ROBERT MURAT AND THE MEETING AT 'SALSALITO', BURGAU, ON TUESDAY 13 NOVEMBER 2007: CLUES ABOUT WHAT REALLY HAPPENED TO MADELEINE MCCANN

by **sharonl** 13.10.19 16:15

[ Preliminary notes: This long article may be discussed in a thread on the open forum:
The references are incomplete and will be added to in due course. Our article maybe amended as new information comes to light, or as a result of any errors being brought to our attention.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed by MMRG in this article reflect our honest views based on all the available evidential material we have seen - and our hypotheses are no more than just that - theories.

Acknowledgements: MMRG acknowledges with grateful thanks all those whose research is quoted in this article, but would like to mention especially the outstanding work of Nigel Moore of the former 'mccannfiles' site and 'pamalam'] in preserving the original PJ files made public by the Portuguese Police in August 2008 and so much other valuable material ]

ROBERT MURAT AND THE MEETING AT 'SALSALITO', BURGAU, ON TUESDAY 13 NOVEMBER 2007:

CLUES ABOUT WHAT REALLY HAPPENED TO MADELEINE MCCANN

An exploration of the 'Two Camps' Thoory

======

THE ‘SALSALITO SUMMIT’: Brian Kennedy’s two meetings in Portugal on 13 November 2007

by the Madeleine McCann Research Group
September 2019

Executive Summary: On 15 May 2007, Robert Murat was made the chief suspect in the disappearance of Madeleine McCann - suspected of being responsible for her abduction. On 7 September, Gerry and Kate McCann were made suspects - this time, on suspicion of hiding Madeleine's body.

Cheshire businessman and multi-millionaire Brian Kennedy was appointed by the McCanns in (or maybe before) September 2007, to run the McCanns’ private investigation into Madeleine’s disappearance. In November 2007 he, together with the McCanns’ co-ordinating lawyer, senior Freemason Edward Smethurst (1), travelled to Portugal, where they attended two very important meetings.

One of these two meetings was at the home of Robert Murat's uncle and aunt, Ralph and Sally Eveleigh, where Robert Murat and his lawyer, Francisco Pagarete, met with Brian Kennedy and Edward Smethurst.

So this meeting was attended by one of the chief suspects in the disappearance of Madeleine McCann (Murat), plus his lawyer, and the lawyer and chief private investigator for the other two main suspects, the McCanns.

MMRG believes that these two meetings, held on 13 November 2007, hold vital clues as to what really happened to Madeleine McCann. This article reveals what is known about these two meetings and attempts an understanding of their real purpose, examining in detail events before and after this historic meeting.

It will also introduce what has become known as the 'Two Camps' theory. In short, this theory suggests that, after Sunday 29 April 2007, if not before, Robert Murat and a coterie around him were already known to the McCanns and their circle.

MMRG, along with an increasing number of others, holds that there is strong evidence that something serious happened to Madeleine, or that she died, late on Sunday 29 April 2007. The evidence for this is discussed in many places on CMOMM (2).

We will argue in this article therefore that when Murat was summoned from the home of his sister in Sidmouth, Devon, the following day (Monday 30 April) (3), and jetted to Portugal the next day (Tuesday) at 7am from Exeter airport, it was to help the McCanns (in some way not yet fully known) to help plan and carry out a hoax abduction on Thursday that week.

Events that swiftly followed Madeleine's reported have revealed what now appears to be a plot by British government security services to frame Robert Murat as the chief suspect in the case. Immediately before he was made a suspect, the McCanns' friend Jane Tanner identified Robert Murat as the person she had (allegedly) seen walking away from near the McCanns' apartment at 9.15pm on Thursday 3 May. Thereafter three more of the McCanns' friends heaped added suspicion onto Murat by making statements claiming he had been seen by them lurking around the McCanns' apartment sometime after 10.30pm that evening, a claim Murat emphatically denied.

This article traces the development of this rift between the McCanns and their friends, and Robert Murat, and tries to answer why the British security services, together with the McCanns' friends, clearly framed Murat as the chief suspect. Murat was later to describe this apparent conspiracy against him as 'The biggest-ever f___-up on the planet".

We explore how this 'rift' between the 'camps' (which for convenience we will call the 'Murat Camp' and the 'McCann Camp') progressed for months - but seems to have mysteriously melted away after one of those two meetings on 13 November, namely their 'high summit' meeting at 'Salsalito', home of the Eveleighs.

One issue as yet unresolved is whether Robert Murat consented to being framed, or was taken by surprise. This article seeks to explore this further with records from the Portuguese Police files, and statements, articles and interviews on the TV and print media.

It is MMRG's provisional view that whatever really happened to Madeleine McCann somehow connected both the McCanns and Robert Murat. It suggested that Murat was summoned by a person or persons known to help with the planning of a hoax abduction on 3 May 2007, and then to penetrate the subsequent Portuguese Police investigation as a 'spy in the camp' - by interpreting the evidence of key witnesses and trying to disrupt the investigation. We provide evidence that this may have been with the help of the British Ambassador in Portugal.

MMRG further suggests that British security services then plotted against Murat, behind his back. This may explain why he described the whole affair as 'The biggest f___-up on the planet'.

We finish by showing how after the crucial 'Salsalito Summit' meeting, the McCann camp reversed their claims against Murat, helping him to gain two enormous libel awards totalling well over £600,000.


Chapters

INTRODUCTION

A PROOFS THAT THE MURAT/McCANN CAMPS MEETING TOOK PLACE AT SALSALITO IN NOVEMBER 2007

B BRIAN KENNEDY MEETS THE PORTUGUESE POLICE – DAYTIME, 13 NOVEMBER 2007
C THE MEN FROM METODO 3

D INFORMATION FROM BRIAN KENNEDY AND THE METODO 3 MEN
D1 Situation 1: A man in the shadows
D2 Situation 2: Was Sergey Malinka a paedophile?
D3 Situation 3: A strange incident on the border with Spain

E THE ARADE DAM PLOT

F BRIAN KENNEDY MEETS WITH ROBERT MURAT, HIS FAMILY AND LAWYERS – EVENING, 13 NOVEMBER 2007

G ROBERT MURAT’S ACTIVITIES BETWEEN 1 MAY AND 13 NOVEMBER 2007
G1 Robert Murat becomes an interpreter for one week
G2 Murat's 17 lies
G3 What was Robert Murat really doing between 1 and 3 May 2007?
G4 The campaign to frame Robert Murat: Part 1
G5 The campaign to frame Robert Murat: Part 2
G6 The campaign to frame Robert Murat: Part 3: Jane Tanner adamantly identifies Robert Murat as the man she said she'd seen on Thursday 3 May
G7 The campaign to frame Robert Murat: Part 3: Jane Tanner DENIES having 'adamantly' identified Robert Murat
G8 Did Jane Tanner really identify Robert Murat on 13 May? - What Kate McCann says about this in her book
G9 The campaign to frame Robert Murat: Part 4: Three of the members of the Tapas 7 claim to have seen Robert Murat lurking near the McCanns' apartment and the Ocean Club after Madeleine was reported missing

H HOW NEWS OF THE SALSALITO MEETING EMERGED

I   ANALYSIS

J THE SMITHMAN SIGHTING AND THE ‘SALSALITO SUMMIT’

K EVENTS AFTER THE ‘SALSALITO SUMMIT’

L CONCLUSION

M APPENDICES

---------------------------

INTRODUCTION

This article focuses on the action of Brian Kennedy in attending two meetings in Portugal on 13 November 2007 (4). According to the McCanns, they appointed Cheshire businessman Brian Kennedy to run their ‘Find Madeleine’ campaign on Friday 14 September 2007 (5), just one week after they had been made formal suspects over the disappearance of their daughter. He was then responsible for carrying out their private investigations.

ROBERT MURAT AND THE MEETING AT 'SALSALITO', BURGAU, ON TUESDAY 13 NOVEMBER 2007: CLUES ABOUT WHAT REALLY HAPPENED TO MADELEINE MCCANN Kenned10

Cheshire-based businessman Brian Kennedy, said to be worth £250 million (6). Just five
days after the McCanns fled Portugal after being made formal suspects in the
disappearance of their daughter, he offered to run the McCanns' private investigation.
He went on to appoint a series of unreliable and untrustworthy detectives and private agencies...who found out nothing about what happened to Madeleine

Although this article suggests that these two meetings were attended by Brian Kennedy on Tuesday, 13 November 2007, it has not been formally admitted by any of those present at the meeting that the second meeting was on the very same day as the first. However, it seems highly likely that they were. Brian Kennedy and Edward Smethurst would hardly fly out to Portugal for a police meeting, then fly back to England, only to fly out again days later for another meeting with the Murat group. If they didn't meet with the Murats that very day, it must surely have been the following day.

The first in time of these two meetings was with the Portuguese Police at Portimao Police Station. The second was with Robert Murat and three other members of his family at the home of Ralph and Sally Eveleigh, Robert Murat’s uncle and aunt.

We will deal now with the first one, but first, because so little is known about these two meetings, especially the Salsalito one, we need to prove that they actually happened.

The meeting Brian Kennedy had with the Portuguese Police at the Portimao Police Station is in the Portuguese Police files publicly disclosed in the DVD of information released to the public in August 2008 (4).

The general public was not meant to know about the 'Salsalito' meeting. So here is what is known about it.


A PROOFS THAT THE MURAT/McCANN CAMPS MEETING TOOK PLACE AT SALSALITO IN NOVEMBER 2007

----------

Proof 1 - Source http://robertmuratscapegoat.blogspot.com/

It was Francisco Pagarete, Mr Murat’s Portuguese lawyer - the one whom he was so anxious to see when he flew out to Praia da Luz on 1 May - who confirmed that a second meeting involving Brian Kennedy took place at Mr Murat’s uncle’s house in the Algarve in November. He told the BBC: “[Brian Kennedy] came here to give his support to Robert and to say he doesn’t believe Robert was involved in this story in any way or sense. And he asked if Robert could help the investigation for the finding of Madeleine in any way”. Mr Pagarete added that Mr Kennedy had ‘promised to stay in touch with Mr Murat’ but ‘had not contacted him since’. Mr Pagarete also confirmed that Edward Smethurst was at the meeting (7).

----------

Proof 2:

The Portuguese paper Jornal de Notícias (8) appeared to have some additional information about this meeting. Their report, early in 2008, said: “The meeting - a dinner that Brian Kennedy asked to be discreet and far away from the eyes of the press - took place in the end of last year at a house of Murat's relatives in Burgau (Vila do Bispo). At the dinner were Robert Murat and Kennedy, their respective lawyers, Jennifer Murat and the aunt and uncle of Murat” [NOTE: This appears in fact to have been Ralph Eveleigh, Murat’s uncle, and Sally Eveleigh, his cousin].

----------

Proof 3 - Source  http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-563826/Madeleine-One-year-Portuguese-police-ashamed-says-attorney-general.html

Last night, it was revealed the McCanns' financial backer, tycoon Brian Kennedy, had met Robert Murat, the first suspect in the case (9).

The meeting took place at Mr Murat's aunt's house in the Algarve last year.

Mr Murat's lawyer, Francisco Pagarete, said: 'We had a very pleasant dinner with Mr Kennedy.

"He came here to give his support to Robert and to say he doesn't believe Robert was involved in this story in any way.

"And he asked if Robert could help the investigation for the finding of Madeleine."

It is understood the meeting in November was also attended by Mr Kennedy's lawyer, Edward Smethurst, who is co-ordinating the McCanns' legal affairs.

----------

Proof 4: On maccannfiles you find this - Timesonline

'Visit to Robert Murat, 04 May 2008' (10)

'Pray like mad,' begs tearful Kate McCann

Steven Swinford
May 4, 2008

Excerpt:

Brian Kennedy, the home improvements tycoon backing the McCanns, admitted yesterday that he flew to Portugal last November and spent an evening with Robert Murat, apart from the McCanns the only other official suspect. A source close to Kennedy said he was "gathering information".

Kennedy's lawyer, Ed Smethurst, approached Murat through a mutual friend and said that Kennedy wanted to offer him a job.

But the job offer never transpired. Kennedy spent the evening with Murat and his lawyers at his aunt's house in Praia da Luz, discussing Madeleine's disappearance.

He left with a "flea in his ear" after being confronted over reports that Metodo 3, the McCanns' private investigators, had suspicions about Murat.'

Additional evidence is provided by this comment found on a blog which was run by a group supporting the McCanns

Additional comment found on blog http://justice4mccannfam.forumotion.com/t557-murat-meets-brian-kennedy

[ Note: This was a McCann-support blog (11). The comments made by this poster reflect concerns MMRG members had at the time about this mysterious Salsalito meeting. Murat was an official suspect in the ABDUCTION of Madeleine. Why on earth, if the McCanns really believed that Robert Murat had been responsible for abducting Madeleine, or had had something to do with her abduction, would the McCanns send Brian Kennedy & Edward Smethurst to meet him? This obvious question would seem to have been in the mind of this pro-McCann blogger who evidently wrote this when s/he first heard news of the Salsalito meeting ]

QUOTE (reproduced exactly as written)

I didn't know they [Murat family, Kennedy and Smethurst] had met?? Thats odd...kate as always said she is not convinced he is innocent of any doing wrong in the abduction. Wounder how she felt about that?

Bit of an odd thing to do. Surly the secrecy laws wouldn't allow such a meeting..

what on earth is going on with this case????

Why would Kennedy want to go and have lunch with murat?? Did he honestly believe murat was going to jump to his questions. He is an arguido...not allowed to talk......... yet kennedy wants him to talk and help????

UNQUOTE

Exactly! What would be the point of sending your top private investigator and your top lawyer to meet with the man who had probably been responsible for abducting your child?

This article will try to provide the answer.

Finally, can we prove that this meeting was on Tuesday 13 November, the same day as we know that Brian Kennedy met the police at Portimao Police Station? No. But it seems very likely. We know it was in November. It doesn't seem likely that Brian Kennedy would take two separate flights in November all the way to Portugal.

There are three mentions above that this meeting took place over dinner and 'in the evening'. Surely the most likely probability is that Kennedy and Smethurst flew in to Portugal early on 13 November, or maybe the day before, then met with the Portuguese Police during that day, then drove up to 'Salsalito' for their high-powered and (as we shall see) game-changing meeting with four members of the McCann family. They may have flown home the following day, Wednesday 14 November.

B BRIAN KENNEDY MEETS THE PORTUGUESE POLICE – DAYTIME, 13 NOVEMBER 2007

There were several weeks of preparation, at least, leading up to this first of two meetings on 13 November. Brian Kennedy brought with him to the meeting two private investigators from the disreputable Spanish detective agency, Metodo 3, who had been hired by Brian Kennedy some weeks earlier, in or before September 2007, to ‘look for Madeleine’ (12). Metodo 3 was eventually closed down in 2014 after several corruption scandals involving criminal conduct, including illegally recording meetings of top politicians at a premier Barcelona restaurant (13).

ROBERT MURAT AND THE MEETING AT 'SALSALITO', BURGAU, ON TUESDAY 13 NOVEMBER 2007: CLUES ABOUT WHAT REALLY HAPPENED TO MADELEINE MCCANN Marco10

Francisco Marco, boss of the discredited and corrupt detective agency, Metodo 3.
The McCanns paid his agency over £300,000, maybe much more, over a period
of 18 months. His agency was finally closed in 2014 when it was found to have
illegally recorded top politicians' private conversations at a posh Barcelona restaurant

At that time, Brian Kennedy had - maybe still has - a villa in or near Barcelona (14). Maybe he already had had contact with this controversial private detective agency before 2007.

The immediate cause of this meeting taking place was a telephone call from the Spanish Police to the Portuguese Police on Friday, 19 October (4).

A report of this ’phone call is given in the Portuguese Police files which were controversially released to the general public on a DVD in August 2008 - much to the anger of the McCanns, because it revealed a great deal of information, embarrassing to them and their friends, about the detailed police investigation into Madeleine’s disappearance.

Here is the actual report in the files, translated by a Portuguese volunteer interested in the Madeleine McCann case.

QUOTE

“On the 19th of October, we were contacted by Alberto Carbas, Chief of the Kidnapping Unit of the Commissary-General, based in Madrid, who passed to us the information that the McCann family had contracted a Spanish private detective agency known as ‘Metodo 3’. The costs of their investigation into Madeleine McCann were being covered by a Scottish multi-millionaire whose name is Brian Kennedy. His objective was to find Madeleine.

“We were asked if we were available and interested in meeting with a representative of Metodo 3 and the Spanish Commissary General and Chief of the Kidnapping Unit of the Police in Spain. The purpose of this proposed meeting, they said, was to find out the truth, but they stated that they would not interfere in police work. At most, they said, they would ‘complement’ our investigation. They firmly stated that they are not working directly for the McCann family, but for Brian Kennedy. They didn’t ask for any information regarding the investigation, nor was any offered to them, for obvious reasons”.

UNQUOTE

The claim that Metodo 3 was ‘not working directly for the McCanns’ was highly misleading. Brian Kennedy had attended a meeting with the McCanns and a bevy of lawyers at a meeting in London on Friday, 14 September 2007 and agreed to help them by searching for Madeleine and trying to find out who had abducted her (12). One of the lawyers had driven to the McCanns’ home in Rothley, Leicestershire, to take them to and from the London meeting.

Moreover, in running this private investigation, he worked hand-in-hand with the McCanns’ co-ordinating solicitor, Edward Smethurst, a high-ranking Freemason from Lancashire - as we shall see in a moment.

ROBERT MURAT AND THE MEETING AT 'SALSALITO', BURGAU, ON TUESDAY 13 NOVEMBER 2007: CLUES ABOUT WHAT REALLY HAPPENED TO MADELEINE MCCANN Smethu11

Rochdale resident Edward Smethurst was a long-time friend of Brian Kennedy,
and had for years acted as the in-house lawyer for Kennedy's extensive Latium
Group. Just three days after the McCanns arrived back in England, having fled
Portugal after being named suspects, Edward Smethurst 'phoned the McCanns.
At least, that is what we are told in Kate McCann's book on the case,
'madeleine' (12). He was immediately appointed the official 'Co-ordinating
Solicitor for the McCanns'. He is a prominent Freemason and Past
Grandmaster in the East Lancashire Provincial Lodge.

This part of the report was interesting:

“On the 19th of October, we were contacted by Alberto Carbas, Chief of the Kidnapping Unit of the Commissary-General, based in Madrid, who passed to us the information that the McCann family had contracted a Spanish private detective agency known as ‘Metodo 3’…We were asked if we were available and interested in meeting with a representative of Metodo 3 and the Spanish Commissary General and Chief of the Kidnapping Unit of the Police in Spain”.

It seems clear that this meeting must have been arranged by one of Brian Kennedy’s men from Metodo 3, Antonio Giminez Raso. He was one of the men who attended with him in Portugal on 13 November 2007. He had also once been employed as an Senior Inspector in the Kidnapping and Drugs Unit of the Catalonia Regional Police Force (15), so no doubt would have had connections with the Kidnapping Unit of the Commissary-General in Madrid.

However, as we now know, Antonio Giminez Raso was arrested on 18 February 2008, just three months after he attended this meeting in Portimao on 13 November 2007 (16).

He was arrested on very serious charges, including assisting a violent drugs gang in their attempt to steal drugs from a boat in Barcelona harbour, and corruption in public office. Although he had been a trusted Senior Inspector in the Catalonian Regional Kidnapping and Drugs Squad, by the time he was engaged by the McCann Team in 2007, he had either been dismissed from the police or resigned from them. It seems though that he must still have had contacts or influence inside the Spanish Kidnapping and Drugs Unit, hence his being able to persuade (himself or through inside contacts) the Chief of the Kidnapping and Drugs Unit in Madrid to contact the Portuguese Police on 19 October. How convenient it often is to have friends in high places!

We now know that Brian Kennedy flew out in November 2007, less than four weeks after this ’phone call from the Spanish police, to attend a meeting with the Portuguese Police at Portimao Police Station. The meeting at Portimao Police Station must have been arranged following the ’phone call from the Spanish Police on 19 October. Since Edward Smethurst accompanied him to the meeting with the Murat family on the evening of 13 November (and probably to the police meeting as well - see below) it is highly probable that the two men flew out from England together. It is likely that they flew to Portugal at least the day before.

Below are the Portuguese Police’s accounts of a meeting between them, Brian Kennedy, three members of Metodo 3 and (probably) Edward Smethurst. They began with this introduction:

QUOTE

“We held a meeting on 13 November, with Inspectors Paulo Ferreira and Ricardo Paiva [from the Portuguese Police] present, with Brian Kennedy, Director of the [Metodo 3] detective agency, Francisco Marco and one of his advisers, plus Antonio Jimenez, ex-chief of the Kidnapping Unit of Catalonia [Note: Other information suggests that Edward Smethurst was also present]. Brian Kennedy insisted that his motives were purely charitable, aimed at finding the truth, and generally helping missing children. He said he was interested in discovering the truth even if the McCann family, the friends, or any other person is found to be involved in the disappearance”.

UNQUOTE

Here is the full report of the meeting, dated Wednesday 14 November 2007, kindly translated into English by a Portuguese volunteer, and preserved for us by ‘pamalam’ on the mccanpjfiles site, at this link: http://www.mccannpjfiles.co.uk/PJ/BRIAN-KENNEDY.htm

QUOTE

Volume XIII Pages 3434 - 3436

Service Information 2007.11.14

To: Coordinator of the Criminal Investigation
From: Joao Carlos, Inspector

Concerning the investigation of the disappearance of the British minor, Madeleine McCann, I present you Sir with the following:

On the 19th of October, we were contacted by the Commissary General, located in Madrid, by the Chief of the Kidnapping Unit, Alberto Carbas, who passed to us the information that the McCann family had contracted a Spanish company known as 'METODO 3', composed of Spanish private detectives. This business, or in other words, the costs of the activities of this business, were being covered by a Scottish multi-millionaire whose name is BRIAN KENNEDY and whose objective was to locate the British minor.

With this information, we were asked if we were available and interested in meeting with a representative of this Spanish business, and also with the Commissary General and Chief of the Kidnapping Unit of the Police of our neighbouring country, whose operation is in Madrid.

The meeting had as its objective to receive on behalf of the private detectives, from that moment and for their own wishes, relevant information with the aim to ascertain the truth, and to state that they would not interfere in police work, and at most they would serve as a complement to some useful information. They firmly state that they are not working directly for the McCann family, but for Brian Kennedy and that their sole purpose is to locate the missing child, or to gather the inescapable truth of what happened.

They did not ask for any information regarding the investigation, nor was any offered to them, for obvious reasons as this is found incorporated in the Portuguese penal process.

On the 13th of the current [month], in the presence of the signatory and inspectors Paulo Ferreira and Ricardo Paiva, a meeting was held, in this department, with Brian Kennedy, the director of the detective company, Francisco Marco and an advisor of this same company, Antonio Jimenez, ex-chief of the Kidnapping Unit of Catalan. From the beginning, Brian Kennedy was questioned, and ascertained that the meeting only had this scope - of transmitting that his objective in all of this was purely charitable in that he is interested [in helping to stop] the bad treatment of minors and in missing children. He affirmed that he only was interested in discovering the truth and nothing more even if the McCann family, the friends, or any other person is found to be involved in the disappearance.

During the course of this meeting, the director of METODO 3 gave us a small book (attached), with information relative to the disappearance of the minor. This information, as we were told, was received via telephone and that they had already opened a line in Spain, specifically to receive and deal with information.

