The Madeleine McCann affair: first impressions

Sections

• Inspiration
• Credentials... or the lack of!
• The evidence of the sniffer dogs
• The Starting Point
• That curious timeline
• The Apartment
• Strange behaviour at an interview
• Profiling
• Kidnapping vs Abduction
• Memory, and the reliability of witness statements
• Another cause for concern
• Memo to self
• In summary so far...
• Footnotes
• Credits

Inspiration

Just over a week ago I blogged about that little girl, Madeleine McCann, who disappeared in Portugal in 2007.
It was a very short post, principally referencing a video ("Maddie: The Truth of the Lie"... see Note 1) that I'd stumbled across. Yet I found the content of that video sufficiently intriguing to prompt me to look rather more closely at the whole affair, which is what I've been doing since that initial post.

And that, in turn, has prompted these present observations. The purpose of them being, aside from the obvious one of sharing my thoughts with whomever may chance by and be interested, to help clarify my thinking on the matter so far. As much for my own benefit as anything else.

It wasn't long after Madeleine had disappeared that I, along with probably tens of thousands of other people, became aware of the event... courtesy of the massive media coverage.
And, like so many other people, I ended up including an image of Madeleine and a linkback to the findmadeleine.com website (see this article) on a social networking page that I used to have.
But I have to confess that I hadn't paid a great deal of attention to the case, and certainly hadn't followed it particularly closely.
I was aware of course of the continuing failure to find her and if I'd thought much about it at all it was from the standpoint that with the passage of time it seemed to me increasingly unlikely that she would ever be found alive. Call me a cynic if you like.
Other than that I knew or thought very little about the matter. Just one more crime in a world that is, alas, far too full of wrongdoings.

Then, two years on, I watch the previously mentioned video... being drawn to it by the tagline that it had been "censored in the UK".
Well, red rag to a bull really. I just had to watch it to find out what was being censored, and why.

And the watching of it drew me in, inspiring me to try delving a bit more deeply into the whole affair. Only to discover just how many words have already been written about it, how many theories postulated... and just how few verifiable facts seem to be actually known.
I also discovered, to my great surprise, how many people don't buy into the "official version".
"To my surprise" because I'd assumed that, aside from the initial and inevitable speculation that the parents were implicated, it had subsequently resolved into a fairly straightforward abduction case.
How little did I know!

But at some stage in this brief journey of discovery I seem to have decided to do rather more than study what's currently available; a decision to extend my delving into a more proactive position, sort of thing. To take it on board as an issue meriting some actual research on my own part.

I think what truly motivated me to embrace this as yet another issue with which to engage (alongside the many that already occupy my thoughts) was the presence of particular "aspects" that appear to tie in (maybe) with certain other "interests" of mine.
Bells were set to ringing in my head; I was reminded of certain other cases at other times. Cases that carried the implication of far-reaching and highly disturbing ramifications.

It would be far too premature to discuss the nature of those "aspects" just yet... I'm just not sufficiently familiar at the moment with all the details of the case.
Yet it appears that almost without conscious volition I've added myself to the ranks of those who are still digging into the whole sad affair and, with this preliminary setting out of my thoughts, adding yet more to the seemingly millions of words that have already been written by others far more knowledgeable than I.

Credentials... or the lack of!

I cannot claim any special expertise in, or knowledge of, child abductions. Nor, I have to admit, have I ever had any particular interest in the topic. "Yes, to abduct a child is wrong"... and that's been about the extent of my opinion on this type of crime.

Although I have a bit of a weakness for arcane research and the activities associated therewith (the ferreting out of buried facts and connections etc), and am a keen observer of human nature behaviour and motivations, basically I'm just an ordinary guy possessing absolutely no superior abilities or skills that render me especially fitted to engage with this.
So what can I possibly hope to bring new to all the digging that's clearly been going on for quite some time by seemingly numerous people? And is that my intention?

Probably not. And indeed if that were my intention then perhaps the only thing I can contribute is a mind fresh to the affair, relatively free of preconceived notions, and uncluttered by all the "stuff" about which there's already been so much speculation.

One of the problems that invariably accompanies any event or situation attracting passionately-held yet opposing views is the tendency for folk to become, quite unwittingly perhaps, blinkered to any fact or feature that doesn't fit their own particular theory. Things that do fit are used to reinforce the theory, and things that don't are all too often either dismissed or simply ignored.
A further problem is the transformation, in the mind, of beliefs assumptions and speculations into "established fact"... a mental process that can be so subtle that the victim thereof may not even be aware of its occurrence.
And it seems to me that both of these phenomena are present to some extent in the case of Madeleine McCann's disappearance.

If we lose sight of the known and established facts; if we ignore those facts that don't fit our own favoured theory; if we instead reach conclusions based on little more than speculation, belief, and assumption then we run the very real risk of falsely accusing the innocent and, more importantly, distorting or even preventing the justice that Madeleine so rightly deserves. We remove ourselves from the possibility of ever reaching a true and accurate conclusion.

