http://www.mccannfiles.com/id232.html
EXCLUSIVE to mccannfiles.com
By Dr Martin Roberts 25 March 2012
ANOTHER STORY
A primary objective for both believers and non-believers in Madeleine McCann's abduction has long been one of establishing that someone (or no-one) broke into 5A on Thursday night, 3 May, 2007.
The evidence however, coupled with various statements to police, is sufficient for us to conclude that no-one actually left the apartment around the time of the Tanner sighting.
Whoever crossed the road in front of Jane Tanner, if indeed anyone did so, they had not just emerged from 5A.
Furthermore, if no-one of an abduction persuasion left the apartment at any time before 10.00 p.m. that evening, it can only have been because they were not inside it in the first place!
A contingency explanation might be that Madeleine was 'taken' after Matthew Oldfield's 9.30 p.m. 'check,' not before.
Hence the Smith sighting nearer 9.50.
But whoever it was that members of the Smith family actually saw being carried, it could not have been Madeleine McCann in her Eeyore pyjamas.
The child seen by Aiofe Smith was said to have been wearing a long-sleeved top.
If one is prepared to accept that Jane Tanner can discern the colour of a garment from some distance away, in the dark, when she cannot even see the item in question, then it is even more reasonable to accept the accuracy of Aiofe Smith's close-up description.
As previously discussed (Crystal Clear: McCannFiles, 19 March), Jane Tanner's sighting of only one individual means that there was no accomplice.
The window becomes completely irrelevant therefore.
No-one climbed through it in either direction.
No-one exited via the patio at the time of the Tanner sighting (Gerry McCann or Jez Wilkins would have seen them) and, in any case, 'the abductor' was spotted further up the road.
Since the Tanner-approved artist's impression confirms the 'abductor' was not wearing gloves (that topic was visited long ago), he might well have left his fingerprints on the door handles, both inside and outside, when opening and closing it.
The door opened inwards and could not have been 'kicked shut' from outside.
It was not reported open.
Although no fingerprints were actually recovered from the front door to the apartment, one or two additional details remain to be accounted for.
The front door was recessed.
If the intruder were left-handed, he would have struggled to open the latch had he been carrying a prostrate, sleeping child, who might easily have awoken when her feet and legs inevitably came into contact with a solid vertical surface.
If he were right-handed he would have struggled to pull the door closed without risking contact with the child's head; both of these possibilities being governed by the position of the child's body on removal from her bed, where her head would have been to the right.
Of course the 'abductor' could have overcome this small problem to some degree by operating the door with the opposite hand on one or other occasion.
But the smarter solution, surely (and the culprit has been recognised, by Kate McCann at least, as smart), would have been to carry the child vertically, as described by the Smith family, freeing either hand at a stroke.
This small matter of orientation alone confirms that Jane Tanner's 'suspect' did not set off to cross the road from apartment 5A.
Since the child was not passed through an open window, any re-positioning would have been entirely (and literally) in the hands of the one person who had entered the apartment and picked Madeleine up directly from her bed.
Notwithstanding the problems associated with opening and closing the front door thereafter, whichever way round Madeleine may have been facing, one has only to ask the simple question of why anyone should alter the position of something they are carrying?
The equally simple answer is: To make their grasp of the object more secure and/or more comfortable. No 'abductor,' in the circumstances envisaged, would transfer his burden to a less comfortable position. Had Madeleine been picked up in a 'fireman's carry' initially, her remaining in that position would have enabled her captor to open and close the exit door straightforwardly. And from the door to the head of the road, where the pair were apparently seen, is a distance of just a few steps - hardly far enough for the porter, a decently proportioned individual by all accounts, to want to re-think his carrying style.
In any event the 'abduction' was accomplished with little or no time to spare. One has therefore to picture the perpetrator seizing Maddie in his arms from where she lay, her head to the right, then making his way out, albeit awkwardly, through the front door.
A 'change of ends' in the interim would not have made escape any easier.
Nor would a similar manoeuvre, once outside, have resulted in a more comfortable position.
Since such a switch would not have been advantageous by any measure, it would not have been made.
Madeleine would have been carried out directly, her body in exactly the same position throughout. Which renders Jane Tanner's sighting of her impossibly back-to-front. Thus it is that Jane Tanner's insistent account of a child, clad in pink, being carried through the streets of Praia da Luz, actually negates the possibility of its having been Madeleine, since the physical circumstances of her holiday accommodation mitigate against, rather than support, Tanner's claims.
The child, if she saw one at all, could not have been Madeleine McCann.
But she saw no-one else.
And if no-one is known to have left 5A, carrying a child, at any time between 9.00 and 10.00 p.m., it is because there was no-one inside to have done so.
Apart, that is, from Gerry McCann at 9.05 and Matthew Oldfield at 9.30.
It's a lock-out There is yet another important aspect to the fugitive's dilemma.
The front door, the only exit he could conceivably have availed himself of that night, was locked. And he did not have a key.
Let us allow Messrs. McCann, Oldfield, O'Brien and Payne to explain the situation more fully: First, Gerry McCann: 'Thus, at 9.05 pm, the deponent entered the club, using his key, the door being locked.
At 10pm, his wife Kate went to check on the children.
She went into the apartment through the door using her key.' (Statement to Police, 4 May, 2007). '... he fully confirms the statements made previously at this police department on 4 May 2007, being available to provide any further clarifications.'
(Statement to Police, 10 May). Hence Gerry first states that he unlocked the front door with his key (he didn't simply 'open' it) then later confirms his statement. He goes on (10 May, italics/parentheses mine): (Re Sunday): 'They left the house (for the Tapas bar) through the main door, that he was sure he locked, and the back door was also closed and locked.'
'On this day (Wednesday), the deponent and KATE had already left the back door closed, but not locked, to allow entrance by their group colleagues to check on the children.
He clarifies that the main door was always closed but not necessarily locked with the key.' (The last, it should be noted, is a general observation, not specific to Wednesday).
'Back to Thursday, after breakfast, about 09h00, KATE and the children left by the back door, the deponent having left by the front door, which he locked with the key, having also closed and locked the back door from the inside.'
So far the account has been consistent throughout.
But then he has a dramatic change of heart: 'Despite what he said in his previous statements, he states now and with certainty, that he left with KATE through the back door which he consequently closed but did not lock, given that that is only possible from the inside.
