Parents Believe Missing U.K. Toddler Alive

Madeleine McCann's parents said Tuesday they think their missing 4-year-old daughter is still alive, despite local media reports of blood being found in the hotel room where she vanished in Portugal.

"Last week when we met with the police, they said, 'we are looking for a living child.' And they've said that a lot," Kate McCann told Sky News.

The Portuguese newspaper Jornal de Noticias said Monday that sniffer dogs found specks of blood on a wall in the hotel room from which the British child vanished in May. Madeleine's father Gerry McCann said he could not comment on any specific detail of the probe because this might jeopardize it.

"We do know some information that, one, we're not allowed to tell, and, two, we would never ever put anything into the public domain that might put the investigation of Madeleine at risk," he said.

McCann said he and his wife believe the girl is alive. "We're not naive, but on numerous occasions the Portuguese police have assured us that they were looking for Madeleine alive and not Madeleine having been murdered," he added. "And I don't know of any information that's changed that."

Police inspector Olegario Sousa, speaking in a telephone interview from Lisbon, refused to confirm or deny the report in Jornal de Noticias newspaper about blood being found in the hotel room in the Algarve resort town of Praia da Luz.

"The family are not suspects," Sousa said. "This is the official position."

The newspaper report, which did not cite its sources, said investigators believe the blood might be Madeleine's, but that tests are pending. It also said it appeared that somebody had tried to wipe the specks of blood off the wall.

The paper said investigators were working on the theory that the girl died by accident.

CBS News correspondent Richard Roth reports an undercurrent of criticism in Britain, a feeling that Portuguese police may have botched the investigation into the toddler's disappearance. Roth says there's a counter-current in Portugal, that the British media are obsessed with false hope, or hype.

Another Portuguese daily, Diario de Noticias, reported Tuesday that investigators have known for a month that Madeleine McCann died the night she was reported missing.

In response, Sousa said "we do not confirm newspaper reports."

"All of the details of the investigation are under secrecy," he said. "There are several fronts open in the investigation. There is no certainty about anything."

McCann's parents had left her and two smaller siblings in the hotel room while they had dinner within the resort complex.

As the disappearance approaches its 100-day mark on Saturday, Portuguese police say they have investigated many leads and there have been several reported sightings of the girl, but none of this has come to anything and the McCann family's nightmare goes on.

The only named suspect in the case is 33-year-old Briton Robert Murat, who lives in a house about 150 yards from the resort. Police searched his home again over the weekend in his presence. It was not known what if anything they found, and Murat was not arrested. He has insisted from the outset he had nothing to do with the child's disappearance.

Kate McCann said in interviews published Sunday in Britain that she is haunted with guilt over leaving the girl alone while she and her husband went to dinner — a decision that has raised questions in Britain and abroad. McCann said the hotel seemed safe and family friendly.

"We're just so desperately sorry to Madeleine that we weren't there," she told The Sunday Times. "Even now, every hour I still question myself, 'Why did I think she was safe?'