... at least, in Portugal, Praia da Luz, August 2007... there were none, it seems!
Monday, 30 January 2012
Saturday, 28 January 2012
Textusa's Phone Hacking Scandal #1
We have something to confess. Besides all we’ve said about what we thought and think about the Leveson Inquiry, we have to tell that it affected us personally.You see, we hoped we were going to be summoned to the phone hacking hearings. The Levenson Inquiry dashed our hopes. Once this one started, the other circus' matinee was over...
You see, us Sisters, have to confess that we’ve fictionally done some fictional phone hacking of our own.
We had my eldest grandson, who we pretended to be an electronics genius, to come up with a contraption made up of empty cans, a couple of wire coat-hangers, a fan, an old spark plug Fred had in the garage, and an electric cord, with which we made believe that we could tap on any phone conversation. Provided it was fictional, of course.
What we can't understand is why we weren’t summoned to the hearings. The fact that all our hacks are FICTIONAL should have been an added reason for us to be summoned. After all, wasn’t most of what we heard in them total and absolute FICTION?
No we’re not speaking about the Leveson Inquiry. That’s as fictional, if not more, but not hardly the place to discuss fictional phone hackings… just fictional journalistic ethics. Now, THAT is one enormous fictional subject even in the non-fictional world…
Our fictional hacking should have also being subjected to question, no question about it. But it wasn’t. So we’ve decided to share with our readers all our fictional tapes.
Today we publish the first of a number of fictionally hacked fictional phone calls:
PHONE CALL #1:
F: Has he shown up yet?
G: No, not that I know of…
F: The Portuguese cop hasn’t given you any indication that he may have contacted them?
G: No.
F: Our cops know nothing also… Why, in heaven’s sake, did he have to fly out the next day?!? Damn it!!..
G: Are you sure that it’s the Ss?
F: From what you told me, it can only be them! It was a big family, right? The woman was pregnant, right?
G: Yes… just like I told you, it was a big group, a couple in front with a woman, as I said, pregnant, then the older couple with the toddlers, and then by the stairs the youngsters… not exactly sure how many... Let me see… two… then four, and then three or four. That… makes it either nine or ten…
F: There aren't that many big families around here, so they have to be the Ss alright. The man was (description of S), right?
G: Yes and the woman was (description of S’s wife), like I've told you a thousand times… when I stopped at the crossing, one of the older couple said something to me, I'm not exactly sure what or who said it, if it was him or her, I don't remember which... but I do remember that it was clearly Irish, that I'm absolutely sure of. Listen, I practically ran over the man and his entire family!! And talking about that, you know, I'm starting to a worry about something...
F: What is it?
G: What if he recognizes me?
F: Isn't that what we want to happen?
G: No, I mean, what if he recognizes me... as in ME? All this circus is making my face much too familiar to everyone... If he had gone to the cops on Friday, when he should have, he obviously wouldn't be able to tell me apart from anyone else, but he didn't go, did he? As time passes on so are the chances of him going to the cops saying that's ME he saw, and not some abstract abductor, you know... He did get a pretty damn close look at me, I tell you... What do we do if he says that it was me?
F: So? What's wrong if he does? Don't you have all your friends saying that you were with them? And the Tapas people that confirm that? The only problem I see of him saying that, is that most likely the police won't take his statement seriously, and that's a problem, them thinking that he's just another joker with visions, so let's really hope he doesn't say that, ok? If he does, we can only hope the cops do take him seriously and think he's using your, as you say, familiar face to describe the kind of man he saw. I mean, besides your accent, you have no other uncommon feature that makes you any different from any other "normal" man, now do you? With your current popularity plus what your friends and Tapas have said and continue to say, we shouldn't expect any problems. It will never cross anyone's minds that you could be... you. Damn S and his travel plans, by now this all could be done with!!
G: You were pretty happy when I told you the first time who I had bumped into… remember? Remember you said that it had been a pretty darn good stroke of luck, you even said it was a typical case of "luck of the Irish", that I had run into S, who you just happen to know, and not into any of the locals!!
F: Yes, yes… but who could have guessed that they would be flying the next morning?!? I’ve already confirmed that the Ss were here, the whole lot of them, and that they did fly Friday morning back to Ireland. But what on earth’s sake is keeping him from coming?!? It can’t be that he doesn’t know by now about your daughter…
G: What? With this entire circus? He’d be the only living soul in the whole world to miss it… He will come, I’m sure. He has to come!
F: Yes, but until then we can’t just sit still, can we?!? No way can we allow for the PJ to start poking their filthy noses where they shouldn't… You never know what they do if they found out or just happen to stumble on what was going on. I’m starting to get calls from people who are getting very, very nervous, and when these people get nervous they get nervous, if you know what I mean…
G: I understand, I understand… if I couldn’t afford the scandal myself, I can just imagine what would happen to some of those that were on the resort if it what we were all up to was to be known…
F: Yes… we had a pretty good thing going until you lot spoiled it all up. Can you just imagine the amount of time and effort it took us to set up something like this?!? And the money and trust that I'm losing with this thing?!?
G: He’s already said he was sorry…
F: And?!? You know what I feel like doing with him and his sorrow?!? Do you have the faintest idea of the size of the scandal this would be back home if we weren’t we were and knew who we know?!?…
G: Calm down, calm down… you did say that on our side all was taken care of?
F: Yes, yes… our Government has guaranteed that they won’t ever allow for this ever to be known, and the Portuguese Government is being dealt with, if it hasn’t happened that already…
G: So that means that the PJ is also up to speed, right?
F: As I told you, I don’t know what has been done, nor do I know what kind of control they have over the PJ or any, but from what I’ve followed with the Freeport and the Casa Pia, the cops on the field are not that controllable... in this Country the control seems to be made more on an upper level...
G: Meaning?
F: Meaning we can’t run any sort of risk. Our cops are our cops, their cops are theirs, and the less they know, and, very important, the less they discover, the better. No one has guaranteed us that the PJ will remain silent if they discover what was going on here…
G: But we weren’t doing anything illegal…
F: No, we were NOT, were we? But you did agree to lie about your own daughter’s death, didn’t you? And it didn’t take a lot pushing as I remember…
G: We would all be jobless in the bat of an eye… and our house…
F: Listen, I’ve been thinking, until S finally decides to speak, we have to keep the abduction story alive. We just have to maintain the pressure in that direction without letting go so the PJ isn't able to go in any other direction but abduction! Absolutely no other direction, understand?
G: From the first minute I’ve understood that!! I did my bit, didn't I? Walked until I was seen, didn't I? J has said she saw a guy passing with a girl in his arms, didn't she? And the rest of our group has confirmed that we were on the binge down the road… there’s not much more we can do, is there?
F: No, that's why we'll need to create another S, won’t we?
G: How’s that?
F: You go and see what your friend J told the police what she saw, you know, clothes, general description of the man…
G: That’s easy… she described me.
F: What? She’s an idiot?!?
G: No, no… she had to… from the apartment to M’s, somebody could have seen me, and things would have matched, right? Pity nobody did see me then, otherwise we wouldn’t be needing S right now would we? And I point out that now that we have S speaking also, hopefully soon, J's and S's description of the abductor do match, don't they?
F: Right And no, we wouldn't be needing S if someone saw you going to Ms... You’re right, you’re right… Anyhow, what we have to do is find someone else that has also seen you. Whoever it is can’t be from Luz or anywhere too near this town…
G: Why?
F: Are you daft? How many nights have there been? Three? Four? Wouldn’t the abductor have gained the most distance from here by now?!?
G: I don’t see why the abductor couldn't have seen me around here, I mean S did see me here didn’t he?
F: Yes he did, but that was on the night she was supposed to be taken, right?
G: And?
F: And?!? Don’t forget that S DID see you. He can show up any minute, right? And we DO want him to show up, don’t we?
G: Sure do!
F: So where would we have this new sighting now here in Luz? We already have two different places where he was seen, the one where your friend J says she sees you and the other where S sees you too. When S shows up, don’t you think that having a third location in such a small town is kind of pushing it a bit too far??! The abductor is an abductor, not a grasshopper jumping around with a little girl on his back…
G: But couldn’t it be someone also coming out of Kelly’s just like the Ss?...
F: Do you think so??!? First, that would mean that Kelly did have a life when the idea is for this whole town, which includes that place, to be as lifeless as a desert; or isn't that the supposed reason why you people kept yourselves in the resort all this time? Then this new witness would have to have left Kelly's precisely between not being noticed leaving by the Ss, because if they’re asked about that, they'll have to say that they saw no one leaving with them, because they really didn't see, did they?; and be able to still follow the Ss in time to reach the stairs to see the abductor, right? right? But that's not all, and this would be what would set all alarm bells ringing from here to where you're from, you'd also have the fact that is this new witness would come only now forward. You see what would happen? When S does show up, then we have both witnesses that have seen the abductor, here, in the exact same place and on the exact same night, taking both exactly an "eternity" to come forward and speak!! What do you think the cops would think about that with all the exposure we’ve been able to get around your daughter?!? That Luz is filled with retards?!? It would obviously look rigged! You know what they say, one coincidence, two coincidences – maybe they’re still coincidences. Any more than that and it stops being coincidence.
