Leicestershire Police Force should hang there heads in shame. The manner in which they have pandered to the McCann's and the tapas 7 is nothing short of disgraceful. They have laughed and joked during questioning of the friends, whilst discussing important issues such as whether Jane "more stories than jackanory" Tanner would like jammie dodgers with her cup of tea, and "trying not to giggle" whilst interviewing Fiona Payne when she mentions that Jane Tanner left the table to "relieve Russell"
On the 16th May 2007 Katherine Gaspar made a statement to the Leicestershire Police force which raised some very serious concerns about David Payne who had organised the holiday to Praia da Luz with the McCanns and the rest of the friends more commonly known as the "tapas 9". In September 2005 Katherine Gaspar and her husband Savio holidayed in Majorca with the McCanns, David and Fiona Payne, and their respective children. Here are the most worrying quotes from that statement:
"I was sitting between Gerry and Dave and I think both were talking about Madeleine. I can’t remember the conversation in its entirety, but they seemed to be discussing a particular scenario. I remember Dave saying to Gerry something about ‘she’, meaning Madeleine, ‘would do this’.While he mentioned the word ‘this’, Dave was doing the action of sucking one of his fingers, pushing it in and out of his mouth, while with his other hand he was doing a circle around his nipple, with a circular movement around his clothes. This was done in a provocative way. There seemed to be an explicit insinuation about what he was saying and doing. I remember being shocked by that. I always felt it was something very weird and that it was not something anyone should say or do."
“I remember thinking whether he would look at my daughter and other little girls in a different way than I or others do. I imagined that he had perhaps visited internet sites related to little children. In a word, I thought that he could be interested in child pornography on the web. During our holiday in Majorca, each parent would bath the children in turn. I was keen to stay near the bathroom if Dave was bathing the children. I remember I said to Savio to be careful and to be close by if Dave was helping to bathe the children and my daughter in particular. I did this [stay hear the bathroom if Dave was bathing the children] quite obviously because hearing what he said had troubled me and I didn’t trust him bathing ‘A’ [our first child]. When I heard Dave say this for the second time, it reinforced what I had already been thinking concerning his thoughts about little girls."
Alarmingly this statement was hidden from the PJ for a total of 6 months, much to the concern of the Gaspars, by the time the PJ got hold of the statement Goncalo Amaral had already been removed from the case. Surely this was vital information that could have helped build a better picture of the sort of people the McCanns were in the company of, so why would the LP suppress it, particularly after other concerns raised by Yvonne Martin who had worked for 25 years in the area of child protection? Yvonne Martin concluded that she had seen David Payne in the course of her professional activity in child protection, not being able to discern if he was a suspect/arguido or witness.
On the flip side of the coin the LP made the most ludicrous request of the PJ. On May 8th 2007 Kate McCann spoke to D.C. 975 Markley of Leicestershire Constabulary, regarding a "vision" a friend of her Aunties had. This "vision" was about Madeleine being on a yacht. Markley wrote the following on a spare sheet of LC paper headed 'LEICESTERSHIRE CONSTABULARY:
Continuation WITNESS STATEMENT,' the following:
INFORMATION FROM THE FAMILY
INFORMATION FROM THE FAMILY
I spoke to Kate McCann on Tuesday 8th of May 07. She told me that a friend of her Aunt & Uncle from Leicester had a friend that had a strong vision that Madeleine was on a boat with a man in the Marina in Lagos.
This person arrived in Portugal and has spoke to Kate. They have visited the Marina and identified the boat as "SHEARWATER". They saw a man on the boat but this was not the same man that she had in her vision.
This is very important to Kate. I spoke to Glen Pounder if he could make some enqs with regards to the boat.
He has done this and the boat is registered to a Canadian National called Bruce Cook. Glen has told me that George Reyes at the police stn is now dealing with the matter with regards to doing PNC checks etc.
I spoke with Kate today and she has given me photographs of the boat. She has also given me a photograph of a man who had been on the boat. This is not the man that the woman had in her vision.
This matter is very important to her and she is very pleased that we are making enqs into the matter.
Once the enqs have been completed can we please let her know the result.
Thanks
The letter is then signed by DC Markley. An international letter of request to the PJ asking them to investigate this lead was then sent, all upon the basis of a vision, not a witness statement but a vision!!!! You couldn't make it up.
But it get's worse.........
The PJ requested that the Leicestershire Police Force interview the tapas 7, and send them a list of questions they would like to be asked. All the statements are viewable by searching "McCannfiles rogatory statements" on your web browser. Have a read through them and you will see what I mean by pathetic pandering. Yes the questions were asked, and the motions gone through, but make no mistake this was all that happened. There was no hard line follow up questions, no pressure applied, even when the replies were so obviously ones of guilt or of a person who knew more than they wanted to let on the Police simply moved on, even in some instances changing the subject. Here's an example:
1485 ”What about a kit bag? Would they have a kit bag with them?”
Reply ”Err he certainly didn’t have a great big tennis bag or a, you know, err I mean I used to be a squash, a semi-professional squash player and you know they certainly didn’t have anything that I would call a kit bag from days when I played…”
1485 ”Yeah.”
Reply ”You know, a lot of sport, err if they had a rucksack with some water in that would be, you know, about as big as it got, you know a small rucksack. But it certainly wasn’t a big tennis, you know, things that you could put a tennis racquet in.”
1485 ”Yeah.”
Reply ”There was nothing of that size that you could hide a, a tennis racquet in or anything like that, it would have been just purely, if they had anything…”
1485 ”Yeah.”
Reply ”It would have been something that had their water in.”
1485 ”So as opposed to a bag it’d be something like a rucksack, if at all?”
Reply ”If, if at all, yeah.”
1485 ”Yeah.”
Reply ”Yeah.”
1485 ”And is that the same for Kate?”
Reply ”Yeah, yeah.”
1485 ”You mentioned early on, on the last interview as well, about a photo. You spoke brief about a photo you’d shown, you’d shown a photo.”
.........and so the subject is changed
Clearly David Payne has dropped himself right in the clart with his replies to this line of questioning, but instead of pushing him further into saying something incriminating, he was steered away from doing so.
There are many instances of this throughout all the statements. The Leicestershire Police even put a link to the McCanns page on their own website so anybody with information could contact them. These people were suspected of being complicit in the disappearance of their daughter, and yet our police were encouraging people to contact the McCanns with information, they even took them flowers!!!
Instead of covering for the McCanns, instead of treating the witnesses with kid gloves and instead suppressing evidence whilst pandering to the McCanns ridiculous whims why weren't Leicestershire Police doing what a police force should be doing? Is it to much to ask for a Police force to be seen to do it's job properly? No stone unturned? You're having a laugh!!
