you'd expect, but you can still see something of the irises. Very interesting, you ask me. Don't see eyes like that very often."
From Alan Dresser's account, later confirmed by the takeaway's employees, McDonald's was unusually crowded that day. It may be that other parents of young children were also using the break in the weather to get out of the house for the morning, but whatever the case, most of them seem to have converged on McDonald's at the same time. Dresser had a querulous toddler in tow, and he was, he admits, anxious to appease him, to feed him, and to be on his way in order to put him down for a nap. He established the boy at one of the three remaining available tables - second in from the doorway - and he went to place their order. Although hindsight demands one castigate Dresser for leaving his son unattended for so much as thirty seconds, at least ten mothers were present in McDonald's at that moment and, in their company, at least twenty-two small children. In such a public setting in the middle of the day, how was he to assume that inconceivable danger was approaching? Indeed, if one thinks of danger at all in such a location, one thinks of paedophiles lurking nearby and seeing an opportunity, not of three boys under the age of twelve. No one present looked the least bit dangerous. Indeed, Dresser was himself the only adult male there.
CCTV tape shows three boys later identified as Michael Spargo, Ian Barker, and Reggie Arnold approaching McDonald's at 12:51. They had been inside the Barriers for more than two hours. They were doubtless hungry, and although they could have assuaged their hunger with the bags of crisps they'd taken from Mr. Gupta's snack kiosk, it seems to have been their intention to take food from a McDonald's customer and to make a run for it afterwards. Both Michael's account and Ian's account agree on this point. In every interview, Reggie Arnold refuses to talk about McDonald's altogether. This is likely due to the fact that, no matter whose idea it was to take John Dresser from the premises, it is Reggie Arnold who has the toddler by the hand as the boys walk towards the Barriers' exit.
In looking upon John Dresser, Ian, Michael, and Reggie would have been gazing at the very antithesis of their own past selves. At the moment of his abduction, the child was dressed in a new, azure snowsuit, with yellow ducks marching across the front of it. His blond hair was freshly washed and had yet to be cut, so it fell round his face in the sort of cherubic curls one associates with Renaissance putti. He had bright white trainers on his feet and he was carrying his favourite toy: a small brown-and-black dog with floppy ears and a pink tongue partially torn from its mouth, a stuffed animal later found along the route the boys took once they removed John from McDonald's.
This removal was apparently accomplished without difficulty. It was a matter of moments, and the CCTV film that documents John's abduction makes for chilling viewing. In it, one clearly watches the three boys enter the McDonald's (which, at the time, did not have closed-circuit filming of its own). Less than one minute later, out they come. Reggie Arnold emerges first, holding John Dresser by the hand. Five seconds later, Ian Barker and Michael Spargo follow. Michael is eating something from a conical container. These appear to be McDonald's French fries.
One of the questions relentlessly asked after the fact was how could Alan Dresser have failed to notice that his son was being taken? Two explanations exist. One of them is the noise and the crowded conditions of the takeaway, which covered any sound John Dresser might have made when approached by the boys who took him. The other is a mobile phone call that Dresser received from his office as he reached the till to place his order. The wretched timing of this call kept him with his back turned from his son longer than he might otherwise have had it turned, and as many people do, Dresser lowered his head and maintained that position as he listened and responded to the caller, likely to avoid distractions that would have made it more difficult for him to concentrate in the raucous atmosphere. By the time he had concluded this phone call, paid for his food, and