Media Mayhem - MCCANN MEDIA NONSENSE OF THE DAY

BABY BOMBSHELL South Africa’s ‘Maddie McCann’ rejected parents after DNA showed she’d been snatched from hospital & raised by kidnapper

Aliki Kraterou

28 May 2021, 16:43Updated: 28 May 2021, 16:58

A WOMAN who has been dubbed South Africa's Madeleine McCann has revealed she initially rejected her birth parents after a DNA test showed she was a stolen baby.

Zephany Nurse, 24, discovered she was snatched from a maternity ward at Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town, in 1997 and raised by her kidnapper, through a selfie.

Back in February 2015, Zephany found out her pal at school Cassidy Nurse, was actually her biological sister after the pair snapped a selfie and realised they looked identical.

Her real identity only came to light when students at the Zwaanswyk High School spotted similarities between her and Cassidy.

Cassidy showed the photo to her parents Celeste and Morne Nurse who immediately thought Zephany could be their long-lost child- DNA tests revealed that indeed the two girls were sisters.

Mum-of two- Zephany who appeared on This Morning today with her birth family, said she initially couldn't believe the results of the DNA test.

"At the time when they presented to me that they were going to do the DNA test, no way in my normal, right mind, in my 17 years of age at that time, could I ever possibly think that this DNA test could actually be positive," she said.

"Because life was so normal for me. It shook my entire world when the results came back. It was shocking."

Although she admitted she initially cut off her birth parents, in support of the woman who raised her, she said she now enjoys a good relationship with both sides.

She added that becoming a parent herself helped her "open up her heart to both her mums and daddies."

"We are definitely in a good space right now, and myself being a mum to a daughter and a son has definitely contributed to us having the relationship that we have right now," she said.

"It has really broadened up in my mind to more people being involved, and more people being involved in their lives.

"So being a mum, being a parent, has really my opened up heart, opened up my mind, to both my mums and my daddies, but mostly to my biological family as well.

In 2016, the kidnapper Lavona Solomon was jailed for 10 years for kidnapping a newborn baby from her sleeping mother.

Zephany had said at the time: "I sat there in shock. My life was out of control.

"That broke me. I needed her. I needed to ask her, 'Why? What's going on?' I was so overwhelmed that I belonged to someone else."

It is thought Lavona concealed a miscarriage and then faked the rest of her pregnancy before stealing the baby, bringing the baby home and pretending she had given birth alone.



https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/15098557/south-africas-maddie-mccann-snatched-hospital-raised-kidnapper/
....................

Not only is this ^^^ very old news, there is no similarity whatsoever with the disappearance of Madeleine McCann.

The internet has inevitably become the source for making a fast buck - by fair means or foul.

MADDIE QUIZ 
Madeleine McCann’s parents and ‘Tapas Seven’ have NEVER been quizzed as witnesses by Brit cops – as police hunt ‘person of significance’

Met detectives have been relying on Portuguese transcripts of formal interviews with key witnesses, including Maddie's parents

• Charlie Parker
  
• 16:33, 1 Oct 2017
  
• Updated: 17:58, 2 Oct 2017
  

THE PARENTS of Madeleine McCann and their “Tapas Seven” holiday pals have never been quizzed as witnesses by Scotland Yard into her disappearance.
The £12million six and a half year police probe into Maddie’s feared kidnap, which is hunting “a person of significance”, has not once asked Kate and Gerry, their friends and other key witnesses, for their account on the night the youngster vanished.



Madeleine McCann went missing at the Ocean club apartment hotel in Praia de Luz , PortugalCredit: AFP


Her parents Kate and Gerry McCann have vowed to search for their missing daughter for the rest of their livesCredit: AFP
The Met detectives have been relying on Portuguese transcripts of key interviews with British witnesses, and have never conducted their own, The Times has learned.
Neither Gerry and Kate McCann nor their seven friends they dined with on the night Maddie vanished have been formerly interviewed.
Former Met detective chief inspector Collin Sutton, said: “I would conduct fresh interviews with all the key British witnesses. We’re talking about interviews given by the McCanns and friends through an interpreter, written down in Portuguese and then translated back into English so officers from Grange can read them. The room for error would be enormous.”
A source close to Scotland Yard's search Operation Grange said the new individual is now a "critical line of inquiry" in the investigation.
The source told the newspaper: "It is as much to rule out the person out of the inquiry as anything else."



A family of the McCann's months before the three-year-old disappearedCredit: Rex Features


The Times understands the Met never interviewed Maddie's parents or the Tapas Seven as witnessesCredit: PA:Press Association
Madeleine vanished in May 2007, while on holiday with her family in Praia de Luz, Portugal.
The girl, who was then three, was left sleeping in a hotel with her siblings after her parents went for dinner.
Her parents Kate and Gerry McCann have since vowed to never give up on trying to find their daughter who would now be 14.
Kate said: "We will go on, try our hardest, never give up and make the best of the life we have."
The news comes days after cops received £154,000 to keep the investigation afloat.
The extra cash is set to fund the search until March next year.
Kate and Gerry were "extremely thankful to both the Home Office and Scotland Yard for the continued funding," their spokesman Clarence Mitchell said.



A general view of apartments at the Ocean Club in Luz in the Algarve, Portugal, where Madeleine went missingCredit: PA:Press Association
Operation Grange was launched in 2011 after the Portuguese-led investigation was shelved in 2008.
There have been more than 8,000 potential sights of the Brit three-year-old since her disappearance.
One of the most seriously regarded sighting was in Amsterdam, 2008.
Shopkeeper Anna Maria Stam told cops a three or four-year-old girl who resembled Madeleine, told her she was with a "stranger" who had taken her "away from mummy".

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/4588686/madeleine-mccann-parents-kate-gerry-tapas-seven-never-quizzed-british-police/

Madeleine McCann search digs up the haters and misguided conspiracy theorists

Sky News presenter Kay Burley says ignore the haters and think of two desperate parents hundreds of miles away hoping against hope that nothing is found this time

By Kay Burley
20:25, 7 JUN 2014


Struggle: Gerry and Kate McCann (Image: PA)

There can’t be many parents around the world unaware of the plight of a beautiful little girl who was only three years old when she disappeared in 2007, writes Kay Burley in the Sunday People.

Immediately recognisable by her first name, Madeleine, the eldest of the McCann children disappeared one warm May evening in 2007 as her parents dined with friends in a restaurant at their resort in Praia da Luz, Portugal.

Despite an Interpol search and worldwide publicity nothing has been seen of the little one since.

This week, seven years on, police from the Met have begun searching an area of scrubland near the apartment including a deep, concealed shaft and sewers.

Could this prove to be the final resting place?

Her parents, Kate and Gerry, who suffer every single day with the consequences of their actions that night have decided not to travel to Praia da Luz for this latest hunt for Madeleine.

Who can blame them?

Well, it would appear quite a few. I am absolutely staggered by the number of people on social media who think they know exactly what happened to little Madeleine.

Conspiracy theorists believe that it’s only a matter of time before the McCanns are held culpable for their daughter’s disappearance.

They point out Kate refused to answer some questions put her by the Portuguese police. Kate was with her lawyer when interviewed by the police.

She would have been advised what to say.

The haters refer to cadaver dogs who showed ‘beyond doubt’ that a body must have been kept in the wardrobe of the apartment and then later driven in the McCann’s hire car to be buried.

Under the noses of the Portuguese police and the world’s press?

Easy to dismiss such claims as Looney Tunes, but even a national newspaper was guilty of claiming the McCanns know more than they have told the police .

As a mother I am offended and appalled by such unfounded allegations.

Every morning the McCann’s must wake up only to be smothered by a blanket of guilt.

‘If only we’d done this…’

They have always held on to the hope that Madeleine will be found alive.

So as the search continues, please ignore the haters and think instead of two desperate parents hundreds of miles away sitting by the phone and hoping against hope that nothing is found this time.

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/madeleine-mccann-search-digs-up-3659944

The McCann case: opposing opinions

Len Port

In the midst of the latest phase in the investigation into the disappearance of Madeleine McCann, Sky News presenter Kay Burley entered the fray with an article in the Daily Mirror in which she castigated “conspiracy theorists” and “haters” of Madeleine’s parents.

