Gerry and Kate's phone calls for 03/04 May 2007

The first person Gerry called on the evening of Madeleine's disappearance was Alistair Clark, a friend and diplomat who happened to have close connections to Gordon Brown.

Between 10.00 and 10.50 pm The first call that Gerry made on the night of the crime was to Alistair Clark, a good friend from university days and a diplomat who is close to Gordon Brown. Clark made contacts at the highest level and - before Policia Judiciaria - already Sky News and the British Ambassador were being informed about the abduction. [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

And yet the GNR weren't called untill 10.50

Autumn wrote:
The first person Gerry called on the evening of Madeleine's disappearance was Alistair Clark, a friend and diplomat who happened to have close connections to Gordon Brown.

Between 10.00 and 10.50 pm The first call that Gerry made on the night of the crime was to Alistair Clark, a good friend from university days and a diplomat who is close to Gordon Brown. Clark made contacts at the highest level and - before Policia Judiciaria - already Sky News and the British Ambassador were being informed about the abduction. [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

And yet the GNR weren't called untill 10.50

I'm not sure that's correct. I thought John Hill the Mark Warners/Ocean Club manager (or one of his staff) called the police at about 10.30pm according to his statement - and the GNR arrived about 10.50pm to 11.00pm?

The info came from HiDeHo's blog.

10h50 pm - First call to GNR Lagos precinct (Guarda Nacional Republicana, rural police);
The first call to Police Precinct of GNR (Portuguese Rural Police) in Lagos, reporting a missing child and asking for Police help was made at 10.50pm and a patrol was sent, arriving at Ocean Club

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No.
Time
Gerry and Kate's phone calls for 03/04 May 2007 - based on information released in the media prior to the release of the PJ files
1
10.00pm - 10.50pm
Gerry

Alistair Clark (Gerry's friend/Diplomat)

'The first call Gerry made on the night of the crime was to Alistair Clark, a good friend from University days and a diplomat close to Gordon Brown. Clark must have immediately contacted people at the highest level – before the PJ were informed, Sky news and the British Ambassador were informed of a kidnapping.'

(Source: Correio da Manhã, 14 September 2007 - original link now removed, copy of translated report can be found here)
*
10.40pm

Local GNR police are called
*
10.47pm

Local GNR police arrive
2
11:30pm
Gerry

Susan Healy (Kate's mother)

Susan Healy: I think it would be about half eleven - and I'm guessing now, I might be wrong - there was a phone call and it was Gerry on the phone, and he said "It's a disaster, it's a disaster". And he was quite hysterical.

BBC Panorama documentary
3
11:40pm
Gerry

Trish Cameron (Gerry's sister)

It all came pouring out of him at 23.40 – from his phone records – when he called his sister Trish in Scotland ranting and raving semi-coherently on the phone about Madeleine being taken, and Trish kept trying to get him to calm down.

Timesonline 16 December 2007

Trish, went on: ''Kate ran and told my brother. He was distraught on the phone to me, breaking his heart.

''He said, ‘Maddie’s been abducted, she’s been abducted’. Nothing else was touched in the apartment, no valuables taken, no passports.''
4
00:00am
Kate

Mother of Anne-Marie Wright (Mother of Kate's cousin)

Anne-Marie Wright, Kate's cousin, is the wife of Michael Wright and the McCanns are godparents to one of the Wright's children. The McCanns spent Christmas with the Wright's in Skipton rather than their own parents and Michael Wright was a named driver of the McCanns' Renault Scenic hire car.
*
00:01am

Telegraph publishes first report of Madeleine's disappearance (link):

Three year old feared abducted in Portugal

By staff and agencies
Last Updated: 12:01am BST 04/05/2007

A three-year-old British girl has gone missing while on a family holiday in Portugal, the Foreign Office said today.

Portuguese police are investigating the disappearance from a holiday complex in Praia da Luz in the western Algarve.

A Foreign Office spokesman said that he understood the girl's parents had gone to have dinner once their children were asleep last night, but returned to check on them only to find the girl had gone missing.

"They reported it straight away," he said, adding that consular assistance was being offered.
5
00:30am - 01:00am
Kate

Susan Healy (Kate's mother - 2nd call)

According to Portuguese newspaper Sol (18 August 2007), sometime between 00:30 and 01:00am Kate calls her parents. Susan Healy says ''I had a phone call from Kate asking me to contact Father Paul Seddon''
*
00:30am - 01:00am

Pat Perkins (Family friend)

When Kate McCann discovered Madeleine missing, she called her parents in Liverpool. They had a visitor, Patricia Perkins, the Human Resources director of a British health organization. After hearing of Madeleine's disappearance, Mrs Perkins rings her friend Aurelio Guerreiro and asks him to go and help the McCanns.

