If Madeleine McCann died on Sunday 29 April, what was really going on behind the scenes that week?

PeterMac wrote:I mentioned this in a previous chapter, which I now can't find.

The short cut, and the [alleged] separation of the family when they left the apartment, 
would mean they had a preemptive response to anyone who said they had not seen them together as a family of FIVE, 
AND for anyone who said they never saw either parent taking Madeleine to the creche.

Is it this chapter?
https://whatreallyhappenedtomadeleinemccann.blogspot.com/2016/08/chapter-1-changes-in-story.html

If you use the search facility and put in a key word or two (i.e. front door) you get this chapter...

Snipped from Gerry's second statement 10th May.

Returning to Thursday, after breakfast, about 09h00, KATE and the children left by the rear door, he having left by the front door, which he locked with the key, having also closed and locked the rear door from the inside.


This makes no sense at all, Kate struggling with 3 children down a set of steps, while Gerry simply walks out of the front door, I'm not buying that for 1 second.

crusader wrote:Snipped from Gerry's second statement 10th May.

Returning to Thursday, after breakfast, about 09h00, KATE and the children left by the rear door, he having left by the front door, which he locked with the key, having also closed and locked the rear door from the inside.


This makes no sense at all, Kate struggling with 3 children down a set of steps, while Gerry simply walks out of the front door, I'm not buying that for 1 second.

I only buy it because I believe that they left by different doors and probably by slightly different times, to avoid being seen as a family of only four. If Kate had the twins with her then she could plausibly claim, if asked, that Madeleine was with Gerry.

If that was the plan, to avoid being seen as a family of only 4, they would have had to spend nearly the whole week never being seen together as a family of 5 every day.

In his 2nd statement Gerry said they went to the beach on Tuesday, all leaving by the front door due to them having the pushchairs.

The day it was pouring with rain, so the children didn't go on the sand but they bought ice-creams and sunglasses . . .
That Tuesday ?

"In the afternoon Gerry and I decided to take the children down to the beach. To be honest, I think they’d have been just as happy to go back to their clubs, but we wanted to do something slightly different with them, just the five of us. We borrowed a double buggy from Mark Warner to make the walk easier for Sean and Amelie. The weather wasn’t great: in fact, on the beach it started to rain. A bit of rain is not something that bothers a Scotsman like Gerry, but Sean and Amelie didn’t like the feel of the wet sand and insisted, in the way two-year-olds do, on being carried.
  Our trip to the beach wasn’t exactly a roaring success and the kids certainly weren’t thanking us for it. Still, we made the best of it, and the suggestion of ice-creams soon brought smiles to three little faces. The children and I sat down on a bench and Gerry went off to fetch them. The shop was only about 25 feet away, yet when he called to me asking me to give him a hand with the five ice-creams he was paying for, I was momentarily torn. Would the children be OK on the bench while I nipped over? I hurried across, watching them all the time.
  How could I balk at leaving the kids to run a few yards for ice-creams and feel comfortable with the child-checking arrangement we had at dinner? I haven’t ever been able to rationalize this discrepancy in judgement to my own satisfaction. Perhaps in my subconscious the prospect of three active children squabbling, hurting themselves or being hurt by somebody else in a public place in the middle of the afternoon rang more alarm bells than three sleeping children, safely tucked up in bed, being checked on regularly. If the fear of abduction had ever entered my head it would have been in the former situation.
  Having polished off her ice-cream, Madeleine asked if she could go back to Mini Club now, please. So much for extra family time! Before heading up the road, we stopped at a shop on the corner of Rua da Praia and Avenida dos Pescadores, one of several open-air, market-style stalls, as Gerry needed a pair of sunglasses. A couple of the women who worked there were sitting by the stall, admiring and making a fuss of the children, who responded quite happily. These ladies were warm and friendly, this is the kind of thing that happens every day, especially in southern European countries, and I only remember it at all because of what subsequently happened.
  You may be wondering not only what relevance all these minute details might have to anything, but also how I can recall them so distinctly and how accurate my recollections can possibly be. "
[Err Yes.   We are]


Too much information.  Too much insistence on FIVE FIVE

'So much for extra family time' - they spent as little time as possible with the children.

The point is, there is no evidence to support any of the claims made by Gerry and Kate McCann.

After the initial arrival day/s, they opted to breakfast and lunch alone in their own apartment. They used a shortcut which can't be verified. They left apartment 5a by different means thus dividing the family of five which can't be verified.

Then there is the daily childcare records to consider. For a tour company that prides itself on it's childcare facilities and awareness, the documented registers of attendance and activities appear very slapdash indeed.

