My McCann thoughts........ Richard Philips ....

Ihave been looking for the thread where i first saw the link but cannot find it ...sorry mods if i should not have started a new thread on this ...but i think it is a very interesting read....and shows the book for what it is .....a con.

Monday, September 15, 2014

Looking For Madeleine A chapter by chapter review.

Introduction.

Those of you who have read my blog posts about the DNA evidence will know that I am neither for or against Kate & Gerry McCann. I have no vested interest except that my training as a scientist requires that I examine all evidence critically and that I seek the truth based only on a thorough examination of all the evidence. Science also teaches us that evidence & predictions drawn from it can often be tested by experimentation which in turn can generate new evidence that leads to a greater understanding of the truth. Instinct & gut feeling have no place in science other than, perhaps, in helping to form an initial hypothesis. Nor do personal attacks so if you do reply to this blog (please do by the way) please stick to facts.
My motivation for doing this review is that the authors have claimed to be able to demonstrate that speculation that the McCann's played a role in Madeleine's disappearance are unfounded. I sincerely hope they have been able to do so because that would be a significant step forwards in solving this case. However if this is a false claim, and if it becomes widely accepted that would have the opposite effect. Thus I embark on this project with hopeful skepticism.

For the record I am reading the kindle version of the book. If there are differences between this and the hardback version I will not be aware of them.


Looking For Madeleine Chapter 1.

The opening phrase of the book is concerning as it appears to set the tone for the rest of the book. I know I have not finished the book yet, but I have read the authors opening note,extracts in press and several summaries so I have an idea of the books conclusions.
Back to the opening phrase " 'There she was, perfect,'" is attributed to Kate McCann. Anyone who has studies the case will be well aware of Gerry McCann's "She was almost perfect" comment in an interview. A comment that has led to a great deal of criticism. Thus the opening phrase seems to be an attempt to do several things. 1. Right Gerry's wrong. 2. Give a slightly false impression to the reader. & 3. Provoke those who are convinced that the McCann's faked Madeleine's abduction.
In fairness to the authors Kate does say something very similar in her book, but this was written after Gerry made his "almost perfect" comment so can also be seen as trying to right a previous wrong. I would have hoped that what the authors claim to be the first independent, objective account of the case would not have such a provocative opening phrase.

Unfortunately within just a few paragraphs we come to an inaccuracy. The authors refer to Madeleine's eye "defect" (it is no more of a defect than having blue or green or brown eyes) as a coloboma. A coloboma is a hole in , or an imperfectly formed iris. As far as we can tell from studying photographs, and the McCann's stressed this in a TV interview, Madeleine's right eye contained a fleck of brown colour in a perfectly formed iris. It was almost certainly not a coloboma so to say it definitely was a coloboma is not accurate.

Next we come to a description of the young Madeleine. The authors are honest in describing her as a difficult child, but try to give the impression that her sleeping & behavior problems had been largely solved. "The stars mounted up" suggesting that the stars Madeleine was awarded for sleeping a whole night in her own bed were issued almost every night. The evidence that this was the case is not good. A photograph of the reward chart has only 7 stars on it (http://www.gerrymccannsblogs.co.uk/ROTHLEY.htm) & Kate states in her book that a star was put up every time Madeleine stayed in her own bed all night. Furthermore we know that Madeleine spent woke up & spent one night in her parents bed while on holiday in Praia Da Luz. These two verifiable facts suggest to me that Madeleine was not good at sleeping all night in her own bed.

There are a number of questionable things in the next few paragraphs, but the authors are setting the scene for the start of the holiday so I'll let most of these pass. However the authors make a significant omission when relating the story of the camera-phone footage taken in the bus at Faro airport. They say that David Payne exclaims "Cheer up, Gerry! We're on holiday!" , but they omit Gerry's reply. There are a number of versions of this reply on the internet, but it is fairly certain that Gerry said "I not here to enjoy myself". He may also have used an expletive. Of course it is possible that Gerry was making a sort of joke, but there seems to be no humor in his reply & no one appears to laugh. In the light of what was to happen later this could be significant, but it is omitted.

In relating what happened on the holiday the authors do depart from the McCann party line when discussing the name by which Madeleine was called. They accept that at the creche she seemed happy to be called Maddy. Credit to the authors for this.

The description of the holiday continues with reasonable accuracy, although with a rather one sided slant. The description of the reasoning behind the decision to leave the children alone and make checks every 15mins or so seems somewhat biased. There is no questioning of how or why such a decision was taken. No discussion of whether any, not even one, of the group questioned the safety of such a scheme. This is one of the main reasons people criticise the McCann's yet the authors simply accept the version given. Perhaps they will tackle this issue later.

There is a comment about Gerry's addiction to tennis and running. This is something that has been questioned. How much tennis did Gerry play before the holiday. What does the tennis coach from the OC say about Gerry's proficiency and attitude to tennis. Was Gerry a member of a tennis club? Does he still play tennis? I say this because there are people who claim that Gerry prefers golf & some who say that he hardly played tennis at all before or since this holiday. The authors should have been in a position to check these facts.

The description of evenings in the tapas bar concentrates on the Wednesday night. There is an admission that the group drank quite heavily that night and stayed up well past midnight. There is a description of Gerry leaving shortly before Kate & of Kate finding Gerry asleep and snoring. Such a brief account of what could be a critical event seems strange. Did the authors ask the tapas 7 or Kate and Gerry to elaborate. How long did Kate remain in the bar after Gerry left? Did she try to stop him leaving? Was there any reason for him to leave abruptly? This event could suggest that there was something amiss. Some source of tension between them. I hope that the authors explore this later in the book.

It is worth pointing out here that if they stayed till after midnight on 2nd May & if there story about checking on the children is true the McCann's would have made a total of at least 12 return trips to the apartment that night in spite of having a fair amount to drink. I mention this simply to draw attention to the nature of the regime they claim to have adopted.

