So where was Smithman going to that night?

[sadie]

But Mr Moderator, the garden there is the garden to the house that is occupied!  He has gone past plenty of gardens to properties that are occupied, why choose that one? 

Also it appears thta the hedging is quite high and goes the full length where the garden adjoins the steps.  How could he get in?

[Mr Moderator]

But Mr Moderator, the garden there is the garden to the house that is occupied!  He has gone past plenty of gardens to properties that are occupied, why choose that one? 

Also it appears thta the hedging is quite high and goes the full length where the garden adjoins the steps.  How could he get in?

The lower lane is called Rua das Salgadeiras as per aerial view plan below.

Mr Amaral was of the same opinion and spent some time walking around this property and the overgrown gardens to the rear.  A partially demolished wall on Rua das Salgadeiras would have facilitated access. See bottom photograph.

[attachment deleted by admin]

[sadie]

What does it matter   what  'Aoife'  said  ?    ...  you,  me,  John, Aoife,  or anyone else  (  including the police   )  cannot know,  and certainly cannot  'prove'  where the man the Smiths saw went after they passed him

Stop making insupportable claims

Of course it matters what Aoifie said.  She is the only witness and she gives a clear description of what happened.

Are you suggesting that Aofie is INIT too then?

[Brietta]

Who said he did  ?

Is that not one of the areas indicated as being of interest?

[misty]

Excuse me?

What does that matter?

He identified him.  He was in Ireland at the time, and Gerry was back home in the UK.

No, Mr Smith said there was something about the man getting off the plane that reminded him of the man he saw on the night of the 3rd.
Gerry's appearance would have changed slightly after 4 months in Portugal - his skin would be much more tanned, his hair would have been lightened by the sun, he may have lost weight with the stress. Were Mr Smith to have been asked to pick him out in an ID parade, I wonder if he would have been 100% positive?
It amazes me that people can happily accept Mr Smith's identification as proof positive when the same people dismiss all the sightings of Robert Murat in the Ocean Club vicinity on the same night because he looked rather like David Payne (and we are talking witnesses who saw the face of the man at OC)

[Silkywhiskers]

From The Truth of the Lie -

Chapter 21 - An Irish family in shock - pages 197-199

- Sept 2007, McCanns return to UK

- Gerry exits the plane, carrying his son against his left shoulder, the child's arms down along his sides, down the stairs and across the tarmack Gerry walks

- The Smith family see this recording on the news at 22h00 and are hit hard: they know this person, this way of carrying a child and of walking. It is Gerry McCann, they believe with a high degree of certainty, that they saw on 3 May at about 22h00, carrying a 4 yr old girl who appeared to be deeply asleep

- The father contacts the police to communicate this new information. He says he has not slept since 9 Sept and is very upset. It's as if he re-lived the night he saw the man carrying the child. Seeing Gerry walk and carry the child, awoke something in his head...

- Still not completely convinced, he watches the news again on ITV and also on Sky.

- No, there are no doubts. Gerry McCann looks just like the same person he saw carrying the child on May 3

- Smith, upset and worried about what he saw and has concluded, needs the investigators to contact him.

- In late September, the Portuguese police receive this information from Smith. This appears to be a piece of the puzzle.

- Now Jane Tanner's insistence at seeing the abductor go the other direction makes sense, removing attentions from the way Gerry walked, in the direction of the beach. The man carrying a child didn't walk east towards Murat's house, but west in the direction of the Smiths.

- This puzzle piece allows the investigators to reconstruct what happened on that cold night of 3 May. The puzzle is almost complete.

- We make the decision to bring the Smiths back to Portugal. They will be heard, and in legal and procedural terms, will give their identification using televised images, since a personal identification [of Gerry] is out of the question.

- A reconstitution of that night, with the Smiths, is seriously considered.

- But the Smiths don't return to Portugal.

- The Portuguese police changed their minds after GA leaves the team; they decide to use the international request mechanism [letters rogatory]

- This leads to absurd delays

- In the meantime, rumours abound that strangers to the investigation have found about about this witness and his family and, supposedly, have tried to talk to Smith, though their intentions in doing so are unknown.