Burley, a reporter and newsreader of long standing, wrote: “I am absolutely staggered by the number of people on social media who think they know exactly what happened to little Madeleine. Conspiracy theorists believe that it’s only a matter of time before the McCanns are held culpable for their daughter’s disappearance.”

Burley went on to dismiss criticisms of Kate McCann’s refusal to answer questions put to her by Portuguese police, and to belittle what many have read into the findings of cadaver dogs in the McCanns holiday apartment and a hire car they used.

“Easy to dismiss such claims as Looney Tunes, but even a national newspaper was guilty of claiming the McCanns know more than they have told the police,” wrote Burley.

“As a mother I am offended and appalled by such unfounded allegations.

“Every morning the McCann’s must wake up only to be smothered by a blanket of guilt. ‘ If only we’d done this…’

“They have always held on to the hope that Madeleine will be found alive.

“So as the search continues, please ignore the haters and think instead of two desperate parents hundreds of miles away sitting by the phone and hoping against hope that nothing is found this time.”

This heartfelt standpoint exemplifies one of the most contentious features of this extraordinary case. In the absence of indisputable evidence, two conflicting schools of thought have developed about what happened to Madeleine: one that she was abducted, the other that she died inadvertently in the apartment and her parents were somehow involved in a cover-up.

There was no proof either way in 2007 and there is none today, but it is human nature to adopt a preferred line of probability depending on one’s logical and emotional approach.

It is true that many people hiding in the safety of anonymity or pseudonyms make abhorrent, highly abusive comments on internet sites. In the absence of legal options, indeed they should be ignored.

The trouble with Kay Burley’s condemnation, however, is that in its broad sweep it fails to recognise that many of those who do not accept as a given fact that Madeleine was abducted are not “haters.”

Some of the McCann doubters and critics have probably studied this case in more depth and for longer than most mainstream media journalists in Britain.

They are aware, for example, that back in May 2007 no trace was found of a break-in or a burglary, let alone a kidnapping, at the apartment from which Madeleine went missing.

Well-informed sceptics want the truth to emerge so that justice can finally be done. Their reasoned arguments and conclusions are worthy of serious consideration.

Not everyone believes what they hear on television news channels or read in newspapers. ‘Churnalistic’ and seemingly servile coverage of this case gives rise to distrust.

While there is genuine compassion for Madeleine’s devastated parents, a great many Portuguese mothers are offended and appalled by the repercussions in this country of leaving Madeleine and her siblings alone that fateful night.

The reputations of the Portuguese judicial police, the original lead detective and a range of innocent ‘suspects’ have been blackened in the British media over the years.

To cap it all, the Algarve has been cast recently as a hotbed of paedophilia and the ordinary folk dependent on tourism for their livelihood in Praia da Luz have been subjected to the crass timing of the current search operations.

Obviously this case has been a very public and impassioned one, but simplistic rants in the mainstream or social media are not helpful.

One indisputable fact is that no matter how much anyone sympathises with or is critical of Kate and Gerry McCann, it is still far from clear exactly what happened to their daughter.

Sadly, it is looking increasing unlikely we shall know any time soon.

At the end of a TV interview at the weekend, former Chief Inspector Gonçalo Amaral, who believes Madeleine died in the apartment, was asked: “Will we ever find out what really happened that night?”

He replied: “Yes, we will. When MI5 opens the case files we will find out. Don’t forget that the British secret services followed the case right from the beginning. On location.”

Amaral did not predict how long it might be before that information becomes available.

algarvedailynews.com

______

Algarve-based Len Port has been a journalist for 50 years, working as a staff reporter, broadcaster and freelance correspondent for many leading news organisations. He covered events in the Far east in the Sixties, and in Northern Ireland and South Africa in the Seventies. Since moving to Portugal in the early Eighties, he has edited regional magazines, contributed to national dailies in Britain and written several books, two of which are currently available as ebooks with Amazon.

I believe Len Port really was the first journalist to arrive at the scene of the crime - the Ocean Club, Praia da Luz

Crime: The Madeleine McCann case and the media – By Len Port

1st May 2017

The most reported and discussed missing person case ever recorded is still not only a highly contentious mystery, but also a personal tragedy that has been turned into a public farce by elements of the media.

In the entirely predictable press frenzy surrounding the imminent 10th anniversary of the disappearance, much of the coverage, particularly in the British tabloids, has been farcical. But it should not be dismissed lightly.

Unable to come up with “news” on the case, the tabloids have been rehashing the same old speculation and guesswork.

“Could Madeleine McCann have been snatched by a lone paedo or simply wandered off?….”

“She was sold to a rich family, says ex-cop….”

“New hope after decade-long search….”

“Experts say Madeleine McCann’s body is almost impossible to find ”.

And then there was the much-touted Australian TV show that promised “a major breakthrough in the case”.

Meanwhile, the Daily Mirror took a slightly different tack with a story headlined, “What REALLY happened the night Madeleine McCann disappeared as nanny breaks her 10-year silence”.

The story did not explain what “really” happened, nor did it name the nanny or why she had remained silent for so long.

It quoted her as considering the McCann to be “the picture perfect family” and repeated the usual British criticism of the Portuguese police.

More surprisingly, she claimed that the resort from which Madeleine vanished was considered so unsafe that nannies were given rape alarms (whistles) and advised, “don’t go anywhere by yourself, ever”.

There was nothing to suggest the Mirror had tried to question or check this or any of the nanny’s other assertions, but, in Praia da Luz, they were viewed with derision. It was seen as yet another attempt to brand Praia da Luz as a den of iniquity, which it is not and never has been.

The official police files on the case contain nothing about rape whistles or alarms. None of the signed statements by child-care workers mentioned anything about suspicious goings-on or Luz being “unsafe”.

The manager of the Ocean Club where the McCanns were staying said in a police statement in 2007 that he had “no knowledge of any untoward situation involving Ocean Club users or in the village itself, other than some damage and minor thefts”.

The Mirror story was also a reminder that real journalism has to a large extent been replaced by ‘churnalism’, which disregards traditional standards of original news gathering based on impartiality and fact-checking for accuracy and honesty.

The nanny’s story was quickly recycled virtually verbatim on the Internet by other tabloids. Even the broadsheet Daily Telegraph fell into line as did news services in the United States, Australia and New Zealand.

Trial by the media has had a huge influence on public perceptions about guilt or innocence in this case. Most of the mainstream media reports state as if it were a fact that Madeleine was “abducted”. Maybe she was. Maybe she wasn’t. There is no certainty either about the other main theory that her parents covered up an accidental death in the apartment.

Until solid evidence is found and the culprits are brought to justice, the public fascination with this case will continue to fuel and be fuelled by the media’s determination to churn out stories whose accuracy and agenda may sometimes be open to doubt.

The current avalanche of stories inevitably evokes the previous admission by Lord Bell, founder and former chairman of the Bell Pottinger public relations group, to columnist and author Owen Jones that “the McCanns paid me £50,000 in fees to keep them on the front page of every single newspaper for a year, which we did”.

Nevertheless, “Maddie” helps circulation figures and makes money. Money, along with misinformation, has always played far too big a part in this case which – let’s remember – is about the tragic loss of a child.

https://portuguese-american-journal.com/police-investigation-the-madeleine-mccann-case-and-the-media-by-len-port/

Len Port is a member here, it's a pity he's never posted.

Modest and understated, too frequently he gets overlooked and that just won't do !

I know who took Maddie

Original Source: SUN: WEDNESDAY 01 SEPTEMBER 2010

By ANTONELLA LAZZERI and ANDY CRICK

MADELEINE McCann suspect Raymond Hewlett confessed on his deathbed that he KNEW what happened to the little girl, The Sun can reveal.

In a letter to his estranged son Wayne, he denied having anything to do with Maddie's disappearance.

But he said he knew she had been stolen to order by a gipsy gang who kidnap children for wealthy couples unable to have kids or adopt.

Hewlett, a serial paedophile seen near the spot where Maddie was snatched in Portugal, said they had a "shopping list" of potential targets - such as a little girl with blonde hair like Maddie.

Private detectives working for Maddie's parents Kate and Gerry are "extremely interested" in Hewlett's claims.

A source close to their ongoing investigation said: "What he says fits the No1 theory, which is that she was stolen to order."

