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Gerry and Kate's timeline for 03/04 May 2007 |
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Madeleine and her two-year-old twin siblings, Sean and Amelie, were placed in the resort's Kids Club,
where Ms Baker worked, at around 10am while their parents took a stroll...
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CHARLOTTE PENNINGTON (Nanny): "On May the third, it was just Madeleine I was reading a story to.
I later saw them around lunchtime. That's the last time I saw them together as a family."
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...their parents took a stroll before collecting them (Madeleine and the twins) at 12.30pm for lunch
back at the apartment.
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The 'last photo' is allegedly taken at this time. It is widely reported that the digital time
on the camera was incorrectly set to 01:29, however there have been no versions of the photograph released to confirm
this. The photo shows Gerry sitting at the poolside, in casual shorts and t-shirt, with Amelie and Madeleine.
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In the afternoon, the McCanns played tennis while Madeleine went back to her nanny at the children's
club...
(Time of returning to nanny based on the quoted 6 hours i.e. 2.5 hours a.m. and 3.5 hours p.m. to 18:00
when it is said that Madeleine and the twins were 'picked up by her parents')
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BRIDGET O'DONNELL: Earlier that day there had been tennis lessons for the children, with some of the
parents watching proudly as their girls ran across the court chasing tennis balls. They took photos. Madeleine must have been
there, but I couldn't distinguish her from the others. They all looked the same - all blonde, all pink and pretty.
Jes and Gerry were playing on the next court. Afterwards, we sat by the pool and Gerry and Kate talked
enthusiastically to the tennis coach about the following day's tournament. We watched them idly - they had a lot of time for
people, they listened. Then Gerry stood up and began showing Kate his new tennis stroke. She looked at him and smiled. "You
wouldn't be interested if I talked about my tennis like that," Jes said to me. We watched them some more. Kate was calm, still,
quietly beautiful; Gerry was confident, proud, silly, strong. She watched his boyish demonstration with great seriousness
and patience. That was the last time I saw them that day. Jes saw Gerry that night.
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Gerry had knocked up at the start of the 4.30pm tennis-drills session, but had decided not to exacerbate an injury to
his Achilles tendon, so had dropped out and waited around by the courts until the children came back from the kids’
clubs at 5pm for tea.
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We've produced this model of the Ocean Club to clearly show the key areas and where people were.
The tennis courts and pool area, the Tapas Bar and here apartment 5A where by 5.30 in the evening the McCanns say the
children have been picked up from their kids' clubs and they were all back together.
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In the afternoon, the McCanns played tennis while Madeleine went back to her nanny at the children's
club, who gave her tea at 5.30pm.
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At 6 Gerry McCann has his third tennis lesson of the day so he leaves the flat. He says as a family
they talked about bringing the children back out to play in the area by the courts.
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Madeleine, Sean and Amelie were picked up by their parents at 6pm. |
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At 6.30 Gerry McCann asks a friend, David Payne,
to pop in on Kate to see if the children are coming down (to the tennis courts). He goes to the flat, he says all is well,
but the children are too tired and are already in their pyjamas.
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The first identified 'window of opportunity' begins
at 6.30pm when Mr McCann was on the tennis court and his wife was alone in the apartment with Madeleine and two-year-old twins
Sean and Amelie.
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At 6.40pm one of the McCanns' friends, David Payne,
went to their apartment and saw Mrs McCann playing happily with the children.
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At 7, lesson over, Gerry McCann goes back to
the apartment.
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Gerry was in his apartment at 7pm, had a glass of water, then a beer, while the children sat with Kate on the couch having
stories with a snack. The children were clearly shattered – the last thing any of them needed was a sedative and, anyway,
it was not something the McCanns ever did. They put them to bed after a last story. The twins were asleep virtually the moment
they lay down, Madeleine not far behind them.