Now we come to another of the important incidents of the week. The account that has been given by the McCann's of Madeleine's comment early on Thursday morning that she and Sean had been crying the night before and that no one had come to her or Sean. The authors accept Kate's version that when she asked Madeleine what she had meant Madeleine had already become interested in something else.
This story may or may not be true. If it is true it raises a number of questions. If it is not true it raises even more questions. Some people find Kate's account of this difficult to believe. It is impossible to say for sure whether it is true or not, but some critical analysis of the subject is warranted in an objective account of the case. Perhaps the authors cover this later. We shall see.

The account of Thursday 3rd May continues. In just a couple of pages the authors describe in very simple terms the events of the day and the fateful evening that Madeleine went missing. Amazingly description of the largely uneventful day is more detailed that the description of the events of the fateful evening. The checks are not analysed in detail. The only detail given is of Kate telling Jane & Fiona that Madeleine had said she & Sean woke up the previous night. Only the bare bones of the checks are there. There is no mention of Gerry being gone longer than expected, of his meeting with Jez Wilkins or of Jane Tanner seeing a man carrying a child. Perhaps these will be covered later, but it does seem odd to hurry through the events of that evening. The chapter ends with Kate returning to the tapas bar and shouting "Madeliene's gone".
This is followed by a quote from the tapas waiters statement, the book says :-

"Long minutes later, still in the restaurant, waiter Jeronimo Salcedas heard what he would come to assume had been Kate screaming 'Never in my life'....'had I heard a cry like that....' ".

These is an accurate quote in it's meaning, but not 100% word for word as quotes should be. Nor is it given it's full context by the authors. The quotes in the book come from his second statement made in April 2008 almost a year after the event. His statement made on 6th May 2007 when events should have been fresh in his memory he makes a similar, but slightly different comment. Here is a 100% accurate quote from his second statement:

"I ran out of the Tapas and noticed that some of the childcare works of the Mark Warner had begun to arrive. At the point I left the Tapas I heard a scream from a woman I did not know. I do not know who screamed, but I had never heard a similar cry. I cannot even describe it but thought it had come from the child's mother."


In this first statement he also appears to be unaware of Kate entering the tapas bar to raise the alarm. He does not mention it at all. He says he only noticed something when he saw Diane Webster was sitting alone. He says seconds later that Gerry appeared & was looking for Madeleine & headed for the pool area. Here is a more complete quote from his first statement:-

"At that time, at about 22.20 - 22.30 he noticed that there was only one person sitting at the group's table, the oldest of them and he asked her jokingly whether they had left her alone.

The person in question said that the others had gone to the apartment to look for a girl who had disappeared. Seconds later Madeleine's father appeared, greatly agitated, looking for his daughter everywhere, obviously and immediately heading towards the pool and surrounding areas.

Shortly afterwards Luz Ocean Club was in a state of absolute commotion. Everyone was trying to help in the search for Madeleine which was multiplied in numerous search actions over a large perimeter. The witness immediately perceived the seriousness of the situation. Madeleine's mother was shouting desperately for her daughter. The witness told another chef at the Millenium restaurant so that he would also help in the searches."

I make no judgement about the significance of the statements. The waiter clearly heard someone (probably Kate) screaming some time after the alarm had been raised and searches were ongoing. However the way this is presented in the book is subtly misleading & not what I would hope to see in a definitive, unbiased account.

So all in all not a great start, but hopefully some concerns expressed above will be addressed in later chapters.

Next installment tomorrow.

Tuesday, September 16, 2014

Chapter 2 detail

Detailed review of Chapter 2.

The chapter starts with the group of friends rushing back to the apartment and an explanation of why Kate said the words "they've taken her", by paragraph three we are back to Kate in the apartment alone doing her check, paragraph 4 has David Payne's impression of Kate as she entered the tapas bar. To say that the start of chapter 2 is disjointed and confused is an understatement! It does settle down into a description of the early searches by the tapas group.


There is a strange and seemingly unnecessary criticism of Portuguese officials before a section explaining how the police were called. This section fails to address one of the important unexplained facts of the case: namely :-who decided to call the police, when & why. The authors accurately describe the OC receptionist hearing from staff in the tapas restaurant that a little girl was missing. They say the receptionist called the police at once. These events are recalled in the OC staff statements to the police. The authors describe Oldfield (one of the tapas 7) going to the OC reception and having a surreal conversation trying to persuade them to call the police. The authors do not mention that the OC receptionist does not mention this conversation in their statement, nor does anyone mention directly telling the tapas staff that Madeleine was missing or that it was necessary for the police to be called.
A few paragraphs later after a section about searches and nanny's the authors mention that the McCann's were frantic about why the police hadn't arrived and Oldfield went back to the reception this time with Gerry McCann. The OC receptionist statement shows that he remembers Gerry coming to the reception after the initial call was made and that he then made a second call timed just 11 minutes after the first call.


If you are a bit confused by this it isn't surprising. The authors seem to have deliberately tried to confuse the question of the calls to the police while at the same time having a completely out of context swipe at some Portuguese officials. The involvement of Matthew Oldfield in attempts to call the police is, at the very least, doubtful.


Careful reading of statements and phone record logs in the official published PJ files reveals the following.


