Praia da Luz, Why Have You Forsaken the McCanns?

Now, for those who don’t believe in Him, an opinion which I respect, you must at least agree with me that PdL seems to have been drawn up by someone that really, really wanted to make life as difficult as possible for the McCanns to get successfully away with their evil deed.

As PdL has been where it has long before the Tapas ever arrived there, one can only attribute this to an Entity beyond humanity.

I call him God, you may, or may not. Call It something else. If you do believe in Him, well, you must also agree that He’s one great prankster with the McCanns.

I can just imagine Him and Maddie giggling down on all the stupidity that her parents have put themselves into and are still stuck with in.

First, if you remember, if someone was to kidnap someone from Apartment 5A at PdL, he would go the opposite way in which Jane Tanner saw him go, as was not it's only the fastest way out for PdL, as it was where the best cover provided for such a thing to be done.

Whoever made those roads go they way they go and connect the way they do could only be thinking in making the McCann's life hard.

Then, we saw that the shortest way to the beach from the Ocean Club is, as you know, blocked. So the natural path takes one by the PdL Church, which the McCanns so much want to us to know that they don’t know it existed.

And you know why they want you to believe that? Because the Church is way too near where all the fun is, and where the fun is, is where you’re most likely to find a witness, when you want to find one.

We also saw that the Rua da Escola Primária was the most possible inconvenient location to stage a abduction simulation. Its shortness, its lighting, its varying steepness and its various multitudes of options to avoid it and avoid being seen in it, makes it mandatory for anyone to be seen there carrying barefooted blonde little girl on chilly night be only because he wanted to be seen there carrying barefooted blonde little girl there.

Couldn’t that street just be a tiny little shorter, a little bit darker and filled all the way with houses from top to bottom?

We also saw that dumping on the body on the beach made no sense whatsoever.

It also made no sense to be in Rua da Escola Primária if you wanted dump a body anywhere on the coast line.

Terrible little town when you just want to get away with a little "white" lie of hiding the fact that a little girl died there…

There are indeed many other little things about PdL that seem to really play against the McCanns that I’ll speak of them later, like the fact that the Tapas Bar has the entrance it has, and the space the bar has, or that the front entrances to the Apartments seem to have been drawn up just to contradict these people, and  other such details, that I’ll keep to myself at this point in time.

It’s like PdL is itself a “Divine Conspiracy” against the McCanns.

Today I want to highlight another one of these of these things.

Mrs Fenn, says “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.”

From her words, besides those that are quite explicit (“Upon leaning over the terrace, after having seen the mother” and “from her balcony, which had a view over the terrace of the floor below”) one can infer that Mrs and Mr McCann are together or close to each other when the facts said above happened. She sees Kate in despair and asks Gerry, right? Now let’s look at the Apartments 5A (McCann’s) and 5G (Fenn’s):
 
Now from another angle:
Have you noticed where the problem is? No, I’ll help you:
  Doesn’t it seem that that thing was put there just to contradict Mrs Fenn's statement?

Like when they built that building by placing that simply decorative ledge they just “wanted” to clearly hamper the communication between those two specific floors? Making it impossible for the floor to have ANY visual contact with the terrace below?

We now get to know, for certain, that Mrs Fenn, from her balcony, DOESN’T have a view of the terrace, the immediate area of the street near the Apartment 5A, and to see the gate itself, only with a great deal of “leaning”… which might make us go back and review that whole thing about hearing or not the opening of the gate…
 
Would Gerry McCann be able to communicate with Mrs Fenn if standing on his terrace as pictured above? No, he wouldn’t. But does that mean that Mrs Fenn can’t speak to her downstairs neighbours, from her balcony, if she so desires? Of course she can:

There’s a small space in the McCann’s terrace, right in front of the couple’s bedroom where both parties can speak to each other.

By the way, that litttle ledge of terrace, has almost been ignored as existing up to now, but it’s there, as is shown, and not much used, and not much sense in using it.

