It's unclear when CB first gained access to the Westfalia but the Berkshire gf he was with in 2004 claims not to remember it. And we also don't know who owned the vehicle before him but it's possible to be another German associate. CB told the German trio he took to Spain that the vehicle belonged to a friend of his. The German community in the Algarve were said to be closely knit. Of course, the vehicle spotted in Figueira may not be the WF at all, but a similar vehicle. The interesting thing to me is the German plates. We know CB was travelling back and forth between Germany and Portugal and buying and selling cars, the area around his farmhouse was said to be littered with them. Even if it wasn't him in the vehicle, is it possible he knew them?
The JC case was a very strange one indeed. After the mother and uncle retracted their murder confessions, both later sought to blame the other for Joana's disappearance. First, the uncle claimed that Leonor had sold her daughter to traffickers and that he believed Joana was still alive. Later, Leonor claimed that there was indeed a plot to sell her daughter but that it was her brother's idea. She said as part of the plot she sent Joana to the shop and that everything 'was all set' for her daughter to be taken abroad. But claims that when she (Leonor) returned, her brother said the exchange went wrong, the people didn't have the money and that he ended up killing Joana, who would have told all, and then buried her body in the mountains.
All very odd. But if there is any truth in a simulated abduction, to which they were complicit, in order to hand Joana to people traffickers, it could explain why police were convinced that they were hiding something. And if there is some "German" link to this trafficking plot, might they have also been involved in the MM case?
There's a few details in the MM case that suggest she may have been taken as part of some larger operation, one where CB was perhaps at the very bottom of this chain. Might it be conceivable that the plot was then abandoned when the media exploded, with MM's face being plastered over the world and CB was forced to "destroy the evidence", maybe under instruction from those higher up in the chain?
With regards CB, I've tended to prefer the "opportunist" theory over a "planned" operation, but a few things lately have point to the latter. HCW saying to Jon Clarke that he would not be at all surprised if certain high-level people were involved as part of a paedophile ring for example. Then we have RH's deathbed confession that also pointed to an abduction to order plot. Plus CB's "best friend" MT who said CB often spoke about selling children and being convinced that's what he did with MM. Plus it's never been established where he got the money to buy the expensive winnebago that MT claims CB turned up at Orgiva in just 1 month after MM disappeared. He didn't have it a couple of months earlier when MT saw him in PDL where CB was broke and living out of his campervan. And as much as I view the story with scepticism, the story about the "horrible job" that would "change his life" is perhaps the biggest indicator that CB was the bottom of some chain.
Maddie suspect told of 'horrible job to do in Praia' night before toddler vanished
