A
NANNY
has told investigators she once
discovered a
stranger
lurking
outside the apartment from which
Madeleine McCann disappeared.
She worked at the Ocean Club in
Praia da Luz and phoned a
hotline set up by the McCann's
private detectives to tell of
last year's chilling ordeal,
which has sinister echoes of the
Madeleine case.
The
nanny told Spain's Metodo
3 detective agency that the
mystery man ran away when she
spotted him hiding in the
shadows as she was babysitting.
The
unnamed childminder also
told British police about the
dark-haired
stranger
and is understood to have given
them a statement in June.
Although she raised the alarm,
she is not thought to have been
questioned by Portuguese police
involved in the search for
missing Madeleine.
Investigators at the detective
agency declined to make the
woman's identity public. They
revealed only her initials, MH.
She told them that she spotted
the man in the summer of 2006 as
she was babysitting in the same
apartment which the McCanns
rented this year.
The
nanny was looking after a
six-year-old boy, whose parents
were playing tennis. She
discovered the suspicious man
lurking
in bushes when she went outside
momentarily.
Investigators noted that the
nanny's
report had marked similarities
to the Madeleine case. Both
events happened on a Thursday
and when the parents had
arranged to be elsewhere on the
complex.
A source close to the McCanns
said: The
nanny
remembers it was a Thursday
because it was tennis night and
the parents of the boy she was
looking after had gone off to
play and left her in charge.
During the night she received a
call from her bosses warning her
there was a problem with rats in
the apartments.
For that reason she left the
flat
briefly. She
saw
something move in the darkness
and thought it was a rodent. To
her surprise she then
saw
a man's shoe.
She shouted and the man ran from
the shadows and shouted, ?No,
no. He fled before the complex's
emergency lights came on. The
nanny
told resort managers he was
between 25 and 35 and looked
like a local. He was wearing
light-coloured trousers and a
blue check shirt.
Jane Tanner, one of the McCanns
dining companions known as the
Tapas Seven, has provided police
with a description of a man she
saw
carrying a child away from the
apartment only minutes before it
was discovered that Madeleine
was missing.
The detectives working for the
McCanns are believed to have
taken a call from the
nanny
last week. She is convinced the
incidents are linked.
The
nanny worked at the Ocean
Club resort for six months until
October last year, shortly after
her encounter with the mystery
man.
Her bosses at the Ocean Club
passed on her information to the
holiday complex's director but
it is not known what measures
were taken about potential
intruders.
The McCanns spokesman Clarence
Mitchell said they were grateful
to hear the
nanny's
story.
He added: Her evidence backs up
what we have always said ? that
Madeleine was taken from her bed
by an abductor.
