An update on The Nightwear Job by Dr Martin Roberts:A Nightwear Job:
http://onlyinamericablogging.blogspot.com/2016/03/a-nightwear-job-by-dr-martin-roberts.htmlWednesday, 20 November 2019
THE NIGHTWEAR CONTINUESMore questions concerning Madeleine McCann's pyjamas by Dr. Roberts A feast of reasoned arguments: It
is fully three years since readers’ attention was brought to the
possibility of the McCanns’ having prepared for the disappearance of
their daughter in advance of the putative event. The article in question
(A Nightwear Job) provoked outright hostility on the part of some, and
continues to do so. It centres on two photographs of exactly the same
subject taken or reproduced with different lighting conditions, the more
contrastive of which affords a clue to the blue background against
which the subject (a pair of pyjamas) was in fact pictured. Bearing in
mind that the upper garment was pink, and appears so in both images, you
may find it hard to believe, as I do, that there exists, even today,
more than one individual prepared to suggest the background colour is
anything but blue in each of them.Another,
altogether spiteful lady (?) has previously, and vociferously,
attempted to convince people that the police in Portugal would routinely
invite members of the Paparazzi to record evidence for them, submitting
out-of-focus, false-perspective prints in the process. A close ally of
hers has persisted in reminding his readers that one Luis Forra is
credited by his agency (EPA) with the pictures under discussion.
Tellingly, Forra is also credited with other daylight photographs
(supposedly taken at 11:00 p.m.), one of Madeleine McCann (at age 2), and images from an event that did not take place until several days after his pictures were submitted. Clever man.“Then prove he didn’t take them!” They chorus. Well, except to the unremittingly dense, the photographs speak for themselves. Had any
professional photographer laid claim to them first hand their agency
work would have dried up overnight. To quote one of my detractors:
“They are simply not terribly good photos.” Needless to say Luis Forra
has failed to reply to asinine e-mail entreaties from this deluded duo.A
third man (not Harry Lime) has asked for ‘evidence’ that the Police did
not take the photographs in question, despite its having been clearly
pointed out that they were devoid of ‘flat lighting’, a neutral
background and, most significantly, a scaling reference – a protocol to
which police forensic photographers are obliged to adhere. Furthermore, a
copy of the image was specifically filed by police as ‘information from
the family’, not as a ‘diligence’ of their own. (It is elsewhere
claimed by one of the Luis Forra advocates that this is the only image,
so archived, to bear the Portuguese ministry’s copyright mark. That
claim is demonstrably false. At least three of the marina photographs
carry the same mark, partly visible between the areas of dense black).Intellectual rigor is seemingly lacking among these Wizards of Oz.This
follow-up piece though is about more than the questionable motives of
others. To come straight to the point, should the pyjamas in those
photographs have belonged to Madeleine McCann, then the story of her
abduction can have no foundation whatsoever, since she is supposed to
have been wearing them at the time, and stolen clothes do not
mysteriously reappear for photo-shoots.In
support of the conjecture that they were indeed Madeleine’s pyjamas, we
have visible evidence of their size, of their having been washed (and
therefore previously soiled - which chimes with Kate McCann’s tale of
tea drinking) and Kate McCann publicly saying so herself (“So these are
actually, apart from the size and the button on the back which
Madeleine’s doesn’t have, these are actually the pyjamas that Madeleine
was wearing when she was taken”).O.K., so Kate endeavoured to distinguish between the pyjamas she and husband Gerry were holding up for the cameras and those actually
worn by Madeleine. But the distinction is more apparent than real. What
do we genuinely know of the size (they seem plenty big enough to me)?
Nothing, other than what Kate chose to mention, which was… nothing of
substance. The same goes for the button aspect, which came to light once
the PJ had requested a contemporary pair from M&S in the UK and
received trousers accompanied by a simple T-shirt in response.
Otherwise, instead of a pair of pyjamas ‘very much like’ those worn by
Madeleine, we have her mother re-iterating that they were actually hers.During
other appearances before the European media, Kate reinforced the
dissociation between Madeleine’s pyjamas and the touring pair, claiming
the latter were in fact Amelie’s and ‘a little bit smaller’. That of
course makes the ‘not Madeleine’s’ stance noticeably firmer.
