Authors of ''Looking for Madeleine '' talk to Pat Kenny

The Pat Kenny Show
Listen Back: 17 September 2014
Authors of 'Looking for Madeleine' Summers and Swan talk to Pat Kenny about the book.
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http://www.newstalk.ie/player/listen_back/13240/12861/17th_September_2014_-_The_Pat_Kenny_Show_Part_3

Background:
The presenter is Pat Kenny a very experienced and respected current affairs presenter. He worked for many years with the national broadcaster RTE on radio and TV. He has recently moved to the commercial radio station Newstalk.


It opens with a clip with Kate and Gerry talking about their agony.


Then Presenter’s introduction:


Surely the most reported missing child case in history. On May 3 2007 three year old Madeleine vanished from the holiday apartment while her parents were dining 60 paces away.  Initially the parents were suspects but they were cleared by the Portuguese Attorney General when he closed the case in 2008. Scotland Yard began a review of the case in 2011 which is still ongoing. The Portuguese reopened the case in 2013.  Seven year on we still don’t know what happened.
Now award winning authors Anthony Summers and Robbyn Swan have just published what they claim is the first independent and objective account in a new book Looking for Madeleine in an attempt to answer the unanswered questions about the case.. They have examined the Portuguese police files and conducted several interviews.


Interview starts.


PK:  Tell us what happened.


RS: The parents left at 8.30 pm and as you said were 60 yards away across the pool. The children were asleep and left alone with the patio door closed but unlocked for ease of access. They and their friends were conducting what you might call an adhoc baby listening service checking on their own children. In other resorts this service is provided.


AS:  It appears that Kate and Gerry were thought of as the most systematic, checking every 25/30 minutes, and on occasion one of their friends checked for them.  At 10 pm she was gone


RS: She was last seen by her father at 9.05/9.10. Kate’s check was due at 9.30 but as one of their friends was getting up anyway he checked. He did not see Madeleine but could see the twins. All was quiet; he didn’t go into the room. That widens the window of opportunity.


PK: That’s understandable.  It’s what you might do in your own home. You don’t risk waking the children up.


PK: The reaction of Kate makes it extraordinary that the police suspected her. She was a woman possessed by grief.


AS: Yes, the waiter who was 60 yards away says he’d never heard such a scream before. They had waited so long for this child who only arrived after IVF treatment.


PK: she spent the night screaming and crying hysterically?
 
RS:  She was a woman demented. She’s very religious. She wanted a priest. She wanted to pray. Gerry was also demented; he was falling on the floor.


AS:  Some people have suggested that their behaviour was in some way over the top or forced but experts in grief say you can’t predict how people may react to terrible situations.


PK: The first bobbies to arrive were not up to the job? And the crime scene was contaminated by people trying to help?


AS: Some of the contamination was dog hairs from the dogs the Portuguese police brought in.


PK: Most missing children are found. We’ve had cases here (in Ireland) of children missing from crèches.


RS: We tried to be fair to the police. The first ones were like the local village cops. They thought they were looking for a lost child. They did not isolate the scene. People did trample through the apartment. Then the official police came. Some prints found belonged to the investigators. The police finger print man was not wearing gloves


AS: Did she wander? There were nearby roads opened up for drainage and one in particular not well protected. The foreman on this job said later he had checked the drain and nothing was there. To have wandered she would have gone through the patio door and 2 sets of gates and closed them all which is not likely.


PK: why were the parents suspects?  Was it because it is  police procedure is to look at the family first?


RS: We talked for the first time to the British policeman who is reviewing the practice in the case and he said you eliminate the parents first. The Portuguese police had an initial suspect but when he was ruled out and all leads led to dead ends the police became desperate and brought in British dogs which were rather oversold to them. The dogs alerted in the apartment and in a rental car that had not been rented until weeks after Madeleine vanished.  This was the turning point in the investigation according to the lead investigator.


PK: weren’t there stories of gypsies being involved?  Remember the case of the missing boy in Greece?


AS: The best expert on this says there’s no recorded case of gypsies taking children of other races. Darker suspicions have been raised. Pedophilia.


PK:  Would a crowded holiday resort be a likely place of danger?


RS: People who study this say the warm climates attract pedophiles. They can see scantily dressed children. Pedophilia is rife in society. We hear about it every day.


PK: About the McCann’s own efforts. How well served were they by their own detectives?


