What really happened to Madeleine McCann?

[Matthew]

What really happened to Madeleine McCann?

30 reasons which suggest that she was not abducted (http://madeleinefoundation.org/main/30-reasons/)

Whatever your view, you may find this interesting. :)

[sp54]

It does make very interesting reading. I wonder if we will ever know the truth of what really happened that night? :rolleyes:

As someone who works with children, the rule of thumb is to ALWAYS have children within either sight or sound of you at all times and this was something that a group of highly professional people like these clearly would have known and chose to ignore :(

[fredblog]

What ever happened to the poor child I for one would never leave my children on their own at that age and had I done I would be getting a visit from social services no doubt. However because this pair are 'respected doctors' it appears their neglect is acceptable:huh:.

I would also NOT like to receive medical care from either of them!

I also did not buy into the 'we must give funds' idea and was unimpressed how the millions of pounds were and are still being used.

[jrobertson]

The following text was copied from the website http://madeleinefoundation.org/main/30-reasons/

<snip>

1. ‘Stranger’ abductions of an infant from a family home almost never happen. We always need to examine whether the family may be involved

Sadly, throughout the world, every year, many infants and young children die in their own homes, due either to accident, neglect, negligence or a deliberate act.
In some of those cases, especially where very young children are concerned, the parents decide to hide the body, and claim their child had been abducted. Statistics have been kept in some countries about the proportion of alleged ’stranger’ abductions of an infant from a family’s home, or their temporary residence elsewhere, such as being on holiday. They show that in up to 99% of so-called ’stranger abductions’ of infants from a family home, it later turns out – when the full facts emerge – that a member of child’s family has been involved in the child’s death and has tried to cover it up by falsely claiming that their child had been abducted.
Last year (2007), for example, there was the case of two-year-old ‘Baby Grace’, whose body was found battered and decomposing in a plastic box on sand dunes near Galveston, on the Gulf Coast of the U.S.A. Eventually, DNA tests linked the body to parents in the U.S. who, months earlier, had told police that their baby had been abducted, sparking a massive man-hunt. Then there was the case of the dead baby found by police hidden in the attic of a couple’s home. Once again, the guilty parents had falsely claimed their baby had been abducted. More recently, in the U.S., the mother of 2-year-old Caylee Anthony reported her as missing a month after she had ‘disappeared’. But forensic evidence, including that of cadaver dogs, now suggests that Caylee died at her mother’s home in suspicious circumstances [UPDATE: Caylee’s mother, Casey Anthony, has now been arrested and charged with first degree murder, but little Caylee’s body has still not been found].
Now, the above statistics do not in any way prove that the McCanns were involved in Madeleine’s death nor, like many other parents have done, have made up an abduction ‘cover story’. But what we do say, and what the statistics tell us, is that wherever a parent claims that a complete stranger has lifted their infant child from their home and taken the child away, we should immediately view their claim with grave suspicion. We need to examine their claim, test it, check it out. Which is what the Portuguese police have also tried to do in this case. We need to see what evidence there is that Madeleine was abducted. We also need to see if there is evidence that may point in another direction – for example, the possible involvement of the parents.
Since the reports of Madeleine going ‘missing’, it has often been highlighted how many children go missing every year. And we concede that there are, certainly, occasional cases of ’stranger abductions’. However, the vast majority of cases of missing or ‘abducted’ children usually fall into one of the following two categories:
a) children who run away from their parents
b) children snatched by a former spouse or partner during custody disputes
A very small number of children are also:
c) snatched by stranger abductors whilst outdoors and away from their homes (think for example of Sarah Payne and the Soham girls Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman), and
d) snatched by child traffickers whilst outdoors and away from their homes (though this phenomenon is not known to occur in western Europe).
Then, in addition, there are very occasional instances of babies snatched from hospital by mothers desperate to have a baby.
But we repeat – and this is most important: In cases where parents of infant children claim that their children have been abducted from their family homes (or from a temporary residence elsewhere such as a holiday hotel or caravan), in nearly every case, it turns out that the child has died in the family home, due to an accident, neglect, negligence or a deliberate act. In these circumstances, it is usually a member of the child’s own family, or extended family, or a friend known to the family, who is responsible for that death. Hundreds of examples of such cases have occurred in recent years alone.
In the U.S., following the abduction of a child called Megan by a known paedophile, ‘Megan’s Law’ was passed, which provides for parents to be informed if a known sex offender is living in their area. But in the U.K., the Children’s Commissioner said: “We are concerned that a version of Megan’s Law could detract from the fact that children are actually most at risk from people known to them“.
Against this background, where we have seen that in the vast majority of cases of young children reported stolen from inside their family home, the child is dead and the family is responsible, we now turn to examine 29 specific lines of evidence which suggest that Madeleine McCann was not abducted.

2. The evidence from two highly trained cadaver dogs that the ’smell of death’ was found in several places in the holiday apartment where the McCanns were staying – and in a car they hired three weeks later

As suspicions grew in the minds of the Portuguese police that Doctors Kate and Gerry McCann might know what had happened to their daughter, and might even have been involved in some way in her disappearance, the police turned to the British police to help them determine whether Madeleine might have died in Apartment 5a in Praia da Luz, where her parents had been staying from 28th April to 3rd May, the day she was reported missing.
They turned for advice to experienced Leicestershire detective Mark Harrison, who, after a week’s visit to Praia da Luz in July 2007 – in which he analysed all the evidence – advised that the Portuguese police should proceed on the working assumption that Madeleine had died in the McCanns’ apartment, and her body hidden or otherwise disposed of. He then brought in a top police dog handler, Mr Martin Grime, who had two highly-trained dogs under his command: ‘Eddie’, who could detect human cadaverine, the so-called smell of death, and ‘Keela’, a blood-hound, who could detect the presence of blood.
Dogs, it should be noted, are known to have a sense of smell 10,000 times as strong as that of humans, which is almost beyond comprehension given that we ourselves have such a highly developed sense of smell. The two dogs, trained and used successfully by top police dog-handler Martin Grime over many years, had the ability to use their faculties in two highly specific areas.
Eddie, who has been called ‘the cadaver dog’, can detect the presence of human ‘cadaverine’, a special chemical released from a dead body, usually after the body has been dead for at least two hours (sometimes as short as an hour-and-a-half). It’s important to understand that Eddie is trained only to sense the presence of the special type of cadaverine released by a human corpse. The scent of death from animals is a different form of cadaverine. Keela is a dog trained specifically to detect the presence of blood. She is a ‘blood-hound’. She has been trained to ignore decomposing body materials other than human blood, freezing with her nose as near to the blood as possible without touching the item, to enable scientists to recover the sample quickly and efficiently. She can even pick out traces of blood after clothing or weapons have been washed many times; when Keela was working on the Abigail Witchalls case, she found eight pieces of blood-stained clothing in just one day.
Claims have been made by the McCanns and their team of legal and PR advisers about the alleged unreliability of cadaver dogs, including suggestions that they have on occasions mistaken pork for cadaver scent. But cadaver dogs have an excellent track record and have been used successfully in several murder trials. They are able to detect the smell of death up to dozens of feet below the surface and even after a body has lain there for years. Spectacular examples of their work can be viewed on many websites on the Internet. In addition, Mr Harrison and Mr Grime, who trained Eddie and Keela, patiently explained that the dogs had traced the ‘smell of death’ – human cadaverine – on around 200 previous occasions. They had never once been wrong.
So what did Mr Martin Grime’s cadaver dog and blood-hound find?
According to the official police summary report released in July this year – and confirmed by video evidence of the dogs in action in Praia da Luz, widely available on the Internet – Eddie, the cadaver dog, found the ‘smell of death’ in the following places. We quote the exact words of the report:
a)in the McCanns’ apartment, Apartment 5A, Eddie the cadaver the dog detected the scent of a human corpse (human cadaverine):
(i)in the couple’s bedroom, in a corner, around a wardrobe, and
(ii)in the living room, behind the sofa, close to the external window of the apartment.
Also, a ‘lighter’ scent of death was found in the flower beds in the back yard, near the foot of the steps leading down from the patio.
b) on family items of clothing, Eddie found the scent of a corpse as follows:
(i)on two items of Kate McCann’s clothing, and
(ii)on one item of Madeleine’s clothing – a T-shirt.
c) in addition, Eddie the cadaver dog was taken to the house that the McCanns rented, in a different part of Praia da Luz, after they left Apartment 5A. Eddie found cadaverine on what was said to be Madeleine’s favourite pink soft toy, ‘Cuddle Cat’, which Dr Kate McCann always had with her when being interviewed by the media – but which Eddie detected lying in an otherwise empty cupboard. Here it should be noted that, earlier, Eddie had found Cuddle Cat in the living room at the McCanns’ rented home, tossed it in the air, but not actually ‘marked’ it by barking. He later marked it when the police re-located it in the cupboard.
d) on top of all that, Eddie, sniffing the car from the outside only, detected cadaverine in the car the McCanns hired on 22nd May, less than three weeks after Madeleine ‘disappeared’ – a Renault Scenic:
(i)on the car key
(ii)around the door of the front driver’s seat.
These findings, supported by other forensic evidence, show that a dead body must have begun to emit cadaverine in Apartment 5A – the McCanns’ apartment. That body must have lain dead in that apartment for at least 90 minutes, probably two hours or more. Once that ‘smell of death’ – cadaverine – had begun to be produced, it could then be transferred to other locations such as the hire car, Madeleine’s clothes, Dr Kate McCann’s clothes and Cuddle Cat.
That means that a corpse – that must have been dead for approximately two hours (in order for cadaverine to have been produced) – must have been in direct contact with all of these locations – floor, wardrobe, car, clothes etc. If the body had subsequently been moved, it would still emit cadaverine as it was decomposing. Meanwhile, Keela, the blood-hound, found the smell of blood – note, blood, not just ‘body fluids’:
a) in the living room, behind the sofa, close to the external window of the apartment (exactly where Eddie had found the scent of human cadaverine), and
b) in the McCanns’ hired Renault Scenic:
(i)on the car key
(ii)in the interior of the car boot.
We should note three very important things here. The dogs alerted to the smell of death/blood, separately, in exactly the same places in the apartment. Eddie the cadaver dog only alerted to the smell of death to the McCanns’ apartment, out of all the other ones he was taken to. Similarly, the McCanns’ car was the only one in the car compound that Eddie alerted to. Let us be very clear about where the dogs’ evidence takes us. Records have been checked by the Portuguese police, going back years. No-one else has ever died in Apartment 5A. No-one else has ever died in the Renault Scenic. There was a dead body in Apartment 5A. There was a dead body in the Renault Scenic hired by the McCanns. That dead body could only be one individual – already dead – who could have been in both Apartment 5A and in the Renault Scenic. It must have been Madeleine McCann.

