“Finding Madeleine” | Chapter 5, The Smithman Enigma (part Two)

“The Smithman Enigma”, Chapter 5 (Part Two)

Madeleine Mccann, Age 3

Preface: We remind our readers that this is Chapter 5 of a multi-chapter book entitled “Finding Madeleine”.

We also remind our readers that this is a serious subject involving the betrayal, disappearance and likely abuse of an innocent little 3-year old girl whose fate became tied to the 2016 U.S. Presidential election through the Smithman images.

Finding Madeleine resolves the 10-year mystery of her disappearance. Finding Madeleine establishes Madeleine is the likely victim of an elite pedophile and/or network and of a monumental hoax orchestrated by her parents and the highest levels of the British government.

This Chapter is devoted to establishing that key evidence was fabricated in 2008 by and on behalf of Madeleine’s Fund (established by her parents and the saintly Mr. Brian Kennedy, their benefactor) by a convicted fraudster in league with the former head of undercover operations of Britain’s MI5. The fraudulent evidence was later circulated as a “person of interest” by the British Met Police “Operation Grange”.

We urge you to read Chapters 1, Chapter 4 and the Part One of Chapter 5 for additional background.

This Chapter 5 is necessarily forensic in nature and draws upon information and events established in preceding Chapters (along with other commentary) available here at TBP (use the search function) and at our home: findingmadeleine.com.

Please also refer to the full book for full citations, sources and images. “Finding Madeleine” provides everything necessary for a legitimate investigation into Madeleine’s disappearance. It also establishes the inability of the British government and the unwillingness of the Portuguese governments to do so.

Please refer to Madeleine’s Fund and the British press for the comic book and soap opera versions of Madeleine’s disappearance. Refer to Inspector Amaral’s book for his perspective in which he nailed the hoax but failed to recognize the motive or the involvement of the British government.

Martin Smith = the Irishman who claims to have seen a person dubbed “Smithman” carrying a small white sleeping child in the vicinity at the time so Madeleine’s disappearance.

Brian Kenedy = the Mccann’s saintly self-appointed savior who took over Madeleine’s Fund private search for Madeline.

Smithman = a photo reconstruction of the face of the person observed by Martin Smith and two other members of his family, none of whom saw his face.

Exton = Henri’ Exton, former head of undercover operations for MI5.

Halligen = Exton’s partner who was indicted and and convicted of fraud in the U.S. shortly after Exton delivered the Smithman images to Madeleine’s Fund.

Kate and Gerry Mccann = Madeleine’s parents, both British M.D.’s.

Inspector Amaral = the Portuguese Inspector who, after he took MI5’s bait, was let go after he named Kate and Gerry Mccann as “arguidos” (suspects).

Praia da Luz = a small coastal fishing village in Portugal where the Mccann’s and several of their friends were vacationing when Madeleine disappeared.

The Smithman Enigma, Chapter 5, Part Two (continued)

Despite Martin’s inability to recognize Smithman’s face, Brian Kennedy sought out Martin for making a facial reconstruction of Smithman. Martin made sure his local constabulary in Ireland knew Kennedy had done so. According to a cover letter from Detective Liam Hogan of the An Garda Siochana station in Drogheda, Ireland dated January 30, 2008,

“He [Martin Smith] has been contacted by Mr Brian Kennedy who is supporting the McCann family to take part in a photo t exercise. He has given no stories or helped in any photo fits.”

According to Detective Hogan, Martin declined to help Kennedy create a photo-fit image of Smithman. For which there was good reason. Martin did not have the faintest idea what Smithman’s face looked like. Nevertheless, and thanks to Exton, by the end of 2008 Kennedy had finally obtained the facial photo-fits of Smithman he had long been after.

Kennedy had gone to heroic efforts to obtain the Smithman images. He succeeded only after Exton was brought on board after which Exton miraculously produced a facial image of a man whose face no one saw. Yet, after finally obtaining the images in late 2008, Kennedy and the Fund chose to not release them publicly. They also reminded Halligen and Exton the images were subject to their confidentiality agreement with the Fund.

Why were the images that were of such a high priority withheld by Madeleine’s Fund once obtained? We can think of four reasons: a) they had no confidence in them, b) the images were incriminating to the Mccann’s, c) they wanted to hold onto the images pending further investigation; or d) the images had been acquired for another purpose.

Let’s take those in order:

1. They had no confidence in them. For that, all they needed to do was to read the Smith’s statements, so we must reject that explanation.
2. The images were incriminating to the Mccann’s. Recall, the Portuguese had named Gerry an arguido. The images bear little resemblance to Gerry. If anything they were exonerating to Gerry. Nor have the Portuguese or the British investigators suggested them to be incriminating to Gerry.
3. They wanted to hold the images pending further investigation. That explanation might explain a delay of a few months or so, but Madeleine’s Fund never publicly released the images as their investigation produced nothing worthwhile in their fruitless 10-year search for Madeleine.
4. The images were acquired for another purpose. It’s the only reasonable explanation left.

Some may suggest the Fund did not release the images because they were focused on another suspect, “Tannerman”, who was supposedly seen carrying a young girl on the near-empty street outside the Ocean Club a half hour before the Smith’s saw Smithman. Tannerman was just another diversion as the Portuguese had discerned in the first few months; even the Grangers dismissed him in 2013. But those realizations did not come until later, so let’s delve into Tannerman for a bit to see if there was a legitimate reason for holding onto the Smithman images.

