Draft Letter to Prime Minister re Operation Grange - Comments Please

by **Jill Havern** 23.09.16 14:23

Draft Letter to Prime Minister re Operation Grange - Comments Please

I propose in a few days to send this letter to the Prime Minister and to the Metropolitan Police Commissioner.

I would welcome any suggestions from members as to any changes that might be made to it before I send it.

From: Ms Jill Havern and members of ‘The Complete Mystery of Madeleine McCann’ forum

Mrs Theresa May
Prime Minister
10 Downing Street
LONDON
W1A 1AA

Commissioner Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe
Metropolitan Police
New Scotland Yard,
8-10 Broadway,
LONDON
SW1H 0BG

Monday, 26 September 2016

Dear Prime Minister and Commissioner Bernard Hogan-Howe

The conduct of the Operation Grange investigation into the reported disappearance of Madeleine McCann

First of all, Prime Minister, we congratulate you on your appointment as Prime Minister and wish you every success in your new position. The serious matters raised in this letter will of course be very familiar to you, as you had meetings with the McCanns and their advisers when you were Home Secretary, and asked Sir Paul Stephenson to set up Operation Grange. You may also be aware of three petitions that were placed on the Prime Minister’s website by members of my forum, in 2010, 2014 and one in 2015, which addressed issues about the investigations into Madeleine McCann’s reported disappearance. The first two called for a public enquiry into the investigations. The most recent called on the Home Office to publish a full report on the work of Operation Grange.

According to statements made in the press on 3 April this year, you – as the then Home Secretary – sanctioned further expenditure on Operation Grange of £95,000, which was said to be for a further six months to ‘conclude’ this review and investigation. That meant that Operation Grange was scheduled to be completed on 3 October, in a week’s time. Since then we have learnt that the funding is to be extended by a further six months, with the team being granted a further £100,000.

The forum: ‘Complete Mystery of Madeleine McCann

I write in my capacity as the owner of the internet forum, ‘The Complete Mystery of Madeleine McCann’, set up in November 2009. The letter is sent on behalf of my admin team, our members and our regular guests and visitors, who number tens of thousands every day. We currently have over 6,350 members, many of whom read us every day for updates, and hundreds of whom contribute by way of research, comment, and analysis every month.

Long-term forum members include many with professional backgrounds, including the police, the law and the medical professions, and others with technical skills in such fields as forensics, photography and statement analysis.

The forum is far and away the best-read Madeleine McCann discussion forum on the internet, and has been referred to regularly in the press and in books such as ‘Looking for Madeleine’, by Anthony Summers and Robbyn Swan.

It is with this background that we urge you to consider most carefully the following issues relating to Operation Grange.

The remit of Operation Grange

The very first consideration must be the remit allocated to Operation Grange from the outset. The relevant parts of it read as follows:

“The activity, in the first instance, will be that of an ‘investigative review’. This will entail a review of the whole of the investigation(s) which have been conducted in to the circumstances of Madeleine McCann’s disappearance. The focus of the review will be of the material held by three main stakeholders (and in the following order of primacy);

The Portuguese Law Enforcement agencies,
UK Law Enforcement agencies,
Other private investigative agencies/staff and organisations.

“The investigative review is intended to collate, record and analyse what has gone before. It is to examine the case and seek to determine, (as if the abduction occurred in the UK) what additional, new investigative approaches we would take and which can assist the Portuguese authorities in progressing the matter…

“The ‘investigative review’ will be conducted with transparency, openness and thoroughness…”.

It was clear from the outset that the initial investigative review had a strictly limited remit. That is highly unusual for any review which purports to be a genuine, comprehensive review. Most ‘cold case’ reviews start with a ‘clean sheet’, so to speak.

Crucially, however, the review insisted that it would only investigate ‘the abduction’. That meant that, from the very first, Operation Grange had ruled out any consideration of whether or not the McCanns could have been directly involved in the disappearance of Madeleine.

The purpose of this letter is not to make any accusation against the McCanns. It is simply to point out that, despite a number of indications that they may have been involved, the Operation Grange team were told from the start not to investigate them.

During his investigative review, the Investigating Officer, Detective Chief Inspector Andy Redwood stated that “Primarily, what we sought to do from the beginning, is trying to draw everything back to, to zero, if you like ..”. Plainly this was not the case, as any potential involvement of the McCanns was ruled out from the beginning.

In addition, on the day that your predecessor David Cameron signalled that he had ordered the Home Office to set up a review, his spokesman declared that the purpose of the review was to ‘help the family’. It was plain, then, that the officers leading the Operation Grange team were simply not allowed to consider any involvement of the McCanns in Madeleine’s disappearance.

The interim report of the Portuguese Police, 10 Septenber 2007

I will not in this letter set out the many indications that the McCanns may have been directly involved in the disappearance of their daughter. That is something that any genuine re-investigation, with a remit not limited to declaring in advance that Madeleine had been abducted, should examine. I will however refer to the interim report of the Portuguese Police, dated 10 September 2007, a document made public in July 2008. It was compiled by Chief Inspector Tavares de Almeida. In a lengthy document, the contents of which have never been convincingly refuted, he set out the following indications that the McCanns may have been involved. These are all direct quotations from a translation of his report:

1 No abduction “As time went by, the abduction scenario was not confirmed. The abduction hypothesis did not stand up”.
2 The McCanns worked on their version of events “The information that was initially collected from family and friends was uncertain. In addition, the McCanns and their friends worked on their account of events in order to strengthen and defend their version of what had happened Madeleine”
3 ‘Distorted’ information “The information from the immediate family and their group of friends which is fundamental in investigating this type of crime was always distorted…The group’s initial informal statements given during the initial stages of the investigation immediately introduced the abduction hypothesis. But even simple things were the subject of misinformation:
was the window open or closed?
was the shutter up or down?
was the balcony door open or closed?
was the front door merely shut or locked with a key?
4 Changes of story “The media attention that has been given to the case and the search for information by the said media has led to an evolution in Madeleine’s parents’ statements. All the information that has been made public has contributed to the McCanns rebuilding and adapting their story to fit the eventual police questions”.
5 Excuses for corpse scent and blood “When the media first informed the public that blood had been detected ‘in the car and in the apartment’, Dr Kate McCann and members of her family made statements to the public with the simple excuse that it had been someone who had access to the apartment that had deliberately placed this evidence there. Now they even say that it was the criminal investigation team that placed this ‘false’ evidence (i.e. blood and cadaver odour in the apartment and in the car). In an attempt to justify the finding of [Madeleine’s] blood in the apartment, Dr Kate McCann went even further, stating on that occasion that Madeleine sometimes suffered nosebleeds”.
6 Altering the crime scene “There is strong evidence that the crime scene was altered, and some furniture was moved around: an intentional alteration of things in that apartment took place, in order to create a false scenario that doesn’t match reality, in an attempt to develop opportunities to create a bogus abduction scenario. Those changes are indications that the abduction was a stage-managed simulation.
7 Findings of a top sniffer dog handler   In addition, Tavares de Almeide listed the findings of top British dog handler, Martin Grime, who now works for the F.B.I. in the U.S. In early August 2007, he took with him to Portugal two springer spaniels, Eddie, a ‘cadaver dog’ who was trained to alert to the past presence of a corpse, and Keela, a ‘blood dog’ trained to detect blood. According to Mr Grime, the two dogs between them alerted on 17 occasions either to the scent of the past presence of a corpse or to blood in locations connected to the McCanns: their apartment, their clothes and in their hired car. They alerted to no other items or locations in Praia da Luz.
8 The unreliable evidence of Jane Tanner   “Continuing with our analysis of information offered to us, one of the group’s members, Jane Tanner…became an important witness…She said she saw someone crossing the street at dinner time from the location of the McCanns’ apartment towards Robert Murat’s house…This information directed and occupied our work for a long time. This may be an example of how information that is not correct may not only delay the investigation but could even have led to losing the little girl. Jane Tanner insisted on the truthfulness of her account. This led to certain scenarios being developed. But these scenarios were not sustained in reality...”
9 “The precise moment when Jane Tanner chose to make her statement about what she had ‘seen’ and the explanation for choosing that moment, is unreal. That is to say: it is not easy to accept that any witness (from the group), on seeing someone with a child in their arms walking away from the McCanns’ apartment, didn’t act and speak immediately. Then there is her description of the abductor being altered, or ‘perfected’. These reasons mean there is little credibility in what she says”
10 “There was a discrepancy [about the moment Jane Tanner allegedly saw an abductor] between the statements of Dr Gerald McCann and Jane Tanner. They claimed to have passed each other at only two or three metres’ distance [7 to 10 feet], yet failed to see each other. How could they position themselves as both being together in quite a confined space, yet both fail to see each other walking by; or, more correctly, one sees the other but the other doesn’t see her? Even the exact location where they supposedly crossed each other’s paths is not very well defined by both”.

