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P.J.TRANSLATIONS
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Edited version - I have removed the "erms" and "you knows"
unless they were the answer to a question.
RECORD OF TAPE RECORDED INTERVIEW Police Exhibit No SVF116A
Person Interviewed: Matthew OLDFIELD Number of Pages 36
Place of Interview: Force Headquarters Enderby Signature of
Interviewing
Date of Interview: 09/04/08 Officer producing exhibit
Time Commenced: 1019 hours
Time Concluded: 1122 hours Duration of Interview: 63
minutes
Interviewing Officer(s) DC 4078 FERGUSON Tape Reference nos:
SVF116
Other Persons Present None
Tape counter times Person speaking Text
00.00.02 4078 “We are recording okay. So the time is now
eighteen minutes past ten and it is the ninth of April in
the year two thousand and eight. We are in an interview room
here at Leicestershire Police Headquarters. I am DC Sophie
FERGUSON, I work in the Major Crime Unit here in Leicestershire.
Could you just give us your full name please?”
Reply “Matthew David OLDFIELD”.
4078 “Thank you. And your date of birth Matthew?”
Reply “Fourth of January nineteen sixty-nine”.
4078 “And your home address?”
Reply
...................................................................................................
........ 4078 “Thank you. And just to put things in context. You
are married to Rachael MAMPILLY?”
Reply “That’s right”.
4078 “And you have a daughter called G***e who is now two, is
she?”
Reply “Two and a half, she’ll be three in September”.
4078 “And you went on holiday with, in company with the McCANN
family last year?”
Reply “Correct”.
00.00.48 4078 “Which is obviously why you are here. This
interview is at the request of the Portuguese Police and they
will be monitoring this interview partly, you know, sometimes
they will be, sometimes they won’t be. You have been given a
letter from us outlining the objectives for this interview, but
please ask at any time if there is anything you want
clarifying”.
Reply “No, it was clear, I understand”.
4078 “And also if I mumble and you can’t understand what I am
saying, just remind me, because I do forget and I run away with
myself sometimes”.
Reply “I think you speak more clearly than I do, but, yeah,
that’s fine”.
4078 “Nevertheless, just say, you know, if you want to slow down
or whatever”.
Reply “Okay”.
4078 “Your time and co-operation is obviously appreciated, but I
would just ask you to be patient with me as, no doubt, we will
be covering things that you have been over time and time again”.
Reply “Sure”.
4078 “With the Police and, you know, by yourselves”.
Reply “Yeah”.
4078 “I am going to ask you to concentrate as much as you can
and try to recall what you heard, saw and did around the third
of May two thousand and seven. Let me know if you need to take a
break. And I intend to ask fairly open questions and then, as I
said earlier, things that haven’t been covered in that process,
we will go back and ask more closed questions”.
Reply “Okay”.
4078 “So I can tick the boxes that we need to tick today”.
Reply “Right. Okay”.
00.01.55 4078 “Did that make sense?”
Reply “Yeah”.
4078 “Before we go on to the holiday, can you just give me some
background in relation to how you know the McCANNs in the first
place?”
Reply “Yeah, primarily the connection is through, Russell and
Jane, Russell was Rachael and mine Best Man and we’ve been good
friends since we went to University together in Leicester and
originally he went out with a girl in my year called Ann SMITH
and then when I was looking for accommodation Ann mentioned that
he had a space in his house, so there was two girls, Russell,
Paul and myself and we made up the house and we sort of shared
the rental at a house there and we’ve sort of been friends ever
since and then, as I say, he was Best Man for Rachael and I when
we got married in nineteen ninety-nine, and we stayed in contact
pretty much since. We’ve been on hol, well we’ll probably come
onto holiday and stuff later. But through Russell I know David,
who was also at Leicester Medical School, and Fiona WEBSTER, who
is also, Fiona PAYNE as she is now, it was also at Leicester
Medical School and they were two years behind me, so they
graduated in ninety-four and I graduated in ninety-two, they
know Gerry and Kate or they knew them on a much sort of more
friendly level than, than I did. So I knew Gerry because we
worked together in, I think, two thousand and two, when we were
at the Leicester General Hospital, so we knew each other on the,
on call rota, so we’d be together at sort of medical meetings,
but we didn’t sort of socialise more than sort of a quick chat
at that point in time. And then we really got to know them when
David and Fiona got married in two thousand and three, when we
went, when they got, they were married in Italy and we, there
was a big group of people that went out, all the group that were
out in Portugal were there as well, and we shared an apartment
with Gerry and Kate and Madeleine, she was about sort of four
months old then, four months, it was around about September so
she’d be about four or five months old then, and there were
other people within the apartment, there was Stuart and Tara
and, I think that was it, I think there was six adults and the
children, and so we spent sort of a long weekend there for the
wedding and so we got to know them a little bit at that point.
But then we didn’t really have any other contact, apart from,
hearing about them through David and Fiona and Russell and Jane,
from them. And then the holiday came about because,
independently we’d been on sort of various holidays and we’d
sort of often talked about them, sort of being friends and we
then went on a joint holiday to Greece the year before with
David and Fiona, Russell and Jane, but not with the McCANNs,
we’d been to Greece, and sort of spent a week on the beach there
and then sort of thought about booking a holiday the next year
and then Dave and Fiona, I think they’d already been on holiday
with Gerry and Kate on another occasion, they wanted to involve
them in the group and we ended up going for a MARK WARNER
complex in Portugal. Some of us had been to MARK WARNER, various
MARK WARNER resorts before, we’d been to the Greek one in Lemnos,
originally before G***e was born, it was just a last minute deal
and it was great, it was all inclusive, we all like sport, and
sunshine and it was sort of all inclusive and it was just a
very, sort of relaxing sort of place to go, so we went out there
and we were quite keen to do that again because everybody in the
group is pretty sporty, and if you have a lot of people together
you can share sort of the child care arrangements and it’s also
very relaxing for everybody. Because when we went to Greece it
was like the fastest holiday I’d ever been on because there was
only about an hour when they were asleep at lunch each day and a
couple of hours in the evening where you were actually sort off
child care duties, so the week went by in about sort of six
hours, it was all sort of, it was very quick. And so we, we
went, we talked about whether we’d go back to MARK WARNER, I
think, and David and Fiona had looked at various resorts and
chose the Portugal one because it fitted better with time.
Originally we were booked, we got the, we actually (inaudible)
got the week off that they, that sort of fitted, but we were
originally going to go to the Lake District with Rachael’s
parents but we ended up going, saying that, yes, we’d move that
and change that for another week and go out. And various emails,
everybody got sort of tied down to doing it and we booked and
then went out”.
00.06.45 4078 “In relation to Gerry and Kate then, just to
clarify what you have said. You met them at David and Fiona’s
wedding?”
Reply “Yeah”.
4078 “In two thousand and three in Italy. And you stayed, you
shared an apartment with them then. Have you met them socially
between then and now very often?”
Reply “No, no, I know that some of the other groups would, but I
think mainly because we were no longer Leicester based, because
we left Leicester in two thousand and, end of two thousand and
three beginning of two thousand and four, because I got a job
down in Kingston because I came to the end of my training, and
so we moved out, from there. But in between the times that we
were still at Leicester, two thousand and three would have been
the wedding, so the end of two thousand and three, because I
started at Kingston in February two thousand and four and we
didn’t sort of socialise, I don’t think we met them at all after
the wedding, before, before we left to go down to London. But I
know Russ and Jane and Dave and Fiona would have been to sort of
the birthday parties, but more because they were Leicester based
really. And we weren’t, hadn’t become sort of that close from
that small visit in Italy”.
4078 “So the first time you had seen them or had anything to do
with them really again was this holiday last May?”
Reply “Yeah, I mean, we knew about them because Fiona, Dave and
Fiona were sort of close friends with them and I think Fiona and
Kate trained at some point (inaudible) training or knew each
other in that way, so we’d hear about them, but it was, Gerry
and Kate and then Dave and Fi at this end and then Russ and Jane
sort of sort of thing, it was like that”.
4078 “Okay. And the holiday that you had booked starting the
twenty-eighth of April?”
Reply “Yeah”.
00.08.24 4078 “Saturday I think that was”.
Reply “Yeah”.
4078 “Do you remember where you flew from?”
Reply “We flew from Gatwick. We certainly flew from, Russell and
Jane came down with us, and the rest of the group went from
Leicester, from East Midlands, simply because they didn’t want
to come down or get up very early, because MARK WARNER flights
are always particularly early, so they’d need to come down and
stay overnight and then drive down sort of very early in the
morning, so Russell and Jane came to us and then we went down to
Gatwick from our house. And there was a bit of a problem with
the, with the transport, because we’d booked a taxi and we’d
said ‘Look, we’ve got three children, four adults and loads of
baggage for a week, it’s got to be big enough’ and he turned up
in sort of like a standard and said ‘It’s all fine’, we needed
two child seats and a booster seat, and he turned up in sort of
like a standard size taxi and then tried to get us into two and
we’re going, ‘Oh no, we can’t do that’, so we booked into a sort
of a valet parking thing, we’d used before at Gatwick, we drove
down there and parked in that, it was all a bit of a sort of a
rush at the end but got through”.
4078 “Last minute stress, which you don’t need with little
children, I am sure”.
Reply “Yeah”.
4078 “I know from speaking to Jane yesterday that you and Jane
and Russell arrived slightly earlier than the rest of the group,
with flight times?”
Reply “We arrived earlier, yeah”.
4078 “So if you can tell me what you remember from when you
arrived at the resort?”
Reply “I mean, we’d sort of came in by (inaudible) and we
arrived, we got on the bus, we were allocated rooms on the bus,
that’s a question that’s been asked before, so we had the choice
about where we were going to stay, we’d had the keys with our
names on it, we pulled outside the entrance to the Tapas Bar in
the bus and MARK WARNER staff sort of met us and took the
luggage and helped us get it up to the room, we must have
arrived around lunchtime because there was an issue about where
are we going to eat, are we going to get food, and I think on
that first day we popped down to the Supermarket, there was a
Supermarket just down the street, as you may be aware, to just
sort of get snacks and things, because I think the Tapas Bar
doesn’t open, wasn’t open on that transfer day, so we’d have
probably sort of sorted food out and I think we were then
unpacking in the rooms when, the rest of the guys arrived and
they came in by taxi so they actually pulled into the car park
at the back, I remember going out to sort of meet them and say
hello to them”.
00.10.53 4078 “Okay. Bear in mind, obviously I have seen maps
and plans, but my mind just doesn’t retain that kind of
information particularly well, it is a failing on my part, that
I am going to ask you if you can describe things in detail”.
Reply “Sure”.
4078 “So that I can picture it in my mind as we are going
through, because then it makes it easier for me to understand
the logistics of what you are saying as well”.
Reply “Yeah”.
4078 “Just grab my water. Feel free to help yourself to drinks
and things if you need to. I say drinks, there is only water
available, just tell me if you want something else”.
Reply “Yeah, that’s fine”.
4078 “Right. So you have arrived at the resort, you have been
allocated an apartment?”
Reply “Yeah”.
4078 “And presumably you have gone and settled into your
apartment?”
Reply “Yeah”.
4078 “Can you describe to me where your apartment was?”
Reply “Yeah, so there’s the, the apartment block, are at one
side to the let’s think how best to describe it, it’s all based
around a T-junction essentially. So, the apartment blocks runs
along parallel to this bit and you go down the T-junction which
goes down a hill about, oh, the distance now in memory must be
sort of thirty yards, thirty or forty yards, and there’s an
entrance through a sort of a walled enclosure into the Tapas and
sort of pool area and within that there’s sort of like sun
loungers, there’s a big sort of kidney shaped pool and a smaller
children’s pool at the far end of the far end of the complex and
you’ve got the Tapas Restaurant which runs closer to the, on the
far side of the pool from the apartment block and behind that
there is a crèche, where we dropped G***e off to, coming back
out of there you come, pool behind you, you come out the door,
left, up the hill to the T-junction and you turn left just to
get round the, the walls that sort of enclosed the, well it’s
just little walls, which would enclose the back of the apartment
block where we accessed the apartments from and you’d walk
across a small car park into, to access the apartments there”.
00.12.59 4078 “Right”.
Reply “You go under the sort of, the way that the stairwell goes
and the way that the balconies go, you actually walk, I think
you walk under, there’s sort of like a roof made by the above
apartments and things to get to our doorway and so there were,
sorry, stop me if I”.
4078 “Sorry, no, just before I forget to ask. The car park that
you mentioned?”
Reply “Yeah”.
4078 “Does that divide the apartments and the road, is the car
park between?”
Reply “Yeah, so you’ve got a road and then you’ve got a car
park, and then the apartment block and there’s sort of two
blocks of apartments, we were all in one, but if you walked to
the far end of the car park there’d be a sort of little wall and
I think there was a little access, you can either swing your
legs over a wall to get into it but then there was another car
park for another apartment block. So you came through the car
park, the apartment block’s in front of us and then there were
four apartments, ours was five ‘B’, which was pretty much
straight ahead of you just angling off to the left, there was an
empty apartment five ‘C’ and then there was five ‘D’ where
Russell and Jane were, so we were practically, sort of doors
opening, not quite see each other but just about and then to get
to Gerry and Kate’s apartment, who were five ‘A’, you turn left
along a sort of a small wall that separate, that went parallel
to the side of the building, but only went to there, to their
entrance and then it was sort of dead ended and you go round the
corner there to get into their apartment”.
00.14.12 4078 “Okay. So if you were walking let’s say from the
Tapas Bar towards your apartment?”
Reply “Yeah”.
4078 “You wouldn’t pass by, directly pass outside Gerry and
Kate’s apartment?”
Reply “No, because of this, you’d have the wall coming out,
which would make it the bedrooms, yeah, which made it the
bedroom wall, so you walk past that, you wouldn’t actually go
through that. There are other ways to get into the apartments,
the patio doors, which I will talk about in a second, because
dividing, you’ve got the apartment block, so you’ve got the
road, you’ve got the car park going that way and you’ve got the
apartments where we were and it’s a multi-storey, because I
haven’t mentioned Dave and Fi who were five ‘H’, I think five
‘H’”.
4078 “Yeah, I think that sounds about right”.
Reply “And you’d go up the stairs to them, they were the only
people on the next floor up, and that’s because they had, no,
but that’s just where their apartment was, they weren’t next to
us, I think it was to give them a two bedroom place, enough
bedrooms for the children, they had a bigger apartment as well,
I think to get Di in there as well. So you’ve got the apart,
you’ve got the road, you’ve got the car park, you’ve got the
apartments and then if walk through the apartments you’ve got
patio doors that overlook the Tapas Restaurant and the pool
area, but they are separated from that by a small sort of
garden, which is just about the width of this room and then
there’s a sort of a small metal gate that you go out onto a sort
of a passageway which runs between the walls that make up your
back garden and the wall circling the Tapas and the swimming
pool complex, so you could walk through those gates, turn left
to get back onto the road and go down the hill to turn back into
the Tapas”.
00.15.53 4078 “I have got a couple of plans and some photographs
and with you talking about it I think I have pretty much got it
in context. And the bit that I found difficult yesterday was I
assumed that you would walk straight past the bedroom window
where Madeleine had been staying?”
Reply “No”.
4078 “Until Jane clarified for me that there was the car park in
between”.
Reply “Yeah”.
4078 “So actually the only reason to be there would be because
you were specifically going into that apartment?”
Reply “Yeah, that’s right”
4078 “This plan there was obviously is Gerry and Kate’s
apartment, five ‘A’?”
Reply “Yeah”.
4078 “And partially your apartment there, look?”
Reply “And so you’ve got the road that goes down the hill with
the Tapas down here, you’ve got the car park here and you’ve got
the top road, a road up there”.
4078 “And what we did yesterday was we called the doors this
side the ‘roadside doors’ and the other side the ‘poolside
doors’”.
Reply “Okay”.
4078 “Because I think there has been some confusion in the past
about front and back doors”.
Reply “Yes, yeah, it depends which way you call the front and
the back, that makes sense, yeah”.
4078 “Okay”.
Reply “Yeah”.
00.17.06 4078 “Right. So where were we. You have arrived and you
have settled in your apartment, you think you may have gone to
the Supermarket. And do you remember what happened when the rest
of the group arrived?”
Reply “I think, I mean, they would have had to settle into
their, and not particularly clearly at this stage, but, I mean,
the, that evening, in terms of what was going to happen and
where we were going to get food, slightly different, in that,
they did an arrival meet and greet at the Millennium Restaurant,
which was slightly distant from the apartment complex, rather
than the Tapas, the Tapas was closed for that night and there
was also an opportunity to meet sort of the child care people
and all of the sort of sports and activities people. So I think,
I think at about sort of I’m not absolutely certain about this,
but I think at about four o’clock we also went poolside, four or
five o’clock, and that’s where you met the Nannies who’d be
looking after the children the next day, so I think we, you met
that time and then it was packing up and going over to the
Millennium Restaurant and having tea and then coming back and
putting everybody down”.
4078 “Right”.
