Time	What happened?
00:00am	Local GNR officers, who were first on the scene, decide to call in the Policia Judiciaria. This was done at 00:10am according to the PJ case files.
00:30am - 01:00am	According to Portuguese newspaper Sol (18 August 2007), sometime between 00:30 and 01:00am Kate calls her parents. Susan Healy says ''I had a phone call from Kate asking me to contact Father Paul Seddon''   *   When Kate McCann called her parents in Liverpool, they had a visitor, Patricia Perkins. After hearing of Madeleine's disappearance, Mrs Perkins rang her friend Aurelio Guerreiro and asked him to go and help the McCanns.    Sol reports the incident:   'Aurelio Guerreiro, the owner of a bar at the marina in Vilamoura, was close to being involved. His testimony to Sol confuses the McCanns’ time version. Sometime between 0.30 and 1 a.m., Aurelio got a phonecall from an old customer: Pat Perkins, the human resources director from a public English organisation. She calls him, upset: ''She told me the daughter of British friends of hers, who were holidaying close to Lagos, had disappeared over 3 hours ago, that they were completely alone and that nobody was helping them to search for her''. Kate McCann had just informed her parents of the tragedy. Pat, who lives in Liverpool, confirms: ''I was at Kate’s parents’ house at that moment. But I have nothing further to add''. Guerreiro tells what he did after Pat called him: ''I understood she wanted me to go meet them, but I was an hour away from their location, and I could not close the bar, I decided to call the police''. After PJ in Portimao confirmed to him they already knew about the case, Aurelio phoned Kate, at the number that Pat had given him: ''An Englishman picked it up. He thanked me, and contrary to what I expected, he didn't ask me for anything''. Minutes after this phonecall, Gerry asks for the priest from the Luz parish to be called for him – but the Ocean Club staff members refused, given the time it was.
01:00am	Officers from the Policia Judiciaria arrive.   *   Bridget O'Donnell reports that 'at 1am there was a frantic banging on our door. Jes got up to answer. I stayed listening in the dark. I knew it was bad; it could only be bad. I heard male mumbling, then Jes's voice. "You're joking?" he said. It wasn't the words, it was the tone that made me flinch. He came back in to the room. "Gerry's daughter's been abducted," he said. "She ..." I jumped up and went to check our children. They were there. We sat down. We got up again. Weirdly, I did the washing-up. We wondered what to do. Jes had asked if they needed help searching and was told there was nothing he could do; she had been missing for three hours. Jes felt he should go anyway, but I wanted him to stay with us. I was a coward, afraid to be alone with the children - and afraid to be alone with my thoughts.'   - Why were Ms O'Donnell and Mr Wilkins woken at 1:00am in the morning, simply to be told there was nothing they could do to help the search? Why even knock on their door?   The person knocking on the door is believed to have been Matthew Oldfield, in the company of John Hill. Ms O'Donnell describes seeing the same man, one of the doctors, over breakfast later that morning, with his young child in a pushchair.   *   The Times reports, on 09 November 2007, that 'The PJ arrived at 1am, according to the McCanns. There was substantial searching involving tourists and locals for some hours. Kate remained in the apartment hoping for news, while Gerry went out and looked.'   *   Russell O'Brien claims to have met Murat at 1:00am in the morning and says Murat told him he also had a daughter.
02:00am	Linda McQueen, one of Kate's friends from childhood, recalled how she had spoken to Kate at about 2am on the night Madeleine vanished. She tells the Daily Mail, of 16 September 2007, that: "She just said, 'Somebody's taken Madeleine, somebody's taken Madeleine.' She sounded shocked and frantic and was just trying to get everything up and running to find her. It was just awful. This cold, icy feeling came over you."
