I don't know why you think anyone is lying Anne
I'm sure you already know that when people are re-telling something they have been told, they do not repeat parrot fashion the exact words which they heard - especially if it is something shocking or outrageous - they use their own words - and own interpretations and make assumptions based on what they have been told.
The main gist being conveyed by Kate and Gerry was that they had found Madeleine gone from her bed and the shutters/ window in the bedroom, (which they knew to be closed when they went out) - now both wide open. Their immediate reaction to this horrific discovery was that someone had broken into that room through that window and abducted their child - which of course is the first thing any normal person would think at that point.
We do not know the exact words K&G used, but we do know that they were both in a very distressed state, and the people they phoned would also be extremely shocked at the news. The fact that different people have not all remembered - or precisely repeated word for word like tape recorders - what K&G told them, but may have also have added in their own impressions of what happened is perfectly normal.
It's obvious that K&G did not have identical conversations with each and every person they spoke to. Different people would ask different questions - and so what K&G talked about with one person, they may not have done with another.
None of those people were there - and so they had to try to visualise what had happened:-
If Kate said that someone had broken in through the window, then it's perfectly possible that one of the people she told this to assumed that in that case the shutters must have been jemmied - and so when they related what had happened to someone else - (say a reporter for instance) - then 'jemmied' is the word they would use. IOW they put their own take on it.
There is nothing odd or unusual about any of that. and no-one is lying or trying to mislead. It's perfectly normal human behaviour.
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A few years back I had a phone call from a neighbour excitedly telling me that our village PO had been raided in broad daylight and our postmaster had been attacked with a baseball bat and was in hospital. The next time I went to the PO - I was surprised to see him standing there as fit as a fiddle. He told me that there was a bat - but the robbers had not touched him with it - only threatened him. Did I think my neighbour was a liar? No of course I didn't. The story was probably 3rd/4th hand by the time it reached me - and as always happens in these cases - people had put their own take on it along the way - and so inaccuracies had crept in.
Benice, in this case it was first hand !
There's no reasonable explanation for the coincidence they all got it wrong about the doors locked, the broken shutters and the open window. People awoken in the middle of the night by a phone call saying a little girl has gone don't start asking how, who etc., they're shocked.
They disguised the truth and they had a good reason for doing so : escape blame. The guilty one was a man without a face, then for ever without identity.
If their words exceeded their convictions, given the horrible situation of having lost the child they had so much longed for, how do you explain they were careful to tell the police
only they had found the shutters open ? And how do you justify they left the media repeat, innocently, the spectacular and false story of the broken shutters that miraculously turned them into victims ?
Had Madeleine had an accident when searching for them or even had she been abducted when searching for them, would people have thought the parents were victims ? Would you, Benice ? Or would you, if, by chance (the media wouldn't have reported it) you heard of the drama, simply feel compassion for parents who made a mistake with such cruel consequences ?
No doubt that readers of the UK newspapers, which all sang a song they
didn't invent, thought the police was incompetent: doors locked, broken shutters and open window, what could it be unless a predator ? Why would the police lose precious time looking for a little girl who obviously hadn't wandered off ? Would they be trying to protect tourism, etc.
Though I find inappropriate to consider abduction as a fact, I'm not excluding the possibility Madeleine was abducted. Nevertheless, this hypothesis raises many questions, the first being why her parents didn't say the truth. The one and only reasonable explanation I can find is denying reality.