Reply “So we all ate that evening at the Millennium with the
kids, except, expect I was feeling unwell so I didn’t each much
but I was still at the Restaurant that night”.
4078 “Right. And what were your interests, what did you intend
to sort of be doing that week?”
Reply “Sailing, for me, because it’s a thing I really enjoy but
don’t have any opportunity to at home. I mean, they’re big on
water sports, MARK WARNER, I mean, they do lots of other things
as well, football on the beach and all those sort of things, but
really, for me it’s, it was an opportunity to sort of get
sailing and tennis, which was the original reason we chose MARK
WARNER when we went, because we’d just sort of taken up tennis
and wanted to sort of, to be able to play and so those were the
two things that we anticipated doing most of. I mean, the other
guys wanted to learn how to wind surf and wanted to learn how to
sail because they had only done very little of it or not at all,
but wind surfing I’d done plenty of it and don’t really find it
that, I thought I’d really like it because it’s sort of lots of
equipment, it’s technical and it’s sports as well, but it just
doesn’t work quite for me, but sailing does and I’d have gone
sailing”.
00.19.25 4078 “So did you have to sign up during the welcome
meeting to what you wanted to do?”
Reply “Yeah, yeah, except the guys signed up for, for sort of
introductory lessons in sailing and wind surfing, so I think
that took at least two mornings of their week and there as no
point me doing that introductory bit because you just take the
boats out, so I just sort of intended to go down and sail at the
same time they were having lessons and then there was, there was
tennis as well”.
4078 “Did you play tennis every day?”
Reply “No, I think we tried to play tennis, because they two
things, they do sort of organised lessons and we signed up for
some lessons which got delayed for weather reasons later in the
week, I can’t remember if we signed up for those straight away,
because we didn’t do a group, we didn’t do a group lesson which
we’d done, when did we do a group lesson, I don’t think we did,
I think we just did, Rachael and I, with an instructor, because
I think we felt we’d play sort of socially with everybody else
and then we’d have, do some sort of private lessons rather than
signing up all week. I’m not sure about that. I don’t remember
playing any organised games with anybody else, I think we just
had sort of three, sort of two or three proper tennis lessons”.
4078 “Do you remember when they were?”
Reply “I know there was one on the last Thursday, because it got
moved over from Wednesday, because Wednesday it rained and
Thursday was a pretty decent day for weather, so it would
probably have been, if I’m thinking it’s three, it would
probably have been Monday, Tuesday and Thursday, but I can’t
remember”.
4078 “Okay”.
Reply “I know we played social tennis with the men in the
evening, on that Thursday and we actually, because there weren’t
that many people around, and we actually asked them whether they
could move the tennis forward so they could go to the social
tennis, because it was actually later and it would have gone
across bath time so at least half of us wouldn’t have been able
to go, so they actually moved it forward and I think they moved
it to six o’clock from either seven or six thirty, I think we’d
asked for it to actually be moved to five thirty but it wasn’t
obviously fair on everybody else, in terms of guests, so they
didn’t move it completely forward, but they certainly moved it
forward by at least half an hour”.
00.21.49 4078 “And that as on the Thursday?”
Reply “They moved it for ever night, the Thursday I remember
because it was the men’s social and we didn’t think we were
going to be able to, to get there because we were already a bit
late down the beach, but we’d had sort of a bit of free time,
we’d already had our sort of time off child care, if you like,
and we didn’t know whether the girls were going to give us a
pass to do it, but they did late, so we ended up going to it,
but sort of quite late for it, we were pretty late by the time”.
4078 “Okay. And I am going to ask, and you may not be able to do
this, but I am going to ask if we can go through Sunday, Monday,
Tuesday, Wednesday, and I appreciate that they are all going to
be probably a bit of a blur”.
Reply “Yeah”.
4078 “If there is nothing specific that reminds you of which day
was which then that is, you know, we can’t help that, but I will
go through that process anyway and then it might trigger
something, if it doesn’t, it doesn’t”.
Reply “Yeah, I mean, I think I’ll struggle with that”.
4078 “Yeah”.
Reply “But I think the, I mean, I can remember bits of the
Wednesday because we did things that were slightly different
because it rained. I can remember much more about Thursday
because obviously we talked about it much more”.
00.22.52 4078 “You said that on Saturday you were feeling a
little bit unwell?”
Reply “Saturday I felt unwell, didn’t eat much in the evening,
which for a free buffet is pretty unusual for me, and then I
started throwing up in the evening and I ascribed it to, when we
were on the plane on the way out, they were giving out the meals
and all the kids had been changing seats, so there was, I was
sat with, E**a, which is, Russell and Jane’s eldest daughter and
maybe E**e on one side and maybe G***e as well, but one of the
meals that came round the plastic had already come off and it
was in front of E**a and I said ‘You have mine just in case
there’s something wrong with it’ and so I blamed that I felt
sick that perhaps I was right, it had sort of gone off or
something. It may not have been, it may just have been a bug or
something, but I usually don’t get diarrhoea and vomiting, I
mean, I can’t remember the last time I’ve been sick. But I
started feeling a little bit queasy in the evening and then the
Saturday evening into the Sunday morning I was actually throwing
up, which is just incredibly rare for me. So I felt completely
icky all the day Sunday, so I think to try and avoid infecting
anybody else, I didn’t do much outside the apartment and
certainly in the evening I didn’t go for dinner with everybody
else”.
4078 “That is Sunday out the way with then”.
Reply “So Sunday was pretty much a write-off and I was thinking,
oh, the start of my holiday and I’m not doing anything that
day”.
4078 “Yeah. So Monday was really your first proper holiday day?”
Reply “So Monday would have been the first proper holiday day.
In the mornings we, G***e, Rachael and I always had breakfast at
the Millennium, apart from the day I was feeling funny. And I
think we were the, I think we saw Jane most days. Gerry and Kate
came the first, I think came the first day, or maybe the
evening, but then started making their breakfast all the time,
because they had three kids to get there and the Millennium was
a good ten minute walk along roads with sort of, where you had
to actually cross into the road to get round because of
obstructions on the pavement and there was quite a lot of sort
of fast, although it wasn’t sort of like a busy road, but the
traffic that did come occasionally came through quite fast, so
it was quite a long, erm, a long walk to get there, so they
decided that it wasn’t worth the hassle and they would just eat
and have breakfast in their apartment, so they certainly didn’t
eat there after that first day, if they made it the first day, I
think the group did eat the first day. What I did on Monday, I
don’t know, I would have tried to get out on the water at some
point and I’m sure we’d have played tennis”.
00.25.25 4078 “Was there anybody that you particular spent more
time with than the others, sort of there was a lot of you in the
group?”
Reply “Yeah”.
4078 “Did you tend to spend more time with any particular couple
or person?”
Reply “ I probably spent more time with Russell because, oh and
probably Dave, because we knew them better and also Gerry and
Kate were much more organised about their sort of day and what
they did and they had signed up for tennis lessons, or did they
do tennis group, so they were sort of fairly committed. But we
would sort of end up sort of, so, obviously on a Monday we’d
have breakfast and then, this is like for every day, we’d then
go and drop off at Nursery and so we’d drop G***e off and she
didn’t really like it and so it was a little bit traumatic, she
was actually fine when she was there, which is a typical thing.
So you’d go and you’d drop her and then you’d be on to do what
you’d do next and at some point we did play tennis, we may well
have done that on the first day because it was kind of the
easiest thing to do. I don’t remember who we played or even if
we did that. And the morning would finish around twelve, twelve
thirty, we’d then pick G***e, we’d go and there wasn’t really
much in the, in the Tapas Restaurant for kids so much, we tended
to bring, come back to the apartment and actually sort of do
some pasta and or beans or whatever she fancied eating and we’d
sort of feed there. And initially I think we did that in our own
apartment and we were sort of like chatting over the walls to
Gerry and Kate on one side and when the top tier looked over
they could see us as well. So we’d do that, she’d go down to
sleep about half past twelve, and then that was a relax time, so
we’d either sunbathe or read on the outside. And on every
lunchtime that I could get away with it, either myself and Dave
or one or two of us would go and go down to the waterfront and
take a canoe out or a kayak out and sort of bob about in the
water. In the afternoons we didn’t take G***e back to Nursery,
so we’d keep her with us, she’d sleep sort of, she’d sleep half
twelve to sort of one o’clock and if we were upstairs eating
with Dave and Fiona, as we did much more towards the end of the
week, then she’d maybe sleep ‘til half past three and so we’d be
up and either playing by the pool or we might go down to the, we
went down to the beach but that was on the Thursday. Gerry and
Kate put their kids back into the crèche each afternoon. David
and Fi were a bit more sort of varied about it. And I think
Russell and Jane also kept E**e and E**a out, so we’d often pop
round to their apartment”.
00.28.06 4078 “So the afternoons were more kind of play it by
ear?”
Reply “Yeah”.
4078 “Around the children and depending on whether they slept or
(inaudible) and how much you could get away with?”
Reply “How much you can get away with, it didn’t kind of work,
it was, it’s fairly even. So Rachael and Jane or somebody would
go, certainly on the Thursday, because the Thursday is easier to
remember for obviously reasons, but Rachael and Jane played
tennis that lunchtime and then came back and Russell and I went
off to the beach”.
4078 “(inaudible) to take care of G***e (inaudible)”.
Reply “Yeah, there was always that sort of, oh she’s gone down
to sleep. But, it was quite a nice opportunity to sort of
sunbathe and read books and”.
4078 “What was the weather like during the week?”
Reply “It was sunny but cold, the pools were freezing, so we
didn’t, even though the pool was there, it was unusual for
people to be in it. Sunny most days, it got cloudy and it rained
on the Wednesday and the Wednesday evening was pretty sort of,
in the evenings it was very cold, so at the Tapas Restaurant,
when we were there, we’d often, you’d need a jumper if you sat
outside and there was no heat particularly, and I think Thursday
was sort of fairly similar and quite, well certainly at night
and I think the rest had been sort of maybe a little bit
overcast at times but I’m not really bothered about the
sunbathing and if there was a wind you could go sailing and that
was”.
00.29.32 4078 “Yeah. So it was a win win situation for you?”
Reply “No, it didn’t really matter to me. Although if it wasn’t
sunny then Rachael wouldn’t be sunbathing and she’d be off
playing tennis and so I’d be”.
4078 “Okay. Do you remember the Monday evening, it probably
would have been your first trip to the Tapas Bar, I would
imagine?”
Reply “I remember it only in terms of it then became the same as
it was every, every evening. So after the first night they ate
they said, it was all, it was nice. Because the options for
eating in the evening, because Rachael actually booked the
restaurant for the rest of the week after the first time on the
Sunday night when they ate and it was all very successful. And
because, the whole point of going to MARK WARNER, apart from the
sort of the sport and things, is this issue of child care, which
of course has changed for us completely now, but when you go to
(inaudible) or you go to the other ones, they tend to be sort of
a compound, I mean, they’re not sealed from people from the
outside, but they’re sort of self-enclosed, there’s a warden
sort of at the gate house, but you can walk in and out pretty
freely, and they do a baby listening service, so they have a
number of the Nannies who are on rota who will sit at the bottom
of the, Lemnos was sort of like lots of little cottages, not
cottages, little sort of flats, apartments going up on two
hillsides, and so they would walk round, round and went past all
the apartments and have a listen at the door to see whether
anybody was crying or upset and at the start of the evening, as
you went past, you’d give them your room number and where you
were going to be and then if they heard anybody crying you’d
then be taken back up the, they’d find you in the restaurant and
you’d go up to the door and see what was going on. And that was
the sort of thing that we were looking for when we booked the
MARK WARNER because, it kind of seems funny when you look at it
from this perspective, but at the time, it was just about having
a safe environment where the kids, because all the time and all
through this, the thing you ever worry about is, if I leave them
alone and they’re, you think that they’re safe because they’re
all locked, you’re not really thinking that anything horrible
would happen, you think, what happens if they wake up and
they’re crying and you’re not there and they’re going to be
upset and you think, well, if they’ve got this then it’s going
to be ten minutes at the most, and it’s going to be awful and
you’ll feel bad about it if it happens, but G***e is a really
good sleeper and we’ve got that sort of safety net, so we were
looking for that for Praia da Luz. And it was one of the things
that made us think, maybe we shouldn’t go, because when we were
trying to book, it said it’s a village, it’s not enclosed, it’s
sort of apartments throughout the village and there isn’t a baby
listening service and we can’t guarantee that you’ll be
together, because I think there were three centres, there’s one
up by the Millennium, there’s one Ocean Club and then there was
the one near the main entrance, and so we were concerned that if
one member of the group, we were all going, oh perhaps we’ll be
the Billy no mates, the really unpopular ones will get stuck at
the Millennium and we won’t be able to, we won’t be able to go
out and visit our friends because we’re not going to leave to go
and see them and we won’t be able to share child care and so it
would be fairly difficult and it was a big issue because they
couldn’t guarantee, the couldn’t allocate the rooms for us and
they said it’ll have to wait until you get in the resort but in
the end it was sort of quite quiet and so they sort of could
stick us really close together. I can’t remember why I started
talking about that?”
00.33.03 4078 “It is because we talked about your first night at
the Tapas Bar and then you came on to say the routine would have
been the same as every night”.
Reply “Right”.
00.33.07 4078 “So you were just going to cover the arrangements
that had been put in place for checking on the children?”
Reply “Right. And so the Tapas seemed to fit because, because
you didn’t feel far away from the room, it felt so quiet and
very safe and it was sort of a minutes walk, if that actual
distance seemed quite, you were sort of falsely reassured, but
obviously at this point you could see the back of your
apartment, not hugely clearly, but you can sort of see the
apartment block, you could see if the light came on, for
instance, or you felt that you’d be able to see if the light
came on and because we were sort of going what we thought was
every sort of ten or fifteen minutes, basically between courses,
then you could go. And rather than go and find another
restaurant where not everybody would be able to go because
somebody would need to be babysitting, it seemed most sensible
just to, to stay put in the same place, because the food was
pretty reasonable and just trekking everywhere else was going to
make it such a headache for the child care. And then this issue
of, well you do just put the kids in with babysitters, because
they were in a sort of a Nanny sort of a night drop-off service,
but that kind of felt less safe, in that, one, they wouldn’t
sleep or G***e wouldn’t, we’d be worried that she wouldn’t
particularly sleep and she’d be worried and it’d be difficult to
drop her off because she really didn’t like being dropped off at
the Nursery, which I always tried to avoid that chore, I did it
on the Thursday, but she didn’t like it and she wouldn’t go to
sleep particular well with sort of strangers in a room when
people would be coming in and out to collect their children”.
4078 “It would be unsettling for her”.
Reply “So it actually seemed a worse choice than just being
close but not actually in the room (inaudible)”.
4078 “Was there an actual discussion between the group of you as
to the sort of fifteen minute checks or ten minute checks or
whatever or was it something that you as a couple had decided on
and then the circumstances during the week meant that everyone
had sort of taken it in turns to check?”
Reply “No, we pretty much checked our, well certainly we checked
our own and it was only the last night that we offered to check
for Gerry and Kate. It just, we are sort of fairly similar, our
sort of views on sort of child care and that it was important,
we’re sort of from the same background, we have sort of similar
issues about sort of child rearing, which is why we sort of get
on and there was nothing obvious that anybody would do anything
particularly different. I mean, Russell and Jane sort of are
sort of fairly relaxed and easy going and Dave and Fi are sort
of a bit disorganised and a bit late and Gerry and Kate are much
more organised and we sort of fit sort of between that end of
between, between that end of the scale and Russell and Jane. So
it was all sort of, it was just sort of natural, we didn’t
decide, oh we’ll do this, it just sort of came at natural
breaks, we’d come down and we’d go between sort of courses to
sort of check, but we usually, we’d check our own and, as far as
I know, that didn’t really change. Although, because it wouldn’t
seem, certainly for Russell and Jane I’d be happy to check for
their children because they know me and if they had been awake
and I went in they wouldn’t be particularly, they wouldn’t be
particularly shocked or surprised or not know who I was, but
Gerry and Kate and their children I didn’t know them so well, so
I wouldn’t and certainly at the beginning of the week have
offered to check their children or assumed that that would be
okay, it was only at the end of the week when we seemed to know
each other better and our routines and everybody seemed to be
doing the same thing that it seemed to be a nice thing to do to
offer to save them a trip”.
00.36.24 4078 “Yeah”.
Reply “But, no, the, there was no sort of formal arrangement, as
far as I know, for, for when we would go and check on the kids,
we just went at sort of convenient times as we could”.
4078 “Okay. So I know you can’t specifically remember the Monday
evening, but that began with the sort of weekly routine
(inaudible)?”
Reply “Yeah”.
4078 “Was there, had there been, also before the Thursday, had
there been any problems with that routine?”
Reply “No, anything out of the usual or out of the ordinary?”
00.36.58 4078 “Yeah, was there anything that sort of made you
more anxious about G***e’s welfare?”
Reply “No”.
4078 “Had she woken up on any of those occasions?”