1. Tapas bar staff realised because of the commotion and searching that a child was missing on the resort.


2. Of their own initiative they phoned the OC reception to relate this news.


3. The OC reception immediately phoned the police. This call was logged in phone records as being made at 22.41. (The statement of the receptionist says it was between 21.30 and 22.00. Given that it seems likely the alarm was not raised till 22.00 and the call to the GNR was logged at 22.41 it seems likely the time in the statement is out by 1hr)


4. A few minutes later Gerry McCann and another man, possibly Matthew Oldfield, but the receptionist states it was John Hill, arrived at reception. (It is unlikely that the receptionist would mistake Matthew Oldfield for John Hill because Mr Hill was the OC manager. John Hill states that he did go to reception around this time but it appears that he went alone or at least was not with Gerry McCann)


5. The receptionist made a second phone call to the GNR. This call was logged in phone records as being made at 22.52.




At this point I would like to ask the authors why they have written a record of the calls made to the GNR that does not agree with at least some of the statements in the official police files. Particularly with statements made by the person who actually made the calls. I would have expected them to at least highlight the doubt that exists over this matter rather than state as fact something that is at best doubtful.


The chapter continues to describe what happened after the GNR (police) arrived at the apartment. The authors are again selective in their choice of quotes from statements selecting things that support the suggestion that Madeleine had been abducted while ignoring quotes that might give the opposite impression. This strikes me as dishonest.


For example they quote GNR officer Roque. Here is the passage from the book: 'Roque noted that the bedclothes on Madeleine's bed seemed "too tidy". It appeared, he thought "that she had been picked up from or had left the bed with great care. There was a mark on the sheet that appeared to be made by a child's body"'. To me this reads as if the officer felt that the scene was that of a child abduction.


However the full quote from officer Roque's statement is:-


"During the search he did not find anything strange apart from the bedclothes on Madeleine's bed, which were too tidy, it appeared that she had been picked up from or had left the bed with great care. There was a mark on the sheet that appeared to be made by a child's body."


To me this has a slightly different tone. He found the bedclothes "strange", "it appeared she had been picked up or left the bed with great care", the "mark" "appeared to be made by a child's body". Perhaps I am wrong, but he says a little later in the same statement:


"He found the parents to be nervous and anxious, he did not see any tears from either of them although they produced noises identical to crying. He did not feel that this was an abduction, although this was the line indicated by the father."


Of course officer Roque could have been quite wrong in his opinion, but that is not the point. Summers and Swan have been dishonestly selective in the quotes they have used. They appear to be trying to create a specific impression for the reader rather than present accurate facts.


The rest of the chapter proceeds in similar vein. The impression given is of distraught parents, frantic searching, and incompetent police. As someone who has studied the case I know that some of the criticism of the police is justified & I have no doubt the scene was chaotic and confused. However earlier dishonesty by the authors and the one sided tone of the narrative lead me to doubt whether this really is an impartial account, but things do improve a bit towards the end of the chapter.


There is an interesting section about the various attempts to contact the press. One of the first two PJ officers to arrive told them "No media!" but was told Sky News had already been contacted (perhaps unsuccessfully). The authors relate that attempts by the group to contact the press began quite early, probably before 03.00, and continued in spite of the PJ's request for "No media!".


There is also a section about attempts to locate a priest and the fact that finding a priest seemed very important particularly to Kate. It is related that even when a priest in Liverpool was called and spoken to on the telephone Kate still wanted a local priest to be found.


A few paragraphs on and we are told that beds were made up in the Payne's apartment for them to lay down and rest if not actually sleep. We are also told that at this time, about 04.30, Gerry knew about Jane Tanners sighting but had not yet told Kate.


These sections do not portray the McCann's in a good light. Several attempts to contact the press against police instructions, attempts to find a priest and anger that one could not be found, and attempts to sleep or rest while others searched for their daughter. Finally the fact that a friend and also her husband withheld information from Kate about a possible sighting of an abductor.


The chapter ends with the word paedophile. Used in the context of Gerry talking to his sister Patricia about what might have happened. I found this a little unnecessary. This is meant to be an unbiased truthful account, not a pulp fiction page turner.


However I finished the chapter with my hope of an impartial account somewhat revived. Many things are omitted from this account of the hours 22.00 - 07.30 , but I live in hope that the authors will tackle them in later chapters.

Wednesday, September 17, 2014

Chapter 3

Chapter 3

I'm starting to feel like Dr Who, jumping back and forward in time. This chapter starts with by taking us back in time from 07.30 to near dawn although the authors fail to tell us exactly what time that was. I checked a couple of websites which both said dawn was at 06.34 in nearby Faro that morning.
According to Kate's book they went out "as soon as it was light, to resume our search." Anyone who has seen the dawn will know that "as soon as it was light" is very imprecise.

Anyway regardless of the exact time S&S tell us Kate & Gerry went out,"wrapped up warm", so can we expect them to tell us what they did & where they went? Unfortunately the answer is no, so another of the big questions from that night remains unanswered. We still have no idea what Kate & Gerry McCann did that morning in spite of 7 years of interviews & books including this latest "definitive" account. In her own book Kate says:

"As soon as it was light Gerry and I resumed our search. We went up and down roads we had never seen before, having barely left the complex all week. We jumped over walls and raked through undergrowth. We looked in ditches and holes. All was quiet apart from the sound of barking dogs,which added to the eeriness of the atmosphere. I remember opening a big dumpster-type bin and saying to myself, please God, don't let her be in here. The most striking and horrific thing about all this was that we were completely alone. Nobody else, it seemed, was out looking for Madeleine. Just us her parents.
We must have been out for at least an hour before returning to David & Fiona's apartment"

If you read that carefully you will see that Kate reveals nothing about where they went. Not a mention of the direction they took even to start with. No comment about whether they tried to be systematic, returning to the last place either of them had looked the night before and moving out from there. Nothing. No detail at all except the very generic "undergrowth" "holes" "ditches"and "dumpster-type bin".

I had hoped that S&S would be able to fill-in this gap. That they would have been able to provide evidence that Kate & Gerry really did search for Madeleine at least for that hour around dawn, but sadly they do not. Nor do they make any challenge to the question of what Kate & Gerry might have done at that time. They accept that they went out searching even though there is only their word for it.

