All Paths Lead to Rome

The Portuguese have this very wise saying that “all paths lead to Rome”. This saying goes back to the time when the Romans occupied the Iberian Peninsula, and basically means that, like all roads that at that time of human history were built with the main objective to connect everywhere known to the Empire's capital, Rome, so as in many different ways you may choose to do something, you inevitably reach the same conclusion independent of the choice made.

Mrs Fenn’s statement is a perfect example of that. Why is it so important?

Notice that when I make the question I don’t bring up the subject of whether it was true or not, that whatever was said.

You see, it’s simply irrelevant the way you look at her statement, as from any possible angle it’s always HIGHLY unfavorable, not only to the McCanns, but all those that were involved that night.

We now know that it’s a fact that, on Aug 20th, 2007, she said, and signed, that she witnessed a child negligence incident that happened between 22:30 and 23:45, on the night of May 1st, 2007.

Let me just say, beforehand, that if she’s told the truth, then it proves the Tapas hide a greater lie than the one they’ve wanted us to believe in, but, and that’s the beauty of this, it's better for those with a guilty conscience that she has indeed told the truth than have her proven a liar.

That is how important the Mrs Fenn statement is.

Negligence is the most recurrent theme of this never ending story. We keep bumping into it in almost every its chapter. So much so, that when the McCann name is pronounced, the word “negligent” just simply pops up.

It's said that a lie repeated a million times becomes inevitably the truth. History teaches us that.

It also teaches us that those lies that aren't definitely clarified become either legends or urban myths. Time provides them with the necessary cloaking to be impossible for them be proven wrong or right, or even if the events told even happened at all.

And that was on what the McCanns have betted on. That if you discussed hard enough how negligent they were, the abduction would always REMAIN lurking in the background.

And as long as it stayed there, then it became a reality; because it will remain a possibility, however absurd.

From there to "myth" it's just that small step of becoming an "unsolved mistery"... So they've rammed, time and time again, down our throats, that they were the most negligent people ever conceived by mankind.

By the way, I would too. If I had, as they did, my back covered by those responsible for having the Social Services act as they did in the circumstances, which was to make me sure  that they wouldn’t do anything   however much I shouted out loud how negligent I had been.

Better said, if I was assured by someone responsible that they wouldn’t, right Jim? We know the Social Services didn’t, haven’t and won’t, do a thing about the McCanns.

But there’s negligence, and then there’s negligence. It’s said for a just reason that always, really always, one has to be careful on what one wishes for, for one may just may have his wishes granted. And that’s what happened with the McCanns.

Pamela Fenn’s “negligence” has got nothing to do with the McCann's “negligence”.

It’s like asking two people, one who lives in a country cottage, the other in a city apartment, to describe where they reside. Both will speak of “living quarters” but with little else in common.

You see, the McCanns just wanted a thin, evenly spread layer of negligence, you know, it’s there but you can hardly taste it; but Mrs Fenn, dipped an enormous spreader real deep into the jar and applied one nice, rich, thick layer of the thing.

Later, in another post, we’ll see that this was not exactly the result of her enthusiasm but rather to a misleading sense of urgency, so as to nail the negligence message right into some “thick” skull that just kept on insisting on looking towards the wrong direction: the one that pointed to Maddie’s death.

Now, let’s flip a coin. If it is heads we’ll look at Pamela Fenn’s statement as being true, tails, as false. Heads it is. So, let’s pretend it’s true.
 

But for that to be, we also have to pretend that we have this elderly lady who after having put up, for one hour and fifteen minutes, with a toddler’s ear-piercing crying; that when she finally hears the child’s parents arrive, she doesn’t even bother to come to her balcony, which apparently had a view over the terrace of the floor below, lean over and tell them something.


We know the crying must have been so annoying that she “contacted a friend called EDNA GLYN, who also lives in Praia da Luz, after 23.00, telling her about the situation”.

We know that her friend "was not surprised at the child’s crying”. That might appeased her a bit, but certainly doesn’t seem enough to wipe away her concerns and discomfort that made her make that phone call in the first place.

For some reason she did make it. So why on earth, doesn’t she say something to her parents when she hears them arrive? A simple and justified demand for respect was certainly deserved from these people.

Negligence wouldn’t cross my mind at that moment, but stupidity, egoism and lack of civility definitely would.

I would certainly tell them off, and would also tell them, in no uncertain terms, that a repeat performance would mean the immediate calling of police.

Oh, but say you, this peaceful elderly lady didn’t any problems with her neighbors, and so preferred to remain politely in silence.

I for one, would have dressed up, charged into Tapas and asked if anyone there was the parent of the the child that was crying her heart out alone in her apartment. And if I got no answer, I would make sure I waited for those parents and let them have it.