G: I like that phrase.
F: What phrase?
G: That one about coincidences…
F: What?! You like the phrase, do you? Well do feel free to use it that I won’t charge royalties, ok? I’m talking serious here and you’re paying attention to a catch phrase?!? I’m beginning to think that you’re beginning to like the role you’re playing... that you think that you’re some kind of a funny joker or something of the sort, aren’t you? Do I have to remind you that we’re talking about your dead daughter?!?
G: Sorry…
F: Let me think, will you? We have to have someone seeing your daughter being moved from one hideout to another… don’t worry I’ll find someone. Beige trousers, right?
G: What? Ah… yes, the trousers were beige, yes. But if want be sure, you can always go check, in the tennis bag, what trousers I wore that night... the jeans are J's, the others are mine.
F: The tennis bag has already been dispatched back home, to keep it safe from prying eyes...
G: Oh, of course, of course... we can't take any chances now, can we? It was already enough for us to have called the cops with the bag still in the apartment! What idiots! Then leaving the damn trousers on the bed! My heart almost stopped when I walked into the room with the GNR, and saw them just lying there!!!... How pathetic we must have looked like when we threw ourselves on the floor crying like babies... but that was the only idea I got to distract them... twice! Once so the trousers could be taken off the bed, and the other to get the trousers and the bag out of the apartment! Twice! It resulted... but what a blunder that was...
F: Blunder? Blunder was you lot ever setting foot on Luz! That was what was THE BLUNDER!!!
Monday, 23 January 2012
Debunking Urban Myths: The Unpublished PJ Files
Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Compare and Contrast":
"Who says we know the whole Mrs. Fenn statement?She could have told more incidents to the police.It is possible that she informed the OC the folowing morning and the OC warned the McCanns. That could be the reason that Gerry replied her on the fatal night"a child has been abducted (or disappeared")and he did not say "my daughter disappeared" and Mrs Fenn thought it was odd. He probably had heard about Mrs. Fenn complaints.When the PJ asked Kate about the cry incident, Kate denied it "not true".Kate could have used it for the abduction explanation.
It is posssible that Mrs. Fenn left Portugal short after that night and that she came back in August.
Or it is possible that the OC told the police about her complaints.
It is also possible that there is another statement, telling more and we don't know it(rows, fights).
Within a very short time the police knew there was no abduction.No traces, no evidence."
Posted by Anonymous to Textusa at Jan 20, 2012 10:47:00 AM
This Anonymous’ comment seems to credit, and we're beyond innocence at this point in time, someone who, like so many others, acted in a very despicable manner, Mrs Fenn.
S/he implies that Mrs Fenn may have provided the PJ with some relevant information before late August, 2007.
I have said before, and maintain it, that Mrs Fenn was certainly heard in the hours that followed the PJ arrival at the scene, as a resident of the same building where the events supposedly were to have taken place; and I also said, and maintain, that the fact that there’s no written register of this statement it's because the information she had to provide at the time added little or nothing to the investigation.
At that moment Mrs Fenn was truthful, because she indeed saw and heard nothing, and was yet to be indoctrinated about the goings on, so, the investigators at that point in time ruled her as an irrelevant witness, which she indeed was.
But, says Anonymous, what if she did say something?
If she did, both herself and the PJ enquirers seem to have forgotten to make any mention of it in the sole statement that we can find, and read, in the PJ Files.
But, what if this is ANOTHER statement that is in the “unpublished PJ Files”?
It’s time to debunk yet another urban myth.
I would like today to speak about a piece of clutter that I see mentioned much too often: the infamous unpublished PJ Files.
There are two different types of documentation that are perceived to being part of these unpublished PJ files. I divide them into the following categories: those that I know of and those that I don’t know anything about.
Those that I know of are those that are missing from the files. I don’t know, for certain, and in some cases at all, what their content is, but I know they aren't there. How do I know they’re missing? By the page numbering system used.
This page numbering is of mandatory use in any Portuguese legal documentation that has more than a single page. The objective is to make it impossible any innuendo afterwards about any kind of page or pages that were supposed to exist, but can’t be found. Not to avoid, but to make it absolutely impossible the existence of phenomenons such as the "unpublished PJ Files", subject of the present post.
As a side issue, it also allows to determine a timeframe in which a certain document was put into the files, regardless of any other date mentioned in the document itself.
For example, imagine that page #333 is dated with a statement from Aug 15th, and page #334 has one from Jun 14th. The numbering makes it clear that the attaching sequence was that page #334 was attached on, or after, Aug 15th.
The reason for that 62 day interval, or even a bigger one depending on how able we're to determine when documents that follow it were attached, may be clearly and easily explainable, or not. But that is complete separate topic than the one we intend to discuss in this post.
Fact is that the numbering tells us that the Jun 14th document is attached after the Aug 15th one. The numbering makes the whole documentation be consistent and cohesive. There can be no chance for any of its parts to have its legitimacy questioned.
No page in a Portuguese Legal Process is pulled out of a process without justification. None is thrown away, so if, for some reason, it’s to be disregarded, it’s crossed out, so that the number of pages is consistent with the numbering. For the same reason, no pages are added in between existing ones, as per the Aug 15th/June 14th example above .
One thing we know about the PJ Files, and that is there are, in fact, many missing pages from it. Numbers that have been are skipped, meaning pages that ought to be there but aren't.
The reason for a page to be missing in a file, can be conjectured or justified, more or less clearly, but there’s one absolute certainty that if page #4 is the one that follows page #2, then one, and only one, page is missing, which is obviously page #3, and not a dozen, a hundred, or a thousand.
In this example, the numbering allows us to have ABSOLUTE CERTAINTY that ONE page, and ONLY ONE PAGE is MISSING, and that it was inserted AFTER page #2 and BEFORE page #3. There are no two ways about it. Anything else is pure invention.
It's common to hear say that not all of the PJ Files were published, to justify something that is not in the PJ Files, but may be there... we only don't know if it is or is not, because it may be in the unpublished PJ Files.
Confusing? Yes, and maybe that's the idea.
Unless someone corrects me, the documents that constitute the PJ Files that we have access to are numbered, from beginning to end, in a coherent and consistent manner, as they should be. There are some pages missing, as I’ve said, and I’ll speak about them later, but we’re before a unique, and almost complete, set of pages, which were methodically collated and joined together into what we know to be the PJ Files.
This to say, that there isn't any "big chunk" of the PJ Files, that could be considered as whole process by itself, the "unpublished PJ Files", that we didn't know not only its whereabouts, much less could we guess its approximate size...
Let's see what pages are indeed missing. Those whose numbers don't appear. There are various reasons why they were pulled before the documentation's release to the public. You can read here, a thorough and commendable work at Pamalam's:
- Category A, relate to people identified during the inquiry whose possible link to the events is extremely unlikely (the most tenuous) and whose right to privacy would be infringed if their personal information were left on file (basically the 'pervy percy' list).
- Category B, relate to crimestopper data with respect to sightings, the TV program having guaranteed anonymity.
- Category C , relate to information from people - often criminals or having a criminal history - that was volunteered by them and they should not be put at risk for having come forward.
Besides these there's also have a set pulled that aren’t in the files as they involve analysis:
1 - Anexo 17: Analysis of first round of witness statements, Time period 17:30 to 19:59 on 3 May 2007
2 - Anexo 19: Analysis of first round of witness statements, Time period 21:00 to 21:59 on 3 May 2007
3 - Anexo 30: Analysis of second round of witness statements, Time period 21:00 to 21:59 on 3 May 2007
4 - Anexo 37: Analysis of phone contacts of Tapas 9, Dates from 28 April to 1 May 2007 inclusive
5 - Anexo 55: Analysis of phone contacts of Tapas 9, Time period 22:00 to 22:59 on 4 May 2007
6 - Anexo 61: Analysis of events described by McCann parents, Date 3 May 2007
7 - Anexos 63 and 64: Analysis of creche registers, Dated 30 April (Anexo 63) and 1 May (Anexo 64)
These pages, in my opinion correctly pulled out, are not statements, but intermediate conclusions reached during the course of the investigation.
Then you have other non-secretive documentation that was also pulled off, such as Court papers, and personal photographs that the PJ, after analysis, determined not to be linked to the case in any way, and so were pulled out to preserve individual privacy. We consider that Dianne Webster's Tapas dinner photos are NOT among these pictures, as they're definitely linked, and relevant, to the case, if not for anything else, to prove who was sitting next to who, according to their made-up version, of course...
And that’s it. That's about all the papers that are missing from the process that we call the PJ Files.
If you add the above mentioned pages, to the public known documents, you’d have yourself a complete set of PJ Files. Everything else, is NOT PJ Files.
What about the first Carol Fenn-Tranmer (CFT) statement, you ask? That’s missing, isn’t it?
Please don’t confuse missing from left out. To be missing, is to have been in a certain place and not be there any longer. To be left out, is never to have been there.
CFT’s first statement was never a part of the PJ Files. So it is NOT missing, it was left out.
