The Disappearance Of Madeleine McCann | Robbyn Swan & Anthony Summers

1. 0:00 – 15:00

   (wind blowing) Ladies and gentlemen,…

   1. CWChris Williamson0:00

      (wind blowing) Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back. I am joined by Robin Swan and Anthony Summers. You may recognize them from the most recent Netflix series on The Disappearance of Madeleine McCann. Guys, welcome to the show.

   2. RSRobbyn Swan0:19

      Thank you very much.

   3. ASAnthony Summers0:21

      Thank you.

   4. CWChris Williamson0:21

      So, you are investigative journalists, but you're also married, and you've been working together for about 30 years. Is that right?

   5. ASAnthony Summers0:31

      That's, I think, what my wife would say. Um-

   6. CWChris Williamson0:35

      (laughs)

   7. RSRobbyn Swan0:36

      One of us works.

   8. CWChris Williamson0:38

      Right.

   9. ASAnthony Summers0:38

      ... but I've never really, I've never really been fond of that description, investigative journalist.

   10. CWChris Williamson0:43

       Okay.

   11. ASAnthony Summers0:43

       When asked why, um, I suppose I would say, uh, asked to nail it down, am I a bank manager or an engine driver or an investigative journalist, I would go for the third.

   12. CWChris Williamson0:55

       (laughs)

   13. ASAnthony Summers0:56

       Um, but I always think that it's a misnomer in the sense that everyone in this business, i- in the journalist business, should, in theory, try to dig beyond the grass that you can see and find out what's underneath.

   14. CWChris Williamson1:13

       I totally get that.

   15. ASAnthony Summers1:13

       And, and yet that is what we do, um, that, and that's what we've done in our career together.

   16. CWChris Williamson1:20

       Yes. So, having a look at your back catalog of books, um, 9/11, Pearl Harbor, Richard Nixon, and Madeleine McCann, there's some, uh, high pressure topics in there. Do you ever find the, uh, difficulty and the emotion and the pressure of writing with quite inflammatory topics ever... do, do, do the lines kind of get crossed with the relationship at all? Does that ever kind of come in or are you able to kind of mediate those pretty effectively?

   17. ASAnthony Summers1:49

       Uh, as a thoroughly cowed, uh, husband and co-author, I will leave Robin to answer that.

   18. CWChris Williamson1:56

       (laughs)

   19. RSRobbyn Swan1:56

       I, I... Ser- on a serious note, always want to interject a serious note here, um, you know, frankly, uh, we're, we're incredibly lucky to be able to do the kind of work we do. You know, what a privilege to, to be able to explore, you know, some of the most important cultural and historical moments of the last century, and try to bring your own little bit of extra information into that, um, to try to write that story well. Sure, there's, there's pressure, um, and, and we don't always agree, but I think the reason we have found that we're able to work together well is that we have... sometimes we have slightly different strengths, but we're both incredibly relentless, uh, when it comes to the digging. And, and, you know, the oth- w- we really are, you know, if one isn't pushing, the other one is. A- and I think so, so we have a real simpatico in that way. But also, I think each of us respects the other's, uh, the other's talent. You know, um, Tony has an extraordinary ability to make the complex simple, uh, you know, e- to, to drive what we call a coach and horses through a, you know, a knotty problem and make it possible for readers to understand something in a really, you know, basic eh- but interesting way. And, and I think, you know, I'm pretty good at, at, you know, getting the big picture of things, and, and, and, you know, delivering, you know, to the, to the project all the nuts and bolts so that we can do that, so that we can have that material and, to, to, to base the story on.

   20. ASAnthony Summers3:36

       Y- you know, I, I think Robin's been talking rather as though w- which she said we don't, we, we don't really clash on things. Well, b- b- quite often, we say, "No, that's not right. No, it's not right because look, this is what I was digging up," or "This is of the X hundred interviews we've done on a subject."

   21. CWChris Williamson3:57

       Yeah.

   22. ASAnthony Summers3:57

       Um, "Do, do you remember that so-and-so said this?" So we have to think about that, and what the important thing is that, that we're playing mental ping pong, and it's, it's a terrific asset actually. I have a, a friend and sometime colleague, um, in the United States who'd already done one book about that seemingly eternal story of the assassination of President Kennedy in 1963. And having done one book, which was a success, uh, and quite a serious book, not, not just one of those books, one more of those books about the Kennedy assassination, he launched into the research for a second. He has been on that now, by my most recent count, for about 25 years, possibly more, on his own, and-

   23. CWChris Williamson4:48

       (laughs)

   24. ASAnthony Summers4:48

       ... I think that's fatal for him. I, I've got a feeling he's going to die without the book having been published. But what he lacks is what we, we do have, which is someone to pay, play intellectual ping pong with, to s- say, "Well, I've just written these couple of paragraphs. What do you think about that? Is, is that fair? Isn't that fair?" All he, all he can do is rattle around in, in his own head, and it's a huge advantage to have two people who are sort of on the same wavelength about things working together.

   25. CWChris Williamson5:20

       I suppose as well when we're talking about these inflammatory topics that are highly charged, it's the sort of thing that requires quadruple checking, and you don't want to be making any errors.

   26. RSRobbyn Swan5:33

       Absolutely.

   27. CWChris Williamson5:34

       Cool.

   28. ASAnthony Summers5:34

       You, you bet. And then, of course, at the end of each book trail, you then have the, not only the editor, and the art of editing and publishing is, except in, uh, some circumstances, is not what once it was when I came into the business-

   29. CWChris Williamson5:52

       Mm-hmm.

