Dear Metropolitan Police Service (MPS),
Information regarding Operation Grange is requested.
By
way of background, at around 10.00pm on Thursday 3 May 2007, Madeleine
McCann was reported missing. On 15 May 2007, Robert Murat was declared a
formal suspect (‘arguido’). On 7 September 2007 the McCanns were also
made formal suspects. In July 2008, following reports from the
Portuguese Judiciary Police and the Attorney-General, the Portuguese
investigation was shelved on the basis that there was insufficient
evidence to charge any person with either of two crimes: (1) abduction
or (2) homicide and hiding a cadaver. Accordingly Mr Murat and the
McCanns were relieved of their suspect status.
On 12 May 2011,
in response to a request the previous day from Rebekah Brooks, then
Editor of the Sun newspaper, the then Prime Minister David Cameron
ordered the then Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Sir Paul Stephenson,
to set up an investigation into Madeleine’s disappearance, which the
Prime Minister’s spokesman said was ‘to help the family’.
Today
(December 2019), over 12½ years since Madeleine was reported missing,
and over 8½ years after Operation Grange was set up, it would appear
that the Metropolitan Police is no nearer to providing an answer as to
what really happened to Madeleine McCann. It has now been one of the
United Kingdom’s longest-running and most expensive enquiries ever,
costing at least £12 million so far with no sign whatsoever that any
significant progress has been made.
As long ago as 26 April
2015, a number of newspapers reported that Operation Grange was to be
scaled down from 29 full-time officers to just four.
Impressive statistics were given by Operation Grange at the time.
1,338 statements taken
1,027 exhibits collected
650 sex offenders considered
8,685 potential sightings of Madeleine around the world considered
560 lines of enquiry pursued
over 11,000 mobile phone records seized and examined
31 rogatory requests sent to a number of countries
several suspects (some of them named) questioned and/or interviewed under caution.
The
reports indicated at the time that the Home Office granted another £2
million to Operation Grange for further investigative work until April
2016. Many people, not least members of the London Assembly, have
expressed grave doubts about the purpose of the investigation, its
length, cost and modus operandi.
Hence I submit these questions:
1.
Do you have any updates on the numbers of (a) statements taken (b)
exhibits collected (c) 650 sex offenders considered (d) sightings of
Madeleine around the world considered (e) lines of enquiry pursued (f)
mobile phone records seized and examined (g) rogatory requests made and
(g) suspects questioned and/or interviewed under caution? If so, please
supply the updated figures.
2 Up to what date has the Home Office currently authorised funding for Operation
Grange?
3
Who is the current Senior Investigating Officer and how many
full-time or part-time staff does s/he have and, of those, how many are
detectives and how many are support staff?
4
There have been several media reports in the past two years, some of
which are said to have been sourced from Operation Grange insiders,
suggesting that the current Operation Grange suspect for the abduction
of Madeleine is a paedophile in a German prison. Can the Metropolitan
Police now confirm whether that is the case, or, alternatively, state
whether they now have any other prime suspect in view.
5.
Please state any dates when any Operation Grange detectives have
met in person with their Portuguese counterparts since 1 April 2015.
6.
Please list the dates of any travel to foreign countries made by
any Operation Grange detectives since 1 April 2015 and name the
countries involved.
I would be grateful.
Yours faithfully
Anthony Bennett
-------------
https://jillhavern.forumotion.net/t16705-new-foi-act-request-for-information-about-operation-grange-19-december-2019-update-on-its-work-funding
All FOI's into the disappearance of Madeleine McCann are filed here: https://jillhavern.forumotion.net/f49-foi-requests-into-the-disappearance-of-madeleine-mccann
Thursday, December 19, 2019
Dr Martin Roberts 'A Nightwear Job' (If Madeleine's pyjamas had not, in fact, been abducted then neither had Madeleine McCann)
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.html
Wednesday, 20 November 2019
THE NIGHTWEAR CONTINUES
More 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
Wednesday, 20 November 2019
THE NIGHTWEAR CONTINUES
More 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
*See the extended search videos here: http://www.mccannfiles.com/id167.html
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.
---------------
Discussion on CMOMM: https://jillhavern.forumotion.net/t12555-dr-martin-roberts-a-nightwear-job
---------------
Discussion on CMOMM: https://jillhavern.forumotion.net/t12555-dr-martin-roberts-a-nightwear-job
Friday, November 8, 2019
Letter from PeterMac (MMRG) to The Rt Hon Priti Patel: OPERATION GRANGE - REPORTED DISAPPEARANCE OF MADELEINE BETH MCCANN
8th October 2019
The Rt Hon Priti Patel, PC, MP
The Rt Hon Priti Patel, PC, MP
Home Secretary
Madam,
OPERATION GRANGE - REPORTED DISAPPEARANCE OF MADELEINE BETH MCCANN
I am a retired Police Superintendent, Operations Commander, with
CID and other investigative experience. I have studied this case for 12
years, in conjunction with experts in various fields.
I refer to the recent report by Sir Richard Henriques of his review of Operation Midland.
"Sir Richard, who was commissioned to review the investigation by the Metropolitan Police in February 2016, concluded:
“The principal cause of the many failures in this investigation was
poor judgement and a failure to accurately evaluate known facts and to
react to them.
“A major contributing factor was the culture that ‘victims’ must be believed.
“Whilst the responsible Officers assert that they kept an open
mind, several failures can only be explained by an unwarranted and
disproportionate belief in ‘Nick's’ credibility.”
The review said that major inconsistencies between Beech’s
accounts, a lack of corroborating evidence and overall “implausibility”
was not properly challenged.” [ Link supplied below]
It is evident that Operation Grange may have fallen into the same trap of poor judgement, specifically
• has failed to accurately evaluate known facts, and to react to them
• has followed the culture that the ‘victims’ [the McCanns] must be believed
• has not had an open mind, but has had an unwarranted and disproportionate belief in the ‘McCanns’ credibility’
• has not taken account of the major inconsistencies between the
McCann’s and their holiday friend’s and other witnesses’ accounts; of
the lack of corroborating evidence; and further that the overall
‘implausibility’ of the account has not been properly challenged.
The Operation seems deliberately to be ignoring the points of
evidence against the ‘official account’. The most notorious of these
include the alerts by the British blood and human cadaver detection
dogs; the clear evidence of forgery of the photo of the family by the
pool; the exposing of the original untruths about forced and broken
shutters; the total lack of evidence of entry, presence and exit; the
impossibility of the alleged regular checking system; bizarre and
contradictory statements from the parents themselves about the ‘comfort
blanket’ and the pyjamas . . . and a plethora of others. The list is
too long even to append here. Not one has been explained or refuted.
Operational Policing is clearly not within the immediate responsibility of the Home Secretary.
The continued funding of Grange over eight years at a cost of at least £ 11.6 million (2018), however, is.
(By contrast Operation Midland lasted only 16 months, and cost a relatively insignificant £2.5m)
The position of PM Mrs May, might have been compromised by her
decision whilst Home Secy. to receive Dr Kate McCann at a Downing Street
reception, and to introduce her as a ‘victim’ to Royalty. [Link below]
PM Mr Cameron, might similarly have been compromised by his
decision to write personally to the McCanns in terms inappropriate
during an investigation into a missing child, when it is established
fact that in over 85% of cases the close family or friends are
ultimately shown to have been involved and should therefore always be
treated as prime suspects. Met. DCI Colin Sutton turned down the
opportunity to lead Grange after learning that the investigation was
going to be very narrowly focused, and away from the McCanns or their
friends, contrary to his oath, his professional duty, his experience and
his training. [Link below]
Professionals from several fields have expressed serious doubts
about the path the investigation is following, and serious commentators
across the world have presented reasoned and evidenced thoughts about
many aspects of the case and its investigation, some presented as
challenging documentaries
It is clear that PM Mr Cameron, having inherited the poisoned
chalice of the involvement of Government and the Security Services from
Blair and Brown, was also put under intolerable pressure to set up
Operation Grange given the threats against Mrs May, as Rebekah Brooks
admitted at Leveson.
