BLUE BAG BLUES

(More accurately titled:  The blue bag, the dogs,  a freezer and the cot that wasn’t there on Tuesday night). 

The bag:

The blue bag problem: 

23/12/07( mccannfiles.com) It is revealed that police want to trace a blue tennis bag allegedly taken from Kate and Gerry McCann's apartment on the night Madeleine went missing. Detectives think the hold-all could have been used to carry Madeleine as she was taken away, or even to transport the three-year-old's body. It belonged to the girl's father but has not been seen since the night of May 3, according to a Sky News documentary due to be broadcast on Christmas Eve.

Expert Tony Rogers, who reviews unsolved cases for British police and worked on the Soham investigation, said: "If it's a bag of a size that could be used to take a child away from the flat, that would be of great interest to the investigating officer." But McCann family spokesman Clarence Mitchell flatly denied that Mr McCann had lost a bag during the family's holiday. He said: "As far as Kate and Gerry are concerned, there is no missing tennis bag. They came back from holiday with everything except of course, tragically, Madeleine." Mr McCann told friends yesterday that he did not take any tennis equipment to Praia da Luz, and did not own a blue tennis bag. But Sky News stood by its story, which it said came from sources who had travelled to the resort after Madeleine's disappearance.

Portuguese newspaper Diaria de Noticas reports that the Policiaria Judiciaria have been searching for months for a blue tennis bag, with sufficient size to carry a small child, which belonged to Gerry McCann. The story, advanced by Sky News, adds that Gerry McCann assured PJ investigators at the time that the bag had been "stolen". 

From the rogatory interview with David Payne re the missing tennis bag: 1485 "What about a kit bag? Would they have a kit bag with them?”

Reply "Err he certainly didn’t have a great big tennis bag or a, you know, err I mean I used to be a squash, a semi-professional squash player and you know they certainly didn’t have anything that I would call a kit bag from days when I played…”

1485 "Yeah.”

Reply "You know, a lot of sport, err if they had a rucksack with some water in that would be, you know, about as big as it got, you know a small rucksack. But it certainly wasn’t a big tennis, you know, things that you could put a tennis racquet in.”

1485 "Yeah.”

Reply "There was nothing of that size that you could hide a, a tennis racquet in or anything like that, it would have been just purely, if they had anything…”

For a start, the officer hasn’t mentioned a tennis bag at all and there is no reason why Dr. Payne should now give an answer pertaining to a ‘big tennis bag’ when he has been prompted with a ‘kit bag’. Adding a little later that Gerry McCann had nothing with him big enough to hide a tennis racket in only makes it worse. Together with Clarence Mitchell helpfully denying the existence of a bag which Gerry apparently told the PJ had been stolen it only serves to focus attention on this bag which must have existed to be stolen in the first place.

23/12  press reports from McCannfiles.com: Pamalam GerryMcCannsblog.co.uk

It is revealed that police want to trace a blue tennis bag allegedly taken from Kate and Gerry McCann's apartment on the night Madeleine went missing. Detectives think the hold-all could have been used to carry Madeleine as she was taken away, or even to transport the three-year-old's body. It belonged to the girl's father but has not been seen since the night of May 3, according to a Sky News documentary due to be broadcast on Christmas Eve.

Expert Tony Rogers, who reviews unsolved cases for British police and worked on the Soham investigation, said: "If it's a bag of a size that could be used to take a child away from the flat, that would be of great interest to the investigating officer." But McCann family spokesman Clarence Mitchell flatly denied that Mr McCann had lost a bag during the family's holiday. He said: "As far as Kate and Gerry are concerned, there is no missing tennis bag. They came back from holiday with everything except of course, tragically, Madeleine."

Mr McCann told friends yesterday that he did not take any tennis equipment to Praia da Luz, and did not own a blue tennis bag. But Sky News stood by its story, which it said came from sources who had travelled to the resort after Madeleine's disappearance.

Portuguese newspaper Diaria de Noticas reports that the Policiaria Judiciaria have been searching for months for a blue tennis bag, with sufficient size to carry a small child, which belonged to Gerry McCann. The story, advanced by Sky News, adds that Gerry McCann assured PJ investigators at the time that the bag had been "stolen". 

Unquote

Lost, stolen or never existed in the first place and please note the verbatim repeat by Payne in his rogatory interview ' a  bag of a size...'

