Madeleine McCann

[FrankO]

No evidence of anyone ever entering or exiting through the window. Gerry McCann had to acknowledge this in his statement of 10th May. On 4th May he had remembered doing his 9.05pm check by entering through the main door by use of a key. By 10th May, aware of the lack of forensic evidence to support this, he changes tack entirely and claims he entered via the unlocked patio door. This was almost certainly a lie rather than a memory lapse, but necessary since his version A had been disproved.

Could you rephrase this, Cobalt?

As I'm understanding/reading it now, you first talk about there being no evidence that anyone went in or out through the window. That's clear enough. But then you say that there was no evidence that Gerry McCann on the night of May 3rd had entered through the front door by use of a key and that this is why he realized after May 4th that he had to change his story to having entered via the unlocked patio door at the back of the apartment.

What I don't get is: what has the window got to do with how he entered the apartment? And on the basis of what (kind of) evidence, according to you, would it have been possible to determine whether he entered through the front door on that particular occasion, or not? What am I missing?

Just trying to understand...

Cheers,
Frank

[Darryl Kenyon]

Hi Darryl. It was reported--I don't know how accurately, but it came from a journalist in Portugal--that Brueckner's phone call lasted fully 30 minutes. If true, that's far more than a 'tip off.'

This is true RJ . Sounds more like a personal call. Probably the police put more credence on the phone call putting him in the area. But there could be a chance that there might have been some ongoing argument over money owed or drugs maybe ?

Regards Darryl

[cobalt]

FrankO,

It's always a problem when evidence and supposition are mixed in together, as happened in my previous post.

Regarding the window, there was no forensic evidence of entry or exit. Given the police awareness of this as a possible burglary method and the tests they conducted on the outside of the window, the window itself and the interior bedding which lay directly underneath the window then I think it is fair to say the PJ discounted this possibility. If anyone entered and then left the apartment, it was not via the window.

We have no evidence of how Gerry McCann entered the apartment on his 9.05 check save his own accounts, which are at variance. In his first PJ interview he remembers entering by using a key in the front door. In his second interview he recalls entering via an unlocked patio door. This is all we know.

The importance of his first statement, made the day after the disappearance, is that, given what was later established about the window, it required any intruder to have entered the property by means of a key since there were no signs of forced entry. This does not of itself implicate the MCanns: any employee such as cleaner could have obtained a duplicate key or a pass key to their apartment.

However his first statement (4th May) was my focus. First of all, this was the last occasion on which he saw his daughter so one would expect his memory of that visit to have been very clear, especially the day after. In his statement of 4th May he said he entered by means of a key. Secondly, despite their bizarre checking system, no other members of the Tapas group reported leaving their doors unlocked so it is not clear why the McCanns did this. Thirdly, McCann himself did not offer this information about unlocked patio doors during his first interview, and it only emerged (10th May) after the PJ discounted the window as a means of entry/exit. So on balance, I put more weight on Gerry McCann's first statement.

[caz]

So I'm confused, cobalt. Was the patio door locked or unlocked? Even if Gerry misremembered how he had entered during the second interview, surely he wouldn't have recalled the patio door being unlocked if in reality it had been locked? And if it was unlocked, the intruder could have entered that way, found Madeleine, then opened and looked through the window to check the coast was clear before finally carrying her out via the patio door and into his parked vehicle if he had one.

Love,

Caz
X

[Abby Normal]

IMHO any scenario where an intruder either went through the window or opened it for any reason just doesn’t make sense. The doors were left unlocked the whole time they were there. The intruder had probably had been scoping the place out and probably was there the night before which caused maddy to wake up and cry for her mother. Why screw around with the window which would pose numerous unnecessary issues for an intruder when he could just waltz in and out. Their apt was easily accessible from the road and he probably parked nearby but not so close as to get busted. Nobody parks right in front of the place they are going to rob. There was already a legit sighting of a man carrying his child home that night and it was probably a common occurrence which an experienced burglar probably knew. Therefore in my opinion I think the smith sighting was probably legit and Brueckner makes a likely suspect as he was an experienced criminal.

[cobalt]

'So I'm confused, cobalt. Was the patio door locked or unlocked?'

We simply do not know. We have two accounts by Gerry McCann that are contradictory, and I have explained my reasons for preferring his original (4th May) version whereby he entered by using a key on the front door. Only when the shutters/window entry point was dismissed by the police did the unlocked patio door come into play. That leads me to believe that the McCann apartment, like all the other Tapas apartments, was locked.