Reply “No, not that we know. I mean, she may have, I mean, she’s
a good sleeper and we put her down about half seven, so we had
about an hour to make sure that she settled well, but she was so
tired from going to Nursery and being out and playing with all
of the others that, she slept like a top. There was nothing
unusual, we never sort of came in and had, had a sort of a worry
about her not being happy or being well”.
4078 “So the overall effect of that, I am assuming, would be
that you were really quite relaxed on that holiday, you were
doing things that you enjoyed doing?”
Reply “Yeah”.
4078 “G***e was occupied and happy?”
Reply “Yeah”.
4078 “And in the evening you had felt very sure that she was
sufficiently tired for you to go and have your meal and you and
Rachael would take it in turns to check on her?”
Reply “Yeah, yeah”.
4078 “Okay”.
Reply “I mean, we’d be, we’d be back by, there was only one time
that we ever went out for a drink after the meal, so normally
the meal would finish around sort of ten and we’d tootle off
back. And I was ill on one night, Rachael was ill on the
Wednesday night and so the Wednesday night was the only time
that I stayed out any later than that. So it was, and we’d
already (inaudible), so it was sort of like an hour and a half
of time that we were away, maybe two hours”.
00.38.15 4078 “Was there anything different about the Tuesday
that you can recall?”
Reply “No, I don’t remember anything specific about, about that
day. I mean, Rachael became ill on the Tuesday night. G***e had,
the thing that would have made it really horrible, when I became
unwell, was for everybody then to go down with D and V, and we
were sort of very worried that it would go first to G***e and
then to the kids and then back up to everybody and completely
ruin the entire trip for everybody, and G***e had loose nappies
nearly every day, but until after Madeleine went, disappeared,
she was never sick and on a couple of occasions then she was
sick, but she had sort of fairly loose nappies. Rachael became I
think unwell over the Tuesday night and was mostly sort of
pottering about the apartment on the Wednesday. But, apart from
that, I don’t remember anything else about the Tuesday”. |
|
4078 “Okay. So, by the Wednesday then, Rachael was pretty much
confined to the apartment, if you like?”
Reply “Yeah”.
4078 “And do you remember what you did that day?”
Reply “I remember I went running with Kate at lunchtime, she’s
quite a good runner, and we went out on the road all the way up
to the main junc, the sort of main road where you access Praia
da Luz from and then back”.
4078 “What sort of distance would that be?”
Reply “Yeah, I think it’d be about three or four miles, maybe
each way”.
4078 “And you run, do you often run?”
Reply “No, I don’t like it, but I quite like it on holiday when
it’s a bit warmer and it’s not so bad on your joints and I quite
like running on the beach, because it feels quite sort of Bay
Watch and it’s kind of Californian”.
4078 “In your own mind, yeah”.
Reply “Yeah, yeah, yeah, and then I woke up. But yeah, but, no,
she’s quite a good runner and I quite enjoy it every now and
again, but, if it’s sort of unusual and you’re sort of exploring
a bit”.
00.40.05 4078 “And how did”.
Reply “I can’t remember how that came about”.
4078 “That is what I was going to ask”.
Reply “Yeah, it may have been that, because I think Kate might
have run most days, because she was quite a keen runner, and it
may just be that either I thought I’d go for a run and she was
already changed, or I was changed and, or Gerry might have said
that, I’m speculating, it may just have been coincidence that we
both got into running gear and then decided to run together”.
4078 “But you went on this route and are saying you found it
quite hard to keep up?”
Reply “Yeah, well, yeah, she’s quite a good runner”.
4078 “Right. Do you remember what you had one before that, in
the morning?”
Reply “No, I have a feeling that on the Tuesday was one of the
sessions that the guys had, either a wind surf or a sailing
lesson down the beach, so I think I’d have gone down there to
sail. Wind conditions were kind of funny, the, the, because it
was kind of, kind of a thermal sort of cycle, so in the morning
it’s actually quite quiet and good for beginners because the
wind’s not really started to blow and the land heats up and the
wind comes in as things move in, so it was the afternoons that
were really strong enough for what I wanted to do, so I think I
must have been a bit disappointed. But I think the Tuesday and
Thursday were days that they had lessons and I went, I’m fairly
sure that I went down to the beach whilst they went and took out
one of the other boats. The Wednesday, one of the days I went
out with Russell and we just bobbed about on the kayaks because,
and I think that was either a Monday or a Tuesday. When did I go
back into the water, have I missed one. One of the days we were
bobbing about on the water just sort of chatting at lunchtime”.
4078 “How busy was it around the beach?”
Reply “Fairly quiet, yeah”.
00.41.51 4078 “And on all the occasions where you went sailing
on your own or with Russell or running even with Kate, was there
anybody, with hindsight now, that sort of springs to mind that
you noticed hanging around that you wouldn’t have expected to
have been there or that you didn’t recognise from the holiday?”
Reply “Yeah, I’ve thought about this a lot and, no, there was
nobody that seemed to be odd or taken an unusual interest”.
4078 “And I have no doubt you have thought about it time and
time again, like you said at the beginning, and in all those
times you haven’t sort of come to any theories about the staff
at the complex or?”
Reply “No, I mean, there was nobody that gave you a particularly
bad feeling. I mean, there was one incident where somebody, and
I think Russell mentioned, might have mentioned it, about
somebody that was videoing and doing pictures of kids, and I
remember being there at the time and the video and everything
and was sort of speaking to them, but I don’t, I didn’t really
know them, I didn’t get any particular vibes, they had children,
they had a video camera”.
4078 “And nothing else has sprung to mind at all?”
Reply “I think, no, I mean, we were so fairly, although we’d
spoke to other people and chatted, it was mainly, it was sort a
self-sufficient group, there was such a number of us, so if we
went to play tennis we weren’t necessarily, taking anybody else
on, or just mixing with the group, because we had enough people
to play with on our own”.
4078 “And the beach was fairly quiet?”
Reply “The beach was fairly quiet”.
4078 “Can you recall the pool and the Tapas?”
Reply “The pool and the Tapas were fairly quiet”.
4078 “What about in the evenings when you were going back to
check on G***e, do you recall some of the other people around?”
Reply “No, there’d be rarely, rarely anybody about, maybe an
occasional one person. Was he, was it the chap, whose name I
can’t remember, he had a child who was willing to be part of, or
was being suggested for the interview, Jeremy, Jeremy or
somebody?”
00.43.49 4078 “Yeah”.
Reply “Who had a child and I think I’d seen him around because I
think their child didn’t sleep particularly well and he may have
been pushing or he might have been collecting from crèche, but
what day or what time, I don’t really remember”.
4078 “How did you come to know Jeremy?”
Reply “It was a couple that we spoke to while we were on, Jeremy
I think I spoke to on the coach, either on the coach or we
already said something when we were checking in, sort of that’d
have been four o’clock in the morning or whenever it was, and
there was, so I think I spoke to him on the coach or on the
plane on the way over, definitely on the coach or on the plane
on the way over, and sort of said hi every now and again, but
didn’t, anything more than that really”.
4078 “And did you speak to him during the holiday?”
Reply “Yeah, just on odd occasions”.
4078 “Okay. Right. So, I mean, having said that you had
struggled to remember what you did each day, you have done
pretty well really so far, you have remembered, for example,
that Rachael was unwell all day on the Wednesday, so therefore
you had gone for a run with Kate. I am guessing, would that have
been when G***e was asleep or?”
Reply “I think that was lunchtime”.
4078 “Yeah. Do you remember what you did after your run with
Kate?”
Reply “No, because I’d have been on, I’d have been on G***e duty
I think that afternoon. So given that Rachael was unwell and she
was sort of in and out of bed (inaudible). But a lot of the time
we ended up, there was sort of like a play area by the pool with
sort of like a plastic, sort of house and little slides, and we
spent most evenings, after the kids, because the kids ate a
little bit earlier, they ate about sort of quarter to five
sometime round there, they’d have their tea, and we’d all move
over to this sort of play area, because, I mean, it was
fantastic, because there was just like little play houses and
things and sort of lots of grass, so there’d be lots of sort of,
they’d sort of chase each other round, they’d play on these bits
and we’d chase them backwards and forwards, taking it in turns
and just sort of stand around and chat. Some people might play
tennis at that point in sort of part of the social games,
because they did, they did like a sort of mixed, women’s night,
men’s night, social, like that. So there was definitely times
when Rachael was on the court, because G***e would be going,
like sort of seeing them on the court, she didn’t like it, she’d
look like at the netting, going ‘Mummy, mummy’ and ‘Come on,
come and play’. So that was pretty much the routine for most
nights and we may have gone over and played with that played
with that stuff a little bit earlier as well”.
00.46.17 4078 “Was it during those sort of times where you got
to know Gerry and Kate a little bit more?”
Reply “Predominantly those, because that’s when we saw them
most, I mean, it’d be sort of a good hour. And the awful thing
was that Madeleine always used to say ‘Oh come on be a monster,
be a monster, chase me’ and you think, there really are, it was
all pretend at that point, but of course, not as it turned out
that the fact that she said that was. But, it was all fun, the
children running round and then they’d all jump on Dave or jump
on Gerry, it was all, they got on great, there was a sort of
good range of ages so they had enough people to play with, yeah,
it was great, they loved it, running around”.
4078 “And I will ask this question, because I know it comes into
play later on, so we may as well cover it while we are going
through this”.
Reply “Yeah”.
00.47.07 4078 “As you got to know Gerry and Kate how did you
find them?”
Reply “Yeah, they’re, I mean, they’re very similar sort of
people. I mean, they were absolute, they absolutely loved their
kids and there’s no question to any of us that they had anything
to do with this. They were appropriate, friendly, they had the
same, I mean, we’re all medics, so you’ve got that in common
anyway. But, yeah, I mean, you see them on the cameras on TV and
they’re all sort of, they are all sort of very, very sort of
focussed, very, sort of (inaudible) but they know what they want
and they can explain it, they are articulate. I mean, he’s a,
sort of an academic sort of medic, so, it’s sort of a
competitive field where you compete for grants and staff and all
that sort of thing, so you need to know what you’re doing, you
need to be sort of fairly on the ball and that’s just how he is,
I mean, it’s just, if he’s got a project, he’s sort of very
focussed and sort of fairly, fairly driven. But, absolutely,
sort of great parents. I mean, most of my memory from Italy is
of sort of, I think Madeleine may have had quite a bit of
attention when she was younger. She was mostly in and out of
sort of the apartment, didn’t see much of her there. I saw more
of Gerry when we were playing sort of football and things. But,
yeah, just a normal. I mean, he’d done quite a lot of sports on
a Wednesday night particularly and when we went to the bar after
we spent a lot of time talking about sort of, could it have been
slightly different could I have been a professional footballer,
this is how, I enjoyed it and how far I got and we talked about
sort of what I’d done and there was quite a lot in common with
that. Kate sort of initially was much sort of quieter but when
you sort of talked to her she’s sort of just friendly and sort
of warm and just a normal person”.
4078 “And how would you describe Madeleine?”
Reply “Sweet, lovely, sort of very outgoing and enthusiastic,
bounds of energy, sort of memories of her as they’re running
round the bits when we sort of chased her, it was always ‘I want
more. I want more. Be a monster. Be a monster’ and running
round, yeah”.
00.49.15 4078 “Sad memories for you all, or mixed memories
probably, I should imagine, bitter sweet?”
Reply “Yeah”.
4078 “And you said the Wednesday you stayed later and you went
for a drink after the meal at the Tapas?”
Reply “Yeah, we might have had one, so about sort of half an
hour or so later that we went back. But the reason, now we
mention it, but I think that was on the Thursday, when we went
to the table, I didn’t sit next to Gerry, because we had this
conversation, he said he’d bored the pants off me yesterday when
we were talking about his sports (inaudible)”.
4078 “Right”.
Reply “I don’t know why I brought that up, I don’t know, it
seemed to be sort of part of my thought”.
4078 “On the subject of drinking and how much you had to drink
in the evenings, has obviously been mentioned in the past, so I
will ask the question”.
Reply “Yeah, somebody said fourteen bottles, I think, oh, tut”.
4078 “Blimey”.
Reply “I know and that was each”.
4078 “So how much did you really have to drink, obviously it is
going to be different each night, but, you know, roughly?”
Reply “I think we had, I think we had between four and six
bottles at the most on the table open but not emptied, so I
think we started with either one of each, sort of a white and a
red, or two of each, and then may have had an extra one during
the course, but not, not drunk, maybe two or three sort of
glasses. It is difficult because it’s holiday and the sort of
the bottles are there and I don’t particularly, I have to be in
the sort of right sort of mood to drink and it sort of can be a
bit cold and it wasn’t always sort of conducive to having lots”.
00.50.51 4078 “To what extent, did you feel like you had been
drinking then?”
Reply “No, not at all”.
4078 “Were there any evenings where you felt, oh I feel like
I’ve had a lot?”
Reply “No”.
4078 “So you always felt relatively sober?”
Reply “Yeah”.
4078 “Is there anything that you can think of, worthy of
mention, up until the Wednesday night before we move onto the
Thursday?”
Reply “No, my initial thought is there’s nothing that’s leapt
out that I haven’t mentioned before. I mean, there was no sort
of strange people or anything unusual with the, with the flat.
Some people had, I mean, gardeners came round to trim the
gardens once or twice, or maybe just once a week, I mean,
because we were there for three weeks, maybe they came round
slightly more. Somebody had workmen in maybe during, the shutter
we broke, the shutter broke for, the outside shutter by the
patio door broke for us on the first day, I think it went back
up into its, so you couldn’t actually drop it on the outside,
the shutter by the patio, but we didn’t drop that anyway, until
we got in at night, but I think it broke and it had to be, and I
think they did come, yes, they did come and repair it. But apart
from that there wasn’t really anybody else (inaudible)”.
4078 “We will concentrate more on your apartment actually before
we move on to the Thursday”.
Reply “Yeah”.
4078 “How are you doing, you know, do you need a break or
anything?”
Reply “No, I’m fine”.
00.52.34 4078 “So we have got the diagram there of your”.
Reply “Yeah”.
4078 “Well mainly all of your apartment and Gerry and Kate’s
obviously. Up until the Wednesday night, from what you have
already said then, you didn’t go into Gerry and Kate’s
apartment, well, sorry, you didn’t check on Gerry and Kate’s
children?”
Reply “No”.
4078 “Had you been into their apartment before?”
Reply “ I don’t think so. It’s hard to remember now at this
point because I know what it looks like. I mean, we certainly
knew the back where their patio was. And it may have been on the
first day that we actually looked at everybody’s apartment,
because we had the smallest apartment, because we only needed
one bedroom and they needed two so we may have had a brief walk
through or as far as the kitchen. But I can’t say with any
certainty that I’d been in”.
4078 “Okay. Can I just borrow that back from you because there
might be another plan in there”.
Reply “I mean, that, I can’t remember whether that was asked in
any of the original statements, there might be something about
that there and that would, I would recall that better”.
4078 “That is just a plan that somebody has drawn up of the
area. It is marked Exhibit DM2 for anybody that is interested
watching the DVD. You have already described the layout of where
you were in relation to the Tapas”.
Reply “Right. It’s sort of pushed out a little bit. Yeah, that’s
right”.
4078 “So this would be Gerry and Kate’s apartment?”
Reply “On this corner here, round this kind of, kind of wall,
yeah. So their door entrance would be in that sort of corner
there and your access would be up and across the car park so
you’d get onto the pavement and come down and then back into the
Tapas here and then there’s a wall here and sort of a footpath
between the lower wall dividing the apartments and sort of a
five foot’ish wall on that side. I’m not sure about that
building there, that’s where they had the tennis place, but
there’s just like a little reception just in the actual doorway
itself, yeah”.
00.54.53 4078 “So can you just mark on there for me your route
between the Tapas and your apartment? Did you always take the
same route?”
Reply “No, because during the day, if somebody was in the
apartment, we’d go back through the patio doors, we’d just leave
them open, if somebody was in, but at night we didn’t, we always
locked it and went round the back. So the day route, when
somebody was in, we’re just going to go sort of, do you want me
to put them both on, I’m going to have to choose a different
colour, and so the night route would be”.
4078 “I’m not prepared for that”.
Reply “Would be, you can’t sort of get over that wall, if that’s
pavement, then that’s down the pavement and you’d go down there
to the, to the Tapas and back and forward and that would be the
checking route”.
4078 “That is fine”.
Reply “The day route, you might, you’d sneak back up here and go
through the patio doors”.
4078 “Yeah. It’s more the night route I was interested in
because obviously when we come on to talk about the Thursday
evening it is going to be your route and in relation to what
everyone else has said”.
Reply “Yeah”.
4078 “I am just going to call this now MO1, just because it is
specific to you now that that is the route that you have taken”.
Reply “Yeah, sure”.
4078 “And we will do an Exhibit label for that as well in due
course, no point wasting the time doing it at the moment. And
then logistically then, when you would go to your apartment to
check G***e?”
Reply “Yeah”.
00.56.22 4078 “You would come through, as you have described?”
Reply “Yeah”.
4078 “And through the roadside door, if you like, rather than
the poolside door, would that be right?”
