"I'm Devastated" Says Jane Tanner , the only witness to Maddy's abduction

Daily Express: says: 'The only witness to Madeleine McCann’s abduction is “devastated” that she did not do anything to prevent it, friends claimed last night. Jane Tanner saw a man carrying a child under a blanket on the night the four-year-old went missing. Mother-of-two Miss Tanner was dining with Madeleine’s parents when the child was snatched from their holiday apartment 40 yards away.

She originally dismissed the man and the blanket as someone with his own child. But when Madeleine’s mother Kate discovered her daughter was missing half an hour later, Miss Tanner realised what she had witnessed. Now friends say she is racked by anguish and that her life has “collapsed”. But the McCanns have publicly forgiven her, pointing out she could not have known what she was witnessing. Although she only saw him from the back Miss Tanner, 36, gave police a description of the abductor that night.

The report remains the only official sighting of Madeleine outside the apartment in Praia da Luz on the night she vanished. The description has been circulated to forces round the world and detectives say Miss Tanner holds the key to identifying the abductor. “She is utterly convinced she witnessed Madeleine’s abduction and grief-stricken that she didn’t raise the alarm. She just genuinely did not suspect a thing because when she saw the man with the child she believed Madeleine was fast asleep safe and sound just a few yards away.

“She has not talked publicly about what she saw because she is a very private person and is finding it hard to come to terms with. She is just hoping and praying – like everyone close to the family – that Madeleine is found safe and well.”


Mundo Portugues; says: 'The notice was advanced for the English periodical “Daily Express”: a new witness will have affirmed to Polícia Judiciária (PJ) that she saw a man, close to 21h30, to walk hastily in direction of the Church of the Beach of the Light, next to the beach, in the night where Madeleine McCann was abducted.

This information comes to corroborate the certification of a friend of the McCann couple, Jane Tanner, who already had said previously to the PJ to have seen, in the night of 3 of May, a man to hastily go down the street with a child rolled in a blanket, significantly to the same hour. The route that will have been taken the foot, passes for the front of the entrance of the enterprise where the parents if found it supper in this night, and later for a supermarket, that by this time already would be closed. More below, in direction of the beach, it meets Church of Ours Lady of the Conceição, already close to the beach.