Remember - this book has been endorsed by the Portugese Supreme Court as being an accurate account of the investigation.....!

[misty]

- No, there are no doubts. Gerry McCann looks just like the same person he saw carrying the child on May 3


Yes.

Can you therefore explain why Aoife & Martin Smith's individual efits of the same man differ so markedly, when neither of them actually saw the face properly?

[Brietta]

- No, there are no doubts. Gerry McCann looks just like the same person he saw carrying the child on May 3


Yes.

Did his wife agree with him?

[Silkywhiskers]

Did his wife agree with him?

What on earth difference does it make?

An eyewitness is only sound if his WIFE says so???????????

 8-)(--)

[pathfinder73]

Is that not one of the areas indicated as being of interest?

The wasteland is a possible place where Smithman hid the body, retrieved it and passed the Smith family.

[John]

John, I think that if you examine G Earth, you will notice that the property you are talking about immediately to the West of Aoife is actually two houses.  One is number 33 Rua 25 Abril.   

The other is 62 ( I think, difficult to read ) with its entrance fbeing on the rom the steps down.  I dont know the name of that road where the steps are, but anyway that is not empty and derelict.

We proved that Smithman did NOT go west in an earlier thread. 

In order to have reached the front door or the garden door to the derelict property, Number 33 Rua de Abril, he had to have gone West. 

He did NOT. He went South down the steps towards the sea. or East along Rua 25 Abril,towards Malinkas or the church


So looks like we can forget the derelict property there.

He had no need to go west, all he had to do was to go down the steps of the lane called Travessa das Escadinhas and turn right into Rua das Salgadriras. A few metres along this road and hop over the decaying wall into the large garden.  All of which is depicted in the photo below.

[Carana]

From The Truth of the Lie -

Chapter 21 - An Irish family in shock - pages 197-199

- Sept 2007, McCanns return to UK

- Gerry exits the plane, carrying his son against his left shoulder, the child's arms down along his sides, down the stairs and across the tarmack Gerry walks

- The Smith family see this recording on the news at 22h00 and are hit hard: they know this person, this way of carrying a child and of walking. It is Gerry McCann, they believe with a high degree of certainty, that they saw on 3 May at about 22h00, carrying a 4 yr old girl who appeared to be deeply asleep

- The father contacts the police to communicate this new information. He says he has not slept since 9 Sept and is very upset. It's as if he re-lived the night he saw the man carrying the child. Seeing Gerry walk and carry the child, awoke something in his head...

- Still not completely convinced, he watches the news again on ITV and also on Sky.

- No, there are no doubts. Gerry McCann looks just like the same person he saw carrying the child on May 3

- Smith, upset and worried about what he saw and has concluded, needs the investigators to contact him.

- In late September, the Portuguese police receive this information from Smith. This appears to be a piece of the puzzle.

- Now Jane Tanner's insistence at seeing the abductor go the other direction makes sense, removing attentions from the way Gerry walked, in the direction of the beach. The man carrying a child didn't walk east towards Murat's house, but west in the direction of the Smiths.

- This puzzle piece allows the investigators to reconstruct what happened on that cold night of 3 May. The puzzle is almost complete.

- We make the decision to bring the Smiths back to Portugal. They will be heard, and in legal and procedural terms, will give their identification using televised images, since a personal identification [of Gerry] is out of the question.

- A reconstitution of that night, with the Smiths, is seriously considered.

- But the Smiths don't return to Portugal.

- The Portuguese police changed their minds after GA leaves the team; they decide to use the international request mechanism [letters rogatory]

- This leads to absurd delays

- In the meantime, rumours abound that strangers to the investigation have found about about this witness and his family and, supposedly, have tried to talk to Smith, though their intentions in doing so are unknown.


Remember - this book has been endorsed by the Portugese Supreme Court as being an accurate account of the investigation.....!

Erm.... I must have missed that. When did the PT Supreme Court "endorse" it? Or are you referring to the fact that  a temporary injunction pending a defamation trial was overturned?

Even leaving aside the accuracy issue, relying on Amaral's account of five months of an investigation is like saying Hitler won the war.

