EXCLUSIVE to mccannfiles.com
By Dr Martin Roberts
24 January 2010
THAT KEY BIT OF INFORMATION
According to the Archiving Dispatch in relation to the McCann investigation, the McCanns had no known friends or contacts in Portugal apart from those on holiday with them. How then are we to make sense of Gerry McCann's reply to reporter Sandra Felgueiras when asked whether he knew Robert Murat? ("I'm not going to comment on that."). The absence of a firm denial makes the positive answer much more likely to be correct. In contrast, Robert Murat's own answer to the question of any prior meeting with Gerry McCann is unequivocal:
"I've never met the man before and the idea that I'd met him when he was campaigning for the Labour Party is laughable. I've been a Conservative all my life." (Robert Murat on Gerry McCann, Daily Express, 14 September 2007).
(We now know it was Stephen Carpenter who asked Murat if he would help as he spoke Portuguese and that Stephen introduced him to McCann)
This is distinctly odd. McCann hints at acquaintance. Murat denies it. The statements are as contradictory as are Kate McCann's indirect contention that Madeleine was not left asleep when 'it happened under other circumstances' versus Gerry McCann's account of how he last saw all three children together, asleep, at 9.05 on that fateful Thursday night. Any one of these statements is seemingly innocuous in itself. It is only when they are matched together with their cognate that suspicion is aroused, since logic dictates that semantically they should each point in the same direction and clearly they do not.
There is a Spanish riddle which tells of a hungry traveller who chances upon a cherry tree and neither eats cherries nor leaves cherries; a seemingly impossible state of affairs. The riddle has a solution however, just as do those associated with the disappearance of Madeleine McCann.
The question prompted by the paradox attending Messrs McCann and Murat is this: How might Robert Murat have been previously known to Gerry McCann, despite their never having met?
Progress toward a possible answer is suggested by the McCanns' constant, almost monotonous reference to that 'key bit of information' held by a member of the public, and which Gerry McCann has long since suggested would 'unlock (the mystery of) where Madeleine was kept.' During an interview for ITV, as early as 25 May 2007, Gerry used these words exactly. However, he failed to include the phrase in parentheses, rendering his reference literal rather than metaphorical. ("We truly believe that a member of the public holds the information to unlock where Madeleine is being kept."). In October 2007 Kate told her Spanish interviewer from Antena 3, "I think she's probably in someone's house."
(We now also have knowledge thanks to Stephen Carpenter, McCann asked for keys to search empty property in the local area)
Forward in time to the following year (1 May, 2008) and an interview with Nicky Campbell for Radio 5 Live Breakfast. What do we hear?
KM: "Madeleine's still missing and we need to get that key bit of information from somebody, errm... which will lead to us finding her."
Now let's consider some further commentary from this same interview, not in the sequence in which it occurred necessarily, but one which has a certain explanatory power nonetheless (the first exchange at least is intact).
GM: "Yeah. I mean, clearly, we haven't got the key bit of information that will lead us to finding Madeleine but, I think, the way we try to, errr... think about it is, it's like a jigsaw."
NC: Do you have... do you have theories that you're working on?
GM: You know, clearly, the investigators are looking at all options and scenarios and that... that's the key thing; there are a host of scenarios here, errr... and there... in very many of those scenarios, Madeleine is alive in them.
'Very many' maybe - but not all. En passant, it is revealing that Gerry McCann should invite public acknowledgement of there being no evidence Madeleine is alive:
GM: We have contact with the Foreign Office, errm... from predominantly a consular basis. We do put requests in, that we do want to get as much information as possible and, I think, what we've asked, and will ask repeatedly, is: 'what evidence does anyone have to suggest that Madeleine is dead?' because we know of no evidence to suggest otherwise and we would like a public acknowledgment of that.
Our primary concern however is with 'keys.'
GM: We do want to remind people that, obviously, the key thing here is Madeleine.…... Errm... and we're in a... we're here, we're appealing, errr... we know we've been criticised for doing media. This is only the second appeal Kate and I have done in seven months, errr... so it's not like we're in... out there on a regular basis but we are in a very difficult situation because we believe someone - a member of the public - holds the key.
Attention is drawn again to 'the key', a topic accompanied not so much by a slip of the tongue as an irresistible intrusion by the brain (we'll allow Gerry McCann the benefit of the doubt on that score. Given his working environment, I imagine a colleague would have noticed by now if something were missing, but you never know). Early on in his reply Gerry suppresses an urge to say something which, despite his best efforts in that regard, forces its way through his mouth barely seconds later: "We're in a very difficult situation." And why are they in a 'difficult situation' exactly? "because…a member of the public…holds the key."
