30 December 2009
EXIT STRATEGY
Those conversant with academic enterprises will be familiar with the term ‘paradigm shift’, where new data forces a theoretical re-appraisal. For the most part progress is made on the basis of modest adjustments, but every now and then the upheaval is cataclysmic, as with the discoveries of Copernicus, Newton, and Einstein for instance.
In as much as police investigation of a crime seeks consistency in any interpretation of the perpetrator’s actions, the requirement for a generally valid explanatory paradigm also pertains. Hence the importance of evidential inconsistencies which point to those corners of the room where, for whatever reason, the carpet appears not to fit; flaws in understanding which inhibit rather than encourage a solution to the problem overall.
In the case of Madeleine McCann, there exist, even after two years and more, unexplained inconsistencies, apparent from the outset, which may yet suffice to isolate the more appropriate of two competing paradigms, i.e. abduction or something else.
No more than cursory examination of the McCanns’ initial statements to Portuguese police is needed to reveal a conspicuous lack of uniformity, the resolution of which may have wider explanatory power than one might at first suppose, as it opens the door to questions of a slightly different nature than the very many raised so far. As it happens, the opening of doors is the central issue here.
Gerry McCann’s statement, made on 4 May 2007, records the following detail:
“Thus, at 9.05 p.m., Gerry entered the apartment using his key, the door being locked, and went to the children’s room and noted that the twins and Madeleine were OK.
He then took several minutes going to the toilet. He left the apartment and bumped into someone with whom he had played tennis and had a brief conversation. He then returned to the Tapas.”
“At 10.00 p.m., Kate went to check on the children. She went into the apartment, using her key and saw that the bedroom door was completely open, the window was also open, the shutters raised and the curtains open.
The doors were locked except the one at the back as already noted above” (a reference to Matthew Oldfield’s visit in between: “he went through Gerry’s apartment, going in through a glass door (the patio door) at the side of the building, which was always open”).
Kate McCann’s statement (again 4 May) echoed the detail of her husband’s in respect of Matthew Oldfield’s entering through the unlocked patio door, yet provided a contradictory account of her own access:
“Around 10.00 p.m., Kate went to check on her children, entering the apartment via the back lateral door which was closed but not locked.”
We are faced, quite simply, with overlapping yet conflicting accounts – of doors locked, unlocked, then locked once again according to Gerry McCann. The concomitant status described by Kate McCann is that of ‘unlocked throughout.’
Without progressing a single additional facet in this case, it is immediately apparent that someone is lying.
The obvious questions ensue: Who? And Why?
Paradoxically, addressing these in reverse order is the more advantageous approach, so, second things first, let’s consider the question ‘why?’ in both general and specific terms.
If a crime is committed against a person and identifying the criminal is the primary police objective, what would provoke a victim into lying about their own movements before, during or after the incident?
Frankly, even concealment of ‘contributory negligence’ is counter-productive.
Ethically speaking at least, a bicycle parked outside the supermarket ought not to be interpreted as an invitation to a bicycle thief (however much apologists might wish to argue otherwise).
In such a case the police sensibly focus their attention on recovering the stolen property and prosecuting the culprit. Whilst covering one’s own tracks might seem appropriate in something like insurance fraud, it is scarcely necessary otherwise.
If Madeleine McCann was abducted by an anonymous paedophile, as the parents have constantly invited everyone to believe, the prevailing purpose of all parties would or should have been to locate the child at the earliest opportunity.
To assist in that endeavour anyone remotely connected with the situation should have explained themselves truthfully, warts and all. And yet we have the McCanns themselves irrelevantly lying about their own access to the apartment from which Madeleine disappeared; hence evidence, from the first, to suggest that the paradigm of stranger abduction is an inappropriate explanation for the child’s absence.
Do these lies contribute to a ‘cover’ for an abductor (what parent of a missing child would do such a thing?) or camouflage for the teller(s)? If the latter, then the abduction paradigm may be discarded forthwith.
What is equally apparent is that whilst ‘contributory negligence’ may have nothing genuinely to do with one’s child being abducted (and need not be introduced into the equation therefore), it may have everything to do with some other condition or outcome.
Thus the McCanns’ readiness to lie points distinctly away from abduction by a person or persons unknown, and toward something else entirely.
So much for lying about locked doors in general. The specifics, no less puzzling initially, eventually point in the same direction.
The News of the World (May 11, 2008) explained: “The patio door could only be bolted from the inside which would have meant them having to walk around to the front every time they wanted to check on their children.”
If the patio door could only be secured from the inside, it follows that it would not have been possible to unlock it from outside. This situation is confirmed by the evidence of Saleigh and Paul Gordon who, accompanied by their two children, occupied apartment 5A before the McCanns, between April 21st and 28th 2007. Paul also confirms that the couple always felt safe and that the front door was equipped with a double lock, while the one at the back only locked from inside the apartment.
Hence Gerry’s use of a key must have been in relation to the front door.
Kate’s entering the apartment using her own key (according to husband Gerry) implies that the patio door was still locked at 10.00 p.m. (otherwise why not use it?) Yet both attest to Matthew Oldfield having entered their apartment via the unlocked patio door in between times, whilst Kate repudiates her own use of any key.
The McCanns’ lies concerning door security extended beyond their own premises even.
They early on ventured to suggest that they didn’t lock their back doors, but left them unlocked in case of fire (Daily Mail, 11.8.2007).
However, they did not include Matthew Oldfield, for one.
