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1. 447 nononethere says:
   September 24th, 2007 at 4:25 pm

   439,
   I am sure you are probably a nice man Ian but I refuse to have a laugh at the expense of a missing little girl or at the expense of a family who may be wrongly accused. Try and recall the Guilford 4. Please don’t lower yourself by supporting people who post like Firestar.

2. 446 Cillit Bang says:
   September 24th, 2007 at 4:24 pm

   Phew Tony Bennett!

   After reading that I will just have to go and watch the Confess You Murdering Murderers! Southpark vid on Youtube again (I have saved it to a list for quick viewing) to let off some steam!

3. 445 Ian WIllis says:
   September 24th, 2007 at 4:22 pm

   please, the Portugese are humans like everyone else.

   Just take a look at this result:
   http://www.google.co.uk/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rls=GGLD,GGLD:2005-12,GGLD:en&q=portugal+swingers

   Of course the PJ know what swinging is!

4. 444 Cannie says:
   September 24th, 2007 at 4:21 pm

   442- you are so right

5. 443 firestar says:
   September 24th, 2007 at 4:21 pm

   427
   told you i was watching a film about 40+ bikers the other day.
   that’s probably because i am.

6. 442 brandoflour says:
   September 24th, 2007 at 4:20 pm

   411

   from that article

   “Into this comes Kate McCann, who admits to a failure of parenting, to doing a stupid thing, and we fall on her like a pack of hyenas, weirdly pleased to leave behind our own failings and insecurities for a minute and concentrate on hers.

   The fact is that while I would never leave small children alone, I know dozens of people who routinely do, and I do not find them irresponsible, just tired.

   There are so many of them that a whole service industry has built up around them: “family” hotels with a baby-listening service where someone cocks an ear at the bedroom door every now and then while harassed parents try to grab the semblance of a date together in the dining room; holidays, like the McCanns’, with kids’ clubs attached, where children are parked with what amounts to a stranger while parents try to sunbathe in peace for a couple of hours; skiing trips where the chalet comes complete with a random nanny; gyms with crèches; restaurants with some weird bloke in a clown suit “entertaining” the children in another room; and so on.

   A certain section of society routinely leaves their children in the care of somebody else whom they don’t know terribly well, no matter what the nanny agency has murmured soothingly about police checks. You can think what you like about this, but it is a fact of middle-class life, trying to reconcile loving your children with still having a life of your own, and an omnipresent source of anxiety for many people – if it weren’t, you couldn’t buy teddies with cameras hidden in them to check up on your child carer, and many women wouldn’t have the unpleasant niggling feeling that they don’t entirely trust their nanny to bring up their child.

   The McCanns were foolish and wrong to leave three small children – babies, really – alone in a strange apartment. But doesn’t the subsequent calamity override the initial human error? Apparently not: only a fifth of Britons think they are completely innocent, according to a poll for this paper today. And 76% think they were wrong to leave them alone. And yet we all take risks: you take a risk every time you let a child out of your sight, every time they board a bus or a train, every time they’re a bit evasive about their whereabouts. If your house is burgled and you stupidly didn’t switch on the burglar alarm, does that mean you deserved it? Does it make your distress, your sense of violation and the loss of your goods any less significant? ”

   Nope you can throw enough big words and “sisterhood” at it but its a load of bollox

   PR at its worst

   If she knows people who regularly leave their children on their own and says nothing ? Shes a horrible human being

7. 441 Molly says:
   September 24th, 2007 at 4:20 pm

   387 - GHCH

   What a cracking post - hits every nail right on the head.

8. 440 innocenttilproveninnocent says:
   September 24th, 2007 at 4:19 pm

   Suppose I could add that as a foreigner with 30 years of school and TV English I had never perceived the term “swing habit” before the articles of last Summer but it was explained in the context.

9. 439 Tony Bennett says:
   September 24th, 2007 at 4:18 pm

   ==========================
   THE PACT OF SILENCE
   ==========================

   re Rab (posts 267 and 289) “I do not think it is possible for all the Tapas 9 to be involved” and Firestar 276 (and others).

   REPLY: I think it is time for all of us who do not buy the McCanns’ story outright (sorry, stories) and the story (sorry again, stories) of the Tapas 9 either, to consider this report from ‘Sol’, the Portuguese newspaper. I would strongly plead for all serious posters on the Forum to carefully read this report in detail, for it contains much of interest - not least the ‘compromise’ or ‘promise’ made by Russell O’Brien to Kate and Gerry to keep stumm, and finally the notorious and sinister ‘Tapas 9 Pact’ referred to by (I think) David Payne.

