"The illusionists"+"Answer Page" 11 and 13/12/2013 Dr Martin Roberts -mccannfiles

http://www.mccannfiles.com/id232.html

(some pictures)

EXCLUSIVE to mccannfiles.com

By Dr Martin Roberts
11 December 2013


THE ILLUSIONISTS

Illusions take many forms. They can be aural or visual, even tactile, but the one thing they cannot be is veridical. And since appearances can deceive in any modality it can sometimes be worth putting one's perceptions to the test; either that or suspend disbelief. In Christopher Nolan's 'magical' film The Prestige (2006), after the 'Pledge' and the 'Turn', the 'Prestige' associated with a stage magician's making songbirds disappear before the eyes of a bewildered Victorian audience depends very largely upon the unnoticed, and unsuspected, squashing to death of a canary or two, the magician's assistants in this case sacrificing their all for his art. Dying for the cause is by no means without precedent therefore.

Six years ago in Praia da Luz, Portugal, a pair of contemporary illusionists were hard at work pledging that they would turn every stone so as to overcome a certain personal hardship, whilst basking in the prestige occasioned by their own daughter's unexplained absence. Not being particularly practised in their craft however, they needed a warm-up trick or two. A card trick for starters, performed with a couple of 'signing-in' cards:

"We dropped the kids off at their clubs for the last hour and a half, meeting up with them as usual for tea." (Kate McCann in Madeleine, p.59).

Meanwhile Gerry had already signed Madeleine into her 'lobster' group at the Mark Warner creche (at 2.30 p.m. that afternoon, Tuesday 1 May), and not for the last hour and a half either.

No less amazing is Kate's having been elsewhere at the very same time signing both Sean and Amelie into their 'jellyfish' group, where they stayed for fully two hours and fifty minutes, before Kate signed them out again (at 5.20 p.m.).

How did they do that?

Then, before moving onto the grand illusion, the duo offered up a variation on 'cups and balls'. Not one where the ball appears unexpectedly under a different receptacle, but where the receptacle itself, a young child, cups some tennis balls in her arms and moves back and forth in time, posing for the camera on Monday, yet absent when photographed on Tuesday and when mysteriously seen adopting the very same pose on Wednesday.

Already we are into the realm of illusion. When the camera 'snaps' the subject is not there. Like the body an audience believes has just been impaled inside the magic box. Although our illusionist visitors to the Portuguese Algarve had yet to attain such dizzying proficiency as to make either a Lear Jet or Tower Bridge disappear, they were nevertheless working toward the grand illusion, utilising an entire apartment as their magic box.



The Magic Circle

"...we played no part in the disappearance of our lovely daughter Madeleine". (Gerry McCann, September 2007)

It is a rule of membership that practitioners do not reveal their secrets. We are left to guess at their methods. So should one expect the presenter of a vanishing act to 'vanish' his subject completely, i.e., without a subsequent return to the stage followed by thunderous applause, or, in a more down-to-earth context, comprehensively abduct his own daughter, never to be seen again? What would be the point? (Unless of course there was a prior expectation that the show would go on interminably.)

What we can expect is that any illusion we witness is deceptive, just like illusionists themselves. Convincing the Victorian audience, as portrayed in the Nolan film, that 'the bird had flown', required the death of a canary; something the magician could never publicly admit. Technological innovation may since have saved the life of many a captive bird, but what secret door might Madeleine McCann have disappeared through? We were all made to think it was a window at first but, in a typical magician's 'double bluff', this was afterwards revealed to have been transparent misdirection.

The box containing Madeleine McCann was shown to the audience at 9.00 p.m. She was there. And again at 9.30. She appeared to be there still. But after one more rotation, at 10.00 p.m., she was gone. The illusionist's partner checked the box inside and out. There was 'no little body' in the form of Madeleine McCann.

Was the little bird alive or dead? Was it being carried away as the audience looked on? Not alive if so, but with sufficient strength to adapt its cradle, not dead either. Perhaps it was hidden within a secret compartment inside the magic box? Had Madeleine fallen unnoticed behind the sofa? Then it would only be a matter of time before she was discovered and the trick spoilt. She was not discovered. There was no trace of her left that night.

So how was it done? How was the illusion created? Well, despite advances in technology and presentation, the fundamental elements of any good illusion remain the same. The magician's assistant is obviously not in the box when the lid slams shut. Unless of course she's a canary, and expendable, in which case someone has to clean the mechanism afterwards, and before the (next) show.



