Not Even Alice In Wonderland

The Portuguese have the following peculiar but wise saying “Não se pode meter o Rossio na Rua da Betesga”

Translated, without knowing Lisbon, and in particular the Rossio area, it doesn’t make any sense. This is the photo of that part of the city:

On the left, the original, on the right, the Blue rectangle shows the Rossio, one of Lisbon’s big plazas, and the Red the Rua da Betesga, the only street connecting Rossio and one of its neighbouring plazas, the Praça da Figueira.

Now we can translate the saying and you can understand its meaning: “You can’t fit Rossio into Rua da Betesga”.

Simple, accurate and incontrovertible.

And that’s what happened in both the Smith Sighting and TS’s Sighting in the Mockumentary.

In the Smith Sighting, the BHs had a “Rossio”, 3 different avoidable locations, when they desperately needed just a “Rua da Bestega”, more precisely a single and unavoidable location. That’s why in the Mockumentary they changed the area where it did happen, from the beginning of the Rua da Escola Primária to a more convenient location in the same street but a little further uphill, like we showed in our post “Public Misleading of Public”.

With TS’s Sightings, the opposite happened.

They had a “Rua da Bestesga” and they had to fit a whole “Rossio” into it. Impossible as the saying does say.

Whilst you may get away with spreading a “Rua da Betesga” all over a “Rossio”, it’s a completely helpless effort trying to stuff a “Rossio” into a “Rua da Betesga”. But unlike with the Smith Sighting, in this case the location couldn't be changed, as you'll see. The formula applied to "solve" the Smith Sighting problem just wasn't applicable to the TS's Sightings.

Edgar puts TS and her mom on the right side of the street not to make things feasible but because it was for the BH’s as you’ll see and we hope to demonstrate, the lesser evil.

Let’s start from the beginning and start with what really happened.

Firstly, on May 9th 2007, TS did go to the PJ and stated the following:

“(…)

Thus desires to clarify: On April 30, Monday, by 08:00, and when on the way to the stop of the bus bound for school, which leaves at 08:15, the path she makes every day whenever she has classes, she noticed the presence of a male individual at the back of MADELEINE’s house, in a small pathway that there exists to access the apartments, looking ostensibly at the house’s porch. Such happened when going down the street, descending on the left side; he was right in front of the balcony, being the distance between them the width of the street. That when descending she decided to look at the pathway, as once she had lived there, likes to observe the house and the adjoining garden. She was accompanied by her mother, who she’s confident didn’t view the individual closer, as her mom had two dogs on a leash, who forced them to cross the road, a little further down. At that moment she saw the individual more closely, during the act of crossing, losing him from her vision field she finished doing so.

Questioned, she said that the individual did not see the deponent, because he was staring fixedly at the balcony.

Assumes no one was on MADELEINE’s house’s porch, however can’t state it unquestionably.

After the crossing, took the bus, and went on it with destination the school and her mother went to the beach walk the dogs.

(…)

With regard to the individual she describes him as: Caucasian, fair complexion, so he wouldn’t be Portuguese, but could be British, according to her criteria. About 180 cm, slim build, 30/35 years of age. Short hair, closely cropped haircut with 1 cm in height and fair, but doesn’t know if it was blonde, because the Sun was reflecting, hindering perception. Didn’t see his eyes because he was wearing black sunglasses, with a mass structure and thick temples. He had a large forehead. Normal size nose, somewhat pointed and sharp. Big ears but close against the skull. Mouth with thin lips, not having seen the teeth Risen chin, that stood out in a face she describes as pointed. He had no beard, nor moustache, was clean shaved. He had no other personal marks, besides a few small pimples on the face as the result of shaving. He looked ugly, even "disgusting".

The first time she saw him he wearing a black thin leather jacket type windbreaker, with a zipper and several pockets with identical zippers, silver in colour. She saw no logo or inscription on it. As the windbreaker was open, she saw that he wore a white t-shirt with a dark blue logo near the waist, that she doesn’t know how to identify very well. Pants, she deemed them to be blue jeans, worn. Black and gray sports shoes (sneakers), with a wave, maybe the "Nike" logo which’s colour she doesn’t remember.

The second time he was wearing the same windbreaker, this time zipped up as the day was colder than the first, with wind. Didn’t notice the other pieces of clothing. Refers that on this day he had a pen with a clip hanging from one of his pockets.

The first time he was resting on the wall, supported by the palms of his hands, and on the second his hands were in his pockets.

