Beyond the smears; Madeleine McCann
16 December 2007
The Sunday Times
David James Smith
For six months David James Smith has examined the evidence surrounding the disappearance of Madeleine McCann for The Sunday Times Magazine. In this, the most comprehensive - and authoritative - investigation yet, he addresses the key issues facing Gerry and Kate as they prepare for Christmas without their daughter
That week in Praia da Luz, the week the McCanns were made suspects in their own daughter's "death", I was out there talking to them and to family and friends. I was at the home of the Anglican vicar Haynes Hubbard, sitting with him and his wife, Susan, while their own three children pottered around us. The Hubbards had flown in from Canada three days after Madeleine's disappearance to begin Haynes's tour of duty as the vicar of Praia da Luz. They had heard about Madeleine for the first time while changing planes at Lisbon airport, in a slightly unnerving encounter with an elderly Portuguese woman who had seized Susan's arm and told her to "hold on" to the baby she was carrying as a child had been taken.
The Hubbards had spent their first days at the resort fearing for their own children's safety. Gradually, they became friends with the McCanns, particularly Susan and Kate, drawn together at first perhaps by the McCanns' need to find some comfort in religion. But mostly, the McCanns were enveloped by family and friends from the UK. There were 14 relatives with them at one point in the early days. In the end they had asked some to leave.
The McCanns were flying home that Sunday and had been to a farewell dinner the night before at the Hubbards. Susan told me that she and Kate had discussed how much one person could cope with. Kate seemed close to the limits of human endurance. Haynes chimed in: "And I don't think she's looking forward to tomorrow very much either." The thought was left hanging there: how much can one person take?
Kate was to go to the nearby town of Portimao the next day, Thursday, September 6, to be questioned by detectives from the Policia Judiciaria (PJ). It would be Gerry's turn the day after. For the media this would be a shocking new twist to the story. The PJ had told them four weeks earlier they were going to be subjected to formal interviews and the McCanns had stayed on, instead of going home at the end of August as originally planned, waiting for the interviews to take place. Waiting. Waiting.
Finally, the PJ called. They told the McCanns they would be made official suspects arguidos. The McCanns had noted the change of mood in Portugal, especially among the PJ, and the increasing viciousness of the Portuguese press. Some of the stories seemed so incredible and far-fetched Kate, for instance, disposing of Madeleine's body, or Madeleine's DNA being found in the car the McCanns had hired three weeks after Madeleine disappeared that I at first assumed they were the fanciful inventions of an unfettered press.
I soon realised how well they reflected the thinking of the PJ. More recently I have discovered the stories were being fed to the press by the PJ, from the highest ranks. So much for judicial secrecy. One Portuguese journalist told me that segredo da justicia secrecy of justice was like the speed limit. Everyone knows the law; nobody keeps to it.
It seems important to make it clear right away that I do not suspect the McCanns harmed Madeleine, nor do I think they disposed of their daughter's body if, as the PJ believe, she died in an accident that night in their apartment. This is not a mere prejudice on my part. I have spent a long time considering and examining every unpleasant scenario. The McCanns are not my friends and I have no axe to grind with Portugal, its police or its media. To me, the McCanns are genuine people in the grip of despair the accusations against them are ludicrous and a cruel distraction from the search for their daughter.
That's why I put the quote marks around the word "death" at the top of the article. Madeleine may be dead, it may even be more likely she is dead, but nobody knows for sure. Nobody, not even the PJ, as we will see, can produce any persuasive evidence that she has come to harm.
That evening, Thursday, May 3, at just after 8pm, by their account, Kate and Gerry McCann were having a glass of wine together in apartment 5a on the ground floor of Block 5 of the Waterside Gardens at the Ocean Club. Their three children were asleep in the front bedroom overlooking the car park and, beyond it, the street. Madeleine was in the single bed nearest the door. There was an empty bed against the opposite wall, beneath the window. Between the two beds were two travel cots containing the twins: Sean and Amelie.
