The Secret Rothley Meeting, 17 November 2007

Not sure if there's a specific thread about this meeting, but found this interesting timeline and collection of reports today:

http://madeleinemccann.org/blog/2014/04/20/the-rothley-meeting-17-november-2007/

The Rothley Meeting, 17 November 2007
/McCann Files /The Rothley Meeting, 17 November 2007
April 20, 2014  admin  McCann Files
The Rothley Meeting, 17 November 2007

Rothley Court Hotel
Rothley Court Hotel

A brief background timeline concerning the Rothley meeting

04 November 2007: The Daily Express reports that Russell O’Brien, Jane Tanner, Matthew Oldfield and David Payne fear Portuguese police are preparing to make then arguidos.
07 November: The Spanish newspaper El Mundo reports that lawyers for two of the Tapas Seven have contacted police indicating their clients are willing to be re-questioned to ‘correct’ details of their original statements. The origins of this report indicate it to be unreliable but it is picked up and reported in the UK press.

17 November: (date unconfirmed) The McCanns and the Tapas Seven hold a secret meeting at a hotel near their home. This is believed to be the Rothley Court Hotel; their preferred setting for interviews/photo opportunities.

19 November: The BBC Panorama documentary ‘The Mystery of Madeleine McCann’ is broadcast.

25 November: (date unconfirmed) Kate and Gerry McCann are photographed walking back from church with the twins and what appears to be Catriona Baker (Madeleine’s ‘nanny’ at the Mark Warner Kids Cub and a crucial witness to her movements whilst in Praia da Luz).

08 December: News of the secret meeting emerges. According to The Telegraph, the Tapas Nine had wanted to keep the meeting secret but details of it were leaked by a source close to the McCanns. The source admitted that it was an opportunity to discuss events amid reports that the group are to be re-interviewed by police, going on to add “It was a show of solidarity under police claims that one or two had wanted to change their stories.”

16 December: The Times publishes Kate and Gerry McCann: Beyond the smears by David James Smith. The article reveals how a UK journalist was prepared to collaborate with Gerry McCann, at a time when he was still an arguido, and subject to the rules of judicial secrecy, in order to promulgate the latest ‘official’ McCann timeline. A timeline which may well have been under discussion at the Rothley meeting.

- See more at: http://madeleinemccann.org/blog/2014/04/20/the-rothley-meeting-17-november-2007/#sthash.HsRtjFUe.dpuf

The associated Press articles are on that link underneath the timeline - bit too much to bring them all over here.

Slightly off topic, but on Dee's link, there is a correspondence between a David Smith and Joanna.

Not seen it before and interesting just reading this David's stance on it...

Copied:

A conversation with the press, 08 July 2011

A conversation with the press Unterdenteppichgekehrt

Friday 8 July 2011 at 15:38
Article in Question: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article3040094.ece

Message: Dear Mr. Smith,

In your article “Kate and Gerry McCann: Beyond the smears”, from 16th December 2007, you mention this fact: “Russell O’Brien and Jane Tanner had brought a monitor too, but theirs wasn’t getting much of a signal from the Tapas restaurant 50 yards away.”

The couple never mentioned to the PJ that they brought a monitor as well, in all their statements they claim that the Paynes were the only ones with a baby monitor. Only in April 2008, in the rogatory interviews conducted by Leicestershire Police, this piece of information appeared. It might seem a small omission, but in the light of possible neglect charges, would have been important. Jane Tanner claims in the rogatory interview that she brought it with her in the evenings and positioned it on a ledge/wall behind her. This was NEVER mentioned to portuguese Police as the released statements show. The question I have is, how did you get this info before the rogatory interviews even took place? I know you have to protect sources, but this seems a very strange inside knowledge.

Thank you in advance.

Kind regards

Who are you and what is your interest in this case?
David

I am sorry if I have upset you… Well I gave my name, I am from Germany and I am interested in the case. Since the files have been released I have been trying to build myself an opinion based solely on facts and no spin. I am in the possession of the DVD with the released case files and have spent a lot of time with their analysis. That is why I came upon this rather curious discrepancy regarding the baby monitor. There was a meeting of the McCanns and their friends in Rothley in November, and in December your article was published with this “new” fact. I am just curious where it suddenly came from.

