Re: Prosecution Exhibit 1: 'madeleine' - What's in the book?

by **sharonl** 17.05.20 19:13

Verdi wrote:On the plus side, it could be said that we covered a lot of ground. But it was all incredibly deflating and some of it was downright stomach-churning. Once again the police shared details about Murat; once again they bemoaned the absence of hard evidence. My frustration with their lack of progress, combined with what they were actually telling us about him, whipped up a storm of fury in me that was completely out of character. It seems to me now as if for several months I was possessed by some demonic alien that infiltrated my thoughts and filled me with anger and hatred. I needed a face on which to pin all this rage, someone to blame. And although, as I now know, the PJ had no case against Murat, they handed him to me on a plate. Since they had insinuated throughout that he might be the person responsible for the unimaginable fear and pain suffered by our little girl, is it any wonder I felt as I did?

madeleine by KATE MCCANN

How did Kate Mccann know their little girl suffered unimaginable pain and fear ?

Interesting

Kate McCann -

"Madeleine had a fear of pain"
"Madeleine did not disappear due to us leaving her alone, I know that she disappeared under other circumstances"
"I imagined her body laid out on a grey stone slab, her tiny genitals torn apart"
"I had I suppose this temporary thought that perhaps she's cowering in a wardrobe or something"

Gerry McCann

"We are not responsible for Madeleines' death"
"Kate and I are 100% confident of each others innocence"
"She has been taken by a paedophile gang"

Clarence Mitchell

"If she's dead, she's dead, but not by their hand"
'Kate and Gerry are not responsible for Madeleines' death"

So, if the McCanns are not responsible for Madeleines' death, who is? And, who is this paedophile gang that Gerry seems to be aware of?

Who had access to Madeleine on that Sunday? And why? David Payne? Clement Freud?

Why was Gerry on that holiday? He wasn't there to F*****G enjoy himself.

When did they first associate with paedophile freud?

With all the paedophiles in or around PDL at that time who have been allegedly investigated by Operation Grange, were David Payne and Clement Freud included? If not, why not?

Another interesting fact, although it may be coincidence, is that despite all the parents being at least in their late 30s, none of the children in the group were over the age of four.

by **PeterMac** 18.05.20 8:31

Verdi wrote:
...and if there were any specific police searches overnight, they were not apparent. The only searches I was aware of were those carried out by ourselves, fellow guests and the Mark Warner staff.
Kate McCann

Of course they were not apparent - to YOU

Because you spent the entire night sitting in a darkened room gazing at a candle, and Gerry was asleep on a camp bed getting his strength up – –
to go for your morning jog.
Your words, not mine.

