Monday, April 10, 2017
Why the Smith Sighting - and not the Last Photo - is the Key to the Madeleine McCann Case
First of all, the "Last Photo" is not photoshopped. It is a real photo. Now, as to when it was taken, I can accept that it might not have been taken when the McCanns claimed (although I believe it may well have been taken when they said it was). I will go even further - to make my point - and be willing to accept that one possibility is that it might have been taken on Sunday. So, let's say it was indeed taken on that day. What does that tell us? Here is where the speculation goes off track. As a profiler, all I can tell you is if it is true the photo was taken days before the McCanns claim, there might be a half dozen reasons for them choosing that photo and saying it was taken later in the week, none of which are very alarming to the point of throwing up a huge red flag.
Here is an example of how speculating on certain evidence leads to false conclusions.
My granddaughter was born three years ago. She was born at my daughter's home in a planned home birth quite close to her due date, just a day or so early. At the time of her birth, I lived just thirty minutes from my daughter's home. On the occasion of my granddaughter's first birthday, my daughter cobbled together one of those first-year-of-life albums with photos from birth through turning one. As one peruses the photos, one cannot help notice that there is but one photo of me, the only grandmother, in the whole book and I am conspicuously absent from the birth photos. My ex-husband is shown holding the newborn baby in a couple of photos, the baby's uncles are there with big smiles on their faces, my best friend (who was an "aunty" to my daughter during her childhood) is there helping at the birth, but I am not. Why am I, the grandmother of the baby, the mother of the woman giving birth, not there?
Okay, start speculating.
Did any of you come up with these possibilities?
My daughter and I have a bad relationship and I wasn't invited to the birth.
I was busy doing television and my career and publicity was more important than being at the birth.
I was off traveling - having planned a vacation around the time of my daughter's due date.
I was opposed to home birth an refused to show up and support my daughter's choice.
Yeah, none of these are true. Oh, and, wait, look here! What is this?
Yes, that is a photo of me at the birth! What the heck? Where did that come from and why, if it isn't a photoshopped picture or a photo of me with another baby, or a photo of me with the baby on a day sometime after the birth, why wasn't that photo in my daughter's picture book? Why would it be left out?
First of all, let's talk about if the photo is actually me at the birth. Yes, it is a real photo. I was there. Not only was I there, but I chose to be there under stressful circumstances. Oh, no, not that I had any problems with my daughter; our relationship was fine. And I am a supporter of home birth; my son, David, was born at home. In fact, I went with my daughter to her final midwifery appointment and as soon as she called and told me she was in labor, I raced over to her house. I would never have planned a vacation during the last month of her pregnancy and I would have turned down all television and work-related jobs to be present at the birth. In fact, the stressful circumstance which made my presence difficult was that my mother was dying in another state and I had to choose whether to be at her deathbed or at my granddaughter's birth.
I had been at my father's side when he died just a year earlier and I had been making trips back and forth to New York to help my sister care for my mother in her last year of life as she declined with Alzheimers. After she fell and was hospitalized for the last time, my other sister went up to New York to help as my daughter's due date was nearing. I then had to choose to be with my mother or to be with my daughter, not knowing exactly when my daughter would give birth or my mother would leave this world. I did what I thought my mother would sanction; I stayed for the birth. My mother died the same day, just hours after the baby was born, so I was unable to fly there after the birth to be there in time to say goodbye.
So, yes, I was at the birth, totally involved, and none of the negative speculation would have been accurate. So, what about the photo? Quite simple really. My daughter didn't have that photo. I never had sent it over to her. The photos she DID have of me weren't very flattering and she knows I hate bad photos of myself, so she kindly did not include them in the book. Yes, other grandmothers wouldn't have cared if they looked like a wildebeest holding the baby but my daughter knew it would make me shudder. I asked a woman who put a photo of me kissing an iguana in a marketplace during a trip to Nicaragua to pull the photo from Facebook; the iguana's sideview of it's neck and dewlap hanging down looked a whole lot better than mine. I love the photo (privately) but not for public viewing! Okay, call me what you will - proud, vain, whatever - I just hate embarrassingly bad photos of myself at my age.
So, now, see how speculation as to why there was no photo of me at my granddaughter's birth can go so far off course? Now, think about the "Last Photo" of the McCanns. Why would they lie, if they even did, about the time it was taken? I can think of a whole bunch of reasons which are far less bizarre than Maddie being dead by Sunday which then requires a massive plan to hide the fact and cooperation of a great number of people being needed to carry on the charade for the next four days.
