No I'm sorry but that won't do. In the heat of the moment the McCanns told their relatives that the shutters had been broken. Why should they not have genuinely believed that to be the case? I don't know what you mean about saying anythn "officially" but by the next day and the first statement it would almost certainly have become apparent or have been pointed out to them by police or others that the shutters were not actually broken. So,once again I ask you: why have you completely dismissed the possibility that the McCanns genuinely believed the shutters had been broken in the immediate aftermath of the disappearance?
If anyone knows how these shutters work it would help. I have only used the wooden German ones, which were much heavier than these metal ones and much too heavy to raise from outside. I know this because I watched two very fit men try once.
If you forced these metal shutters up in such a way that they jammed, for example, they wouldn't go down again when you used the strap inside as Gerry did. If the mechanism inside the top broke, they couldn't be raised using the strap.
The shutters in question were open and went back down when lowered with, I assume, the strap. Therefore not showing any sign of breakage by being jammed up. The only way they could be broken therefore was if the mechanism was broken, meaning they couldn't be raised using the strap. As far as I know that wasn't tried, so no opinion could have been reached..