60 of Us

By May I

If a trio of journalists obtain an “exclusive” interview and speak directly to the people they are interviewing, one would expect some degree of accuracy with regard to the information they are reporting?

Mail Online -31 December 2007

“British witnesses: We saw two blond (sic) men on balcony next to Madeleine apartment”

By Fiona Barton, Dan Newling and Vanessa Allen

In the “exclusive interview” Jayne Jensen and her sister Annie Wiltshire speak of seeing “two blond men in their 30's, standing on the balcony of an empty apartment only a couple of doors away from the McCann's flat ….   One had curly hair....one was stockier than the other”

No sign of pimples or ugliness; both were “tanned and in Bermuda shorts”

The photograph in the article points to this apartment:

This was on the afternoon of May 3^rd; the day that Madeleine disappeared.

In the strange micro climates we have previously observed in Praia da Luz, these two have managed to acquire a tan in weather described as “pleasant with a cool breeze” in Kate's book. Or perhaps they have flown in from sunnier climes?

The sisters were “ immediately struck by the strange behaviour of the men on the balcony” 

What was the strange behaviour described?

“The pair... were standing outside the patio doors of a ground floor apartment, which had been unoccupied all week.”

According to Annie; “ One of the guys was walking down the steps and as I looked at him, he walked back up and started talking to the other one.”

Maybe I'm not so alert but this hardly strikes me as suspicious behaviour. The article goes on to mention that the apartment had been unoccupied all week, so it can be deduced it was 5C, and the photograph in the article appears to confirm this. Maybe the sisters had some way of knowing the apartment was empty, as Jayne had been in the resort a week before the McCanns arrived. Wasn't it possible that the 2 men had only just arrived the day they were seen on the balcony?

The sisters were in apartment 4L, which is a different block to the T9 party.

Annie explains why she found the situation odd:

“I hadn't seen them before. In May the resort wasn't busy. There were only 60 of us staying in the apartments and you got to recognise ALL the other people.”

She is very precise about the number 60 and US suggests a group with something in common.

Us is obviously both men and women given her comment about the men being strangers to her.

The blocks of apartments were reported to have 15-20 units, so she isn't referring to the number of apartments. Neither is she talking about US as doctors, as she and her sister are described as business women and the other couple she socialises with are a middle-aged barrister and a TV producer.

Tennis players maybe? But the tennis lists don't show 60. 

What about Mark Warner guest lists? More than 60 here.

So, what else to do the 60 have in common- not their age group nor the fact they have brought children. Or could it be everyone on the flight? Who would remember all of the passengers on a flight, unless previously known to them?

Or Tapas “diners”? With only 15 per night including the T9, according to Kate, that only allows for another 6 per evening. Could the additional diners be part of the 60?

There may be some explanation for this number, which is asked for by the authors of Maddie 129.

Question 68 asks why the Ocean Club manager mentions this as the number of people searching for Madeleine on the night she went missing, referring to an article by The Guardian. The authors obviously regard this as significant.

In fact, John Hill said ABOUT 60 Ocean Club workers and guests joined the search. Did he have a roll call, or did he just estimate the numbers? If he simply estimated, how did he account for the people who joined in the search of their own accord, when the news of the disappearance reached them?

How did Annie Wiltshire arrive at the same estimation?  Did John Hills share this information with her or is she simply repeating what she heard? She talks about 60 people staying in the apartments, with no mention of workers.

The sisters come forward to speak to the press in December because they claim their names were leaked to a Portuguese newspaper. They say they had alerted the police the next day but they were not interested.  Disinterest isn't confined to the Portuguese police, however. On their return home to England, they contacted the police, who did not respond until they contacted Clarence Mitchell.  Leicestershire Police then interviewed them for 11 hours and signed statements were obtained.

These statements will contain some very important information for 2 other reasons apart from the sighting of the 2 blonde men.

They said that they ate at the Tapas restaurant that evening.

They said that they saw Robert Murat outside the McCann apartment half an hour after the alarm was raised. This was said to be corroborated by the middle-aged barrister.

Kate's book, page 136, also reminds us that 3 of the Tapas 9 also claimed to have seen him that night.   

Can 5 people have made the same mistake? Actually, 6 if you count the “middle-aged barrister” who also backs Jayne’s sighting that night and also speaks to the police.

Strangely, on page 135, Kate describes Jane Tanner observing a man from the interior of a van. The police asked her to try and identify 3 men and say if they resembled her abductor sighting.

 “One was blonde and tall and the other too fat.”

Perhaps the police had taken more note of the sisters' sighting than they realised? The third man she was unable to see properly, so she couldn't be sure.

After observing the T9 at the Tapas, behaving reasonably, the sisters left to go to somewhere unspecified for a nightcap. 14 bottles of wine on the list for all the diners seems quite abstemious, so were accounts of excessive drinking an exaggeration? They seem to have been added by a different hand to the main body of the list.

On the way to the bar, they heard the hue and cry, so they must have left the Tapas shortly before 10pm. They must, therefore, have observed the checking or lack of it, by the group?

When the dining list was later released in the PJ files, the names Jensen and Wiltshire do not appear. The mysterious Irwin women do appear on the list, but no-one seems to have any recollection of them. The only possibility is that the sisters were at the table of another guest; under the name of the person who booked the table and that they left the group to go off on their own to another bar? 

Why are we spending time on the Tapas bookings when we assert there was no Tapas dining?

Because we want to demonstrate the anomalies that arise when trying to use it as a guide and forestall any “explanations” we may be offered as to the presence or otherwise of the sisters that night.

In conclusion, Clarence Mitchell uses the well- worn phrase that the information given by the sisters was “Very credible”, but as we can see, the men described do not fit the description of Pimpleman given by TS and Jeni Weinberger. Carol Tranmer, on the other hand, gives a description of a man she saw on the afternoon of May 3^rd, who was Scandinavian in appearance (blonde?) and refuses to be convinced that the person she is asked to identify is the pimply man seen by TS.   

The statements of Jayne and Annie, taken by the UK police, are not available in the PJ files, but the review team from Scotland Yard must have had access to them.

Will they be interviewing the sisters again?