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, erm, 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, erm, primarily the connection is through, erm, Russell and Jane, erm, 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, erm, 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, erm, Fiona PAYNE as she is now, erm, 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. Erm, so I knew Gerry because we worked together in, I think, two thousand and two, erm, when we were at the Leicester General Hospital, so we knew each other on the, erm, on call rota, so we’d be together at sort of medical meetings, erm, 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, erm, there was a big group of people that went out, erm, 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, erm, hearing about them through David and Fiona and Russell and Jane, erm, from them. And then the holiday came about because, erm, independently we’d been on sort of various holidays and we’d sort of often talked about them, you know, sort of being friends and we then went on a joint holiday to Greece the year before with David and Fiona, Russell and Jane, erm, but not with the McCANNs, we’d been to Greece, erm, 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. Erm, that was, erm, we’d been to, as I say, some of us had been to MARK WARNER, erm, various MARK WARNER resorts before, we’d been to the Greek one in Lemnos, erm, 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, erm, and sunshine and, erm, it was sort of all inclusive and it was just a very, erm, 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, erm, 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, erm, chose the Portugal one because it fitted better with time. Erm, in terms of, I mean, 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. Erm, 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, we, erm, 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, erm, 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, erm, 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, erm, 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, erm, 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 “Erm, we flew from Gatwick. We certainly flew from, Russell and Jane came down with us, erm, and the rest of the group went from, erm, from Leicester, from East Midlands, erm, 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, erm, to Gatwick from, from, erm, 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 “Erm, 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, you know, the choice about where we were going to stay, we’d had the keys with our names on it, erm, 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, erm, 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, erm, 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, erm, so there’s the, the apartment block, erm, are at one side to the, erm, let’s think how best to describe it, it’s all based around a T-junction essentially. So, erm, the apartment blocks, erm, 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, erm, 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, erm, 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, erm, 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, erm, into, to access the apartments there”.
00.12.59 4078 “Right”.
Reply “Erm, 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, erm, 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. Erm, 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, erm, you’ve got the apartment block, so you’ve got the road, you’ve got the, erm, 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. Erm, 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, erm, (inaudible), erm, 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, yeah, that makes, erm, 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 “Erm, 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, erm, 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, erm, 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, you know, the children the next day, so I think we, you know, you met that time and then it was packing up and going over to, erm, 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, erm, with the kids, except, erm, 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 “Erm, sailing, for me, because, erm, it’s, it’s a thing I really enjoy but don’t have any opportunity to at home. Erm, I mean, they’re big on, erm, 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, erm, 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, you know, to be able to play, erm, 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, 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, erm, 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, erm, and then there was, there was tennis as well”.
4078 “Did you play tennis every day?”
Reply “No, erm, no, I think, 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, erm, with, erm, 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, erm, proper tennis lessons”.
4078 “Do you remember when they were?”
Reply “Erm, 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, erm, 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, erm, on that Thursday and we actually, because there weren’t that many people around, erm, 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, erm, 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, erm, but, erm, 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, you know, all the kids had been changing seats, so there was, I was sat with, erm, E**a, which is, erm, 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. Erm, but I started feeling a little bit queasy in the evening and then the, erm, 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, erm, 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. Erm, in the mornings we, G***e, Rachael and I always had breakfast at the Millennium, apart from the day I was feeling, erm, 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. Erm, 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 “Erm, I probably spent more time with Russell because, oh and probably Dave, because we knew them better and also, erm, Gerry and Kate were much more organised about, erm 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, you know, 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, erm, 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, erm, 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, erm, 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. Erm, in the afternoons we didn’t take G***e back to Nursery, erm, 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, erm, then she’d maybe sleep ‘til half past three and so we’d be up and either playing by the pool or, erm, we might go down to the, we went down to the beach but that was on the Thursday. Erm, yeah, erm, Gerry and Kate put their kids back into the crèche each afternoon. Erm, 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, erm”.
4078 “(inaudible) to take care of G***e (inaudible)”.
Reply “Yeah, there was always that sort of, oh she’s gone down to sleep, you know. But, erm, it was quite a nice opportunity to sort of sunbathe and read books and”.
