A BBC Crimewatch appeal to find missing girl Madeleine McCann generated almost 1000 calls and emails, including those from several people who gave the same name for a suspect.
Detectives from Scotland Yard's Operation Grange welcomed the ''overwhelming response'' and said they were trawling through several potential new leads.
Monday night's program featured a new reconstruction of the hours leading up to the then three-year-old's 2007 abduction from the Portuguese resort of Praia da Luz.
The public was shown two EFIT images of a man police believe may have been the abductor. An Irish family saw him walking towards the beach carrying a child of about Madeleine's age. Within minutes of the broadcast, several viewers provided the same name for a potential suspect.
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Madeleine's parents, Kate and Gerry McCann, said: ''We are absolutely delighted with the overwhelming public response to Crimewatch … We are genuinely hopeful that one or more of these responses will lead to a major breakthrough in the investigation.''
Crimewatch editor Joe Mather said many calls came from Britons who were in Praia da Luz at the time but had not previously contacted police. Detective Chief Inspector Andy Redwood, who is leading the investigation, said: ''We have now had over 730 calls and 212 emails as a direct result of the specific lines of inquiry we issued yesterday.''
Telegraph, London
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