Cracked Mirror: Reflections on the McCann affair - The Policemen's Tales

The Cracked Mirror
Reflections on the McCann affair
The Policemen's Tales
It fell to the Portuguese Republican National Guard — the Guarda Nacional Republicana or GNR — to respond to the calls for help from Praia de Luz. The GNR is the gendarmerie of the Portuguese state, copied originally from the French model, its role being general policing and the maintenance of law and order, not criminal investigation. Before 2007 its international reputation was largely anonymous and uncontroversial, due perhaps to the relatively law abiding nature of the Portuguese people, both policemen and policed, rather than any special GNR qualities. As far as outsiders are concerned anecdotal evidence suggested that foreigners found this gendarmerie, despite its relatively low pay, rather more amicable and trustworthy than its neighbouring Spanish counterpart, with few of the stories of petty, but shady, exploitation of foreigners that continue to sour the reputation of its Spanish equivalent. Like all police forces in the EU it had for many years been drawn ever more closely into the network of European common policing standards.

Officer José María Batista Roque of the GNR and his colleague Nelson da Costa were on vehicle patrol near Odiaxere on the night of May 3. Working out of the Lagos GNR station under its commander Sergeant Antonio da Duarte Conceição both were highly experienced men with decades of service between them. The radio message they received from Lagos instructed them to proceed to Praia de Luz to investigate reports of a missing child. A further message was received while they were on their way: it had now been reported to Lagos that the child was extremely young and that there were serious concerns for her safety. Proceed with all urgency.

Their syrens announced their arrival around 11 PM. They quickly found their way to the throng in the main reception area of the Ocean Club. There they were greeted by a Mark Warner employee with language skills, M/S Sylvia Batista, and a distressed — he fell to his knees in front of the officers — Gerry McCann, who had left the apartment to meet them. The two police officers, Mr McCann, another of the Tapas group and Silvia Batista – to interpret - all drove up to apartment 5A, where Kate was waiting, and attempted to get a handle on just what was supposed to have happened.

It was not easy. Both Gerry McCann and some of the Tapas helping to make up the bustling crowd in the apartment talked of the disappearance as a possible abduction but none of them gave any clear information as to how they had formed this view so soon, or what evidence there was to suggest it. The views of the Tapas group were, of course, essentially worthless since none of them had any first-hand knowledge of the circumstances of the child's disappearance; the only first hand witness of the state of the apartment at 10 PM was Kate McCann.

Kate McCann said nothing. Whatever she had cried or shouted to friends and relatives about shutters, intrusion and the certainty of a kidnap she did not share with officer Roque. Instead Gerry McCann, still apparently in a state of shock and at times hardly coherent, spoke of an open window and raised shutter in the child’s bedroom but, crucially, according to the reports of the police officers, made no suggestion that it had been forced. In the middle of this confusion, with Sylvia Batista translating merely that Gerry McCann was “suggesting” a possible abduction, with the eyes of the frightened and agitated people in the room upon him and with the shouts from the searchers in the street in his ears, Officer Roque began at the beginning and searched the apartment.

He found nothing to suggest that apartment 5A was in fact a crime scene. Far from having been disturbed in any way the child’s siblings were still sleeping soundly; there was no evidence of forced entry; there was not a sign of even the minimal struggle that a child might put up, let alone any displaced furniture, evidence of injury or use of force, and, of course, no visible traces of an intruder. Roque reported matter of factly of his search: “I found nothing strange in the apartment.”

With one exception. Roque added that the bedclothes on Madeleine’s bed “were too tidy.” It appeared, he reported, “that she had been picked up, 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.”

What exactly Roque might have inferred from the bedding being "too tidy" he did not say but – and here we can read something between the lines of his factual statements, the twitching instincts, perhaps, of an experienced policeman — he gave the impression of being somehow troubled by the parents. Naturally they were “nervous and anxious,” he said, but at times he found their behaviour “unusual,” adding that, at one point, both of them knelt down on the floor of their bedroom and placed their heads on the bed, crying, although there were no tears. Clearly the whole scenario failed to form a consistent picture.

