Josef K wrote:No, the internet buddies chide and the snidey remarks stuff.

Hexpane wrote:i dont really understand this debate about empathy... in the literal sense you would empathize (w/ the parents) if you lost a child... otherwise you sympathize.

If you were stolen from your parents as a child you could also empathize, merely being a child a hundred years ago doesn't qualify.

The BBC last night quoted a source close to Mr and Mrs McCann who said they were considering carrying out their own tests on the vehicle, which was being kept in a "safe place to avoid any possibility of evidence being planted".

Rick Reuben wrote:

the age of australia, 9-15-07 wrote:BRITISH girl Madeleine McCann died from an overdose of sleeping pills, a French newspaper has claimed, citing "hard evidence" in the hands of Portuguese prosecutors that "prove the little girl had ingested (the pills) in large quantities".

France Soir said it based its report on scientific analysis of bodily fluids found in the hire car of Madeleine's parents, Kate and Gerry McCann.

But Britain's Daily Mail, which led its newspaper yesterday with the French report, also quoted a British forensic specialist, who expressed grave doubt the fluids showed a conclusive match with Madeleine's DNA or could reveal the presence of an excessive amount of drugs.

Maybe Madeleine was too energetic to be trusted alone in the hotel room while the parents dined, so the parents tried to sedate her and ended up with an OD?

Rick Reuben wrote:

the age of australia, 9-15-07 wrote:BRITISH girl Madeleine McCann died from an overdose of sleeping pills, a French newspaper has claimed, citing "hard evidence" in the hands of Portuguese prosecutors that "prove the little girl had ingested (the pills) in large quantities".

France Soir said it based its report on scientific analysis of bodily fluids found in the hire car of Madeleine's parents, Kate and Gerry McCann.

But Britain's Daily Mail, which led its newspaper yesterday with the French report, also quoted a British forensic specialist, who expressed grave doubt the fluids showed a conclusive match with Madeleine's DNA or could reveal the presence of an excessive amount of drugs.

Maybe Madeleine was too energetic to be trusted alone in the hotel room while the parents dined, so the parents tried to sedate her and ended up with an OD?

Sol June 30, 2007
an article by Felicia Cabrita and Margarida Davim

Madeleine Case

Pact of Silence

Madeleine’s parents and the friends with whom they spent their holidays in PDL are suspects in the inquiry. There are contradictory versions about the night of the kidnapping, and an assumed pact of silence in the group

The beginning of June is flowing in a strange way in the Algarve. A chilly wind and overhead clouds help to fill the auditorium of Lagos, where a solidarity concert is being held for the missing english girl. It’s been a month since Madeleine McCann vanished without a trace.

A few kilometres from Lagos, in the Ocean Club resort at Praia da Luz, the faint illumination further densifies the climate. At the reception, which leads to the Tapas restaurant, there is nobody. Getting inside is easy.

A portuguese waiter, but with a british ‘behaviour’, strikes the first blow on the journalist’s plan: “We only serve dinner to the club’s clients”. “What about a drink?”. He says yes.

It’s 9.30 p.m. If we were to believe the several members of the McCann’s holiday group, and after several mismatching versions, at this time Madeleine was being carried out of her apartment by a dark-haired man, who would be around 35 years old.

From the same table where the group of nine had dinner on that evening, one tries, in vain, to observe the apartment’s front – a ground floor apartment that faces the restaurant. A linoleum screen on the side of Tapas and the corridor of bushes that follows the limits of the apartment’s back yards prevents any vigilance to that level.

The image of Madeleine – big blue, questioning eyes and an innocent smile, fixed on the photographic films – is always present. It doesn’t leave the conversations of whom passes by. One remembers the words that the mother, Kate Healy, is supposed to have said to a friend (and that the husband, Gerry McCann, did not know): “I had a bad premonition about my children, when I found out the Ocean Club had no baby listening service”.