3. The extraordinary reactions of Doctors Kate and Gerry McCann when they were told that the cadaver dog and the bloodhound had detected the ’smell of death’ and blood in Apartment 5a and the Renault Scenic

The evidence from the cadaver dog and the blood-hound were convincing enough on their own. But the Doctors McCann strongly reinforced the evidence that Madeleine had died in Apartment 5a by their extraordinary reactions when that evidence was first reported.
To most people – if their child really had been abducted – the news that the smell of death had been found in their holiday apartment and in their car would have prompted an outpouring of grief and concern for their child. It would have prompted reactions such as: who hired the car before us?, or – is anyone else known to have died in our apartment or in the hire car?
But this was not the reaction of the Doctors McCann. Instead, speaking through a variety of sources, including their £75,000-a-year spokesman, Clarence Mitchell, ‘friends of the family’ and ’sources close to the McCanns’ legal team’, the McCanns came up with the following five explanations for why cadaverine – the ’smell of death’ – and blood, had been found in their apartment and in the car they hired:
(a) First, Kate McCann claimed – at first indirectly via her mother, not directly – that the ’smell of death’ may have been found on her clothes because she was said to have dealt with no fewer than six corpses in her last two weeks at work. As a newspaper report based on police sources put it: “Kate didn’t negate the fact that her two pieces of clothes and the stuffed animal had been signalled by the English dogs trained to find cadaver odour – and justified it by her profession. Madeleine’s mother alleged [via her mother] that as a doctor at the Leicester health centre, she was present at six deaths directly before she came to Portugal on holiday, giving the same excuse for Madeleine’s stuffed animal, that was with her in the months after her daughter disappeared”.
So far as this excuse for the presence of the ’smell of death’ is concerned, there is doubt as to whether Kate McCann did actually work in close proximity with 6 corpses. That has certainly never been verified. Further, those Doctors who have to certify the cause of death do not normally handle the body or handle it long enough or closely enough for the smell of death to be transferred to clothes. It also seems highly unlikely that a person who really has worked in close proximity with corpses would take the same clothes on holiday with them that they used in working close to corpses.
(b) Second, Kate explained the presence of the ’smell of death’ on the pink soft toy ‘Cuddle Cat’ by claiming that she sometimes took it to work, and that it must have been transferred on to Cuddle Cat by her working on the corpses during the two weeks before going on holiday to work. Quite apart from it being unlikely that a mother would take a child’s favourite stuffed toy to work, never mind having it with her when she was in the close proximity of corpses, it appears that experts say that it is not usually possible for the ’smell of death’ to be transferred in this way. Even if it was, the McCanns would still have to account for the presence of the ’smell of death’ in their apartment, and on the car they hired three weeks after Madeleine went missing.
(c) Third, the Doctors McCann claimed that if DNA, thought to be Madeleine’s, was found in the boot of their car, then it could have come from the children’s dirty nappies, which they carried in the boot. First, it is unlikely, though possible, that anyone would carry dirty nappies around in this way. Second, it must be remembered that the blood-hound, Keela, found the smell of blood in the hired car, not just ‘body fluids’. The ‘dirty nappy’ excuse therefore also doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.
(d) Fourth, the Doctors McCann claimed that the ’smell of death’ could have come from rotting meat that Gerry McCann was taking to the local rubbish dump from time to time. This is also impossible, as the scent from dead animals does not produce the same ‘cadaverine’ as human cadaver scent. The cadaver dogs are trained to detect only human cadaverine. Probably Dr Gerry McCann didn’t realise this when he made his comment.
(e) Fifth, the Doctors McCann said that any blood found in the flat (apparently found having oozed underneath the tiles in the living room) might have come from Madeleine grazing her leg when she boarded the plane, or perhaps a nosebleed. These explanations seem unlikely, given the amount of blood that would be needed to seep through the tiles. The ‘knee incident’ occurred elsewhere, and any light bleeding would surely have stopped well before they even got to Praia da Luz.
Nose bleeds usually leave only a few spots of blood (if any) on flooring, being largely contained – normally – by clothing and placing a handkerchief or similar on the nose. It’s highly unlikely that Madeleine would have sat still while copious quantities of blood poured from her nose onto the tiled floor right by the living room wall.
In addition to these excuses for the apparent presence of both the smell of death and Madeleine’s blood, the Doctors McCann immediately poured scorn on the evidence of the cadaver dog and the blood-hound. They cited an Irish court case where the judge would not accept the cadaver evidence alone, because it was not corroborated. They claimed there were Irish and American lawyers who had been able to cast doubt on cadaver dog evidence, and pointed to a U.S. study which allegedly showed that cadaver dogs could be fallible. Yet cadaver dog evidence has played a vital part in securing the conviction of many murderers in many countries. And we know from the British police that Eddie and Keela had never once been wrong in over 200 cases where they detected the smell of death or blood.
Let us ask ourselves, also, whether pouring scorn on the evidence of a cadaver dog in another court case would be amongst the first thoughts of genuinely loving, grieving parents, who were first told that the smell of death had been found in their apartment and car?

4. The forensic evidence of the DNA of blood found in the living room of the McCanns’ apartment, and in the Renault Scenic hired by the McCanns, analysed by the Forensic Science Service here in England

There have been claims and counter-claims about the significance of the forensic evidence obtained by the Forensic Science Service (FSS) in Birmingham on samples of blood or body fluids found in the McCanns’ apartment and in the boot of the car they hired. The Doctors McCann and their spokesmen have claimed that the FSS results did not confirm that it was Madeleine’s dead body in the apartment and in the car.
So let us look carefully at what the FSS found.
In Apartment 5A, Eddie, the ‘cadaver dog’ and Keela, the ‘blood-hound’ both clearly marked precisely the same location – behind the sofa in the living room (which had been moved by the McCanns from its original location). The tiles where Keela scented the blood were carefully removed and sent to FSS.
The blood found by Keela was by then degraded, quite possibly as the result of cleaning agents having been used, and the FSS lab was able to check only 5 markers. Each one of those 5 markers matched Madeleine’s DNA – or, to re-phrase this a different way, there were no markers that could not have come from Madeleine, so the idea that it was her blood could most certainly not be discounted.
As for the Renault Scenic, registration no. 59-DA-27, Eddie and Keela both clearly marked the same car and the same location within the car. The blood found there by Keela (beneath the carpeting in the boot) was also degraded. But the FSS lab was able, on its first analysis, to check 15 markers. All of these 15 markers matched Madeleine’s DNA – again, meaning that there were no markers within these 15 that could not have come from Madeleine.
A second result showed the same 15 markers, but among a total of 37 markers. An individual only has 19 ‘markers’. That means that the sample from the car had been contaminated by DNA from another individual. However, with 15 markers all matching Madeleine’s DNA, that would still give analysts 99.9% confidence that the samples were from Madeleine.
The DNA of the degraded blood was found not to match with the DNA of the twins, Sean and Amelie.
The law differs from country to country as to how many out of an individual’s 19 DNA ‘markers’ are needed to prove that any DNA sample comes from that individual. Many countries accept 15 markers as sufficient proof. Under Portuguese law, however, the courts require all 19 markers to be confirmed.
This was ‘Low Copy Number’ DNA and so all 19 markers could not be obtained.
We might add here that when the British police cross-check the DNA of a suspect with its database said to consist of 2.5 million people who have been arrested on suspicion of a crime, they use only 10 markers in order to establish a DNA ‘match’. The scientist who invented DNA fingerprinting two decades ago, Professor Sir Alec Jeffreys, said however that using 10 markers to obtain a sufficiently reliable ‘match’ was insufficient proof. He went on to state that 15 markers would be provide sufficient evidence to be conclusive. He said:
“The current DNA database uses 10 distinct markers to obtain a match and this means there is still a residual risk of a false match. They should use about 15 markers; 15 markers would close the possibility that the match from a crime scene sample is genuine but a fluke”.
The FSS were able to confirm that the results of the analysis were ‘indicative’ that the blood found was Madeleine’s. We might, without exaggeration, state that these DNA results were ‘highly indicative’ that it was Madeleine’s blood that was found. But the FSS felt unable to say that these DNA results, on their own, were ‘conclusive’.
The key point to be made is this. The FSS results, on their own, do not provide absolute proof that the blood in the apartment and in the hired car was Madeleine’s. But these strongly indicative results – with all 5 markers in one sample and all 15 in another that could not have come from Madeleine – must be taken together with all the other evidence in this case. We can surely say with confidence that the chance of those 15 markers belonging to someone other than Madeleine is next-to-nothing, especially when we take into account other significant circumstantial evidence.”
And we can say without fear of successful contradiction that it is another piece of evidence in the case that points very strongly in the direction of Madeleine being dead in her holiday apartment on 3rd May 2007, the day she ‘disappeared’.

