Bingo!

Not Born Yesterday wrote:Yes, I was about to say that some reports say the 3rd and others the 4th.

If it is true that this man did not go to the police initially until February 2008, no wonder he couldn't remember the exact date; absolute nonsense!

Kitti: the dates vary.

Kate McCann, Robert Murat and Madeleine in the same taxi?

Ten months after the disappearance of Madeleine McCann, the taxi driver's story hit the international press. It has been reported widely in the UK press, but I don't think I have seen reports that the story had been investigated and rejected after verification. Here is an article from the Belgian site, Enfants Kidnappés, dated February 28th.

Ten months after the fact, a taxi driver from Vila Real de Santo Antonio, went public with his witness statement to the PJ. According to reports in the Portuguese press, the taxi driver made his statement to the PJ two days after Maddie's disappearance. "I don't have a lot to say, but what I have to say, I can state with certainty. On the 3rd of May at 8.10pm, the evening of Madeleine's disappearance, three men, a woman and a little girl entered my taxi. Sitting beside me was seated a man who resembled Robert Murat and whom I recognised later in the press. There was also a little girl in pink pyjamas with that distinctive mark in her eye and her mother, of that there is no doubt."

I noticed her because there was a nervous tic to her chin and my son had the same tic when he was small. I asked myself why they had not dressed the little girl instead of leaving her in pyjamas. She was awake but she was not talking. The other men were aged between 40 and 50 years. The mother, who looked amazingly like Kate McCann, was dressed in a yellow coat and had her hair in a pony tail. She asked me to drive them to the Apolo Hotel five kilometres from there in a village close to Faro. They asked me in English how much the fare would be and I told them just over three Euros. The man next to me, the one who resembled Robert Murat, gave me a 5 Euro note. They did not take themselves towards the hotel, but to a 4x4, a big dark coloured car, which looked to me like a BMW, with a foreign registration.

Mr Castela, the taxi driver, is used to remembering people's faces. He is 67 years old and has been doing his job for 17 years. Fixing faces in one's mind allows better identification of people. And if he is sure about the time in his story it is, he says, because, "I know they got into my taxi at that time because I usually watch the television news. I was thinking at that moment to return home. I took that fare and I returned home for 8.30pm where I could carry on watching the television news.

"He did not place any importance on his clients until two days later when the media took up the case, "Then I spoke to my son who is an officer with the GNR and he decided to put me in contact with the PJ. I told them exactly what I have just said and the inspector asked me if I knew if the hotel had surveillance cameras. I told him that in theory, yes. Out of curiosity, two days later, I returned to the hotel and asked them if the PJ had contacted them. They told me no. I tried to find out if they had surveillance cameras but they told me that they had been out of order for two years."

The PJ confirmed having been contacted by the taxi driver and his witness statement taken at the time. But these claims had been rejected after verification.

http://frommybigdesk.blogspot.co.uk/2008/02/enfants-kidnapps-kate-mccann-robert.html

FRIDAY, 29 FEBRUARY 2008

what is the nervous tic.?.

kitti wrote:what is the nervous tic.?.

Something Gerry and Kate display everytime they are on TV or at interviews if a journo dare asks an awkward question!

Kate and Gerry McCann are conducting a press conference. German reporter Sabine Mueller has a question: “How do you feel that more and more people seem to imply that you might have something to do with it?”
Kate replies: “I don’t think that’s the case.” Gerry adds: “There’s no way Kate and I are involved.”

ARE or WERE?

So where did the driver pick them up from?

fred wrote:So where did the driver pick them up from?

Monte Gordo but it doesn't say whether it was an apartment/hotel.

chrissie wrote:

fred wrote:So where did the driver pick them up from?

Monte Gordo but it doesn't say whether it was an apartment/hotel.

Thanks. But it would be much more than 3euros to Vila Real St Antonio.
I think it's all nonsense.

Annabel wrote:http://joana-morais.blogspot.com/2008/02/taxi-driver-story-and-rogatory-letter.html

The son, a police officer of the GNR, advised the father to phone to the Judiciary Police of Portimão. “ He (the son) dialled the number and I said what I am telling you (to the journalist of 24 Horas newspaper)”, he remembers to 24horas.

Thanks Annabel, I was hoping someone would remember that the Taxi Drivers' Son is a policeman.......possibly thinking of a reward????

Has anyone noticed that the Express have a new Reporter, Twomey???? James Murray must have found better events to report about and in fact, it is only the Express reporting on this. .....front page !!!!

The English request for witnesses to be heard
in: Correio da Manhã, 24.08.2013
by Tânia Laranjo  
24 August 2013 | Posted by astro

One of the witnesses that the English authorities want to be heard again is a taxi driver who asserts that he transported the girl, that night, in the company of adults.

The man has already volunteered to make a statement, and should now make a formal statement at the Judiciary Police in Faro.

More at:
http://joana-morais.blogspot.com/2013/08/the-english-request-for-witnesses-to-be.html

almostgothic wrote:The English request for witnesses to be heard
in: Correio da Manhã, 24.08.2013
by Tânia Laranjo  
24 August 2013 | Posted by astro

One of the witnesses that the English authorities want to be heard again is a taxi driver who asserts that he transported the girl, that night, in the company of adults.