Personally I wouldn't expect to see any better from any tour company, no matter what their supposed reputation. It's all very laid-back and do as you down right pleazy until something goes horribly wrong - then and only then do they jump to attention.

What goes on in the underbelly of any hotel or other tourist accommodation is an eye opener. The client has no idea ....

It's no wonder Mark Warner called on their PR experts to bail them out of a rather sticky situation.

Tuesday 1st May 2007

During Gerry’s tennis lesson, Madeleine and Ella came to the adjoining court with their Mini Club for a mini-tennis session. Jane and I stayed to watch them. It chokes me remembering how my heart soared with pride in Madeleine that morning. She was so happy and obviously enjoying herself. Standing there listening intently to Cat’s instructions, she looked so gorgeous in her little T-shirt and shorts, pink hat, ankle socks and new holiday sandals that I ran back to our apartment for my camera to record the occasion. One of my photographs is known around the world now: a smiling Madeleine clutching armfuls of tennis balls. At the end of their session, the children had been asked to run around the court and pick up as many balls as they could. Madeleine had done really well and was very pleased with herself. Gerry loves that picture.

madeleine by KATE MCCANN

Slightly off-piste for which I make no apology.

This Express report is probably one of the most significant ever published..

They still have supporters though, so the significance of what McCann said didn't register with them.

Since watching Richard's films - I only started questioning last week, so totally new to this, I've being thinking about Kate's name.
In the book I remember her saying the day Madeline disappeared was the day she changed her name, as the press and everyone referred to her as Kate McCann, but she had never used her married name. 
Why then did she sign the creche register as Kate McCann?  
(Maybe I've remembered that wrong!)

You are quite right Silver Moon, but you need to take pretty much everything in the book with a pinch of salt.
 
Snips from the bewk:
 
‘Before 3 May 2007, I was Kate Healy, a GP married to a consultant cardiologist and the mother of three children.’ 

‘She had addressed me as Kate Healy, and although this was the name by which I was always known before Madeleine’s abduction, since then I’d only ever been referred to as Mrs McCann.’ 

‘On 4 May 2007, I became Kate McCann. According to my passport, driving licence and bank account I was Kate Healy. I hadn’t kept my maiden name for any particular reason – it was just who I was and who I’d always been. But when Madeleine was taken, the press automatically referred to me as Kate McCann, and Kate McCann I have been ever since. Overnight our old life had gone and I’d become a different person.’ 

I’ll have to check the files, but from memory she signed as KM every day except one, where she signed out as KH right next to a signing-in KM signature.

All KM signatures apart from this one on 2nd May:

Doug D wrote:You are quite right Silver Moon, but you need to take pretty much everything in the book with a pinch of salt.
 

Thank you for taking the time to answer a newbie to all of this!

Those entries alone seem to suggest that the Creche entries are unreliable.  It's funny, I read her book not long after it came out (yes I believed every word they said!!) and as soon as I saw the creche entries on Richard's film, I remembered that about her becoming Kate McCann when Madeleine "disappeared"  There's a lot more I don't remember at all, but that information stuck for some reason.

It's been quite a week - until last week I had no clue of all this stuff.

Now I think "How in the world are they not in jail"

My mind is totally blown not just by the truth, but also by the incredible depth of research that Richard and I assume others, put into finding the truth.  


Perhaps the best investigative journalism I have ever seen.

And for what it's worth, I now think that far from being good parents (never mind the Madeleine death!) but what parents go on holiday and put their children in creche ALL day every day, seeing them only at mealtimes and bedtime?!!!  (Of course they probably needed the twins out of the way to clear up.)  If they think this presents them as good parents, while they were "playing tennis  / golf and jogging etc etc" they are very much mistaken.  I would be ashamed as a parent to admit that!

Silver moon wrote:Since watching Richard's films - I only started questioning last week, so totally new to this, I've being thinking about Kate's name.
In the book I remember her saying the day Madeline disappeared was the day she changed her name, as the press and everyone referred to her as Kate McCann, but she had never used her married name. 
Why then did she sign the creche register as Kate McCann?  
(Maybe I've remembered that wrong!)

Hello Silver moon and a belated  to the forum!

Jumping from belief in Kate McCann's autobiographical novel to Richard D Hall's video collection is a huge leap between the dark and the light   .

The case of Madeleine McCann's disappearance has attracted an attentive audience since the case first hit the headlines back in May 2007, believers and non-believers have come and gone leaving but a remnant of the past interest in the case.  I've seen so many examples over the years of folk coming late to the case, which is good but alas their interest has been piqued by a a less than reliable source - for example the Netflix Madeleine McCann production.