The following are direct quotations from Tavares de Almeida’s report, on the subject of the alerts by Martin Grime’s cadaver dogs:

“Apartment 5A, Ocean Club resort, the McCanns’ apartment from where the child disappeared: The cadaver dog alerted to the scent of a corpse in the master bedroom, in a corner, by the wardrobe; in living room, behind the sofa, and by the side window, while the bloodhound alerted to blood in the living room behind the sofa, and by the side window (in exactly the same spot that had been signalled by the cadaver dog)”.
“Front garden of Apartment 5A: The cadaver dog alerted to the scent of a corpse on one of the flower beds (the dog handler however commented on the ‘lightness’ of the odour in this location)”.
“The McCann family’s clothes and belongings: The cadaver dog alerted to the scent of a corpse on two pieces of clothing belonging to Dr Kate McCann, one piece of clothing belonging to Madeleine (a red T-shirt) and on Madeleine’s soft toy [Cuddle Cat]. The cadaver odour was detected when the toy was still inside the McCanns’ residence in July 2007; the scent was later confirmed outside the house as well”.
“The vehicle that was used by the McCann family: The cadaver dog alerted to the scent of a corpse on the car key and on the inside of the car boot, while the bloodhound also marked the car key and the inside of the car boot”.
“In a total of 10 cars examined [in an underground car park) the cadaver dog and the blood dog marked only the car of the McCann family, first rented on 27 May”.

Tavares de Almeida concluded his report as follows:

“From everything that was established, the facts point in the direction of the death of Madeleine McCann occurring on the night of 3 May 2007, inside apartment 5A, at the Ocean Club resort in Praia da Luz, which was occupied by the McCann couple and by their three children. There is a coincidence between the markings of cadaver odour and blood [by the two dogs], according to the (partial) Laboratory Report that has been annexed to the files.

“The said marking occurred behind the living room sofa (cadaver odour/blood/DNA), which unarguably proves that said piece of furniture was pushed back by someone, after the death of Madeleine McCann was confirmed. Because of the few traces that were recovered on location and subject to examination, it has to be admitted as a strong hypothesis that it [the room] was subject to a clean-up operation at some time following the occurrence of death”.

“From everything that we have discovered, our files result in the following conclusions:

A the minor Madeleine McCann died in Apartment 5A at the Ocean Club resort in Praia da Luz, on the night of 3 May 2007
B a simulation - a staged hoax - of an abduction took place
C in order to render the child’s death impossible before 10.00pm, a situation of checking of the McCann couple’s children while they slept was concocted
D Dr Gerald McCann and Dr Kate McCann are involved in the concealment of the corpse of their daughter, Madeleine McCann
E at this moment, there seems to be no strong indications that the child’s death was other than the result of a tragic accident…
F from what has been established up to now, everything indicates that the McCann couple, in self-defence, did not want to deliver up Madeleine’s corpse immediately and voluntarily, and there is a strong possibility therefore that it was moved from the initial place where she died. This situation may raise questions concerning the circumstances in which the death of the child took place.
I should at this point add the explanations that the McCanns have given for the alerts of the two dogs.

Dr Gerry McCann is on record as stating, to as Portuguese interviewer: “I can tell you that we have also looked at evidence about cadaver dogs and they are incredibly unreliable”. This statement contradicts the evidence from many disciplines, not only searching for corpse scent and blood, but also explosives, drugs (even being able to distinguish between different types of explosive material and different drugs) and even medical conditions. Sniffer dogs are used increasingly and to strikingly good effect in many fields in countries all over the world.

By contrast, the settled view of Dr Kate McCann, as set out on page of her book ‘madeleine’, is that the dogs made ‘false’ alerts because of ‘the conscious or unconscious signals of the handler”. This amounts to an attack on the professional integrity and judgment of Mr Grime and implies that the dogs were ‘mistaken’ in all of their 17 alerts to corpse scent and blood.

In addition, In the days immediately following leaks about the dogs’ findings, the McCanns and members of their family came up with a series of bizarre and increasingly desperate explanations for them. These included that any blood was from Madeleine having nosebleeds, or having scratched herself when climbing the steps to the aircraft, or from mosquitoes flying into the walls, or that any cadaver odour was due to carrying dirty nappies or rotting meat in their hired car, or to Kate McCann’s clothes and the soft toy, Cuddle cat, having been contaminated by her having visited six people who had died in the fortnight before they left for their holiday.

There is no evidence that Operation Grange has addressed these issues, though it has been supplied to them with full references.

New research: A photograph, evidence of collusion, and other matters

During the nine years since Madeleine was reported missing, members of my forum, and many others elsewhere, have added to the concerns about the possible involvement of the McCanns in Madeleine’s disappearance. It would be impossible in a short letter to even list all these concerns. They are all available for the police to see on my forum and on many other places on the internet.

I will however mention just two significant matters.

The photographic evidence of Madeleine’s presence in Praia da Luz on the McCanns’ holiday is confined to just five photographs. Three of those five are genuine photographs taken on the first day of their holiday, Saturday 28 April. A fourth, allegedly showing Madeleine holding tennis balls on a tennis court in Praia da Luz, has been claimed to have been taken by two different people and on two different days. There are other aspects of that photograph that also cast doubt as to its true provenance. A fifth photograph, of Gerry McCann sitting by a pool with his daughters Madeleine and Amelia, is claimed by the McCanns to have been taken at 2.29pm on the day Madeleine was reported missing. They have called it ‘The Last Photo’.

However, evidence discussed on my forum suggests that this key photograph may have been taken earlier in the week, probably on the Sunday. There is no indication that Operation Grange has addressed this evidence.

Second, there is the strange and striking correlation of two reports, made respectively by Jane Tanner and Martin Smith, alleging they had seen a man carrying a young child on the night of 3 May 2007, with a third report by a Spanish ex-pat living in Germany Nuno Lourenco, in which he alleged that a Portuguese holidaymaker, Wojchiech Krokowski, had tried to kidnap his own daughter on Sunday 29 April. Nuno Lourenco’s statement can be shown to be demonstrably false, yet his description of Krokowski is matched in almost every detail by the descriptions of Jane Tanner and Martin Smith. In particular, each of the three uses this meaningless phrase to describe the man: “He didn’t look like a tourist”. These facts, prima facie, suggest collusion to promote Krokowski as the likely abductor. This alleged collusion is clearly a matter which should have been addressed by Operation Grange, but there is no evidence that it has been.

These issues have been further complicated by the former Investigation Officer of Operation Grange, Detective Chief Inspector Andy Redwood, having claimed to a 7 million audience on BBC Crimewatch on 14 October 2103 that the person seen by Jane Tanner had ‘come forward’, six years later. We were told that he had been carrying his young child home from the night creche, with no mention made of where the child’s mother was. He was said to have been carrying his child in exactly the same way as described by Jane Tanner, with no buggy, no blanket and only dressed in pyjamas. It was dark and cold (13 deg C) at the time. The identity of this person who had suddenly emerged after six years was not disclosed. In addition, if he had been taking the route from the creche described by DCI Redwood, he could not have been taking the shortest route to his apartment. For these reasons and others, many people have real cause to doubt whether DCI Redwood was being truthful.

Members of my forum and others have on many occasions submitted detailed evidence to Operation Grange on these and other issues, but there is no evidence that these lines of enquiry have been followed up.

The appointment of Detective Chief Superintendent Hamish Campbell as the Senior Investigating Officer for Operation Grange

There is one other issue about the remit that has caused widespread concern, and that is why former Detective Chief Superintendent Hamish Campbell was chosen to head Operation Grange and allowed to set the remit. The action for which Hamish Campbell is best known is having been the Investigating Officer into the as-yet-unsolved murder of Jill Dando. His work on the case resulted in an innocent man, Barry George/Bulsara, being wrongly jailed for eight years. There were credible suggestions, though never proved, that the conviction of Barry George was secured by a member of the Metropolitan Police placing an amount of firearms residue, matching the known weapon used to kill Jill Dando, in his coat pocket. Hamish Campbell’s role in that utterly botched police investigation surely made him an unsuitable choice to head up one of the most controversial and expensive reviews and investigations undertaken by the Metropolitan Police.

The employment by the McCanns of wholly inappropriate private detection agencies and individuals

I turn now to this aspect of Operation Grange’s remit:

“The focus of the review will be of the material held by three main stakeholders (and in the following order of primacy);
The Portuguese Law Enforcement agencies,
UK Law Enforcement agencies,
Other private investigative agencies/staff and organisations”.