We do not believe that your position has been compromised in any of these ways.
I note that in a refreshingly robust and professional manner you
have already instructed Sir Thomas Winsor to conduct an inspection of
the Metropolitan Police, but observe that Operation Grange is a tightly
focussed issue, stemming from the involvement of a previous Labour PM,
Blair, and his Chancellor, Brown, (the reason for whose involvement is
far from clear.)
On 10 October 2016 I sent a full letter with several appendices of
evidence and references to your predecessor The Rt Hon Amber Rudd PC,MP,
with copies to Mr Cameron, and to the Met. Commissioner.
Several dossiers of fully referenced evidence and analysis have
been sent direct to Grange, and a formal document with appendices of
relevant and incontrovertible evidence was sent to the Portuguese
Attorney General, and to the Polícia Judiciária (PJ). [Link below]
All have acknowledged receipt.
Retired Portuguese DCI Dr Gonçalo Amaral, the original SIO in the
case, who wrote the book in which he referred to political involvement
which has been endorsed by the Supreme Court in Portugal as an honest
account and consistent with the evidence, has also been kept informed of
our research.
We can provide duplicates on request.
In light of the above, may I as a tax-payer be assured that any
money allocated to Operation Grange is devoted to a proper search for
the truth and to justice for a little British girl, or that Sir Thomas
be instructed to focus on Grange as a priority in his wider assessment
of the work of the Metropolitan Police
I remain, Ma’am
Yours sincerely
Peter Mac
BSC, LLB, MA
Member of the Hon.Soc. Middle Temple
Retired Police Superintendent
Nottingham Police. 1972-2000
Refs:
Henriques Report
Letter to the Portuguese Attorney General
DCI Colin Sutton
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4467832/Met-interested-proving-McCann-parents-innocent.html
E-Book, referenced chapters dealing with individual aspects of the ‘evidence’
DCI Dr. Amaral’s book - in translation
Home Sec. Mrs May, Duchess of Gloucester, and principal suspect, Dr Kate McCann,
Reply received today (8/11/2019)
HMI and NAO have looked at it . . .
So that means one of several things
that the conspiracy goes right to the heart of every organisation involved
Or, possibly, and this will not be popular, that Grange is actually doing something . . .
Related link: Response to my letter from National Audit Office
Sunday, October 13, 2019
ROBERT MURAT AND THE MEETING AT 'SALSALITO', BURGAU, ON TUESDAY 13 NOVEMBER 2007: CLUES ABOUT WHAT REALLY HAPPENED TO MADELEINE MCCANN
[ Preliminary notes: This long article may be discussed in a thread on the open forum:
The references are incomplete and will be addd to in due course. Our article maybe amended as new information comes to light, or as a result of any errors being brought to our attention.
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed by MMRG in this article reflect our honest views based on all the available evidential material we have seen - and our hypotheses are no more than just that - theories.
Acknowledgements: MMRG acknowledges with grateful thanks all those whose research is quoted in this article, but would like to mention especially the outstanding work of Nigel Moore of the former 'mccannfiles' site and 'pamalam'] in preserving the original PJ files made public by the Portuguese Police in August 2008 and so much other valuable material ]
ROBERT MURAT AND THE MEETING AT 'SALSALITO', BURGAU, ON TUESDAY 13 NOVEMBER 2007:
CLUES ABOUT WHAT REALLY HAPPENED TO MADELEINE MCCANN
An exploration of the 'Two Camps' Theory
======
THE ‘SALSALITO SUMMIT’: Brian Kennedy’s two meetings in Portugal on 13 November 2007
by the Madeleine McCann Research Group
September 2019
Executive Summary: On 15 May 2007, Robert Murat was made the chief suspect in the disappearance of Madeleine McCann - suspected of being responsible for her abduction. On 7 September, Gerry and Kate McCann were made suspects - this time, on suspicion of hiding Madeleine's body.
Cheshire businessman and multi-millionaire Brian Kennedy was appointed by the McCanns in (or maybe before) September 2007, to run the McCanns’ private investigation into Madeleine’s disappearance. In November 2007 he, together with the McCanns’ co-ordinating lawyer, senior Freemason Edward Smethurst (1), travelled to Portugal, where they attended two very important meetings.
One of these two meetings was at the home of Robert Murat's uncle and aunt, Ralph and Sally Eveleigh, where Robert Murat and his lawyer, Francisco Pagarete, met with Brian Kennedy and Edward Smethurst.
So this meeting was attended by one of the chief suspects in the disappearance of Madeleine McCann (Murat), plus his lawyer, and the lawyer and chief private investigator for the other two main suspects, the McCanns.
MMRG believes that these two meetings, held om 13 November 2007, hold vital clues as to what really happened to Madeleine McCann. This article reveals what is known about these two meetings and attempts an understanding of their real purpose, examining in detail events before and after this historic meeting.
It will also introduce what has become known as the 'Two Camps' theory. In short, this theory suggests that, after Sunday 29 April 2007, if not before, Robert Murat and a coterie around him were already known to the McCanns and their circle.
MMRG, along with an increasing number of others, holds that there is strong evidence that something serious happened to Madeleine, or that she died, late on Sunday 29 April 2007. The evidence for this is discussed in many places on CMOMM (2).
We will argue in this article therefore that when Murat was summoned from the home of his sister in Sidmouth, Devon, the following day (Monday 30 April) (3), and jetted to Portugal the next day (Tuesday) at 7am from Exeter airport, it was to help the McCanns (in some way not yet fully known) to help plan and carry out a hoax abduction on Thursday that week.
Events that swiftly followed Madeleine's reported have revealed what now appears to be a plot by British government security services to frame Robert Murat as the chief suspect in the case. Immediately before he was made a suspect, the McCanns' friend Jane Tanner identified Robert Murat as the person she had (allegedly) seen walking away from near the McCanns' apartment at 9.15pm on Thursday 3 May. Thereafter three more of the McCanns' friends heaped added suspicion onto Murat by making statements claiming he had been seen by them lurking around the McCanns' apartment sometime after 10.30pm that evening, a claim Murat emphatically denied.
This article traces the development of this rift between the McCanns and their friends, and Robert Murat, and tries to answer why the British security services, together with the McCanns' friends, clearly framed Murat as the chief suspect. Murat was later to describe this apparent conspiracy against him as 'The biggest-ever f___-up on the planet".
We explore how this 'rift' between the 'camps' (which for convenience we will call the 'Murat Camp' and the 'McCann Camp') progressed for months - but seems to have mysteriously melted away after one of those two meetings on 13 November, namely their 'high summit' meeting at 'Salsalito', home of the Eveleighs.
One issue as yet unresolved is whether Robert Murat consented to being framed, or was taken by surprise. This article seeks to explore this further with records from the Portuguese Police files, and statements, articles and interviews on the TV and print media.
It is MMRG's provisional view that whatever really happened to Madeleine McCann somehow connected both the McCanns and Robert Murat. It suggested that Murat was summoned by a person or persons known to help with the planning of a hoax abduction on 3 May 2007, and then to penetrate the subsequent Portuguese Police investigation as a 'spy in the camp' - by interpreting the evidence of key witnesses and trying to disrupt the investigation. We provide evidence that this may have been with the help of the British Ambassador in Portugal.