(She also instigated the original Madeleine chain e-mail, which can be seen at the bottom of 'The First Reactions' page)

Sol reports the incident:

'Aurelio Guerreiro, the owner of a bar at the marina in Vilamoura, was close to being involved. His testimony to Sol confuses the McCanns’ time version. Sometime between 0.30 and 1 a.m., Aurelio got a phonecall from an old customer: Pat Perkins, the human resources director from a public English organism. She calls him, upset: ''She told me the daughter of british friends of her, who were vacationing close to Lagos, had disappeared over 3 hours ago, that they were completely alone and that nobody was helping them to search for her''.

Kate McCann had just informed her parents of the tragedy. Pat, who lives in Liverpool, confirms: ''I was at Kate’s parents’ house at that moment. But I have nothing further to add''.

Guerreiro tells what he did after Pat called him: ''I understood she wanted me to go meet them, but I was an hour away from their location, and I could not close the bar, I decided to call the police''. After PJ in Portimao confirmed to him they already knew about the case, Aurelio phoned Kate, at the number that Pat had given him: ''An English man picked up. He thanked me, and contrary to what I expected, he didn’t ask me for anything''.

Minutes after this phonecall, Gerry asks for the priest from the Luz parish to be called for him – but the Ocean Club staff members refused, given the time it was. At four in the morning, Jane was asking a member of GNR: ''Have you cut off all the roads already?''. Minutes later, Gerry, given the fact that the priest didn’t appear, asked another element of GNR to show him the way to the church.
*
01:00am

Policia Judiciaria arrive
6
02:00am
Kate

Linda McQueen (Kate's friend from childhood)

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."

Daily Mail
7
03:00am
Kate

Jon Corner (Family friend and godparent to the twins)

Jon Corner: ''She phoned at about 3am. She just blurted out that Maddie had been abducted.

“She said, 'They’ve broken the shutter on the window and taken my little girl'. She’s still devastated. She’s very upset that the police don’t seem to be doing anything.”
8
07:00am
Kate

Jill Renwick (Friend and former work colleague)

Family pal Jill Renwick revealed how panicking Kate sent her a text saying: ''I need help.'' Jill Renwick has known the McCanns since they all worked together at a Glasgow hospital more than a decade ago.

She spoke to Kate at 7am on the morning after Madeleine vanished and said: ''Kate was at the police station in hysterics. When we spoke she said the police weren’t doing enough.''
9
10:00am
Gerry

Trish Cameron (Gerry's sister - 2nd call)

Back home in Dumbarton, Mrs Cameron spoke to her brother again at 10am yesterday.
"It was frustrating for him then because between 5am and 7am the police seemed to do nothing, they were standing about," she said.

Guardian link

*

This contradicts previous statements from the McCanns which suggested that the police had deserted them at 4:30am and that they had been forced to go out looking on their own at 6.00am - even though Kate has subsequently admitted, in her BBC interview with Jane Hill, that she has never done anything that could be called 'physically searching'.
10
Untimed
Gerry

Philomena McCann (Gerry's sister)

He's absolutely uncontrollable. He's howling and screaming down the phone: "They've taken her, she's gone."
11
Untimed

John McCann (Gerry's brother)

John McCann appears only to have received text messages

''They texted a couple of times just.. you know.. pray for us. Pray for Madeleine.''
12
Untimed

Calls to journalists

According to a member of the Ocean Club's staff who was helping out as an interpreter that night, between the group of nine friends and the GNR, the McCann couple didn't stop calling journalists. They were moving influences in the British media, where they also have relatives. Around 6 am, Sky News breaks the first news.

Source: Sol

Calling all the major news outlets, when Madeleine could have toddled through the door at any moment, or been found hiding somewhere.

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If Madeleine had really disappeared the parents would have been out searching not spending their time on the phone as they did imo

Cherry wrote:If Madeleine had really disappeared the parents would have been out searching not spending their time on the phone as they did imo

So obvious - First reactions - But it didn't happen

listener wrote:

Cherry wrote:If Madeleine had really disappeared the parents would have been out searching not spending their time on the phone as they did imo

So obvious - First reactions - But it didn't happen

The first reactions of all the Tapas 9 were most odd. The Webster woman thought, it was just another one of their games. The rest of them did not seem to be overly concerned for all the other children in their statements and immediate actions, as Kate McCann ran back to the Tapas bar, without first securing the twins with other adults. To have immediately launched their television careers over the telephone, when Madeleine could very easily have been found sleeping in a wardrobe in Tanner's or Payne's apartment is extremely suspicious. Although, one has to say that suspicious is not a strong enough word to use with regard to this matter.


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Dianne Webster's first words to Fiona after Kate screamed was "I said, what do you want me to do".

Any normal Grandmother would instantly think about her own Grandchildren and instinctively rush off back to her own apartment to make sure they were still there.