I and my fellow members seriously question the designation of ‘other private investigation agencies/staff’ as ‘stakeholders’. Clearly, what is mainly being referred to here is the McCanns’ own private investigations. DCI Redwood made it clear on a number of occasions that he regarded the McCanns’ own investigations as being of real merit and interest. Pictures were seen in the British press of his men collecting boxes of documentary material from the offices, in Barcelona, of Metodo 3, one of the detective agencies used by the McCanns. Two e-fits of a man carrying a child said to have been seen by Mr Martin Smith and his family were drawn up by Henri Exton, one of the investigators employed by the McCanns, in the spring of 2008. These e-fits lay gathering dust until suddenly, on 14 October 2013, DCI Redwood produced them, saying that they were now “the centre of Operation Grange’s focus”. These two examples demonstrate without question that Operation Grange have relied to a considerable extent on the material supplied by the various ‘other private investigation agencies/staff’.

However, we would seriously question whether they were right to do so, based on all that is now known about the agencies and people involved in the McCanns’ private investigations, for which, as we know, they received very generous donations, amounting to millions of pounds, from a generous British public.

In an Appendix, I have provided a list of the main agencies and individuals that the McCanns have employed as part of their private investigations, and what is known about each. In summary, the two main private investigation agencies employed by the McCanns, namely Metodo 3 and Oakley International, were run by crooks. None of the individuals or agencies used seem to have had any experience whatsoever of finding missing children or adults. All have very dubious backgrounds and histories. I suggest that the Metropolitan Police must have known this from the beginning, since at least some of the facts I set out in the Appendix have been published in Britain’s mainstream media, and in places on the internet (including my own). How, therefore, in the light of the extraordinary conduct of these agencies and individuals, could the Metropolitan Police possibly claim that such material could assist in their investigations?

Given the appalling track record of these agencies and individuals, may I respectfully suggest that much more light will be shed on what really happened to Madeleine McCann if you begin with a fresh police force and a fresh remit. Any new police force should then interview under caution any U.K. individuals who have worked for the McCanns (see the Appendix for a list of names). It would also be useful for any new police force to interview former Metodo 3 employee, Julian Peribanez, who worked on the Madeleine McCann case. Two years ago, he published a book which contained a damning indictment of the corruption and criminality within Metodo 3. His claims amount to an accusation that Metodo 3 was, in effect, never employed to search for Madeleine at all. This matches an account written by Christie Twomey for The Times in early 2008, in which she also made strong criticisms of Metodo 3 and two if its staff.

The major involvement of the government and the security services in supporting the McCanns

As Prime Minister and the nation’s Home Secretary from May 2010 to July 2016, you will know better than almost anyone else about the extensive involvement of the government and the security services ever since Madeleine McCann was reported missing. This has seemed to a great many people to have been wholly disproportionate. Moreover, it has not led to Madeleine being found nor to the arrest of anyone responsible for her disappearance. I can only summarise here some of this high-level government support:

1 Appointing, within days of Madeleine’s reported disappearance, the Head of the government’s Media Monitoring Unit, Clarence Mitchell, to be the McCanns’ public relations spokesman, a post he held for nine years

2 The reported, successful efforts of former Prime Minister, Gordon Brown to persuade the Portuguese police to release the description of a possible abductor, based on the claims of the McCanns’ friend Jane Tanner

3 The direct involvement of MI5, as disclosed by Portuguese investigation co-ordinator Goncalo Amaral, in his book ‘The Truth of the Lie’

4 The role of the British Ambassador in Portugal, interfering with the Portuguese police who were trying to seize items for forensic testing from the McCanns in the early days

5 Delays by the then Home Secretary in 2007 and 2008 in processing requests by the Portuguese authorities for rogatory interviews

6 The reported involvement of Special Branch officers, who met with the McCanns at East Midlands Airport and drove them to their home the day they returned from Portugal

7 Setting up a top secret national co-ordinating committee on the Madeleine McCann case on 8 May 2007, under the chairmanship of the Head of Leicestershire Constabulary, Matt Baggott

8 Leicestershire Police officers deliberately delaying sending relevant evidence to the Portuguese Police, advising Jane Tanner ahead of an identity parade in which she purported to identify Robert Murat as the person she had seen carrying a child the night Madeleine was reported missing (leading to his arrest)

9 British criminal profilers identifying Robert Murat as fitting the likely profile of the abductor to the extent of 90% of likely characteristics

10 The former Prime Minister acceding to a request made by his friend Rebekah Brooks, CEO of Rupert Murdoch’s News International empire, to set up Operation Grange, reportedly after threatening him with ‘a week of bad headlines about Theresa May.

These are only examples of the government’s heavy involvement in this case.

The McCanns’ public appeal for funds

There are several issues regarding the McCanns’ fund-raising efforts which do not appear to have been addressed by Operation Grange at all. Some of these are set out in lengthy papers written by qualified accountant, Enid O’Dowd, and can be read on the internet.

One issue is that the McCanns’ ‘Find Madeleine Fund’ is a private trust and company and not a charity. Moreover, it is quite clearly controlled by the McCanns and close members of their family and friends, although to the public it appears to be a charity.

Several contradictory statements have been made by the McCanns and those backing them about the use to which the funds have been put. Statements were made that funds would ‘only be used for the search’. However, contrary statements have been made suggesting that significant monies from the fund have been used to pay the McCanns’ legal fees and costs.

Apart from that, why has the public’s money apparently been squandered on the ill-chosen agencies and individuals employed by the McCanns, a responsibility also shared of course with each one of the Directors of the Fund? How could it be, for example, that the McCanns paid Kevin Halligen, said in newspaper articles to be a serial fraudster, £500,000 plus expenses for four months’ work, during which he was for most of the time living a 5-star life of luxury in hotels in Britain and the U.S, with his girlfriend, Shirin Trachiotis? Does the public not need Operation Grange, or others, to provide answers to these questions?

More recently, on 2 September 2015, the McCanns’ spokesman, Clarence Mitchell, said:: “They [the McCanns] realise that [Operation Grange] cannot go on forever. A newspaper report informed the public that Mitchell had explained “how former GP Kate and heart doctor Gerry, both 37, of Rothley, Leics., had moved money from the publicly-backed Find-Madeleine-Fund into a special account in anticipation of having to finance the hunt for their daughter themselves". The public, when they gave money to the Find Madeleine Fund, would not expect the Directors to then create a separate fund, which was reported as being controlled just by the McCanns.

What should happen now

I have set out the case that Operation Grange has not succeeded in its search for the truth because of its inappropriately limited remit. I have also referred to justified criticisms about the operation of the Find Madeleine Fund.

Despite impressive statistics released from time to time of the numbers of documents studied, lines of enquiry pursued, rogatory requests submitted, numbers of suspects or persons of interest questioned, etc., it seems plain that after well over six years, Operation Grange is nowhere nearer to solving this case.

You will be aware that thousands of people, among them professionals such as police officers, criminal profilers, criminologists, doctors, psychiatrists and statement analysts, have questioned the McCanns’ account of events.

At the same time, we have seen in the press over recent years many accounts of senior-level police corruption in the Metropolitan Police force.

An analysis of the case by 'PeterMac', a retired Police Superintendent, and other evidence submitted by members of my forum

'PeterMac', a retired Police Superintendent, has studied the Madeleine McCann case for nine years, and conducted original research on key evidential issues in the case. I am aware that he has submitted a great deal of evidence to the respective Senior Investigating Officers, always obtaining a receipt for the information he has sent them.   His analysis, which by implication is highly critical of Operation Grange, has been presented in a free e-book which can now be read at this link:

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

Other members of my forum have also submitted evidence and have been assured verbally and in writing that all the evidence they have submitted is being kept on computer and has been taken into consideration. It will therefore be available for any fresh police force, not bound by a restricted remit, to investigate.

On behalf of the members of my forum, therefore, I call on you to:

1 Appoint independent assessors of proven integrity and independence to evaluate the work of Operation Grange, and make its findings public. In this respect, may I remind you of this part of the review’s remit, as determined by DCS Hamish Campbell: “The ‘investigative review’ will be conducted with transparency, openness and thoroughness…” Any such report must include a full investigation into the huge involvement in this case of MI5, Special Branch and other government or government-backed security agencies;

2 Appoint, via the new Home Secretary, a different police force, which has the highest possible reputation for integrity and independence, to investigate the reported disappearance of Madeleine McCann;

3 Ensure that any new police investigation has an unlimited remit and can therefore go to wherever the evidence leads them;

4 Order the relevant government department to investigate all aspects of the operation of the Find Madeleine Fund, including:
A investigating the actions of all of its Directors,
B the funding of the private investigations,
C whether or not funds have been used to pay the McCanns’ legal fees and expenses,
D why it was necessary for a separate account to be set up last year, to be controlled by the McCanns and not the Directors, and
E accounting for all monies paid into and from the Find Madeleine Fund since it was set up in May 2007.

