A former resort worker has revealed that they saw new Madeleine McCann suspect Martin Ney in Praia da Luz around the time that the toddler vanished.
Convicted triple-murderer Ney, 48, was yesterday named as a 'person of interest' by Portuguese police following a tip off from Scotland Yard.
The killer, known as the 'masked man', was reportedly known to haunt the Algarve region and travelled throughout Portugal in the 1990s.
Now, a resort worker has claimed to have seen Ney in Praia da Luz just a few weeks before Maddie vanished from the resort in May 2007.
They claim Ney stared 'intently' at them as they drank in a bar and spotted him once again in a supermarket close to the holiday home where Maddie disappeared.
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Martin Ney, 48, is believed to be one of the two key 'persons of interest' officers are now focusing on (left), and a previously issued suspect's photofit (right)
Madeleine McCann disappeared from the Ocean Club resort in Portugal's Praia da Luz as a three-year-old in May 2007
Speaking to the Mirror, the former resort worker, who was employed at the Ocean Club where the McCanns stayed, said: 'I have a very good memory for faces.
'I remember his looking at us intently.'
Maddie's parents Kate and Gerry are yet to be informed of any fresh leads.
Ney was jailed for life in 2012 for abducting and murdering three young children and abusing many more.
He revealed in chatroom messages, under the username GerdX, he had dressed in camouflage to jump out of bushes, 'in children's playgrounds if a beautiful boy goes past,' The Sun reported.
He also wore masks, balaclavas and replied 'yes' when one girl awoke from a nap and asked if he was her daddy.
Ney was jailed for killing Stefan Jahr, 13, in 1992, Dennis Rostel, eight, in 1995, and Dennis Klein, nine, in 2001.
His known victims are all boys, but experts claim gender is often unimportant for paedophiles.
It was reported last year that Ney confessed a fourth killing to a cellmate, that of 10-year-old French school boy Jonathan Coulom, who was kidnapped and killed from a holiday camp in Saint-Brevin-les-Pins in 2004. This has not resulted in a charge.
He was also investigated over the disappearance of German boy Renee Hasse in Aljezur, Portugal, in 1996, but never charged.
He is known to have finished his teacher training aged 21 before travelling to Ecuador in 1993, Peru in 1995 and Portugal a year later. He was jailed in 2012 after a wide scale police operation.
Ney is believed to have leapt out at children from behind bushes wearing a mask and dressed all in black (photofit pictured)
Former disgraced Portuguese Police chief Goncalo Amaral gave a recent interview to Australian journalist Mark Saunokonko in which he