Concerning the front door, although he is certain that it was closed, it is unlikely that it was locked, because they left through the back door.' This aspect of his 10 May statement is questionable on two counts. The first is the certainty with which McCann seeks to override his earlier testimony. Memories do not improve over time, they deteriorate (that's been tested scientifically, Sandra). Hence Gerry McCann's immediate recollections will have been more accurate than those he decided to advance a week later. The second doubtful observation is that concerning the front door ('although he is certain that it was closed, it is unlikely that it was locked, because they left through the back door.').
The doors to apartment 5A were logically and physically independent of each other.
They did not operate in tandem.
Hence it makes no sense to claim that 'it is unlikely that it (the front door) was locked, because they left through the back door.' Even if the statement is taken to be an imprecise reference to the McCanns' behaviour rather than the doors' function, it still fails to convince.
The McCanns claim to have adopted a policy of patio door access for their own convenience, not to jeopardize security unduly ('Part of the reason we ended up coming through the back was the noise coming through the front door.
We didn't want to disturb them.' - Gerry McCann in 'Madeleine Was Here').
The fact is, they say they could see the patio, even if only just, from where they claim to have been dining. They could not see the front entrance at all. Under these circumstances it is inconceivable that a professional couple would adopt the attitude of, 'We're leaving the back door open, so we might as well leave the front door unlocked too.' Notice also that Gerry's observation concerning the degree of front-door security does not flatly contradict his earlier statements in that regard. He merely says it is 'unlikely' the door was locked. Not a categorical statement of fact at all. It is important to understand the significance of 'locking' the main entrance doors to the Ocean Club apartments.
As others of the Tapas fraternity will go on to explain, the mechanisms were not of the Yale variety, although Kate McCann (6 September), knowingly or otherwise, gives the impression that a Yale type lock was in place: 'They left through the balcony door, which they left closed but not locked.
Main door was closed but not locked.
She thinks it could be opened from the inside but not from the outside.
' Matthew Oldfield, on the other hand, appears to have been rather more observant: 4078 "Okay. Did you leave by the patio door?" Reply "Yeah, back the same way, because this door would have been locked and that's the shortest way anyway of coming through there, so I would have gone back out the same door." What Oldfield tells us here is that, supposing the front door to have been locked, he would not have been able to unlock it and exit that way had he wanted to. Never mind shortening the distance of his journey, he would have been unable to unlock the door, despite being on the inside.
Further into his rogatory interview, Oldfield has more to say about locking doors, his own patio for example, and helpfully concludes with: 4078 "So at night times you'd always have that door locked when you'd exit?" Reply "The patio door would be locked and you'd go out through the..." 4078 "Gone through the other..." Reply "Main door and lock that one." 4078 "Which then you locked behind you." Reply "Yeah." 4078 "After you went." Reply "You had to lock it because it would open on the, it wouldn't shut through like a Yale lock it would close just on a, on a handle that opened it."
The front door locks, it appears, did not operate on the commonly understood Yale principle therefore. In the course of his skirting the issue as far as the McCanns' practices were concerned, Russell O'Brien, in his rogatory interview, makes the function of their respective front door locks absolutely clear: "On Sunday I recall I checked Kate and Gerry's apartment as well as Rachael and Matt's. I had taken Matt's keys and I believe that their (Rachael and Matt's) door was deadlocked the same as ours and that I would have needed to turn the key two times. "I needed Matt's key to check on their room and I had it, but I didn't need Kate and Gerry's key because they went through the patio door', erm, we went through the patio door to cross in and look into the children's bedroom. So, at the time, I have to say, I didn't really think that, you know, about the differences in how, in how we were, the security in the, in the rooms was, but, erm, I definitely did not go in through Gerry's and Kate's main, you know, double locked door or anything, I'm sure I went through the patio." And now the focal point:
"We were conscious that, that, erm, if you, you only do one lock on the main door then it can be opened from the inside but if you double lock it then, then, then you need the key to get in or out.”
It is noticeable, on reading this episode of his rogatory interview in full, that Russell O'Brien is panicked somewhat by the possibility of the interviewing officer's interpreting his observations of other peoples' careful security measures as applying to the McCanns also.
He is at pains, on several occasions, to re-iterate that he did not avail himself of their door key in order to enter 5A at any time, as they were behaving differently to everyone else in leaving their patio door unlocked.
Thus is he, O'Brien, supporting the McCanns' contention that they left their patio door unsecured, whilst at the same time avoiding any specific reference to the status of their front door.
The following is typical: "...on one of the visits at least, erm, I went back to five 'D' and checked on our children, but I also went to five, erm, 'D' on Matt's and I, I'm pretty sure that I needed Matt's key to do that, so I think they were doing the same as us.
But when, for Kate and Gerry, I just went in through the patio steps and, and just across to the room." O'Brien's filibustering aside, what we can very reasonably conclude from all of this is that if the front door to 5A were double locked, then a key would have been necessary if one wished to get in or out.
Importantly, three 'witnesses' (McCann, O'Brien and Oldfield), albeit not truly independent, all alluded separately to the locked door at the front of 5A, one of them being the occupant himself who, as we know, later modified his account. O'Brien in particular refers to the McCanns' 'double locked door.' How would he have known (why should he have assumed even) that was the case, given his claims not to have used it? And why should anyone be particularly 'conscious' that 'if you, you only do one lock on the main door then it can be opened from the inside'?
Surely the focus of concern should be with intruders breaking in, not occupants getting out!
For his part, Oldfield, without explicitly stating that the McCanns' front door had been 'double locked,' nonetheless intimated that he could not have opened it from the inside.
This despite the McCanns supposedly having left their apartment that night via the very same patio door through which he claimed to have entered.
Oldfield says he eventually left via the patio door himself 'because this door (the front door) would have been locked.' With a key, obviously, and from the inside no doubt.
Many question whether he even set foot inside the McCanns' apartment that night.
Ironically, in this instance, it might have been better for them had he not done so, but peered through the patio doors from outside instead.
That way he need not have known, or assumed, anything about either door - front or back.
Once inside however, he, like the abductor, has to get out and, again like the abductor, would have done the obvious thing, i.e., exit the way he came in (which leads directly to where he intended to go next) without a further thought, for the front door in particular.
Not only does he give it further thought.