4078 “What was the weather like during the week?”
Reply “Erm, 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. Erm, 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 know, you’d need a jumper if you sat outside and there was no heat particularly, erm, 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 “Erm, 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, you know, it was all, you know, it was nice. Erm, 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, you know, 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, erm, 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, erm, 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, erm, you know, round and went past all the, erm, 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, erm, you know, 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, you know, 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, you know, they’re going to be upset and you think, well, you know, if they’ve got this then it’s going to be ten minutes at the most, erm, 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, you know, 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, you know, it said it’s a village, it’s not enclosed, it’s sort of apartments throughout the village and, erm, there isn’t a baby listening service and we can’t guarantee that you’ll be together, you know, 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, you know, 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, you know, we’re not going to leave to, erm, 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, erm, for us and they said it’ll have to wait until you get in the resort, erm, 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, you know, the actual distance seemed quite, you know, 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, erm, you know, 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, you know, 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, erm, 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, erm, 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, erm, are sort of fairly relaxed and easy going, erm, 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, you know, they had been awake and I went in they wouldn’t be particularly, erm, you know, 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, erm, 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, erm, you know, she slept like a top. Erm, 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 “Erm, 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, erm, 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, erm, 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 “Erm, 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, erm, the sort of main road where you access Praia da Luz from and then back”.
4078 “What sort of distance would that be?”
Reply “Erm, yeah, I think it’d be about three or four miles, maybe each way”.
4078 “And you run, do you often run?”
Reply “Erm, 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, erm, yeah, but, erm, 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, erm, 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, erm, 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, erm, 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. Erm, 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, you know, 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, erm, no, I mean, we were so fairly, you know, 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, erm, sort of, erm, taking anybody else on, or sort of, erm, 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. Erm, tut, 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, you know, 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, erm, you know 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). Erm, 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, you know, 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, you know, 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, you know, we’d chase them, erm, backwards and forwards, you know, 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’. Erm, so that was pretty much the routine for most nights and we may have gone over and played with that, erm, 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 know, and you think, you know, there really are, you know, it was all pretend at that point, but of course, erm, not as it turned out that, you know, the fact that she said that was, erm. But, you know, it was all, you know, fun, the children running round and then they’d all jump on Dave or jump on Gerry, it was all, you know, 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, erm, 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. Erm, they were appropriate, friendly, they had the same, I mean, we’re all medics, so you’ve got that in common anyway. Erm, 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, you know, 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, you know, 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. Erm, but, absolutely, sort of great parents. I mean, most of my memory from Italy is of sort of, you know, I think, 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, you know, just a normal. I mean, he’d done quite a lot of sports, erm, on a Wednesday night particularly and when we went to the bar after we spent a lot of time talking about sort of, you know, could it have been slightly different could I have been a professional footballer, you know, 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, erm, in common with that. Erm, Kate sort of initially was much sort of quieter but when you sort of talked to her she’s, erm, sort of just friendly and sort of warm and just a normal person”.
4078 “And how would you describe Madeleine?”
Reply “Erm, yeah, sweet, lovely, you know, sort of very sort of outgoing and, erm, you know, 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, erm”.
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, erm, 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, you know, 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, you know, maybe two or three sort of glasses. Erm, it is difficult because, you know, 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, you know, it sort of can be a bit cold and it wasn’t always sort of conducive to having, erm, 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 “Erm, no, my initial thought is there’s nothing that’s leapt out that I haven’t mentioned before. Erm, 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. Erm, somebody had workmen in maybe during, the shutter we broke, the shutter, erm, 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, erm, 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 “Erm, 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, erm, apartment, because we only needed one bedroom and they needed two, erm, 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. Erm, 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, erm, because during the day, if somebody was in the apartment, erm, we’d go back through the patio doors, we’d just leave them open, you know, 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, erm, 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 “Erm, would be, erm, 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 “Erm, 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, erm, 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 “Erm, brown, erm, big, brown and wood, brown and wood like. There was a lock, erm, it sort of, you know, 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, erm, 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, erm, 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 “Erm, 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, you know, 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, erm, the outside, erm, shutter wouldn’t have been down until we were in there”.