MMRG further suggests that British security services then plotted against Murat, behind his back. This may explain why he described the whole affair as 'The biggest f___-up on the planet'.
We finish by showing how after the crucial 'Salsalito Summit' meeting, the McCann camp reversed their claims against Murat, helping him to gain two enormous libel awards totalling well over £600,000.
Chapters
INTRODUCTION
A PROOFS THAT THE MURAT/McCANN CAMPS MEETING TOOK PLACE AT SALSALITO IN NOVEMBER 2007
B BRIAN KENNEDY MEETS THE PORTUGUESE POLICE – DAYTIME, 13 NOVEMBER 2007
C THE MEN FROM METODO 3
D INFORMATION FROM BRIAN KENNEDY AND THE METODO 3 MEN
D1 Situation 1: A man in the shadows
D2 Situation 2: Was Sergey Malinka a paedophile?
D3 Situation 3: A strange incident on the border with Spain
E THE ARADE DAM PLOT
F BRIAN KENNEDY MEETS WITH ROBERT MURAT, HIS FAMILY AND LAWYERS – EVENING, 13 NOVEMBER 2007
G ROBERT MURAT’S ACTIVITIES BETWEEN 1 MAY AND 13 NOVEMBER 2007
G1 Robert Murat becomes an interpreter for one week
G2 Murat's 17 lies
G3 What was Robert Murat really doing between 1 and 3 May 2007?
G4 The campaign to frame Robert Murat: Part 1
G5 The campaign to frame Robert Murat: Part 2
G6 The campaign to frame Robert Murat: Part 3: Jane Tanner adamantly identifies Robert Murat as the man she said she'd seen on Thursday 3 May
G7 The campaign to frame Robert Murat: Part 3: Jane Tanner DENIES having 'adamantly' identified Robert Murat
G8 Did Jane Tanner really identify Robert Murat on 13 May? - What Kate McCann says about this in her book
G9 The campaign to frame Robert Murat: Part 4: Three of the members of the Tapas 7 claim to have seen Robert Murat lurking near the McCanns' apartment and the Ocean Club after Madeleine was reported missing
H HOW NEWS OF THE SALSALITO MEETING EMERGED
I ANALYSIS
J THE SMITHMAN SIGHTING AND THE ‘SALSALITO SUMMIT’
K EVENTS AFTER THE ‘SALSALITO SUMMIT’
L CONCLUSION
M APPENDICES
---------------------------
INTRODUCTION
This article focuses on the action of Brian Kennedy in attending two meetings in Portugal on 13 November 2007 (4). According to the McCanns, they appointed Cheshire businessman Brian Kennedy to run their ‘Find Madeleine’ campaign on Friday 14 September 2007 (5), just one week after they had been made formal suspects over the disappearance of their daughter. He was then responsible for carrying out their private investigations.
Cheshire-based businessman Brian Kennedy, said to be worth £250 million (6). Just five
days after the McCanns fled Portugal after being made formal suspects in the
disappearance of their daughter, he offered to run the McCanns' private investigation.
He went on to appoint a series of unreliable and untrustworthy detectives and private agencies...who found out nothing about what happened to Madeleine
Although this article suggests that these two meetings were attended by Brian Kennedy on Tuesday, 13 November 2007, it has not been formally admitted by any of those present at the meeting that the second meeting was on the very same day as the first. However, it seems highly likely that they were. Brian Kennedy and Edward Smethurst would hardly fly out to Portugal for a police meeting, then fly back to England, only to fly out again days later for another meeting with the Murat group. If they didn't meet with the Murats that very day, it must surely have been the following day.
The first in time of these two meetings was with the Portuguese Police at Portimao Police Station. The second was with Robert Murat and three other members of his family at the home of Ralph and Sally Eveleigh, Robert Murat’s uncle and aunt.
We will deal now with the first one, but first, because so little is known about these two meetings, especially the Salsalito one, we need to prove that they actually happened.
The meeting Brian Kennedy had with the Portuguese Police at the Portimao Police Station is in the Portuguese Police files publicly disclosed in the DVD of information released to the public in August 2008 (4).
The general public was not meant to know about the 'Salsalito' meeting. So here is what is known about it.
A PROOFS THAT THE MURAT/McCANN CAMPS MEETING TOOK PLACE AT SALSALITO IN NOVEMBER 2007
----------
Proof 1 - Source http://robertmuratscapegoat.blogspot.com/
It was Francisco Pagarete, Mr Murat’s Portuguese lawyer - the one whom he was so anxious to see when he flew out to Praia da Luz on 1 May - who confirmed that a second meeting involving Brian Kennedy took place at Mr Murat’s uncle’s house in the Algarve in November. He told the BBC: “[Brian Kennedy] came here to give his support to Robert and to say he doesn’t believe Robert was involved in this story in any way or sense. And he asked if Robert could help the investigation for the finding of Madeleine in any way”. Mr Pagarete added that Mr Kennedy had ‘promised to stay in touch with Mr Murat’ but ‘had not contacted him since’. Mr Pagarete also confirmed that Edward Smethurst was at the meeting (7).
----------
Proof 2:
The Portuguese paper Jornal de Notícias (8) appeared to have some additional information about this meeting. Their report, early in 2008, said: “The meeting - a dinner that Brian Kennedy asked to be discreet and far away from the eyes of the press - took place in the end of last year at a house of Murat's relatives in Burgau (Vila do Bispo). At the dinner were Robert Murat and Kennedy, their respective lawyers, Jennifer Murat and the aunt and uncle of Murat” [NOTE: This appears in fact to have been Ralph Eveleigh, Murat’s uncle, and Sally Eveleigh, his cousin].
----------
Proof 3 - Source http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-563826/Madeleine-One-year-Portuguese-police-ashamed-says-attorney-general.html
Last night, it was revealed the McCanns' financial backer, tycoon Brian Kennedy, had met Robert Murat, the first suspect in the case (9).
The meeting took place at Mr Murat's aunt's house in the Algarve last year.
Mr Murat's lawyer, Francisco Pagarete, said: 'We had a very pleasant dinner with Mr Kennedy.
"He came here to give his support to Robert and to say he doesn't believe Robert was involved in this story in any way.
"And he asked if Robert could help the investigation for the finding of Madeleine."
It is understood the meeting in November was also attended by Mr Kennedy's lawyer, Edward Smethurst, who is co-ordinating the McCanns' legal affairs.
----------
Proof 4: On maccannfiles you find this - Timesonline
'Visit to Robert Murat, 04 May 2008' (10)
'Pray like mad,' begs tearful Kate McCann
Steven Swinford
May 4, 2008
Excerpt:
Brian Kennedy, the home improvements tycoon backing the McCanns, admitted yesterday that he flew to Portugal last November and spent an evening with Robert Murat, apart from the McCanns the only other official suspect. A source close to Kennedy said he was "gathering information".
Kennedy's lawyer, Ed Smethurst, approached Murat through a mutual friend and said that Kennedy wanted to offer him a job.
But the job offer never transpired. Kennedy spent the evening with Murat and his lawyers at his aunt's house in Praia da Luz, discussing Madeleine's disappearance.
He left with a "flea in his ear" after being confronted over reports that Metodo 3, the McCanns' private investigators, had suspicions about Murat.'