He cites it as the primary reason for leaving via the patio door, despite not even being asked about it!
The question was, 'Did you leave by the patio door?' not, 'Why did you leave by the patio door?' One should not overlook the fact that Oldfield's explanation for his actions is retrospective.
His rogatory statements were made well after the event, by which time he will long have known that the McCanns had left 5A via their patio on the night in question. And yet, even in hindsight, he still sees fit to proffer the explanation, 'because this door would have been locked,' in the knowledge (?) that the McCanns, atypically, did not exit through this door themselves and might therefore have merely closed it without locking it, as Kate McCann had contended eighteen months earlier.
Since Oldfield has consistently asserted that he entered 5A on that fateful occasion, his statements concerning the interior, including the doors, shift logically from supposition and toward reliability.
From outside he can only assume certain things.
Once inside his actions are governed more by knowledge than assumption (unless of course we're talking about safeguarding children.
There again, he was outside the room).
Be that as it may, his justification, 'because this door would have been locked,' given in hindsight, warrants additional consideration.
If the statement is interpreted as having been expressed in a tense the classical grammarian would describe as 'future perfect in the past,' then it simply reflects the timing of a situation or event, not its degree of certainty.
In that case 'The door would have been locked' is a statement of fact with regard to a past moment in time, not a conditional suggestive of doubt. The continuation (understood) might be, for example: The door would have been locked by the time I arrived. If, on the other hand, the statement is construed as a conditional one, it must obey two constraints (in this case): It must still make sense if appropriately expanded. But what it tells us must also conform to what else we know. Does it succeed on both counts? Let's examine a few more hypothetical possibilities:
1. The door would have been locked as usual.
2. The door would have been locked on that occasion.
3. The door would have been locked by Gerry.
4. The door would have been locked had the McCanns left the apartment that way themselves. All make sense, but only the last actually introduces an element of doubt.
It is also the interpretation which best fits the circumstances as we have been given to understand them.
Nevertheless, although the situation described, as well as Oldfield's concomitant action, is in the past, the statement describing it is made in the present (accepting, of course, that Oldfield's 'present' was April, 2008).
We know, as Oldfield knew, that the McCanns had not left the apartment that way, making the statement under consideration (version 4 above) superficially pointless.
We are obliged then to turn our attention to Oldfield's thoughts at the time of the action, not when he made his statement.
And these too are suddenly portrayed as vaguely absurd.
Following a quick 'recce' (or hasty abduction) the protagonist would instinctively go out the way they came in, or otherwise take the line of least resistance.
For Oldfield the patio gave onto the path leading directly to the Tapas bar, as he himself pointed out.
The front door did not.
The obvious answer to the question 'Did you leave by the patio door?' therefore is something akin to 'Obviously.' As simple as that. The front door has no role to play in proceedings, and certainly should not feature as the primary motivation for leaving via the back entrance.
What this points to is Oldfield's knowing, at the time he made his statement, that the front door was locked - at the time of the incident, i.e. 9.30 p.m. on May 3, 2007.
In which case it will have barred the passage of an aspiring abductor fifteen minutes earlier.
At last we may properly understand why Gerry McCann, having introduced the open patio door into the equation, thought it expedient to add that it was 'unlikely' that the front door had been locked.
Because he had previously, and consistently, distinguished between 'closing' and 'locking' the front door and first described locking and unlocking this door with his key (not closing and opening, or closing and unlocking); implying that a key would afterwards have been required to open it - from either side.
As an anonymous commentator speaking unofficially for the McCanns has observed: "The front door has two locks - one which is self-locking. When they are referring to 'locking' the door, they are referring to locking the deadbolt with the key as opposed to the springbolt (latchbolt) which was self-locking." Exactly. No worries though. From the catalogue of possibilities offered up by Kate McCann in 'Madeleine,' they need only select the 'duplicate key' option.
" So unless we're looking at some particularly disgruntled member of the OC staff who, one supposes, might have had a master key, and despite a lengthy holiday season ahead decided that it simply had to be Madeleine McCann on 3 May, 2007, what we're faced with is an abductor who enters 5A much like an insect enters a pitcher plant.
He comes in through the unlocked patio doors and then - fails to emerge. He is not seen to exit via the patio. He does not exit via the window. He cannot exit via the front door. And yet Jane Tanner is convinced she saw the newly hatched 'abductor' carrying Madeleine, back-to-front.
Through the looking glass Co-incidentally, we have evidence, in the form of an 'off the record' statement by Gerry McCann, that he was aware (or had been made aware) of this conundrum.
During a recent interview for Portuguese television, Goncalo Amaral revealed the following: "There is a report from Control Risks, the first private detective agency which was brought to the case [by the McCanns] in the very first days, where they state, after speaking with Gerald McCann and other witnesses in that group [Tapas 9], that the key that Mr Gerald McCann alleges to have used had in fact been left in the kitchen, on the kitchen's counter.
Right away, the lies started." (Interview on SIC, 17 February 2012).
Why, one might ask, is such a crucial observation absent from Gerry McCann's own statement to police on both 4 and 10 May?
Reporters David Brown and Patrick Foster, informed readers later that year: 'Mr McCann first contacted private investigation companies less than three weeks after his daughter was reported missing on May 3.' (The Times, September 24, 2007).
Less than three weeks in this instance is more than two weeks, or Brown and Foster would have written 'less than a fortnight.' The relevant data gathering by Control Risks Group was therefore carried out after Gerry McCann had made his statements to police, when, unsure of what exactly to reveal about the status of the front door to the apartment, he opted for the non-committal 'likelihood' of its having been unlocked on the Thursday night and 'not necessarily' locked on other occasions, despite every itemised departure being accompanied by the rigorous locking of both doors, front and back.
And locking the front door, don’t forget, meant a key would be required if one wished to go through it afterwards, in whichever direction.
An earlier discussion (Reinforcements: McCannFiles, 10 April, 2011) examined how and why elements are introduced into a story to compensate for a weakness of some kind.
Since the two are inter-related (the element and the weakness) consideration of the one should help identify the other.
If the front door key left in the kitchen was an accommodation to circumstance, then the front door will have been the weakness.
But the story of Madeleine McCann's 'abduction' is not Alice in Wonderland.
Nor is Gerry McCann Scotland's answer to Lewis Carroll.
