Maddie RE-EXAMINED
10yrs on, top Scotland Yard cop investigates..
The night she disappeared
Shocking police blunders
What may have happened
For Kate and Gerry McCann, the family holiday they had been looking forward to for months was to become a nightmare. With their three children, they were to enjoy a week at the Ocean Club in Praia da Luz, Algarve.
They went to the resort with three couples, Fiona and David Payne, Matthew and Rachael Oldfield and Russell O’Brien and Jane Tanner, along with Fiona’s mother Dianne Webster. The group would eventually become known as the “Tapas Seven”.
The Paynes took their two children, the Oldfields were on holiday with their daughter, while Russell and Jane had their two children.
On arriving at the resort on April 28, 2007, the McCanns checked in at 2.30pm. They were given apartment 5A – a two-bedroom property on the complex’s ground floor.
The rear of the flat could be accessed via a waist-high gate from the main public road straddling the 1980s-built Ocean Club.
It backed on to a public path which separated it from the club’s main communal swimming pool and tapas bar, which was 50 yards away.
Kate, 39, and Gerry, 38, slept in a rear bedroom, while their three children all slept in the front bedroom overlooking the residents’ car park.
Madeleine, their eldest child at nearly four years old, slept in one of two single beds, while her twin siblings Sean and Amelie each had a travel cot in the middle of the room.
On the first night the group ate in the resort’s buffet-style Millennium restaurant with their children.
But Kate and several other members of the group thought it was too far away from their rooms and complained it did not open until 7pm.
They decided instead to blockbook a large table at the tapas restaurant for the next six nights and eat once their children were asleep.
The group turned down the chance to pay for resort-supplied babysitters or put their kids in an evening creche.
Instead, each couple agreed to take turns to make half-hourly checks on their children.
For the next five nights, the group met at 8.30pm and ate in the poolside restaurant until around 11pm.
On May 3, the McCanns considered dining alone with their children but changed their minds. Kate and Gerry had tennis lessons during the morning while their children spent time in the resort’s two creches. The couple then had lunch in the apartment with their children before going to the Ocean Club’s swimming pool just yards from the flat.
It was during this time that Kate took the last known photograph of Madeleine at 2.29pm as she dangled her feet into the water next to her dad and sister Amelie.
They then returned Madeleine, Sean and Amelie to the creches and had another joint tennis lesson.
Gerry later played a game against another holidaymaker while Kate went for a jog.
The couple sat down with their children for dinner at the tapas restaurant at around 5pm. This is the last independent sighting of Madeleine, corroborated by staff and creche workers.
They went back to apartment 5A at 5.30pm and Gerry left his family to play another tennis match at 6pm.
In her police state- ment Kate said David Payne turned up at the apartment at 6.30pm but did not come in or see the children.
But in his statement to Leicestershire Police he claimed to have gone inside and saw all three looking “happy and content”. Later, in her book, Kate said he had popped his head around the door during this visit. Kate bathed the children and put Madeleine in her pink M&S Eeyore pyjamas before giving them all milk and biscuits.
Gerry returned at 7pm and the couple read to the children before they went to bed at 7.15pm.
The pair then spent time getting ready and each had a glass of white wine before going to the tapas restaurant at 8.35pm.
They told police the front door was locked and they left by the rear patio
door, closing it but not locking it. Madeleine was asleep with her pink Cuddle Cat comforter on the bed.
According to various witnesses, the McCanns were the first in the group to arrive for dinner at around 8.40pm.
Gerry left the table at around 9.05pm to check on the children.
He told police he entered via the rear patio and went into their bedroom, where all three were asleep.
On his way back to the restaurant he briefly spoke to a man he met playing tennis earlier in the week, TV producer Jeremy Wilkins.
Kate was due to make the 9.30pm check but Matthew Oldfield offered to do it as he was checking on his daughter in 5B.
He told detectives the bedroom door was open and he saw Sean and Amelie asleep in their cots but did not physically see Madeleine. However he assumed because it was quiet that she was OK and sleeping in her bed. He also recalled noticing their room seemed lighter than the others, as if the shutters were partially opened.
Kate agreed with Gerry to make the 10pm check because she had not gone half an hour earlier.
In her statement, she said she entered through the rear patio door and immediately noticed the children’s bedroom door was wide open.
She also told detectives that the curtains and window were open and the shutters up – and Madeleine missing from her bed.
Kate left the twins in their travel cots and ran into the tapas restaurant, shouting: “They’ve taken her, they’ve taken our Madeleine.”
Around 15 minutes before Matthew Oldfield’s check, Jane Tanner had seen a man walking away from the resort carrying a small child.
She later described the pyjamas the girl was wearing, matching the description of those worn by Madeleine on the night. But British detectives revealed in 2013 that the man was an innocent tourist and the girl was not Madeleine.
At around 10pm Irish tourist Martin Smith spotted a man carrying a child near the Estrela da Luz complex in Praia da Luz. The former Unilever executive made a statement to Portuguese police at the time, along with his wife and two children.
Martin helped to compile an e-fit of the suspect a year later but the images were only made public in 2013.
According to a later police statement in 2008, he was “60-80% certain” the man was Gerry McCann. This statement, given to the Irish Garda, was included in the Portuguese police files made public in 2008.
After Kate raised the alarm at 10pm the entire Tapas group raced to the apartment and began searching the immediate area.
Portuguese police were notified at 10.14pm and fellow holidaymakers and resort staff searched the complex until 4.30am. At 6am a British expat claimed to have seen a “suspicious” couple with a child like Madeleine rushing towards a marina at Lagos, a town four miles from Praia da Luz.
George Burke, from Liverpool, said the “vicious-looking” man and woman were carrying the child across a dual carriageway. Portuguese police looked into the sighting but dismissed it as not being relevant to the investigation.
News of Madeleine’s disappearance began to be reported on British breakfast TV shows the day after she vanished. Later the same day police received a tip-off that a girl matching Madeleine’s description had been seen at a motorway service station.
Staff alerted officers after seeing a distressed blonde girl accompanied by a woman inside the Galp services on the A22 in Lagos.
Policia Judiciaria detectives seized CCTV images of the pair and showed it to the McCanns, who said the girl was not Madeleine.
By nightfall on Friday the world’s media had descended on the resort to cover the unfolding story.