The dogs:

03-CARTAS ROGATORIA 5 Pages 21 to 25

Translation

DVD Rogatory Letters 3rd volume

Martin Grime

Dated May 14 2008

'At any time, did Gerald McCann address, either in Portugal or the United Kingdom, the performance of the dogs in this case''

I never met nor spoken to Gerald McCann. However I do know that he addressed my head supervisor at the time, the South Yorkshire Head of Police, or Mr. Meredith Hughes.

This deposition was made by me and is true according to my understanding. unquote

-

09-Processos Vol IX Pages 2462 to 2465

Verbal Report by Martin Grime Relating to the Searches Carried out with the Dogs in the Ocean Club Apartments

Apartment 5 A

Ok what was done was we deployed the victim recovery dog into the apartment and by experience and the training of the dog what I first noticed is that as soon as I came in that the dog was very excited and as a handler I can pick up his body language etc and it would appear to me that as soon as he has come into the house he's picked up a scent that he recognises and he has then gone through the apartment trying to source where that scent source has come from and as he has worked through the house the only two places where he picks up enough scent to give me the bark alert are in this bedroom, in this corner where he was barking. 

unquote

Part 3: The freezer.

Maddie cops were hunting for 'secret apartment and freezer'

https://pressfrom.info/au/news/world/-122334-maddie-cops-were-hunting-for-secret-apartment-and-freezer.html

Several months after Madeleine McCann vanished Portuguese police were trying to find a mystery apartment where the missing girl's body could have been hidden in a freezer, according to the detective who once led the 2007 investigation.

Speaking on episode 10 of Maddie, nine.com.au's podcast series about Madeleine's disappearance, Goncalo Amaral described a line of inquiry his team was following when he was abruptly removed from the case, in October 2007.

"The team was looking for an apartment," Mr Amaral said, explaining police had been tipped off about the possible unusual development.

"It is not impossible," Mr Amaral said. A potential hypothesis was that Madeleine's body had been hidden in fridge or freezer in the apartment, somewhere in or around the holiday town of Praia da Luz. unquote

Even more interesting is the analysis of the early interviews: 

http://www.gerrymccannsblogs.co.uk/press/NEWS_MARCH_2019.htm

http://www.gerrymccannsblogs.co.uk/Nigel/ 

(for Dr. Roberts articles go to Nigel’s McCann files)

Dr. Martin Roberts.(2009)

5. Dead or alive

The likelihood of Madeleine having been abducted is vanishingly small when assessed in terms of mathematical probability, and we must therefore consider an alternative fate. A lengthy statement by GM to ITV on 25th May, 2007 opens the door somewhat.

GM: "We truly believe that a member of the public holds the information to unlock where Madeleine is being kept. They either will have seen something, that will lead to the abductor being traced, or they will notice suspicious behaviour from someone, and we truly believe that and I think, you know, we cannot have imagined how successful our campaign to keep the publicity going, regarding her disappearance, has been, but it's because people have seen that and with information technology, the world is so much smaller, we believe that there truly is a feeling here that the people will not allow this to happen and they want Madeleine to be found and everyone is acting, some in big ways; every small piece of action here helps the search."

We begin by discovering Madeleine's fate on departing 5A. She was locked up inside something or somewhere (by the way, how does GM know that a key is required to access his daughter?). A few months later (October) KM tells us it's a house:

Q (Antena 3): "Do you still maintain the hope, that is, genuinely believe that Madeleine is still alive?"

KM: "I do, maybe even more so, I strongly believe that Madeleine is out there, errm... I think she's probably in someone's house. I don't know why, errm... and I... I suppose it's a feeling but I feel, as Madeleine's mummy, I feel in my heart really that she's there and I don't believe Madeleine's been taken from us permanently. I don't believe that; don't feel it."

(n.b. I believe = I am uncertain. I strongly believe = I seriously doubt. I don't believe (x) = I am more certain of (y) than (x)).

unquote

So it is possible that somewhere in or near Praia da Luz there was an apartment where a freezer could be used to story the body. However, the enthusiastic alert from the cadaver dog to the location where the photographs of the PJ taken on the evening/night of the 3rd of May 2007  have proof of a large blue bag  being stored  after the disappearance. 

So why transport the body but take the bag back to 5A? Kate McCann gives us an explanation in her book ‘Madeleine’: In Chapter 21 Kate complains that as far as she could find out, the door to door enquiry had been done very slowly and more or less haphazardly. If someone wasn’t there, too bad, the house wasn’t visited again. Not a single apartment or house was visited twice. 