The choice of Algarve as a holiday destination would come to change their lives. Everything was arranged with three other couples, with whom they used to travel. Some of them had recently been to Greece, with their children, and the Mark Warner agency, the same that prepared their trip to the Algarve, had done their itinerary for the islands. According to their reports, the hotel where they stayed had a baby listening service – a service that is assured by four or five members of staff who would control the children while the adults dined, by listening through doors and windows to confirm that everything inside was quiet.

At the Tapas bar, from bartenders to staff from the Kid Club, criticism is whispered: “We have a creche where they left their children for most part of the day, where they could be until 11.30 p.m. without spending another Euro. They could also have used our baby-sitters, who stay with the children in their rooms until 1 p.m. In this case, they would have to pay an extra fee, but these people looked like they could afford it”, an employee comments, concluding that “this was a very strange group, that never stayed with their children”.

The children’s routine

The story of Madeleine looks like a tangled ball of wool. In the last days of April, Kate and Gerry, both 39 and doctors, arrive with their friends in Praia da Luz. The weather is not very good, but the group makes the best of it. The children seem to exist outside of the adults’ world. In the morning, Kate would take Madeleine, almost 4, and the 2-year old twins, to the Kid Club. The other couples in the group did the same. While the little ones entertained themselves with collages and paintings, the group divides itself between tennis and jogging until lunchtime. In the creche, the girl’s picture is taken: “She was shy and had some difficulty in adapting to the group. She always stayed close to the english children she already knew”.

It is at lunchtime that the families socialize a bit. After a short nap, the children go back to the Kid Club, while the parents use the activities that the club offers. They only get to meet again in the late afternoon, when the children’s dinner is served. Before 8 p.m., Madeleine and her siblings, who seem to function like a clock, are already asleep. Half an hour later, the group of friends meets at Tapas. The staff remember that they only leave at midnight: “They were very lively and drank a bit too much. I didn’t even realize they had children, because I never saw them around”.

Mathew Oldfield, one of the elements of the group, is back in England. He reacts with surprise upon the contact of Sol, but he does not avoid the conversation: “We drank. We were on holidays. So what?”.

And thus the days followed one upon another, at the Ocean Club. The holiday week is almost over and the group’s spirit does not change. Nobody had noticed until then, how the children were kept at a distance.

The most reliable way to undrestand what happened on May 3, when Madeleine disappeared, is to analyze the various versions that emerged.

It would have been 10 p.m. when Kate decided to check the children at the apartment. This is the only moment in the story that gathers consensus. Madeleine had vanished from her bedroom and the twins were sleeping like nothing had happened. The mother was back at the restaurant in one leap. She was disoriented.

PJ called two hours later

In seconds, the resort is in turmoil. The group’s four men and the club’s employees check every corner. They seem to be oblivious of the essential: to call the authorities. GNR is the first to arrive at the scene, but the news only reach Policia Judiciaria (PJ) more than two hours later. The first explanations arise. Where were the parents when the child disappeared? Gerry explains that, inspired in the scheme that some of the friends had used on their holidays in Greece, the nine members of the group took turns in checking on the children with some regularity.

This is the beginning of a story that will change in many chapters. Gerry starts by saying that he first left the table to check on the children around 9.05 p.m. When he entered the apartment the children were fine, he just noticed that the door to their bedroom was partially open. He looked at the window, which was closed, just as the shutters, and relaxed.

Ten minutes later, his friend Jane Tanner, who went around the apartments, crossed ways with a dark-haired man who was walking in the opposite direction, carrying a child. She didn’t make any connections either.

A few minutes later, Mathew Oldfield enters the room, sees the McCann children fast asleep, and notices nothing out of the ordinary. It is at 10 p.m. that Maddie’s mother discovers her daughter has disappeared. The window was wide open and the shutters were up.

To GNR, who is in the area with sniffer dogs to search for the child, this is a highly unlikely scenario. One of the military assures: “This is an extremely silent area, where there are practically no passing cars. That shutter was very difficult to lift from the outside, and would have made a lot of noise. It would have been a lot easier to use the door, but there were no signs of a break-in”.