In this book, written in Spanish, we can analyse three pieces of information:

1. In the first case, we observed that there was report of facts which occurred in August/September of 2006, and which appears to us somewhat extemporaneous, as it cannot now be related to the material under investigation.
2. In the second point, we should remember that the computers of Sergey Malinka were searched and that nothing of suspicion was found there or related to paedophilia.
3. In that which concerns the third point, we are currently carrying out diligences with the intent to confirm or disprove the related information.

With nothing more to report.
Joao Carlos, Inspector

UNQUOTE

Item 1 to which Brian Kennedy and the Metodo 3 investigators referred was the evidence of Margaret Hall. We will not reproduce it here, but this is the link for those who wish to see it:
http://www.mccannpjfiles.co.uk/PJ/MARGARET_HALL.htm (Incident 1 - Evidence of Margaret Hall)

Item 2 refers to allegations apparently made by Kennedy and Metodo 3 against Sergei Malinka, referenced here:
http://www.mccannpjfiles.co.uk/PJ/SERGEY-MALINKA.htm#p13p3439 (Incident 2 - Question marks about Sergei Malinka) See File No. 3439

Item 3 refers to an alleged sighting of Madeleine McCann by a lorry driver, whose report suggested he had seen a lady looking like Michaela Walczuk handing a large package, which could have been a child, over a fence or wall several miles east of Praia da Luz. There were multiple indications that this sighting was a complete fabrication. The link for those who want to see the extent of the Portuguese Police enquiries on this alleged sighting is here:
http://www.mccannpjfiles.co.uk/PJ/METODO_3.htm (Incident 3 - Alleged sighting by lorry driver).

None of these three 'sightings' produced any worthwhile leads. It is very possible that Brian Kennedy and his two investigators knew very well that they were false leads, and only arranged this meeting to try to portray the McCanns' private investigation as a credible and sincere enquiry into who abducted Madeleine and where she was. Indeed there is evidence that Brian Kennedy's investigators were offering money to Moroccans to invent claims that they had seen Madeleine (17).

by **sharonl** 13.10.19 16:17

C THE MEN FROM METODO 3

First we need to say a word about the two men who accompanied Brian Kennedy to this historic meeting on 13 November: Francisco Marco, boss of Metodo 3, and his sidekick and lead co-investigator, Antonio Giminez - or Antonio Giminez Raso to give him his full name. Both men were rogues and indeed criminals.

To summarise, Francisco Marco was the boss of Metodo 3, a firm founded by his mother and with a long record of suspected criminal activity (18). His mother was arrested and held in custody pending an investigation into a telephone tapping scandal. The firm closed in 2014 when Marco and several of his colleagues were implicated in illegal taping of conversations between senior political figures in a top Barcelona restaurant. Some of them admitted their guilt early to avoid long sentences.

As for Antonio Giminez Raso, he was arrested on 18 February 2008 and spent the next four years in jail awaiting trial on charges of drug dealing and corruption in public office. He was lucky to avoid conviction when the judge decided not to convict him (and his twin brother) because there was ‘insufficient proof’ that he had colluded with a notorious, 27-strong, extremely violent, criminal gang. The judge, however, dismissed him with a warning: “You got far too close to members of this gang”. He had allegedly plotted with the criminal gang to steal 25 kilograms of cocaine from a boat in Barcelona harbour (19).

ROBERT MURAT AND THE MEETING AT 'SALSALITO', BURGAU, ON TUESDAY 13 NOVEMBER 2007: CLUES ABOUT WHAT REALLY HAPPENED TO MADELEINE MCCANN Antoni10

Antonio Giminez Raso (far right, hiding his face) was a lead investigator
for the McCanns. He was formerly an Inspector with the Regional Drugs
Squad in Catalonia, based in Barcelona, until he was either booted out
of the force, or forced to resign, being suspected  of corruption. Hired
by the McCanns in September 2007, only four months later he was
arrested and remanded in custody, charged with plotting to steal
a large quantity of drugs from a boat in Barcelona harbour, and corruption.
Clarence Mitchell, spokesman for the McCanns, flatly denied that
Antonio Giminez Raso had ever been employed by the McCanns

D INFORMATION FROM BRIAN KENNEDY AND THE METODO 3 MEN

The PJ’s report on the meeting, which is amongst the documents contained in the police files (4) (and see above) indicates that right at the start of the meeting, Brian Kennedy was keen to stress that his intentions were ‘purely charitable’, because he “felt concerned about cases of child neglect and child abduction”. The Director of Metodo 3, Francisco Marco, presented information to the PJ about three situations, allegedly received via their ‘hotline’.

Situation 1: A man in the shadows

The first of the three reports he presented concerned an incident that the British media had already referred to, at the end of October 2007. A woman who had been baby-sitting at the Ocean Club, in Apartment G5A in August/September 2006, said she spotted a man ‘hidden in the shadows’, the same day that Madeleine disappeared. A story about this had surfaced in the Sun on October 31 - less than two weeks before this meeting. MMRG believes that this story was planted in the Sun by the McCanns' public relations chief, Clarence Mitchell.

According to the newspaper, “The nanny - identified only as M.H. - reported the frightening incident to the police in England after the hunt for Madeleine started in May, but did not speak to the police in Portugal”. Clarence Mitchell added that: “This evidence supports what we have always said, that Maddie was taken from her bed by an abductor”. The Portuguese Police had in the meantime, however, already ruled out this report, because the detectives considered that there was no proof that it was in any way related to Madeleine's disappearance.

Situation 2: Was Sergey Malinka a paedophile?

The second piece of information was about the alleged existence of images of paedophilia on a computer at the home of Sergey Malinka, witnessed by the fiancé of a British woman, four years ago, when he was at Malinka's house (20). We know that Malinka and Robert Murat were friends who knew each other well.

ROBERT MURAT AND THE MEETING AT 'SALSALITO', BURGAU, ON TUESDAY 13 NOVEMBER 2007: CLUES ABOUT WHAT REALLY HAPPENED TO MADELEINE MCCANN Malink10

Sergei Malinka, friend of Robert Murat. Murat 'phoned Malinka
around 11pm on the night Madeleine McCann was reported
missing, a 'phone call he said he 'couldn't remember' making

According to this witness, she questioned Malinka on the subject and he explained that the computer ‘belonged to a client’ and that he would report it later to the authorities. All of the computers at Malinka's house were seized and examined, but the Portuguese Police report said that nothing of any relevance or suspicion was found. That may be because the Portuguese police had evidence that Malinks 'wiped' his computer of anything incriminating before it was seized (21). This would appear to have been a ruse by Brian Kennedy and the Metodo 3 men to switch the PJ’s focus onto Robert Murat’s friend Malinka.

Situation 3: A strange incident on the border with Spain

The third piece of information referred to was a detailed witness statement, according to the Metodo 3 report, about a woman handing what the witness was convinced was a child, wrapped in a blanket or a sheet, over a fence, to a man, next to two parked vehicles, near a town 100 miles from the Algarve, close to the border with Spain (22). The witness, a Portuguese lorry driver, M.G., looked at several photos and picked out Michaela Walczuk [Robert Murat’s girlfriend, now his wife], saying that her picture was the one that most resembled the woman he had seen.

The British media published a version of this story on 19 November 2007 (six days after the ‘Salsalito Summit’), but with different details. The METRO free paper boldly wrote (23): “A witness spotted Murat's German girlfriend, Michaela Walczuch, in a car with Maddie, on 5 May, in central Portugal”. On the same day, the Daily Mail published a similar story (24): “According to a source, a new witness identified Michaela Walczuch as the woman seen with the missing child, in central Portugal, 160 kilometres [100 miles] from where she disappeared on May 3rd”.

As usual, Clarence Mitchell had a few things to say to the media: “We are not going to comment on any line of the investigation except to say that we are encouraged by the fact that our investigators seem to be making progress. Kate and Gerry are not ruling out any possibility”.

The Portuguese Police studied this incident and questioned the Portuguese lorry driver, but the facts that he described to the police were somewhat different to those reported in the British press. The lorry driver said he saw a woman handing something to a man, over a fence, wrapped in what looked like a blanket. He said the object wasn't heavy, because they did it easily and the fence was around 1.6 metres high (5 feet). Asked if it could have been the body of a child, he responded that nothing he had seen would indicate that.

Questioned also about the positive identification of Michaela Walczuk, according to Metodo 3's report, the witness told the Portuguese Police that he couldn't see the woman's face, because he was driving his lorry at 45/50 mph, and the couple were at some distance. He only chose Michaela's photo from amongst the others Metodo 3 had shown him because she had the same hair colour and similar build.

The actual facts which emerged from the lorry driver, then, did not seem anywhere near sufficient to justify the press headlines claiming that he had positively identified Robert Murat’s girlfriend. There is also a degree of mystery about how and when the lorry driver in question came forward with this information. There is a reasonable suspicion that he somehow got into contact with Metodo 3, and it was they (Metodo 3) who contacted the PJ. Was this one more deliberately false lead set up by the very dodgy Metodo 3 men? On the evidence we have, the whole claim could be yet one more fabrication in a case laced with multiple fabrications.

E THE ARADE DAM PLOT

It is possible, even probable, that during his visit to Portugal, Brian Kennedy may have planned the so-called ‘Arade Dam Plot’ with the two Metodo 3 men, Francisco Marco and Antonio Giminez Raso.

Just four weeks after their 13 November meeting with Brian Kennedy and the Portuguese Police, Francisco Marco and Antonio Giminez Raso met at the Arade Dam, Portugal, together with a highly controversial Portuguese lawyer, Marcos Aragao Correia. We know this for a fact because Marcos Correia later wrote about this meeting in detail.

The lies of Marcos Aragao Correia

Let us first explain who Marcos Correia was, because he played a key role in the Madeleine McCann case during 2008 and 2009.

He was a young, qualified lawyer from the Portuguese island of Madeira, an island in the Atlantic Ocean of around 270,000 people, several hundred miles from Portugal itself. It would be fair to call Marcos Correia both strange, and a liar. His early career showed little promise, and he soon formed a Portuguese human rights group, perhaps to gain more attention for himself (27).

It appears he may have got involved with the McCanns and Brian Kennedy around September or October 2007. He initially gave the media two different reasons for getting interested in the Madeleine McCann case - both of them lies - to explain why he became interested in the Madeleine McCann case.

His first false claim was to tell the media that he was in touch with Portugal’s criminal underworld who, he said, told him that Madeleine had been abducted by a paedophile gang, who had raped her, then killed her, then thrown her body in a ‘murky lake’ somewhere in Portugal (28). He then used this false account to explain why, in January 2008, he had financed a search for Madeleine’s body in the lake of the Arade Dam.

Much later, he frankly admitted that this was a complete lie. Instead, he claimed, his interest in the Madeleine McCann case had come about in the following way. He said that on Saturday 5 May 2007, just two days after Madeleine was reported missing, he had, in the evening, attended his first-ever Spiritualist Church meeting on the island of Madeira (29).

That night, he claimed, after returning home from the meeting, he had had a strange vision - of a very tall, big blond man, strangling a young girl who, he said, looked around 3-4 years old. Correia said later that he heard soon afterwards about the disappearance of Madeleine McCann and connected the vision with her abduction by this big, blond man. Hence, he said, he became interested in helping to find Madeleine. But this barely plausible story was also revealed - by Correia himself – to have been another complete lie (30). He then gave the media a third different account of how he first became seriously interested in the Madeleine McCann case.

These appalling lies appear to have been a way of disguising how he really became involved in the Madeleine McCann case. We can be sure that at some stage, Marcos Correia must have had contact with the McCanns and/or Brian Kennedy in order to agree to work for them.

The curious incident of the Recorded delivery letter

In November 2007, just before Brian Kennedy flew out to Portugal to meet with the Portuguese Police, the media reported a curious court case on Madeira. The case had been brought by Marcos Correia. He was claiming damages against the Portuguese Post Office for allegedly failing to deliver a Recorded Delivery letter to the McCanns in Rothley. The judge decided he had failed to prove his case and ordered Correia to pay 100 euros (around £85) costs to the Post Office (31).

Marcos Correia said he had sent a Recorded Delivery letter to the McCanns because he thought he could help the search for Madeleine and wanted to offer his services.

A plausible explanation for this series of events is that the McCanns and Brian Kennedy had already asked for his help, and agreed to employ him, before he brought these proceedings in the Madeira Court.

Is it possible that the court case was merely a ruse to pretend that he had had a genuine previous concern about helping with the search for Madeleine, when in reality he had already been contracted to work for the McCanns and Brian Kennedy?

Marcos Correia engaged by the McCanns to ‘get’ Gonçalo Amaral

We now know that Brian Kennedy, at some stage, also contracted for Marcos Correia to represent, in court, the notorious murderess, Leonor Cipriano (32), who together with her brother murdered her eight-year-old daughter, Joana - a case, incidentally, solved by Gonçalo Amaral. Each of them were handed 16-year jail sentences for this appalling crime.

In April 2008, Leonor Cipriano sensationally dropped her lawyer, who was representing her in a criminal complaint against Gonçalo Amaral and four of his fellow detectives. She claimed that Amaral and his men had tortured her into making a confession and had then covered this up by lying about what happened in a report. Instead, she appointed the strange lawyer from Madeira, Marcos Correia, to represent her.

How exactly this was arranged, we may possibly never know, though we do know that it was on 8 April 2008 that Marcos Correia was allowed into Odemira Women’s Prison to meet the convicted murderess. How was this arranged? Who intervened and persuaded Leonor Cipriano to change her lawyer?

In the event (May 2009), Gonçalo’s men were found innocent of torture, but Gonçalo Amaral and a colleague were found guilty of filing a false report of what happened at the police station (33). The event tarnished Gonçalo Amaral’s reputation. No-one was found guilty of any torture of Leonor Cipriano. But when the court announced the conviction of Amaral, giving him an 18-month suspended sentence for ‘filing a false report’, Marcos Correia exulted: “The target was hit” (34).

Much later, Correia admitted in a lengthy magazine article that the McCanns and Brian Kennedy had paid him to take on Leonor Cipriano’s case against Gonçalo Amaral. He also admitted to being paid by them to pretend to search the Arade Dam, an event we’ll now summarise.

Searching for Madeleine’s bones in a ‘murky’ lake

On 10 December 2007 (four weeks after the Salsalito Summit’, the two Metodo 3 men, Francisco Marco and Antonio Jiminez Raso, met at the Arada Dam with Marcos Aragao Correia. To get to this meeting, each would have had to travel several hundred miles; Correia from Madeira, and Marco and Giminez Raso from their home town, Barcelona in Spain. We can be sure that either Brian Kennedy, or the McCanns’ ‘Find Madeleine Fund’, would have paid for all the expenses for these three trips, and given these three men their instructions.

Just seven weeks after the meeting at the Arade Dam, in a blaze of publicity, Marcos Correia turned up at the Arade Dam with a team of British divers, announcing that they were to be conducting an extensive search of the Arade Dam to see if they could find Madeleine’s remains (35). Correia trotted out to the media his lies about being informed by the Portuguese underworld that Madeleine had been killed and her body thrown into a ‘murky lake’.

Correia explained that, based on the information he had been told, and using a ‘vision’ he had received of the lake and a series of maps, he had established with near certainty that Madeleine’s body must have been thrown off a tower at the Arade Dam - and that was where the divers were going to look for her remains (35).

The whole story was clearly a total pack of lies. The Arade Dam ‘search’ was pure theatre for the media - who gobbled up all that Correia had to say, recycling his lies for public consumption by the millions who were still enthralled by the enduring mystery of what really happened to Madeleine McCann

Correia added that he had organised this search of the lake as a ‘Good Samaritan’, financing it all out of his own pocket (35). That was more lies. He admitted much later that the McCanns and Brian Kennedy had paid not only him but also the team of divers, who had charged a reputed £1,200 for their week’s work.

All that the divers found were some bones and a few other objects. The media reported excitedly that the bones had been handed to Metodo 3 detectives for analysis, before being passed to the Portuguese Police. Of course, the bones should have been handed over straightaway to the Portuguese Police, not to the McCanns’ own private detective agency. It seems, however, that at the 13 November 2007 meeting with the Portuguese Police at Portimao, Brian Kennedy may have successfully persuaded them that he was just a good honest bloke, sincerely trying to get to the truth of what happened to Madeleine out of the goodness of his own heart. In this way, it seems that the McCann Team were allowed to break the Portuguese law forbidding parallel, private investigations into crimes already being investigated by the PJ.

The bones were found, in the end, to be merely animal bones (36). But in public relations terms, the week-long search for Madeleine’s bones was a huge public relations success. It brilliantly confirmed the abduction narrative. No-one could have guessed at the time that this was a complete set-up to deceive the public, accompanied by multiple lies.

Having found nothing of interest, Marcos Correia and his diving team then staged a further week-long search of the Arade Dam at the beginning of March 2008 (37). That was still more useful publicity for the McCanns, who continued to pretend to have had no involvement in organising the search - that is, until over a year later, when Marcos Correia publicly admitted in a magazine article (38) that he’d been paid via Brian Kennedy - both to organise the dam search, and to take up the criminal case against Gonçalo Amaral by murderess Leonor Cipriano.

by **sharonl** 13.10.19 16:18

F BRIAN KENNEDY MEETS WITH ROBERT MURAT, HIS FAMILY AND LAWYERS – EVENING, 13 NOVEMBER 2007

Now we can return to examining Brian Kennedy’s second important meeting that day, which took place at ‘Salsalito’, the home of Ralph and Sally Eveleigh, in Burgau, about three miles from Praia da Luz.

ROBERT MURAT AND THE MEETING AT 'SALSALITO', BURGAU, ON TUESDAY 13 NOVEMBER 2007: CLUES ABOUT WHAT REALLY HAPPENED TO MADELEINE MCCANN Zzzzzz22

The beach and village of Burgau. The Eveleighs lived here, in their villa,
'Salsalito', which specialised in holidays for adults and celebrities. Ralph
and Sally Eveleigh, uncle and aunt of Robert Murat, appear to have
owned and run the Burgau Beach Bar, where Polish holidaymaker
Wojchiech Krokowski and his wife had their meals. Nuno Lourenco
falsely claimed that Krokowski had tried to abduct his daughter from
Burgau beach

The Eveleighs were the aunt and uncle of Robert Murat. Robert Murat’s mother, Jennifer Murat, was also there. The Murats were accompanied by Robert Murat’s lawyer, Francisco Pagarete.

Brian Kennedy had with him the man the McCanns had appointed as their ‘co-ordinating lawyer’, Edward Smethurst, a Lancashire lawyer who was a very prominent Freemason in the Lancashire Province of Freemasonry, and a former Grand Master.

East Lancashire Provincial Freemasons Lodge. Edward Smethurst is a
member, was a past Grand Master of the Lodge, and heads up the East
Lancashire Lodge's Masonic Charity for children

So there were these two groups of people at the meeting:

The Murat Team

Robert Murat
Jennifer Murat
Ralph Eveleigh
Sally Eveleigh
Francisco Pagarete (lawyer)

The McCann Team

Brian Kenendy
Edward Smethurst (lawyer).

So what was this high-level meeting all about?

G ROBERT MURAT’S ACTIVITIES BETWEEN 1 MAY AND 13 NOVEMBER 2007

Let us recall first the brief history of this case until 13 November 2007.

On 15 May 2007, Robert Murat was declared the first official suspect in the apparent abduction of Madeleine McCann. One of the contributory reasons for this was the insistence of British government ‘criminal profilers’ who maintained that Robert Murat was a ‘90% fit’ as the likely abductor of Madeleine (35).

On 7 September 2007, both of the McCanns were also declared official suspects, accused of covering up the death of Madeleine and hiding her body.

From 13 May 2007, various members of the McCanns’ group of friends, the so-called ‘Tapas 7’, had deliberately pointed their fingers at Robert Murat as the likely suspect who was guilty of abducting Madeleine.

On 13 May 2007, Jane Tanner had ‘adamantly’ identified Robert Murat (at an identity parade) as the person she had allegedly seen carrying a young child away from the McCanns’ apartment at about 9.15pm on Thursday 3 May (40). Jane Tanner subsequently denied that she'd 'named' Robert Murat as the man she had seen that night, but she most certainly picked him out on this identity parade. There is a very strange passage in Kate McCann's book on the case, 'madeleine', in which she tries to pretend that Jane Tanner didn't really positively identify Murat (41). MMRG believes that this long passage of Kate McCann's book may have been an elaborate attempt to allay suspicion that Jane Tanner's identification of Murat was a deliberate set-up.

Evidence that this was a deliberate set-up is provided by the admission by Jane Tanner that before she identified Murat in that identity parade, she had been coached earlier that afternoon by Detective Chief Superintendent Bob Small of Leicestershire Police, and two key members from the government-backed private company, Control Risks Group (42).

MMRG suggests that these three men advised Jane Tanner to adamantly identify Robert Murat as the person she said she'd seen 10 days earlier. These three men were, we suggest, acting with the blessing of the very highest levels of government, including of course Prime Minister Tony Blair. Blair, incidentally, resigned as Prime Minister on 27 June 2007 - just 43 days after Robert Murat was declared an official suspect. Murat was accused, in effect, of having abducted Madeleine McCann, or otherwise been instrumental in her abduction.

The McCanns and the British government had got exactly what they wanted. Just 12 days after Madeleine McCann had been reported missing, there was an official suspect, Robert Murat, accused of abducting Madeleine. The result was a focus on Robert Murat. Many stories emerged in the media of his controversial background. The abduction narrative was hugely reinforced. It would only start to crumble in August, when the cadaver dogs of Martin Grime, one of the world's top sniffer dog handlers, alerted to the scent of blood and to the past presence of a corpse, in no fewer than 17 locations in the McCanns' apartment (43), in their car, on their clothes and their children's clothes, in their villa they rented after 1 July, and on other objects such as a car key fob and the soft pink toy known as 'Cuddle Cat'.

On 16 May, the day after Murat was made an official suspect, three members of the Tapas 7, Fiona Payne, Rachael Oldfield and Russell O’Brien, all gave statements to the police saying that they had seen Robert Murat in the vicinity of the McCanns’ apartment after 10pm on Thursday 3 May. This contradicted Robert Murat’s version of where he was that evening (44), (45), (46).

On 11 July, these three Tapas 7 members returned to Portugal to encounter Robert Murat at a ‘confrontation’ with Robert Murat, staged by the Portuguese Police at Portimao Police Station (47). It was reported that the room was so small that the knees of the four people were practically touching each other. The three repeated their accusations that they had seen Robert Murat around the McCanns’ apartment after 10pm. Robert Murat continued to deny them (48). Goncalo Amaral was clearly mystified by this strange encounter between the three members of the Tapas 7 and Robert Murat.

Who was telling the truth?

MMRG believes that, on this occasion at least, Robert Murat was telling the truth, and that the three Tapas 7 members were not. As we shall see later in this article, Russell O'Brien, Fiona Payne and Rachael Oldfield/Mampilly were later to admit that they were probably 'mistaken'. But, significantly, this change of heart by all three of them took place after the crunch 'Salsalito' meeting on 13 November 2007.

During the following months, the McCanns and friends continued to maintain that the Portuguese Police were right to have made Robert Murat their chief suspect, albeit that they also pleaded publicly that he should be investigated ‘fairly’.

During this period, Robert Murat’s conduct came under intense scrutiny by both the police and the public. He had suddenly flown from Devon to Faro, Portugal, on the early morning flight from Exeter Airport on Tuesday 1 May (49).

