Madeleine McCann #4

[Savewaterdrinkgin]

No idea, debt I presume? But it was Gerry’s sister who was posting things along the way and giving way too much information. She was eventually told to shut up by Gerry I’d imagine as everything was deleted pretty quickly after the comment about Kate wanting to place Madeleine up for adoption.

What was the story with Gerry supposedly replacing the freezer in the apartment, is this verified anywhere?

gerry posted it on his blog in the early days. He said he’d had a busy day as the hotel fridge broke so he took it to the tip and bought a new one. When people questioned why he’d buy the hotel a fridge rather than ask maintenance to repair it, he deleted the post.The man who worked at the tip commented about him dropping off the fridge and some other items, so Gerry quickly responded with a review of the tip. No idea if it still exists saved somewhere, but I have photographic memory and never forget!

Plus Kate only worked 2/3 days a week with short hours and I’d imagine Gerry wasn’t needed all day every day, so being doctors doesn’t automatically mean they earn good money especially with 3 toddlers to feed and clothe, a mortgage and other expenses. The holiday may have been booked a long time before hand and paid off monthly.

 

[Blurp]

The holiday may have been booked a long time before hand and paid off monthly.

Or paid for them

 

[The Yoko Ono of GY]

No idea, debt I presume? But it was Gerry’s sister who was posting things along the way and giving way too much information. She was eventually told to shut up by Gerry I’d imagine as everything was deleted pretty quickly after the comment about Kate wanting to place Madeleine up for adoption.



gerry posted it on his blog in the early days. He said he’d had a busy day as the hotel fridge broke so he took it to the tip and bought a new one. When people questioned why he’d buy the hotel a fridge rather than ask maintenance to repair it, he deleted the post.The man who worked at the tip commented about him dropping off the fridge and some other items, so Gerry quickly responded with a review of the tip. No idea if it still exists saved somewhere, but I have photographic memory and never forget!

Plus Kate only worked 2/3 days a week with short hours and I’d imagine Gerry wasn’t needed all day every day, so being doctors doesn’t automatically mean they earn good money especially with 3 toddlers to feed and clothe, a mortgage and other expenses. The holiday may have been booked a long time before hand and paid off monthly.

Also, weren’t the children procteated via artificial fertilization? (Sorry if that’s bad English.) Also a cause for debt.

 

[Lady_H]

Interesting that about the only thing that they've been able to do is supposedly identify the man carrying a child as someone taking their own child from the crèche to their apartment. Funny how they were there when all the fuss was going on at the time and all over the media for months afterwards and never came forward to be ruled out for many years. One would think that anyone who was around at the supposedly vital time would put themselves forward for interview to be ruled out and redirect the investigation as the drawing and sighting was very well publicised.

Though it was still unlikely to be Gerry if he hid the body in the sports bag in the wardrobe as the dogs seem to indicate. But if it were, where would they have hidden her outside the apartment? Did anyone have a hire car then?

There were two different witness statements of two different men.

The sighting you’re talking about is Dr Julian Totman aka Tannerman, who was identified by Jane Tanner, one of the Tapas 7, at about 9.10pm. He was interviewed by the Portuguese and eliminated from their enquiries early in the case. They even photographed his child’s pyjamas. But Jane Tanner muddied the waters (who didn’t in this case) by reversing the direction of travel of Dr Totman, suggesting that he was walking towards the creche not away from it and saying that she thought the pyjamas of the child were pink (the colour Madelein was wearing) and not blue, the colour of Totman’s kids pyjamas. When the Tannerman drawing resurfaced in the press years later, Dr Totman contacted the Leicestershire police to let them know he thought he was Tannerman. Don’t forget all he would have known at the time was that he was interviewed by the police in Portugal, and heard nothing further. The McCanns always pushed the Tannerman sighting as the suspect who took Madeleine (according to them).

They were much less keen on the other sighting, Smithman, spotted by the Smith family at about 10pm further down towards the beach and heading in that direction. The pictures look a lot like Gerry McCann. And Martin Smith later contacted the police after seeing a photo of Gerry carrying one of his other children, saying that the photo triggered his memory and that he was convinced the person he’d seen was Gerry McCann.