The man has already volunteered to make a statement, and should now make a formal statement at the Judiciary Police in Faro.

More at:
http://joana-morais.blogspot.com/2013/08/the-english-request-for-witnesses-to-be.html

Oh dear, IF he swears blind that it WAS KM in his taxi, then she will have to be re-interviewed.
Better get cuddle cat out from where ever he is and wash those hair ribbons for her appearance before the new inquiry team.

Correio de Manha is the equivalent of the Sun or Mirror so I wouldn't take this seriously.

Ring Murat too......he's going to be implicated AGAIN.

kitti wrote:Ring Murat too......he's going to be implicated AGAIN.

Nah!!! He'll be too busy digging his mums drive up.

Brilliant, Almostgothic. xxx

Iris wrote:From the Telegraph. ( I have the original webpage saved.)

By Natalie Paris
11:31AM GMT 28 Feb 2008
A taxi driver has reportedly claimed to have taken Madeleine McCann and Robert Murat for a ride in his cab on the night the toddler vanished.
All the latest on the Madeleine McCann investigation
Antonio Cardoso, 67, alleges that Madeleine was with three men and a woman who were waiting at a taxi rank in Monte Gordo near the Spanish border.

The Sun newspaper reports that he took them on a short journey to a hotel where the group transferred to a jeep with foreign number plates.
Mr Cardoso claimed the girl in the back of his taxi at 8.10pm on May 3 was wearing pink pyjamas and had a distinctive mark in her eye.
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He said he later recognised one of the men as Robert Murat after watching a television programme.
The claims have shocked Madeleine's parents, Kate and Gerry McCann, who have rejected them for being incompatible with the known chain of events that night.
Murat was made an official suspect, or arguido, two weeks after the little girl disappeared but has always denied any involvement in the case.
Mr Cardoso said he drove the group in silence for about two miles from the Hotel Apolo in Vila Real de Santo Antonio near Faro, with the man who he believed to be Murat sat beside him in the front passenger seat.
He claimed the girl he thought was Madeleine was awake but said nothing during the trip and stared straight ahead.
He told the Sun: "I noticed her eye because my son was born with a defect much the same. I saw her kind of twist her chin a few times in my rear-view mirror.
"I remember she was in pink pyjamas and wondered why they hadn't dressed her."
He described the adults as casually dressed and the woman as a slim blonde.
Mr Cardoso said he had informed the police of the apparent encounter but as well as Metodo 3, the private detective agency hired by the McCanns.
But the McCanns spokesman Clarence Mitchell told the newspaper: "We are dismissing this primarily because the timings are entirely wrong."

Accompanied by picture of Madeleine on her bike. Strange that it says the 3rd here, and now it's morphed into the 4th.

If the taxi driver picked up 3 adults and a child, at 8.10pm, on May the 3rd, the child couldn't have been Madeleine, because the McCanns said they didn't leave their apartment, until 8.30pm.

Unless the child was Madeleine and she was on her way to her new life, with new parents, with the blessing of her so called biological parents. This would probably explain the McCanns cavalier attitude, towards Madeleine's disappearance.

Of course there is always the chance the taxi driver was telling porkies. Some people will do anything, for publicity, the McCanns are prime examples.

almostgothic wrote:Late last night
The rags rehashed the scam
Seems a big Algarve taxi
Took away Maddie McCann ...

Don't it always seem to go
That they don't know what they've got
'Til she's gone
They screwed paradise
And put up an online shop

Brilliant almostgothic, and oh so true! 


They took all the posters
and put em in the 'Maddie Museum'
Then charged the poor numpties
a dollar and half just to see em


Don't it always seem to go
That they don't know what they've got
'Til she's gone
They screwed paradise
And put up an online shop

http://joana-morais.blogspot.com/2008/02/taxi-driver-story-and-rogatory-letter.html

Snipped from the article:

Clarence Mitchell, spokesman for the McCanns, reacted yesterday with amazement at the declarations of the taxi-driver. “The declarations of Mr. Castela are false. They are a perfect nonsense. He can only be mistaken when he says that at that time he transported Kate and Madeleine with three men”, he said, underlining the fact of being several independent witnesses who place Madeleine's parents in a completely different place. “How is that possible, if at 20h35 several witnesses say that Kate and Gerry were sitting down on a table of the Tapas restaurant”, he questioned. Clarence doubts of the intentions of the taxi-driver. “It astonishes me that only now, ten months later, he talks about this. These are declarations that only cause pain to Kate and Gerry", he said, advancing that that the McCann's daughter has no facial twitches.
“The only sign to report is the one she has in the eye.”

oh that's now just a fleck.

tanszi wrote:oh that's now just a fleck.

Which of course they never made a big deal of!

Whenever I her that Clarence Mitchell is denying this.....theres something in it

I THOUGHT THEY HAD TRACED THE PEOPLE THAT WERE IN THE TAXI,WERRE STAYING AT LOCAL HOTEL.

kitti wrote:Whenever I her that Clarence Mitchell is denying this.....theres something in it

good point Kitti  how many retractions has he had to make up until now?