The Oldfield check at 9.30 also requires the patio door to be unlocked, since Mr. Oldfield had volunteered to make a check on the McCann children en route to check on his own. There must be doubt about whether such a check ever happened, since there is no record so far as I recall of parents checking on other members' children. Oldfield claims he saw the twins but not Madeleine when he peeked through the bedroom door, so not much of a visual check. More likely, I would contend, he listened outside the bedroom window of the locked McCann apartment and heard no crying or movement thus assumed all was fine inside. That is the best gloss I can put to an unconvincing piece of testimony.

The unlocked patio door also makes an appearance in David Payne's statement. His visit, which may have occurred just after Kate McCann had taken a shower, mentions him entering (she does not remember him crossing the threshold) through the unlocked patio door. At 6.30pm I would assume most patio doors in a holiday apartment would be unlocked if there were persons inside, but Payne thinks this an important enough detail to insert into his account.

[Sunny Delight]

Gerry entering via the front door or via the patio doors is a red herring. Either way the main aspect was the open window. There is a continual claim that Police found no evidence of entry via that route. What evidence would one expect to find apart from fingerprints and an experienced burglar would know to wear gloves? Even so if the perp entered via the patio doors and opened the window to check all was clear? We don't know. But someone opened that window and they did it for a reason. I see a connection with other robberies in previous months were entry via a window was the MO. Surely anyone with an ounce of sense can see that is a connection worth looking into.

Jane Tanner was ridiculed for years. The Portuguese Police called her a fantasist. They contended it was all a conspiracy by the party to deflect from the real culprits- the McCanns. So convinced were they by their bonkers theory that they seemingly didn't bother to track down holidaymakers who had used the night creche on that night. It took 5 years until the Met tracked down who they strongly suspected was the man seen by Tanner. In fact they declared that they were almost certain he was the man she had seen. Every detail of the parties statements are dissected and drilled into- inconsistencies leapt upon. But at the end of the day the Tapas 9 had no reason to lie and appeared to attempt to tell the truth as they knew it. They did that in the honest hope that the Police would leave no stone unturned. How wrong they were.

[rjpalmer]

I would submit that we don't actually know what the PJ did or did not find in the room. We only know what is being reported.

Yes, this sounds conspiratorial, but in the seven-part Neflix documentary on the case, which I think is balanced and fair-minded, the Portuguese journalist Sandra Felgueiras stated that she was "deeply embarrassed" by the role she played in reporting the story. Specifically, Felgueiras said that she came to realize that her contacts inside the PJ were feeding her bogus information. At one point, she cites how they overstated and misrepresented the DNA evidence allegedly found in the rental car. She used the word "lie." "The PJ lied to me."

This is interesting because it was reported clear back in 2008 that the PJ had lied to the McCanns about the strength of this same DNA evidence, hoping it would cause one of them to 'break' and confess.

If Amaral and his men were willing to do this, how do we know what other information might be inaccurate and/or misleading? In the United States, it is common practice for the police to overstate the strength of their case against a suspect--including lying to them outright--and it is not illegal for them to do so. If they can trick a suspect into confessing, so be it.

The Portuguese Police strike me as even more secretive and freewheeling than the Yanks, so how can I trust that Amaral wasn't leaking bogus information, hoping it would put the screws to the McCanns? He could have also deliberately withheld exculpatory evidence, since it would have been in the best interest of his theory/game plan to do so.

This is pure speculation, but if Brueckner is ever charged and put on trial, I wouldn't be particularly shocked to learn that supposedly non-existent evidence of an intruder at the crime scene suddenly materializes.

[cobalt]

'Gerry entering via the front door or via the patio doors is a red herring. Either way the main aspect was the open window.'

As is Darwin's Theory of Evolution a red herring.Darwin's theory is based upon best evidence and in the last 150 years has actually become reinforced. But that does not stop zealots, self styled 'Creationists,' who quote the Old Testament, of dinosaurs and humans walking in two by two into Noah's Ark, confident that gaps in the fossil record 'prove' that the world is only around 4,000 years old. These cranks normally avoid microphones for obvious reasons.

