Introduction

Last post we spoke of one of the ix (nine) interactions Yvonne Martin had with the authorities pertaining to the Maddie case.

We dealt with interaction ii – The anonymous letter.

Even though we tackled a very controversial issue the expected warm breeze of silence that touched our cheeks told us the seas ahead continue to be calm and ridiculously flat so we see no reason for us not to continue to point the bow of our vessel towards the horizon and proceed with our trip through these dead-still waters.

Today we will deal with Yvonne Martin's interactions iii and iv:

iii – Calls PJ, date uncertain but educated guess would say on June 12 or the day before;

iv – Speaks to PJ at her residence, June 12.



A – CALLING PJ

This is simply one of the most important interactions between Yvonne Martin and the authorities but has gone completely unnoticed up to now as far as we have been able to see.

The reason for this importance is very simple and very easy to understand: it’s her doing. And because it’s her doing, it shows want.

It’s her who decides to call PJ and tell them she wants to speak to them.

How do we know this? By the first paragraph of her first statement on June 12: “In the sequence of information conveyed to this police, a team made up by the signee and by colleague Carlos Antunes, went to the residence of YVONE WARREN MARTIN (…) Sargaçal (…), being that from conversation with the referred YVONE the following was determined:”

PJ, even if only for practical reasons weren’t knocking on every door in Praia da Luz. Much less in Lagos, or Sargaçal where Yvonne Martin resided. That’s what press conferences and appeals are for: to have people who think they may have relevant information to come to them and not the police going around talking to everyone in the hope they can find them.

For PJ to go to Yvonne Martin’s residence, it was because they received “information conveyed” and this information could only have been conveyed to the PJ by Yvonne Martin.

This has enormous implications as we hope to show. Both in the intervention itself as in the ones that followed.

We don’t have the hour when the conversation between Yvonne Martin and the PJ at her residence took place, only the day, June 12.

That means we don’t know when exactly Yvonne Martin conveyed the information to the PJ, or in simple terms, when she called and asked to talk to them.

We think that by taking into account the high profile status of the case she called them on that day and they immediately sent a team out. For that reason we will be assuming that this interaction took place on June 12, some hours before PJ arrived at her house.

Let’s do a quick recap of what we know happened up to that point in time.

- Yvonne Martin has gone to Luz on May 4. DP has made a negative impression on her and she, although she can’t be precise, suspects he may be a paedophile with whom she has crossed paths with during her career;

- On site does nothing about it. Goes back home and does nothing about it for 3 weeks;

- Then on May 25 she hears a description of a man carrying a child and wearing a dark jacket and she immediately connects that to a man she has seen wearing a polo shirt;

- Prompted by the PJ’s description mentioned above the senior social worker writes an anonymous letter to the British police because the McCanns behaved strangely, the apartment had no sign of a break in and her professional experience showed that in 99,99% of the cases of children disappearing the family and friends are involved. Because of all these reasons the police should look up and see if David Payne is a registered paedophile or child abuser.

More than a month later after being in Luz and about 3 weeks after she wrote the anonymous letter, she decides on June 12 to call the PJ to tell them she wants to speak to them.

There can only be one reason for Yvonne Martin to call PJ: she has seen no response from authorities to the anonymous letter she wrote and decides to press the issue further.

She supposedly has contacted the British police via this anonymous letter and on NOT seeing any reference on the MSM to a paedophile being involved nor any reference to David Payne being involved, decides to “ask” authorities why nothing had been done.

And so she contacts the PJ.

But the question that must be asked is how does she know nothing was done about her anonymous letter?

How does she know the clues she gave aren’t being followed, that police weren’t following them discreetly constructing a case against Payne the paedophile and to catch others possibly involved?

But above all, how does she know the content her letter hasn’t been, correctly, disregarded?

Wasn’t she so vague in the way she points the finger to Payne?

She seems to say that in the letter she just asks authority to check the registers to see if he was there but doesn’t say he was there.

But let’s imagine she’s very precise in that letter – we don’t know what was written in that letter – and has said possibly something like “David Payne is a paedophile” written in bold and underlined, they could have done all the checks they should have done and found nothing.

They could have found no visible link between Payne and paedophilia and just said “Thank you, ma’am, we inform you that although you had suspicions and concerns we have found no evidence linking David Payne to paedophilia or to child abuse”.

Problem is that there was no ma’am to thank as the supposed letter was anonymous. Police couldn’t give any feed-back about it to its author even if it wanted to.

Note that by calling the PJ after having written the anonymous letter she does not consider the possibility that Payne checked out ok and was innocent of all her suspicions.

However what is to be noted is that with this call she shows interested determination, insistence and persistence. No hesitation whatsoever.

The fact she called them means very clearly she is not at all hesitant that to her Payne is the suspect the police should focus on.

She has gone out of her way twice to point the finger in his direction: the anonymous letter and the phone call.

That means certainty, no question about that.

This interaction and the one before, the anonymous letter, are very important because they are “baggage”.

When the reader first reads her first statement the reader has no way of knowing how committed she was to getting Payne seen as a paedophile. And when the reader has the information the reader doesn’t go back to read this statement under this new light and so disregards it.

The reader just reads a candid and earnest statement from someone who found someone “odd” and who just wanted to help the investigation.

No, Yvonne Martin si not candid and simply worried. She’s a precise accuser and has a precise target: David Payne and is determined to accuse him.



B – 1ST STATEMENT, JUNE 12

1. Summary of statement (1)

- Yvonne Martin says she sees in her house at 07:00 on Sky News or BBC a minor – as in singular – had disappeared in Luz;

- Because of her profession she feels obliged to help, goes to Luz;

- Arrives at 09:00, sees Kate, Gerry and David by the apartment;

- Identifies herself, presents credentials starts to talk to Kate;

- Kate tells her couple took Maddie;

- David interrupts and takes Kate and Gerry away;

- David later comes back and informs her that the McCanns no longer want to talk to her or want her help;

- Says after this she sees David twice, once when he’s with an older woman (Dianne Webster?) and the McCann twins and the other when he’s with PJ officers;

- Meanwhile (very important word this one, not afterwards or a little later but meanwhile) she hears near the Tapas reception that the consul is coming, decides to wait for him;

- Describes Payne;

- Says when back home and AFTER seeing Payne on TV she comes to the conclusion she may have crossed paths with him, not sure if suspect or witness;

- Says she can pick him out of if shown photographs and then suggest that with that photo they can go check English police database to see if Payne has been related with crimes involving minors.


2. Morning news

Yvonne Martin says she hears at 07:00 am a news report about Maddie having disappeared.

Sky News first reports this at 07:48:


“Presenter: Some more breaking news for you this morning. Errr... We're just hearing that a search is underway for a 3-year-old British girl who's gone missing in the Algarve area of Portugal; and she went missing last night. Hundreds of people have been searching for the girl; and that search continuing this morning. So we will try to get as much on that as for... for you as soon as we can; errr... that, errr... missing girl in Luz and we will bring it to you as soon as we get further detail.”

http://www.mccannfiles.com/id121.html

Yvonne Martin seems to have a problem with time.

We have seen in our previous post how she first says she took 2 weeks to write the anonymous letter then to find out it had to be 3 weeks and now we find out that what she says she hears at 07:00 was aired in fact almost an hour later, at 07:48.

Morning is the time of routine. From when we get up until we leave the house we know if we’re on time or if we’re late. One can only have that perception if one has a set routine as reference.

To have heard something on TV that impresses us to the point of feeling obliged to get out of the house and travel to the other side of Lagos, one must be able to remember what one was doing at the time and then pinpoint it.

For example, it would be natural for her to have said “I saw it when I was having my cereal, so that would be around 7:20/7:30” or “I was just pouring my coffee, so that would be around 07:15”, etc.

One can pinpoint time quite accurately in the morning.

To say that in the morning one hears something at 07:00 on TV when it was aired at 07:48 is an unacceptable inaccuracy.

If this was in the afternoon, it would be understandable but it is when we wake up, when all minutes count, so a 48 minute discrepancy is not.

By the way, who was to guarantee the child would not return safely or be found unharmed soon after the report? Why does she assume the “missing” will be a long-term one or even permanent?


3. Credentials

She says she arrives in Luz at 09:00 and says she sees the McCann couple and a third element (who seems familiar to her). Walks to them and identifies herself “presenting her credentials” and then starts to speak immediately with the mother.

As she wasn’t working in the UK her credentials would be worthless in Portugal. She should have known that.

Social workers are registered to work in the UK but have no authority to act abroad.

And in the UK social workers can’t operate in another area outside the one of the local authority they work for. They aren’t authorised to do so.

Her credentials are only relevant to the UK and only for the area of a particular local authority.

Because they are worthless outside the area of work and have to be reported immediately if lost, social workers keep their credentials safe, not even carrying them in handbags when not on duty. They are accountable if they lose them under such circumstances.

Social workers certainly don’t take credentials on holiday and even if a person also resides abroad the credentials stay where they are valid and useful: in the UK.

Outside the UK the credentials of a British social worker opens as many doors as a Tesco card. By the way as there aren’t any Tescos in Portugal the vast majority of the Portuguese don’t have an idea what that card may be. Just like would happen with the credentials of a British social worker there.

If a social worker acts in the name of their employer without authority then they are liable to disciplinary action for bringing the name of their agency into disrepute.

They have no right to question people in a case not known and registered with their local authority.

Social workers operate under orders from a court or where families approach the local authority and ask for help on a non-court order basis.

A UK policeman on holiday in Portugal is just a man on holiday. Same with any social worker.

In Portugal she wouldn’t be able to look after any children other than as a friend or acquaintance, as anyone could. Being a social worker in the UK does not alter that.

All she could do was to say in this situation would be “I'm a UK social worker. Is there anything I can do to help?”. But if she had acted as a professional and advised accordingly she was working beyond her remit.

Yvonne Martin in this instance wasn't faced with an emergency and she should know as a professional that better qualified and legitimately appointed people, the Portuguese social workers, would be sent in if they were needed.

If she had concerns about David Payne she should have contacted her managers in UK and they could have made contact with the police.

If she had been certain, she should have told the PJ on the spot.

If she wasn't sure, she should have phoned her head office in UK for advice and pass it to them to deal with.

The news report only says “a 3-year-old British girl who's gone missing” so we can’t see in what way does this statement make her obliged professionally to help.

It’s like being a mechanic hearing that a car has been stolen bolting out the door to go help fix a car that he’s just been told wouldn’t be there because it has been stolen.

Child protection social workers are not about helping parents. The welfare of the child is their primary responsibility. Working with parents may promote the welfare of the child who is the priority.

Residential social workers look after children in care. So a child may have two social workers, one residential and other community based who liaise.

Adults who have mental health, physical disability, learning difficulties, dementia, may have a social worker but specific to their needs. Yvonne Martin says she specifically works for child protection.

To help the parents of a missing child with no other children involved a psychologist would be more appropriate rather than a social worker. When she leaves her house Yvonne Martin doesn’t know there are other children besides the one who has gone missing.

If one of the McCanns were arrested in the UK a social worker might need to assess risk to remaining children in the care of the other parent, if circumstances weren't clear.

If the McCanns had a missing child in the UK their local authority wouldn't send a social worker in, unless maybe they wanted advice on how to explain things to the twins. Again, when Yvonne Martin leaves her house she doesn’t know about the twins. She doesn’t know the missing child has siblings.

If she left her house out of empathy, it’s legitimate, out of professional obligation it’s not.

A UK social worker abroad is just a person abroad but will continue to be a social worker. She doesn’t leave her professional skillsets in the UK.

This means that a social worker knows better than anyone else what a social worker should or should not do when faced with a “professional” situation abroad as she’s fully aware of professional limitations and boundaries.

If a social worker in the UK knows that even on duty and under the appropriate authority she shouldn’t meddle with the police work of a crime scene, she ought to know she should behave in exactly the same way abroad.

Plus she should also know that all the social working to be done on site abroad is to be done by the local social workers and by them alone.

Yvonne Martin is not a newbie to the profession, she has 25 years of experience.

So we can say that her behaviour in Luz as far as we are shown was by far not expected from an experienced UK social worker on foreign soil.

She flaunts her credentials as if she was some sort of FBI or CSI agent in an American TV show. She seems to think everyone she shows them will recognise these credentials and bow before their importance.

She plays the role of the private investigator whilst claiming be playing one of social worker.

She’s clear that she’s not there as merely a concerned citizen but as a professional social worker, even if she should have known beforehand she was completely outside any jurisdiction and that there was no child to help for the one who made her leave the house was missing and she knew that before she left.

If she was acting as a response to an inner call from her professional self, why not any question about asking if anyone from the equivalent Portuguese social services had been around? And why not one question about the twins and their welfare?


4. Time

Kate McCann in her book:

“It was about 10am by the time a couple of PJ officers turned up. (One of them, in his thirties, tall and well built, I thought of for ages simply as John. I’m not sure he ever gave us his name, but later – much later – we found out that it was João Carlos.) They told us they had to take us and our friends to the police station in Portimão. We couldn’t all go at once as somebody needed to look after the children. After some discussion, it was agreed that Gerry and I, Jane, David and Matt would be interviewed first and the PJ would come back for the others later in the day. Fiona and Dianne took Sean and Amelie to their club along with the other children. While our world was falling apart, the best way of trying to keep theirs together seemed to be to stick with what they were used to.

Gerry and I travelled in one police car with the others following in a second vehicle. It was an awful journey. It took twenty, twenty-five minutes, but it felt much longer. (…)

Our first impressions of the police station were not encouraging. Basic and shabby, it didn’t seem conducive to efficiency and order. We were shown to a small waiting area separated from the control room – where calls and faxes came in – only by windows and a glass door, which was left ajar. In the control room, officers in jeans and T-shirts smoked and engaged in what sounded more like light-hearted banter than serious discussion.

I know as well as anybody that one shouldn’t judge people – or perhaps places, either – on appearances, but it all made me immensely nervous. I was appalled by the treatment we received at the police station that day. Officers walked past us as if we weren’t there. Nobody asked how we were doing, whether we were OK or needed anything to eat or drink or to use the bathroom. Our child had been stolen and I felt as if I didn’t exist. I’ve tried to rationalize it since: maybe they just couldn’t imagine how it felt to be a parent in such circumstances, or maybe they couldn’t speak English and it seemed better or easier simply to avoid us. Whatever the case, it was a horribly isolating experience.

At some point that morning we’d become aware that friends and family were appearing on television expressing our concern about the lack of police activity overnight. I think I’d registered Trisha and a good friend in Glasgow popping up on the TV in the apartment. Gerry has a memory of seeing some familiar faces on the set in the police control room. (…)

After an hour or so, Gerry, Matt and Jane were taken off for questioning. I remember constantly looking at the clock, counting the hours since we’d last seen Madeleine, my terror mounting with every five minutes that passed.”

As a side note, if ever there was a day childcare needed, Friday May 4 in Praia da Luz would be it.

Kate does speak of sticking “with what they were used to” and wasn’t leaving the kids at childcare something they were used to do? There was the lunch time period but we’re sure that under the circumstances Mark Warner would make sure they were taken care of during the period.

If there was a time for keeping the kids out of the way this was it so if there was a structure to leave kids well-tended to, why did Russ, Rachael, Fiona and Dianne stay behind to take care of the kids?

Gerry McCann was heard in Portimão at 11:15.

Just going by Kate’s words, they arrived at the station at 10:15. For that then they left Luz at 09:50/09:55. Which would mean the PJ officers arrived in Luz after the same PJ officers took them to Portimão to be questioned.


Google maps says it takes 28 minutes. But this is in 2015. That is in theory and in 2007 the roads weren’t as good so let’s say, to be realistic and say it took 30/40 minutes, which means the convoy would have left around 09:35/09:45.

Kate is clear in showing that this trip was done with no hurry whatsoever.

In fact she complains that PJ police seemed to show no sense of urgency about the case or about them.

So it’s very unlikely for PJ to have arrived in Luz, quickly rounding up who they wanted to question, push them into the cars and bolt towards Portimão so that they could put them in some obscure room and then forget about all of them for an hour.

We are being generous with the time. In fact it seems the PJ came even earlier than we have estimated above, they came at 08:30.

From McCannfiles:

“This news item was broadcast at 14:00 on May 4th. The following news item (below) confirms that the man in the brown jacket is an officer of the Policia Judiciaria, who had come to collect them at 08:30am that morning. That makes this footage being recorded just 10/11hours after Madeleine had been reported missing.

The PJ officer appears to be looking round for David Payne, who we see at the end of the clip sitting in the front passenger seat of the car. Presumably, Kate and Gerry went in one car, driven by the PJ officer, whilst Jane Tanner, Matthew Oldfield and David Payne went in a second car.

Presumably, their partners Russell O'Brien, Rachael Oldfield and Fiona Payne stayed behind to mind their children.

At the start of the clip Gerry says "Where are we going?"”

The McCannfiles, the website from where the quote above is from opens its 04 May 2007 page with this picture:


It has the following caption: “Picture above, 04 May 2007, about 11 hours after Madeleine had been reported missing: The McCanns, officers of the PJ and some members of the Tapas Group gather at 08:30am outside the holiday apartments, prior to their departure to the police station in Portimão.”

We think the 08:30 time of departure from Luz to be realistic. Not because we think there was any sense of urgency but we are sure was one of priority.

It’s expectable for the PJ to have gone go and picked up for questioning the missing child’s parents and their friends first thing in the morning.

We seem to be having Yvonne Martin arriving at 09:00 after the 3 people she says she talks to are no longer in Luz as they had left half an hour earlier.

But let’s suppose that the PJ convoy left around 09:30. That means she has about half an hour to arrive, identify herself, engage in conversation with Kate, have Payne interrupt and take her and Gerry away, have him come back a little later and then see him in 2 different occasions, one of which is David Payne with a woman we suppose was Dianne Webster and the McCann twins doing something that Kate describes in her book was done by Fiona and not David and allow for PJ to arrive, gather and coordinate things, such as who was to accompany the McCanns and who was to stay, get the convoy ready and drive off towards Portimão.

She does say she crosses with Payne three times during that period, so the man was free and walking around. Even taking the twins somewhere before he was taken to Portimão.

On a following post we will see how ridiculous all this is as on the following day, June 13, Yvonne Martin pushes her arrival time in Luz to 09:30.


5. Twins

The twins are very important to unravel the “Yvonne Martin” mystery.

Twice in the statement of this day she mentions them: “This third element of the group, appeared to be intimate with the family, because as well as the beginning of the conversation [with her], as when some of some “media” elements arrived, it was him who started to explain what was going on and to answer the questions made, thus sparing the couple this one more hardship. Afterwards, came to note that intimacy when she saw him taking care of the twins of the couple, also minors” and “During this time, she saw the third element two more times:

The first when he was being accompanied by an older woman and the McCann twins, showing the trust the couple had in him by giving him the safeguard of their children.”

Seeing Payne with the twins really affected her. She really noticed that.

The question that one however must ask is how did she know they were the McCann twins?

How did she know that they weren’t Payne’s children? Even if she has seen the McCanns hand over the twins to Payne (why would they as he was to go with them to Portimão?) she had no way to relate the twins to the McCanns.

At best she could only say is that she thought or supposed they were the children of the McCanns – and explain why she thinks this way – instead of being as adamant about it as she is.

The situation she describes is that of Dianne Webster and David Payne alone with the twins and no Kate or Gerry around. The only possible association to make would be to think the 4 were family, nana and dad walking with the children.

Plus, at this stage she doesn’t know the McCanns have any other children. She doesn’t know Maddie has siblings.

To say that she got to know the twins afterwards and now over a month later was able to say the 2 children she saw with that older woman and man briefly were the McCann twins is ridiculous.

First because the only three faces that we all were required to see were that of Maddie, Kate and Gerry. The twins were never the stars of the show.

And second are we supposed to believe that a person who cannot recollect the face of a possible scar-faced paedophile memorises the faces of two children when they are accompanied by said scar-faced paedophile?

There was only one possibility for her to know that those children were from the McCanns and that would be if she returned to Luz after that day.

Kate seems to say that:

“A middle-aged British lady suddenly materialized beside me and introduced herself. She announced that she was, or had been, a social worker or child protection officer and insisted on showing me her professional papers, including, I think, her Criminal Records Bureau certificate. She asked me to sit down on a low wall, plonked herself next to me and told me she wanted me to go through everything that had happened the previous night. She was quite pushy and her manner, her very presence, were making me feel uncomfortable and adding to my distress.

David was standing nearby. Concerned, he took me aside and pointed out that we didn’t know who this woman was or what she was doing there. He reassured me that I wasn’t obliged to speak to her if I didn’t want to. And I didn’t want to. Whoever she was, and whatever her credentials were, it was an inappropriate intrusion. And something about it, something about her, just didn’t feel right. I was glad I extricated myself. This woman would pop up several times in the days and months to come and I still don’t really know who she is or what she was trying to achieve.”

If this is true, that she returned various times to Luz and there observe the McCanns and Payne why doesn’t she say so to the police?

If this is true then it means she “stalked” the case. She showed a great interest in it. And if that happened is it credible for her not to know who exactly David Payne was if he was indeed a paedophile?

And then take 3 weeks to write and anonymous letter? And then another 3 weeks to call PJ and when they arrive at her doorstep be so vague about him?

You be the judge, please.


6. Location

There’s doubt about where the conversation between Yvonne Martin and the McCanns + Payne took place.

As we all know, apartment 5A is bordered by two streets: to the East, Rua Dr. Francisco Gentil Martins and to the North, Rua Dr. Agostinho da Silva.

Kate, with her“she asked me to sit down on a low wall, plonked herself next to me” is saying the conversation took place inside the apartment’s parking lot as we’re not seeing any other low wall they could sit on.

But Yvonne Martin says that “meanwhile she heard comments near the resort’s reception that the British consul would be coming on site, so she decided to wait for this element with the objective of offering her services”.

It’s meanwhile, not later, not afterwards. We have already noted this before on this post.

This“meanwhile” places the conversation on Rua Dr. Francisco Gentil Martins. Besides the way she describes the conversation we imagine the 4 of them standing. Payne interrupts and takes the couple away and then later comes back. This is not a sitting down scenario. Nowhere does Yvonne Martin one mention sitting down or getting up.

What is the importance of this?

Well it makes Stephen Carpenter’s statement even stranger. Apparently he walks to the Tapas reception and only sees Russ and Matt (by exclusion the only “two of the McCann friends” available to be seen) and doesn’t notice that a few yards away to his right there are 3 or 4 people. Nor does he notice them when he, Russ and Matt return from their “leisurely” walk from one reception, Tapas, to the other, Main, to make a phone call that isn’t made because the receptionist amazingly couldn’t speak English and come back.

By the way, Matt, would be going with Kate and Gerry to PJ at Portimão at 08:30.


7. Terminology

“She clarified that she is able of doing a photographic recognition of the individual, having highlighted that with that identified photograph it is possible to access the English police’s database and clarify there if the same [individual] has been related with crimes involving minors.”

Crimes involving minors? Is that plausible terminology to be used by a social worker after she has written an anonymous letter and called the police because of her suspicions of a paedophile?

We are very surprised that her statement didn’t begin with a “listen, I called you because I suspect that the McCann friend with the glasses may be a paedophile and may be involved in what happened to Maddie”. After her anonymous letter and her call that’s what would be expected.

No ifs, no buts. The possible crime in question demanded a cut to the chase attitude and for her to go straight to the point and call it what it is, paedophilia.

It was not a “crime against minors”, it was paedophilia. In this case nepiophilia.

“Crime against minors” can be many things and as Maddie had disappeared and Payne was indeed a friend of the couple, the natural deduction to make from these words would not be paedophilia but child trafficking.

If we were PJ we would be thinking that Yvonne Martin was pointing to a child trafficker with these words.

Although paedophilia is present in some child trafficking, the majority of these cases are linked to couples unable to have children.

These are the ones who pay good money to have a child. Childless couples are the ones who keep and maintain the market for this crime. By saying Payne could be related to “crimes against minors” she was saying that it could have been their friend who took and sold the couple’s daughter.

For a social worker to say “crime against minors” instead of the very clear and precise “paedophilia” is, to say the least, a hugely irresponsible.


8. Anonymous letter

Where is it in this statement? Why wasn’t it mentioned?



Afterword

We have listed above the number of interactions Yvonne Martin had with the authorities:

i – In Luz with a GNR officer on May 4;

ii – Anonymous letter to the British police 3 weeks later (she says 2);

iii – Calls PJ, date uncertain but educated guess would say on June 12 or the day before;

iv – Speaks to PJ at her residence, June 12;

v – Speaks to PJ at PJ, June 13;

vi – PJ “archives” both of her statements, date uncertain but we would guess soon after June 13;

vii – PJ “unarchives” her statements, date uncertain but we would guess around end of October, beginning of November;

viii – PJ notifies her come to PJ to give a statement, date uncertain but we would guess on Nov 13 or the day before;

ix – Speaks to PJ at PJ, November 14.

Up to this post we have dealt only with ii, iii and iv (in blue). The others to be dealt with in future posts.


Footnote

(1) Yvoone Martin's June 12 statement:

“On the past 04 MAY, by 07:00, she took knowledge through an English TV company, Sky News or BBC, of the disappearance of a minor of that nationality, in Praia da Luz – Lagos;

For having performed he duties, for 25 years, in the area of child protection, felt obliged to provide help to her fellow countrymen, having gone to Praia da Luz;

At 09:00, she found the McCann couple by the apartment from where the girl had disappeared, accompanied by a third element, who seemed to her quite familiar;

This third element of the group, appeared to be intimate with the family, because as well as the beginning of the conversation [with her], as when some of some “media” elements arrived, it was him who started to explain what was going on and to answer the questions made, thus sparing the couple this one more hardship. Afterwards, [she] came to note that intimacy when she saw him taking care of the twins of the couple, also minors;

She identified herself, presenting her credentials, having immediately started to talk with the mother as she was visibly upset with the situation;

During the conversation the mother told her she couldn’t understand why a couple had abducted her daughter;

Meanwhile, the third element of the couple had become aware of this conversation, interrupting it and took the couple away from her;

That same element came, a little later to tell her that the couple no longer intended to speak to her and declined her help, an act she found quite strange;

Meanwhile she heard comments near the resort’s reception that the British consul would be coming on site, so she decided to wait for this element with the objective of offering her services [préstimos];

During this time, she saw the third element two more times:

The first when he was being accompanied by an older woman and the McCann twins, showing the trust the couple had in him by giving him the safeguard of their children [filhos]

The second, accompanying what seemed to her to be police officers in civilian clothes;

Is about 35 yrs

Has about 1,80 metres in height

Is of normal built

Having short and dark hai

Using graduated glasses of small dimensions and rectangular lenses

Having a round face

Presenting a scar above his eyebrow and left cheek

Speaking in English with a South of England accent

Wearing clear colour trousers, cream or beige colour, and a polo of a dark colour.

Already home following the case, through the English TV, she saw the same individual and, this time, the doubt she initially had disappeared, coming to the conclusion that that face had already passed by her during her professional activity of protecting minors, failing to discern if has a suspect/arguido or witness;

She clarified that she is able of doing a photographic recognition of the individual, having highlighted that with that identified photograph it is possible to access the English police’s database and clarify there if the same [individual]  has been related with crimes involving minors.”

After 5 years of exchanging mails, the Textusa sisters have finally decided to meet.

Yes, it finally happened!

We decided it was more than enough time to be just letters on a screen to one another and that the time to get to know each other personally had come.

That’s what happened this week.

We met somewhere in the Algarve, the region we thought would be best for the sisters to meet for the first time.

That way we would all be visitors, no one burdened with hosting. We all had to travel by sea, air or land.

This is the reason why this week’s post will be just this.

The experience was just too overwhelming for us to keep to our routines.

The first day was for us three to overuse our grins. There still has to be invented something more delicious, magical or wonderful than a genuine giggle between friends.

We all regretted it having happened only now.

The second day was sisters’ day out.

We travelled to Praia da Luz and Sagres but about that we will speak in more detail in future posts.

We had a wonderful lunch in Lagos. Of the three sisters, one hadn’t eaten sardines yet.

She is proud to say she’s now a full-fledged sardine-muncher. 

She’s now as disgusting and repulsive as the rest of us and found this typical Portuguese fish so delicious that she wishes to repeat the degrading experience over and over again as many times as possible.

We do have to meet again soon because we forgot that we should have had a bottle of wine each for the meal. Or was it whisky? Best bet is to have both. Take no chances.


“Vamos fazer um brinde?” 

“Tchin-tchin!”

Typical Praia da Luz architecture, historic (not) and quaint (not)

1. Introduction

As we said in our post “Sardine-munching” we visited Praia da Luz at the beginning of this month.

We set out to visit the village, do some walking around, have lunch and eventually revisit anything else there before heading for Sagres.

In Sagres we intended to visit the town square where are the esplanades where the attempted abduction of the  “Sagresman sighting” took place.

After that we would just become real tourists and enjoy the scenery and visit the fortress, enjoying the rest of the day together.


2. Praia da Luz

Two of the Textusa sisters had already been in or near Praia da Luz.

One had been there in the 70s and the other 10 years later, in the 80s. Neither remembered much of it, just the beach.

But thanks to Google Maps and its Street View, the town held very few secrets to any of the 3. After all these years “visiting” it all seemed very, very familiar.

There were a few things of Praia da Luz that because they were not possible to see on Street View we wanted to see them for ourselves:


A - The passageway between Rua 25 de Abril and Rua da Calheta, which is known as the stairs up which the Smiths came to before they crossed with Smithman;

B - The commercial area South of the church, where the restaurant Chaplin’s is located;

C - The most southern tip of the town where rock meets the sea, separating the Western beach and the big one everyone knows to the East, and where on the South face, facing the sea, of the esplanade is the sewer some have ventured as a possible destination for Smithman that night;

D - The Rua dos Pescadores which is a pedestrian paved beachfront walkway;

E - The cul-de-sac of Rua da Boa Pesca which the McCann family supposedly used on their way to the beach.

The rest of the town that we were interested in was, as said, very familiar.

Even the driveway in front of Murat’s Vivenda Liliana (now on sale) looked familiar.

And we even saw a “Laundryman’s van” there!

To those unfamiliar with this, a “Laundryman’s van” is any white unmarked van that just happens to be parked in one of the existing parking spaces in that particular driveway.

White, unmarked and parked in one of the EXISTING parking spaces, the characteristics to make it suspicious. Highly suspicious. That, according to a guest, Stephen Carpenter, is unquestionable and obvious.

In fact, we, on seeing that white unmarked van parked there, thought immediately of calling the authorities to warn them of a soon forthcoming abduction of a little blonde British girl from apartment 5A, down the street.

Having now passed days without that happening, we're certain it didn’t take place because the apartment 5A's infamous “jemmied shuttered” window has now metal bars!

Abductors of little blonde British girls who flock to Luz to abduct please be warned that your place of pilgrimage, your holy place, is now blocked by metal bars.

But we know you won’t let a minor obstacle as bars blocking a window limit you. Your colleague who abducted Maddie didn’t obey any laws of physics, so we’re certain all of you (and by golly you’re many) will be able to pass through those bars like a hot knife through butter just like the jemmied/unjemmied window was negotiated by that Peter Pan-like colleague of yours.

Unfortunately, what we weren’t able to see, and we did look for it, was Carpenter’s “Laundryman’s garage”. Pity because we were really looking forward to buying some second-hand toys there.

Maybe next time, if someone in Luz is kind enough to tell us where it is, we will go there as we don’t want to pass on such a bargain again.


3. Our path


We entered the town from the East, driving past the Water treatment station with the background of the hill with its topographical landmark that many myth makers have made many believe it was a Mason one.

We entered the village and turned right and then left on Rua do Ramalhete, passing by the Mirage Bar (A).

Continuing on that street, passing on our left the T-crossing where TS supposedly came from her home and have the first encounter with Pimpleman (B) and the rubbish bins where Pimpleman supposedly was standing when JW alleges to have seen him (C).

We then turned left on Rua Agostinho da Silva where we passed next to Murat’s villa where we saw the white van (D) parked on the driveway in front of it and turned left on Rua Dr Francisco Gentil Martins.

On this street we passed by the passageway where TS alleges to have seen Pimpleman (E) for the first time, the sidewalk where Derek Flack, TS and JW all allege having seen him (F) and the Baptista supermarket which TS says she went inside with her dogs (G) before allegedly seeing for the second time the shady character on the sidewalk we just passed.

We turned left and went up Rua Direita and passed the entrance of Rua da Boa Pesca (H) where the cul-de-sac Gerry McCann says the family used to get to the beach meets this street, the Ocean Club’s main reception (I) and the crossing with the Rua da Boa Praia (J) which was supposedly used by the McCanns to come from the family’s beach trip and where TS went to the Alisuper supermarket.

We then turned left, returning to Rua do Ramalhete and this time instead of going left on Rua Dr Agostinho da Silva we continued straight ahead passing on our right the house, aptly called “Casa da Aventura” (Adventure House), where we believe the journalist Cecilia Pires was introduced to Jenny Murat (K), and on the left the building where Berry and Balu found a man to be suspicious just because he supposedly owned recently some property there (L).

At the end of the street, turned left on Rua Primeiro de Maio and left again on Rua Dr. Agostinho da Silva so we could pass in front of the infamous 5A window (M).

Back around Rua do Ramalhete, then Rua Primeiro de Maio and turned right to enter Rua da Escola Primária where we parked the car and continued our visit walking.


We walked down Rua da Escola Primária, where we stood on each of the 3 spots the Smiths say they saw Smithman (and we believe fully in the Smiths), the last one, where AS crossed with him being on the other side of Rua 25 de Abril at the beginning of the passageway, commonly known as “the stairs” that links this street to the esplanades on Rua da Calheta, where Dolphins restaurant and Kelly’s bar are.

