Madeleine – apartment 4G & smell of death

Credit to Pamalam at http://www.gerrymccannsblogs.co.uk/RED_T-SHIRT.htm

I started by trying to develop an article to prove whether a red T-shirt, from Rua 27 das Flores and alerted to by Eddie, belonged to Madeleine or to Sean McCann, as I have seen it attributed to both.

I was forgetting one important point. Madeleine McCann was wearing children’s clothing in the 2-3 years age range, as proved by her Eeyore pyjamas. And Sean was approximately 2 years and 3 months, so he should have been wearing children’s clothing in the 2-3 years age range. The PJ files confirm that he was, as there is at least one boy’s T-shirt, for ages 2-3.

Then I started trawling through the files to see if I could find Madeleine in a red airplane T-shirt. I found something more important.

First, Madeleine did wear red coloured clothing. A couple of photos are attached.

The evidence that the top is Sean’s is therefore somewhat weak. The motif is airplanes, which I associate with boys, whereas Madeleine had cute and cuddly things normally associated with girls. On top of this, I cannot find Madeleine wearing the airplane T-shirt, though that is also weak evidence. And finally, on Pamalam’s site, the entry about the red T-shirt has Sean in different photos, wearing the red airplane T-shirt.

I could tell from the different outfits worn that the family photos must have been on different occasions, but Pamalam went one better and dated the photos. They were taken on 4 June 2007 (Gerry in green and yellow T-shirt) and 8 June 2007 (Gerry in grey T-shirt).

Those dates are extremely important, as the McCanns moved into apartment 4G on 4 May 2007 and finally moved out on 3 July 2007, thus the red airplane top is dated to the time the McCanns were in 4G.

I believe it gets better. From Rua 27 das Flores, Eddie alerted to 3 items of clothing. One was the red airplane T-shirt. One was a white, sleeveless, shoulderless top belonging to Kate.

The files show two white, sleeveless, shoulderless tops belonging to Kate were taken from 27 Rua das Flores. Fortunately, both are shown in photos at http://www.mccannpjfiles.co.uk/PJ/CLOTHES.htm

One, numbered #2 in the files, has thin straps at the top. The second, numbered #4 in the files, has much wider straps. The photo of Kate shows her wearing the wide-strap version (#4). At 62 minutes into the video at http://www.mccannfiles.com/id167.html, Eddie alerts to the wide strap white top. So in the photo, Kate McCann is wearing the suspect white top.

Kate is carrying Amelie close together, so I would expect there to be transfer from Kate’s white top to Amelie’s clothes. Gerry is slightly further from Sean, but still close enough that I would expect transfer from Sean to Gerry’s top. Always assuming that Kate’s top and Sean’s red airplane T-shirt were carrying the smell of decay at this point in time.

Eddie did not alert to any of Gerry’s clothing from 27 Rua das Flores. Eddie did not alert to any of Amelie’s clothing from 27 Rus das Flores.

Critically, Eddie did not alert in apartment 4G, although it is clear from the photo that these articles of clothing were in apartment 4G.

I can only conclude that there was no smell of decomposition in 4G during the McCann stay, that any decomposition smell on the red airplane T-shirt must date to after apartment 4G, and that any smell of decomposition on Kate’s suspect white top must date to after apartment 4G.

This strongly suggests that if the McCanns were involved in hiding Madeleine’s body they were either experts or extremely lucky. There is no chain across 5A, 5H, 4G to 27 Rua das Flores. 4G is the link that simply does not exist.

For me, this also rules out the idea that the dog alerts were due to Kate handling dead bodies in the week leading up to the holiday. I cannot see how apartment 4G is clean and Amelie’s clothing is clean if that is the case. Both should have been contaminated.

And these results mean the case is getting simpler.

The McCanns trek across Luz

The McCanns left apartment 5A in the early hours of 4 May 2007 and spent the remainder of the night in apartment 5H (Payne apartment). They were interviewed by the PJ in Portimão on 4 May and they moved into apartment 4G, presumably after the interview .

On 2^nd July 2007 they moved into 27 Rua das Flores, a villa somewhat north and east of apartment 5A, but still close to the centre of Luz, and even closer to the mound that British police searched in June 2014.

They finally completed a move out of 4G on 3^rd July i.e. there was an overlap of a day.