A Trick Missed

"At around 10pm, the witness came to check on the children...She verified that the twins were in their beds, unlike Madeleine, who had disappeared...After searching the whole apartment thoroughly...she returned to the restaurant, and alerted her husband and the rest of the group to the disappearance". (KM witness statement 4.5.07)

The Smiths' sighting occurred at just before 10.00 p.m. If the child they witnessed being carried was Madeleine McCann then she must have been removed from the apartment before 10.00. Supposing the adult carrier to have been Gerry McCann, why on earth would he wish to abduct his own daughter? And if she were dead?

If it were Madeleine's body the unidentified porter had in his arms that Thursday night, then when did she have her fatal accident, and when was her body discovered? Not at 9.00 p.m., when Gerry found 'no little body' in the parents' bedroom but gazed down upon three sleeping children in their own. Nor at 9.30, when Matthew Oldfield entered the apartment. Although he claims not to have entered the children's room, and therefore could only assume (but not confirm) Madeleine's presence, it scarcely matters, since a child lying fatally injured between the living room sofa and adjacent wall could not have returned to her bed anyway. Even so she would still not have been noticed, in the dark, by Oldfield. It was for the very purpose of exposing hidden objects that Gerry McCann himself claims to have moved the sofa:

"Regarding this sofa, he remembers it was drawn against the window. He is not sure, but thinks that this sofa was probably a bit further away from the window, and he vaguely remembers pushing it back a bit, because his children threw objects behind it, namely playing cards". (GM witness statement 7.9.07)

So, if a child's body was encountered inside apartment 5A between 9.00 and 10.00 p.m. that Thursday night, then when exactly, and by whom? If in fact it was discovered earlier then 'abduction' becomes a prepared scenario, not an outcome of spontaneous panic, and the plan seriously contrived.

The McCanns have a 'last photo' to prove that an accident could not have happened before 2.29 p.m. that same day and a crèche register signed 'K McCann' at 5.30. So Madeleine was safe until next seen (as one of the three children) by David Payne at around 6.30. Within the hour she's asleep in bed:

"It was around 7:15 p.m. when they put the children to bed and checked they were sleeping, she is sure of this". (KM witness statement, 6.9.07)

The bottom line, as they say, is that either Madeleine McCann was seen by the Smiths, being carried off alive in the arms of a stranger, or she was dead. And if Madeleine's corpse could not have been discovered on the Thursday night, then both it and the unfortunate accident she suffered must have been contingent upon earlier events. How much earlier would govern, in turn, the extent of the subsequent misdirection. The fact that the child seen by the Smiths was wearing long-sleeved pyjamas would seem to rule out the 'Madeleine McCann alive in the arms of a stranger' option, so maybe Kate McCann was right. Maybe Madeleine would have been better off had she been wearing her long-sleeved 'Barbie' ones."

Did Smiths say their child was wearing long sleeved pajamas? I don't recall that.

I am not sure what he is on about in the first bit about the tennis balls.

P66 Madeleine I had finished my run by 530 at the Tapas area, where I found Madeleine and the twins having their tea with Gerry

Who signed K McCann - who actually got Madeleine out of the crèche?

Redwood is another illusionist : Madeleine's pink pyjamas, in front of an amazed audience,become orange, the frills become flat.The Sleeping Father wakes up suddenly after 6 years and Redwood convinces the public he is walking out of the box from the left side when it's the right.Then, the Sleeping Father wanishes in thin air.
But with such big Kaa eyes, it's easy for Redwood to hypnotize the audience.

It's dark in PDL. You could easily mistake pink and orange, under those sodium lights.

The direction he's going in is another matter... what with the crèche being in the other direction.

I think Jane like the rest of the 8 bottles of vino group - or was it 14? - was pretty well hammered by 9 PM one way and another. They seem happy to brush her "sighting" under the rug as fast as possible; she probably DID see the guy going towards the apts and not away from them but "got confused" ...

Redwood has a funny, earnest look on his face. It's like he's acting or maybe he really is that dopey looking.

widowan wrote:Did Smiths say their child was wearing long sleeved pajamas? I don't recall that.

I am not sure what he is on about in the first bit about the tennis balls.