Hewlett died of throat cancer in April, aged 62, after persistently refusing to meet the McCanns' detectives.

He became a suspect because of his appalling record of rape and abduction of children.

And he was living as a nomad in Portugal with his second family when Maddie vanished from the McCanns' holiday apartment in Praia da Luz in May 2007.

Hewlett's letter to builder Wayne, 40, was delivered to the son by a mystery man - thought to be a solicitor or a private eye - a week after he died.

Most of it was an apology for how his vile crimes had affected his first wife Susan and Wayne.

But then he went on to write about Maddie, who was nearly four when she went missing.

Wayne, of Telford, Shropshire, said: "It was a bolt from the blue and I shook when I read it.

"He stated he didn't want to go to his grave with us thinking he had done such a horrible thing.

"He said he had had nothing to do with taking Maddie but did know who had.

"He said a very good gipsy friend he knew in Portugal had got drunk and 'let it out' that he had stolen Maddie to order as part of a gang.

"My dad said this gang had been operating for a long time and had snatched children before for couples who couldn't have children of their own.

"Maddie had been targeted. They took photos of children and sent them to the people they were acting for. And they said Yes or No.

"Dad said the man told him it was nothing to do with snatching children for a paedophile gang or for a sexual reason.

"He said there were huge sums of money involved. And he totally believed what this man was saying."

The account fits with others surrounding the Maddie mystery.

Several strange men were seen taking photos of children around the Ocean Club resort in the days before she vanished. And The Sun revealed earlier this year that a British expat thought he had seen Maddie in a white van driven by a gipsy couple the day after she was lost.

Wayne, who had no contact with Hewlett for nearly 20 years, said his father's letter seemed "very genuine".

He added: "I don't know if this is what happened to Maddie or not, but it does make sense. I can't believe he'd go to those lengths to make up some elaborate lie when he was so weak and ill."

Wayne said he considered going to Kate and Gerry with the letter but was worried it could cause them more heartache if it gave them false hope. He added: "I actually burned it because it unnerved me so much.
e
"To have a letter from someone you hated for so long was just mind-blowing. I couldn't deal with it."

Wayne did not contact The Sun about the message. We learned of its existence through a friend.

But now he intends to sit down with the Maddie detectives to tell them everything he knows.

The McCanns' spokesman Clarence Mitchell said last night: "We are extremely grateful to Wayne for coming forward with this information and the detective team will be interviewing him as a matter of priority."

[Acknowledgement gerrymccannsblog.co.uk]

"He said a very good gipsy friend he knew in Portugal had got drunk and 'let it out' that he had stolen Maddie to order as part of a gang.

Ring any bells?

Funny this is, I was watching Colin Sutton's 'Manhunt' this morning and thought how good it was and how he must have been a good murder detective.

Then he comes out with that ^^^ nonsense about an obviously dead child and I just think he lost credibility with that.

Remember his brief appearance here on CMOMM?

He was given every reasonable opportunity to justify himself but ran off like a scalded cat instead.

Speaks volumes!

Madeleine: SIX key witnesses cast doubt over Robert Murat's alibi

Original Source: MAIL: 31 DECEMBER 2007
Last updated at 17:25 31 December 2007

Six key witnesses have now cast serious doubt on the alibi of Madeleine McCann suspect Robert Murat.

The latest is a British barrister who insists he saw Mr Murat in the hours after the three-year-old vanished from her holiday apartment in Portugal - at a time when the suspect claimed he was with his mother.

Madeleine's mother Kate has now told friends she has her own suspicions over Mr Murat, and has demanded he tells the truth over his whereabouts on the night the girl disappeared.

The key witnesses are:

' Holidaymaker Jayne Jensen, a 54-year-old businesswoman. In a statement to police she said she saw Mr Murat smoking a cigarette on the street corner opposite the apartment half an hour after Madeleine disappeared.

'The barrister, who has not been named but was on holiday and was pictured in Praia da Luz at the time Madeleine vanished. He has given a witness statement that corroborates what Ms Jensen said.

The next evening he and Ms Jensen were talking about the disappearance on an apartment balcony when Mr Murat joined them for a drink.

The barrister has described Mr Murat's behaviour that evening as "odd", saying Mr Murat insisted on going to change his clothes because it had been a long day - when they were certain he had already changed earlier.

' Three friends of the McCanns. It is understood they have given statements to police insisting Mr Murat introduced himself to them on the night Madeleine vanished. It is claimed he said: "I am Robert. Can I help in the search'" Mr Murat subsequently acted as a translator between the police and the McCanns up until he was made a suspect.

' Charlotte Pennington, a nanny working at the Ocean Club resort. She claims to have seen Mr Murat in the hours after Madeleine vanished.

A source close to Mrs McCann told the Standard: "Kate has always felt there are questions concerning Murat that need to be answered.

"Gerry doesn't know whether he is involved but Kate has always been suspicious. There is a body of evidence contrary to what he [Murat] is saying.

"He has said he was not there on the night and now we have a number of people who have come forward quite independently of us and have volunteered information directly in contradiction to what he has said.

"The latest witness is a barrister who has corroborated what others have said."

Mr Murat, 34, strongly denies any involvement in Madeleine's disappearance on 3 May. He has always claimed to have spent the evening at his mother Jenny's villa a hundred yards from where the girl vanished.

Earlier this month Mrs Murat, 71, said anybody who claimed to have seen her son on the night of 3 May was a liar. But she also appeared to contradict her son's version of how he learned Madeleine was missing.

Mrs Murat claimed she woke him up in the morning to tell him the news of the missing child. But, according to the official version, his lawyer Francisco Pagarete said Mr Murat was in his garden when he found out from a British holidaymaker helping in the search.

Investigators are probing Mrs Murat's claim. A source close to the McCanns said: "Murat was there that night. His mother may be protecting him.

"He is her son and most mothers would protect their children. Either she knows something or she is mistaken."

Doubts over Mr Murat's alibi do not prove he has any connection with Madeleine's disappearance, and police are understood to have found no forensic links.

But he has been an official suspect for more than seven months despite repeated claims in Portuguese media that he would be cleared at any moment.

It is understood his lawyer could seek to have his suspect status removed on Thursday, but this bid is likely to fail while the investigation continues.

The McCanns, from Rothley in Leicestershire, also remain suspects, although the police investigation appears to be moving away from their involvement.

[Acknowledgement gerrymccannsblog.co.uk/mccannfiles.com]

Madeleine McCann suspect broke into British girlfriend's flat through window

His ex-girlfriend told of his disturbing jealous rages and how he once hid under the bed

ByMartin FrickerDan WarburtonJess Flaherty
11:04, 11 JUN 2020


In a world exclusive, Brueckner's British ex-girlfriend has told of her relationship with the man being investigated over Madeleine's disappearance (Image: Roland Leon/Daily Mirror)

The ex-girlfriend of Madeleine McCann suspect Christian Brueckner has broken her silence on her chilling experiences with him.

She claimed Christian Brueckner broke into her flat through a window and lay in wait for her under her bed in disturbing echoes of the Madeleine McCann case.

Madeleine McCann disappeared from her bed in a holiday apartment at a resort in Portugal in 2007 when she was three years old.

Now, the German suspect's ex-girlfriend has shared the chilling incident with The Mirror.

The disturbing episode took place hours after he brutally attacked her in a jealous rage after she innocently hugged another man.

She claims he repeatedly slammed her head against a wall in the ladies toilets of the Algarve bar where she worked - leaving her a bloodied mess.

When the woman returned home, she had a “horrible feeling” someone was inside and found Brueckner under her bed.

The 45-year-old believes the German was lying in wait to attack her if she brought another man back to her studio flat.

But instead Brueckner, then aged in his late 20s, chillingly stared at her and said “goodbye” before fleeing.

She said he then embarked on a stalking campaign against the petite barmaid, leaving her too afraid to walk home alone.

Portuguese police were twice called out to deal with Brueckner after she complained of the attack and stalking - but he was never charged.

The 2005 break-in has eerie similarities with Madeleine’s disappearance two years later in nearby Praia da Luz, where he was living.

Gerry McCann previously said he believed her abductor was hiding behind a door when he went to check on her.

Investigators believe the person who took Madeleine broke into their holiday apartment through a window.

