madeleine s disappearance, no man matching jane tanner s description could be located. after madeleine mccann disappeared and days went by and she wasn t found, there was just this incredible fear in this community. parents there with their children weren t taking their eyes off them, as you might expect. but everyone was looking. we d heard it on the news. my sister had called from the uk and told us that something had happened in luz and that a little girl had gone missing. robert murat was a neighbor. he lived in a house very near the apartment where madeleine was. robert murat is a classic expat who moved here, who enjoyed the life on the algarve, and he d been partly grown up in portugal, so he spoke good portuguese. i met the mccanns probably 20, maybe 30 seconds, nothing more than that and then helped out with trying to translate,
we are searching for the child, and till the moment she appears, we can say nothing more. but, soon, there would be a revelation about the night that madeleine went missing while all the parents were having dinner at the resort. jane tanner was one of the other parents in the party. around 9:15, jane went back to check on her own children. and she reports that she saw a man carrying a child across the street into the night. holding her like this, with him both arms forward, and the kid was lying on his arms. and the kid had pajamas similar to the ones madeleine had. you don t see everything perfectly clearly at night, but she did see that. i know what i saw and i think it s important that people know
and when i saw that window pushed wide open and the shutter up, which we had left down the whole week, it was horrible. and the club phoned the police. it took them quite a while to figure out, hey, this is an abduction. there was almost no evidence to follow. it was almost as though the little girl had vanished into thin air. words cannot describe the anguish and despair that we are feeling as the parents of our beautiful daughter madeleine. and then, a potential break in the case from the night madeleine went missing. jane tanner was one of the other parents in the party. around 9:15, jane went back to check on her own children. and she reports that she saw a man carrying a child across the street, into the night. i know what i saw, and i think it s important that people
know what i saw because, you know, i believe madeleine was abducted. there is a sketch here of this man who was seen carrying a child away wearing identical pajamas to madeleine, shortly after i checked on her. the tanner sighting became one of the most scrutinized aspects of the case, but it was always unclear what exactly jane tanner really saw and who that was. eventually, the lead went cold. gerry was invested in the idea that his child needed to be everywhere, her photo everywhere. her parents have mounted an international campaign to keep her name in front of the international public. they have toured europe, north africa, and the united states. the pope, now the latest player in a relentless media campaign that has grown beyond the borders of england and portugal. it wasn t long before there were theoretical sightings of madeleine all over the world.