McCanns Hire Car Contract

bobbin wrote:
It shows we're all quick off the mark though CR, maybe wrong, but Quick, and that is a good sign at least.  

On the other hand, if the Donegal week didn't happen and if the guy along the beach saw the McCs in his cafe, were the McCs there earlier than stated, and when was the time that the cafe owner guy thought he saw the McCs.

And could this have been the true occasion of the "last" photo?

This Walkden chap, it's massively significant. What are the odds of Gerry getting the same car, even if using the same rental co? Or are they somehow complicit too?

Châtelaine wrote:We may have been here before & FWIW, but: May 8 – May 15, 2007 the Renault Scenic was rented by John BROWN.  The additional driver was a Michael WRIGHT.

Were they not shown to be a different Michael Wright. I must say, coincidence of names like that takes a bit of brain bending to come to terms with.   

Clay Regazzoni wrote:

bobbin wrote:
It shows we're all quick off the mark though CR, maybe wrong, but Quick, and that is a good sign at least.  

On the other hand, if the Donegal week didn't happen and if the guy along the beach saw the McCs in his cafe, were the McCs there earlier than stated, and when was the time that the cafe owner guy thought he saw the McCs.

And could this have been the true occasion of the "last" photo?

This Walkden chap, it's massively significant. What are the odds of Gerry getting the same car, even if using the same rental co? Or are they somehow complicit too?

But the blood spats up the wall and in the tiles, in 5A, and dog findings would have had to occur at Walkden car rental time. Was 5A rented out earlier than 28th April to 3rd May. If not rented out, was it vacant and someone 'local' had the key.

bobbin wrote:
But the blood spats up the wall and in the tiles, in 5A, and dog findings would have had to occur at Walkden car rental time. Was 5A rented out earlier than 28th April to 3rd May. If not rented out, was it vacant and someone 'local' had the key.

Turns it on its head, doesn't it? Always was assumed body went apartment => somewhere else => hire car. What if it was the other way around?

Clay Regazzoni wrote:

bobbin wrote:
But the blood spats up the wall and in the tiles, in 5A, and dog findings would have had to occur at Walkden car rental time. Was 5A rented out earlier than 28th April to 3rd May. If not rented out, was it vacant and someone 'local' had the key.

Turns it on its head, doesn't it? Always was assumed body went apartment => somewhere else => hire car. What if it was the other way around?

So, has anyone seen any info on the rental of 5A, or its vacancy, prior to McC PdL week, and have the PJ seen the airplane ticket stubs for all 5 of the McCs flying to Donegal and out of Donegal, and does the airport or airlines show the McCs or even just some of the family flying to Portugal before the studied PdL week.

ATM I'm looking for the Renault maybe not being rented around a crucial time ...

Châtelaine wrote:ATM I'm looking for the Renault maybe not being rented around a crucial time ...

Good one Châtelaine, we certainly need to get some fresh thinking in, the rest has reached a deadlock at present.   

Châtelaine wrote:ATM I'm looking for the Renault maybe not being rented around a crucial time ...

And Gerry getting it back later - lucky, or unlucky?

Who did the apartment with the rotting meat belong to? Could the meat have been placed there to cover up the previous storage of a body?

Clay Regazzoni wrote:

Châtelaine wrote:ATM I'm looking for the Renault maybe not being rented around a crucial time ...

And Gerry getting it back later - lucky, or unlucky?

***
Just speculating, BUT that might have been a good "marketing plot" again. One of things that boggle the mind is HOW a deepfrozen, 3-week-old dead Madeleine could have ended up in a rental car ...

My apologies for using, what some might consider, graphic language.

Clay Regazzoni wrote:

Châtelaine wrote:ATM I'm looking for the Renault maybe not being rented around a crucial time ...

And Gerry getting it back later - lucky, or unlucky?

Who did the apartment with the rotting meat belong to? Could the meat have been placed there to cover up the previous storage of a body?