Regards

No i am not upset. I just don’t to fuel the web ghouls (i have no idea whether you are one of them or not…) who seem obsessed with what i consider to be the grotesque idea that the mccanns or their friends did away with madeleine. In addition to the further distress it must cause the mccanns and their friends on top of the devastating event that started it, I just feel it is a complete waste of time and energy. That said, however, I had a long briefing with Gerry McCann before I wrote my article and I guess the baby monitor info came from him. I am aware that many discrepancies arose in the portuguese statements through misunderstandings of language. And you ought to be aware that there will always be minor discrepancies of fact in statements – failings of memory, interpretation and so on – which are not in themselves sinister or suspicious.
One skill of good policing is sifting the wheat from the chaff and knowing what matters and what doesn’t. I strongly suspect the baby monitor issue lies in the latter category. As you will gather, I have every sympathy with the McCanns and no sympathy with those who want to play amateur detective in public on the net with no apparent consideration for the McCanns’ feelings.

I respect facts.

Rant over…

David

Dear David,

thank you for the information about your source regarding the baby monitor. Allow me to add my 2c to the rest of your mail.

Last time I checked, the case was not solved, Madeleine had not turned up, and no evidence of an abduction had emerged. If you are content with the current status quo that is your prerogative, but I am of the opinion that the death or disappearance of a 3-year old girl should not simply be shelved after only a couple of months. To label all those that want explanations as ghouls is a preferred method of the media, the McCanns and Clarence Mitchell to discredit and ridicule a thinking minority that is in the possession of the casefiles. To ask questions is and should stay allowed in the light of so many discrepancies that were revealed with the release of the police files. The emotional blackmail, that those questions “add to the distress of the parents” is just an additional way to stop these questions.

I agree with you that the added fact of a second baby monitor, that never got mentioned in Portugal, is not important enough to change the course of an investigation that is no longer open. Still it was deliberately added and even “translation issues” cannot conceal the fact, that it was never mentioned to the Portuguese Police. The fact that the information was given to you by the then “Arguido” Gerald McCann, published without confirmation, does not instil confidence in the rest of the article.

But since you are of the opinion that sifting the wheat from the chaff is up to the police you are excused for not questioning the details. I know I won’t be granted another reply after my rant, but there is one question that I wanted to raise with a proper journalist for ages.

The evidence of the Smith family from Ireland would have been the perfect “proof” for an abduction. A man carrying a “sleeping” girl towards the rocky beach via dark roads. Between June (when the article was published for the first time in the Drogheda Independent) and September (when Mr. Smith suddenly realised the man might have been Gerry McCann) it would have enforced the abduction theory immensely. But this evidence was never used, neither by the McCanns nor by the british press. No mention of it anywhere. While hundreds of sightings poured in from all over the world, this one sighting was never mentioned. Why?

Have a nice Sunday

No, I won’t let you get away with that. You are asking me to endorse or tolerate a world in which interfering outsiders blunder around misinterpeting snippets of information and re-presenting them as suspicious facts, in reality half-facts. I do broadly think it is the job of the police to investigate crimes. Those are the people we appoint to do it on our behalf.
The media’s role is to examine, challenge and sometimes investigate too. I think those web ghouls are driven by prejudices formed on the basis of…of what? Television appearances? How the McCanns appear to be? Most of those opinions about them were formed long before the case file was released. There is also a sad desire to give weight to conspiracy theories.

On the basis of the hard established facts of the case – the way in which the characters’ lives intersect that evening, after Madeleine was last seen by anyone else – how many people would have to have known and been involved in the mccanns’ self-abducting or killing their own child? The police always start with motive. Every crime has a motive. What would be the motive and what could be so great a motive it involved all that group of people and was capable of being seemingly indefinitely concealed. What do you think, they were all paedophiles? Sex game enthusiasts? Child traffickers? Or merely agreed that pretending an abduction had been committed was the best way of disguising an accidental calpol overdose?

Come on, get real. Find something useful to do – go and campaign against war crimes in rwanda or something – and leave those poor people in peace. That is not emotional blackmail it is a recognition of their loss and an acceptance of the reality that not a single plausible suspicious shred about them has emerged in all the months since.

All those delusional sites devoted to conspiracy theories about the mccanns are kind of repugnant. I can’t remember the detail of the smith sighting but surely it was quickly established it was not reliable or significant.

David

The article from him (bottom of the link), is masterpiece of guff.

It sounds very much like someone's writing on the Justice Forum, but I won't mention any names.

That person also supports the McCanns for all his life is worth and won't have anything negative said about them although he wasn't there on 3rd May 2007, or maybe perhaps he was.

Can't recall hearing about him before or reading any of his stuff prior. (never been on that justice place)

A bit about him here.

http://www.davidjamessmith.net/about/

He's wrote a few books apparently.

Although will never get round to reading them judging on his above rubbish on the Mc's.