This Charming Man - The Smiths Sighting: Accident or Design?

As indicated in my last post re Maddie’s first photo, I do believe that the Smith sighting is of paramount importance.  With inspiration from “Textusa” excellent blog on Maddie which many of you have probably read, I see the key points as:

The Smith sighting is much more credible than that of Jane Tanner because it was by a group of 9 family members who all back each other up and were close enough to the guy to ask him “is she sleeping”.  Unlike with Jane Tanner, these are independent witnesses with no reason to lie or make stuff up and they have not been evolving their story in the way Tanner has.  So, let’s assume, as seems entirely reasonable, that they are telling the truth and remembering the incident as well as they can.

What they report seeing is a man carrying a young child around Maddie’s age in the middle of Luz towards the sea at around 10pm Thursday 3rd.  They asked if the girl was sleeping and he just looked away not saying anything. 

The possibilities seem to be:

A.     An abductor taking a sleeping Maddie down to the sea, possibly to meet up with a boat that might whisk them away to who knows where.

B.     An innocent man with a justifiable reason for taking a sleeping child from X to Y that night.

C.      Gerry McCann taking Maddie’s dead body to a place where he might hide it.

D.     Gerry McCann carrying another sleeping child around the same size as the child seen.

One of the reasons C and D have credibility of course is that Mr Smith was only triggered to call the police and report the incident when he saw on TV pictures of Gerry walking off the airplane after their return to UK carrying his son and was 60% sure it was the same man he saw on that night.

The problems with each are:

A.     An abductor could not be sure that Maddie would not wake up at any moment and scream blue murder.  Despite the possibility of the abductor sedating Maddie that in recent years has been floated by Team McCann, this as the well know, especially in the case of a qualified anesthetist such as Kate is a preposterous idea

Someone who was professional enough to have cased the joint for days, probably must have had assistance, never left a single trace of forensic evidence would surely have arranged some transport rather than take the huge risk of carrying the kid through town

B.     An innocent man would have had no reason to say something polite to the Smith’s question and more importantly would surely have come forward once the Smith sighting was announced to say yes that was me, I was taking my daughter from x to y we met my wife 10 minutes later etc.

C.      Carrying a dead body through the streets would surely have been way too risky for Gerry.  Had he been discovered carrying a corpse of his daughter he would be 100% sure of spending a lengthy time in a Portuguese jail as well as losing his wife, family and career. There is also the important question of where he would take the body and it not be discovered and yet the cadaverine would be detected in the Scenic 2 months later.

D.     The obvious questions would be who was he carrying and why?  The answer is either Jane Tanner /ROB’s or (probably less likely) Payne’s daughter of a similar age, who most probably, like the twins had been sedated that night.  The why is also easy to answer. To validate the hoax abduction that his wife would stage at just after 10pm.

Thus, I think D is by some margin the most likely possibility.  Once McCann had found someone to be his independent witness, all he had to do is return to the Ocean Club with the kid (maybe handed over to Jane Tanner at some point) and take his place at the Tapas bar.  He probably felt confident that the following day the Irish family he met would come forward and validate the abduction hoax by saying they had seen someone carrying a kid to the beach.  It could not have been him of course because he was sitting with all his buddies at the Tapas table.  Getting everyone in position was probably the reason for the mysterious discrepancy between when the McCanns claim to have called the police and the police records show a call arrived, which of course they were only too keen to assign to the sloppy Latino police not responding in reasonable time.

The McCann’s must have been highly perturbed when their best laid plans failed to bare fruit and validate their abduction hoax which was a little on the ropes not least because of Gerry’s failure (unexpected interruption by Jez Wilkins?) to jimmy the shutters and Matthew Oldfields reluctance to put his neck in the noose by claiming to be the last one to see her alive at 9.30pm.  Finally, Jane Tanner stepped into the breach by cobbling together various memories and weaving them into Tannerman.  Gerry’s lament for the lack of witnesses became almost comic once you twig what was really going on.  Surely someone must have seen something?  What no one?  Any IRISH in the house?  Still no one?  How about you IRISH?  Better pop over to Irish Crimestoppers just in case any IRISH people saw anything.  Jane Tanner was forced to drag up from her initially vague memory the clothes her Tannerman was wearing, which were obviously the same beige kegs that Gerry was wearing that evening, just to help stir some Irish memories.  How disconcerting then when Mr Smith finally did hit the phone and claimed that he was 60% sure that it was good old Gerry McCann that he had infact seen.  Suddenly Team McCann’s PR machine spins into reverse and the significance of the Smith sighting is rapidly downplayed into insignificance compared with that gold standard of witness statements Tannerman!!!!