The woman, who is still too scared of Brueckner to reveal her identity, today reveals her account of her relationship with the Madeleine suspect.

She told the Mirror how the German:

• Seduced her when they worked together waiting tables in an Algarve restaurant.

• Flew into jealous rages when other men paid her attention or even spoke to her.

• Branded her a “lazy Brit” when she refused his demands to clean his house.

• Chillingly broke into her flat through an open window and hid under the bed after a bust-up.

• She now believes her ex, who is in a German prison, could be responsible for Madeleine’s abduction.

She said: “Until now I’ve refused to believe someone I was involved with could commit such a horrible and disgusting thing like hurting a child.

“But I’m not sure anymore. I’m starting to wonder if he did do it. And if he did, he needs to be really punished for it.

“It’s chilling to think my ex is suspected of abducting Madeleine McCann. I can’t cope with it.”

The woman, from Berkshire, moved to the Algarve town of Lagos in late 2003 after spending several years in the Netherlands

“At first I didn’t actually like him that much,” she recalled in a softly-spoken southern accent. “Not for any reason, I just didn’t like him.

“I was 28, he was a couple of years younger than me. Everyone called him Chris.

“He liked me, I knew he liked me in ‘that’ way but I wasn’t interested. We slowly became friends in the spring of 2004.

“Chris could be very, very charming, very funny and very smooth in the way he talked.

“He always dressed nicely, holding the door open for women, that kind of thing.

“I was alone here in Portugal, no family around and a bit lonely and I was getting all this attention from this guy.

“We got together romantically and at first it was great. The relationship was very nice.”

The woman stayed over regularly at Brueckner’s rented farmhouse on the outskirts of Praia da Luz, less than a mile from the Ocean Club.

“I was living in a little flat by myself on the same road as the restaurant where we worked,” she said.

“He was living in Luz in the house that has been on the news all week. He was living on his own.

“He wasn’t sleazy in the beginning, he was very charming, even chivalrous.

“He drove the nice car - the black Jaguar - and was very gentlemanly and spoke properly.

“Our sex life was normal. He wasn’t into anything weird with me.

“We used to go out to eat a lot. He wasn’t a veggie. He liked to eat Indian food.

“He also liked German food. I remember in his house once he made strange German food that I didn’t like at all.

“He liked taking me to the beach. He didn’t like the town beach in Lagos. It would always be the West coast beaches, the isolated ones.

“He liked those because he didn’t like lots of crowds, that’s what he said. He didn’t like all the tourists in the summer.

“At first he seemed very easy-going, very relaxed, but gradually after summer things changed.

“During the summer it was good, but during the winter it started to get not so good.”

Her first inkling that things were not right came when she bumped into a male friend in Lagos in late 2004.

“We were chatting and suddenly he stopped talking to me, like he was spooked or suddenly remembered something,” she said.

“Someone later told me Christian had previously threatened the guy because he’d seen us speaking before.

“We also started to argue in the late autumn, early winter.

“It would be small things. He would get angry about really small things and I would get upset.

“I remember he lost it once because I didn’t clean his house. I said ‘I’ve got my own house to clean, I don’t live here.’

“He was like, ‘You should clean my house, you’re a woman’.

“He said he had two Portuguese girlfriends before me and they both cleaned his house even though they never lived there.

“I remember saying, ‘but I’m not Portuguese’, and he replied saying ‘English women are all lazy’.

“He said he had seen an English girl for a little while and she was lazy like me.

“He called her Carol, I think it was only for a few weeks, she was on holiday and they had a fling.

“He started to get possessive but it wasn’t to my face, it was behind my back.

“He also began going back and forwards to Germany over that time. He’d stay one week in Germany, then back to Portugal.

“I remember feeling suspicious, like something strange was going on, so I looked at his phone.

“I found messages in German from someone called ‘B’ saying ‘Ich liebe dich’ - I love you.

“It was a German number, and obviously he had been going back and forth to Germany, so I put two and two together.

“I confronted him about those and he went crazy, completely crazy. We had a huge fight.”

Worse was to come weeks later when Brueckner flew into a jealous rage at the Metro Bar - now called Little Breakfast - in the early hours of New Year’s Day.

“I started New Year’s Eve working in Taberna de Lagos and then after midnight I worked at another bar,” she recalled.

“Chris was at the bar and was drunk.

“Some really nice guys I’d made friends with came in from the bar next door to say happy New Year and gave me a hug.

“Chris just suddenly came round the bar in a crazy rage and dragged me out in front of everybody.

“He grabbed me by the neck, pulled me into the girls toilets and was ramming my head against the wall.

“There were people pulling him off me, I think it took four big guys to get him off me.

“They called the police and some officers came. I was on the floor and couldn’t move because I was in shock.

“I didn’t talk to the police because I was scared of what he would do if it meant he got arrested.

“The police soon left after I said I didn’t want to deal with them.

“I stayed there the rest of the night recovering and eventually two friends, a guy and his girlfriend, walked me back to my flat.

“I went through the security gate and up two flights of stairs, into my flat and closed the door.

“Something was really strange inside there. It’s hard to explain, something just felt strange.

“I went into the bathroom and the toilet seat was up. I always put the toilet seat down, it’s what I do, so it was another clue.

“I was sure someone was either in there or had been in there.

“I started looking in the cupboards and then thought I’d check under the bed.

“I peeked under and got the shock of my life. He was hiding under there, lying on his back, staring at me.

“Can you imagine how that felt? I just froze. I didn’t know what he was going to do to me.

“He got out from under the bed, acted like everything was normal, said goodbye to me, walked out and closed the door behind him.

“I was there all alone, just shaking and shaking.

“I think he was there waiting to see whether I brought anyone home with me.

“To this day I still wonder what would have happened if I had brought someone back that night.

“I think, from the previous behaviour, he would have really, really hurt that person and me too.”

Despite the vicious beating and break-in, she enraged her friends by rekindling their relationship weeks later.

“A lot of people were very, very angry that I went back to him after what had happened on New Year’s Eve,” she admitted.

“He begged for my forgiveness, saying he lost control because he was drunk and would not drink again.

“He wasn’t a big drinker when we were together, so stupidly I believed him and we got back together with him.

“But it was never the same.”

The final straw came in mid-2005 when she found women’s underwear in a bag belonging to Brueckner.

“I found a pair of knickers that weren’t mine and I got really, really upset about that,” she said.

“I confronted him about it at his place and again he went totally crazy.

“He drove me back to Lagos. I got out of his car and that was it as far as I was concerned.”

But Brueckner had other ideas and began stalking his ex and staking out the restaurant where she worked.

“We had to call the police because he kept trying to get in,” she said. “He was stalking me constantly.

“One day I was carrying a big tray of drinks and because I wouldn’t talk to him he knocked them out of my hand and they went everywhere.

“The police were called and he was banned from coming inside.

“So he would wait outside and follow me. Sometimes it would be begging me to go back with him.

“But other times it would be him threatening me or saying I’m going to find out where your parents are and do something to them.

“People had to walk me home each night. There was someone each night. Eventually it stopped but it went on for a long while.”

She told how Brueckner had a string of ‘relationships’ with older women.

“There was one lady he used to take out to dinner sometimes, she was a bit older, and he said it was just for company,” she said.

“There was another lady, she was much older and I think there may have been something going on between them.

“He used to walk her dog and clean her apartment - at least that’s what he told me - and she gave him money for that.

“She lived in the centre of town. He took me to her house a couple of times, to see her dog.

“He used to go to people’s houses a lot, saying he was going to visit this person and that person.

“But the more I think about it the more I wonder what else he was doing.

“At the end of the day I never found out who the other underwear belonged to, or who ‘B’ was.

“A friend of mine said to me she wondered if he was some sort of gigolo, doing things for money with older women.

“Looking back on it maybe I was very, very naive at that time. I was a lot younger, a lot more impressionable.”

The woman moved on with her life but was stunned to get a visit from Portuguese police officers last year.

They quizzed her about a rape Brueckner carried out on an American pensioner in Praia da Luz in 2005, shortly after they split.

But they never mentioned the Madeleine McCann investigation - even though British and German police already suspected his involvement.

“I remember the Madeleine case. I remember being here in Portugal when it happened,” she said.