Nonetheless, the principal question posed at the very beginning of my
previous article on the subject was not that of whose pyjamas featured
in the photographs, but who took them (the photographs, not the pyjamas)
and, no less significantly, when?Needless
to say, the loud-mouthed and foul-mouthed alike volubly contradicted my
point of view. ‘They could have been taken by anyone, anywhere’ is
about as solid an argument as the denial that Madeleine could ever have
lain dead inside apartment 5A of the Ocean Club when viable candidates
for the role of corpse number precisely one. The impetus to demand
‘proof ‘of a negative statement (i.e., that the photos in this instance were not taken
by a third-party) is clearly irresistible to those for whom
circumstantial evidence implicating the McCanns in their own daughter’s
disappearance is anathema for whatever reason. Ever since Gerry McCann’s “She’s out there until proven otherwise” invitation to prove Madeleine was not
abducted, there has been no shortage of cocksure commentators adopting
the same strategy. It is not quite as fail-safe as they may imagine
however. As touched upon earlier, should it be accepted that Madeleine’s
pyjamas toured Europe after her reported abduction, then the idea that
she and her clothing were stolen together would clearly be untenable.
But even if those pyjamas were really Amelie’s from the outset, and not
merely foisted upon the infant simply in order to bolster that claim,
questions pertaining to the photographer’s identity and chronology
remain.So what if those Eeyore pyjamas were genuinely purchased for the younger girl? Overlooking
the purchaser’s lamentable sense of sizing, let’s proceed immediately
to the extraordinary perspective that would see not just identical pairs
of pyjamas bought for two different children but ‘breakfast mishaps’
occurring to both of them, leaving two soiled pyjama tops. Why
two? Well, Kate McCann has already described washing one. The other
(pictured) was apparently not it, yet also shows clear evidence of a
liquid mark, wet or dry, at the neck. If that mark is dry then it is a
stain, if wet it is either a fresh stain or a result of washing, the
latter being the more likely. Hence the compound coincidence of
identical pyjamas undergoing similar treatment, for similar reasons, and
to no real purpose into the bargain.If
washing one set of clothes two days before their planned departure was
so significant an action as to merit discussion in the context of her
daughter’s apparent abduction, then why did Kate McCann describe only
the one act of laundry, not both? Why in fact did she bother to describe
it at all? Who cares whether the pyjamas the child was wearing were
clean?As Kate wrote in her book:“The
only other unexplained detail I remember from that morning was a large,
brown stain I noticed on Madeleine’s pink Eeyore pyjama top. I couldn’t
recall seeing it the night before and I had no idea how it might have
got there. It looked like a tea stain. Gerry and I do drink quite a bit
of tea, and Madeleine, too, would have the odd small cup.”And later…“I
returned to our apartment before Gerry had finished his tennis lesson
and washed and hung out Madeleine’s pyjama top on the veranda.”Unsurprisingly, Amelie, not yet three years of age at the time, is not identified as a tea drinker.The washing of Amelie’s
pyjamas, whether it occurred or not, was clearly of lesser importance,
to the extent that there is no record of its ever happening. In point of
fact Kate makes no mention whatsoever, in either her police statements
or her book, of ‘Amelie’s pyjamas’.The
tale of the tea-stain has the stamp of a retro-fit explanation for
something or other. What that something might be is of course a matter
of conjecture, but the story did not make its appearance until Kate
McCann’s 6 September statement as Arguida, by which time she would
already have escorted those Eeyore pyjamas around Europe and been more
than familiar with the published images of them, which clearly show a
liquid mark of some kind at the neck. The problem with explaining this
mark away as the infamous tea-stain, however, is that she has also
described washing the pyjama top on the very morning she claims first to
have noticed the stain, Thursday May 3. Hence, any photography of
Madeleine’s stained pyjamas can only have been undertaken before then, i.e., hours before Madeleine was reported missing. Perhaps that is why those same pyjamas had to become Amelie’s without delay.The
specificity of pyjama ownership is one question, the photographer’s
identity quite another. Ironically, as much as the original background
within the disputed photographs points toward a certain party, or
parties, as having been responsible, it also points directly away from
the dismissive ‘anyone could have done it’ point of view.If,
while visiting a holiday resort in sunny Portugal, or even working in
one, you were asked to take a photograph or two of a young child’s
pyjamas, wouldn’t you think to lay them on the floor (a table-top being
obviously problematic), stand directly above and have the entire image
clearly in your viewfinder? You might even decide to deal with the upper
and lower garments separately, as did the PJ, so as to guarantee
capturing both aspects fully ‘in frame’. That is unless the intention
were to make the photographs seem ‘official’; something the appearance
in the picture(s) of ceramic floor tiles would not lend itself to. So
instead you opt for an item of soft furniture as your background - a bed
perhaps - in any event, an item coincidentally upholstered in material
identical to that found in apartment 5A, and the same colour to boot.
