Here we read the first reactions from Kate and Gerry's closest family and friends, immediately after they have been contacted individually with the news that Madeleine has been 'abducted'. Note how consistent the stories are that an 'abductor' gained access to a locked apartment by breaking open the shutter on the bedroom window and escaping by the front door. The story changed later when it became clear the shutters on the window had not been forced, were not damaged in any way and could only be opened from inside the apartment. From that point, the McCanns became convinced that an 'abductor' had entered through 'open' patio doors and escaped through the open shuttered window. Clarence Mitchell, the McCanns' spokesman, is eventually forced to admit that "There was no evidence of a break-in".
| Gerry rings his sister, Trish Cameron, at 23:40 on 03 May 2007 |
Heart specialist Gerry McCann rang his sister Trish in Scotland after Maddy vanished from her cot placed between two-year-old twins Sean and Amelie.
Trish revealed yesterday: "He was breaking his heart, saying 'Madeleine's been abducted, she's been abducted'."
Trish said: "When Kate checked, she came out screaming. Maddy had gone. The door was open and the window in the bedroom and shutters were jemmied open. Nothing had been touched and no valuables taken."
"Kate came screaming back to the group crying, 'They’ve taken her, they’ve taken her'. Gerry was crying and roaring like a bull."
"They think someone must have come in the window and gone out the door with her."
[color:d74b=000000]Link to Daily Mirror article containing this quote |
| Frantic search for toddler, 04 May 2007 |
Frantic search for toddler [color:d74b=000000]BBC East Midlands Today (video)
| [color:d74b=000000][You must be registered and logged in to see this image.] | | Eileen McCann and Trish Cameron (with script) |
04 May 2007
A frantic search is continuing for a three-year-old girl who has gone missing on holiday in Portugal.
(00:01:42)
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Transcript
By Nigel Moore
Reporter: Well, the McCann family, Gerry and Kate, with their twins and three-year-old Madeleine went on holiday to Portugal last Saturday, from their home in Rothley, in Leicestershire. They'd gone to a popular resort on the coast of the Algarve with a group of other families; nine adults; eight children; all on holiday together. Now, last night Madeleine and the twins were left sleeping in their room, while her parents had a meal in a restaurant two hundred yards away - and they did regular checks on them - but at ten o'clock last night there was a huge shock for Kate. Madeleine's aunt who lives in Scotland, takes up the story.
Trish Cameron: They last checked at half past nine; they were all sound asleep, sleeping; windows shut; shutters shut. Kate went back at ten o'clock to check; the front door was lying open; the window had been tampered with; the shutters had been jammied open... or whatever you call it, and Madeleine was missing.
Reporter: Madeleine's disappearance led to a frantic search. Some of the guests were out looking for the little girl all night; the police brought in sniffer dogs. The group of friends in Portugal with the McCanns are devastated.
Rachael Oldfield: Some people are... are out looking again, as well, errm... you know, everyone at the resort has been great and they're doing everything they can to help.
Reporter: The owners of the Ocean Club resort, the Mark Warner holiday firm, have offered to fly out more family members to support the McCanns.
John Hill: The parents were regularly checking, errm... through the, errr... the french windows of their apartment, errm... and between, errm... errr... ten... ten o'clock and ten fifteen, errm... the alarm was raised that Maddie was missing from that room.
Reporter: Today Madeleine's parents have been giving statements to the police. Their friends say they just can't believe what's happened. The family were due to fly home tomorrow to their home in Rothley. |
| Kate rings childhood friend, Linda McQueen, at 2:00am |
Yesterday Linda recalled how she had spoken to Kate at about 2am on the night Madeleine vanished.
"She just said, 'Somebody's taken Madeleine, somebody's taken Madeleine.' She sounded shocked and frantic and was just trying to get everything up and running to find her. It was just awful. This cold, icy feeling came over you."
Link to Daily Mail for this quote
*
It seems slightly odd that Kate McCann should feel the need to phone a childhood friend at 2:00am in the morning - after all, what could she do to help?