Instead S&S choose to focus on the fact that Kate & Gerry say the police were doing nothing at this time and highlighting ways in which the police effort was inadequate while conceding that individual officers did make great sacrifices to search for Madeleine.

The chapter continues to describe the searches on May 4th. It includes a lot that seems rather irrelevant for example describing residents thoughts about holes & roadworks. It's just filler which is odd considering the book is really quite short.

Next we come to what is for some another important episode in the case, the encounter that Yvonne Martin had with Kate, Gerry and David Payne. Curiously this is told from the viewpoint of a journalist Len Port who lived locally. I say curious because the encounter has been described by Yvonne Martin herself and by Kate and David Payne. The whole encounter is dealt with in four sentences and does not mention anything of note except saying that "David Payne, who like Kate apparently thought her(Yvonne Martin) intrusive, asked her to leave." There is no mention of Gerry being present. This is part (I'm sorry it's quite a large part, but is important) of what Yvonne Martin had to say in the statement she made to the police in May 2007:

[size=10]"At the scene, she found a group of three people, two males and one female.
She went over to the group and identified herself.
Two members of that group, a male and a female, identified themselves as the parents of the missing child - the McCann couple.
The couple was visibly upset, and the mother was crying intensely.
The third person never identified himself, upon the witness's insistence the couple replied that he was a close friend of the family.
She adds that this third person appeared familiar to her.
Taking advantage of the information that she had heard on the news, she began questioning the couple about how often they had checked on the children, obtaining the reply that people would go to see them every hour.
As is normal and routine in her service, she asked whether Gerry was the biological father of the missing child, to which he replied yes.
She clarifies that she asked this question because during the course of her 25 years of service working with children at risk, it is very normal that when a couple has child and where the father or the mother is not a biological parent, the biological parent may have a tendency to come and "get" his child.
After having obtained the verbal response from Gerry, the mother, Kate, questioned what she was doing asking these questions which should be asked by the police, who were already on the scene in large numbers searching for her daughter, who had been taken by a couple.
At this moment, the witness notices that the couple began to have doubts about her capacity and she immediately showed them her official documents and credentials issued by the British government to calm them down.
Gerry took her documents and showed them to the third person and told him that they were authentic and were certified by the police.
At this moment, the witness wishes to clarify that, in England, anyone who works with children, whether a doctor, police officer or social worker, has to have a proper credential certified by the police and that this was one of the documents she showed to the McCanns.
Because she found it strange that Kate told her that her daughter had been taken by a couple, she tried to separate her from the other two individuals so that she could speak to her with more privacy, suggesting to Kate that they (Y and K) should enter the apartment, Kate aggressively rejected this idea and told her that they could speak on the street.
The witness then asked whether anyone from the Medical Centre had been with Kate as she was very agitated and needed some support, she was told they hadn't.[/size]
At this point, Kate told her that her daughter had disappeared 13 hours ago. It was about 10 in the morning.
Meanwhile a fourth individual came towards the group and identified himself as a journalist. The witness alerted the couple to the type of statements they should give and that it would be better for them to keep silent.
At this moment, the third person, who was always near to the couple and the witness, moved the couple away from her and the three of them talked in whispers for some time.
After this, and leaving the couple behind him, he approached the witness and told her that the couple did not want to speak any more with her, nor with anyone else.
The witness replied to him that if the McCann couple felt the need to talk to her later, she would be at their total disposal."


I do not draw any sinister conclusion from this account, but I am amazed by how different the account is to that given by the authors. Again I cannot help but think that the authors are being dishonest in the way they are describing some episodes in the story. It is too early to accuse them of bias, but I am already starting to have serious doubts about the accuracy of their reporting. I am imagining someone with little knowledge of the case or the police files reading this book and getting a completely false impression about the case.

The authors go on describe Kate's continued desire to see a priest which appears somewhat out of context, before a very brief section dealing with Kate & Gerry's first formal statements to the police. Here they again stress the tension between the McCann's and the police, something that is becoming a recurring theme in spite of the fact that the police have been on the scene for about 12 hours at this point. There is little comment about what is said in those first statements except to say that both Kate & Gerry mentioned the sighting by Jane Tanner.

Next there is a section about the press presence in Praia Da Luz when the McCann's returned from the police station in Portimao and how this was received by the police. The decision by Gerry McCann to make a statement to the press is mentioned, but there is no discussion about how this decision was reached or how it was decided what should be said to the press. Only part of Gerry's statement to the press is reproduced. A few paragraphs later the full 'Report of Disappearance' form logged by GNR officer Roque is reproduced even though it adds nothing to the readers knowledge of the case. More filler? I can think of many things more interesting and informative that could have been included in the three chapters I have read to date.

Now S&S focus on the fact that Goncalo Amaral, the senior PJ officer assigned to the case, had doubts about whether this was an abduction or not. We are told that one of his officers disagreed with him and that the McCann's later sued Amaral for libel and that the proceedings are continuing. We are not told that they lost the libel case on appeal, but are still seeking damages through the Portuguese courts.

The book continues with the theme of conflict between the McCann group and the police for a few more paragraphs, but at no point do the authors give any details about why the police were suspicious of the McCann's and their story. The whole thing appears to be very one sided. The chapter ends with the following comment attributed to Kate in a phone call to her friend Nicky Gill : 'judging from the actions of the local police, one would think that she had merely "lost a dog"'.

Summary

This chapter seems to be intent on establishing a conflict from day 1 between the McCann's and the Portuguese police. Once again the authors have been very selective in their presentation of facts surrounding important episodes in the case. The number of important episodes and facts that have been omitted from the story is very worrying. I still hope that the authors will return to deal with at least some of these, but I have decided that I will need to keep a list because the number of omissions is starting to grow at quite a rate.
Perhaps most disappointing of all is the complete absence of any new information or any attempt to interpret known facts in a novel, but fair & balanced way.