by Verdi 22.05.20 21:53

Alan [Pike] must be used to seeing people in states of profound distress, and he certainly found two in apartment 4G at the Ocean Club. By this stage I was beginning to feel that there just wasn’t any way up. He started by asking us about our home, our family and our normal lives. He told us we seemed like model parents. I cannot overstate how much such kind reassurance meant to us at that moment. We were both feeling so desperately guilty. Whatever we had or had not done right, we were Madeleine’s parents and in our own eyes we had failed to keep her safe. We struggled to bear that sense of guilt and we always will.

~~~~~~

After examining the proximity of the Tapas restaurant to apartment 5A, the barrister first of all assured us that our behaviour could not be deemed negligent and was indeed ‘well within the bounds of reasonable parenting’.

madeleine by KATE MCCANN

by Verdi 08.07.20 16:04

Let me tell you something about Gerry. His honesty and openness make him very direct, often to the point of bluntness, and he’s not a touchy-feely guy. Like many men, he assumes I take his feelings as read and doesn’t see any need to express them with soft-soaping, flowers or cards.

And although, like most women, I would appreciate the odd romantic gesture, the fact that he has always been loyal, solid and loving deep down, where it really matters, is far more important. It’s just Gerry, I’m used to his foibles and generally any deficiencies in gallantry simply go over my head.

Madeleine by KATE MCCANN

by pdlsleuth1990 08.07.20 21:47

Reread the Madeline book again at the weekend. I found it very anodyne and lacking in very little detail. Which is not surprising as it was probably proofed by her advisers, PR helpers, and legal experts.

What I did find surprising in the relatively short chapter and the holiday was that there was no mention of the trip to Sagres. There was a mention of a trip to a beach but that seemed to be a local beach. Maybe I'm missing something or its not that important. But I thought I read somewhere that the family visited the beach as the same time as another child was targeted. If I am wrong feel free to delete the post.

by Verdi 09.07.20 1:35

pdlsleuth1990 wrote:Reread the Madeline book again at the weekend. I found it very anodyne and lacking in very little detail. Which is not surprising as it was probably proofed by her advisers, PR helpers, and legal experts.

What I did find surprising in the relatively short chapter and the holiday was that there was no mention of the trip to Sagres. There was a mention of a trip to a beach but that seemed to be a local beach. Maybe I'm missing something or its not that important. But I thought I read somewhere that the family visited the beach as the same time as another child was targeted. If I am wrong feel free to delete the post.

I think you might find these links very helpful pdlsleuth1990..

https://jillhavern.forumotion.net/t1581-the-mccanns-family-trip-to-sagres-30th-april#35874

https://jillhavern.forumotion.net/t12096-krokowski-2-nuno-lourenco-s-account-of-how-wojchiech-krokowski-nearly-kidnapped-his-child#325577

https://jillhavern.forumotion.net/t10602-was-wojcek-krokowski-sagres-man-with-a-camera-the-template-for-both-tannerman-and-smithman#290487

thumbsup

by Verdi 23.07.20 12:29

It was later the same day that Gerry met Clarence Mitchell for the first time. Clarence, a former BBC news correspondent working for the Civil Service, was the director of the Media Monitoring Unit attached to 10 Downing Street. He still had many press contacts and had made it known to his Cabinet Office bosses that he missed the cut and thrust of big stories and would be interested, if an opportunity arose, in acting as a government press handler on a major event.

As a result, he was seconded to the Foreign Office to come out to Portugal to handle our media liaison as part of their consular support for us.

madeleine by KATE MCCANN

by Verdi 27.07.20 0:56

When reading this, keep in mind the most recent alleged suspect of German origin and remember also past German suspects with a reported criminal record for child sexual abuse, like Raymond Hewlett.

9 August 2008

Feeling a bit unsettled and agitated this evening. Going through the files brings back the emotion, desperation and uncertainty. At the same time, I have a slight flicker of hope that maybe something will emerge soon – but I’m just too scared to go there.

Inevitably, I spent a great deal of time bringing together bits of related data in order to get a clearer picture of what they actually represented. But I waded through the documents doggedly. It was essential that I did. I don’t believe anybody else would have examined them in such microscopic detail, or with the same determination or motivation, as Gerry and I. How could they? They were not Madeleine’s parents.