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Madeleine and the other children were put to bed. Reports of when she was last seen before this vary,
with some accounts putting it as early as 6pm. This would be crucial as the police might put forward a theory that the McCanns
killed Madeleine and hid her body before they went for dinner.
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By 7pm Mr McCann returned from playing tennis and the couple bathed their children... |
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...and put them to bed by 7.30pm. They spent an hour together in their
apartment and then joined their friends in the apartment complex's tapas bar.
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He (Gerry) says he reads the children a story and all three are asleep by 7.30. |
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At about 7.30pm, Kate and Gerry showered and changed and sat down to have a quiet glass of the sauvignon blanc. |
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That evening, Thursday, May 3, at just after 8pm, by their account, Kate and Gerry McCann were having a glass of wine
together in apartment 5a on the ground floor of Block 5 of the Waterside Village Gardens at the Ocean Club.
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The couple say they have a glass of wine before at half past eight they leave for the tapas restaurant,
it's on the complex about 70 metres away.
GERRY: We ate in the open air bit of the tapas and when we went in there was I think one or two other
couples.
KATE: And then it was just us, you know, and it wasn't late, you know, it was half eight we were
there.
GERRY: One couple we played tennis with and we chatted to them, and then some of the friends started
arriving and they left shortly after that. And I think at that point we might have been the only table.
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BRIDGET O'DONNELL: Our baby would not sleep and at about 8.30pm, Jes took him out for a walk in the
buggy to settle him. Gerry was on his way back from checking on his children and the two men stopped to have a chat. They
talked about daughters, fathers, families. Gerry was relaxed and friendly. They discussed the babysitting dilemmas at the
resort and Gerry said that he and Kate would have stayed in too, if they had not been on holiday in a group.
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Around this time, witnesses agree, the McCanns arrived at the tapas bar near their apartment, meaning
there was a "window of opportunity" of up to 2hrs 40 mins for them to kill Madeleine and hide her body - a scenario dismissed
as "ludicrous" by their family.
The couple then settled down to dinner and take part
in a quiz organised by the Ocean Club's aerobics teacher, Najova Chekaya.
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Mr and Mrs McCann arrived at about 8.30pm and were joined by the rest of the so-called Tapas Nine.
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They were first to the table at the restaurant at 8.35 and spent some minutes talking to a couple from Hertfordshire
– two more tennis players – at the next table, who were eating with their young children... The McCanns sat
down after a few minutes and then ordered some wine. The Oldfields were next to arrive, then Russell O’Brien and Jane
Tanner and, finally, always last, Dave and Fiona Payne with Dianne Webster.
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They had just ordered starters when the routine of checking began. Matt Oldfield went first at 8.55 to check his own
apartment and to hurry up the Paynes, who had still not arrived.
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JANE TANNER: I think the starters were about to arrive so I thought oh, I'll go and do a check in
sort of 20 minutes or so before last check.
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Gerry McCann says he went at just after 9 to check on his children. He says that their bedroom door
was more open than usual so he goes in. Gerry McCann has told Panorama he remembers looking down at Madeleine. He spent a
moment thinking how beautiful she looked and how lucky he was. He says this was the last time he saw his daughter. He closes
the bedroom door and leaves through these unlocked patio doors. A stair gate since removed is shut, this gate is on the latch
not locked.
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He (Oldfield) was followed by Gerry, who entered his apartment at about 9.05 through the patio doors to the lounge. Earlier
that week the McCanns had used a key to go in through the front door next to the children’s bedroom but, worrying the
noise might wake the children, they began using the patio doors, leaving them unlocked.
When he entered the apartment, Gerry immediately saw that the children’s bedroom door, which they always left just
ajar, was now open to 45 degrees. He thought that was odd, and glanced in his own bedroom to see if Madeleine had gone into
her parents’ bed. But no, she and the twins were all still fast asleep.