5. Dr Kate McCann’s refusal to answer any of the questions put to her by the Portuguese police – especially Question No. 41

It has now emerged that Dr Kate McCann refused to answer any one of 48 separate questions that the Portuguese police asked her when she was pulled in for questioning in September 2007. True, she had her lawyer with her, and it is said that in refusing to answer any questions, she was acting on legal advice.
But what mother, truly distraught at the abduction of her daughter, would refuse to help the police with what they wanted to know? Parents who were innocent of any wrong-doing in relation to their daughter’s disappearance would surely do all that they possibly could to assist the police.
A list of the 48 questions asked by the Portuguese police – none of which were answered by Dr Kate McCann – has since been published and is widely available on the internet. One of the questions (No. 41) asked was a surprise to many. The Police asked Dr Kate McCann if the McCanns had discussed or made plans for the legal care of Madeleine to be taken over by a relative. If this was indeed true, this would question the McCanns’ description of their relationship with Madeleine as wholly positive and loving. Some light was thrown on this issue early on in the case when a relative declared that ‘there was always someone with Kate’ during Dr Gerry McCann’s frequent weekend absences at conference and other speaking engagements. It was never explained why Dr Kate McCann needed someone with her to care for the children while her husband was away.
Following Dr Kate McCann’s refusal to answer questions, the British government flew the Doctors McCann back to England on a special Easyjet flight. From then on, any questioning of the McCanns was almost entirely under their own control. The Portuguese Police had to go through British government channels to get permission to interview the Doctors McCann and their friends. The Police’s potential questions were vetted and approved by the McCanns’ lawyers.
Whatever one’s personal view on the British government’s role in the investigation – i.e. whether it went well beyond the norm or not – the Portuguese Police were heavily restricted in their investigation to a level which suggests wilful interference. In effect, the Doctors McCann, though being suspects in the case of an unexplained disappearance, possible abduction, or death, of Madeleine, were able to evade effective questioning. ‘Innocent’ parents who ‘knew’ that their child had been abducted would surely co-operate fully and without reservation with the police and help them with all the information that they possibly could.

6. Publicly agreeing to take a lie detector test – and then refusing

When serious accusations against the Doctors McCann first surfaced, they promised that they would take a lie detector test to clear their names. But when various lie detector experts offered to provide their services, the Doctors McCann changed their minds and refused to co-operate.
This was totally in keeping with their earlier behaviour on being questioned – when Dr Kate McCann exercised her right to remain silent in her Police interview by taking the status of an ‘arguido’ – i.e. suspect.

7. The sheer impossibility of the abduction happening as claimed

Here, it is important to examine closely what the Doctors McCann, and the friends who were with them in Praia da Luz, have said about the possibility that Madeline was abducted. We give a long answer because this issue is crucial to enable us to assess whether the Doctors McCann and their friends are telling the truth or not.
We will come to their constantly changing stories about how the alleged abductor may have entered the apartment later in this document.
The scenario that the McCanns and their friends have produced runs as follows:
They say that:


The abductor must have been watching the apartment for several days before snatching Madeleine on 3rd May.
They (the McCanns) went down to the Tapas bar at the Ocean Club at around 8.30pm that evening (though that timing is disputed by others who say it may have been up to half-an-hour later).
Dr Matthew Oldfield says he checked the apartment from the outside at around 9.03pm.
Gerry McCann says he returned to the apartment from the ‘Tapas bar’ to check on his children at around 9.05pm to 9.07pm.
Gerry McCann says he was briefly in all four rooms of their holiday apartment, during which time he checked his children. He also says he spent an unusually long time in the loo. He tells us that he paused briefly over Madeleine’s bed and thought to himself how very lucky he was to have such a beautiful child.
Gerry McCann says that he noticed that the door to the children’s room was ‘wider open than before’. He says that at 8.30pm it was open at an angle of about 45 degrees (half open). He remembers (he says) that when he went to check the children at 9.05pm, the door was now open at an angle of 60 degrees (two thirds open).
The Doctors McCann now say that the door being open more than it was before may suggest that the abductor was already in the room when he checked on the children – though he says he only realised this possibility some months after the events of the day. It is clearly an unlikely scenario. Gerry McCann says the abductor might have been hiding behind the door or in a wardrobe.
Gerry McCann says he left the room, after checking on the children, at around 9.09pm or 9.10pm. He then says he encountered a journalist, Jeremy (’Jes’) Wilkins, on the road back to the Tapas bar at the Ocean Club, and was talking to him for about 10-15 minutes between 9.10pm and 9.25pm. Jeremy Wilkins confirms this.
Jane Tanner maintains that she saw a man walking ‘purposefully’, with a child in his arms, along the top of the road running alongside the McCanns’ apartment (we will come to the reliability of Ms Tanner’s observations later). She initially said the man had been walking in the opposite direction. She has stuck to her account that she saw this man at 9.15pm.
The McCanns now maintain that they left their apartment unlocked. This contrasts with what they said on May 3rd. (Then, they claimed that the abductor had forced entry into the apartment by jemmying open the shutters. They changed this story very soon afterwards, when the evidence did not support that – please see section 9 of this leaflet). The McCanns now say, therefore, that the abductor must have entered through the unlocked patio door.
The McCanns now explain the fact that the window to the children’s room was found open by claiming that the abductor must have climbed through the window and taken Madeleine through that window.
The McCanns maintain that when Kate McCann says she returned to the apartment to check on the children, she ‘knew instantly’ – and then so did Gerry minutes later when he is supposed to have arrived at the apartment – that Madeleine had been abducted. She told a TV interviewer that because of the requirement for secrecy about the police investigation, she could not explain why she ‘knew instantly’. The photographs of the apartment taken by the Portuguese police on the day after Madeleine was reported missing do not show anything which would clearly point to an abduction, certainly not damaged shutters.

Going by the above scenario, the abductor either entered the apartment before Matthew Oldfield’s check at around 9.03pm and Gerry McCann’s check at 9.05pm/9.07pm – the version the McCanns now want us to believe – or after he left at 9.10pm and before he was (allegedly) seen by Jane Tanner at 9.15pm
The problems with this abduction scenario

There are many problems associated with the specific abduction scenario above that has been generated by the Doctors McCann.
For a start, the Portuguese police did a forensic examination of the window-sill, through which it is claimed that the abductor must have climbed out with Madeleine. The Portuguese police said that they found no trace of any other person having made any impression on the window-sill and, in addition;


the lichen on the outside window-sill appeared to be totally undisturbed and,
only Kate Mcann’s fingerprints were found on the window-sill. All of this tells us that the abductor, if there was one, did not escape with Madeleine through the window.

Further, the window is high enough in the children’s room to make it physically very difficult for an abductor to climb through it. It was reported to be 91cm. above the floor – exactly three feet. The abductor would therefore have had to climb some 3 feet, with Madeleine with him, in his arms or over his shoulder. In addition, he would have to have managed this feat without leaving any forensic traces on the window-sill. Madeleine must have weighed at least two stone (12kg). A task such as this would have meant balancing against the window frame itself; even then it would have been almost impossible even if Madeleine had been asleep.
It would clearly have been still more difficult if either Madeleine had woken up whilst being abducted, or one or both twins had done so.
Furthermore, to escape through the window, as the McCanns claim, the abductor would have had to open the shutters. It is a fact, confirmed by Mark Warners, that it was only possible to open the shutters from the inside. It is also a fact (again confirmed by Mark Warners) that if these heavy metal shutters were opened from the outside, the process was extremely noisy. But no-one heard the shutters being opened.
In addition, as the shutters were actually closed when the police and Mark Warners’ staff arrived to check on the shutters, the initial explanations of the Doctors McCann were that the shutters ‘must have been closed by the abductor as well as opened by him’. We have seen that the shutters could not be opened from the outside. The claim by the Doctors McCann that the abductor closed the shutters behind him prompts two related and very obvious questions:


having gained entry through an open patio door, what would possess an abductor to leave via a 3-foot high window when he would also have to open noisy shutters? – and
why and how, having allegedly scooped up Madeleine in his arms and opened the window and the shutters, would he have had the time and the physical ability to then close the shutters, all without making any sound or leaving any trace, and without waking either Madeleine or the twins?

Moreover, all this would have had to have been accomplished in the dark – unless he switched the lights on when he entered the apartment and then remembered to switch them off again as he was making his exit. No-one saw any lights on ion the apartment. The Doctors McCann left the children in the darkness when they went out for their evening’s entertainment.
Therefore, to sum up – according to the McCanns’ scenario, the abductor would have to have:


first – either picked an opportunity to enter the apartment after the Doctors McCann had left for the Tapas bar or entered the apartment immediately after he had seen first Matthew Oldfield and then Gerry McCann enter and leave the apartment [NOTE: if the former of these two alternatives, then the abductor must have been in the apartment with Dr Gerry McCann during the three to five minutes he was checking on the children]
second – walked through the open patio door without being seen
third – found Madeleine in the dark and picked her up without waking her or the twins, opened the window;
fourth – opened the shutters (with nobody hearing him doing so, and without leaving any finger-prints);
fifth – climbed through the window, carrying Madeleine with him — again without being seen by anyone, and
sixth – he would then have had to close the very noisy shutters, using controls operated from the inside.