One of the most concerning and upsetting pieces of information to emerge quite early was the record of sexual crimes against children in the Algarve. This discovery made me feel physically sick. I read of five cases of British children on holiday being sexually abused in their beds while their parents slept in another room. In three further incidents, children encountered an intruder in their bedrooms, who was presumably disturbed before he had the chance to carry out an assault. I guessed these were the reports that Bill Henderson, the British consul at the time of Madeleine’s abduction, had told me about.

These incidents had occurred within an hour’s drive of Praia da Luz over the three years prior to Madeleine’s disappearance. The PJ had never mentioned any of them to us. In fact, I gathered from the files, some of them hadn’t even been recorded by the authorities at the time they were reported (evidently, they were not considered to be actual crimes). So they might never have come to light if the parents of these children hadn’t been brave enough to come forward to the British police after Madeleine was taken and relive their nightmares. They did so in the belief that there could be a link between what had happened to their children and what had happened to her.

It broke my heart to read the terrible accounts of these devastated parents and the experiences of their poor children. Unbelievably (or maybe not, by this time), there was a familiar thread running through them all. The parents had called the police; they hadn’t felt that the crime was taken seriously, by the police or by their tour operators; statements were often not taken; DNA and fingerprint evidence was frequently not sought. In most instances there was no sign of a break-in. I cried for hours after reading a letter of complaint from one mother to the GNR regarding the sexual abuse of her daughter and the lack of proper attention paid to it by the authorities. The final line in particular has haunted me ever since:

It is difficult to see with this lack of investigation or interest how a profile of this man can be built up. It did not appear to us that there was any great incentive or determination to find the offender and bring him to justice . . . Furthermore, it could all have been so much worse . . . indeed this man could go on to do much worse to another child if he’s not stopped now.

Six months later, our beloved Madeleine was grabbed from her bed.

Of course, none of these children was abducted and these crimes may be completely unrelated to what happened to Madeleine. We do not know who has taken our daughter and for what purpose. What these cases do demonstrate, however, is that British tourists in holiday accommodation were being targeted. At the very least, the possibility of a link between these incidents and Madeleine’s disappearance should have been investigated.

It is so hard not to scream from the rooftops about how these crimes appear to have been brushed under the carpet. The authorities have known of them for a long time and yet the perpetrators, as far as the families are aware, remain free. But we can’t shout about them. Children are involved and they need to be protected. We are extremely grateful, however, to their parents for having the courage and compassion to share their experiences with us to try to help us find our daughter.

These atrocious offences occur all around the world, of course, not just in Portugal. But if individual countries do not acknowledge and deal with them thoroughly, they will multiply. Unless these criminals are tracked down and punished, and measures are put in place to stop them, not only will they continue to offend but others will flock to what they see as an easier milieu for their activities, eager to take advantage of weaker laws and laxer attitudes.

Combing through the files, I despaired. It was only now that I became aware of just how cursory some of the police work had been. Vital questions had not been asked, alibis not verified, lines of inquiry left dangling or, at best, not adequately documented. There is no doubt that the police were overwhelmed, both by having to deal with a crime of this nature under such scrutiny and by the sheer volume of information pouring in. The systems and resources they needed simply weren’t there. I felt some sympathy with them over the challenges they faced, and it was clear that Paulo Rebelo, who replaced Gonçalo Amaral as coordinator of the investigation, had tried to make up for some of the initial inadequacies by checking back for anything that had been overlooked. But the discovery of each missed opportunity was another twist of the knife in my chest.