If Amaral had arranged for a statement in September, he would have known that Martin Smith was only 60-80% sure, that it was based on how he carried the child down the plane steps, in the context of the sensibility factor of suddenly realising that Gerry had been made an arguido, that the only person who thought it might have been him was his wife, that the rest of the family didn't, and they didn't even discuss this doubt for several days.

In relation to the video clips of Gerard McCann and the person I saw on 3rd May 2007 when I saw the BBC news at 10 PM on 9th September 2007 something struck me that it could have been the same person. It was the way Gerard McCann turned his head down which was similar to what the individual did on 3rd May 2007 when we met him. It may have been the way he was carrying the child either. I would be 60-80% sure that it was Gerard McCann that I met that night carrying a child. I am basing that on his mannerism in the way he carried the child off the plane. After seeing the BBC news at 10 PM, footage on the 9th September 2007 I contacted Leicestershire police with this information. During that time I spoke to all my family members who were with me on the night of 3rd May 2007 about this and the only one who felt the same way as me was my wife. She had seen the video clip of Gerard McCann walking down the stairs of the plane earlier that day. We did not discuss this until some days later. This statement has been read over to me and is correct.

[Brietta]

Erm.... I must have missed that. When did the PT Supreme Court "endorse" it? Or are you referring to the fact that  a temporary injunction pending a defamation trial was overturned?

Even leaving aside the accuracy issue, relying on Amaral's account of five months of an investigation is like saying Hitler won the war.

If Amaral had arranged for a statement in September, he would have known that Martin Smith was only 60-80% sure, that it was based on how he carried the child down the plane steps, in the context of the sensibility factor of suddenly realising that Gerry had been made an arguido, that the only person who thought it might have been him was his wife, that the rest of the family didn't, and they didn't even discuss this doubt for several days.

In relation to the video clips of Gerard McCann and the person I saw on 3rd May 2007 when I saw the BBC news at 10 PM on 9th September 2007 something struck me that it could have been the same person. It was the way Gerard McCann turned his head down which was similar to what the individual did on 3rd May 2007 when we met him. It may have been the way he was carrying the child either. I would be 60-80% sure that it was Gerard McCann that I met that night carrying a child. I am basing that on his mannerism in the way he carried the child off the plane. After seeing the BBC news at 10 PM, footage on the 9th September 2007 I contacted Leicestershire police with this information. During that time I spoke to all my family members who were with me on the night of 3rd May 2007 about this and the only one who felt the same way as me was my wife. She had seen the video clip of Gerard McCann walking down the stairs of the plane earlier that day. We did not discuss this until some days later. This statement has been read over to me and is correct.

When push came to shove, Mrs Smith refused to change her statement. So if she felt the same way as her husband she wasn't going to say so herself and on the record.

[Carana]

When push came to shove, Mrs Smith refused to change her statement. So if she felt the same way as her husband she wasn't going to say so herself and on the record.

It might have been an innocuous conversation in which she'd simply agreed that it might have been Gerry and if he felt that he ought to report his niggling doubt to go ahead and do so. I have absolutely no problem with someone honestly reporting a doubt, indeed I find that the right thing to do.

My issue is that this honest doubt has got mangled into a myth in which "the Smith family" (with the innuendo that it was the entire family) agreed that it was definitely Gerry. And that is simply not the case.

[pathfinder73]

When push came to shove, Mrs Smith refused to change her statement. So if she felt the same way as her husband she wasn't going to say so herself and on the record.

Only 3 out of 9 eye witnesses went to Portugal to give statements (Martin, Peter & Aoife). Mrs Mary Smith didn't travel or we would've possibly first known about when she asked, 'Oh is she asleep?' but Smithman didn't respond.

9 Eye Witnesses in total:

Upon being asked, he states that he was accompanied by his wife, MARY SMITH and his son, PETER SMITH, his daughter-in-law, SILE, and his grandchildren of 13 and 6 years of age respectively (children of PETER) TA*** and CO**, his daughter AOIFE (12 years of age) and his other two grandchildren (AI****** (10 years old) and EI**** (four years old) who are children of his daughter B***** who was in Ireland. (Martin Smith)