What about those “jemmied” shutters and the window through which a kidnapper might have entered? They hardly featured in officer Roque’s initial report at all, since almost nothing had been said about them and he had seen nothing to suggest they had been interfered with. Much later, when investigators' suspicions about the parents’ version of events had arisen, he was explicitly questioned about the bedroom window by his superiors. In response he replied that he only remembered that the window in the girl’s bedroom was closed, with the exterior blind raised “the width of a hand.” Officer Roque knew that such a gap could not have been occasioned from outside since, as we explain below, these shutters can only be rolled up from the inside. He remembered nothing about the curtains and reiterated merely that Gerry McCann, not the virtually silent Kate, had indicated through the interpreter that the “window and shutter” had been open when the disappearance was discovered.

The shutters which officer Roque looked at are of a type not normally seen in the UK. Their perforated metal slats form a roll in a housing above the window and are operated by a vertical webbing strap, like a car safety belt, in an aperture on the inside wall alongside the window. To raise them one pulls downwards on the webbing and they are lowered by pulling and releasing the strap which, via a ratchet system, enables them to unroll and drop to their full extent on the outside of the building.

These shutters feature two important security features. First of all they are always designed to fit snugly inside the exterior window recess and to descend the full drop to a window sill. This ensures that intruders cannot get their fingers under the shutter bottom to start lifting them: they must first insert a thin object, a screwdriver for example, or a knife to get the lift started, in colourful old-fashioned burglarese, a “jemmy.”

Secondly the ratchet system means that while the shutter can be lifted it cannot be rolled up from the outside since the roller remains in the locked position in its overhead housing unless released by the interior webbing strap. Attempts to raise it from outside, therefore, result in a heavy, unwieldy and sagging mass of metal which can only be held in a raised position by using props between sill and shutter. No evidence of the use of a jemmy or any tool was uncovered, then or later, and officer Roque could see that there was no distortion of the shutter and no sign of props: it had been opened from the inside. Nor was any evidence of the window itself being forced ever found.

Roque later reported quite frankly that his own feeling was that this was not an abduction, though he did not state whether he based his view purely on the absence of intruder evidence.

And he was not alone. His colleague, Officer da Costa, gave a similar report. After the meeting at reception he had, he said, searched the apartment with his colleague, opening all cupboards in the bedrooms, living room and kitchen and checking under the beds and in the fridge. He did not see anything strange during the search, he reported, and there was no sign of a break in.

In fact, unlike officer Roque, he could not remember the father even mentioning an abduction and the only comment that he remembered Kate McCann making was a tearful request for more police officers. Thus a second officer made his inquiries without a word from the key witness, Kate McCann, regarding what she had seen at 10PM.

Officer Roque searched outside the apartment while da Costa remained inside or at the door. It was then, he reported, that a woman, evidently Jane Tanner although the officer did not identify her, told him that earlier on she had seen someone carrying a child “and running”. Because of the pyjamas the child had been wearing, she said, it could have been Madeleine McCann. Only then, said officer da Costa, did abduction “begin to be talked about.”

His response to Jane Tanner was sceptical. If she had been able to see the pattern of the child’s pyjamas, he reasoned, then there must have been quite good light. So he asked her about the much more important question of what the person carrying the child looked like. She couldn’t tell him, replied Jane Tanner, since it was “very dark.” No, he reported, he did not find the “sighting” credible.

Officer da Costa stated that he neither saw nor heard any evidence to make him believe that an abduction had occurred; his personal view, he reported was that “it did not appear to be an abduction, but rather a normal disappearance where the child had left by her own means.” Again the impression is given that things didn’t form a picture to an experienced policeman, didn’t add up. The thing that stuck him particularly, and that he found “strange” was that the twins never woke up, despite the considerable noise in the apartment.