Before continuing, can you oblige by telling how you came across Richard's videos - was it through CMOMM or some other source.  It's interesting to understand people's research sources but I quite appreciate if you would rather not say.

I should also like to say, rather than jumping in mid-stream (Richard's videos), it's a good idea to get a broad understanding of the case from the original Portuguese police investigation so you can decide for yourself.  It's a lot to get through and there is much repetition, I recommend starting with issues of particular interest to you - like the creche records?

http://www.mccannpjfiles.co.uk/

So back to Healy vs. McCann.

With respect I think this is a something and nothing - another example of Kate McCann poetical prowess to fill the pages of an otherwise trashy novel fit only for the shelves of Barbara Cartland.

It's not unusual for professionals, or non-professionals, to use their maiden name in preference to their married name - indeed Kate McCann's passport, current at the time, was in the name of Kate Healy.  Why did she sign the creche register in the name of Kate McCann?  Maybe a simple explanation - the holiday was booked in the family name .... McCann.

Personally I don't see anything sinistre here.  

It would appear a lot was going on during that week that we don't know about - trying to join the dots is a Herculean task to say the least, problem being we know less than we know about that week!

There is still a lot to talk about and I look forward to your further contribution.  The biggest red flag for me has always been the absence of family photographs - this is just not normal for a family on holiday with their children. Even back in 2007 they had digital cameras and mobile phones, so why no family photographs.  

The trip to the beach for ice-creams, the fun and games at the kiddies pool and playground, kiddies tennis lessons, the boat trip, laughter tears and tantrums back at the apartment, tea-time at the Tapas, cosying-up at bedtime?  The McCann group talk of these things but there is no evidence!.

Bye for now - life calls me!

They did indeed have a high spec digital camera, 7 M.pixel images and video record which we covered in great details a very long time ago.  
That they – allegedly - took only one confirmed photo , the Pool Photo, with it is, or seems, beyond belief. That there is no video stretches credibility beyond normal limits.

It is also barely credible that only one version would be taken. With digital cameras one can fire off numerous ones, as people smile, turn their heads, laugh and so on. And then – if you can be bothered to – you can select just the best one or two and delete the rest.  Probably long after the holiday is over.

Unless, of course there were a very good reason for leaving the camera in the apartment from Sunday night and rigorously editing whatever was on it.  Speculation of course.

From the Statement of Diane Webster, it seems that they had the Camera in the Tapas Bar that night?

She adds that that night, and after the occurrence of the facts under investigation, have been in the the apartment on two separate occasions. At the time described above she remained about 10 minutes in the apartment. After this time she returned to the restaurant to get her handbag as well as the camera of the couple McCANN and "baby monitor" of her daughter, and was soon back again in the apartment. 


Source:
http://www.mccannpjfiles.co.uk/PJ/DIANNE_WEBSTER_11-MAY07.htm


It seems unlikely it was never used?

Unless, of course there were a very good reason for leaving the camera in the apartment from Sunday night and rigorously editing whatever was on it.  Speculation of course.

Despite the horror of the situation, some sense of the necessity to approach the crisis calmly and methodically appeared to kick in among our friends as they tried to exert a modicum of control over the chaos. What could be done? What should be done? Aware that we were only an hour and a quarter’s drive from southern Spain, and beyond that lay the borderless continent of Europe – not to mention the short hop across the Strait of Gibraltar to north Africa – David was saying, ‘We need roadblocks set up. The borders to Spain, Morocco and Algiers need to be alerted.’

Russell later asked us for our digital photos of Madeleine and went off somewhere with our camera.

A week had now passed since Madeleine’s abduction. Later that day, Thursday 10 May, the Portuguese police held a press conference, at which they released a photograph of a pair of the same Marks and Spencer pyjamas Madeleine had been wearing and confirmed that they were winding down the ground search.

Meanwhile, Gerry and I, along with a couple of our friends, were called back to the police station in Portimão. The police were much friendlier on this occasion and the junior officers, at least, gave the impression that by this time they were working very hard. Gerry was taken in to be interviewed while I remained downstairs. I made use of the long wait I anticipated by sitting down with a notebook, pen and my camera, containing dated photographs of the holiday, and trying to write a detailed account of everything that had happened the week before.