If leaving their patios unlocked had been a consensus decision, Matthew Oldfield clearly broke ranks. As far as his own apartment was concerned, “… the patio doors would be shut and locked, errm… the outside, errm… shutter wouldn’t have been down until we were in there.” (Rogatory Interview).
Whether Matthew Oldfield ever entered the McCann apartment at all is a very real question.
His own interpretation of what he saw once inside is so impoverished as to suggest that he is actually describing the view from outside the patio doors, rather than inside. Although we can be reasonably sure he made the claimed dormitory excursion at about 9.30 p.m., it is rather less certain that Kate McCann actually advised him to enter 5A via the patio, or that he acted upon the suggestion, since Oldfield was not alone. He was in the company of Russell O’Brien, the two of them having left the Tapas bar together.
Describing his interaction with Kate McCann at the Tapas table, Matthew Oldfield explains, “… she said that the patio door was open and go in through there. And there was me and Russell as well, so, errm… you know, it seemed, at the time, a very reasonable thing to do, even though it was the first time that we’d certainly done it.” (Rogatory Interview).
According to O’Brien, they each entered their own apartment initially, Oldfield afterwards joining him in 5D.
Oldfield’s recollection in connection with 5A however is, as stated, that it was the first time he and Russell had entered the McCann apartment via the patio door. Furthermore, that “… there was a light behind us in the room.”
Since Russell O’Brien makes no mention of entering 5A himself, one has to wonder, first, why Oldfield should have included him in his account of that act, and second, exactly when and how the two of them were positioned in relation to the light in question. Even if Matthew Oldfield did indeed enter the McCann apartment that night, are we to suppose that, having offered to check on the well-being of a group of sleeping children, he would step inside, then inexplicably stop before reaching the relevant bedroom?
These specifics tie in with the initial question as to which of the McCanns was lying when first interviewed by Portuguese police.
Were it to be the case that Matthew Oldfield remained outside 5A all the while, then the answer would be simple: both of them. Which in turn leads to a development of the earlier argument, that stories of access, and of comings and goings during the evening of 3rd May, 2007 are irrelevant to any genuine case of stranger abduction.
If the McCanns, for whatever reason, were intent on ‘setting people up’ that night (as their various deliberate references to the notorious crying incident suggest they might have been), would they have as good as invited Matthew Oldfield to discover an empty bed?
Unlikely.
That would have meant Kate McCann opening the bedroom window and exposing the twins to the cold before leaving for the Tapas bar.
Nevertheless, despite the virtual irrelevance of their associates’ activities to any tale of child snatching, they were clearly intent on giving an impression of concerned parenthood and, with that in view, placing Matthew Oldfield inside their apartment.
If Gerry simply inserted a fictitious reference between two more reliable book-ends, Kate must have realised that, having described Oldfield as opening the patio doors at 9.30, they would have been open to her as well.
Six days later (May 10) and Gerry McCann is already rectifying his recollection, claiming to have exited and re-entered his own apartment via unlocked patio doors.
Despite indications to the contrary (e.g. Oldfield’s initial claim when interviewed on May 4 that, during the meal, it was usual that every 15 minutes (as on all nights) one of the adults went to the apartments to check if the children were sleeping), there never was any rosta for checking on each others’ children, either before or during May 3rd, as Matthew Oldfield subsequently informs us (Rogatory Interview):
4078: “Well mainly all of your apartment and Gerry and Kate’s obviously. Up until the Wednesday night, from what you have already said then, you didn’t go into Gerry and Kate’s apartment, well, sorry, you didn’t check on Gerry and Kate’s children?”
Matthew Oldfield: “No”.
Getting on for 9.00 p.m. on Thursday 3 May
MO: “So I went and listened, I went… I found the time, because we’d only just been in there, about fifteen minutes ago, and I just listened outside her shutters, so I just passed along that wall that goes to the two, sort of to the McCann’s apartment, so I listened outside our shutters and went along to their shutter and had a listen out there, not because I’d been asked to, but… or it’s not the sort of thing you think about, it’s just kind of, errm…”
Now, on the origin of Oldfield’s 9.30 p.m. check:
MO: ”Erm, so I went to check on G**** and I stood up and Russell stood up and said he was going to go and check as well, and Kate stood up and I said, you know, ‘do you want us to go and check on…’, errm… ‘do you want me to go and check on your kids’, errm… and she said ‘yes’. And I think I offered at that point, just because we had been together all week and we had similar routines and it just kind of seemed like a nice thing to do that would save her a journey back up and, you know, it may or it may not have been different.”
All very ad hoc you notice, even down to the open patio door reference quoted earlier, which should have been unnecessary if everyone were doing the same thing, i.e. leaving their patio doors unlocked.
What all this has to do with stranger abduction can be summed up in a single word – nothing.
Hence we should subscribe to a paradigm shift and view the McCanns’ mendacious behaviour in the light, not of their embellishing any abduction scenario, but of preparing their defences in respect of another unspecified matter altogether; an exit strategy in a rather different direction.
It is as though, having set the hares running and provoked an inevitable inquisition, the McCanns instinctively addressed themselves to issues unraised and which had a direct bearing on something of which they were guilty, i.e. child abandonment, rather than something of which they were not, namely abduction.
This being a reflection of their preoccupation at the time, it provides confirmation, if such were needed, that the cause of their immediate concern was neither Madeleine’s abduction nor the subsequent desire for her safe return.
And that conclusion alone renders the McCanns favoured hypothesis redundant.
Source – http://www.mccannfiles.com/id232.html