Additional evidence is provided by this comment found on a blog which was run by a group supporting the McCanns
Additional comment found on blog http://justice4mccannfam.forumotion.com/t557-murat-meets-brian-kennedy
[ Note: This was a McCann-support blog (11). The comments made by this poster reflect concerns MMRG members had at the time about this mysterious Salsalito meeting. Murat was an official suspect in the ABDUCTION of Madeleine. Why on earth, if the McCanns really believed that Robert Murat had been responsible for abducting Madeleine, or had had something to do with her abduction, would the McCanns send Brian Kennedy & Edward Smethurst to meet him? This obvious question would seem to have been in the mind of this pro-McCann bloggerm who evidently wrote this when s/he first heard news of the Salsalito meeting ]
QUOTE (reproduced exactly as written)
I didn't know they [Murat family, Kennedy and Smethurst] had met?? Thats odd...kate as always said she is not convinced he is innocent of any doing wrong in the abduction. Wounder how she felt about that?
Bit of an odd thing to do. Surly the secrecy laws wouldn't allow such a meeting..
what on earth is going on with this case????
Why would Kennedy want to go and have lunch with murat?? Did he honestly believe murat was going to jump to his questions. He is an arguido...not allowed to talk......... yet kennedy wants him to talk and help????
UNQUOTE
Exactly! What would be the point of sending your top private investigator and your top lawyer to meet with the man who had probably been responsible for abducting your child?
This article will try to provide the answer.
Finally, can we prove that this meeting was on Tuesday 13 November, the same day as we know that Brian Kennedy met the police at Portimao Police Station? No. But it seems very likely. We know it was in November. It doesn't seem likely that Brian Kennedy would take two separate flights in November all the way to Portugal.
There are three mentions above that this meeting took place over dinner and 'in the evening'. Surely the most likely probability is that Kennedy and Smethurst flew in to Portugal early on 13 November, or maybe the day before, then met with the Portuguese Police during that day, then drove up to 'Salsalito' for their high-powered and (as we shall see) game-changing meeting with four members of the McCann family. They may have flown home the following day, Wednesday 14 November.
B BRIAN KENNEDY MEETS THE PORTUGUESE POLICE – DAYTIME, 13 NOVEMBER 2007
There were several weeks of preparation, at least, leading up to this first of two meetings on 13 November. Brian Kennedy brought with him to the meeting two private investigators from the disreputable Spanish detective agency, Metodo 3, who had been hired by Brian Kennedy some weeks earlier, in or before September 2007, to ‘look for Madeleine’ (12). Metodo 3 was eventually closed down in 2014 after several corruption scandals involving criminal conduct, including illegally recording meetings of top politicians at a premier Barcelona restaurant (13).
Francisco Marco, boss of the discredited and corrupt detective agency, Metodo 3.
The McCanns paid his agency over £300,000, maybe much more, over a period
of 18 months. His agency was finally closed in 2014 when it was found to have
illegally recorded top politicians' private conversations at a posh Barcelona restaurant
At that time, Brian Kennedy had - maybe still has - a villa in or near Barcelona (14). Maybe he already had had contact with this controversial private detective agency before 2007.
The immediate cause of this meeting taking place was a telephone call from the Spanish Police to the Portuguese Police on Friday, 19 October (4).
A report of this ’phone call is given in the Portuguese Police files which were controversially released to the general public on a DVD in August 2008 - much to the anger of the McCanns, because it revealed a great deal of information, embarrassing to them and their friends, about the detailed police investigation into Madeleine’s disappearance.
Here is the actual report in the files, translated by a Portuguese volunteer interested in the Madeleine McCann case.
QUOTE
“On the 19th of October, we were contacted by Alberto Carbas, Chief of the Kidnapping Unit of the Commissary-General, based in Madrid, who passed to us the information that the McCann family had contracted a Spanish private detective agency known as ‘Metodo 3’. The costs of their investigation into Madeleine McCann were being covered by a Scottish multi-millionaire whose name is Brian Kennedy. His objective was to find Madeleine.
“We were asked if we were available and interested in meeting with a representative of Metodo 3 and the Spanish Commissary General and Chief of the Kidnapping Unit of the Police in Spain. The purpose of this proposed meeting, they said, was to find out the truth, but they stated that they would not interfere in police work. At most, they said, they would ‘complement’ our investigation. They firmly stated that they are not working directly for the McCann family, but for Brian Kennedy. They didn’t ask for any information regarding the investigation, nor was any offered to them, for obvious reasons”.
UNQUOTE
The claim that Metodo 3 was ‘not working directly for the McCanns’ was highly misleading. Brian Kennedy had attended a meeting with the McCanns and a bevy of lawyers at a meeting in London on Friday, 14 September 2007 and agreed to help them by searching for Madeleine and trying to find out who had abducted her (12). One of the lawyers had driven to the McCanns’ home in Rothley, Leicestershire, to take them to and from the London meeting.
Moreover, in running this private investigation, he worked hand-in-hand with the McCanns’ co-ordinating solicitor, Edward Smethurst, a high-ranking Freemason from Lancashire - as we shall see in a moment.
Rochdale resident Edward Smethurst was a long-time friend of Brian Kennedy,
and had for years acted as the in-house lawyer for Kennedy's extensive Latium
Group. Just three days after the McCanns arrived back in England, having fled
Portugal after being named suspects, Edward Smethurst 'phoned the McCanns.
At least, that is what we are told in Kate McCann's book on the case,
'madeleine' (12). He was immediately appointed the official 'Co-ordinating
Solicitor for the McCanns'. He is a prominent Freemason and Past
Grandmaster in the East Lancashire Provincial Lodge.
This part of the report was interesting:
“On the 19th of October, we were contacted by Alberto Carbas, Chief of the Kidnapping Unit of the Commissary-General, based in Madrid, who passed to us the information that the McCann family had contracted a Spanish private detective agency known as ‘Metodo 3’…We were asked if we were available and interested in meeting with a representative of Metodo 3 and the Spanish Commissary General and Chief of the Kidnapping Unit of the Police in Spain”.
It seems clear that this meeting must have been arranged by one of Brian Kennedy’s men from Metodo 3, Antonio Giminez Raso. He was one of the men who attended with him in Portugal on 13 November 2007. He had also once been employed as an Senior Inspector in the Kidnapping and Drugs Unit of the Catalonia Regional Police Force (15), so no doubt would have had connections with the Kidnapping Unit of the Commissary-General in Madrid.
However, as we now know, Antonio Giminez Raso was arrested on 18 February 2008, just three months after he attended this meeting in Portimao on 13 November 2007 (16).
He was arrested on very serious charges, including assisting a violent drugs gang in their attempt to steal drugs from a boat in Barcelona harbour, and corruption in public office. Although he had been a trusted Senior Inspector in the Catalonian Regional Kidnapping and Drugs Squad, by the time he was engaged by the McCann Team in 2007, he had either been dismissed from the police or resigned from them. It seems though that he must still have had contacts or influence inside the Spanish Kidnapping and Drugs Unit, hence his being able to persuade (himself or through inside contacts) the Chief of the Kidnapping and Drugs Unit in Madrid to contact the Portuguese Police on 19 October. How convenient it often is to have friends in high places!
We now know that Brian Kennedy flew out in November 2007, less than four weeks after this ’phone call from the Spanish police, to attend a meeting with the Portuguese Police at Portimao Police Station. The meeting at Portimao Police Station must have been arranged following the ’phone call from the Spanish Police on 19 October. Since Edward Smethurst accompanied him to the meeting with the Murat family on the evening of 13 November (and probably to the police meeting as well - see below) it is highly probable that the two men flew out from England together. It is likely that they flew to Portugal at least the day before.