You also have a set of statements, for which you have a roster that the people were heard by the PJ and which statements don’t appear in the PJ Files:
Euan Crosby OC Beach Manager;
Nathan Daniel Francis Scarll [or Scarf] Waterfront Manager;
Robert Cook Driver/Maintenance;
Stephen Steve] Edward Carruthers Dual Qualified Instructor;
Claire Louise Bennet Dual Qualified Instructor;
Sebastian Bollen Godsmark Dual Qualified Instructor;
Clare Hicks Dual Qualified Instructor;
Lauren Hilder-Darling Dual Qualified Instructor;
Steven Jackson Dual Qualified Instructor;
Elizabeth Miles Ocean Club nanny;
Fraser Calum Nixon [or Nickson] Dual Qualified Instructor;
Mark Shult Ocean Club nanny;
Sarah Jane Tily Ocean Club nanny;
Benjamin Wilkins Dinghy Instructor;
Alice_Louise_Stanley Assistant Instructor;
Chris Unsworth Windsurf Instructor;
Robert Ragone OC Kids Chef;
Jackie McConnel OC nanny.
Most likely these people were heard, and their statements not deemed relevant, and probably not even put on paper, so there’s no physical registry of them. Very much like what happened with Mrs Fenn, on the night of the 3rd, possibly the day of the 4th.
And that is so unfortunate, as we now know how important the statements from some of these people would REALLY be. So many watersports instructors... and nannies...
Do read what their jobs were supposed to be, and how high they ranked they are in the OC's hierarchy, and do come up with what any of them could have said that would be so sensitive that couldn’t be published. You can't. There are no statements from them on the PJ Files, because there are no written statements from them. Not missing, simply non existent.
Then you have the statements, or "original statements" from a set of VERY interesting people, that are mentioned in the PJ Files but don’t appear in them:
Stephen Carpenter, original statement taken on 17th May 2007 by a UK Police Officer:
Rajinder Balu, rogatory statement refers to “original statements”
Neil Berry, rogatory statement refers to “original statements”
Carolyn Carpenter, rogatory interview not included in DVD.
Carole Tranmer, original interview and identikit not included in DVD (in the interview of Carole Tranmer on 22nd April 2008, as recorded on DVD, reference is made more than once to a statement given by her to Leics police on 8 May 2007, and to an identikit that was created with the assistance of a police officer from Reading)
These, I repeat, are NOT missing. They just aren’t there. I hope by now, that you understand why they aren’t there and who deliberately left them out.
And, we know of these because they were mentioned somewhere else. How many others were left out that we don't know? And will we ever know?
What matters is that they’re NOT, or ever were, part of the PJ Files. They’re not missing, they were left out. They're NOT something the "PJ knew"... they're something that were kept from PJ's knowledge!
So where are the unpublished PJ Files? Those secretive statements made that only a few know them?
There aren’t any. The missing pages, we know. The left out ones we don't, but these can't be said to be part of the investigation, can they?
There are, however, a series of other documents, and maybe even processes, directly related to the Maddie Affair. Remember Wikileaks, for example?
For example, I imagine that in the UK there are many different processes on this subject and in many different places.
My guess is that each major agency involved has one. In Portugal, there's probably not that many. The significant difference in numbers is due to the fact that this implicates much more the British, than it does the Portuguese.
But none of these documents/processes are the PJ Files, are they? They never were there, there were never pulled from there, so they’re not missing from there.
They are what I called in beginning of the post as those documents that I didn't know anything about, because I don't. Nothing or no one tells me how many there are, what they are, or where I can find them. Obviously I don't know what I most want to know, and that is why I don't know...
The fact they could exist, as they probably do (some of them, like the “original statements” we know they do), tells us lots.
If they’re directly related with evidence pertaining the Maddie Affair, and were not shared with the ONLY legitimate and adequate authority to handle this process, shows us clearly that there was a deliberate intent in sabotaging any chances for the PJ to have any sort of success.
And to mind come the FSS documents, credit cards information, Maddie’s medical information, among others.
If they’re directly related with the consequences and implications that would supposedly result from public knowledge of facts, then it would a fact that those facts have absolutely nothing to do with the eventual abduction of a little girl, as per the official version of things, so they're not part of the investigation.
Whatever may these documents contain, call them what you may, but don’t call them “unpublished PJ Files”.
You see, it’s important that this is very clear.
What has happened is that a myth has been created, a sort of bin where one can easily and immediately put in any uncomfortable answer one doesn’t want or is unable to provide, or from which one can easily and immediately conjecture something up. How many times have we read “that may be/is in the unpublished PJ Files”?
So to the question Anonymous puts: “Who says we know the whole Mrs. Fenn statement?”, the answer is simple: the PJ Files does.
Is there any reason whatsoever for Mrs Fenn to have a statement in a process external to the PJ Files? Or is there a reason for her, in part or entirely, statement to be intentionally left out? I see none, but if you do, as you know, we’re open to discuss it.
Now do go back and read the amount of conjecture that this Anonymous created just on the basis that Mrs Fenn may have had a statement in the “unpublished PJ Files”.
These “unpublished PJ Files” have often been used by many a BH’s as their way to explain the unexplainable and the unexplained, as well as the basis for planting clutter, which much is still taken as fact.
"Who says we know the whole Mrs. Fenn statement?She could have told more incidents to the police.It is possible that she informed the OC the folowing morning and the OC warned the McCanns. That could be the reason that Gerry replied her on the fatal night"a child has been abducted (or disappeared")and he did not say "my daughter disappeared" and Mrs Fenn thought it was odd. He probably had heard about Mrs. Fenn complaints.When the PJ asked Kate about the cry incident, Kate denied it "not true".Kate could have used it for the abduction explanation.
It is posssible that Mrs. Fenn left Portugal short after that night and that she came back in August.
Or it is possible that the OC told the police about her complaints.
It is also possible that there is another statement, telling more and we don't know it(rows, fights).
Within a very short time the police knew there was no abduction.No traces, no evidence."
Posted by Anonymous to Textusa at Jan 20, 2012 10:47:00 AM
This Anonymous’ comment seems to credit, and we're beyond innocence at this point in time, someone who, like so many others, acted in a very despicable manner, Mrs Fenn.
S/he implies that Mrs Fenn may have provided the PJ with some relevant information before late August, 2007.
I have said before, and maintain it, that Mrs Fenn was certainly heard in the hours that followed the PJ arrival at the scene, as a resident of the same building where the events supposedly were to have taken place; and I also said, and maintain, that the fact that there’s no written register of this statement it's because the information she had to provide at the time added little or nothing to the investigation.
At that moment Mrs Fenn was truthful, because she indeed saw and heard nothing, and was yet to be indoctrinated about the goings on, so, the investigators at that point in time ruled her as an irrelevant witness, which she indeed was.
But, says Anonymous, what if she did say something?
If she did, both herself and the PJ enquirers seem to have forgotten to make any mention of it in the sole statement that we can find, and read, in the PJ Files.
But, what if this is ANOTHER statement that is in the “unpublished PJ Files”?
It’s time to debunk yet another urban myth.
I would like today to speak about a piece of clutter that I see mentioned much too often: the infamous unpublished PJ Files.
There are two different types of documentation that are perceived to being part of these unpublished PJ files. I divide them into the following categories: those that I know of and those that I don’t know anything about.
Those that I know of are those that are missing from the files. I don’t know, for certain, and in some cases at all, what their content is, but I know they aren't there. How do I know they’re missing? By the page numbering system used.
This page numbering is of mandatory use in any Portuguese legal documentation that has more than a single page. The objective is to make it impossible any innuendo afterwards about any kind of page or pages that were supposed to exist, but can’t be found. Not to avoid, but to make it absolutely impossible the existence of phenomenons such as the "unpublished PJ Files", subject of the present post.
As a side issue, it also allows to determine a timeframe in which a certain document was put into the files, regardless of any other date mentioned in the document itself.
For example, imagine that page #333 is dated with a statement from Aug 15th, and page #334 has one from Jun 14th. The numbering makes it clear that the attaching sequence was that page #334 was attached on, or after, Aug 15th.
The reason for that 62 day interval, or even a bigger one depending on how able we're to determine when documents that follow it were attached, may be clearly and easily explainable, or not. But that is complete separate topic than the one we intend to discuss in this post.
Fact is that the numbering tells us that the Jun 14th document is attached after the Aug 15th one. The numbering makes the whole documentation be consistent and cohesive. There can be no chance for any of its parts to have its legitimacy questioned.
No page in a Portuguese Legal Process is pulled out of a process without justification. None is thrown away, so if, for some reason, it’s to be disregarded, it’s crossed out, so that the number of pages is consistent with the numbering. For the same reason, no pages are added in between existing ones, as per the Aug 15th/June 14th example above .
One thing we know about the PJ Files, and that is there are, in fact, many missing pages from it. Numbers that have been are skipped, meaning pages that ought to be there but aren't.
The reason for a page to be missing in a file, can be conjectured or justified, more or less clearly, but there’s one absolute certainty that if page #4 is the one that follows page #2, then one, and only one, page is missing, which is obviously page #3, and not a dozen, a hundred, or a thousand.