This was just one of the reasons why the group became suspicious in the eyes of the investigators. Russell O’Brien, Jane Tanner’s husband, is already back in England, but he knows he could be summoned back to Portugal for a deposition anytime. Over the phone with Sol, he tries to keep his british phlegm: “It is normal that we are suspects, and the DNA test is a consequence thereof. We were the closest people involved”.

The conversation always comes back to the same issue: the night of the disappearance. The account of that last dinner has disparate versions among the group’s members. Some swear that someone left the table every half hour to check on the kids; other reduce that time to half of it. Some say control is made window by window; others say the adults entered each other’s apartments.

One of the employees that was on duty that evening does not remember a lot of movement: “I only remember a tall, grey-haired man getting up once from the table”. It was Russell, who, two days earlier, also had attended dinner.

An aerobic instructor from the resort entertains the dinner guests at Tapas with a ‘Quiz’. At 9.30 p.m. the game ends, and Gerry invites her to their table, where she stays for half an hour. During that time, as she later confided to friends, nobody left the table, but one of the chairs was vacant. Najova Chekaya refuses to talk to Sol. And Russell, when the questions start to surround him, loses his sympathy: “I have nothing further to tell you. I am not going to dishonor the compromise I assumed with Kate and Gerry. They want to control all infornation that is disclosed”.

Gerry changes his version several times, but he maintains that the door to his children’s room was open. Mat revokes his first statement: when he entered Madeleine’s room, the door was open and there was more light, as if the shutters had been raised. Here starts to develop the theory that there was already someone inside the apartment. Which reinforces Jane Tanner’s version (that she saw a man carrying a child).

Only Jane saw the man carrying a child

But there is a witness whose deposition contradicts this theory. Jeremy Wilkins – a tv producer who had met Maddie’s father during their holidays and used to play tennis with him – was walking his eight months old son at that time. He met Gerry, who went out through the apartment’s back door after having checked on the children, and the two man exchanged a brief conversation. At that time, if one is to believe the first accounts, Jane would have left Tapas in the direction of the apartment’s main entrance, and would have crossed paths with both of them. “It was a very narrow road and I think it would have been almost impossible to walk by without me taking notice”, Jeremy says, pointing out the fact that he saw no man carrying a child, as Jane states.

But Jane continues to guarantee that, at the top of the street, she saw a man with a child in his arms.

Although the area is scarcely lit, and the situation did not make her suspicious at the time, she describes the beige trousers, the dark thick jacket and the black classic-style shoes in a detailed way. Once again, Jeremy disagrees: “If that happened, I would have likely seen it”.

On the next day, the media circus was fully installed. The first reports are on Sky News first thing in the morning, even before portuguese press takes hold of the story. Journalists and locals dispute the information. Robert Murat, the son of an english mother and a portuguese father, with little luck in business, does not waste the opportunity. He moves from failed businessman into the role of a translator for the press and the police. Some british journalists, after sucking him to the bones, start suspecting his availability.

The Murat contradiction

Contrarily to the GNR elements and the Ocean Club’s staff, who participated in the searches on the night before and assure they did not see Murat around, Gerry and some of his friends guarantee that he was there. And thus he becomes an arguido.

Gerry and Kate’s friends, who are interrogated tightly by the PJ over almost a month, refuse to clarify this contradiction, when asked by Sol. “We have a pact. This is our matter only. It is nobody else’s business”, says David Payne, another element with the group. Minutes after we tried to contact Kate, Gerry, in a fury, calls the Sol journalist: “What do you think you are doing? Do you think you’re better than the portuguese police? I’m going to forward your contact to PJ and you will have to explain yourselves”.


-------


PJ says ‘everybody is a suspect’

The director of the Policia Judiciaria in Faro, Guilhermino da Encarnacao, confirmed with Sol that “we do not discard the possibility to have the family and friends as suspects”. This is always done “without neglecting other clues. Everybody who was at the resort at the time are suspects”.




