The gist of Oldfields statements, is that the room seemed to have more light in it that he expected it to have,based on nothing expect that his own daughters bedroom with the shutters down and door closed was in pitchblack
He did not really know why there was some light around so he could see in the Mccanns kids bedroom, he said there were various possibilities, one the shutter being slightly up, thinking it was down on his 9pm check and since his kids room is dark with the shutter down so should his room, two the moon, three a source inside the apartment behind him
If the source was from the shutters being open, would the light have come through seeing as the thicker curtains were closed? No wind, no curtains flapping, no cold felt, no slamming doors. The simplest explanation is the light source was coming through the kitchen window whose blinds were up, and where across the street to them was a street lamp. Something which he wouldnt have seen in his own flat as his kids bedroom was on the opposite side of the light source.
Relevant parts of statements here
Sorry, dont have time to edit the rogatory part
4th may statement
At around 9.25pm, the interviewee went into his apartment and Madeleine's apartment to check on the children. He states that the door of the bedroom that was occupied by Madeleine and the twins, was open and that there was enough light in the bedroom for him to see the twins in their cots. That he couldn't see the bed occupied by Madeleine, but as it was all quiet, he deduced that she was sleeping. That the light was not from an artificial source inside the apartment, but perhaps something coming from outside through the bedroom window. That it seemed to him that the shutters of the parents' bedroom window were open without knowing if the window was also open.
10th may statement
That he did not enter the bedroom where MBM and the twins were sleeping. He recalls that the bedroom door was half open, making an angle of 50 degrees. He does not know how far away he was from the bedroom door. He recalls having the perception that the window curtains - green in colour - were drawn closed but could not determine if the window was closed or open. Concerning the external blinds he clarifies that he did not see if it was closed or open. He recalls having thought that in that bedroom there was more brightness than there was in his daughter's room (where the external blinds were always fully closed), adding to have had the feeling that that light was coming from the outside - making the point that both were turned in the same direction.
Consequently, he admits the possibility of the light he was perceiving was owing to the blinds being raised, denying however that he was capable of assessing the height at which it may have been.
The question asked, he was sure that, at the time of his first being in the vicinity of MBM's bedroom, reported as 21h05 in the course of which he had approached the the window of that bedroom from the outside for the purpose of an auditory check, the blinds were, in his view, fully closed.
Consequently, he is convinced that at the time of the second check the blinds were more open than on the first check, given that he considers that the light inside the bedroom, undoubtedly coming from the outside, could not have been coming through it [the blinds] if they had been fully closed.
Rogatory interview april 08
Reply "Erm, so I went to check on G**** and I stood up and Russell stood up and said he was going to go and check as well and Kate stood up and I said, you know, do you want us to go and check on, erm, do you want me to go and check on your kids, erm, and she said yes. And I think I offered at that point just because we had been together all week and we had similar routines and it just kind of seemed like a nice thing to do that would save her a journey back up and, you know, it may or it may not have been different. But, erm, I said that and she said yeah fine and she said that the patio door was open and go in through there. And there was me and Russell as well, so, erm, you know, it seemed, at the time, a very reasonable thing to do, even though it was the first time that we'd certainly done it. Also, having somebody else there with me, it sort of felt sort of more, more sort of natural and normal. So we went out and we debated about whether we'd go in first or go in later, but Russell wanted to get back because E*** had been a little bit unsettled and so we went back first and he went in and I went in to check on G**** and actually went in through the door, unlocked the door, looked in, into her room, all fine, came back out, shut the door, erm, went over to his apartment and he said that E*** had been sick so he was staying back with her. So I went back and did the check on five 'A', on Madeleine and the kids, erm, and went back through the patio entrance, so through the gate, through the patio doors, erm, there was, it was light enough to see through the apartment and there sort of a little table light on the right at the end of the sofa and when you walk into the room, you could see straight into it, because the door was open. Erm, I've spent a lot of time debating how far the door was open, from previous questioning, and, you know, it wasn't flat back against the wall, because that would have looked odd, it was just sort of halfway open, so it seemed slightly unusual that it should be so wide open, because you could see straight into the middle of the room from the angle that you approach it, because the, you've got sofas here and you've got a bookcase here and you have to come out, you've got sort of the wall of the bedroom and then it goes back where the bathroom is and then comes out again, so you've got to come out round this wall to sort of, not out round this wall, but you come in and the doorway is sort of recessed, so you can see pretty much straight into the room from the doorway back or certainly as soon as you get past that final wall. So it seemed odd to have that door open, it's certainly not something that, you know, G**** has it completely pitch black, because it seems to me that she sleeps a bit longer, erm, but some people do leave the door open and I know Russell and Jane, for E***, and L*** subsequent, also has the door slightly open, you know, they have light and they prefer that, but we've never done that with G****, so it seemed a little bit odd, but not without the realm of possibility. So I approached the room but I didn't actually go in because you could see the twins in the cots and one of the, you could see the twins in the cots because they're in with, sort of the cots were in the middle of the room with sort of a gap of about sort of maybe a foot between the two, the cots had sort of got that fabric end and sort of a mesh side, so you could see the sides and you could see them, erm, see them breathing and there were two there and it was all completely quiet. And the other things you could see in the room, there was a, there was another bed at the back underneath the window at the far side and you could see the end of the bed, another bed here. And because I was looking for, you know, well people say, well why didn't you go in the room, why didn't you check on Madeleine, you were, you said you'd go and check, but it was just that, we were just satisfying ourselves that nobody was upset and awake and crying, we didn't expect that if I checked each three beds somebody, it just wasn’t sort of something that you thought about, you just thought, you know, is somebody, you know, upset, do they want their mum or something, you can say, you know, somebody might have vomited and you wouldn't know about it, but there was, you know, nobody was awake, you thought, if something, just one, it'd be, it'd sort of feel a bit odd, you know, from the draughts, you know, when Kate went in something about the door shutting, there was, I presume, a through draught. So I just sort of went towards the doorway, I didn't step over the threshold, I didn't see Madeleine and I didn't check, I turned round and came back out, said all was quiet when I got back to the table and then we went on with food. Now the room was, we talked also in the interviews about how light the room was and whether I could see the shutters, and I can't see the shutters because the curtains were shut and, they're similar curtains to the ones you've got in there, and you just get an impression of just like green and yellow, but they were closed, they weren't sort of blowing about, because I'm sure I'd have noticed if there was sort of movement like that. But the room seemed light, and we spent a lot of time talking about this, whether it could be light coming in from the street outside, but there was a light behind us in the room and for some reason I thought, I got the impression of light coming through the doorway from behind me, which is why I said that I thought perhaps the moon was out, erm, but there as no sort of, you know, it's a question of whether, there was no sort of slats of light coming through the back that particularly caught my eye. So I didn't specifically see the shutters and I couldn't say that they were definitely open, but certainly the curtains were shut and everything was quiet".