4078 “Okay”.
Reply “Erm, 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. Erm, there’s just like a bathroom and toilet, the bath goes along there. Erm, and there’s sort of like a living area with, erm, 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, erm, 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, erm, I mean, sort of I’m a bit disorganised about getting G***e, you know, to bed, erm, 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, erm, 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, erm, erm, 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, you know, they were being sort of, you know, well looked after, I didn’t hear any sort of screaming, shouting or, you know, 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 know, you do a bit of child psychology when you do and you know what, 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, you know, it was all appropriate sort of, you know, there was nothing odd about the way they interact with their children, they didn’t do anything that would made me think, you know, 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, erm, became unwell the Tuesday evening, erm, 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, erm, 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 “Erm, 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, you know, 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, erm, that from my previous statement, I don’t think there is anything different in there but, erm, 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, you know, 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, erm, 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. Erm, 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, erm, 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, erm, 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. Erm, 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, erm, 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, erm, 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. Erm, from then, I don’t remember, I assume we made our way back from the beach, picked G***e up from Nursery and, erm, 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. Erm, 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, erm, for part of the afternoon, so it was sort of relatively late in the, erm, 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, erm, 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, erm, 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, erm, and he didn’t have confidence in my sailing abilities, but, erm, 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. Erm, by the time we’d got back in the, erm, 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, erm, 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, you know, 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. Erm, I think he was steering. Well, anyway, so we came back. And then we went from there and we actually had, unusually, we had, erm, 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, erm, 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, erm, 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, you know, 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. Erm, so we went back up, erm, back to, well I went back to the apartment, got the tennis gear and back onto the courts or back to the courts area, erm, and the other guys went to get their stuff. Erm, and 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, erm, the coach, whose name I can’t remember, the tennis coach, the blonde haired bloke, erm, 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, erm, sort of went back to, erm, to sort of help with, you know, 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, erm, 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, you know, Rachael will be doing it all on her own”.
00.08.51 4078 “You would be in trouble?”
Reply “Well, yeah, and also because, you know, 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, erm, 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, erm, she goes down fairly easy, she goes into our bedroom and we take all the stuff we need out of the room before we, erm, 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. Erm, 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. Erm, 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, erm, 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, you know, there’s just us in this restaurant, as there had been most of the week, there weren’t often, erm, on one night they had a quiz and there were a few sort of more tables, erm, 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, you know, 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, you know, I’ll have whatever it was, I think it was, erm, probably sardines because, you know, they were pretty good, erm, 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, you know, 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, erm,”.
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, you know, 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, you know, there’s, you know, 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, erm, by that time, but not completely dark, erm, 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, erm, 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 “Erm, 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, erm, 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, erm, 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, you know, 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, you know, 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, erm, 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, you know, 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, you know, 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, you know, if you have one then you’d sort of just sort of passed on, but you’d certainly remember thinking, you know, 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 “Erm, it wasn’t, erm, 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, erm, I couldn’t sort of guarantee this, but my impression is that there was, the street lights were sort of very orangey, erm, 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, erm, back to the table, erm, 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, you know, I didn’t hear any noise when I listened outside your room, so I thought it was a little bit odd that, you know, not kind of a wounded pride that he sort of didn’t trust me, but, erm, I just thought, oh, you know, I’ve just checked you don’t really need to check and sort of, you know, sort of go back, but, erm, he sort of got up and went back to check on, erm, on his kids. But, you know, you don’t, you know, we’re all sort of responsible for our own children and you wouldn’t sort of say, you know, 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, erm”.