At around 11.15, only some quarter of an hour after his arrival, Roque contacted the Lagos police station and spoke to his superior Sergeant da Duarte Conceição, another veteran with twenty five years service. Despite his doubts and reservations he gave the sergeant a brief and relatively objective account of the facts, including that the father “had put forward a theory” that it could have been abduction and mentioned that a shutter could have been raised. With no sign of the child and no clues to indicate that she had wandered off Duarte now told the officer to preserve the apartment as a possible crime scene and wait with his colleague for him to join them. Then he set off at once for Praia de Luz.

He got to the Ocean Club just an hour after the arrival of his colleagues. By now talk of “the abduction” had strengthened among the UK group. Sergeant da Duarte Conceição was told immediately by Silvia Batista that the group were now describing it firmly as an abduction with Gerry McCann – neither hysterical nor rolling on the apartment floor at this time - joining her to emphasise the point. Not only that, added Silvia Batista, but the holiday group had printed photographs of the child and were already contacting the media to inform them of the “abduction.”

Contacting the media at midnight? But the narrative, according to friends and family, was that the media had only been contacted after the failings of the investigation had become clear and the parents had been left isolated and unsupported with “nothing happening” at 4.30 in the morning. It is hard to see any real cause for dissatisfaction with the police so soon – police who were doing their best to find their daughter.

What dissatisfaction could there be? The idea that the search effort could immediately be transferred from the local area to a far-away hunt for kidnappers with all the fashionable paraphernalia of closed borders and the rest of it was simply fanciful, both at the time and in hindsight. Leaving aside that there was no description of a vehicle or any third party to alert outside forces to and, indeed, absolutely nothing to suggest a kidnapping save the hearsay hunches of the Tapas group, how could resources have been switched away from Praia de Luz without risking the fate of the child?

The overwhelming need was to exhaust every local avenue in case the child was lying trapped somewhere in the darkness, in a gulley perhaps, or lying injured at the foot of a stone staircase, possibly with rapid loss of blood. And that is what the police, while increasingly mindful of other, remote, possibilities did.

Sergeant Duarte, just like the other two officers, could see nothing, literally nothing, to indicate that an abduction had taken place. And once again Kate McCann did not come forward to tell the sergeant what she had seen. Even so, after carrying out further searches, he contacted headquarters for more officers to attend the scene immediately, called in the nearest available dog team and contacted the criminal investigation police, the PJ, in Portimao.

And thereafter the search effort and investigation rapidly gathered pace. The additional officers from the GNR requested by sergeant Duarte soon arrived and, at about 12.40 AM, so did Inspector Pimental of the PJ together with a technical scene-of-crime officer. Despite the continued absence of any hard evidence to indicate that apartment 5A had been a crime location rather than merely the child’s temporary home, the apartment was cleared, the twins finally moved – still unconscious - and the family allocated alternative rooms so that a forensic search could be made.

The parents, reported the inspector, “looked quite tired and anguished,” particularly the mother. Not only anguished, but silent. For the fourth time that night Kate McCann, the only witness of value, failed to come forward and tell the police – this time in the person of a criminal investigator - what she had seen. Once again the story of the jemmied shutters and the evidence that made her “certain” that abduction, not a disappearance, had taken place – evidence that Kate McCann later alleged that she had given the Portuguese police but could not describe to the public - once again, her story went untold.

After the site had been isolated the inspector examined the flat with his specialist Barreiras. Both of them were critical of the free-for-all that had been allowed to continue in the apartment before their arrival due to the failure of the GNR officers to lock down the location. Statements and photographs were taken and the inside of the bedroom window was finger printed. While GNR officers remained on site to keep the apartment isolated tracker dogs began searching around 2.30 in the morning. Throughout the night the strengthened forces continued to search streets, gardens and car parks and now vehicles were being stopped for examination as well. Between 2 and 2.30 AM Portimao police headquarters, after liaising with the PJ officers at the scene, contacted Faro to ensure that outgoing flights from the airport were monitored while the GNR in Lagos were ordered to keep vehicles under observation for signs of the child.