Never saw him with any camera, even with a cell-phone, even though on the second time, he could have a device in his pocket, which she detected by the shape.”

This really happened. No, not what she says that happened, but the fact that she said it. It’s in the PJ Files.

And you know what also really happened? This:

- In (1), TS “when descending she decided to look at the pathway, as once she had lived there, likes to observe the house and the adjoining garden” having there “noticed the presence of a male individual at the back of MADELEINE’s house” who was “looking ostensibly at the house’s porch”.

- “A little further down”, in (2), the “two dogs on a leash (…) forced them to cross the road”.

- Between (2) and (3), depicts the “during the act of crossing” and was at (3) “that moment she saw the individual more closely”.

- After (3) she lost “him from her vision field”, never to see him again… that day.

And you know where this really did happen? I tell you where: inside TS’s 11 yr old mind. That’s where all of the above, and then some, really did happen.

No, I’m not joking. It’s important that you understand that it did happen and where exactly it happened, and the picture above is my best estimate of what went through TS’s mind of what she had to say.

When you have many boats to choose from to cross a river, the one you choose to put in the water is the one whose performance you will have to accept whatever it may be, independent if it serves your purposes or if it doesn’t.

And you have to live with that decision for the rest of your life.

You can’t just put a boat into water, and if it sinks, pull it out, pretend it didn't happen and put another in its place. If it has sunk, it has sunk. And to pretending that it didn’t sink won't get you anywhere.

Also, no matter how much you tell the Captain of the boat you’ve chosen not to touch the ship’s wheel, there’s absolutely nothing you can do about it once he’s on his own. If he, against all you’ve said, decides to give it a few turns, making the boat go adrift right into disaster, it’s a problem that you can, or can’t, solve later, but nonetheless it’s a problem that you have to deal with forevermore.

Now, if out of all the boats you have, you decide on one made out of paper, that’s taking an enormous risk. I’d even say a ridiculous risk because the disastrous outcome is perfectly foreseeable.

Add to that choice an 11yr Captain, and I say disaster is not foreseeable but certain.

And that’s what they did when they chose to have TS testify. They chose to cross the river on a paper boat captained by an 11 yr old.

When one tells a tale one adds a detail but when an 11yr old tells a tale the amount of added details fills up any treasure trunk.

Disaster was certain and disaster did happen. The paper ship was destined to sink and it sank.

The only thing is that people haven’t yet understood the seriousness of this disaster.

When I say people, I’m not only referring to those, like us who seek nothing but truth and justice and I’m speculating here also the BH’s.

Had they realized the seriousness they would have never have tried to replicate the TS's Sightings in the Mockumentary.

And they did, didn’t they?

As we've shown, you've seen what really happened in the TS's Sightings, both in the real world and in the mind of an 11 yr old.

The problem with the human mind is that reality can’t ever match imagination. For example, I remember the disappointment I felt when I looked at New York’s skyscraper’s for the first time. I mean, they were enormous and all, but they weren’t as GIGANTIC as I'd imagined them.

This distortion between the real and the imagined is aggravated the younger and more immature the mind is.

Children have a completely fanciful distortion of time, dimension and seriousness with the things that they imagine. They either underestimate what isn’t to be underestimated or exaggerate what isn’t to be exaggerated.

They’re children! They have the absolute right to live in their delicious world of imaginary friends, dimensions and consequences! It’s our most wonderful phase in life isn’t it?

But we’re talking about a very serious thing here, aren’t we? We’re talking about covering-up a death of a child.

Why involve a child in it?

That was a needless, stupid and cruel decision that resulted in having TS blurting out impossibility after impossibility to the PJ.

Notice that I haven’t, in the picture above, put any sort of dimensions, because there aren’t any to be put. In an imagined scenario all is possible and things are tailored in our mind to fit.

But dimensions are of the essence in this case. That’s why you can’t put “Rossio” in “Rua da Betesga” in the first place, because the dimension of one is disproportionate to the other.

Let’s then look at what was then supposed to have happened but didn’t because reality is reality and fiction isn’t reality.

We’ll start by showing where TS says Pimpleman was when she first saw him:

From this we can deduce, with some accuracy, that Pimpleman can only be seen from Rua Dr. Francisco Gentil Martins, by someone WITHIN the red triangle below.

TS has to be in the triangle, and we also know that she’s on the left side of the street when she sees Pimpleman, so we have TS’s precise location (blue star) when she first sees Pimpleman (yellow star) as is as shown.

It’s the exact moment she says she sees Pimpleman and it’s the exact same moment Edgar’s problems begin.