I'm re-pasting a post that I made some time back because the Walkdens are the odd ones out on the car hire info. A big Discrepancy....


" McCanns Hire Car Contract
[quote="tigger"]I've lifted this from the Huelva trip topic so as not to go off topic there.

snipped

Simon John Halder 11 km - 190km total 179km , from9/3 to 17/3

John Gray Paterson 190km - 823km total 633km, from 18/3 to 25/3

(Rog.file 5 p.55/56)

K.A. Walkden 4095km - 4945km total 945 km, from 25/3 to 01/4

(rog file 4, p. 23/24)

A.R. Lowes 945km - 2051km total 1106km, from 02/4 to 12/4
(Rog.file 5, p. 27/58)

John Brown 2051km - 2592km total 541km, from 8/5 to 15/5

(Rog. File 5. 61 -63 John Sands Brown friend of M. Wright)?

F.A. Vilela 2665km - 2869km total 204km, from 17/5 to 22/5

E. Mengistae 2903km - 3079km total 176 km, from 23/5 to 26/5
G.P McCann 3114 27/5 etc.

snipped

I wonder if the 'Walkden' figures are incorrectly typed up, somewhere or other.
4945 minus 4095 = 850 km, NOT, 945 km.

The sequence of numbers otherwise would be:
11-190 Halder
190-823 Paterson
823-945 Walkden ? = 122 km (over 7 days use = just over 17 km per day ? not very much)
945-2051 Lowes
2051-2592 Brown

time gap of 2 days, with added 73 km

2665-2869 Vilela

time gap of 1 day, with added 34 km

2903-3079 Mengistae
3114- McCann

If Walkden didn't hire this particular car, and perhaps he did have a blue one, WHO did use the car for the 122 kms that show as 'used' from 25th March to 1st April.

122 kms is the distance covered between the rentals of Paterson and Lowe.

Like the discrepancies in the creche records, the 'figures' for Walkden just do not tally.

ETA Mr Walkden seemed to think that the car he had hired had been BLUE but the McC one was silver....something not right here.

bobbin wrote:

Clay Regazzoni wrote:

bobbin wrote:
But the blood spats up the wall and in the tiles, in 5A, and dog findings would have had to occur at Walkden car rental time. Was 5A rented out earlier than 28th April to 3rd May. If not rented out, was it vacant and someone 'local' had the key.

Turns it on its head, doesn't it? Always was assumed body went apartment => somewhere else => hire car. What if it was the other way around?

So, has anyone seen any info on the rental of 5A, or its vacancy, prior to McC PdL week, and have the PJ seen the airplane ticket stubs for all 5 of the McCs flying to Donegal and out of Donegal, and does the airport or airlines show the McCs or even just some of the family flying to Portugal before the studied PdL week.

TBH Bobbin I just wouldn't know - this kind of stuff could reasonably have been taken as read even in the context of what the PJ thought they were dealing with. It's possible they went to Donegal to break the direct trail, then Faro. Did they even fly to Donegal, or drive/boat?

Frustratingly, got to go back out to work now, but I will now be thinking about nothing else all night!

bobbin wrote: [...]
Like the discrepancies in the creche records, the 'figures' for Walkden just do not tally.

ETA Mr Walkden seemed to think that the car he had hired had been BLUE but the McC one was silver....something not right here.

***
You're right. I've been [re-]visiting this subject many a times. But somehow the data for the Scenic rental just don't count up ...

Châtelaine wrote:

bobbin wrote: [...]
Like the discrepancies in the creche records, the 'figures' for Walkden just do not tally.

ETA Mr Walkden seemed to think that the car he had hired had been BLUE but the McC one was silver....something not right here.

***
You're right. I've been [re-]visiting this subject many a times. But somehow the data for the Scenic rental just don't count up ...

We need the later shift to come on line and look at all of this, not many online at present.
If there were an earlier visit, around Easter/beach /cafe time, with sunshine, then the ice-cream photo with the photo-shopped (unattached) arm, which seems to be on the same balcony as that really awful blue eyemakeup photo could well have been earlier than the PdL week.