Reply “Yeah, so you have got those dotty bits there. So our door
is here, these are the shutters on the back of our thing, so
you’d come out through here and you’d come in and you’d go into
the room here. And we had the bed head was here and came out
into the room and G***e’s cot was here”.
4078 “Okay. So G***e was in the cot rather than the bed?”
Reply “Yeah, yeah, she was in”.
4078 “Okay. And this door here, what was the door like?”
Reply “Brown, big, brown and wood, brown and wood like. There
was a lock, it sort of, one of those you turn twice with the
key. And I think, and sort of I think a round, or was it like a
lever handle, I can’t remember what the handle was like, I think
you had to turn it to go in and so it would snip, you couldn’t
really shut it with the lock on, but I think if you didn’t lock
it up here you could then just open it and shut it, I think you
had to actually lock it to, it wasn’t like a Yale thing that
stops you opening it again, I think”.
4078 “On the evenings where you and Rachael both went to the
Tapas and you checked on G***e?”
Reply “Umm”.
4078 “What did you do in relation to securing the apartment, did
you lock?”
Reply “These would all be locked”.
4078 “Yeah”.
Reply “The shutters, we didn’t open all week, because there’s
kind of no point. I mean, we went in that bedroom for G***e to
sleep during that day, it needed to be dark and kept it at an
even temperature, there was no point putting it up and down. I
know the, one of the things I said in my statement, when we talk
about the Thursday, was where the two windows were only the one,
and I thought the two were on this bedroom rather than this one
and so I said, you go through, but there’s actually two more,
apparently two on those, they showed me a photograph of that. So
that’s something I know that I got mistaken by, I thought there
were two on next door, because I don’t think I’d ever noticed it
because I think because we’d never pulled up the shutters, they
were always sort of down, we just didn’t interfere with those”.
00.58.35 4078 “Yeah”.
Reply “And so the patio doors would be shut and locked, the
outside shutter wouldn’t have been down until we were in there”.
4078 “Okay”.
Reply “But everything else, there’d had been no windows, the
windows would all be shut and secured”.
4078 “So at this end then the shutters would have been down and
that would have been locked?”
Reply “Yeah”.
4078 “Okay. And you say G***e was in this first bedroom on the
left here?”
Reply “Yeah, there’s only one bedroom in ours, so we all slept
together, so it was us and G***e was there. There’s just like a
bathroom and toilet, the bath goes along there. And there’s sort
of like a living area with, there was a TV I think on the table
there, a side table, a couch and a couch there”.
4078 “Okay. When obviously you were next to the McCANN’s, in
their apartment?”
Reply “Yeah”.
4078 “Did you hear between the apartments?”
Reply “You could hear from the bathrooms, you’d be able to sort
of hear, you’d be able to sort of hear talking and, particularly
at bath time. They’d go slightly earlier than G***e just
because, I mean, sort of I’m a bit disorganised about getting
G***e to bed, so they’d already be in bed slightly earlier, but
you’d often hear them in the bathroom. And I know that G***e had
some fairly loose nappies that needed putting in the bath to
clean off, which she hated, so she used to cry for that first
thing in the morning and I think they’d heard her in the
morning. But you’d often hear them talking in the evening”.
01.00.17 4078 “You see, the reason I am asking that is, I think
it was the Sunday night that you stayed in the apartment, wasn’t
it?”
Reply “It was on Sunday night, yeah”.
4078 “Did you hear any of the children during that Sunday
evening that you are conscious of?”
Reply “No, no, I mean, at no time we didn’t hear, I mean, sort
of the big picture about whether they were being sort of, well
looked after, I didn’t hear any sort of screaming, shouting or
anything sort of untoward”.
4078 “You have and you had no concerns about?”
Reply “No, either child care or parenting or them not being
happy. I mean, you do a bit of child psychology when you do and
you know what kids should do. If you leave them in a room and
you’ve got, and they’re linked, well linked to their parent,
they look anxious, then they leave the room and they’re happy
when you come back, they’re, it was all appropriate sort of,
there was nothing odd about the way they interact with their
children, they didn’t do anything that would made me think, that
was my”.
4078 “Okay. Right. The Tuesday evening would have been the
evening that Rachael stayed in the apartment?”
Reply “Rachael was sort of, became unwell the Tuesday evening
and she stayed in the apartment, yeah”.
01.01.34 4078 “The reason I am specific about that is because
there is a statement from somebody who says they hear children
crying and I think it is the Tuesday evening, I will stand
corrected if I am wrong, it was either the Tuesday or the
Wednesday”.
Reply “Yeah”.
4078 “So I must make a point of mentioning it to the other
Officer to specifically ask Rachael. I am sure she will recall
and say if there was anything relevant but we must ask”.
Reply “Yeah, I think, for some reason, she’s, I don’t know
whether that’s come up before, maybe just asked her
non-specifically did she hear anything, but I didn’t on the
Sunday night and, you know, she’d have said if, and she’s never
said that she heard anything”.
4078 “Yeah. Okay. I will just make a note to myself though just
to remind me because, as I say, whilst you are here it is best
to ask all the questions”.
Reply “Yeah”.
4078 “Okay. So that takes us really up until the Wednesday
night. And the Thursday is going to be you actually go through
that sort of blow by blow as far as we can”.
Reply “Yeah”.
4078 “So it may be a good time for a break if that is okay with
you?”
Reply “That’s fine, either, what you need to do”.
4078 “I think we have been, what time did we start”.
Reply “About an hour I think we’ve done”.
4078 “Okay. Well we will just have a short break and I will get
you a tea or coffee?”
Reply “I’d love coffee”.
4078 “Coffee?”
Reply “Yeah, please. But I can make it next door if you like?”
01.02.46 4078 “No, well if you pop next door I will bring it
down to you in a minute”.
Reply “Alright. Thanks”.
4078 “And then when we come back in to do the next interview we
can concentrate on the Thursday without having a break during
that process”.
Reply “Yeah”.
4078 “Because it is nice if it, you know, if it is flowing just
to carry on”.
Reply “Yeah, alright. Thanks”.
4078 “Alright”.
SIGNATURE (Sgd)
SM M OLDFIELD
|
|
00.00.03 4078 “Okay. It says the time is
eleven fifty-four and we are still on Wednesday the ninth
of April two thousand and eight. I am DC Sophie FERGUSON
from Leicestershire Major Crime Unit. I know we have already had
an interview but just introduce yourself again please?”
Reply “I’m Matthew David OLDFIELD”.
4078 “Thank you”.
Reply “Do you need my address or anything?”
4078 “No, I think we will go with the first one for that. We
have been speaking Matthew already about the first part of your
holiday in Praia da Luz last May?”
Reply “Yeah”.
4078 “And obviously in relation to Madeleine McCANN going
missing. And we have already covered between Saturday and
Wednesday night. And then we got to the point where I kind of
enforced a break on you. And we can now concentrate on Thursday,
if you are okay with that?”
Reply “Yeah, that’s fine”.
4078 “Again, like I said at the beginning of the last interview,
it is just as you remember it, you know, if you remember things
differently to how, you know, things are written in statements
and that becomes apparent later on, don’t worry about that, it
is as you can remember it now. You haven’t looked at your
statements this morning?”.
Reply “Yeah”.
00.01.02 4078 “And you know that you are able to do that if you
want to. But we have, well you have decided, and I am in
agreement with that, that you are going to do this without
looking at your statement first?”
Reply “Yeah, I mean, I think the Thursday is the day we’ve
thought about the most and that certain bits of it I don’t
remember particularly well but the important bits I think I do
and I think there are bits that from my previous statement, I
don’t think there is anything different in there but I do think
and I’m happy with the statement first”.
4078 “You might be surprised but this isn’t a test”.
Reply “Yeah”.
4078 “This is just to recall”.
Reply “I know it feels like an exam of course but”.
4078 “Does it?”
Reply “Yeah, a bit”.
4078 “Oh sorry, well I will try not to make it feel like an
exam”.
Reply “No, it’s a test of memory”.
4078 “Yeah, it is a test of memory obviously”.
Reply “Yeah”.
4078 “But we will move through it and we will do it as we have
done the rest of it, if you can tell me as much as you can
remember and then sort of we will go through the finer details
later on?”
Reply “Yeah, yeah, I mean, as I say, Thursday I think since I’ve
thought about it and it’s much clearer. The Thursday morning we,
Rachael, G***e and I went to the Millennium Restaurant for
breakfast, well as we did each morning, as I’ve already said.
There wasn’t anybody else there, we had breakfast on our own. I
don’t mean there was nobody else at any other table, but it was
fairly quiet, but none of the other group were there initially.
Now we were always fairly early because G***e was always awake
earliest, awake at, I don’t know”.
00.02.26 4078 “Lucky you!”
Reply “Yeah, always by half six or six o’clock and she’d be sort
of sparky and awake and wanting to get up and so we’d sort of
trudge on and we might even be banging on the doors waiting for
them to open up, we’d be fairly early to breakfast. And so that
morning we’d eaten breakfast and we were ready to leave before
anybody else arrived and we were actually out of the door when
Russell, with his two children, but not Jane, arrived. So
because I don’t, I didn’t really enjoy dropping G***e off at
Nursery because she got a bit upset, Rachael volunteered to go
and do it. So she went back first and I stayed with Russell and
went back in for breakfast, because I was going to go down to
the beach and sail because they had either a sailing or a wind
surfing, I think they had sailing that morning, so I was going
to go down and go sailing, that’s what we’d agreed that I would
do. So we went back in and he had breakfast and I think Jane had
tennis, I think maybe they were, I think they had a lesson, did
they have a lesson together Rachael and Jane, they wouldn’t have
done because we’d have had lessons as a couple. And so I went
back in with Russell and E**a and E**e and we had breakfast and
then we walked back together and we, Russell had to take E**a
and E**e, so he dropped E**a off at the, at her Nursery area
which was separate from where we drop G***e, and then he went on
and I turned left and went down to the beach and went sailing
for that morning. From then, I don’t remember, I assume we made
our way back from the beach, picked G***e up from Nursery and
had lunch, but I can’t remember where we had lunch that day, it
may have been at Dave and Fiona’s by that point in the week. And
then in the aft, when G***e went down to sleep Rachael went to
play tennis with Jane, I’m fairly sure about that. And then I
went down to the beach with Russell and we actually went sailing
for part of the evening, for part of the afternoon, so it was
sort of relatively late in the, because G***e would sleep sort
of half twelve, one o’clock and she’d sleep for sort of a couple
of hours and Rachael would be out to play tennis and then came
back, so we went off from then. And I’d been, we’d been down to
the beach a couple of times before but we’d end up going
canoeing and I’d always wanted to go sailing because the boats
that I’d really like to sale are the big catamarans, they’ve got
some (inaudible) cats, which are sort of sixteen foot long, but
you ideally need, certainly in a breeze, you need two people to
weight them down or they tend to turn over, so I’d always been
trying to get him out on one of those and he sort of agreed to
and he didn’t have confidence in my sailing abilities, but he
agreed to come on one of those and there was enough wind that
lunchtime to actually do it. And so we went back down to the
beach and took one of the cats out and we were out a bit longer
than expected because part of the boat’s strapping fell off and
I fell off the back and so we got sort of stranded in the water
and he didn’t really know how to sail but managed to bring the
boat round and I was sort of like a mile from shore thinking I’m
going to have to swim all the way back or he’s going to run me
down with the boat, but he actually did really well and actually
managed to pick me up on the back of the boat. By the time we’d
got back in the, the rest of the families were down on the
beach, apart from Gerry and Kate and their kids, so it was Dave
and Fiona and L*** and Scarlet, and Jane and E**a and E**e and
they were playing on the beach. And so we sort of put the boat
away, got changed and came over to them, all sort of full of our
experiences of falling over and Russell saving my life, as he
told you yesterday”.
00.06.02 4078 “I bet he loved that”.
Reply “Yeah, he did like that. And it wasn’t my fault I fell off
the back. I think he was steering. Well, anyway, so we came
back. And then we went from there and we actually had,
unusually, we had, actually had tea with the kids down at the
restaurant, which I think is call the Paradiso or Para, Paradiso,
sort of a beachfront restaurant, it’s on the sand and you access
by sort of boardwalks, and we actually had tea with the kids and
ice cream. Now we was, there was a men’s social tennis that
night, but because we’d had sort of quite a, it was quite sort
(inaudible), we’d actually been off sort of enjoying ourselves
and sailing, it got sort of quite late and we didn’t think we
were actually going to be able to go, so we actually had a beer
at the restaurant while the kids were, they were eating, and it
was past six before the girls said, well they’ve moved this
forward for us and we’re not turning up to the social tennis so
you guys should go. So we finished and set off, probably about
twenty past six, sometime around there, because it was after
when we’d got them to move, we were already late, so I think if
we’d said, if they’d move it to six thirty and we’re setting off
at six twenty, I would have been happy that we could have made
it there in time, but we’d already gone past the time when I
thought we won’t be able to go because we were already so late”.
00.07.20 4078 “Was that you, David and”.
Reply “Russell”.
4078 “Russell”.
Reply “It was men’s social. So we went back up, back to, well I
went back to the apartment, got the tennis gear and back onto
the courts or back to the courts area, and the other guys went
to get their stuff. I think Dave said that he’d been to the
apartment, but I don’t know that for definite, that’s just
something I think has come out, I didn’t know anything about
that. So we went, got our stuff and came back to the courts,
which were already in play, because the social had already
started. And Gerry was down playing on a court, I think there
was only three of them, I think the coach, whose name I can’t
remember, the tennis coach, the blonde haired bloke, was playing
to make up the numbers. And so we waited and watched for a
little while, so we didn’t get on court until, phew, sometime
closer to seven, so maybe sort of quarter to or twenty to or ten
to seven we went down to the court. And we were hoping that
Gerry would actually stay and make up the four, because
everybody, there was one court that was full of four and then
there was a three over he, but he sort of went back to sort of
help with Kate and the kids and didn’t stay to sort of play with
us and there was just the three of us and I think the coach
stayed and played to make up the four initially, but didn’t want
to stay, so he didn’t stay the whole time. But we played then
for, I think the best part of an hour before going back to the
apartment. And that would have made me slightly late for putting
G***e to bed, so I was sort of, oh I better go, I better finish
now because, Rachael will be doing it all on her own”.
00.08.51 4078 “You would be in trouble?”
Reply “Well, yeah, and also because, I like doing the, I usually
do bath time and Rachael would do the story, so I was quite keen
to get back anyway. So half seven we’d normally be trying to get
her down to, but she was awake when I got back so we did the
story, I mean, she’d had a bath and been out, but it was just
sort of the down time before getting into bed, I’m pretty
certain she was still awake at that point when we came back, so
we put her down and read stories, she goes down fairly easy, she
goes into our bedroom and we take all the stuff we need out of
the room before we sort of put her down and then close the door
so we don’t have to go back in, although you often could if you
crept in without waking her up. So that would be sometime
between, normally we’d be there at half seven and sort of have
an hour to get down, to get, to get ready to go out, so it’d be
sort of closer to eight this time. We’d get showered and get
changed and then, because we can see the Tapas from our patio
doors, we can see when anybody else goes down there, because the
original table was booked for eight thirty, we were a bit later
that night and it was about quarter to and we saw Gerry and Kate
down there and so we locked up, went round and joined them at
the table. Now I don’t recall seeing Jane and Russell there, but
I’m told that Jane was there at the time as well. But we got
there and sort of chatted and then Russell arrived. And we were
all there, apart from Dave and Fiona and Fiona’s mother, Dianne,
at sort of five to nine, and they were, they were always sort of
fairly relaxed and sort of a bit late and disorganised, I mean,
that’s a bit unfair, but they were certainly, they’d always be
pretty much the last to arrive, they were always late for most
things and you could see the light on in their apartment, you
could see it from the Tapas and you could see them moving around
so you knew they were still there. And so I decided that I’d go
back and short of chivvy them along, because I felt a bit bad
that there’s just us in this restaurant, as there had been most
of the week, there weren’t often, on one night they had a quiz
and there were a few sort of more tables around that were
occupied, but most of the time it was just us and I felt a bit
bad that we said we’d be there at half eight and it was getting
later and later and it was now coming to nine and we hadn’t even
got the table there to get ready to order, but by this time in
the week we knew what we were going to order, so I told Rach,
I’ll have whatever it was, I think it was probably sardines
because they were pretty good,, so I put my order in for her to
order if the waiter came back and went to try and sort of chivvy
them along. But as I was leaving the Tapas area and their light
going off and knowing that they were coming down and on their
way, and on my way up, about at that top corner before you turn
left to get round the back, as you go up the top of the hill, we
sort of passed on the way down and they were on their way to the
restaurant, but it seemed a bit silly not to go ahead and just
sort of check on G***e, even though we’d only been down there
about fifteen minutes, but that was sort of a convenient time to
go and do it. So I went and listened, I went, I found the time,
because we’d only just been in there about fifteen minutes ago,
and I just listened outside her shutters, so I just passed along
that wall that goes to the two, sort of to the McCANN’s
apartment, so I listened outside our shutters and went along to
their shutter and had a listen out there, not because I’d been
asked to, but, or it’s not the sort of thing you think about,
it’s just kind of”.