We went in that passageway and out on the esplanade area, turned left on Rua da Calheta and walked up to its end where we turned down the road towards the church, passed it and Chaplin’s then turned right at the esplanade after the restaurant “Fortaleza da Luz”.

There we used the small stairs at the West side to go to the rocks near the sea. We circled the walls of the esplanade towards East, passing the sewer, and went on to the Rua dos Pescadores up to the exit that Rua do Poço has to the beach, and through which the McCann family should have passed on their family trip there.

We turned left on that passage of Rua do Poço and entered Rua da Boa Pesca, what we have called up to now a cul-de-sac.

This is indeed a cul-de-sac for vehicles but, as our reader Edgar Cavaco has pointed out in comments he put in our “Dr Gerry McCann is a liar (update)” post, there's a narrow passage with stairs for pedestrians:


We went up Rua da Boa Pesca to Rua Direita where we turned left and then right past the SPAR supermarket and from there on Rua Ema Vieira Alvernaz back to our parked car on Rua da Escola Primária.


4. The Nanny building

It wasn’t planned to be seen but it was very useful to see the building we now call the Nanny building, or as Catriona Baker says in her April 14 2008 statement: “I was lodged in the blue and white building, less than 10 minutes walking from the Mark Warner Village and the working place”

Reading the various statements of the various Mark Warner staff, we get to know they were lodged in various apartments.


The only “blue and white” building within the referred walking distance and with multiple apartments is one called “Edifício Pedras Brancas”, located at the T-crossing between Rua da Escola Primária and Rua Ema Vieira Alvernaz, North of where the 3 Smith sightings took place.


“Edifício Pedras Brancas” or the Nanny building has 58 apartments.

We confirmed how evident were the 2 “exits” Smithman could have used in that building to avoid contact with the Smith family well before making any contact but strangely decided not to.


We showed these 2 exists in our “Intentional - Not debatable fact” post, calling them “Alley” (orange) and “Unnamed street” (purple):


It’s important to understand where this building is when we visit Susan Owen’s statement later in the current post.


5. Praia da Luz: smaller distances

We all have the wrong impression that Praia da Luz is bigger than it really is.

This has not been an intentional misleading on the part of the Black Hats but rather misleading ourselves unconsciously.

We have all have been misled into constructing the idea of much bigger distances between things because of these 3 distances:


#1 – The distance we perceive to have been the trip on Saturday night from the apartments to the Millenium restaurant, the only trip made there by the family that week (route A - B (green));

#2 – The distance we imagine to have been the only family trip to the beach that week (route A - C (red));

#3 – The distance we perceive to have been the Smith sighting from apartment 5A (route A - D (yellow)).

Three “significant” distances in 3 different directions from apartment 5A, E/NE (green), S/SW (red). and W/SW (yellow).

The first two only happened once (one, the beach trip we think it’s made up, never happened) and we attribute that singularity to how unpractical the distances involved would have been.

In the first case, the trip to the Millenium, the distance being “enormous” was explicitly recognised by the group, and that was even the fact that led to them being awarded an ad eternum reservations at Tapas for the rest of their stay to the detriment of all other guests who continued to have to get up and get in line, such was the sacrifice such a walk would represent.

In the second, the alleged trip to the beach, there was no written complaints about the distance but we constructed mentally the idea that trips from the apartment to the beach would be so cumbersome justifying why there had been only that single trip during that entire week.

Summing up, they only went once to the Millenium because it was too far and they only went to the beach once because we thought it would be too far for that family of 5 to do it as a routine.

About the third, the Smith sighting we have a 45 minute gap we have to justify in our heads – from 21:15 when Jez interrupts Gerry, to 22:00 when Gerry is seen by the Smiths. And we justify it unconsciously by thinking the 2 locations are really far apart.

These 3 facts make us “draw” and image in our mind that Praia da Luz is spread wide over a very significant area.


6. Praia da Luz: a compact village

Only Praia de Luz is not big at all.

That was the first conclusion we came to immediately there is that Praia da Luz is quite small, quite compact.

Much smaller than we thought it would be even after having “walked” it on Street View.

To give an idea, from apartment 5A to the Smith sighting area is a 3 to 4 minute walk. 5 minutes at the most.

Yes, one MUST really ask what Smithman did do for 40 minutes in Luz.

Because from 5A to the end of Rua da Escola Primária is a 5 minute walk tops.

Even if he went around Rua do Ramalhete, it would take at the most 10 minutes to get there. That leaves 35 minutes left to explain what did a man with a body of a dead girl in his arms do.

Those saying that it was Gerry walking around with a dead Maddie have to explain what he did in those 35/40 minutes. Having been in Luz, we haven’t the faintest idea. We truly don’t.

We in the blog have said that we think Smithman was Gerry McCann and that he first went with Maddie’s body from apartment 5A (Tanner’s sighting) to Murat’s property, left the body there, came back to the apartment and only then left with the decoy child (Tanner’s daughter) the one he had in his arms when he was seen by the Irish family.

That accounts for the 45 minutes as we don’t know what time he took to leave Maddie’s body nor at what time he left the apartment for the second time to go on his decoy run. But we would guess he left very close to 22:00.

We did all of the driving and walking, and we did stop many times to talk and debate ideas and come up with conclusions, all well under 45 minutes.

Those 45 minutes were more than enough to understand the whole of the town because it really has little to see.

The fact that it is indeed small together with the fact that it is not quaint, historical or typical will be important when we talk about what kind of tourism one expects to find there. We will come back to that later in the post.


As an example, the nanny Susan Owen, says this to describe how she went from the Nanny building apartment (B) – which was in Rua da Escola Primária – to the Mirage bar (M) – which is next to the Millenium: “the deponent refers that she walked the indicated path, having done it by the beach and later taken the route on the road that ends in the referred bar, thus not having crossed the interior of the mentioned resort nor near Madeleine McCann’s residence.”

 One of the shortest route to go from the Nanny building (B) (just up the street from where the Smith sighting happened) to the Mirage bar (M) would have been to go up Rua da Escola Primária, Rua Dr Agostinho da Silva (apartment 5A (A)) and Rua do Ramalhete (yellow route).

Note this distance would be exactly the adding up of the distances between the Smith sighting to apartment 5A (A) and from apartment 5A to the Millenium/Mirage (M).

Knowing what she had to walk, Susan Owens decides to walk the long way around, by the beachfront (blue arrow).

If the distance between 5A and Millenium was as significant as it was said to be by the T9, would the long way around ever crossed Susan's mind?

This shows clearly that distances in Luz aren’t anywhere near what they were made to be.

Having taken a first-hand look at the real distances and realising the true size of Praia da Luz one immediately realises how aware the media was that it was a hoax and how they actively set out to fool all us from the first minute.

We say this because of what they showed of Praia da Luz.

Luz’s small size presented a problem which they had to circumvent. They quickly found out that they had to sell a gecko for a crocodile. And they knew full well they were selling one for the other and did a pretty good job.

They had to make an effort not to show how all close things were. They had to be very careful where they pointed the cameras. Any minimal move could point the cameras into something that shouldn’t appear on screen. Each shot had to be thought out, all had to be done with care.

They had to convey the idea that Praia da Luz was a destination that upper and middle-upper class tourists would seek. That it was understandable and even natural for that group of British doctors to have chosen Praia da Luz for a week of holidays in the low season.

That Praia da Luz was quaint, picturesque and typical little fishing village that would attract the upper and middle-upper class kind of tourist.

Only Praia da Luz is not anything of the sort. The village has nothing to show as such. Only points of interest are its beach with the walkway and its church.

That’s why of Praia da Luz  the media have basically only shown us 2 things: apartment 5A and the church. The rest of Luz it’s as if it doesn’t exist.

The reason being is that besides the church and the beach it has nothing else to show.

The direct consequence of this conclusion was that it helped us realise what was the true reason for the McCann press conferences when they were staying there.

These press conferences weren’t to allow the McCanns & Co any freedom of movement. They never had it curtailed

With the level of cooperation they couple had from the media it simply never crossed any journalist’s (?) mind to point their camera at the McCanns in their “private” time.

The press would never publish anything embarrassing to the McCanns. Much less condemning.

For example, the Scenic would never have been filmed or photographed with the boot open even if the stink coming out of it reached Lagos.

The McCanns were free to do whatever they wanted to do because the collaborating press were not there to cover the story but to sell the hoax.

To collaborate with whoever was pulling the strings.

This is why the collaborating journalists (?) consistently pointed to the floor each time they filmed the Tapas esplanade and so they wouldn’t show the space where the Big Round Table (BRT) was supposed to be and wasn’t anywhere to be seen. The esplanade, like Praia de Luz is just too small and any raising of the lens would show the BRT was not there, it never existed.

So, there can only be one reason for these press conferences: to give the journalists (?) the excuse to have the cameras pointed only on the McCanns.

Exclusively on them. When the couple was being filmed there was no need to film anything else.

They put the couple under the spotlight so that the rest of the stage remained unseen and the spectator wouldn’t realise what little it had to offer and how small it all really was.

By pointing to them only we got to know Praia da Luz as much as we do Rothley. Only in Rothley no one has claimed an abductor has taken a little girl out of her bedroom and disappeared on its streets.

By concentrating the image on the couple, the world wouldn’t see how Praia da Luz really has nothing to offer nor how desolate it really was. If it did, questions as to what was that group of British doctors doing there could be raised. And we’re not even speaking about the other 300+ guests listed on the booking sheets.

An effort had to be made to avoid lenses capturing truth by mistake.

For example, it’s extremely difficult to film the Smith sighting in a way to make it appear as a surprise encounter.


That’s why it has never been reconstructed properly. Like we showed in our “Public misleading of public by McCanns” post, from where the images above are from.


And why it wasn’t even attempted to be reconstructed on UK Crimewatch of October 2013 even though SY considered Smithman the centre of their focus. All we had was a reporter already at the end of Rua da Escola Primária pointing his fingers down Rua 25 de Abril towards the direction of the church (and which had nothing to do with where in fact Smithman headed which was towards the passageway to Rua da Calheta).

Because it’s impossible to film a reconstruction of the Smith sighting without showing how impossible the surprise is.

When one is walking down Rua da Escola Primária and one is thinking about the Smith sighting one can only think: are you kidding me?

To state that a man panics for over a minute and unnaturally heads towards the threat having many, many possibilities to flee has the same logic of saying someone keeps a hand on a burning stove for the same amount of time without pulling it away.

We will do a separate post about the Smith sighting v our visit to Praia da Luz.

It really was hard not to show how ridiculous the entire script was.

The only solution was to keep the cameras pointed to the couple at pre-set intervals and if one had to film anything else, just keep the focus on the apartment or the church. It was the world’s case with the most visibility and yet very little or nothing of Praia da Luz was ever shown by the media.

Before being there we thought Luz was much bigger than it really was because the media simply hid the real village.

The distance to the Smith sighting is just a 3 to 5 minute walk.

We all have been in “beachfront resorts” where the distance to walk to the sand was greater than the one in question between 5A and the beach.

The distance to the Millenium, although not practical is not a tragedy and baby buggies being available, it would have been a leisurely walk for people who enjoy jogging.


7. Praia da Luz: very specific kind if tourism

Being there, seeing it all with our own eyes made us reach the conclusion that the people we know were, or we were told that were, in Praia da Luz that week would never choose Praia da Luz to spend a week there.

We all go on holidays according to the economical possibilities each one has. That’s the harsh reality although not so harsh for some.

One goes where one can afford to go and not where one really wants to go. If one could, there wouldn’t be anything of interest in the world one wouldn’t visit.

So if one goes to where one really wants to go it means one can afford to do that.

The key in the choice is the capability of being able to have one.

The vast majority of people have no choice but to go only where they can afford. At the bottom of that scale are those who unfortunately cannot even afford to go anywhere.

But the upper class can afford to go anywhere they want. Regardless of price. They choose where they want to spend their vacations and go there.

The middle-upper class can afford many places that the rest of us can’t.

Please don’t confuse being able to afford luxury to enjoying luxury.

These people may want to enjoy what we call basic holidays, which may offer little or no luxury. But they go only to these destinations because they choose to do so.

They can choose to spend a week or two at the Ritz, Savoy or Carlton in Switzerland or Dubai, or they can choose to spend it in some remote Greek island where the only transportation available is by donkey.

It’s their choice and they are able to make it. Or better said, afford to make it.

However, in all their choices, luxury or non-luxury, have one thing in common: the offer is genuine.

Those seeking luxury will seek where luxury is offered. Those wanting the basics will head for where history, rural environment, scenery or isolation is to be enjoyed.

One only declines luxury, having the possibility to afford it, for an objective reason.

And that reason is evident, is easy to see and understand.

That reason doesn’t exist in Luz.

Praia da Luz is not a tourism village.

It’s true it swells up with a significant number of tourists every year during summer who are there to enjoy the beach but what keeps it alive in the other 8 months of the year is that it is nothing but an ex-pat suburb. A Little Britain.

It’s a resident town not a tourism one. Yes, in summer probably one will find that for every resident there are 5 or 6 tourists or even a bigger ratio than that but that doesn’t make it exactly a tourism destination.


As can be seen, Praia da Luz is neither quaint, typical nor historic.


It’s fishing part is very unattractive. It’s poor, it’s ugly and it’s off the village centre, out of the tourists eyes.

It’s not to see fishing boats heading for the sea that people go there.

There isn’t, as far as we know a “lota”. A lota is where fishermen sell the fish off the boats.

What little fishing material we saw we would say this activity has long since died in the village. Its fishermen probably now only work in Lagos or in Portimão and not in Luz.

Praia da Luz is just a Little Britain neighbourhood with a beach, plus Portuguese residents who can’t afford a house in Lagos.

It really stands out how uncharacteristic it is.


Just apartment buildings with an architecture from the late 80s to up the early 2000, uncharacteristic and without any interest and we’re being kind.

We only have to look at the building where apartment 5A is. It’s not ugly but it's not quaint, nor typical, it’s just an apartment building.

One might argue that the Algarve is filled with such buildings and we agree but where they are there are areas where near them has esplanades and town squares where people can gather and enjoy the warm night breeze, walking or sitting down with friends to have a drink.

In Praia da Luz there’s only being in an apartment/villa and being at the beach. Nothing else. 

Holidays in Praia da Luz are for those who want beach and beach only and can’t afford to go “expensive” ones at that.

A holiday in Praia da Luz is to get up and go to the beach, come back at lunch for a quick bite and go back to the beach.

At sunset, leave the beach and go to the apartment shower, have dinner, watch a little TV and go to bed.

Next day, get up and go to the beach.

And repeat this routine with a lot of other people who are also there. People who could not afford better. For obvious reasons, families.

Those who can afford luxury and decline having it for some reason in no way go holidaying in Praia da Luz.

People with money who want beach holidays find it somewhere else. They can afford it.

People with money do not pay to go to crowded beaches.

People with money only seek the crowd of peers, people equally with money, but then it’s not about going to the beach but about being seen going to the beaches that matter.

Praia da Luz, however beautiful its beach may be, is not one that matters.

People with money who opt for beach holidays go to resorts where the beach is part of them.

People with money prefer the luxury around a luxurious pool that luxury hotels offer with their luxurious restaurants and bars.

As we said, people with little or no economic constraints go to places with little or no comfort. In such instance they are driven by wanting to find the basics.

Nature loving locations or isolated unsophisticated ones. But there the absence of luxury is the reason to go to these places in the first place.

But Praia da Luz is neither rich nor basic. It stands in that uncharacteristic and unsavoury middle ground where the populace flocks to.

As we said, Praia da Luz is for people with enough income to enjoy holidays but unable, for economic reasons, to go to where they really wish they could go.

To say a person with money goes specifically to Praia da Luz for holidays is to say someone who has enough money to stay in Manhattan would choose to spend their money to stay in Brooklyn or Queens.

As we said, the village is not quaint nor picturesque. Its walls cry for whitewashing. The village shows a lack of maintenance we didn’t expect to see.

The town does nothing to make itself attractive.


What we saw was quite depressing. We expected the centre of the village, which would be the church area, to be well maintained and at least there tourists feel welcomed and cared for. It’s quite barren and unwelcoming living off the beauty of the building.

Because the church is beautiful indeed but the rest around it is like the rest of Luz, unkempt and unattractive.

Walls we expected whitewashed weren’t and what we called the “Chaplin’s commercial area” just South of the church is not the most appealing of places:


And we have to mention the unpleasant olfactory experience we had while walking along the Rua dos Pescadores (pedestrian beachfront) in a harsh contrast with the magnificent view that was before our eyes. We mention it because it was not a temporary problem.

Being there, looking around, we realised very quickly for people economically well off to be there they had to have a reason other than whatever Praia da Luz offered.

And if it would be very unlikely to find people with enough money during beach season it would be impossible to find any there in the off-beach one.

However in April/May of 2007 there were apparently many, many of them there.


8. Praia da Luz: family holidays

The third conclusion we reached was that a holiday in Praia da Luz has to be a family holiday.

We have said before that we are of the opinion that people brought their kids on that week of May 2007 because they came to do swinging.

Friends, family and business and every day acquaintances back home would be given the impression that the family would have gone on holiday together.

In Praia da Luz, with kids being taken care of by childcare, the adults could then do whatever they pleased, and in the case it was indeed pleasure.

At home those who mattered would be kept in ignorance, oblivious of what really was going on, of what the true purpose the holiday was. For them, they had seen a family depart for a family holiday and no one questioned the reason.

But being in Luz made us realise that there was also another reason to for the kids to have to be brought along and that is because Luz offers only its beach.

Only family tourism makes sense in Praia da Luz.

Praia da Luz is as unromantic as it gets.

It’s not the choice for a honeymoon. It’s not the choice for a romantic getaway. Yes, one may see couples there but then one has to go back to the economic question of one being where one can against where one would rather be.

It’s not exactly a location that invites meditation. Not the destination those seeking isolation seek.

Luz is beach and pool. Without beach only pool. Without beach and pool, it’s, in terms of tourism, nothing.

Crowded beaches and crowded pools are destinations where people go as family.

To know the couple next door are going alone without kids to Venice, Maldives, Greece or Vegas, just to name a diversity of locations, one easily understands that they want to enjoy some time together in place where that makes sense.

For them to say they are going on a romantic getaway to Praia da Luz is like visiting Buckingham palace for the food. It just doesn't make sense.  



Final conclusion in terms of a town was understanding how ridiculous it is to say they took 3 and 4 yr olds out on a catamaran on the beach of Praia da Luz.

For a jogging enthusiast, running on the beach is ridiculous because the length by the water doesn’t even serve as a warm-up, in terms of watersports for toddlers the beach is far too wide.

No monitor risks doing any watersport for 3 or 4 yr olds further than waist deep on a beach. The risk involved means that even then only on small beaches where waves almost don’t exist and there aren’t surprising currents.

To put kids that age on a floating platform, one has to take be able to react in a situation when all the little passengers fall off at the same time, such as in capsizing.

If that happens, all toddlers MUST be reached immediately and brought safely to land. All without exception.

One does not tell a little boy of 3 please hold on to this while I take your friend to safety and then I’ll come back for you. One does not abandon a toddler in the water. One has to bring them all together safely to land.

The idea is to have a ratio of monitor to child that will allow in such a situation that every child clings to an adult and all are brought safely and calmly to the sand, in a manner that the children think it’s just a game.

That can only be achieved if all monitors have a solid foothold and every toddler is reachable immediately. To do any such activity where the water is above waist deep is folly. It’s irresponsible and probably illegal.

On a beach with the waves that Praia da Luz beach has, we are not seeing it possible any sort of “on-water” activity for toddlers that age. Not even knee-deep. The waves are too wide, big and strong.

There are loads of activities one can do on the beach with them without putting in any way their safety at risk.

Any water activity with toddlers that age is done safely in the sand during in low tide and away from the waves.


10. Conclusion

As we said at the start of the post, we intended to have lunch in Praia da Luz. We really thought we would find a town focused on tourism.

Instead we found a town. One that didn’t offer us anything significant to hold us there after our stroll.

It’s a fact we thought we would spend more time walking around than we did. That the distances would be further. That there would be places we would like to revisit before leaving.

Instead we basically found ourselves standing by our car, looking at each other and agreeing that although none of us fell into the category of “economically unconstrained” we would never choose Praia da Luz for a holiday.

Nothing against the town itself but, and that is what we really want to point out, nothing in its favour.

Nothing appealing, nothing calling us to come back there and that made us have something against us ever being tourists there.

And it’s not about the “McCann circus” having degraded the town. The buildings and layout are the same as they were in 2007 and the area around the church can be seen has been renovated since.

The fact of the matter is that it’s a small town that relies solely on the beach and seems not to give much care in pleasing those who do come to it in the summer.

The idea we got is that local residents are either Portuguese who can’t afford a house in Lagos or ex-pats.

To live, as the climate is Algarvian and Lagos is near, it’s a good choice to make if one is looking to feel in Britain outside Britain.

But the thing about tourism is that is a very expensive and a very, very short-term habitation contract and as we’ve said above, it’s all about opting and being able to opt.

And we can think of better places to spend our holidays besides in a dreary Little Britain suburb.

Don’t know which of the sisters suggested “how about lunching in Sagres instead?”

And even though it was rhetorical, the other 2 sisters immediately answered,“yes, please, that is a good idea, let’s go!”

That about sums it up, doesn’t it?

We ended up having lunch in Lagos but that’s a story for another day.

It’s said and we fully agree that there’s nothing worse than a parent losing a child.

It’s so horrific that no language without exception has an adjective for it. A person who loses a parent is an orphan and one who loses a husband or wife is a widower or a widow.

He who loses a child has no word to give comfort of meaning, a word that at least would attempt to define what is indefinable, incomprehensible and absurdly unjust, a word to heed others of their pain and plight.

Nothing can be worse than this nothing-worse.

The McCanns have suffered a nothing-worse, they have lost a child.

Yet they and others have extraordinarily been able to make this nothing-worse even worse. That, by all standards, is an outstanding feat. A disgusting and a pitiful one but phenomenal.

And all including them making this nothing-worse even worse with the McCanns smiling and grinning.

We’re specifically talking about negligence, one of the two major clutters the Maddie case has, the other being paedophilia.

About paedophilia no one has very little doubt as to when and by who this clutter – even if we believe it genuine – was planted: Yvonne Martin in her statement of June 12.

She had, supposedly, sent an anonymous letter earlier but in terms of contact that the case has with paedophilia is when the British senior social worker resident in Sargaçal first gives a statement to the PJ.

After Yvonne Martin, came the Gaspars and then the empty CATS file.

Again, supposedly the Gaspars spoke in May but in terms of process their statements are only known by the PJ in October.

The paedophilia narrative in the Maddie case is quite simple and easy to follow.

Three seeds were planted and they became a forest because so much was and is the water poured on them by many a good people blinded by the want to repair somehow the viciousness that this sort of crime involves whenever it is, unfortunately, real.

The paedophilia narrative has a very clear target, David Payne.

He had lost nothing. He lost no child.

Some of us are of the opinion that something occurred between him and Kate McCann which led to the accidental death of Maddie. Whatever happened did not involve paedophile activity by anyone, either before or on the day of her death.

In our opinion, his direct involvement in the events surrounding Maddie’s death earns him being branded with the stigma.

That being true then one can even justify this branding as a sentence given by some obscure parallel justice system that overrode the legitimate one for a various number of reasons.

But the negligence narrative, unlike the paedophilia one, is not as clear.

Narrative meaning is “created by establishing that something is part of the whole and usually that something is the cause of something else…. Groups, communities, societies and cultures also preserve collections of typical narrative meanings in their myths, fairy tales, legends, histories and stories… Stories fill our lives in the way water fills the lives of fish. Stories are so all-pervasive that we practically cease to be aware of them… we develop storied accounts that give sense to the behaviour of others…” (Steve Denning)

In the McCann story, the Narrative of Neglect (NoN) has become an all-pervasive myth. Ask any person with the most limited knowledge of the case and their response is likely to be something along the lines of “Those doctors who left their children alone whilst they went out for the evening.”  Or with the addition of “when they went out drinking”.

With myths and fairy stories, it’s often impossible to establish their origins. Other times its origins become a myth themselves lost in the web of ideas and perceptions with which we form ideas about a subject.

With the NoN we all think it was us, each one of us, who came up with it.

We all think that before what was an obvious situation of negligence we came to the conclusion that there had been neglect.

Maybe if we had been given time to absorb the details of the story we would have come with it but truth is we didn’t. Others spoon-fed it to us.

Negligence, like Smithman did with the Smiths came to us and like he did with them, it forced itself on us.

Like with the Smithman who could have been seen without making any close contact with that family but decided not to run that risk and so forced that contact, so those responsible for spreading the NoN did the exact same.

They didn’t let us wait and discover for ourselves. They took no chances on that. They made NoN walk our way and go against us like the clumsiest of pedestrians on a sidewalk.

They made sure we noticed it.

The NoN has a dated source, noted by the author of “The Cracked Mirror”, written in 2009.

Chapter 12 “ May 4- The Performance of a Lifetime”

“… nothing that followed was as astonishing as the achievements of Gerry McCann on May 4, before news management began to feature in “the narrative.”

Incredibly, at the time that Kate McCann was giving her statement to the police that afternoon, as well as being reminded of the secrecy rules, the media were already carrying the full unsupported and inaccurate McCann version in detail…… the unprompted denial, even at this ridiculously early stage, that the parents had been in any way neglectful or at fault ….. it was all done using the clan and “friends.”

By the time the police car carrying the pair pulled into Portimao police headquarters that morning, Sky had been well briefed with the parents’ story. And so had GMTV. So had BBC1 news. So had BBC2 Newsnight. So had all the important UK dailies.”

The author describes perfectly the launch of a myth, the NoN. He even tells us who launched it.

“Madeleine’s uncle Michael Wright” (he was actually Kate’s cousin by marriage to her cousin Anne Marie)

“The evidence clearly shows that Gerry McCann, far from passing on  to his circle only chaotic first impressions or mistaken interpretations of what had happened immediately after the disappearance, quite clearly hammered home certain key information for many hours after the disappearance which he intended them to pass on to the media. Madeleine’s uncle, Michael Wright, made this quite clear on the same day …”

The author then refers to an article by The Standard:

“This laziness - or misdirection - with the facts of the disappearance of the child was in stubborn contrast to the way the much less important matter of the parents’ activities was reported”.

The McCanns, said the story “were eating at  a Tapas restaurant in the Mark Warner Ocean Club complex  but had been checking on their children every 30 minutes. The restaurant is within sight of their apartment.” No vagueness there, no possible “misunderstandings” by relatives of “early panicky comments” by Gerry. Dead on.

… And then the Standard had this:

“Michael Healy [this was Michael Wright], the missing girl’s uncle, added: “There has been some negative spin put on this, with people criticising them for leaving the kids and going on the tear.” Mr Healy added, “But it’s nonsense, they were close by and were eating within sight of where the children were and checking on them. Other members of the group were checking on her as well. No one was rip roaring drunk. ””

The author then poses a most telling question about this “on the tear story” (the idiomatic expression being Irish/ Liverpool, meaning to go out on a drinking spree, tear rhyming with hair):““Negative spin” and “criticism.” How could there be any spin or criticism of the parents by Friday afternoon when these were the very people telling the world for the first time what had happened the previous night for the first time and when the pair hadn’t given their statements to the police?”

Apart from the author writing this was a pre-emptive defence of their conduct and child supervision, he draws no further inferences.

He may object to the inference we draw from Wright’s statement – that the NoN was an essential myth, without which an abduction was IMPOSSIBLE. That’s why, contrary to the author’s view, we have the strongest opinion it wasn’t a less important matter than the details of the disappearance.

The NoN has successfully established itself in the consciousness of the majority of those who have taken any interest in this story.

It has led to numerous heated debates on the distance between the Tapas bar and the restaurant, calls for the McCanns to be prosecuted for neglect, arguments about the frequency of the checks on the children, questions as to why Matt Oldfield didn’t actually enter the room when he made his fabled check at 9.30….

And how often were the checks made on May 3?


Transcript of TV interview with Sandra Felgueiras and the McCanns (video above from HideHo) and full video here from Xklamation).

“SF - ...[how] he could have had the opportunity to get into the apartment if you were checking the apartment every 15 minutes?


Gerry - [reacts by raising his hand towards SF] Huh... How often did you say we were checking?

SF - 15 minutes...

Gerry - That’s not what we’ve said...

SF - No?

Gerry - ...it’s been widely reported it was about 30 minutes. Now, that’s what our checks were.”

Why did Gerry react so indignantly when asked by an interviewer about checks every 15 minutes, correcting her immediately to confirm the checks were actually every 30 minutes? Because, as we have suggested, no prospective abductor observing 15 minute intervals between checks is likely to continue with his plan.

The NoN has three main ingredients:

- The parents were not present when Maddie was taken;

- The checks of 30 minutes were the minimum needed for an abductor to act;

- The T9 thought they were acting responsibly because of their proximity to the Tapas and their checking system.

And the BIG ROUND TABLE? A mistake. Had they said the rectangular tables were put together to make room for them all, we would have been none-the-wiser about the Tapas dining myth.

Given their description of all of them, including children – 17 in total (we presume with some in high chairs next to the table), gathered around a table for the Millenium breakfast, is it possible this is what lodged in their consciousness when describing the BRT?

For a myth to take hold of the imagination, it needs the sustenance of repetition.  After Wright’s statement to the press, we have this:

On May 16 2007, GNR officer Paulo Carvalhosa da Costa (Carvalhosa misspelled as Carvaihosa in the original PJ Files) stated that on May 4 he arrived at the Ocean Club at 00.05. When asked, he said he never saw Robert Murat in all the times he visited the scene:

“He does remember, on a day he cannot recall, an individual who identified himself as Robert, saying that he was in PdL as a translator helping the PJ, phoned the Lagos post saying:

That some foreign women, who had already been questioned by the Judiciary Police had phoned him, communicating that in a apartment near them there was a child crying.”

Up to this date only Mrs Fenn has said she heard a child crying. This suggests it was her who may have been the “women”– probably a plural heard by Carvalhosa da Costa where there was none. Although she did not make an official statement until August 20 2007, when she reported hearing crying, which persisted for 75 minutes in the apartment below at 22.30 on May 1st, it’s likely that she had spoken to the police before this statement was taken.

If this was indeed Mrs Fenn, then she had phoned Robert Murat at a very early stage. Presumably, Murat had not just phoned Carvalhosa da Costa a couple of days before the 16th or the officer would have been more precise in his recall of when he spoke with Murat.

Murat’s call to Carvalhosa da Costa must, therefore, have been before May 14th and the crying call conversation must have been made by the woman to Murat on or before May 14th.

Why would Mrs Fenn phone Murat unless she already knew the family and had their phone number? Perhaps Murat has clarified this situation in his December interview with Scotland Yard officers?

We find it perfectly natural for two ex-pat families living down the road from one another in a small village like Praia da Luz to know details of each other such as phone numbers.

Mrs Fenn sustained the neglect scenario with her heart-breaking description of a child crying “Daddy, Daddy.” Having been the alleged victim of a burglary in her own apartment, it didn’t occur to her to alert the Ocean Club reception and ask them to check if a child had been left unattended, or to see if the child may have been crying in the presence of a parent or childminder.

Instead, she phones her friend Edna Glyn, after listening to the crying for half an hour! She was also surprisingly precise in her statement that this was an older child (Maddie rather than the twins) How could she possibly know the age of a child from the repetition of those words?

Kate herself, astonishingly, makes sure we know about the abandonment of the children by confirming that Maddie had asked why no-one had come when she and Sean were crying.

She doesn’t bother to seek clarification about what had happened and allegedly was obviously happy to leave the children again, after hearing this plaintive question.

Many critics of the McCanns have expressed their disbelief and disgust about this incident, wondering why on earth any mother could hear such a question and then continue to go “on the tear.”

A question that must be asked is who wouldn’t express disbelief and disgust before such a narrative? No one. And everyone did, as intended.

The road to abduction had been paved successfully with negligence cobblestones.

Nothing more desolate to a fisherman than to sit and see his bait being ignored by the fish swimming around and by it under the calm and clear waters but nothing is more rewarding to him than the rod straining and bending because schools of fish are fighting for it without mercy.

We suggest that such incriminating “evidence” was part of the narrative, necessary to sustain and reinforce the myth.  Every time “neglect” is mentioned; in blogs, tweets, comments on press articles, the narrative is strengthened and embedded.

Although we have chosen not to be seduced by this myth, we must grudgingly admire its potency and endurance. As well as providing an unassailable alibi, it also continues to source so many welcome distractions for TM. So, choose your narrative carefully when you decide where the truth lies.

But what seems to be overlooked by all is how really violent the NoN is to the parents who have lost a child.

The McCann grins and smiles in their excessive assertiveness in defending their own negligence makes us forget the most evident fact of this entire case: they are (not supposed or alleged) parents who lost a child.

They are 2 people to whom a nothing-worse has happened. They have suffered the worst possible tragedy a human can ever be inflicted with.

And yet, as we have seen, there were some who didn’t hesitate for a minute to put one other very heavy burden, the stigma of being neglectful parents, on top of the heaviest possible burden that were on the shoulders of these parents.

These people didn’t give a single thought before making these parents’ nothing-worse be much, much worse. Because they were not only neglectful but that it was that exact neglect that determined their daughter’s tragic fate.

Not only have they lost their child but they were the ones responsible for that having happened. Can it get worse than that?

It can, because much worse than all of the above, the worst of all, was to watch this man and this woman accept without any complaint their nothing-worse being made significantly worse..

And not only without a qualm but with a smile and a grin.

1. Introduction

For us the Mirror article of October 24 “Madeleine McCann detectives examine former suspect's pictures of children after Sunday People probe” is one very positive and major step towards having the real and full truth about the Madeleine case come finally to light.