At dawn Chief Inspector Tavares de Almeida of the Criminal Investigation Department in Portimao, after abandoning his planned holiday, began consideration of a further widening of the investigation. The first phase of the search for Madeleine McCann had finally ended and it was time to draw breath. It was around now, between 4.30 AM and 7, that the local search was temporarily wound down, three officers only continuing with the so-far fruitless effort while their colleagues got some badly needed rest. This was the period that the McCanns described as a time when “nothing was happening,” when, in Kate McCann’s words the investigation had all the urgency of a “search for a missing dog” - the comments a scurvy reward, it may be thought, for the efforts that the Portuguese had put in throughout the night to find the child of these strangers in their land.

It was also the period which finally prompted the despairing couple, neither of whom, of course, could have been aware of the full dimensions or any shortcomings, of the search effort – for how would they have known? - to call for full-scale outside media and political help via their friends and family.

Or so the narrative tells us.

From what we have seen above it is clear that the “narrative”, constructed by the parents and their friends, does not tally with the facts as reported by the police. The parents and the group had, despite their continued denials, in fact contacted the media, in the form of Sky News, long before there was any evidence of shortcomings in the investigation, probably within a very short time of contacting the police themselves, as the group finally admitted at their UK police interviews in April 2008; Kate McCann did not show the police the supposed evidence that “made it obvious” that it must have been an abduction; astonishingly, she did not tell any of the police, either the GNR or the criminal investigation officers of what she had seen, despite her frenzied phone calls though the night with the repeated and insistent claims of jemmying and forced entry. From all the evidence it is clear that the strategy of contacting the media and UK politicians, for whatever purposes, did not result from their response to police actions or failings but preceded them. The “narrative” is quite clearly, for whatever reason and making all allowances for the situation the parents found themselves in, an invention.

Many hectares of print have been covered with the criticisms and contemptuous insults directed at the Portuguese investigation and the decent and well-meaning officers who participated in that first night’s effort. Perhaps, in the light of the policemens’ tales it is best to stand back, take a deep breath and consider the simplest and most well-supported explanation of why the police “failed to isolate the crime scene” or immediately “broaden the search”.

They didn’t do so because none of them, despite their efforts, ever found anything to suggest an abduction had taken place, or was even likely. And almost certainly they were right: there was never any evidence of abduction to find.

Carrry On Doctor wrote:Great article, had not seen this before.
Many indicators that the evening of the 3rd was pre-planned.
Decent officers, trying to do their best, even cancelling holidays, being led up the garden path.
IMO

PeterMac wrote:

Carrry On Doctor wrote:Great article, had not seen this before.
Many indicators that the evening of the 3rd was pre-planned.
Decent officers, trying to do their best, even cancelling holidays, being led up the garden path.
IMO

Being led up the garden path indeed, but as professional police officers, who have seen it all before, realising right from the start that the whole thing STANK.
It was clearly pre-planned, but not very well.

NickE wrote:
Do you think the police have been focusing on the wrong day?
In that case, it might be what makes the case difficult to solve....or?

Silverspeed wrote:Very interesting read  Peter. I've not seen this before either.

 

worriedmum wrote:What stands out for me is the fact that there was criticism of the 'non-preservation' of the crime scene because of the volume of people in it, with GNR officers, Tapas friends and others present(including Yvonne Martin?)and yet AND YET the twins slept through it all...

stillsloppingout wrote:
Which ever way the sleeping children [ and its implications ] is the glue that binds them all together . hence there will be NO break of the pact .