Gerry had bought the wine at Baptista's the supermarket, 200 yards down the hill. They had lived and worked in New Zealand for a year and that particular bottle, Kiwi Sauvignon Blanc, was their favourite. It was the sixth day of their week's holiday on the Algarve and they were reflecting on the enjoyable time they'd had, how surprisingly easy it had been with the children.
When their old friend Dave Payne had invited them on a group holiday, it had seemed too good to resist. Dave and Fiona Payne had been on another Mark Warner holiday the year before, to Greece with Matt and Rachel Oldfield. The Algarve group would be completed by Russell O'Brien, Jane Tanner and Fiona's mother, Dianne Webster. Six of the group were doctors. Gerry was a consultant heart surgeon and had worked before with Matt and Russell. Kate had been an anaesthetist and was now a part-time GP.
The group first spent time together at Dave and Fiona's wedding in Italy in 2003. Now they had eight children between them. Madeleine was the oldest, her fourth birthday a week after they would return from the Algarve. One of the attractions was that there were children for their own to play with. And the adults were a sporty group, a speciality of Mark Warner holidays; tennis had dominated the activities that week. That might all sound very cosy and middle class, but that did not mean their lives had been easy or free of suffering especially with the struggle to have children, eventually managed through IVF or that they had been born into an advantaged world. Kate came from a modest Liverpool background and Gerry, the youngest of five, had been brought up in a tenement building, on the south side of Glasgow. The Ocean Club was a world away from Glasgow.
The terms of the holiday were half-board, breakfast and evening meal, and the McCanns paid about Pounds 1,500. There'd been some reduction when they had discovered that, unlike most Mark Warner resorts, the
Ocean Club did not offer a baby-listening service. Instead, the group had asked for apartments close together, so they were all assigned to Block 5. The Paynes were on the floor above, the only couple with a functioning baby monitor. Russell O'Brien and Jane Tanner had brought a monitor too, but theirs wasn't getting much of a signal from the Tapas restaurant 50 yards away.
The Ocean Club was not a gated, enclosed resort in the usual style of Mark Warner, but a sprawling complex open to the village of Luz and scattered over such a wide distance that shuttle buses were used.
Even though the resort was open to the village, it felt safe and secure, and in early May it was still very quiet. Gerry never saw a soul, except once, on the last night, on his evening checks, walking back and forth between the Tapas and the apartment, an even-paced walk of just under a minute.
As the McCanns endlessly repeated afterwards, if they had thought it was wrong or even risky, they would never have left their children. With hindsight, of course, they would never have done it and now they were riven with guilt, but we can all be wise after the event, and so many of us have taken similar chances at times, in search of a bit of respite from our children.
Gerry had knocked up at the 4.30pm tennis- drills session, which he had joined on most of the other nights, but had decided not to exacerbate the injury to his Achilles tendon, so had dropped out and waited around by the courts until the children came back from the beach at 5pm for tea. That had been one of the most enjoyable times of the holiday, all the children together for tea, then the adults playing with them afterwards.
Gerry was in his apartment at 7pm, had a glass of water, then a
beer, while the children sat with Kate on the couch having stories with a snack. The children were clearly shattered the last thing any of them needed was a sedative and, anyway, it was not something the McCanns ever did. They put them to bed after a last story. The twins were asleep virtually the moment they lay down, Madeleine not far behind them.
These days it was rare for Madeleine to wake up at all once she was in bed. If she did, she'd normally wander into her parents' bed, whether they were there or not. At home in Rothley, sometime earlier, they had begun a star chart for Madeleine staying in her own bed. The chart, still on display in the kitchen, was full of stars.
At about 7.30pm Kate and Gerry showered and changed and sat down to have a quiet
glass of the Kiwi Sauvignon. They were first to the table at the restaurant at 8.35pm and spent some minutes talking to a couple from Hertfordshire two more tennis players at the next table, who were eating with their two young children. As they chatted, Gerry thought how lucky he was, his children asleep 50 yards away so that he and Kate could come and enjoy some adult time at the restaurant and not have to sit with their children, as this couple were.
