Fantasy Land

The  chapter 16  of  Kate "McCann" 's book, "madeleine" without an initial capital M, is titled, to my great amusement, Fantasy Land.

To me the whole case could be called this way too. Alas for one exception: what became of the Child Madeleine Beth McCann. I doubt that this little girl had often been in fantasy land before that fateful holiday, and certainly isn't now, unless angels / or as her mother claims, the abductor, "treat her like a princess, with fairness and respect, blah...

In this short extract we come to find out, among a few interesting other points, how a witness claims to have seen the McCanns carrying a big black bag. It's curious as I never read any statement of the sort in the files, but then again I never got the leisure, unlike Kate, to spend a solid 6 months of my life to scrutinise these police documents - although I can do my bit of research. I would appreciate if she, since she calls herself an Author, didn't content herself with providing snippets of the sort, that don't specify either the date, or the time, the place, etc. I have searched for long and found only one witnessing which is published a bit further below.
Kate obviously hasn't got a good literacy background otherwise she would know about referencing. If you quote someone, even without naming them, then you need to provide in your annexe of references the details about it. The lack of documentation regarding all she states about the case and the PJ is deplorable, it's supposed to be a book about the case, yet, there is no solid reference or reproduced scan! Kate surely didn't care to look at Harward Referencing, even to write a book, but is that surprising?!

Here is the extract in question:

"A witness claimed to have seen Gerry and me carrying a big black bag and acting suspiciously. This was absolute nonsense, but ‘evidence’ of this kind came down to one person’s word against another. And it appeared that, as far as the PJ were concerned, our word counted for little.
‘If you were Portuguese,’ Carlos said with an air of resignation, ‘this would be enough to put you in prison.’
The only conclusion I could draw was that we’d been framed, though this seemed completely implausible. Faced with something like this, way beyond the sphere of your experience, it is natural to dismiss it as impossible, but that doesn’t mean it is. When I thought about all that had happened so far, maybe anything was possible. In any event, it seemed we’d underestimated the magnitude of the fight we had on our hands. Even our own lawyer appeared to think, based on what he’d been told, that the police had a good case against us. I could see by this time that Gerry was starting to crack.
Then came the best bit. Carlos announced what the police had proposed. If we, or rather I, admitted that Madeleine had died in an accident in the apartment, and confessed to having hidden and disposed of her body, the sentence I’d receive would be much more lenient: only two years, he said, as opposed to what I’d be looking at if I ended up being charged with homicide.
Pardon? I really wasn’t sure if I could possibly have heard him correctly. My incredulity turned to rage. How dare they suggest I lie? How dare they expect me to live with such a charge against my name? And even more importantly, did they really expect me to confess to a crime they had made up, to falsely claim to the whole world that my daughter was dead, when the result would be that the whole world stopped looking for her? This police tactic might have worked successfully in the past but it certainly wasn’t going to work with me. Over my dead body. ‘You need to think about it,’ Carlos insisted. ‘It would only be one of you. Gerry could go back to work.’
I was speechless.
The incentive to accept this ‘offer’ seemed to be that if we didn’t agree to it, the authorities could or would go after us for murder, and if we were found guilty, we might both receive life sentences. Was this what it came down to? Confess to this lesser charge or risk something much worse?
Gerry was distraught now. He was on his knees, sobbing, his head hung low. ‘We’re finished. Our life is over,’ he kept saying over and over again. The realization that we were at the mercy of an incomprehensible criminal justice system had hit him hard. It was excruciating to see him like this. I love him so much and he is usually so strong. I was very conscious that my response was different. Maybe I should have been on my knees, too. Why wasn’t I crying? Was my behaviour making me look cold or guilty? Again, my only explanation is that it was beyond comprehension. I might as well have been a character in a soap opera. Any time now the director would call ‘Cut!’ and this scene would be over. Even today, I struggle to believe it actually took place.
There was a phrase Carlos must have used about twenty times: ‘This is the point of no return.’ I could feel myself shaking."
~~~~~~

Excerpt that precedes the one above:

"Carlos still looked very concerned. There was a great deal we needed to discuss, he told us. He reiterated that the situation was not good. The PJ had a lot of ‘evidence’ against us, and I was certain to be made an arguida in the morning.
First he cited video footage the police had shot of the reactions of the blood and cadaver dogs in apartment 5A and also around our hire car. I would be shown this on my return to the police station, he said. Presumably repeating what he had been told by the PJ, he explained how samples from both these sites had revealed Madeleine’s blood and one of them indicated a 15 out of 19 match with her DNA.
I was totally perplexed. Although this news, if true, seemed to add weight to the possibility that Madeleine had at the very least been physically harmed, unusually I didn’t dwell too much on the frightening implications. I can only assume this was because what we were being told didn’t make sense. If, as the PJ alleged, Madeleine’s blood was in the boot of our car, which we had not rented until 27 May, how on earth had it got there? Did this mean someone had planted it? I could see no other explanation. The police theory, it seemed, was that we had hidden Madeleine’s body, then moved it later, in the car, and buried it elsewhere.
Next came the matter of a crumpled page the police said they had discovered in my borrowed Bible. It seemed this was felt to be highly significant because the passage on that page, in II Samuel 12, dealt with the death of a child. I knew nothing about any pages being crumpled, let alone in which part of the Bible. The fact that I had asked to see a priest on the night of Madeleine’s disappearance was also seen as evidence of guilt. What? I was beginning to find my credulity stretched to breaking point. ‘Don’t people in Portugal talk to priests in times of need?’ I asked Carlos. Apparently not. They only called for a priest when they wanted their sins to be forgiven. Good grief. This was definitely not the faith with which I was familiar."