00.12.06 4078 “You thought you might as well?”
Reply “So I thought I might as well and I can report back and
they can be reassured that everything was okay. And we talked a
lot in the previous interviews about what state the shutters
were in, whether they were, and they were all definitely down,
there’s three shutters, there’s, two, and they’re all at the
same level, there was no, I would have noticed if they were, if
one was up and the rest were down, it would have looked odd”.
4078 “What was the lighting like around that area at that time?”
Reply “It’s getting dusk by that time, but not completely dark,
it was not as dark as it got later on (inaudible) visibility”.
00.12.40 4078 “And you said that, obviously you spoke about some
previous interviews?”
Reply “Yeah”.
4078 “And you are confident the shutter was down?”
Reply “Yeah, absolutely”.
4078 “Is that because you can remember seeing it down or because
you just think you would have noticed if it hadn’t have been
down?”
Reply “I’m pretty sure I saw them down”.
4078 “And when you listened outside the room where Madeleine
was?”
Reply “Yeah”.
4078 “How close would you have got to the shutter?”
Reply “I’d have been about a foot away, because, I mean, the
shutters, you’re not sure how well you’re going to hear
something through, so my ear wouldn’t have been pressed against
the two, but, it would have been sort of about a foot or so”.
4078 “And how long would you have listened for outside that
particular window?”
Reply “Five or ten seconds”.
4078 “It is long enough, presumably, for you to have stood
still, so that you weren’t making a noise yourself?”
Reply “Yeah, you’d have been fairly comfortable that you’d have
heard somebody if they were sort of crying or sort of
whimpering”.
4078 “And did you notice anybody else around?”
Reply “No, there was nobody, you don’t, you can’t see the
doorway from that point because it’s round a, you have to go
round the corner, so not into that, I didn’t go into that area,
but I didn’t hear anything, I didn’t see anything”.
4078 “If somebody had have passed by on the street would you
have seen them from where you were by Madeleine’s window? Sorry,
having not been there, it is hard for me to visualise”.
Reply “No, because sort of, more specifically the wall that
comes from the, there’s sort of a drop, so it’s at a different
level the car park, you have to go down steps to get to, you go
down steps to get from the car park to the apartment complex, so
when you go down to the apartment and you go back along the
wall, this wall must be, I can’t remember exactly, but it must
be a good five foot”.
00.14.12 4078 “Right”.
Reply “Maybe, and I can’t be exactly sure, but it’s a decent
height, that wall, because you’ve got the, the ground is lower
on that side, although from the car park side it’s probably only
about at that side and that side is down, it’s quite sort of,
and then there’s sort of some more sort of shrubbery trees, I
don’t know, unless you were specifically looking down the road,
you probably wouldn’t see. I mean, I don’t, I wasn’t aware of
any movement, there was nothing moving, I don’t recall seeing
anybody there”.
4078 “And no doubt you have replayed this in your own mind
several times. You have stood and listened specifically to see
if you can hear any noises from within the apartment?”
Reply “Yeah”.
4078 “Have you been aware of any other noises from outside the
apartment when you listened on that occasion?”
Reply “No, I mean, there would have been, I mean, there was
nothing that made me, there could have been somebody around the
corner, it’s always possible, because I didn’t look round there
and you wouldn’t see it, but there was nothing that I seen,
there was nobody, no. I mean, the sure answer to that is, no,
there was nothing”.
4078 “And would it have been usually to have heard traffic noise
at that time of the evening?”
Reply “No, not really, you might get the occasional car come
into that car park, but mostly the car park you wouldn’t have
seen cars in, and it’s not really through road, when you look at
the map it’s sort of like on a ‘U’, so you’ve got the, a more
main road at the top and one main T-junction to go down at the
far end of the two apartment complexes, you didn’t really get
much through traffic, even going down the hill to the
Supermarket there wasn’t, there was always car sparked down
there, so they must move at some point and there were lots of
apartments, people must pass through, but there was never, it
was pretty deserted”.
00.15.46 4078 “And you can’t remember anything specific?”
Reply “No”.
4078 “Obviously you wouldn’t have been listening for that or
paying much attention to that at that point because it wasn’t
relevant then at that time?”
Reply “Yeah. Well I think that, if you’d seen something unusual
I’d have remembered it, I mean, going through, what we will talk
about later, you kind of think, well, if things didn’t quite
right, it’s the kind of frame of mind you’re in, you’re looking
for sort of an innocent explanation and, if you have one then
you’d sort of just sort of passed on, but you’d certainly
remember thinking, that was odd in hindsight, and I think I’d
have remember that now”.
4078 “Yeah”.
Reply “But at the time I’d have remembered it if it’d been
something that triggered at that point”.
4078 “And I know when, I think I have met you on two occasions
previously, and one of those was specifically to come and ask
you if there was anything that you have thought about since the
holiday that was odd?”
Reply “Yeah”.
4078 “And I know you racked your brains at the time and you
couldn’t think of anything?”
Reply “Yeah”.
00.16.41 4078 “Okay. So what sort of time was it when you did
that listening check outside Madeleine’s room?”
Reply “Well this would have been, I’d have set off about five to
nine or just before nine, and so that round trip would have
taken me three or four minutes maybe, because on this occasion I
didn’t go into our apartment, so it was just walk up, sort of
ten or twenty seconds outside the two shutters and then back
round”.
4078 “Do you remember what the weather was like then?”
Reply “It wasn’t, not specifically, it was a better day on the
Thursday than it was on the Wednesday, because we had rain, and
I think it was sort of warmer and bit more clear, I don’t
remember the, it may have been a bit cloudy, but I don’t
remember specifically”.
4078 “Okay”.
Reply “I think the moon was out later on so, I had the
impression that the moon was out later on, so it may not have
been, it may have been more clear”.
4078 “And you said it was just turning dark?”
Reply “Yeah”.
4078 “Do you remember or can you recall what the street lighting
was like around there?”
Reply “There’s a street light, and this is all, I couldn’t sort
of guarantee this, but my impression is that there was, the
street lights were sort of very orangey, sort of fairly orangey
light, I think there was one at the top corner and maybe one
about halfway up on the right as you came up from the Tapas
Restaurant and possibly one on that, on that back bit behind the
car park, someway further along”.
4078 “I am just trying to illustrate, you said you were fairly
confident that the shutter was shut”.
Reply “Yeah”.
00.18.22 4078 “But it was turning dark. I am just trying to sort
of illustrate whether there was any light on that area, if you
would have been able to see if it was?”
Reply “Well it wasn’t murky, I mean, you were close to the
shutters, they’re sort of white and they’re lined, I think it’d
be fairly obvious if there was a dark gap along the bottom, if
they’d been raised particularly”.
4078 “Okay. So take me through from there then, what happened
after that?”
Reply “So, back to the table, we have, oh, back to the table,
Gerry got up to go and, to go and check on his kids, I mean, and
I’d come back and said, I didn’t hear any noise when I listened
outside your room, so I thought it was a little bit odd that,
not kind of a wounded pride that he sort of didn’t trust me,
but, I just thought, oh, I’ve just checked you don’t really need
to check and sort of go back, but he sort of got up and went
back to check on his kids. But, you don’t, we’re all sort of
responsible for our own children and you wouldn’t sort of say,
you don’t need to do that, I just sort of felt, oh I’ve
listened, you don’t need to do that because I’ve kind of just
done it, but I hadn’t gone into the apartment, so”.
4078 “Did you actually say that or you just thought that to
yourself?”
Reply “Yeah, I thought that, I’d said that everything was sort
of quiet, I listened outside the shutters, but, they went back
up and said he was going to check. I know that Jane went up, and
I think that’s because E**e had been, I think E**e had not been
well that morning and I think that’s, I can’t remember whether
she had any breakfast, but I don’t think she’d been particularly
well that morning, or she was sort of a bit off colour not sort
of being particularly unwell, but maybe, I think the kids hadn’t
settle particularly well and that’s why they Russell and Jane
had come separately in the evening, and so she went back, to
check on, presumably to check on, to check on her kids and then
came back and we had starters by then”.
4078 “Was that the first time that you had taken it upon
yourself to check on somebody else’s child?”
Reply “Yeah, I’d not done it before, it was only because I was
there and I was, and it may not have happened if I’d actually
gone in and checked on G***e through the room, I might not have
just been next to their shutter in terms of to actually have a
listen, I was just there, it was only like four steps further.
But, no, I didn’t, even though we now knew each other for the
week and I felt a bit more comfortable about their kids knowing
me, as I said before I wouldn’t normally sort of impose that
sort of check on somebody else unless they’d, unless they’d
suggested it. It’d be almost like a step, not a step too far,
but it’s not really our place to do that”.
00.21.10 4078 “Okay. So Gerry has gone off almost straight away
after you got back?”
Reply “Yeah”.
4078 “And then Jane followed him?”
Reply “Yeah. Now I don’t remember that particularly well, I
mean, I know from what discussion, it may be in my statement
from months ago remembering better, but it wasn’t unusual for
people to be leaving the table to sort of check, so it doesn’t
stand out particularly in my mind. But I remember Gerry
specifically going because I thought, well I’ve just checked
(inaudible) and then, well I hadn’t been in so I couldn’t really
check and they’re his kids, it was quite right that, if that’s
what he wants. But I don’t particularly remember Jane doing
that, but I might have done at the time, it’s just it’s now sort
of faded because it didn’t see important”.
4078 “Okay. And go on from there then?”
Reply “So we’d have had starters, now, and then, because there
was a natural break between starters and main, that’s when we’d
normally go and do the sort of next check and sort of lull in
conversation or whatever. And I think the time that I originally
said I did it, and I can’t remember what time I estimated from
the statement, but I think I sort of based it on the fact that
I’m a fairly fast eater and I knew what I wanted and so it would
have been ordered and I’d have sort of cleared away within sort
of ten or fifteen minutes, but it may well have been slightly
later than my original statement, because these two had, as I
said, they went off. So these two went off, sorry, Gerry and
Jane went off, did their checks, I wouldn’t have gone, while
everybody else was still eating, and I went up the second check
with Russell, so he’s a pretty slow eater, so it may well have
been sort of closer to sort of twenty past, twenty-five past
nine, sometime round there before we did the next check”.
00.23.05 4078 “Okay”.
Reply “So I went to check on G***e 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 do you want us to go and check on, do you
want me to go and check on your kids 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 it may or it may not have been different. But, 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, 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**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***e and actually went in through the door,
unlocked the door, looked in, into her room, all fine, came back
out, shut the door, went over to his apartment and he said that
E**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,
and went back through the patio entrance, so through the gate,
through the patio doors, 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.
I’ve spent a lot of time debating how far the door was open,
from previous questioning, and 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 G***e has it completely pitch black, because
it seems to me that she sleeps a bit longer, but some people do
leave the door open and I know Russell and Jane, for E**a, and
L*** subsequent, also has the door slightly open they have light
and they prefer that, but we’ve never done that with G***e, 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 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, 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, is somebody upset, do they want their mum or something,
you can say, somebody might have vomited and you wouldn’t know
about it, but there was nobody was awake, you thought, if
something, just one, it’d be, it’d sort of feel a bit odd, from
the draughts, 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 his why I said that I thought perhaps the moon was
out, but there as no sort of, it’s a questions 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”.
00.29.11 4078 “So you weren’t, just to clarify what you have
said, you weren’t conscious of any draught?”
Reply “Yeah”.
4078 “The curtains were drawn and weren’t blowing around?”
Reply “Yeah”.
4078 “You weren’t conscious of light coming through that window
but the room was light enough for you to see into it?”
Reply “Yeah. I mean, the difficult thing about that is, when we
talked about it afterwards, I agonised for whether it seemed as
though there was light coming through the room. And I have to
say my answer then was probably more accurate, in that, the room
was lighter than I expected but I definitely didn’t see the
shutters up, the curtains were definitely not disturbed and the
shutters would have had to have been completely up, I presume,
not to get that sort of, because they were shutters that went
solid but when you lifted them they had gaps of light, and I
wasn’t aware of that and it may well be that the light was just
the source from behind”.
00.29.03 4078 “Obviously you have had cause to sort of reflect
on that, that moment?”
Reply “Yeah”.
4078 “A lot?”
Reply “Yeah”.
4078 “At the time when you were there, before you had reason to
reflect on it, at the time you just said to me that the room was
lighter than you expected, did that go through your mind at the
time?”
Reply “Yeah, it just seemed, it just seemed odd, because it’s
really difficult, I can’t explain why it was odd and I didn’t do
anything about it, and it’s something I’ve thought about over
and over again, surely that just seemed odd and so it was worth
you looking round and going a bit further, and I can’t explain
why I didn’t do it”.
4078 “Why did it seem odd?”
Reply “Because I sort of see them dealing, they seemed to have
dealt with Sean and Amelie and Madeleine pretty much the way we
deal with G***e, so they were sort of very consistent with
bedtime and rooms, I would imagine, would be kept sort of fairly
dark, they seemed to have come from the same sort of parenting
school that we did, and so it seemed a little bit more unusual
that it should be, the door should be open so much and the
light, because they were always, the kids were always sort of
really confident and they were the least misbehaved, well not
misbehaved, they were the least upset when they dropped them off
at Nursery, at crèche, it was all really good and it was all
sort of, they were sort of very good at, if they did something
wrong, they said no and sort of explaining it properly and why
it was naughty to do that sort of thing, it was all sort of very
appropriate and almost by the book, and it seemed a bit sort of
casual to sort of like leave the door open, but then they had
sort of an older daughter, so and older children might get
nightmares, so it seemed as though there might be a reasonable
explanation, but although I thought it was odd at the time, I
didn’t say, do you normally leave your door or anything like
that”.
00.30.42 4078 “You just put it down to the fact that, well you
were a bit surprised that is how they had left it, but that must
be how they are used to doing it?”
Reply “Yeah, and I just don’t know why it didn’t trigger enough
of a thought in my mind to say, but I think it’s just because
you are going expecting that the worst that was going to happen
was that somebody would be upset or out of bed or sort of
crying”.
4078 “And, like you have said, you know, we all do things
differently, don’t we, in something like that?”
Reply “You know
(inaudible)
stuff and you think, oh it’s silly that they
didn’t notice that or, it was obvious that, but I think it’s
your sort of frame of mind that you’re set in”.
4078 “Yeah, and with hindsight it is easy to question things
that you had no cause to question?”
Reply “Yeah, because normally we’d think we’re fairly observant
because, I mean, we do medicine, so we sort of pick up a lot
clues from people that we talk to and how they might feeling or
what they might not be saying and so you’d expect to trust that
sort of, that sort of instinct, but that, for whatever reason,
just didn’t”.
4078 “And how do you feel about that?”
Reply “I mean, I think it’s harder for Jane in a lot of ways
than it is for me, but I think we’re in slightly similar
positions, in that, she thinks, well, you know”.
4078 “What if?”
Reply “What if I’d done that and the only sort of comfort I get
is that what if I’d seen him or well maybe if we just sort of
found out half an hour earlier, but maybe that would have been
enough lead time for things to happen faster and for somebody to
call to be here, but I think it’s easier for me to try and
rationalise it and not think about it quite so forcibly as it is
for Jane”.
OLDFIELD 09.04.08 |
|
00.32.25 4078 “How long were you actually in the apartment for
then?”
Reply “One or two minutes maybe. I remember looking, they’ve
got, all the rooms had sort of a book supply and so, because we
were spending all this down time at lunchtime looking, doing a
bit of reading or maybe sunbathing, but some reading, so I sort
of remember sort of looking along their bookshelf as I walked
through to see if there was anything that I could sort of take
to read for the next couple of days, so it might have been a
minute or two”.
4078 “And you said when you went in you went in through the
patio door?”
Reply “Yeah”
4078 “Or the poolside door?”
Reply “Yeah”.
4078 “How did you know to go through there?”
Reply “Well Kate said that that one was open”.
4078 “And when did she say that?”
Reply “When I offered to go and look”.
4078 “Okay”.
Reply “Because I said do you want me to check the kids and she
said yeah the patio door is open”.
4078 “Okay”.
Reply “I mean, it was closed, it wasn’t sort of open”.
4078 “And I am assuming it is a slide open door, is that
correct?”
Reply “Yeah”.
00.33.23 4078 “So you slid the door open?”
Reply “Yeah”.
4078 “And you have walked through the apartment and you said
there was a light on?”
Reply “Yeah”.
4078 “A lamp, sorry, a table lamp?”
Reply “Yeah, I think sort of, there was like a little sort of
round sort of table like this and then sort of a small lamp”.
4078 “So, as you go though there, whereabouts would the lamp
be?”
Reply “So you come in, the steps would bring you up to this end
of the patio, oh sorry, that’s the side street so it comes up to
this bit and you go in through (inaudible) I’m not sure which
one of those, I think it was this left one here and there’s a
sort of a book shelf here”.
4078 “Is that the one that you looked at to see what books?”