 

[PineappleQueen19]

I can easily see how people in their position could have outgoings greater than their incomings. They would have had to have a nice enough house and a nice car etc to keep up with the Joneses and could have still had some university debt. Then there’s the cost of IVF and lost income from Kate taking maternity leave. Plus wasn’t she a GP, they invest in practice like a business - my sister in law is a GP and her share was £100k.
For those types, overpaying for a Mark Warner holiday even when you are financially stretched is de rigeur because it’s all about keeping up appearances and maintaining your social life with other middle class professionals.

The questions Kate declined to answer are revealing

Spoiler: Long list of questions

1. On May 3 2007, around 22:00, when you entered the apartment, what did you see? What did you do? Where did you look? What did you touch?
2. Did you search inside the bedroom wardrobe? (she replied that she wouldn’t answer)
3. (shown 2 photographs of her bedroom wardrobe) Can you describe its contents?
4. Why had the curtain behind the sofa in front of the side window (whose photo was shown to her) been tampered with? Did somebody go behind that sofa?
5. How long did your search of the apartment take after you detected your daughter Madeleine’s disappearance?
6. Why did you say from the start that Madeleine had been abducted?
7. Assuming Madeleine had been abducted, why did you leave the twins home alone to go to the ‘Tapas’ and raise the alarm? Because the supposed abductor could still be in the apartment.
8. Why didn’t you ask the twins, at that moment, what had happened to their sister or why didn’t you ask them later on?
9. When you raised the alarm at the ‘Tapas’ what exactly did you say and what were your exact words?
10. What happened after you raised the alarm in the ‘Tapas’?
11. Why did you go and warn your friends instead of shouting from the verandah?
12. Who contacted the authorities?
13. Who took place in the searches?
14. Did anyone outside of the group learn of Madeleine’s disappearance in those following minutes?
15. Did any neighbour offer you help after the disappearance?
16. What does 'we let her down' mean?
17. Did Jane tell you that night that she’d seen a man with a child?
18. How were the authorities contacted and which police force was alerted?
19. During the searches, with the police already there, where did you search for Maddie, how and in what way?
20. Why did the twins not wake up during that search or when they were taken upstairs?
21. Who did you phone after the occurrence?
22. Did you call Sky News?
23. Did you know the danger of calling the media, because it could influence the abductor?
24. Did you ask for a priest?
25. By what means did you divulge Madeleine’s features, by photographs or by any other means?
26. Is it true that during the searches you remained seated on Maddie’s bed without moving?
27. What was your behaviour that night?
28. Did you manage to sleep?
29. Before travelling to Portugal did you make any comment about a foreboding or a bad feeling?
30. What was Madeleine’s behaviour like?
31. Did Maddie suffer from any illness or take any medication?
32. What was Madeleine’s relationship like with her brother and sister?
33. What was Madeleine’s relationship like with her brother and sister, friends and school mates?
34. As for your professional life, in how many and which hospitals have you worked?
35. What is your medical specialty?
36. Have you ever done shift work in any emergency services or other services?
37. Did you work every day?
38. At a certain point you stopped working, why?
39. Are the twins difficult to get to sleep? Are they restless and does that cause you uneasiness?
40. Is it true that sometimes you despaired with your children’s behaviour and that left you feeling very uneasy?
41. Is it true that in England you even considered handing over Madeleine’s custody to a relative?
42. In England, did you medicate your children? What type of medication?
43. In the case files you were SHOWN CANINE forensic testing films, where you can see them marking due to detection of the scent of human corpse and blood traces, also human, and only human, as well as all the comments of the technician in charge of them. After watching and after the marking of the scent of corpse in your bedroom beside the wardrobe and behind the sofa, pushed up against the sofa wall, did you say you couldn’t explain any more than you already had?
44. When the sniffer dog also marked human blood behind the sofa, did you say you couldn’t explain any more than you already had?
45. When the sniffer dog marked the scent of corpse coming from the vehicle you hired a month after the disappearance, did you say you couldn’t explain any more than you already had?
46. When human blood was marked in the boot of the vehicle, did you say you couldn’t explain any more than you already had?
47. When confronted with the results of Maddie’s DNA, whose analysis was carried out in a British laboratory, collected from behind the sofa and the boot of the vehicle, did you say you couldn’t explain any more than you already had?
48. Did you have any responsibility or intervention in your daughter’s disappearance?
A QUESTION SHE DID ANSWER
Q. Are you aware that in not answering the questions you are jeopardising the investigation, which seeks to discover what happened to your daughter?
A. 'Yes, if that’s what the investigation thinks.'

