After the Smiths sighting - Where could this mystery man have gone? Land or Sea?

[Benice]

Was the possiblity of Madeleine being taken away by boat ever investigated by the Pj ?  I've personally haven't found any witness statements from the people whose boat the children were taken to in a dingy by the nannies. 

IIRC The man seen by the Smith was heading towards the beach.

[AnneGuedes]

There's nothing like a harbour in PDL. No catamaran was missing. The maritime police was of course alerted and did its job, it's in the files.

[sadie]

Was the possiblity of Madeleine being taken away by boat ever investigated by the Pj ?  I've personally haven't found any witness statements from the people whose boat the children were taken to in a dingy by the nannies. 

IIRC The man seen by the Smith was heading towards the beach.

from where he was seen by the Smiths he could have been heading

South towards the rocky tiny beach and any number of places,
East towards the Church, Sergio Malinkas and the main little town of Praia de Luz ... any number of places
But not west (have proved that in another thread)

OR, could have been meeting up with the getaway car that seemingly had scarpered previously.

With the tidal conditions, the rocky foreshore and the roughening sea, it seems unlikey to me that he would have gone down to that little beach.  but it is not impossible.  Desperate people do desperate things

ETA:  Since this was written, I have given this more thought. 
Instead of a tiny boat being on that beach, which is only rocks at high tide (no sand), it is possible that a larger boat at sea sent a small boat in to pick bundleman and madeleine up.  Bundleman could have then waded out up to his thighs maybe and clambered on board this little boat to be whizzed away to safety.

I still think that the original plan was for the getaway car to pick him up on Jane Tanner corner and whizz them away to a boat somewhere.  As that failed, cos of Jane Tanner witnessing it all, he took refuge at his accomplises flat in OC Staff Quarters.  There he phoned for instructions and was told to either go to a house/flat elsewhere, to a certain place where car would drive in and pick him up ...  or to walk down to the beachy/rocky little cove ready to be picked by boat there.

It is a tricky way down, but someone who regularly did it and with a torch shining from his his head might do it.  It is also possible that there is a smugglers tunnel to that cove.  Then it would be easy.




But Heri thinks differently and I acknowledge that he might be right.

it is more likely that, with the pick up failed, a boat came in and picked him up. before being taken out to sea and the rendevous with a larger boat.  One was moored under 4 miles away at Lagos harbour, just outside the gates to the harbour.  Moved out there just before the gates were closed for the night.   In other words ready to go.  May not have been that one, but it might have been.  That boat had connections with a name in the case.  Cant remember which for absolute certain, but have it recorded somewhere.

I have ideas where that boat went to, but they are only ideas.  However the ideas fully fit around other sightings and the timings are perfect, whilst the drop off point at around dawn (semi darkness) is quite isolated with excellent adjacent vehicle access.  Only ideas tho; like my * sadies theory *.  Like that everything is plausible.

[sadie]

from where he was seen by the Smiths he could have been heading

South towards the rocky tiny beach and any number of places,
East towards the Church, Sergio Malinkas and the main little town of Praia de Luz ... any number of placeess
Or West towards whereever ... but it seems from a previous thread from the description given by one of the Smith stragglers that the man had definitely NOT gone west

OR, could have been meeting up with the getaway car that seemingly had scarpered previously.

With the tidal conditions, the rocky foreshore and the roughening sea, it seems unlikey to me that he would have gone down to that little beach

But Heri thinks differently and I acknowledge that he might be right.

He might have been taken out to sea and rendevoused with a larger boat.  One was moored just a very few miles away at Lagos harbour, just outside the gates.  In other words ready to go.  May not have been that one but it might have been.  That boat had connections with a name in the case.  Cant remember which, but have it recorded somewhere

[Mrs. B]

The study of the boats, IIRC, was fairly comprehensive, though, wasn't there a yacht that somehow "disappeared" that they were never able to trace? Sailing under Swedish or Scandinavian flag, if I'm not totally mistaken of course?

[faithlilly]

from where he was seen by the Smiths he could have been heading

South towards the rocky tiny beach and any number of places,
East towards the Church, Sergio Malinkas and the main little town of Praia de Luz ... any number of placeess
Or West towards whereever ... but it seems from a previous thread from the description given by one of the Smith stragglers that the man had definitely NOT gone west

OR, could have been meeting up with the getaway car that seemingly had scarpered previously.

With the tidal conditions, the rocky foreshore and the roughening sea, it seems unlikey to me that he would have gone down to that little beach



But Heri thinks differently and I acknowledge that he might be right.