As soon as it was light Gerry and I resumed our search. We went up and down roads we had never seen before, having barely left the complex all week. We jumped over walls and raked through undergrowth. We looked in ditches and holes. All was quiet apart from the sound of barking dogs,which added to the eeriness of the atmosphere. I remember opening a big dumpster-type bin and saying to myself, please God, don't let her be in here. The most striking and horrific thing about all this was that we were completely alone. Nobody else, it seemed, was out looking for Madeleine. Just us her parents.
We must have been out for at least an hour before returning to David & Fiona's apartment

The above riles me! Why? After doing bugger all to look for their allegedly abducted daughter the night she supposedly disappeared, the two of them get up at dawn and go around looking for her! Kate has the cheek, the sheer, bloody cheek to point out that noone else is looking for Madeleine. Well, why should they, if the parents couldn't even be bothered doing so? And normal parents would be frantically searching all night until their energy ran out through physical and emotional stress and lack of sleep...wouldn't they? Even at that early stage, Kate seems to think the whole world should revolve around their whims, at least, that's how it reads to me.

And laughably, they were searching for 'at least an hour'. An hour, Kate? You had to spend a whole hour, possibly even more, of your precious 'me'-time searching for your daughter? How inconvenient for you! And hours after your daughter was supposedly snatched by someone with evil intent. Sorry you had to get up so early and go jogging searching with hubby. Children are such a burden, aren't they, when you're trying to enjoy your holiday?

Call me a 'hater' for feeling this way, if you want.

In my opinion.

An hour spent searching I,ve spent longer searching for my cat,and I found it

One hour.

They had slept as well.

Brian Griffin wrote:As soon as it was light Gerry and I resumed our search. We went up and down roads we had never seen before, having barely left the complex all week. We jumped over walls and raked through undergrowth. We looked in ditches and holes. All was quiet apart from the sound of barking dogs,which added to the eeriness of the atmosphere. I remember opening a big dumpster-type bin and saying to myself, please God, don't let her be in here. The most striking and horrific thing about all this was that we were completely alone. Nobody else, it seemed, was out looking for Madeleine. Just us her parents.
We must have been out for at least an hour before returning to David & Fiona's apartment

The above riles me! Why? After doing bugger all to look for their allegedly abducted daughter the night she supposedly disappeared, the two of them get up at dawn and go around looking for her! Kate has the cheek, the sheer, bloody cheek to point out that noone else is looking for Madeleine. Well, why should they, if the parents couldn't even be bothered doing so? And normal parents would be frantically searching all night until their energy ran out through physical and emotional stress and lack of sleep...wouldn't they? Even at that early stage, Kate seems to think the whole world should revolve around their whims, at least, that's how it reads to me.

And laughably, they were searching for 'at least an hour'. An hour, Kate? You had to spend a whole hour, possibly even more, of your precious 'me'-time searching for your daughter? How inconvenient for you! And hours after your daughter was supposedly snatched by someone with evil intent. Sorry you had to get up so early and go jogging searching with hubby. Children are such a burden, aren't they, when you're trying to enjoy your holiday?

Call me a 'hater' for feeling this way, if you want.

In my opinion.

'Roads we had never seen before'

Hadn't one or both of them been 'jogging' around PDL for the better part of the week?

KH with Matt had even been as far as Cemetary Road IIRC

Why would you precisely avoid the very roads you actually knew?

For fear someone might have spotted and recognised them?

And why turn back so soon: was this in order to escape being spotted at the dumpster site when people started waking up?

It leaves a strange impression, this sequence. As if someone wanted to paper over the following:

'We took great care to take empty streets on our way out to reach a dumpster site;
And, having done what had to be done there, we returned to the appartment asap, in order to avoid being spotted on the way back
Whatever we did took no more than an hour'

'Find the body and prove we did it', GM famously quipped somewhere

Did Smithman take care of the first leg of the childs' abduction, and one or more others of its sequel, from a yet unknown deposit/resting place to the poor kids' final destination: a dumpster?

A very odd passage indeed

Maybe it was a relay abduction with all of them taking part... Smithman, Smellyman, Gyppoman etc. 

Kate doesn't do herself any favours with the stuff she writes, does she?

In my opinion.

'Roads we had never seen before'
------------------------------------
And it would seem, 'churches we'd never seen before'!

They, the McCanns had been in PDL for almost a week, and even went to Chaplins 'bar' NEXT to a CHURCH, by the beach, but we have GM 'asking' a GNR officer if he knew where a nearby 'church' was during his 'pretendy search'!

Presumeably those 'devout' Catholics, the McCanns, gave 'mass' a 'miss' on Sunday 29th April 2007!

WHY did GM 'ask', and want to know, where a 'nearby church' was when he was supposedly 'frantically' searching for his 'missing' daughter?



"He only had direct contact with the couple and their friends at about 04.00 when Gerry McCann approached the GNR group of which he was a member to ask whether there was a church close by. He replied to him in English, giving the directions to a nearby church."

http://www.mccannpjfiles.co.uk/PJ/RUI-SILVA.htm

THAT would be at 4:00am, 4th May 2007, when ONLY GM and his friend DP 'went out again' erm, 'searching'!

To which DP, later 'informs' us in a sworn police statement that he "did not partake in ANY seaches on the 4th May 2007"

EXCEPT THE 'SPECIAL' SEARCH, AT 4:00 AM, 4TH MAY 2007,  THAT ONLY HE AND G MCCANN WERE 'INVOLVED' IN!

YEAH, RIGHT!

PERHAPS THAT WAS WHEN THE TWO OF THEM 'MOVED SOMETHING' to 'SOMEWHERE ELSE'

The 'POSSIBLE' most 'DEFINITIVE' McCann 'body language' video, EVER!