Gerry paused over Madeleine, who – a typical doctor’s observation, this – was lying almost in ''the
recovery position'' with Cuddle Cat, the toy her godfather, John Corner, had bought her, and her comfort blanket up near her
head, and Gerry thought how gorgeous, how lovely-looking she was and how lucky he was. Putting the door back to five degrees,
he went to the loo and left to return to the restaurant. That, of course, was the last time he would see his daughter.
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Gerry McCann left the table to check on his children, who were all sleeping soundly, he says. Returning,
he bumped into another British tourist, Jeremy Wilkins, with whom he had played tennis.
They chatted for several minutes, as Mr
Wilkins has confirmed.
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As the adults dined, Gerry went to check on Madeleine and the twins Sean and Amelie at just after 9pm,
perhaps at 9.05pm. He says all the children were safely asleep.
As he was returning to the table he encountered Jeremy Wilkins, an English fellow holidaymaker whom
Gerry had befriended at the resort’s tennis courts. They chatted for a few minutes in the street outside the McCanns’
apartment.
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Mr McCann, 39, was then said to have returned to the apartment at 9.05pm to check on Madeleine, Sean and Amelie. He has
since said he believes the abductor could already have been inside.
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This is the second "window of opportunity" allegedly identified by detectives, but Mr McCann left the apartment by 9.10pm.
He met another witness, television producer Jeremy Wilkins, who confirmed that he stood and chatted with the consultant
cardiologist near the apartment's staircase.
The pair were stood by the gate near the apartment's unlocked patio doors - where the intruder is thought to have gained
entry - so the abductor would have been forced to flee through the bedroom window, on the other side of the apartment.
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Returning to the tapas bar he meets Jeremy Wilkins who he'd played tennis with that afternoon. He
crosses the road to talk to him.
GERRY McCANN (Speaking in August): I bumped into one guy I played tennis with in the street when
I'd gone in to check, and that was the first time I think of any of the nights that I'd been going up and down that I saw
anyone else really - five, six nights, and it was incredibly quiet.
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As he walked down the hill, Gerry saw Jes Wilkins on the opposite side of the road pushing a child in a buggy. Gerry
called hello and crossed over to talk. Wilkins and his partner were eating in their own apartment that night, but their youngest
still wouldn’t settle.
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They spoke for a few minutes. At this time around 9.15 Jane Tanner thinks about checking on her children.
JANE TANNER: So I thought I'll go and do a check before the food arrives. So I just walked out of
the restaurant, up the hill, I passed Gerry who was talking to one of his tennis friends at the time.
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Jane Tanner told police that at this
time she went to check on her daughter, who was ill, and recalled seeing Mr McCann talking to Mr Wilkins. As she went into
the apartment, she saw a man aged around 35 carrying a little girl wrapped in a blanket.
She thought nothing of it but is now convinced
this was the kidnapper. The child's pyjamas matched the description of those Madeleine was wearing. Mr Wilkins apparently
saw no such man, and does not remember seeing Miss Tanner. He has told police: "It was a very narrow path and I think it would
have been almost impossible for anyone to walk by without me noticing."
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At 9.15pm another of the Tapas Nine,
Jane Tanner, said she saw a man carrying a child away from the apartment and she now believes this was the abductor taking
Madeleine.
But Mr Wilkins said he did not see Ms Tanner or the mystery man and that it would have
been impossible for them to be there without him seeing them.
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One of the party, Russell O’Brien, was away from the table for much of the evening, caring for
his sick child. At about 9.15pm Jane Tanner, his girlfriend, went to their apartment to see how things were. As she did so
she passed, right on the street corner by the McCanns’ apartment, a man carrying a child wrapped in a blanket.
The man was crossing the road, walking away from the apartment complex. At the time Tanner thought
nothing of it; it seemed a perfectly normal spectacle in a family resort.
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According to the McCann timeline, at about 9.30 Matt Oldfield is the next to check on the children.