In this example, the numbering allows us to have ABSOLUTE CERTAINTY that ONE page, and ONLY ONE PAGE is MISSING, and that it was inserted AFTER page #2 and BEFORE page #3. There are no two ways about it. Anything else is pure invention.
It's common to hear say that not all of the PJ Files were published, to justify something that is not in the PJ Files, but may be there... we only don't know if it is or is not, because it may be in the unpublished PJ Files.
Confusing? Yes, and maybe that's the idea.
Unless someone corrects me, the documents that constitute the PJ Files that we have access to are numbered, from beginning to end, in a coherent and consistent manner, as they should be. There are some pages missing, as I’ve said, and I’ll speak about them later, but we’re before a unique, and almost complete, set of pages, which were methodically collated and joined together into what we know to be the PJ Files.
This to say, that there isn't any "big chunk" of the PJ Files, that could be considered as whole process by itself, the "unpublished PJ Files", that we didn't know not only its whereabouts, much less could we guess its approximate size...
Let's see what pages are indeed missing. Those whose numbers don't appear. There are various reasons why they were pulled before the documentation's release to the public. You can read here, a thorough and commendable work at Pamalam's:
- Category A, relate to people identified during the inquiry whose possible link to the events is extremely unlikely (the most tenuous) and whose right to privacy would be infringed if their personal information were left on file (basically the 'pervy percy' list).
- Category B, relate to crimestopper data with respect to sightings, the TV program having guaranteed anonymity.
- Category C , relate to information from people - often criminals or having a criminal history - that was volunteered by them and they should not be put at risk for having come forward.
Besides these there's also have a set pulled that aren’t in the files as they involve analysis:
1 - Anexo 17: Analysis of first round of witness statements, Time period 17:30 to 19:59 on 3 May 2007
2 - Anexo 19: Analysis of first round of witness statements, Time period 21:00 to 21:59 on 3 May 2007
3 - Anexo 30: Analysis of second round of witness statements, Time period 21:00 to 21:59 on 3 May 2007
4 - Anexo 37: Analysis of phone contacts of Tapas 9, Dates from 28 April to 1 May 2007 inclusive
5 - Anexo 55: Analysis of phone contacts of Tapas 9, Time period 22:00 to 22:59 on 4 May 2007
6 - Anexo 61: Analysis of events described by McCann parents, Date 3 May 2007
7 - Anexos 63 and 64: Analysis of creche registers, Dated 30 April (Anexo 63) and 1 May (Anexo 64)
These pages, in my opinion correctly pulled out, are not statements, but intermediate conclusions reached during the course of the investigation.
Then you have other non-secretive documentation that was also pulled off, such as Court papers, and personal photographs that the PJ, after analysis, determined not to be linked to the case in any way, and so were pulled out to preserve individual privacy. We consider that Dianne Webster's Tapas dinner photos are NOT among these pictures, as they're definitely linked, and relevant, to the case, if not for anything else, to prove who was sitting next to who, according to their made-up version, of course...
And that’s it. That's about all the papers that are missing from the process that we call the PJ Files.
If you add the above mentioned pages, to the public known documents, you’d have yourself a complete set of PJ Files. Everything else, is NOT PJ Files.
What about the first Carol Fenn-Tranmer (CFT) statement, you ask? That’s missing, isn’t it?
Please don’t confuse missing from left out. To be missing, is to have been in a certain place and not be there any longer. To be left out, is never to have been there.
CFT’s first statement was never a part of the PJ Files. So it is NOT missing, it was left out.
You also have a set of statements, for which you have a roster that the people were heard by the PJ and which statements don’t appear in the PJ Files:
Euan Crosby OC Beach Manager;
Nathan Daniel Francis Scarll [or Scarf] Waterfront Manager;
Robert Cook Driver/Maintenance;
Stephen Steve] Edward Carruthers Dual Qualified Instructor;
Claire Louise Bennet Dual Qualified Instructor;
Sebastian Bollen Godsmark Dual Qualified Instructor;
Clare Hicks Dual Qualified Instructor;
Lauren Hilder-Darling Dual Qualified Instructor;
Steven Jackson Dual Qualified Instructor;
Elizabeth Miles Ocean Club nanny;
Fraser Calum Nixon [or Nickson] Dual Qualified Instructor;
Mark Shult Ocean Club nanny;
Sarah Jane Tily Ocean Club nanny;
Benjamin Wilkins Dinghy Instructor;
Alice_Louise_Stanley Assistant Instructor;
Chris Unsworth Windsurf Instructor;
Robert Ragone OC Kids Chef;
Jackie McConnel OC nanny.
Most likely these people were heard, and their statements not deemed relevant, and probably not even put on paper, so there’s no physical registry of them. Very much like what happened with Mrs Fenn, on the night of the 3rd, possibly the day of the 4th.
And that is so unfortunate, as we now know how important the statements from some of these people would REALLY be. So many watersports instructors... and nannies...
Do read what their jobs were supposed to be, and how high they ranked they are in the OC's hierarchy, and do come up with what any of them could have said that would be so sensitive that couldn’t be published. You can't. There are no statements from them on the PJ Files, because there are no written statements from them. Not missing, simply non existent.
Then you have the statements, or "original statements" from a set of VERY interesting people, that are mentioned in the PJ Files but don’t appear in them:
Stephen Carpenter, original statement taken on 17th May 2007 by a UK Police Officer:
Rajinder Balu, rogatory statement refers to “original statements”
Neil Berry, rogatory statement refers to “original statements”
Carolyn Carpenter, rogatory interview not included in DVD.
Carole Tranmer, original interview and identikit not included in DVD (in the interview of Carole Tranmer on 22nd April 2008, as recorded on DVD, reference is made more than once to a statement given by her to Leics police on 8 May 2007, and to an identikit that was created with the assistance of a police officer from Reading)
These, I repeat, are NOT missing. They just aren’t there. I hope by now, that you understand why they aren’t there and who deliberately left them out.
And, we know of these because they were mentioned somewhere else. How many others were left out that we don't know? And will we ever know?
What matters is that they’re NOT, or ever were, part of the PJ Files. They’re not missing, they were left out. They're NOT something the "PJ knew"... they're something that were kept from PJ's knowledge!
So where are the unpublished PJ Files? Those secretive statements made that only a few know them?
There aren’t any. The missing pages, we know. The left out ones we don't, but these can't be said to be part of the investigation, can they?
There are, however, a series of other documents, and maybe even processes, directly related to the Maddie Affair. Remember Wikileaks, for example?
For example, I imagine that in the UK there are many different processes on this subject and in many different places.
My guess is that each major agency involved has one. In Portugal, there's probably not that many. The significant difference in numbers is due to the fact that this implicates much more the British, than it does the Portuguese.
But none of these documents/processes are the PJ Files, are they? They never were there, there were never pulled from there, so they’re not missing from there.
They are what I called in beginning of the post as those documents that I didn't know anything about, because I don't. Nothing or no one tells me how many there are, what they are, or where I can find them. Obviously I don't know what I most want to know, and that is why I don't know...
The fact they could exist, as they probably do (some of them, like the “original statements” we know they do), tells us lots.
If they’re directly related with evidence pertaining the Maddie Affair, and were not shared with the ONLY legitimate and adequate authority to handle this process, shows us clearly that there was a deliberate intent in sabotaging any chances for the PJ to have any sort of success.
And to mind come the FSS documents, credit cards information, Maddie’s medical information, among others.
If they’re directly related with the consequences and implications that would supposedly result from public knowledge of facts, then it would a fact that those facts have absolutely nothing to do with the eventual abduction of a little girl, as per the official version of things, so they're not part of the investigation.
Whatever may these documents contain, call them what you may, but don’t call them “unpublished PJ Files”.
You see, it’s important that this is very clear.
What has happened is that a myth has been created, a sort of bin where one can easily and immediately put in any uncomfortable answer one doesn’t want or is unable to provide, or from which one can easily and immediately conjecture something up. How many times have we read “that may be/is in the unpublished PJ Files”?
So to the question Anonymous puts: “Who says we know the whole Mrs. Fenn statement?”, the answer is simple: the PJ Files does.
Is there any reason whatsoever for Mrs Fenn to have a statement in a process external to the PJ Files? Or is there a reason for her, in part or entirely, statement to be intentionally left out? I see none, but if you do, as you know, we’re open to discuss it.
Now do go back and read the amount of conjecture that this Anonymous created just on the basis that Mrs Fenn may have had a statement in the “unpublished PJ Files”.
These “unpublished PJ Files” have often been used by many a BH’s as their way to explain the unexplainable and the unexplained, as well as the basis for planting clutter, which much is still taken as fact.
Friday, 20 January 2012
What If?
What if, instead of a school's secretary, she happened to be a doctor… would the headline then be “PERVERT DOCTOR’S £150 AN HOUR FOR ON-THE-SIDE OPERATIONS”?
What if, instead of a school's secretary, she happened to be a renown lawyer… would the headline then be “SHAMELESS LAWYER CHARGES £150 AN HOUR HER “OTHER” CLIENTS”?
What if, instead of a school's secretary, she happened to be a big businesswoman… would the headline then be “DISGRACED MILLIONAIRESS CHARGES £150 AN HOUR FOR “BUSINESS” MEETINGS IN BED”?