   30. ASAnthony Summers5:52

       ... in the beginning. Um, but then, and this is a real discipline too, not least in this case, which has seen a lot of lawsuits, you then have the lawyer, and a good lawyer will make sure that you're not...... making cu- huge gratuitous errata and getting yourself into great libel suit. On the other hand, a good lawyer will- will- will be one who does not just crush what you're trying to say.
2. 15:00 – 30:00

   Also, the British thought…

   1. RSRobbyn Swan15:00

      all that clued in to the idea of crime scene preservation, et cetera. Whereas immediately, an hour later, when the more senior detectives arrived, they were themselves horrified by this, you know, tarnishing of, of the, of the, of the evidence by having all these people trample it, you know. They were none too pleased with their colleagues that this had happened. And I think, uh, that was then compounded ... The, the Portuguese police's initial mistakes in terms of the crime scene were then compounded by two other things. One, they failed to clear the parents of involvement. You know, usually in cases like this, it is always a family member who you look at first. And, uh, in, in the words of the, the policeman who was responsible for reviewing this case and deciding, you know, it wasn't handled very well, um, he thought that they had failed to clear the, clear the ground in front of them, and that's, that's an important mistake that should've been addressed very early on. Instead, it, it, it festered. A- and the second thing was the involvement of the British police. You know, you had a, a crime taking pl- ... a crime or an abdu- abduction or a missing child taking place in Portugal, but she's a British child. So therefore, um, the parents who don't speak the language are immediately reaching out for all the support they can get, and that's coming back at them in terms of multiple police agencies all wanting to help, all wanting to get their patch in, all w- all wanting to be the hero. Um, and that also didn't play well. It felt to the Portuguese like the Brits were trampling all over them and being a colonial power and, and being arrogant. And, and, and the, the Portuguese themselves, uh, became very suspicious, "What are all these, you know, British police officers doing?" And were having ... or actually having their, their British police colleagues followed. So, so the bad relationship, again, didn't help in any attempt to find Madeleine.

   2. ASAnthony Summers17:03

      Also, the British thought that the Portuguese were, were living in the Stone Age in the sense that they weren't computerized in the way that people from when Scotland Yard would eventually became involved, or just the police that were sent out on liaison at first from England. Um, they saw all the, you know, cards in boxes and, uh, and the sort of tem- temporary headquarters with a lot of paperwork and so on, and peop- peop- Portug- uh, and guys typing with two fingers on (smacks hands) on, on old typewriters. That's, that's not how it happens at police headquarters in England anymore. Um, and so there grew a feeling that the Portuguese felt as though they were be- being ... at a certain level thought they were being treated as though they were from the third world, um, and-

   3. CWChris Williamson17:53

      They, they, they're not presented-

   4. ASAnthony Summers17:55

      ... were thrown outs.

   5. CWChris Williamson17:56

      Yeah, they, they're not presented fantastically well, I suppose. Um, and there definitely does seem to be a, um, a lot of friction that you can tell between themselves and everyone else. And you've got the, uh-... chief ... I think it was the chief of Portuguese police being, uh ... The times he was going for lunch and coming back were being noted down in the newspaper. And the British newspapers were being quite, quite a, accusatory, and, uh, and stuff like that. So that, that takes us onto the, the press coverage. And a question that I really wanted to ask you was, why do you think this particular case captured such international attention, both at the time and then wha- why is it still doing it now? Was it right place, right time? Was it the ... Did it have the right look?

   6. ASAnthony Summers18:42

      Look, I ... The, the real reason, the initial reason that there was huge press coverage was because the McCanns, quite wisely they thought, wanted it. In the end, it became the bane of their existence. But that night when they were sitting in their agony after the police had come and the police had, had gone for the time being at 3:00, 4:00 in the morning, they sat with their friends in, in apartment 5A with the, their little girl missing and they thought, "W- what can we do that the police ... Are the police doing enough?" No, maybe they ... Took a long time to come. May- maybe they're not, and maybe ... So we should do something. They tried to reach out to TV stations through relatives in the UK on the ... by th- ... on the telephone. And by 8:00 or 9:00 in, in the morning, the news was ... It was very brief, but the news was being broadcast on Sky News and, and, and other stations i- in the UK where, as at th- ... at the time, it wasn't on, on Portuguese news, I gather, at all. Um, and during the case, um, it is ... There's a l- portuguese law which says that m- information cannot be given out, should not be given out by law while it's ongoing. Now, that's very different from the reality, which in, uh, later on involved, um, you know, people saying things on the QT, saying ... on the quiet saying, um, to, to journalists, "We, we, we, we, we can't ... We're not telling you this really, but." Happens everywhere. It's an old-fashioned police tactic. Um, but, but it, it, it got let loose. But anyway, it become fru- ... F- f- from the McCann's own effort, the press first knew about it. But the ... what the McCanns, by their own admission, also thought was, wait a minute, this is the age of the internet. Gerry McCann, the, the father had, uh, a sister, I believe, called Philomena, in, in s- in the north of Scotland who was, um, hip to computers and who had students, and she brought, um, her, her f- students or former students into a garage, a sort of makeshift shed, where they sat. And within, what, 24, 36 hours, people in New Zealand knew about this case, people who would never otherwise have known about it, which had the effect of getting Madeleine's picture, the picture of the little girl out there to millions. Whereas in, in a similar case in the past, the ... it would not have gone out to millions, or certainly not for a very long time. Um, and in the end, though, starting an avalanche of chatter on the internet, um, chatter which was often far from responsible.