While they were in 5H for only a short time, they occupied 4G for nearly 2 months.

They were given a second apartment in the Ocean Club complex, which they used as office, and which is called “mission control” in Kate’s book “Madeleine”. This must have been some time after Gerry had his experience in Nossa Senhora Da Luz, the local church, since until then there was no campaign to orchestrate. I do not have precise dates for mission control, nor do I have an apartment number, merely that it was in the Ocean Club. If anyone can be more precise, I would be grateful.

According to the McCann Files at http://www.mccannfiles.com/id167.html, on 31 July 2007 the dogs searched 5A (McCanns), 5B (Oldfields), 5D (O’Brien/Tanner), 5H (Paynes/Webster), 4G (McCanns in May/June), but mission control is not mentioned in any search.

This is around 3 months after Madeleine went missing and around a month after the McCanns moved out of 4G and into 27 Rua das Flores.

I haven’t looked up the date of the search at Rua das Flores for this post. It is on file, but I cannot see it as relevant to an examination of what happened in the interim.

What was found?

The McCann Files URL posted above contains a link to a 95+ minute long video of the searches, and thus far I have ignored it, thinking the shorter 6½ minute video contained all the relevant information, with the dross cut out. That was a big mistake, mea culpa.

The video shows that nothing was found (i.e. Eddie did not alert) in apartment 5B (Oldfields), 5D (O’Brien/Tanner), 5H (Paynes/Webster) and 4G (second McCann apartment in the Ocean Club). As Eddie did not alert, Keela was redundant.

The lack of alerts in these locations suggests that whatever the Oldfields/O’Brien/Tanner/Paynes/Webster may have done, there is nothing to implicate them in the physical disposal of a dead body.

The lack of an alert in 5H (Paynes/Webster) suggests weakly that the McCanns did not have the stench of death on them at that time. I say weakly because it could be that there was no physical transfer of evidence and in the 3 months which passed before Eddie was deployed, it may be that any temporary odour had dissipated. This is unlike the alert in 5A in the McCann parents’ bedroom, which seemed to have no source, but which lingered on.

More importantly, unless there was a conspiracy between the McCanns and the Paynes/Webster, it rules out the storage of Madeleine’s body in 5H. To have a body in 5H for longer than there was a body in 5A, and 5A gets alerts while 5H does not is complex to explain, unless you take the simple view that Madeleine’s body was not there. The conspiracy angle is that the McCanns dragged in a large black plastic binbag about the size and weight of Madeleine, thus preventing contamination, and the Payne’s/Webster thought nothing of this.

So 5H is clean, thereby suggesting that if the McCanns had disposed of or concealed a dead body, they had managed to get themselves clean before going into 5H for the night.

The two really important ones are apartment 4G, the one the McCanns moved into on 4 May after leaving the Paynes, and mission control.

The time spent in apartment 4G was just nearly 2 months, but apartment 4G was clean. Eddie did not alert in 4G. I can’t see how 4G was clean if apartment 5A was not and the Renault Scenic was not and Rua 27 das Flores was not, except for two scenarios.

First, Gerry had learned enough about police methods to clean 4G to a level that defeated Eddie. Of course, since Gerry was not forewarned about Eddie, this seems unlikely. Further, if he managed for 4G, why didn’t he manage it for the Renault Scenic and for 27 Rua das Flores? This scenario does not work.

Second, the McCanns were not carrying the stench of death while they were in 4G as Madeleine’s body had not yet been retrieved and disposed of. If this scenario is true, Madeleine’s body was not retrieved until early July and the date of hiring the Renault Scenic becomes redundant. The smell of death in the Scenic and in Rua 27 das Flores might come from that second operation.

The crucial evidence required to understand what might have happened is mission control in the Ocean Club. If clean, it would strongly support the idea that the McCanns could not have retrieved Madeleine’s body before early July, and this cuts down the window of opportunity for a disposal theory. However, if Eddie alerted in mission control, this would strongly support the idea that there is a line running from 5A to mission control to 27 Rua das Flores, and the McCanns are highly implicated.

So what does mission control tell us? Nothing, because it does not appear to have been searched. Like most of the Madeleine McCann case, a simple piece of evidence that could be vital is simply not available.