And would you not be all the more surprised if asked to wash the pyjamas
beforehand, especially if they had already been washed very recently?Ironically,
this very same viewpoint is expressed by the self-assured ‘Luis Forra’
spokesperson, who published the following on 29 July last year (2018):“It
seems totally ludicrous that Kate or Gerry would go to the effort of
flipping a sofa, or removing cushions, in order to take a photo. Why not
use a bed, the coffee table, or the dining table? It's inconceivable
that the sofa would have been flipped, or cushions removed, with so many
other, easier options available. Besides which, in the original
photograph the background wasn't blue!”You
will notice that this critic too struggles with the concepts of
‘contrast’ and ‘brightness’ in the handling of digital photographs. It’s
as if he’d never even bothered to look at a colour palette. Trust me.
If the same subject in each of two photographic reproductions is pink
then the background, in this case, is fundamentally blue, be it sky
blue, air force blue or any other shade of blue. In any case, why should
the Press Association or the Telegraph have seen fit to turn ‘not blue’
into ‘cobalt blue’ before publishing their picture?What
this closing discussion brings to the fore is the idea that the
photographer’s choice of background was not haphazard, but deliberate to
a degree no casual ‘assistant’ would spontaneously have considered. It
was a deliberate effort to disguise the pictures’ origin and make them
appear as ‘official’ as the early media headlines subsequently labelled
them. It succeeded for years, inasmuch as no-one questioned that textile
background, the origin of the garments, the absence in the pictures of a
police imprimatur, the shadows that aren’t, the imprecise focussing, or
the parallax (converging parallels) more obvious to the professional
than the untrained eye. Such
are the questionable details encompassed by this instance of
‘information from the family’ they render the objections cited above
about as robust as straw men standing beside a bonfire.http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6719561.stm'The
pyjamas are identical to those Madeleine was wearing and belong to her
two-year-old sister Amelie.' (This ‘quote’ is in fact reported speech,
the statement appearing three paragraphs beneath the sub-heading
‘Fantastic support’.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQ3ForLXJT0
1:35 Kate McCann:"So
these are actually, apart from the size and the button on the back
which Madeleine's doesn't have, these are actually the pyjamas that
Madeleine was wearing when she was taken."Further articles on the pyjama problem can be found on the excellent Pamalam site:In particular: 10-09-2013 'Not a leg to stand on'22/11/2013 'A Bedtime Story' and 18-01-2014 ' Laid to rest'To find these on Pamalam's site, scroll down to bottom of list and select 'Nigel's McCannfiles'.A numbered and alphabetical list will appear and for Dr. Roberts and the list numbers 87 to 92 refer to the years 2009 to 2014 .http://fytton.blogspot.com/2019/11/the-nightwear-continues.html
A Nightwear Job http://onlyinamericablogging.blogspot.com/2016/03/a-nightwear-job-by-dr-martin-roberts.html
By Dr Martin Roberts
March 9, 2016
As published in the Telegraph
Author unknown
In the very nearly nine years since the disappearance of Madeleine
McCann, and the eight since the parents had their arguido status
formally withdrawn, one simple question has passed publicly unanswered,
probably because the answer appears obvious and the question therefore
not worth the asking. I shall ask it nevertheless:
Who took the McCanns' 'official photograph' of Madeleine's pyjamas?
The image in question was 'released' to the world's media in the
late afternoon of 10 May, 2007, following a press conference that day.