A step that has gone unnoticed in its importance. Much has been said about it but all have missed how really important we think it is.

First of all it’s an historic article. For the first time in the history of humankind a British tabloid reports on a middle aged man admitting to photographing children of strangers and seems to find that acceptable.

The article has all the ingredients of similar ones in which the minimal suspicion of paedophilia serves to roast without mercy:

“after he told Sunday People investigators he enjoyed taking snaps of children on holiday”,

“Mr Krokowski told our ¬investigators he liked taking pictures of ¬children while he was on trips abroad”,

“he admitted he enjoys taking pictures of ¬children on holiday but ¬that it was for ¬artistic purposes.”

Where is the word “pervert” in the article? And “disgusting”? And the two put together as we have always seen in articles with similar content? Where is the “disgusting pervert”??

Nowhere. And that apparently doesn’t fire up red flags anywhere.

Wojciech Krokowski even goes on to recognise that his wife “had some problems with alcohol and petty crimes over the years” and that isn’t used by the tabloid against them.

Have we changed planets and weren’t informed?

(image from the Mirror)

What if all of the above had been said by Raymond Hewlett? Would the article be anywhere as lenient? No, it would most certainly not.

So why is this article incomprehensibly mild towards Wojciech Krokowski, the photographer of children of strangers?

The reason for us is simple and very important: it’s a clear message to all who are able to read it stating that FULL TRUTH is the way that is intended to proceed in the Maddie case.

Please read it again. Comprehend it fully please. That’s how important this article about Wojciech Krokowski is in our opinion.


2. Wojciech Krokowski, the facts

Wojciech Krokowski comes into the process by the hand of Nuno Lourenço a Portuguese emigrant who says he was on holiday in Sagres with his family from April 23 to May 13.

Nuno Lourenço alleges that on April 29, Wojciech Krokowski tries twice to abduct his daughter in Sagres. First on the Mareta beach and then in the Praça da República.


Let’s stick to facts. Please note that allegations once made become fact to be taken into account even though their content may not be true:

- April 28– Wojciech Krokowski arrives in Faro airport on April 28, where he hires a Renault Clio. They stay in an apartment in Burgau;

- April 29– Nuno Lourenço alleges Wojciech Krokowski tries to abduct his daughter first at the beach and then in the Praça da República, Sagres. Nuno Lourenço says he photographs the rented car parked in this town square and produces this photo;

- May 2– Wojciech Krokowski and wife are captured by CCTV in the Chiado Mall, Lisbon, exiting its FNAC shop. This image surfaces because the owner of a bar in Burgau, the “Beach Bar” has strongly raised the possibility that Wojciech Krokowski could have gone there to buy CDs of Portuguese music, and it’s confirmed that he did indeed purchase 2 of them. We don’t know when the conversation between the owner and Wojciech Krokowski took place but we are told the Polish tourist told the owner that besides Lisbon he would also likely visit Évora, the main city in Alentejo known for its Roman temple of Diana, returning on the same day;

- May 3– Maddie disappears;

- May 4– Nuno Lourenço alleges to have seen again Wojciech Krokowski in the Praça da República when he was killing time in the process of hiring a car. Seeing Wojciech Krokowski for the third time apparently disturbs him as he says he speaks about it to his wife when he returns home, we would guess around 15H00. He makes a connection between the attempted abduction of his daughter and Maddie’s disappearance. His wife recommends he speaks to the police about it;

- May 5– Wojciech Krokowski at 06H45 hands over his rented car in Faro airport and flies back home with his wife. On this same day, after allegedly getting the police number from a newspaper, Nuno Lourenço calls PJ and reports the “Sagresman sighting”.


3. Some important clarifications

As the reader will see, we think that Nuno Lourenço is being very, very economical with the truth. We are not alone in this but we couldn’t agree less with the conclusions others have withdrawn from this, as we hope to show.

The conclusions they reach from this are significantly different from ours but that’s fully their right and we respect that unconditionally.

To disagree on content is in no way disrespect but only the expression of diversity of opinion.

However when someone says that this is Wojciech Krokowski’s rented car, that someone is being factually incorrect:


The picture above is taken by the PJ and that is very clear in the files.

It would be extremely odd for the PJ to photograph Wojciech Krokowski’s rented car in Sagres after it had been handed back over to the rental company in Faro.

Wojciech Krokowski’s rented car is a Renault Clio, the one photographed above is a Vauxhall/Opel Corsa.

PJ, as expected, is only able to photograph the space in the Praça da República where the car had been, where Nuno Lourenço has photographed the vehicle:


This is the photograph of Wojciech Krokowski’s rented car taken by Nuno Lourenço:


To use the wrong vehicle and from it draw conclusions only shows very poor researching and by association ridicules us all who research the case.

As is calling Nuno Lourenço by a name other than his own or by stating that he’s Spanish. He clearly says “he’s of Portuguese nationality” in his statement if there was any doubt about that. He’s a Portuguese emigrant who resides in Germany.


4. Textusa sisters visit Sagres

As we said in our “Praia da Luz” post, we left the village earlier than anticipated and headed for Sagres having changed our plans intending on having lunch there.

We arrived around half past noon in Sagres. A little too early for lunch, we thought.

We all had a very hearty typical English breakfast that morning in a very quaint esplanade in the town where we were staying so no one was really feeling hungry and so we all decided to first visit the “Sagresman sighting” and then either visit the fortress and follow it with lunch or do it the other way around.


We came into Sagres by the long straight that is N268 and on the roundabout near the fortress we turned left on Rua de S. Vicente and went to the next roundabout at Praça da República. We entered that square and parked the car on the dead-end located at its Southern corner.

There we walked to the “Pastelaria Marreiros” esplanade (yellow dotted line), the exact same one Nuno Lourenço says he sat at with his family when the alleged abduction there was supposed to have taken place.

There we had tea, coffee and bottled water and talked to each other about the sighting (very little to talk about) but mostly about the historical meaning that Sagres had to the world as it was from there that Henry, the Navigator is said to have opened the doors to globalisation.

Once we decided to leave, we walked to our car and drove out of Praça da República by its only exit, which is the narrow nameless road that Google Maps calls N268-2.

Important to note that if one drives in the Praça da República, the N268-2 is the only way out of it. Not very practical because it makes one go all the way to the fortress but that’s the way it is.

For us it was alright because we intended to visit the fortress anyway.


5. Nuno Lourenço and Wojciech Krokowski at the beach

We won’t go much into what Nuno Lourenço alleges to have happened on the beach between him and Wojciech Krokowski. We will just say that it is as ridiculous as what he later has to say about what is supposed to have happened in the Praça da República.

To say he hears three or four clicks coming from a camera held by a strange middle aged man fully clothed on the beach pointing it to his children and do nothing is absurd.

To say he continues to hear the clicking continuing as the man took “more pictures of 2 children of male gender” sons of a couple next to him and to say he limits his reaction to only looking at said stranger with camera in a “spiteful and aggressive” manner is absurd.

Please note that Nuno Lourenço is fully conscious from the first click he hears of what the man’s intention is and yet allows him to continue taking pictures and when he finally reacts is only with an aggressive look.

But what’s interesting is the conclusion that Nuno Lourenço comes to about this picture taking: the man is taking pictures because he means to abduct.

Who has ever heard of pre-abduction pictures taken in front of the victims parents? Apparently Nuno Lourenço has otherwise he couldn’t have come to the conclusion he does.

According to him it’s perfectly logical for an abductor to first raise suspicions about his presence and only after certifying that he was noticed, abduct.

Note that Wojciech Krokowski, according to Nuno Lourenço, once threatened by the hostile look starts to retreat but does in an absolutely defiant manner: “…they looked at the individual in a spiteful and aggressive manner which made him abandon the sand. Before that and while walking back he took further pictures of the 4 children, of his in a dissimulated manner and of the others with the camera by his face and a knee in the sand”.

Two grown men, Nuno Lourenço and another man, allow this to happen? They allow a stranger who is taking pictures of their children to continue to do so? Especially when Nuno Lourenço thinks the man will use the pictures of his children in “an illicit manner”?


6. The esplanades of Praça da República

If we thought Praia da Luz was smaller and much more compact than we had anticipated then what can one say about Praça da República?

One reading Nuno Lourenço’s statement one is filled with the sensation of space. This is what he says:

“At a certain point in time, and while he drank a coffee he saw the individual enter the pastry shop square [“largo da pastelaria” – we think he means the square where Pastelaria Marreiros is located so is referring to the Praça da República], going around the esplanades by their exterior, always observing the children and went into the referred pastry shop. At that moment, as usual ran around the tables, which caused her to distance herself when she made a part of the circle. Observing this the individual started to walk quickly towards his daughter, to make a coincidence of when she was furthest away from her parents. By chance or fate, her daughter stopped near the deponent and the individual, his supposed intentions foiled, entered again the pastry shop and went out without having bought anything, going to the back of a kiosk that exists in the square. Completely worn out with this situation, in which he doesn’t doubt that his intention was to grab his daughter, got up holding his phone and took several pictures of the individual.”

The “going around the esplanades by their exterior”, “caused her to distance herself when she made a part of the circle”, “to make a coincidence of when she was furthest away from her parents” and “entered again the pastry shop and went out without having bought anything, going to the back of a kiosk that exists in the square” give the idea that all happened in a large area.

But calling a barn Royal Albert Hall doesn’t make the barn any bigger than it really is.

Even more than in Luz, where reality showed us that it wasn’t anywhere as big as we had imagined it to be, we saw immediately in that town square that where Nuno Lourenço described what had happened couldn’t ever have happened because it was much, much smaller than we imagined it would be.

It would be so ridiculous that it does make it impossible to have happened.

First problem Nuno Lourenço has with the story is that he chooses the wrong esplanade to sit at.


The Marreiros esplanade is in the middle of the other esplanades. That means that if his daughter was circling the tables then he would have to be circling all the esplanades. And if she was circling all esplanades then it wouldn’t be possible for her trajectory at the farthest point to  bring her near the deponent no matter how lucky or fateful.

And we’re talking about a 4 yr old and a roundabout at the end of the square. Would any parent let a toddler that age near such a roadway?

If she was circling only the Marreiros esplanade then she would be very close to her father.


7. Let the abduction (?) begin

Nuno Lourenço makes Wojciech Krokowski to be the unthinkable of a prospective abductor. He places the abductor between himself and whole esplanade full of tables and the getaway car.

Nuno Lourenço says that Wojciech Krokowski goes into the pastry shop and as he’s doing that is when he decides to intercept Nuno Lourenço’s daughter. Once foiled in his intent, instead of walking away, Wojciech Krokowski goes back into the pastry shop. Isn’t that the most ridiculous thing a man can do after having just tried and failed to abduct a girl right in front of her father?

He then comes out without buying anything (how does Nuno Lourenço know this?) and heads towards the back of the kiosk that exists on the North end of the square.

Nuno Lourenço watched all passively sitting down.

Only when Wojciech Krokowski goes behind the kiosk does he get up.

Nuno Lourenço wants us to believe that he sees a man trying to abduct again his daughter – a couple of hours after the same man had been run off by him at the beach (with his very spiteful and aggressive stare which didn’t stop him from taking pictures with a knee on the ground) – and only gets up and reacts AFTER Wojciech Krokowski has gone in and out of the pastry shop right in front of him.

Was he waiting for Wojciech Krokowski to settle his bill before taking any action so as to make sure owner of the pastry shop would be paid? Oh, that wasn’t it because the man didn’t buy anything. He was there to abduct not to purchase!

And what is Nuno Lourenço’s reaction? At the beach it was to stare but here he decides to take action: he goes after Wojciech Krokowski taking photographs of the man!

He says he takes several pictures of the individual but “unfortunately, it didn’t work as he had the finger on the phone’s camera’s lens”. He never takes the finger off the lens for several photos? All several of them? Amazing.


8. Understanding the stage

Nuno Lourenço says this next:

“Even then and when going to the to the back of the kiosk he saw that that the individual was now behind the wheel of a vehicle, of the brand “Renault”, “Clio” model (very recent), silver, noting the licence plate on a piece of paper that meanwhile has thrown away, as he will explain. That individual was accompanied by a woman, sitting on the passenger seat. This time he was able to take a photo of the vehicle, which he supplied to the police and that he exhibits now, insisting [fazendo questão] in showing the time, 18H08 of 29/04/2007 as registered on the phone”.

We have been told that Wojciech Krokowski was forced to leave the beach about 2 hours before by Nuno Lourenço and another man.

What de he do during this time? Was Wojciech Krokowski hiding somewhere to give Nuno Lourenço time to finish his beach time, get himself and his family dressed and walk up to the Praça da República?

Did Wojciech Krokowski sit on a esplanade there for those 2 hours? We think very unlikely as although the space in that town square is pleasant it neither has a scenic view nor does it provide anything else of real interest. It’s one of those kind of places where one is either entertained with conversation and time passes or one doesn’t spend much time there.

Even if he did sit there for over 2 hours, wouldn’t Nuno Lourenço have seen him sitting there when he arrived instead of saying he saw him enter the square?

The only other option would be for Wojciech Krokowski to have driven around for those 2 hours and then return. But if he did drive around and returned there, then Nuno Lourenço should have seen him enter the scene by exiting the car and he doesn’t.

But independent of Wojciech Krokowski having parked the car there before he went to the beach or if he drove around and parked there, choosing that place to park the car is completely absurd for someone wanting to abduct a child.

As we said, once one drives into Praça da República the only possible exit is by doing a a tight and narrow “S” on the square and exit by the very narrow N268-2

No question Wojciech Krokowski wants to abduct. Nuno Lourenço has made that very clear.


So having 4 options of a quick getaway (blue arrows), Wojciech Krokowski decides to chooses as escape route (red arrow) one that requires making corners in a very short space on the very narrow street of the square to get into the also very narrow road that is the N268-2.

Wouldn't have made much more sense if had the car parked in the roundabout, as shown below, leaving his wife behind the wheel, so that when he grabbed the little girl all he had to do was to run those 20 yards, get quickly into the car and both drive away?


Note, the potential abductor even makes his life much more difficult by parking in between 2 cars, which means that he has to manoeuvre to get out of there:


Go figure. Either quite a stupid abductor or a very poor script writer. We opt for the latter.

Now let’s understand distances we are confronted with:


The yellow dotted lines represent the distance of 10 metres. From the Marreiros esplanade to the Wojciech Krokowski’s rented car is parked about 20 metres (21 yards) from it.

The short distance between the esplanade and where the car was supposed to have been parked was what fascinated us the most while we were sitting there on the Marreiros esplanade.

We were certain that if we tried to throw something at the car from that distance we would hit it. We certainly could speak by just slightly raising our voice from where we were to someone standing near or sitting inside a car parked there.

The playing area of a tennis court is 26 yards long making it about 4 yards longer than from the esplanade to the parked car. And as far as we know, tennis players talk to each other without shouting. Any questions on the peculiarity of tennis please address them to one Gerald McCann please.

One cannot help but laugh out loud when picturing the abduction as described by Nuno Lourenço taking place in the esplanade where we were, having to pass by or near us toward a parked driverless car 20 yards away.

We hope that by now the reader has noticed that there’s a non-character in all of this: Nuno Lourenço’s wife, the girl’s mother.

First she watches a man taking pics of her children on the beach and then sees the same man trying to abduct her daughter and thinks best to stay out of both and let hubby take care of all.


9. The Charlie Chaplin & Harry Houdini moments


The stage is set (or should we say the miniscule stage is set?) so let’s go back to Nuno Lourenço’s words and see what we call the Charlie Chaplin moment of this pathetic play: when Nuno Lourenço chases Wojciech Krokowski around the square.

We saw how Wojciech Krokowski, after trying to kidnap a girl in front of her dad continues to stay around.

Walks in the pastry shop and walks out.

Nuno Lourenço, the father of the just-would-be-abducted girl, only then stands up and decides, finally, to do something decisive about it: go after Wojciech Krokowski and take pictures of him.


The red arrow refers to Wojciech Krokowski, the yellow one, Nuno Lourenço. Both arrows are marked with 10 metres marks.

Nuno Lourenço says that he “stood up, holding his cellphone and took several [várias] pictures of the individual, frontally and in a way that he saw he was taking those photos of him”.

So Nuno Lourenço wants Wojciech Krokowski to see him taking the pictures. That means that they are at a short distance one from the other.

But, then the comical magic happens.

Let’s see Nuno Lourenço describe it all in his own words: “when going to the back of the kiosk that the individual was now behind the wheel of a vehicle”.

This is where Nuno Lourenço is standing when he photographs the vehicle:


For the first 10 yards or so, they are interacting with each other but then in less space than that of a tennis court, Wojciech Krokowski gains such a distance from his “adversary” in such a way that it allows him to get to the car and get inside before Nuno Lourenço is able to see that!

Nuno Lourenço doesn’t see him getting in the car but sees him already in it. He’s very precise about that detail.

Either that kiosk has Twilight Zone properties or Wojciech Krokowski was running while Nuno Lourenço was limping along for the first to gain such an advantage in such short distance. No other explanation.

But this falls to the ground as Nuno Lourenço later says “after taking the picture, and having passed a few minutes, the couple took off in a calm and orderly manner”. So no hurry on Wojciech Krokowski’s part. It’s the kiosk that must have teletransporting properties.

But the magic doesn’t stop there.

As we saw Nuno Lourenço says that he sees Wojciech Krokowski behind the wheel of the car. He also says “that individual was accompanied by a woman, sitting in the passenger’s side. This time he was able to take a photograph of the vehicle, which he supplied to the police…”

The detail of the picture that is in the files:


We have now the Harry Houdini moment. Where are Wojciech Krokowski and his wife? Aren’t there supposed to be 2 people inside that car when the picture was taken? It clearly shows it’s empty!

So basically he’s telling us that a driverless car just drove away right in front of him.

And the magic simply doesn’t stop! It continues when he says “he noted the licence plate on a piece of paper which he meanwhile threw away”.

Let’s suppose that this piece of paper was some receipt he had in his wallet or pocket but one has to ask from where does the pen or pencil appear?

Nuno Lourenço has gone to the beach with his family. From the beach they head for an esplanade. From the esplanade he gets up on an impulse to go after Wojciech Krokowski to photograph him. His hands busy with his cellphone camera  So where in this whole scenario does a pen or pencil in his hand at that moment make sense? It doesn’t.

Only if he stopped at the kiosk to buy or ask for one and that would certainly explain why he let Wojciech Krokowski out of his sight long enough to give him time for him to get into the car without being seen.

However, not only nowhere in his narrative does he suggest he asked anything from the kiosk as to do that he would need to know Wojciech Krokowski was going to get into a car something he only realizes after he passes by the kiosk.


10. Let’s abandon absurdity to see the absurd

Now with all the details of what Nuno Lourenço says happened let’s stop for a moment and look at what he is really proposing for us to believe.

We will not be comical about it and will state only fact. As will be seen the ridiculousness of the thing stands out by itself without any outside help.

Nuno Lourenço says that a man tries to abduct his daughter in his presence. First at the beach although we don’t understand how nor when. Then at the Praça da República.

There, this man would have picked the little girl up right in front of her father and would have run to a car parked 20 yards away.

At the car he would have to open the back door and put the girl inside, close the door, go around the car and get in the driver’s seat as the other person with him, a woman, cannot act as a runaway driver as she is sitting in the passenger’s seat.

The man has to start the engine and has to manoeuvre to get out of the parking space, the drive away in a very narrow “S”, the escape route we have shown above and which is the only way out of Praça da República.

This would allow for many to see and register the licence plate of the car. A car that the man had rented in his real name so quickly traceable to him, as fact it would prove to be.

All of the above done in front of the girl’s father and mother, all in the space (except the “S” bit) of a tennis court.

Very, very poor scriptwriting we must say.

We hope that the reader can now picture how we laughed out loud when envisioning the above while sitting in the Marreiros esplanade and discussing this.


11. To report or not to report

Nuno Lourenço thinks Wojciech Krokowski has tried to abduct his daughter twice in two completely separate locations and in a 2 hour time difference.

Nuno Lourenço appears to be the first to understand what a real threat Wojciech Krokowski represents but decides not to report this to authorities.

He has Wojciech Krokowski’s licence plate and instead of taking it to the police he says he throws the paper away: “thinking that the licence number no longer had interest, as they had given up on their intention, he threw the paper with the licence plate away, not knowing if into a bin or to the floor”.

This is a man who supposedly just tried to kidnap his daughter. One would have hung on to that bit of paper for dear life. He’s gone to the trouble of following the man around and taking photos but throws away the licence number. Sheer nonsense

Instead Nuno Lourenço’s reasoning seems to be this, as Wojciech Krokowski had shown giving up on his intent to abduct then he no longer represented a threat.

But hadn’t Wojciech Krokowski, according to Nuno Lourenço, shown the same kind of loss of interest in abducting on the beach 2 hours earlier?

He had but 2 hours later, according to Nuno Lourenço, decided to prowl and attack again on the square.

Nuno Lourenço was a material witness that Wojciech Krokowski was set on abducting. That he could momentarily be convinced not to but he was set in doing so.

Wojciech Krokowski was such a potential abductor who had shown to be so obsessed that he even attacked the same family in the same afternoon in separate locations but not that far from one another.

Nuno Lourenço of all people should have realised that Wojciech Krokowski was a time bomb set to explode very soon and somewhere near.

Instead Nuno Lourenço seems to have preferred to ignore the threat.

He doesn’t even remember what he did with the paper with licence number, just that he threw it away. That’s how nonchalant he is about the incidents that involved the possible abduction of his own daughter.

Nuno Lourenço is only prompted to speak to the police after his third encounter with Sagresman.


12. Third encounter

Nuno Lourenço has arrived in Portugal on April 22 and intends to leave on May 13. On May 4 he decides to rent a car. He goes to a Travel Agency called “Turinfo”.

Nuno Lourenço says that it’s a car rental company but it’s not, it’s a Travel Agency. The nearest car rental company is in Lagos which makes sense.


Sagres and more specifically the parking area in front of the fortress must be the place in Portugal with the most rented cars per square yard.

But Sagres is a place one goes to in a rented car not one where one rents one.

Sagres is a destination not a point of entry/exit of the country. One rents car at Faro, or any major city in the Algarve but not in places like Sagres.

“Turinfo” is listed on the internet with an address of Praça da República. We were there and didn’t see it.

We saw restaurants/esplanades, lodgings and a surf-shop (the building in front of which Wojciech Krokowski’s car is photographed).

One the south side of Praça da República we have the “Mareta Beach Boutique Bed & Breakfast”, the “Algarve Surfcamp and Surfschool Amaro” and the “Rosa dos Ventos” restaurant:


On the North just coffee shops/restaurants and with the “RetroSailor Beach Shop” at the North tip:


On the cul-de-sac that exists on the South corner of the square we have lodgings called “Alojamento Particular” and “Mareta Beach Boutique Bed & Breakfast”:

We did not see any Travel Agency or anything named “Turinfo” on that town square but we won’t say or imply it doesn’t exist because as said, it’s listed on the internet. If anyone could tell us where it is, we would be grateful. We simply would like to know where it is located in Sagres.

We do find it strange that the owner, or manager, of the Travel Agency is the only one there who can rent a car to a client as Nuno Lourenço seems to say “the worker present said that he had to return at 13H30, time of her boss’s arrival”.

One has to wonder what that employee has been hired to do in the agency.

What is interesting is where Nuno Lourenço decides to go to kill the time: to a Restaurant called “Rosa dos Ventos” located at the South corner of the square.


“Rosa dos Ventos” and on the other side of the square “Marreiros” and other restaurants, have esplanades, where he can sit and enjoy a coffee and from where he can see the agency’s boss arrive, but instead he decides to go inside “Rosa dos Ventos”, instead of sitting outside in the esplanade, as shown in the picture below:


The photo above is taken by the PJ. The esplanade in the foreground is in front of “Rosa dos Ventos”.

Nuno Lourenço is clear he says he’s inside the restaurant: “looking to the outside, he saw the individual of the photos, dressed exactly the same way but without the hat. He went around the square and disappeared, not seeing him or the car again, because he was on foot and alone.”

From inside “Rosa dos Ventos” one has a clear vision of the Southern part of the square, so if Wojciech Krokowski passed by in a car, not only would it be a huge coincidence to be looking outside when he passed as he wouldn’t be able to detail what clothes the man was wearing.

Nuno Lourenço is saying clearly that Wojciech Krokowski is on foot.

But if  Wojciech Krokowski is indeed on foot and Nuno Lourenço gets disturbed by seeing him again shouldn’t he have exited the restaurant and followed the man even if only out of curiosity?

No, we seem to return into a world of magic again.

Wojciech Krokowski is seen on foot in front of “Rosa dos Ventos” going North (going around the square) and then as suddenly he got into the car days before he simply vanishes. Or doesn’t, we’re not sure. Nuno Lourenço speaks of being unable to follow him because he’s on foot and so implying Wojciech Krokowski has used a car in this encounter but doesn’t detail when or where he got in it. All very confusing, all just too fictional.

It’s not only the kiosk that’s haunted, it’s that entire square.

This is supposed to have happened between 13:00 and 13:30.

He then says “on arriving home he told his wife what had happened who told him to go to the police, now knowing about the disappearance of another child, with strong and haunting similarities to his daughter, (censored), which can be seen by the comparison of images. This way and on seeing the telephone number of this police [PJ] in a daily paper, right in the morning he called the picket, alerting to what happened”.

We are supposing he arrived home around 15:00 at the latest. He’s clearly disturbed, tells the wife about the encounter and she agrees with him that he should call the police. But, fascinatingly, he decides to procrastinate until the next day.

The world is being turned upside down about Maddie and he makes a clear connection between what happened to him and what may have happened to Maddie but decides best to wait waits until the next day to go buy a paper to get the number to call the police. However disturbed he may have been he saw no urgency in reporting, evidently.

Did he really need to buy a paper to know the number to make the call? As far as we know, 112 is the number for emergencies for Europe. Both in Portugal where he is and in Germany where he resides.

But even if he didn’t know that, all he had to do was to head down to nearest coffee shop or restaurant, they all have the nearest GNR number handy.

He sees Wojciech Krokowski for the third time on the 4th but decides to inform police only on the 5th.


13. Why a second visit to Sagres?

One question must be asked, what is Wojciech Krokowski doing in Sagres again?

He supposedly was there on the 29th, so what is he doing there on the 4th?

Sagres like Praia da Luz is a “one-hit” town. For Praia da Luz that one-hit is the beach, for Sagres it’s the fortress.

Once that is visited no need to visit it again 5 days later. It doesn’t make sense.

Both the promontory and the fortress are well worth a visit, no question about that but having only a week holiday as Wojciech Krokowski appears to have had, it’s not worth a repeat with so many beautiful things to see in the region and in the country.

As we’ll see later on Wojciech Krokowski shows interest in seeing Évora and Lisbon in a single day. Both of those he visits in 1 day but then seems to have spent 2 days of his week visiting something that is visited and well visited in just a few hours.


And Sagres is not something one visits because one is passing near by it, it’s an objective. To go there one plans to go there as it’s quite far from anything else.

It makes no sense to have been there on the 29th and then return there on the 4th.


14. Starting to put the pieces together

Let’s now focus on hard fact. Because we are encountering hard facts that need to be looked at and it’s from these that one withdraws valid conclusions.

The first and evident fact is that Nuno Lourenço photographs a vehicle that has been rented by Wojciech Krokowski. And he describes Wojciech Krokowski to perfection. Which means he simply didn’t choose a vehicle randomly. It was that one he wanted to photograph

Second fact is that the photographed car is on Praça da República, meaning that Wojciech Krokowski had been indeed in Sagres and had been in that particular town square.

The fact that Nuno Lourenço is clearly inventing a story doesn’t invalidate that he’s using a real car rented by a real and traceable person who he’s not supposed to know from anywhere.

The three facts above show that he’s clearly directing PJ in Wojciech Krokowski’s direction. Specifically in that particular tourist’s direction.

Nuno Lourenço’s plot although absurd in the telling is very objective and quite linear. One just has to not be distracted by the absurdity he has glued on it.

Nuno Lourenço’s plot starts with him being suspicious about Wojciech Krokowski before Maddie disappears. The reason for that is that for him it has to be so.

To be suspicious only after Maddie disappeared would empty out Wojciech Krokowski role in the plot because then, supposedly, Maddie’s abductor should have his abducting appetite quenched and not draw upon himself any more of “abductive” attention.

The supposed interaction between them on the 29th is to create the idea that Nuno Lourenço suspects Wojciech Krokowski to be a potential abductor. It’s the opening act.

To link Wojciech Krokowski to Maddie, which is an absolute necessity, the suspicions must befall on him prior the little girl disappearing.

Wojciech Krokowski again enters the plot in Sagres when Nuno Lourenço needs an excuse to call authorities after Maddie has disappeared.

To link the need to call authorities and link Wojciech Krokowski can only be done after Maddie has gone, otherwise there would be no link between him and the little girl.

Calling the authorities, could only have been done on the 4th but is only done on the following day for a reason.

Maddie disappears on the night of the 3rd, Wojciech Krokowski has to leave Portugal early on the 5th and as he’s staying in Burgau and flying out in Faro so the only day to link him to Nuno Lourenço is the 4th. Reason why Wojciech Krokowski is in Sagres that day.

But to put PJ really on Wojciech Krokowski’s heels Nuno Lourenço must call the authorities only on the 5th. He has to allow Wojciech Krokowski time to fly out of the country before warning PJ.

If he called PJ on the 4th, the police would quickly track the man down, talk to him and find out he had nothing to reveal and abandon there and then any and all investigation concerning the man. The false lead would not even survive a day.

We have written before that immediately after Maddie’s disappearance there followed a critical period when it was absolutely required to keep PJ distracted with false leads under the penalty they could focus their investigation on where they shouldn’t, which would be on Praia da Luz and on the people holidaying there in the off-season.

Once Wojciech Krokowski flew out of the country he would become a false lead that would continue to be followed.

Long-distance investigations always involve a degree of bureaucracy and time wasted doing it and he would have left the country just before he was to be considered a person of interest to the case.

There had to be a reason to call authorities and that could only be arranged on the 4th and authorities could only be called on the 5th after he left, as they were.

The fact that Wojciech Krokowski was used as a false lead means that he accepted to be one. The fact that the rented car is photographed in the Praça da República shows that very clearly. He placed himself in Sagres so that Nuno Lourenço could point the finger at him.

He has nothing to fear. They can ask him any and all questions about the case and he knows – because it’s true – that he has nothing to do with Maddie, he has nothing he can help the authorities with.

The longer they are busy with him the more PJ wastes time and is distracted.

However, and that’s Wojciech Krokowski’s usefulness, he can report back exactly what diligences the police have taken with the investigation where he’s concerned.

Wojciech Krokowski is a false lead that can provide feedback on how PJ is literally being entertained by following him.

But, one may ask, and one should, if all was as we say it was then how could the rented car have been photographed on the 29th in the Praça da República?

In our opinion it wasn’t.

In our opinion It was photographed on the 4th, explaining Nuno Lourenço’s insistence to show when the photograph was taken: “this time he was able to take a photo of the vehicle, which he supplied to the police and that he exhibits now, insisting [fazendo questão] in showing the time, 18H08 of 29/04/2007 as registered on the phone”

Why does he insist in showing this particular data about his picture of the car but then there’s no mention of him wanting to show all the others ones he supposedly took and were botched by his finger in front of the lens?

We think that it would be useful for the police to see them. To see how many pictures he defiantly took of Wojciech Krokowski or if police experts could extract some information from them. And he could prove how really clumsy he had been at that crucial moment as the botched up pictures would speak for themselves.

Oh, he must have deleted them just like he threw away the paper with the licence plate. That would be very convenient. We’ll pretend (NOT) we will believe that.

Nuno Lourenço, although botching up his lines of the script – reminding us so much of Stephen Carpenter in that aspect – achieves – unlike Stephen Carpenter – fully the objectives intended: he sends PJ after Wojciech Krokowski and PJ does go after him.


15. The Burgau connection

Some say that Nuno Lourenço’s statement has a profound effect on the PJ. Said like that it leads one to believe that PJ valued this lead more than any other when that clearly was not the case.

There is more in the files about this lead than about others leads because this one has one thing the others don’t: it has the licence plate which is palpable, it can be followed up.

And that’s what PJ does. It does what it should have done, if follows a lead that can be followed. The Wojciech Krokowski lead has the exact same value as any other.

It led to more information? Yes, it did. Why? Because it could be followed. That simple. No other conclusion should in our opinion be taken from it.

And because it could and was followed, it led PJ to go up to the next level in this false lead: Burgau.

The licence plate led to a name, the name to an apartment in Burgau. From the apartment to a bar, the “Beach Bar” also in Burgau and from that bar to FNAC Chiado in Lisbon to close the circle.

Burgau shows very clearly a network of people involved in propagating this false lead.

This is where the FNAC lead is implanted. Continuing to send PJ after a real palpable person and so keep it entertained.


The FNAC lead provides PJ with a CCTV image of Wojciech Krokowski.

With the CCTV image it is confirmed that Nuno Lourenço has described Wojciech Krokowski correctly, thus proving he was speaking the truth about a man he supposedly had never seen before. With that CCTV image and Nuno Lourenço’s description Wojciech Krokowski evolves from being a possible person of interest to a real person of interest, bordering being a suspect.

And if Nuno Lourenço decribes the person who rented that car he photographed so accurately then the supposed abduction attempts were also accurately described. That CCTV image makes the Wojciech Krokowski threat to be a real thing.

But to put this image in PJ’s hands, one had to direct PJ to Lisbon, more precisely to the Chiado mall where there’s a FNAC. How is it known that this image even exists? Because Wojciech Krokowski knows he had been there and knows he bought 2 CDs there.