Her first reaction tells me a) she knew without any hesitation that all her grandchildren were ok, which means at that point they were already with an adult. b) she needed instructions from Fiona to tell her what to do next. Which means the following of some sort of plan !!

Quite so.
"Leave all the children with me, whilst you all go and look for her" would be far more normal.
In fact, was it not reported that she simply sat at the table having a few more drinks for some time.
Did any of the parents immediately rush back to their respective apartments to check their own abandoned children ?

"Her first reaction tells me a) she knew without any hesitation that all her grandchildren were ok, which means at that point they were already with an adult."
It might alternatively tell us that everything had gone to plan, and they all realised there was no need to do anything more. They all know there is no abductor, and the only thing that needs doing is putting the charade in train, which G and K are beginning to do with their ludicrous overacting, roaring like a bull, bashing walls, phoning the world.
And then famously, going to bed, since it was too dark to search outside.

Why for the love of God did they admit they went to bed and never searched, surely they had the intelligence to know normal people and the police would be astounded and suspicious about this?

Tony Bennett wrote:

Autumn wrote:
The first person Gerry called on the evening of Madeleine's disappearance was Alistair Clark, a friend and diplomat who happened to have close connections to Gordon Brown.

Between 10.00 and 10.50 pm The first call that Gerry made on the night of the crime was to Alistair Clark, a good friend from university days and a diplomat who is close to Gordon Brown. Clark made contacts at the highest level and - before Policia Judiciaria - already Sky News and the British Ambassador were being informed about the abduction. [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

And yet the GNR weren't called untill 10.50

I'm not sure that's correct. I thought John Hill the Mark Warners/Ocean Club manager (or one of his staff) called the police at about 10.30pm according to his statement - and the GNR arrived about 10.50pm to 11.00pm?

From John Hill's statement

The deponent went to the main reception to see if the authorities had been alerted, and fifteen minutes later went to the apartment being used by the McCanns, where he saw that both members of the couple were in a panic and were shouting that the child had been taken. The deponent thinks that the GNR arrived at the scene at about 22.45, however in a conversation several weeks later, he heard someone say, he doesn’t remember whom, that they had arrived at about 23.30, but as he was so busy he declared that he had no notion of the passage of time.


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They (the Mccanns) decided straight away to call the police but had no idea what the emergency numbers were and, anyway, could not speak Portuguese.

They asked one of their friends in the group to go down to the main reception, which is manned 24 hours, and call the police. The call was made at 10.14pm or 10.15pm, according to the McCanns.

Two officers from the GNR local police arrived at 11.10pm, nearly an hour after the call. They could not speak English and a member of the Ocean Club staff had to translate.

According to the Intercalary Report ( what every that means ) from chief inspector Tavares de Almeida, the authoritie , the GNR were alerted around 22:40 .

However according to one of the GNR officer first on the scene Antonio Henrique da Duarte Conceição

;

At about 23.10/23.17 he heard from a telephone call from the Patrol Commander, Officer Roque, that there had been a disappearance at the OC resort, P da L.

Roque was on duty that day with Officer Nelson Costa.

He was told that (Roque) had already gone to main reception of the complex in Rua Direita and had met the father of the little girl who had appeared in the reception with a friend. Together with employee Silvia (service manager of the OC and who also acted as translator, the father (Gerald McCann) and the friend they went inside the apartment from which Madeleine McCann had disappeared. After Roque checked that the child was not in the apartment, he gathered information from the mother and father. He was told by the patrol, that the father had put forward a theory saying that it could have been an abduction. He was also told that there was a shutter that had been “raised”.

The witness, from the description and supposed seriousness of the facts related, ordered the immediate preservation of the scene, and said he would go to the site and communicate the facts to the PJ (this was done from the Post, he does not remember which officer did this but thinks it was Officer Patricio).

He arrived alone, in his own car at about 23.50 and went to the apartment (to the entrance hall) by means of the front door (opposite the parking area) where he found the girl’s parents, a couple and Silvia. He was told that the twins were still sleeping in the bedroom. On the patio next to the front door, was an English woman who had spoken to the patrol, and had referred to having see someone pass in the street, in a dark area, who was carrying a child. As the information had already been gathered and given his limited knowledge of English, he did not manage to talk to the woman.

At the scene, he talked directly to the patrol and to Silvia who informed him about what had been said. His hope was that the child had left the apartment alone and got lost or that someone had seen her and stayed with her temporarily.


Also ;

Nelson Filipe Pacheco da Costa

Date: 2007-05-16

Occupation: GNR Officer


This is his second statement, in the first he gave a detailed description of police intervention at the site of the events.

He has been a GNR officer since 1994. He is a soldier, currently employed at the Lagos GNR post.


On the 3rd May he arrived at the resort in P da L at about 23.00, accompanied by officer Roque.

They went to the OC reception.