Deuteronomy picks up the story from the end of Numbers. The Israelites are hanging out in Moab, on the wrong side of the Jordan, getting some last minute instructions from Moses. Before getting into the ordinances, however, Moses decides to make sure that everyone is up to speed on what’s happened so far.

Moses recalls feeling rather overwhelmed with the duties of being the leader, and he tells the story of selecting tribal leaders (and sub-leaders) to help him. He does not mention the involvement of his father-in-law (then called Jethro) – as told in Exodus 18 – where he notices that Moses seems a little tightly-wound and recommends that he do some delegating. We also don’t get the details from Numbers 11, with the prophesying and the involvementit was clear in the first days of the investigation that there were significant inconsistencies in the witnesses’ statements, even between various statements made by the same witness. As he explains in his book, he decided not to do one because of the intense media spotlight he and his team were under.

A reconstruction of some of the events of 3 May 2007 was shown on the BBC’s Panorama programme on 19 November 2007.

A second attempt by the Portuguese police to hold a reconstruction occurred in the spring of 2008. The McCanns and their friends all declined to take part, after taking legal advice, giving a variety of reasons for not doing so. Dr Gerald McCann specifically said at the time that he saw no purpose in such a