4078 “Did you actually say that or you just thought that to yourself?”
Reply “Yeah, I thought that, you know, I’d said that everything was sort of quiet, I listened outside the shutters, but, you know, they went back up, erm, and said he was going to check. Erm, I know that Jane went, erm, 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, erm, Russell and Jane had come separately in the evening, and so she went back, erm, to check on, presumably to check on, to check on her kids and then came back and we, erm, 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, you know, 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, you know, I might not have just been next to their shutter in terms of to actually have a listen, you know, 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, erm, I wouldn’t normally sort of impose that sort of check on somebody else unless they’d, erm, unless they’d suggested it. It’d be almost like a step, not a step too far, but, erm, it’s not really our place to, you know, 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, you know, well I hadn’t been in so I couldn’t really check and, you know, 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, erm, 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, erm, you know, as I said, they went off. So these two went off, sorry, Gerry and Jane went off, did their checks, you know, I wouldn’t have gone, you know, 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 “Erm, 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, you know, do you want us to go and check on, erm, do you want me to go and check on your kids, erm, 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, you know, it may or it may not have been different. But, erm, 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, erm, you know, 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, erm, 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, erm, and went back through the patio entrance, so through the gate, through the patio doors, erm, 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. Erm, I’ve spent a lot of time debating how far the door was open, from previous questioning, and, you know, 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, you know, G***e has it completely pitch black, because it seems to me that she sleeps a bit longer, erm, 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, you know, 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, erm, 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, you know, 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, you know, is somebody, you know, upset, do they want their mum or something, you can say, you know, somebody might have vomited and you wouldn’t know about it, but there was, you know, nobody was awake, you thought, if something, just one, it’d be, it’d sort of feel a bit odd, you know, from the draughts, you know, 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 thee 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, erm, but there as no sort of, you know, 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, erm, it just seemed, it just seemed odd, because, you know, 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, you know, 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, erm, 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, you know, it was all really good and it was all sort of, they were sort of very good at, erm, you know, if they did something wrong, they said no and sort of explaining it properly and why, you know, 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 you know, and older children might get, you know, 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, you know, 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, you know, 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, you know, 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, you know, oh it’s silly that they didn’t notice that or, you know, 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, you know, 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 “Erm, 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, you know, 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, you know, 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, erm, so it might have been, you know, 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, erm, 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, erm, 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), erm, I’m not sure which one of those, I think it was this left one here and there’s sort of like, erm, 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 “Erm, 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, you know, 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, you know, 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, erm, you know, you wouldn’t, the cots were in the middle of the room and of course, you know, there’s no way you’d put them at the side, you know, 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, erm, you know, 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 “Erm, 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, you know, in the line with the long axis of the room, but there was a gap between the two and the sides are mesh, erm”.
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, erm, 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 “Erm, there was a bed on the far side underneath the window, erm, 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 “Erm, and there’s another bed along here, which is where Madeleine was supposed to be, erm, 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 “Erm, my, erm, 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, erm, 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, you know, 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, erm, with G***e, and there’d be a slight spacing and then netting and so, from the side, you’d see, erm, part of this one, slightly obstructed by this one, but enough to see through the grill, erm, 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, erm, 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. Erm, 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, of the cots moved to the side, and they then sort of, erm, 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, erm, 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, erm, I mean, there was no, you know, 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 “Erm, 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, you know, 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, you