 

[Lady_H]

Either way this was all pre planned and something caused it to change, hence the panic and writing a timeline the night she went ‘missing’. A theory I always remembered was that the mccanns stayed in the public eye for their own safety, whoever was part of this situation could have been a famous or powerful man/woman and it would have put the mcanns in danger to confess. They lapped it up though, they used the fund to find Madeleine to pay off their mortgage and to get an extension built. Prior to the holiday they were poor and in debt, family had to buy them food. It was all money focused. It was always the plan for Madeleine to ‘go’ because if she got too old and told anyone what happens to her then they’d be in prison either way. It’s a disgusting thought but there are vile people out there who have children to abuse or to sell for abuse so they can profit from them.

I might be misunderstanding, but I don’t buy that the whole thing was pre-planned, or deliberately done for the money, I just don’t see how the evidence points there. I’ve not seen anything suggesting they were impoverished, or unable to buy their own food, and they had been on several holidays with the Tapas 7 crowd before (according to those witness statements). Perhaps they were in a kind of middle-class secret debt situation - but so are many people, and it seems like a big leap to go from debt to staging a global “disappearance” scam that puts you and your friends in extremely serious trouble with a foreign police force in order to eventually set up a fund to pay off the mortgage.

That said the shenanigans around the fund were absolutely disgraceful, the accounts were obfuscated and the money was absolutely channeled into improving the McCanns personal life. Of course that implies there was a more honest way to spend the money which is a bit weird given that it was set up by the parents to search for a child they knew had died. It is impossible to imagine the thinking behind that. Did they spot an opportunity, or was it that they thought to refuse the public outpouring of sympathy would look guilty or odd? I doubt any of it was used on hiring PIs - any decent ones would very quickly start asking some very awkward questions starting with their decision to leave the kids alone in the apartment. And GM was certainly “all about the money”. He even went to Washington to lobby for more of it!

 

[da1sycha1n]

No idea, debt I presume? But it was Gerry’s sister who was posting things along the way and giving way too much information. She was eventually told to shut up by Gerry I’d imagine as everything was deleted pretty quickly after the comment about Kate wanting to place Madeleine up for adoption.



gerry posted it on his blog in the early days. He said he’d had a busy day as the hotel fridge broke so he took it to the tip and bought a new one. When people questioned why he’d buy the hotel a fridge rather than ask maintenance to repair it, he deleted the post.The man who worked at the tip commented about him dropping off the fridge and some other items, so Gerry quickly responded with a review of the tip. No idea if it still exists saved somewhere, but I have photographic memory and never forget!

Plus Kate only worked 2/3 days a week with short hours and I’d imagine Gerry wasn’t needed all day every day, so being doctors doesn’t automatically mean they earn good money especially with 3 toddlers to feed and clothe, a mortgage and other expenses. The holiday may have been booked a long time before hand and paid off monthly.

re his blog diary! he was deffo deleting parts of his posts I can remember reading one then went back to re read it and the part that my brain was questioning had been wooshed! I recon the reason he used the blog as a code!

I'm sorry but this is just so ridiculous. So they are on holiday, somehow find out there is a coffin in a local church, somehow manage to get the keys to the church, then smuggle a body in there, break into the coffin and leave again, without anyone seeing anything or noticing anything?

I get you it sounds ridiculous although I don't think some of this theory should be discounted, desperate people take desperate measures! Who arranged for them to get keys to the church? one of the ex pats who seemingly happened to belong to a certain organisation involving certain hand movements

 

[MidnightAura]

I can easily see how people in their position could have outgoings greater than their incomings. They would have had to have a nice enough house and a nice car etc to keep up with the Joneses and could have still had some university debt. Then there’s the cost of IVF and lost income from Kate taking maternity leave. Plus wasn’t she a GP, they invest in practice like a business - my sister in law is a GP and her share was £100k.
For those types, overpaying for a Mark Warner holiday even when you are financially stretched is de rigeur because it’s all about keeping up appearances and maintaining your social life with other middle class professionals.