   7. CWChris Williamson21:37

      I think you are totally right that it became a, a monster of its own and started to roll along on its own momentum. Um, it's a difficult situation. You know, to the listeners at home, I, I wonder what they think they would have done in that situation. Would you have allowed the police to have conducted the investigation quietly? Would you have, uh, thought that that was the best route? Or would you have tried to react by getting as much information, as much exposure as possible to have this ... have the photo of this little girl out there? I, I, I would guess that the vast majority of people would just want maximum exposure, as much ... It feels like you're doing something, right? Like, you, you're helpless in this situation. What can I do? What can I actually ... How can I impact and help? Um, you know, you're not an investigator. You don't understand forensics. You don't have these sort of things. So one of the things you can do is disseminate, right?

   8. RSRobbyn Swan22:33

      But i- that's, that's not only your natural reaction, but i- it's also the best advice from, from the experts in the field. I- you know, m- some of your listeners might be too young to remember it, but years ago, when, you know, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in the US first got going, for instance, they were behind a great campaign where missing children's faces were put on those, uh, those cardboard milk cartons.

   9. CWChris Williamson23:00

      Mm-hmm.

   10. RSRobbyn Swan23:01

       And that was a way of getting maximum exposure because everybody got a carton of milk.

   11. CWChris Williamson23:06

       Yeah.

   12. RSRobbyn Swan23:06

       That was a way of getting maximum e- exposure for every missing child, and it's a brilliant tool. And the internet is a wonderful and enormous milk carton in that sense. But s- so it do- ... I mean, it could, it, it can be incredibly effective. And what we do know is that publicity does help. You know, th- there was a recent case, I believe in Minnesota, where a young w- a young girl was m- uh, missing for a period of months and she was spotted by a passerby because her face was recognized. You see these kind of things in the Elizabeth Smart case. Um, a- again, she was recognized. There was an oddity about, uh, the, the, the, you know, the, the scene she was seen in by a passerby and was brought to police attention. So the idea that maximum exposure, um, isn't the right thing is actually wrong. It is the right thing, but it can turn around and bite you back.

   13. CWChris Williamson24:01

       Yeah.

   14. ASAnthony Summers24:01

       And it could, in ... K- sorry, it could have been precisely the right thing in the case of, of little Madeleine McCann, um, not least because Madeleine McCann had a thing called a colob- coloboma, uh, which is, um, scientific word, medical word for a blemish.... in her right pupil of her right eye, um, which if you were ... If she was walking past you in, in a store or along the pavement, you, you, you wouldn't notice immediately, but it was a blemish. It was an obvious thing. So in those first days when she was missing and even later, if you had ... If people's attention had been drawn to this feature of, of her eyes, then perhaps she, she could have, might have been recognized and, and the police or the, the shop security or whoever could, could, could have, could have been called. So it was a ... It was like the pic- picture on the milk carton. It was a relevant thing to do.

   15. CWChris Williamson25:00

       Yes. I understand. Why, why was there so much flip-flopping and, um, so many very inflammatory headlines about this case? I don't know how it works with libelous press coverage and stuff like that, but upon reading just a cross-section that you see on the documentary, it struck me just how outlandish some of the headlines were, like Robert Murat being accused of everything under the sun. Uh, the ... I think he's a Swiss national, the guy that was the computer programmer, um-

   16. RSRobbyn Swan25:37

       Russian. Russian.

   17. ASAnthony Summers25:38

       Rosh- Russian.

   18. CWChris Williamson25:38

       Um, he was being accused of everything under, under the sun. They'd flip-flop from the police being at fault, to, uh, the McCanns being at fault, to the dogs, to not the dogs, to ... It just seemed like the most temperamental, um, and, and maximally, uh, extreme headlines that could come out about this case at all times. Is, is, is that ... Is there an explanation for that?

   19. RSRobbyn Swan26:05

       (sighs) It sells papers. Uh, that, that, I don't mean ... I ... This case continues to sell papers. It's, it's, it's a terrible, a terrible truth. But the, the real thing that seemed to be going on during that summer of 2007 going into the fall of 2008 is that the, the, the police, the Portuguese police were becoming frustrated with the way they were being portrayed in the British press, so they were leaking to their Portuguese press contacts little bits of information that they were developing that was counter to the narrative of the McCanns as victims. That would get printed in the Portuguese press, and then picked up and reprinted in the British press with a few little nuances of their own, the translation issue, uh, et cetera. That would then in turn come back and, uh, play again into the Portuguese press system. So they were reporting on the reporting, uh, and, and they were reporting on the leaks, and it just kept building on itself. And then you had a point in the summer where, in their frustration, the Portuguese police did something that they had been offered at the beginning of the summer, which is they took the British police up on the offer of using these highly trained police dogs. And from the moment the police dogs arrived on the scene in Portugal, the entire sort of focus of the case turned from a, a missing child investigation to a, a, a sort of murder inquiry. A- and once that happened, it became open season on the McCanns, uh, there was, there was virtually nothing that, uh, couldn't be printed about them that, that editors wouldn't approve because they were getting it from multiple, quote-unquote, sources. A- and, and, you know, i- it was, you know, uh, they felt they had journalistic and, and libel cover to do that because there was such a plethora of reporting coming out of Portugal that the British media could pick up on. So it just fed itself.