G1 Robert Murat becomes an interpreter for the PJ, for one week

On the morning of Friday 4 May, Murat had pitched up at the Ocean Club reception, met with the Portuguese police, and offered his services as an interpreter. Being bilingual in English and Portuguese, and already accredited as a Portuguese interpreter for Norfolk Constabulary, Robert Murat’s offer to interpret was swiftly accepted. For example, he translated into Portuguese the witness evidence of several of the staff of holiday company Mark Warner and of the Ocean Club (50).

Two contradictory accounts have been offered of how Robert Murat came to act as a key translator in the early days following the news of Madeleine's disappearance.

His own account runs like this. He says he was quietly at home on the evening of 3 May 2007, the night Madeleine was reported missing, eating sandwiches with his mother, Jennifer Murat, a long-time resident of Praia da Luz (51). Although he initially denied it, he later admitted that he must have rung his girlfriend Michaela Walczuk and his good friend Sergey Malinka late in the evening (52).

He says he had no knowledge of Madeleine going missing, even though he admits hearing police sirens after 11pm as they entered the village. He says that he only volunteered to help translate for the police when he says he innocently asked a passer-by, Stephen Carpenter, what all the fuss was about the previous night (53). Carpenter, who had been strolling past the Murat's villa, explained to him that a young British girl had been reported missing. Murat immediately volunteered the information that he had a daughter of similar age, told Carpenter that he was bilingual in Portuguese and English, and offered to accompany Carpenter to the Ocean Club reception to see if he could help with translations. Within hours, he was asked to start his interpreting of some of the witnesses.

But that statement was later challenged after some research by Portuguese journalist Paulo Reis. In a subsequent article (54), he pointed out that Murat was already well known to the staff of the British Embassy in Portugal. He had been an official interpreter for Norfolk Police, an area where many Portuguese flock in summer to carry out work on Norfolk's many farms. A source had informed Paulo Reis that Murat had been recommended as a suitable interpreter to the Portuguese Police by the British Embassy.

Only one of these two stories can be true. MMRG's assessment is that the story involving Murat leaving about Madeleine's disappearance for the first time from Stephen Carpenter looks contrived - and most unlikely. Consider for example these points:

(1) He had been mysteriously called over to Portugal during Monday 30 April and jetted to Portugal on the very next flight, 7am on Tuesday morning from Exeter.

(2) He subsequently lied comprehensively about his movements on that Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, the date of Madeleine's disappearance (see below). He totally changed his story after the Portuguese Police confronted him at his second interview, on 10 July 2007, with evidence from mobile 'phone antennae, and proved that his first account was untrue.

(3) He had lived in Praia da Luz for many years. He was known by some as the 'factotum' of the village. One described him as the 'Dauphin' ('prince') of the village. He would know many people. How likely is it that he heard police sirens or ambulance horns blaring late on Thursday night and made no enquiries?

(4) He later admitted that he had 'phoned both his girlfriend Michaela Walczuk and Sergey Malinka that that night, after he had heard the police sirens, though he claimed he couldn't remember why he did so not what they talked about.

The story involving Stephen Carpenter does not seem to have the 'ring of truth' about it. It seems contrived. It seems more than likely that it was a cover story invented to cover the fact that the British Embassy had engineered Murat's appointment as one of the official interpreters in the Madeleine McCann case.
But one week after being appointed, he was removed from this post, after Inspector Varanda sent Gonçalo Amaral a damning report (55) explaining how Murat had been trying to sneak a look at confidential police documents, asking multiple questions about how the investigation was proceeding, and generally pestering the police with multiple suggestions of how to pursue various lines of enquiry. His behaviour was ‘completely inappropriate for a translator’, said Varanda.

G2 Murat’s 17 lies

On 15 May, when he was made a formal suspect, Murat was questioned about his activities after landing back in Portugal at 9am on Tuesday 1 May (51). However, when re-questioned by the police on 10 July, and after being confronted with evidence from his mobile ’phone antenna ‘pings’ which proved he had been lying when first questioned, Murat confessed that his statement on 15 May was untrue, and proceeded to give the police an entirely new statement, in which he admitted that at least 17 things he had said in his first statement were untrue (56). Crucially, the mobile 'phone evidence proved that he was miles away from where he said he had been on the Wednesday and Thursday. Richard Hall has traced the two routes in his 5th Madeleine McCann documentary, 'Madeleine - Why The Cover-Up?', which may be seen on YouTube, here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TXnZGccqRTk.

The route he described to police on 15 May was totally different from the one he described on 11 July when he was re-questioned. Murat’s excuse to the police was that on 15 May he was ‘too tired’ to be able to remember the truth. No-one believes that poor excuse. It was clear that he had been lying - but why?

G3 What was Robert Murat really doing between 1 and 3 May 2007?

Why didn't he want the police to know what he was really doing from Tuesday to Thursday? And can we even be sure that he told the truth during his second police interview? In his second interview, Robert Murat said that he had been 'visiting some properties', but without explaining why.

It has been suggested that, if Madeleine was already dead by Sunday night, as some suggest, he may have been seeking a place in which to store Madeleine's body. This theory developed because according to the evidence and analysis that Goncalo Amaral received - from sniffer dog handler Martin Grime and from scientists - Madeleine's body must have been transported in the McCanns' hired car, and must have been frozen during the interim period. It is suggested that in the hours after realising that Madeleine was dead, the McCanns, or others on their behalf, could have temporarily stored her body in a freezer. The Ocean Club apartment G5J has been suggested as a possible location, because Portuguese tracker dogs followed Madeleine's scent to that apartment, which at the time was empty.

The suggestion therefore is that Madeleine's body was initially placed in a freezer in G5J, and that as soon as Robert Murat came over to Portugal on Tuesday 1 May, he set about finding a suitable property - presumably empty - where he could safely store Madeleine's body in a freezer. Madeleine's body was then - goes the theory - removed to a permanent resting place after being taken there in the McCanns' hired car, which they hired on 25 May, over three weeks after she had been reported missing. Her body may have been transported from G5J to another location in a blue tennis bag, which afterwards was put in the McCanns' wardrobe in G5A. That would certainly account for Martin Grime's cadaver dog, Eddie, barking furiously at that wardrobe - indicating the presence of corpse scent in that wardrobe. If indeed Madeleine's body had been carried in that sports bag, then of course the bag would become sufficiently contaminated with corpse scent for Eddie to be able to alert to it over three months later.

We would suggest that it is very possible from the above that both the McCanns and Robert Murat were connected with each other - in some way that we do not yet understand - with the disappearance of Madeleine McCann. These are our reasons for suggesting this:

(1) The possibility that Madeleine may have died on Sunday 29 April

(2) The sudden appeal by someone (we are not sure who) to Robert Murat to return to Portugal straightaway

(3) Robert Murat's tissue of lies about what he was really doing in and around Praia da Luz between Tuesday 1 May and Thursday 3 May

(4) We know that Robert Murat had property interests on the Algarve, claiming to police that he had returned to Portugal to discuss with his girlfriend Michaela Walczuk developing an estate agency called Romigen, so called because it used the first two letter of his name and the first two letters of Michaela's name.There is no evidence that such a business was ever set up, though

(5) The fact that Murat seems to have been recommended by the British Ambassador in Portugal as an interpreter for the Portuguese police. Was it just a coincidence that Murat was in the right place at the right time to help with translating witness statements on the morning of Friday 4 May?

(6) The fact that Murat, whilst he was engaged in interpreting for the PJ, took such a keen interest in what was happening in the initial investigation, even trying to sneak a look at secret police documents? - conduct so unusual that he was sacked in his interpreter role within a week.

There is no direct evidence that any of the McCanns and their group were in direct contact with Robert Murat during the three days 1 to 3 May. But there may well have been an intermediary. One Madeleine McCann researcher suggested that there was an unusual coincidence of the mobile 'phones of Robert Murat and Gerry McCann being switched off simultaneously for an near-identical period of 32 hours, but this claim has never been substantiated.

G4 The campaign to frame Robert Murat - Part 1

We come now to one of the most difficult things to explain about Robert Murat, namely, why was he framed? Then there is the conundrum as to whether he was framed without his knowledge, or whether it was with his consent, i.e., was he a willing 'patsy'?

Let's begin with a brief run-through of how he was framed. It is a fascinating story.

The first move that led to Robert Murat becoming the first official suspect in the case seems to have taken place on Sunday 6 May, only the third day in the Madeleine McCann investigation. It came when a young reporter, Lori Campbell, contacted Leicestershire Police, outlining her suspicions that Robert Murat might be the abductor. What she said is clear from this letter, which was sent by Detective Constable Sarah to the Portuguese Police during that Sunday: https://www.mccannpjfiles.co.uk/PJ/LORRI-CAMPBELL.htm

6th May 2007

Sir,

Lori CAMPBELL a reporter from the Sunday Mirror has contacted Leicestershire Police to report the following.

Lori has been speaking to an interpreter who has been helping authorities with the investigation into Madeleine's disappearance. He has only given his name as 'ROR' (sic) and has not given any background information about himself.

Lori has become suspicious of Rob as he has given conflicting accounts to various people and became very concerned when he noticed his photo being taken by the Mirror's photographer. 'ROB' stated to Lori that he is going through a messy divorce.

In the UK at the moment and that he had a three year old daughter just like Madeleine, who he is separated from at the moment. He made a big show of telephoning his daughter in front of reporters, and Lori felt that he was being too loud and making a big thing of speaking to his daughter on the phone. The things that 'ROB' has said to Lori have raised her concerns about him.

Could you please call Lori who is still in Portugal to establish further details to identify 'ROB' in order to eliminate him from your enquiries on 07917 xxxxxx.

Submitted for information

Sometime during the next two days, Lori Campbell was interviewed by SKY News and mentioned her doubts about Murat. She referred to him having allegedly given her misleading information about his claim to have been 'working for the police' [as a translator]. But crucially, also, she made a claim in which she said that Robert Murat's conduct 'reminded her of Soham'. This was a very deliberate attempt to directly compare Robert Murat with the man, Ian Huntley, who murdered the two Soham girls, Jessica Chapman and Holly Wells. Here is a brief reference to her report:

Sky News Ian Woods speaks to a British journalist (Lori Campbell) in the Algarve who contacted police with suspicions about Robert Murat. Lori Campbell of the Sunday Mirror describes Murat as a 'vague character', claiming he lied to her about his role in the inquiry.

As we shall see below, these comments led to a libel action by Robert Murat in 2008.

Let us recall that at this stage of the investigation, the Portuguese Police were looking for an abductor. Jane Tanner had described, on Friday 4 May, a possible abductor, in some detail. She claimed to have seen him carrying away a young child at about 9.15pm on Thursday 3 May.

The next day (Saturday 5 May), a Portuguese man, now living in Germany, telephoned the Portuguese Police saying that a man had tried to abduct his daughter the previous Saturday. His description matched that of Jane Tanner. The man seen by Nuno Lourenco, Wojchiech Krokowski, was swiftly traced and eliminated from the enquiry, which mean that the police were looking for an as-yet-unidentified abductor.

It may be as well to note the following points about Lori Campbell.

First, she had previously worked closely with the McCanns' chief public relations adviser, Clarence Mitchell, on another gruesome case, that of the murder of Jessica Chapman and Holly Wells by Ian Huntley in 2002. Mitchell was then a BBC reporter, who made a habit of seemingly always being first at the scene of many major crimes. The murder of Jill Dando in 1999 was another such case.

Second, Lori Campbell was called on by the McCann Team in August 2007 to write a very sympathetic article about Kate McCann. It appeared in both the Independent (longer version) and in the Sunday Mirror (shorter version). This was at a most opportune time for the McCanns, for in late July Martin Grime's cadaver dogs had alerted to corpse scent and blood in 17 different locations associated with the McCanns - their holiday apartment, their clothes, and in their hired car. News about these dramatic developments had begun to seep out in the British and Portuguese media just as Lori Campbell's article was published. Here is how her article began:

On Saturday, it will be 100 days since Madeleine McCann was snatched from the Portuguese resort of Praia da Luz. Interviewed for the first time without her husband, Madeleine's mother tells Lori Campbell about the criticism they have faced, the support they have received and how she and her family have coped since that dreadful night

After Robert Murat was declared an official suspect on 15 May, he was smeared, no doubt very deliberately, by Clarence Mitchell, the McCanns' spokesman. In a live interview for SKY News, Mitchell was quoted as saying: "An outcome similar to Holly and Jessica [Soham children murdered by Ian Huntley] is possible. I don't want to, and I can't, talk about Robert Murat, but some journalists who worked with me in Soham, and that were now in Portugal, saw resemblances between that case and Robert Murat. And I won't say more”.

He was of course referring to his fellow journalist colleague, Lori Campbell. He was deliberately telling the world that he and another journalist both suspected that Robert Murat was 'another Huntley'.

The extraordinary thing about this is that Murat successfully sued SKY News and other media for this outrageous libel - and others - netting an estimated total of 'over £600,000' in agreed libel damages. Mitchell was extraordinarily lucky that he was not personally sued by Murat. So was Lori Campbell.

We may ask why not? They both committed the original libel of comparing Murat to Ian Huntley. SKY News merely aired their comments.

In MMRG's opinion, the facts tend to show that both the deliberate smearing of Murat by Mitchell and Campbell, and the subsequent libel action, were carefully orchestrated parts of an establishment plan to cover up what really happened to Madeleine McCann.

Mitchell committed his libel comparing Robert Murat to Ian Huntley on SKY News as part of the ongoing plot to frame Robert Murat. Yet Murat never sued him for that gross libel, nor Lori Campbell, only SKY News. It was possibly the worst of all the alleged libels of Murat. And yet Mitchell got away with it.

Why? Probably because he was one of those orchestrating the whole cover-up!

Here is one of the many media articles reporting on the libel award to Robert Murat:

Guardian Article on the award of Libel Damages to Robert Murat

QUOTE

Sky News has apologised in the high court today and agreed to pay "substantial damages" to Robert Murat over a libellous web story and video about the Madeleine McCann disappearance that likened him to an infamous child murderer.

In a hearing in the High Court in London Victoria Shore, counsel for Sky News, said the broadcaster unreservedly apologised for publishing "false allegations" about Murat, a British expatriate property consultant based in Praia da Luz, Portugal.

"My client very much regrets the distress these publications caused and in acknowledgement of that I confirm that the defendant has agreed to pay substantial damages to Mr Murat and also to pay his legal costs," Shore added.

Sky News, which is owned by BSkyB, is to also carry an apology on its website for 12 months. The story, headlined "Journalist reported man to the police", and accompanying video , titled "It reminded me of Soham", went up on the Sky News website within days of McCann's abduction in May 2007.

The video featured an interview with Lori Campbell, the Sunday Mirror journalist who reported Murat to the police, and remained on the site until September this year. The story was removed in April 2008.

Murat did not attend the high court today but his solicitor, Louis Charalambous from Simons Muirhead and Burton, said: "The article and video alleged that there were strong grounds for believing that Mr Murat was guilty of abducting Madeleine McCann. They claimed that, in these early days after the child's disappearance, Mr Murat's behaviour was reminiscent of notorious child murderer Ian Huntley. They also suggested that Mr Murat had deliberately tried to mislead journalists by pretending to be acting in an official capacity for the police."

Charalambous said Murat still lives in Praia da Luz. At the time of Madeleine McCann's disappearance, he had been living with his mother in a villa near the apartment complex where the McCanns were staying on holiday.

Charalambous said his client was, "like many other concerned local residents", involved in the initial search for the missing girl and had also agreed to assist the police as an interpreter.

Murat was given "arguido" or suspect status by the Portuguese police in the early days of the investigation into the McCann disappearance. However, this was formally lifted in July this year.

In July Murat accepted more than £600,000 in damages from 11 UK national newspapers for libelling him in more than 100 articles.

UNQUOTE

G5 The campaign to frame Robert Murat - Part 2

We have examined in detail how, first Lori Campbell, and, second, Clarence Mitchell, smeared Robert Murat as a figure similar to double-child murderer Ian Huntley.

We will now look at how the campaign to frame Robert Murat continued. To do this, we are going to quote from Goncalo Amaral's book 'The Truth of the Lie'. The relevant quotes are from a translation by an English volunteer. What Amaral did in his book was to chronicle the extraordinary conduct of the British police and security services, who descended on his investigation as soon as it started. He felt that he was being swamped by all these police and security service staff coming to 'help' him. There wasn't enough space for them. He had to find them extra space.

The immediate result of this heavy involvement was the Portuguese Police (PJ) being led to believe that Murat was involved in Madeleine's abduction. On Tuesday 15 May, the PJ pulled him in for questioning and, after questioning him, declared him an official suspect for the abduction of Madeleine. We will now see what happened, with the help of Amaral's book:

QUOTE

THE VISITS BY THE CONSUL AND THE AMBASSADOR; INFORMATION IS TAKING A LONG TIME TO COME FROM GREAT BRITAIN

At ten in the morning, twelve hours after the disappearance, the British Consul to Portimão goes to the Department of Criminal Investigation. We inform him of the actions taken up to then and the next stages being considered. He doesn't seem satisfied. Someone hears him on the telephone saying that the police judiciaire are doing nothing. Now, that's strange! Why that untruth? What objective does he have in mind? Giving another dimension to the case? Perhaps, I don't know a thing about it, but this is not the time for conjecture; we have to concentrate on our work, of finding the little girl.

We're not getting any response from Great Britain. We've had no reports on the subject of the couple, their children and their friends, which doesn't help us to tighten up the investigation. We would like, for example, to know if Madeleine was adopted by the couple, which would allow us to eliminate the hypothesis of parental abduction. If the information is not reaching us, it's obviously reaching the British Ambassador. We are astonished by this prompt mobilisation of the English authorities. So, who are the McCanns? Who are their friends? We don't need diplomatic intervention: what we would like, is answers to the questions sent to the British police authorities by Glen Power.

POLICE REINFORCEMENTS

A team from the Central Crime Fighting Directorate (DCCB) arrives from Lisbon, accompanied by their director. I wasn't informed of this decision, but I agree with it. The reinforcements are welcomed, because we must get on very quickly. The experience of these police officers in the field of abductions and the taking of hostages is a plus for the investigation and the ways they operate are largely superior to ours. In addition, their experts are the most qualified of the police judiciaire. From now on, two deputy national directors, assisted by the coordinator of the Portimão Department of Criminal Investigation, will direct the investigations. A few months later, chief inspector Tavares de Almeida was to share one of his convictions with me: if we had remained solely responsible for the investigation, we would have advanced more quickly.

In reality, I don't know. I don't think we can rewrite history with "if." At that time the directorate of the police judiciaire had decided on it, and we had favourably welcomed the arrival of that team. It was about doing our best with these new participants and taking advantage of their ways of working. The motivations behind that decision, whatever they are don't interest us in the slightest.

THE PJ'S DIFFICULTIES IN COMMUNICATING WITH THE MEDIA; THE PRO McCANN PRESS OFFICE.

From the start of the investigation, we ask for the presence of a press attaché to accompany us and take on communicating with the media. The Justice Minister fulfils this request. Very quickly, however, this decision is contested. The reaction of the press itself is feared and public opinion, which might interpret that presence with direct intervention in the investigation by the minister...Finally, the person retained is an investigator, who is not working on the case, speaks English and has some experience in this field. With hindsight, it can be said that it wasn't a good decision. In fact, after the reading of our first press release and the parents' press conferences, the press let fly.

We were convinced that the people directly involved in the investigation should remain distanced from the media whirlwind. We needed help: the police judiciaire would have to engage staff to dissect published articles, focusing on the analysis of press statements from the parents and their friends. But that didn't happen. The media circus was in full swing: all the time, new articles, live TV, a growing number of journalists running around the streets of Vila da Luz.

It didn't seem normal to us either that a couple whose child has just disappeared engages press attachés to deal with their relations with the media. It is not a question here of minimising the role of the means of communication and ignoring that a subject like this stirs up a lot of curiosity, but that constant preoccupation with the management of their communication by the parents, appeared to us, to say the least, astonishing.

THE ARRIVAL OF THE ENGLISH POLICE

After Madeleine's disappearance, the first English police officer whom we welcome to the Portimão Department of Criminal Investigation, on May 5th, is Glen Power, liaison officer to Portugal. The brief of this police official attached to his country's embassy is to facilitate communication between police forces. This is one of a number of pivots on which international police collaboration relies.

I have known Glen Power for a long time. Martin Cox, who had held the job in Portugal for some years, came to the Algarve with Glen when the latter replaced him. I had worked with Glen on several cases of violent crime or linked to organised crime; I was aware of his skills, his great capacity for work, his kindness and his modesty. Our relationship went beyond that of a simple professional connection. I was a bit worried when he told me that he wouldn't be around a few days later. He had a lot to do. He wanted to reassure me by telling me that the language of investigation was universal and that his colleagues would have no difficulty in integrating into the ongoing investigation. No doubt, but personalities are important, as is the information committed to memory, knowledge of the details, the cross-checks that allow us to be responsive to the slightest indications. It's for that reason that, in general, the make-up of the team remains the same from start to finish of an investigation.

Two days later, English colleagues begin to arrive. The main idea was for the English police to place at our disposal two specialists in family supervision and support to be the link between the Portuguese investigators and the McCanns. The National Directorate of the PJ had authorised the arrival of these police officers in the context of international collaboration. Bob Small, an officer from the Leicestershire police, and one of his colleagues meet us to take stock of the situation and evaluate the needs of the investigation before making contact with the couple.

We insist on knowing what our English counterparts have come to Portugal to do. I assign one of my investigators to follow the English superintendent like a shadow and to keep me informed about his actions. I want to be informed of everything he learns, the names of the people he meets and the places he goes to.

Then the two police officers arrive who are assigned to psychological support and communication with the family. Little by little, the number of English police officers grows exponentially. We place at their disposal a room next to our crisis unit, Task Portugal. These are specialists from various police services, including Scotland Yard. Special surveillance teams as well as information and telecommunications technicians turn up with their laptops and various high-tech equipment. Others will come to join us, notably profilers: they will develop a profile of the alleged abductor from which a number of possible scenarios will be constructed. The analysts trace timelines and patterns of connections based on the witness statements gathered. They produce giant summary boards that cover the walls of the offices. They attend all our meetings and collaborate in decision-making. They are the intermediary through which requests for information are sent to Great Britain, and it is they who receive the responses and enquiries.

On May 14th, Kate Healy is indignant about the attitude of the liaison officer, who asks her where her daughter is. Neither she nor her husband accepts anyone doubting their word. The officer will be sent packing - and his colleague too - a week after his arrival. That attitude is, to say the least, shocking on the part of parents confronted by such a situation, that, what is more, is in a foreign country. Those two police officers, who distinguished themselves through long experience in the management of situations of kidnap and abduction, were, all the same, entirely at their disposal; they provided daily logistical and legal support, and afforded them all the help they could have needed.

Curiously, the English do not consider it expedient to disclose the incident and the PJ are not informed. Myself, I only learn of it indirectly. Finally, a solution is found quickly: the two men are replaced by a Portuguese man who speaks fluent English.

During this time, the Leicestershire police continue to receive a considerable number of enquiries that they have trouble sorting and analysing. On May 15th, inspector Ricardo Paiva is sent as reinforcement to the English, who, he says, welcome him warmly and feed him on tea and cakes. Most of the bits of information received from all over the world are of no interest; so, there is no reason for follow-up. People allegedly recognise Madeleine or claim to know exactly where she is, seers, clairvoyants send very confused messages to the police, some well-intentioned, others less so...Rapidly, the sophisticated computer system for managing calls is overloaded. So much effort and so much money spent financing the appeals in the press for witnesses leaves us wondering; we are not convinced of the pertinence of this method that consists of requesting help from the population to resolve a case.

