Is the libel prelim case being heard in Lisbon today?

The background to Mitchell's untruthful statement to the press lay in the problems that the defence team were uncovering in the abduction claim, problems that they patiently outlined at their offices to Gerry McCann one afternoon in September.

Mathew Oldfield confirmed that at just after 9.30, when he supposedly checked the apartment, while missing Madeleine herself, the children' bedroom door was open wider than Gerry McCann left it. So the abductor supposedly seen by Jane Tanner must have moved it, committed the crime and departed before Oldfield's arrival but after Gerry's departure, which was itself fixed in time by another witness, Jeremy Wilkins. Was there enough time for the abduction to occur within these limits?

In the famous “Let’s Dismember Noddy” timelines, the ones that the Tapas group insisted were truthful, there are two times given for Gerry’s visit. The first version says he checked at 9.10 – 9.15 PM.

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On the second, the one with “Gerald” on it, Gerry, who was wearing a watch during his check, has corrected it to 9.15 exactly.


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The same document, as can be seen, says that Jane, who was not present during the Noddy massacre, went for her check at 9.20, something she confirms in her witness statement, “five minutes after Gerry”.

So in that five minutes everything has happened. Gerry has made the two minute walk to his apartment, checked the children and closed the patio doors behind him, leaving the front shutters and window also safely closed. While he is descending the patio steps to the street gate to encounter Wilkins a few yards away, a matter of forty or fifty seconds at most, an intruder has appeared at the front of the building, broken in, gained access to the bedroom, removed the child, climbed out of the window, lowered the shutters partially behind him, walked up the ramp outside the apartment into the street – and appeared, snap, as Jane Tanner passes the talking pair and spots him.

It can’t be done. There simply isn’t enough time, as the Portuguese investigators knew and were intent on proving, eventually, by a reconstruction of the supposed movements of the nine. The defence lawyers, having looked at the information themselves, agreed and told Gerry so. Perhaps, they suggested, Mr McCann should give the matter more thought.

But it was complicated. If the 9.20 abduction is abandoned then when did it take place? After Wilkins and Gerry left? But that leaves just as many time problems, while new ones are introduced. Not only had Jane Tanner walked back from her own apartment past Madeleine's bedroom window but so had her partner O' Brien and so had Oldfield himself, twice, before finally entering apartment 5A through the rear patio doors. None of them had observed anything untoward. To cap it all Jane Tanner's sighting would now to too early for it to be the elusive abductor, thus leaving the arguidos with an unsupported story.

Gerry thought it through all right, long and hard, and finally made his decision. It had to be the Jane Tanner sighting. Something would just have to give with the timescale, that's all, whatever the risks of changing the story. And that was where Clarence Mitchell, his seventy grand a year and his aggressive fib about Gerry's witness statement came in. There was more to come.

Gerry, I don't want to go through that again

Gerry McCann went back to the third version of his checking visit, the dodgy printed timeline which matched what he had told the police in his first witness statement, where he also mentioned the lavatory visit, timing his trip at 9.05. That document was never going to be accepted by either a judge or jury, not just because of these very changes but because the group had effectively colluding in preparing it after their first witness statements, so it was both worthless and suspicious, as the McCanns’ lawyers knew.

Never mind. Something had to be done, and so Gerry became the first ever victim of MMR syndrome – McCann Memory Recovery - when, four and a half months after the event, he suddenly recalled “sensing” an intruder’s presence in the apartment. To strengthen the story there was that wide-open bedroom door that Mathew Oldfield had seen. Gerry and Kate only ever left it ajar, never wide open or closed. That, surely, was clear evidence that someone was already there, in hiding, ready to leap into action as soon as the patio doors clicked shut. Now, with the actual approach and entry all having taken place before his arrival, the only time required as he walked down the back staircase to encounter Jeremy Wilkins, was fugitive exit time.

But this was like playing with a Rubik Cube because of what the Tapas 7 had already put in their witness statements: move one, you may have to move them all. If he’d done his check at 9.05 what had he been doing between 9.07, say, and when Jane Tanner saw him by the back gate about 9.20 at the earliest? A trip to the loo, a gaze down at his daughter – and then what? He must have been talking to Jeremy Wilkins, that’s where the unaccounted 10 -15 minutes had gone. But argh! Jane Tanner had said in her statement that, whatever time they had both gone, she had followed him only five minutes afterwards.

Shrug. That was another bridge that would have to be crossed if they ever went back to Portugal. For now it would be good enough: out went Clarence with the story that so enraged the Portuguese cop.

We can see all this modification and creation when we come to the BBC Panorama programme made during this period and shown in late November 2007. This, remember, was no ordinary documentary. It formed a highly important, perhaps the most important, part of the “twin tracks”, with modified, and previously unknown, material, including the bolting together of the Tapas 7 statements, being deliberately offered to the producers by the defence team.

Ed Smethurst himself, the strategist, participated in the programme and the script was vetted and approved by the McCanns. Even the elusive Jane Tanner, the vital witness, was roped in to make her first public appearance discussing her sighting. It was the real deal, the proper Authorized Version, laid out to influence the minds of the public, as Smethurst admitted on the programme, and through them the mind of the Home Secretary, about which Ed was silent.

