I did a lot of research on the timings once and came up with this:
I have to say that the whole issue surrounding timing of the calls and who called when is completely confused in the witness statements. The most reliable timing in there appears to be John Hill's, who says he was contacted at 22:28. Assuming he recalls the time from checking his mobile phone, then as long as that phone has an accurate time on it, he's pretty much nailed the time that he was alerted. He goes on to say it was Lindsay who called him.
This indicates that Lindsay knew about the disappearance prior to calling John Hill.
So, on to Lindsay. She says she was told by Amy T at about 22:20 of Madeleine's disappearance. She then put into place the missing child procedure and must have called John Hill. Times sound about right, no problem so far.
Moving on to Amy Tiernan it gets a bit muddier... She says that she was on duty and that "the girl's father went to the reception to call the police as soon as her disappearance was noticed and that twenty minutes had passed" so that (assuming that 10pm was the time of the disappearance being noted) puts Gerry's visit to the reception at about 22:20 and it's reasonable to believe that Amy called Lindsay at that time. She also says the police arrived 30-35 minutes later, putting their arrival at about 22:50 or so.
We then have Emma Knight, who also gives a very accurate time - 22:17 - when she says she was called by Lyndsay. Assuming her mobile records were used and the time was right, this means that it was a further eleven minutes between Lyndsay calling her and calling John Hill. Presumably this was a time when the news was filtering up the chain of command and procedures put in place were being acted on. All feasible so far and assuming Lyndsay called Emma as soon as Amy called her, times match to within a few minutes.
Where it really begins to fall apart a bit is when the other Ocean Club employees get involved...
Firstly I think we have to accept that there were only two calls made to the GNR from the Ocean Club that night. One at 22:41 and another at 22:52. The telephone company provided this information and it's clear to see. If there were calls made from mobile phones to the GNR there doesn't seem to be any mention of it at all.
Moving on to the statement of the receptionist at the time, Helder Luis, he states quite categorically he "was contacted by a member of staff from the Tapas Restaurant between 09.30 and 22.00" and that "he immediately contacted the GNR in Lagos" and "shortly after this the child's father and John Hill arrived at the reception and he phoned the GNR again." Well hold on there, there's a world of difference between being a few minutes out (as Amy/Emma/Lyndsay appear to be) and being (at least) 41 minutes out. If he was contacted between 9:30 and 10pm and immediately contact the police, where is the record of that call? The first call has to be at 22:41:29 as we know from the records and presumably the second one at 22:52 is when John Hill walks into reception with Gerry?
However, it gets more confused... Vitor Santos in his statement says, "he remembers that at 22.00/22.15 he received a phone call from the reception, from receptionist Helder, who told him that John Hill was extremely agitated as a child had disappeared and that the GNR had been contacted but had not arrived yet." Well hang on... we know from the phone company records that the call was at 22:41 and not any time between 22:00 and 22:15... He continues that the receptionist says, " that he had phoned the GNR post several times and that he had been told that they would arrive when they could but that they were investigating a theft in Odiaxere. The receptionist asked the witness whether he should contact the PSP, to which the witness replied no as this area belongs to the GNR." So that all seems quite detailed and plausible apart from the timings which are WAY out and not just a few minutes.
Vitor adds more details though... "When he arrived at the scene about 10 to 15 minutes later, he immediately went to the reception where the GNR were present, taking a statement from the girl's father." So when Vitor gets to the OC at sometime between, say, 22:20pm and 22:35pm, John Hill and Gerry are already in the reception with the GNR? And yet the GNR weren't called until some minutes after this time... Vitor's timings are looking suspect, it must be said.
Further confusion - Emma Knight says the police arrived some time around midnight to half past. Amy T says they were there before 11. Vitor says they were there not long after half past 10. Matt Oldfield says that he went to reception to ask them to contact the police at five past or ten past ten. Why doesn't Helder mention this? He says that the Tapas bar contacted him and he called the police immediately. Matt Oldfield says he was having to argue quite hard to persuade the receptionist to call as they assumed Madeleine had wandered off.
More times: George Crosslands says he was called by John Hill at 22:15 (and yet John Hill himself says he wasn't told until 22:28) and that when he got to the OC 10 minutes later, John Hill was already there (some minutes before he was even contacted... good effort) and that the police arrived at 22:50.
If you want even more confusion, refer to Arlindo Pelega and Jeronimo Salcedas's statements! Pelega says the commotion started at 21:20 and by 21:40 the table was empty in the Tapas bar. Salcedas states in his first statement in May that the table was empty at 22:20 - 22:30 and yet by the time of his rogatory this had changed to 21:30 to 22:00 but he's not really sure...
Confused? I am. I haven't been able to establish the chain of who told whom what and when to start the whole chain of events of. I assume that as Amy Tiernan was on duty, she was the first person contacted but I have no idea who by. Maybe by Helder the receptionist after Matt Oldfield had been in? Or was it in response to the call from the Tapas bar he says he had?
Anyhow, all that seems clear is that only two calls were made and the first of those was at 22:41. I don't think it's fair to blame the McCanns for the lateness of the call though. They probably assumed that after Matt had rushed off to reception that the call had been made. Up until 22:41 it looks as though the OC were following through on their procedure for missing children as they wouldn't want to drag the GNR out on a wild goose chase if Madeleine was hiding in the bushes. At some point they obviously took it seriously enough to call the GNR and then when John Hill arrived in reception with Gerry, they were told to do it again to reinforce the urgency. Kate McCann's claims that she knew with certainty that Madeleine had been abducted and not wandered off wasn't really communicated to anyone that could call the police as far as I can tell (none of them spoke Portuguese so they needed an OC employee to do it), so can she be blamed for it taking the OC staff a good half hour more to get around to calling?
I can't believe that there appears to be no clear work on establishing the exact chain of events that night. Who told whom? Starting with Amy T - how did she find out and who did she tell? The timings are all so jumbled and confused that it's hard to see exactly what happened when, but apart from the way out timings of Vitor dos Santos, Salcedas and Pelega, the rest seem to match fairly well. I'm not exactly sure what Blacksmith expected the McCanns to do... stand over the receptionist until he called? If, as seems to be confirmed, they were rushing about and someone told Matt to go and get the police called, they kind of thought they'd done the job by about five past ten as far as I can tell.
Note to debunker: All these timings are from primary sources in the PJ files and are not invented. No, I'm not going to spend hours finding the references as I've already done that.
This all shows how unreliable things are when asking witnesses about timing. It's also clear that some waiters state that the table was empty WELL before 10pm. Selective checking by John, methinks.