As time went by, we noticed that a certain number of the police officers sent to Portugal were poorly informed about the progress of the investigation. One of them who - like the majority - was coming to Portugal for the first time, was wearing a green and yellow rubber wrist band, bought for £2, which he played with nervously. The inscription read, "Look for Madeleine." Some of his colleagues told him that he would soon get rid of it. As a matter of fact, he took it off as soon as he got properly into the investigation and he had learned about the evidence placing doubt on the theory of abduction.

~ ~ ~

FOR THE PROFILERS, MURAT IS THE GUILTY PARTY

Since Murat's first interview, which they attended, the specialists have continued to refine the profile of the suspect. They have heard about the statement from one of his so-called childhood friends, put on file by the police department: according to him, Murat had an affirmed penchant for bestiality. He recounted his attempts at sexual relations with a cat and a dog, subsequently killed, he states, with cruelty. Moreover, he allegedly attempted to rape his 16 year-old cousin. This individual describes Murat as someone violent with behavioural problems, a sexual pervert, sadist, and misanthropist. We are somewhat sceptical. All the same, according to the English profilers, there is a 90% chance that he is the guilty party. That seems to us to be a bit too easy. We think that drawing conclusions based essentially on the statement of an ex-convict is rather dangerous.

UNQUOTE

------------------------

Why were the British criminal profilers so keen to suggest that Robert Murat was the likely abductor?

Why did Jane Tanner identify Robert Murat as the abductor? - an identification she repudiated after the 13 November meeting at Salsalito' (see below)?

Why were three of the Tapas 7 so keen to implicate Robert Murat as the likely abductor (see below), placing him near the scene after 10pm the night of 3 May 2007 (discussed below)? - and why, after the meeting on 13 November, were they suddenly willing to say they had been mistaken, with the press even suggesting that they may have confused Robert Murat with either Angus Symington or Tapas 7 member David Payne? What made them change their minds?

Also, why was it that when asked a simple question by a journalist in the very early days about whether he already knew Robert Murat, Gerry McCann hesitated, looked away from the interviewer, avoiding eye contact, looked down, coughed, and said “I’m not going to comment on that”? Why did he not just say’ “No”?

These are questions we shall now go on to look at in detail.

G6 The campaign to frame Robert Murat - Part 3: Jane Tanner adamantly identifies Robert Murat as the man she said she'd seen carrying away a child on Thursday 3 May...

...continued in next post...

by **sharonl** 13.10.19 16:20

G6 The campaign to frame Robert Murat - Part 3: Jane Tanner adamantly identifies Robert Murat as the man she said she'd seen carrying away a child on Thursday 3 May


The final move in what appears to have been a highly co-ordinated plan to frame Robert Murat was played by three plotters, and an actress.

The three plotters were Detective Chief Superintendent Bob Small of Leicestershire Police, two men from the government-funded security and risk company, Control Risks Group (CRG), and the actress was Jane Tanner. The two CRG men have since been identified as Kenneth Farrow and Michael Keenan (see below).

The act in question took place during the early evening of Sunday 13 May, just two days before Robert Murat was questioned, and made a formal suspect. The scene was a road close to the house owned by Robert Murat's mother, Jennifer Murat. Jane Tanner was placed in an unmarked police car, with a tinted window through which she could not be seen, and was told by the PJ to look at several men who would pass by the car. She was told to indicate if any of them looked like the man she claimed to have seen at about 9.15pm on Thursday 3 May, carrying a child in pinkish pyjamas.

Pausing there briefly, what chance did she have of 'recogising' this man? On her own admission, she (a) had only seen the man for 3 or 4 seconds as he walked across the end of a lane and (b) she had only seen him from the side. She had not seen his face at all.

Eventually we learned that prior to this rather informal identity parade, Jane Tanner had had an extended briefing with DCS Bob Small and two men from CRG. MMRG's view, on the evidence, is that these three men 'told' her that Robert Murat would be in the identity parade, and told her to make a very definite identification of him as the man she had seen. This, believes MMRG, was a key part of the plan that had been hatched by the plotters - the plotters sent by the British government - to frame Robert Murat and get him arrested.

In the event, she did, 'adamantly', insist that Robert Murat was the man she had seen. This persuaded the PJ that they had 'got' their man. They were sure they had found the abductor. Two days later he was pulled in for questioning.

Now we will dig deeper into the circumstances surrounding this incident.

We now know that on Saturday 12 May, Robert Murat rented a car, which he drove several miles over rough tracks, apparently shopping for 'basic essentials'. He had been placed under observation by the PJ, as Goncalo Amaral explained in his book.

He told the police later that his mother, Jennifer Murat, had needed her car because on that day (Saturday), she needed it for an 'information stall' she had set up in the centre of Praia da Luz.

(Jennifer Murat had set up this stall because, she said, she wanted to 'help' the police in their search for missing Madeleine McCann. So far as we know, she did not do this with the permission of the police. It must be asked: why did she consider it necessary to establish an additional information point when hundreds of police were already in the area collecting information? It has been suggested that she may have decided to have undertaken this project from improper motives. We now know that during the first few days after Madeleine had been reported missing, Robert Murat - while he was interpreting for the PJ - had been pumping them for information about their investigations, and even suggesting alternative lines of enquiry for them to pursue, matters which had led to him being sacked from his position as an interpreter).

The very same night that Jane Tanner had identified Murat as the likely abductor, the PJ went to the District Judge in Portimao, successfully asking for a search warrant to search his mother's house and premises - showing how influential on the PJ was Jane Tanner's identification of Murat.

We will now continue the story of how Jane Tanner identified Robert Murat with extracts from an English translation of Goncalo Amaral's book on the case: 'The Truth of the Lie'.

QUOTE

JANE TANNER FORMALLY RECOGNISES ROBERT MURAT

Before the search, we want to assure ourselves that Jane Tanner recognises him as the individual she saw on the night of the disappearance. She is sitting inside an unmarked car, whose tinted windows allow her to see out without being spotted. The vehicle is parked at the exact spot where she was on the night of May 3rd. Robert Murat, anonymous amongst plain clothes police officers, goes up the road in the same way as the alleged abductor. Jane Tanner is adamant: it certainly is Robert Murat that she saw that night. She definitely recognises his way of walking. But does he resemble the description she painted previously?

One of our investigators, with whom Murat is on friendly terms, is with him in a bar until 2 o'clock in the morning. We are not about to relax surveillance. As soon as he gets home, police officers are stationed around his house in order to monitor all entrances. The crisis unit is buzzing; the teams are preparing for the search. It will be carried out at 7am - the legally designated time - when the journalists are not yet on the streets.

The operation is kept secret. We request reinforcements from the GNR. For the moment, we have no evidence against Murat, only suspicions. If we had been certain that Madeleine was in the house, we wouldn't have had to wait for daylight to intervene. Scenes of crime specialists accompany us in the search for evidence. Outside, two rainwater recovery tanks are explored with the help of divers. We pack up a few items of clothing to send to a laboratory that will carry out the search for fibres, hair, traces of blood that possibly came from Maddie. The cars are also gone over with a fine tooth comb. Laptops are seized and their contents examined by specialists. We find a cutting from a British newspaper, dated 23rd September 2006, that refers to a case of paedophilia.

THE FIRST SUSPECT

Robert Murat is placed under investigation and interviewed at the offices of the police in Portimao from 10am.

UNQUOTE

About a year later, Jane Tanner underwent a so-called 'Rogatory' police interview in Leicestershire. Under procedures for suspects to be questioned in their home country, she and other members of the Tapas 7 were interviewed on tape by members of Leicestershire Police Force. Here is an extract:

OFFICER 4078: “So you were due back on, you were due to have flown back on the Saturday, the fifth?”
Jane Tanner: “The Saturday, yeah, and we flew back on, well the Thursday, it was actually two weeks from the day, from the third, so, whatever”.
OFFICER 4078: “About the seventeenth?”
Jane Tanner: Reply “Yeah, about the seventeenth, yeah”. So I arranged to meet Bob SMALL in a car park at half seven or something at night.  And then, I can’t remember exactly what day the surveillance was, but then there was the, the surveillance when, erm, they took me round the back of the van for the surveillance day and I think that was probably, maybe the Tuesday or the Monday of the week before we went back”.

What is interesting about this is her meeting with DCS Bob Small of Leicestershire Police in a car park. There seems to be something secretive, underhanded about this meeting. We are not sure from her answer whether this meeting in a car park at about 7.30pm at night was the same day as she identified Murat from a police van, or possibly an earlier day.

We come now to an article by Paulo Reis, a Portuguese investigator and journalist who filed many excellent analyses about the disappearance of Madeleine McCann from 2007-2009. Here is his article:
QUOTE ARTICLE BY PAULO REIS

In the early afternoon of Sunday 13 May 2007, Jane Tanner spoke to what she called ‘some of the people that Kate and Gerry brought in’. It has since been established that these were almost certainly two men, Kenneth Farrow and Michael Keenan, from a group called ‘Control Risks Group’ (CRG), a private intelligence agency which appeared to have no track record whatsoever of looking for missing children and seemed to operate covertly and very much ‘in the shadows’. They had arrived at Faro Airport on the flight from Gatwick that very morning. Some CRG staff may already have been in Praia da Luz before that flight. Mr Farrow is the ex-head of the Economic Crime Unit in the City of London Police and Mr Keenan had been a Superintendent from the Metropolitan Police with specialist fraud and investigative experience.

These were just two out of a vast collection of professionals that seemed to descend on Praia da Luz in the days immediately following Madeleine going missing: public relations experts, British police officers, counsellors and advisers, Consular staff and private investigators. It is hard to know how some of them could realistically have been flown in to help search for Madeleine. Some of these people seemed much more used to crisis management than to helping to find a missing child.

Returning to Control Risks Group, the question of who actually asked them to become involved and who agreed to pay for their services has never been made clear. Reports suggest that they were a top-level ‘crisis management team’ who had been brought in by media advisers Bell Pottinger on behalf of Mark Warner. But what seems clear is that their initial mission was to advise Jane Tanner in connection with her identification of the abductor.

It seems probable that she told CRG, as she had earlier told an officer from Leicestershire Police (probably Bob Small), that she could identify the ‘abductor’ if she were to see him in profile and in context.

It seems that no sooner had Jane Tanner finished speaking to the two top CRG men than she took a telephone call from Bob Small, a senior Leicestershire Police Officer already in Praia da Luz helping the Portuguese Police. He told her that the police wanted to see her. He actually made a mistake and said ‘the Spanish police’. It is likely, by that time, that covert plans had already been made to induce Mr Murat to walk across the top of the road, north of Apartment 5A, where Miss Tanner claimed to have seen the ‘abductor’. This situation was thus the precise context in which she believed she could make an identification.

UNQUOTE

We revert now to quoting a few more paragraphs from Goncalo Amaral's book: :

QUOTE

THE EVIDENCE OF JANE TANNER

Continuing with our analysis of information offered to us, one of the group’s members, Jane Tanner, apparently became an important witness, due to what she told us. She said she saw someone crossing the street at dinner time from the location of the McCanns’ apartment towards Robert Murat’s house. [He was later made an ‘arguido’ (suspect)].

This information directed and occupied our work for a long time. This may be an example of how information that is not correct may not only delay the investigation but could even have led to losing the little girl. Jane Tanner insisted on the truthfulness of her account. This led to certain scenarios being developed. But these scenarios were not sustained in reality despite long and intense work being carried out on that arguido [Murat].

There was a discrepancy [about the moment Jane Tanner allegedly saw an abductor] between the statements of Dr Gerald McCann and Jane Tanner. They claimed to have passed each other at only two or three metres’ distance [7 to 10 feet], yet failed to see each other.

How could they position themselves as both being together in quite a confined space, yet both fail to see each other walking by; or, more correctly, one sees the other but the other doesn’t see her? Even the exact location where they supposedly crossed each other’s paths is not very well defined by both.

The precise moment when Jane Tanner chose to make her statement about what she had ‘seen’ and the explanation for choosing that moment, is unreal. That is to say: it is not easy to accept that any witness (from the group), on seeing someone with a child in their arms walking away from the McCanns’ apartment, didn’t act and speak immediately. Then there is her description of the abductor being altered, or ‘perfected’. These reasons mean there is little credibility in what she says.

UNQUOTE

The active involvement of Bob Small from Leicestershire Police and the two top staff from Control Risks Group with Jane Tanner before the identification of Murat is what may be crucial. The account by Paulo Reis appears to be well-sourced and is perfectly in line with the subsequent arrest of Murat.

Yet despite Jane Tanner being so adamant about the man she said she'd seen being Robert Murat, just six months later, she was only able to say: "It might have been Murat I saw, it might not". This statement harmonises with Goncalo Amaral's account that she was 'adamant' that she did indeed positively identify him on 13 May 2007.

G7 The campaign to frame Robert Murat - Part 4: Jane Tanner DENIES having 'adamantly' identified Robert Murat

We have seen above how Goncalo Amaral and his PJ team, having (a) carried out surveillance on Murat (b) been informed by criminal profilers from the British security services that Murat '90%' fitted the profile of the likely abductor and (c) witnessed Jane Tanner 'adamantly' insisting that she 'recognised' Murat as the man she had seen carrying a child on the night of 3 May, were propelled into making him a suspect on Tuesday 15 May.

But we need to pause for a moment and look at claims by both Jane Tanner and Kate McCann that she didn't definitely identify Robert Murat.

We will rely, to start with, on a brilliant piece of original research by Portuguese journalist Paulo Reis, which can be read here: http://

We will quote directly from part of Reis's article:

QUOTE

THE FINGERING OF MR MURAT

On 6th May 2007, a female CID Officer in the Leicestershire Constabulary (Folio 307 of the CD) faxed the “Portugal Incident Room” stating that Lori Campbell, a reporter from the Sunday Mirror, had been in contact. The Officer reported:

“Lori has been speaking to an Interpreter who has been helping the Portuguese authorities with the investigation into Madeleine’s disappearance. He has only given his name as “ROR” (sic) and has not given any background information about himself.

Lori has become suspicions of Rob as he has given conflicting accounts to various people and became very concerned when he noticed his photo being taken by the Mirror’s photographer. ROB stated to Lori that he was going through a messy divorce in the UK at the moment and that he had a 3 year old daughter just like Madeleine, who he is separated from at the moment. He made a big show of telephoning his daughter in front of reporters and Lori felt he was being too loud and making a big thing of speaking to his daughter on the phone. The things that ROB has said to Lori have raised her concerns about him.

Could you please call Lori who is still in Portugal to establish further details to identify ROB in order to eliminate him from your enquiries on 07917 XXXXXX”

The Leicestershire Police were impressively quick in forwarding Miss Campbell’s information to the PJ, in stark contrast to the way they handled some other matters. For example, in mid May 2007, Katherine and Arul Gaspar contacted the UK police. They are both doctors and friends of some of the Tapas 9. They made statements claiming that, while on an earlier holiday with Mr and Mrs McCann and Fiona and David Payne (two of the Tapas 9), Mr Payne, in the presence of Mr McCann, had made disturbing remarks about Madeleine in what might be construed to be a sexual and perverted way.

These potentially critical statements were not reported to the PJ until many months later and then only after the Portuguese Officers had heard rumours and had specifically asked to see them. Although the statements are indexed in the PJ files, they are not included in the CD. This omission has to be deliberate.

Miss Campbell’s report must have hit the hot buttons, because Mr Murat came under suspicion and the PJ intercepted his telephone (see folios 1017 and 1267), picking up some interesting chats with Martin Brunt of Sky TV (see folios 1675 and 1692) but little else except for a conversation with “Phil” a British Police Officer whom Mr Murat asked about the ways mobile telephone signals could be traced to specific locations. Mr Murat’s interest seemed to be whether such tracking would prove he was at home during the critical hours of Thursday 3rd May 2007 and thus tends to support his innocence. There was nothing from the PJ’s surveillance to implicate Mr Murat. However, things were to change and change very quickly.

THE ARRIVAL IN LUZ OF CONTROL RISKS GROUP (“CRG”)

In the early afternoon of Sunday 13th May 2007, Miss Tanner spoke to “some of the people that Kate and Gerry brought in” (believed to be Control Risks Group (CRG) whose two senior investigators—Kenneth Farrow and Michael Keenan— arrived in Faro on the British Airways flight from Gatwick that morning) and told them about her sighting of “the person”.

It is probable (but this is not clear from the CD or from the Leicestershire Police interviews) that she told CRG (as she had earlier told the Portuguese Police) that she could identify the “abductor” if she were to see him in profile and in context.

The involvement of CRG is important. The company was apparently retained as part of a “crisis management” team by Bell Pottinger on behalf of Mark Warner. Some CRG specialists were probably in Luz before 13th May 2007 but Mr Farrow is the ex-head of the Economic Crime Unit in the City of London Police and Mr Keenan an ex-Superintendent from the Metropolitan Police with specialist fraud and investigative experience.

BOB SMALL AND THE SPANISH POLICE

After speaking to “the people that Kate and Gerry brought in”, Miss Tanner received a telephone call from Bob Small (a senior Leicestershire Police Officer, who was assisting the PJ in the Algarve) who told her that the “Spanish Police” wanted to see her! Yes: he did say, according to Miss Tanner, “the Spanish Police”. It is likely, by that time, that covert plans had been made (on some pretext) to induce Mr Murat to walk across the top of the road, north of Apartment 5A, where Miss Tanner said she had seen the “abductor” and was thus the precise context in which she believed she could make an identification.

Mr Small told Miss Tanner to not to discuss anything with anyone, including her husband. She claims she followed this instruction to the letter: but is it realistic to believe she did not tell him anything: or is she lying on this point? If she is being untruthful, why?

Mr Murat was under suspicion but had not been made an “Arguido”. He been around the Ocean Club a lot from 4th May 2007 onwards and had interpreted the PJ’s interviews with Catriona Baker, Stacey Portz , Leanne Wagstaff and Amy Teirney (Folio 457). It is possible that between 6th May 2007 (when his name was mentioned by Lori Campbell) and 13th May 2007 the news that a local suspect had been identified had reached the ears of the “Tapas 9”. It is even conceivable that they knew the suspect was Mr Murat. Unlike her husband and others of the “Tapas 9”, Miss Tanner had never been introduced to Mr Murat.

THE ILL JUDGED“PICK UP”

Arrangements were made for Miss Tanner to be collected by Mr Small and his PJ colleagues in a car park near to Mr Murat’s home: this was probably around 7.30pm on Sunday 13th May 2007 while Dr Amaral waited for news in a meeting room at the Public Ministry, preparing to pounce if Miss Tanner's identification was “successful”.

Miss Tanner dramatizes that she was “worried sick” that the “Spanish Police” were about to cart her off to destinations unknown - and got her husband to walk with her to the rendezvous with Mr Small. If, as she claims, she did not discuss the identification operation with her husband, what precisely did she say to him? What did he think was going on? Who looked after their kids and what did they tell them? It is beyond belief that Russell O’Brien and some of the other “Tapasniks” did not know what was afoot.

Why the police arranged Miss Tanner's pick-up so near to their main suspect’s home was at best foolish and was asking for trouble. On their way to the car park - and just outside his home - Robert Murat (who had met Russell O'Brien on the morning of Friday 4th May 2007) stopped, got out of his green VW van and chatted, showing the couple posters he had made to “Find Madeleine” and generally rattling on about nothing in particular. This was the first time Miss Tanner had been introduced to Mr Murat, but given the events that were about to follow it is amazing she did not cry out “That’s him… that’s the ‘person’ I saw: the abductor”. But she didn’t say a single word.

In April 2008 she told the Leicestershire Police that she was concerned that there “was some strange conspiracy going on” (to abduct her) and that Mr Small had “scared the daylights out of her”. She continued: “But that made me even more suspicious because it was like, so I think at that point, I think I actually spoke to Stewart (Stewart Prior the lead UK Police Investigator in Luz)”. She knows she had spoken to Mr Prior and thus had no reason to believe that she was about to be abducted. Her histrionics in this regard are absurd.

The discussion Miss Tanner had with her husband about the identification charade are very important. He had already met Mr Murat and would be able to identify him and point him out to her. Was it pure coincidence that he [Russell O'Brien]accompanied Miss Tanner  Tanner to the pick up by Mr Small? Was it bad planning that the pick up was just outside Mr Murat’s house? Was it misfortune that they happened to bump into Mr Murat? Or is the whole sequence far more sinister?

Miss Tanner was taken away by Mr Small and the PJ and she says Russell O’Brien wrote down their car registration number, presumably so he could rescue her if the Spanish Police abducted her. Miss Tanner  was driven to another location and hidden in the back of an undercover surveillance vehicle (a refrigerated van) which was driven to a position near the side entrance to Apartment 5A, facing north.

THE IDENTIFICATION OF MR MURAT AS THE ABDUCTOR

Miss Tanner then, apparently, saw three people walk across the top of the road: but Mr Murat was the first to do so. It is not clear exactly what she told the PJ at the time but, however she would like to spin the story now, it was enough to make them believe Mr Murat was the “abductor”, notwithstanding the fact that he looked nothing like the “Egg Man” or her verbal description. The sighting was reported to Dr Amaral and the Public Ministry and plans made to arrest Mr Murat.

UNQUOTE

From the above it can readily be seen that this was a highly unusual set of circumstances, ending with Jane Tanner being 'adamant' that this was the man she had seen 10 days earlier. She identified him not by his face, or his overall build and height but, she says, 'by the way he walked'. (This reminds us of two other alleged 'sightings', in September 2007, by people who purportedly 'recognised' people by 'the way they walked'. These were Martin Smith's 'recognition' of Gerry Mccann and Robert McClusky's, also of Gerry McCann. As we have discussed elsewhere, it is very possible that these two claims were false, and were made on behalf of Robert Murat in order to throw suspicion on Garry McCann, implying that he might have been the man seen by Martin Smith at about 10.00pm on Thursday 3 May).

Before leaving the subject of any advice Jane Tanner may have received from the two CRG men, here are two newspaper articles which discuss how CRG came to be appointed in the first place:

On 24 September, David Brown and Patrick Foster, for the Times, wrote: "Control Risks is a global risk and strategic consulting firm specialising in political, security and integrity risk. Operating from 36 offices, the company’s primary services include anti-corruption audits, consultancy and training, eDiscovery, political risk analysis and a broad range of security and crisis management support". As one CMOMM member pointed out: "This looks more like a company involved in protecting the powerful, i.e. damage control, than a company with expertise in finding missing children".

A later article in the Daily Telegraph reported:

"Present at Kennedy’s first meeting with the McCanns in London [14 September 2007, five days after their return from Portugal - MMRG] were representatives of Control Risks, a firm specialising in security and crisis management. It had already sent detectives to Portugal to see the couple right after Madeleine’s disappearance, at the expense of an anonymous donor whose identity has never been revealed". Link: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/madeleinemccann/11077525/Madeleine-McCann-I-listened-for-15-seconds-and-knew-they-were-innocent.html

Pausing there for a moment, was this 'anonymous donor' Brian Kennedy? He was the one who later claimed to have suddenly jumped in to help the McCanns after learning of their being made suspects on 7 September. But the speed with which he appeared (according to Kate McCann's book 'madeleine') to suddenly become interested in Madeleine's disappearance, and then immediately took over the private investigation for the McCanns, does raise the possibility that he could have been the one to pay for the involvement of CRG from the start.

G8 Did Jane Tanner really identify Robert Murat on 13 May? - What Kate McCann says about this in her book

At various times, Jane Tanner has attempted to 'row back' from her alleged 'adamant' identification of Robert Murat; indeed she has virtually denied that it happened at all.