You see, when she says, as she does, that “being the distance between them the width of the road” she’s not exactly being exact, is she?

What she really wanted to say is that at that point in time he “was on the other side of the road”, which is much more generic.

What’s the difference?

A width of a road is approximately 6 metres, plus a metre for each on opposing sidewalk, the distance between them would be 8 metres, if that. But it’s not. The distance between TS and Pimpleman at that precise moment is double that, around 16 metres, as can be seen:

Now let’s introduce some movement in this.

As she says, a little further down, the dogs force the change of direction. Now dogs don’t just make 90º turns, do they?

And they apparently turned in such way that although TS’s mother was made to make the crossing she didn’t notice the man in the pathway. A sudden turn to the right would place TS’s mother practically facing the man making it impossible for her not to notice the man TS is confident she didn’t even see.

So let’s assume this is what happened:

Now let’s place the numbers that we showed in the picture that TS created in her mind, (1) for when she sees him, (2) for when she crosses the road and (3) for when she stops seeing him:

There’s quite a difference between the imagined and the reality, isn’t there?

It means that she has just walked about 6.5 metres, and has simply shortened the distance between herself and Pimpleman in about 2 metres, making the distance where she says she sees him the most closely to be around 14 metres:

So in terms of distance, we can determined that in this particular instance that TS walked about 6,5 metres from the moment she first sees the man, who is about 15 metres away from her, until she loses sight of him.

Now let’s introduce speed.

An average person walking normally does it in a speed around 4 km/h and with a steady fast pace around 6 km/h.

In this situation we have two indications that can tell us what approximate speed TS and her mom were walking in. The first is that, as TS says, the dogs force them to cross the road, which means that it’s the dogs that are basically setting the pace. The second is that they’re going downhill.

So I would say that TS and her mom being pulled downhill by two dogs would be walking at least with a speed of 6 km/h.

You can see for yourself that they were walking pretty fast in reconstruction done in the Mockumentary:

But as we always do, let’s also in this case bring in all possible error margins that favour the “accused” and say that their speed was between 5km/h (83 metres in 1 minute) and 6 km/h (100 metres in 1 minute).

This means that TS observed Pimpleman between 3.9 and 4.7 seconds at an average distance of 15 metres.

Approximately 4.3 seconds was the time between the moment she saw a man she wasn’t expecting to see and has no reason to suspect him of anything (the only odd thing was for him to be in a pathway with both hands on a wall turned towards a house she says she knows) and the moment she stopped seeing him entirely.

4.3 seconds. Take or add half a second.

Try an experiment. Get an adult friend to look at a person you point to in the street. Make sure you have as much detail as you can yourself first. Give them some time to absorb detail, but don't tell them you are going to ask them to describe the person they are asked to look at. Then ask your friend to describe what s/he saw. I'd be surprised if they could remember half as much as TS.

Now do the "TS Test" with an 11 yr old. Same technique as in the test above with your friend, you observe all the details first, and then ask the child “Can you see that man?”

When she looks, count 4 seconds and then call away her attention from the man by saying something like “Don’t stare like that!” This will ensure that she’ll have looked at the man for at least 5 seconds, which is longer than TS looked at Pimpleman.

Now you need to do two things. One is to make sure that she doesn’t look at the man anymore and the other is to take her mind off the subject momentarily. You can do both by having her look at you while you explain how rude it is to stare at people in public.

After that, tell her that you’re in fact doing an experiment and you now want her to describe him without looking at him again. This will ensure that she’ll be responding in an approximate set of conditions which TS did and that is being explicitly asked to recollect with as much detail possible what she casually saw for around 5 seconds.

Your child will have had the advantage over TS of having been able to look exclusively at the person the whole time without any distractions, such as the dogs irreverent behavior or the act of crossing a road and much less with gardens and houses she so much loves to see every day. But we’re not looking for an exact replica set of said conditions, just as approximate was we can make it.

Register the details. Mentally will be enough, because there won’t be that much to remember.

Now compare results with a similar experiment done in PDL late April in 2007. In this experiment the girl was able, in approximately 4.3 seconds, to notice:

- the presence of a male individual in a small pathway that there exists to access the apartments,

- that he was looking ostensibly at the house’s porch, staring fixedly at the balcony;

- that he was resting on the wall, supported by the palms of his hands;

- that he was wearing a black thin leather jacket type windbreaker;

- that the jacket type windbreaker had a zipper, silver in colour;

- that the jacket type windbreaker had several pockets with zippers also silver in colour;

- that the jacket type windbreaker had no logo or inscription on it;

- that the jacket type windbreaker was open;

- that he wore a white t-shirt beneath the jacket type windbreaker;

- that the white t-shirt had a dark blue logo near the waist, although she can’t identify it;

- that he wore blue worn jeans;

- that he wore black and gray sneakers;

- that the black and gray sneakers had a sort of a logo wave on them, maybe the "Nike" logo.