P66 Madeleine I had finished my run by 530 at the Tapas area, where I found Madeleine and the twins having their tea with Gerry

Who signed K McCann - who actually got Madeleine out of the crèche?

LONG SLEEVES.

I've just had a long 'conversation' about this on JH.

WHEN did 'smithman' change the pyjama top on the child he was carrying, from the VERY SHORT SLEEVED pyjama top the McCanns said Madeleine was wearing, and they 'showed' to the press at news conferences, if they are now focussed solely on 'smithman' as the 'abductor', to LONG SLEEVED pyjama top that Ms Smith saw the child wearing and said so in her signed police statement?

Date of Diligence: 2007.05.26
Location: DIC Portimao
Name: Aoife Smith

The witness states:
• She was wearing light trousers, white or light-pink, that may have been pyjamas. She does not remember if they were patterned as it was dark. The material was light and could have been cotton.

"She also had a light top, WITH LONG SLEEVES. She did not see well because the individual had his arms around the child"
She is not sure if the child's top was the same colour as her trousers but the trousers were light.

Urged, affirms that she has finished declaring the truth, according to her knowledge.
• And nothing more was said. Reads and finds it inconformity, ratifies and signs together with her interpreter.

My point is, i think, that 'smithman' could not be carrying Madeleine if the child he was carrying had a long sleeved top on.
Unless he changed the 'top' between the McCanns apartment and before the Smiths saw him.

Ergo: If the child, the Smiths saw, had long sleeved top on, compared to the very short sleeved top the Mcs say Madeleine WAS wearing, when 'abducted', then 'smithman' could not be 'abductor' could he?

Well it's certainly TRUE that they 'described, SHOWED', held up, to be photographed by the world's media, a pair of short sleeved pyjamas that they said were 'indentical' to the ones Madeleine was wearing at the time of her 'disappearance'

My rationale is that the child with the long sleeves the Smiths 'saw' could not be Madeleine unless the man carrying her CHANGED the top between the McCanns apartment and being 'sighted' by the Smith family.

Ergo: imo, 'smithman' could not be the 'abductor'

"Perhaps you're making the point that there can't be an abductor, because the McCanns insisted that Maddy was wearing short sleeved pajamas, and THEY AND DCI REDWOOD are now 'backing' (as the ONE and ONLY 'explanation' for Madeleine's 'disappearance') the Smith sighting which was of long sleeved pajamas"?

KA-CHING!

[quote="widowan"]It's dark in PDL. You could easily mistake pink and orange, under those sodium lights.

The pyjama Redwoods shaws is orange, without sodium lights. May be , under sodium lights, a pink pyjama could turn orange] but not the contrary.IMO J.T invented the story and said pink because Madeleine was, allegedly wearing pink pyjamas.Too many weaknesses in her testimony to be true. Same for Redwood's scenario ( color of pyjama,without frills,direction,blurred image of the father with clothes he "could" have worn, no identity of the father,no reconstruction for a "so important" new element....).The J.T sighting was rightly conjured away but not for the good reasons.

Perhaps the 'double' was wearing long sleeved PJ's.....a tiny mistake.

I think it is possible that this witness could have been mistaken and the girl was wearing short sleeves. She definitely remembers more about the trousers than the top.

The other scenario is that Madeleine died in the Eeyore pyjamas, but was changed into the long sleeved pyjamas before being disposed of. This could have been done to remove any incriminating evidence. If found, the McCanns would claim that when they last saw her she was wearing short sleeved pyjamas, so someone else must have done it. The Scenic could have been used to dispose of the Eeyore pyjamas, causing the cadaver odor to be detected there.

jinvta wrote:I think it is possible that this witness could have been mistaken and the girl was wearing short sleeves. She definitely remembers more about the trousers than the top.

The other scenario is that Madeleine died in the Eeyore pyjamas, but was changed into the long sleeved pyjamas before being disposed of. This could have been done to remove any incriminating evidence. If found, the McCanns would claim that when they last saw her she was wearing short sleeved pyjamas, so someone else must have done it. The Scenic could have been used to dispose of the Eeyore pyjamas, causing the cadaver odor to be detected there.