An intruder unfamiliar with the Ocean Club apartments, who is in a hurry to enter one such, and just as eager to depart, will have their 'eyes on the prize.' Even if they enter through a window they will seek to exit through the nearest available door.
So, having had to await the disappearance of the Lone Ranger, 'Elvis' (who, we should remind ourselves, is anything but 'tonto') snatches Madeleine up and makes for the front door. Finding it locked, what does he do? Well, if he came in through the window his attention would immediately turn to the patio door which, as he would quickly discover, he could open.
Had he come in that way he would of course have known that already and not even have considered leaving via the front door, unless it were in some way advantageous so to do.
Anyway, out he goes.
Except he didn't.
Why not?
He could not possibly have known there were people standing in the street opposite the gate to the steps until he was outside the door.
So what if there were?
He could not have known either that one of them was the tenant of 5A, whom he had neither seen nor heard speak during the brief time they were in the apartment together.
Maybe he just didn't feel like taking a chance on being seen.
But what choice did he have?
How was he to know the two conversationalists were blind to passers by?
He had no choice it seems.
Unless he realised that the key on the kitchen counter - the one with the 'Use Me!' label attached - was his means of escape.
The abductor had entered an apartment in darkness, looking for a child, not a key.
But then the kitchen counter would still not have been in his line of sight. It would only have been so on first entering, or if he had gone out through the patio door, turned round and come back in again! (the 'I must avoid those witnesses' decision).
So now, if he has not already done so, he tries the front door.
Whether or not Elvis's attempts at escape are front-then-rear or rear-then-front, he's in a tight spot and needs to leave in a hurry.
The minutes are ticking by.
Tarzan is standing outside and Jane's just leaving (or left) the restaurant.
Thinks he: 'Surely whoever's staying here will have left a key to the front door lying around somewhere.' Don't they all? (He hadn't previously met Messrs. O'Brien, Oldfield or Payne) But where? Oh! What's that I can almost see among the clutter on the kitchen counter? (from just inside the patio door, in the dark, Madeleine cradled in his arms (see forensic photographs of 5A interior).
Or, if standing at the locked front door, 'Damn! I'll have to go out through that bedroom window after all!
Mustn't forget to close the curtains behind me!' It looks like it might be a key. I wonder if it fits the front door? Let's take a closer look. If I can pick it up without this child's body skittling everything else on the shelf and waking her up, I might just make it out in time for the next 'check on the children,' due any second now.
' Instructively, the Control Risks observation on behalf of Gerry McCann, that a key had been left on the kitchen counter, does not address the inevitable question of where exactly this same key was found subsequently, after the abductor had perhaps made use of it.
Was it discovered in the door, for instance?
It was fortunate for the McCanns that the intruder did not take it with him.
The point is, if it hadn't moved from the kitchen counter, then it would not have been employed by an abductor desperate to exit the apartment (unless, perhaps, 'Please return to kitchen counter.' was written on the reverse of the 'Use me!' label intended for Alice).
This shortcoming probably explains why the story came and went like Halley's comet.
Gerry McCann no doubt felt it safer not to include it in any further statements he might make to the police; in September, say.
So he didn't.
In the real world, being unconstrained by the timing of Jane Tanner's anticipated 'sighting,' the criminal waits quietly out of sight at the top of the patio steps, until McCann and Wilkins wander off - and so does he - carrying Madeleine.
And a change of pyjamas.
The situation is cut-and-dried.
If Madeleine McCann's so-called abductor did not leave 5A in time to be spotted by Jane Tanner at 9.15 p.m., then he could not have been seen by her.
He might perhaps have left later (via the patio) in time to be seen by the Smiths, but only with a different child, or Madeleine in a change of clothes, and having successfully hidden himself from Matthew Oldfield's view in the meantime (Not difficult. He had only to sit silently on Madeleine's bed. But he would not have known that!).
In any event Gerry McCann was 'fully convinced that the abduction took place during the period of time between his check at 21h05 and Matthew's visit at 21h30.
' Notwithstanding which, he and the abductor were in each other's company, apparently, just before 9.10 p.m.
Why would the culprit wait twenty minutes or more before leaving the scene?
They wouldn't.
And even if they did, is it not highly improbable that two significant sightings, the only two in fact, should have been of innocent parties, whilst the individual actually carrying Madeleine through the streets of Praia da Luz went unnoticed?
No mysterious unforeseen abductor can have emerged from 5A between 9.00 and 10.00 that night.
The only people to do so were those that actually entered the apartment.
Such a conclusion would lead, inevitably, to a chain of postulates: 'Not abducted' between 9.00 and 10.00 p.m. would mean 'not abducted at all,' since she was reported alive at 9.05 and her parents were present in the apartment after 10.00.
'Not abducted' would mean Madeleine is dead and her parents are aware that that is so.
Parental awareness of Madeleine's true fate would reveal subsequent, unremitting emphasis on abduction to have been a ploy.
An effort to conceal Madeleine's death, having been publicly acknowledged by the parents as unnecessary in the event of an accident, would mean that, rather than accidental, something deliberate may have occurred to bring about fatality.
For its own sake Society owes it to victims past, and as an endeavour to safeguard those who might become victims, to demonstrate that the avoidable death of a child is unacceptable, much less that those responsible should go on to profit from it with their continued liberty or, worse yet, financially.
The door handle/lock on apartment 5A PJ Files Click image to enlarge From: Processo 09 Volume IXa, Page 2318 Finally, there also proceeded the detailed analysis of the door and of the windows of the target apartment there not being detected the existence of any clues/traces of break-in/forced entry on them. Photos 38 to 40: Detail of the lock of the door of the apartment front entrance where the non-existence of break-in/forced entry was verified. .
EXCLUSIVE to mccannfiles.com
By Dr Martin Roberts 25 March 2012
ANOTHER STORY
A primary objective for both believers and non-believers in Madeleine McCann's abduction has long been one of establishing that someone (or no-one) broke into 5A on Thursday night, 3 May, 2007.
The evidence however, coupled with various statements to police, is sufficient for us to conclude that no-one actually left the apartment around the time of the Tanner sighting.
Whoever crossed the road in front of Jane Tanner, if indeed anyone did so, they had not just emerged from 5A.
Furthermore, if no-one of an abduction persuasion left the apartment at any time before 10.00 p.m. that evening, it can only have been because they were not inside it in the first place!
