At what time were the police called after Madeleine's disappearance?

[Redblossom]

Thanks John, that clears that one up nicely

[John]

Some excerpts taken from Madeleine.

[icabodcrane]

Some excerpts taken from Madeleine.

What point are you making John ?

We know that Matthew Oldfield was asked by Gerry  to go to reception,  and we know that Oldfield did as Gerry requested

In his own statement , though,  Oldfield expresses regret that he did not insist that the reception call the police there and then  ( in fact, he gives the impression that he left reception fully aware that the police had not  been called at that point )

As to John Hill being described by Kate as finding the wait  (  for the police to arrive )  difficult,  it should be pointed out that John Hill  ( by his own statement )  declares that he was first  informed, on his mobile, at 22.28pm.  Five minutes later  ( 22.33pm )  he presented himself at the resort

He says that on arrival he saw about a hundred people searching the grounds, and that intially he thought that the child had got lost. When the searches did not produce any results he became increasingly worried

It was not until  then  that he went to reception to see if the authorities had been alerted  (  this would exactly correspond to that first call being made to the police at 22.41, through John Hill's instruction )

Also worth noting, is that John Hill declares that  a further 15 minutes passed before  he went to the McCann's apartment and met them

Kate's extract reads as though John Hill was with her at 10.35pm,  and that he was already agitated that the police had not arrived

That is misleading.   John Hill ( by his own timing )  did not meet the McCanns until  10.55pm, some 15 minutes after he ordered  that the police be called ( which explains his reassurance to Kate that the police would be there soon  )   ...  he was right,   they arrived within the next five minutes  ( 20 minutes after they had first been contacted )

[icabodcrane]

So what route did Matthew take to get to the main Ocean Club reception?

At this point I am more interested in why Gerry asked Matthew to go to the 24 hour reception when he had already been there himself

[John]

Thanks Anne, it is always best to get the basics sorted even now.  Some photos on the internet even show the wrong position for the tapas bar never mind the completely wrong location for the Murat villa.

Here is the reference mentioned earlier.  Two points worthy of note.

1. The Mini Club is above the 24-Hr reception (blue dot on map).

2. Gerry asked Mat to go 'back down' to the 24-hr reception at 10.35pm to find out why the GNR had not arrived.  Remind me...didn't the staff only telephone them at 10.41pm according to some?

3. So looks like Gerry had been down to the Mini Club/24-Hr Reception soon after the disappearance was discovered, returned to the apartment and had to ask Mat to go back down again when the police didn't arrive.

4. Pleading with people to call the police from the tapas area.  So there are other calls independent from those listed on the land-line records attributed to reception.   

[AnneGuedes]

Thanks Anne, it is always best to get the basics sorted even now.  Some photos on the internet even show the wrong position for the tapas bar never mind the completely wrong location for the Murat villa.

Here is the reference mentioned earlier.  Two points worthy of note.

1. The Mini Club above the 24-Hr reception.

2. Gerry asked Mat to go 'back down' to the 24-hr reception at 10.35pm to find out why the GNR had not arrived.  Remind me...didn't the staff only telephone them at 10.41pm according to some?

I would add
3. At that moment she (Pamela Fenn) offered Gerry help, saying that he could use her phone to contact the authorities, to which he replied that this had already been done. It was just after 22.30.

[faithlilly]

Thanks Anne, it is always best to get the basics sorted even now.  Some photos on the internet even show the wrong position for the tapas bar never mind the completely wrong location for the Murat villa.

Here is the reference mentioned earlier.  Two points worthy of note.

1. The Mini Club is above the 24-Hr reception (blue dot on map).

2. Gerry asked Mat to go 'back down' to the 24-hr reception at 10.35pm to find out why the GNR had not arrived.  Remind me...didn't the staff only telephone them at 10.41pm according to some?

3. So looks like Gerry had been down to the Mini Club/24-Hr Reception soon after the disappearance was discovered, returned to the apartment and had to ask Mat to go back down again when the police didn't arrive.

4. Pleading with people to call the police from the tapas area.  So there are other calls independent from those listed on the land-line records attributed to reception.   

What strikes me about the extract from Kate's book posted by you John is if the McCanns were pleading with people to phone the police too why did Gerry refuse Mrs Fenn's offer to call them ?

[DCI]

What strikes me about the extract from Kate's book posted by you John is if the McCanns were pleading with people to phone the police too why did Gerry refuse Mrs Fenn's offer to call them ?

Nothing odd about it, when Mrs Fenn offered to let Gerry use the phone, around 10.30, they had already been called. By 10.35 they still hadn't arrived, so they were called again. 