It was here I found the receptionist’s note in the Ocean Club staff message book explaining that we wanted to book the Tapas restaurant for the rest of the week because we were leaving our children alone in our apartments. I was dismayed. This was a glaring green light to a child-taker – and yet no mention is made of it in the files until December 2007. December 2007! Seven months after Madeleine’s abduction! I could only conclude that its relevance had not been appreciated by the police.

Door-to-door inquiries appeared to have been delayed and haphazard. If nobody was at home, too bad: as far as I could tell they didn’t get a second visit. Many of the witness statements looked extremely vague and brief, crying out for what seemed blindingly obvious and essential questions to be asked and answered. Those made by the Ocean Club staff in particular were very sketchy, even allowing for the fact that almost 130 employees were interviewed in the space of just a few days. We have discovered since that there were staff who were not interviewed at all.

Night after night, I read of depraved individuals, British paedophiles, Portuguese paedophiles, Spanish, Dutch and German paedophiles, and of the horrific crimes they’d committed. The police went to visit some of them, looked around their apartments and recorded merely, ‘No sign of the minor.’ Was that enough to eliminate these vile characters from the inquiry? If more had been done, there was certainly nothing in the files about it. No description, no photograph, no alibi, no DNA. Just ‘No sign of the minor.’

madeleine by KATE MCCANN

[Text for research and study purposes only]
...................

Can you see hidden messages here, hidden messages that fit nicely with the latest German person of interest and past persons of interest - or not, as the case may be.

The Netflix production aired twelve years after the event, a culmination of different aspects covered by the media over the years. All leading to yet another revelation - the multi-faceted German prisoner who so far has remained silent by all accounts.

Everything leads to accusations of Portuguese police incompetence. The only official force who worked tirelessly against all odds for justice in the name of Madeleine McCann.

by Guest 27.07.20 1:35

When pointing fingers at the Portuguese police, never forget Wojciech Krokowski!

Another purported pedophile who entered the frame as early as May 5th 2007.

The man who was said to have been photographing children in Sagres.

The man who was said to have had the same characteristics as Tannerman.

The man who had nothing to do with Madeleine's disappearance.

Yet, the Portuguese police were able to quickly get the Polish police to interrogate him and his wife when they got back home, and rule them out of the investigation, while sealing their holiday apartment in Burgau for forensic examination, where they found two strands of hair with the same haplotype as those of Jane Tanner.

Never forget!

by sparkyhorrox 27.07.20 11:05

pauloalexandre wrote:When pointing fingers at the Portuguese police, never forget Wojciech Krokowski!

Another purported pedophile who entered the frame as early as May 5th 2007.

The man who was said to have been photographing children in Sagres.

The man who was said to have had the same characteristics as Tannerman.

The man who had nothing to do with Madeleine's disappearance.

Yet, the Portuguese police were able to quickly get the Polish police to interrogate him and his wife when they got back home, and rule them out of the investigation, while sealing their holiday apartment in Burgau for forensic examination, where they found two strands of hair with the same haplotype as those of Jane Tanner.

Never forget!

I also keep in mind how vague and unhelpful the parents and the rest of the group were in their statements of events and later when asked to re-enact the the events of that particular evening ...

by Verdi 31.07.20 1:25

Repeat..

Night after night, I read of depraved individuals, British paedophiles, Portuguese paedophiles, Spanish, Dutch and German paedophiles, and of the horrific crimes they’d committed.

The police went to visit some of them, looked around their apartments and recorded merely, ‘No sign of the minor.’ Was that enough to eliminate these vile characters from the inquiry?

If more had been done, there was certainly nothing in the files about it. No description, no photograph, no alibi, no DNA. Just ‘No sign of the minor.’

madeleine by KATE MCCANN
...................

As I said up-page, there can be little or nor doubt why this recent media blitz has hit the headlines - apart from a distraction from Brexit, the coronavirus, the Trump assasination and assorted other worldwide atrocities.

by Verdi 31.07.20 1:26

On 22 May I had a phone call from our lead investigator. He warned me that a British tabloid would be running a piece the following day about a convicted paedophile called Raymond Hewlett, who had been staying in Tavira on the Algarve in May 2007. The proximity of Tavira to Praia da Luz and the fact that this man was a paedophile ticked all the boxes for the redtop papers, and they jumped on the story. All of a sudden, Hewlett was cast as the man who could have taken Madeleine.