It's also interesting that Linda McQueen says that Kate 'was trying to get everything up and running to find her'. Surely, Kate would have been better employed 'up and running' looking for Madeleine herself rather than ringing a childhood friend who was in no position to offer any help.
It appears to show that the McCanns were already embarked on a campaign.
Why did they need to get 'everything up and running' when the police were already there? How could they think so logically at a time of high emotions, extreme stress and desperation.
We have been told by friends and relatives that the McCanns were absolutely devastated and uncontrollable with grief - yet they had the calm presence of mind to undertake a carefully organised system of phone calls to friends and relatives to get 'everything up and running'.
Were the friends and relatives simply used by the McCanns in order to provide a smokescreen for their real aim - which was to shift attention away from themselves and unleash a typhoon of media comments that would wipe out all oppostion to their story?
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| Kate rings another close friend, Jon Corner, at 03:00am |
Jon Corner, a close friend of Mrs McCann and godparent of the twins, said Kate telephoned him in the middle of the night distraught.
He said: "She just blurted out that Madeleine had been abducted. She told me, 'They have broken the shutter on the window and taken my little girl.'
"They had left the apartment locked while they were having their meal, but when they went back the last time they saw the damage."
After speaking to her a second time, he repeated his earlier account, but this time in stronger language
He told how tearful Kate sobbed down the phone early yesterday: "Someone has taken my little girl."
He continued: "She was in an absolutely hysterical state - very, very distressed. She blurted out Madeleine had been abducted.
"Kate said the shutters of the room were smashed. Madeleine was missing It looks as though someone had gone straight past the twins to get to her. Kate was incredibly upset. I've spoken to her since, and she's still completely devastated.
"She's also very upset that the police don't seem to be doing more to find Madeleine. She thinks there's too little happening."
The Liverpool Daily Post also speaks to Jon Corner and reports a very similar conversation:
Jon Corner, founder of Liverpool-based River Media, is godfather to the McCann’s twins and his wife has known Mrs McCann since they were both three. The co-founder of city centre-based River Media, and a father-of-three himself, said: “Kate phoned me in the early hours totally devastated."
"She just told me that Maddy had been abducted, that the shutters of the apartment had been forced and someone had taken her."
"Maddy was asleep in the room with Sean and Amelie and whoever has taken her has gone straight past the sleeping twins, left them completely alone and snatched Maddy."
"Kate is just so distressed. She doesn’t know what to do. It has knocked me and everyone else for six. It doesn’t actually seem real."
Link to Daily Telegraph article - original quote from Jon Corner
Link to Daily Mirror article - second quote from Jon Corner
[color:d74b=000000]Link to Liverpool Daily Post article - third quote from Jon Corner |
| Kate/Gerry ring another friend, Jill Renwick, at 07:00am | Jill Renwick, a family friend, told GMTV at 7:45am, on the morning of 04 May, that the distraught parents were certain that Madeline had been abducted. "They were just watching the hotel room and going back every half-hour."
She said the parents went out about 8pm, checked on the children at 9pm and then when they "went back in at 10pm she was gone".
Ms Renwick said: "Poor Kate and Gerry don't know where to turn. She's obviously been taken as she couldn't have gone out on her own and the shutters had been forced open."
"The shutters had been broken open and they've gone into the room and taken her."
Speaking to the BBC later, Ms Renwick said the McCanns, who had been holidaying with three other British families, had felt let down by police in Portugal. "I spoke to them this morning and they said the police had done nothing overnight and they felt as if they'd been left on their own. They just don't know where to turn."
However, the manager at the Mark Warner resort, John Hill said the police had been doing all they could. He said around 60 staff and guests at the complex had searched until 4.30am while police notified border police, Spanish police and airports.
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| Female Tapas group member quoted Daily Mirror 05 May 2007 |
A woman friend of the McCanns - one of their holiday party of nine adults and eight children - said: "We went for dinner at 8.45pm in a restaurant near the apartments as we've done every night.
"A parent from each family went back to check on the children every half hour.
"Someone checked at 9.15. But when Kate went later Madeleine had gone.
"The window shutters, which had been closed since we arrived on Saturday, were open along with the window. They can be opened from the outside.
