Just five hours in May

What really happened to Madeleine Beth McCann?

User Tools

Site Tools


Index of Files

Non-English speaker may get help by Google Website translation. Translate to every language, like Portuguese, German or even Japanese:




js#bj-tango.png navbar


This is an old revision of the document!


Russel O'Brien

Member of the Tapas 7

Dr. Russel James O'Brien was interviewed five times by the PJ:

04-May-2007 “Until yesterday, May 3rd 2007, he has no knowledge of anything suspicious or strange happening around the group of friends or their children. Everybody seemed normal to him from the cleaning staff, to the gardeners, to the rest of the employees of the complex. Also on the beach, he never noticed anything strange or people who could have been thought of as strange enough to attract his suspicions. Yesterday, as his daughter xxxx was feeling ill, the informant dropped yyyy (his other daughter!) at the Kids Club at around 10am after breakfast. He completely corroborates his partner Jane Tanner's statements for the rest of the day. At around 7.15/7.30pm, the informant went back to his apartment. He read stories to his daughters, including xxxx who was feeling better. His partner, Jane, went to have dinner at the TAPAS restaurant at around 8.30pm and he went there at around 8.45pm. When he arrived at the restaurant, nearly all the adults were present, without children, with the exception of David, Fiona and Diane. They arrived more or less 5 minutes later. At around 9pm, they had all ordered their meals. While they were eating, it was normal that every 15 minutes, one person from each apartment would go to the apartments/bedrooms make sure the children were ok. Yesterday, as xxxx was not well, the interval between checks was reduced. He recalls that Matthew Oldfield left the restaurant at shortly after 9pm to check the children. He is no longer sure who went out first, but five minutes later, Gerry McCann and his own partner, Jane, went out, almost at the same time, to check the children. Jane could have come back first because she found Gerry chatting with a person who is also a guest in the same place, named Jez. He thinks that Jane only checked their apartment, being worried about xxxx. Then Gerry came back at around 9.25/9.30 and they started to eat the first course. [as entradas]. At around 9.35/9.40, taking advantage of the lull [waiting pause] before being served with the first [main] course, the informant left the restaurant with Matthew to check the children. When he got there, his daughter xxxx was crying. He stayed in her bedroom with her. He supposes that Matthew checked his apartment. Matthew returned to the restaurant five minutes after leaving it. His partner came to take his place in xxxx's bedroom around 15 minutes later after finishing dinner. At around 9.55, he went back to the restaurant where his food had been waiting for 5 or 10 minutes. All the other adults had finished. At around 10pm, Kate Healy went out to check her children in her apartment. When she came back, she came towards our table, shouting that Madeleine had disappeared. They all went out, running, and he with a few more people decided to look around the apartment blocks, and in their own apartments, to see if they could find Madeleine. In the personal search that he did following the disappearance he did not manage to identify any suspect item/person/object. When it seemed to them that possibly she didn't have to be in the immediate surrounding area they widened the search area having the same fruitless result. He does not know who called the police…”

11-May-2007

16-May-2007

11-July-2007

10-April-2008