New Witness Comes Forward in Search for Maddy McCann
Carlos Moreira says he saw a blond girl sitting in the back of a truck, wearing pajamas.

Associated Press

6:21 PM PDT, May 25, 2010

LISBON, Portugal -- A new witness has come forward saying he saw Madeleine McCann only hours after she disappeared in 2007.

Carlos Moreira, 65, told detectives that on the morning of May 4, 2007, he saw a blond girl sitting in the back of a truck, wearing pajamas similar to those worn by Madeleine the night she vanished.

Madeleine's parents, Kate and Gerry McCann, both doctors from England, said she vanished from their hotel room while they were eating dinner with friends at a resort's poolside restaurant in the sleepy vacation town of Praia da Luz, about 120 miles south of Lisbon.

They had left her and her twin siblings, a year younger, alone in the room while they ate at the restaurant about 50 yards away.

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They said they returned to find their toddler twins, Sean and Amelie, asleep, but Madeleine, who was just days short of her 4th birthday, gone.

Moreira claims he waited three years to tell the McCann family's private investigation team, because, he says, he thought police had mounted road blocks in the area.

"When the van door was opened, she did not wake up, as if she was drugged," he told the U.K.'s Sun newspaper.

"This girl was blond and looked around 4."

The disappearance of the blond-haired girl immediately attracted intense global media attention.

She disappeared just days before her fourth birthday and there has been no reliable indication of what might have happened to her despite numerous reported sightings from around the world.

In July 2008, Portuguese police closed their case, citing lack of evidence.

They later released a file that surpassed 11,000 pages of notes, interviews and other evidence.

The couple are working with a private investigation team to try to find Madeleine.

They say police stalled and botched the investigation into Madeleine's disappearance.

The McCanns' family and friends complained that the police were slow to react to the disappearance and apparently struggled to build a case.

The lack of sophisticated equipment led Portuguese authorities to ask British police for help with forensic tests.

According to an unnamed source who spoke to The Sun, Moreira also identified a previously unpublished sketch of a male suspect as the driver of the van.

"His account is being looked into. He has done the right thing in coming forward," a spokesman for the McCann family said.

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