But we also have to take into account the following:

- this first sighting was the one she says she sees him more closely;

- this first sighting is at around 08.00 when the Sun is low possibly hindering perception, while the second sighting is around noon when the Sun is high and is no obstacle to said perception;

- unlike on this first sighting, on the second she can’t remember even the clothing.

So we can also say, with certainty, that within those same 4.3 seconds, BESIDES all of the above she was also able to notice:

- that he was Caucasian;

- that he had a fair complexion;

- that according to her criteria, he wouldn’t be Portuguese, but could be British;

- that he was about 180 cm tall;

- that he was slim build;

- that he was 30/35 years of age;

- that he had short hair, closely cropped haircut with 1 cm in height;

- that he had fair hair, although she doesn’t know if it was blonde, because the Sun was reflecting, hindering perception (confirming she’s describing Pimpleman from the first sighting);

- that he was wearing black sunglasses;

- that the black sunglasses had a mass structure;

- that the black sunglasses had thick temples;

- that he had a large forehead;

- that he had a normal size nose, somewhat pointed and sharp;

- that he had big ears close against the skull;

- that he had a mouth with thin lips;

- that he had his mouth closed so she didn’t see his teeth;

- that he had a risen chin, that stood out in a face she describes as pointed;

- that he had no beard;

- that he had no moustache;

- that he was clean shaved;

- that he had a few small pimples on the face as the result of shaving;

- that he looked ugly, even "disgusting".

Now, how did your child rate against TS? Poor? Terrible? Shameful? Or just even disgracefully?

I won’t tell you the result I got from my granddaughter. She’s still in her room crying.

You’ve got to give it to TS, she’s one observant little girl!

No wonder Kate rates TS’s statement as “CREDIBLE” and “RELIABLE”!

You don’t believe that she could see that much in so little time? You don’t say…

Pity that on the second sighting she wasn’t paying as much attention as she was during the first one.

She can’t remember the clothing but she’s able to notice two interesting things:

- he had a pen with a clip hanging from one of his pockets;

- he could have had a device in his pocket, which she detected by the shape.

I’ll speak about the hanging pen in a later post, but can’t let the shape in the pocket fly by.

The man is on the other side of the street, as I said, around 8 metres away. She’s walking her dogs. How can she possibly say she can make out any sort of shape of anything from whatever the man may have had in his pocket, if at that distance it’s almost impossible, if not totally impossible, to see if he has anything in his pockets at all?

And when I say almost impossible I’m just safeguarding the possibility of someone wanting specifically to confirm if another person had something or not in one of the pockets. And even then only maybe could one tell but that would mean that one would have to stare.

Remember me saying that he who tells a tale adds a detail?

But let’s be ridiculous. Let’s be totally and absolutely absurd. Let’s say the girl has a photographic memory, and all it took was 2 seconds to gather the information and the remainder two seconds was used to archive correctly everything in her brain so that if the time came that the information was needed, as by coincidence happened, all she had to do was pull it out, as she did, and methodically.

There’s just one minor detail. Nothing relevant, just a thing called impossibility.

As per TS’s description of the first sighting, Pimpleman has both hands on the wall, with an open jacket type windbreaker. Something like this:

I’ve asked you to do an experiment with an adult friend, and another with an 11 yr old child. Now it’s your turn to step up to the plate. I want to do an experiment with you.

Let’s put Pimpleman between you and TS. How? Using the Mockumentary of course:

But I’ll give you two advantages over TS. The first is that the actress playing TS is not where TS says she is. According to TS's words, she’s on the other side of the street, or very near there. The second is that you can look at the picture for as long as you like, while she had less than 5 seconds.

Are you done?

Can you then tell me what colour is the t-shirt he’s wearing?

Yes, you can look again. I'll wait.

Notice that I’m not asking about any logo or any logo’s details. Just asking for what is the colour of his t-shirt.

You can’t tell?

And I can tell you that besides Superman and TS, no one else can.

