The Tanner "Sighting" - AGAIN

Was Jane Tanner’s account of seeing a man carrying a child a fabrication

1. Seconds before she claims to have seen the man carrying a child, Tanner states that she passed very close to Dr Gerald McCann and Jeremy Wilkins. Neither man saw Tanner. Neither man saw the alleged abductor.

2. There is a clear contradiction between Tanner’s account of which side of the road the two men were standing on, and the statement of Gerald McCann, which itself contradicts that of Wilkins. In the Mockumentary this was glossed over and Tanner burst into tears as her version was trashed.

3. Tanner conveyed her sighting to Gerry McCann, Russell O’Brien and other members of the group. Her claimed ‘sighting’ was included in the two hand-written timelines of events which were given to the police around midnight of Thursday 3 / Friday 4 May.

4. It is almost certain that tearing off Madeleine’s activity sticker book cover was done by Gerry McCann. The person who wrote these two timelines, Russell O’Brien, said in a written statement that he had been handed the torn-off cover and said that ‘he thought it was the back of a cereal packet’.

5. Kate McCann claims she did not know of this ‘sighting’ until the following day, (in fact long after she and her husband had alleged spent an hour searching.) It seems her husband did not direct the search in the direction of the alleged sighting.) She further claims that Tanner did not tell her about the ‘sighting’ until about 24 hours after the event. Kate McCann was with her husband nearly all the time following their report of Madeleine’s disappearance, and certainly overnight, whist she “kept vigil” and he slept.

6. Tanner’s original description of the ‘sighting’ was vague, and spoke of a bundle being carried. There were also initial references to the child having been carried in a blanket, though neither of these appear in the statements

7 Tanner’s recollections of the person she said she saw became more detailed over time. This is unusual. Memory usually fades.

8 In her second and subsequent statements Tanner described in detail the shoes the man was wearing and was able to describe in great detail the child’s pyjamas, the length, the frilly edges at the bottom, the colour and the pattern. It was dark at the time, with only street lighting.

9 Her various statements about the sighting are long and rambling with a many hesitations and linguistic ‘fillers’. Forensic linguists tell us that these are typical indicators that the truth is not being told.

10 Despite the massive publicity claiming that Madeleine had been abducted, the Portuguese Police were from Day One so unconvinced by Tanner’s evidence that they discounted it completely.

11. The Portuguese Police were unwilling to release Tanner’s description of her ‘sighting’, and were only prompted to allow Gerry McCann to release a description following heavy political pressure.

12 On 13 May 2007, the Portuguese Police put Tanner in an unmarked police car with blacked out windows. Tanner identified Robert Murat as the man she claimed to have seen carrying a child 10 days earlier.

13 The fact that she did identify Robert Murat has not been denied and was in fact acknowledged by Clarence Mitchell. His carefully-chosen words were: “Jane
Tanner did not actually name Robert Murat and you can go back and check for yourselves, it is all in the police records”.
There is of course a clear difference between “naming” and “identifying”

14 By contrast with her description of the man Tanner saw, Robert Murat is:
taller, heavier build, had short hair, and always wears spectacles

15 Tanner subsequently changed her story, and attempted to deny that she had identified Robert Murat.

16. The McCann Team did not release an artist’s sketch of the abductor to the public until late October 2007. That was six months after the night Madeleine was reported missing.

17. From November 2007 to January 2008, the McCann Team worked on preparing for a publicity event centred around the statements of a Ms Gail Cooper. The same ‘forensic artist’ who had produced the sketch of the man released on 25 October, Melissa Little, now also produced an artist’s sketch of this man (now known variously as ‘Cooperman’, or ‘Monster man’).

18 The sketches based on Gail Cooper’s description, showed a man full-face with a number of features, notably a large moustache and straggly hair. These sketches were shown to Jane Tanner, who had already said she had seen no part of his face, and had already identified Robert Murat.
In fact Melissa Little’s ‘Cooperman’ looks nothing like Robert Murat

19 Tanner now said that she was 80% sure that the new person drawn by Melissa Little was the same person she had seen on 3 May.

