maybe its just ME but the whole bunch knew about tanners sighting even writing it down in the handwritten timelines thing
The 'handwritten timelines thing' was actually TWO timelines which said slightly different things, but BOTH said that Jane Tanner had seen a man carrying a child away from Apartment G5A at about 9.15pm on 3 May 2007. These were written by Russell O'Brien within two hours of Madeleine's reported disappearance. Moreover, these 'handwritten timelines things' were written on the cover of a Sainsbury's Activity Sticker Book of Madeleine's, which one of the 'Tapas 9' (O'Brien or someone else) had ripped off. As this was Madeleine's own book, it is reasonable to infer that Gerry or Kate McCann gave permission or at the very least knew about this timeline being written on their daughter's sticker book.
On pages 328-9 of her book 'Madeleine', Kate McCann makes it plain that she remains 100% sure that Jane Tanner really did see a man carrying off Madeleine from her apartment. This makes it all the stranger that the McCanns' chief private investigator, Dave Edgar from Crewe, at a press conference in August 2009 called to discuss a 'Victoria Beckham-lookalike' who was said to have been asking about 'her new daughter' on a Barcelona quayside at 2am, said that Jane Tanner 'might have seen a woman'.
Kate McCann adds that the 'sighting' of a man allegedly seen by Irishman Martin Smith at about 10.00pm on 3 May 2007 carrying a young child may be another sighting of the abductor, probably making him the first abductor in world history to have wandered around a tourist resort for three quarters of an hour wondering what to do with an abducted child. Although Jane Tanner's description was of a man with 'long, black hair' while Smith said he had 'short, brown hair', Kate spends five pages of her book (pp. 328-9 and 370-2) strenuously arguing that it was the same man. As Kate herself writes (p. 328): "Who knows why there was a forty-five minute gap between the two sightings, or where this man might have been in between?"
In evaluating Jane Tanner's evidence, there are quite a few other factors for us to consider, including:
1) several changes in her story
2) more detail being provided in her second and subsequent statements (contrary to the general principle that memory fades)
3) her excessively rambling Rogatory interviews, full of 'erms', 'you knows', 'ums', 'sort ofs' and so forth
4) her adamant insistence on 13 May 2007 that Robert Muarat was the man she'd seen carrying away a child on 3 May 2007
5) her later denial in January 2008 that it was Murat that she'd seen
6) claiming that 'Cooperman' and 'bundleman' were probably one and the same, even though she admitted she'd never seen 'bundleman's face.