Below are the Portuguese Police’s accounts of a meeting between them, Brian Kennedy, three members of Metodo 3 and (probably) Edward Smethurst. They began with this introduction:
QUOTE
“We held a meeting on 13 November, with Inspectors Paulo Ferreira and Ricardo Paiva [from the Portuguese Police] present, with Brian Kennedy, Director of the [Metodo 3] detective agency, Francisco Marco and one of his advisers, plus Antonio Jimenez, ex-chief of the Kidnapping Unit of Catalonia [Note: Other information suggests that Edward Smethurst was also present]. Brian Kennedy insisted that his motives were purely charitable, aimed at finding the truth, and generally helping missing children. He said he was interested in discovering the truth even if the McCann family, the friends, or any other person is found to be involved in the disappearance”.
UNQUOTE
Here is the full report of the meeting, dated Wednesday 14 November 2007, kindly translated into English by a Portuguese volunteer, and preserved for us by ‘pamalam’ on the mccanpjfiles site, at this link: http://www.mccannpjfiles.co.uk/PJ/BRIAN-KENNEDY.htm
QUOTE
Volume XIII Pages 3434 - 3436
Service Information 2007.11.14
To: Coordinator of the Criminal Investigation
From: Joao Carlos, Inspector
Concerning the investigation of the disappearance of the British minor, Madeleine McCann, I present you Sir with the following:
On the 19th of October, we were contacted by the Commissary General, located in Madrid, by the Chief of the Kidnapping Unit, Alberto Carbas, who passed to us the information that the McCann family had contracted a Spanish company known as 'METODO 3', composed of Spanish private detectives. This business, or in other words, the costs of the activities of this business, were being covered by a Scottish multi-millionaire whose name is BRIAN KENNEDY and whose objective was to locate the British minor.
With this information, we were asked if we were available and interested in meeting with a representative of this Spanish business, and also with the Commissary General and Chief of the Kidnapping Unit of the Police of our neighbouring country, whose operation is in Madrid.
The meeting had as its objective to receive on behalf of the private detectives, from that moment and for their own wishes, relevant information with the aim to ascertain the truth, and to state that they would not interfere in police work, and at most they would serve as a complement to some useful information. They firmly state that they are not working directly for the McCann family, but for Brian Kennedy and that their sole purpose is to locate the missing child, or to gather the inescapable truth of what happened.
They did not ask for any information regarding the investigation, nor was any offered to them, for obvious reasons as this is found incorporated in the Portuguese penal process.
On the 13th of the current [month], in the presence of the signatory and inspectors Paulo Ferreira and Ricardo Paiva, a meeting was held, in this department, with Brian Kennedy, the director of the detective company, Francisco Marco and an advisor of this same company, Antonio Jimenez, ex-chief of the Kidnapping Unit of Catalan. From the beginning, Brian Kennedy was questioned, and ascertained that the meeting only had this scope - of transmitting that his objective in all of this was purely charitable in that he is interested [in helping to stop] the bad treatment of minors and in missing children. He affirmed that he only was interested in discovering the truth and nothing more even if the McCann family, the friends, or any other person is found to be involved in the disappearance.
During the course of this meeting, the director of METODO 3 gave us a small book (attached), with information relative to the disappearance of the minor. This information, as we were told, was received via telephone and that they had already opened a line in Spain, specifically to receive and deal with information.
In this book, written in Spanish, we can analyse three pieces of information:
1. In the first case, we observed that there was report of facts which occurred in August/September of 2006, and which appears to us somewhat extemporaneous, as it cannot now be related to the material under investigation.
2. In the second point, we should remember that the computers of Sergey Malinka were searched and that nothing of suspicion was found there or related to paedophilia.
3. In that which concerns the third point, we are currently carrying out diligences with the intent to confirm or disprove the related information.
With nothing more to report.
Joao Carlos, Inspector
UNQUOTE
Item 1 to which Brian Kennedy and the Metodo 3 investigators referred was the evidence of Margaret Hall. We will not reproduce it here, but this is the link for those who wish to see it:
http://www.mccannpjfiles.co.uk/PJ/MARGARET_HALL.htm (Incident 1 - Evidence of Margaret Hall)
Item 2 refers to allegations apparently made by Kennedy and Metodo 3 against Sergei Malinka, referenced here:
http://www.mccannpjfiles.co.uk/PJ/SERGEY-MALINKA.htm#p13p3439 (Incident 2 - Question marks about Sergei Malinka) See File No. 3439
Item 3 refers to an alleged sighting of Madeleine McCann by a lorry driver, whose report suggested he had seen a lady looking like Michaela Walczuk handing a large package, which could have been a child, over a fence or wall several miles east of Praia da Luz. There were multiple indications that this sighting was a complete fabrication. The link for those who want to see the extent of the Portuguese Police enquiries on this alleged sighting is here:
http://www.mccannpjfiles.co.uk/PJ/METODO_3.htm (Incident 3 - Alleged sighting by lorry driver).
None of these three 'sightings' produced any worthwhile leads. It is very possible that Brian Kennedy and his two investigators knew very well that they were false leads, and only arranged this meeting to try to portray the McCanns' private investigation as a credible and sincere enquiry into who abducted Madeleine and where she was. Indeed there is evidence that Brian Kennedy's investigators were offering money to Moroccans to invent claims that they had seen Madeleine (17).
The references are incomplete and will be addd to in due course. Our article maybe amended as new information comes to light, or as a result of any errors being brought to our attention.
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed by MMRG in this article reflect our honest views based on all the available evidential material we have seen - and our hypotheses are no more than just that - theories.
Acknowledgements: MMRG acknowledges with grateful thanks all those whose research is quoted in this article, but would like to mention especially the outstanding work of Nigel Moore of the former 'mccannfiles' site and 'pamalam'] in preserving the original PJ files made public by the Portuguese Police in August 2008 and so much other valuable material ]
ROBERT MURAT AND THE MEETING AT 'SALSALITO', BURGAU, ON TUESDAY 13 NOVEMBER 2007:
CLUES ABOUT WHAT REALLY HAPPENED TO MADELEINE MCCANN
An exploration of the 'Two Camps' Theory
======
THE ‘SALSALITO SUMMIT’: Brian Kennedy’s two meetings in Portugal on 13 November 2007
by the Madeleine McCann Research Group
September 2019
Executive Summary: On 15 May 2007, Robert Murat was made the chief suspect in the disappearance of Madeleine McCann - suspected of being responsible for her abduction. On 7 September, Gerry and Kate McCann were made suspects - this time, on suspicion of hiding Madeleine's body.
Cheshire businessman and multi-millionaire Brian Kennedy was appointed by the McCanns in (or maybe before) September 2007, to run the McCanns’ private investigation into Madeleine’s disappearance. In November 2007 he, together with the McCanns’ co-ordinating lawyer, senior Freemason Edward Smethurst (1), travelled to Portugal, where they attended two very important meetings.
One of these two meetings was at the home of Robert Murat's uncle and aunt, Ralph and Sally Eveleigh, where Robert Murat and his lawyer, Francisco Pagarete, met with Brian Kennedy and Edward Smethurst.
So this meeting was attended by one of the chief suspects in the disappearance of Madeleine McCann (Murat), plus his lawyer, and the lawyer and chief private investigator for the other two main suspects, the McCanns.
MMRG believes that these two meetings, held om 13 November 2007, hold vital clues as to what really happened to Madeleine McCann. This article reveals what is known about these two meetings and attempts an understanding of their real purpose, examining in detail events before and after this historic meeting.
It will also introduce what has become known as the 'Two Camps' theory. In short, this theory suggests that, after Sunday 29 April 2007, if not before, Robert Murat and a coterie around him were already known to the McCanns and their circle.
MMRG, along with an increasing number of others, holds that there is strong evidence that something serious happened to Madeleine, or that she died, late on Sunday 29 April 2007. The evidence for this is discussed in many places on CMOMM (2).