20 In August 2009, David Edgar, the McCanns’ chief private investigator, said that Jane Tanner might have seen a woman, not a man.

suzyjohnson wrote:Don't feel sorry for her, look what she's put Murat through. And also, if the whole abduction thing was a cover up, she has played her part in a massive fraud.

If, on the other hand, they have no idea of Madeleines whereabouts, then she is one of the people refusing to take part in a reconstruction which could shed some light on things.

Woburn_exile wrote:This is what pretty much did it for me. I read in that Book that Jane Tanner had not released the information until the following day because she "didn't want to cause the parents any more distress"? PLEEEASSEE Does this have any ring of truth about it?

Woburn_exile wrote:This is what pretty much did it for me. I read in that Book that Jane Tanner had not released the information until the following day because she "didn't want to cause the parents any more distress"? PLEEEASSEE Does this have any ring of truth about it?

Reply Russell O'Brien........ at some stage sort of quietened off and the, the PJ sat down with, you know, came in and sat down with Gerry....(I thought) that we were writing on the back of a piece of card,I thought it was a cereal box but obviously it was a children’s book, that (it) was written with me sat at the table in Kate and Gerry’s room. Gerry by this point had certainly calmed down but was, his head was just on the table, you know, like that, he was just staring at the, at the table, very, very quiet and very, very low.

1578....
LP. “Was the first attempt, the earlier attempt as you say. When was this drafted up”?

Reply Russell O'Brien
Erm this was drafted er *around the time that the initial pair of Officers from the PJ came to 5A. I can certainly recall writing some of this, I think perhaps the neat, maybe the neater version erm sat down at the table in Gerry’s flat...

I didn’t want to say to Kate at that point, which might sound odd now, you know, ‘Oh why wouldn’t you say straight away to Kate’, but, you know, the thought of telling the mother of a child that you might have seen being carried away is, it’s too horrible to even say.

JT.......And then I think they, Russell was there when I spoke to the PJ, because I can remember Russell coming in with me when I spoke to the PJ, because there was Russell and Gerry was there as well in the apartment when I spoke to the PJ. And that was the first time I’d ever been into their, into Kate and Gerry’s apartment through the whole week, I hadn’t, it might seem like, but we hadn’t really been into their apartment before”.

4078 “Sorry, was that on the night that Madeleine had disappeared?”

Reply “That was at three o’clock in the morning after she’d disappeared, yeah”.

LP. "So when you went into Gerry and Kate’s apartment who else was there?”

JT. “Erm, I think there was Russ, I think Russell came with me and there was Sylvie who was the translator. I can’t remember which, there was some, there was a PJ chap was sitting on the, by the table. And there was Gerry who was standing by the, the bedroom door”.

LP. “And how was Gerry at that point?”

JT.“Oh he was just, well obviously, obviously distraught. And I think it was quite hard for me to be saying at that, you know, looking in his face and to be explaining what I’d seen, at that point was quite hard because, you know, Gerry was obviously standing there, I don’t know whether, and you sort of think ‘Oh God, here’s me, if I’d tried to stop them this wouldn’t have happened’ sort of thing. So I think I did feel sort of a bit obviously guilty at that stage even though I didn’t know whether it was anything, but obviously you think ‘Oh bloody hell, what if I’ not stopped it happened potentially”.

LP. “And what was Gerry’s reaction to what you said?”

JT. “Well I don’t even know whether he took it in, I mean, he was just, he was, you know, obviously just standing there looking absolutely horrified, so”.

4078 “And where was Kate?”.....

Seek truth wrote:So if JT said she didnt want to upset the mccanns, she didnt have to upset them! she could have gone on her own.

Why didnt she go in the direction she saw the abductor without telling them? Did she mention this?

