Parents ‘checked on her every half an hour’

THE parents of missing three-year-old Madeleine McCann checked on her every half an hour while they were having a meal in a nearby restaurant.

They made sure the toddler and her twin brother and sister were sound asleep, and that their apartment was locked up.

But between their checks at 9.30pm and 10pm the apartment was broken into and Madeleine was taken, according to the girl’s aunt.

Trish Cameron said her close-knit family was “absolutely distraught” at her niece’s disappearance.

She said it appeared someone had been spying on Madeleine and had targeted her for abduction.

Parents Gerry and Kate McCann left Madeleine, who will turn four on May 12, asleep in a single bed with her brother and sister in cots on either side. While they ate in a tapas restaurant 200 yards away, the couple took turns to check on the children every 30 minutes. But at 10pm Ms McCann discovered her child was missing.

Ms Cameron said: “The front door was lying open, the window had been tampered with, the shutters had been jammied open, or whatever you call it, and Madeleine was missing.

“It looks as if somebody has come in the window, they’ve either been watching or they’ve targeted her.”

She criticised the Portuguese authorities’ efforts to find Madeleine as “ineffectual” but said the response of resort staff and fellow holidaymakers had been “tremendous”.