36 Maddie Mccann
For a decade it’s been one of the most distressing crime mysteries ever to grip the world. Who can forget Kate and Gerry Mccann, the distraught parents of little Madeleine, pleading with the public to find their daughter.
The three-year-old went missing from a holiday villa in Portugal one May evening in 2007 while her parents dined close by. Despite endless searches and ongoing investigations, still no one knows her fate.
Even now, haunting and mysterious clues and theories continue to emerge about Madeleine’s disappearance from the family’s apartment in beachside Praia da Luz, the little girl vanishing as her parents ate with friends at a nearby restaurant, which was common for resort guests.
In the past week a childminder who looked after Madeleine and her two younger siblings at the holiday resort has spoken for the first time since Maddie went missing.
While the child’s allocated nanny Catriona Baker had been with Maddie for about six hours that day and was her main carer during their stay, the woman – one of many employed by the resort – also looked after Maddie and says she’s still “haunted” by the night’s events.
In a new twist to the mystery, she also explains that the resort was considered so unsafe that all the nannies were handed rape alarms and advised to not go out alone.
Criticising the Portuguese police’s handling of the girl’s disappearance, the childminder believes their mistakes blighted any chance of finding out who had snatched her.
Speaking of how events unfolded on that fateful night of May 3, 2007, she says, “A parent came to me and said there was something going on, and said someone’s looking for a child. I didn’t instantly think it was Maddie.
“A couple of minutes later I walked in to find Kate crying, friends comforting her, Gerry looking under cars, and then it just blew up. I don’t even think she saw me. I just stood next to her and tried to comfort her.
“She was pacing up and down. The worst possible thing had just happened to her. I think I said something like, ‘She’ll be found, these things happen all the time.’ She was crying, but almost in a catatonic state, and Gerry was very distressed,” the childminder says. “The one thing I really remember was him looking under the cars. I can’t forget that.”
The former childminder, who worked for travel firm Mark Warner at the Ocean Club resort where the Mccanns were staying, looked through bins and walked the streets until 5am searching
‘I walked in to find Kate crying… friends comforting her’
for Madeleine, and is shocked the local police took 90 minutes to arrive at the scene.
She also reveals how numerous people went into the apartment Madeleine vanished from, contaminating a potential crime scene.
“I know I didn’t step into that apartment but pretty much everybody else did,” she says.
Her comments come just weeks after a crime expert who has analysed the high-profile case made claims that the child was not abducted but killed in the apartment.
Investigative criminal profiler Pat Brown, author of Profile of the Disappearance of Madeleine Mccann, believes Scotland Yard bungled the investigation and slammed the crime-fighting agency for “wasting time and money” on the case.
“There’s no point spending all this money – nothing they do is going to make that child alive.”
The US author says Madeleine most likely died an accidental death that was “covered up”.
The childminder disagrees, saying when people ask her if she believes Madeleine’s parents were involved, she says there is “no way at all”.
Distressed by the mystery, she says that after 10 years, she now wants to focus on her happy memories of caring for the “slightly shy little British girl”.
“She was easy for us to care for, and you were happy to sit and help out this pretty little girl,” she says.