This latter operation would have been physically very difficult if not impossible to do without (a) even brushing away even a tiny piece of the years-old lichen growing on the window-sill or (b) leaving any clothing fibres or other forensic evidence. He must in addition have accomplished this in near total darkness and without being seen or heard by anyone – except for the highly suspect evidence of Jane Tanner, which we will deal with later. If he had Madeleine in his arms, and bearing in mind he was in near darkness, he would have been unable to see anything below her or much to either side as he fumbled through the window and shutters and tried to escape from the apartment precincts. Why he would do this when there was an open patio door to walk back through is utterly incomprehensible. The reason the Doctors McCann came up with this improbable scenario is that they had to explain to the Portuguese police and to the outside world why the normally-closed shutters were partially open.
This whole incredible abduction scenario – unconfirmed by any forensics whatsoever, and indeed contradicted by Dr Kate McCann’s fingerprints on the window – is so impossible to believe that we can surely say: this did not happen.
Now let us look for a moment at the McCanns’ theory that the abductor had been ‘casing the joint’ for several days beforehand – and then pounced and abducted Madeleine when he had the chance.
The Doctors McCann claim that he would have been closely watching them, including observing what the McCanns claim as the routine of half-hourly checking (though, to be frank, the evidence suggests that neither they nor their ‘Tapas 9? friends checked on their children half-hourly or even at all whilst they were out wining and dining).
The Doctors McCann have gone further and have suggested that the abductor must have been making notes on their movements – carefully noting down the times of their departures from the apartment. But this does not seem plausible given that neither the Doctors McCann, nor their ‘Tapas 9? friends, have given any details of how often (if at all) they were checking on their children whilst they were out wining and dining.
Another problem about that scenario is that there is nowhere that the abductor could have been observing the McCanns’ apartment without being seen – unless, that is, he was living in one of the flats opposite the McCanns’ apartment, some of which overlooked it. It is understood that the occupants of these flats have all been investigated and their statements corroborated. None of them had anyone in their flat who was watching the McCanns’ apartment, nor was anyone seen acting suspiciously or hanging around in that area during the week the Doctors McCann and their friends were there.
The other obvious problem about the claim of an abductor casing the joint is this:- Suppose an abductor had been watching the McCanns’ apartment day in and day out. On the McCanns’ own timeline, he would have seen the McCanns leave for the Tapas bar at 8.30pm.
If, as claimed, an abductor had been watching the premises, he would probably have chosen his ‘moment’ to abduct Madeleine immediately after Drs Gerry and Kate McCann had left for the Tapas bar (on their own account) at around 8.30pm. Yet, if he had entered the flat just after the McCanns left at 8.30pm, how come he was not long gone 35-45 minutes later?
For the Doctors McCann now claim that the abductor either snatched Madeleine a minute or two after Dr Gerry McCann did his (alleged) check at around 9.05pm to 9.10pm, or, just as improbably, was even present for the entire 5 minutes or so Gerry was doing his 9.05pm check.
Yet a further difficulty for this improbable scenario is that Dr Matthew Oldfield claims that he did two checks – one at around 8.55pm/9.00pm, (various times have been given for this alleged check) and the other around 9.30pm. Dr Oldfield claims that during his 9.00pm visit he ‘checked’ from the outside but saw and heard nothing and said that the shutters were tight shut.
If the abductor really had entered before both Dr Matthew Oldfield’s alleged check (around 9.00pm) and Dr McCann’s check (around 9.05pm), then he was exceptionally lucky, to put it mildly, not to have been detected by either man.
But there are equal if not greater problems with the suggestion that the abductor entered the apartment and removed Madeleine only after Drs Oldfield and McCann had done their checks. Would he really have dashed into the apartment after seeing Dr Oldfield checking the outside of the apartment at around 8.55pm/9.00pm and then Gerry spending 3-5 minutes checking between 9.05pm and 9.10pm? It would surely have been far too risky.
And if he entered the apartment after Dr Gerry McCann left at 9.10pm, he would scarcely have had time to enter the flat, remove Madeleine and then be seen by Jane Tanner at 9.15pm. And that is quite apart from all the other difficulties with that scenario that we have already discussed above.

8. The McCanns’ immediate and insistent cry of ‘abduction’ – excluding all other possibilities

At around 10.00pm on Thursday 3rd May, the ‘abduction alert’ was triggered by Dr Kate McCann reportedly screaming and shouting: ‘She’s gone’ and ‘They’ve taken her’, and then running down to the ‘Tapas Bar’ to alert her friends who were, allegedly, all wining and dining there.
But with the McCanns later admitting that they may have left the patio door open, could not Madeleine have perhaps wandered off, and either been found by someone, or perhaps fallen and hurt herself? After all, there had been reports that Madeleine had in fact run out of the apartment one night earlier that week, and been found hiding in the bushes outside the apartment. Dr Gerry McCann effectively conceded this when he told police in his statement that ‘Madeleine ran off ahead one night on our return to the apartment but ran out of the apartment hiding from us’.
Yet Dr Kate McCann was to say in a number of TV interviews later that: “I knew instantly that she had been abducted”. Questioned on TV about why she immediately thought that, she refused to elaborate. She hid behind the claim that she could say nothing further about her reasons because of the Portuguese judicial system’s ‘secrecy’ rules, apparently making it a crime to discuss any aspect of the investigation. Yet she was happy to discuss a number of other aspects of the investigation which she felt much more comfortable answering, even though these were also covered by the same secrecy rules. The couple then immediately proceeded to inform the British media – both directly and through friends – that Madeleine had been abducted. They informed their nearest relatives that Madeline had undoubtedly been abducted.
Dr Gerry McCann told her mother-in-law Susan Healy that night: “There’s been a disaster. Madeleine has been abducted”, while Dr Kate McCann later spoke to her mother and said: “She’s gone, Mum, she’s gone”. Later the McCanns were to tell some of their relatives that the ‘abduction line’ must be maintained at all costs. They repeatedly told their relatives that there was no other possibility.
Very soon after Madeleine was reported missing, Dr Gerry McCann spoke to his wife Kate’s mother, Mrs Susan Healy. During that conversation, Mrs Healy, struggling to understand what might have happened to her granddaughter, began offering other possible explanations as to why she might have disappeared. But Gerry McCann was adamantly insistent that Kate’s mother must believe that Madeleine had been abducted. He stressed to her that it was vital that she – like he and his wife Kate – should believe what he was telling her.
Quite apart from all the above, and contrary to the McCanns’ insistence that Madeleine always slept like a log once she had fallen asleep, family members reported that Madeleine did in fact have a tendency to wake up and wander after being put to bed. This was confirmed in two important ways:


by Dr Gerry McCann admitting that when he saw the door to the children’s room ‘open wider than usual’ (if he did, that is), his immediate thought was that Madeleine ‘might have woken up and gone to get a drink or gone to the toilet’. She would hardly be likely to do this if she always slept soundly.
by Dr Kate McCann claiming that she and her husband deliberately left the patio door open ‘in case there was a fire and the children woke up’.

Clearly, also, whatever the true explanation for Madeleine running around in the bushes outside the McCanns’ apartment, she had a mind of her own. The immediate, flat denial by the McCanns that there was any other possible explanation for Madeleine being missing, other than having been abducted, was in itself suspicious.

9. The McCanns’ false claim that the abductor had forced entry by jemmying open the shutters

The Doctors McCann were very clear, from the word ‘go’, that Madeleine had been snatched from Apartment 5a because, they said initially, the metal shutters to the property had been forced open from the outside.
How do we know they said this? We know it from the McCanns’ relatives, who all reported to newspapers and other media that this is what Kate and Gerry McCann had told them. Their story was that the abductor had jemmied open the shutters from the outside, and then climbed in through the window. He had to do this because the apartment was locked. He would then have had to climb out of the window again and close the metal shutters by pulling them down, using a control rope from the inside.
But within hours, both the Portuguese police and staff from Mark Warners, the holiday company with whom the McCanns and their friends were staying, had thoroughly checked the shutters. Their unanimous view was: ‘The shutters have not been forced open. There were no signs of forced entry’.
Following that evidence, the McCanns had to rapidly change their story. They did this by making up an elaborate new version of possible events.
They said that, on reflection, perhaps they had left the patio door unlocked. They said that the abductor ‘must have’ walked through the open patio door, and then climbed out of the window with Madeleine, opening the window, opening the shutters, then closing the shutters behind him. Many people pointed out, however, how unlikely it was that a couple would knowingly leave a holiday apartment unlocked, with things like passports and valuables inside, never mind three defenceless, sleeping children, all under 4 years old.
That then gave them a further problem, as the press asked: “If the patio door was left unlocked, then perhaps Madeleine opened it and wandered off?” The Doctors McCann were so anxious to maintain the abduction theory that they then insisted: “Madeline was not strong enough to have opened the patio doors”.
That story in turn contradicted an earlier claim by Dr Kate McCann that the patio doors had been kept unlocked ’so that the children could escape in case of a fire’. If Dr Kate McCann was now right in insisting that Madeleine was not strong enough to open the patio doors, it would have been pointless to leave the patio doors unlocked ‘in case of fire’.

10. The shutters could only be opened from the inside – and only Kate McCann’s fingerprints were on the window

Kate and Gerry McCann claimed that at 10.00pm, they found the shutters, the windows and the curtain all open. At first, as we saw above, they claimed that the abductor forced entry that way. Later they changed their story to suggest that the abductor must have come in another way and climbed out of the window.
But the police only found the fingerprints of one person on the windows – those of Kate McCann. Moreover, the window was found to have been very recently cleaned. That strongly suggests that it was Kate, not the abductor, who opened the window – in order to help create the abduction scenario.

11. Contradictions between the account of Jeremy Wilkins and the accounts of Dr Gerry McCann and Jane Tanner

When Jeremy (‘Jes’) Wilkins – a TV producer also on holiday at the Ocean Club complex during the same week – gave an initial statement to the police about bumping into Dr Gerry McCann at just after 9.00pm, prior to talking to him for three minutes, he told police that he met Dr McCann on the road beneath the McCann’s apartment. One unconfirmed report was that Wilkins had seen Dr McCann ‘checking the shutters from the outside’.
We may also mention here that there are a number of contradictions concerning this brief meeting between Jeremy Wilkins and Mr Gerry McCann, including:


Wilkins says the meeting lasted just ‘3 minutes’; Dr Gerry McCann claimed it was ‘10 to 15 minutes’ – a big discrepancy
Wilkins says he crossed the road to talk to him, whilst Dr Gerry McCann claims it was he who crossed the road to talk to Wilkins
The two men disagreed about the subject matter of their conversation
Ms Jane Tanner claimed she saw both men as she walked right past them; but neither man recalls seeing Ms Tanner.


