A former resort worker has told how they saw triple child killer Martin Ney in Praia da Luz around the time that Madeleine McCann vanished.
The worker said German Ney, named yesterday as a possible suspect in Madeleine’s case, stared “intently” at them and female friends as they drank in a bar in the Algarve town.
They recognised him after seeing his photograph in our sister paper, the Sunday Mirror.
Ney was there “for a fact”, the source, who asked not to be named, said yesterday.
The ex-Mark Warner employee, who worked at the Ocean Club resort where the McCann’s were staying, saw Ney soon after arriving in Portugal in April 2007.
They also saw him in the Baptista supermarket, a stone’s throw from the family’s holiday apartment. The employee told the Mirror: “I have a very good memory for faces. I remember his looking at us intently.”
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They later moved to another resort in Greece and do not know how long Ney stayed in Portugal.
Ney is serving life in Germany for murdering three boys in 2011.
He resembles a photofit of a man said to have been seen with a child in his arms shortly after Madeleine, then aged three, vanished in May 2007. Known as the “Masked Man”, he targeted children who were on holiday – entering their tents or villas, armed and wearing a mask.
Authorities say Ney, originally from Hamburg, was in Portugal in the 1990s and 2000s.
He was first identified as a possible suspect by investigators working for Madeleine’s parents, Kate and Gerry, in 2011.
The photofit resembling Ney was even in Kate’s book about Madeleine’s disappearance. Scotland Yard detectives spoke to counterparts in Germany about possible links several years ago.
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But police there said Ney was only interested in young boys.
It emerged yesterday Portuguese detectives are investigating a second German sex offender.
It is understood they are probing if the unnamed man was part of a foreign paedophile ring operating in the Algarve.
Local media said he was living there when Madeleine vanished.
The man, who has a criminal record, is not linked to Ney, 48.
A source said it meant police were “nearer” solving the case.
The man had contact with Portuguese authorities in the mid-2000s over criminal matters.
Scotland Yard has a small team still working on Madeleine’s case.
British and Portuguese police both refused to comment on yesterday’s developments.
Madeleine’s parents, of Rothley, Leics, still believe she is alive.