   20. CWChris Williamson28:11

       It's so bizarre how, um, facts being reported becomes the next story, not the facts itself. And it does, I can see how this kind of, um, ever-growing sphere of crazy stories starts to become a, a feedback loop and, and feed itself. So you touched there upon the, uh, the dog, the cadaver dog and the, the blood dog, I think are the two, the two that were brought in. Um, the, uh, dog handler himself says these, uh, th- you can't ask the dog what it means. It's a very kind of rough-hewn result, but it definitely seems like ... Uh, oh, am I right in saying that the dog-

   21. ASAnthony Summers28:52

       It could give you ... It could give you a ... It's a hint. It could give you a clue to what might be physical evidence.

   22. CWChris Williamson28:59

       Yeah.

   23. ASAnthony Summers29:00

       As it turned out, um, it was quite the contrary. Um, it, it... but in the he, he told, he told me, she, she said, he said, she said, it became ... And with the police by that time being under, by, in Portuguese terms, extraordinary pressure and feeling pressured, they'd, they've got to do something. They've got to get somewhere. It was a great shining light, uh, uh, a moment of, of maybe truth.

   24. CWChris Williamson29:27

       Yeah.

   25. ASAnthony Summers29:28

       Um, the, the, this is ... The dogs have discovered real evidence and the evidence points to Madeleine's blood in the apartment 5A, and doesn't this point to a possible accident? And, and the idea is, well, a possible accident in which she might have died, and might it be that, that, that the, the McCanns had somehow accidentally-as doctors, um, li- done something to lead to the death of their own child and then, uh, kept her body? And, and the fable began to just,

3. 30:00 – 45:00

   You know the, um,…

   1. ASAnthony Summers30:00

      just grow like topsy. And th- and, and journalists and, and reporters who ought to have known better and editors in London who should have known much better and should have said, "Wait a minute. What do we actually knew- know?" uh, ran wild. It was a terrible circus. And, um, it took time within the police investigation for the circus to be-... to, to be corrected. And, and Rob can talk, talk better to that, because I think we should make clear that in the end there was no DNA evidence that pointed to anyone at all.

   2. RSRobbyn Swan30:40

      You know the, um, the Portuguese police system is different from what we're used to in lots of places in Western Europe. It's a, it's a sort of prosecutorial system in which the police come up with a hypothesis about where... what they think the evidence may support. Whereas we kind of come at it the other way. We have the evidence and then we see where the evidence kind of goes. So there are slightly different nuances there. And so the, the scenario that Tony was just describing, wh- which to us now having read all of the evidence, um, actually is a, is a scenario that is put forward by a senior investigator in the Portuguese Police Department in September of 2007, uh, that Madeline, um, you know, met an accidental death in the apartment, that her parents hid her body, that they transported it later, and that the McCanns and their friends are all involved in a pact of silence, in, in his words, that everyone was lying. And in fact when we traced the, the actual evidence that had come in back before he came up with this hypothesis, you could see that he was basing it on, um, mistranslations, misreadings of incomplete reports, um, a lack of... a complete lack of evidence. Not necessarily through his fault, but it was just a compilation of all of those things. So f- for instance-

   3. ASAnthony Summers32:11

      And misinterpretations-

   4. RSRobbyn Swan32:12

      Yeah, so-

   5. ASAnthony Summers32:12

      ... of, of a British forensic report.

   6. RSRobbyn Swan32:15

      For instance, when the dogs did their barking and did... made their alerts, they went and they did some scrapings and lifts from various places, and started to do the DNA analysis of those. And what they found was that in none of the places that they actually lifted samples from could they identify any substance as being blood. They identified no DNA as having belonged to Madeleine McCann, and they didn't... and they identified no DNA as belonging to any specific member of the McCann family. They did find some DNA of Gerry McCann on a key fob. Well, they might have done because he was holding the key fob because it was for the car he was driving. So there... you know, there... uh, the d- the DNA evidence was just not there to support the hypothesis the Portuguese police had, had come to bank on. And in the... you know, we put this evidence, the alleged forensic evidence, to a senior Irish forensic, uh, scientist, and she examined it, and she said to us, "You know, this is a whole lot of nothing." A- and that's what we had, a whole lot of nothing.

   7. CWChris Williamson33:22

      Is the only evidence which links the McCann family to the disappearance of Madeleine the dogs and the subsequent DNA furor that came around that?

   8. ASAnthony Summers33:35

      Well, it isn't the only evidence, because the great feature of this case, and it can't be said often enough, is there wasn't, isn't any evidence, no evidence that we've known about and that we've come... or come to learn about it anyway. There's no evidence. There is witness testimony, lots of it, which is interesting to explore, but basically there is no evidence.

   9. RSRobbyn Swan34:01

      I think, uh, I think, uh, there... that is the only s- suspicious finding.

   10. CWChris Williamson34:07

       Yes.

   11. RSRobbyn Swan34:07

       People have question marks over the McCann... the timeline presented by the McCanns, but the police have concluded that the timeline discrepancies are the discrepancies of people telling the truth-

   12. CWChris Williamson34:18

       Mm-hmm.

   13. RSRobbyn Swan34:18

       ... about an event they're being asked to recall, you know, w- in a time of stress. And people don't necessarily get things to the minute correct.

   14. CWChris Williamson34:26

       Mm-hmm.

   15. RSRobbyn Swan34:26

       They were on a holiday. You know, they were at a dinner table. They may be off by three minutes, they may be off by five, but essentially people told the same story consistently enough that they were, they were credible. You know, I think police officers quite often, and other investigators, if somebody's story is too perfect, that's more of a worry than, you know, the nine people who are all basically telling you what they remember.