I shall send the same letter to Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe but I urge you to seek an urgent meeting with him to discuss the contents of my letter. Please give this matter your most careful consideration and I shall look forward to your response in the near future.

Yours sincerely

_______________________

Jill Havern
For and on behalf of the members of ‘The Complete Mystery of Madeleine McCann’

by **Jill Havern** 23.09.16 14:24

APPENDIX: The backgrounds and histories of agencies and individuals who were employed by the McCanns and the Directors of the ‘Find Madeleine Fund’ in their ‘Search for Madeleine’

Below are listed the main agencies and individuals employed by the McCann Team, in the approximate order in which they were appointed. The details given are by no means a complete record of these matters,which clearly illustrate the unsuitability of all of them to search for a missing child:

1 Brian Kennedy
2 Gary Hagland
3 Metodo 3
4 Francisco Marco
5 Antonio Gimenez Raso
6 Julian Peribanez
7 Marcos Aragao Correia
8 Oakley International
9 Kevin Halligen
10 Henri Exton
11 Tim Craig-Harvey
12 ALPHAIG
13 Former Detective Inspector Dave Edgar
14 Former Detective Sergeant Arthur Cowley
15 Melissa Little

Brian Kennedy    Brian Kennedy has been the acknowledged head of the McCanns’ private investigations since September 2007, possibly even before then. He must take personal responsibility therefore for the appointment of all the other 14 agencies and individuals listed above.

I refer now to an article by Mark Hollingsworth in the Evening Standard in August 2009, which discusses the McCanns’ private investigation. Here is part of it, quote:

“Kennedy hired Metodo 3, an agency based in Barcelona, on a six-month contract and paid it an estimated £50,000 a month. Metodo 3 was hired because of Spain’s ‘language and cultural connection’ with Portugal. ‘If we’d had big-booted Brits or, heaven forbid, Americans, we would have had doors slammed in our faces’ said Clarence Mitchell, spokesperson for the McCann’s at the time. ‘And it’s quite likely that we could have been charged with hindering the investigation as technically it’s illegal in Portugal to undertake a secondary investigation.

“The agency had 35 investigators working on the case in Britain, France, Spain, Portugal and Morocco. A hotline was set up for the public to report sightings and suspicions, and the search focussed on Morocco. But the investigation was dogged by over-confidence and braggadocio. ‘We know who took Madeleine and hope she will be home by Christmas,’ boasted Metodo 3’s flamboyant boss Francisco Marco. But no Madeleine materialised and their contract was not renewed.

“Until now, few details have emerged about the private investigation during those crucial early months, but an investigation by the Evening Standard shows that key mistakes were made, which in turn made later enquiries far more challenging.

“The Evening Standard has spoken to several sources close to the private investigations that took place in the first year and discovered that:

* The involvement of Brian Kennedy and his son Patrick in the operation was counter-productive, notably when they were questioned by the local police for acting suspiciously while attempting a 24-hour ‘stake out’.
* The relationship between Metodo 3 and the Portuguese police had completely broken down.
* Key witnesses were questioned far too aggressively, so much so that some of them later refused to talk to the police.
* Many of the investigators had little experience of the required painstaking forensic detective work”.

These were very serious allegations. The most serious by far was the claim that Brian Kennedy’s men had intimidated potential witnesses into silence.

Gary Hagland   He was employed by Cheshire businessman Brian Kennedy, who led the series of private investigations conducted by the McCanns and the Directors of the McCanns’ ‘Find Madeleine Fund’. He worked for him, according to statements of his that I have seen, from around September 2007 to March/April 2008, and was based in a house bought by Brian Kennedy for the investigation in Knutsford, Cheshire. He had no qualifications or experience in looking for missing children. His only qualification appears to be in money laundering legislation. An article was written by him in 1993, published in the Journal of Financial Regulation and Compliance. Accompanying this abstract is a brief description of the author, Gary Hagland, which states: ““Gary Hagland, AMSI MIMgt, entered the fledgling area of compliance in 1985 after leaving the Royal Hong Kong Police where he had served in criminal intelligence for some six years”. In addition, Hagland has written a book, under the pen name ‘Mason Horsburgh’, titled ‘UFO: A Saucer full of Secrets’, in which he describes encounters with aliens and flying saucers, including a rapid trip around the planets to beyond Saturn and back. He is also on record, in writing, as having deep reservations about the work he was employed to do for the McCanns, and claims that he was fired by Brian Kennedy after he told him face-to-face that his investigation was ‘heading in the wrong direction’. He has written an as-yet-unpublished book about his experiences working for the McCanns.

Metodo 3   Metodo 3 was the Barcelona-based private detective agency used by the McCanns as their lead investigators from September 2007 to April 2008. Despite obvious problems surrounding this firm of detectives, the McCann Team continued to use them until at least March 2009. The firm had an extremely poor reputation in Barcelona. Journalist Christine Twomey from The Times interviewed its Director and a colleague in early 2008 and also came away with a strong impression that Metodo 3 was very far from being the reputable agency that the McCanns claimed it to be. Metodo 3 had previously been investigated by Spanish police over persistent allegations that they were involved in systematic illegal telephone tapping, and several of its staff were questioned by police. The firm was later involved in another scandal over government contracts for ‘research’ but producing useless, bogus reports. In 2014 the firm eventually went out of business when they were again found to have been conducting illegal telephone recordings of conversations between major Catalonian politicians.

Francisco Marco   Marco was the Director of Metodo 3 at the time of Madeleine’s disappearance and remained so until the recent closure of Metodo 3. In the run-up to Christmas 2007, Marco lied on several occasions, making these wild and untrue claims which were widely reported in the British press: ‘Madeleine is alive’, ‘We know where she is’, and ‘Our men are closing in on the kidnappers’. This led to dramatic headlines in the British press: ‘Maddie will be home by Christmas’. Despite this succession of outright lies, the McCanns continued to employ his services for at least another 15 months. In 2013 he was at the centre of an operation to illegally record conversations of top politicians in a Barcelona restaurant. He was arrested and charged.

Antonio Gimenez Raso   Antonio Gimenez Raso was one of Metodo 3’s leading investigators on the Madeleine McCann case, from September 2007 to 17 February 2008. On that date he was arrested and remanded in custody on very serious drugs charges. It was alleged that, back in 2004, when he was working as a Drugs and Trafficking Inspector for the Catalonian Regional Police, he had supplied information about a stash of 25 kilos of cocaine, worth millions of pounds, on a boat in Barcelona harbour, enabling a criminal gang to steal it. This gang was later described by a Barcelona judge as ‘a 27-strong vicious gang that practised exceptional violence’. Headlines in the British, Spanish and Portuguese press on 18 February 2008 stated unequivocally that Gimenez Raso was ‘One of the investigators employed by the McCanns’, a fact that has seen been confirmed. Yet the McCanns’ spokesman, Clarence Mitchell, issued an immediate, flat denial, claiming: ‘Gimenez Raso is not one of our men’. After four years in custody, Gimenez Raso was found ‘Not Guilty’ because of insufficient proof that he had supplied information to the gang, but, in acquitting him, the judge told him that the evidence had revealed that “You became much too close to the members of this gang”. It was also revealed that in late 2004 Gimenez Raso had ‘left’ his senior post in the police’s Drugs and Trafficking Department, though whether he was sacked or simply resigned is unclear (see also below under Marcos Aragao Correia).            .

Julian Peribanez   Julian Peribanez was another employee of Metodo 3 who worked on the Madeleine McCann case. He can be seen in a video uploaded to YouTube walking alongside Cheshire businessman Brian Kennedy, whilst trying to hide his face from the cameras. He was still working for Metodo 3 in 2013 when the scandal of the   illegal recordings of politicians in a Barcelona restaurant was exposed. Arrested, he soon admitted his guilt and gave evidence against his boss Francisco Marco to the police on how the illegal recordings operation had been carried out. In 2014, Julian Peribanez wrote a book on his experiences with Metodo 3 in which he gave chapter and verse on a host of illegal activities, scams and frauds carried out by the firm over many years, including in the case of Madeleine McCann. Members of my forum obtained a copy of his book and paid for the translation of the chapter he wrote on the Madeleine McCann case into English. It can be read on my website, here:

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

It has already had nearly 8,000 views on my forum. Peribanez makes the following statements about Metodo 3.

1 Initially Metodo 3 worked closely with Brian Kennedy and money-laundering expert Gary Hagland, who Peribanez met at least twice.

2 He and a Metodo 3 colleague, Antonio Tamarit, worked in close contact with the British government-backed security firm, Control Risks Group.

3 There was a meeting in Manchester in early 2008 between Brian Kennedy and Marita Fernandes, the mother of the head of Metodo 3 (Francisco Marco) and José Luis Marco Llavina, her nephew, who was Metodo 3’s accountant.

