Jane Tanner's interview with The Sun on 20 November 2007
In an exclusive interview with The Sun – her first with any newspaper – Jane forcefully hit back at critics who have suggested she is lying. Amid sobs, she said: "I DID see a man that night carrying away Madeleine...she WAS abducted."
Tears welling in her eyes, she went on: "I wake up to that image ever day. Every day I see him there, striding away, carrying Madeleine and I try desperately to remember more detail, what his face was like. "I think about it over and over again. It’s horrible...Madeleine was adorable. Every day I hope this is the day we find her."
Twisting her Look For Madeleine yellow and green wristbands, Jane, 36, then went into detail about the night of 3 May. She told how she and the other members of the so-called Tapas Nine had been leaving the restaurant at the complex in Praia da Luz to check their children.
It was on one of her visits to see her two daughters that Jane passed Maddie’s dad Gerry, 39. He was returning from seeing his children. Seconds later she saw a man cross from left to right in front of her with a child lolling back in his arms. Jane said: "It wasn’t unusual to see people with children, even at that time of night. But my attention was drawn to him because the child had bare feet...it was a cold night and I thought that was strange because as a mother I would never have taken my child around at that time without something on their feet or a blanket. All I could see of the child was their legs dangling...the man was about ten to fifteen feet in front of me and was walking quite quickly and I can remember thinking, 'That’s odd'...but that was all, nothing to make me scream out to make him stop. I never at that time thought it could be Madeleine. I’d just passed Gerry so I thought his children were all asleep in bed."
Jane carried on to her apartment where she found her daughters were fine so she went back to the tapas bar. About 15 minutes later her partner Dr Russell O’Brien checked and found one of the girls had been sick so he asked a friend to fetch Jane. It was while Jane was there that Maddie’s mum Kate, 39, went to see her children at around 10.05pm – and found the girl missing.
Jane said the first she knew was when she looked out of her window and saw the table at the tapas bar was empty. She opened the door and there was commotion. She said: "I saw all our friends outside shouting. I opened the door and one, Rachael, shouted at me, 'Madeleine’ s gone!' As soon as she said that the image of that man carrying the child came into my head and I felt physically sick. A feeling of complete horror washed over me."
Minutes later Jane saw Kate. Close to tears, Jane admitted she could not bear to tell her about the man. She said: "At that time it seemed everyone thought Madeleine was hiding. I knew that if I told her about the man it would shatter that. I was also hoping desperately that I’d been wrong. Instead I took another friend, Fiona, to one side and told her...then, at around 11.15, two policemen arrived and I told them. Later CID arrived."
