In an interview with Panorama, clips of which were shown on the News yesterday, a friend of the McCanns, Jane Tanner, says that she is certain that she saw Madeleine being abducted - see Panorama. This surely raises more questions than answers.
My first response to the story was, "If I saw my friend's child being abducted, I would try to prevent it. I would at least shout to the abductor to stop, chase after them, raise an alram, see where they went, take down the deatils of any car they went to etc." My second response was, "How come she is still the McCanns friend? If my friend watched my child being abducted and did nothing about it, I don't think I would consider them a friend any longer."
But reading the small blurb on the web site above - we'll have to wait for the programme for the full details - it becomes clear that Ms Tanner was not certain at the time she saw a man walking down the road that the child they were carrying was Madeleine. Its only later that this certainty has arisen!
Anyone that has seen the film "My Cousin Vinny", will be aware of a similar scenario. Two boys are accused of a robbery and murder at a petrol station. There is circumstantial evidence pointing to them, and thinking they were being pulled over for something else have already admitted guilt. Finding themselves facing the Chair if convicted they call in one of the boys cousins to defend them, who turns out to be an extremely inept lawyer. A variety of witnesses take the stand to say they were CERTAIN they saw the boys, and postively identify the boys green car at the scene. Fortunately, for the boys Vinny's girlfriend grew up working in her father's garage and is an expert mechanic. From a photograph of the tyre marks left by the car used by the actual robbers she is able to prove for definite that the real car used in the robbery was not the boys.
Of course, none of the witnesses that took the stand under oath gave false witness out of any malice they were certain that what they had seen was the boys car. They had convinced themselves of that after the fact because it seemed to fit. But they were wrong! Had one of these witnesses AT THE TIME have made a note not just of the fact that there was a green car, but had made a note of the make, registration number etc. then that would have been certainty. But humans do it all the time our minds cause us to fit facts to what we think fits.
The only way that Ms. Tanner could actually be certain of what she saw would be if she had made a positive identification of Madeleine at the time she saw someone walking down the street with a young child. But had that been the case then my first set of questions above apply. Why not stop the abduction, why not intervene?
But if what we have is a situation similar to that in Cousin Vinny being convinced after the fact that you have seen something based on some other details why come to THIS particular conclusion? When I am on holiday I see lots of adults carrying young children at all hours of the day. It never occurs to me that there is anything out of the order with that, let alone that someone is being abducted. If I saw someone walking down the street with a young child in their arms, particularly if the child did not appear to be resisting the person etc. I would assume it was that person's child. If it was nine or ten o'clock at night and they were walking away from a restaurant in particular I would assumne that probably like most people on holiday with their children that they had been with their child to eat, and the child was tired.
I can understand that had a friend of mine's child disappeared, and my friend said the child must have been abducted, that despite the fact that abductions of children by strangers are very, very rare in this country let alone in Portugal, I would want to beleive them, but that still would not cause me to jump from that to beleivng that what I had seen was the actual abduction, especially as at the time I had no cause to beleive that, and especially as the least likely explaantion of someone walking down a street in Portugal or anywhere else with a young child in their arms is that they have abducted the child. After all as I said abductions of children by strangers are exceptionally rare so why beleive that this man was abducting a child, let alone a particular child rather than the more likely case that this was just someone on holiday - after all there were lots of other people on holiday with their children it was a holiday resort after all - with their child???
The final question is, the police must realise all the above, so must any experienced investigative journalist, so why make such a big thing about such evidence? Audience figures perhaps as with previous examples of moral panic.
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