The witness could have been mistaken, or - say this was Gerry taking Madeleine away - is it possible they would put a sweater on her? Not because she could become cold if she were already deceased but because carrying a child outdoors, barefoot and bare armed, in weather that cold would certainly cause attention if someone saw them. As with Jane's noticing of the bare feet on a child being carried when adults are shivering and wearing layers, to carry a child that is supposed to be sleeping, outdoors in cold weather, you would either put a cardigan or jacket on them or wrap a blanket around them. otherwise the child would wake up from the cold...

Kate mentioned Maddie's top having a "large brown stain" on the front which at the time she merely noted and washed out. I think she described it that way. Later she wondered if this was something that could prove the abductor had been in the night before, and had given Madeleine something, that is what made her cry.

Kate then goes on to explain all the  times they were pondering when this crying could have occurred, in the bath, etc because surely it could not be when they were out late at night because the kids were asleep then every time they checked, which they did every half hour etc. So it seems a nocturnal visit by a person spilling things or trying to force a kid to drink things is not really viable.

The abductor must somehow get in not once but twice, undetected, and try to sedate her child etc while she is out - but at the same time it was all very safe because they were checking so much and the "all quiet" was sounded each time. Madeleine, according to her grandma or aunt, would have "screamed the place down" if anyone tried to take her - and as Kate says, she was "not backward about coming forward," so "if she remembered it" she would tell them about something upsetting --  a stranger coming in and trying to make her drink medicine (or trying to lie in bed with her as some creepy person was evidently doing to other tourists) you would presume would fall into that category. not something you mention in passing that "where were you when we cried?" and then move on and keep playing.

Could the sleep medication have been in the tea or milk, then vomited up and that left the stain? And would be a reason she'd be wearing another top instead of her Eeyore one?

Most people like their kids to wear clean pajamas to bed, you don't bathe them and put them to bed between clean sheets in dirty clothes. I would think as she had another, warmer pair of clean Barbie pajamas there you would have her wear those, and put the others in the machine. The rest of her clothing managed to get washed such that there was nothing there to get dna from - why just rinse off the mess on her pjs and put them to dry?

The washing of the top story has never really set right with me.

frencheuropean wrote:

widowan wrote:It's dark in PDL. You could easily mistake pink and orange, under those sodium lights.

The pyjama Redwoods shaws is orange, without sodium lights. May be , under sodium lights, a pink pyjama could turn  orange] but not the contrary.IMO J.T invented the story and said pink because Madeleine was, allegedly wearing pink pyjamas.Too many weaknesses in her testimony to be true. Same for Redwood's scenario ( color of pyjama,without frills,direction,blurred image of the father with clothes he "could" have worn, no identity of the father,no reconstruction for a "so important" new element....).The J.T sighting was rightly conjured away but not for the good reasons.

I think it would be hard to tell light colors under those conditions - pink and orange aren't that far apart.

I don't know why SY would conjure Tanner man up in order to dispel him as an abductor - to show Jane wasn't lying and did see someone? Because they want McCanns to be found innocent? But why then not conjure up that this man existed and was in fact the abductor? That would prove Jane wasn't lying and without all the mess about the Smith sighting being suppressed - they could have invented a Smith man and said we found the tourist who bore a passing resemblance to Gerry, it wasn't the abductor - if they are going to conjure away one of the sightings, surely the one to get rid of is the one that McCanns themselves were trying to suppress - not the sighting they'd been highlighting for 6 years as the bad guy.

That makes them look bad.

Jane and Matt are on the back foot now as well having been held out to be liars about their checks or mistaken such that the timeline opens up, at the same time SY putting the end of the dinner at 940 rather than 10ish, which makes it possible for Gerry to have been Smith man.

If I were trying to help McCanns I don't think this is how I'd be doing it.

I would like to know if in fact Matt did a check or did no check. If he was totally lying about it or just about whether he went in the house.

That is the implication when SY opens the timeline up - that he wasn't there at all.  Because even if he only listened outside the door he would have been in the house, and the abduction wasn't occurring AT that time. And if he was outside the window he'd have seen it open and he didn't.  So the kidnapping happened if it happened either between 915 when Gerry stood lingering there, and 930 when Matt was at least at the apt  (although this still leaves McCanns opening the window themselves, if Oldfield was only passed by their window, which he saw shut down) - or after 935 and before 940. Didn't Matt go to see Russell also to see if he needed help with his sick kid? so he'd have been passing back from that visit right around the time SY puts the dinner ending and Mrs Carpenter heard the first cries of Madeleine's name.