A contingency explanation might be that Madeleine was 'taken' after Matthew Oldfield's 9.30 p.m. 'check,' not before.
Hence the Smith sighting nearer 9.50.
But whoever it was that members of the Smith family actually saw being carried, it could not have been Madeleine McCann in her Eeyore pyjamas.
If one is prepared to accept that Jane Tanner can discern the colour of a garment from some distance away, in the dark, when she cannot even see the item in question, then it is even more reasonable to accept the accuracy of Aiofe Smith's close-up description.
As previously discussed (Crystal Clear: McCannFiles, 19 March), Jane Tanner's sighting of only one individual means that there was no accomplice.
The window becomes completely irrelevant therefore.
No-one climbed through it in either direction.
No-one exited via the patio at the time of the Tanner sighting (Gerry McCann or Jez Wilkins would have seen them) and, in any case, 'the abductor' was spotted further up the road.
That leaves 'Elvis' with just the front door at his disposal.
Since the Tanner-approved artist's impression confirms the 'abductor' was not wearing gloves (that topic was visited long ago), he might well have left his fingerprints on the door handles, both inside and outside, when opening and closing it.
The door opened inwards and could not have been 'kicked shut' from outside.
It was not reported open.
Although no fingerprints were actually recovered from the front door to the apartment, one or two additional details remain to be accounted for.
The front door was recessed.
If the intruder were left-handed, he would have struggled to open the latch had he been carrying a prostrate, sleeping child, who might easily have awoken when her feet and legs inevitably came into contact with a solid vertical surface.
If he were right-handed he would have struggled to pull the door closed without risking contact with the child's head; both of these possibilities being governed by the position of the child's body on removal from her bed, where her head would have been to the right.
Of course the 'abductor' could have overcome this small problem to some degree by operating the door with the opposite hand on one or other occasion.
But the smarter solution, surely (and the culprit has been recognised, by Kate McCann at least, as smart), would have been to carry the child vertically, as described by the Smith family, freeing either hand at a stroke.
This small matter of orientation alone confirms that Jane Tanner's 'suspect' did not set off to cross the road from apartment 5A.
Since the child was not passed through an open window, any re-positioning would have been entirely (and literally) in the hands of the one person who had entered the apartment and picked Madeleine up directly from her bed.
Notwithstanding the problems associated with opening and closing the front door thereafter, whichever way round Madeleine may have been facing, one has only to ask the simple question of why anyone should alter the position of something they are carrying?
The equally simple answer is: To make their grasp of the object more secure and/or more comfortable. No 'abductor,' in the circumstances envisaged, would transfer his burden to a less comfortable position. Had Madeleine been picked up in a 'fireman's carry' initially, her remaining in that position would have enabled her captor to open and close the exit door straightforwardly. And from the door to the head of the road, where the pair were apparently seen, is a distance of just a few steps - hardly far enough for the porter, a decently proportioned individual by all accounts, to want to re-think his carrying style.
In any event the 'abduction' was accomplished with little or no time to spare. One has therefore to picture the perpetrator seizing Maddie in his arms from where she lay, her head to the right, then making his way out, albeit awkwardly, through the front door.
A 'change of ends' in the interim would not have made escape any easier.
Nor would a similar manoeuvre, once outside, have resulted in a more comfortable position.
Since such a switch would not have been advantageous by any measure, it would not have been made.
Madeleine would have been carried out directly, her body in exactly the same position throughout. Which renders Jane Tanner's sighting of her impossibly back-to-front. Thus it is that Jane Tanner's insistent account of a child, clad in pink, being carried through the streets of Praia da Luz, actually negates the possibility of its having been Madeleine, since the physical circumstances of her holiday accommodation mitigate against, rather than support, Tanner's claims.
The child, if she saw one at all, could not have been Madeleine McCann.
But she saw no-one else.
And if no-one is known to have left 5A, carrying a child, at any time between 9.00 and 10.00 p.m., it is because there was no-one inside to have done so.
Apart, that is, from Gerry McCann at 9.05 and Matthew Oldfield at 9.30.
It's a lock-out There is yet another important aspect to the fugitive's dilemma.
The front door, the only exit he could conceivably have availed himself of that night, was locked. And he did not have a key.
Let us allow Messrs. McCann, Oldfield, O'Brien and Payne to explain the situation more fully: First, Gerry McCann: 'Thus, at 9.05 pm, the deponent entered the club, using his key, the door being locked.
At 10pm, his wife Kate went to check on the children.
She went into the apartment through the door using her key.' (Statement to Police, 4 May, 2007). '... he fully confirms the statements made previously at this police department on 4 May 2007, being available to provide any further clarifications.'
(Statement to Police, 10 May). Hence Gerry first states that he unlocked the front door with his key (he didn't simply 'open' it) then later confirms his statement. He goes on (10 May, italics/parentheses mine): (Re Sunday): 'They left the house (for the Tapas bar) through the main door, that he was sure he locked, and the back door was also closed and locked.'
'On this day (Wednesday), the deponent and KATE had already left the back door closed, but not locked, to allow entrance by their group colleagues to check on the children.
He clarifies that the main door was always closed but not necessarily locked with the key.' (The last, it should be noted, is a general observation, not specific to Wednesday).
'Back to Thursday, after breakfast, about 09h00, KATE and the children left by the back door, the deponent having left by the front door, which he locked with the key, having also closed and locked the back door from the inside.'
So far the account has been consistent throughout.
When recalling specific instances of departure, Gerry McCann affirms that he locked the front door using his key, an observation of some significance as it turns out and one to which we shall inevitably return.
But then he has a dramatic change of heart: 'Despite what he said in his previous statements, he states now and with certainty, that he left with KATE through the back door which he consequently closed but did not lock, given that that is only possible from the inside.
Concerning the front door, although he is certain that it was closed, it is unlikely that it was locked, because they left through the back door.' This aspect of his 10 May statement is questionable on two counts. The first is the certainty with which McCann seeks to override his earlier testimony. Memories do not improve over time, they deteriorate (that's been tested scientifically, Sandra). Hence Gerry McCann's immediate recollections will have been more accurate than those he decided to advance a week later. The second doubtful observation is that concerning the front door ('although he is certain that it was closed, it is unlikely that it was locked, because they left through the back door.').
