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A witness in the Madeleine McCann case has broken her silence to protest the innocence of the missing four-year-old's parents and recount the haunting night she disappeared.

Bridget O'Donnell and her partner, Jeremy Wilkins, befriended Kate and Gerry McCann during their week-long holiday in Portugal and have now given the most insightful account yet of their agony after the "catastrophic" disappearance of the little girl.

	Telegraph TV: The private investigator hired by the McCanns said Madeleine could be home by Christmas

Miss O'Donnell, who worked as a producer on BBC's Crimewatch programme, said that she has "always believed that Gerry and Kate McCann are innocent".

In an interview with the Guardian, she rubbished police theories that Madeleine was killed inside her parent's holiday apartment in Praia da Luz by revealing that on the night of May 3 Mr McCann was as chatty, "calm and relaxed" as ever, until the discovery that his daughter was missing from her bed.

She also criticised Portuguese detectives for failing to take a statement from her and her partner, and said police officers did not even recognise a photograph of Madeleine the day after the incident.

Speaking about the night Madeleine went missing, Miss O'Donnell said: "Our baby would not sleep and at about 8.30pm, Jes (Mr Wilkins) took him out for a walk in the buggy to settle him.

"Gerry was on his way back from checking on his children and the two men stopped to have a chat.

"They talked about daughters, fathers, families. Gerry was relaxed and friendly.

"They discussed the babysitting 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.

"Jes returned to our apartment just before 9.30pm. We ate, drank wine, watched a DVD and 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."

Confirmation of the conversation between Mr Wilkins and Mr McCann is crucial because police believe at that time Madeleine was already dead and Mr McCann was hiding her body.

It also corroborates the timeline of events given to the police by the McCanns and their friends.

Miss O'Donnell described how the tragic event led to an immediate, physical transformation in the McCanns after the loss of their daughter.

She said during the holiday they got to know them and their group, who they called "the Doctors".

"One man was the joker," she said. "He had a loud Glaswegian accent. He was Gerry McCann. He played tennis with Jes. Gerry was outgoing, a wisecracker, but considerate and kind."

She added: "Kate was calm, still, quietly beautiful; Gerry was confident, proud, silly, strong."

She next saw the McCanns two days after Madeleine's disappearance.

She said: "The physical transformation of these two human beings was sickening.

"Kate's back and shoulders, her hands, her mouth had reshaped themselves in to the angular manifestation of a silent scream. Gerry was upright, his lips now drawn into a thin, impenetrable line."

She revealed that she had debated with the McCanns the childcare arrangements at the Ocean Club resort and recalled admiring them "for not being paranoid parents" by leaving their children alone as they ate at a tapas restaurant every night.

She added that privately she was glad she had not been given the McCanns' apartment because, being on a corner by the road "people could see in" and "they were exposed".

She said the first she knew about Madeleine's disappearance was when one of the McCanns' friends began banging on their apartment door at 1am.

"Jes got up to answer. I stayed listening in the dark. I knew it was bad; it could only be bad. I heard male mumbling, then Jes's voice. "You're joking?" he said.

It wasn't the words, it was the tone that made me flinch.

"He came back in to the room. 'Gerry's daughter's been abducted,' he said.

"I jumped up and went to check our children. They were there. We sat down.

"We got up again. Weirdly, I did the washing-up. We wondered what to do.

"Jes had asked if they needed help searching and was told there was nothing he could do; she had been missing for three hours.

"Jes felt he should go anyway, but I wanted him to stay with us. I was a coward, afraid to be alone with the children - and afraid to be alone with my thoughts."

The following morning, she said, there was no news.

"People were crying in the restaurant. Mark Warner had handed out letters informing them what had happened in the night, and we all wondered what to do.

"Mid-sentence, we would drift in to the middle distance. Tears would brim up and recede."

Miss O'Donnell said that while the parents were out looking for Madeleine, she saw no police until one turned up with a "slightly sweaty" translator, who turned out to be Robert Murat, the only other official suspect in the case.

She said police failed to ask Mr Wilkins for a statement and when the officer pointed to a picture of Madeleine and asked if it was her daughter, "my heart sank for the McCanns".