It doesn't seem that there is much time for the kidnapper in this scenario either.

Only if Matt completely lied and never left the table or never went near the McCann apt (located directly next to his) would the timeline for the kidnapping be 915, after Gerry left, to 940. If the alert went up at 935-940 then our man still only has 20 minutes or less, possibly much less, to get in and out with her sedated and all.

"We dropped the kids off at their clubs for the last hour and a half, meeting up with them as usual for tea." (Kate McCann in Madeleine, p.59).

Meanwhile Gerry had already signed Madeleine into her 'lobster' group at the Mark Warner creche (at 2.30 p.m. that afternoon, Tuesday 1 May), and not for the last hour and a half either.

No less amazing is Kate's having been elsewhere at the very same time signing both Sean and Amelie into their 'jellyfish' group, where they stayed for fully two hours and fifty minutes, before Kate signed them out again (at 5.20 p.m.).
===================================================


I think Kate was smart enough to know that the majority and by that I mean 90% of the people reading her bewk will not be the "Internet nutters" ie people who have actually read the police files and seen the sign in sheets and the rogatory and initial interview statements.

So she's free in the book to minimize the amount of time the kids spent in the crèche - to 90 minutes rather than 3 hours, the full time, every afternoon - for whatever reason. I presume it is for the reason "what people will think" of her- to show they weren't just warehousing the kids, they were only in there a few minutes, because they wanted to be! - when in fact we know they were in there all the hours the crèche was open, every day, including the 3rd when the others took their kids to the beach and out for a meal & ice cream, away from the Tapas at the Paraiso or whatever it's called.

What is amazing to me is that she also feels free to state that after her run she came upon her family near Tapas where they were having children's tea - which means that Gerry signed out the kids or someone else did - and signed her name on Madeleine's sign out sheet, K McCann.  Did she also sign out the twins? Since she used Healy I n those days, that would tend to indicate it was another Tapas mum or dad, doing the McCanns one more in a series of inexpicable (and in this case impossible, since the rest of them were all at the beach having their tea) favors... or that her husband signed the kids out using her name (why?) - or that she's lying about who checked Maddie out; she did it herself singing a name she doesn't use, and when she was meant to be out jogging, only later to come upon her husband and three kids having tea.

Did no one proof read the few pages she actually wrote about May 3rd? Like a lawyer, maybe? To check that it at least nominally squares with the written interviews and physical evidence?

Why would Kate lie about who signed out Madeleine? And the twins for that matter? She doesn't want "people to think" she signed them out.

New article today:

http://www.mccannfiles.com/id232.html



Answer Page, 13 December 2013

Answer Page



EXCLUSIVE to mccannfiles.com

By Dr Martin Roberts
13 December 2013


ANSWER PAGE

Question 2.

'Given the resultant status of the apartment (unlocked patio door so that Madeleine could get out if she wanted), why have you since insisted that there was 'no way' Madeleine could get out of the apartment unaided?'

Answer

It would have been physically impossible for a 3-4 year old child to exit via a dead-locked front door, a sliding patio door with drapes in front and closed shutters beyond, or a window they simply could not reach.

Gerry McCann statement to police (extract), 4.5.07):

'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'.

(Through the front door. The patio door locking mechanism was not key operated).

Rachael Oldfield (nee Mampilly) statement to police (extract), 15.5.2007:

'The window shutters of the McCann's apartment were closed. The patio door that they used to enter the apartment also had its shutter closed. In order to enter they had to raise the shutter.'

The winding mechanism for the shutters was inside the apartment. In order for anyone to enter via the patio once the shutters were down they would normally have to be admitted by someone already inside, even if the door itself was unlocked.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Question 3.

'Exactly why could Madeleine McCann not have walked from her bed to the patio door, left unlocked for her benefit?'

Answer

Because she was not there.

The true configuration of apartment 5a was exactly as described by key witnesses at the time. Neither of Madeleine's parents had any problem getting in, since they were in possession of the key. Matthew Oldfield was not. But that was unimportant, as his customary gesture toward the invigilation of children other than his own was simply to listen at the window. The tale of his halting exploration of the interior on the night of 3 May, 2007 is as fictional as his description of the fixtures and fittings.