Theoretically, then, that’s where Kate and Gerry were standing when Mrs Fenn saw and spoke to them. Kate, hysterically shouting “we’ve let her down, we’ve let her down”, and Gerry providing Mrs Fenn with the necessary clarification that "a small child" (why not his daughter?) had been abducted.

Sounds realistic to you?

To me, it doesn’t either, but let’s not let ourselves just go on feelings here.

We know for an alleged fact, that Kate sounds the alarm down at Tapas, and returns to the Apartment, followed closely by the remainder of the present Tapas, with the exception of Dianne Webster.

So we have either Kate coming up those apartment’s stairs alone, followed by the group where Gerry is included, or the group arriving together, Kate included.

It’s not humanly possible, much less for an elderly lady, for Mrs Fenn to, from when she hears the gate open, have the time to get up from her chair, open her balcony doors and lean over before the whole group is inside the Apartment below.

And Kate, as far as we know, hasn’t started to shout hysterically yet. REPEATEDLY.

And, we must also say, that Mrs Fenn doesn’t say anywhere that she does sees a group… So, definitely it’s not at this moment that she communicates with the couple.

We know also, as an alleged fact, that the McCanns didn’t search outside for their daughter.

We’re almost led to believe that they stayed inside the Apartment the whole time as soon as they arrived there. We now know that that is not allegedly so.

We have at least, that strange episode where Gerry throws himself incomprehensibly on the floor OUTSIDE, and we have Fiona Payne’s rogatory statement that clarifies things quite well:

1485 "How was Kate?”
Reply “Awful, I’ve never seen such horrible raw emotion in my life and I’ve seen a lot of it in my job. She, she was just bereft, she didn’t know what to do, she was just panicking, extremely frightened, extremely frightened for Madeleine and, was wondering where she was or what was happening to her. And the helplessness, of not being able to do anything, what should she be doing, what could they do.
She was angry, really angry, punching walls, kicking walls, she was covered in bruises the next day, because she just didn’t know what, what else to do.
She was angry at herself, she kept saying ‘I’ve let her down. We’ve let her down Gerry’, ‘We should have been here’. She was praying a lot.
I just don’t think she knew what to do, what to do. And she was just howling.
It was just, just awful. I think as time went on it just seemed a massive delay from when we said to Matt to phone the Police, that hour, it was an hour, it just seemed like an eternity, where nothing was happening, tut.
We’re all intelligent people, we were all trying to think what we should be doing and, what’s going to make a difference. And Kate’s ringing, Gerry’s ringing anybody under the sun, family, they just don’t, they honestly just didn’t know what to do..
So there was a lot of, Gerry’s in and out, I mean, they were just sobbing, going between sobbing and then feeling helpless and then ringing people and this frantic activity.
Kate was desperate to have a Priest, which, people find weird, but I think that was just her way of thinking ‘At least I can pray for Madeleine’ and her way of feeling that she was doing something. But she wasn’t functioning”.

1485 “Did the twins wake up at all?”
Reply “They didn’t. They didn’t”.

1485 “In the aftermath?”
Reply “No, and that was the other thing, she kept going into the twins, she kept putting her hands on the twins to check they were breathing, she was very much concerned in checking that they were okay.
But they were okay, I mean, they were fine, they didn’t, they were asleep, but at the time it did seem weird, I remember thinking, when the Police came they turned the lights on, there was loads of noise, obviously from the moment Kate discovered that Madeleine was gone, the screaming and the shouting and there was a lot of noise and they, they didn’t, so much as blink”.