The McCanns sat down after a few minutes and then
ordered some wine. The Oldfields were next to arrive, then Russell O'Brien and Jane Tanner and, finally, always last, Dave and Fiona Payne with Dianne Webster.
That night their group ordered six bottles in total and two were still untouched on the table at 10pm. No more than half a bottle of wine each.
The Portuguese magazine Sol reported that the group had drunk 14 bottles. Another Portuguese journalist told me a local GNR police officer had described one of the group as being so drunk later that evening, they could barely stand or talk.
They had just ordered starters when the routine of checking began. Gerry went first, entering the apartment at about 9.05pm through the patio doors.
Earlier that week they had used a key to go in through the front door, next to the children's bedroom but, worrying the noise of the key might wake the children, they started using the patio doors, leaving them unlocked.
When he entered the apartment, Gerry immediately saw that the children's bedroom door, which they always left just ajar, was now open to 45 degrees. He thought that was odd, and glanced in his own bedroom to see if Madeleine had gone into her parents' bed. But no, she and the twins were all still fast asleep.
Gerry paused over Madeleine who a typical doctor's observation this was lying almost in
"the recovery position" with cuddle cat, the small toy her godfather, John Corner, had bought her, and her comfort blanket up near her head, and Gerry thought how gorgeous, how lovely looking she was and how lucky he was. Putting the door back to five degrees, he went to the loo and left to return to the restaurant. That, of course, was the last time he would see his daughter.
As he walked down the hill, Gerry saw Jes Wilkins on the
opposite side of the road pushing a child in a buggy. Gerry called hello and crossed over to talk. Wilkins and his partner were eating in their own apartment that night, but still their youngest wouldn't settle. It reminded Gerry of the fraught time he and Kate used to have with Madeleine when she was a baby. In his memory, they could never eat a meal together when they went out as she was always disturbing them and needing to be wheeled-off to sleep.
As Jane Tanner walked up the hill, she saw Gerry talking to Jes and, as she passed them, she saw ahead of her a man walking quickly across the top of the road in front of her, going away from the apartment block, heading to the outer road of the resort complex. The man was carrying a little girl who was hanging limply from his open arms. The sighting was odd, but hardly exceptional in a holiday resort.
Her daughter fine, Jane returned to the table.
At 9.30, Kate got up to make the next check on her children, but Matt Oldfield was checking too, as was Russell O'Brien, and Matt offered to do Kate's check for her, which she accepted. Gerry teased that she would not be excused her turn at the next check.
Inside the McCann's apartment, Oldfield noticed the children's bedroom door was again open, but that meant nothing to him, so he merely observed all was quiet and
made a cursory glance inside the room, seeing the twins in their cots but, agonisingly, not directly seeing Madeleine's bed from the angle at which he stood. Afterwards, he could not say for sure if she had been there or not. Nor could he say if the window and shutter had been open.
He would get a hard time from the police because of this, during his interviews not long afterwards, being aggressively accused of taking Madeleine you passed her out of the window, didn't you! being suspected because he had offered to take Kate's turn.
Jane Tanner, too, would be accused of fabricating or misremembering her sighting of this stranger with a child. There could be no answer to such an accusation except that she was an ordinary, honest person who knew what she had seen.
Some time after 10pm, Rachel Oldfield would go to Jane's apartment to tell her Madeleine had been taken and Jane would say: "Oh my God. I saw a man carrying a girl."
The McCanns are convinced that this sighting was the moment of Madeleine's abduction.
It perhaps needs to be stated openly that all these timings and details, the way in which they weave and dovetail together, are based on witness accounts corroborated not just by the McCann group, but by others, such as Jes Wilkins and that, despite suggestions to the contrary, there are no obvious contradictions or differences between them. Nor has any of the McCann group, at any time since, said they wanted to retract or change their statement. That suggestion too is a lie.