Remember Gerry McCann says he had closed the bedroom door, but Matt Oldfield says he finds it open. He doesn't go in the room,
he sees the twins but can't see Madeleine's bed. Because there's no noise he assumes everything is okay.
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At 9.30, Kate got up to make the next check on her children, but Matt Oldfield was checking too, as was Russell O’Brien,
and Matt offered to do Kate’s check for her, which she accepted. Gerry teased that she would not be excused her turn
at the next check.
In the McCanns’ apartment, Oldfield noticed the children’s bedroom door was again open, but that meant nothing
to him, so he merely observed all was quiet and made a cursory glance inside the room, seeing the twins in their cots but,
agonisingly, not directly seeing Madeleine’s bed from the angle at which he stood. Afterwards, he could not say for
sure if she had been there or not. Nor could he say if the window and shutter had been open. |
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Dr Matthew Oldfield left the table and offered to check the McCann children. In his first police
statement he said he merely listened at the door of apartment 5a but later said he had gone in and noticed that the room seemed
lighter than the others, as if the shutters had been opened. He cannot be certain whether Madeleine was there.
Gerry McCann invited Miss Chekaya to join
the party at 9.30. Her account apparently contradicts Mr Oldfield, as she claims that no one left or returned to the table
in the half-hour she was there.
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BRIDGET O'DONNELL: Jes returned to our apartment just before 9.30pm. We ate, drank wine, watched
a DVD and then went to bed.
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Detectives are probing claims that Mr McCann sent and received 14 text messages between 9.30pm and
11.40pm, which they believe are suspicious.
At 9.30pm the time-line says another of the group, Matthew Oldfield, went to the apartment to check
on the children, but did not go inside. He said he saw Sean and Amelie sleeping but did not see Madeleine, whose bed was not
visible from the patio doors.
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At 9.30pm Kate was due to check on her children, but another of the party, believed to be Matt Oldfield,
was getting up from the table to make his own check. Oldfield said he would look in on the McCanns’ children, according
to a source close to the McCanns.
When Oldfield reached the corner apartment he entered through the closed but unlocked french windows
and checked on the sleeping children. Afterwards, with the terrible agony of hindsight, he could clearly recall seeing the
twins lying there, but could not say for sure that he had seen Madeleine.
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Finally, at 10pm, it was Kate's turn to check the apartment. She only became alarmed when she reached out to the children's
bedroom door and it blew shut. Inside the room the window was open, the shutter was up and Madeleine's bed was empty. Kate
quickly searched everywhere and ran back down the hill and into the restaurant: ''Madeleine's gone, somebody’s taken
her'' or ''Madeleine's gone, someone’s taken her.''
Gerry stood up. ''She can’t be gone.'' ''I’m telling you she’s gone, someone's taken her.''
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Kate McCann left the table at this time. One tapas bar worker has even claimed that only one person
left the table during the evening, a tall man thought to be Dr O'Brien.
There are also conflicting accounts of
how much the party drank. One Portuguese newspaper claimed the nine friends downed 14 bottles of wine. The McCanns insist
they drank three or four.
Kate McCann ran back to the restaurant
at 10pm, saying Madeleine was missing.
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Then at 10pm Mrs McCann, 39, returned to the apartment, discovered her daughter was missing and raised
the alarm.
Portuguese police believe this was the third "window of opportunity" when Madeleine either died or
was taken from the apartment.
Mrs McCann said she searched the flat three times before screaming 'She's gone!' But another witness,
a Portuguese waiter, said she stood on the apartment's balcony and screamed across the swimming pool to where her husband
sat with their friends at the tapas bar.
He said she shouted: "They've taken her, they've taken her, they've taken our little girl."
Mr McCann and the friends then ran to the apartment and began searching.
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O’Brien rejoined the table shortly before 10pm. Not long afterwards Kate got up to make the next
check on her three children. The walk must have taken her less than a minute. Madeleine was not in her bed.