What if, instead of a school's secretary, she happened to be a magistrate… would the headline then be “KINKY JUDGE DISHES OUT “SENTENCES” FOR £150 AN HOUR”?
Within the Maddie Affair context, all these are rhetorical questions, for everyone knows the answer to ALL of them is: “No, because she has the necessary connections to stop that headline from ever appearing”.
This headline, however, shows quite clearly what was, is, and will remain to be for a long time coming, at stake the moment poor Madeleine died, just because both her parents and her parents' “friends” were where they wanted nobody to know they were, and this because they were doing what they couldn’t afford anyone (read, you) to know what they were doing.
None of them could EVER afford a similar headline.
Once this particular child died, they couldn’t do anything about having be known where they were (some were able to), but could, and did, do something about being known what they were doing.
But even the best Chef under pressure spoils a recipe, and in this case, with the haste and the amount of “excuses” to be found, the whole broil was overcooked. But did that spoil the serving? Of course not.
All the "guests" had instructions, to save their own backsides, to say how “delicious” the food was even if it was evident to all that it was over burned, overcooked and looked just like it tasted, but won't describe it as it would need the use of rather unpleasant wording.
“DELICIOUS!!!” did they all unanimously shout out, the loudest manner their lungs allowed, with the biggest grin they could muster. Some even went to the point for asking for seconds and thirds (here do read about the “hamburger theory”), avoiding the grimaces that their taste buds demanded, so much was what was at stake... They shouted out then, and will continue to shout as long as this farce will be allowed to last.
About this particular woman, a school's secretary and apparently also a hooker, let me just ponder a minute with you, if you will, on how she found herself to be such “headline news” and an exclusive at that. It’s something that is very relevant to be understood.
Did she call the tabloid? I don’t think so.
How then did the reporter get to know about this?
Two ways, as far as I can see, either from investigative journalism or from someone who knew her and called the tabloid to denounce the situation.
The first, if true, it would make one wonder what kind of journalism we’re before. Has the reporter gone through a thousand of these adverts in hope of finding similar cases to expose? If so, how many prostitutes did he "visit" before he stumbled on this case? All in the purest “line-of-duty”, of course. Where will he now take his investigative journalism? One is afraid to ask, much less venture an answer…
The second possibility, much more likely, does bring up question as to why didn’t the person who denounced this situation report it FIRST to the proper educational authority, starting, for example, with the school’s principal? That would be the responsible thing to do if one was REALLY worried about the children’s care.
Only after faced with inaction, should this individual pursue further on his or her concerns, and if need be, involve the media.
That doesn’t seem to have been the procedure in this case. The reporting went through the straightest and shortest possible way to a reporter, of a tabloid.
Out of spite, out of greed, or out of whatever reason, but with the exact same objective, to tintillate the populace’s voyeurism, which, as we can witness, is ruthless but fundamentally profitable. A tabloid sells. and not in small numbers...
These kind of "news" quench the mob’s thirst to be judgmental and, through that, feel superior.
I personally feel really sorry for the poor woman who was exposed, as long as all her clients were consenting adults. Both parties, the service provider and its receivers, appear to have engaged in said activity voluntarily. A private issue that should have remained private.
Prostitution clients include pillars of the community, such as magistrates, businessmen and bank managers, to name a few. Many people we would know in positions of authority, politics, business or law…
A heterogenic group, very much like the rag readers one, you know, all those that just love sleaze. Do check what’s the most read story, and related ones, if you doubt it.
Back to the article and its journalistic content, it does make one wonder what some people do for a living, and I’m not talking about the school's secretary/hooker.
Did those present in PDL REALLY have something to fear if word got out about what they were up to?
You tell me. A hint, could it be something like this?
Monday, 16 January 2012
Compare and Contrast
By Sina J
One of the tasks in my school English lessons was to compare and contrast two pieces of work such as two of Shakespeare’s plays, for example, Macbeth and The Comedy of Errors. This was a straightforward task because no matter which theatre puts on the play or which book is read for reference, the words are always the same because they are reproductions from a prepared script and followed without deviation. Of course some actors add their acting talent to bring their character to life but he or she is not at liberty to ad lib. If we think of the week Maddie went missing as a play and set an exam question and try to apply the same compare and contrast methods then I would fail miserably.
For a start the ‘script’ for that week was written retrospectively, after the final act was ‘performed’ so therefore everything had to be written to fit what had already happened. It was also written by the ‘performers’ and the result is a play written by a committee, much of it ad libbed. The committee members had different roles to play and some didn’t even make a stage entrance, the back stage crew had some input and some players left the theatre with haste never to be seen or heard from again.
To show you what I mean let’s begin by comparing and contrasting witness statements of the cast. I’ll start with Mr Graham MacKenzie, for no particular reason although it may have been more methodical to go in alphabetical order.
Mr and Mrs MacKenzie were booked into room G31 from 30th April to 5th May and in his statement he says during their stay they used the child care facilities. When they picked up their son C*** they would chat to other parents. Why is his child not included in any of the creche lists?
We instantly have a problem because it appears he wasn’t included in someone else’s script, the person who wrote the crèche records. Compare his statement to the crèche records. But also he was only booked for a 5 night holiday from 30th April according to one list so he didn’t take advantage of the Mark Warner package deal. Although comparing and contrasting this to the Mark Warner Property Arrival list the booking was from 28th April to 5th May and his flight details show he flew from Gatwick which is part of the package deal.
He says he got to know Raj Balu from a nearby apartment and another man called Neil, I presume he is referring to Neil Berry as he and Mr Balu had also become friends, even sharing a meal together. Mr MacKenzie says that Neil and his wife booked their stay for 2 weeks but left the resort early.
Is this a deviation from the "official script" or a fact? We need to compare Mr Berry’s statement and then contrast with the room booking sheets which state Mr Berry was booked into room G606 from 28th April to 5th May then room DP01 from 5th to 12th May.
As Mr MacKenzie mentions Mr Berry and Mr Balu in his statement then I think some extracts from their statements should also be included.
If we check the Mark Warner Booking sheets we see that the Berry family had only booked for 1 week.
Neil Berry says…..”At about 16.00 we were at the swimming pool bar within the complex. It was at this time that we had a few drinks with Raj Balu, Jayne Jensen and Anne Wiltshire, as I testified in my statement of 8th January 2008. My family returned to the apartment at about 17.00 and the four of us remained at the pool bar. I must have stayed there for another half an hour (which would be at 17.30) before joining my family in the apartment. I do not remember whether Raj left with me or whether he stayed at the bar.”
Raj Balu…..” Neil and I eventually left the bar after 19:00. I don’t remember if we left together or not”.
One would have thought everyone in this play would have times and actions imprinted in their minds forever.
He goes on to say….” I returned to my apartment and got ready to go out for dinner."
Much like Superman Mr Balu can arrive somewhere at the same time as leaving somewhere else.
“Around 19:00, together with my wife and son, we headed to the Berry apartment. When we arrived, Neil was having problems in assembling a cot, which was placed there for my son. We had to head to the Mark Warner service desk and they sent someone to help us”.
Mr Berry had been seen by an OC employee near a lift shaft in the complex around 16.00.
Neil Berry……”With regard to where I was at 18.00, whom I was with and the fact that I was seen by a witness at this time next to stairs and lift of block 5 of the Ocean Club:
I am not certain where I was at 18.00. It is possible that I was already in my apartment or returning from the bar”.
Fortunately Mr Balu lets us know where he was at 18.00.
About the cot.....
Mr Berry says “After I returned to the apartment I was with my wife and children. The children went to bed at 19.00 and Raj arrived at our apartment with his family, carrying a cot for his son. We did not manage to set the cot up and I went to find a member of staff. I found a Mark Warner employee, whose name I cannot remember but she was the girlfriend of a maintenance employee called Rob. She accompanied us back to the apartment and managed to set up the cot.”
That seems to be a contradiction rather than a contrast but it can be compared.
If Mr Berry was right and Mr Balu brought the cot, did he bring it from his apartment? If so then he was able to dismantle it and if it was a portable cot then designed to be erected with ease. So between 4 professional people no-one had the ability to erect a cot?
But if Mr Balu was right about exactly who was responsible for it, when did Mr Berry request another cot, to whom and who delivered it? Or as he puts it…. “it was placed there for his son” so maybe it just miraculously arrived? A person delivering a cot would have been able to state where Mr Berry was at the time in question.
Why no name and no statement or statements from the person who delivered the cot or the person who came to erect it? The conflict the two statements throw up indicates the involvement of two different Mark Warner employees.
Could it be then that because they needed some sort of reason that this cot as brought on stage? Not necessarily because they had any involvement in the disappearance of Maddie but for some other reason. Whatever the reason was for the cot story, a witness who brought a cot would have provided them with the alibi they needed when they were interviewed and swabbed by the PJ, yet no witness who brought the cot seems to have been interviewed.
Was there really any cot at all delivered, brought or erected in the Berry apartment?
Anyway I digress…..