“At first I thought they would find her, but they didn’t and then it became bigger and bigger.

“The Portuguese police have spoken to me three times in the past year, but never once did they say it was about Madeleine.

“They said it was about him, they were investigating him because they had found out he had raped an old lady in Luz in 2005.

“They wanted to know all about him. But I had no idea it was to do with Madeleine also.

“They asked me what the relationship was like, what the sex life was like, how he treated me, how he treated women.

“They wanted to know if he liked older women, younger women, what kind, what types.

“They asked me what people he knew, any names, contacts, and asked about the Jaguar car.

“I don’t remember them saying anything about the camper van. I never saw that.”

The woman only discovered the link to the Madeleine McCann investigation when British and German police made their dramatic appeal last week.

Hundreds of calls with fresh information have flooded into detectives since they released details of the suspect.

“The first I knew it was also about Madeleine was when someone sent me a link a few days ago,” said his ex.

“I was shocked and horrified. Really, really shocked. I couldn’t believe I had been with someone who could be capable of that.

“To imagine I’ve been with someone who is capable of hurting someone like that is sickening.

“It’s so hard for me to believe it’s true.

“I’ve had loads of people contacting me saying ‘Do you think it’s true? ‘I’m so shocked’, ‘I can’t believe it’.

“And I’m the same. Of course I would never have guessed it. How can anybody imagine something like that?

“There was absolutely no sign of him being into young children or young girls.

“I find the Madeleine thing really shocking. It’s shocking to discover he was a paedophile.

“I find it absolutely disgusting. It makes me feel sick. Not just sick, angry too.

“If the British police want to speak to me of course I would talk to them.

“If there is anything I can do to help find her or find out what happened to her then I’ll talk to them.”

https://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/uk-world-news/madeleine-mccann-suspect-broke-british-18400181
....................

Got to hand it to the gutter press, they sure know how to a yarn!

Bungling local Madeleine McCann officers froze me out, says top UK detective who claims 'macho, 1970s culture' of Portuguese police hindered the hunt for suspect

   Graham Hill has given account of first two weeks of Madeleine McCann hunt
   Hill was seconded to UK’s Child Exploitation and Online Protection centre
   He could have helped while evidence was fresh but his input was unwelcome
   Here’s how to help people impacted by Covid-19

By Stephen Wright and Richard Pendlebury for the Daily Mail

Published: 23:06, 12 June 2020 | Updated: 01:53, 13 June 2020

Were it not for coronavirus, Graham Hill would be in the US this week training FBI agents. His speciality is the abduction and murder of children by sexual predators, and when he talks senior detectives from police and investigation agencies around the world listen.

But they didn’t in the Portuguese holiday resort of Praia da Luz in 2007.

Dr Hill has given the Mail a disturbing insider account of the chaotic first two weeks of the hunt for Madeleine McCann.

On May 7, 2007, Dr Hill – then a Surrey detective superintendent seconded to the UK’s new Child Exploitation and Online Protection centre – flew to Portugal to lend expert help to the hunt for Madeleine.

The three-year-old’s disappearance on May 3 from a bedroom at the Ocean Club while her parents, Gerry and Kate, ate dinner was beginning to dominate the news.

But thanks to systemic dysfunction and suspicion of outside intervention by the Portuguese police team – led by detective Goncalo Amaral, who would be removed from the case and publish a book which made false allegations against Madeleine’s parents – his input was unwelcome.

Thirteen years and £12million of UK taxpayer-funded investigations later she has still not been found.

But ten days ago, German prosecutors named convicted paedophile Christian Brueckner, 43, as a prime suspect.

He is serving a jail term in Germany for drug-dealing. In December he was sentenced to seven years for raping a 72-year-old US woman in Praia da Luz in 2005 – a conviction that is being reviewed.

The blame game has already begun, however. Why wasn’t Brueckner on the radar of the initial Portuguese investigation, and why wasn’t he identified by the Met’s own nine-year probe – Operation Grange?

A source close to the McCann case said last night: ‘A war is brewing between the Portuguese police and Scotland Yard over their previous knowledge of Brueckner.

‘The Portuguese are, once again, becoming defensive about their role.’

Portuguese police have told local media that Met detectives knew about Brueckner in 2012 but had ‘devalued’ him as a suspect by not ‘attributing relevance’ and ‘never’ requesting further information.

A British police source confirmed that Brueckner was a ‘person of interest’ at the start of Operation Grange, but there was insufficient evidence to make him a suspect.

Dr Hill, who retired from the force in 2012, has watched the latest development with interest.

On the day he arrived in Praia da Luz in 2007 he met Mr and Mrs McCann, who told him they were already concerned about what was being done by local police.

He said: ‘They wanted reassurance. Gerry McCann told me, “I took my daughter from one EU country to another EU country. How could the standards of police investigation be so different?”.

‘I could not give them any reassurance. But I said I would try to help them find their daughter.’

The next morning at the town’s police station he met those leading the Portuguese investigators.

‘It was like going back to the 1970s,’ he recalls. ‘Very macho. The incident room was full of cigarette smoke and there was a noticeable absence of women.

‘It wasn’t what I expected coming from a UK investigative perspective. There did not seem to be a lot of people around. It wasn’t very busy. And that’s all I saw of how they worked. I was never invited anywhere else.

‘It was fraught from the word go. The detectives were very polite and measured but also suspicious of why we were there and what we were seeking to achieve. I only met Amaral on that first occasion and one further meeting. Clearly he felt he did not need my help.’

Dr Hill said he asked every day for information or a meeting with someone connected to the case, adding: ‘I had to do all the pushing. The meeting would be scheduled then, invariably, cancelled.

‘If I asked about search strategies they would simply tell me they were doing everything possible. If I asked about known sex offenders they would tell me it was all in hand. I was kept at a distance. I could offer advice on predatory sex offenders and hope they would show some interest and engage, but they didn’t.

‘It took an awfully long time to establish even the smallest detail.

‘No one ever said, “What do you think?”. They were simply paying lip service to my presence.’

It was several days before they even told him they were focused on a prime suspect – British expat Robert Murat. Dr Hill offered them advice on interview techniques, which was the only time he believes they ever really listened to him, but Murat proved to be completely innocent.

No other suspects were ever mentioned to him. The McCanns only became suspects, or ‘arguidos’, in September – another indication of how the investigation was run badly from the start.

Dr Hill said that had Portuguese detectives been more willing to discuss the case ‘I would have told them the first people they needed to eliminate from the investigation is the parents or a relative’. He added: ‘For the Portuguese to make them suspects months later was complete nonsense.

‘The job had got away from them very early on and they never recovered. It was too big for them.’

After ten days of passive obstruction, Dr Hill returned to the UK.

Difficult questions must be asked of Portuguese and British police, he said, as to why Brueckner was not properly investigated before now. He added: ‘When did the Portuguese know about Brueckner? And in what context? These same questions apply to the Metropolitan Police.

‘The worst-case scenario for any senior investigating officer is that there is information already in their systems which would have led to an ID of the offender.

Citing US research, he said: ‘They looked at 75 convictions for child abduction – 70 per cent of those who carried them out were spoken to in the first 48 hours of the investigation.

‘It’s good to say, “Let’s go back and look again”. But that didn’t happen. Madeleine still has not been found. But we must learn lessons from her case.’

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8416013/Bungling-local-Madeleine-McCann-officers-froze-says-UK-detective.html

Dr Graham Hill requires further investigation methinks.



Should a well respected (allegedly) serving officer of the law be speaking out to the tabloid press about an ongoing crminal investigation? An investigation he is no longer involved with - if ever he was.

Tch tch tch, this just won't do!

Think Christian Brueckner - then join the dots..

Pervert `knew Maddie resort'

PRIVATE investigators trying to quiz a convicted paedophile over the disappearance of Madeleine McCann fear he could die before they interview him. Raymond Hewlett, originally from Todmorden, was staying around an hour's drive from the McCanns' holiday flat when Madeleine vanished.

By John Scheerhout
13:17, 26 MAY 2009UPDATED13:19, 12 JAN 2013

PRIVATE investigators trying to quiz a convicted paedophile over the disappearance of Madeleine McCann fear he could die before they interview him.

