Bridget O'Donnell, who became friends with the couple while staying at the same complex, broke her silence to declare that although Kate and Gerry McCann made a "disastrous decision" in leaving Madeleine alone, they are innocent of any crime. The mother of two also told of the Portuguese detectives' incompetence, saying that they did not even know what Madeleine looked like the day after she disappeared.Yesterday, for the first time, Miss O'Donnell described a crucial encounter when her partner, TV producer Jeremy Wilkins, spoke to Gerry McCann during the hour when Madeleine vanished.
The cardiologist was on his way back to the resort's tapas restaurant at 8.30pm after checking on his three children when he bumped into Mr Wilkins, who was taking his baby son out in a buggy to try to get him to sleep before spending the evening in the family's accommodation.
"The two men stopped to have a chat," she wrote in The Guardian. "They talked about daughters, fathers, families. Gerry was relaxed and friendly.They discussed their baby-sitting 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."
Her account goes against the Portuguese police theory that Mr McCann was somehow involved in his daughter's death and had left her body in the apartment at that time.The chance meeting on the night Madeleine vanished has been subject to endless speculation and is critical in confirming the timing of the McCanns' movements.
Miss O'Donnell, who worked as a producer on BBC1's Crimewatch, said she "admired" the McCanns for being comfortable enough to leave their children alone in their apartment as they ate at a tapas restaurant nearby.
"I admired them, in a way, for not being paranoid parents, but I decided that our apartment was too far off even to contemplate it," she said.
Miss O'Donnell blasted the police investigation, saying that officers did not have a notebook and only wrote their details on a scrap of paper.
An officer also failed to recognise a photocopied picture of Madeleine distributed by the McCanns' search party, which he mistook for a picture of Miss O'Donnell's daughter.
Describing Kate McCann as "calm, still, quietly beautiful" and Gerry as "confident, proud, silly, strong", she said the couple were physically transformed when their daughter went missing.
"The physical transformation of these two human beings was sickening . . . Kate's back and shoulders, her hands, her mouth had reshaped themselves into the angular manifestation of a silent scream,' she said. "Gerry was upright, his lips now drawn into a thin, impenetrable line."
Though they were not part of the McCanns' group of friends - whom they nicknamed "the Doctors" - Mr Wilkins had previously played tennis with Mr McCann.
Miss O'Donnell said: "Throughout all this I have believed that Gerry and Kate McCann are innocent. (Daily Mail)