But Mrs Fenn seems to be a peaceful lady. Me, I'm not peaceful, and some even say I'm no lady. Ok, then, if not out of pure annoyance, shouldn’t she have approached the parents with concerns regarding the child’s health?

It’s not at all natural for a child to be crying for such a long time, so if I hadn’t yet called for help, I would certainly be attentive for the child’s parent's arrival and inform them at once of this vital piece of information. It could prove to be the difference between life and death.

Apparently, Mrs Fenn was the only person to know that that child had cried for an hour and fifteen minutes, so she surely just had to say THAT to the parents, don’t you think?

Oh, say you again, her friend Edna wasn’t surprised that the child cried.

Why, she doesn’t say. It seems then, that like the “Happy Hour” in bars worldwide, there seems to have been in PdL, at least in April/May, an “Unhappy Hour”.

Apparently, it took place between from 22.30 to 23.30 whereby some child was designated to cry her lungs out to the little village’s contentment.

On that particular night, it was Maddie’s turn, as it can be deduced the surprising remark from Mrs Fenn’s unsurprised friend.

So based on her friend’s reliable and justified opinion, Mrs Fenn simply dismisses the one hour and fifteen minutes crying as just “perhaps a nightmare or another destabilising factor”; and when she hears the parents arrive, she either goes to bed, or just adjusts the pillow if she was already in it.

So, for her statement to be TRUE we must then pretend that she’s simply not a curious person, and much less a busybody. Not a hard thing to do. The pretending that is.

Is that all we have to pretend? No. We must also pretend that although she’s not a curious person, and much less a busybody, she was indeed curious enough when two nights later at 22:30 (now that is one unhappy hour in PdL…) “when, being alone again, she heard the hysterical shouts from a female person, calling out ?we have let her down? which she repeated several times, quite upset. Mrs Fenn then saw that it was the mother of little Madeleine who was shouting furiously. Upon leaning over the terrace, after having seen the mother, Mrs Fenn asked the father, Gerry, what was happening to which he replied that a small girl had been abducted. When asked, she replied that she did not leave her apartment, just spoke to Gerry from her balcony, which had a view over the terrace of the floor below.”

So we have a person that when hearing a child crying for one hour and fifteen minutes, and, half an hour after that crying had started, makes a single phone call, is pretty much satisfied with a vague answer from a friend and patiently puts up for another 45 minutes of crying, BUT when she hears the hysterical shouts of a grown woman she immediately goes to the balcony and tries to find out what was going on.

Ok, so we pretend that this is normal and continue, shall we? Sorry, no. We also have to pretend that 109 days afterwards, that's more than THREE months, that, while around her much, much younger people seem to have lost memory for many of the details of what had happened that night, she remembers quite vividly the insistence of both the mother on having let some female down and of the father on there having been an abduction.

Interesting memory selectivity for someone so able to detach herself from whatever surrounds her like that time a child cried, in the apartment directly below, for one hour and fifteen minutes, and as soon as she stopped, she just went back to whatever she was doing.

And so, so interesting capability of remembering Kate’s “we’ve let her down”. I thought that Kate had said this only in the Tapas Bar.

Either memory fails me, or she couldn’t have known this unless she had nice conversations, afterwards, in those 109 days and certainly over a nice cup of tea, with Kate.

Yes, I know I’m starting to annoy you. It’s a little too much to pretend, but the coin determined that we should proceed as if Mrs Fenn statement was TRUE, remember? So this much is what we must pretend, mustn't we?

So Pamela Fenn has spoken the truth, nothing but the truth, and let’s then see what the truth doth tell us.

It tells us, plain and simple, that a single child cried inside Apartment 5A of PdL Ocean Club, on the night of May 1st, 2007, from 22:30 to 23:45. These are FACTS, if, and only if, Mrs Fenn is saying the truth. Don’t forget that for a single minute, please. No other witness report this and this fact is very important.

The McCanns report something of the kind, but having happened on the following night, May 2nd, which is a completely different thing.

Later, you’ll see that I’m not being needlessly precise here, nor leaving any margin of error for Mr. Fenn. She remembers so many details, that two days… are two whole days, and there’s a reason for her to pinpoint this particular day as the day it happened.

From her statement, it’s also a fact that no adult came to that crying child’s rescue during that one hour and fifteen minutes.

Also a fact, according to Pamela, the twins didn’t join or react in anyway, as would be natural and expected, to one hour and fifteen minutes of her sister's crying, in a manner loud enough to concern the upstairs neighbor.

Another fact extracted from this statement is that no other child of the Tapas group not of the McCann clan, joined in or reacted to this crying, clearly audible to the upstairs apartment, so certainly to the neighboring one too.

Now let’s leave Mrs Fenn’s statement for a while, and look what else we know, or better, we have been told, with which it can be implicated with or be relevant to.

