Madeline McCann Kidnapping: Woman Recalls Eerie Incident For Scotland Yard; Were Keys To Tot's Room Missing?
Feb. 10 2014, Published 3:17 p.m. ET
We've got all the latest details in the ongoing investigation surrounding the 2007 kidnapping of 3-year-old Madeleine McCann, as Scotland Yard is speaking with a woman who might have key intel in the case, while a new lead in Portugal could provide key insights into the disappearance of the tot.
A 30-year-old British woman said that during a 2007 vacation in Portugal, a gang she identified as "Gypsies" poisoned her drink with downers, and attempted to kidnap her daughter.
“It was terrifying, like something out of a film,” the woman told the Sunday Mirror. "From the first day of or vacation, a young dark-haired man kept popping up wherever we went. We would arrive at a restaurant and he’d show up minutes later as though he had been tipped off.
“It was low season so everywhere was quiet. There were about three or four restaurants open but the same staff would show up where we were. They all knew the dark-haired man. It felt like the Eastern European mafia was watching us."
She said the man approached her and tried to chat her up about her daughter, making for a "very uncomfortable" time.
On the night of the near-kidnapping, the woman told the paper she drank some wine at dinner, and “within half an hour I felt really dizzy -- I knew I’d been drugged."
She said an Eastern European couple at the restaurant had been obsessing over her daughter throughout their meal. While she was woozy from the drink, the couple made their move, and "the woman lifted my daughter out of her high chair and walked to the door.
“I heard an engine running … I was terrified and managed to grab her back and barge the woman out of the way. We ran back to the hotel in the dark and bolted ourselves in the room. We were so frightened.”
The woman said she tried to talk to Scotland Yard during their initial investigation, but they were so inundated with tips, they did not spend too much time on her claim. She will continue providing investigators with further details in hopes of retrieving the lost child.
In related news, a maintenance man at the resort the child (who has since retired) speaking on conditions of anonymity, told the U.K.'s Sunday Express publication that prior to Madeline's disappearance some keys went missing at the Praia de Luz resort the child vanished from.
“There was another maintenance worker at the Ocean Club who said he had lost a set of keys for the whole of block five. I remember my colleague telling some of us the keys to that block had been lost. He told us about it in the week when the child was taken but I cannot remember the exact day. In the maintenance department we kept duplicates of all keys to the apartments."
The man continued, “When the man told us about the lost keys, he started crying. He was very upset. He was worried about losing his job, I think, and he did not want others to know about it.
“After the child disappeared, we all had to give statements to the police but I did not mention the keys had been lost because I did not think it was relevant.”
The man said the info had been weighing on his mind “for a long time."
The publication tracked down the co-worker, Tiago da Silva, 29, who denied having lost any keys, creating a potential security breach.
“That is not the case," da Silva told the paper. "I can’t remember any keys going missing. The keys in maintenance were kept in a safe and nobody could get to them.”
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