Disappearance of Madeleine Mc Cann/Archive 1 - Disappearance

Disappearance

Madeleine disappeared from a ground floor apartment, 5A Rua Dr Agostinho da Silva, Praia da Luz, on the evening of 3 May 2007. The apartment, where the family was staying, had been rented by the holiday company Mark Warner for the summer season as part of its Ocean Club. The layout of the Ocean Club may have contributed to the disappearance of Madeleine as its buildings are spread out across the village, such that anyone can wander in and out of the holiday areas.

Her parents reported to the police that they had taken Madeleine to their holiday apartment at 18:00 Western European Summer Time, to prepare Madeleine and her two-year-old twin siblings for bed. Then they left at 20:30, leaving the apartment unlocked, to dine with friends approximately 130 yards (120 metres) away at a tapas bar within the Mark Warner Ocean Summer Club. The McCanns said that they were taking turns checking on their children. At 20:55, one of the McCanns' dinner companions, Matthew Oldfield, approached the bedroom window of the children to check if he could hear any noise in the room and at approximately 21:05/21:15 Gerry checked on the children. At 21:20 Jane Tanner noticed a man carrying a child going down the road next to the apartment of the McCanns. Slightly further down the road, Gerry was chatting to Jeremy Wilkins, whom he had met at the resort, and neither noticed Tanner as she walked past them to join the rest of the group at the tapas restaurant. At 21:30 Matthew Oldfield went to check the children but saw only the twins through the open bedroom door.

At around 22:00, Kate returned to check on the children and found Madeleine's bed empty and the bedroom window open. An Ocean Club nanny, Charlotte Pennington, who was one of the first people to arrive at the apartment, said that Kate screamed both "They've taken her, they've taken her!" and "Madeleine's gone!". Kate said that the police were called within 10 minutes of finding her daughter gone. Gerry said it was one of their friends who alerted the resort manager and the police.

The GNR’s spokesman, Lieutenant Colonel Costa Cabral, said that the first call to the police (PJ) was at 23:50. According to the Portuguese police's missing person notice, the disappearance had occurred "by 22:40". The police stated that officers arrived within 10 minutes of being alerted, and an investigation unit began work within 30 minutes. Staff and guests at the complex searched until 04:30 while police on the Spanish border and all airports in Portugal and Spain were notified.