Let's see.
1. There WERE other photos of Maddie that week but they were blurred or not very good, so the McCanns chose the pool photo but said it was on Thursday because that made the photo more compelling (the LAST photo! The McCanns like spin and know its value).
2. They were other photos of Maddie but THEY look bad in them (and Kate and Gerry like to look good).
3. There were no other photos past Sunday because once they did their day with the children, they dumped them in care during the day and left them at night because they were busy enjoying their adult vacation and they didn't want to admit not spending time with them.
In other words, it is dangerous to speculate, creating dots that do not necessarily exist and then connecting those dots to create a theory. To me, the "Last Photo" is just a photo and I can find no reason to exaggerate its meaning.
Now, the Smith sighting is a completely different animal. THIS is the KEY to the case and yet it is even poo-poo'ed as having merit, mostly because it invalidates the earlier death theory of Madeleine. Simply, if the Smiths saw Gerry carrying Madeleine toward the beach on the evening of May 3, then Madeleine died an accidental death while being neglected and there is no big child sex ring that Gerry and his friends and the British governement are involved in.
But, we can't invalidate or diminish the Smith sighting for one HUGE reason and this is the KEY to the case. The McCanns refused to acknowledge the Smith sighting themselves. Unlike every parent I have ever dealt with whose child went missing or was found murdered, the McCanns were not interested in the biggest lead in their child going missing. Why is this? There can only be ONE reason; Gerry does NOT have a solid alibi for the time of the Smith sighting and Gerry most likely IS the person carrying a little girl toward the beach at the time the Smiths saw the man in the street. For if Gerry DID have a solid alibi at that time, the McCanns would have jumped at a sighting that was validated by an entire bunch of strangers, not just a close friend who could easily not be believed (and wasn't). The McCanns ignoring of the Smith sighting is the bombshell in the Madeleine McCann case, not some photo that has a half dozen reasons for possibily not being the last one taken of Maddie.
Even if I could explain away every other behavior of the McCanns and every other piece of evidence in this case, the one thing I cannot possibly come up with is an alternative explanation for is the McCanns ignoring of the Smith sighting. If they are innocent of any connection to Maddie going missing, they would have jumped on the Smith sighting as a huge lead as to who might have taken their daughter. And if they are guilty of involvement in the disappearance of Maddie, their ignoring of the Smith sighting is the strongest piece of evidence we have of Maddie's death and subsequent cover-up being an inside job and not a stranger abduction.
Criminal Profiler Pat Brown
April 10, 2017
By Pat Brown
Rating: 
Published: July 27, 2011What really happened to Madeleine Beth McCann in Praia da Luz, Portugal in 2007? Was she abducted as the Gerry and Kate have claimed or did something happen to Madeleine on May 3 in the vacation apartment and the incident covered up? Criminal Profiler Pat Brown analyzes the evidence and takes the readers through the steps of profiling, developing a theory that is intriguing and controversial.
I don't object to other theories - after all, that is why they are called theories! However, as a profiler, I want evidence that is solid to base my theory on. While I really have no clue to if the last photo was taken on Thursday or Sunday, there is nothing I can find that is substantial enough to warrant an earlier death. If the death were earlier, I can guarantee from the history of parents covering up children's deaths, they do the simplest thing possible. Which, in fact, is what the McCanns likely did under the panic of the evening of May 3. Furthermore, there is no need to guess what the McCanns thought about the Smith sighting; they told us and their behaviors clearly informed us that they did not want to acknowledge that sighting as a possible "abductor." Hence, THAT is solid evidence and that is what I base my theory on (along with many other pieces of evidence - lack of evidence of abduction, the dogs, the lies, etc.)
Yes, only in ebook. Publishers refuse to put out a paper book on the market. Therefore, I did the only other possible thing; self-publish an ebook. It is available at Smashwords and B&N. Amazon pulled the book under threat of lawsuit from the McCanns and Carter-Ruck.
It is absolutely excluded that Smithman was carrying a corpse with a PMI of many days. It would have smelt like hell, no necessity to call for Eddie.