Reply “Yeah, and there was, I think there was a sofa here and a
sofa here, it’s either one of those two corners, it was a vague
memory of it, that there was like a sort of little side light, a
sort of reading light that was on”.
4078 “Okay”.
Reply “Then as you approach this, because of this wall here, you
approach the room pretty much, you had to go in from that angle,
so you get a clear view right into the middle of the room. And
one of the things that completely floored me in the, in the
interview, the second interview there, they showed me a picture
and they showed a picture of the two cots there’s wardrobes
along this side, slap bang on the right here, and they said,
well how can you see it, I think maybe it was an aguish thing at
the time, but I couldn’t quite get at what they were, what they
were really asking me, I mean, how, because they showed me this
picture and you kind of accept it as this is the real situation
and it took a while to, well, no, actually, the actual, the
original Police Force actually moved them when they cleared the
room, they moved them out the way, but, I presume it was just a
sort of, a sort of technique within the questioning to sort of
make you unsettled, but it was sort of quite unsettling, along
with this picture of where the shutters are. But, you wouldn’t,
the cots were in the middle of the room and of course, there’s
no way you’d put them at the side, to put your children in and
be able to walk round and get them from both sides. But you walk
from here and I probably got to about here, to the room”.
00.35.30 4078 “So you didn’t cross the threshold?”
Reply “No”.
4078 “And you say the cots were in the middle of the room?”
Reply “Yeah”.
4078 “What angles were they at?”
Reply “You could definitely see, see the sides, so they’re
either along, I think because of the angle that you approach it,
I think they were just in the line with the long axis of the
room, but there was a gap between the two and the sides are
mesh”.
4078 (inaudible)
Reply “Yeah (inaudible)”.
4078 “So you saw the sides. Do you remember which way the
children were facing in the cots?”
Reply “No, it was just, you could just see the shape and bits of
breathing”.
4078 “Okay”.
Reply “I mean, I, for some reason I imagine that the children’s
heads were towards the, towards the window, but I don’t know
whether that’s just because I assume that’s the way I would put
them down”.
00.36.22 4078 “Yeah”.
Reply “Because I’ve seen it. I don’t think I could see that
much, the view”.
4078 “You can’t remember?”
Reply “You could see the shapes and you could see they were
breathing, you’d stop and look and you could see they were sort
of breathing, but in terms of sort of features and standing over
and seeing where their heads were, and I couldn’t say whether it
was Sean or Amelie that was closest, it was just sort of
children in cots”.
4078 “The door, it opens the way it is shown on this diagram,
does it?”
Reply “Yes, it opens to, back onto that wall”.
4078 “But you didn’t touch the door?”
Reply “No”.
4078 “You didn’t need to because it was already open?”
Reply “It was already open. I mean, it must have been, it must
have been sort of at that sort of angle, so it’s just over
forty-five degrees”.
4078 “Yeah, so it is slightly over half open?”
Reply “Yeah”.
4078 “Okay. What else could you see within the room?”
Reply “There was a bed on the far side underneath the window and
you could see, you could just see the tail of this bed here,
just the edge of it”.
4078 “Sorry, I am not familiar with the room”.
Reply “Sorry, the bed is perhaps, this bed, there is a bed
along, you can see most of it, apart from what was obstructed by
the, by the cot”.
4078 “Yes”.
Reply “There was a bed there. There was build-in wardrobes, I
think probably where that dotted line is there”.
00.37.41 4078 “Yeah”.
Reply “And there’s another bed along here, which is where
Madeleine was supposed to be and you could just maybe catch the,
it was probably set back a little bit, so you could just sort of
catch about sort of six or eight inches of the, so you could see
the outside corner, the corner deepest into the room”.
4078 “Okay. So concentrate, if you can, on what you saw of that
bed and tell me what you saw?”
Reply “Nothing, apart from that, it’s just the end of the bed
and that’s, and that was it. And so it as just like the outside
corner, there was no, couldn’t see the whole length, couldn’t
see colours or legs or anything draping over it”.
4078 “Did it have bed clothing on it, can you remember, or was
it just a plain mattress or some sort of mattress cover or
(inaudible), can you remember?”
Reply “This would be sort of a guess, I think what I could see
was a sheet and I think it was a metal base coming round the
corner, but I couldn’t swear to that. There was only a small bit
that was visible”.
4078 “Okay”.
Reply “I don’t think it was a bare, a bare mattress, I’m fairly
sure there’d have been a sheet on it, but I don’t remember
anything sort of as bulky as a duvet over it”.
4078 “Okay. And is there anything else you can say about what
you saw of that bed?”
Reply “No, I don’t remember there being a pattern on it, it was,
it was just sort of a glimpse and I don’t know how reliable my
memory is for this, I think it was plain coloured, maybe, if I
was to go for it, I’d say it was sort of a light blue, but I
really don’t recall anything specific about the end of that bed,
apart from just registering that there was a bed against that
wall and that’s probably where Madeleine was”.
4078 “Okay. And you saw the side of the cots and you saw the
shapes and knew that they were both breathing?”
Reply “Yeah, I mean, you’ve got two cots, along this side,
you’ve got the short, the long axis along the long room and the
short end, which I think is (inaudible), I think we had a
similar in, with G***e, and there’d be a slight spacing and then
netting and so, from the side, you’d see part of this one,
slightly obstructed by this one, but enough to see through the
grill and this one you’d see through the, through the mesh side,
you’d see the kids”.
00.40.06 4078 “And the lighting was sufficient within the room
that you could make out what it was?”
Reply “You could make out that it wasn’t blankets and just
something piled there, you could see the chest moving”.
4078 “Okay. Could you see anything else from where you were
stood?”
Reply “The rest is just sort vague impressions of the colour of
the curtains, I couldn’t tell what particular pattern, but I
just remember green and yellow with that. And there may have
been a duvet on the back bed behind the two cots. But nothing
else specific”.
4078 “Have you been into that room again since that moment?”
Reply “We didn’t on the night. I don’t think so. I think it was
it was then always cordoned off. I mean, I know that they, Gerry
and Kate were told to get their things out of there because they
were going to have to move rooms and then, and I saw that
photograph of the cots moved to the side, and they then sort of,
under instruction, were asked to move things out of that room,
but I think they just took sort of essentials, because they then
went up to Dave and Fiona’s room later that night, and I don’t
think I’ve been back in that room”.
4078 “I am sorry, you already said how long you think you were
in the apartment for, I have forgotten?”
Reply “It can’t have been more than a couple of minutes, because
I mean, there was no, it was just sort of a check and then it
was back really. I remember sort of being able to pivot here and
be able to see this room door was open as well and those
shutters weren’t down, they were just curtains and that was
fairly, fairly light as well. And I just sort of came back out
really through the same way and shutting the patio doors”.
00.41.58 4078 “So, like everybody that has had anything to do
with this inquiry, you must have played back in your own mind
the different possibilities of what could have happened?”
Reply “Yeah”.
4078 “And what conclusions have you come to, in so much as, if
there had been somebody else in the apartment, would it have
been possible for them to have been there without you seeing
them?”
Reply “It’s possible, in that, just in sort of, whether it’s
technically possible, because this kitchen, there’s like a sort
of breakfast bar there or an opening there, I mean, you, and,
when you come up to here, somebody could be hid behind those
units there, there would be no problem. They could have been, I
can’t remember where the bed is in this room, because it was
just a glimpse as I turned round, it may be out there, but
possibly there is space in there. And then there was this
question of whether somebody could hide in the wardrobes, and I
suppose they were physically big enough for them to be able to
do it. I mean, since, everybody talked about sort of what
happened, and, yeah, I talked in an interview about whether I
thought Madeleine was gone at that point, and I said, well I
thought she was, but then I knew that Jane had seen this, had
earlier seen this person and she described pyjamas and
everything, before she knew what Madeleine actually was wearing,
so when that sort of came out then it seemed fairly likely that
things had already been done, which I think is partly why it’s
sort of been easier for me to deal with the ‘what ifs’ than it
is for her, because it seemed like Madeleine had already gone at
that point, but at the beginning, when I didn’t know, that was
awful, when Kate came back and said, she’s gone, and they were
going, did you see her, and I had to say, well, no, I just made
sure everything was alright and that was, that was awful, that
moment”.
4078 “Can you make any comment on the door or, erm, is this a
window as well, it is not, is it?”
Reply “There’s a window, I think, well from the drawing I don’t
recall it as a window there, that’s the front door here, then
you come round past the shutters, and we listened outside here,
and the front door there. I, it’s, I can’t say, I don’t recall
it being open, I’m sure, I presume that I would have seen it,
but I can’t guarantee that it wasn’t shut at that point. But
there was nothing, it didn’t feel odd when you went into the
apartment, it was sort of quiet and sort of comfortably sort of
dark”.
00.44.26 4078 “Is there anything else, sort of trying to draw
that moment out for as long as we possibly can and just go”.
Reply “Yeah, yeah”.
4078 “Is there anything else, that you smelt, could you smell
anything?”
Reply “No, no, we’ve talked about that before, I didn’t smell
anything, I mean, I could see the children breathing, but I
didn’t clock it as abnormal, it’d be completely to speculate to
say whether their breathing was fast or, I couldn’t say, I mean,
they were breathing and that’s what, and that was what I was
there to check, no, no funny sort of smells, no sort of funny
draughts, no sort of funny sort of noises, no, nothing that I
can think of for that. I mean, it was a complete just a shock
out of the blue when I’d been in and then suddenly somebody’s
saying Madeleine’s missing, there was nothing that made me
think, oh”.
4078 “Okay. Did you leave by the patio door?”
Reply “Yeah, back the same way, because this door would have
been locked and that’s the shortest way anyway of coming through
there, so I would have gone back out the same door”.
4078 “And back to the table?”
Reply “Yeah”.
4078 “Okay. We will move back then from that check. I am sure
you would have already mentioned, but did you see anybody?”
Reply “No”.
00.45.51 4078 “Hear any cars?”
Reply “No. No, I mean, as I say, it was nearly always completely
deserted, there was very few people in the resort, you only
rarely saw, occasionally people move about on the street and
that was mostly during the day, everybody else seemed to sort of
eat earlier or used the baby sitting or whatever service, there
were a few people about between and there wasn’t really much of
a thoroughfare for traffic, so nothing that stuck out”.
4078 “In know specifically one of the Portuguese questions was,
did you hear footsteps or car doors opening and shutting?”
Reply “No (inaudible)”.
4078 “Okay. And you attended the Tapas Bar. And what was
happening there at that stage when you got back?”
Reply “Well everybody, apart from Russell and I were back, so I
arrived back before Russell, I think I said, all quiet, or
something to Kate and Gerry and just sort of sat back down and
we carried on and I told Jane that E**e had been sick and so
later on when his food came, we said, he’s going to be late, can
we sort of send it back or you just keep it warm and he’ll have
it later on, we had a conversation as normal, I just remember
launching into this Jane relieving Russell”.
4078 “We touched on that yesterday”.
Reply “It probably came up but seemed inappropriate to mention.
But she went off to relieve Russell, as it were, to sort of take
over sort of duties and make sure that E**e was alright and then
Russell came back and they actually redid his food I mean, he
was eating it when the next sort of checks went, which were
about half an hour later”.
4078 “So you think it was about half an hour between your
check?”
Reply “It would have been around that sort of time and the
reason I think thirty minutes is because I, I don’t know whether
this is memory now or whether it’s since we’ve been talking
about it, Gerry said or Kate said, it’s about thirty minutes
since the last check, we ought to go, so that’s why I think it’s
thirty minutes because I think that main course would have taken
a bit longer because Russell came back and we started chatting,
how’s E**e and all that sort of thing so, I think he was still
eating at the time, so we waited until he’d finished before we
went”.
00.48.23 4078 “And then who did the next check?”
Reply “Well Kate went and did the next check and think because
we’d, I didn’t, we didn’t all go at that point, just Kate went
and then came running back saying, she’s gone, Gerry Madeleine’s
gone, and she was sort of borderline hysterical, as you’d
expect, and then there was just a blur as everybody then just
ran off from the table. Then everybody I think left the table, I
mean, I just remember being behind Dave as he was, and Gerry, as
they were running, Russell I think (inaudible) a bit behind and
so we all ran. If you ask whether we went into the apartment and
I’m almost a hundred percent sure we didn’t go to the apartment,
we were, because it was just so awful, so Gerry and Kate and
maybe Dave, I’m not sure, but went sort of to the bottom of the
steps and they sort of went in and as soon as they sort of said
she’s gone and everything, all hell broke loose, we went round
to check firstly on G***e to make sure she was okay and we
dropped Rachael up there, telling her that she wasn’t to move,
Jane came out of the apartment, did she come out of the
apartment at that point or was it later in the evening, I can’t
remember, but I remember seeing them, most of the time and then
for the rest of the evening they were stood at the doorways to
the apartments we went back round, and everybody was just
running around like sort of headless chickens, so I remember
saying we need a plan, I mean, I don’t know why I said that but
I think I’d just read too many novels, because everybody just
seemed to just sort of run, there was sort of no organisation
and it was obviously important that we did something
constructive rather than just running around looking in the
hedgerows if what we, because we all went through this is she
really gone, surely she must have just sort of wandered off and
we’re just going to find her and she’s going to be there, but
she’s like a four year old child and she, I mean, all the doors
were shut, she wasn’t really going to run off and then Jane
said, the shutters up, and we sort of scarpered and Dave and
Russell were just running off sort of shouting, so 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, which his back to the, to the main reception essentially,
so I went down that route 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”.
00.51.10 4078 “Quite quick then?”
Reply “Yeah, sort of pretty much, straight away, I think it was
only, but then it was a kind of, 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 sort of woken
up and he thought she’s probably sort of wandered off or
something like that and you thought, yeah, maybe you’re right,
maybe you’re right can you please, it was sort of, it was kind
of, it was sort a weird kind of lack of urgency, he’d ring, but
you had to sort and stand there and say, ring now, ring now, so
I don’t know if they rang at that point, but certainly, I
certainly asked them to, about perhaps sort of 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, but we were still sort
of just milling about on the street, everybody was just running
around just sort of trying to, sort of search nearby roads. And
so we, I volunteered to go up to the I went 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, that was the only time that we went for that
meal in the evening because the food wasn’t great there, it
wasn’t quite up to the MARK WARNER resorts of, but anyway, so we
did other things and that’s why we liked the Tapas, so there was
no reason really why she’d have gone up there, but it was a,
just a different route. So a lot of it in terms of timing is
blurred, but up and onto the top road to the Millennium
Restaurant, which is pretty much you come up and along this road
for about sort of five or ten minutes and sort of this end of
town, let them know that a little girl was missing and then gone
back through the back streets, down on the beach and then back
to the apartment. 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 lost of MARK WARNER people around, and they were
very good, they obviously got there and that might have been the
impetus that got them to ring the Police, if, because I
understand that there is some discrepancy about when we thought
we’d called the Police and when the Police were actually called
and that might be that they went on the, on that route first and
then went, I think it’s Stuart HILL or, well the Manager, the
sort of Manager got involved, that might have been when it
occurred. So there was plenty of running around through the back
streets and back to the apartment and then where’s the, where
are the Police, where are the Police, and so went back down to
the reception, this would have been about thirty minutes or so
later back to reception, and at that point, Gerry had come down
as well, was obviously, sort of intermittently sort of calm and
then completely, hysterically upset, it was sort of, it was sort
of pretty sort of upsetting, because you didn’t know what to
really say, because you can’t really say, it’s going to be okay,
because, you assume the worst and it’s going to be particularly
awful, it’s going, some person’s got, (inaudible), some
xxxxxxx’s got my daughter and she’s so innocent. And, I mean, at
that point, we were sort of in a room next door, the bedroom
across, and we thought maybe it could have been G***e quite
easily. But, there’s, seeing them normal all the time and then
to go to that was just, you couldn’t act it, it just wasn’t, it
was just, you don’t know how you’re going to react in that sort
of situation, but it was just, we’ve already mentioned the sort
of frightening and you wanted to be away from it, but you wanted
to try to do something to make it better, but you couldn’t”.
00.55.19 4078 “You feel helpless?”
Reply “You are and yet people on the outside of it responded in
a much more practical way, of course, they would do, but with
decent suggestions about doing this, doing that. But, we were
there about sort of eleven, ten past eleven when the GNR sort of
Police arrived and there was two of them in a Police car.
Somebody’s asked whether the siren was on and I think the lights
were flashing but I don’t remember, and I may have heard the
siren in the distance, but I can’t recall. So they arrived just
about five minutes after Gerry and I had been there. And one of
the cleaning ladies I think came to translate, I think this is
Sylvia or Sylvie, I’m not sure, but she was there helping,
saying, this is the father. And they put him in the car and
drove back up to the apartment. And then, after that we did more
headless running around, checked on G***e, at times we were sort
of like crossing each other, there was Dave, and running on my
own, and sort of the other way, and I then went out on the coast
road a bit further down, I don’t know what we thought we could
do, but it was just better than being close to them and being
there, and so we ran out on that, I think this road
unfortunately is called, which road is it, Cemetery Road I think
it’s called, I seem to remember noticing it because it seemed
like a horrible, I think it’s this bit here”.