Raymond Hewlett, originally from Todmorden in Lancashire, was staying around an hour's drive from the McCanns' holiday flat in Praia da Luz, Portugal, when Madeleine, three, vanished on May 3, 2007.

He has allegedly admitted parking a van close to the complex on several occasions.

Hewlett has been tracked down to Aachen in Germany where he is seriously ill with throat cancer.

Investigators acting for Madeleine's parents Kate and Gerry McCann hope to speak to him within 48 hours - but fear he could die and take to the grave any knowledge he has about her disappearance.

West Yorkshire Police also want to speak to Hewlett, who has been jailed several times for sex crimes against young girls, in connection with an allegation of indecent assault in 1975.

Hewlett's German wife has reportedly denied her husband was involved in Madeleine's disappearance and insisted he would take a lie-detector test to prove it.

Clarence Mitchell, Kate and Gerry McCann's spokesman, told the M.E.N. last night: "Raymond Hewlett remains a person of interest to the Madeleine investigation.

"He denies he has anything to do with Madeleine's abduction. If that's the case, it's very much in his interests that he speaks to Kate and Gerry's investigators to help them eliminate him.

"However, until they speak to him and have been able to clarify his movements around the time of Madeleine's abduction then he will remain one lead amongst several that the investigators are currently pursuing."

In 1996, the M.E.N. revealed Hewlett was a suspect in the 1975 killing of 11-year-old Lesley Molseed, from Rochdale. Later DNA evidence excluded Hewlett from the murder hunt when another man, Ronald Castree from Shaw, Oldham, was convicted in 2007.

It has emerged that a former soldier who met Hewlett at a campsite in Morocco in May 2007 was told by the convicted paedophile he had parked a van close to the McCann's complex on several occasions.

Peter Verran, 46, reportedly said: "He said he knew Praia Da Luz really well. He knew the Ocean Club complex where the McCanns had been staying. He said he'd been there many times and had often parked his van close to the apartment.

"He said he knew the layout of the place, the flat and the restaurant where the McCanns and their friends had been eating when Maddie disappeared.

"He had a lot of detail about the layout. He said there was no way that the child could be taken without the parents seeing. He said they were lying."

https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/pervert-knew-maddie-resort-920412
....................

Kate McCann wrote:Every time I read these independent statements in the files (and neither could have been influenced by the other, remember – Jane’s description had not been released to the public before the Irish witnesses made their statements), I am staggered by how alike they are, almost identical in parts. As a lawyer once said to me, apropos another matter, ‘One coincidence, two coincidences – maybe they’re still coincidences. Any more than that and it stops being coincidence.’

Spanish tourist 'convinced of Madeleine photo'

By Fiona Govan in Albacete

26 September 2007 • 3:40pm

The Spanish tourist who photographed a little blonde girl being carried on the back of a woman in a street in Morocco has said that she was immediately struck by the child's resemblance to missing Madeleine McCann.

The image, which has now been seen around the world, shows a young girl being carried on the back of a woman in the north African country.

"Either it's her, or she's got a twin sister,” said Clara Torres, who was travelling around the north of the country with her family and her fiancé when she snapped the picture from a moving car on August 31.

"We were going from Chaouen to Tetuan. On the road, in a town called Zinat, I was taking photos of everything we saw, and we saw a group of people and took a photo,” she told a Spanish news channel.

The image shows a group of what appears to be one man and four women of north African appearance, one of them carrying a blonde girl in a sling across her back.

Another older girl with dark hair is walking with the group along the side of the road and the adults are all carrying luggage.

"As soon as I took the photo we were struck by the little girl, who was very blonde. I was on a trip in Morocco and took many pictures, just random ones,” said Ms Torres, who is in her late twenties.

"This was one of those pictures. I remember being struck by her and even mentioned the name Madeleine to my partner.”

But Ms Torres, who lives in the Spanish city of Albacete, in the central south east of Spain, dismissed the idea that she could have seen Madeleine in Morocco until she saw news reports on Monday of other alleged sightings in the North African country.

"I didn't think too much of it at the time because although it is uncommon it is not unusual to get blonde people in that part of the world.

"Also, I didn't think Madeleine could be in Morocco.

"It was only when I got home and saw the news on Monday about two possible sightings of Madeleine in Morocco that I remembered the picture and went through my photos."

When I saw it for the second time and focused in on the child's face, I realised it could be her. ”It sent shivers down my spine,” she said describing the image taken on a Sony digital camera from a distance of around 200 meters.

The digital record shows it was taken at 11.41am Spanish time (09.41am in Morocco) on August 31.

In a round of interviews given to Spanish news channels Ms Torres told how she contacted police in Albacete on Monday where she lives with her architect fiancé, and handed over all the pictures taken on the trip.

She described her regret at not coming forward sooner. “The picture stayed on my camera because I thought it was so strange. Now I'm really kicking myself because 25 days have been lost.”

Believing that the photo could hold the key to Madeleine's whereabouts and anxious not to waste any more time she travelled to Madrid to present it to the British Embassy.

"The police told us they would take 10 to 15 days to get the results back from the photos so I took it to the British Embassy in Madrid to hurry things along. I felt it was too important to wait around.”

With the help of her friend Seguimundo Navarro, a lawyer, she then contacted the McCanns' lawyer Michael Caplan in London and also sent him the picture so it could be forwarded to the McCann family.

Ms Torres is originally from the Spanish enclave of Ceuta in North Africa and it is understood that she and her fiancé, who does not wish to speak publicly and has only been identified as Eduardo M, had visited her family there while taking the holiday in Morocco.

The couple are due to get married next year.It was taken by Spanish tourist Clara Torres on August 31, while she was on holiday in Zinat, in the north of Morocco.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1564278/Spanish-tourist-convinced-of-Madeleine-photo.html

From days of olde, lest they forget..

Panorama walk-out over McCann film

Why did TV journalist David Mills, the producer of a Panorama film on the McCann affair, quit the project before it was transmitted last week? The Observer's David Rose reveals the inside story of the latest row to hit the BBC's flagship show

David Rose
Sun 25 Nov 2007 10.25 GMT

In the credits at the end of last week's Panorama special on the disappearance of Madeleine McCann, one name was conspicuous by its absence - that of David Mills, the programme's original producer. His name had disappeared from the end credits despite the fact that it was his company, Mills Productions, that had done all the research and was responsible for bringing the exclusive footage at the film's heart to the BBC.

Two weeks before transmission last Tuesday, Mills - one of Britain's most respected documentary-makers, who in his 40-year career has made 120 investigative films for broadcasters including the BBC, Granada, Thames and America's CBS - walked out of the programme after a furious row with Panorama's editor, Sandy Smith, over the programme's approach and argument.

He then wrote a stinging email to the BBC attacking Panorama for losing its journalistic passion. It has created a stir in the media world, mixing as it does the controversial issues of the McCanns and how their story is covered, journalistic balance and television current affairs.

'I had written a draft script and had already been told it was compelling,' Mills said. 'Sandy turned up with a completely different version and basically imposed it on me. I told him, "I cannot edit the film to this: it's a completely different show, and I'm not going to do it." To have this happening is very depressing.'

The incident - one of several controversies Panorama has faced this year - suggests, Mills said, that 'the BBC is no longer interested in serious current affairs'. BBC sources confirmed last night that the decisions about the programme's shape had been taken 'close to the top' of the BBC management hierarchy - which has already conducted a series of internal meetings over how the corporation should approach McCann case coverage in general.

As one of those interviewed by Mills and the programme's reporter, Richard Bilton, I can attest to how different the programme shown was to what they told me less than a month ago that they were envisaging. Along with The Observer's Ned Temko, who has covered the case for this newspaper, I ended up on the cutting-room floor. At that stage - as Mills's draft script makes plain - his intention was to make an analytical, investigative programme that would have been very critical of the Portuguese police, not only for the errors in their investigation, but for their apparent campaign of disinformation designed to put pressure on Madeleine's parents, Kate and Gerry McCann. It would also have criticised both the local and British press over allegations that they recycled unfounded rumours with little sign of fact-checking or detachment.

It would, as Mills confirmed again yesterday, have scrutinised the various allegations that have been floated against the McCanns and concluded they are baseless: 'We had an investigative team looking into the story for weeks. Our assessment was that the purported DNA evidence was weak and inconclusive, while so far as we could tell the supposedly significant "discrepancies" between the stories told by the McCanns' friends about the night of Madeleine's disappearance amount to very little indeed.'

