Chasing Cars & Doctors

1. Chasing Cars...

When the PJ checked previous renters of the Renault Scenic 59-DA-27, they were asked a number of questions, including whether they knew the McCann family. The driver but one before the McCanns was Kenneth Walkden, who was interviewed on April 29th 2008. He hired the car between March 25th and April 1st 2007 for a golfing holiday with some friends. The distance travelled in the car was 945km. 

He doesn’t say which golf course they were playing on, but the Boavista or Parque da Floresta may have been amongst the possible destinations. The trip was organised by his friend P S and Mr Walkden said that they all went on holiday together every year.  Maybe to the same venue? The Scenic was also used by a number of golfers other than the Walkden party.


Mr Walkden  told the PJ:

“I am not familiar with any member of the McCann family. Neither do I know any of them.”

I’m sure by this time he knew exactly who the McCann family were and where they lived. Hardly a soul in the UK or Portugal didn’t know who they were by 2008. But he didn’t know them personally it seems.

Mr Walkden happened to be a member of the exclusive and prestigious Rothley Park Golf Club, as did at least four members of his party. The same golf club where Gerry McCann played golf every Monday, according to an article by Anna Pukas in The Mail on January 5th 2008.

Kate’s book is very helpful, as she confirms Gerry joined the Rothley Park Golf Club before she started her IVF treatment, which means Gerry had been a member for at least 5 years when Mr Walkden made his statement.  She also states that Gerry had been to play golf in Portugal a couple of times, dates unspecified, in her book.  Gerry, in contrast, claims to have played golf in Albufeira only once in 1994, according to his PJ statement. Why golf-mad Gerry didn’t even mention the word when describing their holiday activities is a continuing puzzle.

 Returning to Mr Walkden, would a more accurate answer  have been along the lines of ..?

“I don’t know Mr McCann personally, but I now know he’s a member of my golf club.”

 Not necessarily something the club wanted to advertise perhaps, but true.

Or maybe the first time they met was the Summer Event in July 2011, as part of the club’s Centenary celebrations. Gerry was there and so was Mr Walkden. Another one of those “fancy that” moments when they discovered they had both used the same hire car in 2007?


2. Chasing Doctors...

The “flurry of phone calls” that we are now hearing so much about, in relation to the night of May 3rd caused us to revisit the topic of the phones obtained for the T9. In Dianne Webster’s rogatory interview in April 2008, she is asked if she knew a Dave Middleton, the answer being “No.” The question is about phones and who they were obtained from, but Dianne’s answer suggests it is not Dave M who supplied the phone. She mentions her son-in-law, Simon Aldridge (sic) who is, in fact. Oldridge. She says her middle daughter Louise is married to Simon, whose company, Sandtoft Tiling is based in Doncaster. It’s probable that Dave M is also an employee of the company, but as he doesn’t figure in this saga. We won’t include any further details about him.

Police officer 4078 asks Dianne an interesting question. We say interesting, as it seems clear from the interview in total, that the police seemed to know many of the answers before they asked the questions.

4078 “You’ve got two doctor daughters have you?”

Reply “Yeah, well the one in New Zealand’s a doctor as well, but she’s a PhD doctor, she’s a scientist. Yeah that’s er Louisa Nates, yeah, my middle daughter.”

We were curious why her daughter was called Nates, if married to Simon Oldridge, who we could see from records, had lived with a Louise K Webster/Oldridge in a northern town and later, in the West Country. Was it possible to have two daughters, Louise and Louisa, living in different places? Had the rogatory interview been mistranscribed or mistranslated? The question about two doctor daughters intrigued us.

There was no Louise K Oldridge registered as a medical doctor, but as doctors often practise under maiden names, we checked, only to find there was a Louise K Webster registered, but no longer practising, as an anaesthetist. Qualified in Leicester.  And a Dr Louise K  Oldridge who had a business with Simon Oldridge.

Assuming that Dianne’s daughter Louise, married to Simon Oldridge, once practised as a medical doctor, why would Dianne say Louise was a doctorate doctor? Maybe she also had a science doctorate and was staying in New Zealand at this time. Then why not clarify?

Perhaps Dianne just wanted to keep her daughter at arm’s length from everything, but she could have had no idea that her rogatory statement would be released into the public domain, so why prevaricate? A full and frank statement to a police officer from a witness was more important than protecting her daughter, for whatever reason.

If officer 4078 knew the answer to this particular question before she asked, was this discrepancy noted by Leicester Police and was the information ever conveyed to the PJ?

Note: Details of addresses not already in the public domain are known to us, but will not be published here. It is possible to use publicly available sources for those who want to make their own check.