Hopefully my "fresh and open mind", devoid of any real theories and with no allegiance to either the pro- or anti-McCann camps, will help me avoid those pitfalls... initially at least. Which is of course another reason for setting these thoughts down now... so that some way down the road I can refresh my memory about what my "starting point" actually was, and use it to "test" any conclusions I may eventually be tempted to form.

Having said "free of preconceived notions" maybe that isn't strictly true. For I come from a standpoint where I'd generally accepted and indeed wanted to believe (on the rare occasions that I'd actually pondered the matter) that both of Madeleine's parents, and particularly her mother, were innocent of any wrongdoing.
Why so?
A trivial and unacceptable reason really, and an entirely biologically-driven gender-related one... because she seemed to me to be a damned attractive lady!
(Being gentle with myself I can probably rationalise this as an innate chivalric instinct on my part! But I have to state this upfront in order to maintain any semblance of self-honesty, and to remind myself to allow for that bias should I ever reach the point where I do start to develop a theory.)
Yet that innocence, I have to admit, is something about which I now begin to have grave doubts.

The evidence of the sniffer dogs

Those doubts were born purely out of my watching the previously mentioned video, of which the most persuasive aspect to me was the behaviour of the sniffer dogs.
According to my understanding the use of sniffer dogs in all sorts of circumstances by many different agencies in different countries is a well established practise. Whilst they may not be 100% reliable (what is?) they are a useful and proven "tool". And more to the point, whilst there's a possibility that they may be mistaken, they don't lie!

So if a sniffer dog is saying to me that it smells the odour of a cadaver then so be it... I'm prepared to accept that as "truth". Whether what it detects actually is cadaver odour or not is another matter entirely of course. But if a second sniffer dog indicates the presence of human blood in some areas where that odour has been detected by the first dog, and if specimens of human blood are subsequently found in those areas indicated by the second dog, well, how conclusive can one get?

Of course, such traces say nothing other than what they say... that there's a cadaver odour here, and that there's human blood here. What they don't say is that this odour is that of Madeleine's body, or that this blood is that of Madeleine. And, if I've interpreted what has been written correctly, the DNA samples extracted from those discovered blood traces don't conclusively establish the blood as being Madeleine's.

But, given the presence of these traces (and particularly those of the cadaver odour) in situations where one wouldn't expect to find them, and especially in the context of the unexplained disappearance of a child, it seems to me that the balance of probability would suggest that these traces are indeed of Madeleine.
Though its important not to forget that's only a probability, not established fact.

Anyway, I find that probability to be most persuasive and certainly sufficient to merit taking a much closer look at the whole matter. Which I've done, and intend to continue doing... at least for the time being.

And of course if the traces (and more particularly the odour traces) detected by the dogs were those of Madeleine then, to my mind at least, that would immediately and completely undermine any notion of an abductor along the lines suggested by the "official version" of events.
In the absence of such an abductor, and with the evidence suggesting some harm befell Madeleine with her body remaining in the McCanns' apartment long enough for cadaver odour to develop (see Note 2), then the finger of suspicion would clearly point in the first instance directly to her parents.
Following on from which the possibility would also need to be entertained that others of the "Tapas 7" (see Note 3) could have been implicated in some manner.

Ok, at this stage in my thinking I consider that nothing more than a possibility... based upon the assumption that the findings of the dogs were what they appeared to be.
More tellingly though, a possibility that, as far as I can determine, has not yet been eliminated... despite the McCanns and the "Tapas 7" having already been awarded significant libel damages against certain British newspapers that had taken these possibilities and somehow transformed them into "established fact", or at the very least, a serious accusation. (Given that the offending articles have long since vanished, its difficult now to determine which!)
But the only fact that exists in this, as far as I can see, is that the possibilities have still not yet been satisfactorily eliminated.

What the libel cases effectively achieved of course was to render all of the mainstream British press wary of any speculation that could be construed as critical of the McCanns or the "Tapas 7". A muzzle, in other words. A form of self-imposed censorship.
It strikes me that a more appropriate and just judgment would have been to delay judgment until the actual perpetrators of the crime had been conclusively identified.

Nevertheless, it seems to me that some care needs to be exercised in interpreting the findings of the first dog.
In the initial video I watched, "Maddie: The Truth of the Lie", with reference to the finding of the cadaver odour Goncalo Amaral concludes that the presence of such odour in or near a cupboard indicates a body was at some stage in that cupboard.
However, in the extended version of the sniffer dogs video the dog handler takes some time to clearly explain that the presence of odour at that location does not necessarily indicate a body was there. It could just as well be an effect of the movement of air in the apartment. This is not to say that Amaral's inference of a body having been in that cupboard is necessarily wrong... but it may be.

However it seems quite clear, subject to the caveats stated previously, that a dead body was somewhere in that apartment for a period of time.

Moreover, I have to confess to being a tad concerned by the procedure used during the deployment of the sniffer dogs in the car park for it seemed to me that the assembled persons (including the dog handler) located themselves near the McCanns' hire vehicle (the Renault) for far longer than they did with the other vehicles before the dog had detected any traces on any of the vehicles.
If this was a test to establish whether or not the dog could pick out a possibly "contaminated" vehicle from a random selection of vehicles then I'm minded to think that such a procedure was somewhat flawed.