However they are well represented on this site. They quote discredited evidence of windows and the MET, an organisation so disgraced it will surely soon have to be renamed. They talk of phantoms and personifications of evil, such as Breuckner. There is not a scintilla of evidence to support their wild theories, in fact most of the established evidence points in the opposite direction. And that evidence, like Darwin's in its time, points towards something unpalatable for many. The available evidence in the McCann case attacks their sense of security and identity, as Gordon Brown recognised from the outset. That middle class doctors are bad parents and might bring harm to their children is simply taboo in western culture and must be denied. More comfortable to focus on the criminal 'class' or casual workers which the likes of Brown see as overlapping, hence the attention on Breuckner and the underpaid skivvies at the holiday resort. In fact some of the early iPJ investigation checked out 'gypsies,' that well established bogey man of snobs, middle class property owners and Enid Blyton stories.

My favourite example of Creationism recently was the observation on this site that that 'perp' who was 'scoping' the crime scene- American expressions I imagine- would never park a car near the scene of their crime. Which is news to every bank robber who ever escaped with the loot but sufficient for any Creationist who ever picked up their FBI Offender Profile bible. Amaral made mistakes no doubt, but then he had never read The Famous Five.

[Sunny Delight]

'Gerry entering via the front door or via the patio doors is a red herring. Either way the main aspect was the open window.'

As is Darwin's Theory of Evolution a red herring.Darwin's theory is based upon best evidence and in the last 150 years has actually become reinforced. But that does not stop zealots, self styled 'Creationists,' who quote the Old Testament, of dinosaurs and humans walking in two by two into Noah's Ark, confident that gaps in the fossil record 'prove' that the world is only around 4,000 years old. These cranks normally avoid microphones for obvious reasons.

However they are well represented on this site. They quote discredited evidence of windows and the MET, an organisation so disgraced it will surely soon have to be renamed. They talk of phantoms and personifications of evil, such as Breuckner. There is not a scintilla of evidence to support their wild theories, in fact most of the established evidence points in the opposite direction. And that evidence, like Darwin's in its time, points towards something unpalatable for many. The available evidence in the McCann case attacks their sense of security and identity, as Gordon Brown recognised from the outset. That middle class doctors are bad parents and might bring harm to their children is simply taboo in western culture and must be denied. More comfortable to focus on the criminal 'class' or casual workers which the likes of Brown see as overlapping, hence the attention on Breuckner and the underpaid skivvies at the holiday resort. In fact some of the early iPJ investigation checked out 'gypsies,' that well established bogey man of snobs, middle class property owners and Enid Blyton stories.

My favourite example of Creationism recently was the observation on this site that that 'perp' who was 'scoping' the crime scene- American expressions I imagine- would never park a car near the scene of their crime. Which is news to every bank robber who ever escaped with the loot but sufficient for any Creationist who ever picked up their FBI Offender Profile bible. Amaral made mistakes no doubt, but then he had never read The Famous Five.

So you believe that all the Police Forces who have cleared the McCanns are doing so under Political pressure because it is too unpalatable to believe that two middle class doctors could be bad parents or involved in the killing of their daughter and the subsequent cover up. Only the plucky Amaral (who has made plenty of money from the case and pushing his bonkers theory) managed to get to the bottom of it all. Much like the Joanna Cipriano case here he settles on the McCanns using a refrigerator to store the body before later transporting it. I suppose the only difference between Cipriano and the McCanns was they couldn't beat the confession out of British holidaymakers. As RJ states even Sandra Felguiras stated she had been 'lied to' by the PJ. They were peddling false info through her. She felt very strongly she had been left high and dry once the actual truth began to leak out.

Much like Robert Anderson who had no doubt of Kosminski's guilt Amaral convinced himself that he had solved the case. He hadn't been bettered nor had he been incompetent. Rather he was the victim of a Political cover up. Sacrificed so that two middle class doctors would be dismissed as suspects. And what did the McCanns do with this bit of good fortune? They campaigned the world over to garner information on their missing daughter. They appeared on TV shows etc. They campaigned for a new investigation to be opened. Hired their own private investigators. Strange behaviour for a couple who had seemingly got away with everything scot free.

[Aethelwulf]

'Gerry entering via the front door or via the patio doors is a red herring. Either way the main aspect was the open window.'

As is Darwin's Theory of Evolution a red herring.Darwin's theory is based upon best evidence and in the last 150 years has actually become reinforced. But that does not stop zealots, self styled 'Creationists,' who quote the Old Testament, of dinosaurs and humans walking in two by two into Noah's Ark, confident that gaps in the fossil record 'prove' that the world is only around 4,000 years old. These cranks normally avoid microphones for obvious reasons.