12. The failure of both the Doctors McCann, and their friend Jane Tanner, to talk to each other for 24 hours about her claimed sighting of the alleged abductor

According to many reports, and confirmed in an article by David Smith, in ‘The Times’, published in December 2007, the Doctors McCann and their friend Jane Tanner did not bother to talk to each other for at least 24 hours (some reports claimed it was two days) about what she claimed to have seen at 9.15pm that night – namely a person walking off with a child looking like Madeleine.
The Doctors McCann maintain that they found Madeleine gone at 10.00pm on 3rd May. Jane Tanner has claimed throughout that she saw a man carrying a child ‘walking purposefully’ across the top of the road where she was walking away from the Tapas Bar at 9.15pm.
Dr Kate McCann cried out at 10.00pm on 3rd May that Madeleine had been ‘abducted’. Gerry McCann followed suit and word soon spread that Madeleine was ‘missing’ after neighbours heard the commotion and Mark Warners, within 30 minutes, activated their ‘missing child’ procedures. Soon dozens, perhaps hundreds of people were looking around Praia da Luz for Madeleine. The police had been informed and soon put out an alert wanting any information that could help to determine what happened to Madeleine.
Many sources confirmed that the Doctors McCann absolutely insisted that Madeleine had been abducted. During the first 48 hours after she was reported missing, there was a massive search for her by police and local people. According to an article by David James Smith in ‘The Times’, which included an exclusive and extended interview with Dr Gerry McCann, he and Jane Tanner, he explained, did not speak to each other ‘for 48 hours’ because each of them was ‘too busy’. Other reports said it was ‘24 hours’.
It must be clear to anyone who thinks about this point that if there really had been an abduction, and Jane Tanner really had seen him as she claimed, then Jane Tanner would have spoken to the McCanns and the police about what she saw without a moment’s delay. She has since claimed that she ‘did not realise the significance’ of what she had seen. This is simply not credible. We will deal with other reasons why we cannot rely on anything Jane Tanner has said later on in this booklet (see section 16 of our leaflet below).
The failure of Jane Tanner and Gerry McCann to talk to each other about the abductor is all the more extraordinary when it became clear, in August 2008, that within two hours of the report that Madeleine had been abducted, Jane Tanner’s partner, Russell O’Brien, had prepared rough notes on the events of that evening which included the entry: “Jane saw stranger walking with child – 9.20pm”. It seems clear that it was part of the plan of the Doctors McCann and their ‘Tapas 9? friends to rely on Jane Tanner’s alleged sighting from the word ‘go’, in order to ‘prove’ that there really had been an abduction.
From the outset, Jane Tanner said she had little idea of what the man looked like, but was insistent in confirming that he could have been carrying Madeleine. If she had been so sure, why did she not tell somebody as soon as everyone ‘realised’ that Madeleine was ‘missing’? Her delay in giving this information to police – despite its initial lack of clarity (see Section 16) – would have greatly increased any abductor’s chance of escape. If there really had been a man in the vicinity, especially one who might have been carrying a child, it was obviously information the police would want to be able to follow up immediately.
If Jane Tanner’s sighting was genuine, there is no possible rational explanation for her delaying reporting what she saw for 24 hours, or maybe even longer.
Her delay, never mind all the inconsistencies in her story, suggests that her various accounts have all been fabrications (see also below, in section 16).

13. The insistence of Gerry McCann in releasing a description of the abductor based solely on the claims about an alleged abductor made by Jane Tanner – and with the reluctant consent of the Portuguese police

On Friday 25 May, the Portuguese police, under severe pressure from Gordon Brown (as was admitted publicly at the time), issued a vague description of a possible abductor. The description – as relayed on the BBC news bulletin that night – ran as follows:
White,
Aged 35-40,
5? 10? in height,
wearing ‘beige’ or ‘light’ trousers, and
wearing a dark jacket and shoes.
As we now know, this description, issued nearly three weeks after Madeleine was reported ‘missing’, was based solely on Jane Tanner’s dubious sighting. The issuing of this description was against the advice of the Portuguese police – and only happened after future Prime Minister Gordon Brown had intervened by ‘phoning the Portuguese police and insisting that the police issue a description. In addition, Mr Brown asked that Gerry McCann be authorised to make a statement to the press accompanying the release of this description by the police. We may note also that some time after this description was issued, Dr Gerry McCann became upset and criticised the Portuguese police, maintaining that the height of the man should have been stated as 5? 7?. The police had recorded the height given by Jane Tanner as 170cm to 175cm; 175cm converts to 5? 9?, whereas 170cm converts to 5? 7?. Quite why Gerry McCann made such a fuss about this is not clear.
In his statement, made with his wife in front of many of the world’s cameras and journalists, he gave a description of an abductor so vague as to be virtually useless. Here is his full statement:
“We very much welcome the decision of the Portuguese authorities to release details of a man seen by a witness here in Praia da Luz on Thursday 3rd May, the night of Madeleine’s disappearance. The release of this important information follows an earlier meeting that we had with senior Portuguese police officers, a meeting that Kate and I both found to be amicable and very constructive.
“We feel sure that this sighting of a man, with what appeared to be a child in his arms, is both significant and relevant to Madeleine’s abduction, and we would appeal, once again, for anyone who may have seen him, or anything else suspicious, on or around the 3rd of May, to come forward and tell the police.
“For instance, was this man seen anywhere else in or near the town with a child, or what appeared to be a child. Which direction was he heading in, did he have a vehicle? Whether you are a local resident, or a holidaymaker who has since returned from Portugal, any information, no matter how unimportant you think it could be, may be vital to help the Portuguese and British police to find our daughter. As we said yesterday, we wish for nothing more than for Madeleine to be home with us safe and well. Kate and I would also like to make it clear that as this is very much an ongoing investigation, we will not be making any more public statements for the time being. Thank you”.
Months after this description was issued – based solely on Jane Tanner’s statement to the police – Ms Tanner came up with a quite different description, now claiming for example that the man looked ’swarthy’ and ‘Mediterranean’. We deal with that in more detail below.
The reason, of course, why the police were reluctant to issue this description at the time, was because they already had very good grounds for suspecting that Jane Tanner’s claimed ’sighting’ was fabricated, plus many other indications that the Doctor McCanns’ abduction claim was false.

14. Ignoring advice not to highlight Madeleine’s ‘coloboma’ eye defect

The Doctors McCann, in the early stages of the investigation, ignored the clearest possible advice from the police not to highlight Madeleine’s eye defect, the coloboma (an iris defect where the black ‘pupil’ of the eye has partly ‘leaked’ into the rest of the iris). If Madeleine were still alive, said the Portuguese police, this would have put Madeleine at much greater risk of death. In giving that advice, their thinking was that if the abductors were holding Madeleine and realised that she could be identified very easily by the public, they might decide to kill her.
The parents’ conduct suggests that they knew she was already dead. They deliberately ignored sound advice not to make Madeleine so recognisable that the abductors (if she had been abducted and was still alive) might have to kill her. All the McCanns’ publicity posters strongly emphasised the coloboma, placing Madeleine at even greater risk. They even trade-marked Madeleine’s coloboma.
It is also a fact that announcing all claimed ’sightings’ in the press, giving details of possible locations, and claiming for example that their private detectives were ‘right on the trail of the kidnappers’, etc. were also all actions which would have put Madeleine at greater risk, if she really had been abducted. Any information about the possible location of an abducted or kidnapped child is usually withheld by the police in order, of course, to avoid endangering the child’s life.

15. Making long-term plans to mark Madeleine’s alleged abduction – whilst at the same time claiming she was alive and could still be found

On 3rd June 2007, just one month after Madeleine had ‘disappeared’, Dr Gerry McCann was already planning a ‘big event’ to mark Madeleine’s ‘abduction’. He told the press: “We want a big event to raise awareness that she is still missing… It wouldn’t be a one-year anniversary, it will be sooner than that.” He had talked of approaching celebrities like Elton John to ‘front’ a major fund-raising concert. Many people pointed out that no parent, one month after their daughter had gone missing, and who were still frantically hoping their daughter would be found, would even be thinking of planning for fund-raising and publicity-generating events, several months ahead. Unless, that is, they had more than a shrewd idea that Madeleine would never be found.
Less than a month later, on 28th June 2007, Dr Gerry McCann said: “I have no doubt we will be able to sustain a high profile for Madeleine’s disappearance in the long term”. How, we might ask, could any father talk about organising concerts to generate publicity, months into the future, when there was still the possibility that the police might, any day, bring them news that Madeleine had been found – either alive, or dead?
Furthermore, well in advance of 11th August – which would be ‘Day 100? after Madeleine ‘disappeared’ – Dr Gerry McCann and his PR advisers were already planning how to mark the 100th day since her abduction.
Put simply, Dr Gerry McCann’s words are not those of someone who genuinely believes that his daughter has been abducted and that there is a reasonable prospect of finding her. They are much more likely to be the words of someone who knows perfectly well that their daughter will not be found.