Time to learn a bit more!
^{[The Next Step!]}

The Starting Point

So, in the past week or so I've watched loads of video clips and read masses upon masses of words.
So many words. So much speculation. And yet, curiously, so few facts. As in facts that are known, established, verifiable. The "truth", in other words. Or as close as we can ever hope to approach it.

Now I'm deeply conscious that, despite all the reading I've done, all the videos I've watched, there's still lots of stuff out there that I've not read, I've not seen. I'm deeply conscious that there are many many other people that are familiar with far more of the intricacies of the affair than am I. And consequently in every stage of my own speculations and comments I must add the rider... "but I'm open to being corrected".

My instinct at the moment is that if we're reliant upon events subsequent to Madeleine's disappearance revealing the full truth of the crime then that will only happen should someone come forward and confess. I think it extremely unlikely that digging into all the amassed information (and mis/disinformation!) of events subsequent to the crime will ever conclusively lead to identifying the perpetrator(s).

Moreover I doubt very much that statements from "witnesses" about things they have seen, or think they have seen, or claim to have seen in terms of potential abductors being observed etc will, likewise, not lead to a resolution. Unless someone gets set up as a scapegoat!

If the truth is ever to be found, then at the moment I'm inclined to think its much more likely to be found by looking into the past.
Before the disappearance occurred. Maybe quite a lengthy period before Madeleine disappeared.

But the starting point, whether one works backward or forward, must inevitably be that evening of the 3rd May 2007. And, up until the arrival of the police, what do we know of that evening? Not assume. Not think. But know, as in attested verifiable fact? (And at the moment I'm considering that anything testified to by any of what's become known as the "Tapas 9" is open to question. Necessarily so, because they should all have been, by virtue of their proximity to events, regarded as suspects, even if only of complicity. Such is only logical and rational. Until such time as the true culprits and whatever accomplices there may have been, if any, are finally uncovered and brought to justice.)

In terms of what is known then, it turns out (and I'm open to being corrected!), not a lot. In fact, disturbingly little.

Let's see if I have this right...

1. We know that Madeleine was alive and well during the afternooon of 3rd May 2007, based upon her having been collected from the creche by Kate McCann. We know, according to the creche's exit record shown in Goncalo Amaral's video, that she was collected at 1730.
(Although, curiously, in another account in the Daily Mail reporting on an interview with the nanny Catriona Baker that collection of Madeleine was given as 1800!)
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2. We know that the "Tapas 9" were present in the Tapas bar during the course of that evening. What we do not know, other than what we are told by the "Tapas 9" themselves, is the precise timing of the movements of each of the members of that party in and out of the Tapas bar during the course of that evening. (But I'm open to being corrected!)
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3. We know that Madeleine disappeared.

4. And we know that Madeleine's disappearance was reported to the police at 2250 that evening.

5. We know that at some stage Russell O'Brien (one of the "Tapas 9") drafted a timeline of the party's movements inside the torn-off covers of a child's book.

And that, unless I'm much mistaken, is all we actually know. For it seems to me that whatever else we may think we know of the events of that evening up to the point of Kate McCann announcing Madeleine's disappearance is based upon testimony from one or the other of the "Tapas 9"... testimony that I would regard cautiously at the very least.

That curious timeline

Yet of those few facts there is already something I find disturbing, and that is the existence of the timeline drafted by Russell O'Brien on the covers of a book. According to one account:

"Clarified who made the time line handed to Portuguese officers- I had written it- both copies, in consultation with Dave and Gerry. It was written 02:00-03:00 hours in Gerry’s room. It was my idea a form of gathering information and putting things in order. This was after the searches which were again conducted around 01:00-02:00hours."
[From the Rogatory Interview of Russell O'Brien]

Yet instantly I'm confused, for in another account (accompanied by photographs of the "cover of Madeleine's sticker book that was ripped off and used by Russell O'Brien to write down two timelines before the police arrived") we have:

"Madeleine's parents ripped off both covers, the front and the back, from a book belonging to Madeleine, in order to write on the inside the timing for each person. Russell O'Brien was involved with the drawing up of the timing. The book was seized by the GNR on the night of the disappearance. It is to be noted that the writing down of the timing on the inside of the book covers was done before the police arrived on the spot. These covers would be attached to the case file, as elements of the investigation, on September 7th 2007, although seized during the night of 3rd to 4th May.

Terms of seizure:

At this time, it is considered of interest to the investigation to attach to the present deed, two covers of a child's book, on the inside covers of which is a schedule for supervision, hand-written by one of the McCann couple's group of friends and participant in this deed by name of Russell O'Brien."

Now is that the same timeline, or are there two different ones?

However, given that the latter account (dealing with the timeline drafted on the covers of a book) comes from the Summary (Part 1) of the Judiciary Police's Final Report, there is little doubt in my mind that its reasonably reliable.

But I truly do find the existence of this "document" disturbing, for a couple of reasons.