[John]

That's what she says, he thanked her for her kind offer but assumed the reception guy had done it when Gerry asked him shortly after 10.10pm.  Question is why didn't he do so?  Hmm... >@@(*&)

[AnneGuedes]

Since Matthew is unlikely to  have been aware of the short cut  (  having no child using the mini club )  he probably took the long way round

Matthew went there twice.
Fiona, I think, asked me to go and phone the Police, so I actually went down the route to where she would have gone for Nursery drop off, to the main reception essentially, looking for her at that time and I asked the reception to phone the Police, and that must have been about five past, it's difficult to know what time it was at that time, but maybe about ten past ten, five past ten, ten past ten". It was surreal when you got there, I said, you've got to phone the Police, a child's been taken, and they went, oh no, she's probably just  woken up and he thought she's probably  wandered off or something like that and you thought  maybe you're right, can you please, it was , it was kind of, it was sort a weird kind of lack of urgency, he'd ring, but you had to stand there and say, ring now, ring now, so I don't know if they rang at that point,  maybe about ten past ten maybe. , then we went back up to, or I went, because I was on my own, I went back up to the apartment and it was just obvious that she wasn't in the apartment, I volunteered to go up to the Millennium Restaurant because it was just one of the routes that I thought she might have taken, although I couldn't say why I thought she would because we'd only been there once on that night before and maybe she'd been for the restaurant,
so we'd only been at the initial welcoming,
at some point we were back and forth to the, to the reception as well. And I think what the reception probably did was ring the MARK WARNER people and say, there's somebody that's saying there's a child missing, because by that time there were lots of MARK WARNER people around, and they were very good, they, they obviously, got there and that might have been the impetus that got them to ring the Police,
 I understand that there is some discrepancy about when we thought we'd called the Police and when the Police were actually called, this would have been about thirty minutes or so later, back to reception, and at that point, Gerry had come down as well

[faithlilly]

What strikes me about the extract from Kate's book posted by you John is if the McCanns were pleading with people to phone the police too why did Gerry refuse Mrs Fenn's offer to call them ?

Nothing odd about it, when Mrs Fenn offered to let Gerry use the phone, around 10.30, they had already been called. By 10.35 they still hadn't arrived, so they were called again.

'Around 10.30' and 'by 10.35' . Splitting hairs, aren't we ?

[DCI]

What strikes me about the extract from Kate's book posted by you John is if the McCanns were pleading with people to phone the police too why did Gerry refuse Mrs Fenn's offer to call them ?

Nothing odd about it, when Mrs Fenn offered to let Gerry use the phone, around 10.30, they had already been called. By 10.35 they still hadn't arrived, so they were called again.

'Around 10.30' and 'by 10.35' . Splitting hairs, aren't we ?

If you say so!

[icabodcrane]

What strikes me about the extract from Kate's book posted by you John is if the McCanns were pleading with people to phone the police too why did Gerry refuse Mrs Fenn's offer to call them ?

Yes, that struck me as being significant too ...  the more people raising the alarm the better, yet Gerry rejected a direct offer to call the police

Even more significant, though, is the fact that Gerry himself had been at the 24 hour reception but made no demand for the police to called while was there ...  did not even ask whether the police had been called already and stress that they were needed urgently

He just went back to the apartment and asked Matthew to go back to the 24 hour reception and do what he had chosen not to do himself while he was there

[John]

insert

[Benice]

What strikes me about the extract from Kate's book posted by you John is if the McCanns were pleading with people to phone the police too why did Gerry refuse Mrs Fenn's offer to call them ?

Yes, that struck me as being significant too ...  the more people raising the alarm the better, yet Gerry rejected a direct offer to call the police

Even more significant, though, is the fact that Gerry himself had been at the 24 hour reception but made no demand for the police to called while was there ...  did not even ask whether the police had been called already and stress that they were needed urgently

He just went back to the apartment and asked Matthew to go back to the 24 hour reception and do what he had chosen not to do himself while he was there

That's not how the description in Kate's book reads to me. If you read the 'extract' in it's full context,  imo Gerry wasn't going to reception to speak to someone in reception - he was going to the Mini club to look for Madeleine.   

It's not clear from Kates's book when he did that, but it sounds as if it was part of all the frantic searching here there and everywhere that he was doing - and was AFTER he thought the police had already been called from Reception.   

When he didn't find her at the Mini club he went back to the apartment at some stage - still under the impression that the police had been called  -  and when the police still hadn't arrived at around 10.30 he asked Matt to go back to reception.   And that's when John Hill arrived at 5A.  IMO