So that makes the return of the bag a logical action.  In case the body was found, the bag could be associated with Gerry, therefore it could not be left with the body in the freezer.  For  house to house enquiries could be expected and the analyses of their early interviews appear to confirm this theory. It also seems from the wording of their answers that neither of the McCanns moved the body themselves as the absence of a key and the vague indication that ‘she’s probably in someone’s house’  indicate at least one other person. 

http://hemaddiecasefiles.com/post154.html#p154

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Volume X, pages 2539-2548 Witness statement of Kate Marie Healy, on the 6th of September 2007

'When asked, she said that the cleaning, which was provided by the resort, took place on Monday and Wednesday. Thus she mentions once more that she never altered the above described disposition, which means it is not true that at any one moment in time a cot was in the deponent’s bedroom and the other one in MADELEINE’S bedroom.

She asserts that after the day they arrived, April 28, this was the layout of the furniture and this was not altered during the following days.'

http://themaddiecasefiles.com/post507.html#p507

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Volume IV, pages 2569 - 2578 - Arguido questioning of Gerald Patrick McCann, on the 7th of September 2007

'It is not true that on a certain day they placed one crib in their room, leaving the other in Madeleine’s room.'

It can seen on the photograph that the cot must have been positioned in front of the wardrobe  where there is plenty of room and there is only room for a bedside cupboard on the other side of the beds.

And finally: below news that filtered through in the early days. Make of it what you will.

1/12/2007 gerrymccannsblog.co.uk (Pamalam)

It is revealed that Portuguese police are investigating a mobile phone call from Russell O'Brien to Gerry McCann that was made on 10 June 2007. A team of telephone surveillance officers highlighted the call as it is understood to have contained key words that aroused police suspicions.

Investigators are concentrating on the exact whereabouts of Dr O'Brien when the call was made. It is understood Gerry McCann told detectives the call was made within a 4km radius of Praia da Luz but technicians working on the mobile phone network have dismissed this after examining records. It is believed the call took place 28km from Praia da Luz.

2/12/2007

It is reported that Portuguese police are investigating a disused barn in the south-east of Praia da Luz following the discovery of a blood stained towel which police believe may turn out to be Madeleine's blood.

Fibres on the towel allegedly match fibres from the Renault Scenic hire car the McCanns' hired 25 days after Madeleine's disappearance.

It is understood Portuguese detectives discussed the breakthrough when they met British police and a Crown Prosecution Service official last week at a police station in Leicester.

The fresh information is believed to have come from mobile phone surveillance police who tracked a signal to the remote and deserted barn. There they found a towel with an Aztec design, which revealed three sites of blood deposits on the edge of the towel. Tests showed there was 'moderate' support to suggest the blood deposits matched Madeleine's blood.

The results were not conclusive and are not regarded as being strong enough to be presented as evidence in a court case. However, close analysis of the towel revealed fibres which were not made of the towel material. The fibre fragments were microscopically examined against fibres found in the boot of the McCanns' Renault Scenic hire car.

Portuguese police sources say there was 'strong support' that the fibres found on the towel matched fibres found from the boot of the car. 6/12 unquote

To add: on the  10th of June the McCanns left for Morocco and would not have needed the rental car on that day. Moreover:  they should have had hope, considering they had hopes of the Moroccan sighting, but instead they needed time to grieve.

http://www.aparchive.com/metadata/youtube/c9f3af0ada9a01d8297591ca0e897fed

The parents of missing British girl Madeleine McCann will fly to Morocco on Sunday as they make the last in a series of trips around Europe to try and find their four-year-old daughter.
Kate and Gerry McCann will travel to the capital Rabat for a series of meetings and a news conference to appeal for information.
The trip is viewed as potentially important after a sighting of a young girl fitting Madeleine's description at a petrol station in Marrakech.
Since then the British community living in Marrakech have mobilised themselves in order to raise awareness of Madeleine.
"We did here a rumour of a sighting of her in Morocco, and we thought that we ought to just try and do our little bit to raise some sort of awareness here," Francis Boys-Stones, a British resident in Marrakech, told AP Television.
Meanwhile, the McCanns said on Saturday that they would pause the high profile campaign to find Madeleine this week to give themselves time to grieve.
Although, Kate and Gerry McCann said they have no intention of returning to the UK in the foreseeable future.

Madeleine disappeared on May 3, when her parents left her and her 2-year-old twin siblings in their hotel room while they dined at a restaurant in their hotel complex in Praia da Luz, a resort town in Portugal's Algarve region. unquote