We will argue in this article therefore that when Murat was summoned from the home of his sister in Sidmouth, Devon, the following day (Monday 30 April) (3), and jetted to Portugal the next day (Tuesday) at 7am from Exeter airport, it was to help the McCanns (in some way not yet fully known) to help plan and carry out a hoax abduction on Thursday that week.
Events that swiftly followed Madeleine's reported have revealed what now appears to be a plot by British government security services to frame Robert Murat as the chief suspect in the case. Immediately before he was made a suspect, the McCanns' friend Jane Tanner identified Robert Murat as the person she had (allegedly) seen walking away from near the McCanns' apartment at 9.15pm on Thursday 3 May. Thereafter three more of the McCanns' friends heaped added suspicion onto Murat by making statements claiming he had been seen by them lurking around the McCanns' apartment sometime after 10.30pm that evening, a claim Murat emphatically denied.
This article traces the development of this rift between the McCanns and their friends, and Robert Murat, and tries to answer why the British security services, together with the McCanns' friends, clearly framed Murat as the chief suspect. Murat was later to describe this apparent conspiracy against him as 'The biggest-ever f___-up on the planet".
We explore how this 'rift' between the 'camps' (which for convenience we will call the 'Murat Camp' and the 'McCann Camp') progressed for months - but seems to have mysteriously melted away after one of those two meetings on 13 November, namely their 'high summit' meeting at 'Salsalito', home of the Eveleighs.
One issue as yet unresolved is whether Robert Murat consented to being framed, or was taken by surprise. This article seeks to explore this further with records from the Portuguese Police files, and statements, articles and interviews on the TV and print media.
It is MMRG's provisional view that whatever really happened to Madeleine McCann somehow connected both the McCanns and Robert Murat. It suggested that Murat was summoned by a person or persons known to help with the planning of a hoax abduction on 3 May 2007, and then to penetrate the subsequent Portuguese Police investigation as a 'spy in the camp' - by interpreting the evidence of key witnesses and trying to disrupt the investigation. We provide evidence that this may have been with the help of the British Ambassador in Portugal.
MMRG further suggests that British security services then plotted against Murat, behind his back. This may explain why he described the whole affair as 'The biggest f___-up on the planet'.
We finish by showing how after the crucial 'Salsalito Summit' meeting, the McCann camp reversed their claims against Murat, helping him to gain two enormous libel awards totalling well over £600,000.
Chapters
INTRODUCTION
A PROOFS THAT THE MURAT/McCANN CAMPS MEETING TOOK PLACE AT SALSALITO IN NOVEMBER 2007
B BRIAN KENNEDY MEETS THE PORTUGUESE POLICE – DAYTIME, 13 NOVEMBER 2007
C THE MEN FROM METODO 3
D INFORMATION FROM BRIAN KENNEDY AND THE METODO 3 MEN
D1 Situation 1: A man in the shadows
D2 Situation 2: Was Sergey Malinka a paedophile?
D3 Situation 3: A strange incident on the border with Spain
E THE ARADE DAM PLOT
F BRIAN KENNEDY MEETS WITH ROBERT MURAT, HIS FAMILY AND LAWYERS – EVENING, 13 NOVEMBER 2007
G ROBERT MURAT’S ACTIVITIES BETWEEN 1 MAY AND 13 NOVEMBER 2007
G1 Robert Murat becomes an interpreter for one week
G2 Murat's 17 lies
G3 What was Robert Murat really doing between 1 and 3 May 2007?
G4 The campaign to frame Robert Murat: Part 1
G5 The campaign to frame Robert Murat: Part 2
G6 The campaign to frame Robert Murat: Part 3: Jane Tanner adamantly identifies Robert Murat as the man she said she'd seen on Thursday 3 May
G7 The campaign to frame Robert Murat: Part 3: Jane Tanner DENIES having 'adamantly' identified Robert Murat
G8 Did Jane Tanner really identify Robert Murat on 13 May? - What Kate McCann says about this in her book
G9 The campaign to frame Robert Murat: Part 4: Three of the members of the Tapas 7 claim to have seen Robert Murat lurking near the McCanns' apartment and the Ocean Club after Madeleine was reported missing
H HOW NEWS OF THE SALSALITO MEETING EMERGED
I ANALYSIS
J THE SMITHMAN SIGHTING AND THE ‘SALSALITO SUMMIT’
K EVENTS AFTER THE ‘SALSALITO SUMMIT’
L CONCLUSION
M APPENDICES
---------------------------
INTRODUCTION
This article focuses on the action of Brian Kennedy in attending two meetings in Portugal on 13 November 2007 (4). According to the McCanns, they appointed Cheshire businessman Brian Kennedy to run their ‘Find Madeleine’ campaign on Friday 14 September 2007 (5), just one week after they had been made formal suspects over the disappearance of their daughter. He was then responsible for carrying out their private investigations.
Cheshire-based businessman Brian Kennedy, said to be worth £250 million (6). Just five
days after the McCanns fled Portugal after being made formal suspects in the
disappearance of their daughter, he offered to run the McCanns' private investigation.
He went on to appoint a series of unreliable and untrustworthy detectives and private agencies...who found out nothing about what happened to Madeleine
Although this article suggests that these two meetings were attended by Brian Kennedy on Tuesday, 13 November 2007, it has not been formally admitted by any of those present at the meeting that the second meeting was on the very same day as the first. However, it seems highly likely that they were. Brian Kennedy and Edward Smethurst would hardly fly out to Portugal for a police meeting, then fly back to England, only to fly out again days later for another meeting with the Murat group. If they didn't meet with the Murats that very day, it must surely have been the following day.
The first in time of these two meetings was with the Portuguese Police at Portimao Police Station. The second was with Robert Murat and three other members of his family at the home of Ralph and Sally Eveleigh, Robert Murat’s uncle and aunt.
We will deal now with the first one, but first, because so little is known about these two meetings, especially the Salsalito one, we need to prove that they actually happened.
The meeting Brian Kennedy had with the Portuguese Police at the Portimao Police Station is in the Portuguese Police files publicly disclosed in the DVD of information released to the public in August 2008 (4).
The general public was not meant to know about the 'Salsalito' meeting. So here is what is known about it.
A PROOFS THAT THE MURAT/McCANN CAMPS MEETING TOOK PLACE AT SALSALITO IN NOVEMBER 2007
----------
Proof 1 - Source http://robertmuratscapegoat.blogspot.com/
It was Francisco Pagarete, Mr Murat’s Portuguese lawyer - the one whom he was so anxious to see when he flew out to Praia da Luz on 1 May - who confirmed that a second meeting involving Brian Kennedy took place at Mr Murat’s uncle’s house in the Algarve in November. He told the BBC: “[Brian Kennedy] came here to give his support to Robert and to say he doesn’t believe Robert was involved in this story in any way or sense. And he asked if Robert could help the investigation for the finding of Madeleine in any way”. Mr Pagarete added that Mr Kennedy had ‘promised to stay in touch with Mr Murat’ but ‘had not contacted him since’. Mr Pagarete also confirmed that Edward Smethurst was at the meeting (7).
----------
Proof 2:
The Portuguese paper Jornal de Notícias (8) appeared to have some additional information about this meeting. Their report, early in 2008, said: “The meeting - a dinner that Brian Kennedy asked to be discreet and far away from the eyes of the press - took place in the end of last year at a house of Murat's relatives in Burgau (Vila do Bispo). At the dinner were Robert Murat and Kennedy, their respective lawyers, Jennifer Murat and the aunt and uncle of Murat” [NOTE: This appears in fact to have been Ralph Eveleigh, Murat’s uncle, and Sally Eveleigh, his cousin].
