Gemma O'Doherty, Investigative Journalist - now published investigation into Madeleine McCann case

There' s been much discussion on the daytime creche records but are the evening creche records available?

There are two sightings of a man carrying a child that evening - Jane Tanner's sighting and the Smith Family sighting.

Now did the Portuguese police check the evening creche records and identify parents who could have been taking their child home around the time of the sightings? Any possible parents would have been followed up and eliminated from that line of inquiry one would assume.

After a documentary (which one?) it was stated that a man had come forward and was Tannerman who was now eliminated. Am I confused about this? Gemma says no-one has come forward to say they are Smithman which you would think would have happened by now if he was a parent who had collected his child from the evening creche. Its unlikely that a genuine parent would be out on a chilly night unless it was re collecting their child from the creche. So the Smithman sighting is probably very significant (sorry Tony!).

TheTruthWillOut wrote: I realised straight away my Doh! (see my post at the top of this page) but would still like Isabelle's tweets to be explained to me and put in context.

I think she is referring to the fact that the man didn't respond to Mary's question by saying he may have had a distinct accent.

The implication (or saying in so many words) is that eliminating all other possibilities leaves only one. Smithman is GM. That simple IMO, Antonia.

Obviously no one is going to say so explicitly just yet and doubt GM will say fair cop gov anytime soon!

chirpyinsect wrote: think she is referring to the fact that the man didn't respond to Mary's question by saying he may have had a distinct accent.

Confusing......So why does Isabelle thank Gemma for not revealing Mary if we already know it was her? And also according to Gemma's article Mary didn't return to Portugal to make a statement but Martin P and A did which is odd isn't it? This cloak and dagger/winks and nods stuff really does annoy.....!

Inca wrote:Aren't Smithman and TB inextricably linked?  Even now he is still maintaining the same view, yet we can't mention him,  If the posts are reasonable naturally.  I am struggling to understand ,  JMHO.

Inca, I thought it would be better to have our opinions on what Tony has said on a members only topic as they are unlikely to be very complimentary.

Here's that other topic.

https://maddiemccannmystery.forumotion.co.uk/t2163-tony-bennett-s-thoughts-on-the-gemma-o-doherty-article#100630

TheTruthWillOut wrote:

chirpyinsect wrote:   think she is referring to the fact that the man didn't respond to Mary's question by saying he may have had a distinct accent.

Confusing......So why does Isabelle thank Gemma for not revealing Mary if we already know it was her? And also according to Gemma's article Mary didn't return to Portugal to make a statement but Martin P and A did which is odd isn't it? This cloak and dagger/winks and nods stuff really does annoy.....!

Ah M, P and A went to PT at the end of May to give statements BEFORE they saw GM coming down the steps. If you recall the Gardai who interviewed Martin had said that Mrs S didn't want to give another statement, which implies she had already given one.
In his newspaper interview MS said his wife had agreed that Smithman  looked like GM when they saw him coming down the steps. I don't think she ever gave an actual statement about this.

Sorry Chirps but it is getting even more confused for me so will leave it there before I go completely bonkers.

ETA: I had to re-read Gemma's article as it was already driving me mad!

It quite clearly states the Smiths mulled over and discussed the incident upon returning home and finally had to report it by the end of May. I assume first to local Police who then passed it on to PJ/GA whom got them in ASAP. So this does seem to be the very first contact the Smiths had with Police? And Mary decided she didn't want to go to Portugal with the others. Maybe she had made a statement to her local Police which was passed on but I do find it odd she didn't go with the rest of her family?

I still say I'm confused and the situation odd. Just me?

chirpyinsect wrote:

niklasericson wrote:Important work is done from Gemma because this confirm what we already know, that the media is working after Team McCann's terms and conditions and it's not only the tabloid media who do this, it's also public service media.
I have to say that I'am very confused re Gerry McCann and "Smithman", many questions is still unanswered.
Why would GM walk around with a dead child on the streets of Pdl?
Where was he at the time?
There are witnesses from the Tapas staff that said the table was empty at 21:45 and others place him by the table at 22:00?
If "Smithman" is a innocent man that carried his (sick?)child(to "Luz Doc"?) why has he not stepped forward by now?
If this was pre planned, could the "Smithman" be someone else(RoB, MO....?)that carried a living child as a smoke screen but they were not prepared that someone would point finger at GM? 
Is this the reason why nobody have stepped forward?
Confused??

