You appear to be expecting the Met to publicly validate their acceptance of the efits as evidence worthy of inclusion in the investigation's TV appeal, while that may not be in keeping with their true intention. The provenance & history of the images are not issues for which the Met are accountable.
...folk who compile dossiers and send in FOI requests relating to this case, in the naive belief they are "making a difference".
These two efits are not a mere matter of curiosity. Nor are they part of any agenda other than a pursuit of the truth.
Everything about these efits is dark and mysterious - and subject to numerous evasions, half-truths, and now, with the Met saying they first received the efits in August 2011, then changing this to September 2008, outright contradictions.
I am only surprised that so few people have taken a serious interest in them.
Let us look back for a moment at their origin, always bearing in mind that no-one apart from a handful of people even knew they existed before that dramatic Crimewatch McCann Special in October 2013, 6½ years after Madeleine was reported missing.
Ostensibly, these efits were drawn up by Henri Exton in the spring of 2008 on the basis of the Smiths’ recollections of what he looked like.
Just let’s run through some of the circumstances behind that claim, that make it seem highly improbable. We could mention, for example:
1 The Smiths say they only saw this man for a few seconds at the most
2 It was dark at the time (10pm)
3 They admitted the street lighting was ‘weak’
4 Some of them admitted they did not get a clear view of his face
5 When interviewed by the PJ on 26 May 2007, each one of the three Smiths stated on the record: “We would never be able to
recognise him if we saw him again”
6 The efits appear to have been drawn up a year or possibly longer after the claimed sighting on 3 May 2007, making any attempt at remembering a face in any detail impossible
7 Martin Smith by then told the PJ that he was 60% to 80% sure that the man he said he saw was Gerry McCanns, and
8 On the basis of the efits, it seems that the Smiths couldn’t even agree on what he looked like. One efit had a larger face, a rectangular-shaped head, a long and broad chin, wavy hair and thick lips. The other one didn’t.
Then we note the following: the PJ investigation was archived in July 2008, while Operation Grange was not set up until 12 May 2011 or later, an interval of very nearly three years. During this time, there was therefore no active investigation.It is said by the McCanns that the efits were given to the PJ and Leicestershire Police ‘by October 2009’. We don’t know who handed them to these forces. Nor do we know when they did so. No do we know what they did when they received them. As I say, all is darkness and mystery.
But we might very well ask the McCanns: what did you do with the efits when the Channel 4/Mentorn Media documentary was made in May 2009, and what did you do with them when Kate McCann’s book, ‘madeleine’, was published in May 2011 (i.e. before Operation Grange was set up)? In the Channel 4/Mentorn Media documentary, May 2009, the details of the Smithman sighting were given TWICE during the documentary, once in the middle, once at the end. It was definitely suggested that Tannerman and Smithman could have been one and the same – even though it would have meant the abductor wandering around the streets of Praia da Luz for three quarters of an hour. By the time this programme was shown, the McCanns had had the Smithman efits for up to a year. They also had ‘crack’ ex-detective Dave Edgar and his assistant, Arthur Cowley, working on the case (Cowley has since said on the record that he will take his secrets about the McCann case ‘to my grave’). They must have been shown the efits. The McCanns were clearly in control of that documentary; it rehearsed their account of events.
So why on earth did they not then release the Smithman efits and present them to the public? Moreover, the same week as the documentary, the McCanns uploaded a 30-second recording in an Irish voice summarising Martin Smith’s statement. Once again, why on earth were the Smithman efits not shown on their website?
Then we come to Kate McCann’s book, 'madeleine’. On seven separate pages in the book, the Smithman sighting is referenced. On three of them, there is a detailed chart comparing the descriptions of Smithman and Tannerman, point by point, carefully emphasisng what Kate McCann calls the ‘striking similarity’ between the two sightings. Again, why was this second opportunity missed to highlight the Smithman efits?
As we all know, releasing the Smithman efits was only possible once Operation Grange had eliminated the Tannerman sighting.
£2 million and six months or more was spent by the BBC and Operation Grange in 2013 to try to convince us that Tannerman was in reality a bloke who hadn’t come forward for six years, who happened also to be carrying a young blonde girl, with no sign of her mother in sight, without a buggy, and dressed only in pyjamas – pyjamas, what’s more, that he had carefully kept in drawer for 6½ years. In addition, we were asked to believe he was wearing clothing similar to the cloth clothes, shiny classic shoes etc., and ‘not looking like a tourist’, described by Jane Tanner, then Nuno Lourenco, and then Martin Smith. Moreover he had not taken the shortest and most obvious route from the night crèche.
Possibly the expert production of that Crimewatch Special, and its effect on the minds of the British public, have been Operation Grange’s greatest achievements.
All the same, just like Wendy Murphy, I’m not buying it.
The provenance and history of these efits, and the use to which they have been put, are absolutely matters on which the Met Police should be accountable. There is more than a degree of suspicion that the Met have not been truthful about them – and maybe others have not been truthful ,either.
A police force is accountable for all of its actions. Especially so when Madeleine’s disappearance is the most notorious missing child case in world history and the Met and the BBC invested so much time and money in promoting these two very controversial efits.
All IMO of course.