The doors to apartment 5A were logically and physically independent of each other.
They did not operate in tandem.
Hence it makes no sense to claim that 'it is unlikely that it (the front door) was locked, because they left through the back door.' Even if the statement is taken to be an imprecise reference to the McCanns' behaviour rather than the doors' function, it still fails to convince.
The McCanns claim to have adopted a policy of patio door access for their own convenience, not to jeopardize security unduly ('Part of the reason we ended up coming through the back was the noise coming through the front door.
We didn't want to disturb them.' - Gerry McCann in 'Madeleine Was Here').
The fact is, they say they could see the patio, even if only just, from where they claim to have been dining. They could not see the front entrance at all. Under these circumstances it is inconceivable that a professional couple would adopt the attitude of, 'We're leaving the back door open, so we might as well leave the front door unlocked too.' Notice also that Gerry's observation concerning the degree of front-door security does not flatly contradict his earlier statements in that regard. He merely says it is 'unlikely' the door was locked. Not a categorical statement of fact at all. It is important to understand the significance of 'locking' the main entrance doors to the Ocean Club apartments.
As others of the Tapas fraternity will go on to explain, the mechanisms were not of the Yale variety, although Kate McCann (6 September), knowingly or otherwise, gives the impression that a Yale type lock was in place: 'They left through the balcony door, which they left closed but not locked.
Main door was closed but not locked.
She thinks it could be opened from the inside but not from the outside.
' Matthew Oldfield, on the other hand, appears to have been rather more observant: 4078 "Okay. Did you leave by the patio door?" Reply "Yeah, back the same way, because this door would have been locked and that's the shortest way anyway of coming through there, so I would have gone back out the same door." What Oldfield tells us here is that, supposing the front door to have been locked, he would not have been able to unlock it and exit that way had he wanted to. Never mind shortening the distance of his journey, he would have been unable to unlock the door, despite being on the inside.
Further into his rogatory interview, Oldfield has more to say about locking doors, his own patio for example, and helpfully concludes with: 4078 "So at night times you'd always have that door locked when you'd exit?" Reply "The patio door would be locked and you'd go out through the..." 4078 "Gone through the other..." Reply "Main door and lock that one." 4078 "Which then you locked behind you." Reply "Yeah." 4078 "After you went." Reply "You had to lock it because it would open on the, it wouldn't shut through like a Yale lock it would close just on a, on a handle that opened it."
The front door locks, it appears, did not operate on the commonly understood Yale principle therefore. In the course of his skirting the issue as far as the McCanns' practices were concerned, Russell O'Brien, in his rogatory interview, makes the function of their respective front door locks absolutely clear: "On Sunday I recall I checked Kate and Gerry's apartment as well as Rachael and Matt's. I had taken Matt's keys and I believe that their (Rachael and Matt's) door was deadlocked the same as ours and that I would have needed to turn the key two times. "I needed Matt's key to check on their room and I had it, but I didn't need Kate and Gerry's key because they went through the patio door', erm, we went through the patio door to cross in and look into the children's bedroom. So, at the time, I have to say, I didn't really think that, you know, about the differences in how, in how we were, the security in the, in the rooms was, but, erm, I definitely did not go in through Gerry's and Kate's main, you know, double locked door or anything, I'm sure I went through the patio." And now the focal point:
"We were conscious that, that, erm, if you, you only do one lock on the main door then it can be opened from the inside but if you double lock it then, then, then you need the key to get in or out.”
It is noticeable, on reading this episode of his rogatory interview in full, that Russell O'Brien is panicked somewhat by the possibility of the interviewing officer's interpreting his observations of other peoples' careful security measures as applying to the McCanns also.
He is at pains, on several occasions, to re-iterate that he did not avail himself of their door key in order to enter 5A at any time, as they were behaving differently to everyone else in leaving their patio door unlocked.
Thus is he, O'Brien, supporting the McCanns' contention that they left their patio door unsecured, whilst at the same time avoiding any specific reference to the status of their front door.
The following is typical: "...on one of the visits at least, erm, I went back to five 'D' and checked on our children, but I also went to five, erm, 'D' on Matt's and I, I'm pretty sure that I needed Matt's key to do that, so I think they were doing the same as us.
But when, for Kate and Gerry, I just went in through the patio steps and, and just across to the room." O'Brien's filibustering aside, what we can very reasonably conclude from all of this is that if the front door to 5A were double locked, then a key would have been necessary if one wished to get in or out.
Importantly, three 'witnesses' (McCann, O'Brien and Oldfield), albeit not truly independent, all alluded separately to the locked door at the front of 5A, one of them being the occupant himself who, as we know, later modified his account. O'Brien in particular refers to the McCanns' 'double locked door.' How would he have known (why should he have assumed even) that was the case, given his claims not to have used it? And why should anyone be particularly 'conscious' that 'if you, you only do one lock on the main door then it can be opened from the inside'?
Surely the focus of concern should be with intruders breaking in, not occupants getting out!
For his part, Oldfield, without explicitly stating that the McCanns' front door had been 'double locked,' nonetheless intimated that he could not have opened it from the inside.
This despite the McCanns supposedly having left their apartment that night via the very same patio door through which he claimed to have entered.
Oldfield says he eventually left via the patio door himself 'because this door (the front door) would have been locked.' With a key, obviously, and from the inside no doubt.
Oldfield's enterprising 9.30 visit to 5A holds further clues.
Many question whether he even set foot inside the McCanns' apartment that night.
Ironically, in this instance, it might have been better for them had he not done so, but peered through the patio doors from outside instead.
That way he need not have known, or assumed, anything about either door - front or back.
Once inside however, he, like the abductor, has to get out and, again like the abductor, would have done the obvious thing, i.e., exit the way he came in (which leads directly to where he intended to go next) without a further thought, for the front door in particular.
Not only does he give it further thought.
He cites it as the primary reason for leaving via the patio door, despite not even being asked about it!
The question was, 'Did you leave by the patio door?' not, 'Why did you leave by the patio door?' One should not overlook the fact that Oldfield's explanation for his actions is retrospective.
His rogatory statements were made well after the event, by which time he will long have known that the McCanns had left 5A via their patio on the night in question. And yet, even in hindsight, he still sees fit to proffer the explanation, 'because this door would have been locked,' in the knowledge (?) that the McCanns, atypically, did not exit through this door themselves and might therefore have merely closed it without locking it, as Kate McCann had contended eighteen months earlier.