It was no doubt assumed by many that, since the PJ released the
photographs (there is more than one), the PJ themselves must have taken
them. Yet a film distributor who arranges the release of a 'blockbuster'
is hardly likely to have spent the previous months/years actually doing
the filming.
With this seed of doubt in mind, one might consider what the PJ did with their
photograph(s), adhering all the while to the worldwide practice, among
law enforcement agencies, of 'continuity', whereby the progress of
evidence through the system, in whichever direction, is recorded at each
step along the way. Whereabouts, then, did they file this particular
'diligence' of theirs?
Within the relevant Forensic report (23 November 2007) are
references to the following images, together with cognate views of a
pair of pyjama trousers:
A far cry from earlier publicised representations you will admit.
Why on earth should the PJ have seemingly undertaken the same
photographic work twice, involving two quite different sets of pyjamas?
The forensic record (of garments correctly pictured alongside a
scaling reference, i.e. a ruler) is that of a pair of pyjamas supplied
on request by M&S (UK), afterwards forwarded to the Forensic
Laboratory in Lisbon by Goncalo Amaral, together with a covering letter
dated 7 June. It has nothing whatever to do with the official photograph
released in early May. In fact the clothing pictured has more in common
with that featured in the retailer's own contemporary stock photograph,
a copy of which was sent to the Algarve Resident, again on request, and
which the 'Resident' published on 8 May - two days before the official
release.
As published by the Algarve Resident
During a press call at the Amsterdam Hilton, on 7 June, Kate McCann
took pains to explain that the pyjamas being exhibited at that time
were in fact Amelie's, and that Madeleine's were not only bigger but did
not feature a button-fastening t-shirt. Only a couple of days
earlier the same pyjamas, again described as 'Amelies' and 'a little bit
smaller', were presented on 'Crimewatch', but without reference to the
button discrepancy.
It stands to reason of course, that, Madeleine McCann's pyjamas
having been abducted, a surrogate pair would have been required for
photographic purposes, in the event of there being no extant
photographic record of the clothing in question. But appropriate
photographs were to hand. They already existed. One
version, as we have seen, was published by the Algarve Resident, another
by the BBC. The McCanns' 'official' version was consistent with neither
of these. With the PJ yet to physically access a representative set of
pyjamas, why should they have been called upon to photograph anything
else for immediate release?
There is no record of their having done so. Ergo they did not. So who did? And where did the pyjamas come from that enabled them to do it?
Addressing the second of these questions first, the garments
featured in the PJ release cannot have come from M&S locally, since
all their Portuguese branches had been closed years before. Had they
come from M&S in the UK they would obviously have resembled the pair
sent to (and genuinely photographed by) the PJ. A pointer to their
origin is, however, to be found within the case files.
Alongside a suite of photographs taken at Lagos Marina by Kate
McCann is an introductory memo, written by DC Markley of Leicester
Police on or about the 8 May and headed up, 'Information from the
Family'. Here also one finds the only copy (in black and white) of the
McCanns' official photograph of Madeleine's pyjamas (Outros Apensos Vol.
II - Apenso VIII, p.342). Rather than its being a PJ production,
afterwards passed to the McCanns, it seems the photograph was actually a
McCann production fed to the PJ, an observation wholly concordant with
the fact that it was actually the McCanns who first revealed this
photograph to the press, on Monday 7 May, three days before the PJ
released it (as reported by Ian Herbert, the Independent, 11.5.07).
Any illusion that the image in question was the result of a McCann
representative's commissioning their own studio photograph of
'off-the-shelf' UK merchandise may soon be dispelled. It is an amateur
snapshot. Taken in ambient (day) light, against a coloured (as opposed
to neutral) background, it is slightly out of focus and displays
detectable signs of parallax. It is not something even a journeyman
professional would admit to.
And yet, bold as brass, it represents 'information from the family'.
Perhaps it was produced by a member of the McCann entourage that
descended on Praia da Luz over the long weekend 4-6 May? Then again,
perhaps not. As Kate McCann explains in her book, 'madeleine' (p.109):
“Everyone had felt helpless at home and had rushed out to
Portugal to take care of us and to do what they could to find Madeleine.
When they arrived, to their dismay they felt just as helpless – perhaps
more so, having made the trip in the hope of achieving something only
to discover it was not within their power in Luz any more than it had
been in the UK.”