'Scratching, hair touching, stifling 'smirks' KM 'almost' bursts out 'laughing' at the end'!

Strangely NO 'reference', as yet, to these important 'sightings', the PARENTS can't 'remember' anyway, is in S&S most POSSIBLE, DEFINITIVE 'account' about Madeleine's 'disappearance'!

ISTBC, of course.

jeanmonroe wrote:'Roads we had never seen before'
------------------------------------
And it would seem, 'churches we'd never seen before'!

They, the McCanns had been in PDL for almost a week, and even went to Chaplins 'bar' NEXT to a CHURCH, by the beach, but we have GM 'asking' a GNR officer if he knew where a nearby 'church' was during his 'pretendy search'!

Presumeably those 'devout' Catholics, the McCanns, gave 'mass' a 'miss' on Sunday 29th April 2007!

WHY did GM 'ask', and want to know, where a 'nearby church' was when he was supposedly 'frantically' searching for his 'missing' daughter?



"He only had direct contact with the couple and their friends at about 04.00 when Gerry McCann approached the GNR group of which he was a member to ask whether there was a church close by. He replied to him in English, giving the directions to a nearby church."

http://www.mccannpjfiles.co.uk/PJ/RUI-SILVA.htm

THAT would be at 4:00am, 4th May 2007, when ONLY GM and his friend DP 'went out again' erm, 'searching'!

To which DP, later 'informs' us in a sworn police statement that he "did not partake in ANY seaches on the 4th May 2007"

EXCEPT THE 'SPECIAL' SEARCH, AT 4:00 AM, 4TH MAY 2007,  THAT ONLY HE AND G MCCANN WERE 'INVOLVED' IN!

YEAH, RIGHT!

PERHAPS THAT WAS WHEN THE TWO OF THEM 'MOVED SOMETHING' to 'SOMEWHERE ELSE'

It's hard to see how a pair of devout catholics would have remained unconscious of the location of the church. After all, they spent a sunday in PDL. So, if not out cold suffering from inebriation, they would have heard the churchbells inviting the flock to attend the service, maybe even seen people walking past the apartment to attend.

Therefor, to ask whether there was a church close by, is an illogical and unexplainable question.

Unless...

One wants to:
(a) suggest to the police that one doesn't know where the church in question actually is;
(b) go to that church, for some reason or other, deeming it advisable to be able to explain away one's trek there, by being able to refer to the GNR officers directions: 'Yeah, I'm here because the police told me to come here';

or unless someone else had taken the child to a prearranged collection point, namely; the nearby church, as in: 'Jezus, what happened, what an unholy mess. But look, leave it to me, I'll take it to the little church just around the block', while that other person knew the church, but you didn't

This latest 'someone' could have been Smithman, who informed the parents afterwards that their little daughter had been deposited in the vicinity of 'the church', without telling them which church exactly

Then, Smithman would not have been GM, of course

viaveritasvita wrote:

This clip has always fascinated me. Kate's body language - the direction of her eyes down and left and the mouth movements - when asked about whether she and Gerry had wanted to 'actually physically search' completely give the game away, imo. The down and left eye movement suggests recalling an (intense) emotional response. You can tell by her reaction that she knew there was no point in physically searching for Madeleine so they didn't even try. She knew that the situation was hopeless and a decision had been made that was irreversible. 

'I mean, we did' Kate answers to the question of whether they wanted to physically search. So they did want to, but they chose not to. Her answer is conflicted because she cannot give the truthful answer: 'there was no point.' She cannot answer in the negative because that would be inconsistent with the story of what supposedly happened.  So she prevaricates, fudges and buys extra time with lots of qualifiers as she stumbles her way through a response.

'I mean, we had been working really hard really.' So Kate has told us that in the lead up to 9pm or 10pm on Thursday evening, depending on which timeline for the disappearance you follow, both Kate and Gerry had been 'working really hard.'

But how does this make any sense? By the accounts of both Kate and Gerry they had been enjoying a lovely family holiday right up to the time of the discovery of Madeleine's disappearance. In Kate's book she describes how Gerry at the 9.05 check had admired Madeleine sleeping thinking how beautiful she was. I think there is also a quote from him somewhere saying that he admired all three children and thought how lucky he was. Gerry in the 'Madeleine was Here' series explains how  'my world was essentially shattered' a few moments before (??) he discovered Madeleine missing that evening. So, prior to that, all had been good with the world is the implication. And why would he have 'been working really hard' while on holiday when his children were being looked after in the creche?

Playing hard, maybe. But surely not working hard?

Kate in her book describes Thursday as being quite normal and the children being happy and settled, if tired. David Payne at the time of his allegedly 6.30pm visit describes the children as being 'like angels'. 

So why had KM and GM been 'working really hard really' prior to Madeleine's disappearance when they had supposedly been enjoying a fun-filled  family holiday?

'We'd been working really hard really,  apart from the first 48 hours as Gerry said were incredibly difficult.'

I had always taken this to mean the first 48 hours after *something* had happened to Madeleine. So I assumed that *something* happened on Sunday or Monday, say, which mean they had 2 days of 'non-functioning' (say Monday/Tuesday or Tuesday/Wednesday) before they started 'working really hard' to sort things out prior to Thursday evening at 9pm or 10pm.

But now I am wondering if Kate is referring to the first 48 hours after Madeleine's alleged abduction. In her book, she does describe anguish - how she wanted to swim and swim until the water pulled her under and relieved her of this torment. And she describes how her and GM woke at 4am on Saturday morning 'still feeling wretched and utterly abandoned by the PJ in Portimao. Both verging on hysteria, we were incapable of comforting each other. It was clear we were struggling to keep our heads above water.'