~~~
Apart from this potentially intriguing witnessing, which if juxtaposed to Kate's own two massive slip-ups that point down to the 9pm time on the 3rd May 2007 night (see link) becomes mightily interesting, we can also note an outstanding choice of words. So the PJ would have said "BURIED"? Wow, somehow I doubt it. Why would highly trained detectives in a police force say this word in particular? Out of the hundreds of possibilities to conceal or dispose of a body - especially if temporarily - why would the "BURIED" option pop out?
So perhaps this is yet again another slip-up, or a clue. Perhaps in the end, Maddy's body was buried somewhere, after all.

Here is all I can find regarding a witnessing of two people carrying something like a bag. Note, the alledged event has TWO very different versions, one witness correcting the other (both friends). The first version is in black font, highlighted.

The man, according to the first lady's reporting of the other's, was of some undescribed sort of nationality, but the lady with him, 'for sure', was, at first, Portuguese... The COLOUR of the 'bundle' isn't specified, so if Kate has based herself on this, not only she would be very bad at disguising as a Portuguese woman, since, ah ah, she STILL got recognised, and secondly, how did she know that the 'bag' was "BLACK"?

But hang on...
Worse, if she really means this apparently ONLY witnessing that is available in the files, (or please comment to provide a link), she clearly NAMES then, herself as the lady, and Gerry as the man!

-Unless I'm proven otherwise, because my search has been extensive, it well seems that once again, Kate has landed herself in it. ;) FULL REPORT:

http://www.mccannpjfiles.co.uk/PJ/SERVICE_INFORMATION.htm


"2967 to 2968 or 25 to 26- Service information re suspicious sighting in Praia da Luz
2969 to 2970 or 27 to 28 Email re sighting in Praia da Luz [English] 05 14 pensos V Vol XIV 2967-2970.

14_volume_XIV_apenso_V_2967-25

14_volume_XIV_apenso_V_2968-26

14_volume_XIV_apenso_V_2969-27

14_volume_XIV_apenso_V_2970-28

Service Information

Date: 2008-05-02

To: The Head of the Criminal Investigation

From: Inspector Joao Carlos

Subject: Supposed sighting

According to the results of the previous information, received by email we can infer that this was a third party intervention, in other words, the person who reported the sighting was not the person who saw it. Patricia Grainger alleged that her friend Rosemary Walley who lives in Portugal, concretely in Praia da Luz at about 8 -10 minutes from the apartment Madeleine disappeared from. According to Grainger, her friend Walley, on the night of the disappearance or on the following morning, she does not make this clear, when she was in her garden, supposedly facing the room, she saw a man wearing a sports jacket carrying a rucksack/bag. He was accompanied by a Portuguese woman (it is not clear how she deduced the nationality). The couple got into a mini van and left the scene.

The information is laconical, imprecise and quite vague, there is no reference to the British child or to any other child. Once we got hold of Rosemary Walley's telephone number and when we spoke to her and told her the reason for our phone call she was speechless. She said that she did not know anything about the disappearance nor about the sighting, saying that the information provided by her friend was fictitious or a misunderstanding. She added that she had told her friend that on the night of the disappearance she saw a man and a woman, the former was carrying a golf bag on his shoulder and that she said this bag, in jocular terms and out of pure derision be linked to the missing girl. That it was a joke made in bad taste as she did not see anything that could conclude or infer this sense, it was a normal couple, nothing more.
With no more to report
Inspector Joao Carlos

Pages 2969 - 2970 are in English:


Fax from Inspector Paiva

To: Joao Silva Pereira

Date 2nd May 2008

Importance: High.

From: DIC Portimao

To: Inspector Paiva

Date: 2nd May 2008

Importance: High

Fax

From DC John Hughes

To: DIC Portimao

Date: 2nd May 2008

CC. Graham Michael

Importance : High

A new possible sighting on the night of 3rd May 2007. Please advise if further enquiries needed here.

DC John Hughes

From: Southan, Daniel

Sent: 2nd May 2008

To: Task

Subject: Madeleine McCann

We have received information from Patricia Grainger regarding a possible sighting of Madeleine on the night she disappeared.

Grainger states she has a friend who lives in Portugal named Rosemary Walley. Walley lives about 8 - 10 minutes walk from the apartments Madeleine disappeared from.

Walley told Grainger that on the night in question she was sitting in her garden in the early hours of the morning (Grainger can be no more specific about the time), when she saw a male in a sport coat and flannels carrying a bundle, he was with a Portuguese female. Grainger can offer no further description as she did not witness these events.

The male and female got into a people carrier and drove away.
Grainger was told this information some time ago but Walley did not wish to report this to the police either here or in Portugal. Grainger states that her conscience got the better of her and she decided to call the police herself and give this information. It is recorded as West Mercia incident log 208 - s - 010508. Both Walley and Grainger are elderly aged in their 70s.
Grainger lives at **** Worcs.

Walley has two addresses, her address in England is *** Worcs.

Her address in Portugal is:

Casa Clung, Caixa 401z, Praia da Luz

Walley is currently at her address in Portugal and is unaware that Grainger has called in with this information. Grainger thinks Walley will fall out with her if or when the police make contact with her over this.

Grainger is more than willing to speak with you if you wish to contact her.

Regards

Dan Southan "

Strangio, no? But after all, we are in Fantasy Land...

Addition from The Daily Mail, UK:

The police also had a witness who claimed to have seen Mr and Mrs McCann carrying a big black bag and acting suspiciously.Mrs McCann says their lawyer warned them: ‘If you were Portuguese, this would be enough to put you in prison.’
The McCanns said they were treated appallingly even before they were made ‘arguidos’ – suspects – in September 2007.
In light that they did not get charged for neglect they got off lightly
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1385336/Kate-McCann-Madeleine-guilt-meant-I-make-love-Gerry.html