It was a smooth piece of work, using the gravitas and reputation of the BBC to give a stamp of authority to the piece. Watching it afterwards the defence team and the McCanns must surely have been pretty pleased.

Narrator: “Gerry McCann says he went at just after 9 to check on his children. He says that their bedroom door was more open than usual so he goes in. Gerry McCann has told Panorama he remembers looking down at Madeleine. He spent a moment thinking how beautiful she looked and how lucky he was. He says this was the last time he saw his daughter. He closes the bedroom door and leaves through these unlocked patio doors. A stair gate since removed is shut, this gate is on the latch not locked. Returning to the tapas bar he meets Jeremy Wilkins who he'd played tennis with that afternoon. He crosses the road to talk to him.”

Perfect. Even Jeremy Wilkins was now being met while Gerry was “returning to the Tapas bar”, rather than at the bottom of the stairs.

And there was no doubt that the abductor must have been in the apartment because when Mathew Oldfield did his check the door was very much not in the position that Gerry had left it. Good old Panorama gave it the required emphasis.

Narrator: According to the McCann timeline, at about 9.30 Matt Oldfield is the next to check on the children. Remember Gerry McCann says he had closed the bedroom door, but Matt Oldfield says he finds it open." Perfect again.

Can you imagine the conversation between Gerry and the significant members of the Team after the programme went out that night?

Voice: Gerry, we watched the programme.
Gerry: Yes. Great, wasn’t it?
Voice: Gerry. You left the door closed. You said you left that f**king bedroom door closed.
Gerry: Sure, I know.
Voice: You can’t do it. You can’t say that.
Gerry: I’ve said it! And Mathew saw it open – that’s the whole point!
Voice: Gerry, you and your wife said you never, ever, shut the door. You always left it ajar.
Gerry: So –
Voice: That’s how Kate knew there’d been an intrusion, Gerry. Remember?
[silence]
Gerry: [chewing] It’s done now.
Voice: It has to be undone, Gerry. You cannot leave it like that.

Clever Eddie, Media McBride and “Catch Me” Caplan hadn’t been so terribly clever after all.

Still, the public’s memory is short and perhaps the police might not have been watching Panorama. Gerry could hardly unremember the closed door too quickly so there was silence on the matter until a month had elapsed – and until the Rothley meeting, the final opportunity to discuss these matters, had been and gone. On December 16 the Times published a long and authoritative article by one of the McCanns' favourite journalists, produced with their active assistance. It was another chapter, naturally, in the twin-track strategy. Beyond the Smears it was called and it gave the latest, and expanded, Authorized Version. It was much the same as the Panorama programme, with just one major change.

“When he entered the apartment, Gerry immediately saw that the children’s bedroom door, which they always left just ajar, was now open to 45 degrees. He thought that was odd, and glanced in his own bedroom to see if Madeleine had gone into her parents’ bed. But no, she and the twins were all still fast asleep. Gerry paused over Madeleine, who – a typical doctor’s observation, this – was lying almost in “the recovery position” with Cuddle Cat, the toy her godfather, John Corner, had bought her, and her comfort blanket up near her head, and Gerry thought how gorgeous, how lovely-looking she was and how lucky he was. Putting the door back to five degrees, he went to the loo and left to return to the restaurant. That, of course, was the last time he would see his daughter.”

Good, eh? Or, at least, good enough for the British public, if not for the police.

Meanwhile another timescale problem had to be dealt with, using Coffin Clarence and the media. It concerned Kate McCann and David Payne and, if the parents wanted to avoid being put on the plane to police headquarters, there was a lot of work to be done.

widowan wrote:Exactly - there isn't time, and there are numerous other problems such as Gerry standing there while he daughter was carried past 5 meters from him, not seeing it nor Jane - and what about the time it would have taken to sedate her or are we to believe that slumped body being carried like a victim away from a bomb site was merely asleep?

I do not think Gerry checked the kids thta night visually nor did Matt. I think they did listening checks if at all. And I think the Tanner sighting is fantasy. It alibis him and givees an eye witness to the crime as well as making the timeline too short (910 or 915 to 920) for cadaverine to have developed which makes the dogs' information into nonsense.

They won't agree to reconstruct, and if SY takes no for an answer and waves off all these lies and checks only OTHER alibis, then they deserve to have scorn heaped on them.

Me wrote:I said this on another forum I think in relation to their statements.

The disciples scream look at the files, but they mean look at the Rogatory interviews. In the main you might as well throw them in the bin. They’ve been worked and on colluded on so much their value worthless (apart from the odd bits where they forget what the line is supposed to be).

We know they met at that hotel with their legal representatives before giving those Rogy statements, what do you think they were discussing there?

No the real gold is in those first early statements, which haven’t been picked over and polished by expensive lawyers, and that’s where you get a more accurate picture of what happened and what they were trying to cover up.

Me wrote:I said this on another forum I think in relation to their statements.

The disciples scream look at the files, but they mean look at the Rogatory interviews. In the main you might as well throw them in the bin. They’ve been worked and on colluded on so much their value worthless (apart from the odd bits where they forget what the line is supposed to be).

We know they met at that hotel with their legal representatives before giving those Rogy statements, what do you think they were discussing there?

No the real gold is in those first early statements, which haven’t been picked over and polished by expensive lawyers, and that’s where you get a more accurate picture of what happened and what they were trying to cover up.