   Bear in mind, as you read towards the end, the early telephone calls made by the McCanns and friends to major media outlets - even in the first hour after Madeleine’s disappearance.

   And note the withering comments about the relationships of the Tapas 9 to their eight children. Quite extraordinary - all 9 scarcely interested in them, it seems.

   Finally - see last paragraph of this report - and arguably of even greater interest, is Gerry McCann’s desperate, furious and outraged reaction to this story appearing. Remember that it was the publication of this story - the first really sceptical article to be published anywhere so far as I am aware - that prompted him to sue (or rather, threaten to sue) Sol, no doubt in an attempt to keep a tight lid on the increasing scepticism about his hoax abduction claim.

   Here it is in full:

   ===============================
   PACT OF SILENCE
   ===============================

   ——————————————————-

   Madeleine Case - Pact of Silence

   ‘Sol’ - June 2007

   QUOTE

   Madeleine’s parents and the friends with whom they spent their holidays in PDL are suspects in the inquiry. There are contradictory versions about the night of the kidnapping, and an assumed pact of silence in the group

   The beginning of June is flowing in a strange way in the Algarve. A chilly wind and overhead clouds help to fill the auditorium of Lagos, where a solidarity concert is being held for the missing English girl. It’s been a month since Madeleine McCann vanished without a trace.

   A few kilometres from Lagos, in the Ocean Club resort at Praia da Luz, the faint illumination further densifies the climate. At the reception, which leads to the Tapas restaurant, there is nobody. Getting inside is easy.

   A Portuguese waiter, but with a British ‘behaviour’, strikes the first blow on the journalist’s plan: “We only serve dinner to the club’s clients”. “What about a drink?”. He says yes.

   It’s 9.30 p.m. If we were to believe the several members of the McCann’s holiday group, and after several mismatching versions, at this time Madeleine was being carried out of her apartment by a dark-haired man, who would be around 35 years old.

   From the same table where the group of nine had dinner on that evening, one tries, in vain, to observe the apartment’s front – a ground floor apartment that faces the restaurant. A linoleum screen on the side of Tapas and the corridor of bushes that follows the limits of the apartment’s back yards prevents any vigilance to that level.

   The image of Madeleine – big blue, questioning eyes and an innocent smile, fixed on the photographic films – is always present. It doesn’t leave the conversations of whom passes by. One remembers the words that the mother, Kate Healy, is supposed to have said to a friend (and that the husband, Gerry McCann, did not know): “I had a bad premonition about my children, when I found out the Ocean Club had no baby listening service”.

   The choice of Algarve as a holiday destination would come to change their lives. Everything was arranged with three other couples, with whom they used to travel. Some of them had recently been to Greece, with their children, and the Mark Warner agency, the same that prepared their trip to the Algarve, had done their itinerary for the islands. According to their reports, the hotel where they stayed had a baby listening service – a service that is assured by four or five members of staff who would control the children while the adults dined, by listening through doors and windows to confirm that everything inside was quiet.

   At the Tapas bar, from bartenders to staff from the Kid Club, criticism is whispered: “We have a creche where they left their children for most part of the day, where they could be until 11.30 p.m. without spending another Euro. They could also have used our baby-sitters, who stay with the children in their rooms until 1 p.m. In this case, they would have to pay an extra fee, but these people looked like they could afford it”, an employee comments, concluding that “this was a very strange group, that never stayed with their children”.

   The children’s routine

   The story of Madeleine looks like a tangled ball of wool. In the last days of April, Kate and Gerry, both 39 and doctors, arrive with their friends in Praia da Luz. The weather is not very good, but the group makes the best of it. The children seem to exist outside of the adults’ world. In the morning, Kate would take Madeleine, almost 4, and the 2-year old twins, to the Kid Club. The other couples in the group did the same.

   While the little ones entertained themselves with collages and paintings, the group divides itself between tennis and jogging until lunchtime. In the creche, the girl’s picture is taken: “She was shy and had some difficulty in adapting to the group. She always stayed close to the English children she already knew”.

   It is at lunchtime that the families socialize a bit. After a short nap, the children go back to the Kid Club, while the parents use the activities that the club offers. They only get to meet again in the late afternoon, when the children’s dinner is served. Before 8 p.m., Madeleine and her siblings, who seem to function like a clock, are already asleep. Half an hour later, the group of friends meets at Tapas. The staff remember that they only leave at midnight: “They were very lively and drank a bit too much. I didn’t even realize they had children, because I never saw them around”.