1485 “When you were with Kate in the aftermath, who else was in the apartment, I know you say that Gerry was coming and going, was there any other?”
Reply “Gerry was coming and going. Dave came in and, he came in initially with me, when I went to Kate, I don’t think he went in any of the bedrooms, I think he was just mainly in the living room trying to put together what they should all be doing really, he was talking more to Gerry, so he was in. I didn’t see Russell or any of the other group in, in Kate and Gerry’s apartment.
Fairly soon after, a girl called Emma, who, I don’t know what her position in MARK WARNER was, she was sort of I don’t know what you call them, she was mainly working at the reception area, just as a, tut, I don’t know what you call her job title, she was sort of looking after everybody”.

1485 “Just one of the travel assistants or something, yeah?”
Reply “Yeah. I mean, I don’t know what time she got there, it seemed quite early on, she was, she was in the room for the most part, it was me, Emma and Kate with Gerry and Dave sort of to’ing and fro’ing until the first lot of Police arrived”.

From her statement one can easily understand that Gerry went in and out various times, and could, certainly, be called by the non-curious and non-busybody and very reclusive elderly Mrs Fenn, and went into that little ledge of terrace and told her that a small girl had been abducted.

Perfectly natural, one would even dare say, Of course he could have asked her if she had, by any chance seen the small child, which by chance happened to be his daughter, around somewhere near, or, as he was absolutely certain that she had been abducted, if she had seen something or someone strange or unusual.

He could, but doesn’t.

As we know, he knew she hadn’t seen anything, so why bother waste time, when there are more important things are to be done like… ringing up family and everyone under the sun that late at night?

So the conversation between Gerry and Pamela is now, I hope, clear. As mud.

Also, from Fiona’s statement we can deduce that Kate was uncontrolled, INSIDE the apartment, her movements seem to be between the couple’s bedroom to the other to check on the twins. And banging walls.

And from the phrase “when I went to Kate, I don’t think he (David) went in any of the bedrooms”, we’re led to believe that when Fiona arrived, Kate was already in the bedroom, thus answering the previous question if Kate had or not arrived ahead of the group.

Fiona also says that Kate kept SAYING “I’ve let her down”, that she was PRAYING a lot and was just HOWLING.

I don’t know about you, but for me, howling is just the production of sound in an incomprehensible and very loud manner.

Not exactly perceptible, and not, I do think, to be taken as the already mentioned “we’ve let her down” hysterical screaming.

Mrs Fenn’s statement ONLY is coherent with Fiona Payne’s one if Kate went on that little ledge of the terrace and howled or hysterically screamed “we’ve let her down”. Then, and only then,  she could've been seen by the elderly lady, because as the elderly lady says, she did see Kate.

Pity nobody but Mrs Fenn reports such a public demonstration of despair on Kate’s part. Or odd. Or telling.

I’ve said, and maintain, that “we’ve let her down” was an expression used by Kate PUBLICLY ONLY in the Tapas Bar, so either Mrs Fenn learned it in the way I just described above, or somebody told her (possibly over a cup of tea...), that Kate had said those exact words.

And if someone told her that, they might also have told her that she could use that information as if she herad it herself, thet it would be safe and correct to use it. If that did happen then… well, to put it bluntly, she’s lying because it didn't, in reality, occur in her presence.

Unless, of course, like I just said, she did see Kate on that little ledge.

I think that now, and I hope you agree with me, both Gerry’s dialogue, or monologue, with Mrs. Fenn's witnessing Kate’s hysterical shouting is clarified.

I can’t place these three characters, under the described conditions, together at around about 22:30, Mrs Fenn leaning on her balcony and Kate and Gerry being on that little ledge of the terrace. Can you?

I’ll leave you some pictures of where all this supposedly happened, so that you may help me, if you so desire.

Update on Nov 24th, 2010: A photo sent in by a reader (sorry, I couldn't see which other two you were referring to):

 

Clearly, the lady on the balcony, which we suppose to be Mrs Fenn, can indeed see the stairs, although she does have to lean to do so, as we've said. But what is questionable is her "clear" view to the terrace below, which, in this picture, seems to be impossible.

Also very important in this picture, she CANNOT see the GNR standing outside on the street, or anyone else that might happen to be there.