It’s common knowledge that security videos are stored for a week at least. The fact that Wojciech Krokowski knew he had been there and that he paid for the 2 CDs with a credit card makes it possible to makes this CCTV end up in PJ’s hands: all that is required was to have him pay the rental car with that same credit card he used in FNAC.

When those payments were matched and the time of payment in FNAC determined, then most certainly there would be a video footage of him there that could be found. And so it was.

Probably PJ would get to this image by itself by running an analysis on what other payments had been made by that credit card during that period in the country but just like Smithman had to force contact with the Smiths, so did the tellers of this tale have to do the same with the Chiado FNAC. They had to make sure PJ went to that particular FNAC store.

Enter the scene the owner of the “Beach Bar” in Burgau where the apartment where Wojciech Krokowski stayed with his wife is.

It’s not an employee that speaks to the PJ, it’s the owner of the bar. The files say proprietário (owner) and not gerente (manager) or empregado (worker/employee). That is very important which can be seen later on.

We don’t know when the conversation between the bar owner and Wojciech Krokowski took place. We have read and heard it referenced that CCTV video or images of Wojciech Krokowski there were given to the PJ. We have no knowledge of such CCTV footage/images.

As far as we know, in the files there are only the following CCTV images:

- the Paraíso bar pictures where the T9 appear on the afternoon of the 3rd;

- a couple on a gas station with a girl, proven not to be Wojciech Krokowski and wife as some have speculated;

- Wojciech Krokowskiand wife coming out of FNAC Chiado (Lisbon).

We know of this conversation from a report of an external diligence done on May 5 by Inspectors Davide (?) Gomes and Hugo Ferreira of PJ.

In it the bar owner speaks of a very convenient football tale, in our opinion to confirm that Wojciech Krokowski is indeed Polish and to show the police that they were on the right track.

In that conversation what we would like to call the reader’s attention to is how the owner comes up with this most amazing question that Wojciech Krokowski supposedly asked him: where could he buy Portuguese music CDs in… Portugal?

Maybe in the same kind of places he can buy CDs of Polish music in Poland we would say.

But guess where the owner tells him he can do that, where he can buy such a rarity which is to find a Portuguese music in Portugal?

The bar owner says he told Wojciech Krokowski that he had 2 options. One was in a shopping mall in Albufeira – which according to Google Maps is 83 kms away (why not recommend Lagos?) – or in Lisbon more specifically the in the FNAC shop of the Chiado mall (which is 329 Kms away).

There were other FNAC shops in Lisbon, currently there are 8: FNAC Aeroporto de Lisboa, FNAC Amoreiras, FNAC Chiado, FNAC Colombo, FNAC Vasco da Gama, FNAC Alfragide, FNAC Almada (a mall which is very visible and easily accessed by anyone entering Lisbon from the South by car by the 25 de Abril bridge) and FNAC Oeiras.

Isn’t that just telling the PJ, “if you look there, in the FNAC at Chiado, you’ll be pleasantly surprised, trust me, wink, wink, nudge, nudge, hey?”

Imagine the reader is a foreign tourist sitting in Torquay on holiday and asks a owner of a pub where one could buy a CD of English music and is told to travel all the way to London, and specifically to Piccadilly Circus to do that!

Putting that CCTV image in PJ’s hands completes the plot to create and maintain a false lead which is needed to keep PJ entertained:

- Wojciech Krokowski knows he was in FNAC Chiado on the 2nd and he bought 2 CDs there with a credit card;

- It’s easily deduced that there must be a CCTV image of the couple there;

- It’s known that Wojciech Krokowski will leave Portugal on the 5th.

All that is left to be found is a volunteer to send PJ up this creek.

Nuno Lourenço is chosen. He supposedly is not in Praia da Luz and he has a daughter the same age as Maddie.

Wojciech Krokowski parks the car in Praça da República on the 4th and Nuno Lourenço photographs it. The cellphone data is manipulated so photo is registered as taken on the 29th.

That done, all left to do is to call authorities once Wojciech Krokowski’s plane takes off.

PJ would then be sent running in circles around Wojciech Krokowski, going to Sagres, Burgau, Germany and Poland and stay well away from Luz.

All would lead to nothing but that was the whole idea. Very simple and effective, time wasted, attention diverted and no one would know better. All would in the end be summed up to an exaggerated reaction by a Portuguese emigrant on holiday against a tourist innocently photographing because of the hysteria that arose from Maddie’s disappearance.

No one would know better.

But there is one person pivotal and shows that there is a network behind this story: the bar owner.

He is the one who provides the independent validation to Nuno Lourenço’s otherwise absurd tale. He is the one that makes the pieces of the story to come together so making it very clear it was all a collective effort.

The bar owner, we repeat not employee, who nudged PJ into finding the FNAC Chiado CCTV image we believe was Ralph Eveleigh, Robert Murat’s uncle.

If not him then it would be someone close to him as the Eveleighs owned that bar at one time. It’s possible the person who spoke to police may have been renting from Ralph Eveleigh and be referred to as proprietário (owner) because although a rentor he would effectively be the owner of the business using the rented space.

Virginia Blackburn's Daily Express article of November 26 2007 “'Madeleine's gone!' shrieked Kate. What really happened on the night a little girl disappeared” seems to say that it is indeed Ralph Eveleigh who owns the bar at the time: “Murat's uncle ran a bar in nearby Burgau: that, too, was searched”.

We suggest that Nuno Lourenço and Wojciech Krokowski are part of – or connected to – that circle of people who were there enjoying off-season holidays with a very specific reason, one they did all for it not to be known.

That group of people who directly or indirectly obstructed justice and have ultimately destroyed Mr Amaral’s life for the last 8 and half years, time he will never be able to get back.

If one includes in this group as one should Everleigh, Yvonne Martin and the Alvor couple, one can easily see that the obfuscating was not circumscribed geographically only to Praia da Luz.

Why so many involved? No one could have then predicted the proportions things would take. With the backing of the powerful choosing to tell a “harmless” lie (harmless in the sense that the parents of the victim were also in on it so no one was being harmed) instead of risking having their reputation ruined with the truth seems to be the natural thing to have done.

Also, no one predicted that PJ Files would be made public and that they would be subject to such passionate scrutiny. 

It must be horrible to live in permanent fear, permanent defensive mode, always looking over one’s shoulder and all because of a “harmless” mistake.  


16. The Mirror article

The Mirror article recovers Wojciech Krokowski out of nowhere.

For us there can only be one reason for that to happen: to show that the swinging is now in the crosshairs of whoever is deciding in the Maddie case.

Like Euclides Monteiro served to expose the body route and so warning all those involved in it that their a heads were about to roll, Wojciech Krokowski now serves to say that things are now heading outside the T9.

And by using Wojciech Krokowski, someone who has no connections to the Ocean Club, Mark Warner or Praia da Luz, it’s saying that this “outside T9” is really outside. As in guests as well. As in the full truth.

Mr Amaral is clear in his book that PJ went around Luz questioning about Wojciech Krokowski (pg 72): “we’re left with proceeding with the reconstitution of the steps of the Polish couple while they enjoyed holidays in the Algarve, we want to know if they were seen in Praia da Luz, if they could be related with Maddie’s disappearance. The couple’s photo, meanwhile taken from a Lisbon mall surveillance system, where they went on May 2, is shown to various witnesses, in restaurants of Praia da Luz, in which Tapas and Millenium restaurants are included, no one recognises them”

Wojciech Krokowski and his wife weren’t seen setting foot in Praia da Luz. If they did, they did like we did, they just passed through the town.

Knowing that, the following passages of said article are for us very interesting:

“But Mr Krokowski, who describes himself as an “obsessive photographer” told us he still had every single picture he took the day Madeleine vanished and handed them over so we could pass them to Operation Grange.

(…)

Speaking about the photos from his holiday in 2007, Mr Krokowski said he was happy to hand them over.

He added: “We are not the type of people to lie on the beach so we travelled a lot in that area between Sagres and Burgau and I have plenty of photos from our time there but the police never asked for them.

“I thought once maybe I should show those photos. They are not just ¬landscapes, there are lots of people. Maybe something in there could be helpful.

“I collect all my photographs, I still have them from that trip, of course you can have them if they could help in anyway.””

There are only so many pictures one can take of the Praia da Luz beach. We were there so we know that for a fact.

Let us just highlight the following fom the quotes above:  

“he still had every single picture he took”

“was happy to hand them over”

“we travelled a lot in that area between Sagres and Burgau and I have plenty of photos from our time there”

“they are not just ¬landscapes, there are lots of people. Maybe something in there could be helpful”

But what we really, REALLY want to highlight are the following 2 paragraphs of the article:

“Officers are scouring ­dozens of images from the camera of businessman Wojciech Krokowski, from Poland.

They are focusing on those he took while in Praia da Luz around the time Madeleine went missing – on May 3, 2007.”

So he was in Praia da Luz after all. And if the pictures he supposedly took there were only of the beach and its scenery would they be the focus of anything?

Could the message be any clearer? We don’t think so.

It’s clear, very clear that the intention is to finally burst the bubble.


17. Conclusion

Are we optimistic?

We never, ever put aside the archival hypothesis. We think it’s a foolish option to take and have said so repeatedly but we are fully aware that the foe has proven all these years that it will not give up easily.

The wider circle, the one that really matters, the one that is sustaining – not deciding – the whole edifice of this hoax has finally been told that it is time for them step on the stage and face the lights. And that it’s time for them to face the public’s reaction.

The Met has been told to send the clear message that the time to play cops is over. No more binder paper carrying in the cobbled streets of the Algarve for the cameras. They “are now following a small number of focused lines of inquiry” and we get to know that the “enquiry has not reached a conclusion, there are still focused lines of investigation to be pursued.”

And the lines are not only focused but that they “still have very definite lines to pursue which is why we are keeping a dedicated team of officers working on the case.”

Or in other words, it’s time for the Met to close shop and to start coming to conclusions.

And it’s not forgotten to remind all that “Operation Grange is working to support the Portuguese investigation and this work continues” and that “the Portuguese police remain the lead investigators and our team will continue to support their inquiry. They have extended every courtesy to Operation Grange and we maintain a close working relationship. I know they remain fully committed to investigating Madeleine's disappearance with support from the Metropolitan Police”

Meanwhile, the linking the word “fraud” to the McCann fund in the public’s mind seems to be going very well.

We see no reason to be other than optimistic. 

In the comments section in our post “The Narrative of Negligence” we mentioned that there had been 2 very interesting articles published about Maddie.

The first one was the Mirror article of October 24 “Madeleine McCann detectives examine former suspect's pictures of children after Sunday People probe” about Wojciech Krokowski and about who we wrote our post “Sagresman”, explaining why we thought that it was a very important message to all those interested and able to understand it: the exposure of swinging was now on the table.

The other article of interest was the Sun’s article of October 26 “‘£100,000 fraud’ on Maddie fund” about a huge fraud of £100,000 concerning the Find Madeleine fund, as its title explicitly states.

Please note the wording we have just used. We could have said that it was about a huge fraud by someone ripping-off the Find Madeleine fund but we didn’t. We were intentionally specious.

Having fully understood the intent of the article we decided to collaborate and play along with it so wished to be as specious as the other side.


The subtitle is equally specious when it says “WHISTLEBLOWER EXCLUSIVE: Search money rip-off claim”.

Only inside and in the text’s smaller print does it tell the uncloaked truth: “The fund to find Madeleine McCann was ripped off by up to £100,000, whistleblowers claim.”

The subtlety? Saying “rip” in big words and “fraud” in even bigger ones so that the eye captures them immediately and only then use the truthful “ripped” inside in the small letters of the text.

The report, one only later finds out when reading it, is about how the Find Madeleine fund was ripped off and not because it was a rip-off.

But the mind, led by the word “fraud” in the title and the “rip-off” in the subtitle is misled into thinking that ripping-off, or fraud, was done by the Find Madeleine fund, by one of its people.

Later, when the “correction” comes when it’s said, in much smaller letters that the fraud was done against the Find Madeleine fund, the damage has already been done.

In the public’s brain the seed of fraud was successfully planted in the Find Madeleine fund’s fertile soil to be denigrated.

The report is about how an unidentified person has wrongly used £100,000 of the Find Madeleine fund.


This news echoed in the Portuguese press.

Many have said it was just the rehashing of news about Kevin Halligen.

In our opinion it couldn’t possibly be. If it was so, why not name him? If it were him, would there be the need for 2 whistleblowers to sign affidavits to the Sun?

This was on October 26 and many days have passed since. Today, we still do not know the identity of that person.

It’s a fact that a crime of £100,000 has been reported by a newspaper (?) and apparently no one in the UK wants to know anything about it.

The parents, to whom the Sun allegedly handed this directly, bypassing any and all legitimate authorities, have not reacted even though they did supposedly say through their ex-former spokesman Clarence Mitchell: “Madeleine’s Fund takes extremely seriously any suggestion monies intended for the search have been obtained fraudulently. Kate, Gerry and the other directors of Madeleine’s Fund will co-operate fully with authorities to ensure these claims are fully investigated.”

Not a word from them since. Not the minimal reaction. It’s like £100,000 is just short change for them and for the Find Madeleine fund that is supposed to help the search of their missing daughter.

£100,000 seem just to be something someone carelessly dropped on the floor and it wasn’t worth the effort of bending the back to pick it up.

Remember the hype that a dossier containing opinions caused last year?

It cost Brenda Leyland her life and even the Commissioner of the Met referred to the dossier publicly on a radio show. Sky News pounded our ears every 15 minutes with it that day. Days of tragic memory, those.

A dossier with opinions deserved all that but the Find Madeleine fund being ripped-off of £100,000 deserves… nothing. Only silence.


After this report we even had the news from Sun “McCanns: We’ll never give up” that the McCanns had ring-fenced £750,000 to search for Maddie after Operation Grange archived the case – once again making everyone wonder if they had to ring-fence this money to find Madeleine then what else was at risk to spend it on?

One has to wonder if in this £750,000 is included the money that they put aside into the separate account destined to continue to search in case the Met washed their hands off the case. Clarence Mitchell was very clear that such an account was created, only we never got to know how much money ever went into it.

If this £750,000 is in that separate account, then how much money remained in the Find Madeleine fund and what is it expected to be spent on?

But as the article seems to say “Kate and Gerry McCann have already ringfenced the rest of the cash in the Find Madeleine Fund, around £750,000” it seems this amount is all there is left in terms of money in the Find Madeleine fund.

We think that to whoever has only £750,000, £100,000 is a significant amount. An amount which one should be worried about. If it wasn’t for that rip-off the Find Madeleine fund would now have £850,000.

An amount that one would expect the allegedly hindered party would be REALLY interested in knowing what happened to it and do all to see if they could recover any.

Nope. Just silence. Did you say £100,000? Oh please, we have so many other important things to worry about... We did say we were worried, didn’t we? Please look at our worried faces behind these smiles.

The reason for this nonchalant silence is simple. This allegation has, in our opinion, as much truth as all the Sun has ever reported about the Maddie case since 2007: nothing.

It has simply the objective to glue to the public’s eye the word FRAUD to the Find Madeleine fund.

Why else the need to say“there is no suggestion of any wrongdoing by Kate or Gerry”? Whoever suggested that? Why then the need to clarify something that wasn’t raised in the first place?

Aren’t we taken back to the Narrative of Negligence? When they kept shouting how not negligent they had not been to make sure we noticed that they, very conveniently, were supposed to have been negligent?

So, it seems someone is making a serious effort to stick the word FRAUD to the Find Madeleine fund’s forehead.

Well If that’s the case all we can then do is help them out doing that.

And we will use hard fact to do so. We will use what reality provides us as we think it provides us with enough evidence to show how much the fraudulent Find Madeleine fund is indeed fraudulent.

And what hard fact is that? It’s the GoFund through which we helped support Mr Amaral’s legal fees.

We all watched in rightful wonder and delighted amazement the way people gave to it while it was open.


In the 6 months it existed it reached more than double of its set objective of £25,000. 2,814 donations adding up to £52,900. Very impressive. Emotional even.

The GoFund fund was opened on April 29 and because those responsible for it thought it had reached fully its objectives – in fact as we said, it doubled them – announced its closure on October 28. It ran for a total of 182 days.

All fund raising campaigns have 3 phases.

The initial phase, when the passion of contributors is shown by the very quick rhythm of incoming funds. This causes an impression and helps augment the contributions. Contributors giving encourage a bigger number of other contributors to do same. This is the stage in which the greatest efforts to publicise it are made. It’s the most impressive stage.

The plateau phase, when the initial enthusiasm passes and only those truly passionate and committed continue to give. Publicity is understandably scarcer and sparser with time. The rhythm of money received decreases significantly until it reaches a stabilised level. However, this level continues to diminish slowly but steadily with time usually trickling down to virtually nothing, or even nothing in prolonged campaigns. It’s the trickling stage.

When the trickling becomes nothing then this phase is also the final phase of a campaign.

The final phase, happens only when there’s a set deadline which interrupts the flux of contributions. It’s then the very last efforts are made and the publicity returns. Contributions do make a come back  but not in the same amount or enthusiasm as in the initial phase but certainly in greater quantities than received during the plateau phase.

The GoFund went through all these 3 phases. The Find Madeleine fund is in the plateau phase and has been like in that stage for the last 7 years. All this time in that stage in which the level of contributions slowly but steadily diminish.

The GoFund, because it lasted such a short time – not criticising, simply observing – even during the plateau phase, received daily significant amounts of money all the time it was possible to contribute to it.

We will consider the end result £52,900 and the number of days it was active, 182, and come to a daily amount the GoFund received daily: £291.

If it had run only for 1 month, according to this simplistic reasoning, it would have raised £8.730. For a year, £106,215.


By coincidence, at exactly the same time a McCann fund raising campaign also took place, “Kate’s 500 Mile Cycle Challenge”.

It started on May 1 and its last contribution was on July 31. This tells us it went on for 91 days and it raised £11,029. A daily amount of £121.

Using the same reasoning as above, if it had run for 1 month, it would have raised £3,630. For a year, £44,165.

Both these fund raising campaigns help prove how fraudulent the Find Madeleine fund appears to be.

(table from Aletheia's footsteps for Madeleine McCann)

It has been reported that the Find Madeleine fund had the following income yearly (from April 1 to March 31) during its plateau or trickling stage (still ongoing):

April 2008 to March 2009 – £650,766

April 2009 to March 2010 – £233,472

April 2010 to March 2011 – £177,635

April 2011 to March 2012 – £856,542 (this year, the revenue from book is to be included)

April 2012 to March 2013 – £70,573

April 2013 to March 2014 – £421,522

This means, and continuing to use our reasoning, that:

April 2008 to March 2009 – a daily amount of £1,783, a month: £53,488;

April 2009 to March 2010 – a daily amount of £640, a month: £19,189;

April 2010 to March 2011 – a daily amount of £487, a month: £14,600;

April 2011 to March 2012 – a daily amount of £2,347, a month: £70,401;

April 2012 to March 2013 – a daily amount of £193, a month: £5,801;

April 2013 to March 2014 – a daily amount of £1,155, a month: £34,646;

GoFund – a daily amount of £291, a month: £8,730;

Kate bike – a daily amount of £121, a month: £3,630.

Except from April 2012 to March 2013, all other years the Find Madeleine’s income was significantly better than the GoFund’s one. Very significantly better.

Impressively much, much better than of what we know was impressive.

Kate’s Cycle fund is overcome even by 2012/2013.

We all witnessed how passionately people gave to help Mr Amaral with his legal fees.

Knowing that, how realistic can the numbers for the Find Madeleine fund be?

They simply can’t. Not even for 2012/2013.

We very much doubt that after the dogs in July 2007, the general public continued to feel motivated to give to this fund any longer. The news about the dogs broke out in August 2007.

We are certain that with the parents’ possible guilt exposed the contributions stopped or trickled down to almost nothing. This in 2007, 8 years ago.

The numbers, incomprehensibly seem to say otherwise.

For example, they say that from April 2013 to March 2014 the Find Madeleine fund had an income of £421,522.

Was there then a campaign that would justify having people give monthly 4 times more than in the 6 months people gave enthusiastically to the GoFund? We don’t remember any to justify going from £70,573 in one year and then to £421,522 in the next.

Did Kate’s book selling numbers justify the fund’s revenue – £856,542 – to be 8 times better than GoFund’s? Hardly, we all witnessed the flop it was. The book was put on sale with a discount! Worse only was the Summers & Swan literary achievement with their book on Maddie.

Could these numbers be justified by the 618 donators who gave “enthusiastically” to Kate’s 500 Mile Cycle Challenge with equal enthusiasm here?

No, they couldn’t because the numbers of this fund show they gave much less enthusiastically than the ones who did to help Mr Amaral’s legal fees.

The numbers simply don’t add up in the Find Madeleine fund.

We urge that the rightful UK authorities go and REALLY audit this fund. We know the system says it is audited but on anything related to Maddie we have long stopped believing in the system.

The numbers shown, now having the GoFund ones to compare with, are simply not realistic.

To say the money came from commercial companies doesn’t make sense as these do not throw money away without having a return in publicity about their altruism.

As we said we believe the general public has long stopped wanting to go through the trouble of giving to the Find Madeleine fund.

Note that our reasoning benefits the Find Madeleine fund because the GoFund went on only for 6 months.

If it had gone on further in time, like the Find Madeleine fund has, we are certain that within a year the contributions would trickle down to a fraction of what we have considered as the daily and monthly values.

As we said, the Find Madeleine fund has been in the trickling stage for a long, long time. For the last 7 years in fact. A lot of bracelets would have to have been sold for the numbers to be correct.

Besides Gerry and Kate we haven’t seen any other human being wearing one since 2007.

Either we’re missing something or the numbers are lying. We opt for the latter.

If the numbers are lying then we are confronted with a fraud.

Authorities should verify the origins of the money received by this fund.

Because today, thanks to Mr Amaral’s legal help fund, we’re certain that it isn’t the general public who is responsible for the ridiculous numbers above.

However, one must not forget the good people from that same general public who donated to the Find Madeleine fund back in 2007.

These people were not moved by the sense of injustice that would move those who supported Mr Amaral’s legal fees 8 years later but by a genuine concern with the fate of a British toddler with a mark in her eye.


Remembering those beautiful, beautiful people, we would like to quote one of the Sun’s whistleblowers: “What made the fraud so disgusting was money came from people who shed tears over her disappearance and wanted to do their little bit.”

Poignant, poignant words. And true ones.

After all we just want what Kate McCann has said about the Find Madeleine fund in her book: “So the fund took the form of a not-for-profit, private limited company. It was set up with great care and due diligence by experts in the field. From the outset everyone agreed that, despite the costs involved, it must be run to the highest standards of transparency. There needed to be independent directors as well as family representatives, and people from a variety of professions joined my uncle Brian Kennedy and Gerry’s brother Johnny on the board. At the time, though, we had little idea how important these measures would prove to be in enabling us to withstand the massive scrutiny to which the fund would be subjected, especially when the tide turned against us” (underlining is ours).

They want attention drawn to the fraud of the fraudulent fund?

We’re here to help. Here we are doing our part.

1. Introduction

This week our post will be a non-post. The content it will have is about a non-issue: the photo known as the last photo.

We consider that the only importance the last photo has is that it supports our theory: it was faked to show a family time that didn’t exist within a family supposed to be enjoying a week long family holiday.

The fact that holiday time didn’t exist was, in our opinion, because the parents were there to enjoy adult time with other adults and that’s how they spent most of the time that week.

We didn’t intend to post this week. Life is what life is and not what we would like it to be and much less what we want it to be and personal problems have drawn our attention away from the case.

But an anonymous posted this comment:

“Anonymous 10 Nov 2015, 17:33:00

Can I ask if you will be doing a post on the Last Photo in the near future?

I'm a bit torn. I definitely think there is something wrong with the sunglasses reflection but also think it would be very, very difficult to create a convincing composite outdoors days apart in 2007.

So I'd be really interested in your thoughts on this.

Cheers.”

This all started with an opinion, to which he’s fully entitled to have, given by Tony Bennett about our post “Sagresman”.

However, in it he wrote a passage that clearly suggests that we may have changed our minds about the last photo, and would now believe or think it credible that it could have been taken on the 29th.

This being untrue, we sought clarification by placing the following comment in the blog:

“A word to Tony Bennett. There is one thing in your post on JH Forum that we would like to clarify, because you appear to attribute a belief about the last photo that we certainly do not have:

“Maria says that the photo was not taken on Sunday 29 April as claimed by Lourenco. She says that the date and time stamp was altered so as to give the date of 29 April to fit in with the bogus story of the alleged kidnapping at Sagres that day. I agree with all those conclusions, and would add that this reminds us, of course, to the discussion about the ‘Last Photo’ which now suggest that it could have been taken on Sunday 29 April and not Thursday 3 May as claimed.”

We do NOT believe that this photo of Maddie was taken on Sunday 29 April.

We do NOT believe that this photo of Maddie was taken on Thursday 3 May.

This photo is so evidently fake that we are thinking of calling it “How-not-to-fake-a-photo-photo” instead of last photo.

We believe that this photo is a composite of 2 photos. One taken of Maddie alone, WE DON’T KNOW WHEN, a copy of which appears in the Mockumentary. The other of Gerry with Amelie, which we believe was taken on 18 May. These 2 photos were then superimposed one over the other resulting in what is this photo.

We also believe a third photo was used, one where Gerry has the sunglasses hanging vertically on his t-shirt. We suppose it was also taken on 18 May during the session by the pool with Gerry and Amelie.

The lenses of the sunglasses on the composite picture is taken from this 3rd photograph. The reason being that it was the only one where the photographer didn’t appear in the reflection of the sunglasses. In the original it could have been seen that the photographer wasn’t Kate and that detail had to be removed.

We have not changed our minds in any way about what we think of that photo as you seem to be implying in your post.

If you would be kind enough to edit your post to make this clear it would be appreciated because we don't want readers misled.”

We did not seek discussion about the photo. We gave our thoughts about it only to substantiate our request for Tony Bennett to edit his post. He made a statement about us which was incorrect, it was our duty to ask to have it corrected.

However it seems that this has spawned a debate about whether the photo is or isn’t manipulated thus the comment from anon above.


2. To be manipulated or not to be manipulated

Again, we repeat, we think the photo to have little importance to the material truth.

IF, we repeat IF, it was genuine and taken on the 29, it would ONLY prove that Maddie didn’t die on Saturday.

IF the photo was genuine and taken on the 29 that wouldn’t disprove that she died on the 3rd. Or 30th, 1st or 2nd.

However, if proven to be genuine and taken on 3rd then, obviously, the theory of death before that day would collapse.

Because of that, we think that for the people defending this theory the photo must be genuine and to have been taken on the 29th. And even if hell freezes around them on this issue, they will find a match somewhere, light up and say “look how hot the weather is today”.

We believe that Maddie died on the 3rd. For us, it would be highly convenient to say that the photo to have been taken on that day as the McCanns allege.

We don’t. It’s not our policy to twist fact to tale and we very much doubt that anything on that photo was taken on that day.

Does saying the photo is not from the 3rd disprove anything we have stated? No.

The only importance that photo does have in our opinion happens to be in our favour: it shows the absence of photos of what would be expected in a week long family holiday.

One thing that the defenders of April 29 have to agree on is that the photo was manipulated.

They must agree to that. The McCanns say it was taken on the 3rd, they say it was on the 29. For that to happen the McCanns had to have manipulated one of its elements: the date.

So, according to them it’s clear, that there was on the part of the McCanns the intention to deceive. That the McCanns made an effort to deceive.

Once that intent is detected and acknowledged, where then does one draw the line of manipulation and say where there is deceit and where there isn’t?

If there was the intention, which will be the case if date altered, how much was that photo manipulated?

They say it’s only on the date. Only the date was changed.

Why? Because that’s what fits their theory.

We think intellectual integrity demands that once one accepts there was the intention, for whatever reason, to manipulate one should keep an open mind to all possibilities of manipulation.


3. Sunglasses

Our assessment about the photo having being manipulated is only to with the sunglasses. The reflection on them is physically impossible.

We think it is fake not because of any pixel manipulation but because of physics.

Once one realises the photo shows a physical impossibility then it means it has been manipulated. That simple.

We didn’t measure shadows, compare intensities of sunshine nor look at flowering bougainvilleas although some of the arguments we have seen presented have substance. Others don’t. Like in the case of this picture:


Here we have an example of someone presenting a physical impossibility as reason. It’s physically impossible for a surface to reflect something that is behind it.

The floor arrow 1 says is being reflected cannot be. It’s a physical impossibility for that to happen. It’s an argument that doesn’t serve to prove sunglasses were photoshopped.

Arrow 2 is also untrue, as Gerry’s t-shirt doesn’t appear reflected.

To prove our point we will use 3 pairs of sunglasses.


4. Sunglasses #1: Gerry’s


These are the subject of the study. Prove the reflection they show to be impossible then manipulation is proved.


A circle is represented in 3 dimensions by an ellipse. The horizontal representation of a circle has in both extremes what we call the “vertical element of the ellipse” (green square). To put it simplistically, it’s the bit that connects the near and far horizontal lines of the ellipse.


The defenders of the originality of the photo say that what is reflected on the lens is the “vertical element of the ellipse”.

One can immediately see that the curvature of one has nothing to do with the other but let’s continue.


However the more one lowers the height from which the circle is being looked at the tighter is the ellipse that represents it and smaller is the vertical bit of the “vertical element of the ellipse” (green squares).

This alone shows very clearly that the reflection in Gerry’s sunglasses is a physical impossibility. Unless the kids pool was of gigantic proportions and even then the photo would have to be taken almost vertical to the pool to get such a straight line.


5. Sunglasses #2: Darren Ware’s

Darren Ware is a fierce defender of the originality of the photo. So much so that he has posted 2 videos in which he tries to prove that the “vertical element of the ellipse” reflected in Gerry’s sunglasses is real.


On the first video he used a mannequin with a mirror and sunglasses to represent Gerry and a round bed to represent the pool edge.

Darren Ware used a mirror because it has no convexity, unlike the sunglasses have, and so, he thought, he could show how big the “vertical element of the ellipse” could appear reflected.

It was because the sunglasses do have convexity his experiment was foiled. In trying to prove something he didn’t realise he was showing what would disprove him completely.


What Darren only wanted us to see was the vertical line reflected the flat surface of the mirror, but what he failed to realise was that the realistic reflection was showing on the convex surface of the sunglasses, the exact reflection to be replicated.

The image above shows there’s a HUGE difference between the same thing being reflected on a flat surface and being reflected on a convex one.

A really HUGE difference.



As can be read in the Facebook thread where this was discussed, we immediately corrected Darren Ware by posting the picture above.


Darren Ware first responded by showing the “vertical element of the ellipse” (green rectangle) to which I replied: “That bit you pointed out is but a little bit of the edge, it would represent about a foot of the edge of the pool. Are you saying that the reflection is the reflection of a foot of the edge 10 feet away?”.

There was no response to this question. however he came back with a second video:


This time he cleared a room of furniture and represented the edge of the pool with toilet paper.


This time the mannequin didn’t have either a mirror or sunglasses (which he showed to have with him) but a pair of some kind of acrylic glasses.


The reason given for this was “my sunglasses just are opaque, they are not reflective enough, okay, as you can see you can see through them not like Gerry’s sunglasses at all. It’s very difficult with the dim light of this room to see the effect, however light travels in straight lines, it does NOT get affected by what it is bouncing off, unless you’re in a black hole with incredibly high levels of gravity, light photons travel in straight lines, so reflections happen the same no matter what they being reflected in.”

Darren Ware didn’t need to make the second video. His sunglasses had been reflective enough in the first one.

But with his explanation as to why he doesn’t use them, he has just said that what we see in those magical mirror tents in fairs, where our image is intentionally distorted, isn’t real. We're all just imaging things when we see ourselves completely distorted in those weird reflections.

But the same Darren Ware replies to another poster, Isabel Oliveira, who asked him why the photographer’s reflection doesn’t appear on the lenses of Gerry’s sunglasses:

“Isabel... in answer to your question: It all depends on a complex variety of factors. Key ones are distance between the camera and the subject, and the shape (i.e. convexity) of whatever is reflecting back to you. So, for example, in a portrait taken close up you'll see a very wide angled reflection (such as a whole room) of the area behind the photographer...but in the case of the Lat Photo the photographer was possibly 5 meters away from the subject and so the reflected image would be a very narrow field of view. Why can't you see the photographer in his lenses? Simply because, since at that distance the field of view would be narrow, there's a greater chance of not seeing the photographer than doing so.”

Now the convexity matters. But please note that this response is all about physics. Not a single word about pixels. Angles, distances, shapes (i.e. convexity), angles and fields. And that is correct as only physics matter when discussing reflections.

But do also note how Darren does not refer to this “complex variety of factors” [his words] when simplifying things his way – even having gone goes to the point saying they don’t matter (“it does NOT get affected by what it is bouncing off” and “so reflections happen the same no matter what they being reflected in”) – to explain how the reflection of 1 or 2ft of the edge of the pool would fill up vertically a whole lens located at “possibly 5 meters away” when the reflections of objects on lenses from that distance are a fraction of their real size. Those 1 or 2 feet would be millimetres.

These are what we call Darren Ware’s sunglasses:




6. Sunglasses #3: Textusa’s

During the day we spent together in our hotel we asked friends of ours to pose by the kids pool of the hotel. The idea was to replicate the last photo. Only missing a small child to make it perfect:


We have censored all elements that may identify this couple. Experience has unfortunately shown that there are some out there who in their desperate attempts to discredit us will go and do anything even disrespecting the privacy of others who have nothing to do with the case.


The pool, we have checked later on Google Maps was the exact same size of the kids pool at Tapas, with an approximate diameter of 7 metres. The red circle was drawn over the kids pool at our hotel.