4078 “It covers quite a lot of area”.
Reply “You’re basically out on, I think this is Cemetery Road or
one of these roads and it just takes you out down the coast and
there’s lots of new build sort of resorts going up”.
4078 “And all the areas that made a search, with hindsight or at
the time, there was nothing that you can think of that might be
relevant to?”
Reply “No, because as you went on you’d meet other groups, there
was Nathan, one of the waterfront people, who managed the
waterfront, who we’d met previous on a MARK WARNER holiday, so,
you’d sort of cross paths with people who were sort of searching
and then, it’d get deserted and there were dogs barking at you
as you sort of wandered around, because some of the apartments
were occupied and some were still being built, so there was a
kind of a bit of, a sort of a lonely sort of isolated place,
but, it was all very sort of close, and there was nothing,
looking for sort of like funny parked cars or, anything really
that seemed a bit odd”.
00.57.42 4078 “Did you see Kate during that initial?”
Reply “No, no, I mean, partly, because I just didn’t know what
to say to them and partly because by that time they were in with
the Police. And then we went to bed about sort of two, three,
something like that”.
4078 “You obviously found it very, very difficult seeing Gerry
in that state?”
Reply “ Yeah, most, yeah, I mean, it was pretty upsetting sort
of seeing him like he was and also because we thought, obviously
we were all having the same sort of thoughts, that paedophiles,
Madeleine’s gone, a little girl. Rachael stayed at the apartment
and I think Jane did as well, around. I think we, at one stage,
on one of the return visits, I did go into the apartment, just
as far perhaps as the kitchen, and I could see them sat on the
sofa, but they were in with the Police and there was nothing we
could do or say, so we came back out, and that’s the only time I
went back into the apartment”.
4078 “When did you first become aware of what Jane had seen, can
you remember?”
Reply “No, I think it might, I don’t know whether she came on
the same night, because I think it sort of, the realisation hit
her that she might have seen something, so I think it probably,
it may well have been the same night. I don’t know whether it
was that night or the next day, but I feel fairly sure it would
have triggered her memory, but I can’t say for definite”.
00.59.22 4078 “How are you doing?”
Reply “Umm, I’m okay, thank you”.
4078 “I think it has brought it has brought it home to all of us
just, what a mental trauma it has been, for you as a group of
friends as well”.
Reply “Yeah”.
4078 “Which, perhaps people don’t appreciate because they just
read what they read in the Press and forget that there’s a group
of people who have been so affected”.
Reply “Yeah, umm, I think it’s just because it could be, so
easily have been”.
4078 “Yeah”.
Reply “I mean, initially we went through this, it could have
been because of the location of the apartments, it could have
been G***e, we could have been the ones having to generate this
and deal with it as best we could and make it useful and do
something useful about it rather than just sort of collapsing. I
mean, I don’t know how they’ve done it. But then, it’s, and you
thought, oh well, maybe because Madeleine’s sort of quite,
(inaudible) and petite and maybe it wasn’t quite so likely. And
then it sort of that goes away and then you’re left with not
knowing what happened. And then as well, although we weren’t
particularly close to them before, we didn’t see them
particularly socially until after this, it’s still, none of us
move on”.
4078 “How often have you been in contact with them since?”
Reply “I mean, you settle back down as time goes on and it does
sort of ease itself a little bit, you are able to then sort of,
to function and sort of carry on, sort of people a bit further
away, and because we’re sort of further from them in terms of
the usual contact, it’s not been quite so difficult for us to
escape it to a certain extent. But we’d speak to them, I mean,
initially it was every few days and then sort of every week and
now it’s about every sort of two to there weeks”.
4078 “Yeah. There are things I can think of that I need to go
back over and clarify with you”.
Reply “That’s fine. That’s fine”.
01.01.20 4078 “Do you want to carry on with that now?”
Reply “Yeah, yeah”.
4078 “Or do you want to stop and have a break, have lunch?”
Reply “No, no”.
4078 “You want to carry on?”
Reply “I don’t think it’ll go away if we do it later anyway.
But, I mean, if you’re okay?”
4078 “Yeah, fine, fine. Just, I will ask the things that I can
think of then, because otherwise I may forget later, you know,
it probably won’t take very long anyway, because we will need to
do further interviews later. At the beginning of your recall of
Thursday?”
Reply “Yeah”.
4078 “Well not at the beginning, at the beginning of the
evening, you mentioned that you went back, after you had been to
the beach, you went back to the room and got your tennis
equipment?”
Reply “Yeah”.
4078 “Had you taken tennis equipment with you?”
Reply “On holiday?”
4078 “Umm”.
Reply “Yeah, yeah, so we had took trainers and sort of, the kit
and the tennis racquets”.
4078 “Okay. Do you know whether the rest of the group had taken
equipment or was it available to hire there?”
Reply “It’s available from the hire, I mean, definitely, I’m not
sure if Gerry and Kate, I think everybody else didn’t take
tennis kit and hired it, and I know for a while we had two
tennis racquets sitting in one of the buggies that were owned by
the MARK WARNER complex. They have been returned since, but they
were definitely, at least two. I don’t think Dave and Fiona and
I don’t think Russell and Jane and I’m not sure about Gerry and
Kate, whether they took the stuff with them”.
01.02.39 4078 “Okay. And the only other thing I can think of at
this point in time. You mentioned that after it was discovered
that Madeleine had gone, everyone was running around and you
were conscious that there was no organisation. Did you take it
upon yourself to start organising?”
Reply “No, and this is again, this is the sort of, another thing
that, you kind of know the theory, well it’s just from sort of
reading sort of novels and just sort of being sensible, there
was obviously, (inaudible) there is obviously a time that you
need to get everything done sort of pretty fast, because, if you
just think about it logically now, I know that’s what we were
thinking at the time, but you just see so many people running
around, looking in hedgerows, that’s fine if she’s just wandered
off, you’re going to find her even if it takes half an hour, but
if she’s been driven by somebody at speed, you need to get onto
that, get orders, whatever, and whatever response you think you
need or we thought locally we’d need, I mean, you just sort of
start that straight away. But there was that initial inertia of,
are we sure she’s really gone, are you sure she’s not there and
she’s sort of hiding in the bathroom or something, before it
sort of kicked in. But, I was going, we need to have a plan, but
everybody had already run, there was nobody to sort of impose it
upon. And, I don’t know that, I think if I’d done anything
differently I would have stood by the desk and said, no, you
must ring now, you really must, rather than just sort of saying,
oh,and sort of at the back of my mind thinking, well maybe
they’re right, maybe I’ll go back and she’s just turned up and
that’ll be absolutely fantastic, maybe I’m wasting his time, but
I didn’t stand over the desk and say, do it. But, aside from
that, there was no real sort of structured plan of what we
should do”.
01.04.26 4078 “And, as time went on, did you, as a group, become
more structured in what you were doing because of the way
circumstances unfolded?”
Reply “We became more structured, in that, we didn’t do
anything, in terms of life then just became one wander to child
care and back and interviews and alike from there. I think the
media side of things, which we I think a lot of people informed
the media straight sort of fairly quickly, because we know James
LANDALE who does BBC News twenty-four sort of personally, and
his wife, and we did ring them. I mean, I think we were asked
not, people suggesting that it wouldn’t be a good idea to the
Press, but, and they may be right, but, as a group, we thought
that you need some exposure on this because if you need to get
it out there. And that was sort of as much a criticism it wasn’t
sort of a criticism of the Portuguese Police, it was just that
it felt like the right thing to do and it just seemed like a
good idea at the time, to sort of try and get some exposure. And
I think we rang up James or his wife, Kath LANDALE, and asked,
how we, how you could do that and they gave us a number. And
then I think, we hadn’t, I think then there was phone contact
between Rachael and the desk, saying, do you want to go forward
with this, because we, we mentioned it but didn’t sort of
authorise anybody to sort of to go, because we hadn’t spoken to
the Police yet, we didn’t know what they wanted to do and how
they’d feel about it, so we held it back, but I think there were
people within the group and it sort of got out pretty quickly”.
4078 “There has been”.
Reply “In terms of organisation, no, I think it was, we were
pretty useless as a group,. I mean, the extended family for
Gerry and Kate were useful, I think we were just shocked”.
4078 “Well it wasn’t just Gerry and Kate that needed the support
really when you look back”.
Reply “No. Yeah, we got plenty of that”.
01.06.30 4078 “And I assume you all are still now”.
Reply “Yeah”.
4078 “It was obviously very, very hard for you all. There has
been a kind of a timeline that was drawn up between the group?”
Reply “Yeah”.
4078 “I can’t confidently say who did it or when it was drawn
up, but what can you tell me about that?”
Reply “I think, the timeline has been sort of, we all thought it
was a good idea, , (inaudible) Gerry and Kate were there, with
the Police trying to sort things out and we were sort of, the
rest of the group sort of were trying to make sense of it and do
what we thought we could to help, so the timeline, we sort of
said, if we write down everything then while our memory’s fresh
we’ll remember what we did, it should help, it may help. And we
then, we actually took it into the first interview and said,
look, we’ve done this and they said, no, you can’t read from
that. And, of course, you can understand now why it didn’t seem
like a good idea, but at the time it just seemed like a sensible
thing to do to try and get all our recall of everything that
we’d done down as fast as possible. And I think there were
various attempts and I think we sort of might, I don’t know
whether there was anything done on the night, but the next sort
of day or two, certainly in the first two days, we got together
to go through it. But it was mostly us not Gerry and Kate, I
think they, they might have contributed to it later”.
4078 “Okay”.
Reply “And we got a computer I think to write it down so we
could hand it over”.
4078 “Okay. I think we are going to stop here. I need to collect
my thoughts and go back and speak to the people monitoring to
find out if, up until this point, we have missed out anything
between us”.
Reply “Sure”.
01.08.05 4078 “Once we have done that and we have gone back over
things that we might have missed”.
Reply “Yeah”.
4078 “Then we will move on to just sort of mop up really the
rest of the Portuguese questions”.
Reply “Right”.
4078 “And the telephone, there isn’t much telephone (inaudible),
as I said earlier, and then Gerry and Kate’s questions. But
during those processes again we will be stopping to check to see
if there is any more things that come up”.
Reply “Fine, yeah”.
4078 “Okay”.
Reply “Yeah”.
4078 “I know that lunch arrived probably about half an hour ago
and you have had a difficult hour, so we will have a break now”.
Reply “Yeah, okay”.
4078 “So it is now three minutes past one and we will end
this interview”.
SIGNATURE (Sgd)
SM M OLDFIELD 09.04.08 |
|
00:00:02 4078 "Okay its eighteen minutes past three on the
afternoon of Wednesday the ninth of April two thousand and eight.
We’re in an interview room at Force Headquarters and I’m DC
FERGUSON from the Leicestershire Major Crime Unit.”
Reply "And I’m Matthew David OLDFIELD.”
4078 "Thank you Matthew. We’ve just done a quick interview and
covered some of these questions I’m about, well all of the
questions I’m about to put to you again, unfortunately because
of a technical problem we’re having to go through it so I
apologise again for that and I’ll just rattle off the questions
if I may.”
Reply "Yeah that’s fine.”
4078 "The first one was, when did you last see Madeleine?”
Reply "I’m not quite sure when I last saw her because it
depending on whether we had lunch together as a group in David
and Fiona’s, which we may have done on the last day because it
got more common as we went through the week but it was more
common for the six in terms of the, David, Fiona, already in the
apartment of course with Dianne and Russ and Jane and G***e and
Rachael and I to go up there and have lunch as a group than it
was to have the full complete group there at lunch time. Err but
it would seem now, it probably wasn’t until the day previously
because we’d seen them in the evening after their usual tea so I
think on that day, on the final, on the Thursday when we came
back up from tennis I’m not sure that Kate and the children were
there outside the tennis court when we arrived because we
arrived late and it would have been about bedtime so I can’t
specifically recall whether I saw Madeleine at that point, but
we sort of arrived, it wasn’t sort of big groups who were doing
the usual sort of chasing games, they may have gone earlier
because everybody else of course was still down with our wives,
down at the restaurant on the beach so it would have been quite
sort of the same sort of playgroup and they may have, I think
they went back and they were gone by the time I got to the
tennis courts.”
00:01:49 4078 "Okay. We also covered on the last interview, did
you ever leave your apartment by the poolside door?”
Reply "And we did if it was err during the day and there was one
of us in the apartment then we’d have gone in and out through
the patio door because it was the most direct way to get to the
pool and the Tapas restaurant err but otherwise certainly in the
evening we’d have locked that patio door because you couldn’t
lock it from the, you could only lock it from the inside, its
like a snick connector, I don’t know why I keep saying snick but
I don’t know whether its a northern term, but there was a little
hasp on the handle that you lock over to lock the patio doors
and you can only do that from the inside, it wasn’t lockable
from the out so we’d shut that and gone back out the other door
and locked that. So during the day we might have done to get in
and out to get equipment but at night, no.”
00:02:38 4078 "So at night times you’d always have that door
locked when you’d exit?”
Reply "The patio door would be locked and you’d go out through
the…”
4078 "Gone through the other…”
Reply "Main door and lock that one.”
4078 "Which then you locked behind you.”
Reply "Yeah.”
4078 "After you went.”
Reply "You had to lock it because it would open on the, it
wouldn’t shut through like a Yale lock it would close just on a,
on a handle that opened it.”
4078 "So to generalise then, whenever you were all out of your
apartment it was locked?”
Reply "Yeah.”
4078 "And whenever you were sort of coming or, and going unless
somebody remained within the apartment…”
Reply "It would...”
4078 "The patio door could have been open?”
Reply "Yeah.”
4078 "Or at least not locked.”
Reply "Yeah, because usually if it was reasonable weather
Rachael or, would have been sat in the sunshine, essentially
reading it book it’d be, so that probably would, probably have
been open but somebody would have been sat on top of it so while
G***e slept at lunch time.”
4078 "Okay. And then just to mop up the questions that were
outstanding from the Portuguese, when you went into check
Madeleine, Sean and Amelie the evening that Kate asked you to do
that on the third of May, when you went in through their patio
door did you close that after you went in?”
00:03:44 Reply "I’m fairly sure I would have closed that, if not
completely to, I’m pretty sure the more I think about it though
I would have closed it to, because I wouldn’t have wanted there
to be a sort of a funny draught or, or some noise, or something
that made the door slam that would have woken them up so I
pulled it to, behind me, but I can’t guarantee it was completely
shut, but it would have been there or thereabouts.”
4078 "And then when you left after the check…”
Reply "And certainly when I left it would have been completely
closed.”
4078 "And we covered the weather, you can’t remember it being a
particularly windy night.”
Reply "No I don’t remember much about the weather on that night
I’m just thinking more about when we were actually running along
the beach and along the front doing the search and I don’t
recall it being particularly windy but as I think we said but
last time it was windy enough for us to sail in the afternoon
but they didn’t necessarily translate it to have been windy in
the evening.”
00:04:46 4078 "Then there was the question of obviously you said
when you think you may have seen Madeleine last and I asked did
you see the MCCANN’S during the afternoon of the third of May?”
Reply "I don’t recall seeing Kate because I think she was gone
by the time we got back up from, from the restaurant to get the
tennis gear but I would have seen, I saw Gerry because he was
playing tennis with the social group which was the, the social
session tennis, which was what we were coming back up to attend.
So he was definitely there, I would have said hello to him.”
4078 "And prior to that you were on the beach because you’d been
sailing?”
Reply "We’d been sailing and we hadn’t, because it was a bit of
a walk down to the beach we hadn’t gone down to the beach
particularly frequently, we thought we’d get down more often
than that but it was, by the time the girls had woken up it was
just time for, to get them ready to muck about a bit and go to
the, go to the pool or to the slide before it was their tea time
and then they’d join the rest of the group from there so we
didn’t go down to the beach particularly much, we did on that
last day, mostly because we hadn’t done it or even that week and
it was a bit of a waste and because Russell and I were already
there on the boat.”
00:05:50 4078 "But neither of the MCCANN’S were there on the
boat?”
Reply "No.”
4078 "Okay, we went through the phone number and I gave you a
phone number which I’ll just read out for the benefit of anyone
watching this DVD, it’s ............................
Reply "Its not a number I recognise and it’s got that, I
wondered whether it the part of the hospital because its got
that repeat that it’s the ......... that makes it sound like a,
an official…”
4078 "Yeah.”
Reply "Building but its not our hospital number so I don’t
recognise it, I can’t find it on my phone.”
00:06:32 4078 "Okay, I think we also spoke about, and I
specifically asked you about the tennis equipment that the
MCCANN’S may have had.”
Reply "Yeah, and I don’t recall seeing that they had some I
think they’re more likely than Russell and, and Dave to actually
have their own tennis gear because I think they were more
serious about their sport in some ways I know Russell definitely
and I think both Russell, Jane, Dave and Fiona all borrowed
equipment from the tennis people. Gerry and Kate I think
borrowed as well and I can’t remember having their, their own
kit but I didn’t specifically notice it and it didn’t remember
seeing err tennis bags but I wasn’t in the apartment and we
didn’t travel together at the same time so I may be wrong about
that.”
