latest from Dr Roberts. OPEN, SESAME !

Open, Sesame!



EXCLUSIVE to mccannfiles.com

By Dr Martin Roberts
15 December 2013


OPEN, SESAME!

There invariably comes a point beyond which our imagination will not reasonably extend, whereupon a joke ceases to be funny. Hence a good comedian will realize the limitations of a given situation and look for a new angle.

The classic sun-dial illustrates a good angle; an angle which serves the desirable purpose of informing the watcher the time of day. For the McCanns, whose lives, we're told, were turned upside-down overnight, it is a door which points to both events and time. The chorus has become so familiar it could almost serve as a Christmas number one: 'The door was open much further than we'd left it'.

What this invites us all to appreciate is that the position of the bedroom door in question should be taken as an indication of intrusion. 'Where we'd left it' - fine. 'Open further than we'd left it' - interfered with by someone else. The relationship expressed is a very simple one. So simple that, like 1 + 1, if anyone tried to convince us the result was anything other than '2' we'd immediately question their motive for doing so.

Anyway, together with the angle of swing, as it were, climatic constraints must be taken into account. Just as a sun-dial cannot function under cloud cover, a door will not blow open, or close spontaneously, against the wind, which, unlike a 'rip-tide', does not immediately pull in the opposite direction, unless of course it's a tornado (not typically experienced in Portugal I believe).

Armed with these basic postulates we may now proceed to review arguably the most bizarre equations ever to be advanced in the history of human discourse!

Gerry McCann (statement to police, 4 May 2007 at 11.15 [extract])

'Thus, at 9.05 pm, the deponent entered the club, using his key, the door being locked...At around 9.30 pm, his friend MATT...went into the deponent's apartment, going in through a sliding glass door at the side of the building, which was always unlocked. He went into the room, saw the twins and didn't even notice if Madeleine was there, as everything was quiet, the shutters closed and the bedroom door half-open as usual.

'At 10pm, his wife Kate went to check on the children. She went into the apartment through the door using her key.'

So, while the stand-in child inspector takes the short cut, both parents choose the long route? That is odd in itself. But the position of the bedroom door is unequivocal: 'half-open, as usual.'

Oldfield confirms the McCann account minutes later:

Matthew Oldfield (statement to police, 4 May 2007 at 11.30 [extract])

'At around 21h25, the interviewee went into his apartment and Madeleine's apartment...He states that the door of the bedroom...occupied by Madeleine...was half-open and that...he couldn't see the bed occupied by Madeleine.'

'Half-open' (as usual) witnessed by Matthew Oldfield implies 'as usual' left by Gerry McCann earlier, who, by the way, makes no observation himself at this time regarding the door's position before he entered the room. Oldfield, however, 'couldn't see the bed' (from inside the room according to Gerry McCann). Still it's 'all quiet on the Western Front'. The door is definitely not seen to have been disturbed earlier than Gerry McCann's own visit to the apartment at 9.05, nor afterwards at 9.30. Alien hands cannot therefore have touched it until well after Jane Tanner's mistaken identification of a fellow holiday-maker as a child snatcher.

What does Kate McCann have to say about all this later in the day?

Kate McCann (statement to police, 4 May 2007 at 14.20 [extract])

'At around 9.30pm...her friend Matt...went to the witness's apartment. He entered the apartment through a glass sliding door at the side that was always unlocked and once inside, he had not gone into the children's bedroom. He remained at the bedroom door, listening for noise and observing the beds. He went back to the restaurant and said that everything was fine.

'At around 10pm, the witness...went into the apartment by the side door, which was closed, but unlocked...the door to her children's bedroom was completely open.'

It's perfectly clear. Matt uses the tradesman's entrance, does not enter the bedroom (although Gerry McCann has already told police that he did) and yet deliberately observes the beds (beds plural, not cots), one of which Oldfield has already claimed he 'could not see'. And the door is 'completely open' by the time Kate McCann sees it; opened 'much further than they'd left it' and by a third-party no doubt, as Kate's later, more florid assessment for her TV audience described how the breeze blew the bedroom door shut. It cannot therefore have blown it open at all, from which we may only conclude that 'the abductor' struck at some time between 9.30 and 10.00, unless of course Matthew Oldfield interfered with the door, which he did not, as he only remained 'at' it according to Kate McCann.

Already we have a situation in which 1+1+1 equals 3 when, from a logical standpoint, it should really equal 1. These three accounts of the same experience differ in certain fundamental respects, whereas they should concur. There is nevertheless a degree of unanimity regarding the all-important angle of the door, which, when one takes into consideration that we are harking back to a time before Jane Tanner's 'sighting' was so ruthlessly invalidated, becomes an issue all on its own. How can Jane have witnessed a fleeing abductor before he had left, or even entered, the apartment?

In an effort to make that problem go away Gerry McCann had one of his insightful moments, when he was sure, in retrospect, that someone had entered the apartment before him and was hiding somewhere (maybe it was Spiderman clinging unnoticed to the ceiling). The door however, like the sundial, would have to tell the correct time. Its angle simply had to change, which it did during that very week.

Gerry McCann (statement to police, 10 May 2007 at 15.20 [extract])

‘He walked the normal route up to the back door, which being open he only had to slide, and while he was entering the living room, he noticed that the children's bedroom door was not ajar as he had left it but half-way open, which he thought was strange.'

Now we see Gerry too using the back door. He goes on to add:

'MATHEW returned, saying only "all is quiet" (SIC), he having entered through the back door, given that he did not have the key and it was usual for them to enter in that way.'

Well it wasn't that usual for the McCanns to enter their apartment 'that way' when Gerry gave his statement a week earlier. Not only that, the 'half-way open' bedroom door is no longer 'usual', but 'strange', implying that it had been interfered with prior to 9.05 p.m., allowing time, of course, for 'the abductor' to escape before the watchful gaze of Jane Tanner. Job done then? Not quite. Having digested the matter Gerry goes on to drop the banana skin:

'He left the children's bedroom returning to place the door how he had already previously described.'

Ever observant, ever diligent, Gerry spots the door, now at a 'strange' angle, and exits the apartment leaving it in its original position – ajar.

Then along comes Matthew Oldfield.

Matthew Oldfield (statement to police, 10 May 2007 at 16.00 [extract])

'...the deponent went alone to the McCann apartment...he took the quickest route...to the rear patio of the McCann residence, to which he gained access through the glass sliding door into the apartment lounge. The door was closed but not locked as Kate had said it would be.

'...he did not enter the bedroom where Madeleine and the twins were sleeping. He recalls that the bedroom door was half open, making an angle of 50 degrees.'

50 degrees. That's 'ajar' plus 'half-open' (the breeze can only blow the door shut, remember). Well I guess we can forgive Oldfield a five degree error. But what does our 'door dial' now tell us?

The abductor must have followed Gerry out, once more leaving the door 'half-open as usual' (Gerry McCann's first statement) and not the more recent 'ajar' (Gerry McCann's second statement). But did the abductor also forget something, paying 5A a second visit that night once Oldfield had returned to his seat at the Tapas Bar, this time leaving the bedroom door for Kate McCann to discover 'completely open' (that's another 40 degrees folks, against the prevailing wind)?

Were it not for the fact that these observations reflect statements to police that were 'read, ratified and signed' at the time of their deposition, the opening and closing of doors here presents almost as comical a scene as one from Labiche and Michel's 'Italian Straw Hat', and a pointer to anything but the truth.