I agree that it would be highly unlikely anyone would carry a sick/deceased child around the streets. Which has always left me with the belief it was GM carrying a decoy child to emphasise the presence in Luz of an abductor.
If we always bear in mind this happened before JT's sighting was retro-fitted it makes sense. Gerry did not expect to come across 9 people. 2 would have been ok, 1 even better but 9? Too many sets of eyes. Hence Tannerman to deflect from the timing.
If we go back to an earlier alarm it makes even more sense. The only people that say it kicked off at 10pm are members of TM.

Hi everyone.

For me I think it's possibly a decoy child who may have been ill or sedated, or maybe it really was a dead child. Maybe there was a plan in place that was divised earlier but this got messed up somehow. A body had to be moved because the place it was being kept was to be searched and it happened extremely quickly? The quote from Murat has stuck in my mind when he said he was the victim of the 'biggest f...up on the planet' It implies something was planned but it didn't go smoothly.

If it was me, I'm afraid one statement to police would be enough, I wouldn't want to get further involved so I can understand why Mary didn't go back.

dogs don't lie wrote:If it was me, I'm afraid one statement to police would be enough, I wouldn't want to get further involved so I can understand why Mary didn't go back.

I get that DDL, I really do but then why allow such a young A to go back? See what I mean? It isn't clear she made any statement I was just giving benefit of doubt she made one to the Gardia (unless someone knows otherwise?)

Look I hope I ain't coming across as questioning the Smiths here because I really ain't. The Smith sighting is one of the few things that has stood the test of time and is obviously very important/key. I just wish someone like GA, Gemma or even Martin Smith himself would throw a bone to us that are determined to get to the truth. Just a simple line like don't worry, everything is in hand.

Why no one is prepared to indicate how anything is going in the case perplexes me......I really do wonder if GA has quietly given up.

ETA: Where are my manners? Welcome Gloria.

I know what you mean TTWO, sometimes I myself wish Martin would kick off about things. I suppose he, like others, just have to wait and see where it goes. Imo.

Antonia wrote:
There are two sightings of a man carrying a child that evening - Jane Tanner's sighting and the Smith Family sighting.  

I have a vague inkling that around the time of the digs there was a hint at a further witness. Apologies if that is somewhat less than informative!

I have just popped in the have a quick look, and it is so good to see it verified from Mr Smith that he has not changed his mind at all.  Well done to Gemma.

I'm off back to my bed again now.

Welcome to Gloria.

chirpyinsect wrote:

TheTruthWillOut wrote:

chirpyinsect wrote:   think she is referring to the fact that the man didn't respond to Mary's question by saying he may have had a distinct accent.

Confusing......So why does Isabelle thank Gemma for not revealing Mary if we already know it was her? And also according to Gemma's article Mary didn't return to Portugal to make a statement but Martin P and A did which is odd isn't it? This cloak and dagger/winks and nods stuff really does annoy.....!

Ah M, P and A went to PT at the end of May to give statements BEFORE they saw GM coming down the steps. If you recall the Gardai who interviewed Martin had said that Mrs S didn't want to give another statement, which implies she had already given one.
In his newspaper interview MS said his wife had agreed that Smithman  looked like GM when they saw him coming down the steps. I don't think she ever gave an actual statement about this.

We know Mary's statement (if she gave an initial one) is not in the files. However, there were newspaper reports of her encounter. Link here is to miscarriageofjustice.co forum which has a copy of the paper version of the Daily Mail of January 3 2008. With thanks to them:

http://miscarriageofjustice.co/index.php?topic=5256.0







These reports have been lost in the annals - perhaps Gemma O'Doherty has interviewed Mary as well and will reveal more in the next instalments?

Good stuff DeeCoy. The dismissive response of Mitchell stands out to me in that.

unreorganised wrote:

Antonia wrote:
There are two sightings of a man carrying a child that evening - Jane Tanner's sighting and the Smith Family sighting.  

I have a vague inkling that around the time of the digs there was a hint at a further witness. Apologies if that is somewhat less than informative!

I remember that. Was it an English woman who saw a man with child heading down either Rua 25 de Abril or Rua da Calheta?