   Mathew Oldfield, one of the elements of the group, is back in England. He reacts with surprise upon the contact of Sol, but he does not avoid the conversation: “We drank. We were on holidays. So what?”.

   And thus the days followed one upon another, at the Ocean Club. The holiday week is almost over and the group’s spirit does not change. Nobody had noticed until then, how the children were kept at a distance.

   The most reliable way to undrestand what happened on May 3, when Madeleine disappeared, is to analyze the various versions that emerged.

   It would have been 10 p.m. when Kate decided to check the children at the apartment. This is the only moment in the story that gathers consensus. Madeleine had vanished from her bedroom and the twins were sleeping like nothing had happened. The mother was back at the restaurant in one leap. She was disoriented.

   PJ called two hours later

   In seconds, the resort is in turmoil. The group’s four men and the club’s employees check every corner. They seem to be oblivious of the essential: to call the authorities. GNR is the first to arrive at the scene, but the news only reach Policia Judiciaria (PJ) more than two hours later. The first explanations arise. Where were the parents when the child disappeared? Gerry explains that, inspired in the scheme that some of the friends had used on their holidays in Greece, the nine members of the group took turns in checking on the children with some regularity.

   This is the beginning of a story that will change in many chapters. Gerry starts by saying that he first left the table to check on the children around 9.05 p.m. When he entered the apartment the children were fine, he just noticed that the door to their bedroom was partially open. He looked at the window, which was closed, just as the shutters, and relaxed.

   Ten minutes later, his friend Jane Tanner, who went around the apartments, crossed ways with a dark-haired man who was walking in the opposite direction, carrying a child. She didn’t make any connections either.

   A few minutes later, Mathew Oldfield enters the room, sees the McCann children fast asleep, and notices nothing out of the ordinary. It is at 10 p.m. that Maddie’s mother discovers her daughter has disappeared. The window was wide open and the shutters were up.

   To GNR, who is in the area with sniffer dogs to search for the child, this is a highly unlikely scenario. One of the military assures: “This is an extremely silent area, where there are practically no passing cars. That shutter was very difficult to lift from the outside, and would have made a lot of noise. It would have been a lot easier to use the door, but there were no signs of a break-in”.

   This was just one of the reasons why the group became suspicious in the eyes of the investigators. Russell O’Brien, Jane Tanner’s husband, is already back in England, but he knows he could be summoned back to Portugal for a deposition anytime. Over the phone with Sol, he tries to keep his british phlegm: “It is normal that we are suspects, and the DNA test is a consequence thereof. We were the closest people involved”.

   The conversation always comes back to the same issue: the night of the disappearance. The account of that last dinner has disparate versions among the group’s members. Some swear that someone left the table every half hour to check on the kids; other reduce that time to half of it. Some say control is made window by window; others say the adults entered each other’s apartments.

   One of the employees that was on duty that evening does not remember a lot of movement: “I only remember a tall, grey-haired man getting up once from the table”. It was Russell, who, two days earlier, also had attended dinner.

   An aerobic instructor from the resort entertains the dinner guests at Tapas with a ‘Quiz’. At 9.30 p.m. the game ends, and Gerry invites her to their table, where she stays for half an hour. During that time, as she later confided to friends, nobody left the table, but one of the chairs was vacant. Najova Chekaya refuses to talk to Sol. And Russell, when the questions start to surround him, loses his sympathy: “I have nothing further to tell you. I am not going to dishonor the compromise I assumed with Kate and Gerry. They want to control all infornation that is disclosed”.

   Gerry changes his version several times, but he maintains that the door to his children’s room was open. Mat revokes his first statement: when he entered Madeleine’s room, the door was open and there was more light, as if the shutters had been raised. Here starts to develop the theory that there was already someone inside the apartment. Which reinforces Jane Tanner’s version (that she saw a man carrying a child).

   Only Jane saw the man carrying a child

   But there is a witness whose deposition contradicts this theory. Jeremy Wilkins – a tv producer who had met Maddie’s father during their holidays and used to play tennis with him – was walking his eight months old son at that time. He met Gerry, who went out through the apartment’s back door after having checked on the children, and the two man exchanged a brief conversation. At that time, if one is to believe the first accounts, Jane would have left Tapas in the direction of the apartment’s main entrance, and would have crossed paths with both of them. “It was a very narrow road and I think it would have been almost impossible to walk by without me taking notice”, Jeremy says, pointing out the fact that he saw no man carrying a child, as Jane states.