03:00am	Jon Corner receives a call from Kate: ''She phoned at about 3am. She just blurted out that Maddie had been abducted.   "She said, 'They've broken the shutter on the window and taken my little girl'. She’s still devastated. She's very upset that the police don't seem to be doing anything."   *   The Sun, 17 November 2007, reports on Jane Tanner's sighting of the 'abductor' and says: 'When two cops arrived around 11.15pm Jane told them. She did a more formal interview at around 3am. Gerry was present and it was the moment he learnt Jane had seen an "abductor".   Until then she had not had the opportunity to tell Kate and Gerry. They had been too busy hunting their daughter.   Jane said she felt "total guilt" when she revealed what she had seen. Later she found out Madeleine had been wearing pink and white pyjamas.   The Sun, 20 November 2007, reports: "Then, at around 11.15, two policemen arrived and I told them. Later CID arrived. They did this thing called a cognitive technique, where they put you back in the moment, and it was then that I remembered the pyjamas."   "They were pink and white, they were what Madeleine was wearing. I just felt so awful, I felt I could have stopped this from happening. I think of that everyday."   - There are two extraordinary aspects to the suggestion that Tanner had not had the opportunity to speak to Kate and Gerry, about what she had seen, until 3am in the morning.    Firstly, by all reports and by her own admission, Kate McCann never left her apartment all night, yet we are asked to believe that in 5 hours Tanner couldn't find a single opportunity to speak to Kate about what she had seen and secondly, the McCanns were adamant from the very first minutes that Madeleine had been abducted. She had not simply wandered off. Yet, despite this, Tanner did not feel compelled to mention the fact that she had seen a man carrying a child away from their apartment until 3am in the morning!
03:30am	John McCann (Gerry's brother) speaking on the Panorama documentary, about Gerry: "He was walking the streets of Praia da Luz at half past three. I think most of the search party had disbanded by then and he was still crying his eyes out."   *   David James Smith, in his Times article, writes that: 'By 3.30am they (PJ) had gone and there was no police action at all, or none visible to the McCanns. Gerry had asked the departing PJ detectives at half three about contacting the media to make an appeal. One of the officers had reacted with surprising agitation, waving his hand emphatically: ''No journalists! No journalists!'''   *   The Times, in another report, states that: 'By 3.30am the police had packed it in for the night. The searching was pretty much over. Gerry and Kate were frustrated and desperate.'
04:00am	According to Sol, at four in the morning, Jane was asking a member of GNR: ''Have you cut off all the roads already?''.   Minutes later, Gerry, given the fact that the priest didn't appear, asked another element of GNR to show him the way to the church.   *   The Times reports that: 'Gerry went out at about 4am with David Payne, another of their group, hoping to find something.'
04:30am	The Telegraph, on 09 September 2007, reports that: 'The searches continued until around 4.30am, when a shattered Mr and Mrs McCann were ushered back into their apartment, which, despite it being a crime scene, had not been sealed off at that stage.' - It's not clear how Kate could be 'ushered back into their apartment' when she had never left it. * The manager at the Mark Warner resort, John Hill said the police had been doing all they could. He said around 60 staff and guests at the complex had searched until 4.30am while police notified border police, Spanish police and airports. *   The Guardian reports: 'By 4.30am exhausted holidaymakers began drifting away, having found no sign of Madeleine.'
??? am	The Ocean Club gave them another apartment, but the McCanns did not want to be alone, so the twins were taken to the Paynes' apartment, and Kate and Gerry went there later too, to try to rest.