Too many questions suddenly popping up here.

@ Bobbin
OT, but the indeed repulsive blue eyeshadow photo worries me for 2 reasons. One is that her eyes are dark grey, almost black, whereas they're supposed to be hazel/greenish, so she might be dead. And the second is that IF it's indeed a photo of a dead Madeleine [which is comprehensible in view of last century and before customs, to dress and make-up dead girls and photograph them for remembrance], it should never have been published, unless it was to send out a message. Disturbing thinking ... I'll stop here.

Can the mileage discrepancy be possible due to the car being driven by the car hire staff to different collection points ?  If I book a car to collect at point a, but previous customer has dropped off at point b, and it is the only one available to suit my needs, then it needs to go from point b to a.

Walkden said the car was "dark". It wasn't. He said it was "blue". It wasn't. He said he thought it was a Megane. Technically, that's right, because (as I understand it) the Scenic is a variant of the Megane. But the ordinary user will look at the big writing on the boot. If it says Megane, he'll say "it's a Megane". If the writing says "Scenic" - he'll say it's a Scenic. The Leics Constab guy doing the rogatory interview in 2008 had to prompt Walkden to say it was a Scenic.

KM:  It gets even more ludicrous that we’ve obviously hidden her somewhere incredibly well where nobody’s found her ..( Interviewer: Incredibly well...) ...  and we’d hidden her so well that we’d decided we’d move her in the car which we hired weeks later and you know, it’s just ridiculous.

As we know, KM and GM often leak truth. Is she telling us something here. She got pretty steamed up in this rebuttal I recall.

The testimony of the cafe owner in (was it Sagres?) interests me. He describe the family well. Only trouble being it was in early April that he saw them.

And there is always that pesky "F!%$ Off, I'm not here to enjoy myself," from Gerry.

Hmm.

I like Clay's reversal of events btw. Makes much sense to me.

bobbin wrote:

Châtelaine wrote:

NickE wrote:Don´t know if this was brought up earlier in the thread,sorry if.
Ken Walkden drove the same Renault in late April / early May 2007
Ken Walkden and his wife Val and Gerry are members of RPGC.

***
Not being British I struggle at comprehending what RPCG stands for ... Could you help me out, please?
TA

Rothley Park Golf Club.   

Interesting if the timing of hiring was during the week 28th April to 4th May. Did GerryMcC perhaps 'borrow' the car of his friends, if he knew them from the club, for a quick spin somewhere.

During searches of car drivers, I came across an Irwin, an elderly gent and wondered if he was related to the Irwin sisters. I cannot find that info anymore. It must be somewhere related to this thread.

K Walkden and friends hired the car 3 or 4 weeks earlier (a golfing trip from RPGC). But there were people between his hiring it and Gerry hiring the car.
Ken, in his statement, claimed he didn't know Gerry, but they were members of the same golf club.

Clay Regazzoni wrote:

bobbin wrote:
It shows we're all quick off the mark though CR, maybe wrong, but Quick, and that is a good sign at least.  

On the other hand, if the Donegal week didn't happen and if the guy along the beach saw the McCs in his cafe, were the McCs there earlier than stated, and when was the time that the cafe owner guy thought he saw the McCs.

And could this have been the true occasion of the "last" photo?

This Walkden chap, it's massively significant. What are the odds of Gerry getting the same car, even if using the same rental co? Or are they somehow complicit too?

There is a big connection between RothlEy Park Golf Club and the golf clubs near PdL.  It is written about earlier in the thread.  I think lots of parties of golfers came out to the area from Rothley and they use the same hire car company, hence often the same car.

First time to read this thread,wow! Well done to everyone for the wonderful research.

Doug D wrote:Mileages make about as much sense as the crèche records and with a bit of car confusion (blue car/silver car) thrown in, poorly kept records may have been made to fit.