   16. CWChris Williamson34:52

       Yeah.

   17. RSRobbyn Swan34:52

       And everybody's memory is gonna be a little bit different because she was tying her shoe at the time, or she was worrying about her own crying baby. But essentially they all told the same story.

   18. CWChris Williamson35:01

       I mean, anyone who's listening who has ever tried to think back to a situation which occurred even a day ago, under no stress, being able to get your timeline perfectly accurate, and then on top of that, uh, people who are listening as well, think about the last time that there was a even slightly big secret that was held by more than five of your friends. Like, it's lasted, it's lasted-

   19. RSRobbyn Swan35:22

       Well, that's true.

   20. CWChris Williamson35:23

       ... microseconds before everybody knows about it. The, the thought that the entire party of nine to ten people were all complicit in, in the disappearance and then covering it up and then never telling anyone and no one ever slipping up, et cetera, et cetera, it seems very... it seems very unlikely. So y- you touched on it there, there's no evidence of where Madeleine McCann went. Is this almost as if someone's gone in and just plucked her out of thin air and poof.

   21. ASAnthony Summers35:54

       Oh, yes, entirely. I mean, she, uh, as I've... uh, I said it can't be stressed enough so I'm going to boringly stress it again, there is no evidence it was... she just vanished. To all intents and purposes, completely vanished. Uh, what has been interesting down the months has been qu- querying the, um, the testimony. Look, if, if there were three possibilities, how did the little girl vanish from the flat? Possibility one-... did she, as the little girl who was about to be four years old, did she wander out of the, the apartment that night, maybe going to show Mummy and Daddy? She was about to be four. "Look, Mummy and Daddy, I'm big enough to come to your restaurant table." Which was just 60 yards as the crow flies, the other side of the swimming pool. Um, "Here I am," and did she try to do that? Well, a- and did she ... Te- was there then an opportunist abduction? Maybe unlikely, that happens to bump into the one feller or woman in the street who wants to steal a child. Pretty unlikely, but there is a possibility. The streets were riddled at that time with deep trenches. Um, uh, th- they were re- re- redoing the sewers, sewer and water system for, for the town. Deep, I mean, really deep trenches. And, um, I, I ... Uh, uh, it is not a stupid s- theory to, hypothesis to wonder whether she fell into one of these trenches and maybe got covered up by the first scoop of the bulldozer in the morning. But the workmen who were working on the trenches said they hadn't seen anything like that. So that, that is one possibility. Second possibility was there ... Was it a ... Which Scotland Yard pursued for quite a while, was it a burglary gone wrong? Um, there had been, um, a rash of burglaries, an awful lot of burglaries, which incidentally none of the people staying at that beach resort had been warned about. But people breaking into apartments to steal money, to steal a camera, um, steal a phone. Um, had a, had a, had a burglary gone wrong? Had the little girl started to make a noise while the burglar was there? Had something gone terribly wrong when he tried to silence her? Well, um, I, uh, I ... C- conceivably. There's no evidence of it, except that there were burglaries and there were some men suspected or, or being involved in those burglars, in those burglaries, um, who, whose phones were near the apartment that night, checks eventually found. Um, and th- they were interviewed and were, for a while, formal suspects. But there's no evidence that happened. There is however a third possibility which we have leaned towards. We're not claiming to, to know anything that s- special, but we have gathered all the information and there is... The, the information that makes us lean towards the notion that she may have been abducted deliberately in a planned abduction from the flat are these. Um, there is pretty good information from three or four witnesses that the apartment was watched in those days and on the day itself of Madeleine disappearance. Man seeming to noticeably be leaning on a wall, looking, eyeballing apartment 5A, um, on, on d- on different days and seen by the same witness on, on different days. And then on the very afternoon of the disappearance when the McCanns and the children were out playing tennis or at the beach, doing the things you do on holiday, um, a woman in an apartment above the McCanns looked down and saw a man who seemed to sort of emerge furtively into the alleyway. Uh, this is in the afternoon. And then leave by the little gate that led to the main street, seeming to check the gate to see if, um, it made a noi- ... As if to see if it made a noise. Did it squeak or something like ... It looked like somebody on a reconnaissance operation. Whether it was or not is another matter, but it did look like that. There is also the matter of the charity workers and perhaps Robin would like to d- describe that.

   22. RSRobbyn Swan40:43

       Well, there were in that period, just around the time Madeleine disappeared, men going door to door in the, in the Ocean Club Resort and in the apartment complexes nearby collecting for what they claimed was an orphanage in a nearby village. Well, we went to the nearby village and there wasn't and had never been anything like an orphanage there. Uh, we contacted this, you know, the state agency that operates such, you know, such programs. N- never was an orphanage there. So these men, whatever they were doing, it wasn't collecting for an orphanage. Now perhaps they were casing for burglaries later, perhaps they were just pulling off a small fraud collecting bits and bit- bits and bobs of change, but perhaps they were also doing something else. And one of the, the most troubling, uh, incidents we, we heard about and we were told about was one in which a charity collector came to the door and while the mother of the house was dealing with him, she noticed that the man seemed to be talking to her but looking over her shoulder at her three-year-old daughter who was playing on the floor behind her. Later that day, she noticed the man loitering about. The following day while she was upstairs doing the laundry, uh, she started to come down the stairs and as she did so she noticed that the man was in her living room with her three-year-old child. Now as soon as he caught sight of the mother, he scampered away. You know, back out the door and gone and, and, and she didn't catch up to him. But given that, you know, charity collector, three-year-old girl, uh, i- it does sound troubling and those things were not properly investigated at the time and were being investigated by, uh, uh, the British police and their Portuguese counterparts in this latter investigation that has taken place since 2011.