"The window opens on to a car park. The door to the room was shut. It looks as if someone has come through the window and possibly left through the door."
Link to Daily Mirror article containing this quote
*
This is a very interesting quote atributed to 'a woman friend of the McCanns'. Although the woman friend is unnamed, judging by the time they say they arrived at the tapas restaurant, it is most likely this was Rachael Oldfield speaking. Fiona Payne and Diane Webster are not believed to have arrived until 8.55pm. It is interesting for 6 reasons:
1) Before Jane Tanner's appearance on Panorama in November, this was the only quote to come from a tapas group member that specifically spoke about the events of that night, May 3rd.
2) It clearly implies that the last check was done at 9.15pm, before Kate discovered Madeleine missing at 10.00pm. This fits in with Gerry's check at 9.05pm but would appear to cast doubt on Matthew Oldfield's alleged check at 9.30pm.
3) She states how the window shutters which 'had been closed since we arrived on Saturday, were open along with the window'. This makes it even more remarkable that, on 6 separate occasions, members of the group walked past them and didn't see, or register, they were wide open and supposedly damaged. Jane Tanner walked past 3 times, Russell O'Brien walked past twice and Matthew Oldfield allegedly stood in the apartment , at the entrance to the room, and had a 'cursory' look inside. The window, behind the shutter, would almost certainly have needed to be forced or smashed to gain entry - there was no evidence of any forced entry anywhere in the apartment.
4) She states that the window shutters 'can be opened from the outside' but we know this to be incorrect. It is impossible to open the shutters from the outside. The shutters are made from heavy metal and are ratcheted so they can only be opened from the inside the apartment.
5) She continues: 'The door to the room was shut'. This clearly contradicts Kate's later story that the door had been open. Kate stated that she immediately knew there had been an abduction because, as she opened the patio doors, the door slammed shut when the wind whistled through the apartment.
6) She reaffirms the version of events reported in the immediate phone calls to Kate and Gerry's family/friends, that the 'abductor' entered through the window and escaped by the front door. Yet, we are now led to believe that the abductor entered through open patio doors and escaped by the window. How could she get this so wrong when she was actually there?
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| "the apartment... was locked" Philomena McCann, Gerry McCann's sister | Philomena McCann, said on 04 May: "Some people may ask why they left the children alone in the apartment but it was locked and they had a full view of the front door and they were checking every half hour."
[color:d74b=000000]Link to Daily Mail article containing this quote |
| Philomena McCann talks to Sky News 05 May 2007 |
'It Is Abhorent To Suggest Bad Parenting'
Last night the family of Madeline McCann made an emotional appeal for her return, 24 hours after she vanished from her bed in the Algarve while her parents were having dinner nearby. The little girl's Aunt, Philomena McCann says the family is devastated.
00:02:28
*
Note: Philomena says she has spoken to Gerry ''several times'' and she is still recounting the 'abductor through the window' scenario, when she says ''It is obvious that someone, with malicious intent, went through that window.''
When Ian Woods asks: ''Is there a temptation for them to get out and try and search themselves...'' Philomena replies: ''Yeah, well, I mean for Gerry and Kate they want to get out there, they want to search everything, they want to leave nothing unturned.'' - Yet Kate later admits, in the McCanns first interview with Jane Hill from the BBC, that she never actually did any physical searching. There are also no reports that Gerry ever searched beyond the first few immediate hours after Madeleine's disappearance.