16. Jane Tanner’s ever-changing stories of what the alleged abductor looked like – and other problems with Jane Tanner’s accounts

The accounts of Jane Tanner as to what the abductor might have looked like have changed significantly over time, and there are other reasons for casting severe doubt on her stories.
We might note, first, as we saw above, that within two hours or less of Madeleine’s ‘disappearance’ being reported, three of the ‘Tapas 9? men – Dr Russell O’Brien, Dr David Payne and Dr Matthew Oldfield – were conferring about agreeing a ‘timeline’ about that evening’s events. Most parents, unlike these three, would have made sure that their own children were safe, and then joined in the local hunt for Madeleine in the streets of Praia da Luz. Dr Russell O’Brien made the notes. He wrote: “21h10/21h15 – JT sees alleged abductor carrying child”.
Not only did the Doctors McCann at 10.00pm immediately claim that they ‘knew’ there had been an abduction, but also, it seems, the group already knew there had been an abductor. This makes Jane Tanner’s initial failure to talk to Dr Gerry McCann about what she was supposed to have seen, and the subsequent problems with Jane Tanner’s description of the abductor and her changes of story (which we will now examine) all the more strange and deeply suspect.
Jane Tanner’s first description of the abductor she claimed to have seen was that he had short hair, was of average height and build, and ‘was carrying a bundle, maybe a blanket‘. She also claimed that she had seen the abductor on her way back from visiting her apartment to check on the children, and said that the abductor was working in a northerly direction, i.e. away from the beach.
Then, when she gave a second statement days later – and of course after she had had time to confer with the Doctors McCann – she changed her story and told the Portuguese police that she distinctly remembered seeing a blonde-haired girl wearing pyjamas ‘with a pinkish aspect‘. Once again, there is no rational explanation as to why she did not ‘remember’ these details when first questioned.
By the time Ms Tanner gave her second statement, Gerry McCann had already displayed on the world’s TVs the type of pink-and-white ‘Eeyore’ pyjamas that she had allegedly been wearing on that last night. The Doctors McCann must have had two identical pairs of pyjamas with them, or else bought a similar pair after Madeleine ‘disappeared’.
Now, in her second statement – in most people’s minds – there could be no doubt that Jane Tanner was telling the world that she really had seen the person who had carried Madeleine away.
Yet her description of the abductor was still vague. At the time that she says she saw the abductor – 9.15pm in early May – it was already dark, twilight being about 8.30pm to 9.00pm. She could not have had a really clear sight of the abductor, as there was minimal street lighting. Besides that, she says she only saw him sideways on and, as he was said to have been ‘walking purposefully’, i.e. quickly, across the top of the road, she would have only noticed him for a maximum of 3-4 seconds.
By the time of her second statement, Ms Tanner changed two very important details from her initial account to the police. Now, she said the abductor was heading southwards, towards the beach. She also said that she saw him not coming back from her apartment but going towards it from the Tapas bar. It may fairly be asked how she could have got both these matters so wrong. It is an obvious indication that she is fabricating her story, suggesting in fact that neither account is true.
A full six months after Madeleine ‘disappeared’, the Doctors McCann and their PR advisers issued a new description – complete with artists’ impression – of the man they said has snatched Madeleine. Once again, it was based solely on Jane Tanner’s recollections.
But this time we were told that after several months, Jane Tanner’s record of what she had seen had dramatically improved, contrary to the well-known fact that, over time, people’s recollections fade.
How did this come about? We were told, in all seriousness, that a ‘cognitive therapist’ had been working with Jane Tanner in several sessions and had enabled her to have a clearer recollection of what she saw. The identity of this ‘cognitive therapist’ and his/her track record was not disclosed to us, except that s/he was said to be American. In addition, we were told that an ‘F.B.I.-trained forensic artist’ had helped her to draw her new, much improved. Recollection of what the abductor looked like.
Against that background, let us examine Jane Tanner’s new, much more definite recollection. She now ‘remembered’ that the abductor had medium to long hair – not short hair she had claimed before. She said that his hair was ’sleek and black’ – details she had apparently been unable to recollect the day after she saw him. Now she remembered that the man ‘looked Mediterranean’ and ’swarthy’ in appearance. Virtually the only details that remained unchanged were that he was wearing a ‘dark’ jacket, ‘light-coloured’ or beige trousers and dark shoes. All of this was based on a sideways glimpse of him for what could have been no more than 3 to 4 seconds, in the dark, in faint sodium lighting.
But the new ‘artist’s impression’, based on Ms Tanner’s ‘recovered’ memory, revealed one very special new detail. It included a sketch of exactly the kind of white pyjamas Madeleine was supposed to have been wearing that last night.
Moving away from the ever-changing descriptions of the abductor, there are other significant problems about Jane Tanner’s accounts.
First, her account of how and when she saw the alleged abductor does not match the evidence of Dr Gerry McCann and another holidaymaker there at the time, Jeremy Wilkins. Shortly after Madeleine’s disappearance, Ms Tanner was asked by the Portuguese police to draw a sketch-map of where she was when she claimed she saw the abductor. She said she was returning to her apartment to check on her two children, when she passed by, on the same side of the road, Dr Gerry McCann talking to a journalist, Jeremy (’Jes’) Wilkins. Yet Jeremy Wilkins was adamant that he and Dr McCann were both on the opposite side of the road from ms tanner. Moreover, neither of them recalls seeing Jane Tanner on the road at that time.
As Dr Gerry McCann can hardly alter the testimony of Mr. Wilkins – and to argue publicly with him would only bring his motives into question – he was forced to confirm in his own statement that he and Wilkins were indeed on the other side of the road from where Jane Tanner claimed she had passed them.
If Jane Tanner really had passed by them on the same side of the street, as she had claimed several times, there is no way that they could not have seen her.
But in a programme transmitted by BBC’s Panorama on19 November 2007, Jane Tanner contradicted her own written evidence, as produced in her sketch, that she had walked down the same side of the road. Now, as she explained to millions of viewers and as the Panorama graphics team confirmed in their diagrammatic reconstruction, she claimed that Dr Gerry McCann had crossed over the street to chat to Jeremy Wilkins.
Why did Ms Tanner get wrong all these details about Dr Gerry McCann talking to Jeremy Wilkins? No-one else was in the street at the time, and indeed all indications suggest that Praia da Luz was very quiet at the time of the year – early spring. The question arises: did she really see Gerry McCann and Jeremy Wilkins? Or, far more likely, did she perhaps hear of their meeting through other means?
All of the above points, when considered together, serve to suggest very strongly that her various and varying accounts of seeing Dr Gerry McCann, Jeremy Wilkins and the abductor are complete fabrications.

17. Gerry McCann’s absolute insistence that the abductor was the man allegedly seen by Jane Tanner

We have seen above that there are severe doubts, to put it mildly, about Jane Tanner’s account of having seen an abductor. An additional reason for doubting that there ever was an abductor is Dr Gerry McCann’s total reliance on her claimed ’sightings’ as his basis for issuing a description of the abductor. If the abduction had really happened, how for example could Dr Gerry McCann have known that Ms Tanner herself wasn’t involved?
The Portuguese police, it is now clear, was doubtful from the outset about the validity of Jane Tanner’s ’sighting’ – and for very good reason. They refused to use it as the basis for issuing a formal description of the alleged abductor.
Yet, just a few days after Jane Tanner had given her initial, vague description to the police, Gerry McCann insisted on going ahead with a public description of a man who he thought had abducted Madeleine (see Section 13 of our booklet, above). It was a vague description – and accompanied by a sketch so vague as to be useless. It merely showed an egg-shaped head with some straight hair on the top, and was immediately dubbed ‘egg-man’. The description was issued against the advice of the Portuguese police who only agreed to release it after a personal intervention from then Chancellor of the Exchequer, now the British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown. This has been confirmed on the record. It has also been confirmed that during the period leading up to Gerry’s description of the alleged abductor, he spoke on the telephone nine times to Gordon Brown.
Why would Dr Gerry McCann rely on such a patently fabricated description? A probable answer is because by then – 3 weeks after Madeleine had been reported missing – he was desperate to sustain the abduction story with what he represented to be a credible ’sighting’ of the abductor. Fortunately for him and his wife, the media did not probe the credibilty of the sighting at the time.

18. The commitment of the McCanns and their ‘Tapas 9? friends to a ‘Pact of Silence’ about what had happened to Madeleine

In June, Portuguese newspaper Sol contacted both Dr Gerry McCann and Dr David Payne to ask them some questions about the events leading up to Madeleine’s disappearance. Dr Payne was reported to have reacted angrily. He told the Sol journalist: “We have a pact. This is our matter only”. Sol’s article was , understandably, titled: “The a Pact of Silence”.
Since then, most of ‘Tapas 9?, apart from the Doctors McCann, have indeed remained almost totally silent about the events which led to Madeleine’s ‘disappearance’. Of them, only Jane Tanner has spoken on the record at length, and that was merely to give a rambling and wholly unconvincing account of her seeing the abductor to the Panorama programme on 19 November 2007.
Why, it must be asked, would the McCanns’ friends refer to a ‘Pact’ to keep silent about what they know, when there is an international effort to ‘find Madeleine’? There can only be one rational explanation. Namely, that they share a guilty secret which they wish to hide.
The McCanns’ urgent flight back to the relative safety of England after they were made official suspects, and their subsequent refusal to attend a reconstruction of the events of 3rd May – in order that the discrepancies in the ‘Tapas 9? friends’ statements could be (if possible) cleared up – are simply further evidences that their secret pact is intended to prevent anyone discovering what really took place that day. According to press reports, not one of the ‘Tapas 9? group agreed to the Portuguese police’s request to take part in a reconstruction. These facts undermine any little credibility that any of them have left that they are really interested in finding out what happened to Madeleine.

19. The startling failure of the McCann’s friends to search for Madeleine the night she disappeared

According to a number of reports which have never been contradicted, while hundreds of people, including staff of Mark Warners and many local people, searched the area around the Ocean Club apartments for hours after Madeleine went missing, not one of the McCanns’ friends, known as the ‘Tapas 9?, bothered to do so. They all went to bed. That was confirmed in articles written by Bridget O’Donnell (Jeremy Wilkins’ partner) of The Guardian and David James Smith of The Times in December 2007. That is as clear an indication as you could get that they knew it would be pointless searching for Madeleine. It is entirely consistent with them knowing that Madeleine was already dead.