On Kate McCann's own admission, to a House of Commons committee no
less, neither she nor husband Gerry were any more capable of keeping
cool under fire during this time. Having earlier (August 2007) told her
Pal, Jon Corner, "the first few days.…you have total physical shutdown",
she went on to advise the House that, despite being medically trained,
she and her husband "couldn't function" (John Bingham, the Telegraph,
13.6.2011).
Well someone on the McCann side of the fence managed to function in
time for the parents to appear before the media on 7 May with a
photograph that, so far, no-one seems to have taken, and of clothing
which, other things being equal, ought not even to have existed anywhere
inside Portugal, except, perhaps, in the clutches of a fugitive
abductor. But, of course, other things are anything but equal.
Non mihi, non tibi, sed nobis
A month after the world's media were first shown a picture of
something resembling Madeleine McCann's 'Eeyore pyjamas', a real set was
being touted around Europe. Described by Kate McCann as 'Amelie's' and
being 'a little bit smaller', they were held aloft for the assembled
press brigade, without any one of them questioning the pyjamas'
origins either. Being 'Amelie's' was quite enough, apparently, to
justify their also being in the McCanns' possession at the time. Since
when though? Gerry McCann did not return home to Leicester from Praia da
Luz until 21 May, time enough for him to have raided his daughter's
wardrobe for something he might need on his European travels, but way
too late to have met any 7/10 May deadlines.
It seems, then, as if the two ingredients required to achieve an
earlier photograph of 'Madeleine's' pyjamas (the photographer and the
subject) were both missing. So how was it done?
What at first appears to be a riddle is soon solved when one
realises that the pair of pyjamas which accompanied the McCanns around
Europe was the very same pair that starred in their 'official
photograph' taken earlier. Kate McCann took public ownership of them
before the television cameras the moment she referred to them as
'Amelie's'. On close inspection these pyjamas (Amelie's) are revealed as
identical to the pair previously pictured in both the Daily Mail
(10.5.07) and the Telegraph (see top of page here), down to the stray
threads dangling from both upper and lower garments. This means that
'Amelie's pyjamas', for want of a better description, were also present
with the McCanns since the start of their Algarve holiday.
As published by the Daily Mail
Suddenly the question ceases to be 'Who photographed a
representative pair of Eeyore pyjamas?' and becomes, instead, 'Who
photographed Amelie's pyjamas?' Furthermore, if everyone was feeling so shell-shocked as to render them incapable from the Friday, when did they have the presence of mind to take the requisite pictures?
We begin to edge toward a sinister conclusion once we take
particular account of the literal background against which these
particular pyjamas were photographed.
A coarse woven tale
Unlike the various studio renditions of Eeyore pyjamas to which we
have been introduced, the McCann's official photograph(s), versions of
which were published by both the PJ and the UK media, present the
subject laid out against a blue textile, rather than the more customary
piece of artist's board. This blue upholstery, for that is
unquestionably what it is, helps define who, among the Tapas 9, might
have been the photographer.
The Paynes, the Oldfields and the O'Briens can be ruled out. Only
the Payne's apartment incorporated any soft furnishings in blue, but of a
different quality to the plain open-weave material on display here.
During the early morning of Friday 4 May, 2007, the McCanns were
re-located to alternative accommodation in apartment 4G - another in
which blue soft furnishings were conspicuous by their absence (it was
appointed in beige throughout).* Added to which the concern, lest we
forget, is with photography involving a pair of pyjamas known to have
been in the McCanns' possession from the outset.
In his statement to Police of 10 May, Gerry McCann as good as exonerated himself of all blame concerning picture taking:
‘Asked, he clarifies that:
apart from the personal photos already delivered by him to the police authorities after the disappearance of his daughter MADELEINE, he has no others in his possession.
He adds that it is:
his wife KATE who usually takes pictures, he does not recall taking any pictures during this holiday, at night.’
Notwithstanding accounts of how, from the Friday onwards, the
McCanns, their nearest and dearest, all fell mentally and physically
incapable (of anything save visiting the pool, the beach bar, and the
church on Sunday morning), Kate McCann early on made a very telling
remark, concerning photography, to journalist Olga Craig:
"I haven't been able to use the camera since I took that last photograph of her" (The Telegraph, May 27, 2007).