We were exasperated. We now knew that there had been hundreds of paedophiles on the Algarve at that time and if, God forbid, one of them had been involved, Hewlett seemed a less likely candidate than a lot of others. He was in his sixties, for a start, much older than the man seen by Jane and other witnesses. But to the press that was irrelevant. They had a name and a photograph and they were off.

We were desperate for somebody to investigate Hewlett, not because we thought he had anything to do with taking Madeleine but because we wanted to eliminate him from the inquiry and quickly put an end to the media speculation. But the UK authorities told us they couldn’t help. (‘It’s a Portuguese investigation . . .’)

My main worry was that Hewlett, who had terminal throat cancer, would die before anyone took an official statement from him. Then the media would take the line that it was probably him, Madeleine was dead, game over, and we would be left with an uphill struggle to prevent this theory from becoming established. All the hard work we’d done recently to motivate the public to believe in our search again, and to undo the harm being done by Gonçalo Amaral, would be ruined. Sometimes it seemed as if we spent as much time trying to clear the path for our investigation as we did actually investigating. I wasn’t sure I had the strength for another battle. It was so frustrating.

Sure enough, the tabloid interest in Hewlett raged on until July. In the meantime, he was questioned in connection with a case dating back to 1975, but not by Leicestershire or Portuguese officers. He also spoke to the tabloids, but refused to see our investigators unless we paid him to do so. He died a few months later.

[Excerpt for study and research only]

by Verdi 31.07.20 1:32

The recent ITV Madeleine McCann documentary..

Graham Hill, a former detective with Surrey Police who flew to Portugal in 2007 to help try to find the three-year-old, and is now a Dr in criminology, believes despite 13 years passing, lessons have not been learned by the forces involved in terms of working together.

Funny Kate McCann makes no mention of Graham Hill in her book 'madeleine'. She names most other individuals flown over to Portugal to give them, the McCanns, support.

From the book..

A couple of days later, the FLOs’ efforts were bolstered by the arrival from the UK of the specialists from the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP). The director of the forensic psychology unit, who was a detective superintendent, and a social worker came to see us to outline their current lines of inquiry. In the weeks ahead the input of the UK experts would encourage us to feel more optimistic that the investigation was gaining momentum.

This initial discussion, though, was unsettling, focused as it was on the typical profile of a paedophile. All I could think was, not Madeleine. Please not Madeleine!

by Verdi 31.07.20 1:39

Crying in bed again – can’t help it . . . The thought of Madeleine’s fear and pain tears me apart. The thought of paedophiles makes me want to rip my skin off.

Surely these people along with psychopaths are not ‘normal’ human beings?

I’ve never been in favour of the death penalty but these people should be ‘kept’ in a secure location of some description. I don’t mind if it’s in nice surroundings but certainly, in the case of paedophiles, away at all times from ANY contact with children.

by Verdi 31.07.20 1:54

A change of subject - well vaguely. Kate McCann talks of Metodo3, the Spanish private detective agency hired by entrepreneur Brian Kennedy and/or the Find Madeleine Co Ltd. Read carefully, in particular between the lines..

Our first investigators, the Spanish company Método 3, began working for us in October. With private investigations technically illegal in Portugal, we felt the closest we could get would be a firm from somewhere on the Iberian Peninsula, which would have the advantage of familiarity with local systems, culture and geography and the best network of contacts in the region. M3 also had links to the Spanish police, who, in turn, had good connections with the Portuguese police.

We assembled all the source material we could for the investigators, passing on my detailed chronology of events and the research we were compiling, making endless lists of potential witnesses – some of whom we knew the police had interviewed, many more we suspected they had not – and reported sightings of little girls who could have been Madeleine. As a result of the huge publicity the case had been given, the police and press had been overwhelmed by such reports from the outset. Sometimes ‘Madeleine’ has been seen in different countries, thousands of miles apart, on the same day. These tip-offs needed to be sifted and any credible information followed up.

