Moving away for a moment from the apparent unreliability of some or all of the nannies' statements, let's take a glimpse at how other parts of the story have changed from time to time. Here's an account by Sue Reid, culled from the 'Daily Mail' over a year ago, last August. I've just pasted here some verbatim extracts from that article. My comments in bold italics:
QUOTE
Sitting beside a swimming pool in the Algarve on that May evening Gerry and Kate McCann were enjoying themselves. The tapas bar of the Mark Warner holiday resort in Praia da Luz was buzzing with holidaymakers and it was quiz night. The McCanns were favourites to win the contest organised by the resort's aerobics teacher Najova Chekaya. After all, the two doctors had brains on their side. Around their table were seven friends from England, three of them also doctors and one a top medical research fellow.
Comment: Totally false. It has now been proved that the quiz was on Tuesday 1 May, not Thursday 3 May. The entire paragraph is entirely wrong, including even the claim that Praia da Luz was 'buzzing with holidaymakers'. Everyone agrees it was very quiet!
The group of nine were holidaying in Portugal and wanted to have a good time. As one of the doctors, Matthew Oldfield, was to recall: "We drank. So what! We were on holiday."
Comment is unnecessary.
Madeleine: Questions about her disappearance are growing
But 50 yards away on the other side of the swimming pool, the group's children were sleeping alone. In the bedroom of one ground floor apartment was Madeleine, the McCanns' three-year-old daughter. Her twin brother and sister, Sean and Amelie, two, lay in cots either side of her. They had been tucked up at 7pm.
Comment: Most other versions now say 7.30pm
Half an hour later [7.30pm] the McCanns had joined their friends for dinner at the tapas bar.
Comment: Most other versions now say it was an hour or more later that they went down to the Tapas bar.
What happened next has mystified the world. At 10pm Kate McCann got up from the table to check on her children. She slipped in through the patio windows to find the twins safely asleep - and her daughter's bed empty...
Meanwhile the campaign to keep the public aware of Madeleine's name goes on. It has involved her Roman Catholic parents visiting the Pope.
Staying on: Gerry and Kate McCann in Praia da Luz
...on the instructions of JK Rowling, posters of Madeleine were distributed at British bookshops as they opened for the sale of the new Harry Potter book. This week the donations from the public to a Madeleine fund, financing the PR campaign and global search for the little girl from Rothley in Leicestershire, were nudging £1 million. More than 50 million people visited the Find Madeleine website in the 48 hours after its launch.
Nothing like this has ever been seen before, and probably never will again.
The reluctance of Gerry and Kate McCann or their friends to speak publicly, or in any detail, about the minutiae of the evening has fuelled the controversy, although they insist it is illegal in Portugal to comment on any police investigation.
In another uncomfortable development the Portuguese press, including the respected newspaper Dairio de Noticias, has claimed that interviews given by the McCann group to police contain discrepancies. Their stories and the timings of their movements on the night do not tally.
The patio had been left open by the McCanns in case of fire and, it appears, so that they could easily check the children.
Comment: Yet the abductor escaped through the bedroom window and shutters, without leaving a trace.
One question being asked is why didn't the parents put their children in the evening creche which is open until 11.30pm? Why didn't they hire a babysitter, bookable at the Mark Warner reception desk?
Comment: A question that has never been satisfactorily answered
In a further twist, locals now claim that Madeleine did not always settle well. One evening they allege she ran away into the paths between the apartments, hiding for half an hour when it was time for bed.
Comment: Half an hour? She 'ran away'. It doesn't look like she was playing 'hide-and-seek'
...recently they all went to Mark Warner's in Greece where they had devised a plan of leaving their children to sleep while they had dinner nearby.
Comment unnecessary.
As Mr McCann explained: "The distance is so small, it was so close it was almost like having dinner in your garden. What we were doing was rigorous with multiple people checking at regular intervals."
When asked if Madeleine might have wandered out through the unlocked patio windows towards the swimming pool, or beyond to the beach, the McCanns dismiss it out of hand. "We're absolutely certain. We double and treble-checked and have no doubt she was taken," said Mr McCann.