Since Oldfield has consistently asserted that he entered 5A on that fateful occasion, his statements concerning the interior, including the doors, shift logically from supposition and toward reliability.
From outside he can only assume certain things.
Once inside his actions are governed more by knowledge than assumption (unless of course we're talking about safeguarding children.
There again, he was outside the room).
Be that as it may, his justification, 'because this door would have been locked,' given in hindsight, warrants additional consideration.
If the statement is interpreted as having been expressed in a tense the classical grammarian would describe as 'future perfect in the past,' then it simply reflects the timing of a situation or event, not its degree of certainty.
In that case 'The door would have been locked' is a statement of fact with regard to a past moment in time, not a conditional suggestive of doubt. The continuation (understood) might be, for example: The door would have been locked by the time I arrived. If, on the other hand, the statement is construed as a conditional one, it must obey two constraints (in this case): It must still make sense if appropriately expanded. But what it tells us must also conform to what else we know. Does it succeed on both counts? Let's examine a few more hypothetical possibilities:
1. The door would have been locked as usual.
2. The door would have been locked on that occasion.
3. The door would have been locked by Gerry.
4. The door would have been locked had the McCanns left the apartment that way themselves. All make sense, but only the last actually introduces an element of doubt.
It is also the interpretation which best fits the circumstances as we have been given to understand them.
Nevertheless, although the situation described, as well as Oldfield's concomitant action, is in the past, the statement describing it is made in the present (accepting, of course, that Oldfield's 'present' was April, 2008).
We know, as Oldfield knew, that the McCanns had not left the apartment that way, making the statement under consideration (version 4 above) superficially pointless.
We are obliged then to turn our attention to Oldfield's thoughts at the time of the action, not when he made his statement.
And these too are suddenly portrayed as vaguely absurd.
Following a quick 'recce' (or hasty abduction) the protagonist would instinctively go out the way they came in, or otherwise take the line of least resistance.
For Oldfield the patio gave onto the path leading directly to the Tapas bar, as he himself pointed out.
The front door did not.
The obvious answer to the question 'Did you leave by the patio door?' therefore is something akin to 'Obviously.' As simple as that. The front door has no role to play in proceedings, and certainly should not feature as the primary motivation for leaving via the back entrance.
What this points to is Oldfield's knowing, at the time he made his statement, that the front door was locked - at the time of the incident, i.e. 9.30 p.m. on May 3, 2007.
In which case it will have barred the passage of an aspiring abductor fifteen minutes earlier.
At last we may properly understand why Gerry McCann, having introduced the open patio door into the equation, thought it expedient to add that it was 'unlikely' that the front door had been locked.
Because he had previously, and consistently, distinguished between 'closing' and 'locking' the front door and first described locking and unlocking this door with his key (not closing and opening, or closing and unlocking); implying that a key would afterwards have been required to open it - from either side.
As an anonymous commentator speaking unofficially for the McCanns has observed: "The front door has two locks - one which is self-locking. When they are referring to 'locking' the door, they are referring to locking the deadbolt with the key as opposed to the springbolt (latchbolt) which was self-locking." Exactly. No worries though. From the catalogue of possibilities offered up by Kate McCann in 'Madeleine,' they need only select the 'duplicate key' option.
Here it is again: "For a long while we would assume that the abductor had entered and exited through the window of the children's bedroom, but it is equally possible that he used the patio doors or even had a key to the front door." Nope. As David Payne explains in his rogatory interview: "...essentially you needed the key you know, to use, if I remember to gain access into the, err into the apartment, and you know generally it was difficult because there was, you know we'd ask about more than one key, there was the only one key to the apartment.
" So unless we're looking at some particularly disgruntled member of the OC staff who, one supposes, might have had a master key, and despite a lengthy holiday season ahead decided that it simply had to be Madeleine McCann on 3 May, 2007, what we're faced with is an abductor who enters 5A much like an insect enters a pitcher plant.
He comes in through the unlocked patio doors and then - fails to emerge. He is not seen to exit via the patio. He does not exit via the window. He cannot exit via the front door. And yet Jane Tanner is convinced she saw the newly hatched 'abductor' carrying Madeleine, back-to-front.
Through the looking glass Co-incidentally, we have evidence, in the form of an 'off the record' statement by Gerry McCann, that he was aware (or had been made aware) of this conundrum.
During a recent interview for Portuguese television, Goncalo Amaral revealed the following: "There is a report from Control Risks, the first private detective agency which was brought to the case [by the McCanns] in the very first days, where they state, after speaking with Gerald McCann and other witnesses in that group [Tapas 9], that the key that Mr Gerald McCann alleges to have used had in fact been left in the kitchen, on the kitchen's counter.
Right away, the lies started." (Interview on SIC, 17 February 2012).
Why, one might ask, is such a crucial observation absent from Gerry McCann's own statement to police on both 4 and 10 May?
Reporters David Brown and Patrick Foster, informed readers later that year: 'Mr McCann first contacted private investigation companies less than three weeks after his daughter was reported missing on May 3.' (The Times, September 24, 2007).
Less than three weeks in this instance is more than two weeks, or Brown and Foster would have written 'less than a fortnight.' The relevant data gathering by Control Risks Group was therefore carried out after Gerry McCann had made his statements to police, when, unsure of what exactly to reveal about the status of the front door to the apartment, he opted for the non-committal 'likelihood' of its having been unlocked on the Thursday night and 'not necessarily' locked on other occasions, despite every itemised departure being accompanied by the rigorous locking of both doors, front and back.
And locking the front door, don’t forget, meant a key would be required if one wished to go through it afterwards, in whichever direction.
It does rather look as though someone 'wised up' to the implications of conscientious adult behaviour on this occasion and subsequently left a key at someone else's disposal; or would like others to believe they did.
An earlier discussion (Reinforcements: McCannFiles, 10 April, 2011) examined how and why elements are introduced into a story to compensate for a weakness of some kind.
Since the two are inter-related (the element and the weakness) consideration of the one should help identify the other.
If the front door key left in the kitchen was an accommodation to circumstance, then the front door will have been the weakness.
But the story of Madeleine McCann's 'abduction' is not Alice in Wonderland.
