A man has denied raping a woman during a kidnap but the Crown says he was "10,000,000,000,000,000 times likely" to be a contributor to crucial DNA evidence.

Thirty-eight potential suspects have been identified in the abduction of Madeleine McCann, Scotland Yard said yesterday as it launched a final push to uncover the mystery of the 3-year-old's disappearance on a family holiday in Portugal six years ago.

A 26-year-old Rotorua man has appeared in Rotorua District Court following the alleged kidnapping of a woman on Saturday.

Within 24 hours of buying her new car, Ana Eriepa was being dragged from the back of it at high speed as she tried to escape from the boot after being kidnapped.

International child abduction cases spiked by nearly a quarter in the past year, when 130 children were illegally moved in or out of New Zealand. Most were Kiwi kids taken overseas.

Kate and Gerry McCann have welcomed news that Scotland Yard detectives have identified a number of suspects who could be responsible for their daughter's abduction six years ago.

The annals of criminal history are writ large with ordinary streets that hide dark secrets.

She had her top pulled high to cover her head and she moved in a shield of police. The crowd cheered and surged a little. Cameramen bustled and focused their lenses.

Hands cuffed, his chin buried deep in the collar of his dark blue jumpsuit, Ariel Castro appeared in a Cleveland court yesterday.

Whatever happened to the mythical American neighbourhood, that Rockwellian idyll of friendliness and normality, where no problem cannot be resolved by the community spirit, and nothing nasty ever happens?

Kate McCann did something frighteningly normal recently. She stopped at a petrol station, and went in to pay, leaving her 8-year-old twins strapped in the back seat.

A West Auckland man is facing up to 14 years in jail after he allegedly lied to police about being kidnapped and torching his own mother's car.

An Irish property developer who was allegedly kidnapped for eight months has been released from police custody.

A film telling the story of Austrian kidnap victim Natascha Kampusch reveals for the first time that she was repeatedly raped by the man who abducted her as a schoolgirl.

Two Rotorua women who bashed a man over the head with a frying pan then tied him up, gagged him and robbed him have been jailed.

Police have issued a description of a man they say followed an 8-year-old girl and tried to drag her into his car - the latest in a series of abduction attempts in Auckland.

A man who murdered an Auckland man with a thistle grubber has been jailed for life with a non-parole period of 21 years.

A woman who kidnapped a newborn baby from hospital to convince her partner she had given birth has been banned from having unsupervised access to babies.

Wayne Bracken was found guilty of kidnapping and murdering Jack Davis in 2011. But co-accused Neville Dangen, 24 was found not guilty of the same charges.

A man accused of murdering an Auckland father was so forensically aware, he trimmed his nails and hair and burned bloody clothing, a court has been told.

The mother of a newborn baby kidnapped from her hospital crib has described her terror at thinking the child was gone forever.