Mr MacKenzie says he got to know the McCanns when they dined at the Tapas although no-one else mentions that. The only night the MacKenzies appear on the Tapas booking sheet is Tuesday at 8pm. If the restaurant was serving meals at the pace suggested by T9 and this party were usually running late then Mr & Mrs MacKenzie would either have been leaving or had already left the restaurant before T9 arrived so any meeting would have been fleeting if at all.
“During our stay we had seen the McCann party when the children had tea together and also when eating at the Tapas bar in the evenings” NB. Evenings-plural.
As he has only been there once how would he know how many evenings they were supposed to be there?
Mr Mackenzie says they could not get a table on 3rd May so had a take-away meal collected by his wife at 8.30pm. There is no mention of any take away on the booking sheets unlike the following day 4th May when Neil Berry collected a meal for 4 people.
Although I really can't understand why any restaurant would need to know how many people were going to consume a take away meal.
How strange that neither Berry or Balu saw Mrs MacKenzie waiting for a take away or crossed paths or that she saw them.
One would presume everyone who visited the Tapas that night would be interviewed but Mrs MacKenzie was not asked to provide a statement yet was supposedly wandering around the complex around the time T9 were making their way there.
If the Mackenzies were on a package deal why didn’t they take advantage of the dinner at the Mill if they couldn’t get into Tapas again? Was he required in the wings to witness a ‘commotion’?
Ms Cox had been more fortunate and she had a table for 2 booked on 3rd at 7.30pm which had been authorised by Steve. Nicole Cox is the partner of Mr Balu and they have child together.
Mr Balu says……”Neil and E*** (Berry) were having a drink with my wife and I. We had a table reserved in the restaurant for that night, but they were not able to arrange a table and for this reason we decided to leave our table and ate together in their apartment using takeaway service”
There is a tick against Ms Cox’s booking which would indicate that two people arrived. It’s not possible to see the full table number which begins with 2 as it falls off the edge of the copied sheet. Did Ms Cox cancel her table or just ‘leave it’ and someone else got the opportunity to take it? Did Ms Cox get charged by default as her name wasn’t scrubbed and no other name was substituted? The strangest thing is why would Ms Cox and Mr Balu would not share their table with the Berrys, why would the Berrys need a separate table?
Back to Mr MacKenzie who is very vague about the time he heard a ‘commotion’ on the complex later that night, he puts it between 10 and 11 pm. He found out what was going on then informs his wife he is going to join the search for a missing child, spends some time searching in the shrubbery and the gardens of the apartments, working his way around the tennis courts and to the Mccann's apartment where he spends a few moments listening to Gerry McCann on the phone. He went back to his own apartment to inform his wife of what was going on, has a drink and returns to the search. He spends a couple of hours searching. He says the police eventually turned up later in the evening. Add all this activity to the 10 and 11 pm time window he set for the ‘commotion’, add a "later" and that's when he says the GNR did arrive. Is he implying they were slow to respond and the search had been in progress for quite some time?
Yet according to Lieutenant-Colonel Costa Cabral, Head of Public Relations of GNR, the first call to Police Precinct of GNR (Portuguese Rural Police) in Lagos, reporting a missing child and asking for Police help was at 10.50pm and a patrol was sent, arriving at Ocean Club 12/15 minutes later.
So now stage crew are introducing their own script?
Mr MacKenzie also makes a comment about there being no real organisation of the searching….
“There were lots of people just standing round looking, the police eventually turned up later in the evening. There didn't seem to be any real organisation of the searching and I eventually went back to our apartment for the night”
Yet at about 22.17 Hotel manager Emma Louise Knight received a call from Lyndsey Johnson the Crêche Manager, informing her that the girl had gone missing. She met Lyndsey Johnson and the Service Manager, Amy Tierney, near to the Tapas Bar and they initiated the "Mark Warner procedures for the search of a missing child". Did Mr MacKenzie search alone without taking part in the prescribed procedure?
Ms Tierney appears to have 2 roles in this play and in this scene is playing the role of ‘Service manager’. As a creche worker she would have no reason to be at Tapas reception at midnight as she states.
Why was Mr Mackenzie not aware of what was going on that night if he was part of the search? Wasn’t the whole point of missing child procedure to direct participants in a search where to go and as he was supposed to be searching for hours he could hardly fail to be aware? And no, he wasn't somewhere looking in some isolated spot all on his own. He was right at the centre of things, near Gerry McCann for example. And in and out of his apartment.
I do find his statement rather vague not only on time but also the days. When he says he saw Kate collecting the twins from the creche 'the following day at lunchtime', does he mean 4th May or the day after that? Dianne Webster collects the twins earlier than any other parents at 12 o'clock on the 4th .
“The following day we saw Kate McCann when she came to collect the twins from the creche at lunchtime, she was distraught and broke down sobbing”.
More importantly he is confirming his child was at the crèche and as noted before not named on the respective sheets.
Let’s return to the previous scene
What is very strange is if Mrs MacKenzie had collected a meal from the Tapas restaurant at 8.30pm on 3rd May why wasn't she interviewed by the Police? It's not until 16th September that Mr MacKenzie decides to get in touch with the Police to tell them what he heard on the night Maddie went missing when he found out the Police were trying to pinpoint telephone conversations made in the resort. So it was the search for telephone conversations that prompted him.
Why wasn’t Mrs MacKenzie’s name included on the Tapas booking sheets "script" as the Berry take away was the following day?
One comment in Mr MacKenzie’s statement seems to support his belief that someone could have been observing the McCanns. He relates that the temporary apartment he was given on the day of his departure overlooked the Mccanns apartment and there were a lot of cigarette butts on the balcony 'as if someone had been stood there a long time smoking', which he thought was odd. What I would find odd is that the cleaners had not removed them before the next people used the apartment. Convenient butts, a clue befitting any detective B movie ever made.
The stage hands using props in exaggeration, or the existence of these butts may be as questionable as the Berry & Balu cot?
I will leave you with the words of Lady Macbeth in Act 5 scene 1
“Out damned spot”
"What, will these hands ne'er be clean. . . All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand"
The doctor who called to see Lady Macbeth sleepwalking concluded she needed a priest not a physician and that he and her maid must not reveal what they saw or heard.
From The Comedy of Errors Act 2 scene 2
Am I in earth, in heaven, or in hell?
Sleeping or waking? mad or well-advised?
Known unto these, and to myself disguised!
I'll say as they say and persever so,
And in this mist at all adventures go.
One of the tasks in my school English lessons was to compare and contrast two pieces of work such as two of Shakespeare’s plays, for example, Macbeth and The Comedy of Errors. This was a straightforward task because no matter which theatre puts on the play or which book is read for reference, the words are always the same because they are reproductions from a prepared script and followed without deviation. Of course some actors add their acting talent to bring their character to life but he or she is not at liberty to ad lib. If we think of the week Maddie went missing as a play and set an exam question and try to apply the same compare and contrast methods then I would fail miserably.
For a start the ‘script’ for that week was written retrospectively, after the final act was ‘performed’ so therefore everything had to be written to fit what had already happened. It was also written by the ‘performers’ and the result is a play written by a committee, much of it ad libbed. The committee members had different roles to play and some didn’t even make a stage entrance, the back stage crew had some input and some players left the theatre with haste never to be seen or heard from again.
To show you what I mean let’s begin by comparing and contrasting witness statements of the cast. I’ll start with Mr Graham MacKenzie, for no particular reason although it may have been more methodical to go in alphabetical order.
Mr and Mrs MacKenzie were booked into room G31 from 30th April to 5th May and in his statement he says during their stay they used the child care facilities. When they picked up their son C*** they would chat to other parents. Why is his child not included in any of the creche lists?
We instantly have a problem because it appears he wasn’t included in someone else’s script, the person who wrote the crèche records. Compare his statement to the crèche records. But also he was only booked for a 5 night holiday from 30th April according to one list so he didn’t take advantage of the Mark Warner package deal. Although comparing and contrasting this to the Mark Warner Property Arrival list the booking was from 28th April to 5th May and his flight details show he flew from Gatwick which is part of the package deal.
He says he got to know Raj Balu from a nearby apartment and another man called Neil, I presume he is referring to Neil Berry as he and Mr Balu had also become friends, even sharing a meal together. Mr MacKenzie says that Neil and his wife booked their stay for 2 weeks but left the resort early.
Is this a deviation from the "official script" or a fact? We need to compare Mr Berry’s statement and then contrast with the room booking sheets which state Mr Berry was booked into room G606 from 28th April to 5th May then room DP01 from 5th to 12th May.
As Mr MacKenzie mentions Mr Berry and Mr Balu in his statement then I think some extracts from their statements should also be included.
If we check the Mark Warner Booking sheets we see that the Berry family had only booked for 1 week.
Neil Berry says…..”At about 16.00 we were at the swimming pool bar within the complex. It was at this time that we had a few drinks with Raj Balu, Jayne Jensen and Anne Wiltshire, as I testified in my statement of 8th January 2008. My family returned to the apartment at about 17.00 and the four of us remained at the pool bar. I must have stayed there for another half an hour (which would be at 17.30) before joining my family in the apartment. I do not remember whether Raj left with me or whether he stayed at the bar.”