4 Tamarit says of these two: “[Neither] had carried out any investigative work for many years…they made a fortune by means of deception and dishonest trickery…Metodo 3 was swindling [Madeleine’s Fund, with] inflated expenses, invented items, false invoices, etc.”

5 Specific information is given: “Francisco Marco…obtained some El Corte Inglés travel invoices and subsequently falsified them by changing the details”.

Peribanez adds that the claims made by Metodo 3 that they had either 20, or even 40, people working on the Madeleine McCann investigation were outright lies. He says there were only ever three. He adds that Francisco’s claims of having ‘a bank of multilingual telephonists to staff the telephone hotline’ were also ‘bogus’.

Marcos Aragao Correia    Marcos Correia was a lawyer from the island of Madeira who played a very significant role in supporting the McCanns, although the McCanns never conceded this fact. We do, however, have multiple evidences from Correia himself that he was directly instructed in his activities at all times by Brian Kennedy, on behalf of the McCanns. He was engaged by them on two main tasks. One was to act as the lawyer representing convicted murderess Leonor Cipriano in a criminal complaint by her against Goncalo Amaral, the co-ordinator of the Madeleine McCann investigation until 2 October 2007. The other was to search the Arade Dam for Madeleine’s bones.

Leonor Cipriano and her brother were convicted in 2005 of murdering Ms Cipriano’s 8-year-old daughter, Joana, having originally reported her missing. The murder was especially brutal and each received 16-year jail sentences. In unusual circumstances, Marcos Correia visited Ms Cipriano in Odemira Women’s Prison on 8 April 2008 and replaced her existing lawyer. Mr Correia then pursued, on behalf of the McCanns, a legal action by Ms Cipriano against Mr Amaral and four other detectives, accusing them of having tortured her into making a false confession. The charges of torture were dismissed but, in a decision which baffled legal experts, Amaral was found guilty of ‘filing a false report’ and handed a suspended prison sentence.

Still more controversially, Correia worked with Metodo 3 to plan searches for Madeleine’s bones on the Arade Dam, Portugal. As he has personally testified, he met Metodo 3 detectives - Director Francisco Marco and another, probably Antonio Gimenez Raso (see above) - at the Arade Dam on 10 December 2007. Both men had been instructed to meet each other by Brian Kennedy, on behalf of the McCanns. It was a remarkable and expensive meeting. Correia would have had to travel over 600 miles from Madeira, and another 600 back, for the meeting and Marco and Gimenez Raso would have travelled a similar distance from their base in Barcelona.

Just seven weeks after this unusual meeting, British and Portuguese newspapers reported dramatic news that a ‘Good Samaritan’, namely Marcos Correia, had begun a gruesome, week-long search for Madeleine’s bones. He claimed he was doing this out of the goodness of his heart, and his own pocket, because he had received intelligence from Portugal’s criminal underworld that her body had been thrown into a lake. He claimed he had worked out which lake it was. He undertook a further week-long search five weeks later, in early March 2008. Nothing of interest was found, but, significantly, he handed his findings not to the Portuguese police, as he should have done, but to Metodo 3 investigators.

Statements made by and on behalf of the McCanns suggested that they had known nothing of these planned searches of the dam. But it was clear that they must have done, having put their private investigations into the hands of Brian Kennedy, who in turn employed Correia and the Metodo 3 investigators, who held that significant meeting at the Arade Dam on 10 December 2007.

Only after the two week-long searches did some significant facts emerge about Marcos Correia. First, he admitted, eventually, that he had been paid by Brian Kennedy both to prosecute the Madeleine McCann investigator, Goncalo Amaral, in the criminal courts, and to carry out the two bogus searches of the Arade Dam. It also emerged that he had given two entirely different versions of how he came to take an interest in the Madeleine McCann case.

His initial claim was that underworld sources had told him that Madeleine had been abducted by a paedophile gang, raped, killed and then her body thrown into ‘a murky lake’. He said he had then used ‘visions’ and maps to locate where the gang probably threw the body. He later admitted that this was a complete fabrication, and proceeded to give another version of how his interest in Madeleine McCann had arisen. This time, he said that on Saturday 5 May, just two days after Madeleine had been reported missing, he had been to his first-ever Spiritualist church meeting, on the island of Madeira where he lived. On returning home, he said, he had had a vision of a big, powerful man strangling a young blonde girl. Soon afterwards, he claimed, he had heard about the reported disappearance of Madeleine McCann, connected this with his vision, and decided to offer his help to the police and the McCanns. Sometime later, he admitted that this story, too, was a total fabrication.

Later still, interviewed by a Portuguese journalist about his boasts about being a medium and a visionary, he made this claim (quote):   “Metodo 3 submitted me to a test in order to prove beyond all doubt whether or not my mediumistic abilities and my accounts were credible. They were fed up with following false leads. The fact is that the test gave totally positive results, according to what was confirmed to me personally by the Director of Método 3 in Barcelona himself. Following my mediumistic abilities passing Metodo 3’s stringent tests, Metodo 3 offered full support to my research”.

Oakley International     In April 2008, the McCanns replaced Metodo 3 as their lead investigators by a firm called Oakley International. This news was revealed around four months later, in August, when sources close to the McCanns claimed that Oakley International were ‘the big boys of international private detection’, based in the United States. This claim, however, was completely false - see below.

Kevin Halligen    Kevin Halligen, an Irishman born in Dublin, but who had followed a career in England for many years, specialising in his knowledge of lithium batteries, was the founder of Oakley International. On investigation, this company turned out to be merely a one-man-band company, registered by Halligen. Significantly, it had been registered in June 2007, only after Madeleine had been reported missing. It was nothing like ‘the big boys of international private detection’ claimed by McCann sources. It was, in effect, a bogus sole trader company in which Halligen employed a couple of his cronies.

In October 2009, after Kevin Halligen had gone on the run from police, who wanted him in connection with an alleged serious fraud committed in the United States. He was eventually arrested by British police after being found holed up with his girlfriend, Shirin Trachiotis, in the £700-a-night Bank Hotel, Oxford. He was taken immediately to Belmarsh top security prison. There, he spent three years fighting what was, ultimately, an unsuccessful legal battle to avoid extradition to the U.S. In the U.S. he was convicted of a fraud totalling around $1.5 million and was handed a four-year jail sentence.

Prior to his arrest, Halligen’s shocking activities whilst working for the McCanns had been revealed in a highly illuminating article by Mark Hollingsworth in the Evening Standard in August 2009. This article noted that the original contract with Kevin Halligen might have been with Kevin Halligen’s company ‘Red Defence International’, but the media reported that it was Oakley International with whom the contract was made. Because of the secrecy surrounding the McCann case, it is impossible to know which, if either, is true. I will quote directly from Mark Hollingsworth’s article:

QUOTES:

“Kevin Halligen [was] a smooth-talking Irishman who claimed to have worked for covert British government intelligence agency GCHQ Halligen [and his friend Henri Exton] were for hire for a fee of £100,000 per month plus expenses”.

“Halligen…has been described as a ‘Walter Mitty figure’. He used false names to collect prospective clients at airports in order to preserve secrecy, and he called himself ‘Kevin’ or ‘Richard’ or ‘Patrick’ at different times to describe himself to business contacts…He is obsessed by surveillance gadgets and even installed a covert camera to spy on his own employees. He claimed to have worked for GCHQ, but in fact he was employed by the Atomic Energy Authority as head of defence systems in the field of new information technology…”

“Halligen has a degree in electronics [and] worked on the fringes of the intelligence community...After leaving the AEA, Halligen set up Red Defence International Ltd as an international security and political risk company, advising clients on the risks involved in investing and doing business in unstable, war-torn and corrupt countries…In 2006, he struck gold when hired by Trafigura, the Dutch commodities trading company. Executives were imprisoned in the Ivory Coast after toxic waste was dumped in landfills near its biggest city Abidjan. Trafigura was blamed and hired Red Defence International at vast expense to help with the negotiations to release its executives. A Falcon business jet was rented for several months during the operation and it was Halligen’s first taste of the good life. The case only ended when Trafigura paid $197 million to the government of the Ivory Coast to secure the release of the prisoners. Halligen made a fortune from Trafigura and was suddenly flying everywhere first-class, staying at the Lansborough and Stafford hotels in London and The Willard hotel in Washington DC for months at a time. In 2007 he set up Oakley International Group and registered at the offices of the prestigious law firm Patton Boggs, in Washington DC, as an international security company. He was now strutting the stage as a self-proclaimed international spy expert and joined the Special Forces Club in Knightsbridge, where he met Exton”.