We have no doubt that M3 made significant strides, but unfortunately, in mid-December, one of their senior investigators gave an overly optimistic interview to the media. He implied that the team were close to finding Madeleine and declared that he hoped she would be home by Christmas. Gerry and I did not pay much heed to these bullish assertions. While we believed they’d been made in an attempt to cast the search in a positive light, we knew that such public declarations would not be helpful. Credibility is so important. That glitch apart, M3 worked very hard for us and, just for the record, their fees were very low: most of the money they were paid was for verified expenses. Although we went on to employ new teams, we maintain good relations with M3 today. We had the sense that they genuinely cared about Madeleine’s fate, something that, sadly, we have found we cannot take for granted.

by **PeterMac** 02.08.20 16:47

by Verdi 04.08.20 15:53

Kate McCann wrote:Though I envied David and Fiona their sea view, being on the ground floor meant we didn’t have to worry about the children’s safety on a balcony.

Prosecution Exhibit 1: 'madeleine' - What's in the book? - Page 13 Balcon10

Prosecution Exhibit 1: 'madeleine' - What's in the book? - Page 13 Balcon11

Prosecution Exhibit 1: 'madeleine' - What's in the book? - Page 13 Balcon12

by **crusader** 04.08.20 16:10

by Guest 04.08.20 16:14

In their book Madeleine: Our Daughter's Disappearance and the Continuing Search for Her, mother Kate revealed how their ground-floor flat was a "prime" target for criminals.

by Verdi 04.08.20 16:18

Kate McCann wrote: We felt so secure we simply didn’t think it was necessary. Our own apartment was only thirty to forty-five seconds away, and although there were some bushes in between it was largely visible from the Tapas restaurant. We were sitting outside and could just as easily have been eating on a fine spring evening in a friend’s garden, with the kids asleep upstairs in the house.

Prosecution Exhibit 1: 'madeleine' - What's in the book? - Page 13 Shrubb10

Prosecution Exhibit 1: 'madeleine' - What's in the book? - Page 13 Tapas10

Prosecution Exhibit 1: 'madeleine' - What's in the book? - Page 13 The_vi10

by Verdi 04.08.20 16:22

miffy8 wrote:In their book Madeleine: Our Daughter's Disappearance and the Continuing Search for Her, mother Kate revealed how their ground-floor flat was a "prime" target for criminals.

Later, we were told by the British police that the ground-floor location, access to roads front and side, secluded entrance and partial tree cover made our apartment a prime target for burglars and other criminals. Never once did this occur to us when we arrived. As far as we were concerned, we were in a safe, family-oriented holiday resort.

madeleine by KATE MCCANN

by **sandancer** 04.08.20 17:01

Verdi wrote:
Kate McCann wrote:Though I envied David and Fiona their sea view, being on the ground floor meant we didn’t have to worry about the children’s safety on a balcony.

Ah yes , the stone steps that Kate and the three children ages 2 and nearly 4 went up and down to the patio door ( on the balcony !) while good old dad Gerry went in by himself through the front door ! spin

by **PeterMac** 05.08.20 7:49

After Sunday it is stated the Gerry AND Madeleine left by the front door
which means the three children could not be seen together, and there was never an opportunity
for the entire family of 5 to be seen.

by **Tony Bennett** 05.08.20 11:30

PeterMac wrote:After Sunday it is stated the Gerry AND Madeleine left by the front door
which means the three children could not be seen together, and there was never an opportunity
for the entire family of 5 to be seen.

The above fact (Gerry leaving by the front door after Sunday) should be linked to these facts:

1 Last Photo taken Sunday lunchtime not Thursday lunchtime

2 Sudden and urgent booking of Tapas restaurant Sunday night

3 Strong possibility that the controversial Make-Up Photo was taken Sunday afternoon/early evening

4 McCanns' change of plan after Sunday - both breakfast and lunch taken in their apartment

5 Odd coincidences of time of alleged arrival of Madeleine at creche with times of arrival of the twins at their creche, suggesting possible forgery

6 Washing machine breakdown reported to Ocean Club Monday

7 Broken shutters reported to Ocean Club Monday

by **PeterMac** 05.08.20 11:51

Team McCann working overtime to push the official story.
https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1318824/madeleine-mccann-gerry-kate-image-praia-da-luz-algarve-portugal-german-suspect-spt

MADELEINE MCCANN's father, Gerry McCann had an "image fixed indelibly" in his memory from less than an hour before his daughter disappeared, it was revealed during a book written by the parents on the missing toddler.