So what is seen reflected is very similar in distortion as to was expected to be seen in Gerry’s sunglasses:

These are what we call the Textusa’s sunglasses:




7. The 3 sunglasses



8. The “vertical element of the ellipse” in the 3 sunglasses



Isn’t it VERY CLEAR that the vertical element in Gerry’s glasses is the clear exception? The impossible one?


9. The photographer


What unravelled for us the last photo “mystery” was Isabel Oliveira’s question to Darren Ware as to why no photographer appeared on the lenses of Gerry’s sunglasses.

We saw that the glasses had been photoshopped but we simply could not understand why. And the mistake seemed so evident that this particular photoshopping baffled us. We even thought it was on purpose so as to spawn discussions around it by conspiracy theorists.

But Isabel’s question made us realise that with the angle (straight ahead) and height (almost the same as photographer) which Gerry is looking at the camera the photographer had to be reflected in the lens. He or she wasn’t. To hide that could only mean in the original photo it would be visible that the photographer wasn’t Kate.

That realisation made us ask, why not then use another picture to photoshop, one with an horizontal reflection?

The answer is that the Tapas kid’s pool is not a photographic studio. Pictures were taken there and the realisation that photographer appeared in all photos with the horizontal reflection of pool.

And here Darren Ware’s sunglasses help solve the mystery. For the photographer’s reflection to not appear he has to be holding the camera from a significant angle away, vertically or horizontally. Using a mirror:


A mirror has a flat surface. This narrows significantly the angles from which the photographer would be reflected. The convexity of the lenses of sunglasses make this angle much wider. Unless one is taking a profile picture or with the subject looking away from camera, the photographer appears horizontally.

Vertically, it’s easier not to be shown. One just has to photograph the subject from a different height. That’s why in Darren Ware’s photograph there’s no photographer: he’s taken the picture from above the mannequin:


In Textusa’s picture, taken at almost same level of subject, the photographer (red arrow) can be seen:



The blue arrow shows a reflection of where Amelie would have appeared reflected.

The only photograph they would have without the photographer’s reflection would have been one where the glasses were hanging on Gerry’s t-shirt:


The vertical angle from where it was taken, makes only the reflection of the other side of the pool appear (one would have to see the original to see exactly what is being reflected).


That would explain the vertical lines in Gerry’s reflection. They are not vertical lines at all, they are horizontal lines rotated when the lenses of glasses are photoshopped.


This also explains the little pink bit, which would be Amelie’s hat reflected where she was in the original picture – not the last photo, as the original from where the glasses were taken from has nothing to do with it.

To show how easy it is to photoshop the lenses, we did just that:


Only we didn’t use photoshop. We used a much less powerful and basic image editing tool: paintbrush. Just cropped the left lens (left from the point of view of a person looking at Gerry), flipped it horizontally and placed it over the pixels that were in the right lens.

The left lens is the original. Please tell the difference.

That simple. A photoshopped image leaving all shadows and other pixels intact.


10. Experts

The defenders of the originality of the photo say that it’s genuine because 2 experts say it is. We have never heard this. The best we heard to that effect was that they thought that it was “fairly certain” that it was an original.

“Fairly certain” is quite far from saying “this was NOT 'several generations' away from the original, that in fact it was NO 'generations' away from the original, and indeed was an ORIGINAL, GENUINE, UNPHOTOSHOPPED photo”.

By the way, if any expert had said that then they would show themselves not to be experts at all. No expert could, in a technological area, say for certainty that a photo has not been tampered with.

Reason being that in this area one can only use the tools one knows technology has at that moment. One is not aware if there is new technology that renders the tools one has useless.

An expert can determine if a photo has been manipulated but no expert would give absolute certainty that it was not. The best an expert can do is to say that with the tools available he detected no manipulation. That is not saying it was not manipulated.

This is what the experts in question have said:

“PeterMac on Wed Oct 15, 2014 4:23 pm

“20.1 I have taken an initial look at the image. The artefacts alluded to in the pdf document that you sent are simply JPEG compression artefacts (as described here: http://www.fourandsix.com/blog/2011/6/29/that-looks-fake.html ). If you magnify other parts of the image you will see similar artefacts. I also performed a forensic analysis to determine if the lighting and the shadows on the people and background are consistent -- they are. I see no other anomalies in the photo. So, at first glance, I see no evidence of photo tampering.

I will add that it is fairly easy to change dates in an image's metadata or for these dates to be wrong. As such these dates should not be solely relied upon.

Regards,

Y Y Y Y

20.2 “From what I saw I couldn't see anything that would lead me to believe beyond reasonable doubt it had been doctored. The fringing mentioned can be caused by auto sharpening used in consumer digital cameras to make 'better' or 'sharper' images. These artefacts can often be made worse from image compression algorithms out of photoshop or other image manipulation software.”

Neither are stating without doubt that it was not doctored.

We don’t know what was asked of the experts. We don’t know if they were paid for their opinion. If they weren’t we don't what was their motivation to collaborate nor what was their commitment when they answered.

We could be confronted with a brush-off answer like we saw was given by the Wayback Machine with its first reply.

We don’t know the pressure they felt in saying the photo was genuine because of fear of being sued if they said otherwise.

We don’t know what photo they looked at, as we very much doubt the McCanns sent the originals to the expert for said analysis.

Without looking at the detailed reports from experts we don’t know what their opinions are precisely.

Experts do not create truth. Experts explain truth. Truth was always there before they explain it. It’s their expertise that makes us see it when previously our ignorance did not allow us to do so. But what experts can't do is to invent truth.

It’s our eyes and our brains that tell us what truth is. No one and nothing else. Experts’ opinions guide us to more solid reasons to what we believe to be truth. Because we believe it to be so and not because they tell us it is. 

Galileo Galilei was surrounded by experts that at the time stated without doubt that the earth was flat. These experts and those supporting them, did not allow anyone to question such expertise.

This is what I said to Tony Bennett on Facebook, on September 22, concerning the experts:

“I have already pointed out to you that the experts you keep repeating have deemed the last photo as “photoshop-free” are completely useless for the discussion we have had here, unless they have expertise in other areas than the ones you’ve mentioned.

I am not putting them down or minimising their opinions. As you’ll see I would very much like to hear their opinion on something. But this is NOT about photoshopping this is about the physics of imagery. This is not their area of expertise.

(…)

To your photoshopping experts I would put only one question: are the lenses of the sunglasses photoshopped?

However, I would only be satisfied with only one answer from them: “yes”. And I can tell you right now that I would expect for their answer to be “no”.

Before you criticise me I am not being disrespectful to them or stubbornly accepting only one answer as I’ll explain next.

The answer “no” would be the most likely but for me would be inconclusive.

Why? Because I think the lenses shown belong to the frame and that the frame belongs to the face. So I’m almost certain that the analysis by experts of the border between lenses/frame and the border between frame/head would both result in a conclusive “no, it’s not photoshopped”. And they would be correct.

I have some limited experience in image formatting, am not an expert and my “work” is exposed in the images I publish on the blog. It’s limited but it is experience and is enough to allow me to know that what I would be asking your experts to detect (now we’re talking pixels and not physics) is very hard or even impossible to detect: the superimposition of solid colour over the exact same solid colour.

What I think was done, was they cut the image by the middle of the frame of glasses from one picture and superimpose it over the image of the same pair of glasses of another picture. As the pair of glasses was the same in both the pictures so the tonalities of the frame in the image from which was taken would be the same as the one of the frame that was superimposed.

The “scar” would be in the middle of the frame and not on the borders lenses/frame nor on the border frame/head. Those borders would be originals. The first from the image from where it was cut and the latter from the image in which it was pasted.

Thus me saying it would be very hard or impossible to detect.

In this matter I would be very pleased and attentive at what your experts would have to say about it. It would be their area of expertise and they would now be correctly directed was to what they would be looking for, with precision: only the frame of the glasses.

If they said yes, they would prove my point but if they said no they wouldn’t disprove it for the reasons said.”


11. The manipulation of the last photo

Our reader, Nuala Seaton made the following entry on Facebook:

“Anthony Bennett I'm not interested in what your experts had to say. We don't know who they are and we don't know what questions they were asked. Besides which no-one should blindly take the word of an expert and I'm surprised that you do. Anyone who has seen expert witnesses giving testimony in court cases knows two experts on the same subject can have totally opposing views.

So expecting to shut down this debate with the "experts" argument isn't going to work. We're intelligent people with minds of our own and we use them.

The reflection in GM's sunglasses is impossible. The photo was photoshopped.

Isabel Oliveira has asked Darren Ware a perfectly valid question about the photographer's reflection not being in GM's sunglasses. So far he's ignored her question, so we await his response.

It's my belief that the reason the reflection in GM's sunglasses had to be photoshopped is because it DID show the reflection of the person taking the photograph, and that person wasn't Kate McCann.

It's also my belief that the base photo (at the pool) was taken around 17th/18th May 2007 and the image of Maddie was added in afterwards. There are photos here of GM wearing the same clothes as in the Last Photo and AM with her pink hat:

http://www.gerrymccannsblogs.co.uk/1857.htm”

I responded to Nuala on 22 September at 11:26:

“Nuala Seaton, agree totally with you.

Isabel Oliveira's question has just unlocked for me the mystery. Gerry is looking straight at the camera, the glasses are perpendicular to the viewer and at about the same height. The photographer would have to be reflected. Not should but had to! The glasses are perpendicular to the camera.

And it could be easily seen it was not Kate.

My opinion is this.

Photo of Maddie taken during week, could be Sunday, could be any other day, under the context of holiday. It could even have been taken by the childcare people or by the McCanns.

There was a need to to create family time. The few pics taken of Maddie dictate what can be done. This probably was the only photo she took around pool.

After Maddie died, and it could be on the date you say (the heat had passed, media were domesticated to reporting when McCanns gave press conference, clothes and sunlight seem to fit and explains why it took so long for picture to surface), Gerry and Amelie pose for pic.

In "studio" the photographer reflection problem is detected. Probably when the whole picture set up. It needs to be solved. They simply took the glasses from other image taken that afternoon and was pasted over the original.

The picture from where they copied glasses from would be one where Gerry would have them vertically on his shirt, and the reflection being of the opposite border of pool from where he's seating.

The choice of picture from where to choose from was most likely conditioned with the photographer's reflection. Most pictures would have it. This one didn't because the glasses were on his chest and the angle makes what is reflected to be beneath the horizon line of camera, thus the other side of the border.

All this, obviously, MY opinion. My thanks to you and Isabel. It's always the bits and pieces of unconditioned debate that allows one to withdraw the best conclusions.”

This is what we think happened with the manipulation:

A photo of Maddie was taken during the week:


A photo session by the pool, in the weeks after Maddie disappeared, was arranged to create the idea the McCann family spent time together by the pool. One photo was chosen:


In a studio, when doing the composition, it was realised that the photographer appeared in the reflection. Another photo taken during that session by the pool where such a reflection didn’t appear was chosen:


The three put together made up the last photo:



Post-Scriptum:

In response to a comment from Blackcat on 13 Nov 2015, 19:23:00.

Original image from http://www.mccannfiles.com/id280.html

Last night the world, not Paris, was the victim of something horribly new, not a terrorist attack but a Attack of Terrorism. Much more resolute, planned, coordinated and executed.

The blog addresses the deepest condolences to the victims of this tragedy and to their families.

The blog will not publish any comments on the Maddie case. Those we have received and those which we will eventually receive we will publish them tomorrow.

We have to continue  life as normally as possible.

David Jones article on Monday in the Daily Mail about Maddie was very interesting.

It starts with the fact that it rivals in extent with some of our posts, 2,371 words to be exact. Not usual in a tabloid.

Then it’s about a move in this sick game Maddie has become, that wasn’t meant to be one but ended up being one, the closure of the Maddie case.

A relevant one as we hope to explain.

Something that focused our attention briefly between SY being clobbered by the press with its possible involvement in paedo scandals and Brenda Leyland’s Coroner’s court inquest on March 20 and has now returned to the spotlight

It’s an interesting article because it is written in a way that pleases all.

Those supporting that there’s an ongoing campaign for the archiving of Operation Grange, the Swinging Black Hats, are pleased because it seems to support them. It maintains the claims of the PJ’s ineptitude and botched investigations and states clearly that Maddie was abducted.

Those, like us, who believe there is pressure to convince the Swinging Black Hat Deciders that there is no way out of this other than to publicly unveil the truth, are also pleased because as we hope to explain, the article seems to be more in our favour than in theirs.

And because nothing can please two opposing sides simultaneously, it has to have another objective altogether besides dwelling on whether Operation Grange should be closed.

That is what makes it particularly interesting because it’s not about Operation Grange but about throwing Operation Grange right in front of us to distract from one of the most inconvenient episodes of this whole saga, Brenda Leyland’s death.

By giving us all something to chew on and fight about, it draws away attention from Brenda.

Yes, the written record of Brenda Leyland's inquest will be available soon but only to “properly interested persons” and that status is for the coroner to decide who it will be given to:

“A properly interested person can only be:

• anyone else who the coroner may decide also has a proper interest.”

Not seeing us ever being able to look at it from now until 2030, the time the coroner has to keep the records.

And what novelty could it possibly bring to the MSM besides confirming what the MSM has already reported and that it was a suicide?

Whatever is related to Brenda and what happened to her must be swiftly swept under the rug. The faster, the better.


2. Brenda Leyland

About Brenda we will just say the following: no one killed Brenda Leyland but Brenda Leyland.

It was her decision to take her own life and which resulted in her losing it. Not being harsh, judgmental or disrespectful to her but simply stating fact.

What made her make that tragic decision, is open for discussion and we hope to do it another day.

Wounds are still too recent making the subject too sensitive to be dealt with for now.

However, we will not embark in any murder conspiracy theory about her death.

At a certain point in time and for reasons we think we can guess, Brenda decided to do what she did and for that purpose probably searched the internet and acquired the necessary material, namely the helium canisters and in the privacy of the hotel room took her own life.

To discuss where she bought the material, when she bought it or if there’s CCTV images of her doing so is, for us, to dwell unnecessarily in gruesome details and being disrespectful to Brenda and to her memory.

We have witnessed all over the internet that Martin Brunt has taken the burden for her death. On March 20 he was able to do the almost impossible which was to walk into the Coroner’s court looking really bad and walk out looking even worse.

But we do not take part in any witch-hunting. We condemn such attitudes. It repulses us.

To criticise someone we must first find reason to criticise. Taking the easiest route has never been our way of being and we will always compose for ourselves the songs we sing.

Martin Brunt in this specific episode is, in our opinion, a character as much wronged has he has done wrong.

If the reader thinks we’re in any way exonerating Brunt from any responsibility please reread the words “has done wrong” in the previous paragraph.

Brunt was just the finger that pulled the trigger. Not even the hand and much less the man who did it. He was the “hitman” mandated to do a job and did it. It just went awfully and tragically wrong. Brunt made that very clear on March 20.

Consciences should really weigh heavy on those who know there’s weight on their consciences about Brenda. Unfortunately many have arrived in this world without one. “Collateral damage” is just a two-word expression to use conveniently.

That is all we want to say about Brenda for now. It was a tragic mishap that holds little mystery to us but about which we prefer to abstain providing a more substantiated opinion at the moment. For that reason only and not because of Mirror’s distracting article.

David Jones literary piece last Monday March 23 in the Mirror is but a piece in a chain of events that began on March 12 and had nothing to do with Maddie.

Life does not revolve only around Maddie and the article proves that but it also proves that the Maddie case is one painful thorn in UK’s side which has created a purulent and pestilent sore recognised worldwide by its putrid smell and horrendous footprint.

People all around the world feign ignorance but the discomfort is evident. Whenever a Brit meets up with someone from another country the Maddie case in the subconscious of both is a taboo subject. As if the British have been branded with a scarlet letter “M”. A dark cloud that covers every inch of the country.

It has damaged the UK’s reputation beyond anything we have known in the past. By dragging the UK’s name in the mud one could eventually compare it with the “soccer hooliganism” phenomenon back in the early 80’s that shamed England.

It took the Heysel tragedy to make the UK face it head-on with all its horrid truths and so eradicate it. Since then England has restored on the various European pitches its lost credibility and prestige. Why? Because it had to face a problem it was pretending wasn’t as serious as it really was.

That should be a lesson to those persisting that the best solution to the Maddie case is to stick the head in the ground like an ostrich. These people should finally understand that whatever may emerge with the truth will be less damaging than the damage caused by each day this case is allowed to further putrefy in the hands of the foolhardy.

The biggest victim in UK of the Maddie case is SY.

One thing is to be told to go and sell sand to camels, another is to be told to say publicly in the 21st century that the Earth is flat and ordered to ignore all proof that Galileo Galilei was right. It’s degrading and humiliating.

Sky News, on March 16, with the article “Met Investigated Over Child Sex Cover-Up Claims” and Daily Mail with their 2 articles of March 17 “Metropolitan Police to be investigated over claims of 14 separate child sex abuse cover-ups because MPs and officers were involved” and “Cyril Smith was spared court because he would have exposed other high-profile child abusers says former police detective” and Mirror's “Metropolitan Police Chief Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe facing probe over child abuse 'cover-up'” on that same day reported on a possible involvement of the Met in paedo scandals.

Plus the IPCC (Independent Police Complaints Commission) said on March 16 that it was investigating the Met: “IPCC to investigate allegations of historic corruption relating to child sexual abuse in the Metropolitan Police”.

We think that this pressure put on SY is them being used once again as they have been used since 2011.

In our opinion, SY on the Maddie case is to Government Black Hat Deciders as Martin Brunt is to Sky News, it handles it according to what it is told to do. No independence of action whatsoever.

So with the publishing of these articles that say the Met may be up to its neck in covering up paedo scandals, the Government Black Hat Deciders are clearly showing the Swinging Black Hat Deciders that SY cannot afford any more scandals and much less one with the magnitude of Maddie.

But, as we said, there is life outside Maddie, and as Greece, Ireland and Portugal have known in recent years, public funds in all European Governments aren’t what they were and irrelevant of personal opinions on the necessity or not of its application one word has become familiar to all of us in Europe: cuts.

As in budget cuts.

So, with nothing to do with Maddie, Government announced a £600M cut in the Met budget over the next for the next 3 years. Completely within context with modern times.

For those with some difficulty in math, it’s exactly 60 Operations Grange. Less than that if the tab of this operation keeps growing.

Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe, QPM, present Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis (head of London's Metropolitan Police Service) reacted to these cuts. He went on BBC 2’s Newsnight and defended his organisation.

On this appearance he showed concern with mental-health related cases. Because other public services are also under pressure, emergencies often end up with police called and 40% of cases in London are concerned with mental health issues.

The cuts other services suffered ended up meaning a greater workload for the police as it was picking up the pieces of work other agencies - hospitals and social services - had passed onto them.

He also says that the sex offenders register has grown since its inception in 2002. It’s unsustainable for police to monitor it and it is growing.

The closest he comes to the Maddie case is to say that older, historic inquiries (child sex abuse, so nothing to do with Maddie) are going to take longer and be done more slowly.

It's harder to get corroborating evidence in these processes and that may require more officers – if one links this specifically to Maddie, which we think one shouldn’t, then he’s suggesting SY are trying to find corroborating evidence.

He says nothing about closing older, historic cases but that's because of cuts in resources there will have to be a discussion on priorities.

A decision on what to ration. Society will have to decide on priorities needed and that police, probation service, health service and fire service must work together effectively.

Spending will be reduced on everything and he wants a conversation with the public about their priorities.

He defends SY by noting that the Met has saved £600M over 3 years and was the  only force in the country which has retained its numbers. That they are capable of adapting, even when money is tight.

This conversation would take place, in our view, regardless of Maddie case.

Hogan-Howe is defending, as he should, the corporate interests of the organisation he leads and, in our opinion, did quite a good job on BBC 2 that night.

If one has to connect this interview with Maddie, then one could say he implies that if the case comes up with no results then questions may arise from the public in case Police officers lose their jobs because of cuts.

Following suit, the Metropolitan Police Federation met, in synch with Hogan-Howe, seeking to reinforce the idea that their members’ jobs were on the line.

Up to here, as the reader can easily understand, all this has nothing to do with Maddie. All to do with the appropriate defense of rightful corporate interests.

It’s the highest hierarchy of the Met simply expressing their discontent about the foreseen cuts, which not only is their right but is also their duty.

Enter the scene Jerry Lawton.

Since the proven/not proven facts court audience in January little or nothing has been released about the case so, probably pressed by his bosses, Lawton had to find something to write about Maddie. SY's discontentment about its budget cuts was a window of opportunity and he seized it.

Lawton would most likely know Metropolitan Police Federation chairman John Tully's opinions about the cuts in resources and probably asked him about what was to happen about the Maddie review.

The timing was not because Brenda Leyland’s inquest was coming up but simply because it was then that SY was voicing that older/historic cases had to be reprioritised.

We imagine Lawton asked Tully “will the Maddie case close because of cuts?”

The discussion had nothing to do with Maddie up to that moment, but when Lawton threw the line and Tully took the bait it became part of it.

This is what Tully said, as per Daily Star (March 18):

Tully’s reply if read in the right context is, in our opinion, saying the following:

Not only that what he said led to misinterpretation as it is incorrect. Because the Maddie review is not budgeted by the Met but by the Home Office.

Cuts to SY do not affect the review as any cut in the review will not affect SY in terms of budget.

Tully also is not right about human resources. These are indeed being diverted to a task “outside” SY but are being paid out Home Office’s budget and once they end their mission and “return” their salary will weigh, again on the Met’s budget.

Closing the Maddie case will only aggravate SY’s budget problems, not ease them.

But we understand his position as a Federation representative with members’ jobs on the line and seeing £10M spent on an apparently fruitless investigation outside the UK.

Tully’s tweet on March 18 “I've no problems with the content of the article, although I didn't say what the headline suggests -Inference taken I suppose” seemed to be pulling back from what was written about what he said but acknowledged that could be interpreted that way:


Basically recognising that he took the bait.

The rest of the media were stunned. It was a surprise for all. The vast majority preferred to be silent about it. Only the Express'“Is the hunt for Madeleine McCann over? Police urged to return and 're-focus' on UK” and Daily Mail's “It's time we ended the search for Maddie so officers can focus on threats to the public, says police union chief” echoed the Daily Star.

Third-grade press reporting first-grade news while the first and second-grade media just ignored it. 

Besides these 2 tabloids at the time only the Portugal Resident also referred this issue with the article “British police ready to drop Maddie probe as London faces increasing terrorist threat”.

However, as we explained, something that was not supposed to be a move in the Maddie case, had become one.

But this move had a peculiarity, as it came from neither the Government Black Hat Deciders nor the Swinging Black Hat Deciders. It came from SY, expressing the enormous discontent felt within the organisation about the whole Maddie case.

SY didn’t mean to say it out loud but Lawton made it audible.

SY showed that it is really not happy at all about having to do this job. Up until June last year it tolerated it but since that painted wall in Luz and the traffic signs with the grafiti that followed the humiliation became intolerable, too great a burden to bear:

Even if without that intention of saying, SY told both Government Black Hat Deciders and Swinging Black Hat Deciders to make up their minds about the case. Close it, shelve it, prosecute somebody but just take SY out of the madhouse inferno they were put in and show some respect for the organisation.

About the closure of the case, it is a real possibility which we have repeatedly warned about. We have said that the case is now down to 2 possibilities: truth or archival. No other.

But naming the 2 means both are real. Both can happen depending on the political courage required for each option.

Closing the case benefits only one side, the Black Hats.

As we have been saying since 2012, for the Black Hats it shouldn’t have ever been reopened. It was a mistake. To return it to its original state would be a blessing for them.

But Jones is quite accurate in summing it up in a few words how all began “then, in 2011, at the behest of David Cameron and Home Secretary Theresa May, Scotland Yard’s finest were called in to clear up the mess.”

He who has started it is the only one who can finish it.

Even if it’s the Home Office to announce the fate of the process, it won’t be the Home Office doing it but doing it on behalf of Nº10.

Only Nº10 has the power for this decision. Cameron today or whoever tomorrow. No one else.

Even in this McCanns have got it wrong in the only comment, in the Daily Star on March 19, known to have originated from them, from a friend, “it is up to the Met, the Prime Minister and the Home Office to decide the longevity of the investigation – not the Police Federation which has its own agenda”.

No, it’s not up to the Met, nor even up to the Home Office. The McCanns have only got one in three right.

It's a rather apathetic and dispassionate reaction from the parents on receiving the news that the nation is possibly about to abandon all its efforts in finding their daughter who they believe to be alive. After all, these were the same parents who mustered up the courage needed to write directly to the Prime-Minister four years ago.

SY may moan and groan however it likes and it will serve them very little.

If a mother gives her son a broom to sweep up his room, it’s useless for him to whine about how the broom would be better used in the living-room. It’s for the bedroom, end of story.

And if the mother takes away the broom and gives the son the same task to do with a toothpick, then the room will be swept with that toothpick. The job may take longer, but no matter how much moaning and groaning there is, until the  mother changes her mind, it will be with a toothpick that the room will be swept.

But in this case, it was not a toothpick mother has given son, but the most modern hi-tech vacuum cleaner in the world and on top of that announced to the whole neighbourhood that she had done exactly that. Now how pleased will she be if the son comes back and tells her “sorry, the room floor is still as dirty as it was, I just wasn’t able to clean it with this hi-tech vacuum cleaner you gave me to do the job”?

To dash the mother’s hope of a clean floor after having publicly committed herself so adamantly to that objective would be as well received as in dashing the high hopes of a Prime-Minister, or as Jones so eloquently puts it “at least, that was the Prime Minister’s hope, and perhaps his expectation, when — apparently moved by a personal appeal from the McCanns — he ordered a team of Met detectives to be removed from their other duties and assigned to the case, codenamed Operation Grange”.

The press may equally holler as loudly as it can, and it hasn’t, it will produce the same effect. There are only two reputations at stake. Cameron’s for an absurdly unrealistic “hoping” which caused a significant waste of time (“a huge number of man-hours have been spent”) and national resources (“eye-watering £10million of taxpayers’ Money”) in times of cuts all across the board and May’s for dashing that enormous “hope”.

According to some, in the line only the present and the future of the Conservative Party. And all just because someone lost their temper in the early hours of a spring evening 8 years ago far away from the country.

But if one wants to convince the administration board to stop the production of a certain item does one remind them that it’s selling like hot potatoes? Because that’s exactly how Jones is selling the closure:

The public has shown the greatest interest for the subject, even surpassing that shown for the queen of pop, so let’s close it.

Shouldn’t the rhetoric be instead about how that interest was waning?

Then there’s the “must” factor. UK is filled with examples on how its Prime-Ministers usually abide by the Press telling them what they should do on issues they have personally committed to. Not.

But, for reasons less strange than those that made this affair become what it has become, Nº10 may decide it is best to close the case. As we said, and repeat, it’s an option on the table at the moment.

All that is needed is for the public to accept that after interviewing only 14 people (hardy a “plethora” for a case of this magnitude), after “great swathes of wasteland in Praia da Luz were explored with sophisticated gadgetry last year”, after not explaining whether the forensics were indeed requested to Portugal or not and if they were what was tested and what were the results and after the negative propaganda against another country involving an ridiculous number of British little girls being sexually assaulted there (even though the local authorities firmly denied any of them ever having happened).

Note that all of the above is from SY’s mouth. Not from the press but official statements from the Met.

If we were to involve the press the number of unfounded “imminent arrests” announced comes to mind.

But even if Nº10 closes the case, there is one minor detail that is being overlooked: what about the Portuguese process?

Will it close first? Or a little after? Or at the same time? Won’t that make it a little too obvious that shenanigans are going on in both countries about this?

Will it go that the Portuguese will “promise” that they will not come to any sort of result and will re-archive it?

Or will it go that the PJ continues their process and find some result? That would be the worst scenario for UK.

Investigations in Portugal have expiration dates. Deadlines that are to be met. But as all that has to do with time in Portuguese law, the timelines set are but guidelines and can extended if justified.

Has the PJ investigation exceeded the initial deadline? We think it has and that means if it’s still open it’s because someone requested an extension and obtained it. But for that there had to be some sort of justification.

To re-archive the PJ process without any sort of result, seems to us it would be very vexatious to PJ and Portugal.

If these processes, in UK and Portugal, close without results we’re anticipating a certain (high) degree of discontent on the part of the public of both countries. And a disgusted shake of the head from the rest of the world.

Discontent usually leads to the seeking of information and nowadays people looking for details on a subject do not look for them in the media. They have the internet for that. For some reason the expression “let me google it”— used by David Jones in his article — has become so familiar to all, more than any other brand in the world.

People will continue to turn to the media for new news but it's the internet they use to know about all others. 

May we remind all those interested that once the process archived again in Portugal it can be looked at with the exact same public scrutiny as the PJ Files have been for the last 7 years.

So, by all means, UK, do close the process. It’s only history you’re making whatever decision you make.

But please have the message brought to us from where it has to come from and that is only from Nº10.

And Nº10 hasn't given any sign of wanting to do that. Not now, so close to the elections in May.

We're seeing Nº10 closing this process as much as we're seeing Nº10 announcing such a decision via a tabloid. We aren't.

Does anyone remember who conservative Robert Gascoyne-Cecil was? Or, better said, the Most Honourable Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury KG GCVO PC FRS?

No, no one does. But if history was to discover that he, as Prime-Minister (1886-1892), had in some way been involved in protecting Jack the Ripper allowing him to escape justice, we would all remember him today.

Sometimes it’s best not to be remembered than to be remembered only for the wrong reasons.

Gordon Brown is already negatively linked to Maddie.

David Cameron will either win the May elections or is very quickly about to lose the window of opportunity to not follow in the same path, or on the contrary, to be the one who will be registered in history as being responsible for closure of this case by having the truth outed about what really happened to the British little girl with an alleged coloboma in her right eye.

Closure of this case will never be found in the abrupt closure of the case.

Only in a closure with the truth.

Next week we will be taking our Easter break. Then we hope to return to Luz because it’s there that both the material truth and factual lies lay.

1. Introduction

ALL – except for us in this blog and for our supporters – interested in the Maddie case have to agree on one thing: the Tapas bar was an exceptionally good restaurant.

So exceptional that we know of no other in Portugal where people queue to make reservations to have dinner there.

We have seen at many restaurants people waiting outside or by the bar for a table to vacate. But to come in the morning and queue to be able to get a cover, with a high degree of uncertainty of getting it, for that evening, Tapas is absolutely unique in Portugal.

We would even go as far as saying it is unequalled in the world.


2. The wonder-restaurant


We know of many restaurants that are fully booked not only for the day but also for the following days, weeks and even months but these all have the same reservation procedure when it comes to getting a table: one can book today for whenever.

One can book for a different day from the one the reservation is being made.

To demonstrate, today being Friday, in any restaurant in the world one can book a table for tomorrow, Saturday, or for whenever the restaurant in question has a table available, if that means 3 months from today.

Only Tapas in Praia da Luz had in place the “first-come-first-served-but-only-for-today” reservation system. Unique in the entire world.

Thus the queues.

It seems one could not get in the queue, say on Monday, and upon realising that one had woken up just a little too late to get a cover that day and just ask to have a reservation for Tuesday. No, one had to accept one’s fate for the day and if one wanted a meal at Tapas one would simply have get up early on the Tuesday and apply like and with all others for a coveted spot. And hope for the best.

Was there a sign saying “Tapas reservations from 9am – 10am? At what time did they start to accept reservations? Did one just stand there and wait for the grace of an employee to decide whenever he or she was in the mood to take reservations?

We said in our post “Tapas Dining - Fawlty Towers Style” that waiter Joaquim José Moreira Baptista said that to book a Tapas table, guests had to queue at reception from 11 am onwards on the day (The Sun 23.10.07).

The article, brimming with the Narrative of Negligence, was the Sun’s front page of Oct 23 2007: “MADDIE EXCLUSIVE: WHAT WAITERS SAW. Kate left kids alone 3 hours a night”.

Although in the article it’s said “a waiter at the resort where they ate out nightly with three other couples told The Sun it was always the men who looked in on the children. The employee, who did not want to be named... ” starts with “Jose Baptiste, 45, said...”

About the reservations this is what José Baptista had to say:

“Initially the couples went to the restaurant with their children in tow. But the youngsters were cranky and they moved to the nearer poolside tapas bar after a "quiet word" with the manager.

The waiter added: "To get a table guests have to queue up at reception from 11am on the day.

"But somehow the McCanns made a special arrangement to get a table for nine for the last four nights of their holiday.”

We also found an article from the Daily Mail, of the same date with a very similar title: “Kate and Gerry 'left Madeleine alone for three hours for four nights in a row'”:

“The waiter, who has asked not to be identified, said the nightly routine was "set in stone", making it easy for a potential abductor to "choose the right moment to take the child".

He said the group made a "special arrangement" to book the same table at 8pm every night so they could sit outside, 50 metres from where their children lay sleeping.

He told how the arrangement was widely known about by workers at the restaurant, who thought it was strange that other holiday-makers had to queue for reservations at the popular tapas bar.”

José Baptista saying that it was at 11am is contradicted by a guest Andrew Oxlade, Editor of the blog “This is money” in his May 9 2007 blog entry speaking from his own (alleged) very fresh experience:“My experience of Maddie's resort in Praia de Luz, the Algarve”:

“Around that pool was the Tapas bar which was in high demand every night. Most guests went to the buffet at the Ocean Club’s Millennium restaurant, a 10-minute walk away from the McCanns’ apartment. But eager guests would queue from 9am to book one of the limited number of tables at the Tapas bar, which served barbecued fish and meat dishes to order. Both restaurants were included in the price of the holiday”.

Which was it, 9am or 11am? How confused the guests must have been. But no confusion that there were guests queueing up for Tapas! What an exquisite restaurant it must have been.