know, since, everybody talked about sort of what happened, you know, 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 “Erm, 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, erm, it wasn’t shut at that point. Erm, but, you know, there was nothing, it didn’t feel odd when you went into the, erm, into the apartment, it was sort of quiet and, you know, 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, erm, 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, you know, and that was what I was there to check, erm, no, no funny sort of smells, no sort of funny draughts, no sort of funny sort of noises, no, erm, nothing that I can think of for that. I mean, it was a complete just a shock out of the blue when, you know, 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, erm, you know, you only rarely saw, you know, occasionally people move about on the street and that was mostly during the day, erm, everybody else seemed to sort of eat earlier or, erm, used the baby sitting or whatever service, there were a few people about between and there wasn’t really much of a thoroughfare for, erm, 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 “Erm, well everybody, apart from Russell and I were back, so I arrived back before Russell, erm, I think I said, all quiet, or something to, erm, to, you know, 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, erm, 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, erm, she went off to relieve Russell, as it were, to sort of take over, erm, sort of duties and make sure that E**e was alright and then Russell came back and they actually redid his food, erm, 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, erm, because I think that main course would have taken a bit longer because, you know, Russell came back and we started chatting, you know, how’s E**e and all that sort of thing, erm, 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, erm, 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. Erm, then everybody I think left the table, I mean, I just remember being behind Dave as he was, and Gerry, as they were running, erm, Russell I think (inaudible) a bit behind and so we all ran. If you ask whether we went, you know, 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, erm, and as soon as they sort of said, you know, 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, you know, most of the time and then for the rest of the evening they were stood, you know, at the doorways to the apartments, erm, we went back round, erm, and everybody was just running around like sort of headless chickens, so I remember saying, you know, 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, you know, and it was obviously important that we, you know, we did something constructive rather than just running around looking in the hedgerows if, you know, what we, because we all went through this, you know, 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, you know, she’s like a four year old child and, you know, she, I mean, all the doors were shut, she wasn’t really going to run off and then Jane said, the shutters up, and, you know, 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, you know, straight away, erm, 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, you know, 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, erm, can you please, it was sort of, it was kind of, it was sort a weird kind of lack of urgency, you know, 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, erm, you know, I certainly asked them to, about perhaps sort of maybe about ten past ten maybe. Erm, then we went back up to, or I went, because I was on my own, I went back up to the, erm, 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, you know, sort of search nearby roads. And so we, erm, I volunteered to go up to the, erm, 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. Erm, 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, erm, and they were very good, they, you know, they obviously, you know, 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. Erm, so there was plenty of running around through the back streets and back to the apartment and then, you know, where’s the, where are the Police, where are the Police, erm, and so went back down to the reception, this would have been about thirty minutes or so later, erm, back to reception, erm, and at that point, Gerry had come down as well, erm, and, erm, you know, was obviously, you know, sort of intermittently sort of calm and then completely, you know, hysterically upset, it was sort of, you know, it was sort of pretty sort of upsetting, because you didn’t know what to really say, because you can’t really say, you know, it’s going to be okay, because, you know, you assume the worst and it’s going to be particularly awful, you know, it’s going, you know, some, erm, person’s got, (inaudible), some xxxxxxx’s got my, you know, got my daughter and she’s so innocent. And, I mean, at that point, we were sort of in a room next door, you know, the bedroom across, and we thought maybe it could have been G***e quite easily. Erm, but, you know, there’s, you know, 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, erm, you know, 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, erm, responded in a much more practical way, of course, they would do, but with decent suggestions about doing this, doing that, you know. But, erm, 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, you know, saying, this is, you know, this is the father. And they put him in the car and drove back up to the apartment. And then, erm, after that we did more headless running around, checked on G***e, erm, you know, 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, erm, I don’t know what we thought we could do, but it was just better than being close to them and being there, erm, and so we ran out on that, I think this road unfortunately is called, erm, 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 know, you’d sort of cross paths with people who were sort of searching and then, you know, 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, you know, it was all very sort of close, and there was nothing, you know, looking for sort of like funny parked cars or, erm, you know, anything really that seemed a bit odd”.
00.57.42 4078 “Did you see Kate during that initial?”
Reply “No, no, I mean, partly, you know, 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, you know, because, you know, we thought, obviously we were all having the same sort of thoughts, that, you know, you know, paedophiles, Madeleine’s gone, a little girl. Erm, Rachael stayed at the apartment and, erm, and I think Jane did as well, erm, 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, erm, 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, erm, 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, you know, what a mental trauma it has been, for you as a group of friends as well”.
Reply “Yeah”.