The story of how the abductor 'came in through the window' was concocted, reasonably enough, on the basis of the security measures in place. He did not have a front door key and could not have passed stealthily through the shutters at the rear. He might just have managed to 'jemmy' his way in unnoticed at the front of the apartment however. That was until it was established that he had clearly not done so.

Thus a 'fall back' position was called for, which was the unlocked patio door. True enough, it wasn't locked. But with a sturdy steel shutter closed in front of it there was scarcely any need to lock it. For this alternative story to have a semblance of credibility all that was necessary was to omit any reference to the shutter!

Unfortunately Rachael Oldfield forgot her lines. A pity really, since husband Matt had managed, under some duress, to stick reasonably slavishly to his, which included the absurdity of his not going all the way into the children's bedroom. What was that all about?

It's quite simple really. If the McCanns alone had gone down the unlocked patio door route, further questions would quickly have followed. Third-party confirmation of their claim was required to bolster the account. Step forward Matthew Oldfield. How about, Matthew, you actually go into the apartment the same way? But you must not see anything because there's nothing to see. So you enter via the unlocked patio door, o.k., and stop before you reach the bedroom. There. You've done your 'check', the status of the patio door is confirmed, and no-one else is compromised.

Credit where credit's due, he did his best to make it sound convincing. But why didn't the parents accede to the check for real and simply lend the trusted Matt their front door key? One reason of course is that no-one assumed any responsibility for the others' children at all. Another reason is that the last thing the McCanns wanted that Thursday night was for anyone else to have entered their apartment. The incorporation of 'I didn't go all the way in' into Oldfield's storyline is itself confirmation of the importance of Oldfield's seeing nothing of significance - at 9.30 p.m.

Bear in mind that it is not Oldfield who has chosen to place himself inside the apartment at all but the McCanns, for reasons of their own. So why is he kept on a hypothetical leash? Who knew before 9.30 p.m. that it would have been counter-productive for him to have genuinely inspected Madeleine's dormitory? Gerry McCann's latent awareness of someone else having been inside 5A earlier was yet another development in hindsight. He did not carry the suspicion of Madeleine's abduction back to the Tapas Bar with him, so the Oldfield confection cannot have been constructed on that basis. And Kate McCann did not discover that her daughter had been, 'errr, taken' until after Oldfield himself had returned from 'checking'.

For reasons one can only guess at, the McCanns did not wish Oldfield to discover, or even fictionally acknowledge, that Madeleine was missing – at 9.30 p.m., although there had been no indication before then, at least as far as they could have been aware, that Madeleine was indeed 'gone'. And yet they knew."

This changes things, this is the first I've heard that the sliding doors, routinely left unlocked, also had a metal shutter that closed down over them. That is unusual. If it was down that night it'd be noisy and ridiculous to get through that way,

McCanns had said they used the back door and not the locked front door because the key in the door lock would wake the kids (these kids that never woke til the wee hours) so they left the sliding door unlocked. The shutter must not have been down that night, or none of them could have exited or entered via that door without a lot of noise. This is where Kate was asking Fiona whether it was better that they left the door unlocked - well if the adults couldn't get in or out that way then neither could Maddie and also kids have been known in fooling around with blinds and shades and so on, to hang themselves. Not sure what could happen to a 3 year old trying to crawl through stiff metal shutters but I presume it is not pretty.

It would be awfully dark in the apt with ALL the light blocked out.

So if Rachael is telling the truth that the shutter was down - as she well might since her husband was the last to see Madeleine - voluntarily checking, and this one night she disappears - he is a likely suspect to have done something to her - then of course Matt was never in the house, as we know now anyhow - and McCanns did not leave by that door either. Of course the shade could have been left up - how would Rachael know what state it was actually in? Matt says he went in that way; why depart from the story he is telling? That too makes him look suspicious.

Curious. I guess a pact of silence is pretty well advised with this bunch.

They must be one hell of a pair of actors if they can go to dinner knowing their child's body is in that flat, laugh and joke as usual and even send someone to do a listening check, and then completely FLIP OUT when they "discover" her missing.

I need to see photos of the lounge with the sliding door and the shutters. In the US if you have glass sliding door you would virtually never see metal shutters coming right down from the top, there might be lateral blinds that hang on a strap across the top and you can pull those sideways to shut them, but they are easily pushed aside plastic things, not metal vertical ones.