I note that it is described in the Terms of Seizure as a "schedule for supervision". Does this imply that the explanation given to the police for its existence was as a sort of rota for baby-watching by the "Tapas 9" drawn up in advance? Why then does it appear to have been written in the past tense (note the entry "8.45pm all assembled at portside for food" [my emphasis]), and why does it include such notations as "door open to bedroom"?
It seems fairly clear to me that this is not something that can be charitably described as a "schedule for supervision" but is actually an account to establish the chronology of movements of the "Tapas 9", and things said by them to have been observed at various points.

Can we then assume that this timeline was drafted out after the announcement that Madeleine had disappeared (and is that a safe assumption?), the explanation for its existence being that such a task was undertaken in anticipation of the police requiring such an account... i.e., to "assist" the police?

Or was it to help the "Tapas 9" clarify their own understanding of the events leading up to the announced discovery of Madeleine's disappearance?

Why was that done? It seems to me totally bizarre behaviour that, following the announcement of a child having disappeared, anyone even remotely connected to the parents would take time out to do such a thing rather than spending the time searching for the child. What possible reason could have been so compelling for such a task to have been undertaken?

And surely basic common sense should suggest that the police would inevitably require such an account of timings and movements and, more to the point, they would wish to construct such an account following their own methods, and verifying it in their own preferred manner. Thus, drafting such a timeline to "assist" them was actually a fairly pointless exercise... if that was its claimed purpose.

But, even more disturbing (to me at least) is the fact that one of Madeleine's books was defaced (indeed, almost irrepairably damaged seemingly) in order to construct this "document". Are we seriously to believe that the covers of this book were the only inscribable material available? It just seems to be an utterly odd act. Certainly an uncaring if not actually a resentful or even malicious one.

Difficult for me to say really for I have no children of my own, but my sense is that if a child of mine had been abducted then suddenly everything that belonged to that child would have become incredibly precious, indeed almost sacred, to me. I certainly can't imagine myself going round ripping covers off that child's books, even in a moment of panic.

Clearly this lack of understanding on my part indicates I need to do a bit more reading to find out if anything more is known about that drafted timeline. I need to discover how it was learned that the book was Madeleine's, how we learned that it was Madeleine's parents who ripped the covers off (and which of the parents!), and indeed what the circumstances were that led to the drafting of this "document".
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The Apartment

Returning to the "Maddie: The Truth of the Lie" video then...

I was also intrigued by the points that were made therein about the hypothetical abductor's entry to the McCann's apartment... or rather, the claimed unlikelihood thereof.
It seems to me, on the basis of what the police expert Alexandre Simas said, that entry via the window simply didn't occur. An opinion that appears to be confirmed by a Professor Dave Barclay speaking on a Dispatches documentary (or maybe I'm confused again... maybe Prof Barclay is talking of some other shutters and not the window that was claimed to have been found open?):

"We must be very careful that we're not saying this is actually staging but it's difficult to see how anybody could have interefered [sic] with those shutters, from outside, without leaving some trace. In fact, having looked at them, I think it's almost impossible."

Moreover, I readily accept that exit via the window whilst carrying a child would be virtually impossible without leaving at least some mark or indication that such had occurred. If not an obvious one then at least one susceptible to minute forensic examination... which presumably was undertaken? So scrub the window. Its likely a red herring. Which raises the quite interesting question of why it was open, or rather, claimed to have been found open?

The door next then. No sign of an entry by jemmying the door open or forcing the lock. I'm not entirely convinced however, contrary to what Simas claimed, that the lever couldn't have been slipped by the insertion of a thin flexible object (credit card, knife blade etc).
The argument presented to counter this possibiliity was that of a protruding screwhead that would have prevented the insertion of such a thin flexible object between the lock and door jamb. But for that argument to stand up implies virtually no space between the screwhead and the lock or door edge. It argues that there would be insufficient clearance for something even quite thin to be inserted between the two. To the point in fact where the screwhead would practically foul the door.
I consider that extremely unlikely if for no other reason than such absence of clearance would not allow for the normal shrinkage and expansion that occurs with wood in changing humidity etc.
So was this alleged absence of clearance ever checked I wonder?

The other possibility is that our hypothetical intruder may have had a key.

Holiday apartment? Succession of different residents? Caretaking/cleaning staff with access to the apartment?
I don't consider it impossible that if there really were an intruder he (or she) may have had a key.
Presumably the police conducted interviews with previous occupants of the apartment, and investigated the keyholding caretaking staff and their acquaintances?

Or alternatively there are the patio doors that the McCanns state they left unlocked.

But we are still left with the possibility of an intruder with a door key.

But if there truly was an intruder and the door was the means of entry, why that whole business with the open window?
An accomplice perhaps? Intruder enters apartment via the door (or patio door). Grabs Madeleine. Opens window. Carefully (to avoid leaving traces) passes Madeleine through window to waiting accomplice. Exits apartment via door.
?
Could be. Possibly.
^{[The Next Step! also Here]}

I'm reminded of the old adage about "motive, means, opportunity".
Motive: clearly not kidnapping else, despite all the publicity, a ransom note would probably have been received (which suggests another thought, to which I'll return later).
Means: well, possession of a key.
Opportunity: the need to be watching the apartment to seize the right moment... as well as the child of course!
Which all fits rather neatly into the various accounts that have emerged of people having claimed to see someone watching the apartment beforehand.

