Owen Williams on Nov 16 -
This is the woman who believes she was the last person to see Madeleine McCann alive.
Holidaymaker Jane Tanner claims to have seen a man carrying the missing British toddler in his arms away from the Portuguese resort where she disappeared in May.
She has spoken exclusively to a US television show that has investigated the tot’s whereabouts. The programme, 48 Hours Mystery, airs tomorrow / tonight (Sat Nov 17).
But in a preview shown in the States today (Fri Nov 16), she opens up about the sighting for the first time.
She said: “I never in a million years thought it could have been Madeleine.
“I just saw somebody walking across the top of the road, and that person was carrying a child.�?BR>Madeleine, now four, went missing from her family’s holiday apartment in Praia da Luz, Portugal, on May 3 while her parents Gerry McCann and wife Kate, dined nearby at a tapas bar.
The woman - one of the so-called ‘tapas seven�?- says she saw the man carrying a child wearing pink pyjamas, the same colour as Madeleine’s.
Gerry McCann, from Rothley, Leicestershire, says in the programme:

“We will always live with the fact that Kate and I were not in the apartment when it happened and we have to face up to that.

“We’re very much trying to focus on what can be done now, not what could have been done before because we did not do it.�?BR>
The show will also feature never-before-seen video footage of the McCanns shot by a family pal over the course of a week. The intimate footage tracks the McCann family following their daughter’s disappearance from their rented apartment in the Algarve region of Portugal.
The video also shows the family canvassing local neighbourhoods in the rented car where police say they found Maddie’s DNA, subsequently causing them to name Gerry and Kate McCann as official suspects in the case.
48 Hours Mystery correspondent Peter Van Sant said: “It’s very touching, very moving material.
“And you’re going to hear facts that you’ve never heard on this case, including a conclusion by [undercover investigator] Joe as to what he believes really happened that night.�?BR>He added: “This woman is extremely important to the investigation.
“She was one of the ‘tapas seven�?- that’s the seven friends who were at this bar at the resort.
“And she has come forward after six months to say she saw something that night.
“She believes that she saw a man carrying a child in his arms away from the resort.
“She saw the colour of the pyjamas down by the feet, which were pink, which were the colour of the pyjamas that Maddie was wearing that night.
“So for the McCanns this woman is extremely important.
“It’s a world exclusive.�?BR>
In addition to the new footage, the show also talks to John Ramsey, the father of murdered child beauty queen, Jon Benet Ramsey, as well as Ed Smart, the father of Elizabeth Smart, who disappeared and was found nine months later, in their first interviews about the McCann case.
Smart is expected to reveal a private conversation he had with Gerry McCann. It also features private investigator Joe [Joseph] Moura, a Portuguese speaker who went undercover for almost two weeks at the Praia da Luz resort. He told The CBS Early Show in New York today (fri): “I was looking for some answers in reference to the storylines that we have read and heard about.
“I felt that the people who worked there, the employees, would be the ones to tell us what the routines were, the timelines [were].
“I thought it would be critical to the investigation, that’s why we went there.�?BR>“Everything you read in the press is nonsense, it’s trash.
“That’s why we went undercover.
“The employees did not want to speak to the media.
“They were fed up with the media. They were actually misleading the media with certain stories.
“With the story we went in with, we got to befriend some of these people and they told us what really went down, and specifically the routine of the ‘tapas seven�?and including the McCanns.�?BR>Van Sand said that Moura’s ability to speak the language helped him uncover crucial new information.
Moura went on: “What’s really important in this is that the Portuguese police is not allowed to divulge any information.
“When we work a story in the States we are able to get police reports and timelines.

“We have to establish a timeline.

“By establishing that timeline we certainly could make a determination of what could have happened and what could not have happened.�?/STRONG>