These kind of changed stories make it seem like this was not carefully planned out - the first thing you'd want to do if you had time to plan this would be to figure how you were going to trick the cops that someone else managed to get in. Leaving the window open is stupid, it's easy to tell if anyone went in or out of it though maybe they didn't notice the lichen on the sill. Their OWN checks they would have gone over first, but when Jane "saw" the abduction perhaps they tried to be too clever and get that sighting to "fit" since it alibi'd Gerry.

Poor Matt is left swinging in the breeze.

http://www.mccannfiles.com/id155.html

Photos of the crime scene in 5a.

You can see what could be vertical shutters pulled all the way to the top over the sliding glass doors out to the patio; also long curtains pulled back to each side of the glass doors, that would pull shut from the side.

It would be odd in my opinion to ever have those vertical metal blinds down since that door opens from patio to lounge. You don't sleep in the lounge. Maybe it's a safety measure? For privacy you have curtains already.

The sofa behind which Eddie alerted to human cadaver odor, you can see the curtain pulled and bunched there, as if someone tried to look out.

"The tale of his halting exploration of the interior on the night of 3 May, 2007 is as fictional as his description of the fixtures and fittings."

Says it all really. Dr Martin Roberts knows that Oldfield never checked on the McCann's children. We know that Oldfield never checked on the McCann children. To anyone with half of a brain, it is clearly obvious that Oldfield never checked on the McCann children.

Oldfield and his lies hold the key to this mystery. He needs to be questioned further, as well as submit to a lie detector test. SY should not have agreed to spend any money on this investigation unless the entire Tapas lot agreed to voluntarily submit to polygraphs.

In addition to the color of the curtains and the number of windows we also have another huge discrepancy in his rogatory statement:

4078 “Was that the first time that you had taken it upon yourself to check on somebody else’s child?”
Reply “Yeah, I’d not done it before, it was only because, you know, I was there and I was, and it may not have happened if I’d actually gone in and checked on G***e through the room, you know, I might not have just been next to their shutter in terms of to actually have a listen, you know, I was just there, it was only like four steps further. But, no, I didn’t, even though we now knew each other for the week and I felt a bit more comfortable about their kids knowing me, as I said before, erm, I wouldn’t normally sort of impose that sort of check on somebody else unless they’d, erm, unless they’d suggested it. It’d be almost like a step, not a step too far, but, erm, it’s not really our place to, you know, to do that”.

and later in the same statement:

Reply “Erm, so I went to check on G***e and I stood up and Russell stood up and said he was going to go and check as well and Kate stood up and I said, you know, do you want us to go and check on, erm, do you want me to go and check on your kids, erm, and she said yes. And I think I offered at that point just because we had been together all week and we had similar routines and it just kind of seemed like a nice thing to do that would save her a journey back up and, you know, it may or it may not have been different.

So, in the very same statement, he is claiming that it would have been too imposing to listen at another family's window without them suggesting it, however, only 30 minutes later he no longer felt as if offering to check would be imposing and decides to offer up his services. Why the change of heart? Gerry obviously didn't take Oldfield's first check seriously, so why would Oldfield suddenly offer to do something that was 30 minutes earlier considered to be so imposing, and for which he had been completely dismissed?

Another discrepancy from his witness statement to his rogatory is the following:

Witness statement: That the couple Kate and Gerry, Madeleine's parents were already at the restaurant. That they had arrived at the restaurant five minutes before them. The rest of the adults arrived at the restaurant around five minutes after the interviewee and his wife. That the last to arrive at the restaurant was the couple David and Fiona. That the latter arrived at the restaurant at around 9pm. That around 9.05pm, the interviewee went to the area of the apartments.

Rogatory: And we were all there, apart from Dave and Fiona and Fiona’s mother, Dianne, at sort of five to nine, and they were, they were always sort of fairly relaxed and sort of a bit late and disorganised, I mean, that’s a bit unfair, but they were certainly, they’d always be pretty much the last to arrive, they were always late for most things and you could see the light on in their apartment, you could see it from the Tapas and you could see them moving around so you knew they were still there. And so I decided that I’d go back and short of chivvy them along, because I felt a bit bad that, you know, there’s just us in this restaurant, as there had been most of the week,

Firstly, in his original statement he says that everyone had arrived before he went to check on his children and the McCann's children, so the purpose of his visit could not have been to hurry up the Paynes. However, for some reason that story morphs into the Payne's not having arrived, and the purpose of his visit being to hurry up the Payne's. Note that the Paynes and Webster all place themselves as leaving their apartment around 8:50 pm and arriving no later than 9pm, with no mention of being chivvyed by Oldfield.