----------
Proof 3 - Source http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-563826/Madeleine-One-year-Portuguese-police-ashamed-says-attorney-general.html
Last night, it was revealed the McCanns' financial backer, tycoon Brian Kennedy, had met Robert Murat, the first suspect in the case (9).
The meeting took place at Mr Murat's aunt's house in the Algarve last year.
Mr Murat's lawyer, Francisco Pagarete, said: 'We had a very pleasant dinner with Mr Kennedy.
"He came here to give his support to Robert and to say he doesn't believe Robert was involved in this story in any way.
"And he asked if Robert could help the investigation for the finding of Madeleine."
It is understood the meeting in November was also attended by Mr Kennedy's lawyer, Edward Smethurst, who is co-ordinating the McCanns' legal affairs.
----------
Proof 4: On maccannfiles you find this - Timesonline
'Visit to Robert Murat, 04 May 2008' (10)
'Pray like mad,' begs tearful Kate McCann
Steven Swinford
May 4, 2008
Excerpt:
Brian Kennedy, the home improvements tycoon backing the McCanns, admitted yesterday that he flew to Portugal last November and spent an evening with Robert Murat, apart from the McCanns the only other official suspect. A source close to Kennedy said he was "gathering information".
Kennedy's lawyer, Ed Smethurst, approached Murat through a mutual friend and said that Kennedy wanted to offer him a job.
But the job offer never transpired. Kennedy spent the evening with Murat and his lawyers at his aunt's house in Praia da Luz, discussing Madeleine's disappearance.
He left with a "flea in his ear" after being confronted over reports that Metodo 3, the McCanns' private investigators, had suspicions about Murat.'
Additional evidence is provided by this comment found on a blog which was run by a group supporting the McCanns
Additional comment found on blog http://justice4mccannfam.forumotion.com/t557-murat-meets-brian-kennedy
[ Note: This was a McCann-support blog (11). The comments made by this poster reflect concerns MMRG members had at the time about this mysterious Salsalito meeting. Murat was an official suspect in the ABDUCTION of Madeleine. Why on earth, if the McCanns really believed that Robert Murat had been responsible for abducting Madeleine, or had had something to do with her abduction, would the McCanns send Brian Kennedy & Edward Smethurst to meet him? This obvious question would seem to have been in the mind of this pro-McCann bloggerm who evidently wrote this when s/he first heard news of the Salsalito meeting ]
QUOTE (reproduced exactly as written)
I didn't know they [Murat family, Kennedy and Smethurst] had met?? Thats odd...kate as always said she is not convinced he is innocent of any doing wrong in the abduction. Wounder how she felt about that?
Bit of an odd thing to do. Surly the secrecy laws wouldn't allow such a meeting..
what on earth is going on with this case????
Why would Kennedy want to go and have lunch with murat?? Did he honestly believe murat was going to jump to his questions. He is an arguido...not allowed to talk......... yet kennedy wants him to talk and help????
UNQUOTE
Exactly! What would be the point of sending your top private investigator and your top lawyer to meet with the man who had probably been responsible for abducting your child?
This article will try to provide the answer.
Finally, can we prove that this meeting was on Tuesday 13 November, the same day as we know that Brian Kennedy met the police at Portimao Police Station? No. But it seems very likely. We know it was in November. It doesn't seem likely that Brian Kennedy would take two separate flights in November all the way to Portugal.
There are three mentions above that this meeting took place over dinner and 'in the evening'. Surely the most likely probability is that Kennedy and Smethurst flew in to Portugal early on 13 November, or maybe the day before, then met with the Portuguese Police during that day, then drove up to 'Salsalito' for their high-powered and (as we shall see) game-changing meeting with four members of the McCann family. They may have flown home the following day, Wednesday 14 November.
B BRIAN KENNEDY MEETS THE PORTUGUESE POLICE – DAYTIME, 13 NOVEMBER 2007
There were several weeks of preparation, at least, leading up to this first of two meetings on 13 November. Brian Kennedy brought with him to the meeting two private investigators from the disreputable Spanish detective agency, Metodo 3, who had been hired by Brian Kennedy some weeks earlier, in or before September 2007, to ‘look for Madeleine’ (12). Metodo 3 was eventually closed down in 2014 after several corruption scandals involving criminal conduct, including illegally recording meetings of top politicians at a premier Barcelona restaurant (13).
Francisco Marco, boss of the discredited and corrupt detective agency, Metodo 3.
The McCanns paid his agency over £300,000, maybe much more, over a period
of 18 months. His agency was finally closed in 2014 when it was found to have
illegally recorded top politicians' private conversations at a posh Barcelona restaurant
At that time, Brian Kennedy had - maybe still has - a villa in or near Barcelona (14). Maybe he already had had contact with this controversial private detective agency before 2007.
The immediate cause of this meeting taking place was a telephone call from the Spanish Police to the Portuguese Police on Friday, 19 October (4).
A report of this ’phone call is given in the Portuguese Police files which were controversially released to the general public on a DVD in August 2008 - much to the anger of the McCanns, because it revealed a great deal of information, embarrassing to them and their friends, about the detailed police investigation into Madeleine’s disappearance.
Here is the actual report in the files, translated by a Portuguese volunteer interested in the Madeleine McCann case.
QUOTE
“On the 19th of October, we were contacted by Alberto Carbas, Chief of the Kidnapping Unit of the Commissary-General, based in Madrid, who passed to us the information that the McCann family had contracted a Spanish private detective agency known as ‘Metodo 3’. The costs of their investigation into Madeleine McCann were being covered by a Scottish multi-millionaire whose name is Brian Kennedy. His objective was to find Madeleine.
“We were asked if we were available and interested in meeting with a representative of Metodo 3 and the Spanish Commissary General and Chief of the Kidnapping Unit of the Police in Spain. The purpose of this proposed meeting, they said, was to find out the truth, but they stated that they would not interfere in police work. At most, they said, they would ‘complement’ our investigation. They firmly stated that they are not working directly for the McCann family, but for Brian Kennedy. They didn’t ask for any information regarding the investigation, nor was any offered to them, for obvious reasons”.
UNQUOTE
The claim that Metodo 3 was ‘not working directly for the McCanns’ was highly misleading. Brian Kennedy had attended a meeting with the McCanns and a bevy of lawyers at a meeting in London on Friday, 14 September 2007 and agreed to help them by searching for Madeleine and trying to find out who had abducted her (12). One of the lawyers had driven to the McCanns’ home in Rothley, Leicestershire, to take them to and from the London meeting.
Moreover, in running this private investigation, he worked hand-in-hand with the McCanns’ co-ordinating solicitor, Edward Smethurst, a high-ranking Freemason from Lancashire - as we shall see in a moment.
Rochdale resident Edward Smethurst was a long-time friend of Brian Kennedy,
and had for years acted as the in-house lawyer for Kennedy's extensive Latium
Group. Just three days after the McCanns arrived back in England, having fled
Portugal after being named suspects, Edward Smethurst 'phoned the McCanns.
At least, that is what we are told in Kate McCann's book on the case,
'madeleine' (12). He was immediately appointed the official 'Co-ordinating
Solicitor for the McCanns'. He is a prominent Freemason and Past
Grandmaster in the East Lancashire Provincial Lodge.
This part of the report was interesting:
“On the 19th of October, we were contacted by Alberto Carbas, Chief of the Kidnapping Unit of the Commissary-General, based in Madrid, who passed to us the information that the McCann family had contracted a Spanish private detective agency known as ‘Metodo 3’…We were asked if we were available and interested in meeting with a representative of Metodo 3 and the Spanish Commissary General and Chief of the Kidnapping Unit of the Police in Spain”.