Reminder
The McCanns, and many of their Tapas7 friends are medically trained.
Both Dr. Kate McCann and Dr. Fiona Payne are trained to a high standard in anaesthetics. In fact both were Junior Registrars.

Their continued insistence on sedation by an ‘intruder’ as a viable proposition, when combined with the unambiguous admission in their statements, in interviews, and in the book, of clearly defined professional negligence in their manifest failure to provide, or even consider, any form of resuscitation or aftercare, is baffling.

But these qualified anaesthetists simply put a palm on a child’s back, or a finger under its nose. There is no record that of whether each child was turned, undressed and examined minutely for needle stick marks, or had its mouth, nose and throat cleared or checked for the presence of a chloroform soaked rag, had its breath smelled for evidence of drugs, gas or ketones, had its pupil response monitored, had its heart rate taken, had other reflexes tested, or was roused until fully conscious. These would be standard procedures.

On the contrary, what evidence there is points to the twins’ having simply been left for a considerable period unattended, and then some two hours later scooped up out of their travel cots, in the bedclothes in which they slept, and being carried, still sleeping, out into the cold night air and round to an adjacent apartment where they were left to sleep. [3.31]

Neither doctor performed any of the usual and medically required tests or procedures appropriate to recovery from anaesthesia. It is a matter of record that the twins were not taken to a hospital for assessment.
On the facts therefore the doctors were in serious and negligent breach of a whole series of medical protocols for which nurses have been struck off the register. [3.32]
And even more strangely, they have admitted this in statements and in the book. They have made no attempt to suggest that they acted correctly.

If we rely purely on what they have said, we find that it is corroborated by independent witnesses, and it leads to the following conclusion -
They would be guilty of a most serious breach of professional standards, so serious that striking off the Medical Register would be appropriate.

We are given many instances in her own book of Kate McCanns’ loss of control, kicking out at inanimate objects, hitting railings with her fists, throwing herself on the floor, wailing and so on. We are however also given clear examples where she was not acting in this way, being more calm and professionally purposeful, going out into the street to see what was happening, having a blunt discussion with a witness in the apartment above, “wandering” into the twins’ room, and ultimately “keeping vigil” in total silence for the rest of the night. [3.33]

However, it must be said that for a normal distressed and anxious parent to behave in this way would be unforgivable.
For an educated professional person it would be grossly negligent.
For two qualified anaesthetists it is absolutely unthinkable.

If we find that it is indeed unthinkable, then we must wish to believe that their actions were not negligent, that they were not in breach of any protocols, and that their apparent lack of action does not bear any negative interpretation.
But for that to be true they would have to have known precisely why the twins were unconscious, what substance had been administered, in what dose, by whom, and when.
And they have always denied this.

But despite that, and to address the original question, having regard to the available evidence, we may be tempted to take the charitable view, and to conclude that, on the balance of probabilities,

the parents may have been involved in the sedation of the twins.

PeterMac wrote:

stillsloppingout wrote:
Which ever way the sleeping children [ and its implications ] is the glue that binds them all together . hence there will be NO break of the pact .

Fiona Payne is, or was, an anaesthetist, as was St Katherine

Reminder
The McCanns, and many of their Tapas7 friends are medically trained.  
Both Dr. Kate McCann and Dr. Fiona Payne are trained to a high standard in anaesthetics.  In fact both were Junior Registrars.  

the parents may have been involved in the sedation of the twins.

stillsloppingout wrote:

PeterMac wrote:

stillsloppingout wrote:
Which ever way the sleeping children [ and its implications ] is the glue that binds them all together . hence there will be NO break of the pact .

Fiona Payne is, or was, an anaesthetist, as was St Katherine

Reminder
The McCanns, and many of their Tapas7 friends are medically trained.  
Both Dr. Kate McCann and Dr. Fiona Payne are trained to a high standard in anaesthetics.  In fact both were Junior Registrars.  

the parents may have been involved in the sedation of the twins.