Russell O'Brien checked his own daughter at 9.30 and found she had been sick. Jane returned to the apartment to be with her daughter and Russell went back to the table. Russell would later fall under suspicion too, because of those few minutes he spent away from the table.
Finally, at 10pm, it was Kate's turn.
She felt a draught as she entered the apartment and knew immediately something was wrong. Inside the children's bedroom the window was open, the shutter was up and Madeleine's bed was empty.
Kate quickly searched everywhere and ran back down the hill and into the restaurant: "Madeleine's gone, somebody's taken her" or "Madeleine's gone, someone's taken her."
Gerry stood up. "She can't be gone." "I'm telling you she's gone, someone's taken her."
It was reported that Kate had said "They've taken her", as if it was someone that she knew. She did use those words, but only later, back in the apartment, in her despair, as she said: "We've let her down. They've taken her." Matt went down to the 24-hour reception at the bottom of the hill to raise the alarm.
The call to the police went in at 10.15. They arrived 55 minutes later. It is widely reported among the Portuguese media and perhaps the police too, even now, that the McCanns called Sky News before they called the police. For the record, Sky News picked up the story from GMTV breakfast television, at around 7.30am the following day.
There was a latch lock on the sliding glass window, and they thought, but could not be sure, that they had locked it at the start of the holiday. They would later discover it was common for cleaners to open the shutters and windows to give the rooms some airing, so there was no way of knowing whether the window was locked that night or not and no forensic trace to indicate where and how an abductor had gone in and out. They could easily have used the front door, perhaps even had access to a key.
In the McCanns' minds now, there is no doubt Jane Tanner saw their daughter being taken, but there was so little time to talk in the first few days that
it was not until Jane saw the description of Madeleine's pyjamas in the media, around Monday or Tuesday of the following week, that she told them the little girl she had seen was wearing the same design: pink top with an Eeyore logo, white bottoms with a floral design.
While searches began, Gerry was worried about Kate, as she was so distraught and kept talking about paedophiles, saying Madeleine would be dead. He tried to be reassuring but of course he was thinking the same things. It all came pouring out of him at 23.40 from his phone records when he called his sister Trish in Scotland ranting and raving semi-coherently on the phone about Madeleine being taken, and Trish kept trying to get him to calm down. A sharp contrast with the way he would be later, particularly in public, once he had regained his self-control.
The detectives from PJ arrived at about 1am. By 3.30am they had gone and there was no police action at all, or none visible to the McCanns.
Four times that night they put in calls; four times the message came back from the PJ that the McCanns would never forget: "Everything that can be done is being done."
One of the PJ officers had put on surgical gloves and begun trying to dust down the bedroom, but his powder was not working properly. He tried to take the McCanns' fingerprints for elimination, but that didn't work either. It all had to be done again the next day.
The twins slept on like logs, just as they always did at home, though even their parents were fleetingly worried had they been sedated by an abductor? that they should be quite so comatose. The Ocean Club gave them another apartment, but the McCanns did not want to be alone, so the twins were taken to the Paynes' apartment, and Kate and Gerry went there later, too,
to try and rest.
They got up at first light and went to search on their own, the open scrubland beyond the resort, wandering around, calling Madeleine's name. It was cold and lonely there was no answer.
Gerry had asked the departing PJ detectives at half three about contacting the media to make an appeal. One of the officers had reacted with surprising agitation, waving his hand emphatically: "No journalists! No journalists!"
That, of course, was not quite how it worked out.
For many weeks, the McCanns enjoyed a good relationship with the police and were treated to regular updates and a flow of information via the family liaison officers sent out by Leicestershire police. The problem with the three Leicester officers was that they didn't have a word of Portuguese between them.
The first public indication of police thinking came at the end of June when the magazine Sol published a story about the McCann group, casting doubts on their evidence and claiming they had undertaken a pact of silence. This was the first time the McCanns' friends had even been named in public, but Sol's journalist Felicia Cabrita had their names and phone numbers and details from their witness statements. She had called them all, and at least one other witness, Jes Wilkins.
