ANOTHER £55.000! Libel award for the McCanns against the Sunday Times over - yes - those SMITHMAN e-fits again

noddy100 wrote:I wonder if the McCanns themselves donated the 55k to charity or
if the Times suggested it and paid it direct by way of apology

Casey5 wrote:So I wonder why The Times didn't just print the exact timeline - that, in fact, the McCanns did keep quiet about the efits from the time they became aware of them and legally prevented the PI's from disclosing the information until they were first given to the police.
The McCanns would have been unable to Carter Ruck them surely.
Have the newspapers got no legal beagles on their staff?
If Carter Ruck could spot the loophole then why couldn't the legal team at The Times?

j.rob wrote:I have always found Kate's desire to 'morph' Tanner-man into Smithman and pretend that Smithman is the man that Jane Tanner saw at 9.15 ludicrous, as Gerry might say. 

REPLY: It may simply have been seen by the McCann Team at the time as the best way of reinforcing the abduction story  

And Kate is obliged to write in her book: "Although the police appear to have considered these sightings to be unrelated on the basis of the forty-five minute gap between them, the similarities speak for themselves."

But they don't, imo. Jane Tanner's Tanner-man had very dark hair. And it is not cut short at the back but comes right down to the collar-level. It is not a close-cut hair style.

REPLY: I concede the point about both the hair colour and the hair length, as indeed - to be fair - so does Kate McCann in her book.

However, the 17 striking similarities still remain (as discussed on the 'SMITHMAN 2' thread), here they are again (slightly different from my OP on that thread):

One of the strangest aspects of the ‘Smithman’ sighting is how remarkably similar it was to the details given by Jane Tanner of the man she said she saw. Here are the 17 similarities:

   
1. An unaccompanied male
2. Carrying a child and having no buggy or push-chair
3. The child was a girl
4. The child was barefoot
5. The child was wearing light-coloured/pink pyjamas
6. She looked about four years old
7. She was being held on the man’s left side
8. She didn’t have a blanket or other covering
9. The man ‘did not look like a tourist’ (whatever that may mean)
10. He was wearing a dark jacket
11. He was wearing light-coloured trousers.
12. He was both about 1.75m to 1.8m tall (5’ 9” – 5’ 10”)
13. He was aged 25-40
14. He was of average build
15. He was walking ‘purposefully’/quite fast
16. Each was spotted within 600 yards of each other
17. In neither case could the man’s face be seen properly (despite claims that the Smiths drew up the two e-fits, which I think are false).

As far as I can see, these remarkable similarities leave us with three basic possibilities

a)   It was the same man wandering around Praia da Luz for 45 minutes carrying a 4-year-old dressed only in pyjamas on a cold night

b)  Two different unaccompanied men without a buggy or pushchair, who looked near identical, were both carrying a child of about four years of age around dressed only in pyjamas, or

c)  The Smiths saw no-one, but invented their sighting with the deliberate intention of copying the details of the ‘Tannerman’ sighting, possibly (as we saw above) with the intention of giving extra credibility to the sighting of Jane Tanner, but at the same time emphasising that the man was not Robert Murat.       

However it is the way that you sometimes see children who have been killed in war zones, for instance, being carried by anguished or grieving relatives in news reports, (something that I know has been discussed elsewhere). (Was this Jane Tanner and TM 'brain leak' I wonder? A bit like Matt Oldfield flagging up the irony of searching on 'Cemetary Road' on the night that Madeleine had supposedly been abducted or Russell flagging up how a child is more likely to be clobbered by a relative than a complete stranger. So much brain-leak, imo.)

REPLY: Possibly. In my time I've had to carry children who have gone to sleep some distance, and in doing so I used to alternate betwen the two posiitons (child on shoulder, child on open oustretched arms), because each is awkward in its own different way
 
In Kate's book only the artist's impression of Tanner-man is shown. Not the Smith-man artist impression. A glaring omission, one might say.

REPLY: Yes. Though the link between Tannerman and Smithman was made back in 2009, and continued on their website ever since and then given six pages of coverage in Kate's book, as you say the e-fits were never used. I suggest that these e-fits may have been deliberately held in reserve until an opportunity arose to use them. If you believe DCI Redwood is an honest, upright detective, then he and the McCann Team could only use the so-called 'Smithman' e-fits when 'Mr Crecheman' stepped forward.

I don't think 'Mr Crecheman' ever existed. So how to explain Redwood not using these e-fits for a further 2 years and 2 months? (August 2011 to October 2013). My theory is that he and those around him weren't bright enough to invent Crecheman any earlier. Alternatively, they did all think of that ruse much earlier, but maybe hesitated because they weren't 100% sure that they could get away with it.
     
Yet Kate records in her book that Smith-man 'did not carry child in a comfortable way.' But surely that is the wrong way round? It is Tanner-man who is not carrying the child in a comfortable way surely? If Smith-man is carrying the child in the way that Gerry carried Sean off the plane, then that would be the comfortable way to carry a sleeping child.

REPLY: This comes ONLY from Martin Smith's statememt, where he says:

"The child’s head lay on the man’s left shoulder; he did not appear to be comfortable holding her".

The other two Smith's statements did not make the same observation.

Kate Mcann seems to have embellished Martin Smith's statement.

Brian Griffin wrote:Is there a link to the radio interview?

frost wrote:There are a few folk tweeting that the 55k has gone to missing people though I have not seen actual  independant verification of this it would not suprise me in the slightest.

jeanmonroe wrote:

Brian Griffin wrote:Is there a link to the radio interview?

Yes Sireee!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04jm9mv

1hr 36 mins 'in'.

sallypelt wrote:According to Gerry McCann :

"He said the family would probably not have been able to bring the challenge if lawyers had not been willing to act on a no-win, no-fee basis".

Where is Brian Kennedy when he's needed?


http://www.talktalk.co.uk/news/technology/article/madeleine-father-in-web-trolls-plea/145239/

Praiaaa wrote:I heard the whining GM interview yesterday on the radio  they really should out a warning out so we can switch off in time.
A couple of things were interesting - John Humphries did make Gerry look a bit of an idiot over his claims about the press poodle.
And GM did actually make an interesting point - the payout was peanuts compared to what the ST makes in advertising etc.
So... given that ST lawyers would be all over any story in advance, maybe they knew it was dodgy but went for it anyway to draw out the Mcs and the derisory payout would be just peanuts anyway, but would get the story out there.
Also, if they payment was so little compared to the ST revenues, they must have been advised by their lawyers it was all they could reasonably get it if went to court - ie the judge would also see it as a slap on the wrist rather than serious damage caused.
The fact that it went to charidee rather than the Fund is also interesting - maybe they are damage limiting on the Fund.
IMO - its the Fund that will be their downfall.