Sol – August 11


Under the magnifying glass

SOL reveals what the McCanns and their friends say they did on the night that Maddie disappeared. Who would have died before dinner.

by: Felicia Cabrita and Margarida Davim
translated by: astro

The tests that were made this week on the car that was used by the McCann couple, indicates that the police admits that Maddie’s body may have been moved from the place where it was initially hidden, over the last two months.

As Sol could conclude, the investigators look for clues of the cadaver in the Renault Scenic, which was rented by Maddie’s parents after the child’s disappearance. As the abduction possibility is set aside, authorities bet on the reconstitution of the route that was taken to hide the body. During this week, PJ and elements of the english police – accompanied by the c-ockers that SOL surprised on the beach and in a valley that is close to the resort, last week – performed several diligences inside and outside several houses. The authorities seem to have concluded that Maddie’s body is buried in the vicinity of the apartment that was occupied by the McCanns, or was thrown into the sea.

The english dogs marked the death inside the apartment. And portuguese dogs did not find any trace on the outside. This fact is devalued by Pinto da Costa, a forensic doctor, who says a perfume on the body is enough to lose the dogs. A source of GNR that was heard by SOL says “the dogs only detected a movement of the child from the bedroom to another location inside the apartment”.

At the same time, it is still unknown at what time the alleged crime would have taken place. A specialist that was contacted by SOL guarantees: “In order for the dogs to mark the body, it would have had to remain in the area where it died for at least two hours”. If so, and considering that Maddie’s parents say they left for dinner at 8.30 p.m., the girl would have died shortly before that – given the fact the alarm to her disappearance was given at 10 p.m.

Blank hours

It is in these four hours – between the time the McCann couple picked up their children at the creche and the time Kate noticed her daughter was missing – that lies th solution to this mystery. This is also where the inconsistencies are found, between the versions that are reported by the couple and their friends.

The four friends couples, most of them doctors, always said they took turns among them to watch their children (either by listening through windows or by entering each other’s apartments) every half hour.

On that night, if the mismatching versions of the group are to be believed, there were up to three persons doing the same job. It is in this context that witness Jane Tanner appears, who is married to Russell O’Brien. He only appeared in the Tapas restaurant almost at the end of the dinner, saying his daughter, who is the same age as Maddie, was feeling ill. Jane, on the other hand, would have left the restaurant to check on her daughter and verify the other children at approximately 9.20 p.m. And she walked a narrow, scarcely lit road.

On her way, she passes Maddie’s father, who is talking to a friend, Jeremy Wilkins – a tv producer whom he met at the resort’s tennis court. When Jane passed them, the two men were close to a small iron gate that leads to the back entrance of the apartment: “It’s impossible. I didn’t see her”, Jeremy said.

That gate, which accesses a small patio, and according to Maddie’s father, was used by him and Matthew Oldfield to check on the children. In that moment, the girl’s father noticed that the door to the children’s room was more open and that there was more light than usual. Yet, he thought that Maddie, disturbed by her siblings’ crying, would have gone into her parents’ room, leaving the door open. But he did not check whether his daughter was there.

With these elements, which were corroborated by Matthew, Maddie’s father left the possibility that at that time the abductor was already inside the room, in the air.

Contributing to the kidnapping idea, there was also Jane Tanner’s version, who says she saw a man carrying a child, shortly after she crossed ways with Maddie’s father and Jeremy. But the tv producer – who was spending his holidays in a neighbouring apartment block – also dismisses that possibility: “I did not see any man carrying a child”.

Jane’s testimony was one of the pieces of information that would later be used to incriminate Murat, given the fact that the arguido’s house is on the street where the english woman says the man was walking to.

Jane walked approximately 5 metres from the individual who was carrying the child. Although there was little light, she describes him with detail. The man, looking caucasian, was wearing beige trousers, black shoes and was covered in a thick jacket. According to her words, “he didn’t even look like a tourist”.

