A former nanny who cared for Madeleine McCann has broken her silence after a decade, describing the frantic search on the night the three-year-old vanished from a Portuguese resort in 2007. The woman, who worked for travel firm Mark Warner at the Ocean Club in Praia da Luz, recalled seeing Madeleine's mother Kate in a state of shock, crying 'They've taken her,' while father Gerry desperately looked under cars.
The nanny said staff were told to search bins for Madeleine's body, and she criticised Portuguese police for taking 90 minutes to arrive, allowing the crime scene to be contaminated. She also claimed the resort was considered so unsafe that nannies were issued rape alarms and told not to go out alone.
She expressed fury that the McCanns were ever considered suspects, insisting their reactions and timings ruled them out. She also revealed that Portuguese police lost key details from her statement, with a two-page summary missing 'whole chunks' of information from her original four-to-five-page account.
The nanny said she is still haunted by the image of Gerry searching under cars and Kate pacing in a catatonic state. She believes the police blunders were 'catastrophic' and scuppered any chance of finding Madeleine's abductor.