On balance I think these considerations may represent a point in favour of the "official version".

Strange behaviour at an interview

Back to the "Maddie: The Truth of the Lie" video, even on first viewing there was one particular section that struck me as curious and my opinion hasn't changed despite my revisiting it a number of times since.
About 28.32 into the video (and lasting until about 29.25) there is an interview in which Gerry McCann is questioned about the finding of the tiny blood traces in the apartment. Basically he throws a wobbly, ranting and stomping out of view.

Unusually that's not the bit that seems somewhat off-key to me. (I say "unusually" for of the several video scenes I've watched in which the McCanns feature, it is Gerry's rather than Kate's behaviour that to me seems to strike a wrong note. And this was particularly noticeable in the Channel 4 documentary that was aired on 7th May this year.)

However, on this occasion it was not Gerry but Kate that seemed to me to act in a very curious manner. I've now replayed that particular scene numerous times and my sense of something being wrong persists. Initially I couldn't quite put my finger on what it was; despite watching it over a few times I couldn't quite pinpoint what was causing me to have that sense of discomfort... the feeling that something jarred.
"Where have I seen that sort of posture, that facial expression, in other people, and under what circumstances? Of what does it remind me?" I asked myself.

And finally, after repeated viewings and much tormenting of the old grey cells I think I've finally pinned it down.
Her seeming disregard of the question, either its actual words or its implication, that provoked Gerry's reaction; her focussing instead on Gerry, almost as though she were outside of the interview situation, as though the questions being asked didn't also reflect on her; her words of reassurance to someone off-camera about this momentary haitus in the interview.
Suddenly I knew of what it reminded me. It was as though someone had been coaching an actor in a part and then, observing the actor losing the plot a little bit, sought to reassure the audience that "it'll be ok... he'll remember his lines again in a moment".
Or like a parent at a kid's party who, when her child throws a tantrum, says to no-one in particular "Oh, don't worry, he'll settle down again in a moment".
It was bizarre, it was out of kilter, almost surreal in fact, and it seemed to me to be totally inappropriate.

Profiling?

Leaving the video for the time being then, this example of Kate's behaviour leads me rather neatly into another angle of the affair, which is a consideration of the public utterances and behaviour etc of the McCanns.
In the context of which I was much interested in reading the observations of "Criminal Profiler" Pat Brown, the relevant articles seeming to have been conveniently reproduced on the mccannfiles website.

I have to say that I don't totally buy into the intensive scrutiny to which the McCanns' words are subjected, not just by Ms Brown but also by other commentators... the seemingly endless analyses of the words and phrases the McCanns have used to describe events and their own reactions; the pseudo-psychology applied to the linguistic foibles of the McCanns.

To my mind all of that is fairly meaningless absent some benchmark against which to measure them. Do we, for example, have video clips of the McCanns being interviewed prior to Madeleine's disappearance, and talking about things other than said disappearance?
So how do we know what their customary mode of speech is? Moreover, hesitations, substitutions of "you" for "I", repeated insertions of phrases such as "you know" could all as easily be attributed to their being interviewed about an incredibly painful subject at an extremely stressful time for them.

And just to demonstrate how nonsensical it may be to give too much attention to the nitty-gritty of language and grammar let's consider for a moment the description of Pat Brown as a "Criminal Profiler".
If we take this in its literal and grammatically correct meaning what we're saying is that Ms Brown's a criminal and also a profiler! Is that what's meant? Clearly not, I would have thought. So does this inappropriate phrasing suggest that the person who dreamt the phrase up subconsciously perceives Ms Brown as a criminal and a profiler? Or does Ms Brown herself have a subconscious tendency toward criminal tendencies?

So, with all due apologies to Ms Brown for any unintentional slur on her doubtless unsullied character, let's return to the McCanns and the way they've been seen to express themselves.
And I find I can't leave alone this business of pulling the McCanns's words and phrases apart.

For example, Ms Brown makes fairly heavy weather of one of Gerry McCann's remarks that:

"….although we have talked of the guilt we felt at not being there at the moment Madeleine was taken."

Ok, it may not be the way Ms Brown would have expressed herself, but so what?
I certainly understand exactly what Gerry McCann could have meant by that, and I wouldn't inevitably assume that he intended the phrase to be taken literally.

Example: one of my own rather over-used habits of both speech and writing is "at the mo' "... an abbreviation of course for "at the moment".
Read any of my more casual writings on any of my blogs and you're likely to encounter that. Similarly in face-to-face conversation its not at all unusual for me to use that precise turn of phrase.

But in using it I don't literally mean "at this specific moment in time", and I don't believe my readers/listeners would normally understand it in that sense. For what I actually mean is "at this period of time" which refers to an undefined present... a "present" that is of course continually extending itself! So it could be a minute, it could be an hour... it could even be days!

Thus to suggest that Gerry McCann literally meant "at the precise moment that Madeleine was taken" or even that it was a subconscious "slip-up" is I suspect reading far too much into it, for its quite clear to me that he could so easily simply have meant (and had in his mind) "if we'd been there then the moment that Madeleine was taken would not have occurred".