MMRG believes that Tanner's purported identification of Murat was a key element in the plan to frame Robert Murat. For that reason, Amaral's claim that she was ''adamant' that Robert Murat was the man she had seen on 3 May appears to be very sensitive to the McCanns and Jane Tanner. Hence the need for them both to attempt to deny that this happened.

So much so that Kate McCann devotes a convoluted three pages in her book 'madeleine' to try and explain it. This can be read on pages 133 to 135 of her book.

This, then, is Kate McCann's version of what really happened when Jane Tanner identified Murat as the man she said she had seen on 3 May.

She writes: "...the police summoned Jane to a mysterious rendezvous in the car park next to the Millennium area, refusing to say why they wanted to see her and insisting she told no-one...their behaviour seemed so sinister that she was quite scared".

How, we may ask, does this square with her apparently being comprehensively advised earlier that afternoon by DCS Bob Small and two senior Control Risks Group staff about an identity parade she was about to attend?

Kate McCann continues: "Russell O'Brien [her partner and father of her children] walked her to the car park. On the way, they passed the Casa Liliana, just as Murat was returning to his villa in his van. He stopped to speak to Russ, whom he must have seen around, eager to tell him what he and his mother were doing to help find Madeleine. Jane, who had never met Murat, was not taking much notice...When Russell managed extricate them, Murat said he needed to be off, mentioned that the police wanted to see him".

What this paragraph tells us, first of all, is that in the immediate lead-up to Jane identifying Murat, she was present with him and her husband. MMRG has no doubt that these three were indeed talking to each other shortly before the identity parade. But we doubt whether what they talked about was exactly as Kate has recorded. For a start, how is it that Jane Tanner showed no recognition of Murat at all at this encounter, yet a little while later - no more than half-an-hour or so - she told the police she was 'adamant' that Murat was the man she'd seen?

Kate McCann then describes what happened at the identity parade, which we presume must be based on what Jane Tanner told her, as she (Kate) was not present:

"She was instructed to look out of the [car] window and tell the police whether she could identify anyone crossing the junction of Rua Dr Gentil Martins and Rua Dr Agostinho da Silva as the person she had seen that night. Three men walked by. Two of them looked nothing like the figure she had described: one was blond and tall and the other too fat. The third could have been him, but at that distance she couldn't make him our properly and unfortunately, just as he crossed the road, he was obscured by the car in the space the police had wanted...the police moved the can to the car park opposite the Ocean Club entrance to try to give Jane a better look at the third man, but here he was walking along a path and her sightline was blocked by foliage. By now the van windows were steaming up."

She continues: "[Jane] told the police she could not be sure either way. One of the officers made a 'phone call to check whether she needed to sign a statement to this effect but then informed her it wouldn't be necessary".

Kate's book continues with events the following day, when Robert Murat was featured in several TV news bulletins. She describes the following sequence of events which followed:

Russell said: "That's the man who stopped to talk to us yesterday outside the Casa Liliana".
Jane wondered if it was because of the 'amateurish identity parade' she took part in.
Jane then 'phoned DCS Small to share her anxieties.

Kate then comments as follows:

"It was perhaps telling that Jane had not been required to sign an identity parade".
"The absence of documentary evidence...allowed claims to be made later that she'd identified Murat as the man she'd seen on 3 May".
"This was completely untrue. Jane would have loved to make a definite identification...but the fact is she couldn't".
"The set-up was so inadequate that she was unable even to recognise Murat as the man she met half-an-hour earlier".

We therefore have two conflicting narratives:

(A) The Portuguese Police narrative is simple: "Jane Tanner adamantly identified Robert Murat as the man she had seen on 3 May".

(B) The Tanner-McMann narrative is more convoluted and could be said to run like this: "Meeting up with a Leicestershire Police Detective Chief Superintendent and two senior members of Control Risks Group hours before the identification parade has no relevance to this. Me and my partner Russell meeting up with Robert Murat accidentally and chatting about 30 minutes before the identification parade also had nothing to do with this. The police identity parade was botched. I never got a proper look at Murat. I never even recognised him as the man I'd seen 30 minute earlier. I never said with any certainty that he was the one I had seen ten days earlier".

So there is a flat contradiction between the two versions. We have to choose. We have no doubt in deciding that Amaral's version of events is correct, and that the convoluted tales of Jane Tanner and Kate McCann appear to be an obvious attempt to mask the fact that Jane Tanner's adamant identification of Robert Murat as the man she had seen was an integral part of a concerted plot to frame Robert Murat.

G9 The campaign to frame Robert Murat - Part 4: Three other members of the Tapas 7 claim to have seen Robert Murat lurking near the McCanns' apartment and the Ocean Club after Madeleine was reported missing

What followed was almost as remarkable. Three members of the Tapas 7 then heaped further intense suspicion on Robert Murat by each, in turn, claiming to the Portuguese Police that they had seen Robert Murat in the vicinity of the McCanns' apartment and the Ocean Club in the hour or two following the McCanns raising the alarm about Madeleine McCann going missing.

In Kate McCann's book, 'madeleine', page 136, she writes how, the day after Jane Tanner had allegedly 'identified' Robert Murat, her partner Russell O'Brien was watching TV and "pointed him out as the man who stopped to talk to them outside Casa Liliana [his mother's home] the previous evening". She continues: "[Russell then declared that he'd seen Murat outside [our apartment] G5A on the evening of 3 May, as had Rachael [Oldfield]".

This requires some further explanation. We know that the PJ obtained Russell O'Brien's mobile 'phone and found Robert Murat's 'phone number on it. "How did it get there", the PJ asked. Russell O'Brien told them that he and Robert Murat had been talking to each other outside the the McCanns' apartment in the hour or two after Madeleine had been reported missing, and had exchanged 'phone numbers with each other. We shall return to that subject later.

We will now look at the statements of the three Tapas 7 members who - we say deliberately - heaped further suspicion on Robert Murat...

G9 The campaign to frame Robert Murat - Part 4: Three other members of the Tapas 7 claim to have seen Robert Murat lurking near the McCanns' apartment and the Ocean Club after Madeleine was reported missing - CONTINUED IN NEXT POST

by **sharonl** 13.10.19 16:21

The campaign to frame Robert Murat, Part 4: Three other members of the Tapas 7 claim to have seen Robert Murat lurking near the McCanns' apartment and the Ocean Club after Madeleine was reported missing (continued)

We are told by Jane Tanner (and by Kate McCann in her book) that her partner Russell O'Brien was watching television on 14 May when news footage was beamed across Portugal and Britain that Robert Murat had been pulled in for questioning. The previous day, she had identified Murat as the person she had seen walking away from near the McCanns' apartment on the evening of 3 May 2007. The day after Murat was pulled in for questioning, he was declared a formal suspect (on 15 May 2007). The day after that, Russell O'Brien made a statement to the PJ claiming he'd 'seen' Robert Murat near the McCanns' apartment on the evening of 3 May. We don't know when he contacted the PJ in order to make his statement. It might have been on 14 or 15 May or possibly early on 16 May. Here are some extracts from it:

QUOTE

When asked whether he is capable of recognising without any doubt the suspect Robert Murat, the witness replies yes.

When questioned he says that the first time he saw Robert Murat was on the night of the events currently under investigation, in other words, the night upon which Madeleine disappeared, at about 1.00am in the early morning of 4th May.

That he saw Murat for the first time at this moment in the Rua Silva in front of the apartment where the events occurred, near to the parking area.

When asked whether Murat arrived before or after the police, the witness says that he does not know, given that at the time the police arrived he was not present as he was searching for Madeleine.

When he saw him for the first time the police were on the scene.

Robert Murat appeared in the middle of different people (friends from the group, people from the resort, tourists and locals) who were searching for Madeleine. he adds that he does not know at what time Murat appeared on the scene, nor whether he arrived alone or accompanied, in the sense that when the witness arrived at the scene, Murat was already there.

When asked, he says that as far as he can remember, Robert was translating conversations between two officers and various people who were searching for Madeleine. As far as he could make out at that time, it seemed that Robert was trying to help, in the sense that these people were exasperated with some of the officers. He remembers that all the people were quite upset, whilst Robert was very calm. That morning was the first time the witness spoke to Murat, not remembering whether he had approached Murat or whether Robert had addressed him. They had various discussions including the fact that Robert was fluent in Portuguese as he had lived in the country for many years.

He adds that Robert told him he had a daughter of Madeleine's age in the UK and that Madeleine's disappearance was a terrible thing.

When asked what Murat was wearing that night, the witness says he is not certain but thinks he was wearing dark coloured trousers, he can't remember the colour, and a T-shirt, perhaps dark grey in colour and perhaps a jacket, the characteristics of which he cannot describe. He clearly remembers that Robert wore glasses.

When asked he says he does not know how Robert found out about Madeleine's disappearance nor how he arrived at the scene.

When asked, he says that he had never seen Robert before.

After this morning the witness saw Murat three more times, once on the morning of 4th May in the same street, rua Silva at about 12.00 in the company of police officers. About two days later he saw Murat at the OC reception at about 12.00/14.00. Robert was alone and walking towards the previously mentioned road. The witness says that he (ROB) was accompanied by Rachel. The last time he saw Robert was last Sunday, near to his house at about 20.30. At that moment the witness was with Jane.

He never noticed anything suspicious about Murat except for the last time he saw him when Robert was being transported in a vehicle, a green van with four windows, he does not remember the make, model or number plate and that he stopped, got out of the van, opened the back and showed photos of Madeleine and that he showed himself to be a very important person in the investigation, saying that he was providing immense help to the police in discovering the truth.

When asked, he says that according to his wife Jane, she did not see Murat on the night of the events as she had spent most of the time looking after her children.

UNQUOTE

There are several things that we may note here.

First, it's clear that, according to his evidence, he didn't merely 'see' Robert Murat at 1.00am on the morning of Friday 4 May, he had an extended conversation with him, involving 'various discussions'.

Second, it seems strange that when Russell O'Brien and Robert Murat met again on Sunday 13 May, they again seemed to have had an extended conversation.

Third, by the time Murat and Russell O'Brien and Jane Tanner were chatting together near Robert Murat's house - a 'chance encounter', we are told - Robert Murat had already been dismissed by the PJ (see above) for outrageous behaviour whilst interpreting for them. How likely is it that he would be bragging of how he was 'helping the police to find Madeleine'?

Fourth, if it was true that Robert Murat had really been chatting to Russell O'Brien at about 1.00am at the McCanns' apartment, and had even been exchanging 'phone numbers with him, as claimed, how does that square with him claiming to the PJ that the first thing he knew about Madeleine McCann being abducted was either on the early morning news on 4 May or from talking to Stephen Carpenter, who happened to be walking past his mother's house (both, contradictory, versions of how he heard that someone was missing were given by Murat)?

Somewhere along the line, either Russell O'Brien, or Robert Murat, or both, are not telling the truth.

--------

Let us move on to the statement by Rachael Oldfield (a.k.a. Mampilly) about her identification of having seen Murat outside the McCanns' apartment on the night of Thursday 3 May. She made this - her second statement in the proceedings - on 15 May, the day that Robert Murat was made a suspect. Here are the parts where she describes her encounters with Robert Murat before 15 May:

(Link:  Processos Vol V Pages 1292 – 1297)

QUOTE

She says that the first time she saw the suspect Robert Murat was on the night of 3rd May shortly after they had discovered Madeleine was missing. She saw him for the first time at about 23.30 in the covered area between apartments 5B and D. She thought it very strange as he seemed to be there watching, trying to be the next person to talk to the couples from the group. That immediately, when the police arrived, he introduced himself to elements of the group, namely Russell, accompanied by the GNR, translating all the initial contacts between the group and the police.

When asked, she says that she does not know whether he entered the McCanns' apartment with the police.

As regards the other people searching for the girl outside the apartment, he tried to contact them directly, saying that he had a daughter of the same age as Madeleine, offering to translate whatever was necessary.

She thought this individual’s behaviour was very strange, given the intensity of his presence. In addition, all the people they contacted that night belonged to the Mark Warner resort and he stayed there, in the middle of them, without anyone knowing where he had come from. Because of her profession (personnel recruitment, interviews) she thinks she knows a bit about human behaviour, thinking it rather strange that he introduced himself in such an insistent manner.

She saw that this individual was with the police in the area for some minutes before she lost sight of him. She does not know whether he managed to enter the McCann’s apartment.

She thinks that after this night she only saw him again on Sunday, 6th May in the morning, in the Praia da Luz church, during mass.

She saw him again on 11th May when he was translating some statements at the PJ in Portimao. She thinks he spoke again and wanted to draw close to her companions with great intensity, wanting to talk about his life, saying that he was carrying out work in a house in the UK, that he had a daughter of the same age as Madeleine, that she was phoning him a lot to ask how he was (which she though strange given the girl’s young age), always showing a familiarity that was out of the ordinary.

She always had the impression that thus individual had strange behaviour and that he wanted to impose his presence, trying to take part in everything that was related to Madeleine's disappearance.

UNQUOTE

And now let's look at Fiona Payne's statement, made on 15 May:

QUOTE

Witness Statement - Fiona Elaine Payne - Date: 2007.05.16 - Time: 12H00

Questioned, states that she became aware following various news bulletins - namely on SKY NEWS - that ROBERT MURAT was the main suspect in the abduction of MADELEINE MCCANN.

That upon seeing the individual on television, she recognised him immediately as someone from the night of the disappearance of MADELEINE who had made his presence noted.

That she never saw this individual before, and saw him for the first time, as stated, on the night of May 3rd, around 22H39, [see note below - MMRG] outside, and next to the door of the McCANN apartment in the company of GNR elements, who had arrived.

That at this point, one and a half hours had passed since KATE McCANN had noted that her daughter had disappeared.

Questioned, states that she does not remember the characteristics (type, colour, etc) of the clothes that ROBERT MURAT wore that night.

That she found the presence of this individual at the site very strange, and never got to know what his role was (contrary to other people who were there, and who belonged to the police or the resort). That at a certain time, he said that he was there to help the police but his behaviour was not compatible with this role, in that he looked to be leading the process, stating that he was offering his help in all that was necessary.

That she found his behaviour so excessively strange that she stayed as far away from him as she could.

That she does not remember if he entered the McCANNs' apartment on this night. She does not know if he spoke to GERRY, but is certain that he did not speak to KATE, in that after the disappearance of MADELEINE, the deponent stayed with [KATE] for most of the time in her [KATE's] apartment.

That during this night, she saw him walking to and fro, the majority of the time accompanied by the police, and always with an air of authority, offering suggestions and trying to lead the situation.

That she did not speak to him, and only observed his behaviour. She only came across him at around 23H30, next to the McCANN apartment, when he went there to offer his help in any way possible. She does not remember if anyone was with him at this time.

That in the following days she saw him various times with numerous reporters who were in the locale.

That she did not see him in any other place or situation. States that since the night of the disappearance, she found his behaviour strange, as he wanted to know everything what was happening and gave the idea that he knew everything. He tried insistently to lead the process, especially the actions of the police. At one point, he even seemed to try and lead the police movements with his presence and wanted to translate everything.

That she had never seen him before this night.

UNQUOTE

Fiona Payne gives two separate times for when she saw Robert Murat. The first is 22h39, the second 23h30. The second time appear to be correct, i.e. 11.30pm, because she says she first saw him about an 'hour-and-a-half' after Madeleine was reported missing.

Her statement is repetitive. She repeats that she never saw him before 3 May. She says several times, in slightly different words, that Murat was 'trying to lead the investigation' and almost seemed to be in charge.

We are told elsewhere that the GNR police arrived at about 11.10pm. It seems then, if Fiona Payne is correct, that Robert Murat was on the scene, talking to the police, soon after the GNR arrived.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

We will now run through the main events concerning Robert Murat from 16 May (by which time the three members of the Tapas 7 had identified him as being around the McCanns’ apartment) to 13 November – the date of the Salsalito meeting. The purpose of this section is to give an overview of key events, and gain an understanding of Murat’s character, what he was saying and doing during this period of time.

MRS MURAT’S STATEMENT

Before doing so, we should briefly mention Jennifer Murat’s statement dated 15 May. She says that she and Robert first heard the news of Madeleine going missing when her daughter Samantha, who lives in Exeter, ’phoned her on Friday morning. This is doubtful for many reasons.

For a start, both she and Robert Murat admit to having heard a siren, perhaps a police car or ambulance, after 10pm on 3 May. There were also many people out that night searching for Madeleine. Robert Murat’s mobile ’phone proved that he had telephoned both his friend Sergey Malinka and his girlfriend Michaela Walczuk about 20 minutes before midnight. It seems inconceivable that Murat hadn’t the foggiest idea that night that a girl had gone missing in this little town he knew so well.

On the matter of hearing a siren, Robert Murat allegedly told Martin Brunt that he too heard a siren that night. Brunt said that while in Praia da Luz he did two things: he asked everyone who knew Murat if they had seen him anywhere on the night of the 3 May, but apparently no-one had. Brunt also asked everyone he could find if they had heard any sirens that night - but nobody said they had. We don’t really know whether a siren sounded or not.

Then we heard another two versions of how Murat learnt that a young girl was missing. He said his mother had heard something on the news. Then a story developed that he had first heard about it when, apparently by chance, a guest, Stephen Carpenter, happened to walk past their house on the Friday morning and he asked him what had been going on the previous night. Supposedly he then accompanied Carpenter to the Ocean Club to offer his services as a translator. But then that story was contradicted by Portuguese journalist Paulo Reis’s information that Murat was already known to the British Embassy, who had recommended to the police that Robert Murat would be helpful to have as an interpreter.

So, there are so many different versions of how Murat came to find out that night that Madeleine was missing that it is hard to believe any of them. But then it is MMRG’s case that he rushed over to Portugal on 1 May to help with a cover-up, because Madeleine was probably dead by then. If that is the case, he would probably have known full well what the plans were for an abduction hoax to be carried out on the Thursday night.

In addition, when we look at how Nuno Lourenco identified Wojchiech Krokowski to the PJ as the likely abductor of Madeleine on the morning of Saturday 5 May, we can see the hand of Robert Murat’s uncle and aunt, Ralph and Sally Eveleigh, in the various steps that led to this claim. Krokowski and his wife/partner dined at the Eveleigh’s ‘burger bar’ on the seafront at Burgau, and it seems it may have been Ralph Eveleigh who - allegedly – advised Krokowski to go all the way to Lisbon for the day to buy a record of rare Brazilian folk music, whence comes the one and only photograph of Krokoswki on holiday that week. We recall that Jane Tanner’s description of the abductor she claimed to have seen at 9.15pm on 3 May matched almost exactly the description of Krokowski given by Nuno Lourenco to the PJ.

JENNIFER MURAT’S INFORMATION TABLE

Mrs Murat’s version of why she decided to set up an information table - probably on 11 May, or maybe before - in the centre of Praia da Luz (very near the church where the McCanns attended Mass on Sunday 13 May) is that, quote, “she had been in Portugal for a long time and knew many people, so decided to mount a ‘post’ to collect information in order to be able to determine things about the subject and thus could channel them to the competent authorities”. She said she had been conducting her own searches for Madeleine because: “I know this area like the back of my hand and I just wanted to help”.

In a later interview, a reporter explained that: “She was very concerned about how this little girl could have gone missing”, while Sally Eveleigh, Robert Murat’s aunt (but wrongly described in the report as his cousin), said: “There’s no way he could be involved with Madeleine’s disappearance. I’ve known him all his life - he loves children. It’s true there is a resemblance between his daughter and Madeleine but are we going to accuse the fathers of all children who look like her?”

Jennifer Murat was well known to the ex-pat community in the town. She spoke Portuguese so she could talk to other, native residents. But did she really think someone would approach her and give her vital information about where Madeleine was and who took her? And why did she wait until Friday 11 May to do this? - which may very well have been the day that Murat was removed by the police from his job as interpreter

MURAT SACKED AS INTERPRETER

Inspector Varanda, who was conducting the interviews where Murat was acting as interpreter, had had cause to report Murat’s totally inappropriate behaviour to his boss, Goncalo Amaral. His report was dated 11 May and it is understood he was removed from his interpreting duties straightaway. Is it possible that this is what triggered Mrs Murat to set up her stall? Is this why Murat was in a virtual panic the following day (Saturday 12 May) to hire a car?

Varanda had, in his report, criticised Murat for
1 an unusual curiosity about the investigation
2 insistently and repeatedly questioning him about the identity of possible suspects
3 insistently and repeatedly asking questions about the investigation strategy
4 trying to sneak a look at documents he was not authorised to see
5 being hugely knowledgeable about the workings of the Ocean Club and its garden
6 being hugely knowledgeable about the ‘routines’ of the McCanns and their Tapas 7 friends
7 suggesting lines of enquiry, and
8 suggesting possible suspects.

From these serious criticisms of the inspector, it seems more than reasonable to deduce that Murat had a significant personal interest in where the investigation was heading and what it was discovering. It would be quite reasonable also to state that his conduct was perfectly consistent with MMRG’s view that Murat may have been sent over from England to Portugal to help with the cover-up of Madeleine’s death, and was not only perhaps assisting in finding a hiding place for her body, but also acting as a spy within the PJ investigation, trying to find out as much as he could, and at the same time, obviously trying to divert the police by coming up with one suggestion after another about what line of enquiry they should take.

JENNIFER MURAT’S CONDUCT

Mrs Murat, some weeks after Madeleine had been reported missing - and after her son had been made an official suspect – gave a lengthy TV interview in which she spoke convincingly of her son’s innocence, and a ‘victim’.

She also later accused Metodo 3 of “bribing witnesses to change their accounts” (though she didn’t say which witnesses) and said that she feared they [Metodo 3 and the McCanns (and Tapas 7?)] were “working to frame her son” - which actually chimes with MMRG’s analysis.

She was also interviewed for the BBC’s Panorama programme, shown on Monday 19 November. She re-asserted that her son had never left the villa on the night of 3 May - and also branded the McCanns’ friends ‘liars’.

GERRY MCCANN UNCONVINCINGLY DENIES THAT HE ALREADY KNEW ROBERT MURAT BEFORE THEIR HOLIDAY

Taking questions from the media on Tuesday 22 May, Gerry McCann was asked by a reporter: “Did you know Robert Murat?” He replied: “I’m not going to comment on that”. In doing so, Gerry McCann
1 seemed embarrassed
2 coughed nervously before replying
3 avoided eye contact with the interviewer, and
4 turned his head away from the interviewer…
…before blurting out hurriedly: “I’m not going to comment on that”.

It really doesn’t take a body language expert to realise that the very question caused Gerry McCann embarrassment. He could have answered simply ‘Yes’ or ‘No’. Why didn’t he?

If the answer was ‘No’, that would have been the end of the matter. If he had answered ‘Yes’, that would have no doubt unleashed a flurry of further questions, such as ‘How long?’ ‘In what connection?’ ‘Under what circumstances’, etc.

Why could he not answer a straightforward question? Why did he look so embarrassed? The interpretation that most people have placed on this answer, and his embarrassed body language, is that Gerry McCann and Robert Murat did already previously know each other, but that Gerry McCann was unable, for obvious reasons, to admit it.

THE CONFRONTATION BETWEEN ROBERT MURAT AND THE THREE TAPAS 7 MEMBERS, FIONA PAYNE, RUSSELL O’BRIEN AND RACHAEL OLDFIELD

On 11 July 2007, an extraordinary ‘confrontation’ occurred in a tiny room in Portimao Police Station. The PJ had invited Payne, O’Brien and Oldfield to fly to Portugal to ‘confront’ Robert Murat, regarding their claims that they had seen Robert Murat near the McCanns’ holiday apartment at various times after about 11.30pm on 3 May. According to Rachael Oldfield and Fiona Payne, this was about 11.30pm. But according to Russell O’Brien it was more like 1.00am.