4078 "We then went through questions from Kate and Gerry so…”
Reply "Yeah.”
4078 "What I’m going to do is go through your responses and if
there’s anything that I say that you don’t agree with then speak
up. We’ve covered how long you knew Kate and Gerry, you said
you’d never visited their home address, you’ve not been on
holiday with them before and on the holiday that you did go on
with them you met them sort of during the evenings, sort of late
afternoon and in the evenings.”
Reply "Yeah, there’d been a couple of lunch times. I suppose the
only caviat after that is the wedding, that wasn’t really, oh
there was a holiday, it wasn’t really a, there was kind of a,
the only time…”
00:08:00 4078 "I suppose yeah because it was in Italy wasn’t
it.”
Reply "So it was technically more than just a, you know.”
4078 "Mm, and you went for your run with Kate on the Wednesday
or so.”
Reply "Yeah.”
4078 "In relation to the children, you saw them at playtime,
sort of after tea.”
Reply "Yeah, drop off at nursery just for, for the twins because
they were in the same area as G***e.”
4078 "And have you ever felt that you had a reason to become
somehow concerned about the children?”
Reply "No, not at all, and I think we talked in an earlier
interview, but they were always, it was always very appropriate,
they were well rounded, appropriately confident, they weren’t
particularly clingy they weren’t scared of their parents it was
all, it was all very normal.”
4078 "You’ve gone through when you saw them on the third of May
and your arrival at the Tapas bar, who was already there? You
already said it was Kate and Gerry and you think they may have
been talking to somebody else but you can’t clearly remember
who.”
Reply "No.”
4078 "And then you just sat down, as far as you recall you sat
down as normal.”
Reply "Yeah.”
4078 "And then everyone else duly arrived.”
Reply "Yeah, there was derogatory things about time keeping for
Dave and Fiona.”
4078 "In relation to Kate and Gerry’s behaviour it was
completely normal.”
Reply "Completely normal throughout the meal and at all times
really until after the event, and then it was appropriate.”
00:09:20 4078 "We’ve already gone through who left the table and
at what stages on the previous, or on our initial interview. And
it, and also you’ve already told me that when Kate got back to
the table she was literally bordering on being hysterical.”
Reply "Yeah.”
4078 "Once she’d discovered that Madeleine was missing.”
Reply "I mean that bit, you, you heard her calling before she
got back to the table I mean she was, she must have been half
way down the, the route between her room and, between their room
and the restaurant so you heard her before you saw her and you
could just hear the panic in her voice but then it was just
everybody run, rushing back to the apartment so I don’t think
she got as far as the table before we were all up and, and
going.”
4078 "And then the question of were you shocked about what she
said, you were shocked at the facts that she was reporting.”
Reply "Yeah.”
4078 "But you were, they were very appropriate in the way that
she was saying…”
Reply "Yeah.”
4078 "If you imagined yourself in her shoes.”
Reply "Yeah, yeah.”
00:10:21 4078 "I mean you obviously would be distraught.”
Reply "That moment is just it can’t be, it’s just not possible,
it just doesn’t really happen apart from on the news and in
stories obviously it does happen but it was just completely
non-real for the, for, for the moment and its only as things
went on that it became err became reality because you were just
hoping and expecting that it was just going to be some dreadful
mistake and that she was wrong, and it just takes a while for
that to really hit, it is actually happening.”
4078 "You didn’t really go into the MCCANN’S apartment after
that, you saw Gerry and Kate on the sofa and they were engaged
with the Police at that stage.”
Reply "Yeah they were obviously later in the…”
4078 "And you didn’t see the twins so therefore you didn’t
notice anything unusual about them because you hadn’t seen them
anyway.”
Reply "No.”
00:11:11 4078 "You’ve already given an account of how you got
involved in the searches and the fact that you went to speak to
people at reception, and you noticed Nathan, somebody from Mark
Warner.”
Reply "Yeah, water front manager who we’d met before on a
previous Mark Warner holiday. I think he recognised us or maybe
he recognised Rachael and then the association to me yeah we
knew, we’d met him before.”
4078 "And you didn’t really see Kate so you couldn’t comment on
her reaction after the first ten minutes when…”
Reply "No, I mean who was, it was just indirectly through you
know Fiona and people sort of (inaudible) and seeing you know,
how upset and everything she was, but i didn’t directly see
her.”
4078 "And with Gerry, you said he was absolutely distraught.”
Reply "Yeah.”
4078 "And you felt their behaviour was completely appropriate
under the circumstances.”
Reply "Yeah, I mean he was just saying his thoughts to me and we
all thought about our own children and how it would be and if a
child goes missing and then taken out the room you assume the
worst and you assume the worst thing that could possibly happen
to them and just the difficult thing for all of us, the thing
that always concerns about leaving them in their rooms till we’d
thought about it and talked about in between couples and between
Rachael and I was, I mean, the worst thing you go well, why you
worrying so much, they’re locked in, they’re safe, the worst
thing that can happen is they wake up and not really know where
you are for five, ten minutes, and first that’s pretty unlikely,
G***e sleeps all the way through nearly, nine times out of a
hundred, and at worst she’s gonna be upset for ten minutes and
then you’re gonna be, you’re gonna be there just the thought of
something like this is just, completely just out of our
experience, it was just awful.”
00:13:00 4078 "Did you notice Kate and Gerry talking to anybody
unknown during the evening meal?”
Reply "No, err no, not that weren’t known to all of us as part
of the, err either the rest of the holiday group or err staff.”
4078 "And did you see them…”
Reply "Nobody stuck in…”
4078 "Sorry. Did you see them inside a car during the holiday?”
Reply "No, no I didn’t know there was a car.”
4078 "Then there was this awkward question that, is there any
supplementary explanation…”
Reply "No.”
4078 "That you consider pertinent or relevant to establish the
material truth.”
Reply "No there’s nothing that we haven’t, I haven’t suggested
or thought of (inaudible).”
4078 "I think we also clarified the point that the time that you
went in to check on Madeleine and the twins was the only time
you went into their apartment to check the children.”
Reply "Yeah.”
4078 "And your normal priority was really to check G***e.”
Reply "Yeah.”
4078 "Which you and Rachael had been doing between you at
natural intervals.”
Reply "Yeah, and it just fell to each couple to check each
others and then, I think I might have mentioned in one of the
previous ones they, Dave and Fiona had a monitor stretched the
distance across from the, their apartment to ours and it was
just that as the holiday went on and you knew from better, it
seemed like the sort of nice thing to do, to, offer to do it on
that last, on the last night, but it wasn’t usual routine err
for us to check on each other’s children, it may be different
for Dave and Fiona you know Gerry and Kate better and their
children better but for us it only, during the holiday it didn’t
seem appropriate at the beginning, it wouldn’t be our natural
response to do it.”
00:14:33 4078 "And in relation to checking G***e, because it was
like at natural intervals your guess is it was sort of every,
between every fifteen to thirty minutes.”
Reply "Yeah I think thirty would be the, the outside because I
mentioned earlier I’m a fairly fast eater and I was finished and
rather than just sitting there twiddling my thumbs while
everybody else was still eating, I’d have usually gone, I say I
volunteered to do it so I probably did more of the checking on
G***e than Rachael although she would have done during the days
of the holiday.”
4078 "Okay. I’m just going to make sure that I’ve got everything
that we’ve previously covered.”
Reply "Okay, I remembered (inaudible).”
4078 "(Inaudible).”
Reply "Yeah that’s fine.”
00:15:08 DC FERGUSON left the interview room.
00:16:00 DC FERGUSON re-entered the interview room.
4078 "There was one thing we forgot.”
Reply "Right.”
4078 "Robert MURAT.”
Reply "Oh yeah, never saw him, I didn’t see him on the night but
I wasn’t around the apartment as much. I know he, that Rachael
and Fiona saw him on that night but I didn’t recognise him when
the, when the picture came up and they all suddenly went we saw
that man on the night. He didn’t mean anything to me, I’d not
seen him. The first I’d seen him was on the, on the news. I had
no interaction with him then and I know he interviewed or
translated at the Police Station but he wasn’t involved in any
translation for me and I hadn’t see him before.”
4078 "Okay. Thank you. It’s now fifteen thirty four, is there
anything else that you needed to say before we finished?”
Reply "We covered the re-enactment (inaudible).”
4078 "Well we did speak about the re-enactment last time.”
Reply "Yeah I just remembered when you said that you remembered
some…”
4078 "Yes.”
Reply "For something else. I think for us it was a question of
(sighs) we’d do anything that would make a difference to this.
If it was gonna be genuinely helpful then there’d be no question
that we’d go and do it. There are a number of sort of practical
issues in terms of childcare and would it be the seven or would
it be the whole nine, I mean to recreate the entire night. It
would need to be Gerry and Kate, of course they are arguidos and
they’d be feel, I’m sure they’d feel a bit more nervous about
going back to do it once that was whilst they would struggle
under that and I think from our point of view we couldn’t see,
or from my point of view I can’t see quite what extra would
people get out of it given that we’ve already given the
statements and timeline and been questioned about that as much
as we can remember it, so we’d basically just be following what
we, what we said in terms of timing and we have concerns that
it’s not really gonna add anything and maybe that if you were to
play devil’s advocate and be very suspicious you might be saying
it was just being done to create a problem and create
inconsistencies. Now that might not be the case and there may be
very good reasons that something else would come out of it but
in terms of how it’s gonna help find Madeleine I don’t see yet
why that would be a benefit, and its use such as whether not
necessarily the Police sort of video but whether somebody sort
of in all the apartments that overlooks it could be videoing it
and releasing it in sort of an edited form or, or just in
general because there’s been moments when we’ve sat round a
table going, did you sit there and looking at watches and it
might look a bit sort of odd and we wouldn’t want that to be out
in the out in the open without good a reason to think that it
was going to beneficial.”
00:18:35 4078 "I think you also mentioned that you were
concerned about perhaps the weather conditions might not be the
same as they were that night.”
Reply "Yeah, I think that was more of the practical side that if
it, if its being done now because of the weather conditions then
what happens if it was stormy for a week, I mean it wouldn’t be
quite the same, it might be darker because the storm clouds
would, would that then mean that we’d wait for a week or two,
how open ended would it be and also a bit of concern that this
is a sensitive time, its going to be a year anniversary.”
4078 "Mm.”
Reply "And you know Kate would rather be doing, and all of us
would rather be doing something that was a more sort of
reflective on the time rather than being, I suppose the horror
of that night and getting on that particular anniversary time,
the timing is not good.”
4078 "Yeah.”
Reply "I can understand the reasons for asking for it for being
the same time of year.”
4078 "Yeah. So you’re not sort or refusing to attend the
re-enactment because of just being awkward.”
Reply "Yeah.”
4078 "You’re just, can’t see the value in it.”
Reply "Yeah.”
4078 "And you have a number of concerns that you’d like to be
resolved before you commit yourself.”
Reply "Yeah, and I think I’m fairly sure everybody else will say
similar sort of thing. I think Gerry and Kate, a bit more tricky
from the legal point of view.”
4078 "Yeah.”
Reply "And actually, bizarrely enough I’ve got, I was supposed
to be going on a friends, supposed to be a friends stag do that
weekend and the best man rang up and said we’re now going to
Lisbon, well maybe not that weekend, it might not be the best
but I might have been out there anyway, but its not gonna happen
now.”
4078 "Okay, is there anything else?”
Reply "No, no I don’t think so.”
4078 "Thank you for your patience.”
Reply "No that’s alright.”
4078 "It’s now fifteen thirty eight and we’ll finish this
interview.”
00:20:14 The interview ceased at 1538 hours when the tape
recorder was switched off.
SIGNATURE (Sgd)
SLS |
|
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Surname: OLDFIELD
Forenames: MATTHEW DAVID
Age: Date of Birth:
Address:
Postcode:
Occupation: DOCTOR
Telephone No:
Statement Date: 9/04/2008 Number of
Pages: 1
I am the above named and I live at the
address given to the police.
On Wednesday, 9th of April 2008, between
10:19 hours and 11:22 hours I was
interviewed by Detective Constable
FERGUSON at Leicestershire Police
Headquarters, the interview was recorded
on DVD. I am able to state that what I
said during that interview is an
accurate account of my evidence.
On Wednesday,9th April 2008 , between
11:54 hours and 13:08 hours I was
interviewed by Detective Constable
FERGUSON at Leicestershire Headquarters,
the interview was recorded on DVD. I am
able to state that what I said during
that interview is an accurate account of
my evidence.
On Wednesday, 9th April 2008, between
14:14 hours and 14:51 hours I was
interviewed by Detective FERGUSON at
Leicestershire Police Headquarters. As a
result of a technical problem this
interview did not record. I was then
re-interviewed by DC FERGUSON between
15:18 hours and 15:38 hours. I am able
to state that what I said during that
interview is an accurate account of my
evidence.
During interviews I marked on a plan
(labelled as exhibit D.M.2)the route
that I took between my apartment and the
Tapas Bar when checking on my daughter
G***e. I have now produce this plan as
my exhibit M.O.1.
This statement is made by myself and is
true to the best of my knowledge and
belief.
Signed: M. Oldfield |
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TRANSLATION BY
DUARTE LEVY |
|
TAPAS 7 -
09 APRIL 08 |
|
DC Ferguson
interviews Matthew Oldfield… with “Technical problems” |
I am
Detective Constable 4078 FERGUSON of the
Leicestershire Constabulary currently
stationed on the Major Crime Unit and
engaged on enquiries on Operation Task.
At 10:19 hours on Wednesday 9th April
2008 I was present at an interview suite
at Leicestershire Police Force
Headquarters when I commenced a recorded
interview with the witness Matthew
OLDFIELD. The interview ceased at 11:22
hours.
This interview was recorded onto DVD and
a master copy and a working copy were
produced.
I produce the master copy of this DVD as
exhibit reference
S.V.F.115 and
the working copy as exhibit reference
S.V.F.116
I have had the opportunity to read and
check through a transcript made of this
interview and I produce the transcript
of the interview as exhibit reference
S.V.F.116A
At 11:54 hours on Wednesday 9th April
2008 I was present at an interview suite
at Leicestershire Police Force
Headquarters when I commenced a recorded
interview with the witness Matthew
OLDFIELD. The interview ceased at 13:08
hours.
This interview was recorded onto DVD and
a master copy and a working copy were
produced.
I produce the master copy of this DVD as
exhibit reference
S.V.F.117 and
the working copy as exhibit reference
S.V.F.118
I have had the opportunity to read and
check through a transcript made of this
interview and I produce the transcript
of the interview as exhibit reference
S.V.F.118A.
At 14:14 hours on Wednesday 9th April
2008 I was present at an interview suite
at Leicestershire Police Force
Headquarters when I commenced a recorded
interview with the witness Matthew
OLDFIELD. The interview ceased at 14:51
hours.
This interview was recorded onto DVD and
a master copy and a working copy were
produced. (Page 1)
I produce the master copy of this DVD as
exhibit reference
S.V.F.119 and
the working copy as exhibit reference
S.V.F.120
Technical problems were
experienced during this interview and no
data was recorded.
At 15:18 hours on Wednesday 9th April
2008 I was present at an interview suite
at Leicestershire Police Force
Headquarters when I commenced a recorded
interview with the witness Matthew
OLDFIELD. The interview ceased at 15:38
hours.
This interview was recorded onto DVD and
a master copy and a working copy were
produced.
I produce the master copy of this DVD as
exhibit reference
S.V.F.121 and
the working copy as exhibit reference
S.V.F.122
I have had the opportunity to read and
check through a transcript made of this
interview and I produce the transcript
of the interview as exhibit reference
S.V.F.122A.
During this interview process the
witness Matthew OLDFIELD marked on a
copy of exhibit D.M.2 (a plan of the
area) which is now produced as exhibit
reference M.O.1.
Later the same day I returned to
Barunstone Police Station where I placed
all of the discs for the interviews and
exhibit M.O.1 into a secure store.
At 15:10 hours on Monday 14th April 2008
I it out of the secure store and handed
exhibit M.O.1 to exhibits officer 7383
CRAVEN.
At 15:50 hours on Monday 14th April 2008
I handed exhibits S.V.F.115,
116, 117, 118, 119, 120, 121 and 122 to
exhibits officer 7383 CRAVEN having
taken them out of the secure store.
AT 8:15 hours on 8th May 2008 I took
exhibits S.V.F.116, S.V.F.118 and
S.V.F.122 from Exhibits Officer CRAVEN
and retained possession of them until
09:00am on Friday 9th May 2008 when I
returned them to Exhibits Officer
CRAVEN.
This statement is made by myself and is
true to the best of my knowledge and
belief.
Signed: S FERGUSON
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RESPONSE ROGATORY |
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PAGE ORDER |
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MATTHEW
OLDFIELD 04 MAY 07 |
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MATTHEW
OLDFIELD 10 MAY 07 |
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TAPAS9
PHOTOS |
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