However they are well represented on this site. They quote discredited evidence of windows and the MET, an organisation so disgraced it will surely soon have to be renamed. They talk of phantoms and personifications of evil, such as Breuckner. There is not a scintilla of evidence to support their wild theories, in fact most of the established evidence points in the opposite direction. And that evidence, like Darwin's in its time, points towards something unpalatable for many. The available evidence in the McCann case attacks their sense of security and identity, as Gordon Brown recognised from the outset. That middle class doctors are bad parents and might bring harm to their children is simply taboo in western culture and must be denied. More comfortable to focus on the criminal 'class' or casual workers which the likes of Brown see as overlapping, hence the attention on Breuckner and the underpaid skivvies at the holiday resort. In fact some of the early iPJ investigation checked out 'gypsies,' that well established bogey man of snobs, middle class property owners and Enid Blyton stories.

My favourite example of Creationism recently was the observation on this site that that 'perp' who was 'scoping' the crime scene- American expressions I imagine- would never park a car near the scene of their crime. Which is news to every bank robber who ever escaped with the loot but sufficient for any Creationist who ever picked up their FBI Offender Profile bible. Amaral made mistakes no doubt, but then he had never read The Famous Five.

I see you are brining your conspiracy nonsense from the JFK thread here. Some people just like that sort of thing I guess.

[caz]

'So I'm confused, cobalt. Was the patio door locked or unlocked?'

We simply do not know. We have two accounts by Gerry McCann that are contradictory, and I have explained my reasons for preferring his original (4th May) version whereby he entered by using a key on the front door. Only when the shutters/window entry point was dismissed by the police did the unlocked patio door come into play. That leads me to believe that the McCann apartment, like all the other Tapas apartments, was locked.

The Oldfield check at 9.30 also requires the patio door to be unlocked, since Mr. Oldfield had volunteered to make a check on the McCann children en route to check on his own. There must be doubt about whether such a check ever happened, since there is no record so far as I recall of parents checking on other members' children. Oldfield claims he saw the twins but not Madeleine when he peeked through the bedroom door, so not much of a visual check. More likely, I would contend, he listened outside the bedroom window of the locked McCann apartment and heard no crying or movement thus assumed all was fine inside. That is the best gloss I can put to an unconvincing piece of testimony.

The unlocked patio door also makes an appearance in David Payne's statement. His visit, which may have occurred just after Kate McCann had taken a shower, mentions him entering (she does not remember him crossing the threshold) through the unlocked patio door. At 6.30pm I would assume most patio doors in a holiday apartment would be unlocked if there were persons inside, but Payne thinks this an important enough detail to insert into his account.

I'm still confused, cobalt. Sorry.

If you are right that both the front door and back patio doors were locked, with the three children alone inside, and there was no forced entry, or possibility of an intruder entering via the window, how do you believe Madeleine was taken from the apartment? If one of the parents had done it, why on earth would they have locked the front and back doors behind them, leaving a locked door mystery that would have had but one solution: whoever locked both doors must have removed the child first?

Love,

Caz
X

[FrankO]

FrankO,

It's always a problem when evidence and supposition are mixed in together, as happened in my previous post.

Regarding the window, there was no forensic evidence of entry or exit. Given the police awareness of this as a possible burglary method and the tests they conducted on the outside of the window, the window itself and the interior bedding which lay directly underneath the window then I think it is fair to say the PJ discounted this possibility. If anyone entered and then left the apartment, it was not via the window.

We have no evidence of how Gerry McCann entered the apartment on his 9.05 check save his own accounts, which are at variance. In his first PJ interview he remembers entering by using a key in the front door. In his second interview he recalls entering via an unlocked patio door. This is all we know.

The importance of his first statement, made the day after the disappearance, is that, given what was later established about the window, it required any intruder to have entered the property by means of a key since there were no signs of forced entry. This does not of itself implicate the MCanns: any employee such as cleaner could have obtained a duplicate key or a pass key to their apartment.

However his first statement (4th May) was my focus. First of all, this was the last occasion on which he saw his daughter so one would expect his memory of that visit to have been very clear, especially the day after. In his statement of 4th May he said he entered by means of a key. Secondly, despite their bizarre checking system, no other members of the Tapas group reported leaving their doors unlocked so it is not clear why the McCanns did this. Thirdly, McCann himself did not offer this information about unlocked patio doors during his first interview, and it only emerged (10th May) after the PJ discounted the window as a means of entry/exit. So on balance, I put more weight on Gerry McCann's first statement.

