What was locked and what was open? Was there an 'abductor'?

To answer these questions, we need first to look at what was said by the McCanns to family and friends in the immediate aftermath of Madeleine's disappearance.

Jon Corner, as quoted above, clearly states that Kate had told him that they had left the apartment locked while they were having their meal. In other words both doors, front and patio, were locked.

Trish Cameron recalled that she received a call late that same night from Gerry and she recounted: "Kate went back at 10 o'clock to check. The front door was lying open, the window had been tampered with, the shutters had been jemmied open or whatever you call it and Madeleine was missing... They think someone must have come in the window and gone out of the front door with Madeleine."

Philomena McCann, Gerry's sister said on 04 May: "Some people may ask why they left the children alone in the apartment but it was locked and they had a full view of the front door and they were checking every half hour."

Jill Renwick, a family friend, told GMTV on 04 May: "She's obviously been taken as she couldn't have gone out on her own and the shutters had been forced open."

The clear implication in Jill Renwick's statement is that she couldn't have gone out on her own because the front door and patio doors were locked. Otherwise Madeleine, as an active 4 yr-old, could surely have got out through 'open' patio doors very easily and on her own. She was clearly too small to attempt a climbed escape through a closed and shuttered window.

However, police tests showed the heavy metal shutter had not been forced up from the outside, so must have been pulled open from inside the room.

Chief Inspector Olegario Sousa, spokesman for the investigation, confided in British former Chief Inspector Albert Kirby that neither the windows nor their shutters had been tampered with.

What must be appreciated, at this point, is that these comments, from closest family and friends - the first to be contacted, are not Chinese whispers. It is not a case that the McCanns rang one person, who got the message wrong, and this got passed on to everyone else. These are four people who received independent telephone calls from Gerry or Kate, in the hours following the 'abduction', and made independent statements. Yet, the statements all recount the same story. The McCanns' apartment was locked, so the 'abductor' must have gained access via the jemmied shutters and left via the front door.

But this begs the question: How did the abductor get into the apartment if the patio doors were locked and the shutters, as attending officers quickly assessed, had not been forced from the outside?

There now appear to be two problems with the recounted version of events. How did the abductor get in and why was the window open? And it's at that point the story changes, in a crucial way.

It is suddenly revealed that the patio doors to the rear of the apartment were left unlocked. This immediately resolves the problem of how the 'abductor' entered the apartment but it makes the decision to leave their three babies alone, inside an exposed and unlocked apartment, seem almost unbelievable, not to mention grossly negligent.

So, to further justify and soften the decision to leave the doors unlocked, it is 'revealed' that the McCanns and all their friends on the holiday left their patio doors open throughout the evenings for fear of fire.

They also embark on a series of interviews where they repeatedly assert that they are responsible parents and that their decision to leave the children alone was quite normal behaviour. Gerry goes so far as to describe it as no different to leaving them in the house when you go into the garden.

The second problem that now faces the McCanns is that they have committed themselves to an 'open window and shutter' story. Indeed, it is quoted as the very reason Kate knew something was wrong because when she says she opened the patio doors at 10.00pm, the bedroom door slammed shut as a result of the wind running though the apartment.

So, if the abductor clearly didn't enter through the bedroom window, why was it open? The McCanns hadn't opened it, so there could be only one reason. The 'abductor' must have used it to escape from.

It is also vaguely claimed that the front door has curious locks and can only be opened with a key, further strengthening the bizarre decision of the 'abductor' to escape through a window, carrying a child who would surely have woken up.

But why, with access to a front door and an apparently unlocked patio door, would the 'abductor' complicate things, and heighten the risk of detection, by clambering through a window with a heavy metal shutter?

This idea of a complicated 'key-only exit' front door can surely be discounted, as no apartment would be granted a fire certificate if you could only escape through the front door if you had the key. Mark Warner would surely not install doors that could leave them culpable in the event of a fire.

So, we now have the McCanns' insistance that the 'abductor', or 'predator' as he is now referred, was laying in wait, and entered through the open patio doors between checks on the children.

So what can we make of the way the story changed so quickly?

There is only one conclusion to be drawn.

If the patio doors were locked, as Kate and Gerry independently told Brian Healy, Jon Corner, Trish Cameron, Philomena McCann and Jill Renwick, and the window shutters had clearly not been 'jemmied', then there can have been no way into the apartment that evening. And therefore, by deduction, no abductor.

And that, is a very disturbing conclusion.

http://www.mccannfiles.com/id21.html