Or should we go with the literal interpretation? And should we also believe that Ms Brown truly is a criminal profiler?

Words are tricky things, and very few of us are that precise in our use of them... even less so when they're spoken. To read too much into their use in trying circumstances absent some benchmark of "normal" usage for the person uttering them is I believe an undertaking fraught with hazard.

Admittedy in times of stress people can and do inadvertently express themselves in ways that may reveal their true thoughts and motivations, but I would argue that the analysis thereof is by no means a precise science with a rigorous methodology, and is probably best avoided for the most part. Or at the very least treated cautiously.

That said, there are two of Ms Brown's articles that impressed me mightily. In the first, "Who Should be the Suspects in the McCann Case?", about half-way down we're offered an analysis of the McCanns' behaviour, and there are several things in it that to me seem to highlight genuine cause for concern.

The mention that:

"The McCanns have never personally offered the reward on television or posted the reward at the web site. Almost all parents of missing children do this."

Or that:

"Neither Kate of [sic] Gerry have taken or indicate they will take a polygraph. Parents of missing children do this to clear themselves so the police will not waste time focusing on them."

Then we have Ms Brown's observation that:

"Usually in a set of parents, we will see emotions bounce around, one of them falling apart, one becoming angry; with the McCanns their answers are carefully constructed and evenly relayed. Their appearances feel more like performances than parents desperately trying to reach out to their child, the kidnapper or the public. Yes, they are British, but even a stiff-upper lip tends not to look like this under these circumstances."

And so it goes on. Ms Brown offers a number of very pertinent examples of what she describes as:

"The quick return to normal activities is unusual for parents of abducted children; most obsess continually and can’t think of anything else and have trouble going through the simplest routines of life."

Absolutely spot on!

As I've mentioned previously, I can't really put myself into the position of a parent for I have no children of my own. But I can definitely relate to extreme emotional stress, and I totally concur with Ms Brown that "most obsess continually and can’t think of anything else and have trouble going through the simplest routines of life".
Yet this quality appears to be markedly absent in either of the McCanns... or at least in their public appearances. Is it conceivable that one could mask one's feelings so well, could prevent one's inner turmoil from involuntarily surfacing? With the passage of time possibly... but in the early stages? I suspect not.

Now it may be that having other children mitigates those traumatic effects to a large extent. The requirement to tend to the needs of one's other offspring may exert a significant "grounding" effect. I don't know. But it certainly seems to me, as Ms Brown suggests, that the McCanns behaviour post-Madeleine appears totally inconsistent with how one would expect normal people to react after having had a child abducted!

She then goes on to make the very valid point:

"Kate and Gerry left their twins in Portugal while they went to see the Pope. Most parents of abducted children would be paranoid to be away from their other children for fear something would happen to them. Furthermore, to leave your children in the exact location where your other child was taken, whether one had a relative with them or not, is odd for parents who believe the abductor of their missing child is in the very same vicinity."

Bizarre! To say the very least.

The second of Ms Brown's articles that strikes me as being totally spot on is "McCann Detective 100 Percent Full of It" in which she deals with the hiring of the Metodo 3 Agency by the McCanns. Well, what can I say? Ms Brown has said it all.

Kidnapping vs Abduction

Having gone to some lengths in the preceding section to downplay the emphasis that some commentators have put upon analysing the actual words used by the McCanns in their public appearances (and indeed the words of other witnesses) I'm now going to be totally inconsistent and do a bit of word analysis myself. Of a sort.

But with a difference! For I'm referring to the possibility of the use of very specific words consciously decided beforehand, and used with the equally specific and deliberate intention to cultivate a particular perception in the minds of the intended audience!

It would seem that right from the very beginning the word "abducted" has been used. I've just interrupted my writing for a while to trawl through yet more newspaper articles etc in an attempt to discover whether or not the words "kidnapping" or "kidnappers" were ever used.

Yes, there are some instances of those words, but there seems to be a huge preponderance of "abducted" and "abductor", and they seem to be the terms favoured by the McCanns, with practically everyone else following their lead.

I've been intrigued by this.

Now perhaps its just me, but the word "kidnap" suggests to me something along the lines of "making away with the intention of demanding a ransom", whereas "abduct" suggests something else entirely... making away for far more nefarious purposes maybe.
So intrigued was I by this that I even troubled to check the relevant definitions in a dictionary (albeit a rather ancient one... The Concise Oxford Dictionary 5th Edition):

"abduct: Kidnap; take away (esp. a woman) by force or fraud"

"kidnap: Steal (child); carry off (person) by illegal force"

So kidnap could arguably be seen as the more appropriate term. Why then the preference for "abduct"? Was it because "kidnap" so very often carries the implication of a ransom that will be demanded at some future point? Or is that just my sense of the word?

Following on from this though, I have yet to encounter any report of Madeleine's disappearance that mentions the expectation of a ransom being demanded. (Though, as usual, I'm open to correction... and I'm sure there probably is one for I haven't managed to look at more than a fraction of the available material yet.)
But my impression is that the entire investigation and media campaign were conducted in a manner indicating not a kidnapping for ransom but an abuction for "other purposes".