But I'd like you to clarify this : "Simply, if the Smiths saw Gerry carrying Madeleine toward the beach on the evening of May 3, then Madeleine died an accidental death while being neglected". Why should MMC have died while being neglected ? Eddie wouldn't agree with that.
This neglect question is the best shield the MCs have, because it is turns abduction possible, in spite of existing no evidence of it.
I have covered this over and over in my blogs but, simply put, the discombobulation of the evening supports Gerry discovered Madeleine dead and made a decision to deal with it. Furthermore, setting oneself up for neglect charges and the hatred of the police is unnecessary when all you have to do is go to jimmy a window after dark and pretend someone broke in and took the child while you were sleeping. This way, you remain the ever decent parent with the sympathies of the police and public. The apartment was locked down (I do NOT believe the sliding door was left open) and the convoluted and changing story of how the abductor got in was hastily concocted which is why nothing was planned earlier on.
All depends on what you want to believe in life and sometimes the obvious, is too obvious. I think, to be honest, I always wanted this case to be woke up and wandered off, since that would make the McCanns totally responsible, with no abductor to blame. Children left homealone played it's part.
So put that aside, and just hold the thought about the case of Oscar Pistorius, I actually believe him, but I don't support the action he subsequently carried out.
My take on events, after carefully again reading the Roggies, is that the McCanns returned ALONE to the apartment & specifically the bedroom, where Madeleine was discovered in the corner of the room. Whether through direct trauma or accidental postural suffocation she was beyond help. Out of sight on Mrs McC on her check, here, sound plays it's part, because I doubt Mrs McC was actually looking for Madeleine, as in with the eyes and rather like all the helpers out there that night searching PDL with their 'ears'
Back to the Roggies, no one entered the bedroom for anything upwards of 20 minutes, the first was Diane Webster. There was time at this point in panic, possibly confused with alcohol to have 'ran' with Madeleine - crossing the path with the Smiths. All you need to do is find a few minutes around the 9.45 (or earlier) to 10, I believe this time slot is the most critical of all - the rest is all window dressing & going with the flow of events.
Anything could have happened next and is anyone's guess. Sound is essential to this whole saga and\or lack of it.
Looking at the T9 jotted timelines, an added check here, a sighting there - subsequently dismissed by Redwood all added to the confusion and meanwhile, gave alibis to everyone that it must have happened earlier, in the Tanner sighting time frame.
I once spent a whole 8 hour shift looking for a patient - she was found next to her bed!!! How was that done? It comes down to the pre-preception of what you are looking for, not necessarily what is actually there.
I would have liked to show Aoife the pants with the side buttons.
The crucial point in MS's testimony is Smithman's clumsy holding. It was unexpected from a man whom he logically thought was the child's father. How could he guess that this father lookalike was carrying a cadaver ?
But I do think also that these people would never stage an abduction as primary people could. First thing, would they have been capable of jemmying genuinely ? And silently ? It was much easier to say that shutters were jemmied or open than to jemmy or open them. And it worked perfectly, you have to admit. Although nobody saw the shutters raised and the window opened, nobody doubted those crucial details that had a very, very long life in the media. The MCs had to substitute "opened" to "jemmied" because the GNR, after having a quick look, likely said that nothing was broken.
Apart from that, as I told you before, I believe that Eddie, in a flat that was rented to 4 families between the disappearance and M. Grime's arrival and all the draughts one can imagine, needed the (at least) average minimum PMI for cadaver dogs to alert : 150/180 minutes.
I will say that there may be many theories drawn about whether the Smith really saw Gerry and what exactly happened to Maddie and when but, no matter what, the reaction of the McCanns to the Smith sighting is damning and that is the whole point. Perhaps the reason they refuse to acknowledge the sighting as a man abducting their child is because they know better and don't want us to know.
I totally agree with you Pat on all the points you put forward. My 30+ years of experience in software engineering (and various image formats were a significant part of my degree) tells me that if there is any evidence that the 'last photo' was manipulated I haven't seen it, other than the date which is easily changed. I see nothing wrong with that photograph.
As you've demonstrated, you can come up with many different explanations for anything, and one of mine on this particular case is this - Gerry and Kate had been fighting all week (Diane Webster remarked that she thought 'it was another one of their games', which to me indicates they were in conflict during the holiday, although of course certain forum posters will no doubt treat the word 'game' entirely literally and come up with some kind of 'sex game' theory). As a result, they hadn't spend much time with the kids, and only had a photo or two of them at the pool in the middle of the week. They didn't want the police or the public to be aware of them fighting - they had presented themselves to the world as the perfect middle-class couple, and suspicion was already falling upon them. So they changed the date to make it look like it was the 'last photo', rather than 'one of the only photos we took'.