Not sure why it’s in this thread:
 
[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] - 71378
 
But I highlight the following that suggested a reason for the lack of hiring records up to 8^th May and the possibility that this could have been a more logical time for the cadaver scent in the car.
 
Kikoraton 28^th July 2011:
 
‘Said Kate Mccann: the 'ludicrous' idea of their hire car being involved afterwards.
You may not know that "afterwards" does not necessarily mean 3 to 4 weeks later, when their hire of the car was documented. The car-hire records show an unexplained gap between 12 April and 8 May. It's my belief that this period of hire has been kept back from the public domain. It's a Rolls Royce to an electric phut-phut machine that somebody interesting hired that car between at least 28 April and 8 May, when it went back into general service’.

Subsequent hiring records could all have been doctored (badly?) and could also explain the excessive mileage showing when the Mc's eventually returned the car.

I'm sure there must be a lot more about this on a thread somewhere.

This is really interesting. It would not be surprising if the car hire records were tampered with.  The gap from 28th April - 8th May ... so what was the car doing at this time and was this the time of body relocation?
If the MC Canns, as seems very likely, were being supported by some very influential people then it seems highly likely that the records were amended to 'cover up' the car hire for this period. Interesting, although if it were used at this time to relocate the body there was plenty of time to clean it thoroughly to remove traces.

I think it quite feasible that KW was 'asked' to act vague about the car hire. It seems that everyone wanted badly to conceal the links between Rothley Golf / business interests and the Mc Canns.
It goes back to Vigia group and their massive business interests around PdL.  Vigia was a Leicester company with UK shareholder, 3 of which had relocated to live around P d L.
The Mc Canns had massive assistance in this, seemingly, in order to conceal what was happening in the area, which appears, from research to be due to a big business venture relating to golf/ resorts / low season activities

I have a lot of experience with hire car companies as we now hire cars two months at a time, we no longer have our own car. The companies at the airports have a large, often very large fleet, the resort fleets far less as people requiring a hire car whilst on holiday usually get them at the airport to drive themselves to the resort and then any subsequent journey.
I would believe then that the company they hired the Scenic from wouldn't have a huge fleet so a high chance of hiring the same car twice.

BlackCatBoogie wrote:Yes I think a business deal is probably behind it all, probably along with a few other unsavoury activities.

I too think she was abducted but by arrangement and it went wrong somehow.  Possibly because they over sedated her.  Possibly because somebody played them at their own game and the wrong person took her?  Kate's comments about 'the bastards' taking her is curious in this respect, as are her bruises, as are reports that GM was overheard a few days after the abduction on his mobile asking someone not to harm her.  And the anger and strange behaviour after her abduction, Murat's statment about the 'cock-up' etc.

What do you mean by the blue bag comment Sar - can you explain further.

Were funds for a new business venture needed - and just look at the timing with regard to the Ocean Club contract (in link further up the thread).  Did they know the owners of Mark Warner (look at all the west London connections) -was there an inside deal somewhere?  That went wrong?  Were they double-bluffed somewhere and had to extricate themselves?

An awful lot of GM and KM contemporaries seem to be in the holiday lettings business. Can't you just see them running a golfing outfit in the Algarve - with celebrity sports guests buying in/coming to visit?

Throw in a few pyschics to prolong the fact that she may be alive and enable a few lucrative emplyoyment contracts in the public sector on the back of it and they are  


BUT why the absolute confidence that the body won't be found if she WAS abducted by a third party, this doesn't fit. Unless (please gods) they know that she is still alive somewhere.  Or it is not in the interests of the third party to ever have her body found.  I dunno.

All in my own opinion, nothing is stated as fact.

BCB sport / tennis bag

Thanks for replying Sar - am thinking along the same lines as you re busines interests etc and wondered what you meant by  Explains blue bag "lead" away?

in your earlier post.