He might have been taken out to sea and rendevoused with a larger boat.  One was moored just a very few miles away at Lagos harbour, just outside the gates.  In other words ready to go.  May not have been that one but it might have been.  That boat had connections with a name in the case.  Cant remember which, but have it recorded somewhere

Or he could have turned right at the bottom of the street, secreted the body in a concealed place and carried on up the hill.

[Mrs. B]

So where on that stretch would you hide a body so well that not ONE of the GNR dogs, or officers, or helicopters or specialist search teams & all local residents would NOT find it? Despite of the entire area being searched through meticulously for DAYS on end?

[Benice]

There's nothing like a harbour in PDL. No catamaran was missing. The maritime police was of course alerted and did its job, it's in the files.

But weren't the children taken out to a bigger boat by dinghy - which I assume would be from PdL beach?

It's not impossible that the same scenario happened that night if she was taken out of the country by sea

It's an option which completely dispenses with the dangers of being stopped and discovered whilst travelling through the country by car.

[faithlilly]

So where on that stretch would you hide a body so well that not ONE of the GNR dogs, or officers, or helicopters or specialist search teams & all local residents would NOT find it? Despite of the entire area being searched through meticulously for DAYS on end?

In a bin perhaps ?

[AnneGuedes]

So where on that stretch would you hide a body so well that not ONE of the GNR dogs, or officers, or helicopters or specialist search teams & all local residents would NOT find it? Despite of the entire area being searched through meticulously for DAYS on end?

GNR dogs were either rescue or sniffer ones = cadaver avoiding ones.

[Mrs. B]

In a bin perhaps ?

You mean none of the officers involved in the search thought about checking the bins? Do you have a source for that, as I find it highly unlikely that trained officers would be THAT negligent, that'd be one of the first places to look, I'm sure.

[Mrs. B]

LOL What dogs are "cadaver avoiding" dogs. In fact, ALL dogs are cadaver FINDING dogs by natural instinct. How many times have you heard "body found by person walking DOG"?

[faithlilly]

In the Channel 4 programme 'Searching for Madeleine' this is what the four experts had to say about the bins :


JS: Back in town, our team discover another intriguing hiding place. They spot large industrial bins all over the resort.
 
DB: (to camera) There have been cases in the UK where bodies have been disposed of in wheelie bins and then taken directly to refuse tips and dumped there in the hope that they would be covered up.
 
CP: We were told to search everywhere, including the bins and in Praia da Luz they're quite big and scary-looking. Although I saw police searching, I personally didn't see police looking in the bins like we did. But I don't think we looked in every bin.
 
GL: There's a world of difference to looking in a refuse bin and tipping it on its side, emptying it all out, looking in every bag and re-filling it. When you've done that then you can say there's no pyjamas, there's no body in there.
 
JS: Dispatches has learnt that the bins are emptied nightly between midnight and 4am. And even though a major search for a missing child was going on, they were still emptied on the night Madeleine disappeared. Since the collections were not stopped, there's another area Gary Ligg knows needs prompt attention but it's thirty kilometres away.
 
GL: We need to find out where the land-fill site is; talk to the authorities, find out where it went and try to identify which area of the land fill these particular bins were emptied.
 
CS: (to camera) Ideally you would secure all of the bins in the immediate area and make sure that the local authority don't dispose of any of the contents until the search team have had the opportunity to check them all.
 
JS: We asked the Portuguese police whether the bins and local landfill had been searched. They chose not to comment.


The experts were :

CS = Chris Stevenson (former Detective Chief Superintendent, Cambridgeshire Police)
DB = David Barclay (Former Head of Physical Evidence UK National Crime and Operations Faculty)
DC = David Canter (Director, Centre for Investigative Psychology, University of Liverpool)
GL = Gary Ligg (Former Senior Search Adviser, West Yorkshire Police)

[AnneGuedes]

But weren't the children taken out to a bigger boat by dinghy - which I assume would be from PdL beach?

It's not impossible that the same scenario happened that night if she was taken out of the country by sea

It's an option which completely dispenses with the dangers of being stopped and discovered whilst travelling through the country by car.

Maritime Police has to be very active in Portugal : see the kilometres of coast there is (which are also external frontiers of Europe), and all sorts of trafic and illegal fishing and Spain having better boats invading Portuguese territorial waters, etc.

[AnneGuedes]

LOL What dogs are "cadaver avoiding" dogs. In fact, ALL dogs are cadaver FINDING dogs by natural instinct. How many times have you heard "body found by person walking DOG"?

Mrs.B, I'm glad you find it funny, I don't.
I was mentioning trained dogs.
Rescue dogs are trained to alive human scents, without any discrimination.
Sniffer dogs are trained to, given a certain person's scent through some object belonging to him/her, pick up the same alive scent and follow it.
Dog walkers don't train their dogs' smelling capacity, those follow whatever they're curious of.