Now, this declaration merits a touch more than a moment's thought. According to the McCanns since 3 May 2007, a member of the public holds Madeleine, never mind a key. She is the one in a difficult situation. One can think of a host of separate descriptors for the parents of an abducted child, but the phrase 'difficult situation' would not, I suspect, leap to mind. Their situation is ostensibly straightforward. They are minus a child and presumably doing whatever they can to recover the missing person.
So, what is it about a member of the public's holding a key that represents a difficulty for the parents? The obvious, and naïve, answer would be: 'Person (a) is in possession of something that person (b) wants or requires', and that's all there is to it. Personally, I believe the significance to be rather more subtle, and that turning the key in question could open the door to a clearer understanding of earlier events in Praia da Luz. Perhaps the following remark (made again to Nicky Campbell) will at least put the key in the lock:
GM: "We don't know what's been done, what hasn't been done, who's been eliminated, who hasn't, what grounds they have been eliminated on."
If the intention is to isolate and identify an individual from a population P by a process of elimination, viz I = P - (P - 1) that's a lot of people to be eliminated before the individual is singled out. Gerry's statement reads rather as if he already has a sub-set of the population in mind. That sub-set, one imagines, would not number very many at all; it might include the McCanns themselves even, as well as that person holding the key. Thus the 'difficult situation' arises in consequence of the McCanns being members of a relatively small group of people, along with our mystery key holder. Members of the same set, it has to be acknowledged, must have something in common or they would not belong to the set in question. This, not the key, is at the root of the McCanns' 'difficulty.'
If we briefly consider the key as a metaphor, it represents information; information which the McCanns are desperate to acquire. This information in turn is presumed by the McCanns' media audience to reflect knowledge of Madeleine's whereabouts and, metaphorically speaking, could be in the hands of anyone either acquainted with or related to 'the abductor.' But looking anew at Kate McCann's reference to this very situation, it is noticeable that completion of the metaphorical allusion is something of an afterthought:
KM: "Madeleine's still missing and we need to get that key bit of information from somebody, errm... which will lead to us finding her."
So, 'that key bit of information' is not necessarily to be construed as a 'lead' connected with finding Madeleine.
To come to the point, the metaphor itself appears to be a red-herring. Revisiting now the very early statement of Gerry’s ("We truly believe that a member of the public holds the information to unlock where Madeleine is being kept."), if we invert the previous exchange (of information for a key) and now substitute the idea of a key for that of information, the claim then becomes 'a member of the public has personal access to wherever Madeleine is (or was).' Importantly, they might not be aware of it.
This is the McCanns' dilemma. They want, indeed need to know what this person knows of Madeleine's previous whereabouts, for as sure as eggs are eggs she's not there now, and she wasn't there when this householder reclaimed their key either. The individual in possession of 'the key' is no abductor, but the proprietor of an as yet unidentified domicile somewhere in the vicinity of Praia da Luz, where Madeleine was temporarily installed .
According to the Archiving Dispatch in relation to the McCann investigation, the McCanns had no known friends or contacts in Portugal apart from those on holiday with them. How then are we to make sense of Gerry McCann's reply to reporter Sandra Felgueiras when asked whether he knew Robert Murat? ("I'm not going to comment on that."). The absence of a firm denial makes the positive answer much more likely to be correct. In contrast, Robert Murat's own answer to the question of any prior meeting with Gerry McCann is unequivocal:
"I've never met the man before and the idea that I'd met him when he was campaigning for the Labour Party is laughable. I've been a Conservative all my life." (Robert Murat on Gerry McCann, Daily Express, 14 September 2007).
(We now know it was Stephen Carpenter who asked Murat if he would help as he spoke Portuguese and that Stephen introduced him to McCann)
This is distinctly odd. McCann hints at acquaintance. Murat denies it. The statements are as contradictory as are Kate McCann's indirect contention that Madeleine was not left asleep when 'it happened under other circumstances' versus Gerry McCann's account of how he last saw all three children together, asleep, at 9.05 on that fateful Thursday night. Any one of these statements is seemingly innocuous in itself. It is only when they are matched together with their cognate that suspicion is aroused, since logic dictates that semantically they should each point in the same direction and clearly they do not.
There is a Spanish riddle which tells of a hungry traveller who chances upon a cherry tree and neither eats cherries nor leaves cherries; a seemingly impossible state of affairs. The riddle has a solution however, just as do those associated with the disappearance of Madeleine McCann.