Nor is Gerry McCann Scotland's answer to Lewis Carroll.
An intruder unfamiliar with the Ocean Club apartments, who is in a hurry to enter one such, and just as eager to depart, will have their 'eyes on the prize.' Even if they enter through a window they will seek to exit through the nearest available door.
So, having had to await the disappearance of the Lone Ranger, 'Elvis' (who, we should remind ourselves, is anything but 'tonto') snatches Madeleine up and makes for the front door. Finding it locked, what does he do? Well, if he came in through the window his attention would immediately turn to the patio door which, as he would quickly discover, he could open.
Had he come in that way he would of course have known that already and not even have considered leaving via the front door, unless it were in some way advantageous so to do.
Anyway, out he goes.
Except he didn't.
Why not?
He could not possibly have known there were people standing in the street opposite the gate to the steps until he was outside the door.
So what if there were?
He could not have known either that one of them was the tenant of 5A, whom he had neither seen nor heard speak during the brief time they were in the apartment together.
Maybe he just didn't feel like taking a chance on being seen.
But what choice did he have?
How was he to know the two conversationalists were blind to passers by?
He had no choice it seems.
Unless he realised that the key on the kitchen counter - the one with the 'Use Me!' label attached - was his means of escape.
The abductor had entered an apartment in darkness, looking for a child, not a key.
He had crossed the main floor with his attention directed towards the bedrooms, not the kitchen (had he come in through the window he could not yet have noticed the kitchen even).
Suddenly he hears someone else slide open the patio door ('Not another one after this little girl!' he thought) then hid from view somehow.
After he'd heard the toilet flush and the patio door slide shut, he reasoned that the 'coast was clear' and carried his prize anxiously to the front door, when the kitchen counter would have been out of view, or the patio door, if that is how he came in.
But then the kitchen counter would still not have been in his line of sight. It would only have been so on first entering, or if he had gone out through the patio door, turned round and come back in again! (the 'I must avoid those witnesses' decision).
So now, if he has not already done so, he tries the front door.
Whether or not Elvis's attempts at escape are front-then-rear or rear-then-front, he's in a tight spot and needs to leave in a hurry.
The minutes are ticking by.
Tarzan is standing outside and Jane's just leaving (or left) the restaurant.
Thinks he: 'Surely whoever's staying here will have left a key to the front door lying around somewhere.' Don't they all? (He hadn't previously met Messrs. O'Brien, Oldfield or Payne) But where? Oh! What's that I can almost see among the clutter on the kitchen counter? (from just inside the patio door, in the dark, Madeleine cradled in his arms (see forensic photographs of 5A interior).
Or, if standing at the locked front door, 'Damn! I'll have to go out through that bedroom window after all!
Mustn't forget to close the curtains behind me!' It looks like it might be a key. I wonder if it fits the front door? Let's take a closer look. If I can pick it up without this child's body skittling everything else on the shelf and waking her up, I might just make it out in time for the next 'check on the children,' due any second now.
' Instructively, the Control Risks observation on behalf of Gerry McCann, that a key had been left on the kitchen counter, does not address the inevitable question of where exactly this same key was found subsequently, after the abductor had perhaps made use of it.
Was it discovered in the door, for instance?
It was fortunate for the McCanns that the intruder did not take it with him.
That could really have spoiled their holiday, since there was only the one.
The point is, if it hadn't moved from the kitchen counter, then it would not have been employed by an abductor desperate to exit the apartment (unless, perhaps, 'Please return to kitchen counter.' was written on the reverse of the 'Use me!' label intended for Alice).
This shortcoming probably explains why the story came and went like Halley's comet.
Gerry McCann no doubt felt it safer not to include it in any further statements he might make to the police; in September, say.
So he didn't.
In the real world, being unconstrained by the timing of Jane Tanner's anticipated 'sighting,' the criminal waits quietly out of sight at the top of the patio steps, until McCann and Wilkins wander off - and so does he - carrying Madeleine.
And a change of pyjamas.
The situation is cut-and-dried.
If Madeleine McCann's so-called abductor did not leave 5A in time to be spotted by Jane Tanner at 9.15 p.m., then he could not have been seen by her.
He might perhaps have left later (via the patio) in time to be seen by the Smiths, but only with a different child, or Madeleine in a change of clothes, and having successfully hidden himself from Matthew Oldfield's view in the meantime (Not difficult. He had only to sit silently on Madeleine's bed. But he would not have known that!).
In any event Gerry McCann was 'fully convinced that the abduction took place during the period of time between his check at 21h05 and Matthew's visit at 21h30.
Why would the culprit wait twenty minutes or more before leaving the scene?
They wouldn't.
And even if they did, is it not highly improbable that two significant sightings, the only two in fact, should have been of innocent parties, whilst the individual actually carrying Madeleine through the streets of Praia da Luz went unnoticed?
No mysterious unforeseen abductor can have emerged from 5A between 9.00 and 10.00 that night.
The only people to do so were those that actually entered the apartment.
It has been pointed out before now (A Line in The Sand: McCannFiles, 19 March) that the one thing neither the McCanns nor their legal representatives would be able to fend off would be a proof, evidential or logical, that their daughter Madeleine could not have been abducted during the one hour in which they suppose it to have happened.
Such a conclusion would lead, inevitably, to a chain of postulates: 'Not abducted' between 9.00 and 10.00 p.m. would mean 'not abducted at all,' since she was reported alive at 9.05 and her parents were present in the apartment after 10.00.
'Not abducted' would mean Madeleine is dead and her parents are aware that that is so.
Parental awareness of Madeleine's true fate would reveal subsequent, unremitting emphasis on abduction to have been a ploy.
An effort to conceal Madeleine's death, having been publicly acknowledged by the parents as unnecessary in the event of an accident, would mean that, rather than accidental, something deliberate may have occurred to bring about fatality.
For its own sake Society owes it to victims past, and as an endeavour to safeguard those who might become victims, to demonstrate that the avoidable death of a child is unacceptable, much less that those responsible should go on to profit from it with their continued liberty or, worse yet, financially.
Whether inspired by the McCanns or not, a spate of recent 'abductions' is evidence of a disturbing trend in peoples' perception of what they might get away with.
It cannot be allowed to continue.
Otherwise we are as good as signing the death warrants of 'at risk' children everywhere.