We do wonder how many guests did spend their entire holiday trying to get a meal at Tapas without success? We are sure many got up early every single day of their holiday only to face bitter disappointment.

A holiday spent fruitlessly in queues. Quite sad when one comes to think about it. Our sympathy to all those people. How frustrating it must have been for them to have seen the T9 at Tapas every night.

But at least these “queue-people” entertained themselves with something to do every day during that holiday which unlike all other of the rest of the 300+ guests who were also there and about who we still have to be told to this day what they did during all that time in a Praia da Luz without beach or pool.

But this “first-come-first-served-but-only-for-today” reservation system was complemented with a “teacher’s-pet-guests” one, or as José Baptista said it best with his “special arrangement” and “"quiet word" with the manager”. A very nepotistic reservation subsystem. Only for those guests who the restaurant considered didn’t have to stand every day in line like all the rest. The elite of the elite.

The T9 seem to have benefitted from this as well. They were part of the chosen few, the “queueless ones”.

Only a fabulously extraordinary restaurant can treat its potential customers with such disdain and arrogance.

And indeed it seemed it could as we have yet to read a single complaint about this reservation system at Tapas in any of the reviews we have read about the Ocean Club, as per our “Reviewing the Reviews” post.

Guests were mistreated but the desire to have dinner at Tapas was apparently so great that they put up with the rejection without complaint.

It is quite strange that such a sought after restaurant is hardly mentioned in the reviews and that can only be explained by the fact that those fortunate enough to have been able to get a meal there not wanting to share it with the world, not wanting it to be known.

Tapas was to be their little secret. The less people knew how brilliantly good Tapas was the less long the queues would be.

And the secret was so great that even guests there didn't know they had to queue up were surprised by having dinner there. A guest on Tripadvisor wrote the following on Sept 20 2007:

“The staff at the Tapas bar were great and the pool was lovely and clean. We should know the kids spent most of the two weeks we were there in it!. We also had dinner at the Tapas bar which was a great surprise.... really nice food, well presented and the staff were pleasant.”

Tapas did not have Michelin stars because that company only gives 3 stars and anything below 5 or 6 stars would be simply unbecoming for such a fantastic restaurant.

Its quick serving and efficiency speak for itself as we showed in our post “Nights of the round table”.


3. Allotment

The reason for the supposed queues could only have been because of limited spaces available.

Kate confirms this in her book:

“Today we’d been able to make a dinner reservation for the adult contingent at the poolside Tapas restaurant. Apparently, this restaurant, a canopied outdoor addition to the bar, catered for only up to fifteen diners in the evenings, and reservations could not be made until the morning of the day in question. Being so close, it was far more convenient than the Millennium.”

Only 15 covers total says Kate. And she confirms that the “first-come-first-served-but-only-for-today” reservation system was indeed in place.

Receptionist Sandro Silva has this to say about Tapas v Millenium and the limited number of covers available:

“Adds that this family, like all Mark Warner clients had a half-board regimen, which is breakfast and dinner. For dinner, customers can opt between two restaurants, the "Tapas" and the "Millennium", the first being an “á la carte” service, and in the second "bufett"[sic], the customers choose not only because of food but also for reasons of proximity in relation to their accommodation. However, the deponent refers that the guests convey to him that restaurant "Tapas" has better quality that it's difficult to get a reservation as it has little [Portuguese: poucos] places.”

Sandro Silva is not as precise in the number of bookings available as Kate.

But Sandro was one half of what we called the “Tapas Duet”, the other half being Luísa Coutinho.

Luisa is, as we saw in our “Chasing Staff” post, a relative of the Garveigh family, joint owners of the OC.  John Garveigh B 1928 was one of 3 joint owners of the Ocean Club, with George Robin Crosland and David Symington.

As we then said we found it to be quite a coincidence to find the very person who was said to have arranged for the Tapas 9 to dine at the Tapas Bar every night was one of the Garveigh family:

“Remembers that, on Sunday 29, one of the elements of the group that arrived with the minor Madeleine McCann, whose name doesn’t know and only knows being of male gender and tall and thin, came to the deponent requesting the reservation [Portuguese: marcação] of dinner for all the group, for all the week, and always for 20H30”

This is what Luísa had to say say about Tapas v Millenium and the limited number of covers available:

“Adds that this family, like all Mark Warner clients had a half-board regimen, which is breakfast and dinner. For dinner, customers can opt between two restaurants, the "Tapas" and the "Millennium", the first being an “á la carte” service, and in the second "bufett"[sic], the customers choose not only because of food but also for reasons of proximity in relation to their accommodation. However, the deponent refers that the guests convey to him that restaurant "Tapas" has better quality that it's difficult to get a reservation as it has little [Portuguese: poucos] places to be reserved to “Mark Warner” clients, more precisely 20.”

Please note that Luísa’s and Sandro’s statement are exactly the same with exception of the first’s final words “[places] to be reserved to “Mark Warner” clients, more precisely 20”. One could even be tempted to think that Sandro forgot to say that last bit of his lines.

Luísa, besides contradicting Kate, brings a new element into the equation: the allotment of Tapas covers.

Not only there were more than 15, but out of whatever total number of covers there were (wish we knew), Mark Warner was limited to 20.


The Tapas was a so, so much sought after restaurant that its covers were rationed by tour operators! Oh, what a fantastic restaurant Tapas had to be! No wonder there were queues to dine at “a canopied outdoor addition to the bar”, as per Kate McCann. Loads of people just eager to have dinner outside in those chilly nights!

We’re certain that when Russell O’Brien speaks of Tapas with some disdain it can only be because he’s used to only the finest and poshest of Exeter:

“Jane went down and I certainly can recall saying ‘Well you know what I like’, you know, we’d ordered, it was a very limited menu, we’d discussed what we liked each night, and I said, you know, ‘Just order the me the’, ‘Order the X, Y and Z and I’ll be down when I’m happy that the kids are definitely asleep’.”

And:

“As the menu was always the same, the group already knew what plates made up the menu, for this reason the deponent told his wife what he wanted, and that she place the order.”

If Tapas was a restaurant with “a very limited menu” of a “just-order-me-that-again” kind and if  “"Tapas" has better quality [than the Millenium] that it's difficult to get a reservation” then we shudder to think how horrible the Millenium menu must have been.

According to Dianne Webster, it seems that Tapas was understaffed that being the reason why it was never fully occupied, even quite empty:

“And err they only ever took so many bookings you know, although there were quite a lot of tables in the restaurant it was never ever full, in fact it was generally I would say quite empty err but this was because I think the staff were limited you know they had limited staff at the restaurant so they could only cope with so many people and originally err I think you had to get there early in the morning to book, you could book at the entrance to the Ocean Club err and Rachael somehow managed to get a block booking every night for eight thirty. Err so that was why we ended up going there every night because it was near the apartment”.

She should know, she was, allegedly, there.

One would think that Ocean Club would just get more staff if it was that popular. After all restaurant personnel was not exactly something the resort was short of as there were 50 people hired (44 newly hired in 2007) at that time for that particular expertise by the Ocean Club as we showed in our “Tourism diet” post.

And do note how Dianne confirms the queues. One HAD “to get there early in the morning to book”. If one HAS to be early it’s because if one didn’t one risked not getting what one desired. 

Only the early bird gets the worm, or in this case a reservation for dinner.

But what we want to highlight is that from Luísa Coutinho  we get to know that the tourist operator Mark Warner had, allegedly, at their disposal 20 of the coveted Tapas covers.

What we don’t get to know is how many Thomas Cook, Jonathan Markson, the Travel Club, Style Holidays, WWOS and m o s [sic] each one had.

Or to know if guests registered as Clientes Directos/Owner/Donos were allowed to book dinners there, and if they were, how many of Tapas covers were they allotted.

The obvious question that has to be asked is where are the registries for the reservations made by Thomas Cook, Jonathan Markson, the Travel Club, Style Holidays, WWOS, m o s, Clientes Directos, Owner and Donos?

How many reservation books did Tapas restaurant use? One per operator or all in the same? If all operators in the same reservation book, where are the guests from the other tourist operators? There were queues, right?

If it was used one reservation book per operator, why on earth was PJ only interested in the Mark Warner reservations?

Or, was PJ only interested, as we think they were, in knowing who had supposedly dined in Tapas during that week and got fed a reservation system that never existed and much less a reservation-by-operator one?

All this is to say that it must be agreed by ALL (except us in the blog and our supporters) interested in the Maddie case, that if one had an opportunity to eat at Tapas one would certainly NOT pass on the chance. That if one was offered a meal at wondrous Tapas one would only refuse it if one had something one could not simply put off.

This post is about asking the following question: if that was so, then why were there so many who passed up the chance of having dinner there when they were given the chance?


4. The gruesome march of April 2007

To answer that question one must understand why the Tapas restaurant was made to be such a wonderful place.

As our usual readers know, we don’t believe that the Tapas dinners ever took place. We think the Tapas was just a bar to support the pool during the day and most likely specialising in sandwiches and salads, and possibly pizzas in the evening.

The Tapas seems to have been a snack type bar by day and casual meals in the evening. Very basic with cheap, light-weight furniture.

We think its quality was upgraded to literally ridiculous levels as a necessity because it had to be an integral part of the Narrative of Negligence.

To allow the T9 to leave the children “acceptably” alone, they couldn’t be very far away, and the only place they could be placed at was at the Tapas bar.

The restaurant really prepared and meant to serve meals to the resort’s guests was the Millenium. That’s where guests with half-board dined. That’s where the resort was logistically prepared to serve dinners.

A reason had to be found for the T9 to be at Tapas and not to eat at the Millenium.

But that alone wouldn’t be enough, they had to be placed at Tapas as a routine so they would have been near apartment 5A every night.

For the first part of the story the “Saturday Evening Gruesome March to the Millenium” was invented.

That terrible march during which for 600 gruesome yards 9 adults dragged themselves with their little children on the day they arrived for the holidays.

Their moans and groans that night must have terrified many little children of Luz, so loud they must have been. One trip to the Millenium and it was enough for the T9 to know for certain that it would be an impossible feat for them to repeat it in the forthcoming days.

What had been done countless times by so many other guests before them and was certainly done by as many who came after them simply couldn’t be done by them. Go figure.

Because of it they had to have special treatment and consideration. Go figure.

The use of baby buggies that were available – both Kate and Gerry “confess” using them for the beach trip (although one says 2 single and the other a double) and the 2013 UK Crimewatch even shows the McCanns using one before the gruesome march – wasn’t even considered. Go figure.

We also note that JW, who is together with Derek Flack and TS, one of the witnesses who claim to have seen Pimpleman, when the first time she sees him, is shown in the 2009 Mockumentary at the T-crossing just ahead of Murat’s property, around 08:00 going on foot with her little daughter towards the Millenium.


JW wasn’t given the same consideration or special treatment the T9 had. She’s not entitled to a week’s reservation at Tapas.

She has to go to the Millenium like all other guests.


If JW is Jeni Weinberger as we think she is it seems she got in the queue TWICE: on Tuesday May 1 and on Wednesday May 2, as the Weinbergers (written as Weinburger on the Tapas booking sheet) dined in Tapas those evenings.

For negligence to happen the T9 had to be unable to go to the Millenium because it was too far for the little children to walk and simply could not be stopped because of a minor detail such as the baby buggies being there to be used.

The part of the T9 not being able to go to the Millenium in the Narrative of Negligence was taken care of. Next, they had to place without any sort of doubt, the T9 at Tapas.


5. The “Cinderalisation” of Tapas


It seems to us that if the T9 had used a simple “we ate at Tapas every night because it was near” would be sufficient.

And indeed it would. It seems reasonable that if one has a restaurant at the resort that serves the half-board meal one has paid for right near our backdoor, there’s no reason for one to walk 600 yards.

But liars need veracity for their tales. They need to present proof so that they are assured that we think what they are saying is true. Thus the expression he who tells a tale adds a detail.

In this case the added detail was physical evidence to “prove” that what they were fibbing about had really happened: the Tapas dinners.

The Tapas reservation sheets were the physical evidence which validated the Tapas dinners and in turn these validated the negligence. The Narrative of Negligence in a nutshell.

And like Cinderella went from maid to princess, so did a mere snack-bar that merely supported a pool become a wondrous and a fantastic and desperately sought after restaurant.

With Cinderella it was a magic wand, with Tapas a collective lie. But both equally real. NOT.

As we said, the Narrative of Negligence required proof of a negligent routine.

The proof the T9 were negligent every night. Not just that night. They had to have had dinner at Tapas every night and every night they had to leave the children alone.

So the absurd and unrealistic reservation system was invented and the absurd and unrealistic reservation sheets the physical evidence that the T9 had been constantly “acceptably” negligent, was needed to be presented to make the lie a truth.

But for there to have been the need for reservations the demand had to supersede the offer. Tapas had to be wanted otherwise why reserve? Tapas had to have less covers than the demand to dine there.

And so Tapas became the daily most sought after restaurant in Praia da Luz, in Lagos, in Portugal and maybe even in the world.


6. Tennis

As we have said in our post “Praia da Luz”, the town has very little to offer besides the beach and pools. Without these, one struggles to find something to do there.

The week of April 29 – May 3 2007 was one without beach and pool due to the weather.

There seems to have been only 2 other alternative activities: tennis and watersports.

The latter requires equipment, namely wetsuits, and it involves a significant degree of risk, so is limited only to people with some sort of experience.

It seems that tennis may have been the most popular activity during that week.

Let’s then see what is in the PJ Files about tennis:

- Daniel Stuk May 08:

“Asked, the deponent relates that the only tennis instructors of Mark Warner are himself and his colleague called GEORGINA.”

- Georgina Jackson May 08:

“Questioned, the deponent relates that the only tennis instructors at Mark Warner are herself and her colleague called Daniel, commonly known as DAN.”

- Luís Machado May 08:

“On the other hand, questioned regarding the possibility of having giving lessons to the parents of said child, the deponent negates peremptorily that he did so.

On that subject [Portuguese: Nesse sentido], the deponent would clarify that does remember the resort [Portuguese: empreendimento] in which the McCann family stayed and is used by the tourist operators "Jonathan Markson" and "Mark Warner", adding that he only works with clients of the first.

Consequently, he denies that at no time did he administer any classes to the father of the minor, GERRY McCANN or to the mother KATE HEALY.”

- Vasco Sales Portas 08May:

“That he works for the company "Jonathan Markson", exercising his functions as a tennis instructor in the "Ocean Club" resort since 2001.

(…)

He clarifies that besides the company for which he works, "Markwarner", owner of the resort, also has its own tennis instructors.

He adds that "Markwarner" has its tennis “base” set [Portuguese: instalada] near the Tapas restaurant, being rare the times they use other courts.

Questioned, he says that during the past week (29 APR 07 to 05 MAY 07) he had only four students, who are detailed in the fax which he has handed over during this act of the investigation [Portuguese: autos].”

There is another instructor, named Marco Alemão, who appears listed together with Portas and Machado. There’s no statement on the files from him. We imagine that he also works for Jonathan Markson.

The Mark Warner employee list only mentions Georgina Jackson and Dan Stuk as tennis coaches.

- Gerry McCann on May 10:

“Subsequently, at 17h00 [of Saturday], the whole group, including children, went to the TAPAS situated at the back of the apartments, next to the pool, to attend a welcoming committee arranged by MARK WARNER where they met with instructors in tennis and sailing and other resort employees, which ended at 18h30, glasses of sangria having been served to them.”

- Stephen Carpenter 21 April:

“On Sunday, April 29, Carolyn and I took part in Mark Warner’s tennis group morning coffee, where I met Gerry, Kate, Julian, Rachael, Annie, Georgina, Annie’s sister and Ann, there were other tourists whose name I’ve already forgotten. There were in total, approximately 16 people in that morning coffee, and tennis was one of the activities that he, or both enrolled for during the week.”


7. The importance of tennis

Of the resort’s 5 tennis courts, only 2 were used by Mark Warner, the Tapas ones. The ones near the Millenium seem to have been for the other tourist operators.

Taking the above at face value, if Portas had only 4 sudents, and imagining the other 2 tennis coaches, Machado and Alemão, would have an equal number, that makes it that out of all the other  guests from all other tourist operators (Thomas Cook, Jonathan Markson, etc.) there were only about 12 people being accompanied by tennis coaches that week.

If we add the 14 (one must exclude Georgina and Dan from the 16 Carpenter claims to have been present at the Tennis meeting), that makes a total of 26 people interested or together with people interested in playing tennis.

What did the remainder of the 300+ guests present that week do? All of them did watersports? We don’t think so.

One cannot let go unnoticed the huge discrepancy between Gerry’s and Stephen’s statements as regards when the tennis meeting took place.

One says Saturday late afternoon, the other Sunday morning. And neither are mistaken because both connect a beverage to the event.

Gerry says he was served sangria, a drink hardly likely to have been served in the morning and Stephen remembers the coffee, typically served in the mornings.

Gerry with his sangria makes sense it to have been Saturday afternoon, Stephen with his coffee makes sense to have been Sunday morning. What doesn’t make sense is for having 2 meetings about tennis and Gerry and Kate attending both.

Kate, by the way, contradicts Gerry and sides with Stephen. In her book:

“After dropping off the children we went along to a ‘tennis coffee morning’. Neither of us is a regular tennis player but before we’d had the kids we’d spent many holidays knocking a few balls around. Perhaps that’s a bit of a casual way of putting it: we’re both pretty competitive so there have been some fierce matches over the years, thankfully all ending amicably with a hug over the net and a post-match beer. So we were keen to get in some tennis on this break and maybe improve our technique a little. We played a few games and signed up for group lessons for the rest of the week, me at level 1 and Gerry level 2 (I must grudgingly concede that he is better than I am).”

And do note that neither Georgina nor Dan speak of such meeting.


8. The tennis dinner

Another thing neither Georgina nor Dan speak about is the Tennis dinner.

We get to know that on Friday, May 4, there was the intention to have one. The reason why the T9 names don’t appear on the sheet of May 4. They already had a dinner reserved there that evening under the collective umbrella of Mark Warner tennis.


Dinner was reserved on Friday for 12 people: the Mark Warner Tennis dinner.

Now, let’s do some very simple maths.

Of those 12, 9 were the T9. Saying it was only the tennis players of the T9 is ridiculous as nowhere else is it mentioned where the remainder Tapas were supposed to have had dinner if Maddie had not disappeared?

Some say that Jane Tanner and Rob O’Brien had planned to dine out on May 4 to go to a birthday party of a friend who happened to be in Luz at the time.

Jane Tanner says this in her rogatory interview:

“4078    “Okay and the last number then, is 07949 XXX844”?

Reply    “Yeah this is the one I think it would be, this is erm, this is Charlotte, my friend in Exeter who was actually out in Portugal with us when we were there, but I think I rang her, she went home on the Saturday and she hadn’t taken her mobile out with her, cos I’d (inaudible) texted her, that day we were supposed to go, it was her husband’s birthday, I must have, I’ve still got the text on here that she, we were supposed to go to their apartment for a barbecue at lunch time, so I text her in the morning and said, (inaudible) text (inaudible), there you go, I text her in the morning and said that, so you see what time that is and but she didn’t answer so, cos she hadn’t got her mobile phone”.

Jane Tanner was answering about why she had sent 2 text messages to the 07949 XXX844. As per PJ Files:

“The raw telecom data provided to OP TASK shows that the mobile phone attributed to Jane TANNER (0780xxx191) was in contact with mobile number 07949xxx844 at 20:30:21 hrs on 3rd May 2007 and again at 09:04:46 hrs on 4th May 2007. Each contact was an 'SMS'. Enquiries are underway to subscribe the '1884’ number.”

We do find it strange how just one text message is enough to set up a meeting for a party on foreign soil (we’re supposing the May 4 text was to cancel) but what is important to highlight at this moment is that it’s very clear that Jane Tanner speaks only of lunch, “a barbecue at lunch time” and not of dining or spending the whole day there.

There’s no doubt in our mind, of 12 tennis diners, 9 were the T9. That leaves out only 3. Counting with tennis coaches.

Were the T9 so unpopular that no one wanted to dine with them? Were they so unpopular that if they said they didn’t want to come maybe then many other of the many Mark Warner guests there would have? Were the T9 so unpopular that because they said they would come everyone else decided to go and find dinner elsewhere?

And who were these remaining 3 tennis diners? 

If Georgina and Dan were meaning to go, which would be the logical and an expected thing for them to do, there is only one person left. Who was the mystery man or woman?

It does make sense BOTH tennis instructors would be present, so we do have to ask who was the lonely heart that got stood up that night?

Let’s imagine that either Georgina or Dan for some reason couldn’t attend, who then was the mystery couple?

No one has ever heard of them. Of this possible couple or this possible man/woman. They don’t get a mention from anyone.

And shouldn’t the name of this couple/man/woman be on the reservation sheet?

It begs the question where did this person/couple have dinner on May 4?

When this person/couple woke up on Friday morning they were certainly counting on having dinner at the luxurious Tapas, and the fact the collective dinner was cancelled wouldn’t mean that his/her/their dinner had to be elsewhere as others did dine at Tapas that night. The place didn’t close because of Maddie’s disappearance.

The covers for the tennis dinners had unexpectedly become available then and there, so no reason for these/this “non-T9” not to dine there at, we remind readers, the most sought after restaurant in Luz.

Besides, isn’t it very strange that the 12 meant to go to dinner aren’t detailed by name?

Wouldn’t one expect to see their names be detailed just like the T9 were on the other days, in this case with a bracket saying “Mark Warner Tennis dinner”, so it would be known to the staff they were meant to sit together but pay for their meals separately?

Because, if the dinner had indeed taken place, who was supposed to have been billed, controlled or achieve whatever purpose these so called reservations sheets were supposed to have?

And the proof the purpose of these sheets is completely lost is shown how this generic “12” leaves us today at odds to know who was supposed to have dined there that evening.


9. Rejecting the wondrous

But what  one really has to do is go full circle in this post and link this so-called Tennis dinner with the highly desired Tapas restaurant.

Why didn’t anyone else of the tennis gang, with the exception of eventually these one or two people, want to go to this dinner in the fancy and grand Tapas? Why not jump at the chance and have the marvellous adventure of degustation that so many wanted to try and so many left Luz without having experienced it.

It doesn’t make sense, does it?

The tennis dinner is a hoax as are the rest of the Tapas dinners. Practically nothing that was said to have happened in Tapas did happen.

The Mark Warner tennis dinner was something invented to validate the tennis that had to exist during that holiday. Writing it up on the Tapas reservation sheets was the physical evidence that it was thought to be enough to validate it.

And in our opinion tennis is not a code name for anything. Tennis was simply the only activity they could find for people to have an excuse to be doing that week. 300+ guests and 5 courts.

As Cinderella would certainly advise the scriptwriters of this absurd story, “by all means do use your imagination, like making pumpkins into carriages, mice into horses, rats into servants and rags into a dress fit for a princess, but at least make an effort to keep it real as possible like I did by bringing into the story a magic wand to turn the absurd into some sort of reality… otherwise how do you expect people to believe anything you say? Your absurd tale, unlike mine, is just absurd”



Post Scriptum:

With this post we are breaking for Christmas. We do hope that 2016 will finally be the year of closure. All is in the hands of the British government as we believe this case to be an exclusively political one.

We continue to believe that the Deciders are waiting for the outcome of the Lisbon trial now in the hands of the Lisbon Appeal Court.

We so wish that the decision is known soon as we subscribe fully to the concept that justice delayed is justice denied. A serious mistake that the Portuguese justice system is very prone in making.

As we expect to come back only in 2016, we thought we could leave readers links to the posts we have done on the Tapas bar:

- About the  Tapas reservation sheets:

Post “# 01 - What are they?” (29Mar2011) - in which we asked for what exactly were those sheets of paper known as the Tapas reservation sheets because we really fail to understand their purpose outside them existing to deceive that there were T9 Tapas dinners when there weren’t.

Post “# 02 – Continuity” (05Apr2011) - in which we showed there was no continuity as would be logical and expected to be found in these sheets.

Post “# 03 - The Doodle” (21Apr2011) - in which we showed how strange it was to find a SINGLE doodle on page of a book that was supposed to be opened and used only on occasion.

Post “# 04 - Slide & Splash” (10Aug2011) - in which we showed how the Slide & Splash sheet was the pre-written and was put in the Tapas reservation sheet of May 7.

Post “# 05 - Shrink to fit” (15Aug2011) - in which we showed how ridiculous it was to sit a family of 4 on a table for 9/10 people when there were other tables available.

Post “# 06 - How many seats?” (14Sept2011) - in which we ask the question we asked in the current post: how many covers in total could REALLY be reserved each night for Tapas? And if there were queues to be able to dine there, then why wasn’t Tapas fully occupied every night, as Dianne Webster confirms it wasn’t?

Post “# 07 - The Deleted Dinner.” - in which we showed how a nameless dinner was billed to table #209.

Post “# 08 - The Obsessive Dining Timing Disorder.” (21Sept2011) - in which we showed how strange we found it that for any restaurant that there was no need to know if a person wished to dine at 20:00, or if s/he wished to do so at 20:15 or 20:30, it made a difference, apparently, for Tapas.

Post “# 09 - The Unique Reservation Sequencing Technique.” (24Sept2011) - in which we show how reservations are jotted down by the order in which they are requested, unlike what appears to have been the methodology in the sheets which was to write them down in the sequence of when people expected to dine.

Post “# 10 - The Irwins” (26Sept2011) - in which we showed how the Irwins, like the T9, also got“special arrangement” or had a “"quiet word" with the manager”. Why, we don’t know.

Post “# 11 - The Missing queue” (28Sept2011) - in which we showed that if the Tapas reservation sheets were true, then very strangely there were no queues to reserve on May 4.

Post “# 12 - Being there before being there” (02Oct2011) - in which we showed how the Savages and the Newmans were able to book dinners at Tapas before arriving in Praia da Luz.


- About the Big Round Table (BRT) at Tapas:

In the Sun article referred to in the post, waiter José Baptista speaks of the BRT: “There was a big round table near the pool. The McCanns and their friends had it every night.”

We have never seen it and we don’t just doubt its existence, we know that it didn’t exist. These were the posts we have done on the BRT:

Post “In an Emergency call 112, when in a HOAX call 211” (05Dec2010) . in which we presented our arguments questioning BRT’s existence.

Post “Textusa Meltdown” (13Dec2010) - in which we reacted to the reaction to our “In an Emergency call 112, when in a HOAX call 211” post.

Post “Textusa Meltdown - "The Day After"” (10Mar2010) - in which we showed how the other side tried to rewrite history in the best Orwellian style, by wiping off the internet Sidmouth’s precious comment about the Tapas round tables and pergolas.

Post “Tapas Dining - Fawlty Towers Style” (12Apr2011) - in which we parodied these queued-up for reservations.

Post “Nights of the Round Table” (16Feb2011) - in which we showed how there was a “really-very-fast-food” service provided by Tapas bar.

Post “Will Kate’s Book Definitely Prove Textusa Wrong?” (15Apr2011) - in which we defied Kate McCann, 1 month before publishing her book, to prove us wrong by asking her to publish Dianne Webster’s pictures of the BRT.

Post “Bluntly Bruntling Things Up” (20Sept2012) where we showed that the images of a video in which Sky News’ Martin Brunt appears showing the BRT had been manipulated.

Post “Textusa Correcting Textusa” (03Nov2012) whereby we corrected our correction of saying Mr Amaral had been wrong when pointing out the BRT out in his book. It was us who were wrong, so we corrected ourselves.

Post “Swan Lake - Act 3” (10Nov2012) - in which we showed the extent of image manipulation in Mr Brunt’s Sky News video.

Post “The proof Ocean Club reads Textusa” (07Mar2014) - in which we showed how the Ocean Club had come up with a BRT for Mr Amaral’s 2013 documentary. In this post we also showed how CNN was also economical with the truth.

About the BRT we would like to bring over a comment we had from a reader that was posted on our Facebook page:

“Hi Maria we make tables, sometimes big round ones. Your comments on the tapas dinners are bang on the money, I’ve been an avid reader of you and the sisters for some time, great work. I will add a comment on big round tables, hotels and restaurants rarely purchase due to the space they take on the restaurant floor, and certainly a place like the tapas certainly wouldn’t entertain a round table to seat 8/10 persons. Keep up the good work, please, justice for Maddie Best Regards”

The BRT not existing, the Tapas dinners don’t exist. The Tapas dinners not existing the Narrative of Negligence goes down the tube.


- About the Quiz Nights at Tapas:

Post “Quiz nights at Tapas” (15Mar2011) - in which we questioned ever being Quiz nights in Tapas.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

It’s a fact that when one lies one does make the effort to keep the lie as close to the truth as possible.

The problem that a liar, any liar has is when for whatever reason, one has to venture into details one doesn’t have the faintest idea what the is truth about them and that’s when the guesswork begins and more often than not the result has little or nothing to do with reality.

When telling a story when one ventures into areas one is not familiar with, one is usually betrayed by the truth in the form of details that are there in fact and should be part of the narrative and aren’t. But in this case the liar can always use the excuse that they were unwittingly left out.

But when the narrative contains details that simply don’t exist then it’s proof that it’s fake, that it’s a total fiction.

In a truthful narrative all details are coherent and cohesive with the reality.

That’s what didn’t happen with Susan Owen, one of the Mark Warner nannies, when she details in her statement what she supposedly had been up to on the evening of the 3rd.


Reading her statement it’s quite clear she wanted to say that evening she went from point A, the apartment where she was staying at in the Nanny building, to point B, the Mirage bar but making sure the authorities understood clearly that she didn’t pass anywhere near where Maddie had disappeared.

This is what Susan Owen, said when describing the above: “the deponent refers that she walked the indicated path, having done it by the beach and later taken the route on the road that ends in the referred bar, thus not having crossed the interior of the mentioned resort nor near Madeleine McCann’s residence”  or in Portuguese so nothing gets lost in translation: “a depoente refere que efectuou o trajecto indicado de forma apeada, tendo-o feito ao longo da praia, tendo posteriormente encetado o caminho pela rua que termina no referido bar, não tendo, portanto, atravessado o interior do empreendimento turístico mencionado nem junto da residência de Madeleine McCann.”

The above contains such an evident falsity that it even forced us to crop a picture we used in our “Praia da Luz” post:


It described (yellow dotted line) what would be the natural route to go from the Nanny building apartment (B) – which was in Rua da Escola Primária – to the Mirage bar (M) – which is next to the Millenium passing by Apartment 5A (A). But as she couldn't pass anywhere near that forbidden ground, she obviously had to tell the PJ that she had circumvented it.

We had to crop the rest of Praia da Luz out of that picture because if we didn't we would have to show the following:


And then the reader would notice immediately that in Praia da Luz there is no “road that ends in the referred bar [Mirage]” when one comes up from the beach. This post would be spoiled.

The Google map view shows clearly that in Praia da Luz there is no road that goes directly from the beach to the Mirage bar:


Fact: there is no road that goes directly from the beach to the Mirage bar; tale: there was supposed to be one.

To go from the Nanny building to the beach, the path is clear:


The problem for Susan Owen is that from the beach to the Mirage the route is simply not straightforward.

By saying she went to the beach and from there straight to the Mirage, Susan Owen ventured, literally, in her mind into terrains of Praia da Luz she wasn’t familiar with and which lack of knowledge thereof reveals very clearly that she was just inventing and not describing anything.


Susan Owen certainly thought that the beach connects with first crossing one encounters when coming into Praia da Luz from the East (red circle). Logic would seem to dictate that coming from that direction, if one turned right, one would encounter the Mirage, which one does, and if one turned left one would go straight down to the beach. Only Rua Alfredo Nascimento Batista doesn’t do that.


The street that links the beach to Rua Direita is Rua da Praia (red dotted arrow), the road we suppose Kate McCann is referring to when she says “before heading up the road [to go back to the Mini Club], we stopped at a shop on the corner of Rua da Praia and Avenida dos Pescadores”, as we explained in our post “Is Kate McCann a liar?”


Susan Owen makes the same mistake as Gerry McCann when he said “they all left by the main door due to the carriages, went around to the right, down the street of the supermarket and went to the beach along a road directly ahead” when there’s no road directly ahead of Rua Prof Dr Gentil Martins as we showed in our post “Dr Gerry McCann is a liar”.




Gerry McCann thinks that Rua Prof Dr Gentil Martins is aligned with the Rua da Boa Pesca, a cul-de-sac and it isn’t as we showed in our post “Dr Gerry McCann is a liar (update)” and Susan Owen thinks that Rua da Praia is aligned with Rua do Ramalhete, which it isn’t:


To go by Rua Direita towards the Mirage is certainly not going by the beach and this road does not end up at the bar:


Susan Owen is very clear, she says she first goes to the beach and then LATER goes by that road that connects that beach to the Mirage that doesn’t exist.

Susan Owen is not telling the truth. The 2 possible routes that link the beach to the Mirage bar are the following:


Neither fit into the category of a “road that ends in the referred bar”. Susan Owen is just “imagining things” when she says it does.

However, Susan Owen’s “wild imagination” makes us question a lot of things like, for instance, why did she need to avoid the truth as she wouldn't be a witness to anything if she had gone to the bar by a sensible route?

The answer to that question is quite simple and in our opinion it’s because she doesn’t want to compromise herself with any timings that have to do with Maddie.

Susan Owen is out in the streets of Praia da Luz at a very critical time: around 21H30, time up to which she says she was in her apartment and then leaves for the bar.

Leaving her apartment in the sensible direction would mean they (lest we forget she goes from apartment to the bar together with Emma Wilding and Shinead Vine) would cross the critical area at a critical time and most likely become crucial witnesses in the case.

Most of the nannies are minor players. We think that outside Amy Tierney, Jacqueline Williams and Charlotte Pennington all others were told to say they were either in their apartments or at the Mirage, a bar that just happens to be “embedded” in the Ocean Club.