The question prompted by the paradox attending Messrs McCann and Murat is this: How might Robert Murat have been previously known to Gerry McCann, despite their never having met?
Progress toward a possible answer is suggested by the McCanns' constant, almost monotonous reference to that 'key bit of information' held by a member of the public, and which Gerry McCann has long since suggested would 'unlock (the mystery of) where Madeleine was kept.' During an interview for ITV, as early as 25 May 2007, Gerry used these words exactly. However, he failed to include the phrase in parentheses, rendering his reference literal rather than metaphorical. ("We truly believe that a member of the public holds the information to unlock where Madeleine is being kept."). In October 2007 Kate told her Spanish interviewer from Antena 3, "I think she's probably in someone's house."
(We now also have knowledge thanks to Stephen Carpenter, McCann asked for keys to search empty property in the local area)
Forward in time to the following year (1 May, 2008) and an interview with Nicky Campbell for Radio 5 Live Breakfast. What do we hear?
KM: "Madeleine's still missing and we need to get that key bit of information from somebody, errm... which will lead to us finding her."
Now let's consider some further commentary from this same interview, not in the sequence in which it occurred necessarily, but one which has a certain explanatory power nonetheless (the first exchange at least is intact).
GM: "Yeah. I mean, clearly, we haven't got the key bit of information that will lead us to finding Madeleine but, I think, the way we try to, errr... think about it is, it's like a jigsaw."
NC: Do you have... do you have theories that you're working on?
GM: You know, clearly, the investigators are looking at all options and scenarios and that... that's the key thing; there are a host of scenarios here, errr... and there... in very many of those scenarios, Madeleine is alive in them.
'Very many' maybe - but not all. En passant, it is revealing that Gerry McCann should invite public acknowledgement of there being no evidence Madeleine is alive:
GM: We have contact with the Foreign Office, errm... from predominantly a consular basis. We do put requests in, that we do want to get as much information as possible and, I think, what we've asked, and will ask repeatedly, is: 'what evidence does anyone have to suggest that Madeleine is dead?' because we know of no evidence to suggest otherwise and we would like a public acknowledgment of that.
Our primary concern however is with 'keys.'
GM: We do want to remind people that, obviously, the key thing here is Madeleine.…... Errm... and we're in a... we're here, we're appealing, errr... we know we've been criticised for doing media. This is only the second appeal Kate and I have done in seven months, errr... so it's not like we're in... out there on a regular basis but we are in a very difficult situation because we believe someone - a member of the public - holds the key.
Attention is drawn again to 'the key', a topic accompanied not so much by a slip of the tongue as an irresistible intrusion by the brain (we'll allow Gerry McCann the benefit of the doubt on that score. Given his working environment, I imagine a colleague would have noticed by now if something were missing, but you never know). Early on in his reply Gerry suppresses an urge to say something which, despite his best efforts in that regard, forces its way through his mouth barely seconds later: "We're in a very difficult situation." And why are they in a 'difficult situation' exactly? "because…a member of the public…holds the key."
Now, this declaration merits a touch more than a moment's thought. According to the McCanns since 3 May 2007, a member of the public holds Madeleine, never mind a key. She is the one in a difficult situation. One can think of a host of separate descriptors for the parents of an abducted child, but the phrase 'difficult situation' would not, I suspect, leap to mind. Their situation is ostensibly straightforward. They are minus a child and presumably doing whatever they can to recover the missing person.
So, what is it about a member of the public's holding a key that represents a difficulty for the parents? The obvious, and naïve, answer would be: 'Person (a) is in possession of something that person (b) wants or requires', and that's all there is to it. Personally, I believe the significance to be rather more subtle, and that turning the key in question could open the door to a clearer understanding of earlier events in Praia da Luz. Perhaps the following remark (made again to Nicky Campbell) will at least put the key in the lock:
GM: "We don't know what's been done, what hasn't been done, who's been eliminated, who hasn't, what grounds they have been eliminated on."
If the intention is to isolate and identify an individual from a population P by a process of elimination, viz I = P - (P - 1) that's a lot of people to be eliminated before the individual is singled out. Gerry's statement reads rather as if he already has a sub-set of the population in mind. That sub-set, one imagines, would not number very many at all; it might include the McCanns themselves even, as well as that person holding the key. Thus the 'difficult situation' arises in consequence of the McCanns being members of a relatively small group of people, along with our mystery key holder. Members of the same set, it has to be acknowledged, must have something in common or they would not belong to the set in question. This, not the key, is at the root of the McCanns' 'difficulty.'