The questions Kate declined to answer are revealing

Spoiler: Long list of questions

1. On May 3 2007, around 22:00, when you entered the apartment, what did you see? What did you do? Where did you look? What did you touch?
2. Did you search inside the bedroom wardrobe? (she replied that she wouldn’t answer)
3. (shown 2 photographs of her bedroom wardrobe) Can you describe its contents?
4. Why had the curtain behind the sofa in front of the side window (whose photo was shown to her) been tampered with? Did somebody go behind that sofa?
5. How long did your search of the apartment take after you detected your daughter Madeleine’s disappearance?
6. Why did you say from the start that Madeleine had been abducted?
7. Assuming Madeleine had been abducted, why did you leave the twins home alone to go to the ‘Tapas’ and raise the alarm? Because the supposed abductor could still be in the apartment.
8. Why didn’t you ask the twins, at that moment, what had happened to their sister or why didn’t you ask them later on?
9. When you raised the alarm at the ‘Tapas’ what exactly did you say and what were your exact words?
10. What happened after you raised the alarm in the ‘Tapas’?
11. Why did you go and warn your friends instead of shouting from the verandah?
12. Who contacted the authorities?
13. Who took place in the searches?
14. Did anyone outside of the group learn of Madeleine’s disappearance in those following minutes?
15. Did any neighbour offer you help after the disappearance?
16. What does 'we let her down' mean?
17. Did Jane tell you that night that she’d seen a man with a child?
18. How were the authorities contacted and which police force was alerted?
19. During the searches, with the police already there, where did you search for Maddie, how and in what way?
20. Why did the twins not wake up during that search or when they were taken upstairs?
21. Who did you phone after the occurrence?
22. Did you call Sky News?
23. Did you know the danger of calling the media, because it could influence the abductor?
24. Did you ask for a priest?
25. By what means did you divulge Madeleine’s features, by photographs or by any other means?
26. Is it true that during the searches you remained seated on Maddie’s bed without moving?
27. What was your behaviour that night?
28. Did you manage to sleep?
29. Before travelling to Portugal did you make any comment about a foreboding or a bad feeling?
30. What was Madeleine’s behaviour like?
31. Did Maddie suffer from any illness or take any medication?
32. What was Madeleine’s relationship like with her brother and sister?
33. What was Madeleine’s relationship like with her brother and sister, friends and school mates?
34. As for your professional life, in how many and which hospitals have you worked?
35. What is your medical specialty?
36. Have you ever done shift work in any emergency services or other services?
37. Did you work every day?
38. At a certain point you stopped working, why?
39. Are the twins difficult to get to sleep? Are they restless and does that cause you uneasiness?
40. Is it true that sometimes you despaired with your children’s behaviour and that left you feeling very uneasy?
41. Is it true that in England you even considered handing over Madeleine’s custody to a relative?
42. In England, did you medicate your children? What type of medication?
43. In the case files you were SHOWN CANINE forensic testing films, where you can see them marking due to detection of the scent of human corpse and blood traces, also human, and only human, as well as all the comments of the technician in charge of them. After watching and after the marking of the scent of corpse in your bedroom beside the wardrobe and behind the sofa, pushed up against the sofa wall, did you say you couldn’t explain any more than you already had?
44. When the sniffer dog also marked human blood behind the sofa, did you say you couldn’t explain any more than you already had?
45. When the sniffer dog marked the scent of corpse coming from the vehicle you hired a month after the disappearance, did you say you couldn’t explain any more than you already had?
46. When human blood was marked in the boot of the vehicle, did you say you couldn’t explain any more than you already had?
47. When confronted with the results of Maddie’s DNA, whose analysis was carried out in a British laboratory, collected from behind the sofa and the boot of the vehicle, did you say you couldn’t explain any more than you already had?
48. Did you have any responsibility or intervention in your daughter’s disappearance?
A QUESTION SHE DID ANSWER
Q. Are you aware that in not answering the questions you are jeopardising the investigation, which seeks to discover what happened to your daughter?
A. 'Yes, if that’s what the investigation thinks.'

I still cannot believe that an innocent person would refuse to answer that many questions.

