CHAPTER 63 Addendum
A response to critiques of Chapter 63 – SmithGerryMan
Since the SmithGerryMan chapter (Ch. 63 ) was published there has been a revival of debate about the significance of the Smith’s sighting of a man carrying a child
They range from broadly understanding and supportive, through “interesting new look at the available evidence”, to outright opposition and barely concealed hostility on various Facebook sites
One accused me of claiming that the sighting was “fanciful”, which I assume means that I do not believe any of the Smith family saw anyone, and that I was suggesting that all nine of them lied.
For the record I think no such thing. They clearly saw a man carrying a child.
The arguments for SmithGerryMan seem to revolve round the belief that the three members of the Smith family who gave statements were accurate in their estimate of the time of that event.
Two say 9.50, one allows more latitude between 9.50 and 10pm. The significance of this was discussed in the Chapter
The till roll from Kelly’s Bar has been available for inspection for the past 16 years. It is shown in the appendix as it appears in the PJ files. It has for the purpose of copying and pasting into the report been chopped into four sections. The serial numbers on each entry make it clear however that this is the full till roll from 9pm until midnight as appears in the PJ Files.
There are 17 entries
What do we KNOW ?
The Dolphins’ restaurant bill was paid by the daughter-in-law by credit card at 21:27:40
In Chapter 63 I suggested that it would take a finite time for an extended family of 9 including 5 children of ages 13 down to 4 years to collect themselves together, “wash hands”, negotiate the stairs, cross the short distance to the Kelly’s Bar, settle down, decide on drinks and place an order.
And the Kelly’s Bar till roll supports this, with the significant entry of €13.75 timed at 21:39. Eleven minutes after the restaurant receipt.
Then some seven minutes after that and again ten minutes later are the two entries each of €8,
One minute after that is the €5 entry.
The €8 entry is repeated for a third time, 25 minutes after the second one, and eight minutes later exactly half that amount – €4 – is rung in.
The time is now 22:24
It may be impossible at this distance of time to establish without a shadow of a doubt which of these till roll entries related to the Smith Family, though we might guess that the €5 and the second €8 were not. The statement from the staff member producing the roll as an exhibit was taken on 10th October 2007, some five months after the event, and she makes it clear that Kelly’s is always full of people from ‘other countries’ so there would be no reason to remember one particular family.
But I believe we can still make an educated attempt to unravel it and interpret what we see. If we look at the Dolphin restaurant BILL, not the credit card receipt, we can see that a bottle of Matteus Rosé cost €9 and a can of cola €1.30
These are 2007 prices, before the financial crash of 2007/8
Even today Matteus costs around €3.50 a bottle in a supermarket, somewhat less in wholesale suppliers. That give the standard three times mark-up for the restaurant. Cola is now about 47 cts., and was sold at €1.30.
Again perfectly normal trade standard mark-up. Twice wholesale plus twice VAT
Now they go to Kelly’s and order the SAME Drinks. 4 glasses of wine, and 5 fizzy drinks for the children.
Generous bar measures of the wine, at €2 per glass, giving 5 glasses to the bottle, puts the bottle at €10, and the 5 colas at €1.15. This is Bar pricing, not restaurant.
4 wine @ €2 = €8.00
5 cola @ € 1.15 = €5.75
Total = €13.75
QED. ? ? ?
I emphasise that I don’t KNOW. I am putting it forward as a reasonable suggestion
IF we follow that reasoning, then the repeated €8 entries and the final €4 fit suspiciously neatly into the scenario.
[But as another critic has observed, it might also be that after the first couple of rounds, the waiter started to ‘tot it all up’, and presented the final bill of €16.50 as they left. At 2253. Seven minutes to eleven.]
It is of note that the PJ placed so much importance on this sighting that the member of staff, whose name is redacted, was interviewed by TWO PJ Inspectors.
“Inquiry carried out by Inspectors Rui Fernandes and Ricardo Paiva”
The time is now 22:24.
A reminder that this time is consistent with BOTH adults’ stated recollection of spending ‘about an hour’ in Kelly’s, having a “few more drinks”, and having all arrived in the bar around 21:39
But the commentator referred to above wants to “Close the Smith book” at 9:49 – just EIGHT MINUTES AFTER ARRIVING – and goes so far as to highlight the till roll entries to support that, whilst neatly amputating and ignoring all the subsequent entries – which don’t. He is wanting us to accept drinking up time, collecting of family together, leaving, climbing the stairs in the alley way and crossing the road as ONE Minute. This is ‘cherry picking’ evidence and distorting reality to fit the theory, which inevitably ends badly.
Commentator’s evidence as posted on Face Book
In the real world we surely have to add a few minutes to the 22:24 entry for drinking up time, collecting women and children and then herding them all round the corner and up the stairway in the the alleyway. This takes us at the earliest to 22:30, probably considerably later.
OF COURSE this is not consistent with the SmithGerryMan hypothesis, but I am far from convinced that it should be dismissed out of hand. Clearly the PJ having looked at the evidence did not consider it of enough significance to follow up in any way.
It could be argued that the Kelly’s Bar till roll is stronger evidence for exit at 22:25 – 22:35 than at exactly 21:49, But that throws the full suggested scenario of Gerry chucking the corpse into a waiting car in the driver side footwell with the driver’s seat pushed right back, and then sprinting back to the Tapas Bar using a hitherto unnoticed rear entrance . . . [I’m not making this up. © J Tanner]. . . . to arrive 90 SECONDS later, fresh and bright to make small talk about football matches and wait for Kate’s next entrance from Stage right in Scene 2, Act IV, into disarray. [see later]
Interestingly, given the likely speed of the Smith procession, he would have probably sprinted right through them on his way back. There is no mention of a sprinting man in the PJ files, nor of any of the stragglers in the Smith procession’s having seen the girl being chucked into a stationary car.
