Witness Statement

Ricardo Alexandre da Luz Oliveira

Date/Time: 2007/01/30 21H00

Occupation: Waiter

Place of Work: Tapas restaurant, OC.

He comes to the process as a witness. He has worked as a waiter in the Tapas Restaurant at the OC since April of the current year.

His working hours are from 16.00 to 24.00 every day except for Fridays and Saturdays which are his days off.

When asked, he says that he serves at the tables in the restaurant, snacks are served between 16.00 and 18.00 and dinner is served between 19.00 and 22.00.

When asked, he says that the meals served are not restricted to guests of the resort and that guests can invite people from outside of the resort. In any case the witness says that it is not usual for people from outside of the resort to dine there.

When asked he says that during his working hours he does not remember having seen anyone who is not a guest dining at the restaurant. 

When asked, he says that in order to enter the restaurant it is necessary to present a guest card at the restaurant reception. However, and only for this year the restaurant has been open to public from outside the resort but that in any case he does not remember having seen anyone who was not a guest having had a meal there.
When asked, he says that a few days after guests’ arrival he manages to recognise them, however not all of them regularly have meals there.

When asked, he says that the parents of the missing girl, Madeleine, would have dinner every day at the restaurant, since the day they arrived, in a group of 9 people

When asked he says that he never saw the children at dinner with their parents, in other words the children did not dine with their parents.

When asked he says that the parents and the other members of the group would arrive between 20.00 and 21.00 but that they would only begin to dine when all of them had arrived.

When asked, he says that he remembers that it was usual during dinner for one or two members of the group to leave the table for about 10 or 15 minutes and given the fact that on various occasions he saw walkie talkies on the table, he supposed that they went to check on their children who were in their respective rooms.

On 3rd May the witness arrived at his place of work as usual at 16.00 and that he first saw Madeleine’s parents at dinner that night at about 20.45.

When asked, he says that he does not remember whether the parents arrived together or whether they were the first or last to arrive at the table.

When asked, he says that he was one of the waiters who served at the table, but he does not remember whether he served Madeleine’s parents.

When asked, he says that on 3rd May he only remembers that one guest from the table left for about 10 minutes, given that when he was about to serve the respective plate he was told to hold the food back for a few minutes, and that it was about 15 minutes before the guest returned, at about 21.45.

He does not remember having seen Madeleine’s parents leave the table for short instances, but it is possible that someone could have left the table without the witness having noticed.

Dinner would end at about 21.45, a few minutes later the witness looked at the table and saw that there was nobody there and one of his colleagues told them that all the guests had left the table in a hurry. In any case, he remembers having heard shouts from the direction of Madeleine’s parents’ apartment.

When asked, he says that he does not remember anyone having been absent from the table for a few instants.

When asked, he says that he did not notice anything strange in the functioning of the restaurant nor any guest or individual with any strange or abnormal behaviour.

After hearing the shouts from the apartment he heard about Madeleine’s disappearance.
When asked he says that the place where the table that Madeleine’s parents dined at did not have a clear view of the apartment, merely the back of the apartment and it was dark when the events occurred and that there is no lighting plus the fact that there is an opaque plastic windshield around the restaurant.

When asked he says that he does not have any knowledge about thefts from the apartments nor having seen any unknown individuals inside the resort.