Seems woke and wandered back in favour again.

[The General]

Wasn't Gez Wilkins wandering around at the time?

So you see the logic all of a sudden and have now moved on to picking holes? That's what I want.
So where is big Jezza then? He's being sensible and locking his apartment and using the front door.

[Eleanor]

Those photos are professionally lit. Look how dark and secluded that access is. You would have to go full retard to use any other mode of access and egress.

Two gates to shut and a flight of stairs to go down, carrying a child?  Not to mention the Patio Doors.

[The General]

Two gates to shut and a flight of stairs to go down, carrying a child?  Not to mention the Patio Doors.

Why shut any doors or gates? You're not exactly going to be worried about that as you leg it.
In case the cat gets out?

[Eleanor]

Why shut any doors or gates? You're not exactly going to be worried about that as you leg it.
In case the cat gets out?

These gates and the patio door were shut when Kate went to check at 10pm.

[The General]

These gates and the patio door were shut when Kate went to check at 10pm.

You're getting the jist of this.
Why in the name of Barry Gibb would someone fleeing close any doors? You'd be sharting yourself all the way out and you wouldn't have a chance.
So this theory of an abductor is reliant upon the use of the window? Why? Because Kate said so?
There is literally no reason for Jimmy to go anywhere near the window.

[ShiningInLuz]

You're getting the jist of this.
Why in the name of Barry Gibb would someone fleeing close any doors? You'd be sharting yourself all the way out and you wouldn't have a chance.
So this theory of an abductor is reliant upon the use of the window? Why? Because Kate said so?
There is literally no reason for Jimmy to go anywhere near the window.

Headstart and confusion.

Headstart because it takes anyone arriving longer to work out that there is something amiss.

Confusion, because no one can really work out what happened, just like we can't.

However, carrying Madeleine down the rear steps of 5A whilst closing doors & gates is challenging.

It is also something that once again, we have only Kate to rely upon.

[Brietta]

Let's assume an abduction took place.
If the patio door was the access point, it would also be the egress point, as if it was suitable to enter unseen, in the gloom and in good cover, it would serve the same purpose coming out.
If the front door opens from the inside without a key (hence the question), they would unlock or even open it.
I can't think of a reason for opening a window on the same elevation as the (edit) front door, apart from if it didn't unlock from the inside. But if we assume that this abduction would have took seconds, as you suggest, and that they knew they had a clean run, there would be no messing about with any of the other egress points; it would be in through the unlocked door, grab and dash. No messing about - in and out, down the stairs and in to the night.
So why is the window open?
Did they leave any lights on?

The evidence was the kidnapped child.

Think of the logistics of the situation as far as your criminal contacts might have viewed them.

Once the intruder had passed the child to an accomplice ... all s/he had to do was to slip out unencumbered ... easily done by all accounts.
Only Jane Tanner saw anything ... but not until she heard that Madeleine was missing did she realise the significance.

[Eleanor]

You're getting the jist of this.
Why in the name of Barry Gibb would someone fleeing close any doors? You'd be sharting yourself all the way out and you wouldn't have a chance.
So this theory of an abductor is reliant upon the use of the window? Why? Because Kate said so?
There is literally no reason for Jimmy to go anywhere near the window.

But the gates and the patio door were shut.  The window could have been used to hand Madeleine through, or simply as an escape route.

But we have done all of this, and more, many times.

[The General]

Headstart and confusion.

Headstart because it takes anyone arriving longer to work out that there is something amiss.

Confusion, because no one can really work out what happened, just like we can't.

However, carrying Madeleine down the rear steps of 5A whilst closing doors & gates is challenging.

It is also something that once again, we have only Kate to rely upon.

Yes, that would be the only point to closing anything on your way out. But let's remember the narrative. Jimmy is biding his time between a rigorous checking regime. He therefore knows that any attempt at obfuscation is futile, as, apparently, another adult is soon to be making their way to do a check and will soon discover a child missing - in fact it turned quite ad hoc on the night, with various checks being supposedly completed. Jimmy would clearly have no idea the level of checking once the checker was inside the building, he would have to assume that all were counting heads.

[Brietta]

How would the supposed person in the room exit? the supposed accomplish outside would be supposedly holding Madeleine not the shutter.What happened to the second supposed accomplish,JT saw only the one,Smiths saw only the one.

Criminals don't walk around with a neon sign on their heads advertising their profession.  I doubt they go about their nefarious work mob handed and attracting as much attention as possible.  They work unobtrusively.
No-one would look twice or even remember seeing someone going about their business in Mark Warner livery or fading into the background in some other way.

I think one way of vanishing once Madeleine had been passed through the window to an accomplice would have been a quick exit through the front door and sauntering along the pathway in the direction of block four ... and thereafter vanishing into the night either to nearby accommodation or to a vehicle.

[John]

The front door still required a key to open it from the outside, so in all appearance it was "locked" as far as an intruder goes.

But could be opened easily from inside. Given that Madeleine used that door every morning and given that she was in the habit of dashing ahead, it isn't too difficult to conclude that she knew how to open that door and get out.

[John]

There was such a mess in the beginning that no one knew which was front or back.  But the front definitely needed a key to get in from outside, once we had all sussed which door anyone was talking about.

At the time I opined that someone could have crept up the Patio Steps unseen.  I still think that this was possible.

I agree that it was certainly possible Eleanor.  Wasn't there a couple who did just that when they heard children crying but didn't do anything about it for fear of being labelled busybodies?

[John]

No.  IMO, someone crept up the back Patio Steps, got in and then abducted Madeleine and took her out of the front door.  The open window could well have been an escape route if the abductor had been caught at it.

It's all quite simple, albeit a bit risky, but it was always going to be that.

Simple yes but unsupported by any evidence.

[The General]

But the gates and the patio door were shut.  The window could have been used to hand Madeleine through, or simply as an escape route.

But we have done all of this, and more, many times.

Let's pack it all in then and post about the texture of the scones in the cafe at M&S.
You might have 'done all this before', but I haven't.

I will labour the point one more time, though. Why would Jimmy pass her through a window when he could just walk out of the door? What's the point? The window is 2 feet from the door on the same elevation.

[Brietta]

Hence my point which should help abduction believers. Just park right outside the gate, in semi-darkness and roll down the road, no lights, no engine until you're past the Tapas entrance....that's how criminals operate.
But alas, as we've seen, this most simple and obvious of escape modes just doesn't tally with the window nonsense most of them rely on.

There was a perfectly good car park right outside Madeleine's window ... why not use that?  Of course the fact it might have led to discovery either before or after the abduction is neither here nor there.

Parking further away or heading to nearby cover surely cuts the risk of a vehicle being noticed rather than parking right on top of the scene of the crime.