4078 “Which, you know, 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, you know, we could have been the ones having to generate this, you know, 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. Erm, but then, you know, it’s, and you thought, oh well, you know, maybe because Madeleine’s sort of quite, you know, (inaudible) and, you know, petite and, you know, maybe it wasn’t quite so likely. And then it, you know, sort of that goes away and then you’re left with not knowing what happened. Erm, and then as well, although we weren’t particularly close to them before, erm, we didn’t see them particularly socially until after this, it’s still, you know, none of us move on”.
4078 “How often have you been in contact with them since?”
Reply “Erm, 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, erm, quite so difficult for us to escape it to a certain extent. Erm, 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, you know, 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, erm, by the MARK WARNER complex. Erm, 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, you know, (inaudible) there is obviously a time that you need to get everything done sort of pretty fast, because, you know, 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, erm, before it sort of kicked in. But, you know, I was going, we need to have a plan, but everybody had already run, there was nobody to sort of impose it upon. And, you know, 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, you know, 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. Erm, but, aside from that, there was no real, you know, 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 “Erm, we became more structured, in that, we didn’t do anything, in terms of, you know, life then just became, you know, one wander to child care and back and interviews and alike from there. I think the media side of things, which we, erm, I think a lot of people informed the media straight, erm, sort of fairly quickly, because we know James LANDALE who does BBC News twenty-four, erm, sort of personally, and his wife, and we did ring them. I mean, you know, I think we were asked not, you know, 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, erm, 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, you know, to sort of try and get some exposure. And I think we rang up James or his wife, Kath LANDALE, and asked, you know, how we, how you could do that and they gave us a number. And then I think, we hadn’t, erm, I think then there was phone contact between Rachael and the desk, saying, you know, 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, erm, 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, you know. I mean, the extended family for Gerry and Kate, erm, 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, you know, we all thought it was a good idea, you know, (inaudible) Gerry and Kate were there, you know, 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, you know, it should help, you know, it may help. Erm, 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, erm, and I think we sort of might, erm, 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, erm, 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 "Err 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 err 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 err 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 err 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 err 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, err 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 in the err 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 err 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, err 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 err 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 err, if it was reasonable weather err 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 err 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 "Err I, 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 err 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 err I’m just thinking more about when we were actually running along the beach and along the err and along the front doing the, the search and I don’t recall it being err 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 "Err I don’t recall seeing Kate because I think she was gone by the time we got back up from, err 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 you know because Russell and err 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 err I don’t recognise it, I can’t find it on my, 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 err 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, their sport in some ways err I know Russell definitely and I think err both Russell, Jane, Dave and Fiona all borrowed equipment from the tennis people. Gerry and Kate I think borrowed as well err 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, err 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 you know 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, you know, 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 you know she was, you know she must have been half way down the, the route between her room and, err between their room and the restaurant so you heard her before you saw her err and you could just hear the panic in her voice but then it was just everybody run, rushing back to the apartment so you know 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 you know the, 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 err 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 err but err 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, the difficult thing for all of us you know, 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, you know, 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, you know, 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 err just the thought of something like this is just, err completely just out of our experience you know, 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, err 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 err to check each others and then, I think I might have mentioned in one of the previous ones they, Dave and Fiona had a, 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 err but for us it only, you know, 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 err 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, err 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, err 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 err 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. Err and I think for, 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 you know childcare and would it be the seven or would it be the whole nine, I mean err you know 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 err 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 err 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 err out in the open without good err you know good a, 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, you know, 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 err 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 err 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 "You know, 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 err 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