One has to admire the tenacity of the SmithGerryMan adherents / disciples / acolytes in the same way one ‘admires’ the bishops Cranmer, Latimer and Ridley who could have saved their own lives had they admitted that the other side might have had a point about the exact status of a biscuit.
But it has all the same signs of having become a Belief, a Faith, a Cult which therefore excludes rational argument and dismisses evidence against it as Heresy.
Another prominent commentator in a recent YouTube presentation shows signs of real Anger that anyone dare offer alternative explanations, or in this case a different date from that on which she has set her personal stamp. She brushes it aside with the words “I can't accept it “ as if that were in some way final for all time and for all people.
She does not say “I have had good look at it and I don’t think he is correct for the following fifteen reasons . . . .”
When we realise that the difference in time between her ‘version of the truth’ and the one put forward by Bernt Stellander is actually less than 20 hours and that he proposes that the main event occurred on the same DAY - just in the early hours of the morning, rather than the early evening – her anger is even less easy to understand.
It may be that although she has a copy of the book she has not read it in detail. What is clear is that her dismissal out of hand of the argument and logical progression suggesting the day before is not followed by a detailed refutation in the Video billed as a review of the book, but simply by another exegesis of her own theory.
As I continued to research the SmithGerryMan conundrum I came across a critique of a BBC Panorama presentation in which they reported “It was approaching 10pm when some members of the family of nine were suddenly struck by the sight of a man walking quickly towards them holding a small child uncomfortably in his arms.”
They saw a man carrying a child. Neither they nor anyone else had any idea that sometime in the next two hours a girl was about to be reported missing / abducted
They had no reason to notice anything. No reason to be Struck by anything
They had no reason to pay any attention to someone else’s private business AT ALL
In exactly the same way that the barmaid paid no attention to the family when they were in Kelly’s
But this is another clear example of the Main Stream Media’s bias against examining facts, and forcing the idea of Abduction down the throats of their licence payers.
The BBC later sought to correct this, but the damage had been done.
And when Martin Smith had his memory jogged by the TV news footage, and remembered having seen someone carrying a child and thought there was a possibility it might have been the same person, ONLY his wife agreed. The rest, Peter, the daughter in law and 12 yr old Aoife did NOT. His wife had of course never made a statement, nor did she on this occasion.
The new scenario put forward for SmithGerryMan at 21:50– mentioned above – stands further investigation.
It involves the addition of several new elements, all of them significant and VITAL to the new plot. It is set out in a 7 page essay which may be found on Facebook
It involves a new ‘friend of Gerry’s’ who either lives in or is visiting PdL. NewMan
It involves a car
It is all set up for 9pm - 2100 hrs
The plan was for Gerry to go to the apartment, collect the body of Madeleine, take it to just past the SmithMan sighting point, on Rua 5 Abril, meet NewMan in the car, dump the body with him, and return to the Tapas Bar, NewMan would then hide the body somewhere, perhaps in a freezer in an unused apartment, for disposal later.
BUT what actually happens is this
Gerry goes to 5A (at 9:04 by his watch !) and collects the body.
He comes down the stairs but sees Jez W in the street,
He drops the body in the garden and chats for a time with Jez W
He then picks up the body again, and takes it to SmithGerryMan point, where he is seen.
NewMan meanwhile has been waiting in the car round the corner for perhaps half an hour or more.
Gerry meets NewMan, and in an extraordinary detail does not place the body in the back of the car, or in the boot, but in the DRIVER’S side footwell. [I am entirely unclear why this element was introduced. It adds nothing, and detracts from the already tenuous credibility]
NewMan has moved the seat back as far as it will go for this.
Gerry now sprints back along the new route to the Tapas Bar, covering the 800m. in 90 seconds, just in time for the next Scene, starring Kate.
It seems he does not overtake the slow procession of Smiths who are on the same or parallel trajectory. (“Daddy, isn’t that the man we saw two minutes ago. Where is the little girl ? Daddy I’m frightened “)
NewMan drives uncomfortably to wherever he does.
If that isn’t enough there is a further Brilliant twist.
NewMan had HIRED the car and three weeks later Gerry, by happy coincidence, hires the SAME car – which in fairness in a small town is at least possible.
* * * At this point I have to say I am not sure whether this is put forward as a Serious attempt to explain what did happen, or if it is merely to show that if enough new elements are introduced SmithGerryMan might theoretically become possible, even though as each element is added its overall credibility becomes more ‘stretched’ and unlikely.
I sincerely hope it is the latter.
I think that, as they say “This one will Run and Run” at least until some more evidence comes to light. And who knows ? That may be soon.
REFS
https://mccannpjfiles.co.uk/PJ/MARTIN_SMITH.htm
https://shininginluz.wordpress.com/2014/07/15/madeleine-mccann-the-smith-sighting-part-2/
https://shininginluz.wordpress.com/tag/aoife-smith/
BBC transcript
The crowds of summer had yet to arrive and the normally bustling streets of the old quarter lay quiet. It was approaching 10pm when some members of the family of nine were suddenly struck by the sight of a man walking quickly towards them holding a small child uncomfortably in his arms.