Raj Balu…..” Neil and I eventually left the bar after 19:00. I don’t remember if we left together or not”.
One would have thought everyone in this play would have times and actions imprinted in their minds forever.
He goes on to say….” I returned to my apartment and got ready to go out for dinner."
Much like Superman Mr Balu can arrive somewhere at the same time as leaving somewhere else.
“Around 19:00, together with my wife and son, we headed to the Berry apartment. When we arrived, Neil was having problems in assembling a cot, which was placed there for my son. We had to head to the Mark Warner service desk and they sent someone to help us”.
Mr Berry had been seen by an OC employee near a lift shaft in the complex around 16.00.
Neil Berry……”With regard to where I was at 18.00, whom I was with and the fact that I was seen by a witness at this time next to stairs and lift of block 5 of the Ocean Club:
I am not certain where I was at 18.00. It is possible that I was already in my apartment or returning from the bar”.
Fortunately Mr Balu lets us know where he was at 18.00.
About the cot.....
Mr Berry says “After I returned to the apartment I was with my wife and children. The children went to bed at 19.00 and Raj arrived at our apartment with his family, carrying a cot for his son. We did not manage to set the cot up and I went to find a member of staff. I found a Mark Warner employee, whose name I cannot remember but she was the girlfriend of a maintenance employee called Rob. She accompanied us back to the apartment and managed to set up the cot.”
That seems to be a contradiction rather than a contrast but it can be compared.
If Mr Berry was right and Mr Balu brought the cot, did he bring it from his apartment? If so then he was able to dismantle it and if it was a portable cot then designed to be erected with ease. So between 4 professional people no-one had the ability to erect a cot?
But if Mr Balu was right about exactly who was responsible for it, when did Mr Berry request another cot, to whom and who delivered it? Or as he puts it…. “it was placed there for his son” so maybe it just miraculously arrived? A person delivering a cot would have been able to state where Mr Berry was at the time in question.
Why no name and no statement or statements from the person who delivered the cot or the person who came to erect it? The conflict the two statements throw up indicates the involvement of two different Mark Warner employees.
Could it be then that because they needed some sort of reason that this cot as brought on stage? Not necessarily because they had any involvement in the disappearance of Maddie but for some other reason. Whatever the reason was for the cot story, a witness who brought a cot would have provided them with the alibi they needed when they were interviewed and swabbed by the PJ, yet no witness who brought the cot seems to have been interviewed.
Was there really any cot at all delivered, brought or erected in the Berry apartment?
Anyway I digress…..
Mr MacKenzie says he got to know the McCanns when they dined at the Tapas although no-one else mentions that. The only night the MacKenzies appear on the Tapas booking sheet is Tuesday at 8pm. If the restaurant was serving meals at the pace suggested by T9 and this party were usually running late then Mr & Mrs MacKenzie would either have been leaving or had already left the restaurant before T9 arrived so any meeting would have been fleeting if at all.
“During our stay we had seen the McCann party when the children had tea together and also when eating at the Tapas bar in the evenings” NB. Evenings-plural.
As he has only been there once how would he know how many evenings they were supposed to be there?
Mr Mackenzie says they could not get a table on 3rd May so had a take-away meal collected by his wife at 8.30pm. There is no mention of any take away on the booking sheets unlike the following day 4th May when Neil Berry collected a meal for 4 people.
Although I really can't understand why any restaurant would need to know how many people were going to consume a take away meal.
How strange that neither Berry or Balu saw Mrs MacKenzie waiting for a take away or crossed paths or that she saw them.
One would presume everyone who visited the Tapas that night would be interviewed but Mrs MacKenzie was not asked to provide a statement yet was supposedly wandering around the complex around the time T9 were making their way there.
If the Mackenzies were on a package deal why didn’t they take advantage of the dinner at the Mill if they couldn’t get into Tapas again? Was he required in the wings to witness a ‘commotion’?
Ms Cox had been more fortunate and she had a table for 2 booked on 3rd at 7.30pm which had been authorised by Steve. Nicole Cox is the partner of Mr Balu and they have child together.
Mr Balu says……”Neil and E*** (Berry) were having a drink with my wife and I. We had a table reserved in the restaurant for that night, but they were not able to arrange a table and for this reason we decided to leave our table and ate together in their apartment using takeaway service”
There is a tick against Ms Cox’s booking which would indicate that two people arrived. It’s not possible to see the full table number which begins with 2 as it falls off the edge of the copied sheet. Did Ms Cox cancel her table or just ‘leave it’ and someone else got the opportunity to take it? Did Ms Cox get charged by default as her name wasn’t scrubbed and no other name was substituted? The strangest thing is why would Ms Cox and Mr Balu would not share their table with the Berrys, why would the Berrys need a separate table?
Back to Mr MacKenzie who is very vague about the time he heard a ‘commotion’ on the complex later that night, he puts it between 10 and 11 pm. He found out what was going on then informs his wife he is going to join the search for a missing child, spends some time searching in the shrubbery and the gardens of the apartments, working his way around the tennis courts and to the Mccann's apartment where he spends a few moments listening to Gerry McCann on the phone. He went back to his own apartment to inform his wife of what was going on, has a drink and returns to the search. He spends a couple of hours searching. He says the police eventually turned up later in the evening. Add all this activity to the 10 and 11 pm time window he set for the ‘commotion’, add a "later" and that's when he says the GNR did arrive. Is he implying they were slow to respond and the search had been in progress for quite some time?
Yet according to Lieutenant-Colonel Costa Cabral, Head of Public Relations of GNR, the first call to Police Precinct of GNR (Portuguese Rural Police) in Lagos, reporting a missing child and asking for Police help was at 10.50pm and a patrol was sent, arriving at Ocean Club 12/15 minutes later.
So now stage crew are introducing their own script?
Mr MacKenzie also makes a comment about there being no real organisation of the searching….
“There were lots of people just standing round looking, the police eventually turned up later in the evening. There didn't seem to be any real organisation of the searching and I eventually went back to our apartment for the night”
Yet at about 22.17 Hotel manager Emma Louise Knight received a call from Lyndsey Johnson the Crêche Manager, informing her that the girl had gone missing. She met Lyndsey Johnson and the Service Manager, Amy Tierney, near to the Tapas Bar and they initiated the "Mark Warner procedures for the search of a missing child". Did Mr MacKenzie search alone without taking part in the prescribed procedure?
Ms Tierney appears to have 2 roles in this play and in this scene is playing the role of ‘Service manager’. As a creche worker she would have no reason to be at Tapas reception at midnight as she states.
Why was Mr Mackenzie not aware of what was going on that night if he was part of the search? Wasn’t the whole point of missing child procedure to direct participants in a search where to go and as he was supposed to be searching for hours he could hardly fail to be aware? And no, he wasn't somewhere looking in some isolated spot all on his own. He was right at the centre of things, near Gerry McCann for example. And in and out of his apartment.
I do find his statement rather vague not only on time but also the days. When he says he saw Kate collecting the twins from the creche 'the following day at lunchtime', does he mean 4th May or the day after that? Dianne Webster collects the twins earlier than any other parents at 12 o'clock on the 4th .
“The following day we saw Kate McCann when she came to collect the twins from the creche at lunchtime, she was distraught and broke down sobbing”.
More importantly he is confirming his child was at the crèche and as noted before not named on the respective sheets.
Let’s return to the previous scene
What is very strange is if Mrs MacKenzie had collected a meal from the Tapas restaurant at 8.30pm on 3rd May why wasn't she interviewed by the Police? It's not until 16th September that Mr MacKenzie decides to get in touch with the Police to tell them what he heard on the night Maddie went missing when he found out the Police were trying to pinpoint telephone conversations made in the resort. So it was the search for telephone conversations that prompted him.
Why wasn’t Mrs MacKenzie’s name included on the Tapas booking sheets "script" as the Berry take away was the following day?
One comment in Mr MacKenzie’s statement seems to support his belief that someone could have been observing the McCanns. He relates that the temporary apartment he was given on the day of his departure overlooked the Mccanns apartment and there were a lot of cigarette butts on the balcony 'as if someone had been stood there a long time smoking', which he thought was odd. What I would find odd is that the cleaners had not removed them before the next people used the apartment. Convenient butts, a clue befitting any detective B movie ever made.
The stage hands using props in exaggeration, or the existence of these butts may be as questionable as the Berry & Balu cot?
I will leave you with the words of Lady Macbeth in Act 5 scene 1
“Out damned spot”
"What, will these hands ne'er be clean. . . All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand"
The doctor who called to see Lady Macbeth sleepwalking concluded she needed a priest not a physician and that he and her maid must not reveal what they saw or heard.
From The Comedy of Errors Act 2 scene 2
Am I in earth, in heaven, or in hell?
Sleeping or waking? mad or well-advised?
Known unto these, and to myself disguised!
I'll say as they say and persever so,
And in this mist at all adventures go.
Thursday, 12 January 2012
To Follow Or Not To Follow
loopdaloop has left a new comment on your post "No More Doubts":
“Unfortunately Textusa you have read into this one wrong.
An investigative review means that they WILL be following up leads as if IT HAPPENED IN THE UK!