Maybe that was because it was not perceived, either by the authorities, the media, or even the McCanns themselves, that they were sufficiently wealthy to merit becoming victims of such a crime?

But equally it could well have been a cunningly contrived piece of social engineering to condition people into unthinkingly accepting that there was little possiblity of Madeleine being returned in exchange for a ransom.
The careful and considered use of specific words in advertising is a well-established technique employed to elicit desired responses from a "target audience".

Or maybe its my imagination playing tricks with me, and those different words don't have the same connotations for others that they hold for me?
^{[The Next Step!]}

Memory, and the reliability of witness statements

One can get considerable mileage out of discrepancies that may occur between statements from different witnesses, each describing the same event.

Similarly, even more mileage can be had from the discrepancies that can arise between different accounts of the same event by the same witness, those accounts being separated only by the passage of time.

In the normal course of events it would be unlikely to get, say, a half-dozen people to describe a particular incident or series of incidents and then find those descriptions matched exactly. Indeed, in an extreme case one could easily find discrepancies such that one could be led to believe that entirely different incidents were being described.
This phenomenon occurs perhaps less so with trained observers, but few "ordinary" people possess the necessary observational skills.

Many factors can feed into this. Memory distortion (depending on how long after the incident(s) occurred the description is elicited); the fact that different people may focus their attention on different elements of an incident; the interpretation of what is seen (which can vary from person to person); and even such simple factors as defective eyesight, angle of view, differing perceptions of time, distance, and so forth.

Much more worrying, when it comes to comparing accounts of a particular incident from a number of different people, is when those accounts tally to a remarkable degree. Worrying, because it can so frequently indicate that some sort of "comparing notes" has occurred beforehand.

At the time of writing this I haven't yet explored in detail the publicly available statements of the "Tapas 9" in relation to the events leading up to Madeleine's disappearance... or indeed the statements of other witnesses during the furore of the "discovery". Although of course I have skimmed briefly over them.

That said, I've already become aware of some inconsistencies (such as, for example, Jane Tanner's account of having seen a man carrying a child, an observation apparently not borne out by Gerry McCann and "Jez" who were also present at the time of the alleged sighting). To be frank, at this stage in my thinking I'm not really inclined to place too much significance on such discrepancies. In a sense they're to be expected.

Then there's the other sort of statement discrepancy, where a person's account of something can vary over time.
Again inserting the disclaimer that I've not yet explored in detail etc, I believe that such discrepancies have been noted in the statements the "Tapas 7" gave to the police at the time, and the accounts of those same people given during the rogatory interviews with the British police.

Well, once again I'm inclined not to place too much significance on this at the moment.
The mind and memory are curious beasts. One might almost describe them as evil twins for so frequently they delude the poor possessor thereof into recollecting things in an incredibly distorted way and, more to the point, in such manner that we're unaware of the inaccuracies of our own recollections.

Having observed this curious phenomenon in both myself and others, and having had to accept so many times over the years that my own recollections are not always as reliable as I'd wish them to be, nowadays I resort to the tactic of writing things down if there's something I really want to remember accurately.
For once written down I can refer to those notes a week later, a year later, or even ten years later and be assured that what I'm reading is an accurate representation of my thoughts, actions etc at the time they occurred. (Incidentally, this is also a good technique for proving to oneself just how effectively recollection can transform "remembered" events over time!)

Anyway, that of course is the principal reason for these quite lengthy notes on my initial impressions about Madelaine's disappearance. For if, as seems probable at the moment, I remain seized of this matter for a significant period then the likelihood would be that my recollection of these impressions would change. With the consequent risk of forming false conclusions, of forgetting avenues of research that merit pursuing, and so forth.

This is not to say of course that witness statements are utterly useless, or that they should never be relied upon. Nor is it to say that discrepancies therein should inevitably be dismissed as "one of those things" with no more attention being paid to them.
Rather it is to underline the fact that I think it would be extremely foolish to construct a theory based primarily upon witness statements, or discrepancies between such statements.

Unfortunately all too often that is all one has to work with... initially at least. Ideally though such statements can and should act as "pointers" leading to other types of evidence.

Another cause for concern

This is one of those things that may not have a direct bearing on Madeleine's disappearance as such, but rather could provide a context in which that disappearance occurred.

At the very least what it may conceivably do is shed light on the personalities of some of the actors in this drama.

I would urge the reader to firstly study the statement of Yvonne Martin, a child protection worker. And then read the full statements of Katherine and Arul Gaspar.

Of the latter what I find most concerning aren't the reported remarks and gestures of David Payne (though they're disturbing enough) but the reaction of Gerry McCann, which seems to me to have been seriously lacking somewhere.

As I've said before, I have no children of my own. But if I had a daughter and someone, even a friend, made such a remark with accompanying gestures about her to me, I can well imagine what my response would be. And it probably would have been a damn sight more reactive than Gerry McCann's appears to have been!

In fact, I rather wish I hadn't come across those particular statements as it means that yet another task I have to add to my "find out more about this" list is seek to discover whether there is any document in existence (or for that matter anything else) that explains those disturbing statements in such manner that they are proven to be, well, wrong... or have been misrepresented.