In spite of the proximity to the person who would later originate the first drawing of the supposed kidnapper of Maddie, Jane, who socialized with the girl on a daily basis, did not recognize her. According to her statement, the child was wearing pink pyjamas, seemed to be asleep and was barefoot. This was the detail that she found the strangest.

That night, after Kate discovered the disappearance of her daughter (and after Jane supposedly confirmed with another friend that Maddie was wearing a pyjamas of the same colour), Jane Tanner made no comment. “I did not want to worry Kate even further”, she later guaranteed.

A witness that was contacted by SOL at that time seems to indicate that Jane, although she never crossed ways with the tv producer, may have described the right person, so if the suspect crossed ways with someone on his way, the versions would match.

The last diligences that PJ has performed do however put aside the doubts that were on Robert Murat, given the fact that the searches did not find anything that incriminates him.

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

The ‘movie’ of the night

After collecting all the elements, and crossing information from various sources, SOL’s investigation makes a reconstitution of the night that Maddie disappeared.

6 p.m. The McCanns pick their children up at the Ocean Club’s creche.
7.30 Madeleine and the twins go to bed.
8.30 Gerry and Kate arrive at the Tapas restaurant.
8.45 Russell, Matthew and Rachel Oldfield go to the restaurant.
8.55 David and Fiona Payne also arrive at the Tapas. According to David, all the elements of the group were already there. But Rachel assures that Matthew arrived two or three minutes after the Paynes.
9.00 Matthew went to check on the children.
9.05 Gerry left the Tapas to check on his children. When he is returning to the dinner, he meets Jeremy Wilkins – an english man he met during the holidays – and chats with him for ten minutes. Neither Gerry nor Jeremy notice Jane or the suspicious man that she says she saw, although they were all on the same narrow street at the same time.
9.10 Jane went to check on her children and notices a man walking hastily, carrying a child. She memorizes the suspect, but fails to recognize Maddie.
9.25 Gerry returns to Tapas. Russell told PJ that at this time Matt and he went to check the children.
9.30 Matthew goes into Madeleine’s apartment. Russell O’Brien leaves the restaurant at the same time. In the first statements, Matt does not refer anything strange in Madeleine’s room and Russell fails to explain that he stayed in his apartment because his younger daughter was feeling sick. Later, Matt said that he noticed more light in the McCanns’ apartment and Russell revealed his daughter was vomiting.
9.35 Matthew Oldfield returned to Tapas.
9.45 Jane Tanner says at this time – not at 9.30 – Matthew and Russell left the restaurant.
9.55 Russell returns to the restaurant.
10.00 Jane goes to the apartment and notices her daughter has disappeared. She goes back to Tapas and raises the alarm. Everybody leaves the restaurant, except Dianne Webster.
10.05 Dianne Webster goes into Maddie’s room. The twins are sleeping.
22.15 Dianne returns to Tapas, to pick up her purse and her camera.

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The McCanns’ friends that the police is watching

Rachel and Matthew Oldfield

Rachell Manpilly is 36 and she is married to Matthew Oldfield. The couple has a daughter, who was only 18 months old when Madeleine McCann disappeared. But now even so the Oldfields asked for the Ocean Club’s babysitting service. Matthew met Gerry McCann when both doctors worked together at a hospital in Leicester. Matt has a pending accusation for medical negligence in that hospital, after a late diagnosis resulted in the death of a patient. This was not the first time the Oldfields spent their holidays with this group. The last trip had been to Greece – where they also stayed in a resort of the Ocean Club’s group – but that time Gerry and Kate did not accompany them.

Dianne Webster

63 year old Dianne Webster is the oldest element of the group. This credit controller is the mother of Fiona Payne and the grandmother of two of the children from the group that was spending their holidays in the Ocean Club.
To the portuguese police, Dianne told she could not precise which elements abandoned the Tapas restaurant during dinner, on the night that Madeleine disappeared. Fiona’s mother is also the only witness that said each couple was responsible for their own children, and did not enter their friends’ apartments.
After Kate entered the restaurant – visibly upset and yelling “they’ve taken our Madeleine” – Dianne was the only one who stayed seated at the Tapas’ table. Which she only left five minutes later.