“During the Madeleine investigation, Halligen spent vast amounts of time in the HeyJo bar in the basement of the Abracadabra Club near his Jermyn Street office. Armed with a clutch of unregistered mobile phones and a Blackberry, the bar was in effect his office. ‘He was there virtually the whole day,’ a former colleague told the Evening Standard: ‘He had an amazing tolerance for alcohol…When not imbibing in St James’s, Halligen was in the United States, trying to drum up investors for Oakley International. On 15 August 2008, at the height of the McCann investigation crisis, he persuaded Andre Hollis, a former US Drug enforcement agency official, to write out an $80,000 cheque to Oakley in return for a ten per cent share-holding. The money was then transferred into the private accounts of Halligen and his girlfriend Shirin Trachiotis to finance a holiday in Italy, according to Hollis. In a $6 million lawsuit filed in Fairfax County, Virginia, Hollis alleges that Halligen ‘received monies for Oakley’s services rendered and deposited the same into his personal accounts’ and ‘repeatedly and systematically depleted funds from Oakley’s bank accounts for inappropriate personal expenses’. Hollis was not the only victim. Mark Aspinall, a respected lawyer who worked closely with Halligen, invested £500,000 in Oakley and lost the lot. Earlier this year he filed a lawsuit in Washington DC against Halligen claiming $1.4 million in damages. The finances of Oakley International are in chaos and numerous employees, specialist consultants and contractors have not been paid. Some of them now face financial ruin”.

“…by mid-August 2008, Kennedy and Gerry McCann were increasingly concerned by an absence of details of how the money was being spent. At one meeting, Halligen was asked how many men constituted a surveillance team and he produced a piece of paper on which he wrote ‘between one and ten’. But he then refused to say how many were working and how much they were being paid…Halligen was charging very high rates and expenses….eyebrows were raised when all the money was paid to Oakley International, solely owned and managed by Halligen. One invoice, seen by the Evening Standard, shows that for ‘accrued expenses to May 5, 2008’ (just one month into the contract), Oakley charged $74,155. The ‘point of contact’ was Halligen who provided a UK mobile telephone number”.”

“The contract [with Brian Kennedy] was terminated by the end of September 2008, after £500,000, plus expenses, had been spent. Halligen has gone into hiding, leaving a trail of debt and numerous former business associates and creditors looking for him. He was last seen in January of this year in Rome, drinking and spending prodigiously at the Hilton Cavalieri and Excelsior hotels..."

Henri Exton     As can be seen above, Exton is or was an associate of Kevin Halligen. It appears that Halligen employed him on his ill-fated Madeleine McCann investigation. Mark Hollingsworth wrote this about him in the 2009 Evening Standard article quoted above:

“Exton had been an undercover officer for the Manchester police. A maverick…figure, he successfully infiltrated gangs of football hooligans in the 1980s…In 1991 he was seconded to work on MI5 undercover operations against drug dealers, gangsters and terrorists…But in November 2002, the stress appeared to have overcome his judgment when he was arrested for shoplifting. While working on an MI5 surveillance, Exton was caught leaving a tax-free shopping area at Manchester airport with a bottle of perfume he had not paid for. The police were called and he was given the option of the offence being dealt with under caution or to face prosecution. He chose a police caution and so in effect admitted his guilt”.

In the BBC Crimewatch McCann special shown on 14 October 2013, two e-fits of different-looking men were shown to viewers, who were told by the Head of Operation Grange, Detective Chief Inspector Andy Redwood, that the man represented by these two very different e-fits was ‘the centre of our focus’. It was said that these two e-fits were drawn up by two members of the family of Martin Smith, from Drogheda, Ireland. However, there are major doubts about the reliability of the sighting claimed by the family. The e-fits were produced by Exton in the spring of 2008 and shown to the McCanns. The McCanns say that ‘by October 2009’ they had shown these e-fits to Leicestershire Police and the Portuguese police, yet nothing was done about them until the Crimewatch show of October in 2014. Undoubtedly there is a great mystery about Exton’s role in producing those two puzzling e-fits.

Tim Craig-Harvey     Tim Craig-Harvey was another close associate of Kevin Halligen; both had close connections with government security services. Little was known about his role in the Madeleine McCann case until he appeared in a Channel 5 film about the case in early 2014. Research since then has revealed that Tim Craig-Harvey was involved in the formation and running of a number of companies associated with Kevin Halligen. Both had close associates in common. Given what we now know about Kevin Halligen’s history and modus operandi, there must clearly also be major question marks about precisely why Craig-Harvey got involved in the Madeleine McCann case.

ALPHAIG     In March 2009, shortly before a Channel 4 documentary made by Mentorn Media about the reported disappearance of Madeleine McCann, shown in May that year, stories began to appear in the print and TV media about a new company said to have been engaged by the McCann Team to find Madeleine. The press referred to it as ‘Alpha Investigations Group’. A number of reports suggested the following: (a) that it was a well-established and reputable detective agency and (b) that the ‘head’ of this agency was either retired Detective Inspector Dave Edgar, or him and a colleague, retired Detective Sergeant Arthur Cowley. Neither was true.

In fact, subsequent analysis by Madeleine McCann researchers unearthed these facts:

1 Dave Edgar was appointed independently by Brian Kennedy
2 So was Arthur Cowley
3 There was and never had been any company called Alpha Investigations Group
4 Instead, a bogus company, ALPHAIG, had been set up to give the false impression that there really had been a company called Alpha Investigations Group.

The researchers also established the following facts:

1 Only after Edgar and Cowley had been working for the McCann Team for months did the head of the McCann Team’s private investigation, Brian Kennedy, set up a one-man-band company, ALPHAIG, in the name of Arthur Cowley, the sole Director. That occurred on 10 June 2009.
2 One of Kennedy’s friends, two days later, also registered an internet domain in the name of ALPHAIG - but it was never used.
3 ALPHAIG never traded.
4 Only one set of accounts was ever produced and it showed no evidence of any business being done.
5 The registered office was Cowley’s home - a hilltop cottage 1,000 feet up on Halkyn Mountain in north Wales.
6 It was never the base for any detective agency.
7 ALPHAIG never had a website.
8 ALPHAIG never had any offices.
9 ALPHAIG never advertised.
10 ALPHAIG ceased to exist in 2011.

Sometime after it ceased to exist, Arthur Cowley spoke to a journalist and told him that he held ‘secrets’ about the Madeleine McCann case that he was not prepared to disclose and would ‘take to my grave’.
It appears, therefore, that ALPHAIG was only registered as a company to give a wholly misleading impression to the media and the public. ALPHAIG was a dummy company. Neither Dave Edgar nor Arthur Cowley was employed by, or running, a company called Alpha Investigations Group, nor had they been running any detective agency at all, let alone a well-established one.

The media were deceived. Brian Kennedy appears to have been responsible for this misleading impression being given. He personally appointed Dave Edgar. He appointed Arthur Cowley as well. One of Brian Kennedy’s long-time friends and contacts registered a domain name for ALPHAIG.

Former Detective Inspector Dave Edgar    In his August 2009 article for the Evening Standard, Mark Hollingsworth wrote this about a press conference organised by the McCanns’ spokesman, Clarence Mitchell, and Dave Edgar, earlier that month:

“It was billed as a ‘significant development’ in the exhaustive search for Madeleine McCann. At a recent dramatic press conference in London, the lead private investigator David Edgar, a retired Cheshire detective inspector, brandished an e-fit image of an Australian woman, described her as ‘a bit of a Victoria Beckham lookalike’, and appealed for help in tracing her. The woman was seen ‘looking agitated’ outside a restaurant in Barcelona three days after Madeleine’s disappearance. ‘It is a strong lead’, said Edgar, wearing a pin-stripe suit in front of a bank of cameras and microphones. ‘Madeleine could have been in Barcelona by that point. The fact the conversation took place near the marina could be significant.’

“But, within days, reporters discovered that the private detectives had failed to make the most basic enquiries before announcing their potential breakthrough. Members of Edgar’s team who visited Barcelona had failed to speak to anyone working at the restaurant near where the agitated woman was seen that night, neglected to ask if the mystery woman had been filmed on CCTV cameras and knew nothing about the arrival of an Australian luxury yacht just after Madeleine vanished”.

Little is known about the career of Dave Edgar, except that he worked in Northern Ireland for a substantial period. One thing about the press conference that Mark Hollingsworth failed to mention was that during it, Edgar claimed that the McCanns’ friend Jane Tanner, who maintained that she had seen a man carrying a child at about 9.15pm on the evening Madeleine was reported missing, might actually have seen a woman, not a man. This seemed to fit in with the narrative about a woman seen on Barcelona docks that Clarence Mitchell and Dave Edgar were trying to convey to the media. But it made a nonsense of the detailed description she had given on 4 May 2007 (the day after Madeleine was reported missing) of a man.