RS: We talked for the first time to Brian Kennedy, a wealthy man who helped them organize detectives. He admits that some of the best efforts (of the detectives) went astray. When he met with the McCanns early in 2007 they were desperate. No-one was looking for their child. No-one was helping them  
(Its not clear from the tape but it’s possible Mr Summers is trying to interject here. According to Kate’s book she did not meet Mr Kennedy until Sept 2007 which is not ‘early 2007’.)


RS: How far would you go to look for your own child?


AS:  we considered ‘how far would you go…’   as a possible title. This happened in the age of the internet. Anything is possible. Once Gerry calmed down he got onto his sister. The news got out there and is still out there today thanks to the internet.


PK: what is your own belief? Do you think she could still be alive?



RS: It’s possible. Statistics show that 56% of children abducted by strangers are found alive. There’s no evidence from the forensics in the flat that that she was harmed and no body has been found.


Ends


I am not very impressed with the researcher who would have prepared a brief for the presenter!

After the interview which came near the end of the show two comments were read out. The issues raised were that 'we don't all leave our kids' and that the lack of prosecution was probably due to social class.  I suspect there would have been more comments if the interview had been earlier in the programme.

I would have thought that the researcher would have looked at the amazon reviews showing basically either 1 star or 5 stars. This would have made for a great introduction asking the authors to comment on the unusual range of opinion and the specific issues raised by the reviewers.

Thanks for that Enid - even though it makes me want to

They`ve obviously joined the campaign to slag off the poor Portuguese.  It`s enough to turn one into a `hater`!

And the Portuguese are oft cited as our oldest allies. Not for much longer, maybe.

On the other hand, maybe that's the problem. Would the French have been so quick to play a part in all this nonsense, I wonder...

In my opinion.

Woofer wrote:Thanks for that Enid - even though it makes me want to

They`ve obviously joined the campaign to slag off the poor Portuguese.  It`s enough to turn one into a `hater`!

It's very laughable though the way people try to slag them off without having good reason, silly!


Crying hysterically all night ? Where did that come from.
Well maybe it's because as she didn't go out at night to search for her, she must have been crying all night?

Well you could pull apart every statement in that interview, but let's take this one:

"Gerry was also demented"

Really? Wasn't this the guy who said calmly to the woman upstairs "A little girl's been taken." (not exact quote, someone else may help on that - but words to that effect). Not even "My little girl's been taken." Strangely though he didn't ask her if she'd seen the child despite her living upstairs.

"Demented" Gerry was also able to take the decision that same night (apparently, according to the Tapas 9) not to pass on to his wife the information that their close friend Jane Tanner had witnessed the abduction.

This "demented" Gerry was also able to go walkabout on an aimless "search" of the resort despite having been told by Jane Tanner in which direction the alleged abductor had been walking.

"Demented" Gerry also seemed able to engage in a number of crucial calls to friends and relatives about "jemmied shutters" and the like.

Okeydokey wrote:Well you could pull apart every statement in that interview, but let's take this one:

"Gerry was also demented"

Really? Wasn't this the guy who said calmly to the woman upstairs "A little girl's been taken." (not exact quote, someone else may help on that - but words to that effect).   Not even "My little girl's been taken."  Strangely though he didn't ask her if she'd seen the child despite her living upstairs.

"Demented" Gerry was also able to take the decision that same night (apparently, according to the Tapas 9) not to pass on to his wife the information that their close friend Jane Tanner had witnessed the abduction.

This "demented" Gerry was also able to go walkabout on an aimless "search" of the resort despite having been told by Jane Tanner in which direction the alleged abductor had been walking.

"Demented" Gerry also seemed able to engage in a number of crucial calls to friends and relatives about "jemmied shutters" and the like.

Good point.

And also weren't they busy on their mobiles deleting stuff?

A women in grief hey, but the police still made her suspect? just need to search the Internet, and look for pictures of Kate out there in Portugal.
Extraordinary what you might find hey!

Tell you what, strike all the other evidence and for me the attitude and behaviour of the parents is enough to tell me something isn't right. No-one would behave like this if their child had gone missing. I should qualify that and say no-one 'normal' would.

In my opinion.

"Demented Gerry"  calmly wrote down a time line of the evenings events.... as if such a matter was crucial to finding his daughter who was only 'missing' a short while at that stage.... and tearing up her colouring book to find some spare paper to use..... her last art work.