Madeleine McCann suspect Robert Murat was sweating, "breathless" and "a little excited" at the Ocean Club resort in Praia da Luz the day after the four-year-old went missing, a key witness said yesterday.

Bridget O'Donnell, who became friends with Kate and Gerry McCann while staying at the same complex, broke her silence to declare that although Kate and Gerry McCann made a "disastrous decision" in leaving Madeleine alone, they are innocent of any crime.

She described Gerry McCann was "relaxed" about leaving his children alone in their holiday apartment the night Madeleine disappeared, and told of the Portuguese detectives' incompetence, saying that they did not even know what Madeleine looked like the day after she disappeared.

Yesterday, for the first time, Miss O'Donnell described a crucial encounter when her partner, TV producer Jeremy Wilkins, spoke to Gerry McCann during the hour when Madeleine vanished.

The cardiologist was on his way back to the resort's tapas restaurant at 8.30pm after checking on his three children when he bumped into Mr Wilkins, who was taking his baby son out in a buggy to try to get him to sleep before spending the evening in the family's accommodation.

"The two men stopped to have a chat," she wrote in The Guardian.

"They talked about daughters, fathers, families.

"Gerry was relaxed and friendly.

"They discussed their baby-sitting dilemmas at the resort and Gerry said that he and Kate would have stayed in too if they had not been on holiday in a group."

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Her account goes against the Portuguese police theory that Mr McCann was somehow involved in his daughter's death and had left her body in the apartment at that time.

The chance meeting on the night Madeleine vanished has been subject to endless speculation and is critical in confirming the timing of the McCanns' movements.

Miss O'Donnell, who worked as a producer on BBC1's Crimewatch, said she "admired" the McCanns for being comfortable enough to leave their children alone in their apartment as they ate at a tapas restaurant nearby.

"I admired them, in a way, for not being paranoid parents, but I decided that our apartment was too far off even to contemplate it," she said.

Her comments will be a welcome boost for the McCanns who have suffered a growing backlash in recent days from the mayor of Praia da Luz, where posters have been removed of the missing girl.

Miss O'Donnell was staying with her partner, her three-year- old daughter and nine-month- old baby son in their apartment a block away from the McCanns".

 

She said: "Privately I was glad we didn't get their apartment.

"It was on a corner by the road and people could see in. They were exposed."

She described the dilemma parents faced when arranging childcare at the resort.

Although the Ocean Club had a 'sit-in' babysitting service, she said it was expensive, highly in demand and parents had to book well in advance.

Alternatively, children could be taken to the kiddie club which also ran a babysitting service.

But Miss O'Donnell said that when she left her children there, the sitter called to say one was crying.

The couple had to leave their meal unfinished to collect their two children and return to their apartment.

On May 3, the night Madeleine disappeared, Miss O'Donnell said they decided to stay in with their children.

She said: "We ate, drank wine, watched a DVD then went to bed.

"On the ground floor, a completely catastrophic event was taking place.

"On the fourth floor of the next block, we were completely oblivious."

At 1am they were woken with the news by a friend of the McCanns helping with the search .

The next day the couple spoke to police who were being aided by Robert Murat acting as a translator.

"The translator had a squint and sweated slightly," said Miss O'Donnell.

"He was breathless, perhaps a little excited."

Miss O'Donnell blasted the police investigation, saying that officers did not have a notebook and only wrote their details on a scrap of paper.

An officer also failed to recognise a photocopied picture of Madeleine distributed by the McCanns' search party, which he mistook for a picture of Miss O'Donnell's daughter.

Describing Kate McCann as "calm, still, quietly beautiful" and Gerry as "confident, proud, silly, strong", she said the couple were physically transformed when their daughter went missing.

"The physical transformation of these two human beings was sickening . . . Kate's back and shoulders, her hands, her mouth had reshaped themselves into the angular manifestation of a silent scream,' she said.

"Gerry was upright, his lips now drawn into a thin, impenetrable line."

Though they were not part of the McCanns' group of friends - whom they nicknamed "the Doctors" - Mr Wilkins had previously played tennis with Mr McCann.

Miss O'Donnell said: "Throughout all this I have believed that Gerry and Kate McCann are innocent.

"There were no drug-fuelled 'swingers' on our holiday - there was a bunch of ordinary parents worrying about sleep patterns.

"None of us imagined we were being watched. One group made a disastrous decision; Madeleine was vulnerable and was chosen.

"But in the face of such desperate audacity, it could have been any one of us."

Three days after Madeleine's disappearance, the couple left the resort.

British police later took a statement from Mr Wilkins, but she said Portuguese police never bothered.

Miss O'Donnell added: "My heart goes out to them, Kate and Gerry, the couple we remember from our Portuguese holiday.

"They had a beautiful daughter Madeleine, who played and danced with ours at the kiddie club. That's who we remember."