Missing Madeleine

The sun was dipping over the Atlantic on the Portuguese coast. May 3 had a been a day out of the tourist brochures: a family picnic for the McCanns at the beach, Gerry had played tennis in the afternoon, and by 6:00pm at the ocean club, the mostly British guests were getting ready for the evening.

Gerry and Kate had made plans to meet seven of their friends from England -- three of them fellow doctors --at the resort's tapas bar.

What happened in the next four hours --between 6pm and 10pm that night -- is the heart of the mystery of Madeleine McCann.

It's a crucial timeline as told by the McCanns and their friends from dinner, virtually all of it given to the police in confidential statements that were later leaked to the press.

It's been that way with so much in this sensational case.

If you're inclined to play detective, keep in mind that a great many of the published reports about the missing child are a hopeless muddle of facts, rumors, off-the-record-sources and flat-out speculation.

What we believe was happening inside the McCann’s ground floor apartment was familiar to parents of young children: getting them settled for the night so mom and dad could enjoy their evening out.

John McCann: Bedtime was all about getting bath, settled for bed, put to bed with -- after their story. The cuddly toys.

Three-year old Madeleine -- days away from her birthday -- had spent the day by the pool and playing in the child-care center.

Later that evening, at 8:30pm, when it was time for the grownups to have dinner, the McCanns chose not to drop the kids off back at the baby sitting service.

Rather, they say they did what they'd done on previous nights.

They tucked in Madeleine and the two-year old twins in one of the bedrooms and left them alone, heading out to the tapas bar -- about 50 yards from their front door.

John McCann: The kids were safely in bed. And it had all gone smoothly that week. And it was all going smoothly until that Thursday night.

This graphic view of the resort complex shows the relationship of the buildings.

Madeleine and her brother and sister here in the McCann apartment on the end next to the street.

And inside the resort's walled perimeter, past the pool, is the tapas restaurant where the dinner was underway by 8:45pm.

At 9 o'clock, with food and bottles of wine are arriving, Gerry McCann says he left the restaurant and came back here to the apartment to look in on the children. He saw Madeleine and the twins asleep in bed and returned to the dinner.

Half-an-hour later, another of the parents got up from the table to look in on his own child who hadn't been feeling well.

He stopped by here too, but reportedly didn't go inside where the McCann children were asleep.

All seemed quiet and he return to the dinner.

Then at 10:00pm, Kate McCann walks back to the apartment to check on the children.

Video   A personal plea for Madeleine If you see a little girl that you think is Madeleine, says John McCann, get in touch with authorities immediately. 'Don't dither,' says McCann. Dateline NBC

The twins are fast asleep, but Madeleine is not in her bed.

A window shutter is open, apparently forced from the inside. Her child is gone.

Gaisford: And from that point on, of course, the happy relaxed evening just stops dead. And then they start searching for their daughter.

The twins remain asleep as some close by say. Kate McCann screams, "They've taken her."

A frantic search of the resort begins.

The McCanns and their friends calling out for Madeleine.

They're joined by other guests and resort staff.

Police arrive -- too slowly, some would later say.

Gaisford: This is not a hotbed of crime, it doesn't have whole teams of search officers just there ready and waiting.

The search goes into the night. Spilling out from the resort into the village itself.

By midnight, a distraught Gerry McCann phones home.

John McCann: The-- the whole-- the whole night was hellish. You know? I've got crying for help from my brother and I’m stuck couple of thousand miles away from him. I can't do anything concrete. And then eventually he just said, "I don't know what to think. I think some pedophile or some other swine has taken Madeleine."

And the next day, the first of what would become a familiar and poignant ritual for the McCanns: facing the cameras and pleading for any scrap of information.

Gerry McCann: Words cannot describe the anguish and despair that we are feeling as the parents of our beautiful daughter Madeleine ... please, if you have Madeleine let her come home to her mummy, daddy, brother and sister.

A pretty English child abducted from her holiday bed becomes the electrifying international storyline.

With their reputation as a safe family tourist destination on the line, the pressure is on the Portuguese authorities to solve the case quickly.

Gaisford: The police start their searches, but they don't treat the house as a crime scene, and that means a lot of evidence is lost straightaway.

Portuguese national police, the rough equivalent of the FBI, are brought in to take over the investigation from the overwhelmed local village cops.

For days, police continue to comb the area around the resort for any trace of the girl, but to some their effort seems amateurish.

Andrew Forrester, search volunteer from Wales: In the U.K., the presence would be massive. You are only a mile and half from where it happened and there's nothing going on. It's strange, very strange.

Official updates are scare-- -Portuguese law prohibits the police from disclosing details about an on-going investigation.

But cops do assure the press that they have a working theory: the child has been kidnapped.

The photos of Madeleine issued to the media and police throughout Europe -- one in particular -- point out an anomaly in the child's right eye, something that can be used to identify her.

Her parents -- the two doctors -- observant Catholics, find solace in the church nearby the resort.

Kate McCann: Gerry and I would like to express our sincere gratitude and thanks to everybody but particularly to the local community here who have offered so much support...

With no immediate break in the case, reporters and photographers swarmed the seaside village. And the educated parents -- especially the cool, elegant mother -- were trailed ceaselessly by cameras, recording their every move.

A sophisticated British public relations apparatus was put in place around the McCanns. The goal in part: to keep the pressure on the Portuguese. The parents vowed not to leave the country without their daughter.

Kate McCann: I mean at this, at this moment in time I cannot think about going home without Madeleine.

But, at least to southern Mediterranean temperaments, the parents seemed so controlled, so English and rational about their devastating loss. Why didn't Kate wail?

A cultural divide of northern and southern Europe was opening and it later would have consequences for the McCanns.

But for now, world-wide sympathy for the McCanns was building.

Gerry McCann press conference:  As we have said before we are positive and focused on the investigation....

Gaisford: The media was effectively being used by the McCanns, and they were able to keep the message alive.

The McCanns stayed on at the resort, Kate McCann rarely seen in public without her daughter's stuffed toy cuddle cat.

Gerry McCann supportive of the police -- publicly, anyway.

Gerry McCann: There is a huge amount of work going on in the background. You may not know the details and we don't them not but we know there is a systematic approach to this.

On the eleventh day after Madeleine disappeared, there was suddenly real news to report -- an investigative breakthrough.

The cops had a suspect.

A half-British local man in his 30's who lived with his mother in a villa just down the road from the resort.

The cadaver dogs and crime-scene technicians were enroute to turn the home upside down looking for traces of Madeleine.

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