The mystery of Robert Murat: 17 changes in his story

The Mystery of Robert Murat: The 17 changes in his story. An examination of Robert Murat’s two sets of police interviews, first in May 2007, then in July 2007 - by Tony Bennett

A summary of Murat’s changes of story about what he did on 1, 2, 3 and 4 May

Here’s a convenient summary of Mr Murat's 2nd account of events (given on 10 and 11 July 2007) from 1 to 4 May 2010 and how this contradicted his earlier account of events given to the Portuguese Police on 15 May 2007:

1. Remembers that on 1 May he tried to contact Jorge da Silva.
2. Remembers that on 2 May he didn’t leave home at 10.30 but instead had a meeting with Sergei Malinka at the Batista Supermarket.
3. He had in fact taken Michaela and Malinka back to his mother’s house in Praia da Luz for a further discussion, something he’d omitted to tell the police in the first interview.
4. He now remembered visiting his bank and paying in 287.51 euros.
5. He now remembered he’d called at the home of Francisco Pagarete, his lawyer, that morning.
6. He now remembers that he had met Francisco Pagarete that afternoon.
7. He now remembers that another of Jorge’s sons was present at their meeting in the café in the afternoon.
8. The meeting in the café went on much longer than he had said previously.
9. He thinks that Michaela Walczuk’s husband Luis Antonio may not have been present at Michaela’s house that evening, contrary to what he had previously said.
10. On 3 May, he had not woken at 9.00am as previously stated, but at 8.00am.
11. He had not driven to Michaela’s house after 10.00am as previously stated; instead he had left home at 8.45am for a 9.30am meeting with the owner of the business tourist complex called ‘Gold Bunker’ in the Espiche district and her father-in-law.
12. He now remembered that he had visited two apartments for about 30 minutes, probably on the afternoon of 3 May.
13. He and Michaela had lunch with them, a fact he had not disclosed to police before.
14. Michaela’s daughter Christine was not with them that day contrary to his previous story.
15. They went to the Palmares Golf Club in the afternoon, another fact Murat had failed to disclose.
16. He now admitted to making two telephone calls, to Sergei Malinka and Michaela, at 11.39pm and 11.40pm that night.
17. He previously said he had woken at 9.00am on Friday 4 May. He now admitted he had telephoned Michaela at 8.27am and must have got up earlier.

A possible interpretation of these changes of story could be along these lines; namely that during his first statement, Murat did not want to admit to:

• meeting with Sergi Malinka at the Batista supermarket on 2 May at around 10.00am
• he and Michaela being in the Espiche/Almádena area at around 9.30am on 3 May
• he, Michaela and the da Silvas being at the Palmares Golf Club on the afternoon of 3 May
• that he had visited two apartments on the afternoon of 3 May.

The reader may form his or her own judgment as to why there were so many changes. We will however add this discussion by a poster on the ‘maddiecasefiles’ internet forum, who analysed these discrepancies in Murat’s account of those few days:

“Jorge Miguel Rocha da Silva tells us that even on the day Murat returned from Exeter (1 May), he tried to get in touch da Silva at the children’s clothing shop that he runs with his wife. He couldn’t, as it was a public holiday. On the following two days (2 & 3 May) he insisted that that da Silva meet him at short notice. A few days later, three days before Murat was made an arguido, Michaela Walczuk was still inviting him to get-togethers at her apartment.

“The official line from Murat is that he was talking to da Silva to persuade him to invest in his and Michaela’s venture: ‘Romigen’. Yet to this day, Romigen appears to be no more than a ‘shell’ company, just a paper idea for selling property via the internet. It doesn’t seem as though the company required any significant cash injection. And if we look at da Silva’s statements, if Murat had any intention of buying land to make money out of it, this was never made apparent to da Silva even after several hours of apparently unprofitable conversation - or rather, so it's been said, of long and puzzling silences.

“On his first full day back in Praia da Luz (2 May), Murat did manage to get in touch with da Silva at the shop. He took da Silva and his two sons to a café bar for the first round of talking. We know that Murat rang his lawyer no less than four times that day. In addition, in da Silva’s first statement to the PJ, he said that: “They did some talking in Mrs Murat’s VW Transporter”. He says rather vaguely that the discussion was ‘to develop some details of the intended business’.

“The following day (3 May), Murat, Michaela, Jorge da Silva and his sons met again for a long session on 3 May, at the Palmares Golf Club. It is hard to understand from Jorge da Silva’s account what all these meetings were really about”.

So what could they have been about? Was the true content of these discussions being concealed?

We know that Murat came back to Portugal in great haste on 1 May.

His own account says that he booked his ticket on that very day. He seems to have booked his flight ticket at between midnight and 2.00am. His sister Samantha took him to the airport to catch the 7.00am flight. Murat must have been up and about at not long after 4.00am that morning to get up, travel by car to the airport and check in etc.

There seems to be, without doubt, a significant degree of urgency about Murat’s movements on 1 May. In his statement he said that he met only his mother (who fetched him from Faro airport) and Michaela that day, but since then we’ve learnt that he called at Jorge da Silva’s shop.

Was his sudden early morning flight from Exeter to Praia da Luz just in order to get ‘Romigen’ moving? Did he really need to meet urgently with a top local lawyer for that reason? Two years later, Romigen appears to be still only a ‘shell’ company. So we pose this question: did something significant happen on Monday 30 April which required him to jet out to Portugal immediately and confer with a number of powerful and well-connected people in Praia da Luz?

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