Which gives them more power.
Secondly, an abduction is what was reported so they will investigate that as Goncalo Amaral and the Portugese did. Once they realise that it leads to a dead end they will follow up the other leads!
I believe in Scotland Yard for this one! Don't forget that it was the British Police that helped the Portugese DEVELOP the 'accident and coverup' theory!
The evidence of Martin Grimes dogs is also not disputed in this country.
After clearing up the Stephen Lawrence case, Scotland yard will do the same on this one!!”
Posted by loopdaloop to Textusa at Jan 11, 2012 6:48:00 PM
Ldlp,
Thank you for your comment, however the expression used continues, for us, to be as clear as it is read. I understand your point of view, and might even subscribe it, if not concurrent with other details that make us have opposing thoughts.
You see, at this point in time, there isn’t anyone in the “upper layers” of British Society who isn’t aware of what really happened, as there isn’t one of them who doesn’t know, and understand, the exact implications of revealing publicly whatever the truth is now.
Yes, because this particular truth evolves daily, forever changing by incrementing its disastrous consequences with each person comes into "the club”. Either privately or publicly. The truth, say, on July 7, 2007, to just name a date randomly, was completely different both in scope and personal involvements than it was to be on Aug 8, 2008, as it is different from then to today, and so on.
That said, when the British PM allocated the 3£ mill to the Maddie SY Review, he had only one of two objectives: either to “fry” the McCanns, and end the embarrassment, or whitewash the case and do the best possible for the said embarrassment to go away.
I understand that it seems, on a first glance, that the terminology “abduction” could have been used as the natural sequencing of the ongoing investigation. Picking it up from where it was left off, or to be precise, archived at.
But picked up from whom or where?
Not from the PJ, because in its investigation, it clearly doesn’t conclude that there was abduction, does it? To qualify its conclusions with that word, it's completely inadequate and abusive in terms of Police work.
If it has to follow something then it can only be from what the couple alleges to have happened. They did say it was abduction, and the first page of the PJ Files does say “rapto” (kidnap). But as I said in the post, besides the couple and friends, the rest of the world, in which are included their “friends”, let the “abduction” term drop pretty quickly.
To use the word “abduction” to express the pick-up point would make SY be following up on what the McCanns had to say on the matter rather than what their Portuguese counterpart officially concluded. And from what we read, that's exactly what is happening.
Between the PJ and the McCanns, I know who I’d believe. I’d rather go on investigated facts, then from desperate claims from people who bear heavily burdened consciences, but that’s me.
Also, when one is writing a high-profile document, such as this one is, that one knows that’s going to be meticulously scrutinized, such as this one would be, one is very careful with the wording used. Each word and each sentence is, as is being written, revised by more than a single pair of eyes.
So, the author, if he wished to express, as seems to be the case, the level of commitment to be made by those responsible for the Review, saying that although it happened somewhere we’ll treat it as if it happened right at our front door, using the word “events” instead of “abduction” (“as if the events occurred in the UK”) would have served fully that purpose, without being minimally controversial. But that wouldn't fully support the "Official" version of things, would it?
Also, there’s the question of the results being published or not. It seems that they won’t be, which, as I’ve said it doesn't surprise me in the least. Are SY investigations usually published? No. Are PJ investigations usually published? No.
But is the outcome, or RESULT, of the investigations, either by PJ or SY, usually known to the public? Yes, they are.
Even if just to say something biased and false, like the Portuguese Judicial System said about the Maddie Affair: there wasn’t enough evidence to prosecute the couple.
We now know it to be a completely ridiculous statement, but at least something was said, a result presented, which apparently will not be the case, with the Review. Just to say if they’re to prosecute someone or not, in a case determined by the Nation’s PM and paid for by £3 million of British Public Funds.
By the way, to say that they won’t publish the result of a certain investigation means, to me, that they have published something of the nature in the past. Otherwise there wouldn’t be any expectancy would it?
Then there’s the resignation. Why?
Now throw in the Leveson Inquiry (what a sad, pathetic spectacle put on by the "establishment") and the Phone Hacking Hearings, put all in an oven and keep regularly checking how it’s cooking.
I repeat that we stated only an opinion and we would dearly love for it to be wrong and would be happy to apologise if it is.
We aren’t owners of the truth, and we welcome opposing opinions as we’ve shown more than once before. The only people who really know for certain are those "in the know".
We know that they know that we know. That they know sums it up for us as regards them.
We don’t sit here in judgement telling others that what we’ve decided has now become fact. That is a style used by many a Black Hat dressed in White from head to toe.
“Unfortunately Textusa you have read into this one wrong.
An investigative review means that they WILL be following up leads as if IT HAPPENED IN THE UK!
Which gives them more power.
Secondly, an abduction is what was reported so they will investigate that as Goncalo Amaral and the Portugese did. Once they realise that it leads to a dead end they will follow up the other leads!
I believe in Scotland Yard for this one! Don't forget that it was the British Police that helped the Portugese DEVELOP the 'accident and coverup' theory!
The evidence of Martin Grimes dogs is also not disputed in this country.
After clearing up the Stephen Lawrence case, Scotland yard will do the same on this one!!”
Posted by loopdaloop to Textusa at Jan 11, 2012 6:48:00 PM
Ldlp,
Thank you for your comment, however the expression used continues, for us, to be as clear as it is read. I understand your point of view, and might even subscribe it, if not concurrent with other details that make us have opposing thoughts.
You see, at this point in time, there isn’t anyone in the “upper layers” of British Society who isn’t aware of what really happened, as there isn’t one of them who doesn’t know, and understand, the exact implications of revealing publicly whatever the truth is now.
Yes, because this particular truth evolves daily, forever changing by incrementing its disastrous consequences with each person comes into "the club”. Either privately or publicly. The truth, say, on July 7, 2007, to just name a date randomly, was completely different both in scope and personal involvements than it was to be on Aug 8, 2008, as it is different from then to today, and so on.
That said, when the British PM allocated the 3£ mill to the Maddie SY Review, he had only one of two objectives: either to “fry” the McCanns, and end the embarrassment, or whitewash the case and do the best possible for the said embarrassment to go away.
I understand that it seems, on a first glance, that the terminology “abduction” could have been used as the natural sequencing of the ongoing investigation. Picking it up from where it was left off, or to be precise, archived at.
But picked up from whom or where?
Not from the PJ, because in its investigation, it clearly doesn’t conclude that there was abduction, does it? To qualify its conclusions with that word, it's completely inadequate and abusive in terms of Police work.
If it has to follow something then it can only be from what the couple alleges to have happened. They did say it was abduction, and the first page of the PJ Files does say “rapto” (kidnap). But as I said in the post, besides the couple and friends, the rest of the world, in which are included their “friends”, let the “abduction” term drop pretty quickly.
To use the word “abduction” to express the pick-up point would make SY be following up on what the McCanns had to say on the matter rather than what their Portuguese counterpart officially concluded. And from what we read, that's exactly what is happening.
Between the PJ and the McCanns, I know who I’d believe. I’d rather go on investigated facts, then from desperate claims from people who bear heavily burdened consciences, but that’s me.
Also, when one is writing a high-profile document, such as this one is, that one knows that’s going to be meticulously scrutinized, such as this one would be, one is very careful with the wording used. Each word and each sentence is, as is being written, revised by more than a single pair of eyes.
So, the author, if he wished to express, as seems to be the case, the level of commitment to be made by those responsible for the Review, saying that although it happened somewhere we’ll treat it as if it happened right at our front door, using the word “events” instead of “abduction” (“as if the events occurred in the UK”) would have served fully that purpose, without being minimally controversial. But that wouldn't fully support the "Official" version of things, would it?
Also, there’s the question of the results being published or not. It seems that they won’t be, which, as I’ve said it doesn't surprise me in the least. Are SY investigations usually published? No. Are PJ investigations usually published? No.
But is the outcome, or RESULT, of the investigations, either by PJ or SY, usually known to the public? Yes, they are.
Even if just to say something biased and false, like the Portuguese Judicial System said about the Maddie Affair: there wasn’t enough evidence to prosecute the couple.
We now know it to be a completely ridiculous statement, but at least something was said, a result presented, which apparently will not be the case, with the Review. Just to say if they’re to prosecute someone or not, in a case determined by the Nation’s PM and paid for by £3 million of British Public Funds.
By the way, to say that they won’t publish the result of a certain investigation means, to me, that they have published something of the nature in the past. Otherwise there wouldn’t be any expectancy would it?
Then there’s the resignation. Why?
Now throw in the Leveson Inquiry (what a sad, pathetic spectacle put on by the "establishment") and the Phone Hacking Hearings, put all in an oven and keep regularly checking how it’s cooking.
I repeat that we stated only an opinion and we would dearly love for it to be wrong and would be happy to apologise if it is.
We aren’t owners of the truth, and we welcome opposing opinions as we’ve shown more than once before. The only people who really know for certain are those "in the know".
We know that they know that we know. That they know sums it up for us as regards them.
We don’t sit here in judgement telling others that what we’ve decided has now become fact. That is a style used by many a Black Hat dressed in White from head to toe.
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