Where are the Tapas Seven now? We reveal how their lives are still haunted by that night and plagued by stalkers, conspiracy theorists... and 'disturbing' photos in the post
When Madeleine McCann disappeared, it wasn’t just her parents Kate and Gerry who found themselves at the centre of the ensuing nightmare.
Friends the couple had been holidaying with in Praia da Luz – and who were dining with the McCanns at the Ocean Club resort’s tapas restaurant on the evening their daughter vanished – were also catapulted into the spotlight.
The Tapas Seven, as they became known, would go on to be both witnesses and a support crew for the McCanns, forever bound by the events of that fateful night.
Their evidence was scrutinised by police, their backgrounds probed.
None of the seven was ever an ‘arguido’, or formal suspect, and all co-operated willingly with the investigation. Yet 18 years on, the ties endure.
Last month two of their number – husband and wife David and Fiona Payne – gave evidence against Julia Wandelt and Karen Spragg after Wandelt contacted them via a slew of phone calls and emails.
Wandelt was convicted of harassment but cleared of stalking and Spragg was found not guilty of both charges. The judge gave both restraining orders.
The Paynes, who have remained close to the McCanns, told the court of the distress it caused.
Six members of the Tapas Seven, from left, Jane Tanner, David Payne, Fiona Payne, Dianne Webster, Rachel Oldfield and Dr Matthew Oldfield
‘It’s disturbing,’ said Fiona. ‘We have had lots of unsolicited contact from various people over the years, people with conspiracy theories.
‘However, we have never been contacted by anyone who thinks they could be Madeleine.’
To recap, a group of nine adults and eight young children, including Maddie and her younger twin siblings, travelled to the Algarve in May 2007, flying from East Midlands and Gatwick airports.
In addition to the Paynes were Fiona Payne’s mother Dianne Webster and married couples Matthew and Rachael Oldfield, and Russell O’Brien and Jane Tanner. Matthew, Russell and the Paynes knew each other from their days studying medicine at Leicester University in the early 1990s.
It was through the Paynes that the McCanns got to know the rest of the group, after they moved to Leicestershire in 2000.
Fiona, an anaesthetist, met Kate, who was working as an anaesthetic registrar, in a staff coffee room at Leicester General intensive care unit in December 2000.
Kate would later recall: ‘We became such great mates that one of our consultant colleagues rather cheekily used to refer to us as Charlie’s Angels.’
The female friendship expanded to include their husbands. It was the Paynes’ wedding in Italy in 2003 that brought all three couples together on a ‘holiday’ for the first time. Portugal was to be the second occasion they travelled abroad with their young families.
Julia Wandelt, who claimed to be Madeleine McCann, was found guilty of harassing the missing girl's family
Ending each day at the resort’s tapas restaurant became a key part of the relaxation routine. The children would go to bed in the ground-floor bedrooms of their apartment, approximately 60 yards away, and the adults would dine alfresco, taking it in turns to check on the children. And then came the night that Kate went to check on hers – and found that Maddie had disappeared.
What unfolded has been probed, questioned and debated ever since, with the nine adults present all, in some way, falling victim to the tidal wave of conspiracies that followed. Of the seven friends, the Paynes have remained the closest to Kate and Gerry – a closeness Wandelt attempted to capitalise on.
When Wandelt’s barrage of calls and messages to Kate and Gerry failed, she simply extended the net wider and, as known friends who also lived in Leicestershire, the Paynes were next in line.
David, 59, a consultant urologist, told the jury he had been sent not just photographs of Wandelt, comparing herself to Maddie, but personal photos of his wife and children.
One email from Wandelt read: ‘All I want is DNA, nothing more. You say you can’t help me but as a member of the tapas group you could clear your names.’
It was followed by: ‘I understand you have received a lot of hate and that is traumatic for you. I know you have experienced lots of hate and criticism. Could you please speak to them and help me to get in touch with them?’ Then, on Christmas Eve 2024, came the festive missive: ‘Merry Christmas, David. The truth will set you all free.’
Neither of the Paynes has spoken publicly about the unresolved tragedy that affected their own lives. They have, however, stayed stalwart friends of the McCanns.
Fiona has turned up to every anniversary vigil in Rothley honouring Madeleine’s disappearance, to support Kate and pray with her.
Karen Spragg was found not guilty on charges of harassment and stalking but was given a restraining order
In May 2023, it was Fiona who recited Emily Dickinson’s poem, Hope Is The Thing With Feathers, before embracing Kate. And when Kate and Gerry missed one gathering, due to another family commitment, it was Fiona who stepped in to address well-wishers and supporters.
‘We have stayed in touch and have seen them go through a lot of intrusion and seen how hard it is for them,’ David told the court.
Fiona, 53, described how they would regularly meet for walks or for coffee and Kate told her about the young woman who was claiming to be Madeleine.
She was half expecting it, Fiona said, when she too was contacted, by phone and via Facebook. Wandelt’s efforts even included trying to befriend Fiona’s own daughter on social media.
Fiona found this particularly cruel. ‘It is really difficult, she [her daughter] is a vulnerable young adult who has been adversely affected by Madeleine’s disappearance. She has the good sense to ignore these messages.
‘I felt angry actually that she [Wandelt] sought to manipulate her in that way.’ As for the other members of the group, the Paynes remain friends with both Russell O’Brien, a consultant in acute medicine and his wife Jane Tanner, who works for Exeter University, as well as Matthew Oldfield. Russell was best man to both David Payne and Matthew Oldfield and for a time, worked in the same field of cardiology as Gerry, the two men having identical roles at Leicester’s two hospitals – Leicester Royal Infirmary and Glenfield.
Russell’s wife Jane was pregnant with their eldest daughter, now a 22-year-old medical student, at the same time as Kate was expecting Madeleine. By the time of the holiday, Russell and Jane had moved to Devon, where they live in a large family home, close to the River Exe.
Jane’s evidence from the night of the disappearance would prove, in those early days, the most enduringly powerful.
The mother-of-two said she had seen a man carrying a child in the vicinity of the McCanns’ apartment at 9.15pm, 45 minutes before Kate raised the alarm.
Her sighting was later discounted after a British man came forward to say he was holding his sleeping child in his arms on their way back from the night crèche.
She would also become the first of the seven to speak publicly, appearing on Panorama in 2007, when she said: ‘I’m talking now because I’m being called a liar and a fantasist. I know what I saw. I think it’s important that people know what I saw because I believe Madeleine was abducted.’
Matthew Oldfield, 56, had worked alongside Gerry but by the time of the holiday, he and wife Rachael, 54, had moved south, where he began work at Kingston and Richmond NHS Foundation Trust, where he remains a consultant endocrinologist.
Rachael, meanwhile, was a recruitment consultant and is now an editor with a drug and medical device intelligence database company.
Publicly, they have said very little over the years about what happened in Praia da Luz.
But that the events of that night have left an indelible mark can be in no doubt.