   But Jane continues to guarantee that, at the top of the street, she saw a man with a child in his arms.

   Although the area is scarcely lit, and the situation did not make her suspicious at the time, she describes the beige trousers, the dark thick jacket and the black classic-style shoes in a detailed way. Once again, Jeremy disagrees: “If that happened, I would have likely seen it”.

   On the next day, the media circus was fully installed. The first reports are on Sky News first thing in the morning, even before portuguese press takes hold of the story. Journalists and locals dispute the information. Robert Murat, the son of an English mother and a Portuguese father, with little luck in business, does not waste the opportunity. He moves from failed businessman into the role of a translator for the press and the police. Some british journalists, after sucking him to the bones, start suspecting his availability.

   The Murat contradiction

   Contrarily to the GNR elements and the Ocean Club’s staff, who participated in the searches on the night before and assure they did not see Murat around, Gerry and some of his friends guarantee that he was there. And thus he becomes an arguido.

   Gerry and Kate’s friends, who are interrogated tightly by the PJ over almost a month, refuse to clarify this contradiction, when asked by Sol. “We have a pact. This is our matter only. It is nobody else’s business”, says David Payne, another element with the group. Minutes after we tried to contact Kate, Gerry, in a fury, calls the Sol journalist: “What do you think you are doing? Do you think you’re better than the Portuguese police? I’m going to forward your contact to PJ and you will have to explain yourselves”.

   UNQUOTE

10. 438 nononethere says:
    September 24th, 2007 at 4:18 pm

    426,
    no that is why I said, you need experts to help you. Really start reading my posts rather than trying to desperately find holes in what I have said. What I wrote was very reasonable.

11. 437 Puzzled says:
    September 24th, 2007 at 4:18 pm

    If my child were missing I would be doing everything I could to help the police find her.

    To this end, if I was in the McCanns position and knew I was innocent I would now be back in Portugal saying to the police - how can I help? What questions do you have for me - because I want to answer them as thoroughly and honestly as I can. Do you need DNA samples from me - if so, take what you need? Would you like to search my house? OK fine - don’t waste time on a search warrant - just go ahead. Cuddle cat? Take her, open her - just tell me what I can do?

    Why would I do this? Not to clear my name but to help eliminate myself from their enquiries as a suspect. And who would I want to do that? Because I would want to find my child - dead or alive. I would be desperate to know what happened to my child. I would still be consumed with guilt at leaving her alone in the first place and I would want justice for her.

    I ask all those who are so convinced the McCanns are innocent - why do they not answer the questions and help? If they have nothing to hide - why are they hiding?

    Why would I do this? Because

12. 436 firestar says:
    September 24th, 2007 at 4:18 pm

    439
    i don’t know.
    i hear moriarty’s bought a detecting hat.

13. 435 firestar says:
    September 24th, 2007 at 4:17 pm

    438
    and if that were true, people wouldn’t keep lifting our speculation.

    the mc canns are certainly acting on what they read on here.

14. 434 Ian WIllis says:
    September 24th, 2007 at 4:16 pm

    noonethere 430

    i dont think any of us on this sarcasm forum have any false beliefs of being able to impact the case.

    doesnt stop us from exchanging views/opinions and HAVING A LAUGH, does it?

15. 433 firestar says:
    September 24th, 2007 at 4:16 pm

    435
    neither does yours, so be quiet.

16. 432 innocenttilproveninnocent says:
    September 24th, 2007 at 4:15 pm

    429. OK,,, well thanks. So I had something of a memory about it.

    I wonder how that adds up to the picture of being devout Catholics…

17. 431 firestar says:
    September 24th, 2007 at 4:15 pm

    another thing is, were the portuguese aware of what the word swinging meant?

    i would imagine it’s not an oft-used word when talking to foreigners
    (unless you want to swing with them i suppose)

18. 430 nononethere says:
    September 24th, 2007 at 4:14 pm

    430,
    your opinion and everyone’s on this site actually carries no weight in the Madeleine McCann case.

19. 429 Moderation says:
    September 24th, 2007 at 4:13 pm

    seriously Firestar, does that not then nullify the court system? surely we have to believe in the system or we have anarchy?
    Its a problem I have with OJ. A jury found him not guilty but the white public didn’t like that so pronounced him guilty anyway.

20. 428 Portia says:
    September 24th, 2007 at 4:13 pm

    Express article. Even though the questions listed are plausible, there is nothing in any of them that would cause a suspect to refuse to answer. The questions must have been of an intimate nature. Nothing else makes sense.