Thanks for your response, Cobalt.

Gerry McCann did say in his interview of 4^th May that the terrace door was kept unlocked: “At about 21.30 his friend Matt (member of the group) went to the apartment, where his children were and on his way went to the witness' apartment, entering by means of a glass sliding door that was always unlocked and was located laterally to the building.”

So, according to the statements made, the patio door was left unlocked and the window & shutters were only found opened at around 10 pm. That’s what we have to deal with.

So, either 1) the McCanns opened and closed the window & shutters themselves or 2) they never opened & closed them but lied about having found them open or 3) someone else opened them from the either the outside or inside.

Why would the McCanns need to have found the window & shutters open? The only thing I can think of is to divert attention away from the fact that they’d left the patio door unlocked and to save a bit of face. But they didn’t strictly need it as, obviously, leaving the patio unlocked would have given an intruder the chance of getting in and out without leaving much of a trace, if any at all.

Another point against the McCanns inventing the open window & shutters or opening them themselves, as far as I see it, is that it would have been quite stupid to tell anybody that the shutters had been forced open or words to that effect. Why do that when they knew for a fact that they hadn’t been forced? It would have served no purpose.

The fact that they did initially tell people that the shutters were broken open, however, is understandable if you’d assume they didn’t stage anything and that they had assumed the shutters could only be opened from the outside by using quite a bit of force.

Why would an intruder need to have opened them – supposing he didn’t enter or exit through it?

One possibility is the one offered by Caz, to see if the coast was clear. This possibility doesn’t convince me much if it was only to see if the coast was clear, unless, of course, the front door was locked and a key was needed to open it. Otherwise, opening the front door would seem a more logic solution. Less chance of noise that could wake up the children & draw attention from anyone in the street and a bit further back from the street.

Another possibility would be that there were 2 abductors: one entering through the unlocked patio door and then passing Madeleine through the opened window to the second abductor who put her in a car parked right in front of the apartment or close by. The first one then leaving either by the front door (if not locked) or the patio door, as the window was small.

And a third possibility, similar to the one with 2 abductors, is that there was only one abductor, who entered through the patio door, subdued Madeleine in one way or another, opened the window to first check if the coast was clear, then put her outside under the window, whereas he then exited either through the front or patio door. That way he had his hands free to open any door and wouldn’t have to carry the girl through the apartment, which would have slowed him down somewhat. In short, it would have been slower/less practical. When outside, he picked up the girl and put her in a car parked right in front of the apartment or close by.

Just some of my thoughts…

[cobalt]

The two locked doors were not seen as a problem since it could be claimed an intruder entered and left through the window. It was only when that possibility was discounted by the PJ that the two locked doors created the problem you have identified.

The first reference I can find mentioning an unlocked patio door was in Oldfield's statement of 4th May, the day following the disappearance. Strangely, Gerry McCann does not mention this unlocked patio door in a statement he made the same day.

The claimed visit by Oldfield at around 9.30pm was the only reported instance of a Tapas person checking inside an apartment on another family's children. It was unique. In his statement Oldfield seems vague about why this double check (he was also checking on his own children) took place. He had already conducted, by his account, an aural check outside the McCann children's bedroom window at around 9.05.

If Oldfield's 9.30 check inside the McCann apartment was an invention, as I suspect it was, then what purpose did it serve? On a basic level it takes the edge off the parental neglect of the children since it creates the impression that regular checks were being made. That was clearly a concern shared by all the Tapas group who had produced two versions of their timeline before the PJ arrived. The alarm was raised at around 10pm but the local police were not informed of the situation until 10.41.

Oldfield's 9.30 check also introduces, rather tentatively, the possibility of kidnap in that he mentions the bedroom being brighter than he would have expected. Since he did not actually see Madeleine McCann on this check it helps expand the possible time during which such a kidnap could have taken place. Given the amount of activity allegedly taking place by parental checks between 9pm and 10pm this is important since any abductor would have been working within a very narrow 'window' of opportunity.

And of course it opens up the possibility of an abductor entering and exiting through the unlocked patio doors, just as he claims he did himself.

[Darryl Kenyon]

Just had a thought that the opened window could have been a ruse by the abductor to give the impression that's the way he/she exited down or up the main road with transport. When in fact the guilty party went the other way through the patio doors past the complex entrance , or up the side alley to where they were staying/living very nearby.

Seems doubtful but you never know.

Regards Darryl