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| Gerry tells Brian Healy the shutters were broken and the door was open, 05 May 2007 | "Gerry told me when they went back the shutters to the room were broken, they were jemmied up and she was gone," said Mr Healy. "She'd been taken from the chalet. The door was open." Full article:
Grandfather: evidence that three-year old was snatched [color:d74b=000000]Guardian
Sandra Laville and Dale Fuchs in Faro
Saturday May 5 2007
The grandfather of a three-year-old snatched from her parents' holiday apartment in the Algarve said yesterday that there was clear evidence she had been abducted. Police helicopters flew over Praia de la Luz yesterday as the hunt intensified for Madeleine McCann, who went missing from her bedroom in the apartment on Thursday night. Teams of officers used sniffer dogs to scour the resort, in the south-west of Portugal, where Gerald McCann, a cardiac surgeon, and his wife Kate, had taken their three young children - Madeleine and her younger brother and sister, who are twins - for a week-long holiday. Mark Warner, the holiday firm which runs the luxury resort, claimed last night there was no sign of a break in at the ground floor apartment overlooking the sea. But Brian Healy, Madeleine's maternal grandfather, told the Guardian his son-in-law had phoned him shortly after returning to the apartment from a nearby restaurant to find Madeleine had disappeared. "Gerry told me when they went back the shutters to the room were broken, they were jemmied up and she was gone," said Mr Healy. "She'd been taken from the chalet. The door was open." Mr Healy flew to Portugal yesterday to lend support to his daughter Kate, 39, who is a Leicester GP, and son-in-law Gerry, 38, a consultant cardiologist at the city's Glenfield Hospital. He denied suggestions that the couple had simply left their three children alone while they ate in a restaurant. "It is not right to say that they just left them," said Mr Healy. "They could see the chalet from where they were sitting in the restaurant, they were a hundred yards away. They went back every half hour to check on the children. When they returned at the end of their meal she was gone. My daughter can hardly speak. She is distraught, she is crying and in shock." |
| 'apartment was locked up' - Liverpool Daily Post 06 May 2007 |
The McCanns made sure the toddler, who turns four next week, and her two-year-old twin brother and sister, Sean and Amelie, were sound asleep, and that their apartment was locked up.
But between their checks at 9.30pm and 10pm the apartment was broken into through a window and Madeleine was taken, according to the young girl’s aunt, Trish Cameron.
[color:d74b=000000]Link to full Liverpool Daily Post article |
| Timesonline 06 May 2007 | At 9.30pm Gerry McCann checked his children and they were sound asleep, with Madeleine lying with her comfort blanket. Thirty minutes later his wife returned and found Madeleine gone and the shutter of the rear window open. Silvia Batisa, head of administration at the complex, helped to comfort the family and interpret their interviews with the police: "The parents were devastated, in a panic. They wanted more police and dogs immediately. Kate said all the time, 'Please find my daughter’ and ‘Madeleine is beautiful'." She recalled that the twins were still asleep in their two cots and there was the small, bright pink wool blanket that Madeleine likes to hold when she sleeps. "We walked out quickly so as not to wake up the twins. The parents immediately said, 'She’s been kidnapped'," said Batisa.
Link to complete Timeonline article
* There are 2 particularly interesting things in this report: 1) It again highlights, despite a number of other possibilities, the McCanns immediate insistance that Madeleine had been kidnapped. 2) It casts doubt on the belief that 'Cuddle Cat' was Madeleine's sleep comforter, instead it suggests, from this report, that her comforter was a 'small, bright pink wool blanket'. This is later confirmed by David James Smith's article published on 16 December 2007 which states that Madeleine 'was lying almost in “the recovery position” with Cuddle Cat, the toy her godfather, John Corner, had bought her, and her comfort blanket up near her head'. |
| Susan Healy's account of first conversations with Gerry and Kate | On 23 October 2007, Spanish TV aired an interview with Susan Healy, Kate's mother. In the interview, Mrs Healy revealed details of the first frantic calls she received from Gerry and Kate after Madeleine went missing. The first call she received was from Gerry and the call from Kate came an hour later. She said: "Kate rang me and said, 'She's gone, mum. She's gone', the night Madeleine disappeared. "I was able to say to her, 'We'll be able to get her back'. I'm finding it harder to say that. But we're not going to acknowledge she's gone from our life altogether. She's too important for that." She also revealed that she initially thought there had been a crash when Gerry called her on the night of May 3. She said: "Gerry phoned me and said, 'There's been a disaster. It's a disaster'. I thought there had been a car accident. He was hysterical. It took me a while to realise. He just said 'Madeleine has been abducted from her bed'." Susan then talked about how Kate had clung to her Catholic faith since Madeleine's disappearance. She said: "It was as if she started to ask God straight away to give her Madeleine. Possibly, she feels that there has to be a greater thing that helps her to get Madeleine back, something that has more power than we have." In the interview, in which she was joined by husband Brian, she was asked about the fact that police believe Kate killed Madeleine by accident. She said: "I don’t understand the fact that Kate's been made an arguido. I know it's rubbish and because I believe things usually work out, I'm reasonably confident this will go away. For Madeleine to be dead, that's something that could never be rectified."