This is what the nannies said they were doing at that time as we noted in our post “Luz’s Secret Service”:

- 3 nannies are on duty at the “Evening crèche service” – Amy Tierney, Jacqueline Williams and Charlotte Pennington.

- 3 nannies are in their residences: Lyndsay Johnson, Catriona Baker and Rhiannon Fretter

- 3 nannies are at the ‘Mirage bar’: Susan Owen, Shinead Vine and Stacey Portz

- 2 nannies having gone out of apartment, we suppose on the way to the ‘Mirage bar’ but only leaving their apartment at 22:30: Kirsty Maryan and Sarah Williamson

- 2 are unclear as to where exactly they were: Leanne Wagstaff and Emma Wilding. Leanne says she’s going to the bar at 22:30 with Kirsty Maryan and Sarah Williamson but at same time Catriona Baker places her inside apartment; and Emma who is placed by Catriona Baker inside the apartment at 22:30 already knowing about the disappearance and by Susan Owen at the ‘Mirage’ bar at 22:45 ignorant of what had happened.

All accounted for, except one, Pauline McCann who only says “in what concerns the disappearance in itself, refers that she was shocked as this was the first time such has ever happened to her.”

But only one, Susan Owens, recognises that she’s out in the streets of Praia da Luz during the critical time of from 21:30 to 22:30. She wiggled herself out from being anywhere near where Maddie disappeared by saying she went around the scene.

But Susan Owen’s statement tells us something else besides telling us that she’s not telling the truth and that is she can’t tell us what she was doing that night.

No one thinks she was in any way related with what happened to Maddie that night so why doesn’t she just tell what was she really doing that night instead of “imagining things”?

We noted in our “Luz’s Secret Service” post that we found it very strange that no Mark Warner nanny had been babysitting that night.

And noted in the same post that trio supposed to be manning the night crèche, Amy Tierney, Jacqueline Williams and Charlotte Pennington, simply abandoned whatever children were supposedly there that night.

Susan Owen could have been be playing marbles, cooking pancakes or knitting a sweater for all we know, so why not just say she was doing just that?

Because whatever she was doing, however innocent an activity in itself it was, and we do think it was something really innocent like babysitting a group of children in an apartment, it couldn’t and can’t be known.

Very simple and very revealing. It can’t be known because whatever that innocent activity was it links up to all other sort of activities in which others were involved and who do not want that to be known and who have had the power which comes from a collective interest, for it not to be known.


POST SCRIPTUM/CORRECTION:

 We need to correct this we said in our current post:

“Susan Owen could have been be playing marbles, cooking pancakes or knitting a sweater for all we know, so why not just say she was doing just that?

Because whatever she was doing, however innocent an activity in itself it was, and we do think it was something really innocent like babysitting a group of children in an apartment, it couldn’t and can’t be known.

Very simple and very revealing. It can’t be known because whatever that innocent activity was it links up to all other sort of activities in which others were involved and who do not want that to be known and who have had the power which comes from a collective interest, for it not to be known.”

All words are true but not for the night of May 3rd. We don’t believe that Susan Owens was doing any babysitting on the night of the 3rd.

We believe that little after Maddie died all things related with the swinging were abruptly halted. We believe that Maddie died early evening and so all swinging activities, in which is included leaving the children with babysitters, was cancelled.

All were focused in making sure things were contained within the T9 and outside any swinging.

We have then to divide in terms of a certain “normalcy” that week, from before the evening of the third and after that.

For example, we have said that we believe the T9 never set foot in Tapas with the exception for the dinner of the 3rd. So, the normalcy that week was for the T9 to have “dinner” somewhere in Praia da Luz, but on the night of the 3rd they sat for dinner in that esplanade. Or at least 7 of them.

“Dinner” in commas as that was their claim, not something we believe. We think that their dinner tale is absolutely false, there was no dinner at a Big Round Table (BRT). They gathered at the Tapas so they could be seen there to validate the Narrative of Negligence, the base stone of the hoax.

Likewise, we believe the normalcy for the babysitters up to the third was to babysit children in various apartments while the children’s parents engaged in adult fun in and around Praia da Luz.

On the 3rd, we are certain there was no babysitting. That night the children stayed under the care of their parents. We think that everyone involved in the swinging, and that includes the babysitters, stayed in their respective apartments waiting for instructions on what to do and then, as required, acting as instructed.

The wording should then have been:

“Susan Owen could have been be playing marbles, cooking pancakes or knitting a sweater for all we know, so why not just say she was doing just that?

Because whatever she had done during the nights before that week, however innocent an activity in itself it was, and we do think it was something really innocent like babysitting a group of children in an apartment, it couldn’t and can’t be known.

Very simple and very revealing. It can’t be known because whatever that innocent activity was it links up to all other sort of activities in which others were involved and who do not want that to be known and who have had the power which comes from a collective interest, for it not to be known.

The same innocent activity we believe she wasn’t doing on the night of the 3rd because someone, with the capability to do so, decided to halt all and thought best to put in place a humongous hoax because. 

That means that what Susan Owen, like so many others, did on the night of the 3rd, although with absolutely NO connection to what caused Maddie to lose her life, was far from being innocent.”

Last week we saw how a Mark Warner nanny, Susan Owen, imagined things when finding herself in need of having to “find” a route that circumvented apartment 5A when she invented a road for the authorities that went from the beach to the Mirage bar that simply does not exist in Praia da Luz.

That told us she had something to hide about what she did on the night of the 3rd, and by hiding it she was just one more who obstructed justice in the Maddie case.

This week we will see how a nanny will state very, very clearly that either she’s not telling the truth or another nanny has lied to authorities.

And we are going to hear it directly from the first nanny’s mouth.

We’re talking about Charlotte Pennington and Jacqueline Williams. One blatantly contradicts the other.

As the reader knows we think neither are telling the truth. In our post “Luz’s secret service” we explained in detail why we think there was no “night-crèche” above the 24Hour reception of the Ocean Club during the week Maddie died so when both speak of it we obviously think they are both inventing things.

We are told from the statements of these 2 particular nannies, Charlotte Pennington and Jacqueline Williams, that they, together with Amy Tierney, were warned of the fact that Maddie had disappeared from a mystery woman.

In our “Luz’s Secret Service” post we showed very clearly how ONLY guest Dawn Bullen could have been the mystery woman referred to by both Charlotte Pennington and Jacqueline Williams who allegedly warned the 3 nannies that we are told were on duty that night in a “night-créche” it’s claimed to have existed.

This woman is identified by Charlotte Pennington on May 7:

“That on the past May 3 2007, at 22H15, being the deponent exercising her functions in the MiniClub, in the service called “Dinner period” (sic), together with her colleagues Jackie and Amy, a woman she doesn’t know but indicates being a tourist lodged in the resort in question, went to those facilities, asking if it had been communicated a disappearance of a child, whose name she only referred to be "Maggie" or "Maddy".

(…)

Faced with what was happening, they informed the individual of the female gender that they hadn’t been communicated of any disappearance, being that, in virtue of the name indicated, they thought to be Madeleine, reason why Amy contacted by telephone her superior, with the name Lyndsay, who informed her that in fact Madeleine had disappeared.”

And this is how Jacqueline Williams on May 08 describes the same mystery woman:

“That on last May 3 2007, at 22.05, being the deponent performing her functions at the Mini Club, in the service called “dinner period" (sic), together with her colleagues Charlotte and Amy, an individual of the female gender whose name she cannot indicate, only that she was the mother of a child that was there (belonging to the Toddlers2 group), being a tourist lodged in the resort in question and who ended her stay last week, went to those facilities saying she had been informed that a child with the name “Maddie” had disappeared, so the parents of that child needed the help of the nannies in order to try and find her.”

As we said in that post, both know this woman is a guest lodged in the resort but both are unable to put a name to the woman.

Jacqueline Williams even knows the boy there being picked up is in Toddlers 2 club and that the mystery woman ended her stay the week before but still when it comes to her name “she cannot indicate”.

Then we noted how odd it was for someone to pick up a child without any sort of identification procedure between crèche, child and parent. If there had been one, then both Charlotte Pennington and Jacqueline Williams would have been able to identify very clearly who the person was who warned them that Maddie had gone.

But this post is not about Dawn Bullen, although as we have shown very clearly she is a character worth studying but who has been overlooked and that hardly comes as a surprise for us or our readers.

So this post is not about Dawn Bullen but about the nannies Charlotte Pennington and Jacqueline Williams and how one states clearly the other is a liar.

It’s about, to be more precise, whether the nannies did or didn’t abandon the alleged night crèche with children still there that night as we detailed in our post “Luz’s Secret Service”.

Amy Tierney is clear in saying that she left immediately for apartment 5A in her statement of May 06 2007:

“States that on the night of the disappearance she was on duty and immediately went to the room to check if the child was hiding. She saw that the shutters were raised and that the window was partially opened. It was then that she began looking in the closets to see if the child was hiding there.”

Jacqueline Williams, in her statement of May 08 2007 says she, like Amy Tierney, immediately leaves the alleged night crèche. However her statement helps us understand what Charlotte Pennington did as she is very specific and precise about the fact that Charlotte Pennington stayed with the remainder of the children:

“That after this situation, the “search procedure of missing child" was initiated, which consists of an organised search and broken up into different areas of the resort in question. Immediately the deponent helped and participated in such diligences, staying her colleague with the name Charlotte in the crèche, taking care of the remaining children who were there and waiting for the arrival of the last parents, after which she also participated in the mentioned procedure.”

Charlotte Pennington says on May 07 2007:

“That after this situation, the “search procedure of missing child” was initiated, which consists of an organised search and broken up into different areas of the resort in question.

In this way, the deponent states that she participated in such diligences, making a partnership with her colleague Amy, walking various areas of the resort “the ocean Club”. More refers that she even walked the area at the back of the residence where Madeleine stayed with her parents and siblings, being that, in virtue of already there being various individuals inside, without being able to say if they were friends or workers of the resort, she didn’t go inside that residence.”

Charlotte Pennington partners up with Amy Tierney who left immediately. Jacqueline Williams also left immediately. This means that all 3 nannies abandoned the alleged night crèche.

It could be said, and no one did, that Charlotte Pennington only joins up with Amy Tierney after she handed the remainder of the children back to the parents and then, and only then headed for apartment 5A.

We’re playing Devil’s advocate here, as Charlotte Pennington does say the procedure was initiated and that she participates in such diligences but it’s a fact she doesn’t put an exact timing to that.

Jacqueline Williams even comes to her defense by saying “after which [handing the kids to the last parents] she [Charlotte Pennington] also participated in the mentioned procedure”.

But if that was the case, we would obviously expect to see in Charlotte Pennington’s statement a recognition of staying behind to take care of the remainder children waiting to hand them over to their parents.

And if it was after that she joins Amy Tierney we would equally expect that she would detail that fact, say something like “after I handed over the last child, I closed the facilities and headed for apartment 5A where I joined my colleague Amy Tierney”.

It is Charlotte Pennington herself who tells us that she also left immediately, as per her own words in Dan Newling’s article in the Daily Mail of 25 September 2007 “Kate McCann DID scream 'They've taken her' claims new nanny witness”.

“Talking from her mother’s home in Leatherhead, Surrey, yesterday she told the Daily Mail: "I was in the apartment less than five minutes after they found that Madeleine had gone.

"When we were coming out we saw Kate and she was screaming: 'They've taken her, they've taken her!'

"I was standing right in front of her outside the apartment’s back door, in the alleyway. I was very close to her. It might not have been the first thing she said. But she definitely said it.

"I was one of three Mark Warner staff who saw her shouting it. They have all given statements to the Portuguese police saying that."”

So if she’s in Apartment 5A 5 minutes after Maddie was taken then that means she left the alleged crèche as immediately as Amy Tierney and Jacqueline Williams, confirming the children were simply abandoned.

In fact, if she arrived when she says she does as quoted in the article, it means she arrived there before Amy Tierney and even before Dawn Bullen the woman who allegedly warned her and her colleagues that Maddie had disappeared!

Fortunately for us, Charlotte Pennington has done a Kate McCann. To do a Kate McCann is for one to be registered on video saying what one shouldn’t have ever said.



Kate McCann did it in the 2009 Mockumentary with her door that “was open much further than we had left it” and so saying that neither Matthew Oldfield nor her husband had touched that door between when she allegedly went to Tapas for dinner and that moment, like we showed in our post “Kate confesses, finally”.

Charlotte Pennington does a Kate McCann when she decides to refer one very important detail which she leaves out in her statement that is in the PJ Files and that is mention that the mystery woman, Dawn Bullen, picked up the LAST child from the night-crèche.


This is what she says in the documentary “Dispatches: Searching for Madeleine” - Channel 4 - 18 October 2007 from 03:07 to 03:28:

“I was working that night at something called “Drop-in Creche”. We had one child left and... the mother came in, picked up the child and just mentioned “hang on a minute, I've just seen a guy who’s run past me, who seemed really distressed and I recognised him as being a guest at Mark Warner but he was shouting out something like 'Maddie' or 'Abbey' or 'Gabby'.”

And from 03:33 to 03:55:

“I went straight to the apartment. I sort of walked in, did a quick scan around and been told “no, no, she’s not here, she’s not here.”

Kate McCann was outside and she was very distressed. She was saying things like “they've taken her” and “she’s gone” and, you know, “where is she? where is she?”

She was crying and there were tears down her face and it was absolutely heartbreaking to see.”

So we are to believe that a woman who brings shocking news and just happens to pick up the LAST child from the alleged crèche cannot be identified by any of the 3 nannies?

Plus, now Dawn Bullen, who is supposed to have dinner with another 3 adults in Tapas, crosses with a man, who we haven’t the faintest idea who he may be because we have no report of any male T9 running in the street shouting a child’s name.

And if that had happened, then why doesn’t Dawn Bullen make contact with this guest (supposedly she had dined in the same place as all the men of the T9 and so could have said “a man I saw dining at Tapas”) and offer her immediate help instead of continuing her trip to the alleged crèche.

Also we can’t understand from where Jacqueline Williams gets the idea that “so the parents of that child needed the help of the nannies in order to try and find her.”

Also note that in the statements the alleged night crèche is called a “dinner period” service and now Charlotte Pennington refers to it as a “drop-in-crèche”. In October 2007 it wasn’t yet “night crèche”.

And isn’t this “I went straight to the apartment. I sort of walked in, did a quick scan around and been told “no, no, she’s not here, she’s not here” a blatant contradiction to what she told the authorities in May: “in virtue of already there being various individuals inside, without being able to say if they were friends or workers of the resort, she didn’t go inside that residence”?

But what we really want to highlight is that with the above Charlotte Pennington is calling Jacqueline Williams a liar.

Jacqueline Williams says “staying her colleague with the name Charlotte in the crèche, taking care of the remaining children who were there and waiting for the arrival of the last parents.”

If the woman who warned them was there to pick up the last child then what “remaining children” is Jacqueline Williams talking about? Please note the plural – CHILDREN.

And Charlotte Pennington does say that the woman was there to pick up the last child. What she said in the Dispatches video is only repeating what she is quoted as saying in the already mentioned Daily Mail article:

“Just before 10pm the last mother arrived to collect her child from the creche and mentioned that she had just bumped into a man, who had been shouting a name.”

Very clearly confirming that it was the last child.

So which is it Jacqueline Williams and Charlotte Pennington?

Charlotte Pennington continues in the same Daily Mail article: “We knew that one of the other nanny’s charges was called Maddie. We told the head of department what had happened and she took us straight to the apartment.”

The head of the department is said to be Lyndsay Johnson, which is questionable as on May 4 Donna Louise Rafferty-Hill says she is. But let’s pretend that it’s Lyndsay Johnson.

Lyndsay Johnson says she is in her apartment and says she’s informed by phone by Amy Tierney at 22:20 so very unlikely to have been her who “took us straight to apartment”.

Is Charlotte Pennington speaking of Amy Tierney when she says “head of department”? Amy Tierney is supposedly the Head of Minis but we wouldn’t call that heading a department. But let us let it be a department, it won’t be because of us that Minis isn’t one within the Mark Warner Childcare service.

But then why the need to tell Amy Tierney if she was there right next to them?

Let’s play Devil’s advocate once again and stretch our imagination supposing that only Charlotte Pennington and Jacqueline Williams speak to the mystery woman and they go tell Amy Tierney who just happened to be in some back room at the moment for some reason.

What matters is that whoever is supposed to have taken them straight to the apartment, takes THEM. Plural: “took us straight to apartment”.

Wouldn’t that mean that during the walk from the 24H reception to apartment 5A Jacqueline Williams wouldn’t have realised that Charlotte Pennington was right there next to her and that she didn’t stay behind in the crèche?

Again we ask, Jacqueline Williams and Charlotte Pennington, which is it?

Whoever wrote your scripts didn’t realise the implications of speaking to the press and TV companies and didn’t dream that the PJ files would be released.

We are often accused of spreading misinformation by our detractors, sometimes by those who have taken part, wittingly or unwittingly, in doing exactly that.


For the sake of accuracy and in order to contradict a seemingly embedded myth, we would like to demonstrate that John Geraghty, business tycoon who acquired the church keys for the McCanns on May 7th or 8th 2007, is neither from Leicester nor is the man who appears between 00:47 and 01:00 of the above video “John Geraghty May 7, 2007 in Praia da Luz” alleged to be him:



Father José Manuel Conceição Pacheco is clear that Mr Geraghty was the middle-man between the church keys and the McCanns:

“About the keys to the church, they were handed to them [the McCanns] on the 7 or 8 of May, which happened by suggestion of a person resident in the Parish, JONH GERAGHTY [sic], so that they could use the church, with serenity, without the media pressure. The key was handed by someone from the church JONH GERATHY [sic], who made them reach the McCanns, with the authorisation and consent [Portuguese: anuência] from the deponent”.

Mr Geraghty has been identified in both the press and on blogs as a Leicester business man, involved in the construction industry. Until we were given the heads up by an anonymous source, quoting a name that enabled us to research further, we also took this myth for granted.

As Mr Geraghty has not made a statement to the PJ nor given interviews to the media, we will follow our usual protocol of not publishing any personal information not already known publicly, or speculating on his role as a friend to the McCanns.

What we can say is that it appears from our research Mr Geraghty has never lived or had any business connections in the Leicester area. He married his wife R and has lived in the south of England since the 1970s, until around 2002.

There are two facts stated by the press which were correct: Mr and Mrs Geraghty now live near the Boavista golf course and Mr Geraghty was 68 in 2007.

As the Boavista development was only completed in 2002, their move to Portugal may coincide with their absence from the electoral roll in the UK after this time.

Whether the press description of Mr Geraghty as a “tycoon” – a rich and powerful man – is an accurate statement, those who know him can say better than we can.

(photos from here)

And there are a number of people reading here who know him very well, particularly as he was the Captain of the golf club in 2008 and the first captain to achieve a hole-in-one.

Speaking of myths, the airport bag story seems to fit into this category. Dominic Herbert wrote the story about a bag found near Faro airport on 3/11/07, “Maddie DNA clue in airport bag” described in the PJ files as a “media invention”. This article was already mentioned by us in our post “Fabricated: Bag found in Portugal”.

It was the same Dominic Herbert, writing for the now defunct News of the World  on 30/9/07 (as usual, with an unnamed source, but known to him) about John Geraghty storing the car for the McCanns in his garage, where independent forensic tests were, allegedly, carried out.

“Undercover Brits’ secret tests on car” is a dramatic account of white-suited men working for 9 hours overnight to dismantle the car, unknown to the PJ: “The scientists, wearing protective white suits and using the latest techniques and equipment, dismantled the car in the double garage of a Pounds 1 million villa owned by a friend of the McCanns-wealthy British tycoon John Geraghty, 68”.

And a claim that a tracker device had been fitted to the car and removed by the PJ: “It is understood Portuguese cops then seized the car to remove a tracker device, the size of a credit card, attached to the carburettor. But it is believed the detectives are still NOT yet aware that the independent tests have been carried out”.

Was it true? Or was it another “media invention”? According to Kate’s book, it’s true, as she describes an unnamed friend storing their car and on the advice of their lawyers, Kingsley Napley, having independent forensic tests carried out on the car.

Nothing about the forensic scientists who undertook the tests or the person who paid for them.

Kate does describe a scientist from Control Risks Group undertaking tests on the twins’ hair, so can it be presumed that it was CRG who carried out the tests on the car?

As Brian Kennedy became involved on September 12th, according to Kate, it’s possible either he or Mr Geraghty paid for the tests

Whatever happened, this is the last that is heard of the tests, whatever the results might have been.

Kate says Michael Wright returned the car to Praia da Luz after they flew home on September 9th, so presumably, he delivered the car to Mr Geraghty. However, a report in News of the World stated that Geraghty was at the airport when the McCanns left and that Kate had asked him to store the car.

Maybe Wright drove the car back to PdL with Geraghty as a passenger.

Sandy Cameron (former husband of Gerry’s sister Tricia) also left PdL on the same day, according to Kate.

(pics from here)

So he must have returned to PdL at a later date, because the car was returned to Lagos by Sandy Cameron on September 23rd.

Sandy Cameron, in his rogatory statement, describes using the car and cleaning it because of the unpleasant smells in the boot, although there is no documentation in the files about his nomination as a driver:

“While we were in the villa, a gardener would arrive every week or every 15 days, as would have been determined by the estate agency. The gardener would leave the rubbish bags near the back door and on at least one occasion, I used the vehicle to throw out this garbage. The garbage collection Portugal is not done the same way as in the U.K., and because of this it was necessary to take all the garbage to an area which I would call “recycling area” at the back of the Ocean Club. I used the Renault Scenic with this objective in various occasions.

 On one occasion, I think in July of 2007, I took Patricia to the supermarket. We placed the shopping in the boot of the Renault Scenic; we bought various items including fresh fish, shrimp and steak. When we unloaded the shopping, I noticed that blood had run out from the package to the bottom of the plastic bag. 

After this shopping trip and still in the month of July 2007, I began to notice a strange odour in the car. I did not give it much importance and assumed it probably was caused by the garbage bags or by the blood leaked in the boot on the shopping day. As a result, I removed the mat from the boot to clean it up. I shook the mat to remove any particles, cleaned it with a wet cloth and let it catch air.

In my opinion it’s impossible that Kate and Gerry would have hidden Madeleine somewhere and used the car to transport her to another location. There was always lots of people and mediea observing each of their movements, for this to be possible.”

The return form was also signed by John Geraghty (is that a pp?, meaning somebody signed on his behalf)

As an aside, why did Sandy Cameron need to return to PdL to return the car, after the McCann family had departed, leaving Michael Wright behind to do the cleaning and packing?  He was a teacher and the autumn term would have started.

Was John Geraghty simply a Good Samaritan from the Catholic congregation of Nossa Senhora da Luz who became a friend of the McCanns?

He certainly kept a very low profile. However, one photographer did capture a moment from September 9th 2007, on the day the McCanns and some of their family returned to the UK. Gerry is seen with two unnamed men.

(picture from here)

We believe one is Sandy Cameron and the other is John Geraghty.


Compare this to a photograph taken in the south of England in 1991 and the golf captain photo of him taken in PdL. Mr Geraghty bears no resemblance to the man in the video clip, who is balding, white-haired and not wearing glasses.


The real Mr Geraghty did work with an organisation in the UK which had links with churches. It seems a very reputable organisation which continues to undertake good work with overseas communities.

He may have come to the aid of the McCanns as part of the Catholic community, even though they did not set foot in the church before the disappearance of Madeleine.

Who knows if he remains friends or whether he ever regrets becoming involved.

He should know whether it’s true that Euclides Monteiro’s tractor accident happened on the golf course near Lagos, back in 2009, as claimed by journalist Brendan de Beer as referred by us in our post  “Person of interest”.

Or is Euclides Monteiro’s tractor accident on a golf course just another myth?

For all these years someone has been taken as Mr Geraghty when he clearly he's not and for all these years everyone from Praia da Luz who reads up on the case and knows the real Mr Geraghty has been happy to see this mistaken identity and say nothing, except for our anonymous reader.

It’s almost a case of one having to ask “who's afraid of John Geraghty”?

This post is a follow-up of our “Carman” post of last week.

There is no collective noun to describe tycoons, so we came up with our own – a triumph.

Stephen Winyard, owner of Stobo Castle health spa in Scotland and resident of Monaco, was the first tycoon to be named as a financial supporter of the McCanns. By May 10th 2007, Mr Winyard was reported to have made the offer of a million pound reward for information leading to the return of Madeleine. The offer was made earlier in the week through The Times.

Nothing more was written about Mr Winyard until December 2007, by which time, a triumph of tycoons had materialised, including John Geraghty. Mr Winyard is the answer to the questions we posed about the tests on the car stored in Mr Geraghty’s garage.  It was Mr Winyard who paid for the tests and who spoke about the results of the report refuting the claims made by the Portuguese police.

We are informed that it was Gerry McCann who had requested financial help from Mr Winyard in September and that Mr Winyard had “broken cover” to highlight the findings of the report, by Home Office - approved forensic scientists.

The Scotsman article of December 8 2007 by Michael Howie “Scots tycoon attacks 'scurrilous allegations' as he comes out as McCanns' secret funder” gives us all the details:

“ONE of Scotland's most wealthy businessmen can today be revealed as the mystery donor helping fund the fight to clear the names of Madeleine McCann's parents.  

Stephen Winyard, who owns the luxury Stobo Castle spa in Peebleshire, has spoken publicly for the first time since pledging £100,000 to help meet the escalating legal costs of Gerry and Kate McCann.
In an exclusive interview with The Scotsman, Mr Winyard revealed he has already paid for DNA tests carried out on the Renault Scenic hire car used by the McCanns nearly four weeks after Madeleine's disappearance.
 
The 58-year-old father-of-three has remained in the shadows since offering a £1million reward for four-year-old Madeleine's return in May. But he said he could no longer remain silent as "scurrilous allegations" continue to be directed towards Mr and Mrs McCann.
 
He said he wanted to highlight the results of the tests on DNA recovered from the car, and on hair samples from Kate McCann and Madeleine's brother and sister.
 
Portuguese police believe that DNA recovered from the boot of the car suggest Madeleine's body was carried inside the vehicle.
 
Meanwhile, Portuguese newspapers have alleged that hair samples from Kate and Gerry McCann's children show the couple sedated the two-year-old twins, Sean and Amelie, and Madeleine on the night she disappeared.
 
Mr Winyard stated that the findings of their own tests, by Home Office-approved forensic scientists, refuted these claims.
 
"The reason I am breaking cover is to highlight the findings of that report," he said. "The conclusion of the report was that no DNA was found that in any way implicated Gerry and Kate in Madeleine's disappearance.
 
"The further test that was commissioned, basically a hair drug test, also refuted the fairly scurrilous accusation that the twins were sedated or that Kate took sedatives herself."
 
Mr Winyard, who splits his time between Stobo Castle and his home in Monaco, was approached by Gerry McCann for financial help in September.
 
The businessman agreed to offer an initial sum of £100,000 - a figure matched by Virgin tycoon Sir Richard Branson.
 
Double-glazing magnate Brian Kennedy is also donating money to help the McCanns clear their name.
 
Mr Winyard said the three were sharing the costs between them. "I think the McCanns are entitled to the best legal defence they can muster to refute these scurrilous allegations.
 
"I remain absolutely confident there is totally insufficient evidence to link them to Madeleine's disappearance and I'm absolutely confident that in the fullness of time they will be fully exonerated," he said.
 
Mr Winyard "simply could not stand by and watch" as the couple endured the worst possible hell. "I think you have to be a parent to fully understand, to some degree, what they're going through, to understand their loss," he said.
 
Mr Winyard, who has met Gerry twice and Kate once, said the couple "deeply resented" the allegations made against them in the Portuguese press.
 
"Their main concern is to get their suspect status lifted so that the search for Madeleine can continue.
 
"Some of the reporting in the British press has been less than fair. The blanket coverage of every aspect of their lives, the littlest things that they do, creates, I think, the impression in people's minds that they are somehow responsible for what happened to Madeleine."
 
"This is all to do with getting the focus back on finding Madeleine. Both Gerry and Kate have been through an absolute nightmare over the last seven months and they're facing some very difficult weeks with Christmas coming up."
 
Mr Winyard criticised the lack of public support offered to the McCanns by the Prime Minister. Gordon Brown initially spoke to the McCanns several times on the phone. But since they were declared suspects by the Portugese authorities, lines of communication had come to a halt.
 
"This government was elected to look after its citizens," said Mr Winyard, "and it's fair to say it's a fundamental principle of our legal system that everyone is presumed innocent until proven guilty.
 
"With that in mind, I would really strongly urge that Gordon Brown, who has previously been really supportive, accede to our request for a meeting at ministerial level."
 
He acknowledged that the McCanns' decision to leave their children in their apartment at Praia da Luz while they dined had "divided opinion".
 
"It is something the McCanns will have to live with," he said.
 
A Downing Street spokesman said: "We do not comment on ongoing cases."”

Brian Kennedy, double glazing tycoon and Virgin tycoon Richard Branson had agreed to share the costs, specifically for the best legal defence for the McCanns. In the Telegraph article by Fiona Govan of November 20 2007, “McCann team tests car for traces of Madeleine”Kennedy confirmed tests had taken place: “We did our own tests on the hire car and found no traces of Madeleine.”

We can only assume that these tests were the ones said to have been done by those “scientists, wearing protective white suits and using the latest techniques and equipment, dismantled the car in the double garage of a Pounds 1 million villa owned by a friend of the McCanns-wealthy British tycoon John Geraghty, 68” as stated in the News Of The World article of September 30 2007 by Dominic Herbert “Undercover Brits’ secret tests on car”.

Geraghty, who up to last week everyone thought had connections with Leicester, which he didn’t, and who up to then everyone also thought was a completely different man physically:


Presumably, Branson as a financial contributor was also aware of the findings, but as Geraghty was not referred to as one of the financial donors, was he also informed of the report’s findings?

There is no reference to these tests in the PJ files and no further mention of them after December 2007.

In conclusion, we still don’t know:

Which Home Office - approved scientists conducted and reported on the tests.

Who, apart from Mr Winyard, Kennedy and probably Branson, were informed of the results.

Whether these results were sent to any police force.

Why results supposedly favourable to the McCanns were never referred to by the McCanns or their immediate circle and were not forwarded to the PJ at the time, or the FSS in Birmingham.


Acknowledgement: We would like to acknowledge Crimeshots through which we found the Scotsman article quoted in current post.

Yes, we said we were on the half-term break. We also said we would only return next Friday. But about that we also said “we, will be back next week if there aren’t any surprises”.

The surprise was an email within the translated Chapter 13 of the book “La Cortina de Humo” by Julian Peribanez and Antonio Tamarit that the CMOMM Forum published this last Friday, February 12.


We won’t comment about the content of something that makes Brian Kennedy look like a naïve tycoon and that concurs with the McCann innocence.

But there was a pearl to be found in this chapter. The mail from Edward Smethurst to Julian Perinabez, supposedly written in December 2013 or little after:

“Dear Julián,

I’ve just finished in a telephone conference with our advisors. As you are probably aware, the Metropolitan Police is currently responsible for the investigation. Therefore, the Trust (the Madeleine Fund) has decided neither to meet with you, nor to discuss the investigation with any private investigators whilst the MET (Metropolitan Police) are carrying out their investigation. We will therefore not be able to meet with you.

However, if you have any information which may assist the Trust (the Madeleine Fund) or the investigation, please feel free to send it to us by email and we would welcome this.”

So, if true, according to this mail, the Fund would not speak to a private investigator because a legitimate police, the Metropolitan Police was “currently responsible for the investigation”.

In fact, because of that they wouldn’t speak to any private investigator.

We do think that was the proper and correct thing to do.

However, it seems that in 2007 when a legitimate police was currently responsible for the investigation, the Polícia Judiciária (PJ), they had no problem in speaking to, even hiring, Metodo 3.

And according to the chapter, it was tycoon Brian Kennedy who hired them.

Same tycoon who was, together with another 2, Stephen Winyard and Richard Branson, according to press reports, responsible for the “independent”forensic testing done to the Scenic, in the property of John Geraghty by alleged scientists, a privately funded criminal investigation venture that sidelined who was then responsible for the investigation, the PJ, as we showed in our “A triumph of tycoons” post.

Why wasn’t the 2013 standard to rightfully respect the legitimate authorities applied in 2007?

(image from here)

We don’t know if the recent news, or to be more precise the article on February 15 in the Sun “I’m convinced my Maddie is still in the Algarve, says Kate McCann as she launches Child Rescue campaign” about Kate thinking Maddie is alive in the vicinity of Praia da Luz is anything related to the decision from the Appeal court on the McCann v Amaral judicial process undergoing its terms in Lisbon.

We do find it strange that an event to promote an alert system, that the system was completely and absolutely overshadowed by a speculative remark made by Kate McCann.

It seems that to the media it’s much more important for the public to know that Kate McCann thinks that her daughter was from May to September 2007 apparently very near her than to educate us all on how that alert system works and what we should do in case a child goes missing.

A system, without any of the news article of February 15 telling us it consisted of an app for a smartphone, which according to Kate if it had existed in 2007 would have mobilised and galvanised people:

“If enough people had been mobilised and galvanised early then who knows what the outcome would have been”.

Unless we start importing people from other planets we cannot see how many more people Kate expected to be galvanised and mobilised in May 2007.

Then, there were no smartphones, people got their information updates from two main sources: television and radio. One just has to read the statements in the files and see how many people claim to have learned that Maddie had disappeared from TV.

Two people come to mind, Stephen Carpenter and Yvonne Martin. And both were immediately galvanised and mobilised. Both left their residences at once.