   23. ASAnthony Summers42:37

       ... but the third possibility, and the thing that w- we've just described about the charity worker may be part of the third possibility, um, is, and it's really startling. It didn't emerge for years until Scotland Yard put it together and made it public, which is that in the years before and just after Madeleine disappeared, um, there had been, uh, tw- uh, 28, 28 episodes of an intruder, um, coming, getting into flats and apartments, usually with British children within 40 miles of Praia da Luz. Now, that's a high rate of intrusions by, by, by any standards in a, in a small place. And the man would, would come in, usually appeared to be, from the descriptions of the children as far as they could manage from being woken in the night, was of a swarthy man with st- stubble on his face, talking English, but in a- an evidently foreign accent with a sort of funny smell about him, which the, the children couldn't describe. Um, and in one particularly chilling incident, which we, we found out about actually, um, the, the man had come in and got onto the bed with a little girl, whose sister was in the room, and she'd said, um, something like, "Is that you, Daddy?" And, and of course, it wasn't Daddy. The, the man though, um, had had a medical mask over his face, um, uh, y- yeah, covering, covering his mouth and most of his cheeks, and had, um, cloth, uh, towels or, or tablecloths or cloths around his feet, one would think perhaps to make sure he didn't leave footprints on the parquet floor, that sort of thing. Um, and, uh, on that occasion, the little girl was not, um, se- sexually assaulted in any way, but in other, on other occasions, the little girls had been sexually assaulted. Now, the local constabulary, we described this before, there were two constabularies in,

4. 45:00 – 1:00:00

   That would also... the…

   1. ASAnthony Summers45:00

      two police forces in Portugal, the Guardia Civil, which is the regular policeman, the guy who, who drives the patrol car around, the guy who does traffic duty and so on, and the PJ, the Polícia Judiciária, who do investigations. Now, clearly, breaking into houses and messing with, with little girls is a job for the, the PJ, the Polícia Judiciária. And in almost all occasions, the mothers of those other children said, have said, um, only the local cops came and, you know, took down a few details and then ambled away and there was no follow-up. It is a shocking realization. It can... it plays into the, the theory coupled to the man watching, um, the man testing the gate, um, and, and the suspect, um, charity collectors. It all plays into the notion that she was deliberately abducted.

   2. CWChris Williamson46:04

      That would also... the fact that the intruder was so prepared, it would appear, with a mask over his face, with, um, towels around his feet would play into the fact that there was no prints that were found at the crime scene of Madeleine's disappearance.

   3. ASAnthony Summers46:20

      It might.

   4. RSRobbyn Swan46:20

      It might, indeed. You know, the-

   5. CWChris Williamson46:22

      There was a par... Was, was there a partial palm print?

   6. RSRobbyn Swan46:25

      (gasps) There were a few partial prints. They were later identified, and, uh, please don't quote me on this because, uh, they're... most of them were not identifiable. One of them belonged to Kate McCann, one of them belonged to one of the police officers who was doing the fingerprint work, I believe.

   7. CWChris Williamson46:39

      (laughs)

   8. RSRobbyn Swan46:40

      Um, a- again, not great disciplines in some cases-

   9. CWChris Williamson46:44

      Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

   10. RSRobbyn Swan46:44

       ... in terms of gathering the fingerprints.

   11. CWChris Williamson46:46

       Yeah.

   12. RSRobbyn Swan46:47

       Um, uh, the, the... we haven't... one thing we haven't touched on, and again, it's, it's important evidence and it's important in terms of people as they're thinking about this case, is that there, there were two sightings that night that have been considered partic- of particular possible relevance, which is that at, um, at about 9:15... Please forgive me, I'm not... I don't have the paperwork in front of me, that McCann's f- ho- friend, Jane Tanner, was, um, coming back from the, the tapas area where they were having their, their meal and as she was approaching the intersection of the street on which the McCann's apartment was located, she saw a man, a man who appeared to be dressed not like a tourist, but more, in more sort of heavy proper clothing than you normally saw the tourists in. A dark jacket and a kind of mustardy or tanny trousers with dark hair, slightly long at the back. And this man was carrying a child and he was carrying the child like this, which you can't really see in your podcast, but with his arms outstretched and the little child laying across them in a kind of awkward posture, but the child seemed to be deeply asleep and she was wearing pajamas, he or she was wearing pajamas, and the reason I use the word she is because the pajama pants apparently had a light pink or florally pattern, much as later was described by Kate McCann the pajamas of Madeleine had been that night. Now, lots of little girls wear such pajamas. It's not an, uh, a definitive thing by any means. That man was seen. For years, one didn't know who he was. Um, in 2013, the British investigators, uh, the, the police came forward and said they thought that they knew who the man was at this point and that he had come forward originally and then identified himself and it had not ever found its way into the record, and that he was a British tourist, a- another doctor, in fact, who'd been carrying his own daughter home from the babysitting service, from the creche.

   13. ASAnthony Summers48:52

       Completely legit.