Describing the scene she and husband Brian found, at the McCanns’ holiday apartment after they flew to the Algarve, she added: "Kate and Gerry were hysterical. Their voices were out of control and I think it was just blind panic and fear that they couldn’t get through to police or to anybody to make it clear they felt Madeleine had been abducted. They were afraid every minute that was lost was crucial to getting her back."
"My daughter is very placid, very easy-tempered and I saw her scream at the British consul that night; shout down the phone at him to get someone to do something."
And in a final message to her granddaughter, Susan said: "Madeleine, you know how loved you are. You know how much your mummy and daddy want you back. Stay strong and we'll get you back."
Brian Healy added in a whisper: "We will keep searching."
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| McCanns 'left patio doors unlocked' for 'fear of fire', 13 May 2007 |
Madeleine's parents 'left patio doors unlocked' [color:d74b=000000]Daily Mail
Last updated at 16:53pm on 13th May 2007 Police in Portugal are working on the theory that Madeleine was snatched through patio doors left unlocked by her parents as they dined just 40 yards away. Until now, it was believed that shutters at the front of the apartment had been jemmied open by the little girl's abductors. But Chief Inspector Olegario Sousa, spokesman for the investigation, has confided in British former Chief Inspector Albert Kirby that neither the windows nor their shutters had been tampered with. Mr Kirby, who led the investigation into the abduction and murder of Liverpool-born toddler Jamie Bulger, revealed that it was the unlocked patio doors of the apartment that allowed Madeleine to be taken away swiftly and quietly. Sources close to the investigation also confirmed that police attention was solely focused on the back of the apartment, which leads on to a small garden easily accessible from a public path through a gateway. Gerry and Kate McCann would have used the patio doors as they checked on their daughter and her twin siblings during their meal near the Mark Warner holiday complex swimming pool and it is these doors that were left unsecured. The McCanns and all their friends on the holiday left their patio doors open throughout the evenings for fear of fire. Mr Kirby told The Mail on Sunday: "I had a very interesting chat with the officer in charge. The window shutters are not an issue. "Their mechanism makes them almost impossible to open. The door was left unlocked. They did that every night. "I think the police have a very specific understanding of what they are looking for." Mr Kirby believes Portuguese police will solve the case of the missing toddler within days. He said: "I am impressed by the investigation. I have a feeling we will have a result by the end of the next week." * There is considerable doubt that the patio doors were ever left open, but, for arguments sake, if they were left open 'for fear of fire' then that would be a very serious admission to make. For it would show that they accepted there was risk of fire and, more significantly, were aware of this risk. Yet, they continued to leave their children alone and unattended, despite being aware that they were placing them at risk. This would add considerable support to any possible neglect charges.
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| McCanns reverse 'break in evidence', 25 October 2007 |
McCann family reverse story over break-in 'evidence' [color:d74b=000000]Irish Independent
By Shane Hickey
Thursday October 25 2007
THE spokesman for the family of Madeleine McCann has reversed a statement made in the early days of the search for the missing child.
Speaking to RTE's 'Prime Time', Clarence Mitchell said she could "easily" have been kidnapped by an abductor who did not leave the trail of a break-in.
However, in the early part of the hunt, friends and family members told journalists that the shutter on the apartment where the McCanns were staying had been broken.
Mr Mitchell made his comments when questioned by a 'Prime Time' team in a report on the disappearance to be screened tomorrow. "There was no evidence of a break-in," said Mr Mitchell.
"I'm not going into the detail, but I can say that Kate and Gerry are firmly of the view that somebody got into the apartment and took Madeleine out the window as their means of escape, and to do that they did not necessarily have to tamper with anything. They got out of the window fairly easily."