All the red flags raised....
1. Dismissing or deflecting the Smith sighting (independent witnesses) in favour of a dodgy sighting by one of the Tapas group (a biased witness)...
2. Continuous attempts to discredit the Smiths (why? It might have turned out to be their best lead if it was a genuine abduction. Why bury their statements, suppress the e-fits, deflect, dismiss, discredit? The motive must be so obvious by now.)
3. Continuous attempts to create doubt by raising the question why the Smiths waited so long to make the comparison to Gerry. Crime investigators will be the first to tell you that weeks, months, down the line, peoples' memories are jogged by restagings, by requests for people to go back and try and recall what they saw. This was not an attempt to mislead or influence the witnesses. Mr Smith saw Gerry carrying Sean as they came off the plane and it triggered something in his memory.

So Verdi and TB the great investigators of our time, poo pooing anyone who disagrees with them. Did they ever talk to the Smiths, and yet all along toed the McCann line to discredit Smithman without sourcing Facts. And yet someone else asks the simple question and the BBC retracts the "changed my mind story". They must be furious, snapping their crayons and stamping their feet.
Goodbye Boys you're done.AIMO

WB, I've transferred your post here.

We are promised much more to come from Tony on this subject.....

His need to destroy the Smith family's credibility at all costs is indeed interesting.

This has all become a tad more interesting, if not highly amusing. Will TB's sock drawer become even more tangled not to mention twisted? I do love the TB modus operandi, so similar in many ways to that of TM, which is to state as fact that which is unproven. Just because 'Smithman' was shown on the McCann website - from May 2009 - which is of course well before the release of the Crimewatch efit of 2013 - does not mean that Martin Smith fabricated his evidence. Is this the best 'smear' against the Smiths that TB can come up with? Oh dear, oh dear! Calling Martin Smith a fraud who fabricated his evidence (without an ounce of proof) is surely libellous? I would suggest that THE FACT that Kate McCann writes about the Smith sighting in her book (published in 2011) and THE FACT that Kate claims in her book that Smith-man is the same person as Tanner-man (despite the different timings of the sightings and the differences in appearance) is quite good PROOF that Smithman is, indeed, a thorn in the TM (and it would seem TB) side.

Poe wrote:

Dee Coy wrote:As for TB claiming Mr Smith retracted his statement in 2007, we see the start of the back-pedal:

https://jillhavern.forumotion.net/t14903p25-gemma-o-doherty-maddie-did-the-bbc-bend-the-truth

'I have never actually said that Martin Smith made a formal, written, signed retraction of his 'Gerry McCann is the man I saw' claims. What I did think I prove was that Smith had actively collaborated with the McCanns ever since December 2007 (SMITHMAN 8 and SMITHMAN 11). Maybe all that Smith means by saying that he hasn't retracted his evidence is just that "I never signed any formal retraction". '

No, Tony, you've proven no such thing. And what Martin Smith is simply saying is that he never changed his mind about believing GM to be Smithman. Contrary to what YOU have been saying these last years.

'REPLY: Actually, this was one of the few parts of that BBC programme where the BBC told the truth! Martin Smith had indeed collaborated with the McCanns and Operation Grange and had indeed changed his mind. Remember he allowed his sighting to be used on the McCanns' website from May 2009 to look for an abductor - without a squeak of protest from him. If people still don't get that Martin Smith is a fraud and has fabricated his evidence, there is little more I can do to make them think again '

You don't learn, do you?

Just how many Smithman threads are there?

Surely, if the Smithman situation is as cut and dried as Mr Bennett intimated, one or two threads would be sufficient!  Whatever, eight is overkill and eleven is just scarily obsessive.

Back to the article.

When Mr Amaral won, the papers printed excerpts from his book, even if it was under the guise of look what the nasty man was saying, so they are willing to publish articles that are negative to the McCanns. With careful phrasing, I can see the UK press being eager to publish parts of Gemma's article because it paints the BBC, and their claims of impartiality, in a bad light.  It could be used to hit out at the BBC with the McCanns being collateral damage.

I wonder what action the McCanns are/will be taking. I bet threatening letters have already landed on editors' desks but dare they risk another libel case on such a flimsy basis, with an English language publication and so close to home?

The thread linked from 'over the way' at the foot of the post is of considerable interest, imo. The snipped part reproduced in italics below would appear to be pertinent to the current debate.

Written by yours truly and published on 21/07/15, the CMoMM thread is boldly titled: Smithman 8 - the Nine Phases of Smithman - How the Smiths became part of the McCann Team in January 2008.