   14. RSRobbyn Swan48:53

       Yeah.... there's only one oddity in that, and those of us who have looked at this case closely have all registered it, and that's that the direction that the man that Jane Tanner saw seemed to have been traveling in the opposite direction of the man, that the man might or should have been taking, had he been doing that. Now, we can't explain that, we cannot explain that anomaly. It perhaps has been, uh, satisfied, satisfactorily explained to the police. I would note that the McCann family's website, where they keep a kind of updated, um, postings on this case, they remain, th- that, the, the police artist's sketch of that man remains up and he is still considered a per- person of interest. So, I think there may still be some small doubt about that. And then there's a second incident. Um, a second incident, um, at about 10 o'clock that night, um, a- described by an Irish family. Perhaps Tony would like to describe that one.

   15. ASAnthony Summers49:50

       Well, i- i- about 10 o'clock that night, which is precisely the moment that, back at apartment 5A, um, Mrs. McCann found her child missing, um, an- another, another man, or a- a man was seen carrying a child coming down s- the steps, actually. It's- it's a sort of street of- of- of steps, um, by a family of- of large Irish family of- of, what, eight? Eight? Eight? Uh-

   16. RSRobbyn Swan50:22

       (laughs) Like, people.

   17. ASAnthony Summers50:22

       Uh, a large, a large family. Um, and, um, he, th- th- the memory was that he didn't, um, say anything. I- I believe they said, "Goodnight," 'cause it was late, or, "Good evening," or words like that, and he did, just didn't respond, walked solidly on. Now, he- he could've been another innocent father bringing his child home or could he, could he maybe have been... Could this have been another sighting, a relevant sighting of an abductor taking Madeleine away? Th- there is no answer that's been found to this. Much confusion has been caused over it, um, uh, because at one point, um, the father in that family that saw, uh, the child, that child being- being carried later saw... Had- had seen Gerry McCann, Madeleine's father, um, arriving back in Leicestershire off a plane. And he thought, "Oh, that looks like the guy we saw that night." Um, but the rest of the family didn't think this. I- I think the- the- the father and the family thought it possibly because of the way that he was... Gerry McCann was carrying one- one of his other children at- at- at the time that he was getting off the plane, um, and put- put... Somehow put two and two together and made about 20.

   18. CWChris Williamson51:55

       (laughs)

   19. RSRobbyn Swan51:55

       Um-

   20. CWChris Williamson51:56

       They, uh, they explained it on his gait, didn't they? They said that's the posture of someone.

   21. RSRobbyn Swan52:00

       Gait, exactly. He thought it-

   22. ASAnthony Summers52:01

       Yeah.

   23. RSRobbyn Swan52:01

       ... th- his posture and his gait. Mm-hmm.

   24. ASAnthony Summers52:02

       His posture. It just reminded him.

   25. CWChris Williamson52:04

       (laughs)

   26. ASAnthony Summers52:04

       But on the- on the oth- there are only so many ways to carry a baby.

   27. CWChris Williamson52:07

       That's it, yeah. (laughs)

   28. ASAnthony Summers52:08

       And- and- and mo- and mo- most of the point in- in this episode is the fact that there is multiple evidence that at that moment at 10 o'clock, Gerry McCann was first at the tapas restaurant with hi- with his crowd of- of friends, um, having his dinner, and then rushing to help his wife and searching, searching for Madeleine. So, the man on the street with the steps wasn't him.

   29. CWChris Williamson52:33

       What was the distance between the tapas restaurant or apartment 5A and this sighting by the Smith family?

   30. RSRobbyn Swan52:40

       We... When we walked it, I- it's- it's not five minutes. It's ve- it's very close.
5. 1:00:00 – 1:10:20

   There is, you know,…

   1. RSRobbyn Swan1:00:00

      brickbats thrown at them, even, uh, uh, seeing that there are those who... Even having seen the Netflix film, which I think comes out firmly... They did enormous amounts of research, and it comes out firmly showing, um, the, the flawed investigation that led to their... the, the McCanns being implicated. There are still people who have... u- are using that as an excuse to vilify the McCanns. And I, I, I just think, "Where is your compassion?"

   2. ASAnthony Summers1:00:29

      There is, you know, o- one thing we should say we've sort of lost touch in, in, in this con- long conversation with, with Madeleine herself. Is Madeleine herself alive? Could she be alive? Well, the answer is, perhaps the best of the child protection experts in the world say one should never leave hope, and there is a significant figure. The only published statistics on this are in the United States.... of children that have disappeared, the latest figures show, 40% end up sadly f- uh, found dead, um, or known to have died. 56% eventually turn up even after 10, 15, 20 years. And so parents should never lose ho- lose hope. And I think the clear indication is that the McCann's have not and refuse to lose hope.

   3. CWChris Williamson1:01:33

      It's a very... (sighs) it's, uh, uh, thinking about what the McCann's go through, I'm an empathetic individual and for anyone else listening out there who is as well, it- it's painful to watch the way that they go through the situation, and they're forced to do these press interviews, and, uh, uh, and try and they're getting scrutinized for the fact that Gerry McCann and his, his wife don't show enough emotion. And you're like, "Well, what do you want me to do? Do you want me to break down crying on air? Or do you want me to get the message across which we think will actually help our daughter? Should I be over dramatic or should I try and be productive?" And, you know, uh, uh, I ask for the people who are listening to think how would they have reacted, like, genuinely, genuinely how would you have reacted in this situation? What, what would the, your capacity to hold your emotions have been? Because I've worked on the front door of night clubs for over a decade, and I see when someone gets knocked back by a doorman that they lose their shit. Their, their, their arms are in the air and they're saying that their, their dad's a solicitor and this is gonna happen. And you think, "Right, this was, uh, uh, nat, a nanogram compared with the situation that these people go through." And-

   4. RSRobbyn Swan1:02:44

      Mm-hmm.