The original film would have compared Madeleine to the JonBenet Ramsey case in Colorado, about which Mills has made three previous documentaries. After the body of JonBenet, a child beauty pageant winner aged six, was found in her parents' Boulder home, they were vilified by the police and media, despite their continued insistence that they had nothing to do with her death. They claimed she had been killed by an intruder. Mills's version of the McCann Panorama featured an interview - eventually not used - with JonBenet's father, John, in which he said that the Colorado police 'did a great job of convincing the media and the world that we were guilty, but they couldn't charge us, because of course they had no case'. Years later DNA evidence proved beyond doubt that JonBenet had been killed by an intruder. John Ramsey told Panorama: 'It's a life-time damage. No question about it.'

The programme on the McCanns that was broadcast by Panorama was much less ambitious. It recited the case both for and against the McCanns, but had nothing harsh to say about either the police or the media. It did include new material, including a video diary shot of the McCanns in Portugal by their friend John Corner - footage that had been acquired by Mills and had led to his company getting the BBC commission.

It also cast doubt on some of the wilder claims published by the tabloids, and contained the first interview with Jane Tanner, one of the McCanns' companions on the holiday in Praia de Luz last May, who said that she was certain she had seen a girl who looked like Madeleine being carried in the street by a strange man around the time she is thought to have disappeared. But the programme avoided firm conclusions.

Having handed the film's editing over to a colleague, Mills emailed Smith on Monday, the day before transmission, saying he felt compelled to remove both his name and his company's from the credits. 'In part this is because its muddled structure and lack of narrative drive means it is far below the standard of any work that I or my company would wish to be associated with,' the email said. 'In part, too, my decision reflects the programme's intellectual impoverishment. The McCann case poses issues of real importance which Panorama should have examined. That it is instead running a laboured, pedestrian, extended news report is shameful.

'But the most important reason for my decision is that because the programme is insufficiently analytical it verges on the dishonest. Our lengthy investigation revealed that there is no meaningful evidence against the McCanns... The real question must be how, without any meaningful evidence, the Portuguese police and the media in Portugal and Britain have been able to convince most people that the couple were involved.'

Mills had been working closely with a CBS team, which also used the video diary footage. They, he told Smith, had concluded it was 'ludicrous' and 'crazy' to think the McCanns could have caused the death or disappearance.

Smith emailed Mills back, accusing him of wanting to broadcast 'advocate journalism', and pointing out that the broadcast version did describe some of the allegations against the McCanns as 'tenuous, to put it mildly'. Smith said that, while it was true that the programme 'changed substantively,' this was because 'it is a current affairs programme and it was overtaken by events'. He added: 'To get Jane Tanner and some of the McCann family meant that some of the other stuff moved to the edge, and the original version was just not journalistically as important.'

Mills disagrees. 'So far as I can see, investigative journalism at the BBC is over,' he said. 'The broadcast script contains nuances that suggest that the McCanns still have a case to answer. The BBC should have had the courage to state that this is simply not so.'

Clarence Mitchell, the former BBC reporter who is the McCanns' spokesman, said Kate and Gerry were 'content' with the broadcast version and accepted that events meant it had to change. He said they had spoken to Bilton and told him they considered the film to be 'fair'.

Other McCann family members were less happy. John, Gerry's brother, whose interview was broadcast, said: 'It wasn't the programme that I was told they were going to make. They've made something very different, and I am disappointed, because I'd hoped the full story was going to be told. Nevertheless I'm pleased they interviewed Jane Tanner. She said she saw Madeleine being abducted, and we want people to remember that.'

The row follows controversies over previous films this year, such as a report on Scientology by former Observer journalist John Sweeney, in which he lost his temper and turned - in his words - into an 'exploding tomato,' and a story claiming that wi-fi technology might be harmful, which was denounced by some scientists as 'irresponsible'.

As someone who once spent a year reporting for Panorama myself, I know that no BBC programme is more closely scrutinised and, sometimes, fought over. The fact remains some of its most distinguished contributors, including Tom Mangold and John Ware, have left in recent years, and that it has been repeatedly accused of punching below its weight. Mills is not a marginal figure, and the CBS film with which he was collaborating was much firmer in its conclusion that the McCanns had to be innocent.

Last night the BBC hierarchy was closing ranks to resist Mills's arguments. Outside the corporation, they may not be as easily dismissed.

'

Your programme verges on the dishonest'

From: David

Sent: 19 November, 2007 12:12

To: 'Sandy Smith'

Subject: credit

Dear Sandy,

As you know, in the end I felt I could not leave either my name or my company credit on the programme.

In part this is because its muddled structure and lack of narrative drive means it is far below the standard of any work that I or my company would wish to be associated with.

In part, too, my decision reflects the programme's intellectual impoverishment. The McCann case poses issues of real importance which Panorama should have examined. That it is instead running a laboured, pedestrian extended news report is shameful.

But the most important reason for my decision is that because the programme is insufficiently analytical; it verges on the dishonest. Our lengthy investigation revealed that there is no meaningful evidence against the McCanns. Our CBS colleagues concluded that it was 'ludicrous' and 'crazy' to think them involved and that ... 'the child was abducted'.

The real question must be how, without any meaningful evidence, the Portuguese police and the media in Portugal and Britain have been able to convince most people that the couple were involved. Yet while the programme drips innuendos against the McCanns, it does not put a single challenging question to anyone in the Portuguese police or to anyone in the media. This is truly astonishing.

David Mills

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2007/nov/25/bbc

Thursday 27 April 2017 10:29, UK

Why you can trust Sky News

Police searching for Madeleine McCann have said they are pursuing a "significant line of inquiry" as the 10th anniversary of her disappearance approaches.

Assistant Commissioner Mark Rowley told Sky News: "...Because it's worth pursuing it could provide an answer, but until we've gone through it I won't know whether we are going to get there or not.

"Ourselves and the Portuguese are doing a critical piece of work and we don't want to spoil it by putting titbits of information out publicly."

Meanwhile, the only four official suspects investigated by the Met Police over the abduction have been ruled out of the inquiry.

The suspects were believed by Scotland Yard to have taken her during a burglary gone wrong at the McCanns' rented holiday apartment in Portugal.

They were identified by their mobile phone use, their location near the apartment on the night and their backgrounds.

One is Jose Carlos da Silva, 35, a former driver at the Ocean Club complex in Praia da Luz, where Madeleine vanished on 3 May, 2007.

He and the others were questioned and investigated for six months before being told they would face no further action.

Mr Rowley said: "Somebody's doing a burglary, panicked maybe by a waking child and that's what leads to Madeleine going missing."

Asked if that was an unlikely scenario and if any surprised burglar would simply run away, Mr Rowley said: "In my experience, if you try to apply the cold, rational logic of a normal person sitting in their front room to what criminals do under pressure, you tend to make mistakes.

"It was a sensible hypothesis and it's not entirely ruled out."

Madeleine disappeared as she slept in a room with her younger twin siblings while their parents Kate and Gerry McCann, both doctors, dined with friends nearby.

Scotland Yard began investigating six years ago after the failure of the first Portuguese police investigation. The team of detectives, cut in 2015 from 29 to four, has spent more than £11m of UK Government funds.

Mr Rowley said new information was still being received daily.

The Metropolitan Police was recently given an extra £85,000 by the Home Office to keep the investigation going until September.

Portugal's deputy national director of the Policia Judiciaria, Pedro do Carmo, told Sky News that he was under no financial or political pressure to wind up his re-opened investigation.

He said: "If the Metropolitan Police decides to close its investigation that doesn't mean we are going to close ours.

"Our two investigations are not dependent on one another."

:: Watch the documentary Searching For Madeleine on Sky 1 on Tuesday, 2 May at 10pm, and on Sky News on Wednesday, 3 May at 8pm.

https://news.sky.com/story/madeleine-mccann-met-police-rules-out-its-four-official-suspects-10850920

https://jillhavern.forumotion.net/t13407p1050-video-of-the-day#443091

Aha! A tenuous link but a link nonetheless..

