Bearing False Witness

wallad wrote:How could Charlotte Pennington "sort of walked" into the apartment?  She either did or she didn't.  It reminds me of one of the male holiday companions who "checked" on the McCann children and said in a statement that the twins were "sort of breathing".

Why would CP divulge that the twins were not in the room if she was involved?

KEY SIGHTINGS

Four years on, as we strive to piece together the puzzle of what happened to Madeleine, many questions remain unanswered and several people who may be able to help us have yet to be identified.

The following sightings are still of great interest to us. Explaining them is very important to our continuing investigation, if only to eliminate the individuals concerned from our inquiry. Artists’ impressions and sketches based on the descriptions given by witnesses can be found at the end of the Picture Section.

SIGHTINGS ONE AND TWO

Witness One: Jane Tanner
Witness Two: Holidaymaker from Ireland

These two crucial sightings of a man carrying a child in the street, made around the time of Madeleine’s abduction on the night of 3 May 2007, have been discussed in detail in this book. The description of the man seen by Jane Tanner was eventually made public three weeks after Madeleine’s disappearance and an artist’s impression commissioned by our own investigative team was released in October 2007. Yet to this day no man has come forward to identify himself as the father, relative or family friend of the child in either case.

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.
Artist’s impressions of the man seen by Jane Tanner are reproduced at the end of the Picture Section.

Witness One sighting Witness Two sighting
Date and time of sighting 3 May 2007; 9.15pm approximately 3 May 2007; 10pm approximately
Location Rua Dr Agostinho da Silva, Praia da Luz Rua da Escola Primária, Praia da Luz
Age of man 35–40 34–35
Height of man About 5ft 10ins/1.78m (recorded incorrectly in statement as 1.7m) 1.75–1.8m (5ft 9ins–5ft 10ins)
Hair Thick, dark, slightly longer at back of neck Short, brown
Clothing Beige or gold trousers wide and straight, chino style; dark jacket Cream or beige trousers; classic cut
Other Carrying child across arms at front of chest; child's head to the left of man's chest Carrying child over arms with child's head towards left shoulder
Walking hurriedly Did not carry child in a comfortable way
Not felt to be a tourist because of the clothing worn Not felt to be a tourist because of the clothing worn
Age of child Young child, not a baby; assumed to be female because of clothing Approximately four years; female; medium-blonde hair; pale skin, typically British
Clothing of child Pale pink and/or white pyjamas with floral pattern Light-coloured pyjamas
Other Barefoot
No blanket or covering Witness unsure (family members say child was barefoot)
No blanket or covering

SIGHTINGS THREE TO EIGHT

It was only from the police files, to which we were given access in August 2008, fifteen months after Madeleine’s abduction, that we learned of six sightings by four independent witnesses in the five days prior to her disappearance. A ‘suspicious’ male had been noticed watching our apartment and/or acting oddly nearby. In three of these reports a man was seen standing by the small car park directly opposite the entrance to the Ocean Club’s swimming pool and Tapas restaurant (Ocean Club Waterside Gardens) on Rua Dr Francisco Gentil Martins. In two accounts, a ‘suspicious’ man was observed on the access path between the Ocean Club apartments (which include apartment 5A) and the pool and Tapas restaurant area.

Witness Three
This witness is a young girl whose grandparents used to own apartment 5A. As this flat is familiar and of interest to her, her report is very precise and credible. She saw the same individual watching our apartment closely on two separate days. On Monday, 30 April 2007, at around 8am, she noticed a man standing on the narrow access path running between the apartments and the pool and Tapas restaurant area. He was leaning with his palms against the wall surrounding the garden area of apartment 5A and looking up at the veranda.

On Wednesday, 2 May 2007, the witness saw the same man near the car park opposite the entrance to the pool and Tapas restaurant area on Rua Dr Gentil Martins. He appeared to be just standing there and watching apartment 5A.

Description: Caucasian male; light-skinned; 1.8m (5ft 11ins) tall; slim build; aged 30–35; short cropped hair, thought to be light in colour. He had spots and was ‘ugly, disgusting even’.
Clothing: Thin, black leather jacket; light T-shirt; jeans with belt; trainers; dark, thick-framed sunglasses.
Portrait: Sketch number 1 in the Picture Section.

Witness Four
On Sunday, 29 April 2007, between 8 and 9am, this witness noticed a man loitering on Rua do Ramelhete whose appearance unnerved her. Three days later, in mid-afternoon on Wednesday 2 May, the witness saw the same man on Rua Dr Gentil Martins, on the opposite side of the road to apartment 5A, near the car park across from the entrance to the Ocean Club’s pool and Tapas restaurant area. The witness said that the man was standing still and looking over in the direction of apartment 5A.
Description: Male of Portuguese appearance; approximately 5ft 10ins (1.78m) tall; slim build; ‘very ugly – pitted skin with a large nose’.
Clothing: Casual; jeans.
Portrait: Sketch number 2 in the Picture Section.

Witness Five
This witness was walking down Rua Dr Francisco Gentil Martins with his partner around lunchtime on either Wednesday 2 May or Thursday 3 May 2007. They passed a man who was standing by the wall near the car park opposite the entrance to the Ocean Club’s swimming pool and Tapas restaurant. The witness followed the man’s line of sight and reported that he was ‘staring fixedly’ at an area close to our apartment block, where a white van was parked.
Description: Caucasian male with dark skin; assumed to be Portuguese and not a tourist; aged 25–35; 1.7–1.75m (5ft 7ins–5ft 9ins) tall; medium build; short, thick, dark hair reaching collar-level at the back.
Clothing: Plain light-coloured T-shirt.
Portrait: Sketch number 3 in the Picture Section.

Witness Six
On 3 May 2007, this witness was standing on the veranda of a first-floor apartment in the same block as 5A, overlooking the pool and Tapas restaurant area. Some time between 4pm and 5pm, she noticed a man coming out through one of the little gates leading from the terraces of the ground-floor apartments to the access path. His behaviour struck the witness as suspicious: he appeared to be trying to close the gate quietly, using both hands, and very slowly and deliberately checking in both directions before walking to the end of the pathway and on to Rua Dr Gentil Martins. The witness thought this was the first gate along the pathway from the road. If her recollection is correct, it was the gate to apartment 5B, where our friends Matt and Rachael were staying. That afternoon, Rachael, Matt and their daughter were on the beach at Praia da Luz with the rest of our friends. They were away from the Ocean Club complex from before 3pm until 6pm.

Description: Caucasian male; fair-skinned, assumed not to be Portuguese; aged 30–40; medium height; medium–slim build; very fair, cropped hair.
Clothing: Pale T-shirt.

Portrait: Sketch number 4 in the Picture Section.

In terms of both timing and location, these reports are highly relevant to the investigation into Madeleine’s abduction. While the individual concerned may not be the same in all cases, there are certainly common characteristics to suggest that some of these sightings, if not all, could be related.

We believe that identifying these individuals could bring us much closer to finding Madeleine.

If you can help, please contact [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] or 0044 (0)845 838 4699.

The Supreme Court judges said that lifting their status as formal suspects does not mean that they were innocent.

"The archiving of the case was determined by the fact that public prosecutors hadn't managed to obtain sufficient evidence of the practice of crimes by the appellants.

"There is therefore a significant, and not merely a semantic difference, between the legally admissible foundations of the archive ruling. It doesn't therefore seem acceptable that the ruling, based on the insufficiency of evidence, should be equated to proof of innocence."