20. Frequent changes to their story and numerous contradictions

There is so much that could be written about how the Doctors McCann and some of their ‘Tapas 9? friends have changed their stories. There have been so many contradictions within their evidence, that it is only possible here to give the very briefest of summaries. The point is often made that if you ask a number of witnesses who have witnessed an incident, their stories may well vary in certain details and there may be inconsistencies between them. However, in such circumstances, you will seldom get outright contradictions and certainly not multiple changes of story in order to try fit them to a story – so-called ‘backfitting’.
Here is a short list of some of these many significant contradictions:


Kate was said to have read bedtime stories to the children on the night Madeleine went missing. But in another version it is claimed that Gerry reads the bedtime stories.
Jane Tanner says she sees abductor; Dr Gerry McCann and Jeremy Wilkins are in the same road at the same time but do not see him.
Jane Tanner said in her statement and in a drawing she did for the police that she walked up the left-hand-side of the street right past Dr Gerry McCann and Jeremy Wilkins – but on the Panorama programme she changes this to say they were on the opposite side of the road.
The Doctors McCann initially claimed that they locked all their doors including the patio doors and that the abductor had forced or jemmied open the shutters. Then when the police and Mark Warners disproved his false claim, he changed his story and said that they ‘must have’ left the patio door open and so the abductor must have left through the shutters and climbed out of the window.
Originally the Doctors McCann said they left the door near the children’s door unlocked. Then, when the police cast doubt on that story, the Doctors said it was a different door – the patio door – that they must have left unlocked.
Multiple changes of story by Dr Matthew Oldfield about when he is supposed to have carried out his ‘checks’ at Apartment 5a on the night Madeleine ‘disappeared’.
Multiple changes of story by the Doctors McCann and some of their friendsabout how often they were checking their children. First they said ‘hourly’, in another quote it was said to be ‘every 15 minutes’, and finally they all agreed to say ‘every half hour’.
One of the nannies, Charlotte Pennington, changed her story about when she last saw Madeleine on 3rd May.
Gerry McCann was said to be have been ‘hanging around tennis courts at 5.30pm/6.00pm but other accounts say he was having high tea with all the family and Charlotte Pennington at the same time.
The times that Dr Gerry and Dr Kate McCann are claimed to have arrived at the Tapas bar on the evening of 3rd May vary from 8.30pm to 8.58pm.
Dr Matthew Oldfield says all of the ‘Tapas 9? except Kate were at the Tapas bar when the alarm was raised; but Jane Tanner says she was absent at this time.


21. The hiring of very dubious firms of so-called ‘private investigators’

Much has been made of the Doctors McCanns’ decision to use costly private investigators to search for Madeleine, allegedly because the Portuguese police were negligent in not following up proper leads.
Here we look at what action the Doctors McCann have taken with regard to private investigators, and examine the track record of these investigators. That may tell us something about whether the McCanns really think that Madeleine was abducted.
On 25 May 2007, just 22 days after Madeleine was reported missing, in a BBC interview with Jane Hill, the Doctors McCanns were asked if, now that they had £300,000 already in the Helping to Find Madeleine Fund, they would use any of that money for private investigators. Dr Gerry McCann responded: “The advice we have received is that private investigations will not help at the moment”.
Despite this clear claim, the Control Risks Group, whose activities include private investigation, announced in September that they had been helping the McCanns since May and ‘were in regular contact’ with them throughout. Although Control Risks Group carried out various forms of private investigation, there was no evidence that they had ever had any successes in the field of tracing missing persons. It is a complete mystery what their role was and how much money the ‘Helping to Find Madeleine Trust Fund’ paid them.
The Doctors McCann then went on to hire a very dubious Spanish ‘detective agency’ – Metodo 3 – at cost of several hundred thousand pounds, all for no obvious benefit or results. Once again, this firm of private investigators had no known track record in finding missing children. On the contrary, they were much better known for their expertise in the fields of money laundering and fraud. Also, we may note that this was a Spanish agency, and based in Barcelona, right on the very opposite side of the Iberian peninsula which includes both Portugal and Spain – some 500 miles from Praia da Luz.
Many of those involved in running Metodo 3 had controversial histories. One of its leading detectives, Mr. Francisco Marco, was described simply as a ‘crook’ by leading Portuguese criminologist, Mr Moita FloresMr Marco also made the widely-publicised claims in the run-up to Christmas 2007 that Metodo 3 were ‘closing in’ on the abductors, and that he ‘knew who snatched Madeleine’. He bragged that Madeleine was ’still alive’ and would be ‘home by Christmas’. Many British tabloids covered this emotive story on their front pages. Well-known Portuguese writer Joana Morais volunteered the opinion that “I trust in Mr. Moita Flores’ opinion about Francisco Marco – that he is a crook”.
In February 2008, another Metodo 3 private detective, known as Antonio J.R. (aged 53), working for the McCanns as their ‘detective in charge of special operations’, was charged with stealing 400 kilograms of cocaine – nearly half a ton – from an illegal shipment of 1,500 kg. on a ship coming from Venezuela. He had been Chief Inspector of the Drugs and Organised Crime Unit for the Barcelona police at the time 400 kilos of cocaine went missing from the port of Barcelona. But he had left the police to work for Metodo 3 in August 2005, just when an internal investigation was looking into how that 400 kolos had disappeared. He was remand in custody by a Barcelona court on on charges of breach of trust, corruption, corruption of public officials and illicit criminal association.
It had been Antonio J.R. of Metodo 3 who had travelled to Morocco and, whilst he was there, he was responsible for – somehow – finding a number of witnesses who claimed to have seen Madeleine. It was around the time of Antonio J.R.’s trip to Morocco that the Moroccan government took the unusual step of expelling a man who had been visiting hotels and garages in various parts of Morocco offering people money if they could claim to have seen a girl looking like Madeleine. A coincidence, perhaps.
Then it was revealed in summer this year that the Doctors McCann and the ‘Helping to Find Madeleine Trust Fund’ had spent some £1 million on a firm of private investigators called ‘Oakley International’, described by the Doctors’ McCanns’ PR spokesman, Clarence Mitchell, as ‘the big boys’, suggesting they were intenationally reputed private investigators. But enquiries revealed that the firm was only set up in 2007 and consisted of people nobody had ever heard of.
To sum up. The Doctors McCann have hired three so-called private detective agencies. After nearly a year-and-a-half, it is doubtful that they have obtained any useful information whatsoever about the whereabouts of Madeleine. Not one of them has any proven track record of searching successfully for missing or abducted children. One of them – Metodo 3 – is tainted with much more than a whiff of criminality within its ranks. Another firm (Oakley International) has only just been set up and apparently has no track record for anything. The Doctors’ McCann, or, we should say, the ‘Helping to Find Madeleine Trust Fund’, appars to have spent up to £2 million or more on these three companies, with no result.
Putting two and two together, we suggest that the purpose of spending some £2 million on shady firms of private investigators, with no record whatsover of successfully tracing missing children, was not to find Madeleine. The Doctors McCann and the Fund Trustees must have had other purposes in mind.

22. The McCanns’ rush, right from the outset, to hire a team of top lawyers, including the appointment of Britain’s top extradition lawyer

It has been widely reported – and not denied – that a ‘team of lawyers’ flew out from Leicestershire within 48 hours of Madeleine being reported missing. How several lawyers could help find an abducted child has never been explained. Shortly after that, they had got sufficient funds organised to afford top lawyers in both Britain and Portugal. Again, how lawyers could help to ‘find Madeleine’ is not clear. The likely purpose of all these lawyers was to defend the Doctors McCann, and possibly some of their ‘Tapas 9? friends, from serious criminal charges.
When the Doctors McCann were about to made formal suspects in the investigation of their daughter’s disappearance, they rushed to hire the U.K.’s top extradition lawyer – Michael Caplan Q.C. , who successfully represented General Pinochet when the Chilean government tried to extradite him to Chile for crimes against humanity.
As many have pointed out, ‘inocent’ parents would not need a team of lawyers out with them within 48 hours, nor would they need Britain’s top extradition lawyer. If they had done nothing wrong and Madeleine really had been snatched by an abductor, they would surely have been happy to co-operate in full with the Portuguese police and would not have needed any lawyers.
We might note here, briefly, that one of the Portuguese lawyers hired by the McCann, Mr Pinto de Abreu, has been accused on another occasion of proposing that his clients engage in illegal activities.

23. Not staying protectively close to the twins after Madeleine’s disappearance

According to Dr Kate McCann’s account, on seeing Madeleine’s bed empty, and the twins fast asleep in their cot, she rushed down to the Tapas bar crying ‘Madeleine’s gone’ (or, according to other accounts, ‘They’ve taken her’). In doing so, she left behind her twins in an unlocked room – allegedly believing ‘with absolute certainty’ that there was an abductor in the vicinity. She, her husband and her friends had mobile ‘phones on them, so she could have easily summoned them to help her by ‘phone. She exposed the twins to immediate risk of also being abducted, especially as she was so convinced that Madeleine had just been abducted.
Moreover, the Doctors McCann continued to leave their twins at the Ocean Club crèche during the period immediately after Madeleine disappeared, preferring to spend time visiting the Pope, the White House, and ‘campaigning’. Parents whose child had truly been ‘abducted by a stranger’ would be especially protective towards their other children and by their side as much as possible.
It is possible, for example, that if Madeleine had really been abducted, staff of the crèche, or those known to them, could have been responsible for – or implicated in – the abduction. As thousands of other parents have pointed out, any parent who was really distraught at the loss of a child after a genuine abduction would not have let their twins out of their sight; they would have clung to the precious two they had left in the world.

24. The McCanns’ apprehension about their ‘phone calls and e-mails being monitored

The Doctors McCann expressed anxiety when rumours surfaced about the possibility that the Portuguese police might be monitoring their telephone calls and that their e-mails might be intercepted. It must be asked: what innocent parent, genuinely concerned that their child had been abducted, and anxiously awaiting news of a possible sighting of her, would worry about that?