    The line of questioning may have been geared towards information concerning their friends. Police would have to have that kind of information to rule the friends out as abductors or accomplices. Surely the police need to rule out blackmail. These are the kind of questions that could make someone high tail it out of Portugal.

21. 427 Ian WIllis says:
    September 24th, 2007 at 4:12 pm

    the report goes on to say:-

    One afternoon I decided to test this proposition, approaching two holiday reps there, dressed in their red Mark Warner sweatshirts. “Er, is this a good place for swingers, then?” I asked.

    They looked at me in total bafflement. “Swingers?” one replied.

    “Look around you, sir. Most of our guests are retired, or families with children.”
    —————————————————————————-

    It goes to show how naive the journalist is. Look at the membership of any swingers clu, and it will be full of older people and those with childen - young, people dont need to join a swinging club to get a shag!

22. 426 nononethere says:
    September 24th, 2007 at 4:11 pm

    422,
    more like the other way around. I could not care less if you or anyone else here thinks the McCanns are guilty. But what I do find disgusting are constant, gross endless insults about a case that none of us acutally have the truth about. Those who think the McCanns are guilty are suggesting that they are truth seekers, that they are open-mined, that they are looking at this from all angles. What a laugh! Just read back most of the posts here. It is hate-mongering at its worst and if you can’t see that, then I am not sure what you are reading.

23. 425 firestar says:
    September 24th, 2007 at 4:09 pm

    420
    i wasn’t talking about the presumption of innocence.

    it’s just that certain people don’t seem to understand that regardless of what the courts use as a presumption, fact says that someone is either guilty of a crime or they aren’t.

    the argument that ‘they haven’t been proved guilty’ is meaningless when discussing whether or not, in our opinion, someone is guilty.

    they either are, or they aren’t.

24. 424 Ian WIllis says:
    September 24th, 2007 at 4:09 pm

    424 innocenttilproveninnocent

    thisislondon story says:-
    “Several Portuguese lawyers and journalists, along with a uniformed police officer from the National Republican Guard I spoke to outside the Ocean Club apartment, told me solemnly not only that the McCanns and their friends were “swingers” who had taken their holiday together to indulge in group sex (an assertion made repeatedly by the Portuguese Press), but that “everyone knows” that its tolerance of orgies is the Mark Warner Ocean Club resort’s main selling point.”

25. 423 john says:
    September 24th, 2007 at 4:08 pm

    The Real stig

    India Knight is entitled to her opinion - in parts she is correct. I do not believe that it helps on fora to be abusive to anyone.

    That said I will put up with the more raucous element on this forum. I think that your advice to ‘read this article - all of it, slowly, every single word:’ appears rather patronising though, especially as you tend not to read anyone else’s particularly thoroughly.

26. 422 Ian WIllis says:
    September 24th, 2007 at 4:07 pm

    423 noonethere

    You said “Whoever took Madeliene more than likely has gone underground or has sadely already gotten rid of her. The McCanns could never be able to inflitrate a paedophile ring (if this is what happened) or catch child-traffickers, you need experts for that. And such a task may actually take a long time”

    So by that you are implying its impossible to find her so they may as well as give up, and use the resources on their criminal defence rather than the search for her?

27. 421 firestar says:
    September 24th, 2007 at 4:06 pm

    403
    i’m not bloody minded enough to be a woman.
    

28. 420 innocenttilproveninnocent says:
    September 24th, 2007 at 4:03 pm

    402. To the point. There was also a statement or a rumour in an article about this peculiarity last Summer. Who remembers?

29. 419 nononethere says:
    September 24th, 2007 at 4:02 pm

    409,
    what a wierd interpretation of what I actually wrote. Read it again. You asked me a question and your question was.

    Let me focus you back to the real story. If your 4-year old daughter was missing and allleged to have been credibly spotted in Morocco by 2 independent witnesses, what would you do?

    And I answered it.

30. 418 Puzzled says:
    September 24th, 2007 at 4:02 pm

    Been out. Just scanning through some of the posts I missed and I see that yet again because I am a doubter of the McCanns non-involvement I am being called names and ridiculed.

    Firstly - why is it only the real pro-McCanners who are insulting about other posters views? I have said all along that I would really love to find out the McCanns are innocent and also be able to find where Madeleine is - dead or alive. So please do not continue to be rude about people who have a different view. I respect all your views but choose to hold other ones.

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