They are clearly desperate, and HAVE NO OPTION but to push the "continued existence at 2115 Hrs 3/5/7"
narrative.
The fact that his story does not stand up, nor his alleged meeting with JW and being passed by JT in the road outside, and the other inconvenient fact that it is HIS narrative which closes down the 'window of opportunity' so small that even the most ardent Pro-parents have been unable adequately to explain how it might have happened
even after 13 years of trying, is conveniently ignored by the paid and controlled MSM.

by Guest 05.08.20 12:23

Not only does he further close the window of opportunity by this but he almost bolts it shut with his admission that abduction is a 'million to one' shot (please somebody furnish me with the quote from the interview)

by Verdi 05.08.20 12:49

After Sunday it is stated the Gerry AND Madeleine left by the front door ...

I've never seen mention of Gerry McCann leaving apartment 5a by the front door with Madeleine.

Gerry McCann - witness statement 4th May 2007

Returning to Thursday, after breakfast, about 09h00, KATE and the children left by the rear door, he having left by the front door, which he locked with the key, having also closed and locked the rear door from the inside.

At 12h30 they started lunch, the meal having lasted an hour until 13h30. After that time they made their way to the resort play area, the deponent left by the front door and the rest of the family by the rear door that, once again, he shut and locked from the inside. As to the front door, he does not know exactly if he locked it.

by Secondthoughts2 05.08.20 14:03

If rear door is the side entrance with narrow staircase to the patio doors, how strange that Kate McCann would navigate a gate at the top and bottom of the staircase, and going down these steep narrow stairs with 2, two year old toddlers, onto a sloped narrow pavement, also a road where vehicle traffic passed along. While Gerry McCann (and Madeleine?) left by the front door?

Would make more sense if the entire family left by front door, onto a flat paved area outside the front door, where a wall separated the little footpath from the car park.

This would allow the family, after locking the front door, to organise themselves in a safe fashion, take the kids hands, or carry them, for the onward journey.

Sometimes when things make no sense it's because that's not what happened.

by **sharonl** 07.08.20 22:06

Secondthoughts2 wrote:If rear door is the side entrance with narrow staircase to the patio doors, how strange that Kate McCann would navigate a gate at the top and bottom of the staircase, and going down these steep narrow stairs with 2, two year old toddlers, onto a sloped narrow pavement, also a road where vehicle traffic passed along. While Gerry McCann (and Madeleine?) left by the front door?

Would make more sense if the entire family left by front door, onto a flat paved area outside the front door, where a wall separated the little footpath from the car park.

This would allow the family, after locking the front door, to organise themselves in a safe fashion, take the kids hands, or carry them, for the onward journey.

Sometimes when things make no sense it's because that's not what happened.

But if we believe that Madeleine had disappeared earlier, it would make sense in that the McCanns could not risk being seen as a family of only four.

by Verdi 08.08.20 0:54

Combing through the files, I despaired. It was only now that I became aware of just how cursory some of the police work had been. Vital questions had not been asked, alibis not verified, lines of inquiry left dangling or, at best, not adequately documented. There is no doubt that the police were overwhelmed, both by having to deal with a crime of this nature under such scrutiny and by the sheer volume of information pouring in. The systems and resources they needed simply weren’t there. I felt some sympathy with them over the challenges they faced, and it was clear that Paulo Rebelo, who replaced Gonçalo Amaral as coordinator of the investigation, had tried to make up for some of the initial inadequacies by checking back for anything that had been overlooked. But the discovery of each missed opportunity was another twist of the knife in my chest.

It was here I found the receptionist’s note in the Ocean Club staff message book explaining that we wanted to book the Tapas restaurant for the rest of the week because we were leaving our children alone in our apartments. I was dismayed. This was a glaring green light to a child-taker – and yet no mention is made of it in the files until December 2007. December 2007! Seven months after Madeleine’s abduction! I could only conclude that its relevance had not been appreciated by the police.

madeleine by KATE MCCANN