25. Kate McCann’s decision to wash ‘Cuddle Cat’ – the pink toy – despite the McCanns’ belief that it may have been handled by the abductor

The Doctors McCcann gave two quite different versions about where Madeleine’s favourite toy, ‘Cuddle Cat’, had been found when Dr Kate McCann entered her apartment at 10.00pm on May 3rd. One version was that Cuddle Cat had been left ‘on a high shelf or ledge’. The other version, eventually supported by a photo released by the Portuguese police showing Cuddle Cat lying on Madeleine’s bed, was that the abductor had left Cuddle Cat on Madeleine’s bed.
It would be clear from the above – and from the Doctors McCanns’ unshakeable conviction that Madeleine had been abducted – that there was a distinct possibility that the abductor might have left his DNA on Cuddle Cat.
Yet Dr Kate McCann decided to wash Cuddle Cat, allegedly because Cuddle Cat was ‘dirty with suncream’. By doing so, however, she and Gerry would both have known that they would thereby have washed out any possible DNA traces that the abductor (if there ever was one) would have left on the soft toy.
In relation to ‘Cuddle Cat’, many mothers have pointed out that the last thing they would do to a missing child’s favourite cuddly toy would be to wash it. The smell of their child would still be on it.
Ironically, despite Kate’s washing of Cuddle Cat, the cadaver dog, Eddie, detected the ’smell of death’, cadaverine, on the toy. The chemical cadaverine is almost impossible to remove from an article, even by washing. Finding the smell of death on Madeleine’s favourite toy even after Kate McCann had cleaned it was another clear pointer to Madeleine having died in Apartment 5a in Praia da Luz.
The cadaver dog Eddie detected the scent of death on Cuddle Cat when he was required to detect the presence of cadaverine (if any) at the house the Doctors McCann were renting in Praia da Luz after they had had to leave their holiday apartment. He did so, finding Cuddle Cat hidden away in a cupboard, an odd place to find it given that Dr Kate McCann always made sure it was with her for the cameras.

26. Failing to co-operate fully with the Portuguese police despite repeatedly promising to do so – and refusing their mobile ‘phone records

The Doctors McCann insisted from the beginning that they would fully co-operate with the Portuguese police.
When the police began investigating the possibility that the McCanns themselves might be involved in Madeleine’s disappearance, they immediately claimed that they were being ‘framed’.
They initially refused to supply their mobile ‘phone records to the police, despite the fact that Dr Gerry McCann was known to have received many SMS text messages on the day Madeleine ‘disappeared’. The details of those text messages could have thrown light on the mystery of Madeleine’s ‘disappearance’. The Portuguese police asked the Doctors McCann to supply their mobile ‘phone account records. But by the time the Portuguese police had obtained Dr Gerry McCann’s mobile ‘phone, sometime between 11.37pm on 3rd May and 12.03am on 4th May (just after midnight), it is now known that he deleted all those messages.
Thus within an hour-and-a-half of Madeleine ‘disappearing’, Dr Gerry McCann was taking time to delete his mobile ‘phone records. Why?

27. Having a ready supply of pre-printed photographs of Madeleine ready for the police as soon as they arrived on the night of 3rd May

Within just two hours of Madeleine’s ‘disappearance’, the Doctors McCanns had a ready supply of posters featuring Madeleine’s face. The Doctors McCann claimed that they had produced them on the spot using their digital camera and by getting access to a printing machine at the Ocean Club. But police enquiries at the club did not find any printer that could have produced those particular types of photo posters. This led to the Portuguese police to strongly suspect that they had been pre-prepared earlier in the day, somewhere away from the premises.

28. Not releasing the famous ‘last photo’ of Madeleine, taken at the poolside, for three weeks – and only after Gerry had returned to England

The famous ‘last photo’ of Madeleine was said by the Doctors McCann to have been taken at 2.29pm, that is lunch-time, on Thursday 3rd May, by the poolside at the Ocean Club. It was said to have been taken on Dr Kate McCann’s digital camera. It shows a solemn-looking Dr Gerry McCann, with Amelie to his left and, to Amelie’s left, a smiling Madeleine clearly enjoying something she is looking at off-camera. The Doctors McCann said that they had taken ‘many’ photos on that digital camera during their holiday.
There was therefore no apparent reason why the police could not have used this ‘last photo’ of Madeleine straightaway to make known her face to the public. As it was the most recent of Madeleine, it would have been the most helpful to the police – and of course to the public who were being asked to look for her.
Those who are experts in digital photography have analysed this crucial ‘last photograph’ and several claim that there is evidence that the photo could well have been ‘photo-shopped’, that is, deliberately manipulated to produce a false result. These experts say that the original photograph does seem to have been taken at 2.29pm on 3rd May, but that Madeleine may have been added in later, from another photograph. Even simpler, the date and timestamp in the digital photo could easily have been altered within minutes using free software downloaded from the Internet.
Whether these experts are right or not, It is curious, to say the least, that this famous ‘last photo’ was produced to the police only after Gerry McCann mysteriously flew back on his own to England for a couple of days in late May. He took Kate’s digital camera with him and certainly had the opportunity to arrange the ‘photo-shopping’ of that ‘last photo’ – if that was his intention. In addition, it is strange that not one other holiday photo from that digital camera has ever been produced.
A key figure in the early days after Madeleine’s ‘disappearance’ was Mr Alex Woolfall, a public relations guru employed by major public relations and advertising firm Bell Pottinger, and seconded to Mark Warners. In an article in the summer of 2007, Woolfall claimed: “The McCanns had not slept. They were trying to work out what to do that might help generate images of her. They were desperately keen to publicise her face”. The article continued: “The McCanns had photographs of Madeleine on their digital camera, which Mr Woolfall began transferring to a laptop computer. Woolfall said to Kate McCann, ‘Let’s try to identify pictures where her face is visible’. Downloading the images was a very difficult process for them. It was upsetting”.
Mr Woolfall talks of photographs in the plural. If there were so many, why was only that one photo ever released? – why did it take three weeks? – and why did it appear only after Dr Gerry McCann’s visit to England?

29. The strange words and phrases the McCanns have used in referring to the alleged abduction

When Dr Gerry McCann initially reported Madeleine’s disappearance to his mother-in-law, Mrs Susan Healy, he said: “There’s been a disaster, it’s a disaster”, itself a very odd term to use if there had been an abduction, or kidnap – and especially as he said it only a short while after Madeleine had apparently gone missing. This led Mrs Healy to say in a TV interview: “I thought he was talking about a car accident. It took me a while to realise [what had happened]”. Mrs Healy later said that Dr Gerry McCann “was so hysterical on the phone that I was unsure what he was saying”. Later, Dr Kate McCann ’phoned her mother and said: “She’s gone, Mum, she’s gone”.
On another occasion, Dr Kate McCann said, describing the abduction, “I know the situation new were in that night. I know that what happened is not due to the fact of us leaving the children asleep. I know it happened under other circumstances”. What was the ‘it’? It sounds more like it is referring some other event than the alleged abduction.
Another bizarre description of the alleged abduction occurred during the Panorama programme transmitted on 19 November 2007. Describing how the abduction must have happened, and pressed by her interviewer, Richard Bilton, that the abductor must have had only a small ‘window of opportunity’ during which to snatch Madeleine, she replied in a very causal, laid-back manner: “They’d been watching us, over a matter of days, I’m sure, erm, you know. They know, erm, you know, they must have known, you know, that Gerry had just been into the apartment and then…[she makes a fast swish of her arms and a loud guttural click in the throat - described by many on the Internet as ‘whoosh, clunk’] erm, you’re right, there was only a small window of opportunity, but, you know…” The real effect of witnessing how she describes this apparently most tragic event in her life can only really be appreciated by watching the clip of it on YouTube:


30. Only carrying out a drugs test on the twins after five months

The Doctors McCanns refused to take their two-year-old twins to be tested for the presence of drugs or sedatives in their system, although they later admitted that they thought the children ‘could have been drugged by the abductor’. They then waited nearly five months before engaging an agency to carry out ‘independent’ tests. The results of these tests have never been publicly disclosed and it is not known for the presence of what drugs the agency tested.
The Doctors McCann publicly claimed that these tests proved that the twins had never been sedated. But if they had really wanted to test for the presence of drugs or sedatives, the time to have done that would have been immediately after Madeleine ‘disappeared’. Why did the Mccanns not carry out a test at that time? Perhaps, both being Doctors, because they knew that if they had been giving unauthorized sedatives to their children, the presence of those drugs would have been revealed by any tests.
Prepared by Tony Bennett for The Madeleine Foundation, October 2008

</snip>

[jrobertson]

What did happen to Madelein McCann, and why did the McCanns apparently want this video banned?


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UxGhlYTNisw
link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UxGhlYTNisw

[Matthew]

Supposed sighting in India too being investigated:


http://img.metro.co.uk/i/pix/2011/07/28/article-1311866867700-0D331D0400000578-2868_466x310.jpg

Kate and Gerry McCann, as the family of Madeleine McCann are alerted to a possible sighting of the missing child in India
The six-year-old girl was seen in the north Indian city of Leh on Friday night and police are investigating the claims, with DNA tests being carried out, according to reports.


The French woman and Belgian man who were with the little girl said they were her biological parents, but detectives took their passports to check.


Private detectives hired by Kate and Gerry McCann (http://www.metro.co.uk/explore/people/mccann_gerry) are liaising with local police, but the family are said to be playing down the possible sighting.


Swabs were taken from the girl to see if they provide a match, according to the Daily Mirror.


Clarence Mitchell, spokesman for the McCanns, said: 'The private investigators currently searching for Madeleine have been aware of this report from India for several days, and have been working to establish its veracity.


'So far unfortunately there is nothing to suggest that this sighting is any more credible than any of the many others we have had over the last four-plus years.'


Maddie disappeared over four years ago from her family's holiday flat in Praia da Luz in the Algarve as her parents dined out friends.


She would now be eight.



Read more: http://www.metro.co.uk/news/870729-madeleine-mccann-seen-in-india#ixzz1TQ0nWeTF

[Bryn Teg]

I am with you on this one fredblog!