That is one hell of a claim! Is TB serious? The Smith family became part of the McCann team in January 2008? In what way? How and why? What exactly did the Smiths do and/or say to support this claim? Did the McCanns let the police know that the Smiths were joining the McCann Team? Where is a statement to this effect? I see nothing in the excerpt reproduced below (and indeed in any of the post) to help support the title. On the contrary, I see evidence that TM were very keen indeed to support their theory that Tanner-man was Madeleine's abductor and that the man that the Smiths saw was the same person as Tanner-man and could not have been a different person.  Why would the McCanns not allow Smith-man to be a separate sighting to Tanner-man?

TB writes (except below):
Phase 6 from May 2009 to April 2011:
SMITHMAN PROMOTED AS A KEY SUSPECT ON THE MCCANNS’ FIND MADELEINE WEBSITE
This is the period during which the  McCanns actively promoted the Smith sighting on their ‘Find Madeleine’ website, with a 30-second audio clip of a man with an Irish accent repeating a summary of the Smiths’ evidence. During this audio clip, the voice is heard to say that the man looked ’34-35’. But in his original police statement, he had said the man looked ’35-40’. This was the second time Martin Smith changed his mind, because when he was interviewed a second time by the Irish police, he gave the man’s age as ‘40’. The most likely explanation for Smith changing the age of the man from ‘40’ to ’34-35’ is because he was asked to by the McCann Team

Ha! I really like the account above because it would seem to me that far from 'actively promoting' the Smith sighting, TM in fact  are 'desperately discrediting' the Smith sighting by getting a man with an Irish accent to say the man looked '34 - 35' when in fact Mr Smith had originally stated the man looked '35-40'. An Irish voice-over on the TM website is not Mr Smith, not can TB claim that it is. It is, presumably, a person employed by TM to promote the idea that Madeleine's abductor is younger than the man the Smiths saw. Which makes you wonder why they bothered to do that? Is a male aged around 40 who looks like the Smith-man efit released in 2013 important to the narrative? The police appeared to think so.

Phase 5
from January to May 2009:
SMITHMAN FEATURES IN A PRO-MCCANN DOCUMENTARY

Former Detective Inspector Dave Edgar appointed to lead the McCann private investigation, around November 2008. Former Detective Sergeant Arthur Cowley appointed later. They help to prepare a documentary, widely called the ‘Mockumentary’, prepared by Mentorn Media and shown by Channel 4 on May 2009. The documentary, in two lengthy passages, suggests that ‘Tannerman’ and ‘Smithman’ are one and the same    

Phase 6
from May 2009 to April 2011:
SMITHMAN PROMOTED AS A KEY SUSPECT ON THE MCCANNS’ FIND MADELEINE WEBSITE

This is the period during which the  McCanns actively promoted the Smith sighting on their ‘Find Madeleine’ website, with a 30-second audio clip of a man with an Irish accent repeating a summary of the Smiths’ evidence. During this audio clip, the voice is heard to say that the man looked ’34-35’. But in his original police statement, he had said the man looked ’35-40’. This was the second time Martin Smith changed his mind, because when he was interviewed a second time by the Irish police, he gave the man’s age as ‘40’. The most likely explanation for Smith changing the age of the man from ‘40’ to ’34-35’ is because he was asked to by the McCann Team
Phase 7
May 2011:
SMITHMAN PROMOTED IN KATE MCCANN’S BOOK, ‘madeleine’:    

When Dr Kate McCann published her book, ‘madeleine’, on 11 May 2011, seven pages of her book mentioned Smithman. Three of these seven pages consisted of an itemised list of the ‘striking similarities’ between ‘Tannerman’ and ‘Smithman’.

https://jillhavern.forumotion.net/t11521-smithman-8-the-nine-phases-of-smithman-how-the-smiths-became-part-of-the-mccann-team-in-january-2008

Attack is the best form of defense, so they say...

poster wrote:Attack is the best form of defense, so they say...

Think there are going to be more people banned on t'other site soon, at least 2 are questioning the two Walter Mittys over there. Soon be a membership of 2. Dumb and Dumber. Members mentioned are in no way real and legends only in their own imagination. AIMO

I have just read TB’s response to Phoebe - deleted

poster wrote:Attack is the best form of defense, so they say...

I've heard that said, but sometimes in football training you do 5-a-sides, attackers vs. defenders, and the defenders always win. I think because, when pushed, the defenders can score goals. Whereas the attackers can't defend to save their lives.

That was a pointless interjection, I know....