   5. CWChris Williamson1:02:45

      ... uh, uh, how, how are you su- but there's no way to prepare for this. One point that I thought was very, very interesting which was done by the, um, (smacks lips) Russian computer programmer that was briefly implicated because he'd done Robert Murat's website, one thing he says on the Netflix show is, "No one teaches you how to behave in this situation." And he's referring to when he comes out of the, uh, his apartment, I thi- (smacks lips) think he gets into a car, and he drives away. And essentially what he says is, "At no point in your life are you taught what is the optimal strategy to do when this happens." And you extrapolate that forwards to the high degree of scrutiny over a longer term that the McCann's have been through, and you think, "Well, yeah, what, what becomes normal? What is normal in that situation?"

   6. RSRobbyn Swan1:03:37

      Absolutely.

   7. ASAnthony Summers1:03:38

      There's no such thing as normal when the child that you have, the precious child that you have come by thanks to IVF, as in the case of Madeleine, disappears off the face of the earth (snaps fingers) just like that.

   8. CWChris Williamson1:03:53

      (sighs)

   9. ASAnthony Summers1:03:53

      There's nothing normal.

   10. CWChris Williamson1:03:55

       I couldn't agree more. Guys, I, I really appreciate your time for coming on today. Am I right in thinking that there is a, an updated version of your book now available?

   11. RSRobbyn Swan1:04:06

       Uh, there is. There is an updated version of our book, Looking for Madeleine. And, um, uh, if you would like to, we can, we can s- I don't know what you use for your publicity, but we can send you a cover of the book. We don't-

   12. ASAnthony Summers1:04:18

       We don't have the, the physical book in, in our hands yet.

   13. RSRobbyn Swan1:04:22

       In our hands.

   14. ASAnthony Summers1:04:22

       Because, um, bec- because it, we're in Ireland and our publisher is in England, it was only, um, went on the streets at the moment the, the, uh, Netflix series came out. But we can send you a JPEG of it, which-

   15. CWChris Williamson1:04:36

       Fantastic. Well, to the listeners-

   16. ASAnthony Summers1:04:38

       I'll give it- be very grateful if you would use it.

   17. CWChris Williamson1:04:40

       That's fine. To the listeners who want to, as you know, the Modern Wisdom Amazon shop front will have this book in the show notes below. All you need to do is click through. If you do purchase from there, you will be supporting the show at no extra cost to yourself, and also you will be able to do some further reading on what has been a, a reignited and fascinating topic. If you have some friends who you know enjoyed the documentary, please share this episode with them. I'm sure that they would be interested to find out some more information about this. And I'm right in thinking that, uh, Anthony and, and Robin you're about to go and begin work on another book. Is that right?

   18. ASAnthony Summers1:05:19

       Yes. You tell us, what should we be writing about next?

   19. RSRobbyn Swan1:05:22

       (laughs)

   20. CWChris Williamson1:05:22

       Oh, wow. Well, I tell you what. If the listeners-

   21. ASAnthony Summers1:05:26

       Done many of them. We even, I even in, in my foolishness, um, long time ago did a book that hasn't been torn to pieces by the, by the hounds yet on the Kennedy assassination. We did a, a biography of Richard Nixon. We, we, you've named some of the books we've done. What should we be doing next?

   22. CWChris Williamson1:05:44

       Oh, wow. (sighs) What would I like? Um, (smacks lips) well the m- the, uh, Mueller report's just come out.

   23. RSRobbyn Swan1:05:53

       Um, good idea.

   24. ASAnthony Summers1:05:54

       I think one or two other people might be paying attention to-

   25. CWChris Williamson1:05:57

       I think a couple of people.

   26. ASAnthony Summers1:05:59

       ... the, the book and, and to a man called Trump.

   27. CWChris Williamson1:06:01

       Yeah.

   28. ASAnthony Summers1:06:01

       Um, we have thought of doing a book about, uh, nu- nuclear warfare, nu- nuclear matters. And we, because I find that whereas my generation, um, and, and people younger than me, um, were acutely aware of, of the nuclear threat, um, dur- during the Cold War and so on. Um, but now you talk to s- anybody under 40 really and to an awful lot of people under 40 or younger and s- and say, um, "Hiroshima," and they say, "What? Didn't quite get that." They don't, don't, they don't, really don't know what it was. And mention Three Mile Island to them, which of course is not, not a bomb but a, a disastrous leak of radiation from, from a power plant, and they say, "Three Mile Island?" Uh, uh, one of, somebody said to me, "Creme- Three Mile Island, well, that must be where they dropped another of those bombs." I, I mean, so we think that since the nuclear threat is still real-... that maybe we'll write about that.

   29. CWChris Williamson1:07:09

       So, I will put in the show notes below for anyone who would care to listen to it, but Sam Harris recently did a podcast with Professor Nick Bostrom from the Future of Humanities Institute, and this guy is the world's expert on existential threats, essentially. And the, uh, particular discussion that he had was, um, very grounding. I've listened to a lot of Nick's work, and some of the listeners will have done as well, but I'll, uh, I'll send it to you guys once we finish. I highly recommend that. Another interesting point for people who listened to my episode with Jordan Hall, the owner and founder of Neurohacker, also the founder of the DivX Codec from 20 years ago, he is thinking about how to redesign civilization as a whole from game A to game B, a game which-

   30. RSRobbyn Swan1:07:57

       (laughs)

Episode duration: 1:10:15