This then poses the question and makes likely the thesis that it is they who both un wittingly sedated the kids twice, resulting in the i assume lager dosage administered [ twice ] to Maddie proving fatal . 

Death by falling , choking , the dosage proving fatal ,or due to its mixing with already prescribed medication for conditions unknown .

Woofer wrote:In Fiona Payne`s statement, she said it was weird that KM kept checking the twins to see if they were still breathing. 

Was she grassing on her friend ?  Why else would FP bring attention to the twins being comatose?

Perhaps this is one of the reasons why the saintly Kate is no longer to be found registered as a medical doctor in the UK. IMO she's either been struck off, or she''s retired, thus circumventing the inevitable.

canada12 wrote:If we rely purely on what they have said, we find that it is corroborated by independent witnesses, and it leads to the following conclusion -
They would be guilty of a most serious breach of professional standards, so serious that striking off the Medical Register would be appropriate.

Perhaps this is one of the reasons why the saintly Kate is no longer to be found registered as a medical doctor in the UK. IMO she's either been struck off, or she''s retired, thus circumventing the inevitable.

Praiaaa wrote:

Woofer wrote:In Fiona Payne`s statement, she said it was weird that KM kept checking the twins to see if they were still breathing. 

Was she grassing on her friend ?  Why else would FP bring attention to the twins being comatose?

double dose -very interesting, would explain the complicity of the T7

NickE wrote:

PeterMac wrote:

Carrry On Doctor wrote:Great article, had not seen this before.
Many indicators that the evening of the 3rd was pre-planned.
Decent officers, trying to do their best, even cancelling holidays, being led up the garden path.
IMO

Being led up the garden path indeed, but as professional police officers, who have seen it all before, realising right from the start that the whole thing STANK.
It was clearly pre-planned, but not very well.

Do you think the police have been focusing on the wrong day?
In that case, it might be what makes the case difficult to solve....or?

stillsloppingout wrote:

PeterMac wrote:

stillsloppingout wrote:
Which ever way the sleeping children [ and its implications ] is the glue that binds them all together . hence there will be NO break of the pact .

Fiona Payne is, or was, an anaesthetist, as was St Katherine

Reminder
The McCanns, and many of their Tapas7 friends are medically trained.  
Both Dr. Kate McCann and Dr. Fiona Payne are trained to a high standard in anaesthetics.  In fact both were Junior Registrars.  

the parents may have been involved in the sedation of the twins.

This then poses the question and makes likely the thesis that it is they who both un wittingly sedated the kids twice, resulting in the i assume lager dosage administered [ twice ] to Maddie proving fatal . 

Death by falling , choking , the dosage proving fatal ,or due to its mixing with already prescribed medication for conditions unknown .

nglfi wrote:

stillsloppingout wrote:

PeterMac wrote:

stillsloppingout wrote:
Which ever way the sleeping children [ and its implications ] is the glue that binds them all together . hence there will be NO break of the pact .

Fiona Payne is, or was, an anaesthetist, as was St Katherine

Reminder
The McCanns, and many of their Tapas7 friends are medically trained.  
Both Dr. Kate McCann and Dr. Fiona Payne are trained to a high standard in anaesthetics.  In fact both were Junior Registrars.  

the parents may have been involved in the sedation of the twins.

This then poses the question and makes likely the thesis that it is they who both un wittingly sedated the kids twice, resulting in the i assume lager dosage administered [ twice ] to Maddie proving fatal . 

Death by falling , choking , the dosage proving fatal ,or due to its mixing with already prescribed medication for conditions unknown .

The difficulty I have with the idea that it wasn't planned, is when did the clean up operation take place? They clearly cleaned that place from top to bottom as none of Maddie's dna was found in the entire apartment,  and based on Amaral's conclusions about what happened,  there had to be a clean up operation behind the sofa and on the curtains.  When did this happen? I also have difficulty reconciling the known facts with the idea it was planned so I'm pretty confused either way!!