David and Fiona Payne

It was David Payne who organised the group’s holidays at Praia da Luz. The reservation was made over the internet, after a good experience with the Ocean Club’s group, in Greece. This was the second time that David came to Portugal. The first time was eleven years ago, before he got married.
David and Fiona have been together for seven years and are both doctors, like the McCanns’ friends. The couple has two children and they were the only ones in the group who used the babyphone system to keep watch over the children during dinners – which always took place without the small ones.
Fiona was back in the Algarve on July 11, along with Rachel and Russell, in order to give their third deposition to PJ.

Russell O’Brien and Jane Tanner

Russell O’Brien is a doctor and lives in Exeter – the same english city where the sister of Robert Murat lives.
After studying at the same university as David Payne, O’Brien met Jane, with whom he has two children. The friendship between Russell and David is so strong that he chose him as his wedding godfather when he made his relationship with Fiona official, in Italy.
Coincidentally, Jane and Kate became pregnant at the same time, as the O’Brien couple’s oldest daughter is exactly the same age as Maddie.
Jane Tanner is one of the key witnesses in the ‘Madeleine case’, given the fact she says she saw a suspicious man, walking with a child in his arms, on the night of the disappearance. Jane describes the individual with extreme precision, although she was not capable to recognize the child he was carrying. The man that Jane saw has dark, thick hair and is 1.70 m tall.



SOL – August 18

New contradictions in Maddie’s case

By Felicia Cabrita, with Margarida Davim
Translation by astro

The version that the McCann couple and their group of friends have been giving about what happened on the night that Madeleine disappeared, is shaken by new testimonies that were collected by Sol.

The English started by saying they took turns every 15 minutes in order to, through the windows of the rooms where the children were sleeping, listen if anything abnormal was happening. This ‘vigilance’ system, which they assure was efficient throughout a week of holidays, is questioned by an English citizen who lives in the apartment above the one that was occupied by Kate and Gerry McCann.

Employees deny Russell

Fenn told Sol that, on the night before she disappeared, Maddie cried for quite some time, calling out ‘daddy, daddy!’.

Also the table waiters that were working in the resort’s restaurant – the Tapas, where the group of friends had dinner that night – didn’t notice much movement of checking on the children. One of them guaranteed to Sol that, since the beginning of dinner (which started between 8.30 and 9 p.m.), only two men got up, almost simultaneously.

One of them was Russell O’Brien, one of the doctors of the group, who was absent for most of the dinner and who returned to the table 5 minutes before Kate went to her apartment and noticed Maddie was missing. Russell then explained that his daughter was sick, and even “vomited so it was necessary to change her bed sheets”. One of the employees of the Ocean Club, who was heard by Sol this week, contradicts his version: “If that had happened, he would have to ask the housekeeping service for some clean sheets, which did not happen”.

During the short hour that dinner lasted, the group asked for, and consumed at their table, eight bottles of red wine and six of white wine, according to the restaurant’s records.

GNR was on location since 11 p.m. With the help of a member of staff from the Ocean Club, who helped as a translator until 4 a.m., they collected the first reports. Although Maddie’s mother guaranteed that, when she noticed her daughter was missing, the shutters of the room where the children were sleeping were up and the window was open, the members of this police force did not detect any clues to indicate that these had been forced.

On the other hand, the resort’s employee guaranteed to Sol that “the shutters are so old and simple” that, with the sun exposure they were subject to in these 14 years, if anyone did “try to open them from the outside, they would have broken”. The main door to the apartment didn’t show any signs of a break-in, either.

The McCann family were never alone. Dozens of members of staff at the resort appealed to the local population, mostly English citizens, and the surrounding areas were searched thoroughly. The couple was busy making phonecalls.