The room was so tiny that it was said that their knees were virtually touching each other. The ‘confrontation’ seems to be a technique used by the PJ, and maybe by other police forces, to try to tease out the truth when two sets of people are giving entirely contradictory versions of events.

The Tapas 3 were saying: “We saw you there”. Murat was denying it: “No I wasn’t”. The Tapas 3 called Murat ‘a liar’. In his book ‘The Truth of the Lie’, Goncalo Amaral merely observed that each ‘side’ stuck to its guns. He described the outcome as ‘inconclusive’.

We put forward these points for consideration:

A Why did the three Tapas 3 members not report their information about Murat to the police before Murat was declared a suspect? They said they had seen him a number of times before 15 May.
B The Tapas 3 each seem to give the impression that they were aware in detail of the kinds of things that Murat was saying to the police, how he was helping the police, his general manner, his reference to his child in England, and so on. But could they have got that information secondhand, e.g. by reading the reports of Lori Campbell on 14 May and others?
C   Could Murat really have been hanging around there as long as one-and-a-half hours? - according to the testimony of the Tapas 3?
D   Were the Tapas 3 instructed by an unknown adviser to make these statements to the PJ, in order to cement in the PJ’s mind that Murat was the person they were looking for?

The PJ reported: “The fourth confronter, the accused, ROBERT JAMES QUERIOL EVELEIGH MURAT, said that it is a lie [fabrication] what the other confronters had said, because on the night of the disappearance of Madeleine, he was not - nor had been - in that place, not having on the night of 3 May 2007 even gone out of his house”.

In a later media interview, Murat said: “They [the Tapas 3] were at the PJ, saying that they had seen me there that night [May 3, 2007]. What I ask is why did they lie?”

Murat was reported by Vanessa Allen to “have told reporters he had been in the McCanns’ apartment in the aftermath of the abduction, translating for the police”. But he didn’t give any dates, so we don’t know when that was. He may well have been referring to the morning of Friday 4 May, when we know he was with police and talking to reporters near the McCanns’ apartment.

He did later tell a reporter: “I helped the McCanns communicate what had happened the night before to the police. They were frantic with worry and frustrated that they were not being understood. I have also been translating witness statements for the last few days from Mark Warner workers and holidaymakers”.

“THE BIGGEST F___-UP ON THE PLANET”

It was during an interview with David Jones, reported by the Daily Mail on 2 June, that we learnt quite a lot more about Murat. In this interview, Murat uttered these now often-quoted words: “Basically, I’m just an ordinary, straightforward guy who’s the victim of the biggest f***-up on this planet – if you’ll excuse the language”.

Murat was talking to David Jones just a couple of weeks after he had been declared a suspect.

Here are extracts from his long report, headed: ‘Robert Murat: Suspect or Scapegoat?, and subtitled: ‘Madeleine - Is Robert Murat a suspect or a scapegoat?’ It was a revealing interview.

QUOTE

“Last Wednesday, while Gerry and Kate McCann were in Rome imploring the Pope to pray for the safe return of their four-year-old daughter, Madeleine, I spent a disquieting afternoon on the Algarve, drinking coffee with Robert Murat.

“Depending on your point of view (and in a tragedy whose every grim twist is played out in the public gaze, everyone has an opinion), Murat is either the most vile creature on earth or the most unjustly vilified…inevitably, every aspect of Robert Murat’s life is being subjected to microscopic scrutiny. And in the absence of confirmed facts, wild rumours are circulating about his life and background.

“If we believe some of what has been written about him, Murat is a pervert who fits the profile of a child abductor all too well… according to unnamed sources, he is a social misfit who visits paedophile websites.

“It has also been suggested that he coldly volunteered to assist in the hunt for Madeleine to glean inside information, and remain one step ahead of the police investigation, just as Ian Huntley did after the Soham murders.

“Weighed with various accrued morsels of suspicion against him - an unexplained 11.40pm phone call on the night of the abduction; a car hired hastily two days later - some close observers have concluded that Murat is, indeed, the monster who took Madeleine, and that it is only a matter of time before he is formally charged with her abduction.

“The story Murat had to tell me raises profound and disturbing questions about the nature of the Madeleine investigation. ‘They held me for all that time, but they didn’t even take a DNA sample from me’, he told me, incredulously. ‘Can you believe that? I would happily have provided a swab’.
Assuming Murat is telling the truth, this is a jaw-dropping omission, and throws the entire forensic operation into question.

“Privately, it will doubtless appal the McCanns. However, a source close to the couple assures me they do not believe Murat took their daughter, regarding him as a ‘sad loner’ whose involvement has distracted attention which could have been usefully deployed elsewhere.

“At the risk of being proved foolish, having spent 90 minutes with Murat - who chatted to me in the bar of his cousin’s guesthouse near Praia da Luz [Salsalito’, the Eveleigh’s house] - I believe the McCanns’ instincts are probably right. Either that, or Murat is a consummate actor.

“In a career spanning 30 years, I have met some pretty despicable characters, but there was no aura of evil about the man I encountered last Wednesday.

“Despite being under such stress that he has lost more than a stone, and has turned from a non-smoker into a 40-a-day man, Murat was reasonably articulate and polite. He even apologised for swearing…his denial of any involvement in Madeleine’s abduction carried the ring of truth.

“At one stage in our conversation he compared his own suffering to that of Gerry and Kate McCann. ‘I’m going through exactly the same experience as the McCanns, so I can empathise with them,’ he told me, seemingly unable to understand that no one - not even a man perhaps wrongly accused of child abduction - could begin to understand their torment.

“Later, when protesting his innocence, Murat made another wholly inappropriate remark. ‘It might sound harsh, but if anyone has broken the law, then the McCanns have’, he said, frowning behind the thick-lensed glasses he has worn since a motorcycle accident cost him the sight of an eye. ‘Portuguese law says that you can’t leave young children unattended. They say they were eating in the complex (the Ocean Club, where the family were holidaying). But actually the apartment is outside, across an alley. So, I’m sorry, but they broke the law. I would never leave my daughter out of my sight…’

“PR guru Max Clifford has offered his services to him, but one wonders, if and when he is cleared, whether even he can salvage his reputation. Ultimately, however, only one thing matters: is Robert Murat telling the truth?”

“Madeleine and their two-year-old twins, Sean and Amelia, were left alone in the apartment, but were checked approximately every 30 minutes. And this provides the first inconsistency in the case against Murat. He says he returned to Portugal, after a lengthy spell in Britain, at 9.40am, on Tuesday, May 1, two days before Madeleine’s disappearance. ‘So I am supposed to have planned the kidnapping of a little girl inside 50 hours’, he told me, shaking his head. ‘In that time, I supposedly identified the apartment where she was sleeping and spied on her, and worked out the times her parents went to dinner each night, then took her away. It’s ludicrous. If you want my opinion, it had to involve someone on the inside, who works at the Ocean Club. How else would the abductor know when it was safe to take Madeleine? Have the police started looking at the people who work there? If not, they should’.

“The [Portuguese Police] confiscated five computers: three belonging to Murat, and two owned by a former business partner. The hard drives are still being examined, but when I ask him about the allegation, reported by the Portuguese Press, that pornography of the most depraved kind has been found on one of the computers, he snapped: ‘It’s scandalous. It’s just made up. Pure fantasy’.

“What is the firm evidence against him? Does his background perhaps offer some insight into the cold-hearted man some suspect him to be?

“Murat denies that Michaela Walczuk is his girlfriend: ‘She’s my partner [in a property business], and we are very, very, very close - but she’s not my girlfriend because she can’t be. She’s a Jehovah’s Witness and she’s still married. I’m not a Witness, but I attend study classes’.

“Murat spent the spring in Sidmouth, Devon, renovating a house bequeathed to his mother, Jennifer, 71. He says it was she who collected him from Faro airport on May 1, a story she confirmed to me. If we believe him, Murat spent the two days before the abduction in meetings about his website. By Murat’s account, he first learned about Madeleine’s disappearance around 7.30am the following morning, when Samantha ’phoned from Devon after watching the news on TV. According to one witness, Murat went in and out of the McCanns’ apartment. It has been suggested that he did this quite deliberately, so that he would have an explanation if and when his DNA was found inside. However, he told me adamantly that he has never been inside apartment 5A, and knows its layout only because he searched a similar flat in the same block.

“All this sounded plausible enough. His manner was less assured when I asked about the late-night mobile ’phone call to Sergey Malinka on the night of Madeleine’s disappearance – a call he initially denied making, leaving some to suggest that the two men were in league. ‘I’ve checked my phone records and I admit they do show I made a call at 11.40pm’, he says, lighting another cigarette. ‘It lasted 30 seconds, so we must have talked, but I honestly can’t remember what about. He was setting up my website, so it was probably that. It might seem very late to call someone, but that’s how we live here. Afterwards, I ’phoned my sister. I rarely go to bed before midnight or 1am’.

“Basically, I’m just an ordinary, straightforward guy who’s the victim of the biggest f***-up on this planet – if you’ll excuse the language,” he said.

“Murat’s gay American designer friend, Tuck Price, 43, who flitted in and out of the room during our interview, hardly helps his cause. ‘When this is all over, I hope he makes a buck or two out of it’, Price said shamelessly. ‘He bloody deserves it’. If Murat does, indeed, ‘make a buck’, we may come to regard him in the same vein as Colin Stagg, who was wrongly accused of the Rachel Nickell murder on Wimbledon Common, for little reason other than that he was a local oddball who seemed to fit the frame. He [Stagg] is about to receive a huge police compensation pay-out”.

UNQUOTE

Pausing there, we can see how wrong David Jones was on the facts of the case. He assumes as facts, for example, that Madeleine was abducted and that the McCanns’ children were being left alone and being checked every half-hour.

Of high significance is the comment from ‘a source close to the couple’ that “the McCanns assure me they do not believe Murat took their daughter, regarding him as a ‘sad loner’ whose involvement has distracted attention…”

Anyone who has studied this case even to a minimal extent will be aware that references like ‘a source close to the couple’, ‘a spokesman for the couple’, ‘a source close to the investigation’ etc. are all, if not nearly all, references to the McCanns’ official spokesman, Clarence Mitchell. But even if in this case it was someone else, this makes it clear that, just two weeks after Murat’s arrest, the McCanns seemed to already know that Murat was not their daughter’s abductor.

How could they be so certain? He had been arrested. His house has been searched. There were multiple references in the media to him being a paedophile and ‘behaving like Ian Huntley’ etc. Plus, no fewer than four of their friends had placed him under extra suspicion. Jane Tanner had been adamant in an identity parade that Murat was the man she had seen with a child walking away from near the McCanns’ apartment. Fiona Payne, Russell O’Brien and Rachael Oldfield had made statements that he had been hanging around the Ocean Club suspiciously from around 11.30pm to 1am on the night that Madeleine’s disappearance was reported. Did the McCanns really believe that Murat had nothing whatever to do with the abduction of their daughter? That he was just a ‘sad loner’?

Of course, if the McCanns knew fine well that Madeleine hadn’t been abducted, then their answer makes sense. Of course they knew that Murat hadn’t abducted Madeleine.

THE CHARACTER OF ROBERT MURAT

The media were naturally keen to get statements from those who knew Robert Murat and could testify as to what kind of man he was. In this section we will reproduce extracts from several newspaper articles about him, to see what we can find out about his character in particular.

In this section we will quote from the Portuguese Police files and from statements made various people about him. Many of these statements were the subject of litigation by Robert Murat which resulted in his receiving two libel settlements, reputedly netting him well in excess of £600,000. We therefore put on record that in publishing these comments about Murat, we do not assert that any of them is true, but we are merely reproducing them to enable readers here to gain a better understanding of the man, his character and his background.

We will refer first of all to two witness statements about Robert Murat given to the PJ which have been made public since August 2008. No action has been taken by Murat, so far as we are aware, to prohibit their publication or prevent their further dissemination.

With that in mind, here they are.

Witness Statement of Carlos Manuel Mateus Costa
Date: 15 May 2007, 4.15pm   Location: DIC Portimao
Profession: Businessman

“After seeing today and yesterday's notices in the media [about Robert Murat], he has decided to give the following statement.

“He states that he has known Robert Murat for about 25 years. That he worked with him at ‘Jacinto & Murat’ from 1982 to 1984. This firm was owned by Robert's father who has since passed away.

At this time, Robert was eight years old. Immediately one noticed that Robert had a strange personality, staying away from people, and not wanting to engage. He had somewhat of a violent attitude. He remembers an episode where Robert, on the veranda on the first floor of the firm, threw vases from that exterior without checking to see if anyone was underneath him.

At this time, the witness lived in Vila do Bispo. He was the neighbour of a British couple, P.L. and P.L., who are now deceased. This couple had a daughter whose name was L******, who was 17 years old. They were friends of Robert’s mother, JENNIFER MURAT. She was always with her son and they would visit the home [of P.L. and P.L.] next to the deponent's in that same village. At this point Robert was 12 years old.

L******, the neighbour already mentioned, told him that Robert had tried to have sexual relations with her mother’s cat. The animal responded by scratching him on various parts of his body. These injuries were seen by the by the deponent given that he [Robert] had visited the Castelejo beach in Vila do Bispo on various occasions. On one of these occasions, he saw Robert scratching at excoriations. He was told by L****** that Robert had killed the cat out of spite. He also states that he witnessed a macabre episode perpetrated by Robert. He saw him once again trying to have relations, this time with the family dog, who ended up being forced into the house, situated in Almadena, Eiras Velhas.

Beside this, he states that when he went to the beach with Robert, he [Robert] would stay away from the rest of the group (about 15/20 metres) and not say a word to anyone the whole day.
He also adds that a cousin of Robert, of British nationality, whose name he does not know, and who lives in his house, has suffered an assault by Robert. For this reason, she left the home. These acts were hidden by Robert's mother, who protected him and who never punished him. At this point, Robert was 16 years old.

He would like to add that according to what he knows about Robert, he was not surprised that he was described as a disturbed person who could very easily turn violent. He is also someone with a sadistic and deviant sexual personality, and who also is misanthropic. This is based on contact with him for 15 years.

He also states that it is his opinion that Robert could have committed a crime of this abduction of a child. That he does not have the capacity of getting involved in a paedophile ring. If he did abduct this child, then the witness believes she may be dead. He concludes this from Robert's violent and deviant personality. He adds still that he also was violent with his mother when he was reprimanded and would react by kicking her.
He asserts that Robert did receive psychiatric treatment whilst in the U.K.

We would venture the following comments on the above.

The witness, Carlos Costa, says he had known the family well for 25 years. This has never been contradicted.

It is clear on the face of his statement that he was very concerned when he had seen the reports in the newspapers about Murat. It appears he reacted instantly. His statement was taken at 4.15pm on the very date that Murat was made a suspect.

His statement is very detailed with many specific pieces of evidence given. It 1s hard to imagine that he had invented them all, or indeed any of them. It would be an extraordinarily wicked thing to do to invent any of these very graphic and disturbing allegations.

Finally, the comments about his relationship with his mother are deeply interesting. We know that Murat has two sisters. It would appear that Murat may have gravitated to his mother in Portugal while, as far as we know, his sisters stayed in England. It seems that in his teenage years at least, he was being brought up just by his mother, without any other siblings.

Carlos Costa tells us that some of the very graphic and disturbing incidents he describes “were hidden by Robert's mother, who protected him and who never punished him”, adding that “he also was violent with his mother when he was reprimanded and would react by kicking her”. The picture he gives us is of a mother who was frightened by, and dominated by her son. This may be relevant when considering the various statements she has made about him.

We know also that there is another, anonymous witness, who contacted the PJ to tell them that Murat had child sexual abuse images on his computer.

We will now look at some other reports.

Vanessa Allen and Martin Fricker filed this report in the Daily Mirror on 28 May (extracts):

“The family of missing Madeleine McCann were being protected from some horrific aspects of the inquiry last night. Child porn is believed to have been found on the computer of sole suspect Robert Murat, 33. Detectives also discovered links to depraved websites featuring other sickening images”.

In an article ‘MY TALKS WITH COP QUIZ MAN’, Vanessa Allen made these comments about Murat:

“Murat had a reputation, not only in the car trade but in Hockering, as something of a Good Samaritan”.

She continued:

“In April 2005, he joined the Remax property company [in Portugal] and worked there on two separate contracts during 2005 as a sales executive. He was well liked and fondly remembered, but left suddenly stating that he had to go for personal reasons. It was whilst working at Remax that Murat became instantly attracted to another member of the sales staff, Michaela Walczuk, a blonde German divorcee Jehovah’s Witness”.

“Mr Murat was a ubiquitous figure in the first few days after the crime. Journalists found him helpful in the extreme. On the Sunday after the disappearance, he expressed concerns that the supermarket’s early closure would leave the media without supplies and arranged for bottles of water to be put in the car park of the apartment where Madeleine disappeared. Mr Murat also distributed a business card with his face on it and the company name Portuguese Homes. But despite his initial presence at the scene, he was unwilling to be photographed…”

“To those who know him, there is something remarkably familiar about the story of how the first suspect in the Portuguese police investigation was unusually keen to help at the scene of Madeleine’s disappearance. Gareth Bailey also found Mr Murat ‘overly helpful’ when they worked together for four years at the Inchcape Autoparc used car dealership in Norwich. ‘He was [one of those] people who likes to get involved with everything,’ said Mr Bailey. ‘Sometimes at work I had to tell him to go away in a friendly way. Mr Murat would spend up to four hours with a single customer and ‘catered for every single issue’, Mr Bailey said”.

“Carla Cunha, 35, a Portuguese factory worker, said Mr Murat had helped him find work at the local Bernard Matthews plant in Great Witchingham”.

“But among journalists he was regarded with suspicion. A joke began spreading among the press pack that he was the ‘prime suspect’. And the joke spread to Mr Murat as well, with him introducing himself as the chief suspect, SKY News’s Ian Woods said in Portugal. Woods said that…people began to ask who he was. After a few days people were getting a bit suspicious as to who he was and why he was around so much”.

The subsection 'THE CHARACTER OF ROBERT MURAT' continues in the next post...

by **sharonl** 13.10.19 16:22

CONTINUED...

Vanessa Allen’s report continued:

“There were reports in the Portuguese press yesterday that police photographed Murat and Malinka together in the days after Madeleine vanished. Tuck Price, a Murat family friend, said this was ‘absolutely not’ sinister. He added: “It’s possible, of course. They would probably have a coffee and talk about the website”.

In her report was further opinion about Murat from Norfolk people who knew him:

“Posters proclaiming Murat’s innocence were yesterday put up around the Norfolk village where he used to live with estranged wife Dawn and their daughter Sofia, four. The A4-sized posters were placed by Murat’s Portuguese friend Carla Cunha on front doors, fences, a bus shelter, and the village hall in Hockering, Norfolk. The posters show his face and say: ‘Rob is innocent. Please Rob be strong for Sofia. She love you very much’.”

“Charlotte Pennington claims to have seen Murat outside the Ocean Club reception as the first big search party was being assembled. She told the Daily Mail: ‘He was outside the lobby just before we started on our big search. He was adamant that he wasn't there. But he was. He was there in the road, he was just looking. It was about 10.30. He was just watching. I didn't know his name then. But the next day he was our interpreter and I met him then. He didn't take part in the searches, but he was there’.

“Since Murat’s arrest, the McCanns have said they have no memory of even meeting him. One family member said: ‘He is talking lies and rubbish’. But it is what he said next that really set my alarm bells ringing. Murat was reluctant to tell me what he did for a living when I asked. After pausing for several seconds, he said: ‘I’m in real estate. I’ve just bought a couple of properties in the Algarve which I’m doing up’. Why all the mystery? At this point I still knew him only as Robert, so I asked him his surname. Again he stonewalled. ‘It’s not important’, he blustered. ‘I’m no one really. I’d rather not say’. While we had been speaking, Sunday Mirror photographer Alban Donohoe had taken our picture. Minutes after we said goodbye, Murat came back to our car, agitated. He was desperate for Alban to erase the photos. He was polite as always, but I sensed panic in his voice and it made me uneasy. Why would a man so apparently keen to attract attention suddenly be so concerned about a couple of pictures? Like so much else about him, it just didn’t add up. Later, as we drove past I deliberately glanced at him and waved goodbye. He was holding court as usual at the centre of a dozen film crews. He stood, hands on hips, just yards from the police tape which cordoned off the crime scene. But as he caught my eye, he appeared to freeze for just a moment and his expression changed to one of a man exposed. My encounter with him played on my mind that night. I rang my office in London and we agreed I should pass on my concerns”.

Pausing there, the comment by the McCanns and their friends that they ‘had no memory of meeting Murat’ seems curious, since there is at least evidence that he was closely mingling with police very near the McCanns’ apartment on the morning of Friday 4 May. And we know that Russell O’Brien admitted to having exchanged ’phone numbers with Robert Murat, apparently on the morning of 4 May, after police asked him why he had Murat’s number.

The Sun reported on 28 May: ‘Maddie suspect had kid porn’.

These are extracts from their report:

“He lives yards from the Portuguese holiday flat where Maddie, four, was snatched. A police source said: ‘Examination of Mr Murat’s computer has confirmed an unhealthy appetite for deeply disturbing material. There is no direct link between what was found and Madeleine. But officers are describing it as a ‘relevant sexual history’.

“Murat’s ex-boss Paul Titcombe, 49, of Taverham, Norfolk, met Murat while working at a local Bernard Matthews factory in 1999. He said Murat had at least two affairs with women at the plant. Paul later employed him as a car salesman at a garage. He said: ‘We got matey, but there’s a coldness and distance to him’.”

“Titcombe called him ‘a huge porn fan, addicted to women’. Garage owner Paul, of Norwich, said Murat once terrified a female colleague at the Bernard Matthews factory by stalking her. Earlier, Titcombe gave an insight into his character. He told how the suspect astonished pals by leaping on kids bouncy castles at parties. Paul Titcombe said: ‘Instead of mingling, he’d go straight to the bouncy castle and jump around. He got a bit of a name for himself. It seemed like a fixation’.”

A part of the Sun’s report has since been removed from the website. It read:

“Titcombe continued to say that all the women hated him [Murat] and that he suspected he had an ‘unhealthy’ interest in children.

Another news report has also since been deleted, it read:

“The Sun hears from Murat’s former work colleague Ji Stanton. Says he: ‘If he didn’t take his medication, he could be very Jekyll and Hyde. People did see him as creepy’. Ji once accused Murat of trying to nick his sale: ‘Rob just flipped out in seconds. He went berserk, eyes bulging. I was freaked out’.”

These comments came in a report by Lori Campbell and Olga Krepysheva in the Sunday Mirror on 3 June, titled: ‘Suspects did talk after abduction – Exclusive: The Search for Madeleine Day 31.

“The two men at the centre of the investigation into Madeleine McCann’s abduction both misled police, the Sunday Mirror can reveal. Chief suspect Robert Murat and Russian IT expert Sergey Malinka DID talk by ’phone the night she disappeared. Previously they had insisted otherwise.

“‘This Englishman called Sergey on his mobile exactly after the little girl was kidnapped. I heard it was about 11.30pm that day’. Retired teacher Lilia, 71, said Malinka made the confession about the call to his dad Igor. She said: ‘It was Igor who told me all this and later Sergey even forgot somebody called him at that hour and what it was about. But then the police came and took away his car and his computers. The car is back now but not his computer hard drive yet’.”