So I now think that the 'non-functioning first 48 hours relates to the days immediately following the alleged 'abduction'. By early the following week, when family and friends were around them, they both seemed to be functioning much better. 

Still think that *something* happened prior to Tuesday. Which gave TM Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday to 'work really hard'. 

And then Friday and Saturday to be 'non-functioning' before friends arrived on Sunday. Along with crisis manager/s. And the church rallied heavily around them at mass on Sunday and in the following days/weeks.

All in my own opinion of course. And I also think that the last-minute arrangements for Robert Murat to fly out that week (I think booking that flight late at night on Monday 30th April, arriving very early on Tuesday 1st May?) suggests to me that there was some sort of deepening crisis that needed managing that had happened as early as Saturday or Sunday and by Monday assistance was needed by someone who knew the area extremely well and had a finger in all sorts of pies.

jeanmonroe wrote:

The 'POSSIBLE' most 'DEFINITIVE' McCann 'body language' video, EVER!

'Scratching, hair touching, stifling 'smirks' KM 'almost' bursts out 'laughing' at the end'!

Strangely NO 'reference', as yet, to these important 'sightings', the PARENTS can't 'remember' anyway, is in S&S most POSSIBLE, DEFINITIVE 'account' about Madeleine's 'disappearance'!

ISTBC, of course.

They may just as well have told the viewer that they know that the 'sighting's are all complete BS!

And in actual fact, they did! For all the world to see.

What prats they are. Still - laughing all the way to the bank I suppose.

They must think that the general public are SO STUPID.

IMO.

fred c dobbs wrote:An hour spent searching I,ve spent longer searching for my cat,and I found it

Same here, except it was the children's hamster and I did not sleep, stayed up till 4am when  she eventually appeared looking for food.

jeanmonroe wrote:'Roads we had never seen before'
------------------------------------
And it would seem, 'churches we'd never seen before'!

They, the McCanns had been in PDL for almost a week, and even went to Chaplins 'bar' NEXT to a CHURCH, by the beach, but we have GM 'asking' a GNR officer if he knew where a nearby 'church' was during his 'pretendy search'!

Presumeably those 'devout' Catholics, the McCanns, gave 'mass' a 'miss' on Sunday 29th April 2007!

WHY did GM 'ask', and want to know, where a 'nearby church' was when he was supposedly 'frantically' searching for his 'missing' daughter?



"He only had direct contact with the couple and their friends at about 04.00 when Gerry McCann approached the GNR group of which he was a member to ask whether there was a church close by. He replied to him in English, giving the directions to a nearby church."

http://www.mccannpjfiles.co.uk/PJ/RUI-SILVA.htm

THAT would be at 4:00am, 4th May 2007, when ONLY GM and his friend DP 'went out again' erm, 'searching'!

To which DP, later 'informs' us in a sworn police statement that he "did not partake in ANY seaches on the 4th May 2007"

EXCEPT THE 'SPECIAL' SEARCH, AT 4:00 AM, 4TH MAY 2007,  THAT ONLY HE AND G MCCANN WERE 'INVOLVED' IN!

YEAH, RIGHT!

PERHAPS THAT WAS WHEN THE TWO OF THEM 'MOVED SOMETHING' to 'SOMEWHERE ELSE'

This has to be an attempt to pretend to the police that TM were unaware of the whereabouts of the local church.

Now, why would they want to do that? Even at this stage, is the local church playing an important role? There seems to have been some comings and goings of local priests/ministers around this time? And of course the couple were given a key to the church. When, I wonder?

I suppose a church might be a good place to 'hide' a body for a period of time - or even for ever! 

Certainly, according to Kate's book, the local church gave them enormous support in the early days/months. And there was the heavily publicized visit to the Pope of course. Although that all got 'whooshed' from the Vatican website - when exactly, I wonder?

And Matt did point out the irony of his searching along 'Cemetery Road' on the night Madeleine disappeared, despite the fact that at this stage Madeleine was presumed to have been abducted alive.

Churches, Cemeteries.  Kate: 'I was crying out that I could see Madeleine lying, cold and mottled, on a big grey stone slab.' (page 105, Madeleine.)

viaveritasvita wrote:

Yeah, really busy ringing important people, setting up funds and trying to concoct a believable story. Epic fail on that last one, by the way.

I'm not a doctor, but I am pretty sure adrenalin would have kicked in you'd have gone out searching frantically without respite until you were physically unable. I know I would. I bet everyone on this forum would, pro or con.

Weird!

In my opinion.

j.rob wrote:

viaveritasvita wrote:

This clip has always fascinated me. Kate's body language - the direction of her eyes down and left and the mouth movements - when asked about whether she and Gerry had wanted to 'actually physically search' completely give the game away, imo. The down and left eye movement suggests recalling an (intense) emotional response. You can tell by her reaction that she knew there was no point in physically searching for Madeleine so they didn't even try. She knew that the situation was hopeless and a decision had been made that was irreversible. 

'I mean, we did' Kate answers to the question of whether they wanted to physically search. So they did want to, but they chose not to. Her answer is conflicted because she cannot give the truthful answer: 'there was no point.' She cannot answer in the negative because that would be inconsistent with the story of what supposedly happened.  So she prevaricates, fudges and buys extra time with lots of qualifiers as she stumbles her way through a response.

'I mean, we had been working really hard really.' So Kate has told us that in the lead up to 9pm or 10pm on Thursday evening, depending on which timeline for the disappearance you follow, both Kate and Gerry had been 'working really hard.'

But how does this make any sense? By the accounts of both Kate and Gerry they had been enjoying a lovely family holiday right up to the time of the discovery of Madeleine's disappearance. In Kate's book she describes how Gerry at the 9.05 check had admired Madeleine sleeping thinking how beautiful she was. I think there is also a quote from him somewhere saying that he admired all three children and thought how lucky he was. Gerry in the 'Madeleine was Here' series explains how  'my world was essentially shattered' a few moments before (??) he discovered Madeleine missing that evening. So, prior to that, all had been good with the world is the implication. And why would he have 'been working really hard' while on holiday when his children were being looked after in the creche?