Aurelio Guerreiro, the owner of a bar at the marina in Vilamoura, was close to being involved. His testimony to Sol confuses the McCanns’ time version. Sometime between 0.30 and 1 a.m., Aurelio got a phonecall from an old customer: Pat Perkins, the human resources director from a public English organism. She calls him, upset: “She told me the daughter of british friends of her, who were vacationing close to Lagos, had disappeared over 3 hours ago, that they were completely alone and that nobody was helping them to search for her”.

Kate McCann had just informed her parents of the tragedy. Pat, who lives in Liverpool, confirms: “I was at Kate’s parents’ house at that moment. But I have nothing further to add”.

Guerreiro tells what he did after Pat called him: “I understood she wanted me to go meet them, but I was an hour away from their location, and I could not close the bar, I decided to call the police”. After PJ in Portimao confirmed to him they already knew about the case, Aurelio phoned Kate, at the number that Pat had given him: “An English man picked up. He thanked me, and contrary to what I expected, he didn’t ask me for anything”.

Minutes after this phonecall, Gerry asks for the priest from the Luz parish to be called for him – but the Ocean Club staff members refused, given the time it was. At four in the morning, Jane was asking a member of GNR: “Have you cut off all the roads already?”. Minutes later, Gerry, given the fact that the priest didn’t appear, asked another element of GNR to show him the way to the church.

Couple wants to return to England

As Sol has been reporting, the clues that were collected by PJ with the help of English police, lead to a turnaround in the investigation. One of the dogs used by the british ‘marked’ Maddie’s death inside the apartment. On the other hand, blood was found inside the bedroom where the McCanns’ children were sleeping, which has been dissimulated with the help of whiteners, and is still being analyzed in a british laboratory.

The path that the English dogs followed 2 weeks ago, in the surroundings of the apartment, exclude the possibility that the child was abducted and is still alive. The dogs walked the only two paths that Maddie’s family and friends knew.

One of them leads to Luz beach. The irish citizen Martin Smith, a local resident for years, told Sol that on that night he crossed ways with a man who was carrying a child, with the characteristics of Maddie. That path was searched by police and other people. Six days after the disappearance, Gerry, who was accompanied by an unknown individual, also seemed to participate in the searches, but on the opposite side of the way the dogs walked.

Parents are leaving

Throughout this week, much was speculated in the press. ‘The Times’ published that the blood that was collected inside the apartment is not Maddie’s but “from an individual from the European northeast”. The English lab denied this, stating that they have not finished their work yet. The McCanns were saying yesterday in several newspapers that they were considering going back to their country.



SOL paper edition AUGUST 18

How Murat was ‘betrayed’

By Felicia Cabrita
Translation by astro

Robert Murat, the only arguido in the case of Madeleine, became the character of a dark movie as quickly as he left the scene.

“The saddest part of this is that I offered to help finding the girl, and my life was destroyed for that. What planet are we living on?”. The spear that would hit the anglo-portuguese man was thrown at random. On the night of May 3, around 9.20 pm, Jane Tanner, a friend of the McCann couple, under the excuse that her daughter was sick, left the restaurant where they were dining, and walked towards the apartments where the group’s eight children were sleeping. On her path, she crosses ways with Gerry, who is talking with a friend. Jane assures that, when she reached the street that is perpendicular to the one where the two men were located, and which leads to the apartments, she saw a man carrying a girl.

This testimony is shattered by another English tourist, Jeremy Wilkins, who was on that street then. He guaranteed to Sol that he saw neither Jane nor any man carrying a child.

But Jane’s words were taken seriously by the Policia Judiciaria, and were joined by others. The direction of the street in which the man that was carrying a child was walking to, ended at Robert Murat’s house.

According to a member of the Ocean Club’s staff who was helping out as an interpreter that night, between the group of nine friends and the GNR, the McCann couple didn’t stop calling journalists. They were moving influences in the british media, where they also have relatives. Around 6 a.m, Sky News breaks the first news. The abduction idea is launched.