If we briefly consider the key as a metaphor, it represents information; information which the McCanns are desperate to acquire. This information in turn is presumed by the McCanns' media audience to reflect knowledge of Madeleine's whereabouts and, metaphorically speaking, could be in the hands of anyone either acquainted with or related to 'the abductor.' But looking anew at Kate McCann's reference to this very situation, it is noticeable that completion of the metaphorical allusion is something of an afterthought:
KM: "Madeleine's still missing and we need to get that key bit of information from somebody, errm... which will lead to us finding her."
So, 'that key bit of information' is not necessarily to be construed as a 'lead' connected with finding Madeleine.
To come to the point, the metaphor itself appears to be a red-herring. Revisiting now the very early statement of Gerry’s ("We truly believe that a member of the public holds the information to unlock where Madeleine is being kept."), if we invert the previous exchange (of information for a key) and now substitute the idea of a key for that of information, the claim then becomes 'a member of the public has personal access to wherever Madeleine is (or was).' Importantly, they might not be aware of it.
This is the McCanns' dilemma. They want, indeed need to know what this person knows of Madeleine's previous whereabouts, for as sure as eggs are eggs she's not there now, and she wasn't there when this householder reclaimed their key either. The individual in possession of 'the key' is no abductor, but the proprietor of an as yet unidentified domicile somewhere in the vicinity of Praia da Luz, where Madeleine was temporarily installed .
(I Beleive Dr.Martin has just solved the key to the problem, Amaral was on the right track)
(Even Jane Tanner's 'Bundleman' had to abscond to a destination within walking distance, as there was absolutely no sign of any urgent vehicular departures from the scene). This is the person the McCanns are anxious to eliminate from their enquiries, and one only need postulate a little knowledge on their part to appreciate why, as we recall to mind Kate's answer to yet another question put to her during the interview for Spanish Broadcaster Antena 3:
Q: "...do you have full confidence in them?"
KM: "One hundred percent. One hundred percent."
(voice off camera – "of everyone?")
KM: "Of our friends, yes."
Clearly, someone outside of her immediate circle does not enjoy Kate's full confidence.
If this 'scenario' is to be entertained, one has further to consider how it might be possible, outside of breaking and entering, for a person to gain access to a foreign household; one that is not their own, and to which they do not have a key? According to recent pronouncements in Lisbon by Gerry McCann, "A thesis without evidence is meaningless." This statement is not universally true, but to avoid too great a compromise of the hypothesis under discussion, here are a few constituent aspects for which there is ample experiential evidence:
1. Enquiries purporting to be in respect of property purchases are typically put to estate agents and / or property developers.
2. Potential purchasers are usually invited to inspect a property or properties in which they express interest.
3. Depending on individual circumstances, inspection visits can be unaccompanied.
4. Where an inspection with a view to purchase is agreed and the agent's representative is not required to be present, a key is collected and returned.
See where this is going?
Robert Murat was a property developer who will have had contacts and knowledge with respect to vacant properties for sale or let in the PDL area. He has a reputation for being helpful and accommodating; instincts which led to his translation endeavours on behalf of the PJ.
If a key were borrowed, either from, or owing to the intervention of, Robert Murat, and returned in due course, Murat may not have met the borrower. The borrower however must at least have known of Murat in order to have made their enquiry in the first instance.
This framework, then, is capable of embracing the contradiction which stimulated this discussion initially: Robert Murat never having met Gerry McCann - Gerry McCann unprepared to comment upon whether or how he knew Robert Murat.
Hypothetically speaking, if Robert Murat had any reason to suspect he'd been deliberately misled into unwittingly aiding and abetting a crime, would he not be understandably circumspect if invited to discuss it subsequently? Just as hypothetically, if a vendor/lessor were later to discover that his/her property had been inappropriately used to facilitate an 'abduction,' might he or she not be at least a little interested in the detail of the trespass, especially if entry to their property were gained before 9.00 p.m.? And if we were Kate and Gerry McCann, would we not be oh-so-interested in that key bit of information, its custodian, and ensuring they were kept on-side? Small wonder that the search for 'Madeleine' continues.
http://steelmagnolia-steelmagnolia.blogspot.com/2011/05/stephen-carpenter-in-mark-warner-and-he.html
Stephen Carpenter and the mystery man DAVE who held all the keys need to have a good long chat with the PJ.
http://www.mccannfiles.com/id301.html