The information had been handed to Cabrita by the police she says she acquired the material through good journalism, which in a sense it was and her source is widely believed by her colleagues to have been the former head of the inquiry, Goncalo Amaral.
The PJ appointed an official spokesman, Olegario Sousa. He was apparently plucked from his day job he was a chief inspector on the art-robbery squad because he was the only one who spoke decent English. He was never directly involved in the investigation and was rarely told much of what was really going on.
Bizarrely, the McCanns believe they were inadvertently responsible for encouraging the PJ to take them seriously as potential suspects.
Initial suspicion focused on Robert Murat, who made himself busy with police and journalists from the first day, offering his services as an interpreter, as he spoke both languages and lived across the road from the Ocean Club with his mother at the villa Casa Liliana. In fact, the man Jane Tanner had seen carrying a child was walking straight towards the Murat villa.
Murat later told me that he told the PJ the press were suspicious of him, and they told him not to worry and to keep away from the press and work for them instead. He had signed papers to become an official interpreter and even acted as interpreter during the witness interviews.
Leaving the police station in Portimao one evening, a week after becoming an official police interpreter, Murat became aware he was being followed. Shortly after that he was arrested and interviewed himself and made an arguido.
Murat always denied he was out the night Madeleine disappeared, but three of the McCann group claimed at the time they had seen him and still insist they were right. I was told there was at least one new independent sighting of Murat out on the night of May 3.
An officer from the UK National Policing Improvement Agency was called in to advise on the techniques and parameters for a search and it was agreed the British would supply some specialist equipment for spotting disturbed soil and also some search dogs including one trained in Human Remains Detection (HRD) and one trained to detect the scent of blood.
Ultimately, only those who were there and involved know exactly what happened, but the McCanns wonder just how the search dogs were presented to the PJ and what claims were made for their success rate and infallibility.
All British policing techniques are meant to be practised uniformly by every force across the country and defined in written policy created by the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO). But the ACPO was unable to produce for me any policy relating to search dogs.
Gerry was initially optimistic at the prospect of the searches by these supposedly elite British dogs and techniques. The dogs then went on to search the apartments of the McCanns and their friends. A whole group of cars were also called in by the police, including the cars owned or used by Murat and the Renault the McCanns had been using, which they had hired on May 27.
The dogs, and their handler from South Yorkshire Police he retired soon after the assignment were filmed during their searches. Those who have seen the film say there is little objective science in the searches. It is suggested the handler treats the HRD dog differently in the McCanns' apartment than in the others. The dog keeps sniffing and running off and the handler keeps calling it back. Eventually it "alerts", meaning it goes stiff and stays still. Then the blood dog is called in, and the handler keeps directing it to the area where the other dog has alerted, and eventually this dog alerts too, in the same place behind the sofa in the lounge, which is where the trace of blood is supposedly found.
The cars were lined up, not in a controlled environment, but in the underground public car park opposite Portimao police station. Again, according to some who have seen the video, the dog is led quickly from one car to the next until he reaches a Renault with "Find Madeleine" stickers all over it. The dog sniffs and moves on to the next car but is called back by the handler "Here!" and the dog and the handler walk around the McCanns' car for about a minute, as opposed to the few seconds devoted to the other cars, and then the dog goes rigid, an alert, and the doors and the boot are opened.
It was this process that led to the supposed revelation that Madeleine's body must have been transported in the car, and the recovery of some body fluids, which would supposedly support that theory, with traces of Madeleine's DNA.
The role of such dogs is normally intended to find a body, or other tangible remains. Without any subsequent discovery the alerts amount to little more than an indication or worse: in one recent case in
Wisconsin a judge concluded that similarly trained dogs were "no more reliable than the flip of a coin", after hearing evidence that they were wrong far more often than they were right. The McCanns' lawyers are in touch with the defence lawyers in that case.