Pls don't reply if you don't want to - am just really interested in what you meant by this as it is significant. 
This case is knawing away in my head all the time  

I think there's a danger of hyperactive imagination running away with the story. With each new element of intriguing speculation we're also adding rafts of characters each with implausible levels of involvement, implausibly tenuous links to each other, and with each addition we make the PJ ever more stupid, and GA increasingly blind, to boot. 

The leaps of logic and wild assumptions are in danger of becoming misleading. 

When you attempt to create linkage to prior renters, you simply obfuscate the glaring facts. The McS rented (or had rented for them) a car, in which they made a number of inexplicable and suspicious journeys and at one stage in the rental the car turned up with a honking stench wafting from it which was so severe that extraordinary steps had to be taken to deal with it. The stench didn't turn up several weeks or months after carrying the stinky package, nor did the rental company and/or other renters simply have issues pegs on their noses. There is a direct relationship between the stench, the point in the rental that the stench occurred, the people in control of the car at the time, which renders absolutely every other prior connection to the car entirely irrelevent. 

If there's a gap in the rental record, maybe its because there's a gap in the rental demand, or due to a maintenance process. A master criminal using a car as a scene of crime would not return to the scene of crime to do anything but destroy the scene of crime, certainly would never release it to an openmarket and then hope to somehow get it back at a later date. And why would the rental firm entertain such an incriminating act in which the end result was anything other than the complete destruction of the car, covered fully by insurance? 

It may be tempting to imagine so many little links in the chain, each getting their few euros of bunga, but to weave a plot like that you'd have to be disastrously thick because you open yourself up to blackmail, whistleblowing, accidental leak, or a bout of better conscience. 

Similarly, i'll wager there are scores of golf clubs in the uk with links to PDL. I don't play and I don't play in the circles that can afford second homes in those places, but even I know people who frequent that area on golf trips. I know someone with an apartment in PDL. I've been offered a cheap holiday there in times past. His apartment is in the same luxury apartment development that appeared on one of the property tv shows - I think it was 'A Place In The Sun.' Similarly my local golf club has at least five members, all extremely well-heeledp semi-retired business men, who have homes within two miles of each other down somewhere between Murcia and Faro. That's the nature of wealth, friendships, fraternities, clubs and the business mindset. They share the number of a travel agent, of locals who can service various needs down there, of the local tips and tricks, of the realtor and the investment potential. It perpetuates itself organically. Introducers and arrangers are not uncommon. 

If there was a sniff of grand conspiracy, GA would be all over it. His silence on it would be inexplicable. 

The dogs remain the key.

CynicAl wrote:I think there's a danger of hyperactive imagination running away with the story. With each new element of intriguing speculation we're also adding rafts of characters each with implausible levels of involvement, implausibly tenuous links to each other, and with each addition we make the PJ ever more stupid, and GA increasingly blind, to boot. 

The leaps of logic and wild assumptions are in danger of becoming misleading. 

When you attempt to create linkage to prior renters, you simply obfuscate the glaring facts. The McS rented (or had rented for them) a car, in which they made a number of inexplicable and suspicious journeys and at one stage in the rental the car turned up with a honking stench wafting from it which was so severe that extraordinary steps had to be taken to deal with it. The stench didn't turn up several weeks or months after carrying the stinky package, nor did the rental company and/or other renters simply have issues pegs on their noses. There is a direct relationship between the stench, the point in the rental that the stench occurred, the people in control of the car at the time, which renders absolutely every other prior connection to the car entirely irrelevent. 

If there's a gap in the rental record, maybe its because there's a gap in the rental demand, or due to a maintenance process. A master criminal using a car as a scene of crime would not return to the scene of crime to do anything but destroy the scene of crime, certainly would never release it to an openmarket and then hope to somehow get it back at a later date. And why would the rental firm entertain such an incriminating act in which the end result was anything other than the complete destruction of the car, covered fully by insurance? 

It may be tempting to imagine so many little links in the chain, each getting their few euros of bunga, but to weave a plot like that you'd have to be disastrously thick because you open yourself up to blackmail, whistleblowing, accidental leak, or a bout of better conscience. 

