Crooked hotel worker ‘tipped off ’ abductor

AN innocent receptionist and a crooked hotel worker may have given Madeleine’s abductor the chance to break into the family’s holiday apartment.

The receptionist wrote down a block dinner reservation for the McCanns and their friends in a staff register which could be seen by all at the Ocean Club in Praia da Luz.

The note said the group wanted to eat close to their apartments as they were ‘leaving their young children alone there and checking on them intermittently’. Police in Praia da Luz believe a rogue hotel worker may have passed this information on to Christian Brueckner.

Detectives know the name of the employee who is said to have told Brueckner that the group left their valuables in their apartments while they ate out.

But Portuguese lawyer Rui Pedro yesterday said the worker could not be prosecuted as it would be difficult to prove that he intended for Madeleine to be snatched. Police suspect that Brueckner had planned to burgle the apartment but then kidnapped the three-year-old on impulse.

Kate McCann wrote a book called Madeleine and in it she describes learning of the receptionist’s note.

She wrote: ‘To my horror I saw that, no doubt in all innocence and to explain why she was bending the rules a bit, the receptionist had written the reason for our request... we wanted to eat close to our apartments as we were leaving our young children alone there and checking on them intermittently.’

Anthony Summers, co-author of Looking For Madeleine, told Sky News that the note ‘is potentially very important’ because it was available for all staff to see. He said Brueckner had once been a waiter so may have known workers at the Ocean Club.

He added: ‘Did he learn from somebody who was complicit, not necessarily at all in abducting or murdering Madeleine, but perhaps in how to take advantage of people being away to rob an apartment?’