Madeleine McCann was probably the victim of a mysterious child predator, claims a new book on the Madeleine McCann case.

Authors of the book Looking For Madeleine, Anthony Summers and Robynn Swan, present startling information on the goings-on at the resort she was abducted from.

They say that a man knocked on the door of a woman who was staying near Madeleine McCann and her family. He said that he was taking donations for an orphanage. The woman then noticed that he was staring intently at her three-year-old daughter.

Summers said, “She later saw that man watching her place during the afternoon. The next day she went upstairs to fetch something for a moment and as she started to come downstairs she saw what she thinks was the same man in the room where her child was and as soon as she started to come into the room he (fled).”

Three years earlier, a strange man reportedly got into the bed of a young girl at a nearby resort. When the girl woke up, she ran and he began chasing her while her sister asked if he was their father or their uncle.

Swan said of the girls, “What they noticed about this man was that he was wearing what seemed to be a surgical mask and he had wound laundry around his feet, seemingly to keep from making prints or leaving marks,”

“He disappeared without interfering with the two girls.”

That is creepy, but the authors present even more suspicious evidence that the man had Madeleine in his sights. Apparently the same man that pretended to be collecting money for an orphanage a few days earlier was spotted spying on the McCann’s apartment in Praia da Luz, Portugal.

“Two separate witnesses apparently saw a man, whom both described as very ugly or with a spotty or pimply face, staring fixedly at apartment 5A. They both described him being in the same position in the street,” Swan said.

“That’s combined with the fact that on the very day Madeleine disappeared, a lady visiting the apartment upstairs saw from her balcony a man behaving very oddly in the lane between the apartments and the pool. The man was going out of an adjacent gate, closing the gate repeatedly to see if it was creaky. He seemed to be looking around and generally acting very peculiarly before leaving.”

There had been a recent history of child abductions and sexual predators in the area when Madeleine McCann’s family arrived. The authors speculate that, had there been a warning posted somewhere in the apartment, Madeleine’s parents wouldn’t have left the door unlocked as they dined nearby and checked on the kids every 30 minutes.

This possibility seems fairly likely to be the simplest explanation of what could have happened to poor Madeleine McCann. What do you think? If these facts are true, do you think the authorities should have taken more care to warn families that were vacationing in the area?