Rumor vs. evidence in Madeleine McCann case


Van Zandt: Is this just a botched police investigation or did the McCanns kill their daughter?Melanie Maps / AFP - Getty Images

By Clint Van Zandt - 13th September 2007

Many, like me, believe that the Portuguese Police investigation into the disappearance, what Madeleine’s parents drawing comparisons between this investigation and one conducted in the United States over a decade ago, that surrounding the death of Jon Benet Ramsey.

Dr. Kate McCann stared out of the window of the plane flying her, her husband, and two of their three children from Portugal to their home in Great Britain. According to the media, fellow passengers later that her expression indicated her sadness at having to leave Portugal without her precious daughter, Madeleine, while others cynically suggest she was happy to be escaping the pressures of being named as a police suspect in the disappearance of her daughter some four months ago.

One “investigative” tactic of the Portuguese police seems to be to leak information to the media in an attempt to put pressure on the McCanns and to suggest that the police were actually carrying out a professional investigation and not simply flailing their arms against two grieving parents, while they haven't targeted in the absence of other credible suspects. Media sources in both Portugal and Great Britain have reported that with the help and assistance of British police, something the Portuguese seemed to have resisted in the initial stage of this case, significant physical evidence has been found to link the McCanns, especially Kate, to the disappearance and believed death of Madeleine.

Their working theory
Police seem to have adopted a working theory that the McCanns, wanting to have a night out without being concerned with constantly caring for and checking on then 3-year-old Madeleine and her two-year-old twin brother and sister, intentionally sedated Madeleine with her subsequently expiring due to an overdose of sedative. Everything after her death, the police seem to suggest through tabloid leaks, was a massive cover-up on the level of the JFK murder or the downing of TWA 800, or so many other conspiracy theories.

This working theory suggests that the McCanns, both medical doctors, found Madeleine dead, hid her body for almost a month, and them moved her body to some unknown disposal site. This theory (according to the media from alleged police leaks), is supported by the finding of blood spatter in the resort apartment rented by the McCann family, the reactions of a British sniffer dog to the presence of blood the dog identified as Madeleine’s, and DNA examination of forensic evidence found in the trunk of an automobile the McCann’s rented some 25 days after Madeleine’s disappearance. The theory goes on to suggest that Madeleine’s blood was found in the trunk, thereby indicating that sometime after renting the car the McCann’s used it to transport Madeleine’s long since dead body. Another sniffer dog allegedly reacted to “the presence of death” in the apartment used by the McCanns and had a similar reaction to clothing worn by Kate McCann and to a doll used by Madeleine.

Missing in this theory, of course, is some spokesperson from the DNA lab or British police confirming these reports and suggesting their belief of what such “evidence” may mean to this case. Also missing is any suggestion as to why, if having died of an overdose of some type of sedative, that Madeleine’s blood would have been found in the apartment or the car, or of where the McCann’s could have concealed their daughter’s body for 25 plus days. Or any guess as to how they could have secretly retrieved Madeleine’s body, placed it in the trunk of the rented car, and drove unobserved to some secret, probably predetermined body disposal site where they may have unceremoniously dumped their oldest child’s body and just as stealthfully returned to their rented apartment, totally undetected by law enforcement, the media, the public or the ever watchful paparazzi.

Many, like me, see the similiarities drawn by Madeleine’s parents to the investigation conducted in the United States over a decade ago— the one surrounding the death of Jon Benet Ramsey.

In both cases there is more than enough information to suggest that the investigators were either slow to respond, careless, or even inept in the way they investigated the reported the disappearance of both young girls. We know, of course, Jon Benet’s disappearance quickly became an unsolved murder investigation, while Madeleine’s disappearance is still a life or death mystery.

Motive, of course, is always important in such cases. In the case of Jon Benet Ramsey, some believe her death was accidental, something done in anger, frustration, or rage that was the result of her contact with a member of her immediate family. In such a theory the Ramseys, and likewise the McCanns, would have had to have thought, “We’ve lost one child; we’re not going to lose another or even lose our entire family through this terrible accidental death.” But why, in the case of Madeleine McCann, would two medical doctors concoct such a story, perpetuate such a lie, and go on to deceive millions of people in a faked quest to find their allegedly kidnapped child? Again, if the ongoing tabloid theory— one apparently planted by the Portuguese police— was true, then the McCanns shared in the responsibility of sedating their daughter and believed they would have had their remaining two children taken away from them while they both went to prison for manslaughter. "That's motive enough," some would say.

But if this theory is wrong; if the McCanns had nothing to do with Madeleine’s disappearance, nothing other than an unhealthy dose of parental neglect for leaving their three children unattended while they dined and drink with friends the night Madeleine disappeared, then Gerry McCann and Kate, like John and Patsy before them, may have suffered a double loss: that of losing a child and being accused of the loss of that child. In the case of Jon Benet, forensic evidence linking any offender to her death was either never found, or was lost, or was subsequently proven to be of no consequence in linking the person or persons responsible with the death of young Jon Benet.

Physical evidence, if any, that links anyone with the disappearance and possible death of Madeleine has yet to be officially disclosed. We know that some such evidence was allegedly found weeks or months later; this in the apartment that was originally rented by the McCanns and one that Madeleine may have died in (the suggested police theory). Dozens, perhaps hundreds of people had been in and out this apartment since it was vacated by the McCanns and prior to the finding of the suggested evidence, therefore this “evidence” may be questionable at best. Kate McCann has indicated that as a medical doctor, she has had contact with a number of deceased individuals, perhaps accounting for the “smell of death” on her clothing. The blood evidence in the trunk of their rented car? Some believe that it could have been planted by the Portuguese police, noting that agency is under investigation for allegedly beating a confession out of a mother who was a suspect in her daughter’s disappearance, a woman later imprisoned although her daughter was never found. Others believe it could be evidence of Madeleine’s presence, thereby suggesting her parents ability to hide, retrieve, move and dispose of her body almost a month into this investigation, something that would challenge the skills of fellow Brit James Bond.

Other evidence, however, is also believed to exist. Again the tabloids report that police have had the McCanns under 24/7 surveillance for over a month, and that these same police have secretly recorded intimate conservations between the McCanns, suggesting, perhaps the presence of recording devices in their apartment, their bedroom, and possibly in their vehicle. No transcripts have yet been released, so again we know of only rumor and conjecture, and nothing concrete that says that during pillow talk, the McCanns discussed their suggested role in the disappearance and death of their daughter.

I don’t see a sniffer dog raising its right paw to testify in any type of legal proceeding against the McCanns (although the dog handler could interpret the dog’s reaction to various stimulants).

As they have now been officially named as the only two current suspects in this case, certain legal rights, including the right to review the evidence against them, should be afforded the McCanns. Gerry, Kate and their two children are now back in the U.K. and away from the questions of Portuguese police and the ever present media and the mocking local public. We know that Portuguese tourism and the credibility of both the Portuguese police and of the country itself were under daily scrutiny. Most locals want this case and the parents of the missing child, like in the case of missing Natalee Holloway from Aruba some two years ago, to just go away. Could the Portuguese, in their frustration to solve this case and their desire to otherwise make it “go away” have zeroed in on Madeleine’s parents as a means of forcing them to leave Portugal and take the embarrassment of this unsolved, and perhaps botched investigation home with them so life could go on in Portugal? If so, it appears that the Portuguese have at least succeeded in this phase of their investigation.

But what if Gerry and Kate actually had something to do with the disappearance and the suspected death of their daughter? Can the rumors about physical evidence really prove beyond a “CSI” style doubt that they, to the exclusion of some international child theft ring, or some local pedophile, were ultimately responsible for the loss of their pretty-eyed, now 4-year-old daughter? Time will tell. Eventually, fact and reality will replace the rumors, speculation and lies that abound in this tragic case.

If the McCanns had anything to do with Madeleine’s disappearance and ultimate demise, they will have dampened the human spirit and compassion of millions around the world in their attempt to spare themselves from responsibility. This is a story that may not have any kind of happy ending, short of the miraculous return of Madeleine like in the recovery of kidnapped Utah teenager Elizabeth Smart. We hope for just such a miracle.

Clint Van Zandt is a former FBI Agent, behavioral profiler and hostage negotiator as well as an MSNBC Analyst. His web site www.LiveSecure.org provides readers with security related information.

https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna20726999