06:00am	The Times reports that: 'Later, at about 6am, the McCanns went out alone and walked around the scrubland on the outskirts of the village, holding hands and calling Madeleine's name. There was nobody else around and they felt utterly alone.'   *   David James Smith writes that: 'They got up at first light and went to search alone on the open scrubland beyond the resort, wandering around, calling Madeleine's name. It was cold and lonely – there was no answer.'   - These reports, both from The Times, are contradicted by Kate's admission, in her BBC interview with Jane Hill, that she never did anything that could be described as 'physically searching'.   *   George Burke, from Liverpool, was driving home from nearby Lagos around 6.00am when he caught the two people in his car headlights. "I couldn't see them clearly because it was dark and windy. They scurried down a side road and out of sight."   He says: "It was very, very dark and it was hard to make out exactly what the couple looked like. But through the gloom I could see a very suspicious-looking man and woman, with a child who fitted Madeleine's description. Though there was nobody else on the road, they were hurrying across a road that leads straight to the train station and marina."   He adds (but only reported in The Sun): "They were trying to carry the kid without anyone seeing."   - Whether this sighting has any relevance to the case remains to be seen but what is interesting is Mr Burke's description of the weather conditions. At the same time as the McCanns are alleged to have gone out searching the scrubland 'at first light', Mr Burke describes the conditions as 'very, very dark' and 'windy' and could only make out the couple he saw because of his headlights.   There are no lights in the scrubland around the outskirts of the village, which renders the area pitch black.
06:36am - 06:40am	Sunrise in Praia da Luz, Portugal.
07:00am	McCann family friend, Jill Renwick, revealed how panicking Kate sent her a text saying: ''I need help.'' Jill Renwick has known the McCanns since they all worked together at a Glasgow hospital more than a decade ago.   She spoke to Kate at 7am on the morning after Madeleine vanished and said: ''Kate was at the police station in hysterics. When we spoke she said the police weren't doing enough.''   - It's not clear how Kate could be calling from the police station at 7am when the McCanns were actually filmed leaving Praia da Luz for the police station at 8:30am! (see below)   *   The Guardian, 02 June 2007, reports that: 'Jill Renwick has known the couple since they all worked together at a Glasgow hospital more than a decade ago. She spoke to Kate at 7am on the morning after Madeleine vanished: "She just said, 'Help me, please help me'. She said, 'We've been searching all night until 4.30am, and then everybody left us'. At that stage there was only one police officer at the door. They didn't know what to do. So I phoned GMTV."'
07:30am	David James Smith writes that: 'It is widely believed among the Portuguese media, and perhaps the police too, even now, that the McCanns called Sky News before they called the police. For the record, Sky News picked up the story from GMTV breakfast television, at around 7.30am the following day.'
07:30am - 08:30am	Bridget O'Donnell writes that: 'The next morning, we made our way to breakfast and met one of the Doctors, the one who had come round in the night. His young daughter looked up at us from her pushchair. There was no news. They had called Sky television - they didn't know what else to do. He turned away and I could see he was going to weep.'   - The doctor that Ms O'Donnell describes is believed to have been Matthew Oldfield.   It also clearly states, from a first-hand account, that Sky Television were called directly with the news, contradicting previous reports that Sky picked up the story from GMTV. But at what time?
08:30am	This news item was broadcast at 14:00 on May 4th. The following news item (below) confirms that the man in the brown jacket is an officer of the Policia Judiciaria, who had come to collect them at 08:30am that morning. That makes this footage being recorded just 10/11 hours after Madeleine had been reported missing.   The PJ officer appears to be looking round for David Payne, who we see at the end of the clip sitting in the front passenger seat of the car. Presumably, Kate and Gerry went in one car, driven by the PJ officer, whilst Jane Tanner, Matthew Oldfield and David Payne went in a second car.   Presumably, their partners Russell O'Brien, Rachael Oldfield and Fiona Payne stayed behind to mind their children.   At the start of the clip Gerry says "Where are we going?" Gerry and Kate make their way to the police station on the morning of 04 May 2007 This broadcast was made later that day at 20:00 and shows more footage, including David Payne making his way to the car.   The report says that, in spite of having called the media to start with, the 3 groups of friends now refuse to talk to the media, probably to avoid accusations of negligence to the parents of the child (no talk of their own children). They report that nothing was missing from the room except Madeleine, not even her pink blanket. They also add that it was around 21.30 that Madeleine was discovered missing and that there were people walking around, yet nobody saw or heard anthing.