Russell, anxious to get posters produced and out there quickly, asked me for my camera, so that he could use the photographs of Madeleine stored on it. The PJ appear to have been determined to prove we’d brought these posters on holiday with us from Britain. They sent them to a forensics lab for analysis, asking for information on how old they were and how they had been printed and cut. Having established that Kodak paper had been used, they contacted a Kodak representative to find out where this paper could have been bought. I was so exasperated to read all this. There was a much easier, more obvious way of confirming how and where these posters were produced. They could have just asked. As it was, it took them until April 2008 to verify that the posters had been run off, on the night of the abduction, by Amy Tierney, the Mark Warner duty manager, using her own Kodak paper and her own Kodak printer.

madeleine by KATE MCCANN

And then most interesting of all..

Friday 4th May 2007

The texts and phone calls kept coming. By this time our friend Jon Corner, a creative director in media production in Liverpool, was circulating photographs and video footage of Madeleine to the police, Interpol and broadcasting and newspaper news desks. This was in accordance with the standard advice of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in the US, which advocates getting an image of a missing child into the public domain as soon as possible.

What was family friend Jon Corner doing with a portfolio of Madeleine images and videos - on Friday 4th May 2007?

And with such a portfolio, why did he choose to use those which were published?

How did she know of the National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children in the US and what their policy was on 4th May?

They had some time to plan, and Images could have been sent by anyone with access to a Laptop with an Internet connection.

Maybe the Police Manuals found in their Villa contained the Information?
The question remains, who gave them these Books, and when?

Uncropped Images were on someones Computer.

I saw Kate and Gerry McCanns' despair and if they were acting they deserved an Oscar

Timesonline

The PR expert who advised Madeleine's parents in the first weeks of her disappearance offers a new insight into their state of mind

Dominic Kennedy
October 6, 2007

Gerry and Kate McCann's on-screen composure in the days after their daughter disappeared was at odds with their turmoil and dread behind the scenes, a witness says today.

The couple swung between uncontrollable distress and a determination to do what was needed to help to find Madeleine. They gave no indication that they thought she had been snatched, let alone by a paedophile. Their early assumption was that she had wandered off and had an accident or been taken in by a well-meaning stranger.

Alex Woolfall, a public relations consultant for the holiday resort where the child disappeared, was with the McCanns regularly for that first fortnight and is convinced that they are innocent. "That they could be involved and in any way be guilty - to me they would have to win every Golden Globe and every Oscar ever awarded," he told The Times.

Mr Woolfall has provided the first detailed account by an insider of what happened to the McCanns during the desperate days after Madeleine disappeared. He is an expert in crisis PR at the communications group Bell Pottinger and flew to Portugal as part of the Mark Warner holiday company’s emergency response team on Saturday, May 5. Madeleine vanished on the evening of May 3.

He met the couple for the first time at their new apartment. "They were behaving exactly as I thought someone in that situation would be," Mr Woolfall said. "They had not slept. They were trying to work out what to do that might help generate images of her. They were desperately keen to publicise her face."

The McCanns had photographs of Madeleine on their digital camera, which Mr Woolfall began transferring to a laptop computer. "I said to Kate, 'Let's try to identify pictures where her face is visible'. Downloading the images was a very difficult process for them. It was upsetting.

"They were trying to do two things at once: one, emotionally deal with what was actually, really happening to them; two, operate in some sort of logical way to help get her back."

Mr Woolfall transmitted the photographs to the Press Association in London, from where they were distributed to the media. The portfolio included the now famous image of Madeleine wearing a hat on a tennis court.

The McCanns wanted to do more. "They were exhausted and despairing but thinking, 'Should we go outside and say something that might get her back?' They said they wanted to head downstairs and talk to the media. They were very tired, but that was one thing they were determined to do."

Mr Woolfall went out to alert journalists and returned to the McCanns. "They wrote down what they wanted to say and went out and gave a short statement. After that, they were completely spent. You could tell there was nothing left."

Mr Woolfall was surprised by the reaction of British viewers to the couple's demeanour. "I was struck at the perception of people who had watched Kate and Gerry: that they were very controlled and perhaps were not responding in a way people thought would be more natural. They were not at all controlled. When I was with them, they were between being completely distraught and trying to do what they felt was the right thing." Armchair detectives have leapt to wild conclusions based on the few alleged details of the case to have emerged. One bone of contention has been whether Mrs McCann, when raising the alarm that Madeleine was missing, screamed: "They've taken her." Some have questioned why a mother would leap to the conclusion that a child had been abducted.

Mr Woolfall says that he heard no suggestion in the early days that the girl had been snatched. "Certainly I did not hear any discussion that this could be a paedophile or an aggravated robbery. All the time I was around it was whether she could have wandered off and had an accident or somebody had actually taken her in, perhaps not with ill-intent.