One walked half of Praia de Luz together with 2 of the T9 men, during which they were able to find what we believe to have been the last specimen of a non-English speaking hotel receptionist in the Algarve - by sheer coincidence in the Ocean Club reception - and ends up finding a translator for the McCanns, sorry the PJ, just when he had the intention to return to his apartment where he has left his family but which he ends up not doing and we still have to know when does he that day.

The other, a senior social worker, drove from the other side of Lagos to have a very peculiar blockage of her memory when she had to remember the face of a supposed paedophile while having same memory with the precision to remember distinctly from that day 2 children she allegedly sees for the first time.

And from May 4, both TV and radio, together with the newspapers blared out only one thing: let’s galvanise and mobilise and find MADDIE, the British girl with a coloboma.

Having then the radios and TV putting out this single message would be today’s equivalent of having every single smartphone on the planet with one and only one app, the “Find Maddie” one!

Impossible to beat, impossible to ask for more participation from the public or the authorities. The entire planet was galvanised and mobilised.

Only that explains the alleged thousands of alleged sightings! So how can Kate speak of lack of mobilisation and galvanisation?

But as we said, and for us that is what matters, we don’t know if this piece of so-called news is or isn’t related to the decision from the court which has everyone from Maddie’s world in deep and anxious suspense.

Truth is, as we have said before, the Portuguese judicial system is absolutely anachronistic to the point that to make any sort predictions about its timings is as reasonable as predicting snow during summer in the Sahara.

Back in September last year, we were told by a friend that as the Appeal court is undermanned there would be only a decision around April.

Meanwhile we have heard on the grapevine, so absolutely unconfirmed, that it may be in March. We’re still in February. And please do reread the above before holding us accountable for any of the times mentioned.

However it must be said that experience has shown us that the McCann side seems always to be one up on the rest of us when it comes to knowing Portuguese court decisions.

It wouldn’t in our opinion be absurd to say that this sudden urge from Kate to tell us that Maddie may be in Luz could be  related with something team McCann know about the court decision that we, including Mr Amaral, don’t.

If this is the case, then it would seem to be a quite a desperate move on Kate’s part and good news for us. It would seem she’s desperately seeking sympathy by showing that after all these years she still believes in a live Maddie not far from Luz.

In other words, she would be anticipating an unfavourable decision from Lisbon. Trying to convince the executioner to be merciful, so to say.

But one has to say that it doesn’t seem to be a very brilliant move on her part. To say without any new fact that anyone is aware of, that Maddie is alive near Praia da Luz is basically saying that both the PJ and the Scotland Yard of are quite incompetent. Not to insult the hundreds, not to say thousands who searched every inch of that micro-region in 2007.

On the other hand it could also be said that all this was about the McCanns justifying the expenses related to hiring a new team of private investigators as Operation Grange will most likely close at the end of April (someone in the UK is crossing fingers really hard wishing Lisbon will say something before then!).

But then why point things towards the area of Praia da Luz? Hasn’t the PJ, Dave Edgar and Scotland Yard turned every possible stone there down to a mysterious sock?

And why justify the expense? They have already done that. They have already said they have earmarked £750,000 to go on investigating in case Operation Grange closes down.

Another option would be for them to be pressing the Met to keep Operation Grange open. Again, not a smart move to call them incompetent and then “ask” for them to go back to where they have already been and were not welcomed at all.

All three above options have one thing in common: they’re absurdly ridiculous by the simple fact that Kate even raises the possibility of her being alive and near Praia da Luz.

The most successful “abductor” of all time was a neighbour? And he eluded the entire world for 9 years?

No, the ridiculousness is such a statement is far too ridiculous to be innocent. Kate McCann is, in our opinion making a fool of herself with the intention of being ridiculous.

We think none of the three options above apply. We think all is summed up in in these words from the article in the Sun from Kate: “I want an end, an answer. Whatever that it is.”

That is the message the other side wants to put across, in our opinion.

Kate McCann is asking for this nightmare to end. She’s at the end of the line. She wants the game to stop.

If there’s an axe to fall on her neck, then let it fall but stop the anxiety of not knowing when. If there’s no axe, then send the executioner away. One or the other. Clarify things.

This seems to be confirmed on the next day’s news in the Sun two days after, on February 17, “Kate McCann: 'The twins know all about her disappearance and they want Maddie back'” with the following snippets:

Starting with the title “the twins know all about her disappearance” and continuing inside with “KATE McCann and husband Gerry have told their twins "everything" about Maddie's disappearance”, “the couple have strived to keep their other children in the loop”, “Kate explained: The twins are doing really well”, “they are up to date, they know everything, they know if we are meeting police” and “there is nothing kept from them”.

Or, in other words, the twins are ready for whatever outcome. Please let closure come, says Kate in our opinion.

These could be heartfelt words if not for the ridiculousness presented.

We think those who ordered her to be this ridiculous had in our opinion two goals:

- The first is to get this message across to the target listeners in a very crystal, crystal clear manner;

- The second is to make the couple as contemptible as possible. The more loathsome the couple appear to be, the less attention will be given those outside the T9 even if named. The couple are the loathsome ones and focus should be concentrated exclusively on them and their 7 friends.

Like us, the other side is in our opinion not looking only at the court decision but beyond it.

They want a decision from King Richard I, the Lionheart.

To understand why we bring King Richard into the picture we have to take the reader back into the tale of Robin Hood and a major detail everyone misses when hearing it.

We will skip the part of questioning whether Robin Hood even existed as well as the part of also questioning whether he ever met King Richard.

We will just stick to the “facts” of the tale that is currently in vogue which is the one where Robin ends up with Marian, hailed and no longer an outlaw by the hand of King Richard.

Everyone is enthralled by the courage of Hood and his Merry Men. Of how he robbed the rich and gave to the poor wanting nothing for himself.

The tale also has a love story, that of Marian and Robin, plus the comic reliefs of Little John knocking Robin into the creek, the quirks from Friar Tuck and Marian’s maid.


And who can forget the brilliant performance of the recently sadly lost Alan Rickman in the role of the Sheriff of Nottingham? What a loss to the world that death was. Our homage to an outstanding actor.

But we would like to centre our attention on the extremely happy ending.

King Richard comes and puts in their rightful place King John, the Sheriff of Nottingham and Guy of Osborne. Blesses the love of Robin and Marian. Hails the hero and pardons all his crimes.

We all are enthralled with so much happiness and righteousness that we totally miss that the entire tale would have never been known if it wasn’t for King Richard.

(image from here)

Or if it was ever known it would be because of a thief who met a similar end as Che Guevara in Bolivia: one spectacular but fruitless death.

And Che’s death was only known because of who he had been in Cuba, and not because of his feats in Bolivia where he was killed.

None of Che’s companions who died with him in Bolivia gained any immortality. Fact is, if it wasn’t for Cuba, Che’s death would not be known to anyone outside Bolivia and we very much doubt by anyone from there.

Like Cuba validates Che, it’s King Richard who validates Robin Hood.

Without King Richard, Robin Hood would be just one completely unknown thief among so many others.

Where does this fit in the Maddie case?

In Maddie’s case, truth is Robin Hood.

We, all who strive for the truth, are his Merry Men.

The reality is that without a King Richard to validate the truth, the usurper, King John, will continue to ignore it completely and persecute those who defend it.

In Robin Hood’s tale, the kingdom was then ruled by a corrupt and evil ruler, John, who if given the chance, would have completely smothered Robin Hood, wiped him from any history book and replace him with a “hero” of his choice, much more convenient, for the sake of the public folklore.

In Maddie’s story we have in effect an evil and corrupt establishment who if given the chance, will completely smother the truth, wiping it from any history book and replace it with a version of its choice, much more convenient, for the sake of public closure.

Without our King Richard deciding in Robin’s, or to be more specific Truth’s favour we are indeed fighting a lost battle.

We look upon him waiting his decision.

Will he move to immortalise Robin Hood or is he unable to overcome John and so allow the lie to perpetuate?

We can only win the battle by making sure that our King Richard is convinced it’s best to bless Robin Hood, or in our case, the truth.

Note, we did not say we were Robin Hood.

We said we were his Merry Men. Only 3 among so many others in Maddie’s Sherwood Forest.

In this case, truth is Robin Hood. Nothing and no one else.

Merry Men care not about their own egos. Yes, the tales let us hear of names like Little John, Will and Friar Tuck. But none are heroes in individual feats against their foes, all are part of a collective heroism.

In that moment which King Richard legitimises Robin Hood, no individual Merry Man is counted individually, although each one was essential to put the hero in that position.

It’s about time people set individual egos aside. One reason we don’t lend our names to the blog is exactly we don’t want our egos interfering with our work here. Besides our egos are pretty well replenished:


It seems then our work has been validated since June 8 2013, with presently 183 posts in a blog and too many comments to count all over the internet, both published and unpublished. What better compliment could one ask for?

People must understand once and for all that fact finding time is over. It has been over since July 2008.

The establishment has all the facts, all the proof, all it needs to legitimise the truth. The truth is not legitimised for political reasons, not because further investigation is needed. The one that exists in the PJ Files is sufficient.

We here in the blog appear to be putting out new facts but we aren’t.

We are simply exposing old facts. Facts the establishment would prefer you not to see but still old facts. Facts from 2007/2008. Facts from the PJ Files.

Our detractors call us armchair detectives. We are not such thing. What we are, and very proud to be, is armchair journalists.

We do the job paid journalist can’t or won’t do in the Maddie case.

We analyse existing fact and expose it like journalists do. We don’t go out questioning people or look at vestiges. We do not seek to sit in the prosecutors chair in a court room. We inform. We read what has been written and we expose what is there to be read.

We do what journalists do, only we do it for free and from armchairs. We do love our armchairs.

What we have shown is all facts that are in the files. So if we have seen these facts, we’re certain the establishment also has been able to do the same.

Our foes are not stupid people, we keep repeating that. They should not be underestimated.

And they should not be underestimated especially when it comes to the manipulation of people.

If you want to fool someone look no further than someone who refuses to be fooled, for he is the easiest person to fool.

Place the right carrot in front of a donkey and the animal will follow the exact path you want it to follow. Convince him he’s choosing the “right” carrot and you have the advantage that he will walk your path thinking he’s the one choosing where he walks.

The choice of which carrot to follow will be his, he only fails to see that the variety of carrots put before him to choose from was not a decision of his making.

And there are times one doesn’t need to place a variety for choice. The type of carrot a particular donkey needs is so evident that is all needed is to keep feeding him with them.

When one chooses to ignore facts one knows are there, one is not being a Merry Man.

Then one not only one is not helping Robin Hood as one but is hindering him.

One is just acting like Will Scarlett – in Kevin Costner’s film version of the tale – who betrays Robin just because his ego is hurt for feeling his brother is getting better treatment than he is.

And when one is only worried about ego and not the truth, then all the opposing side has to do is to put on the end of a stick the right “ego-satisfying” carrot and very easily they have gained an unwitting but very helpful ally.

But as we have said, ultimately nothing depends on Robin Hood or the Merry Men. It all depends on King Richard for validation. It’s his call and his call only.

All we can, and must be, is like ticks on a human and become a really bothersome nuisance.

However, if he has reason to live with the irritating itch then he will live with it. That’s why we must bite, bite and bite and then bite again. Many ticks biting will drive anyone crazy and striving to stop the itch.

Like a tick when compared to a human we are also minuscule but like it we certainly can exert convincing pressure.

The reaction from the public to the latest stunt from Kate shows that this is a sensitive subject.

It may lay dormant but it will never go away.

Or as the February 17 article in the Sun says“Kate told how her family have been "completely amazed" by the fact Maddie, whose 13th birthday is in May, is still so much in the minds of the public despite being missing for so long.”

Yes, she is in the mind of the public. That is a fact. So much so that even the Sky News website is accepting comments against the couple.

And Kate does seem to be begging for closure. And by “boasting” a live Maddie near Praia the Luz she doesn’t seem to be pushing the archival option. More towards a merciful executioner one. 

To conclude, our collective very, very annoying tick bites may be what will convince our King Richard that best thing he can do is to hail Hood rather than try to smother him.

Make him understand that our “bite marks” will forever be visible on the internet for all to see that no matter how much he may say that Robin Hood, or the truth, doesn’t exist, it will persistently be here for all who have eyes to see, so best for him to assume the hero once and for all, stand next to him and raise his arm to the cheering crowd.

(image from here)

Then we will all be able to meet and celebrate at Nottingham castle where we will raise Robin, or Truth, in our arms, parade it on our shoulders and let the children throw rotten tomatoes at the likes of John, the Sheriff and Guy.

Now, at the end of winter of 2016, it seems that Maddie has suddenly bloomed like a flower in full spring.

If it had happened in the spring then we all would have understood it. But out of the blue in winter?

Last week we spoke of 2 articles in the Sun, the article  “I’m convinced my Maddie is still in the Algarve, says Kate McCann as she launches Child Rescue campaign” published on February 15 and the other, published 2 days later the “Kate McCann: 'The twins know all about her disappearance and they want Maddie back'” in the same tabloid.

Then we said each sent its own specific message to ears meant to be targeted.

The message of the first was in our opinion to ask for an end to the suffering and of the other was that the twins were ready for whatever that requested closure meant.

We also said that both articles had the common factor of being absolutely ridiculous by affirming the likelihood of Maddie being alive and near Praia da Luz.

But on February 20 a third article of the same tabloid was published and showed us to be wrong, there was no ridiculousness in the previous 2 ones. The article was called “Kate McCann: 'I physically can't rest without knowing where Maddie is'”

Before we say anything about this last article, we would like to note that in  just 5 days (February 15, 17 and 20) there were 3 articles published in the Sun all by Antonella “I’m a McCann groupie” Lazzeri. Impressive? We would rather say it presents a rhythm that discards any coincidence.

As we said, we spoke too soon of ridiculousness in our last post. But our post was published on the 19th and this article only came out on the 20th, so we couldn’t have read it. In our opinion it’s the most important of the 3, and we have called it the “knowledge of what happened to Maddie” article.

It explains why Kate points all her fingers of both her hands towards Praia da Luz. And by explaining that it justifies the “ridiculousness” of having it said Maddie is still alive. She has to use Maddie for her intent and to use Maddie she obviously has to say she’s alive.

To understand all, let’s first recap the snippets from the first 2 articles.

From article #1, the  “I’m convinced my Maddie is still in the Algarve, says Kate McCann as she launches Child Rescue campaign”:

“It’s nearly nine years and that’s so ridiculous and so unbelievable”

“Nine years. Time just goes too quickly. It’s the quiet times that are tough”

“I want an end, an answer. Whatever that it is.”

We then said it was Kate begging “King Richard” for a closure. We maintain that was the message.

From article #2, the “Kate McCann: 'The twins know all about her disappearance and they want Maddie back'”:

Starting with the title: “the twins know all about her disappearance”

Continuing inside with:

“KATE McCann and husband Gerry have told their twins "everything" about Maddie's disappearance”

“the couple have strived to keep their other children in the loop”

“Kate explained: The twins are doing really well”

“they are up to date, they know everything, they know if we are meeting police”

“there is nothing kept from them”.

We then said it was the McCanns (not only Kate) saying that the twins were ready for any outcome. We maintain that was the message.

Now let’s look at article #3, the one that takes us full circle.

From the title: “can't rest without knowing where Maddie is”

And inside:

“she can never feel 'at peace' without knowing what happened to her daughter”

“You just can’t rest without knowing”.

What is being said is, in our opinion, that what happened to Maddie is to be known. To be disclosed.

Almost innocent and logical words if it wasn’t for the repeated Praia da Luz soundbites. Let’s recap on them:

From article #1:

“I’m convinced my Maddie is still in the Algarve, says Kate McCann”, KATE McCann yesterday said she is convinced whoever snatched Madeleine from the Algarve resort of Praia da Luz never took her far”

“That’s where she last was and I don’t think she’s been taken a million miles from there”

“I’ve always said Praia da Luz is the place where I feel closest to her”

“but Kate believes Madeleine probably never left the country”

“she said she and husband Gerry have learned from their years of research that abducted children are generally not taken far”.

Article #2 doesn’t mention Praia da Luz. It is about the twins so understandably unlikely for that town to have been mentioned.

From article #3:

“Kate, from Rothley, Leicester, said she feels Maddie is still in the Algarve as that's the place she feels "closest" to her daughter.”

To sum up the message of the 3 articles: I want closure, the twins are ready and what happened to Maddie in Praia da Luz is to be disclosed.

Very simple, very direct, very straightforward and very objective.

And what happened to Maddie is really all that happened to her. From the death to disposal. Thus the near Praia da Luz and not only Praia da Luz.

All those who are to be implicated will be implicated.

Kate is saying she’s not going down alone.

Why should she be silent when they go after her? If she’s charged what has she got to lose? Nothing. All she had to lose will have been lost.

It’s not like she can serve a prison sentence, however light, and then return to a normal life as if nothing happened and retake her life from April 2007. She can’t. That was taken away from her in May 2007. Then, she was sentenced to life imprisonment without parole in a prison without walls.

And that sentence will not be lightened even if she serves one other in a prison with physical walls.

The only thing that will lighten that sentence is truth. It will not lighten the fact that it’s a life sentence and it will continue to be so but it will make the walls much, much thinner.

When she shows she didn’t run away from the responsibility of the accidental death but that she was forced to. Forced to act out a play faking the life of her own daughter. Forced not because she was protecting herself but rather others, important others, who were there in Praia da Luz that week.

That, and only that, will shift some of the guilt from her shoulders.

She may even go from being the devil to become a saint when the public realizes that the hoax was the work of the “powerful” and that the McCanns were just mere puppets.

Even then she will never be able to go back to a normal life but at least a great deal of the stigma she will carry will be taken away.

Could it be that when she appears to be saying that she won’t go down alone, she’s not being submissive and accepting her fate but rather being defiant and is blackmailing?

We don’t think so. The first 2 articles seem to contradict that. If she was defiant, in the first she wouldn’t be seeking an end but rather stating she continued to have the strength to continue. The focus would be on that.

But it’s the second article that to us clarifies that there’s acceptance. The twins are not played as victims but as ready. As up to speed on all. The article does not seek sympathy. Does not send the message that if they are arrested the twins will suffer even more. The message is the exact opposite, the twins are ready, they are prepared.

When she appears to say she is not going down alone, she’s simply, in our opinion giving a timely warning to those in Praia da Luz and near it to be ready.

These 3 articles in the Sun told us that the tide was changing.

That things seemed to be definitely heading for closure.

But then we were surprised when the changing tide suddenly became a tsunami.


The tsunami of Katie Hopkins publishing on February 22 an article on her Mail Online column “KATIE HOPKINS: We'll never know what really happened to Maddie but her parents should accept their share of the blame and let her go” bashing the McCanns.

Katie Hopkins is a controversial woman who seeks to be controversial.

She has said unthinkable things in the past. But one thing one has to recognise in Hopkins is that there’s no falsehood. She speaks the language of the not politically correct. Sometimes she says things that we think should never be said. But no one can accuse her of saying things she doesn’t believe in.


That’s why she has a massive audience. Numbers don’t lie. On Twitter, Katie Hopkins has 622,000 followers!

So when Katie Hopkins decides to say what she thinks on the McCanns she has definitely set a milestone in the case. There’s a before Katie Hopkins and there’s an after.

The historic moment was set when UK’s biggest loudmouth – said as a compliment because it is by being one that she earns her living very nicely – said “I have never been allowed to say this before”.

If Katie Hopkins, who in the past has used the media to say the most outrageous things, couldn’t up to now give her honest opinion about the McCanns, then who could? No one.

Or as she describes it, “It’s been a white-out, like the silence of snow” up to now.

So when she does finally give her opinion about the couple – and publicising it beforehand – it was like a large stone door protecting some ancient treasured secret that had been sealed shut was finally opened.

We will get back to that “door opening” later on. Let’s first look at what Katie Hopkins says in her article:

“There is no amount of money the will right the wrongs of the past, no libel action that will cancel out the damage the McCanns inflicted on themselves.”

“Kate and Gerry McCann didn't deserve £11million of our cash to look for Maddie or try to resolve their consciences or salvage reputations.”

“If you really must blame someone, then Kate and Gerry are right there in front of you. And yet, protected by some invisible force-shield I don’t understand.”

“Show me a family from a council estate who left their child alone to go out eating and drinking who have been lauded with such support and the protection of the state.”

“Kate was no better. There were 48 police questions Kate McCann refused to answer after Maddie was gone. Surely if you wanted to find your child you would give anything, tell police everything you knew, offer anything you had?”

 “Taking her little bed-time toy, Cuddle Cat, with the last smell of their daughter, and putting it in the wash just five days after she vanished into the night.”

Summing up, libel actions threat, reputation salvage, protection by an invisible force, the explicit use of the words “protection of the state”, 48 questions and washing of cuddle-cat.

If what was to be said in order to denounce the McCanns were gangsters then Katie’s article was certainly Saint Day’s Valentine’s Massacre, when many mobsters of Chicago were gunned down.

But the massacre doesn’t end there. We have saved the most juicy snippet for last:

“Even our British broadcaster was in on the act. A Crimewatch Special in 2013 featuring new photo-fits of Maddie’s abductor failed to acknowledge that the McCanns had been sitting on these pictures for nearly five years.

Pictures compiled by their own investigation team whose report they later hid from view when it pointed the finger of blame in a direction Gerry didn't enjoy.”

Savour it please. Read and enjoy every single word of it.

With this, Katie Hopkins just machine-guns down three really important “McCann mobsters”.

First, the BBC. The state media service. She says very explicitly that the BBC “was in on the act”.

Second, at the end, with “they later hid from view when it pointed the finger of blame in a direction Gerry didn't enjoy” she clearly is saying that Gerry is Smithman, the man SY says is of interest to the case.

But, it’s the third snippet that is the most relevant one. She says explicitly that the McCanns were “sitting on these pictures [the Smithman e-fits] for nearly five years”.

Wasn’t it for saying that the Times had to issue a public apology? Wasn’t it because of that the Times had to pay £50,000 to the McCanns in a libel suit no one was able to know when or where it happened, even after having issued a public apology?

We would say there was more “blood” spilled by Katie Hopkins’ article than on that fateful night in Chicago.

Only seeing one survivor: the dogs. Katie doesn’t mention the dogs.


The reaction to the article was tremendous. It was only the most read article of the Mail online.

As we write this, the article had 46,000 shares and 1,900 comments, the vast majority of which are against the couple.

Impressive to say the least.

Impossible to be ignored.

We don’t think Katie Hopkins ever had so much support to any of her ideas. Many, many said something on the terms of “I really dislike this woman, but on this one she’s spot on”.

Or as a reader put it in a comment to our last post:

“Opening gambit: “I have never been allowed to say this before”, starts the piece by Katie Hopkins, controversial British television personality and newspaper columnist, who has previously spoken out about obesity in much the same style as her latest piece – without filter and completely open to hatred, or perhaps even more shockingly, agreement.”

No question, like we said, there is from now on a time before Katie Hopkins and a time after.

Now, whenever the McCanns show their faces publicly to say anything, whatever, Katie Hopkins will be looming over them. It’s inevitable.

The alert app, whatever that was supposed to be being promoted by Kate (one has to ask why one has to pay install an app supposed to help missing children) has been utterly ridiculed just because she has lent her face and name to it.


By the way, of the 7 sponsors listed for this app that adds nothing to what Facebook and Twitter already do successfully, 3 are quite unsurprising: CEOP, Missing People and Virgin.

We realise that the content of Katie Hopkins’ article is basically about negligence.

Negligence, or “The Narrative of Negligence”, is something our readers know we think has never happened. No child was left alone in that resort that week either by the T9 or any other. All, when not with their parents, were being taken care of by nannies.

We think Katie Hopkins speaks of negligence not because she was curtailed in any way but because she, like the vast majority of the public, is what she believes happened. And by implying strongly that Gerry is Smithman, her narrative doesn’t seem to support abduction.

We return at this point to the “opening of doors” of the media that allowed this article to see the light of day. And be pre-announced.

No way the Mail online would allow itself to be surprised by such the content in an article.

Especially when the article contained the exact same thing that supposedly brought the mighty Times to its knees.


And it was pre-announced. This had to have approval by the Editor.

It’s possible that the Editor to approve, he went to get approval all the way up the food chain, all the way King Richard.

However, Paul Dacre, the Mail editor, has exposed the killers of Stephen Lawrence in a very bold move, making a front page accusation of his killers, which reflected badly on police handling of the case.

We don’t know whether he had to have the nod from King Richard or whether he has just made another bold move.

If boldness was the case, we here congratulate him.

But in whatever case, something happened that changed the rule set in iron that has ruled the UK media from September 2007: what is against the McCanns simply isn’t.

Even if a bold move, only now in these tide changing times could he sense he could be this bold. That the iron of that rule has rusted suddenly and it has eroded away.

Whatever, what was before Katie Hopkins, stopped being so after her. Before sensing he could publish an article like the one she wrote about the McCanns all the boldness wasn’t bold enough.

The tide has changed and there is an undercurrent of expectation.

Are we implying that Katie Hopkins is in on the plot? No, we aren’t. If we thought she was we would say so but we don’t think she is.

She’s too big, loves too much controversy and has a much too wide a audience for anyone to propose her to play any games.

But someone could have suggested something like “Hey Katie, what about you writing one on the McCanns? Think you can do that? Limits? No, no limits… let them have it! We assume any and all legal risks, so write away.”

And away she wrote.


And it seems she will continue to write on the subject.

Another thing the public support to Katie Hopkins’ article showed was that Maddie’s fate interests much more people than those who daily populate “Maddie’s internet world” .

Unfortunately, some places of this “Maddie’s internet world” have, with time, become platforms not to seek the truth but only to provide self-gratification to the egos of some.

We see them pushing theories based on the most fragile of conjectures from which they take highly convenient conclusions while discarding or ignoring blatant evidence because it’s inconvenient for them to include it.

All just to prove a point, the point that they are right. Even if they know perfectly well they aren’t anywhere near being so.

As the Portuguese say, rather break than bend. Rather be caught dead than wrong. They have committed themselves to a certain theory and nothing, not even truth, will stand between them and them being the only ones who are right.

We have never seen truth be proven when parts of its story has been hidden.

But there are countless episodes in history in which what was supposed to have been the truth, is found out not to be when parts of its history that were hidden are revealed.

And in these cases, these inevitably these falsities became truths because someone thought that proving their point was much more important than proving the truth.

Very few things are more loathsome than to lie just to prove one is telling the truth when one knows one isn’t.

Especially about the death of little girl. Disrespecting her memory and disrespecting also Mr Amaral, his wife and the two biggest living victims of all this, Mr Amaral’s young daughters.

And it’s becoming boring. We have had quite significant feedback of people telling us they are only waiting for the court verdict to abandon the case.

It’s a shame to see it happen but they are tired of people enforcing their rather stupid and baseless theories. Theories that are filled only with lots of imagination, usually spectacular, but have little or no substance but only cherry picked information about what is used and what is not.

One is reminded of the words of General Kurt von Hammerstein-Equord:

“I divide my officers into four groups. There are clever, diligent, stupid, and lazy officers. Usually two characteristics are combined. Some are clever and diligent -- their place is the General Staff. The next lot are stupid and lazy -- they make up 90 percent of every army and are suited to routine duties. Anyone who is both clever and lazy is qualified for the highest leadership duties, because he possesses the intellectual clarity and the composure necessary for difficult decisions. One must beware of anyone who is stupid and diligent -- he must not be entrusted with any responsibility because he will always cause only mischief.”

Once stupidity and diligence join forces, only disaster flourishes.

The concept of “mine is better than yours” is really quite stupid but it seems to be what motivates some very diligent people.

It’s up to the reader to reach the conclusion if this blog falls under the shadow of this shameful behaviour.

But, as we said, the reaction to Katie Hopkins’ article showed us that there is a number of common citizens interested in knowing about the little girl outside “Maddie’s internet world”.

The reaction from the public to her article but also to the 3 Lazzeri articles from the Sun have made the “archival” option very difficult. We would even say impossible.


The Evening Standard echoed Katie Hopkins’ article with their “Katie Hopkins sparks Twitter frenzy with attack on Madeleine McCann's parents”, published on February 22. The Standard article has at the moment we write 9,000 shares.

The interest in the subject from the general public is clear.


In this article, readers can vote in a poll. 87% agree that Katie Hopkins is right that the McCanns should take more blame for Maddie’s disappearance.

The public is speaking with crystal clear clarity.
 
There was a surge of people going online to find out about Maddie. That article has educated a lot of people about Maddie. For example, many have stumbled on the dog videos for the first time.

The reaction from the other side appears to be feeble, not to say pathetic:


In today’s article from the Sun, again from Lazzeri, “Kate McCann and Coral Jones receive award for dedication to missing kids”, in a story that links Kate McCann to Coral Jones but leaves Coral out of the pictures, Kate McCann has received an award, “the Stephen Wynard Award from the Charity Missing People at a gala event attended by Bob Geldof at London's BT Tower this week” for people who“despite having been affected themselves, volunteer their time for free to make a difference for all missing children and their families”.

Receiving an award from Missing People is like receiving an award from Metodo 3 for best investigative services.

And we are supposing that the sponsor of this award is Stephen Winyard and not Stephen Wynard, a misspelling by Lazzeri, who we spoke about in our “A Triumph of Tycoons” about the private forensic tests done on the Renault Scenic in John Geraghty’s property.

Stephen Winyard, owner of Stobo Castle health spa in Scotland and resident of Monaco, was the first tycoon to be named as a financial supporter of the McCanns. By May 10th 2007, Mr Winyard was reported to have made the offer of a million pound reward for information leading to the return of Madeleine. The offer was made earlier in the week through The Times.

These are the first comments from the public to the article that have come in:

rachel davies 13 minutes ago
Congratulations to Coral Jones. My heart bleeds for both children. The only thing Kate Mccann should be getting is a.... life sentence, for making up a story of leaving her daughter to cover up what really happened to her the day before they declared her missing. Our government will eat humble pie when the truth is told.

Fobie Wobie 1 hour ago
What an utter disgrace that this liar is given an award for being negligent in the care of her own child.

Steve Freeman 1 hour ago
This women has had her child abducted for goodness sake. Say what you like about the circumstances just imagine how she feels for a minute.
I'm sure the knowitall's commenting on this thread are perfect parents and deserve their own reward, but when she goes to sleep tonight her child will still be missing. Our children will be fine tonight, but I hope you guys will sleep better in the knowledge you've made a smug comment towards someone who's hurting, and her child will still not be there in the morning.

Fobie Wobie 1 hour ago
@Steve Freeman The evidence points to the child NOT being abducted.

chiangmai1 1 hour ago
an award for lying and not answer questions about what she done.something wrong here

Matt mould 2 hours ago
So she gets an award for going out on the lash whilst her kids getting abducted ? the whole sorry story is all wrong! dodgy dodgy couple

Reply
rachel davies 8 minutes ago
She didn't go on the lash they pretended too so as An alibi for her so called dissapearance this child was never left alone x

robw71 2 hours ago
Is this a f## p###take

Mary Donohoe 2 hours ago
This is a hideous joke, getting an award after leaving children alone, just to go out with pals, sooooo wrong...

jbird65 3 hours ago
That vile McCann woman should be behind bars, not getting an award of any sort. Pity she wan't as dedicated to her kid while she had the chance.

The clarity from the public continues.

Has anyone heard of this award? Was anyone aware that this gala took place?


It seems this award was created in 2015, as announced in the Peeblesshire News on July 21 2015, in their article “Child Rescue Alert at Stobo”:

“A COUPLE who launched a worldwide search for their missing daughter visited Peeblesshire to promote a new child rescue alert system.

Kate and Gerry McCann were among a group of 30 guests and supporters of UK charity Missing People at Stobo Castle for the first Child Rescue Alert dinner in Scotland.

Their daughter Madeleine went missing on a family holiday in Portugal eight years ago.

The local event was hosted by Stobo owner Stephen Winyard who is also a patron of the Child Rescue Alert system which is managed by the charity.

The Child Rescue Alert system, which is a partnership between CEOP, a command of the National Crime Agency, the charity Missing People and Groupcall, offers vital, rapid public outreach when a child is known to have been abducted or their life is believed to be at immediate risk.”

If this award is the best reaction the other side has to offer then someone on that camp should rethink their current strategy.

Or maybe the strength of their ammo is indeed running out.

To spend millions and 5 years to end up saying we don’t know what happened to Maddie seems to us something King Richard cannot afford to say anymore.


Post Scriptum 27Feb16:

One of our readers, Anonymous at 27 Feb 2016, 09:03:00, has submitted a comment that just said “Look at what I found!” and a link.

The link took us to a swinger website.

As experience as shown us, we have against us people who are without any scruples or sense of decency, so to protect the private details of those appearing in that swinger website we thought best not to publish the link provided by the reader.

Instead we opted to use a screengrab:


A swinger, saying the following “Hi we are staying at stobo castle 19th feb looking for some company. Anyone around or can point us in the right direction? Cheers”

Stobo Castle is owned by Stephen Winyard, assumed patron of the McCanns and as of this past week a permanent presence in their Rothley household via a Missing People award with his name given to Kate McCann.

We have been accused in the current post by a commenter that we just “point to the files and go 'what do you make of this'”. We assumed that was exactly what we did. We showed readers things on the files and elsewhere and then allowed the readers to make up their own minds about what we showed.

Exactly as we will do with the above statement in the website from the swinger.

Reader, what do you make of this?

We would like it to make it very clear that the hotel owner may be unaware of such events and is in no way responsible for the individual private behaviour of the guests, so we are making no allegation against Stephen Winyard.

Also, as we have said, we have done our best to protect the private details of the people in that website. However, we are aware that if someone is dead set on finding this website and this webpage will eventually be able to do so.

That is not of our doing or responsibility and whoever does it is the only one responsible for the use of the information found.