In his 13/09/07 statement McClusky said;
Having viewed recent media coverage regarding the investigation, Mr McClusky now states that the female he saw and described is Mrs McCann( the missing child's mother). He states he is "almost certain" that they are the same person and has agonised for days over what to do and whether to contact Police.
Smith reported his thoughts to the police a week later, on 20/09/07.
I am familiar with Mr and Mrs McCluskey's statements. As I said already "Mr MCluskey and Mr Smith made almost identical assertions regarding the male carrying the female child. Worth bearing in mind that no-one else backed Mr Smith's opinion which was made some time after Mr McCluskey made his."
Worth noting from the original statements of both is that ~
- neither was capable of describing the child carrier
- both "recognised" the similarity of the method of carrying from television news broadcasts of the family disembarking from a plane
The dates of reporting are also interesting. And not only due to the fact that having watched tv news covering the same event the McCluskey statement was in police hands a full week before Mr Smith's, who seems to operate a time gap method between observation and reporting as this supplementary addition and the original attest.
Mr McCluskey witnessed an incident involving a child carrying man which he went to great pains to inform the police about immediately knowing that a child had gone missing days before.
Mr Smith witnessed a churlish child carrier who did not return his wife's greeting on passing. It took a fortnight before that was reported to the police.