[Reference to Zapata case, Eugene Zapata later confessed. SEE: McCanns will use US evidence to challenge 'scent of death' claims and Convicted Wisconsin Killer Hangs On to Generous State Pension ]
The PJ had never attempted to obtain a "control sample" of Madeleine's DNA. That had been left to the McCanns, who had found traces of her saliva on the pillow of her bed at home in Rothley and provided that DNA sample to the Portuguese police.
Whatever the public's perception based on a slew of news stories at this stage there is no published evidence that Madeleine's DNA, or any trace of her blood, has been recovered from the apartment or the car. Any suggestion to the contrary appears to be misinformation from the PJ. In fact, both the PJ's national director, Alipio Ribeiro, and another PJ official, Carlos Anjos, have both said openly that the police have failed to establish a perfect match. The PJ found several specks of what they believe to be blood in apartment 5a, including one sample that someone had apparently tried to wash off. They found a trace of body fluid that is, not blood in the boot of the Renault and a tiny trace of blood in the Renault's key fob.
Some forensic tests were carried out at the PJ's own laboratories in Lisbon, where tests on samples related to Robert Murat were also made. The tests on the traces that were potentially the most significant came to the UK Forensic Science Service (FSS) based in Birmingham. One sample was said to have produced DNA that was similar to Madeleine's. An exact match would be 20 out of 20 bands, this sample was said to be similar in 15 out of 20 bands. But in reality, that result was meaningless, as any family member could produce the same match.
Some journalists were told that more advanced tests were being carried out on the smallest blood traces tests called low copy number profiling, which could produce DNA findings in the slightest of samples. They were a slow process, but did not normally take more than two weeks.
In late November, PJ forensic experts came to meet FSS experts in the UK, amid claims the PJ were still waiting for further results. Leicestershire Police has paid for all the forensic tests being carried out in the case by the FSS they are the client in the case, not the Portuguese. The PJ see this as evidence that the British are suspicious of the McCanns too.
There seemed to be no doubt that the PJ really did think the McCanns had done it. I was outlined a scenario in which Kate had come back to the apartment and found that Madeleine had fallen from the sofa and hit her head hence the blood and cleaned up and hid the body somewhere in the apartment, and perhaps had not even told Gerry until the next day.
The police could not answer all the questions, of course. They were almost as unanswerable as they were unimaginable. Where would they have hidden the body? How would they have got it into the car 24 days later, and where would they have taken it? What kind of people would they have to be what borderline personality disorders must they both share to keep that to themselves for six months, maintain a facade in front of everyone they knew, and at the same time not hiding away but going out to ask the world to help find Madeleine?
I know that the McCanns believe the PJ were oversold the value of the detection dogs. The McCanns also think the PJ genuinely believed they were guilty.
It was after the dogs came out that the PJ's attitude towards the McCanns changed and it became harder for the McCanns to obtain a briefing meeting. They were disturbed when the press began reporting that the PJ knew Madeleine was dead. Finally, after pressing for a meeting, one was arranged for Wednesday, August 8, three days before the 100-day anniversary of Madeleine's disappearance. When they arrived at the station in Portimao the couple were separated and both interrogated. Kate especially was given "the third degree". Gerry broke down and cried, pleading with the PJ to share any evidence that Madeleine was dead. "It's coming, it's coming," he was told.
The interviews caused the couple "incredible emotional distress". But they agreed, if they had been guilty, they probably would have cracked and confessed at that point. The police said there would be no more briefings. The next time they saw the McCanns it would be across the table, for formal interviews.
What was doubly dispiriting, of course, was that while the PJ treated them as suspects, they were no longer looking for Madeleine. I was told the PJ had "abandoned the abduction theory". It was open season now on the McCanns. The publicity was wretched.
The British press were not blameless either, often lazily repeating allegations and sometimes repeating them despite emphatic denials from the McCann camp. If you read the blog sites on the internet you would discover an even darker, nastier tone. The McCanns and their holiday friends were swingers, apparently. That allegation was even made on the Portuguese equivalent of the BBC, by a former PJ detective Jose Barra Da Costa. When I checked with him, he said he had been told by a friend in the UK who happened to be a police officer. No doubt that officer had plucked it from the internet. It is not true.