As we know, this sighting supposedly happened around 08.00 in the morning, so Superman was still in bed resting from having had to serve dinner at Tapas with the speed the T9 require that they be served. He was a total shambles at the end of all those nights for that particular week…

How do I know that? Well, as it happens, the other day on the train to Paris I happened to be sitting, by pure coincidence, next to a friend of a Batman's friend who told me that. And during our conversation she also confided in me that Superman had confessed to Batman that he was the one that had abducted Maddie just to get some rest that week!

What?!? You believe in TS’s statement and you don’t believe me? Go figure.

By the way, did you notice the colour of the “woosh” on Pimpleman’s sneaker’s?

After so many things being wooshed away in the Maddie Affair, I was really glad to finally see a woosh that hadn't been wooshed away... it's there, you just have to look attentively, or is it me that I just want to see what isn't there to be seen?…

Yes, you can look again at the picture. Do take your time.

Please don't forget that we consider TS, as the child she was at the time, to be blameless and unaccountable for any of the actions we've here referred.

Note:

The part of TS’s statement to the PJ that we used in our post, in its original Portuguese:

"(…)

Deseja assim esclarecer: No dia 30 de Abril, segunda-feira, pelas 08H00 e quando se dirigia para a paragem do autocarro com destino à escola, que parte às 08H15, trajecto que faz diariamente quando tem aulas, apercebeu-se da presença de um individuo do sexo masculino, nas traseiras da casa de MADELEINE, num pequeno caminho que aí existe de acesso aos apartamentos, a olhar ostensivamente para a varanda da casa. Tal sucedeu quando descia a rua, do lado esquerdo descendentemente, o qual estava mesmo defronte da varanda, sendo a distância que os mediava, a largura da artéria. Que ao descer decidiu olhar para o caminho, uma vez que tendo aí habitado, gosta de observar a casa e o jardim contíguo. Fazia-se acompanhar da sua mãe, a qual está segura não visualizou o individuo mais de perto, sendo que esta levava dois cães pela trela, que as obrigaram a atravessar a estrada, um pouco mais baixo. Nesse momento viu o indivíduo mais de perto, no acto da travessia, deixando de o ter no campo visual ao concretizar a mesma.

Indagada disse que o indivíduo não viu a depoente, pois tinha o olhar fixo na varanda.

Presume que ninguém se encontrava na varanda da casa da MADELEINE, no entanto não pode afirmar indubitavelmente.

Depois da travessia, apanhou o autocarro, e seguiu com destino à escola e a sua Mãe foi para a praia passear os canídeos.

(…)

No atinente ao indivíduo descreve-o como sendo: raça caucasiana, tez clara, pelo que não seria português, mas poderia ser britânico, segundo os seus critérios. Cerca de 180 cm de altura, compleição magra, 30/35 anos de idade. Cabelo curto, tipo rapado com 1 cm de altura e claro, mas não sabe se era louro, porque o sol reflectia, prejudicando a percepção. Não viu os olhos porque estava de óculos escuros de cor negra, com estrutura em massa de haste grossa. Tinha uma testa grande. Nariz de tamanho normal, algo pontiagudo e afiado. Orelhas grandes mas encostadas ao crânio. Boca com lábios finos, não tendo visto os dentes. Queixo subido, que se notava numa cara que descreve como afiada. Não tinha baraba, nem bigode, estando escanhoado. Não tinha outros sinais particulares, além de algumas borbulhas pequenas no rosto em resulatdo do barbear. Tinha um aspecto feio, atémesmo “nojento”.

Na primeira vez que o viu vestia um casaco tipo blusão em pele fina de cor negra, com fecho de correr e vários bolsos com fechos idênticos, de cor prateada. Não viu qualquer marca ou inscrição. Estando o blusão aberto, viu que vestia uma t-shirt branca, com uma marca azul escura junto à cintura, que não sabe identificar muito bem. Calça, ao que julga, eram de ganga de cor azul, gasta. Sapatos desportivos (ténis) de cor negra e cinzenta, com uma onda, talvez da marca “Nike” cuja cor não se recorda.

Da segunda vez vestia o mesmo blusão, desta feita fechado, pois o dia estava mais frio que o primeiro, com vento. Não reparou nas outras peças de roupa. Refere que neste dia ele tinha uma caneta com presilha pendurada num dos bolsos.

Da primeira vez ele estava encostado ao muro, apoiado nas palmas da mãos, e na segunda com as mãos nos bolsos.

Nunca o viu com qualquer máquina fotográfica, nem com um telemóvel, ainda que da segunda vez, pudesse ter um aparelho no bolso, o que detectou pela forma."