Robert Murat wakes up three hours later. His mother, Jennifer, had already been alerted by one of her daughters in England to turn on Sky. After breakfast, they decide to search the garden that is next to the Ocean Club.

“While we were searching, an English man walked by. I asked him a few questions about what was going on. I told him I spoke Portuguese and English, and that if they needed me, I was at their disposal” – Murat recalls. And that is the way it happened: on the same morning, he presented his services to GNR. On the street, he met Gerry and Kate, and from minute to the next he was the authorities’ interpreter, and assisted in the first statements from the parents and other witnesses.

Around noon, Jo Wheeler, a journalist for Sky in the area of weather forecast, who lives in the Algarve, calls him: “She wanted me to work as an interpreter for the team that was about to arrive. I refused, because it didn’t seem correct to be helping the family and the police, and working for the media”.

Finally, it’s Gaynor Jesus, an anglo-portuguese woman, jobless and a childhood friend, who accepted. “I know very well she was one of the persons who framed me”, Murat says. The Murat family has roots in Portugal since the 18th century (as wine merchants, in Oporto). The parents took up residence in the Algarve in the sixties, and opened a real-estate agency in Lagos. Robert was born in 1973, with a problem in his right eye’s retina (which ends up going blind).

The searches for Madeleine continue. With the help of the press, the sequestration theory is installed, connected to an international pedophile network.

Next Sunday, Robert was sitting on the boardwalk next to the apartment where Maddie disappeared from, when Lory Campbell, a reporter for the Sunday Mirror, accompanied by another English journalist, and pretending not to know how the three Portuguese police forces function, talks to him: “I was talking with them for 5 minutes, when I suddenly noticed that the photographer from the Mirror was taking pictures of me”.

Hours later, it’s Ian Woods, an anchor from Sky, who comes closer. Robert has one flaw, he speaks too much. And he says a fatal phrase: “You know, this affects me very much, because I’m divorced and I have a daughter who is almost the same age as Madeleine”. Woods asks for his full name. Filled with the spirit of the police investigation, Robert becomes suspicious: “I told him my name was Rob and I ended the conversation”.

The next day, Lory Campbell makes a denunciation to the police in Leicester, the McCanns’ city: she had discovered a suspect. Not only did Robert refuse to tell the journalists his full name, but he was also concerned about being photographed. Lory finishes: “He made a great show by calling his daughter in front of the reporters”.

The police process is rapidly clogged up by denunciations from several journalists and anonymous sources about Robert’s behaviour: “To this day, I don’t understand how I was placed in this, but someone was very interested in finding a culprit rapidly”. The next day, he is at Baptista supermarket, when Gaynor Jesus walks in, whom he hadn’t seen in years. Half joking, the childhood friend tells him: “Do you know that among the journalists, you’re being mentioned as the main suspect”. Robert also laughed.

Seven days later, following a search on his house – where they only found a vi-brator, batteries and a literary text on Casanova – the Public Ministery decides there are strong suspicions that Murat could be Maddie’s kidnapper. Gaynor Jesus, who is still working as Sky’s interpreter, is interviewed by Ian Woods and uses Robert’s blindness for a macabre portrait: “When we were kids, while playing, he had a glass eye that he would hold in his hand to scare us”.

Contacted by Sol, members of the GNR who were on location on the night that Maddie disappeared guaranteed they didn’t see Murat at the time. That version is confirmed by several English citizens, who live in the area and participated in the searches.

But three members of the McCanns’ group – who started out by saying they didn’t see anything or anyone suspicious that night – recover the press’ speech. When, approximately a month ago, Russell O’Brien, Rachel and Fiona were confronted with Murat at the PJ, they repeated the information that had been published by the media. According to a source that watched the confrontation, Russell guaranteed that Murat had told him: “I’m helping because I’m divorced and I have a daughter who is the same age”. And Fiona assured (although it was nighttime): “I’m certain it was him because he has a weird eye”.

To Robert, today, revolt has replaced his fears: “This is not going to remain this way”.