I don't find the last photo important at all. The Smith sighting is all important. The McCanns should have been shouting about this sighting to all the world, whether they were involved or were entirely innocent. A certain person and his forum socks, endless polls and blue ink may well deny that, but it is the truth.
But there we are, 9 people, independent witnesses, crossed a guy carrying a Madeleine lookalike shortly after the alarm was launched.
Those 9 people forced the guy to change its destination, likely father ocean, mother nature that would craddle the child.
The main mistake of the PJ, reproduced by the Public Ministry, was to accept the time line of the TP9, even with all its discrepancies, instead of observing that according to independent witnesses the group left the table before 10, not after.
I think that comment from Diane Webster may well be a forum myth that I've mistakenly thought came from the files. If it is in the files, I can't find it, so I'll chalk it up as a myth.
Nevertheless, I'm still convinced by other evidence of conflict between Gerry and Kate - but even if I'm wrong, the key point is still correct: that you can easily come up with other explanations for things (like the 'last photo') that fit the evidence. Same as you can't just assume that a little girl with make-up on who may have been crying somehow equals paedophilia.
DW's comment is a myth, yes.
It is important, too, that the McCanns did not release the Smith e fits to the public and, even when forced to acknowledge the significance of the Smith family's evidence, they dressed it up as somehow validating their chosen 'abductor' ( as seen by their fiend Jane Tanner )
If the McCanns' version of events were true, and they had been faced with two potential sightings of their child being carried away that night, then the natural response would be to treat each of them with the same degree of importance.
How can it be that the McCanns never even considered the possibility that the two events were unrelated, and that one sighting may have been perfectly innocent whilst the other was crucial to finding their child ?
Why on earth did they 'combine' both sightings and come to the nonsensical conclusion that it was the same man ... still wandering about PDL with their missing child in his arms an hour later ?
The McCanns' determination to push the man Jane Tanner saw as 'the abductor' ( which just happened to give Gerry McCann an air-tight alibi in the form of Jez Wilkins ) is undeniable ... even now, when the Met have all but dismissed that possibility, the McCanns continue to promote it on their website.
By the way Pat, that photo of you and your granddaughter is just lovely
That was an EXCELLENT analysis of the Smith sighting; very clear and right on the money. The McCanns attempts to redirect attention away from the Smith sighting or explain away the Smith sighting makes zero sense for innocence people; it makes perfect sense for people who are desperate to have the public and police believe that Gerry has an alibi (Tannerman) and, therefore, Tannerman MUST be the abductor. Burying Smithman is a sure sign they are not worried about finding Madeleine in the hands of a stranger, but seriously concerned about anyone considering Gerry might be carrying Maddie off to her burial place.
The sort of foil-hat nonsense being purported by he and his cohorts is manna from heaven to the McCanns and their followers.
It is no coincidence that your theory largely reflects that of Goncalo Amaral, who the McCanns also tried to silence.
That is the only theory they have used lawyers to shut down.
Says it all.
You hit the nail on the head. I wrote a blog a while back on the problem with a very convoluted - if well meaning - theory that will be labeled a "conspiracy theory" and be more of positive for the McCanns than a negative. They are not so concerned with Facebook and discussioon outside the main media as they are with the MSM, major book publishers, and experts in their field. The original pamphlet of attorney, Tony Bennet, Amaral Goncalo and his book, me and my book (they have issues getting my blogs pulled due to the need to sue me in the US), and the Portuguese court which gives legal credibility to purporting certain theories. The big blow of Goncalo's win and the Supreme Court statement that the McCanns were not cleared led to MSM in Australia and the UK allowing expert opinion for the first time. This caused a response which we see with them pushing Dave Eggar making MSM claims that Maddie is alive, she has been kidnapped by a sex ring and not ENOUGH money has been spent searching for her....and EXACT response to my media statements. So, yes, it is the simpler theory of accidental death and coverup and the Smith sighting that has the McCanns sweating, not the theory she died on Sunday and a whole bunch of people are involved in some massive criminal activity.