Left behind was Cuddle Cat, Madeleine’s comfort toy. She was never separated from it, especially
at night.
According to Kate, the bedroom window was open and the shutter up, yet they had been closed and down
when Gerry checked at 9pm. Kate searched the apartment and the area immediately outside.
She ran down the hill and into the restaurant, where Gerry recalls her shouting or screaming either
“Madeleine has gone. Somebody has taken her” or “Madeleine has gone. Someone has taken her”. Other
reports suggest she shouted, “They've taken her.”
Gerry thought “that can’t be right, that can’t be right”. He went running up
to the apartment with Kate and checked everywhere she had already looked, and made a quick run around the apartment block.
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The McCanns say they asked Matt Oldfield to call the police at 10.15 from the Ocean Club front desk.
When the police don't appear, they say someone from the group goes back to the front desk to see what's happening.
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Matt went down to the 24-hour reception at the bottom of the hill to raise the alarm. The call to the police went in
at 10.15.
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They decided straight away to call the police but had no idea what the emergency numbers were and,
anyway, could not speak Portuguese.
They asked one of their friends in the group to go down to the main reception, which is manned 24 hours,
and call the police. The call was made at 10.14pm or 10.15pm, according to the McCanns.
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I have spoken to someone who was staying very close to flat 5A on the night of May 3rd. She says
the first that she was aware of a missing child was 10.30 and she's sure of that because she says the BBC 10 o'clock news
had just finished. She says that she heard Kate McCann sobbing, repeating over and over again: "We've let her down." She also
says that she heard the first Portuguese policeman arrive and he said: "She must have walked out because there's no sign of
a break in."
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The police say the first call they received was about 10.40. |
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Police were called at 10.40pm... |
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...the first officers arrived at 10.47pm |
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JUNE WRIGHT (Luz resident): ''I arrived at the Ocean Club reception at around about 10 to 11
and at the time that we arrived a police car arrived - and as the police officer got out a man approached him, who I now know
is Gerry McCann and said that his daughter had been abducted. That there was no way that she could have opened the shutters
herself, she'd definitely been taken.''
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GERRY McCANN (Speaking in August): There had been quite a few people in the apartment but not into
the bedroom, that was limited to myself, Kate, I think two of our friends, the two GNR officers and I think a translator.
I was certainly saying to people: "Stay out of the room." There was no sealing off of the room and should we?
The twins were still sleeping in their cots. So... you'd be trying to leave it as undisturbed as
possible, and they slept very soundly until we moved them out of the cots into their own apartment which does make me wonder
about whether there was any substances used to keep them asleep.
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Ms Baker was not with the McCanns when the alarm was sounded over Madeleine's disappearance just
before 10pm. However, she joined the search shortly after 11pm after completing her duties as a night babysitter.
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They (GNR Police) arrived 55 minutes later. (The call to the police went in at 10.15). |
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Two officers from the GNR local police arrived at 11.10pm, nearly an hour after the call. They could
not speak English and a member of the Ocean Club staff had to translate.
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SUSAN HEALY (Kate McCann's mother): I think it would be about half eleven - and I'm guessing now,
I might be wrong - there was a phone call and it was Gerry on the phone, and he said it's a disaster. It's a disaster. And
he was quite hysterical.
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It all came pouring out of him at 23.40 – from his phone records – when he called his sister Trish in Scotland
ranting and raving semi-coherently on the phone about Madeleine being taken, and Trish kept trying to get him to calm down.
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At midnight the local police called the Policia Judiciaria, the PJ, who investigate serious crimes. |
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The detectives from PJ arrived at about 1am. |
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BRIDGET O'DONNELL: 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.
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...and senior detectives from the Policia Judiciaria arrived at 1am. |
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The apartment was not cleared of searchers until 2am, when police said there were up to 50 people
inside.
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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.
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JOHN McCANN (Gerry McCanns' brother): 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.
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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!''
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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.