10:00am	Back home in Dumbarton, Trish Cameron, Gerry's sister, receives her second call from Gerry at 10am.   "It was frustrating for him then because between 5am and 7am the police seemed to do nothing, they were standing about," she said.   - This contradicts other statements emanating from the McCanns which suggested that the police had deserted them at 4:30am and that they had been forced to go out looking on their own at 6.00am.   *   10:00am is believed to be the time the apartment was sealed off by police tape.
13:00pm	The forensic team arrive at 13.00pm to begin work on the apartment. The apartment and immediate surroundings are already sealed off with police tape - as can be seen in the SIC video above.
???pm	Kate's parents, Susan and Brian Healy, arrive on a flight from Liverpool with Michael Wright, Kate McCanns' brother-in-law.   Kate and Gerry move items to new apartment
22:00pm	At 10.00pm, as the search for Madeleine continues, Gerry reads a prepared statement to the waiting media.   Transcript of statement read by Gerry McCann:   'Words cannot describe the anguish and despair that we are feeling as the parents of our beautiful daughter Madeleine. We request that anyone who may have any information related to Madeleine's disappearance, no matter how trivial, contact the Portuguese police and help us get her back safely. Please, if you have Madeleine, let her come home to her mummy, daddy, brother and sister. As everyone can understand how distressing the current situation is, we ask that our privacy is respected to allow us to continue assisting the police in their current investigation.'   Watch statement here on BBC News video

Three year-old feared abducted in Portugal, 04 May 2007

Three year-old feared abducted in Portugal Telegraph   By staff and agencies Last Updated: 12:01am BST 04/05/2007   A three-year-old British girl has gone missing while on a family holiday in Portugal, the Foreign Office said today.   Portuguese police are investigating the disappearance from a holiday complex in Praia da Luz in the western Algarve.   A Foreign Office spokesman said that he understood the girl's parents had gone to have dinner once their children were asleep last night, but returned to check on them only to find the girl had gone missing.   "They reported it straight away," he said, adding that consular assistance was being offered.   *   This would appear to be the earliest media report of Madeleine's disappearance. What is curious about it is that it is timed at 12.01am on 04 May 2007. That is just 2 hours after Kate is reported to have discovered Madeleine missing and at a time when, according to a number of reports, the Policia Judiciaria had not even arrived at the scene.   On first sight, it would appear that this 'breaking news' originated from the Foreign Office, as a spokesman is quoted, but why would the Foreign Office disclose this information so quickly, at a time when there was still confusion about what had actually happened, and why would they specifically notify the Telegraph to the exclusion of every other media outlet?   It would seem more likely that the Telegraph received the news first and then rang the Foreign Office to confirm the story. We know that the McCanns were almost constantly ringing relatives and friends throughout the night. Could it be that one of those friends had a contact at the Telegraph, hence the speed of the report?   It appears most likely that the timing of the report was simply the Telegraph's mechanism for allocating a time to a report. A search on the Telegraph's website reveals that all reports show 12:01am until you download the actual report, at which point the correct time is shown. Nevertheless, this still does appear to be the first report published.   Adding to the mystery is the fact that the report reproduced here is no longer available to access through the Telegraph's search engine (which refers you to the article reproduced below), although the article is still available on the direct link above.

	British Toddler Missing, 04 May 2007
	Police and residents search for missing British Toddler on the Algarve (01:19)

Three year-old feared abducted in Portugal, 04 May 2007

Three year-old feared abducted in Portugal Telegraph   By staff and agencies Last Updated: 12:37am BST 07/05/2007 (Main body of article written 04/05/2007)   The parents of a British toddler who has gone missing while on holiday in Portugal say they fear she has been abducted.   Three-year-old Madeline McCann disappeared last night from her parent's rented apartment in the Western Algarve, while they dined nearby.   Sniffer dogs have been brought in by Portuguese detectives to comb the Mark Warner resort where the girl was staying and the nearby seaside village of Praia da Luz.   A family friend said the child's parents, Gerald and Kate McCann, were certain she had been k