Tannerman gains his name from Jane Tanner who is the only person to claim to have seen him. Jane Tanner was a member of the Mccann’s holiday group in Praia da Luz.

The Portuguese investigators (correctly) gave little credence to the Tannerman sighting, or much of anything the Mccann’s group told them after the rst few weeks. It was the British press, British investigators, Jane Tanner, others in the Mccann’s group, Madeleine’s Fund and their private investigators who focused on Tannerman. And Tannerman either did not exist, or was irrelevant.

At approximately 9:15 pm Jane claims to have seen Tannerman walking within a few feet of Gerry and another Ocean Club guest, “Jez”, with whom Gerry knew from playing tennis. Gerry was returning to the tapas restaurant from having checked on his children. Gerry and Jez were chatting casually not too far from Apartment 5A. According to Jane, she saw Tannerman carrying either a bundle or a young sleeping girl dressed similar to Madeleine walk by her, and within a few feet of Jerry and Jez, on a near-deserted street. Yet, Gerry and Jez said they were unaware of Tannerman’s presence.

Like the Smith’s, Jane did not see Tannerman’s face.

In the first weeks after Madeleine vanished there was no reason to give precedence to either Jane’s or the Smith’s sightings. Although the sightings occurred about 40 minutes apart, how might anyone have known Tannerman and Smithman weren’t the same person, or whether they were two different people carrying the same child?

There was no reason for Madeleine’s Fund to hold onto the Smithman images out of concern for diverting attention from Tannerman. Tannerman was yet another rabbit trail.

After terminating Exton and Halligen’s contract, Madeleine’s Fund brought on another investigator in late 2008. The new guy was David Edgar, a retired gumshoe from Cheshire. Here’s how Edgar described his work for Madeleine’s Fund.

“My job was to lead the investigation to nd Madeleine McCann and nd out what happened to her. I discovered evidence and passed it to the British and Portuguese police. e answer to what happened to Madeleine lies in Portugal, so it is important to get information from the Portuguese public.”

Source: Express, September 15, 2013.

It should come as no surprise that Edgar was unable to make any headway and managed a few stumbles of his own. It didn’t matter. By the time Edgar got involved the Madeleine case was mucked up well enough. Everything was bollixed, confused and murky.

Perhaps it was Edgar who passed the fabricated Smithman images to Operation Grange. Whoever transmitted the images to the Grangers may have made a terrible mistake. In 2013, and with much fanfare, Operation Grange released the phony images of Smithman to the public.

After Operation Grange released the Smithman images in 2013 they remained an enigma. The images of Smithman’s face generated tips, but none panned out. Which should come as no surprise given their dubious provenance. Were the Smithman images to be subject to authentication as a piece of art their provenance would be deemed indeterminate at best, if not inauthentic or an obvious fraud. The attention Smithman garnered soon evaporated and the images were forgotten.

Smithman did attract some unwanted attention. He attracted the attention of a retired lawyer who had taken a persistent interest in the case and, like Inspector Amaral, thought the Mccann’s had contributed to the death of their daughter, covered it up, and disposed of her body. It took him a while, but he knew something was wrong about Smithman.

Almost a year after the Grangers released Smithman the lawyer filed a FoI seeking information about Smithman’s provenance. The Metropolitan Police confirmed the Smith’s as the source for Smithman, but they were tight-lipped on the timeline. Here is the relevant excerpt of the request and the denial exchange:

“At Questions 3, 6 & 7 you asked:

3. On what date were these two [Smithman] e-fits created?

6. On what date were these two e-fits first shown to members of Operation Grange?

7. On what dates in 2012 and 2013, or otherwise in 2011 and 2014, did members of Operation Grange (a) meet with members of the Irish family or (b) have contact with the Irish family, whether by telephone, e-mail, letter or otherwise?

REASONS FOR DECISION [denial of FoI Questions 3, 6, 7] e information you have requested is exempt in part by the virtue of Section 30(1)(a) and Section 40(2) (a)(b) and (3)(a)(i)(ii)(b) of the Act.

To disclose information which could cause a person arrested to be identified and interfere with any ongoing investigation cannot be maintained.”

Source: Metropolitan Police, Reponse to Freedom of Information Request Reference No: 2014090001604, October 14, 2014.

The Met Police declined to answer the timeline questions on the basis that it would cause an arrested person to be identified, or would interfere with an ongoing police investigation. Divulging the timeline for the Smithman images could hardly have interfered with an investigation that failed to do so much as write a parking ticket. Nor do questions 3, 6 and 7 of the September FoI seek personal information or anything about a “person arrested”. The Grangers had arrested no one or even named a suspect.

Meaning the September 2014 FoI request to obtain the timeline for the Smithman images was likely denied because it would (ostensibly) interfere “with any ongoing investigation”, a rather vague and arbitrary catch-all excuse. But that proved to be wishful thinking. Other than boxfuls of paper, Operation Grange produced nothing the least bit useful towards Finding Madeleine.

When the Grangers released the two Smithman images they became the political equivalent of a loose nuke.

Three years were to pass before the Smithman nuke went off in the midst of the 2016 U.S. Presidential election while the already bizarre PizzaGate story was swirling. Smithman was aimed at John and Tony Podesta and their long-time political patron and ally, Hillary Clinton, whose Presidential campaign John was heading up.

Hillary Clinton “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot”