Channel 4: Dispatches 'Searching For Madeleine' Transcript:
Thanks to 'kizzy' for transcription
JS = Juliet Stevenson (Narrator)
CS = Chris Stevenson (former Detective Chief Superintendent, Cambridgeshire
Police)
DB = David Barclay (Former Head of Physical Evidence UK National Crime and Operations Faculty)
DC = David
Canter (Director, Centre for Investigative Psychology, University of Liverpool)
GL = Gary Ligg (Former Senior Search Adviser,
West Yorkshire Police)
MT = Matt Tapp (Police Media Adviser)
CP = Charlotte Pennington (Mark Warner Nanny)
DH
= David Hughes
GE = Guilhermino da Encarnação (Chief investigating officer)
GM = Gerry McCann (father of Madeleine)
KG = Voice of Kate Garraway (presenter - GMTV)
KM = Kate McCann (mother of Madeleine)
LP = Len Port (local journalist)
JR = Voice of Jill Renwick (family friend)
JN = Journalist (unknown)
JW = June Wright (Luz resident)
MK =
Matt King (Luz Resident)
OS = Olegário de Sousa (Spokesperson for the PJ)
TV = voice-over on television
Red writing indicates text that appeared on screen.
PART
ONE
JS: On May 3rd, 2007, 3 year old Madeleine McCann went missing.
GM: Please, if you have Madeleine, let her
come home...
JS: 168 days later, that is the only undisputable
fact about this extraordinary case.
OS: I have no facts to sustain whether the
child is alive or dead...
JS: Tonight, Dispatches sends 5 leading
criminal investigators to Portugal.
CS: If we got two thumb marks then that
would have to be an investigative priority...
JS: Their brief to bring 134 years
of experience to the search for Madeleine. The Portuguese village of Praia da Luz is a quiet holiday resort, but for the last
6 months it has been at the centre of an intense police investigation and a frenzy of media speculation. Dispatches team of
criminal experts arrives in Luz intending to shed fresh light on what might have happened to 3 years old Madeleine McCann
in a case that has dominated the headlines.
[Chris Stevenson (former Detective Chief Superintendent, Cambridgeshire
Police)
Professor David Canter (Director, Centre for Investigative Psychology, University of Liverpool)
Gary Ligg (Former
Senior Search Adviser, West Yorkshire Police)
Matt Tapp (Police Media Adviser)
David Barclay (Former Head of Physical
Evidence UK National Crime and Operations Faculty)]
CS: What we're looking to do is what we
would have done had this been reported in the UK.
DC: I would really want to know an awful
lot about the typical patterns of activity of the families involved.
DB: What you're talking about is: Did she
leave on her own? Was she taken by somebody else? Or was it none of the above?
JS: Portuguese secrecy laws prevent the
police from revealing any details about the investigation. Using information in the public domain and from their own expert
observations, our team will analyse what could have happened to Madeleine.
[DAY 1 LAST PHOTO May 3rd 2.29pm]
The last photograph of Madeleine McCann
was taken by her mother, Kate, at the pool of the Mark Warner Ocean Club where they were staying with friends.
[Charlotte Pennington Mark Warner Nanny]
CP: They
were a very social group and they seemed all to be really respectful, nice, loving parents. Madeleine, I found out to be quite
bright... errm, quite shy... errm, very sweet, very beautiful girl. On May the third, it was just Madeleine I was reading
a story to. I later saw them around lunchtime. That's the last time I saw them together as a family.
[DAY 1 CHILDREN PUT TO BED May 3rd 7.00pm]
JS: The McCann's say that they put their
children to bed at 7pm. It has been reported that Madeleine shared her room with her younger sister and brother.
[McCANNS GO TO DINNER May 3rd 8.30pm]
At 8.30, Kate McCann and her husband, Gerry,
joined friends for dinner at the Ocean Club Tapas Bar. Between 9.05 and 9.30 Gerry McCann and two friends checked the children
150 metres walk away. At 10'clock, it was Kate McCann's turn to check on the children.
CP: I was working that night at something called 'Drop-in Creche'. We had
one child left and... errm, the mother came in, picked up the child and just mentioned 'Hang on a minute, I've just
seen a guy who's run past me, who seemed really distressed and I recognised him as being a guest at Mark Warner, but
he was shouting out something like 'Maddie' or 'Abbey' or 'Gabby'.
[DAY 1 LOST CHILD PROCEDURE May 3rd 10.10pm]
JS: Mark Warner staff were briefed and fanned out across the resort.
CP: I went straight to the apartment. I sort of walked in, did a quick scan
around and been told 'No, no. She's not here, she's not here'. Kate McCann was outside and she was very distressed. She was saying
things like 'They've taken her' and 'She's gone' and, you know, 'Where is she? Where is she?' She was crying and there were
tears down her face and it was absolutely heartbreaking to see.
[DAY 1 POLICE CALLED May 3rd 10,30pm]
JW: I arrived at the Ocean Club reception at around about ten
to eleven. And at the time that we arrived a police car arrived and, as the police officer got out, a man approached
him, who I now know is Gerry McCann,
[June Wright Luz resident]
and said that his daughter had been abducted; that there was no way that
she could have opened the shutters herself; she'd definitely been taken.
CS: We started with three hypotheses: that Maddy had wandered off; that
she had been taken by...
JS: Based on the few details that have emerged from witnesses, and on their
own years of investigative experience, Dispatches' team of experts apply British police procedure to develop a strategy for
their review.
CS: It really reinforces to me to get the full background...
JS: The team is led by Chris Stevenson, a former Detective Chief Superintendent.
Among his thirty murder cases he ran the investigation in to the Soham murders of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman.
CS: ...and make sure that we've got that all totally and clearly documented.
CS: (to camera) It's very much a case of gathering as much information as
quickly as you can so that you can develop which of the hypotheses is the most likely.
DC: ...and I think that when you can get that framework, you can begin to
see the various possibilities...
JS: Forensic psychologist, Professor David Canter has compiled offender
profiles in 150 serious criminal investigations including abductions and murders.
DC: (to camera) There seems to me to be a range of possibilities from, on
the one hand, the child just wandered off. In other words, the child is the cause of the disappearance, right the way through
to the other extreme where it's some organised network of criminals who've come in from somewhere else looking for an opportunity
and have taken the child away.
JS: Based on DC's model, they resolve that there are three clear possibilities:
- that Madeleine wandered off on her own and got lost
- that she was
abducted
- or that something happened to her which may have involved her family.
They start by looking at the first hypothesis: that Madeleine woke up and
walked off by herself.
DC: ...for instance we need to know what the pattern of behaviour is, of
Madeleine. Did she wander at all? Was she likely to wake up at night? If she did wake up, did she know her way to the pool?
Could she find it on her own? Would she have gone looking for her parents?
JS: The team visit the McCann's apartment in conditions similar to the night
that Madeleine disappeared. First they explore how she could have got out of the apartment. Madeleine's bedroom window faced
the car park at the back of the apartment next to the main door. Reports indicate that, according to the McCanns, the shutters
were closed and the door locked. The more likely exit route is through the patio doors on the side of the apartment facing
the resort pool. It has been widely reported that these doors were closed but had been left unlocked. The team explore the
route she could have taken had she left this way. The apartment is situated at a corner of two roads. From the patio door,
steps lead directly out onto the street. Former police search adviser, Gary Ligg, believes it's most likely she would have
headed downhill towards the Ocean Club reception to the pool area and Tapas Bar.
DB: There's quite a slope on this road.
GL: Yes. And it takes you past the reception area if she's walking. We've
a tendency to walk downhill. If she's looking for her mum and dad, she may have an inkling or some knowledge that they're
in here because this is where they went.
CS: If she's coming down here, this is the first area of welcoming light.
GL: It is.
CS: So a disorientated child would probably tend to home in on that.
JS: Gary Ligg has devised search plans for over 100 serious criminal investigations.
In this case he would immediately advise a wider search of the area.
GL: (to camera) if she is lost and she's a lot warmer than the ambient temperature
around, we're gonna use a helicopter with a forward-looking infra-red.
DC: But why would a child wander off? A child would go to find her parents.
That's what she'd do, and she must know where the pool is.
GL: Are you going to dismiss the possibility that she's wandered off at
this early stage?
CS: We can't do that David. We've got to look at that as a possibility and
that has to be a priority, however unlikely a scenario that is.
[DAY 1 SEARCH WIDENS May 3rd Midnight]
JS: 2 hours after Madeleine was reported missing, the volunteers started
to look further afield for any sign of her.
JW: Everybody that was in the village was out and they did a complete sweep
of the beach and all up the rocks and all up the backs of the houses.
[Matt King Luz resident]
MK: You could hear from one end of Luz to the other end of Luz people should
out Madeleine's name.
CP: Everyone was sort of on automatic rather than talking to each other.
MK: If it was quiet at one end you could hear the others shouting at the
other end of Luz, or in every little alley way going around Luz.
JW: I kept thinking deep inside that she's gonna be found.
JS: Volunteers and Mark Warner staff continued searching into the early
hours of the morning.
CP: It was sort of like weird not finding her. This has never happened.
We've always found the child.
MK: As the night went on, it got colder and later and later. Everybody started
realising that this isn't going to be as good an outcome as what we were hoping.
CP: It got really more, more and more 'Where is she?' and you'd walk past
people and they had tears streaming down their face.
JW: The police arrived with police dogs and it was very late then so I don't
think there was anything else that night that we could really do.
MK: Something was seriously wrong.
[DAY 2 VOLUNTEERS SEARCH ABANDONED May 4th 4.30am]
JS: At 4.30 am, the volunteers reluctantly
abandoned their search for the night.
CS: If Madeleine had wandered off, I would definitely have expected her
to have been found by a member of the public. There are a lot of other apartments over-looking the street and the exit from
the apartment down the stairs, and you would have expected someone to see a small child and I would have thought, intervened.
JS: Dispatches' team of experts have tested one theory: That Madeleine wandered
off on her own. Next, they look at the possibility that she might have been abducted and uncover some worrying leads.
PART TWO
JS:
In the Portuguese resort of Praia da Luz, five criminal experts, commissioned by Dispatches, are reviewing the mysterious
disappearance 168 days ago of Madeleine McCann.
GL: But this time we are not talking about her wandering around, we're talking
about the open ground.
JS: Within ten hours, Madeleine's story was already causing ripples around
the world.
[DAY 2 THE NEWS BREAKS May 4th 7.45am]
KG: We've got some more breaking news for
you this morning. A very serious story is developing and is coming through...
JS: News of Madeleine's disappearance reached the British media by 7.45
the following morning
KG: ...and it is thought that she MAY have been abducted.
[Jill Renwick family friend]
JR: ...the shutters had been broken open and they've gone into the room
and taken her.
JS: From the moment that Madeleine was reported missing, Kate and Gerry
McCann have been adamant that she was taken.
DC: The thing about a car is you are moving more towards this end (points
to ORGANISED GROUP on the following diagram)
MADELEINE_____FAMILY____FRIENDS____LOCAL OFFENDERS____ORGANISED GROUP
<
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- >
It's
surprising how many offenders, in all sorts of...
JS: Having considered it unlikely that Madeleine wandered off by herself,
the team of experts now look at whether abduction could indeed be a possibility.
CS: You can't rule out the possibility that this was a chance abduction
and somebody happened to stumble across her. You can't rule out the possibility that somebody had targeted her having watched
what happened on previous nights and setting in place a plan to remove that child for whatever reason.
CS: So the Tapas bar is over that sort of orangey-yellow roofed building,
just round there.
JS: The team want to see just how possible it would have been to abduct
Madeleine. How could someone get into her bedroom unnoticed? How could they avoid being caught while people were checking
on the children? And how could they get away unseen if her parents were watching the apartment from the restaurant?
GL: To be sure of the line of sight is to either stand at the Tapas Bar
or at the doors, because of the elevation of the doors? So where's the reception?
CS: Here, this is it.
JS: They head for the Tapas bar to find out just what the McCann's could
see of their apartment from their dinner table. To reach it, you must go through the Ocean Club reception.
CS: Hello there, I'm an ex-detective from England... (comes out again) ...We're
not guests. They won't allow us to.
JS: Our team were not allowed into the Ocean Club, but local journalist,
Len Port, did get in the day after Madeleine disappeared. His photographs show what the McCanns and their group could see
of the apartment from their table.
LP: This picture here shows the scene from the Tapas bar. It is more or
less from the table they were sitting at.
CS: You can't see below half way down the door that they left insecure.
And you can't see the steps up there at all.
DB: No, not at all.
CS: So, somebody being wary could quite easily enter and leave.
DB: And depending on where you were with these umbrellas, you see even less
'cause they stick up over the top of the fence.
JS: Professor Dave Barclay is a leading international forensic scientist.
He developed best practice in the UK. As well as the Omagh bombing, he's advised in 225 cold case murders in the last 6 years.
From the photos he concludes the McCanns would not have been able to see an intruder from their restaurant table. But would
an intruder have avoided being spotted by one of Madeleine's parents or their friends on their regular visits to Madeleine's
bedroom?
DB: It would be easy for someone to get in and out of there without arousing
any attention.
CS: And with the insecurity, we know that the time required to go in there,
remove a child... you could be in and out in less than a minute.
DB: Yes
CS: Providing you'd done the necessary amount of pre-planning.
Shall
we just walk around and have a look and see what we can see from the road here.
JS: The team re-visit the apartment to see how much planning an abductor
would have needed in order to get in unseen. They start in the car park at the back of the apartment. It has been widely reported
that, according to the McCanns, the back door was locked and the shutters of the children's bedroom were closed. If they had
to force entry, could an offender get in that way unseen?
DB: If you were a burglar you could just pass over that wall and you're
actually quite capable of getting in by the window.
GL: That's right. Anyone could fix that.
(Mumbles amongst the team, camera pans to other apartments)
GL: It's all overlooked.
?: It IS all over-looked.
?: You wouldn't target that.
?: No.
GL: That window and that shutter, when they left the property, was secured.
The front sliding windows were open and next to the front sliding windows is a gate to the street.
JS: Search expert Gary Ligg thinks the much more likely entry point is on
the side of the apartment facing the resort. Here there are sliding patio doors which were closed but left unlocked according
to all the reports. The patio steps lead directly to the road.
DB: If anyone can get in there through the sliding windows, why bother to
go through the shutters in the first place?
GL: Have a look here. It defies any logic that somebody would use the rear
entrance or exit when this is so secluded and already insecure.
DB: That little gate, which doesn't seem to have any lock on it, goes straight
onto the road.
CS: Yes.
JS: Given the ease of entry and the seclusion of the pool side of the apartment,
the team begin to see abduction as a real possibility.
DC: ...if they were going to look/check on another child, where exactly
was it...
[DAY 2 McCANNS APPEAL TO ABDUCTOR May 4th 10.00pm]
JS: The media quickly accepted the abduction theory as the most likely explanation
of what had happened to Madeleine.
GM: Please, if you have Madeleine, let her come home to her mummy, daddy,
brother and sister.
JS: Having looked closely at the location and possible ways an abductor
could get in, the team returned to the apartment at night to look at how a person might use the dark to escape unnoticed.
DB: Is that where the alley comes in?
JS: While the bedroom side of the apartment is well lit, the steps leading
to the patio doors are in darkness.
DB: There's lots of light round that side and, erm, if you look in there,
there's shadows all the way up and it's easy to sneak out of this gate as well.
JS: The team focus on the alley way along the pool side of the apartment
block. Team leader, Chris Stevenson, thinks it's an obvious escape route.
CS: With this alley way here, because it is out of synch of that street
light, it is quite dark isn't it?
DB: Yes. Once you are in here, or you've jumped over that wall, I don't
think anyone would see you. They certainly couldn't see you from the Tapas Bar.
JS: Half way down this alley way they discover there's another one which
runs between the two apartment blocks and onto the car park.
CS: The only way, if you go down that alley way, of leaving is through the
car park because to go straight on is a dead end. There's no other exit route. If you've got a car for instance parked in
the back car park, you're actually better off going out this way, through between the two blocks of flats and onto the car.
Whereas to go that way (points left out of the gate) you're very much more subject to be seen aren't you?
DB: You are.
JS: The team pose another question. If spotted, would an intruder raise
suspicions?
GL: There was a report of somebody walking away from this area with a child
wrapped in a blanket.
DB: You then become a tourist then don't you... holding a child that's sleepy.
DC: (Pointing to a map of Praia da Luz) It has some very distinctive localities
in it and it wouldn't be...
JS: As the experts begin to think that an abduction is practical for someone
with local knowledge of the area, forensic psychologist David Canter outlines what kind of person might target Madeleine.
DC: We haven't really talked about the victimology about a 4 year old girl
being abducted. It's not a young baby that would be more typically taken by a woman who's looking for some sort of substitute
or replacement child. It's not a teenager or a pubescent young girl that really can be abducted in relation to very obvious
sexual activities. It is a much more ambiguous area, possibly more towards the end of somebody who's a bit disturbed, a bit
confused who would take a child that they saw the opportunity to take.
DC: (to camera) There are people, very few and very rare, but there are
individuals who have some sort of sexual obsession and can even get an obsession with a particular child or a child that has
a particular look about her and that seems to me to be a possibility within that framework of somebody who's around that area
who saw her and really became obsessed with the need to take her.
DC: (to team meeting) Those people who abduct children around that sort
of age, very typically will release them after a while but my concern is that, that individual would be totally shocked and
over-awed by hundreds of journalists being all over the place.
JS: If this was the case it would change the nature of the search.
[DAY 3 POLICE BACK ABDUCTION THEORY May
5th]
GE: (at an impromptu press conference - translated through voice-over)
At this moment, I can confirm to you that this was an abduction but we believe the girl is still alive and well.
JS: In the following days, police and volunteers widened their search to
the outlying areas of PDL.
MK: We were literally searching everywhere and were having to look in drainage
holes. You'd have to be looking in the wells and in the ruins. You knew you could have been looking for something not very
nice.
JS: With the volunteers operating on their own and without a brief of what
to look for, their effectiveness was limited. Although the volunteers searched the beach on the night, Gary Ligg is concerned
that it wasn't followed by a more thorough police search.
