Guardian 05/05/07

http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2007/may/05/world.topstories31

Grandfather: evidence that three-year-old was snatched

Sandra Laville and Dale Fuchs in Faro
Saturday 5 May 2007 00.19 BST

The grandfather of a three-year-old snatched from her parents' holiday apartment in the Algarve said yesterday that there was clear evidence she had been abducted.
Police helicopters flew over Praia de la Luz yesterday as the hunt intensified for Madeleine McCann, who went missing from her bedroom in the apartment on Thursday night.

Teams of officers used sniffer dogs to scour the resort, in the south-west of Portugal, where Gerald McCann, a cardiac surgeon, and his wife Kate, had taken their three young children - Madeleine and her younger brother and sister, who are twins - for a week-long holiday.

Mark Warner, the holiday firm which runs the luxury resort, claimed last night there was no sign of a break in at the ground floor apartment overlooking the sea. But Brian Healy, Madeleine's maternal grandfather, told the Guardian his son-in-law had phoned him shortly after returning to the apartment from a nearby restaurant to find Madeleine had disappeared.

"Gerry told me when they went back the shutters to the room were broken, they were jemmied up and she was gone," said Mr Healy. "She'd been taken from the chalet. The door was open."

Mr Healy flew to Portugal yesterday to lend support to his daughter Kate, 39, who is a Leicester GP, and son-in-law Gerry, 38, a consultant cardiologist at the city's Glenfield Hospital. He denied suggestions that the couple had simply left their three children alone while they ate in a restaurant.

"It is not right to say that they just left them," said Mr Healy. "They could see the chalet from where they were sitting in the restaurant, they were a hundred yards away. They went back every half hour to check on the children. When they returned at the end of their meal she was gone. My daughter can hardly speak. She is distraught, she is crying and in shock."

Will stick this one here as well.

Sky article from the 10th.

http://news.sky.com/story/512005/british-child-snatched-from-algarve-hotel

I'm surprised that this article is dated a week after the event; it sounds just like one from within 24 hours with all the guff about hotels and parents dining 40 yards away.

P.S. Some of it has definitely been copied from this Telegraph article, the earliest known report.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1550571/Three-year-old-feared-abducted-in-Portugal.html