Miraflores wrote:

Perhaps this is one of the reasons why the saintly Kate is no longer to be found registered as a medical doctor in the UK. IMO she's either been struck off, or she''s retired, thus circumventing the inevitable.

She's not been struck off though. She is still on the register but without a practicing certificate.  A revalidation process  has been introduced recently and at a guess I would surmise that she hadn't got recent enough experience to comply with this. Not having a practicing certificate means that she doesn't have to have insurance, so that's a nice little bit of money saved.

nglfi wrote:

stillsloppingout wrote:

PeterMac wrote:

stillsloppingout wrote:
Which ever way the sleeping children [ and its implications ] is the glue that binds them all together . hence there will be NO break of the pact .

Fiona Payne is, or was, an anaesthetist, as was St Katherine

Reminder
The McCanns, and many of their Tapas7 friends are medically trained.  
Both Dr. Kate McCann and Dr. Fiona Payne are trained to a high standard in anaesthetics.  In fact both were Junior Registrars.  

the parents may have been involved in the sedation of the twins.

This then poses the question and makes likely the thesis that it is they who both un wittingly sedated the kids twice, resulting in the i assume lager dosage administered [ twice ] to Maddie proving fatal . 

Death by falling , choking , the dosage proving fatal ,or due to its mixing with already prescribed medication for conditions unknown .

The difficulty I have with the idea that it wasn't planned, is when did the clean up operation take place? They clearly cleaned that place from top to bottom as none of Maddie's dna was found in the entire apartment,  and based on Amaral's conclusions about what happened,  there had to be a clean up operation behind the sofa and on the curtains.  When did this happen? I also have difficulty reconciling the known facts with the idea it was planned so I'm pretty confused either way!!

ETA just had a thought,  maybe a basic clean up was done initially, and they banked on rhe fact that the police wouldn't do an immediate forensic search, and then the clean up proper took place sometime that night after the police left. But then I read earlier that it only took them a couple of hours to seal off the room. Sorry, just thinking aloud here!

stillsloppingout wrote:

worriedmum wrote:What stands out for me is the fact that there was criticism of the 'non-preservation' of the crime scene because of the volume of people in it, with GNR officers, Tapas friends and others present(including Yvonne Martin?)and yet AND YET the twins slept through it all...

That last line is key " YET THE TWINS SLEPT THROUGH IT ALL ". If it is to believed Maddie died the day before which is a real possibility , then not only have the parents committed a crime, they have the next day, drugged there children [ which due to them not waking , and Kate's visual checks is a IMO given .

But SURELY more likely they were all over sedated on the fateful day, resulting in the death of Maddie , as it would be beneath contempt to after losing a child say the day before, then drug / sedate  your children the next day . 

Which ever way the sleeping children [ and its implications ] is the glue that binds them all together . hence there will be NO break of the pact .

Miraflores wrote:More intriguing to me was why she renewed her licence when it was due in August last year, and then come the middle of November ceased to have a licence. Why not save the renewal fee in the August? The 2006 date refers to the time when the GP register was established, so there could be many Drs who weren't on it until then, but had been in practice for years, so that date in itself is not significant.

Miraflores wrote:More intriguing to me was why she renewed her licence when it was due in August last year, and then come the middle of November ceased to have a licence. Why not save the renewal fee in the August? The 2006 date refers to the time when the GP register was established, so there could be many Drs who weren't on it until then, but had been in practice for years, so that date in itself is not significant.

canada12 wrote:

Miraflores wrote:More intriguing to me was why she renewed her licence when it was due in August last year, and then come the middle of November ceased to have a licence. Why not save the renewal fee in the August? The 2006 date refers to the time when the GP register was established, so there could be many Drs who weren't on it until then, but had been in practice for years, so that date in itself is not significant.

Can a license to practise be taken away without the doctor being altogether barred from the registry? Just a thought...?