He also made strange pronouncements about what he thought had happened to Madeleine, often based on a range of media stories. To give one example, in September 2009 he developed the strongly-held belief, published in at least two newspapers, that Madeleine was being held alive in an underground lair within a few miles of Praia da Luz. There was absolutely no evidence of this. Despite this ‘firm’ belief of Edgar’s, the McCann Team did nothing to follow up this apparently sincerely-held conviction. It appeared that the only basis for this hypothesis was that the media had reported a few weeks before on the case of Jaycee Lee Dugard, an 11-year-old girl who was abducted in 1991 but was found alive 18 years later, in the summer of 2009. Edgar’s claim that he believed Madeleine was being hidden in a lair on the Algarve coast was fairly obviously for media consumption - to capitalise, as it were, on the publicity surrounding Jaycee Lee Dugard - and was never a genuine line of enquiry.

Former Detective Sergeant Arthur Cowley   I have covered his limited role in the McCann Team’s private investigation above. I have indicated that the evidence suggests that he was not running a company called ALPHAIG, but merely agreed with his employer, Brian Kennedy’s plan to make it look as though he and Dave Edgar were running along-established business called Alpha Investigations Group.
Melissa Little    Melissa Little was not, strictly speaking, one of the McCann Team’s investigators. She was hailed by the McCann Team as an ‘F.B.I.--trained forensic artist’, which sounded highly impressive. Her main role in the private Madeleine McCann investigation was to produce two sketches of alleged suspects. One of them, of the man supposedly seen by Jane Tanner at 9.15pm on the night Madeleine was reported missing, was produced on 25 October 2007 - nearly six months after Madeleine had been reported missing. There was no obvious reason why the McCann Team took so long to release this sketch. It was of very little, if any, value, so long after the event. Moreover, Jane Tanner’s description has changed over time in significant respects. Moreover, Jane Tanner said she had not seen any of the man’s face.

Brian Kennedy, some weeks later, asked Melissa Little to produce another sketch for him. This time it was of a moustachoied man, with long, straggly hair, said by the McCann Team to be a suspect. It was based on a sighting by a Ms Gail Cooper of a suspicious-looking charity collector she had seen in Praia da Luz. The McCann Team publicised this sketch, with the help of Leicestershire Police and the News of the World, on 20 January 2008. The man became known by many who saw the sketch as ‘George Harrison man’ or ‘Monsterman’. The sketch was based on reports of this man submitted privately to the McCann Team and not to the Portuguese police. One of the curious features of this second drawing by Melissa Little is that it bore a passing resemblance to the earlier one she had drawn based upon Jane Tanner’s claims. Jane Tanner even made a statement that she was ‘60% to 80% sure’ that the person she had seen and ‘Monsterman’ were one and the same. This wholly lacked credibility as she admitted that she had seen no part of the face of the man she said she had seen.

Paulo Reis, a Portuguese researcher into the Madeleine McCann case, made some important observations, on the ‘GazetaDigital’ website, on Melissa Little’s two sketches. He referred to a Powerpoint demonstration produced by the McCanns and sent to the Portuguese police and Leicestershire Police in advance of the news report in the News of the World. He noted these points:

1 Although Jane Tanner had not seen the face of the man she claimed to have seen on 3 May, and Gail Cooper had clearly seen, full face, possibly more than once, the man she identified, Melissa Little was somehow able (after spending hours with both witnesses) to state ‘There are many similarities between Miss Tanner’s man and Gail’s’

2 Gerry McCann stated in his Powerpoint presentation to Leicestershire Police: “Miss Tanner spent a full day with Melissa Little, a qualified Police Sketch Artist since 1986, to compile this likeness of the suspect”

3 Miss [Jane] Tanner believes that there is an 80% likelihood that this is the same man she saw carrying away the child, believed to be Madeleine.

The News of the World developed this story still further. They wrote: “The sketch by qualified police artist Melissa Little bears an uncanny resemblance to an earlier picture, based on Miss Tanner's story”. Paulo Reis added this comment to his article: “This is unsurprising given both selections had - using considerable artistic licence - been made by the same artist, Melissa Little, and paid for by Mr Kennedy to assist the McCanns”.

Paulo Reis hinted strongly that Melissa Little may not have been independent, but in effect had colluded with Brian Kennedy and the McCann Team to suggest to the British public that the two images were of the same man. To achieve this, Melissa Little also sketched a drawing of how Monsterman might have looked carrying a child. As no-one had actually seen him doing so, this was most certainly the use of artistic licence, at best, and arguably dishonest.

Two footnotes need to be added.

First, the man identified as ‘Monsterman’ by Melissa Little’s sketch was soon identified by the Portuguese police and firmly ruled out of any connection to Madeleine’s disappearance.

Second, Jane Tanner had taken part in an identity parade on 13 May 2007, 10 days after Madeleine’s reported disappearance. One of those paraded before her, viewed from inside a police van with a two-way mirror, was Robert Murat.. Jane Tanner told the police that she was adamant that Robert Murat was the abductor she had seen just 10 days earlier. Murat was made a formal suspect two days later, partly on the strength of Tanner’s strong conviction that he was the man she had seen. However, Murat looked nothing like either the man she had described as having seen on 3 May, nor did he look anything like ‘Monsterman’. How was it possible for Jane Tanner, who had never seen the man’s face in the first place, to first of all say it was Robert Murat, and then to say it was ‘80% likely’ that he was Gail Cooper’s ‘Monsterman’?

by willowthewisp 23.09.16 15:10

GoGetmGoncalo,Hope you have a genuine reply to this fantastically composed letter,best of Luck for the Truth to finally emerge?

by Guest 23.09.16 15:34

Exceptionel is the only word I can think of!

Initially I wasn't too sure about the concept but reading this missive, I now understand the reasoning. It's truly a brilliant work of rational analysis and it makes me proud to be one of the team.

My admiration!

by Guest 23.09.16 15:54

Fantastic letter - would it be worth mentioning CRG and their early impact too?

by jeanmonroe 23.09.16 15:57

Personally, i do not 'agree' with the following:

"First of all, Prime Minister, we congratulate you on your appointment as Prime Minister and wish you every success in your new position."
--------------------------------------------------------------

This woman was not, voted for, not even by her own Conservative Party 'membership', to 'be' PM.

She was only voted for, (secretly) by only 199 Tory 'MP's' to 'be' PM. (132 Tory 'mp's' did NOT vote for her to be 'pm')

Ergo, ONLY '67' ( .000105% of UK population) Tory 'mp's' held 'sway' on her being PM.

This woman has NO 'democratic mandate' from the Bitish 'electorate' (46,420,413 'eligible voters') to be PM.

Otherwise, a fine letter.

All imo, 'obviously'.

jta: Theresa May did not mince words in arguing for snap elections when Brown took office in 2007.

After then-chancellor Gordon Brown REPLACED Blair without an election May, then shadow leader of the House of Commons, accused Brown of having “no democratic mandate.”

“So whenever Gordon Brown chooses to call a general election, we will be ready for him. He has no democratic mandate He has a reputation tainted by his failures after a decade in office. And he has no new ideas. An early election? Bring it on!" May wrote in an article for ConservativeHome.

'Brain Fog' Mrs May?

by Guest 23.09.16 16:37

That's true,

199 people out of 60 million voted for Theresa May to be PM.

And we are supposed to live in a democracy.

by jeanmonroe 23.09.16 16:57

BlueBag wrote:That's true,

199 people out of 60 million voted for Theresa May to be PM.

And we are supposed to live in a democracy.

Yeah, we 'do'............North UKorea!

by Roxyroo 23.09.16 17:24

Great letter, covers all the bases, well done x

by **Jill Havern** 23.09.16 17:25

The letter is being sent on Monday so could I please have comments on the content rather than Theresa May's appointment?

by **sandancer** 23.09.16 18:17

Excellent letter , concise and full of information.
My thanks to all the great researchers who have given their time and energy to a little girl with no voice .
Madeleine , you will not be forgotten. Mrs May you cannot ignore this !

by **HiDeHo** 23.09.16 19:15

That letter is an AMAZING compilation of the case.

I can see no fault in the areas that I am familiar with. Facts are all correct in my opinion.

Thanks so much for taking the time to compile such an enormous amount of info. We can all learn something from it. bravo

by whatsupdoc 23.09.16 19:17

An excellent letter, Jill. It covers many issues which have been totally ignored by the Police / Government.

It's time for the PM to bring back some Honesty, Decency and Integrity back to the UK Government.

by jeanmonroe 24.09.16 1:07

Get'emGonçalo wrote:The letter is being sent on Monday so could I please have comments on the content rather than Theresa May's appointment?

Sorry about that.

There is one thing you could possibly 'include' and that is, WHEN did TM or BHH 'know', if they did, that Madeleine 'was dead', albeit that 'there's no evidence' to 'implicate' the McCan'ts 'in her death', as GM has stated, publicly?