 

[50sGirl]

I still cannot believe that an innocent person would refuse to answer that many questions.

I cannot believe that a mother with a missing child would refuse to answer ANY questions.
I’d answer every single question, even if it put me in a bad light, because I’d want them to find my child.

 

[mchammerr]

I cannot believe that a mother with a missing child would refuse to answer ANY questions.
I’d answer every single question, even if it put me in a bad light, because I’d want them to find my child.

Which just shows, she must know something.

 

[Telly Fanatic]

If I was innocent I would have done a independent polygraph test to prove it

 

[Lady_H]

If I was innocent I would have done a independent polygraph test to prove it

Totally, you’d insist that the police polygraph you especially if they seemed to think you were responsible. Polygraph me, eliminate me and stop wasting precious time you could spend looking for my child.

Anyone innocent would also have been all over BOTH sightings, at different times and different places, Tannerman AND Smithman. Any parent of a missing child would be screaming for ANY sighting to be fully investigated. Why would they play one up, and the other - the one in which a man was seen heading to the beach carrying a child - right down?

In her book Kate seemed finally to grudgingly acknowledge that the Smith family sighting could be legitimate, but only if that was the same person as the one seen by Jane Tanner (coincidentally just exactly at the time that gave Gerry an alibi). Why would you say that? Why couldn’t there be two different sightings of men with children, at different times and places - and more importantly why wouldn’t you want both investigated to the absolute fullest possible extent?

 

[da1sycha1n]

I only recently found this thread. I’m pleased to have a forum to discuss the case. I’m still watching the Bogart videos (on number 12). I know Luz (it’s a beautiful part of Portugal) and a lot of their story never made sense to me. Certainly the locals have opinions that place it all at the McCann’s door. A lot of the details I’m now finding out are blowing my mind. I’ve read Amaral’s book and had a look over the PJ files recently and it’s dawning on me that the British public just don’t know the facts. I wish there was more reporting on it but I’m guessing there might be reluctance given their litigious nature.

Ive been to praia da Luz, what struck me was how narrow the streets were!

 

[MrsBsDayOff]

The posts about Kate's alleged temper, and Madeleine not being allowed alone with Kate back in England. What's the source for that? Hadn't heard it before.

Another question re the kids all being born by IVF - was donor egg or sperm used? I've never heard anything definitive on this.

 

[Multi-21]

Another question re the kids all being born by IVF - was donor egg or sperm used? I've never heard anything definitive on this.

Surely that’s part of their medical records and therefore (rightly) confidential?

 

[BettyCrockerr]

Surely that’s part of their medical records and therefore (rightly) confidential?

Not if it pertains to the investigation. If the kids are not biologically their own or not Gerry’s kids that could be made part of the case for child abuse.

 

[Multi-21]

Not if it pertains to the investigation. If the kids are not biologically their own or not Gerry’s kids that could be made part of the case for child abuse.

That makes me very uncomfortable, that people would point fingers and say they didn’t love them as they weren’t biologically theirs. If you weren’t sure about having children and it didn’t happen you wouldn’t put yourself through IVF.
Any ‘abuse’ on that basis is an assumption. You’d need actual evidence it happened. Plenty of people abuse their biological children as well so it doesn’t just follow that if they aren’t theirs biologically there was abuse.

 

[BettyCrockerr]

That makes me very uncomfortable, that people would point fingers and say they didn’t love them as they weren’t biologically theirs. If you weren’t sure about having children and it didn’t happen you wouldn’t put yourself through IVF.
Any ‘abuse’ on that basis is an assumption. You’d need actual evidence it happened. Plenty of people abuse their biological children as well so it doesn’t just follow that if they aren’t theirs biologically there was abuse.

I’m not saying they don’t. I’m simply saying that, given the nature of the investigation, the subject of IVF and the biological paternity of the children would be looked into and it wouldn’t be shrouded in confidentially.

 

[Emsie]

Not if it pertains to the investigation. If the kids are not biologically their own or not Gerry’s kids that could be made part of the case for child abuse.

No. This is not correct or statistically right at all.

 

[BettyCrockerr]

No. This is not correct or statistically right at all.

The paternity of the child involved in an abduction investigation WILL AND DOES get looked into as part of the investigation.