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Gerry went out at about 4am with David Payne, another of their group, hoping to find something. |
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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BRIDGET O'DONNELL: 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.
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Gerry and Kate's phone calls for 03/04 May 2007 |
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Alistair Clark (Gerry's friend/Diplomat)
The first call Gerry made on the night of the crime was to Alistair Clark, a good friend from University days
and a diplomat close to Gordon Brown. Clark must have immediately contacted people at the highest level – before the
PJ were informed, Sky news and the British Ambassador were informed of a kidnapping.
(Translated
from Correio da Manhã, 14 September 2007 - original link now removed, copy of translated report can be found here)
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Local GNR police are called
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Local GNR police arrive
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Susan Healy (Kate's mother)
Susan Healy: I think it would be about half eleven - and I'm guessing now, I might be wrong - there was a phone call
and it was Gerry on the phone, and he said "It's a disaster, it's a disaster". And he was quite hysterical.
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Trish Cameron (Gerry's sister)
It all came pouring out of him at 23.40 – from his phone records – when he called his sister Trish in Scotland
ranting and raving semi-coherently on the phone about Madeleine being taken, and Trish kept trying to get him to calm down.
Trish, went on: ''Kate ran and told my brother. He was distraught on the phone to me, breaking his heart.
''He
said, ‘Maddie’s been abducted, she’s been abducted’. Nothing else was touched in the apartment, no
valuables taken, no passports.''
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Mother of Anne-Marie Wright (Mother of Kate's cousin)
Anne-Marie Wright, Kate's cousin, is the wife of Michael Wright and the McCanns are godparents to one of the Wright's
children. The McCanns spent Christmas with the Wright's in Skipton rather than their own parents and Michael Wright was a
named driver of the McCanns' Renault Scenic hire car.
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Telegraph publishes first report of Madeleine's disappearance (link):
Three year old feared abducted in Portugal
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.
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Susan Healy (Kate's mother - 2nd call)
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''
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Pat Perkins (Family friend)
When Kate McCann discovered Madeleine missing, she called her parents in Liverpool. They had a visitor, Patricia
Perkins, the Human Resources director of a British health organization. After hearing of Madeleine's disappearance, Mrs Perkins
rings her friend Aurelio Guerreiro and asks him to go and help the McCanns.
(She also instigated the original Madeleine chain e-mail, which can be seen at the bottom of 'The First Reactions' page)
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 organism. She calls him, upset: ''She told me the daughter
of british friends of her, who were vacationing 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 English man picked
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. 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.
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Policia Judiciaria arrive
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Linda McQueen (Kate's friend from childhood)
Linda recalled how she had spoken to Kate at about 2am on the night Madeleine vanished.
"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."
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Jon Corner (Family friend and godparent to the twins)
Jon Corner: ''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.”
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Jill Renwick (Friend and former work colleague)
Family pal 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.''
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Trish Cameron (Gerry's sister - 2nd call)
Back home in Dumbarton, Mrs Cameron spoke to her brother again at 10am yesterday.
"It was frustrating for him then because between 5am and 7am the police seemed to do nothing, they were standing about,"
she said.
Guardian link
*
This contradicts previous statements 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 - even though Kate has subsequently admitted, in her BBC interview
with Jane Hill, that she has never done anything that could be called 'physically searching'.
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Philomena McCann (Gerry's sister)
He's
absolutely uncontrollable. He's howling and screaming down the phone: "They've taken her, she's gone."
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John McCann (Gerry's brother)
John McCann appears only to have received text messages
''They texted a couple of times just.. you know.. pray for us. Pray for Madeleine.''
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Calls to journalists
According to a member of the Ocean Club's staff who was helping out as an interpreter that night, between the group of
nine friends and the GNR, the McCann couple didn't stop calling journalists. They were moving influences in the British media,
where they also have relatives. Around 6 am, Sky News breaks the first news.
Source: Sol
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