Playing hard, maybe. But surely not working hard?

Kate in her book describes Thursday as being quite normal and the children being happy and settled, if tired. David Payne at the time of his allegedly 6.30pm visit describes the children as being 'like angels'. 

So why had KM and GM been 'working really hard really' prior to Madeleine's disappearance when they had supposedly been enjoying a fun-filled  family holiday?

'We'd been working really hard really,  apart from the first 48 hours as Gerry said were incredibly difficult.'

I had always taken this to mean the first 48 hours after *something* had happened to Madeleine. So I assumed that *something* happened on Sunday or Monday, say, which mean they had 2 days of 'non-functioning' (say Monday/Tuesday or Tuesday/Wednesday) before they started 'working really hard' to sort things out prior to Thursday evening at 9pm or 10pm.

But now I am wondering if Kate is referring to the first 48 hours after Madeleine's alleged abduction. In her book, she does describe anguish - how she wanted to swim and swim until the water pulled her under and relieved her of this torment. And she describes how her and GM woke at 4am on Saturday morning 'still feeling wretched and utterly abandoned by the PJ in Portimao. Both verging on hysteria, we were incapable of comforting each other. It was clear we were struggling to keep our heads above water.'

So I now think that the 'non-functioning first 48 hours relates to the days immediately following the alleged 'abduction'. By early the following week, when family and friends were around them, they both seemed to be functioning much better. 

Still think that *something* happened prior to Tuesday. Which gave TM Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday to 'work really hard'. 

And then Friday and Saturday to be 'non-functioning' before friends arrived on Sunday. Along with crisis manager/s. And the church rallied heavily around them at mass on Sunday and in the following days/weeks.

The church seems to be a key element in all of this. I'd love to know what angered the priest who was swiftly moved on so much! He must know something that he now has to keep to himself, probably for the rest of his life. In my opinion.

Praiaaa wrote:

fred c dobbs wrote:An hour spent searching I,ve spent longer searching for my cat,and I found it

Same here, except it was the children's hamster and I did not sleep, stayed up till 4am when  she eventually appeared looking for food.

And had you not found it you'd have had very upset children, so you searched out of love for them and the hamster...because you are normal!

j.rob wrote:

jeanmonroe wrote:

The 'POSSIBLE' most 'DEFINITIVE' McCann 'body language' video, EVER!

'Scratching, hair touching, stifling 'smirks' KM 'almost' bursts out 'laughing' at the end'!

Strangely NO 'reference', as yet, to these important 'sightings', the PARENTS can't 'remember' anyway, is in S&S most POSSIBLE, DEFINITIVE 'account' about Madeleine's 'disappearance'!

ISTBC, of course.

They may just as well have told the viewer that they know that the 'sighting's are all complete BS!

And in actual fact, they did! For all the world to see.

What prats they are. Still - laughing all the way to the bank I suppose.

They must think that the general public are SO STUPID.

IMO.

That dismissiveness bugs me too. It's like they are talking about a casual drive and a pub they stopped at somewhere and not their child. "You know, that one we stopped at with the white flower-pots outside and the Great Dane that nicked our sandwiches...what was it called now? It was in Devon wasn't it? Or was it Cornwall...anyway, who cares..."

How can anyone watch and listen to this pair and not think there is something very wrong?

In my opinion.

Maybe the key to the church is one of the keys to the Luz 'mystery'. Who knows? It seems appropriately symbolic and laden with religious symbolism not to mention the occult.

And why did Kate and Gerry give so much credence to the sightings of mystics and fortune-tellers and the likes?  Kate writes about it in her book. They must be very into mysticism. And Kate's hatred of Detective Amaral, and distain, at least, for anyone who is not simperingly sycophantic towards them is just so - emotionally unhinged almost.

Brian Griffin wrote:

j.rob wrote:

jeanmonroe wrote:

The 'POSSIBLE' most 'DEFINITIVE' McCann 'body language' video, EVER!

'Scratching, hair touching, stifling 'smirks' KM 'almost' bursts out 'laughing' at the end'!

Strangely NO 'reference', as yet, to these important 'sightings', the PARENTS can't 'remember' anyway, is in S&S most POSSIBLE, DEFINITIVE 'account' about Madeleine's 'disappearance'!

ISTBC, of course.

They may just as well have told the viewer that they know that the 'sighting's are all complete BS!

And in actual fact, they did! For all the world to see.

What prats they are. Still - laughing all the way to the bank I suppose.

They must think that the general public are SO STUPID.

IMO.

That dismissiveness bugs me too. It's like they are talking about a casual drive and a pub they stopped at somewhere and not their child. "You know, that one we stopped at with the white flower-pots outside and the Great Dane that nicked our sandwiches...what was it called now? It was in Devon wasn't it? Or was it Cornwall...anyway, who cares..."

How can anyone watch and listen to this pair and not think there is something very wrong?

In my opinion.

Couldn't agree more.

j.rob wrote:Maybe the key to the church is one of the keys to the Luz 'mystery'. Who knows? It seems appropriately symbolic and laden with religious symbolism not to mention the occult.

And why did Kate and Gerry give so much credence to the sightings of mystics and fortune-tellers and the likes?  Kate writes about it in her book. They must be very into mysticism. And Kate's hatred of Detective Amaral, and distain, at least, for anyone who is not simperingly sycophantic towards them is just so - emotionally unhinged almost.

Yeah, and best of all, she has left no doubt whatsoever as to her attitude towards GA in her bewk. Horrible woman. In my opinion.

Feel free to call me a 'hater' but seriously, there is just so much to dislike!