Yet another scenario is now emerging in the local press. It is built on the recollections of other guests and workers at the resort. The official story from the McCanns is this. Mr McCann said he checked on his three children at 9.05pm. He noticed that a door in the apartment which had been left shut was ajar. He thought nothing of it but it may have indicated that a kidnapper was already there. But his daughter was fast asleep so he went back to the Tapas bar.
Comment: He's stuck rigidly to that line
Another of the group, Jane Tanner, says she took her turn 10 minutes later. She claimed later to police that she saw a dark-haired man of about 35 carrying a child as she walked back to the bar afterwards but thought nothing of it.
Comment: 'as she walked back to the bar'. This has now been completely reversed to her seeing the abductor as she was on her way from the Tapas bar to do her 'check' (if she was doing a check)
Soon after her return - at 9.45pm - Dr Oldfield did his round of the bedrooms.
Comment: Yet in other statements, nothing is said about Jane Tanner returning to the Tapas bar
In a first statement to police, it is unclear if he actually went inside the McCann flat.
Comment: Perhaps he couldn't remember, and needed a 'cognitive therapist' to help him
Indeed, one scenario is that many of the checks of the children were not visible, but involved listening at doors or even from outside the apartments.
Comment: Only Oldfield's check at around 9pm is said to have involved listening outside
However, in a second statement Dr Oldfield insists he did look in Madeleine's bedroom...
Comment: I wonder if he talked to Gerry O'Brien before making his second statement?
...believes he saw her there...
Comment: He now says he's not sure, but believes he didn't see Madeleine
...and that there was light coming in through the windows as though the heavy shutters had been opened. Again, he thought little of it until afterwards.
Then, of course, it was Mrs McCann's turn. She found Madeleine gone.
Madeleine's aunt Trish Cameron recalled that she received a call later that night from her younger brother, Mr McCann, who told her: "I went back to check the children at nine o'clock. They were all sound asleep, windows shut, shutters shut." Mrs Cameron related that when Mrs McCann went to the two apartment a little under an hour later: "The shutters had been jemmied open. They think someone must have come in the window and gone out of the front door with Madeleine."
Comment: Utter fabrication, making it look like the police backed their story. They were soon found out on that little lie
But what is now perturbing Portuguese police is how could she be abducted when the McCann group were checking so often?
Comment: Good question
Or have reports inadvertently exaggerated how vigilant the parents really were?
Comment: Another good question
And what of Najova Chekaya, the aerobics teacher running the quiz? She was invited over to the McCann table by Mr McCann himself when the game ended at 9.30. She stayed for half an hour. She later claimed to friends that nobody left the table.
Comment: She was talking about Tuesday!
There is another conundrum too. It concerns the sighting by Jane Tanner of the man carrying a child. He was wearing beige trousers and smart black shoes. Her report is taken seriously by police.
Comment: You got that one wrong, Sue!
Yet a British holidaymaker, Jeremy Wilkins, has given a deposition that does not support her evidence. He knew Mr McCann because he played tennis with him, and was walking his eight-month-old son in the night air when the drama unfolded. He says that he met Mr McCann, who had come out of his apartment at 9.05pm...
Comment: Gerry says he came in at 9.05pm, satyed in the loo a long time, and came out at 9.10pm. The handwritten notes the 'Tapas' wrote on a torn-out page from Madeleine's notebook put the time of his check at 9.10pm to 9.15pm - so on that tmeline, there's a 10-minute discrepancy between the times Gerry McCann and Jeremy Wilkins say they saw each other
...and had a word with him. Soon after that Jane Tanner would have crossed paths with Mr Wilkins and his baby.
Comment: Gerry's new line is: 'I had my back towards her as she walked past me'. But he didn't see her walk away from him either. And Jane Tanner drew herself walking past Jeremy W and Gerry McC on the same side but later told the 'Panorama' programme that the two men were on the other side of the road
Mr Wilkins says he saw no man carrying a child or Jane Tanner herself. "It was a very narrow path and I think it would have been almost impossible for anyone to walk by without me noticing," he said.
So today the questions remain. Was Madeleine kidnapped or killed? Or unwatched, did she simply walk out and get lost? How could there be a break in with a jemmy through metal shutters without waking the twins or alerting a passerby? Someone, somewhere must know the answers.
Comment: Dr Kate McCann and Dr Gerry McCann. And Goncalo Amaral
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