Of the criticism that the McCanns left their children by themselves on four evenings while they went for dinner, Mr Mitchell said there was a cultural difference between Britain and Portugal.
"It is a British approach to get your children washed, bathed and in bed early in the evening if you can so you can have something of the evening to yourself. That is the British way of doing things. It doesn't mean it's wrong. It doesn't mean it's right," he said.
"Nobody feels more guilty than Gerry and Kate over the decision they took jointly to leave their children in that position that night. And they will never forgive themselves. They've said this often.
"Nobody feels more guilty than they that Madeleine was alone when she was taken. However, they felt they had a perfectly proper system of checking (her in place)."
- Shane Hickey
*
Note: On Martin Brunt's documentary 'The Mystery of Madeleine McCann, aired on 24 December 2007, Prof David Barclay, one of Britain's top forensic consultants said: "I think it's impossible for somebody to get in and out, through that window without leaving a forensic trace. Apart from anything else, the window sills in that area are covered in green lichen. The minute you try and scrape over the window sills you would have left marks and we know that the scenes of crime lady, the next morning, was looking for exactly that."
Interestingly, Clarence Mitchell's statement about the McCanns reversal of their 'break in' story, came one week after Dispatches aired the documentary 'Searching For Madeleine' on 18 October 2007. In that documentary, it was effectively proved that there was no way anybody could break into the apartment and leave no forensic trace or damage to the lightweight aluminium shutters, which are covered with a fine coating of polyurethane paint which marks extremely easily.
They also tested the thumb prints, that showed up under the red dust of the forensic fingerprint powder, and proved the prints came from somebody moving the shutter from inside the apartment.
Again, Prof Dave Barclay said: "We must be very careful that we're not saying this is actually staging but it's difficult to see how anybody could have interefered with those shutters, from outside, without leaving some trace. In fact, having looked at them, I think it's almost impossible."
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| Grief, 10 April 2008 |
Grief, 10 April 2008
Excerpts the Rogatory interviews of Rachael Oldfield, Fiona Payne and Russell O'Brien, in which they comment on the McCanns' grief in the minutes immediately following Madeleine's reported disappearance.
Thanks to [color:d74b=000000]KazLux for compilation
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Rachael Oldfield in an interview with the Leicestershire Police, April 2008
Q: "On realising Madeleine had not been found in the first ten minutes, how did Kate react?"
RO: "She was really upset, she was hysterical, really distressed, crying and screaming, there's no way she could have acted that, or anyone could have in fact, I don't think, not even an actress."
Q: "On realising Madeleine had not been found in the first ten minutes, how did Gerry react?"
RO: "Very similar to Kate, it was, you know, screaming, shouting, errm... crying, just, you know, he was very much a... you know, a father whose child had disappeared, as Kate was a mother whose child had disappeared or wouldn't you know?"
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Fiona Payne, in an interview with the Leicestershire Police, April 2008
Q: "How was Kate?"
FP: "Awful, errm... I've never seen such horrible raw emotion in my life and I've seen a lot of it in my job. Errm... tut, she... she was just bereft, she didn't know what to do, she was just panicking, extremely frightened, extremely frightened for Madeleine and, errm... was wondering where she was or what was happening to her. And the helplessness, errm... of not being able to do anything, what should she be doing, what could they do? Errm... she was angry, really angry, tut, punching walls, kicking walls, she was covered in bruises the next day, because she just didn't know what, what else to do. She was angry at herself, she kept saying 'I've let her down. We've let her down Gerry', you know, 'We should have been here'. Errm... tut, she was praying a lot. Errm... I just don't think she knew what to do, what to do. And she was just howling. It was just, just awful. I think as time went on it just seemed a massive delay from when we said to Matt to phone the Police, errm... that hour, it was an hour, it just seemed like an eternity, where nothing was happening, tut. Errm... you know, we're all intelligent people, we were all trying to think what we should be doing and, you know, what's going to make a difference. And Kate's ringing, Gerry's ringing anybody under the sun, family, they just don't, they honestly just didn't know what to do. So there was a lot of, Gerry's in and out, I mean, they were just sobbing, going between sobbing and then feeling helpless and then ringing people and this frantic activity. Kate was desperate to have a Priest, which, you know, people find weird, but I think that was just her way of thinking 'At least I can pray for Madeleine' and her way of feeling that she was doing something. Errm... tut, but she wasn't functioning."