A report based on an interview with Dawn Murat appeared in the Dereham Times (a Norfolk paper) on 23 May, headed: ‘Dawn Murat: My ex-husband is innocent’. It read:

QUOTE

“Dawn Murat this week insisted that she had ‘no doubt at all’ of ex-husband Robert’s innocence in any involvement in the disappearance of Madeleine McCann.

“A fierce bidding war erupted outside the house shortly afterwards as the main Sunday tabloids clamoured for an interview, waving cheques for tens of thousands of pounds.

“In Hockering, posters have been put up protesting Murat’s innocence. And in a second local link to the biggest news story of the year, it has been revealed that until Easter, Father John Wilson, of Wells, was priest at the church at Praia da Luz which has been visited daily by the McCann family since little Maddie was snatched. Father John said: “A number of the congregation have spoken to me about him and have expressed shock and surprise at this”.

UNQUOTE

It is not clear when Father John Wilson left Praia da Luz, although we do know that he was replaced by Father Haynes Hubbard, who arrived very suddenly from Canada in Praia da Luz on 6 May 2007. His wife Susan Hubbard soon became a very close friend of Kate McCann. She spent many short holidays with the Hubbards in the years after Madeleine had been reported missing.

The weekly Algarve online newspaper, getrealweekly, were still advertising ‘Holy Communion’ at 12pm with Rainbow Club, for children, at Sra da Luz (the church on the beach), conducted by Fr. John Wilson throughout May 2007.

A report in the Daily Mail, 15 May, said: “For the last few days Mr Murat had helped out the media. He has a very friendly relationship with the police.”

The following report appeared in the Sunday Mirror of 27 May, headed: ‘Murat’s wife talks about their relationship - The Search for Madeleine, Day 25, Exclusive. My life with the suspect by his wife’, by Grant Hodgson, Nick Owens and Tom Hendry

‘He dumped me in phone call’

“A thousand miles away in Portugal, Robert Murat picked up the phone to call wife Dawn back in Britain. He was ringing to say he was dumping her. Just a few days earlier he had burst into tears when the couple were forced to part briefly while Dawn visited relatives. Weeping Murat had dropped Dawn and their daughter Sofia at Faro Airport - then tearfully pledged to join them in Norfolk once he had tied up some business. Less than a week later, Dawn’s world fell apart when he called to say: ‘I’m not coming to see you. And I don’t want you to come back to Portugal either’. ‘I went to pieces’, Dawn says. ‘I begged him to let us try to make it work, but that was it. I felt as though he had abandoned me and Sofia…’”

The report continues:

“She met Murat at Christmas in 1993. Dawn says: ‘I thought Rob was good looking, young…I realised I had feelings for him…the friendship turned into a romance…Rob was a great lover…it was a normal, healthy physical relationship. He was thoughtful and sensitive.’. The romance went from strength to strength and they eventually married”.

But the report then continued:

“Unconfirmed reports in Portuguese newspapers have alleged that police believe Murat has an interest in ‘depraved’ sexual imagery”.

The report raised a question about why Murat, who had access to both his own and to his mother’s car, was so keen to get hold of a hire vehicle two days [should be nine days – MMRG] after he was arrested. Dawn Murat was very ready to give this innocent explanation: “He has problems with his own car quite regularly. He’s in the property business and needs transport”.

An article in the Daily Express on 14 September referred to an allegation that Murat and the McCanns already knew each other. It was alleged that they had met whilst canvassing together for the Labour Party. Murat told the Express: “I’ve never met the man before and the idea that I’d met him when he was campaigning for the Labour Party is laughable. I’ve been a Conservative all my life”.

The Express article continued: “Despite Murat’s reluctance to make a public statement, he stated that ‘It’s ruined my life. It’s made things very difficult for my family here and in Britain. The only way I’ll survive this is if they catch Madeleine’s abductor’. Murat also stated that he was being made a ‘scapegoat’ so that the Police could be seen to have found a suspect”.

SUMMARY - AND QUESTIONS

We have seen above that four members of the Tapas 7, between 13 and 16 May, deliberately placed Robert Murat under suspicion.

We saw that at a meeting in Portimao Police station on 11 July three of them continued to insist the Robert Murat was hanging around the McCanns’ apartment between 11.30pm and 1.00am the night Madeleine was reported missing.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

We have seen that there have been multiple concerns about Robert Murat’s character.

We also saw that very early on, despite all of that, the McCanns were able to tell a journalist, just two weeks after Murat was made a suspect, that they didn’t think that Murat had anything to do with Madeleine’s disappearance.

And we saw that Murat characterised his arrest not so much as a ‘gross injustice’ or an ‘outrage’, but a ‘f___-up’. Did he perhaps mean that some plan had gone horribly wrong?

And now some questions:

Why were the British criminal profilers so keen to suggest that Robert Murat was the likely abductor?

Why did Jane Tanner identify Robert Murat as the abductor? - an identification she repudiated after the 13 November meeting at Salsalito' (see below)?

Why were three of the Tapas 7 so keen to implicate Robert Murat as the likely abductor, placing him near the scene after 10pm the night of 3 May 2007 (discussed below)? - and why, after the meeting on 13 November, were they suddenly willing to say they had been mistaken, with the press even suggesting that they may have confused Robert Murat with either Angus Symington or Tapas 7 member David Payne? What made them change their minds?

Also, why was it that when asked a simple question by a journalist in the very early days about whether he already knew Robert Murat, Gerry McCann hesitated, looked away from the interviewer, avoiding eye contact, looked down, coughed, and said “I’m not going to comment on that”? Why did he not just say’ “No”?

SECTION H: 'HOW NEWS OF THE SALSALITO MEETING EMERGED' - AND THE OTHER SECTIONS - FOLLOW IN THE NEXT POST
seq IS ON THE NEXT POST

by **sharonl** 13.10.19 16:22

H HOW NEWS OF THE SALSALITO MEETING EMERGED

Brian Kennedy’s involvement in the investigation into the disappearance of Madeleine McCann has been controversial. An article by Mark Hollingsworth in the Evening Standard in August 2009 claimed that “The involvement of Brian Kennedy and his son Patrick in the operation was counter-productive, notably when they were questioned by the local police [in Portugal] for acting suspiciously, while attempting a 24-hour ‘stake out’.” The Evening Standard article also showed that, later, the relationship between Metodo 3 and the Portuguese police had ‘completely broken down’. Hollingsworth claimed that key witnesses were questioned ‘far too aggressively’ by Kennedy’s investigators, so much so that ‘some of them later refused to talk to the police’. Interference with witnesses to that extent could amount to a criminal offence. We are not aware that any other nation allows people to interfere with potential witnesses in an investigation in such a way as to cause them to refuse to testify, as Mark Hollingsworth in his article claimed had happened in this case.

Less than two weeks after the meeting between Brian Kennedy, his entourage and the Portuguese Police at Portimao Police Station, the Portuguese press was abuzz with a rumour that Brian Kennedy had had a further, secret, meeting with Robert Murat that very day (13 November). This was extraordinary news. Murat was the chief suspect for having allegedly abducted Madeleine. The McCanns and their Tapas 7 friends had been accusing him of lying about his whereabouts after 10.00pm in Praia da Luz. Brian Kennedy earlier that day had been telling the PJ that they should follow up a claim by a lorry driver that he may have seen Murat’s girlfriend handing Madeleine over a fence near the Spanish border. What business could Kennedy and Edward Smethurst possibly have with Robert Murat? He was basically alleging that Robert Murat’s girlfriend may have been passing Madeleine in a bundle over a fence (Allegation 3 above)!

It was Francisco Pagarete, Mr Murat’s Portuguese lawyer - the one whom he was so anxious to see when he flew out to Praia da Luz on 1 May - who first confirmed on the record that a second meeting involving Brian Kennedy on 13 November 2007 took place at Mr Murat’s uncle’s house in the Algarve. He told the BBC: “[Brian Kennedy] came here to give his support to Robert and to say he doesn’t believe Robert was involved in this story in any way or in any sense. And he asked if Robert could help the investigation for the finding of Madeleine in any way”. Mr Pagarete added that Mr Kennedy had ‘promised to stay in touch with Mr Murat’ but ‘had not contacted him since’. Mr Pagarete also confirmed that Edward Smethurst was at the meeting.

If all of this tale is correct, then in the daytime on 13 November, Kennedy and his Metodo 3 men were virtually accusing Murat and his girlfriend of abducting Madeleine, but then by the evening were sitting down to a cosy dinner with Robert Murat himself, and his family, offering his ‘support’ to him, telling him he wasn't involved, and asking him to help find Madeleine!

One could hardly make this up. What a woeful tale of deliberate lies surrounded these two meetings on 13 November 2007!

The Portuguese paper Journal de Notícias appeared to have some additional information about this meeting. Their report, early in 2008, said: “The meeting - a dinner that Brian Kennedy asked to be discreet and far away from the eyes of the press - took place at the end of last year at a house of Murat's relatives in Burgau (Vila do Bispo). At the dinner were Robert Murat and Kennedy, their respective lawyers, Jennifer Murat and the aunt and uncle of Murat” [NOTE: This would be Ralph and Sally Eveleigh, Murat’s uncle and aunt].

The Eveleighs ran ‘Salsalito’, the eight-room guest house at Vila do Bispo, Burgau” - which specialised in holidays for adults without children.

I   ANALYSIS

What was discussed at this meeting that Kennedy didn’t want the press to know about?

Let’s take Portuguese lawyer Francisco Marco at his word for a moment. He says that Kennedy and Smethurst came over so that Kennedy could
A – tell Robert Murat that he and the McCanns didn’t think he had anything to do with the Madeleine McCann case
B – to give Murat their ‘support’
C – to ask him to help find Madeleine.

Why on earth would lawyers be needed for him to say those three things?

Indeed, why would it even be necessary to visit them at all? Surely this could all have been said in a five-minute ’phone call?

No, surely something much, much bigger must have been at stake for five people plus a top lawyer from each country, to have met up for dinner that evening.

For months the McCanns and their Tapas 7 friends had been at loggerheads with Robert Murat. Yet, after this meeting, peace soon broke out between the two camps.

Less than four months later - on 8 March 2008 - the McCanns were awarded £550,000 in libel damages. Later, on 17 July 2008, Robert Murat netted an estimated £600,000 in libel damages, followed shortly by an estimated £100,000 libel damages each to his future wife Michael Walczuk and his friend Sergei Malinka. Then on 16 October 2008, the Tapas 7 gratefully accepted a total of £375,000 libel damages between them. These twelve people had netted a grand total of £1,725,000 between them.

The McCanns and their Tapas 7 friends began to make public statements that they no longer believed that Robert Murat had anything to do with Madeleine’s disappearance (see below).

There was one other matter that seemed to have been settled by this ‘Salsalito Summit’.

J THE SMITHMAN SIGHTING AND THE ‘SALSALITO SUMMIT’

On 16 May 2007, precisely 13 days after Madeleine McCann was reported missing, an Irishman, Martin Smith, from Drogheda, telephoned the Irish police. He and his family, numbering nine in all, had all - apparently - collectively remembered that day that they had seen a man, heading towards the beach in Praia da Luz, carrying a blonde child, looking like Madeleine McCann, at around 10pm on 3 May, the very time that the McCanns themselves had been raising the alarm about Madeleine being missing.

Martin Smith and his two children fly to Portugal

Of one thing Martin Smith was remarkably sure: he said that the man he and his family had seen was definitely not Robert Murat, because he knew him well. How well, we still do not know. His call to the Irish police was made a whole 13 days after Madeleine McCann was reported missing. Why the delay? The Smiths were at a loss to explain, giving several different reasons why they only acted the day after Robert Murat was declared a suspect. This was despite hourly coverage of Madeleine’s disappearance on the TV media, and wall-to-wall coverage in Portuguese, British and Irish newspapers. The Smith family visited Praia da Luz three times a year and may have had a ‘timeshare’ at the Estrela da Luz, where they stayed. Most of the family were in Praia da Luz itself until 9 May - six days after Madeleine was reported missing - yet said nothing to the PJ.

The Portuguese Police decided to follow up this report by asking the Smiths to fly over to Portugal to make statements. Martin Smith went with his son, Peter, an adult, and his youngest daughter, Aoife, aged just 12. The three of them gave the police descriptions of this man which to an astonishing degree resembled earlier descriptions (a) of a man allegedly seen by Jane Tanner at 9.15pm on Thursday 3 May and (b) of a man (subsequently identified as Wojchiech Krokowski) who allegedly tried to kidnap the daughter of local man, Nuno Lourenco, on nearby Sagres beach on Sunday 29 April.

Jane Tanner had told the police about her alleged sighting on 4 May. The following morning (Saturday 5 May), Nuno Lourenco had telephoned the Portuguese Police, just as his plane was taking off, bound for Poland, at the end of his holiday. The descriptions of the two men were near-identical, so much so that Gonçalo Amaral contacted INTERPOL, and the German and Polish Police, to intercept Krokowksi and question him.

Although the three members of the Smith family gave details about the man’s age, his hair colour, his build, and the clothes and shoes he was wearing, they admitted that they’d only seen him for a second or two as they walked up past him through a weakly-lit street in the darkness. Each of the three told the police that there was no way they would ever be able to recognise him again.

Martin Smith claims the man he saw was Gerry McCann

On 20 September 2007, Martin Smith made another remarkable telephone call. This call, again to the Irish Police, was to tell them that the man he and his family had remembered seeing on 3 May 2007 was actually Gerry McCann!

He said that he had been watching the TV news on 9 September - 11 days earlier - and could tell by the way Gerry McCann was carrying his son Sean off the plane and the general way he walked that he was the man he’d seen 143 days earlier on 3 May. He said he had ‘agonised’ before making this telephone call.

It was a remarkable claim, and an amazing change of mind. All those 143 days ago, he had briefly seen the face of a man in the dark. Now, on the basis of a few seconds’ television footage, he said he was ’60-80% sure’ that he had seen Gerry McCann at 10.00pm on Thursday 3 May. Not by his face, but by ‘the way he was carrying his son on his left shoulder’.

It is this claim that has led a handful of people who closely follow the Madeleine McCann case to regard this as absolute ‘proof’ that the Smiths had seen Gerry McCann carrying Madeleine the very night she was reported missing.

The McCluskeys make a similar claim about ‘recogising’ the McCanns

However unlikely it was that Martin Smith had really ‘recognised’ Gerry McCann from this short TV clip, it became clear later that another man, Richard McCluskey had, just a few days earlier, made a near-identical, claim based on the same TV clip. He had seen a man carrying a child early on Saturday 5 May, and told police about it. Now, four months later, he claimed to Leicestershire Police that seeing Gerry McCann carrying Sean off the plane on a TV clip ‘remind him’ of Gerry McCann.

His wife Susan was even more definite. She claimed to police, on the basis of the same TV clip, to have ‘recognised’ Kate McCann as the woman she’d seen with the man-and-child back on 5 May 2007.

Richard McCluskey and his wife had been on holiday in Praia da Luz during the same week the McCanns were there.

On 9 May 2007, Richard and Susan McCluskey made statements to Leicestershire Police about a ‘dark-skinned’ man they had seen in the village of Alvor early (1.50am) on Saturday 5 May 2007 (two days after Madeleine’s reported disappearance) whom they thought were acting suspiciously.

Mr McCluskey said that he’d seen the male alighting from a white van and walking along a road carrying what appeared to be a ‘motionless child’. He then said he saw a distressed female run down a road and approach the same white van. His wife Susan had confirmed the sighting. The Portuguese Police swiftly investigated the sighting and soon established that the couple in question were Ukrainians from Alvor with a blonde daughter who attended the ‘A Flor’ crèche in Portimao.

But on 12 September 2007, Richard McCluskey again contacted Leicestershire Police
He made this statement

QUOTE

I am the above named person and I live at an address known to Police. In early May 2007 myself and my wife were on holiday in Portugal. I have already provided a witness statement in relation to the disappearance of Madeleine McCann. I would like to add the following;

The events of the past week or so, with the McCanns being very much in the news, have triggered my memory in relation to the incident.

In my original statement I described a distressed female who ran down a road towards a white van I had described.

Having viewed recent news footage of Mrs McCann I am now almost certain that she is the female I described as being in a distressed state. I say this because of her slight build, high cheekbones and her eyes and hairstyle.

I've agonised for days over whether or not to contact the police about this because it is a terrible thing to accuse somebody of. It had just not crossed my mind that the child’s parents could in some way be involved in her disappearance.

I have watched a good deal of news coverage about the McCanns over the past week or so. Another thing which has played on my mind is the coverage of Mr McCann walking off the aeroplane holding one of his young children. The way he was holding the child over his left shoulder reminded me of the man carrying the child from the white van in Portugal.

Although I could not describe the male I'd seen in Portugal because he had his back to me, it was the particular way Mr. McCann held the child that made me think. He held the child over his left shoulder with his left arm supporting the child’s weight.

UNQUOTE

So, in this instance - which happened eight days before Martin Smith made his statement identifying Gerry McCann as the likely abductor - Susan McCluskey was ‘almost certain’ that the woman she’d seen at 1.50am on Saturday morning, 5 May, was Kate McCann.

Richard McCluskey in his statement added that ‘the way Mr McCann held the child…over his left shoulder’ made him think that the man he’d seen on 5 May could have been Gerry McCann.

Of course, they were both totally wrong. The people he’d seen in Alvor over four months earlier were a Ukrainian couple.

The amazing Smith-McCluskey coincidences

The coincidences between the new statement of Richard McCluskey on 12 September 2007 to Leicestershire Police, and Martin Smith’s eight days later to the Irish police, were astonishing.

Both men were apparently influenced to make these respective telephone calls by watching TV footage of the McCanns returning from Portugal.

Both men made a big play of the fact that Gerry McCann was carrying Sean on his left shoulder. This is normal behaviour, especially for a right-handed man.

Both men delayed speaking to the police - Richard McCluskey by three days, and Martin Smith by 11 days.

Both were careful to explain that they had ‘agonised’ before contacting the police.

Susan McCluskey was ‘almost certain’ that Kate McCann was the woman she’d seen in the early hours of Saturday 5 May. Richard McCluskey said the man ’could have been’ Gerry McCann. Martin Smith was ’60-80% sure’ that Gerry McCann was the man he and his family had seen at around 10pm on Thursday 3 May.

What can explain these remarkable coincidences?

One suggestion that has been made is that both Martin Smith and Richard McCluskey had been prompted by a third party to make these claims about ‘recognising the McCanns’.

Who might that ‘third party’ have been? The finger of suspicion must surely point at Robert Murat.

Martin Smith had been quick to react when someone he knew well had been made the chief suspect in the disappearance of Madeleine. He ‘phoned the police the very day after, telling them, in terms: “We saw a man carrying a child in Praia da Luz on 3 May at about 10pm. But it definitely wasn’t Robert Murat”. Did Murat tell, or prompt, Martin Smith to make that ’phone call. On the face of it, this must at least be a realistic possibility

From 15 May onwards, Murat was a watched man, under suspicion. Jane Tanner had identified him as the likely abductor. Three of the Tapas 7 had claimed he was hanging around near the McCanns’ apartment after 10pm on Thursday 3 May. At a confrontation in Portimao Police Station on 11 July 2007, Murat had had to deal with the three face-to-face. They stuck to their story that they saw him near the McCanns’ apartment around 10pm on 3 May, thus accusing him of lying, when he repeatedly denied it.

Could it have been Robert Murat, or someone acting for him, who had prompted both the McCluskeys and Martin Smith to identify the McCanns as possibly having killed their daughter and tried to hide the body? That was, in effect, what both McCluskey and Smith were saying.

Who benefitted from this sudden attack on the McCanns by McCluskey and Smith? Was not Robert Murat the true beneficiary? Was Robert Murat trying to take the heat off him and switch the PJ’s focus onto the McCanns?

Is it possible that, just as Martin Smith already knew Robert Murat so well that he instantly knew the man who walked past him wasn’t him, so did the McCluskeys also know Robert Murat?

And here’s another crucial question. Did Robert Murat perhaps know exactly what happened to Madeleine McCann? - indeed, was that the very reason he was called over to Praia da Luz during Monday 30 April? If so, did he feel very angry with the McCanns? Did he use the opportunity of the McCanns being made suspects on 7 September to get two of his friends or contacts (Smith and McCluskey) to make life more difficult for the McCanns?

K EVENTS AFTER THE ‘SALSALITO SUMMIT’

Finally let us take a look at the events that followed the Salsalito summit.

Another summit meeting – at Rothley Court Manor, 17 & 18 November 2007

First, on the very weekend following the ‘Salsalito Summit; the McCanns and their Tapas 7 friends, various lawyers and public relations advisers, the crucial figure of Catriona Baker, Madeleine’s crèche nanny, and some of the Metodo3 men, no doubt including its Director, Francisco Marco, all gathered at the exclusive Rothley Court Manor Hotel in Rothley, a few hundred yards from the McCanns’ home in Rothley, Leicestershire. This took place during Saturday 17 and Sunday 18 November,

Clarence Mitchell, the McCanns’ chief public relations adviser, was also present. When news of this secret meeting leaked out to the press - not until 11 December - Mitchell dismissed it as ‘just friends meeting up’. Of course, it must have been much, much more than this.

Catriona Baker was there

Catriona Baker was a crucial witness. It was her evidence that attested to Madeleine being in the ‘Lobsters’ crèche with her each day of that week. It was her evidence - said to be ‘independent’ - about Madeleine being present at a ‘high tea’ at between 5pm and 6pm on Thursday 3 May, that persuaded Gonçalo Amaral and his PJ team that Madeleine ‘probably died by a fall in the flat sometime after the McCanns returned to their apartment that evening’.

But as evidence has been studied over the years, the likelihood that she could have died sometime after 6pm Thursday 3 May now looks very small indeed. The very idea conflicts with several key lines of evidence. If she died on that holiday, it must have been much earlier that week.

Catriona Baker was present at the Rothley Court Manor, staying with the McCanns that weekend. Photos from the weekend suggest that Catriona Baker had a very close relationship with the McCann family, which evidence suggests may have developed well before their 2007 holiday.

A Panorama documentary

Then, the very next day, Monday 19 November, the BBC Panorama documentary on Madeleine McCann, narrated by Richard Bilton, was transmitted. Millions watched what we now know was a totally slanted presentation of the evidence surrounding Madeleine’s disappearance.

A tale of two sketches by forensic artist Melissa Little

Meanwhile, the McCann Team and Brian Kennedy were working feverishly away towards another burst of publicity about a suspect abductor. This did not hit the press until Sunday 20 January 2008, when the now-defunct News of the World (NOTW) published a sensational, ‘exclusive’, front-page story about a straggly-haired, moustachoied man, whom the NOTW hailed as the new ‘lead suspect’ in the supposed abduction of Madeleine McCann. The story, happily for the McCann Team, coincided with a burst of publicity the very next week about the search for Madeleine’s bones at the Arade Dam (see above). These were two fascinating, headline-grabbing stories that put Madeleine on the front pages for more than a fortnight.

The story had, in part, been manufactured by an extremely doubtful claim by a Ms Gail Cooper about a straggly-haired man seen collecting for a local children’s charity in and around Praia da Luz.

But it had also been manufactured by some work being done by Brian Kennedy with Jane Tanner. We can trace this work as follows:

The first sketch - of the man said to have been seen by Jane Tanner

On or about 23 October 2007, five-and-a-half months after Madeleine’s reported disappearance, the Portuguese and British press were suddenly awash with an artist’s sketch of the man said to have been seen by Jane Tanner at about 9.15pm on Thursday 3 May, the evening Madeleine was reported missing. The sketch presented him from the side, that is, there was no representation of his face, for Jane Tanner had admitted that she never saw the man’s face.

