THE NIGHT MADELEINE McCANN WAS KIDNAPPED

Red dots - sightings of men with fair hair. 

If Madeleine McCann was kidnapped around 9.15pm, the kidnappers would want to get her very swiftly to some nearby house or villa.

Kate McCann, in her book, describes what happened around 10pm:

David said 'Let's just check the apartment.'

I'd done that....I ran out into the car park, flying from end to end, yelling desperately 'Madeleine, Madeleine!'

It was so cold and windy....Fear was shearing through my body...

Gerry, David, Russell and Matt split into pairs and dashed around the adjacent apartment blocks.

Just after ten past ten, Gerry asked Matt to run to the Ocean Club's twenty-four-hour reception to get the staff to call the police... 

Robert Murat was living in a villa a little beyond the point at which the 21.15 sighting was made.

 By this time the Mark Warner people had rounded up as many of their colleagues as they could, off-duty staff as well as those just finishing their shifts, rousing some of them from their beds. 

Close to ten-thirty they activated the company's 'missing child search protocol' and mobilised people to comb the complex and its environs.

At 10.35pm the police had still not arrived, so Gerry asked Matt if he would go back to the twenty-four-hour reception and find out what was happening. 

 John Hill, the Mark Warner resort manager came up to the veranda behind our apartment. 

I remember screaming at him to do something. 

 'Where are the police?' I yelled at him. 

He tried to reassure me they'd be with us soon, but I could tell that he, too was finding the waiting difficult. Minutes felt like hours...

Gerry had been over to the Mini Club above the twenty-four-hour reception thinking that if Madeleine had been left somewhere, she might make her way back to any place that was familiar to her...

Gerry meanwhile was running from pillar to post, urging me to remain in the apartment with the twins so that I'd be on hand if Madeleine was found and brought back there...

On my insistence, Gerry and Dave went out again to look for some sign of Madeleine. They went up and down the beach in the dark, running, shouting...

I walked briskly up and down Rua dr Agostinho da Silva, sometimes breaking into a jog, clinging to the hope that I'd spot something in the dark...

I couldn't have allowed myself to entertain sleep. 

 I felt Madeleine's terror, and I had to keep vigil with her. 

I needed to be doing something, but I didn't know where to put myself. 

I wandered restlessly in and out of the room and onto the balcony. At long last, dawn broke...



As soon as it was light, Gerry and I returned to our search. 

We went up and down roads we'd never seen before having barely left the Oceab Club complex all week. 

We jumped over walls and ... through undergrowth. 

We looked in ditches and holes. 

All was quiet apart from the sound of barking dogs, which added to the eeriness of the atmosphere. 

I remember opening a big dumpter-type bin and saying to myself please God don't let her be in here. 

The most striking and horrific thing about it all was that we were completely alone. Nobody else, it seemed was out looking for Madeleine. Just us, her parents.

We must have been out for at least an hour before returning to David and Fiona's apartment...

Posted in: Madeleine McCann,Robert Murat,search,sightings