I earnestly hope so. For the other, and principal, reason why I rather wish I hadn't come across them is because I find the implications therein incredibly disturbing... not just the implications, but the way the implications come about. "Revulsion" is perhaps not too strong a word to use. In terms of the images they conjure in my mind, I fear they will haunt my thoughts for quite some time.
^{[The Next Step!]}

Memo to self

One of the matters that drew my attention in the Goncalo Amaral video was his implication that political pressure had been applied to encourage the "archiving" of the Madeleine case.

Trying to pin this down to specifics I became somewhat sidetracked by learning of the support that the McCanns had received from the British political establishment, which is rather more than I would have thought appropriate, or that protocol required.

Now it strikes me, though this is a very thin thread indeed, that such political involvement is not what one would expect to find in a criminal investigation.
Much more likely to be found, I'd have thought, in some situation that could prove embarrassing to a government in office... or something along those lines.

On the face of it there is nothing in the Madeleine McCann disappearance that could qualify it as such a situation... unless of course one of the figures central in the case had other "involvements".

What those other "involvements" could be is of course a matter of speculation (as is this entire line of thought) but certain possibilities do instantly spring to mind.

However, I suspect I'm at serious risk here of beginning to formulate a theory, and at this early stage in my learning about the case that would be entirely the wrong thing to do, so I shall for the moment leave this particular topic as a memo to myself for consideration at some future time.
^{[The Next Step!]}

In summary so far...

I've by no means exhausted all the avenues that demand exploring, and of those I have explored I've really only skimmed the surface so far. But I wanted to get my initial impressions set down before my mind starts trying to piece things together of its own volition.

Having laboriously worked through all of this what I'm finally left with is the awareness of traces of cadaver odour being detected in places where there shouldn't have been any.
And it seems to me that if the innocence of the McCanns is to be established "beyond reasonable doubt" then the issue of that damned cadaver odour has to be satisfactorily explained.
If there were no other worrying features to the case then perhaps one could accept that the sniffer dog was mistaken. But the presence of those other worrying features demand that the "testimony" of the sniffer dog be rebutted or explained by rather more than a simple claim that the dog was mistaken.

And of those "worrying features", the ones that remain most prominent in my mind (of those that I have so far discovered of course) are the probable "red herring" of the open window; the unsettling mis-use of one of Madeleine's books to write out a timeline; Kate McCann's behaviour in a particular interview; and those statements of Katherine and Arul Gaspar.

However, and equally, if I were sat on a jury and had to decide upon the guilt of the McCanns "beyond reasonable doubt" then, in all fairness, I couldn't do so.

Basically, in my mind at the present moment the jury's still out, though I'm inclined to veer more toward the parents' guilt than their innocence.

And of course it goes without saying that the McCanns should never have left children of those ages alone, and certainly should never have left them alone in an unsecured environment. In that, if in nothing else at all, they are totally culpable.

Footnotes

[1] The online version of the video to which my original blogpost linked was hosted by blip.tv at http://blip.tv/file/2036418. But intriguingly when I checked on 12th May 2009, still in the middle of drafting these present impressions, I discovered that the video had been removed! Although I'd naturally already grabbed a copy for archiving purposes, at time of writing I've now added to my list of things "to do" the location of an alternative online copy.
Update: Subsequent to first writing this note I've now discovered that another copy of the video is accessible at the blog of Joana Morais [Return]

[2] I have tried, unsuccessfully so far, to track down an authoritative reference to determine how soon after death it could be expected for cadaver odour to develop in sufficient intensity/volume to be detectable by a specialised sniffer dog. I can recollect having read somewhere within the Madeleine-related websites a mention of two hours, but have been unable to re-locate that particular passage.
However, based upon what I've now, rather reluctantly and with some distaste, learned about such post-mortem effects as decomposition and putrefaction (which are presumably related to the development of cadaver odour?) it would seem that a period of time significantly longer than two hours would be required for the development of such odour. As ever though, I'm open to being corrected. [Return]
^{[The Next Step!]}

[3] In the annals of the Madeleine McCann case the term "Tapas 7" has apparently come to be used to refer to the members of the dinner party that gathered in the Tapas bar on the evening of Madeleine's disappearance, those being:
David Payne and Fiona Payne
Dianne Webster
Matthew Oldfield and Rachael Manpilly
Russell O'Brien and Jane Tanner
Similarly, or so I understand, the term "Tapas 9" refers to those seven plus Kate and Gerry McCann. [Return]

[4] "The Next Step" links: Where applicable each "item of concern" has been linked to the relevant comments/developments in later "reports". What this method is intended to achieve is a body of "parallel threads" that can be followed through individually if desired, plus eventually providing some sort of coherent and relatively comprehensive narrative. Theoretically, anyway! [Return]

Credits

I am deeply indebted to a number of websites for my preliminary reading, and for pointing me in the direction of other source material. And of those, the following merit special mention for the numerous times I revisited them to verify a detail or track down additional material:

Duarte Levy
Gerry McCann's Blogs
Joana Morais
The McCann Files

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