It seems clear that this meeting must have been arranged by one of Brian Kennedy’s men from Metodo 3, Antonio Giminez Raso. He was one of the men who attended with him in Portugal on 13 November 2007. He had also once been employed as an Senior Inspector in the Kidnapping and Drugs Unit of the Catalonia Regional Police Force (15), so no doubt would have had connections with the Kidnapping Unit of the Commissary-General in Madrid.
However, as we now know, Antonio Giminez Raso was arrested on 18 February 2008, just three months after he attended this meeting in Portimao on 13 November 2007 (16).
He was arrested on very serious charges, including assisting a violent drugs gang in their attempt to steal drugs from a boat in Barcelona harbour, and corruption in public office. Although he had been a trusted Senior Inspector in the Catalonian Regional Kidnapping and Drugs Squad, by the time he was engaged by the McCann Team in 2007, he had either been dismissed from the police or resigned from them. It seems though that he must still have had contacts or influence inside the Spanish Kidnapping and Drugs Unit, hence his being able to persuade (himself or through inside contacts) the Chief of the Kidnapping and Drugs Unit in Madrid to contact the Portuguese Police on 19 October. How convenient it often is to have friends in high places!
We now know that Brian Kennedy flew out in November 2007, less than four weeks after this ’phone call from the Spanish police, to attend a meeting with the Portuguese Police at Portimao Police Station. The meeting at Portimao Police Station must have been arranged following the ’phone call from the Spanish Police on 19 October. Since Edward Smethurst accompanied him to the meeting with the Murat family on the evening of 13 November (and probably to the police meeting as well - see below) it is highly probable that the two men flew out from England together. It is likely that they flew to Portugal at least the day before.
Below are the Portuguese Police’s accounts of a meeting between them, Brian Kennedy, three members of Metodo 3 and (probably) Edward Smethurst. They began with this introduction:
QUOTE
“We held a meeting on 13 November, with Inspectors Paulo Ferreira and Ricardo Paiva [from the Portuguese Police] present, with Brian Kennedy, Director of the [Metodo 3] detective agency, Francisco Marco and one of his advisers, plus Antonio Jimenez, ex-chief of the Kidnapping Unit of Catalonia [Note: Other information suggests that Edward Smethurst was also present]. Brian Kennedy insisted that his motives were purely charitable, aimed at finding the truth, and generally helping missing children. He said he was interested in discovering the truth even if the McCann family, the friends, or any other person is found to be involved in the disappearance”.
UNQUOTE
Here is the full report of the meeting, dated Wednesday 14 November 2007, kindly translated into English by a Portuguese volunteer, and preserved for us by ‘pamalam’ on the mccanpjfiles site, at this link: http://www.mccannpjfiles.co.uk/PJ/BRIAN-KENNEDY.htm
QUOTE
Volume XIII Pages 3434 - 3436
Service Information 2007.11.14
To: Coordinator of the Criminal Investigation
From: Joao Carlos, Inspector
Concerning the investigation of the disappearance of the British minor, Madeleine McCann, I present you Sir with the following:
On the 19th of October, we were contacted by the Commissary General, located in Madrid, by the Chief of the Kidnapping Unit, Alberto Carbas, who passed to us the information that the McCann family had contracted a Spanish company known as 'METODO 3', composed of Spanish private detectives. This business, or in other words, the costs of the activities of this business, were being covered by a Scottish multi-millionaire whose name is BRIAN KENNEDY and whose objective was to locate the British minor.
With this information, we were asked if we were available and interested in meeting with a representative of this Spanish business, and also with the Commissary General and Chief of the Kidnapping Unit of the Police of our neighbouring country, whose operation is in Madrid.
The meeting had as its objective to receive on behalf of the private detectives, from that moment and for their own wishes, relevant information with the aim to ascertain the truth, and to state that they would not interfere in police work, and at most they would serve as a complement to some useful information. They firmly state that they are not working directly for the McCann family, but for Brian Kennedy and that their sole purpose is to locate the missing child, or to gather the inescapable truth of what happened.
They did not ask for any information regarding the investigation, nor was any offered to them, for obvious reasons as this is found incorporated in the Portuguese penal process.
On the 13th of the current [month], in the presence of the signatory and inspectors Paulo Ferreira and Ricardo Paiva, a meeting was held, in this department, with Brian Kennedy, the director of the detective company, Francisco Marco and an advisor of this same company, Antonio Jimenez, ex-chief of the Kidnapping Unit of Catalan. From the beginning, Brian Kennedy was questioned, and ascertained that the meeting only had this scope - of transmitting that his objective in all of this was purely charitable in that he is interested [in helping to stop] the bad treatment of minors and in missing children. He affirmed that he only was interested in discovering the truth and nothing more even if the McCann family, the friends, or any other person is found to be involved in the disappearance.
During the course of this meeting, the director of METODO 3 gave us a small book (attached), with information relative to the disappearance of the minor. This information, as we were told, was received via telephone and that they had already opened a line in Spain, specifically to receive and deal with information.
In this book, written in Spanish, we can analyse three pieces of information:
1. In the first case, we observed that there was report of facts which occurred in August/September of 2006, and which appears to us somewhat extemporaneous, as it cannot now be related to the material under investigation.
2. In the second point, we should remember that the computers of Sergey Malinka were searched and that nothing of suspicion was found there or related to paedophilia.
3. In that which concerns the third point, we are currently carrying out diligences with the intent to confirm or disprove the related information.
With nothing more to report.
Joao Carlos, Inspector
UNQUOTE
Item 1 to which Brian Kennedy and the Metodo 3 investigators referred was the evidence of Margaret Hall. We will not reproduce it here, but this is the link for those who wish to see it:
http://www.mccannpjfiles.co.uk/PJ/MARGARET_HALL.htm (Incident 1 - Evidence of Margaret Hall)
Item 2 refers to allegations apparently made by Kennedy and Metodo 3 against Sergei Malinka, referenced here:
http://www.mccannpjfiles.co.uk/PJ/SERGEY-MALINKA.htm#p13p3439 (Incident 2 - Question marks about Sergei Malinka) See File No. 3439
Item 3 refers to an alleged sighting of Madeleine McCann by a lorry driver, whose report suggested he had seen a lady looking like Michaela Walczuk handing a large package, which could have been a child, over a fence or wall several miles east of Praia da Luz. There were multiple indications that this sighting was a complete fabrication. The link for those who want to see the extent of the Portuguese Police enquiries on this alleged sighting is here:
http://www.mccannpjfiles.co.uk/PJ/METODO_3.htm (Incident 3 - Alleged sighting by lorry driver).
None of these three 'sightings' produced any worthwhile leads. It is very possible that Brian Kennedy and his two investigators knew very well that they were false leads, and only arranged this meeting to try to portray the McCanns' private investigation as a credible and sincere enquiry into who abducted Madeleine and where she was. Indeed there is evidence that Brian Kennedy's investigators were offering money to Moroccans to invent claims that they had seen Madeleine (17).
---------------
End of Part One.
To read the rest of this article, please see these links on the CMOMM forum:
https://jillhavern.forumotion.net/t16655-robert-murat-and-the-meeting-at-salsalito-burgau-on-tuesday-13-november-2007-clues-about-what-really-happened-to-madeleine-mccann#408948
https://jillhavern.forumotion.net/t16656-the-mysteries-of-robert-murat-and-the-salsalito-summit-a-discussion-thread#408952
https://jillhavern.forumotion.net/t16656-the-mysteries-of-robert-murat-and-the-salsalito-summit-a-discussion-thread#408952
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