We know, and please do forgive me for not detailing where exactly this is said, as the sources are too many, in diversity and quantity, within PJ Files, of the existence of a “Child Checking System” (CCS), implemented, I believe, from April 29th, and executed to the night Maddie disappeared.

Let’s pay some attention to the characteristics of this alleged CCS.

It wasn’t a collective “Tapas CCS”, as each Tapas couple had their respective CCS.

The Payne’s CCS (PCCS) was based on a baby listening device, which spared the members of this family to conduct the personal physical checks. The PCCS is irrelevant for today’s post so we won’t speak of it again today. I’ll say a word or two about the listening device later on however.

The McCann’s CCS (MCCS), the O’Brien’s CCS (O’CCS) and the Oldfield CCS (OCCS), were, apparently, all independent, in which each member of the respective couple would check physically, each half hour, on their own children.

There is no reported “accompanied” checking between the MCCS, O’CCS and the OCCS.

That means that every half an hour, THREE adults would go from the Tapas Bar to the Apartments, and then come back.

If we say, that it took 5 minutes to go from the Tapas to check the children, the round trip would be then of 10 minutes.

That alone means there was a continuous movement of "children checking" up and down that particular street. We have no record on how was this was coordinated between the couples.

It seems that IF it was done in random manner, then there surely would have been, one time or another, a coincidence of schedule’s between the CCSs, meaning that members of different couples would walk together to do the checking.

Nothing more natural… however, not reported once, as far as we know.

We do have one incident reported, and one only (there certainly might have been others, but only this one was reported, so is to be assumed as an exception and not as a rule), that one member of a CCS offered to substitute the member of another. It was when Matt Oldfield checked on the McCann children, by coincidence, minutes before Maddie was supposedly abducted.

We’re also told, with clarity, that both the OCCS and the O’CCS used their apartment’s front door to enter and exit, and certified that the door was locked each time they left.

Back to Fenn’s statement, it’s quite clear that the MCCS collapsed totally on May 1st.

When the McCanns made their first statements on May 4th, they surely knew of this, or at least should have known that for at least one hour and fifteen minutes, on May 1st, they didn’t check on their children.

So when they say nothing unusual happened on May 1st, either they’re lying with all the teeth they have or they consider that one hour and fifteen minutes of not checking their children is perfectly normal and reasonable.

As it is neither normal nor reasonable, even if they consider it so, or be it they’re lying to hide the fact, one can say, with reason, that the MCCS, at least on May 1st, was a total blunder, a complete flop, a disgraceful incompetence.

This lack of checking on the part of the McCanns, would have been noticed by the other parents, however, this collapse of the MCCS isn’t mentioned anywhere by anyone in any statement.

Would it be important to be mentioned? Well, their daughter had just been abducted, they said, they had a CCS mounted up, they said that too, but do not say to the police that this CCS flopped two nights before the kidnap.

Neither do the McCanns say it, nor do any of the other Tapas. Only Mrs Fenn, 109 days later. Strange...

We know from Mrs Fenn that it was AT LEAST one hour and fifteen minutes, but who knows for how long really didn’t the McCanns check on their children?

This would certainly a highly important piece of information for the police to have, as it basically means that for one hour and fifteen minutes there was a “loudspeaker” announcing that the “security system” had a major flaw. Basically like putting up a sign on a shop window saying “Notice: this store has the alarm temporarily out of order. Apologies for the inconvenience”:
 

With this information the profiling done by the police of the possible abductor would have been completely different.

Remember that it’s assumed that we are before a planned abduction, that the criminal observed this family and pounced when he thought adequate and opportune.

With this piece of information, it would mean that, possibly, on May 1st, the suspect that had had the opportunity for a whole hour and fifteen minutes to abduct Maddie, then and there, opted instead, even seeing how careless the McCanns were, to take action on a different night.

It would raise the possibility of the predator only deciding on the victim then and there, on May 1st, after seeing what he saw, and preparing whatever he had to prepare and attack two days later.

The clues that the abductor could have left in these two days of preparation could have been tracked by the police, and could have quickly led them to the criminal.

But the McCanns decided not to remember to tell this to the police.

They remembered to tell the police all about the tennis, about how far away was the Millenium, and even about the detail of the wine being from New Zealand.

They even remembered that oh-so-touching “Maddie’s question”, but were careful to add it up with the “nothing unusual”.

They just didn’t remember that on the night of May 1st they did no checking after 22:30, until they arrived home at 23:45.

Wasn’t that the night they arrived separately after a jealous spout?

So, they do remember some details of that evening. By the way, Mrs Fenn speaks of the arrival of the parents, and not of separate arrivals.