"During the first 48 hours the word being used was 'missing' rather than 'abducted' or any link with a paedophile or any sort of crime. Towards the end of the second week I detected a shift towards there being a consciousness that she had probably been taken rather than wandered off, just on the assumption that anybody would have found her by now."

Many theories have emerged from the claim that Madeleine's twin sister and brother, aged 2, failed to wake or cry when she vanished. Mr Woolfall said he had not heard of the twins' alleged silence until he read about it in a newspaper in Britain. The claim was attributed to the Portuguese police.

There has even been a suggestion that Mrs McCann carried her daughter's Cuddle Cat soft toy because it would look good on TV. "For that to have in any way validity, it would cancel out the fact that these two people hadn't got a clue about PR or the media," Mr Woolfall said. "To suddenly be that sophisticated . . . I noticed Kate often had this toy with her. It was Madeleine’s favourite toy and she would go to bed with it. Kate had it with her when she went to church. She had it in the apartment."

A lingering puzzle for many is why the couple left three children in the flat. "When I first got to Praia da Luz, I asked Mark Warner to put me in the chair at the tapas restaurant that they had sat in and show me where the apartment was," Mr Woolfall said. "It never struck me that it would be a particularly odd thing to leave your children in that apartment, given that it was so close.

"It is incredibly sleepy and quiet in Praia da Luz. There is no traffic noise. One day when he was standing on a balcony, Gerry was saying how they felt when they first came to the resort. The pool was close, supermarket round the corner. They felt everything was a stone's throw."

The McCanns have sometimes irritated observers with the fervency of their do-it-yourself campaign. "When I came back there was criticism: why is this couple out there publicising this, doing interviews, going in front of cameras, going through photo opportunities? If you look at what would have happened in the UK, you would have had, probably within hours, a proactive intervention by British police, who would have said this is the process we now need to go through.

"Kate and Gerry have been largely left to get on with it, with no support in the initial stages, or guidance. They realised the media were a huge potential ally."

Mr Woolfall recalled how the bewildered couple gradually began to recover their composure. "In the first week they were not thinking. They actually did not think. They were in shock.

"In the second week, Gerry behaved very much like a doctor would do. Doctors are analytical. He started to have much more strategic conversations with me about what they might do. They became more aware that getting Madeleine's photograph widely distributed in Spain and possibly North Africa was sensible.

"Gerry said to me, 'We don't want the awareness that Madeleine has gone missing to disappear overnight, and that we are a family whose child went missing on holiday and that is the end of it. We want to try and find her.' When I left Portugal, the beginnings of the idea of having a campaign were probably forming.

"They were actually quite hopeful - far more in that frame of mind than despondent and downbeat. They had gone 360 degrees several times through all the different emotional states, but they soon got some good control on things."

Mr Woolfall left after a fortnight working from 5am to 1am, fending 200 calls a day from journalists as far away as Norway and South Africa. He warned the McCanns that they needed a press officer. "Gerry, I think, spoke to the Consulate and said 'Can you help us? Because there is a lot of media interest and we cannot manage.' As a result of that the Foreign and Commonwealth Office flew out Sheree Dodd [an experienced government spokeswoman]."

At first, journalists treated the McCanns with great respect, but there was a free-for-all when the couple took their first unscheduled walk along the beach. "Freelance snappers started to get quite close to them and one or two questions were thrown at them. That was probably the very early stages of the change," Mr Woolfall said. "It reached a crescendo when the McCanns tried to take their kids to the crèche and were bombarded by snappers and freelancers."

When the McCanns were made suspects, Mr Woolfall was bemused. "I thought it was ridiculous. I couldn't believe it. Completely ludicrous."

Did you suspect them? "My God, no, absolutely not in any way at any stage. I walked into that apartment and just saw two people who were frantic that their daughter had gone missing. Nobody could possibly, if they had anything to do with that, behave in that way for so long.

"It made me laugh rather than be exasperated. From Day One they could not move anywhere without 100 flash bulbs going off. The whole idea that they could have done any of the things the police were suggesting was farcical.

"You could not pick another couple on the planet that would have had that many cameras trained on them."

*

Note: June Wright, Luz resident, speaking on the Channel 4 dispatches documentary 'Searching for Madeleine':

"I arrived at the Ocean Club reception at around about 10 to 11 and at the time that we arrived a police car arrived - and as the police officer got out a man approached him, who I now know is Gerry McCann and said that his daughter had been abducted. That there was no way that she could have opened the shutters herself, she'd definitely been taken."

https://www.gerrymccannsblogs.co.uk/Nigel/id65.htm