Similarly, i'll wager there are scores of golf clubs in the uk with links to PDL. I don't play and I don't play in the circles that can afford second homes in those places, but even I know people who frequent that area on golf trips. I know someone with an apartment in PDL. I've been offered a cheap holiday there in times past. His apartment is in the same luxury apartment development that appeared on one of the property tv shows - I think it was 'A Place In The Sun.' Similarly my local golf club has at least five members, all extremely well-heeledp semi-retired business men, who have homes within two miles of each other down somewhere between Murcia and Faro. That's the nature of wealth, friendships, fraternities, clubs and the business mindset. They share the number of a travel agent, of locals who can service various needs down there, of the local tips and tricks, of the realtor and the investment potential. It perpetuates itself organically. Introducers and arrangers are not uncommon. 

If there was a sniff of grand conspiracy, GA would be all over it. His silence on it would be inexplicable. 

The dogs remain the key.

Er, you could be wrong and correct at the same time here. How do you know the stink in the car wasn't created deliberately to explain away dog evidence? It's possible, with the reversed timeline, that the same trick had already been pulled once with a fridge. As for GA, I think the PJ are going to be shown to having got within a hair's breadth of completely solving the case first time around. Only political interference stopped them.

When Murat just had to hire a car at extremely short notice, was he trying to get the Scenic, I wonder?

CynicAl wrote:I think there's a danger of hyperactive imagination running away with the story. With each new element of intriguing speculation we're also adding rafts of characters each with implausible levels of involvement, implausibly tenuous links to each other, and with each addition we make the PJ ever more stupid, and GA increasingly blind, to boot. 

The leaps of logic and wild assumptions are in danger of becoming misleading. 

When you attempt to create linkage to prior renters, you simply obfuscate the glaring facts. The McS rented (or had rented for them) a car, in which they made a number of inexplicable and suspicious journeys and at one stage in the rental the car turned up with a honking stench wafting from it which was so severe that extraordinary steps had to be taken to deal with it. The stench didn't turn up several weeks or months after carrying the stinky package, nor did the rental company and/or other renters simply have issues pegs on their noses. There is a direct relationship between the stench, the point in the rental that the stench occurred, the people in control of the car at the time, which renders absolutely every other prior connection to the car entirely irrelevent. 

If there's a gap in the rental record, maybe its because there's a gap in the rental demand, or due to a maintenance process. A master criminal using a car as a scene of crime would not return to the scene of crime to do anything but destroy the scene of crime, certainly would never release it to an openmarket and then hope to somehow get it back at a later date. And why would the rental firm entertain such an incriminating act in which the end result was anything other than the complete destruction of the car, covered fully by insurance? 

It may be tempting to imagine so many little links in the chain, each getting their few euros of bunga, but to weave a plot like that you'd have to be disastrously thick because you open yourself up to blackmail, whistleblowing, accidental leak, or a bout of better conscience. 

Similarly, i'll wager there are scores of golf clubs in the uk with links to PDL. I don't play and I don't play in the circles that can afford second homes in those places, but even I know people who frequent that area on golf trips. I know someone with an apartment in PDL. I've been offered a cheap holiday there in times past. His apartment is in the same luxury apartment development that appeared on one of the property tv shows - I think it was 'A Place In The Sun.' Similarly my local golf club has at least five members, all extremely well-heeledp semi-retired business men, who have homes within two miles of each other down somewhere between Murcia and Faro. That's the nature of wealth, friendships, fraternities, clubs and the business mindset. They share the number of a travel agent, of locals who can service various needs down there, of the local tips and tricks, of the realtor and the investment potential. It perpetuates itself organically. Introducers and arrangers are not uncommon. 

If there was a sniff of grand conspiracy, GA would be all over it. His silence on it would be inexplicable. 

The dogs remain the key.

Great post CynicAl.

Thumbs up to you CynicAl :)