So she hears the gate, thinks it is the couple, and falls asleep in less than 5 minutes, which, I might dare say, is pretty impressive.

The McCanns might, you say, have been both so drunk, and effectively did no checks, and that they were just too ashamed to admit it.

After all, this would only confirm what they’ve revealed from then on to this day: that they care more about themselves than about their supposedly abducted child.

So the MCCS flunked absolutely, proving that the McCanns were sloppy and careless, thus providing the abductor the opportunity for him (or her) to do the foul deed that would be done two days later.

THAT is what they’d like you think, I hope you realize that by now.

Now stop for a minute and answer this: where were the O’CCS and the OCCS during that one hour and fifteen minutes? We’re talking about FOUR adults, to and fro, every single hour.

That means that in that hour and fifteen minutes, those two other apartments were PHYSICALLY checked by SIX adults. If you can’t do the math, let me explain, TWO per apartment per hour, which makes FOUR between 22:30 and 23:30, plus the first check, ONE per apartment, which means TWO adults, for the second hour, totaling SIX adults.

I’ll be benign, and say FOUR to SIX adults checked their children between 22:30 and 23:45 on May 1st, 2007.

Let’s remember that they do go and do come back. So, clearly, while the child cried, EIGHT to TWELVE adults passed, on the way to and from their own apartments, by the THREE East facing windows of Apartment 5A:
Now, try to picture PdL at night.

Just imagine the immense silence.

There are some people that even hear sirens nobody else does.

I’ll bet that from the balcony of Apartment 5A, you would not understand the conversations at the Tapas bar, but they would certainly be audible.

And the Brit loud laughter is known worldwide, and it is not for its discretion, but is not as loud as the crying of a lonely terrified or sick child. Just ask Mrs Fenn.

And it’s no excuse that Maddie cried indoors. How many times have you heard grown people arguing from inside their homes?

Mrs Fenn, from her apartment hears the gate open, but EIGHT to TWELVE adults, all walking not more than fifteen feet away from a crying child (a daughter of a friend of theirs), hear absolutely nothing… or at least they don’t say they do.

We know that Mrs Fenn heard it, so it would be equally audible in the apartment next door, as was in the one upstairs. Who do we have next door? The Oldfields.

Let’s look then at the OCCS, the neighboring CCS of the flunked MCCS, that although going NEXT door, do not hear the child crying. The Oldfields, as I said, are TWO to THREE times less than fifteen feet, in the case their child is sleeping in the lounge, or much less, if she's sleeping in their room, the ADJACENT one to Maddie's, and INDOORS, from the crying child and simply don’t hear her. Or, once again, never say they do.

Adding these to those said that happened outside, we have ELEVEN to FIFTEEN opportunities for the child to have been heard either by the Oldfields or by the O’Brien’s.

FOUR absolutely deaf adults.

In the silence of the PdL, I bet that even the Payne’s listening device would have picked Maddie’s crying.

If it was switched on, that is, or if Maddie had really cried, but those are whole different stories.

Quiz Night was that night, remember? No wonder Gerry invited Najoua to the table, as, it seems, nobody that sat around it could hear the questions. No, wait… Najoua also had Quiz Night that night of the week at Chaplin’s, so was long gone from Tapas before 22:30…

Either the McCanns were negligent and the remainder deaf, or, on THAT particular night, ALL Tapas CCS (except PCCS) were, by coincidence, negligent.

I’ve never heard of any hearing disability of any of them… so I do go for collective negligence of ALL independent CCSs.

You see, if Mrs Fenn has spoken the truth, it proves one of the following: that either the McCanns, the O’Briens and the Oldfields were ALL negligent on their CCS on May 1st, 2007, or that there was simply NO CCS whatsoever, in any of the families.

It does not imply… it proves.

And it’s not only Mrs Fenn that is saying it… it’s the McCanns, the Paynes, the Oldfields and the O’Briens that also say it… by never mentioning it anywhere in their respective statements.

They ALL, with NO EXCEPTIONS, forget to tell about this episode to the police.

And you know why they didn’t? Because they had nothing to say. For anything to fail, it has first to exist. And if it didn’t exist, it's only possible due to the two reasons mentioned, they were either ALL neglectful or a CCS didn’t exist.

And, for ALL of them to have been negligent, there is ONE thing that MUST've happened: they had to be at the Tapas Bar, because if they were somewhere else, then the negligence just flies away with “the good parenting distance”… it becomes ABSENCE.

And that is where Mrs Fenn’s statement is so beautiful, in that if she’s lying, she proves the exact same thing as she does if she’s telling the truth.

But if she's lying, she does prove much more than that. Oh, you’ve forgotten that we were ONLY assuming that Mrs Fenn was telling the truth up to now…

It's alright, I. in turn, "forgot" to tell you that I flipped a double-headed coin.