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

Questions for MO from the Letter of Request:


MATTHEW DAVID OLDFIELD should also be asked the following questions :


Page 99

* During that dinner, on 3rd May, 2007, were you always sitting at the table ? If not, where did you go ? At what time ? About how long were you absent ? Why ? How many times did you do that ?

* Were you at the McCANN's apartment that night ? Why ? Did you go there voluntarily or did anyone ask you to do it ? At what time did you go there ?

* How did you get into the apartment ? Was the door/window open ? Were the curtains of that door pulled back ? Did you close the door after getting in ? Was it a windy night ? Did you feel a draught of air when you got in ?

* Were there any soft lights on ? What did you immediately see as you got in ? Was the children's bedroom door open ? Was there a light in that bedroom ? Did you notice anything unusual, namely anything concerning the door, the curtains, the window, the shutters or the light in the room ?

* Did you actually see the 3 children ? Did you hear any noise ? Were the curtains waving ? How much time were you inside KATE and GERALD's apartment ? How many rooms did you walk through ?

* How did you get out of the apartment ? Did you close the door ? While you went and came back, did you see anybody, did you hear footsteps or car doors or house doors being locked ? Where did you go to ?

* Did you at any time leave the doors or the windows open, in the Ocean Club's apartment you were staying in with your family ?

* In the days before MADELEINE went missing, did you at any time check on your children ? How often ?

* Who is the user of the mobile phone number 447958XXXXXX, from whom you received the below mentioned SMS text message ? What is the relationship between you and him/her ? After this contact, did anyone reach you personally or by telephone following instructions from the user of this mobile phone ?

(Listed here, are details of an incoming SMS call, dated 4th May, 2007, and timed at 00.08 a.m.)



Page 100

* Any further questions deemed useful, necessary or pertinent in view of the previous replies.

* And also (questions drawn up by the arguidos (formal suspects).

* For how long have you known Gerald McCann and Kate Healy and what sort of relationship is there between you and the couple ?

* Have you ever been with Gerald McCann and Kate Helay at their home, with their children ? How many times ?

* Have you already spent holidays with them at any other time ? If yes, can you describe the way they took care of their children in the evening / at night ?

* How often did you use to meet Gerald and Kate during the holidays from April 28th, 2007, till May 3rd, 2007 ?

* How often did you use to see their children, Madeleine, Sean and Amelie ?

* Did you at any time feel that there was any reason to be concerned about the children ?

* When was the last time you saw Madeleine ?

* When did you see Gerald and Kate on Thursday, May 3rd, 2007 ?

* At what time did you arrive at the Tapas Restaurant on May 3rd, 2007 ? Who was already there ?

* What were Kate and Gerry doing by the time you arrived ?

* Did you speak to Kate and Gerald ?

* What was their behaviour like ?

* Who left the table during the meal ? Why ?

* Did you see Gerald leaving the table during the meal ? At what time did you see him leaving the table ? About how long was he absent ? What did Gerald say when he came back ? Was he behaving or acting differently when he returned ?

* Did you see Jane leaving the table during the meal ? At what time ? About how long was she absent ? What did Jane say when she came back ? Was she showing any different behaviour or attitude when she returned ?


Page 101

* Did you see Russell leaving the table during the meal ? At what time ? For how long ? What did Russell say when he returned ? Was he behaving or acting differently when he returned ?

* Did you see Kate leaving the table during the meal ? At what time ? About how long was she absent ? What did Kate say when she got back ? How did she look like ? What was her behaviour like ? Were you shocked by what she said ? What did you do ?

* Did you get into the McCann's apartment ? Did you get into the bedroom where the children were asleep ? Can you describe what you saw ? Did you see the twins ? Did you notice anything unusual about them ?

* What did you do next ? Did you take part in the subsequent searches ? Who were you with ?

* On realising Madeleine had not been found in the first 10 minutes, how did Kate react ?

* On realising Madeleine had not been found in the first 10 minutes, how did Gerald react ?

* What do you think about their behaviour considering that Madeleine had gone missing ?

* What did you do between 10.30 p.m. in the evening to 10.00 a.m. of the following day ? Who did you see ?

* Who did you talk to ?

* When did you leave Portugal ? How many times did you meet Kate and Gerry ? Do you think they were showing a normal behaviour for parents who had lost a child ?

* During the time you were on holidays, did you notice any situation where Kate and Gerry were talking to any unknown person ?

* Did you see Kate and Gerry inside any car during the holiday period ?

* Is there any supplementary explanation that you consider pertinent or relevant to establish the material truth ?


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