During Kate's interviews with the PJ in September, just before she was declared an arguido, she was separated from her lawyer, and he was presented with a long list of factors pointing to her guilt, including entries from her entirely innocuous diary and a passage they believed she had marked in a bible (which in fact had been given to her and marked by the original owner).
The PJ also told the lawyer there was a 100% DNA match with Madeleine in the car and showed him a document that appeared to prove it. Possibly, this was the document showing Madeleine's control sample of DNA. The McCanns feared even their own lawyer thought they were guilty. Kate was asked by the PJ to explain the dog alerts by her car. "You're the police," she said. "You tell me." Kate asked the PJ: "Are you trying to destroy our family altogether?"
Gerry was asked the same questions the next day and refused to answer. (Some time earlier a Leicestershire officer had said to him, just stick to what you know.) Why did the dogs only alert next to material belonging to the McCanns? The officer was brandishing the dog-handler's report. And then: "Your daughter's DNA, your daughter, Madeleine McCann, how do you explain that?" "Show me that report," Gerry asked. "No. This is the report that matters with the dog." Of course, they could not produce a DNA match because there wasn't one.
The McCanns took heart when Goncarlo Amaral was forced to step down after making public criticisms of them and the Leicestershire Police he had made the criticisms in a phone call to a journalist contact, not suggesting the comments were private or off the record.
The McCanns hope that Amaral's replacement, Paulo Rebelo, a more sober, conservative character, will take a wide view of the inquiry. He is supposed to be locked away on the upper floors of the station in Portimao reviewing the evidence with a team of officers.
Meanwhile, the McCanns are back home trying to recover some kind of normality. How long can you put your life on hold? They have the twins to think of. Gerry has gone back to work half days, and has finally told the British Heart Foundation he plans to go ahead with the research fellowship they awarded him, a week before he was accused of being involved in his daughter's death. He had told me, weeks ago, about the six-figure grant and how it meant almost nothing in terms of professional advancement, but might one day help in the prevention and treatment of heart disease. He had prepared the application in his own time, working evenings and weekends.
In other circumstances it would have meant the world to him but, right now, he had other things on his mind
THE NIGHT MADELEINE WENT MISSING
6.55PM Gerry and Kate McCann played tennis from 3.30 while their children were in kids clubs. Kate returned with the children to the apartment earlier, but Gerry played on until 6.55
7.00 Gerry returns to flat. Children are put to bed. 7.30 McCanns shower and change to go to the tapas restaurant
8.35 McCanns are the first of the group to arrive at the tapas restaurant, 50 yards away from their apartment
9.05 Gerry returns to the apartment to check the children. He enters through the unlocked patio doors and immediately sees children's bedroom door always left ajar at about five degrees open to 45 degrees. He sees all three children asleep
THE CRUCIAL MINUTES
7.00PM Gerry is back in the apartment by 7pm after an afternoon of tennis. He and Kate put the children to bed. At 8pm they sit down to have a glass of wine after showering and changing to go out to the Tapas restaurant.
8.35 The McCanns are the first of the group to arrive at Tapas, 50 yards away from their apartment
9.05 Gerry returns to the apartment to check on the children. He enters through the unlocked patio doors into the living area and immediately sees the children's bedroom door (always left ajar at about 5 degrees) is open to 45 degrees. But he sees all three children are asleep.
9.08 Walking down the hill Gerry sees Jes Wilkins on the opposite side of the road pushing a child in a buggy. Gerry calls hello and crosses over to talk for a few minutes
9.10 Jane Tanner walks up the road unnoticed by McCann and Wilkins. She sees a man walking across the road in front of her. A girl is hanging limply in his arms
9.30 Fellow diner Matt Oldfield does next check. He sees twins in their cots, but doesn't directly see Madeleine's bed
10.00 Kate checks and finds bedroom window open.
Twins are sleeping, but Madeleine's bed is empty
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