"No, and that was the other thing, she kept going into the twins, she kept putting her hands on the twins to check they were breathing, she was very much concerned in checking that they were okay. But they were okay, I mean, they were fine, they didn't... they were asleep, but at the time it did seem weird, I remember thinking, you know, when the Police came they turned the lights on, there was loads of noise, obviously from the moment Kate discovered that Madeleine was gone, the screaming and the shouting and there was a lot of noise and they, they didn't, you know, so much as blink."
Q: "Okay and realising that Madeleine had not been found in the first ten minutes, how did Kate react?"
FP: "Oh, as I said earlier, she was hysterical, it upsets me very much to even think about how she was, cos it was, errm... she was so terrified, absolutely inconsolable, she was rampaging round the... the room, she's up and down, pacing, kicking walls, just on, for most part, just imagining where or what might be happening to Madeleine and angry at herself and them for having left her, not being there and just, she was shouting a lot, I can't, 'We've, we've let her down Gerry, we've let her down, we weren't there for her', errm... you know, the pain that was causing her that she hadn't been there, was just very raw, errm... anger at the... the whole, I say the system that nobody was seemed to be arriving and, you know, what was being done and the feeling of just nothing, nothing being done, the helplessness and that, that raw, raw emotion of just grief, of just terror and just praying, she was praying, she kept kneeling everywhere just praying and praying and praying and asking for a Priest and just wanted, you know, everybody to be praying for Madeleine for her to be safe."
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Russell O'Brien, in an interview with the Leicestershire Police, April 2008
"...but this was the first time I'd actually really seen or heard Gerry, he was on the phone to, errm... a member of his family, errm... curled up, really, on the floor, just outside the sliding patio door, just sobbing uncontrollably and in between sobs just saying 'They've', you know, 'Someone's taken her' or 'Somebody's blo*dy got her', you know, 'She's gone' and absolutely, errm... you know, you know, for such a strong man to see him on the floor broken, he was... he was incapable of even standing up, he was just lying on the floor and just repeating himself, there was so little he could, you know, there was just nothing else in there."
(...)
"Errr... in my opinion, you know, if this was... if there was any foul play bestowed on them, this was the... the... the most powerful Oscar winning act you have ever seen. There was no... there was no way I could imagine anyone could... could hide the fear they must have had if something had already happened and, and then... and... and... and display this... this degree, this degree of anguish without being the most accomplished of... of... and cynical of actors, you know, this was unimaginable. I mean I've told patients they are dying I've told relatives they've, you know, people have died, you know I've seen lots of people very, very angry, you know, you know very, very upset, very, very quickly and really broken and this was, this was as bad as any of them I've ever seen or heard. Errr... you know, and the same for Gerry, not... not just in these moments but over the... over the coming... over the coming days, I've never ever witnessed such unimaginable grief."
Q: "On realising Madeleine had not been found in the first ten minutes, how did Kate react?"
RO'B: "I think I've already discussed this, I mean although I wasn't there for the whole of that... that early period whenever you were back from outside, you know, she was, well, I can certainly recall hearing her on occasions and when I later saw her she was in... in a, you know, in a terrible state, an absolute terrible state."
Q: "And again, the same question for Gerald."
RO'B: "Errr... I can honestly say that I would never ever have expected to see Gerry in that state, so I'd imagine if his, you know, if a relative had died, errr... you know, he's not... he's not... he's not some kind of cold.. cold... big cold heart, but I'd imagine he would, he's a rational, you know he rationalises things, he says, you know, she was eighty you know she was (inaudible) she smoked or something, he, he would be upset but he would accept, he would accept it as being a normal part of things, I've never seen anything like it, I would never expect to see Gerry like he was. He was... he was, errr... distraught beyond any, any kind of measure." |
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The McCanns were forced to retract their statements about the shutters being jemmied open.