Plus, nobody else in the restaurant? Where did that come from? We have numerous witnesses placing themselves in the restaurant at this time.

So why does Oldfield change his story? There must have been a reason. I am guessing that it was to shift the timeline forward, though I am not sure why. The only thing that I am 100% sure of is that Oldfield NEVER checked on the McCann children.

SY seems to agree with you on that.

They were all there, all milling around, and had been since 830 some of them - Matt and Russell went to check on their kids and IIRC Matt said that he went to check on his kids and McCann kids there and was a bit put out that Gerry got up right after he, Matt, got BACK, so it was as if Gerry didn't trust him.

So being the sort of person that evidently likes to help other people even when he's being rebuffed (and I know there are people like this, whose niceness goes beyond being nice into being intrusively helpful) he gets BACK up only ten minutes after Gerry's sat down from his check, and goes this time with Russ, and this time claims he did go in, into the doorway and sees the kids, then changes that to no, he does go in but doesn't see them.

I suppose Jane's "sighting" gave everyone at the T9 dinner an alibi and also something to work with in terms of the timeline - if Jane had seen, or they were going to pretend she had seen, the abduction actually occurring at 915, then none of them would really be suspects because they Had their Man - the scruffy dude, Jane's bundleman efit. However Matt HAS to change his 930 check from "saw them" to "didn't see them" since if Tannerman was the abductor of course he, Matt, couldn't have seen Madeleine 15 minutes later in her bed.

I also think though that their opening of the timeline to 9-10 does more than just bash Matt's check on the head.

How can they say 9-10 when Gerry was there at 5A, at 910? He left the table "around 9" - a few minutes after, apparently - did his thing, went to the loo, washed his hands I hope, went to stand over Maddie mawkishly, left to go chat Jez up and stood out there - he couldn't have gotten back before 915 or 920. So unless we believe the abductor was actually kidnapping Maddie while Gerry stood right there - which is what Jane was trying on, what they all were trying on - and what SY has since ruled out - and I think no sane person would believe it anyhow - then the time is not 9 to ten but 915 or 20 at the earliest.

So why do they say 9-10 as the timeline "opening up"? Are they implying that not only Matt did not check, but also GERRY also made up HIS check?

I never found it believable that Gerry, who couldn't wait to see the back of his kids on this holiday, wasn't there to enjoy himself, didn't sit with his family on the flight over but left kate with the kids - never took them out, didn't choose to have dinner with them even one time or stay in one night - and is asking David Payne to go check on them so he can play tennis - would take time to stand when they are asleep to feel sentimental over them or at least over Maddie - and then go and have this chat with Jez about fathers and daughters and so on. It seemed too unlikely and too contrived, just like Matt's BS check and Jane's story.

When will the next lie be revealed?

How can Sy be so sure that Matt isn't lying about more than the check? He would be a big suspect since he SAYS he was in the room DURING THE TIMELINE when they put the abduction and also since he lied.

And he supposedly was with Russell for this, so is Russell also lying?

I think many of us are suspicious about the state of the bed. Was Madeleine in it or on top of it or is this another piece of trickery?

I have often thought that Madeleine dropped out of bed onto her head. One big blow to her head on what I think would be a hard floor (they are usually tiled floors in holiday apartments abroad). But surely the bedding would be half on the floor also? If you topple out of bed the sheets usually go in the same direction.

I often think they made the bed look neater deliberately. It was even stated she was lying on top of the bed. But who placed her on top? Not her parents surely. And if she was found on top, wouldn't that mean she would shuffle to that position herself and make the bed a mess?

Whether she was in bed or dropped out of it, inside it or on top of it, the bed would be in a mess.

If she was inside it and abducted, the bed sheets would be pulled up with her body being removed.

Her parents putting her to bed by lying her on top makes no sense either, especially if you are going out to dinner. You would tuck her up and make her secure so she couldn't drop out, plus it was supposed to be a chilly night.

So either they made the bed neat themselves or she slept in the other bed under the window, but the bed they claimed to be Madeleine's bed was nearest the door which was more convenient in terms of backing up Oldfield's check on the children, which has now been seen through thankfully.