It was a mystery why this sketch was produced 5½ months after the event. What could be achieved by it? Had it been published two or three days after Madeleine’s disappearance, it might have been effective in achieving responses.

Who drew up this sketch? It was Melissa Little, who was described, or should we say ‘hyped’, by the McCann Team as ‘an F.B.I.-trained forensic artist’. Her real name is Melissa Dring, an artist noted for recreating portraits of historical figures for whom there is no record of their appearance. Possibly her best-known historical re-creation is that of authoress Jane Austen.

We now know, from the files released by the Portuguese Police in July 2008, that on Monday 22 October 2007 [Folio 3905], Gerry McCann emailed Detective Chief Superintendent Bob Small of Leicestershire police with two sketches, both prepared by Melissa Little, one of which (“the second sketch”) became known as “Bundle Man”, that is, the man said to have been seen by Jane Tanner on 3 May 2007.

The first sketch was similar to “Bundle Man” but was in black-and-white and had a nose. As one commentator long ago pointed out:

“The differences between the two sketches may appear marginal, but they are critical, because the black and white man (see folio 3906) does not wear glasses, nor does he have facial hair! Since Mr Murat cannot see a barn door without his glasses and is never without them, this sketch would appear to rule him out as the ‘abductor’. No wonder Miss Tanner was “not really happy with the face”.

The second sketch - ‘Monsterman’

We now know that Melissa Little also drew up a sketch of the new suspect highlighted by the News of the World, on 20 January 2008 - who became known as ‘Monsterman’, ‘George Harrison man’, or ‘Cooperman’. This sketch of hers appeared three-and-a-half months later.

It seems very possible that Kennedy and Melissa Little may have worked on both sketches at the same time - because Jane Tanner was subsequently to tell the media that ‘Monsterman’ could be the very person she had seen carrying a child near the McCanns’ apartment at 9.15pm on Thursday 3 May.

Indeed, in an email sent by Gerry McCann himself to Leicestershire Police in January, he wrote: “Miss Tanner believes that there is an 80% likelihood that this [sketch of ‘Monsterman’] is the same man she saw carrying away the child, believed to be Madeleine”.

But how could she be so sure? On what basis could she be 80% sure when she had frankly admitted that she hadn’t seen the man’s face at all? Now she was comparing her recollection of that man (whose face she hadn’t seen), back on 3 May, with a man whose face was presented in detail: moustache, straggly hair etc.

Surely all the people involved (Jane Tanner, Gerry McCann, Brian Kennedy and Melissa Little) in claiming that ‘Monsterman’ could be the very same person as the one Jane Tanner had seen on 3 May must have known that they were perpetrating a fraud on the public?

Jane Tanner admits that Robert Murat wasn’t the man she said she’d seen on 3 May

Furthermore, neither the sketches she reproduced for ‘Bundleman’ nor for ‘Monsterman’ looked remotely like that of Robert Murat, yet back on 13 May she had adamantly insisted to police that he was the man she had seen carrying a child on 3 May.

By the time the NOTW article appeared on 30 January 2008, it was clear that Jane Tanner could no longer maintain the fiction that the man she saw on 3 May was Robert Murat.

The McCann Team change their official view about Robert Murat

But well before then, it seemed that the McCann Team were already preparing the ground to abandon their attempt to frame Robert Murat.

The ‘Salsalito Summit’ was on Tuesday 13 November 2007. Just three days later (Friday 16 November), an article appeared in the Daily Mail in which the first indications were given that the McCann Team were going to reverse their framing of Murat.

The article began:

QUOTE

“The woman [Jane Tanner] who believes she saw Madeleine McCann being abducted revealed yesterday that she has never named Robert Murat to police as the man she saw. Instead, she thinks he was ‘Mediterranean-looking’. She admitted: ‘I simply don't know if I could identify again the man I saw that night. I've never pointed the finger at Robert Murat because I simply don't know if it was him or not. I would say the man I saw was more local or Mediterranean looking, rather than British. He had dark, almost black, long hair and had swarthy skin. He was dressed in that sort of smart casual way European people dress”.

UNQUOTE

As we have already seen, the claim that she’d ‘never pointed a finger at Robert Murat’ was untrue - as she had of course positively identified him from that police van back in May. Craftily, she was quoted as saying that she had never actually named Robert Murat as the suspect, which was probably true. Indeed, Clarence Mitchell said exactly the same when confronted by a well-informed reporter in February 2009, just after the McCanns had won Round 2 of their legal fight against Gonçalo Amaral.

It must surely be more than a coincidence of timing that this Daily Mail article appeared within three days of the ‘Salsalito Summit’. We suggest that the summit meeting dealt with all the major differences between the Murat and McCann camps. The air was therefore cleared. The hatchet had been buried. Now the way was clear for the McCanns and the Tapas 7 to ‘exonerate’ Murat. Who would have briefed the Daily Mail about this sudden change of heart? Almost certainly - Clarence Mitchell.

On Monday 19 November: The METRO free paper boldly wrote: “A witness spotted Murat's German girlfriend, Michaela Walczuk, in a car with Maddie, on 5 May, in central Portugal”, while on the same day, the Daily Mail published a similar story: “According to a source, a new witness identified Michaela Walczuk as the woman seen with the missing child, in central Portugal, 160 kilometres [100 miles] from where she disappeared on May 3rd”. As we have seen, these issues were raised by Brian Kennedy at the Salsalito Summit.

The Daily Mail articles of December 2007 and January 2008

On 31 December 2007, the Daily Mail published an article claiming that several witnesses had identified Robert Murat as being seen in the vicinity of the McCanns’ apartment and the Ocean Club after 10pm on Thursday 3 May. Those named as having identified him included the three members of the Tapas 7 (Rachael Oldfield, Fiona Payne and Russell O’Brien), crèche nanny Charlotte Pennington, Jayne Jensen, a fellow holidaymaker, two ‘unnamed tourists, and an unnamed barrister.

The very next day (1 January 2008), the Daily Mail carried a prominent story featuring Kate McCann’s claim that she still believed that Robert Murat was involved in Madeleine’s disappearance. It said that eight people had identified Robert Murat as being close to the McCanns’ apartment the night she was reported missing. These two stories had all the hallmarks of another story crafted by Clarence Mitchell and drip-fed to a friendly newspaper in order to promote the latest line from the McCann Team.

Extracts from the report, written by Vanessa Allen, included the following:

QUOTE

“Kate McCann is suspicious about Robert Murat's alibi for the night her daughter Madeleine vanished, it was revealed yesterday. The mother of three has confided to friends that she believes there are questions about the British expat that need to be answered. Mrs McCann's doubts emerged after the Daily Mail reported that seven witnesses claim to have seen Mr Murat near the McCanns' holiday apartment on the night of May 3rd.

“He has always insisted he was at home all night at the villa he shares with his elderly mother in Praia da Luz, near the Mark Warner holiday complex. A friend of Kate and her husband Gerry said: ‘Kate has always felt there are questions concerning Murat and a body of evidence contrary to what he is saying. Gerry doesn't know whether he is involved but Kate has always been suspicious’.

“Mrs McCann, 39, has avoided publicly voicing suspicions about Mr Murat. She and Gerry, also 39, even called for calm after he was made an official suspect on May 14 and appealed for him to be treated fairly.

“Mr Murat, a property consultant, insists he did not learn about Madeleine's disappearance until the next morning and was not aware of the massive search going on less than 100 yards from his villa, Casa Liliana. But a source close to Mrs McCann said: ‘We now have a number of people who have come forward quite independently of us and volunteered information directly in contradiction to what he has said’. Three friends of the McCanns, Rachael Oldfield, Fiona Payne and Russell O'Brien, told police in July [NOTE: That should of course be May - MMRG] that they saw Mr Murat near the Ocean Club holiday complex while they were searching for Madeleine. They are said to have given statements to Portuguese police saying he introduced himself to them [that night] and said: ‘I am Robert. Can I help in the search?’

“Charlotte Pennington, 20, a nanny at the Mark Warner complex, has said she saw Mr Murat on May 4, when he was working as a police translator, and recognised him as a man she had seen near the Ocean Club at midnight. The Mail told yesterday [31 December] how holidaymaker Jayne Jensen, 54, also recognised the 34-year-old as a man she saw smoking a cigarette on the street corner opposite the McCanns' apartment.

An unnamed British barrister who was on holiday in Praia da Luz at the time is understood to have corroborated what Mrs Jensen said, but not made a formal statement. Two other tourists also called the hotline operated by the McCanns' private detective agency, Metodo 3, to report similar sightings. Mr Murat, who has a young daughter from a failed marriage, vehemently denies any involvement in Madeleine's disappearance. His mother Jennifer, 71, has accused Metodo 3 of bribing witnesses to change their evidence. But a source close to the McCanns said: ‘He is her son and most mothers would protect their children. Either she knows something or she is mistaken’.”

UNQUOTE

So by 1 January, Murat was back in the frame, at least according to Dr Kate McCann and the Daily Mail, with Dr Kate McCann strongly hinting at ‘questions which need to be answered’ and ‘doubts’. But judging by another Daily Mail report just a week later (see next paragraph), this New Year’s Day story appeared to be merely a prelude to the McCann Team’s gradual abandonment of Robert Murat as the chief suspect.

On 8 January, the Daily Mail ran a story which reversed their New Year’s Day article. Here’s what Vanessa Allen wrote this time:

QUOTE

Madeleine witnesses ‘may have mistaken this friend of the McCanns for Murat’ on night she disappeared

“Doubt was cast on the evidence of several key witnesses in the Madeleine McCann disappearance last night. Those who said they saw suspect Robert Murat outside the family's holiday apartment on the night she vanished may have named the wrong man, it was revealed.

“Detectives believe the witnesses who said they saw the British expat could have confused him with a friend of Kate and Gerry McCann, David Payne, who was out searching for the missing three-year-old…

“A series of witnesses have given statements claiming to have seen him around the Ocean Club apartment complex in the hours after Mrs McCann, 39, raised the alarm. They include three friends of the McCanns, Russell O'Brien, Fiona Payne and Rachael Oldfield, who later confronted Mr Murat at a police station after he was made a suspect and said he offered to help them search that night.

“Mark Warner nanny Charlotte Pennington said she saw him hanging around outside the Ocean Club's reception at about 10pm. British holidaymaker Jayne Jensen, an unnamed British barrister and two unidentified British tourists all claim to have seen him around the complex that night.

“But none of them knew the 34-year-old property consultant before that night. Police are examining the theory that they could have confused him with Dr David Payne. The medical researcher, who is 41, was searching around the complex that night and - in a street lit by orange streetlights - could easily have been mistaken for Mr Murat. Mr Murat's lawyer Francisco Pagarete told the Daily Mail: ‘Robert has always said the witnesses were mistaken. He was not there that night’.

“A source close to the inquiry said: ‘The similarity between the two has rendered many witness accounts virtually worthless’. But he added: ‘What is baffling is that Mr Payne's wife and two of his friends are among those who claim to have seen Mr Murat outside the McCanns' apartment that night. You'd think a wife would recognise her own husband’.”

UNQUOTE

The story had changed dramatically, within a week, from ‘Eight people saw Robert Murat that night’ to ‘They all probably mistook him for Dr David Payne’. At least the Daily Mail told its readers at the end of the article how utterly absurd it was to suggest that Fiona Payne might have mistaken Robert Murat for her own husband.

On 21 January, there was another Daily Mail article, this time suggesting that Robert Murat was now being considered by the McCanns as an ‘accomplice’ of the abductor, not the abductor himself. The Daily Mail headlines were as follows:

QUOTE

Robert Murat ‘seen talking to man matching artist's impression of Madeleine suspect’

Robert Murat spoke to a man who looked like the new suspect’

‘New e-fit of man seen ‘acting strangely’ around complex prior to Madeleine's disappearance’

‘McCann family friend says sketch 'strongly resembles' man she saw carrying a child wearing pyjamas identical to Madeleine’s on the night of the abduction’.

UNQUOTE

The heading and sub-headings cunningly linked this new ‘sighting’ of Gail Cooper’s (‘Monsterman’) to Jane Tanner’s original claimed sighting of an abductor, thus continuing to lend credibility to her alleged sighting. But the article also brought Robert Murat into the picture, for the Mail went on to report:

QUOTE

“Robert Murat was spotted chatting to a man who resembled the ‘oddball’ in the new sketch released by the McCanns and who is suspected of abducting Madeleine, it has been claimed today. Charlotte Pennington, a nanny at the Ocean Club holiday complex where the McCanns were staying, told police last May she saw Murat chatting to ‘a man aged around 27 to 35, average height, very dark eyes and of Portuguese or Spanish appearance’. She told detectives she saw expat Murat, who lives with his mother near to holiday complex, talking to the man outside the Baptista supermarket in Praia da Luz”.

UNQUOTE

The Mail went on, somewhat dramatically:

QUOTE

“An international manhunt is now underway for the man seen near the resort in Portugal. The sketch was based on the evidence of a British tourist [Gail Cooper] who came forward saying she had seen a ‘creepy man’ lurking around the resort pretending to collect money for a fake orphanage. The dramatic development comes amid fears that he may have been acting with an accomplice in a paedophile gang to ‘case’ the holiday complex in the days running up to her disappearance.

“Grandmother Gail Cooper, who was staying just 500 yards from Gerry and Kate McCanns' holiday apartment, told police how she came face to face with the ‘disturbing’ man hanging around the resort three times. Based on her descriptions, an FBI-trained artist produced a likeness of the suspect whom British and Portuguese police and Interpol were desperately trying to trace last night. The sketch bears a striking resemblance to an image of a man seen by family friend, Jane Tanner, carrying a child away on the night Madeleine vanished on May 3”.

UNQUOTE

Barely six days later, it appeared that the McCann Team had come up with another new slant on the story. On 27 January this bold headline appeared in the Sunday Express: “McCanns say Murat not kidnapper”. Now, bizarrely, the McCann Team seemed to be saying that he could have been a ‘spotter’ for a whole gang of paedophiles. The report ran:

“Kate and Gerry McCann are certain that original suspect Robert Murat is not the man who snatched their daughter Madeleine. But private detectives searching for the missing four-year-old still believe he may have acted as a ‘spotter’ for a kidnap gang targeting the McCann family. The couple have now revealed how they never thought the expatriate was responsible. Despite doubts over his alibi, they have ruled out the 34-year-old after a major probe in Praia da Luz. A 10-strong squad of investigators mounted an undercover operation finding ‘strong’ proof he was in the vicinity after Madeleine’s disappearance. Several witnesses gave statements to Spanish detectives from the Metodo 3 agency, claiming they had chatted with Murat after the alarm was raised by Kate at 10pm. The couple's lawyers sent petitions to senior Portuguese police to re-interview him.

“One theory is that Murat - going through an expensive divorce - may have been paid by a paedophile gang to select a child. A friend of the McCanns said last night: ‘Privately Kate and Gerry have always believed that Murat was not the man who took Madeleine. However, they do not think he should be cleared, because there is enough evidence to suggest he could have been a spotter for a gang. Murat has told the police that he was not at the apartment on the night she went missing but lots of people saw him and he went round introducing himself saying, ‘Hi, I'm Robert’. He still has a lot of questions to answer”.

For months the McCann Team had lent weight to the notion that Robert Murat was the probable abductor. This was a major shift in their position. Now he had been demoted to ‘an accomplice.

And in the weeks and months that followed, other media articles gradually began to explain, ever more emphatically, that the McCanns and their friends no longer considered Murat a suspect.

All of this, we suggest, flowed directly from the two camps having settled their differences at the ‘Salsalito Summit’.

L CONCLUSION

There was a clear conspiracy by both the British secret services and the McCann Team, and possibly some journalists, to frame Robert Murat. This succeeded in getting Murat made the lead suspect.

The finger-pointing at him by the McCanns and the Tapas 7 continued until the Salsalito Summit on 13 November 2007.

We also saw in September how the battle between Robert Murat and the McCanns seemed to escalate when both the McCluskeys and Martin Smith made almost identical claims - to having identified Kate McCann as a woman seen in Alvor, and Gerry McCann as a man seen in Alvor on 5 September (Robert McCluskey and at Praia da Luz on 10pm on 3 September (Martyn Smith) carrying an apparently lifeless child.

Weeks after the ‘Salsalito Summit’, stories in the press - almost certainly planted by Clarence Mitchell - gradually began to take the heat off Robert Murat.

Undoubtedly the two teams had to sort out their differences. The lawyered-up head-to-head meeting between the two camps at the Eveleigh’s luxury villa in Vila da Bispo, Burgau, on 13 November 2007, appears to have settled the issues between them.

If only we had an audio recording of that meeting.

MMRG, April 2019

by **sharonl** 13.10.19 16:24

M APPENDICES

REFERENCES

(1) Links on CMOMM to Edward Smethurst:
(2) Links to evidence that Madeleine died on Sunday 29 April 2007:
(3) Statement of Robert Murat,
(4) The account of Brian Kennedy’s meeting with the Portuguese Police can be found in the Portuguese Police files, here: http://www.mccannpjfiles.co.uk/PJ/BRIAN-KENNEDY.htm
(5) See ‘madeleine’, book by Kate McCann, hardback edition, pp. 268-269
(6) Article on Brian Kennedy’s wealth:
(7) http://robertmuratscapegoat.blogspot.com/
(8) Jornal de Noticias article, believed to be dated 27 November 2007 or a few days later
(9) http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-563826/Madeleine-One-year- Portuguese- police-ashamed-says-attorney-general.html
(10) Timesonline, 4 May 2008

(11) http://justice4mccannfam.forumotion.com/t557-murat-meets-brian-kennedy
(12) See ‘madeleine’, book by Kate McCann, hardback edition, pp. 282-283
(13) Links on CMOMM to the closure of Metodo 3:
(14) Links on CMOMM to Brian Kennedy’s links with Barcelona:
(15) Links on CMOMM to articles about Antonio Giminez Raso (also spelt Antonio Jiminez Raso):
(16) Arrest of Antonio Giminez Raso
(17) For evidence of the activities of the McCanns’ private investigators in Morocco, please see:
(18) Links on CMOMM to Francisco Marco and Metodo 3 here:
(19) For details of the arrest of Antonio Giminez Raso, see here:
(20) Statement alleging that Sergey Malinka held child sexual abuse images on his computer

(21) Portuguese police statement indicating that child sexual images on his computer may have been wiped
(22) Statement of lorry driver, M.G.
(23) METRO, 19 November 2007
(24) Daily Mail, 19 November 2007
(25) Links on CMOMM to the Arade Dam plot:
(26) Links on CMOMM to the career of Marcos Aragao Correia
(27) Marcos Correia’s foundation of a ‘Human Rights’ group, here:
(28) Marcos Correia explains why he became interested in the disappearance of Madeleine McCann:
(29) Marcos Correia gives a second, very different explanations as to why he became interested in the disappearance of Madeleine McCann:
(30) Marcos Correia admits that both his claims about how he became interested in the Madeleine McCann case were false:

(31) Details of the Madeira court case
(32) See article ‘The Lies of Leonor Cipriano’, here on CMOMM:
(33) Goncalo Amaral found guilty of ‘filing a false report’:
(34) Marcos Correia: ‘The target was hit’
(35) Arade Dam search:
(36) Bones found were ‘animal bones’
(37) Second Arade Dam search:
(38) Magazine interview with Marcos Aragao Correia.
(39) A Verdada da Mentira ‘The Truth of the Lie’, by Dr Goncalo Amaral
(40) A Verdada da Mentira ‘The Truth of the Lie’, by Dr Goncalo Amaral

(41) ‘madeleine’, by Kate McCann, hardback edition. pp 132-137
(42) Jane Tanner’s interview with D.C.S. Bob Small, see:
(43) A list of the 17 alerts made by Martin Grime’s cadaver dogs
(44) Statement of Russell O’Brien
(45) Statement of Fiona Payne
(46) Statement of Rachael Oldfield/Mampilly
(47) Statement of Portuguese Police’ see also ‘The Truth of the Lie’ by Goncalo Amaral
(48) Portuguese Police report of the ‘confrontation between the Tapas 3 and Robert Murat:
(49) Murat’s flight to Portugal
(50) Murat acted as interpreter for

(51) Robert Murat First Statement
(52) Robert Murat Second Statement
(53) Stephen Carpenter’s Statement
(54) Paulo Reis article
(55) Report of Inspector Varanda
(56) See links on CMOMM here: and Robert Murat’s Second Statement (Ref: (52))
(57) https://www.mccannpjfiles.co.uk/PJ/LORRI-CAMPBELL.htm
(58) Independent and Sunday Mirror, 5 August 2007
(59)

FULL TRANSCRIPT OF INTERVIEW OF LORI CAMPBELL BY IAN WOODS OF SKY NEWS, 14 MAY 2007.

(This interview was transmitted on 14 May, the day before Murat was declared an official suspect)

TRANSCRIPT OF SKY NEWS BROADCAST – INTERVIEW WITH LORI CAMPBELL BY IAN WOODS, 14 May 2007

Lori Campbell talks to Ian Woods from Sky News, 14 May 2007
Transcript

Lori Campbell: I was so suspicious by the Monday that I just felt I had a duty to pass those suspicions on. I spoke to my news desk back in London and then they said they thought that that was the right thing to do.

Ian Woods: Now, let’s discuss why we were a little suspicious of him, because your suspicions were aroused first of all and you shared those suspicions with me. I then talked to him, investigated it, tried to find out whether his story was true and I have to say I came back and said his story checked out. What first of all made you suspicious of the fact that he was spending so much time around the scene?

Lori Campbell: It was just very reminiscent of the Soham murders was my first instinct. There was a local guy. He was hanging around the scene an awful lot. He was asking us questions about what was going on in the investigation, maybe trying to find out what we knew and he just seemed to be giving an air that he was authoritative and he was working in an official capacity for the police. And I was just very suspicious about that, that they would take on board a man who was just a local guy. They have many people, I am sure, who speak Portuguese and English. Why would they ask him to, you know, go into the apartment, speak to the family and have that sort of contact with them?

Ian Woods: Now, how co-operative was Robert when you were talking to him, because first of all he wouldn’t do any interviews with me. I have asked him to do interviews on camera. He declined and you approached him to do a proper interview and asked his identity and things like that?

Lori Campbell: Well, he was very vague when I tried to ask about his background. He would chat to me quite openly, but he wouldn’t give me his surname. He wouldn’t tell me really where he was from, where he lives over here. He wouldn’t give me a telephone number for him. And then I asked him what he did for a living. He was very vague. He said he worked for real estate. And I just had a really uneasy feeling about him from day one.

Ian Woods: You reported him to who and what was the response?

Lori Campbell: My first call was to Leicestershire police back in the UK and they took all my details. A detective constable called me back and she suggested that I also speak to somebody out here. We didn’t really have a police contact last week. So, I called the British Embassy and they said to speak to a policeman on the scene. So, I walked up to a GNR policeman and said, you know, “I’ve got suspicions about a gentleman who’s been near the scene and I’d just like to pass those on.” And one of my main suspicions was that he said he was translating witness statements and I asked them if that could be true and they said, “No, that’s highly unlikely.”

------------

If you'd like to discuss this article, please use this thread: https://jillhavern.forumotion.net/t16656-the-mysteries-of-robert-murat-and-the-salsalito-summit-a-discussion-thread

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