That statement alone carries with it a very serious connotation. However, we still have a distance to travel.
The more contrastive of the two images reproduced here displays
what appear to be areas of shadow, when in fact there are no local
perturbations at the surface of the fabric to cause them. Similarly, the
dark bands traversing the t-shirt appear more representative of what is
actually beneath it. These visible oddities suggest the material is in fact damp and 'clinging' to the underlying upholstery.
There is, as we know, an anecdote of Kate McCann's, which sees her
washing Madeleine's pyjama top on the Thursday morning. As re-told in
her book, she does so while alone in the family's apartment:
"I returned to our apartment before Gerry had finished his
tennis lesson and washed and hung out Madeleine’s pyjama top on the
veranda."
Size matters
As previously stated, Kate McCann was careful to bring the
attention of her Amsterdam Hilton audience, to Madeleine's pyjama top
being both larger and simpler than the version she was holding in her
hands at the time. She was inviting them instinctively to associate
garment size with complexity - the larger the simpler in this instance.
It would mean of course that Madeleine's 'Eeyore' pyjamas, purchased in
2006, would not have been absolutely identical with those of her sister
Amelie, purchased whenever (but obviously before the family's 2007
holiday on the Portuguese Algarve).
On 7 May, the Sun reported that:
"The McCann family also disclosed that on the night of her
disappearance Madeleine was wearing white pyjama bottoms with a small
floral design and a short-sleeved pink top with a picture of Eeyore with
the word Eeyore written in capital letters.
"The clothes were bought at Marks and Spencer last year."
In
his 7 June covering letter to the Forensic Laboratory in Lisbon,
Goncalo Amaral conveys the following specification in relation to the
pyjamas he was intent on sending for examination:
"The Pyjamas are from Marks and Spencers, size 2 to 3 years -97 cm.
"The pyjamas are composed of two pieces: camisole type without buttons"
Since these items could only have been supplied to the PJ in
mid-07, they must have represented that year's style, as it were, for
2-3 year olds. Madeleine would have been four years old by this time.
However, Kate McCann would have people believe that 'Amelie's' pyjamas,
sporting a button, were designed to fit an even younger child. Had Kate
purchased the appropriate pyjamas for Amelie in 2007 of course, they
would not have had a button at all.
They must therefore have been purchased in the same epoch
as Madeleine’s own, i.e. during 2006, when Amelie would have been a year
younger and somewhat smaller even than when the family eventually
travelled to Portugal the following year.
The significance of all this becomes apparent once we consider
those photographs which show how the pyjamas held aloft by the McCanns
at their various European venues encompassed half Gerry McCann's body
length at least. Photographs of the McCanns out walking with
their twins in Praia da Luz, on the other hand, illustrate, just as
clearly, that Amelie McCann did not stand that tall from head to toe.
Even In 2007 she would have been swamped by her own pyjamas, never mind
the year before when they were purchased.
In conclusion, the McCanns' 'official photograph', first exhibited
on 7 May, appears to be that of a damp pair of pyjamas, too big to have
been sensibly purchased for Madeleine's younger sister that Spring, and
most certainly not the year before. The subject is set against dark blue
upholstery of a type not present in any of the apartments occupied by
the McCanns or their Tapas associates immediately after 3 May. Kate
McCann has explained, over time, how she was alone in apartment 5A that
morning, in the company of a damp pyjama top (having just washed it) and
how, from that afternoon by all accounts, she 'couldn't bear to use the
camera', an automatic device (Canon PowerShot A620) belonging to a
product lineage with an unfortunate reputation for random focussing
errors.
Madeleine was not reported missing until close to 10.00 p.m. that
night. If Madeleine McCann's pyjamas were not in fact abducted, then nor
was Madeleine McCann.
Martin Roberts
Grateful thanks are due to Nigel Moore for collating a number of
highly relevant photographs and media reports in connection with this
topic.
If a fellow thought that the Metropolitan Police Service was a
functioning entity, he might call for the arrest of the McCanns based on
what is written and depicted here. Ed.
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Discussion on CMOMM: https://jillhavern.forumotion.net/t12555-dr-martin-roberts-a-nightwear-job