Me wrote:And for those who think she never identified Murat in the van here's her carefully chosen words in the Rogatory interview:

Reply “Erm well I think it’s when I’d done the, well I did the surveillance and then the next day after that, I think it came on Sky News about whether they were searching, what the MURAT’s house, so that’s Rachel sort of came running down at that point and sort of said, have you seen this blah, blah and at this point, nobody knew that I’d done the surveillance cos the Portuguese Police were very adamant that I shouldn’t tell anybody and I didn’t tell anybody for days actually, I didn’t even tell them then that it was actually, that I’d done it, I mean it was a couple of days afterwards. So Rachel came down and sort of said, oh I saw him blah, blah, blah and then I think Russell, I can’t remember who else but then somebody else said oh they, they saw him and etc., so at that point it was, I rang Bob SMALL cos I’d got, I’d got his number from the day before for them and you know, they sort of, you know to say, oh is this, is this relevant and also I wanted to tell him that I’d seen him on the way to the doing the surveillance as well yeah just for that, so I think it’s just to make the point really that I think at that point, they didn’t know that Robert MURAT said he wasn’t there on the night”.
4078 “Right”.
Reply “You know, or said yeah, had said that he wasn’t there on the night, so you know was immediately, I think it was immediately, I’m not trying to push anything onto Robert MURAT’s door, cos as I say I don’t think it was him that I saw”.
4078 “No”.
Reply “But I just thought it was”.

The last line is proof that at that time in that she "just thought it was (him)".

Tells you all you need to know about her credibility and this is an area the Yard should be concentrating on.

Cristobell wrote:I meant to add that I have never seen pro mccanns use the sighting of Jane Tanner to support the abduction story, yet this is the strongest piece of evidence they, this suggests that even they don't have much faith in it.

Woburn_exile wrote:This is what pretty much did it for me. I read in that Book that Jane Tanner had not released the information until the following day because she "didn't want to cause the parents any more distress"? PLEEEASSEE Does this have any ring of truth about it?

Portia wrote:

Woburn_exile wrote:This is what pretty much did it for me. I read in that Book that Jane Tanner had not released the information until the following day because she "didn't want to cause the parents any more distress"? PLEEEASSEE Does this have any ring of truth about it?

Actually, she did not.

Proof: Maddies torn up picture book, where ROB wrote Janes statement down in the presence of Gerry hisself;

BEFORE the arrival of the police. In fact, the police disturbed them in the process of writing Janes statement into the timeline.

Now, we have not seen any explanation for ROB and Gerry being aware of Jane-darlings sighting of the Abductor-egghead, BEFORE the arrival of the police, have we?

And of why on earth they hid this knowledge from the PJ!

Hypothesis: if they had told the PJ that our girl Jane just an hour ago had seen Eggman carting off little Maddie, do we not agree, all of us, that then the PJ would have run into the direction pointed out to them by ROB, Gerry and our girl Jane?

Sardine munching and all: they would have run after the Eggman.

Raise your hands, all of you on this forum , who agree with me, and who think the PJ would have chased the Eggman down.

If he existed.

And IF the father of the missing child had taken the trouble of telling him of Janes observation, asking them to go look into the direction described by her.

Good Heavens, I forgot: he was asleep, with Amelie on his breast, wasn't he?

Cristobell wrote:Referring back to the torn sticker book, this leads me to believe that any plan must have been spontaneous rather than pre-planned. Had it been pre-planned they would have had time to find something more appropriate to write on. I also think the Jane Tanner sighting was hastily thought out, as though something had gone wrong and she had to think on her feet. Absolutely no-one (other than Frankenstein's monster) carries a child in the way described by Jane. I also tend to think that an abductor would make some attempt to be discreet, perhaps check that the coast was clear before boldly striding across a main road in full view of 3 witnesses with his booty stretched across his arms.

Ayniia wrote:
Yes! Why would she even say that?! Well, I know, because PDL was so deserted that the only other "witnesses " were the Smith's and someone needed an alibi and fast...