If, IF, TM has 'known' about 'her death' (ref: GM 23/09/2009) since May 2011, or whenever DC 'authorised' a 'review', what (why?) did she, personally, as Home Secretary, 'authorise/grant/approve/sign off on' over £15MILLION of UK taxpayers money to be ACTUALLY 'spent' on?

'Finding' a 'killer'?

jta: WHO, specifically, 'told' TM that 'Madeleine WAS abducted'? (bearing in mind that only, ONLY, the 'missing' child's own parents, the very last two 'people', to have seen her 'alive', (admitted) have said 'that')

by macdonut 24.09.16 14:18

Great, hard hitting letter. Many thanks for spending the time to do this.

My only concern is the repeated comments on what Operation Grange has and hasn't done. Putting myself in the PMs shoes, she could easily bat away assertions that "there is no evidence that Operation Grange has....." by stating that the investigation is ongoing and that there has been no running commentary on the progress made nor precise details released of what has and hasn't been investigated.

Rather than state that there is no evidence that OG has looked into particular areas, it might apply more pressure stating that you look forward to learning whether these areas were fully investigated and what the findings were.

Just a thought. Great though and once again, thanks.

by Doug D 24.09.16 14:20

Excellent letter Jill. Well done.

I know it’s long already but just a couple of suggested additions that could go in:

a/. Lord Bell (Bell Pottinger) ‘the McCanns paid me £500,000 in fees to keep them on the front page of every single newspaper for a year, which we did’

b/. Comment about the most recent accounts, with last years having the absolute bare minimum to comply with the Companies Act, with no information whatsoever, certainly not in the spirit of KM’s statement on page 128 of the book ‘madeleine’:

‘It was set up with great care and due diligence by experts in the field. From the outset everyone agreed that, despite the costs involved, it must be run to the highest standards of transparency.’

by Yorkshirgel 24.09.16 14:38

Congratulations on having the courage to put in print what lots of people are thinking. Well done and a big pat on the back for the researchers too.

However, if my recent letter to PM asking her to look in to discrimination of English students re tuition fees is an example, expect to get a routine letter from the PM's office saying 'as Mrs May has hundreds of letters sent to her by the public she has passed on this letter to me to deal with'. That was in answer to a very long letter I sent and she did not even have the decency to answer it herself.

The letter you have sent is detailed, unbiased, truthful and factual. I really, really hope it will convince TM to act and finally let Madeleine Rest In Peace. We have a duty to keep knocking on the PM's door via our MPs and I hope everyone else will be prepared to do this in the coming months.

WELL DONE Jill, you could not have put it better. I hope TM listens. You do know that she has put some files where they cannot be opened for 50 years don't you? That was in the national papers, and we all know they were paid by the McCanns to keep them on the front page for one whole year. I hope you get a reply from her, but don't hold your breath.

by Roidininki 24.09.16 17:15

No way is this letter going to be seen by Theresa May.
I was always taught bullet points and this is just too, too, way too long.
Sorry, because its a well put together account and obviously a lot of time spent on it but you did ask for comments.

by MayMuse 24.09.16 17:23

I agree with the other members comments, it is excellent, thank you.
Hope you don't mind my mentioning a couple of things to note; the paragraph shown below still requires the page number to be inserted for reference. I wouldn't want Theresa May to overlook that or she may have to read the whole book, if not already? winkwink

Plus a typo? Amelia instead of Amelie in another paragraph.
Easily done as it must have taken forever to collate and write but know how important it is for it to be "right".

By contrast, the settled view of Dr Kate McCann, as set out on page of her book ‘madeleine’, is that the dogs made ‘false’ alerts because of ‘the conscious or unconscious signals of the handler”. This amounts to an attack on the professional integrity and judgment of Mr Grime and implies that the dogs were ‘mistaken’ in all of their 17 alerts to corpse scent and blood.

A fifth photograph, of Gerry McCann sitting by a pool with his daughters Madeleine and Amelia, is claimed by the McCanns to have been taken at 2.29pm on the day Madeleine was reported missing.

And...
end of quotation missing

10 The former Prime Minister acceding to a request made by his friend Rebekah Brooks, CEO of Rupert Murdoch’s News International empire, to set up Operation Grange, reportedly after threatening him with ‘a week of bad headlines about Theresa May.

It's the little things that mean a lot

by Liz Eagles 24.09.16 17:27

Roidininki wrote:No way is this letter going to be seen by Theresa May.
I was always taught bullet points and this is just too, too, way too long.
Sorry, because its a well put together account and obviously a lot of time spent on it but you did ask for comments.

Well maybe what you were taught (bullet points) was wrong!

Should we all correspond in bullet points to get someone important to listen to us during their busy lives? Crikey, I feel like a commentator on Woman's Weekly, or should we speak in specific terms to the Prime Minister (former Home Secretary) in absolute terms and demand a reply?

With your enthusiasm Roidininki, I'd give up on life itself...except this forum doesn't give up on the demise of Madeleine McCann....or hadn't you noticed.

by Roidininki 24.09.16 17:31

I think you're sadly mistaken in thinking Mrs May is going to spare the time to read this letter from a discussion site. I'm a realist you see.

by Liz Eagles 24.09.16 17:38

Roidininki wrote:I think you're sadly mistaken in thinking Mrs May is going to spare the time to read this letter from a discussion site. I'm a realist you see.

Maybe you ought to join a 'quieter' website that just wishes to either chew the cud on batty things or talk about child murder cases that have never been solved and have no relevance to Madeleine McCann as they are mostly murder cases from USA. Perhaps you are already a member there - you seem to fit in with the mentality.

I feel very sorry for your negativity and it doesn't belong on this forum.

by Liz Eagles 24.09.16 17:48

Roidininki wrote:I think you're sadly mistaken in thinking Mrs May is going to spare the time to read this letter from a discussion site. I'm a realist you see.

Now you have me laughing...there's nothing like a pooper to poop on a parade.

Begone with your negativity.

by Roidininki 24.09.16 17:49

My negativity doesn't fit on this forum ? Maybe you ought to accept that comments were asked for in post 1 ?
Members are advised not to attack each other but isn't that what you're doing?
I gave a comment which you don't like but I was not giving my comment to you .

I don't belong to a quieter website nor do I wish to go into one ,nor am I interested in American cases so stop guessing about me and advising me what to do .

I've followed this case from day1 and I am wholeheartedly dedicated to finding what happened to Madeleine.

by Liz Eagles 24.09.16 17:55

Roidininki wrote:My negativity doesn't fit on this forum ? Maybe you ought to accept that comments were asked for in post 1 ?
Members are advised not to attack each other but isn't that what you're doing?
I gave a comment which you don't like but I was not giving my comment to you .

I don't belong to a quieter website nor do I wish to go into one ,nor am I interested in American cases so stop guessing about me and advising me what to do .

I've followed this case from day1 and I am wholeheartedly dedicated to finding what happened to Madeleine.

Chill out Roidininki, get positive, believe in what this forum does to find justice for Madeleine McCann. Believe that each and every FOI that is pushed in with its crappy reply deserves another in order to get to the truth.

Believe that the latest letter to the Prime Minister (former Home Secretary who reluctantly sanctioned funding for Operation Grange) is an honest request deserving a reply.

Forget about being a 'realist', start pushing for the truth, that's if you care.

Oh, and I'm immensely proud of the people who put together all the information to push for the truth that you disregard and say it should be minimized to bullet points.

I'm sorry, you are so very wrong in your outlook.

Bullet point correspondence is tantamount to Tweeting which is bloody nonsense.

by Roidininki 24.09.16 18:03

You are allowed your opinion as I am mine . However I find your style dictatorial so will quit this particular thread

by Liz Eagles 24.09.16 18:07

Roidininki wrote:You are allowed your opinion as I am mine . However I find your style dictatorial so will quit this particular thread

by Yorkshirgel 24.09.16 18:11

Sorry to say I have to agree with [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] when he says the letter will not get to Theresa May. I do not think it will either although it is an excellent letter. Politicians like to hide things away if it may not get them brownie points to reveal them. Dave Cameron is a good example of that. I do not think bullet points should be in the letter, it is not a report is it. We were asked to comment. Did you mean 'comment' or did you mean 'criticize'? Not meaning to be rude here. I thought one of the rules was not to attack another member?

by MayMuse 24.09.16 18:13

MayMuse wrote:I agree with the other members comments, it is excellent, thank you.
Hope you don't mind my mentioning a couple of things to note; the paragraph shown below still requires the page number to be inserted for reference. I wouldn't want Theresa May to overlook that or she may have to read the whole book, if not already? Plus a typo? Amelia instead of Amelie in another paragraph.
Easily done as it must have taken forever to collate and write but know how important it is for it to be "right".

By contrast, the settled view of Dr Kate McCann, as set out on page of her book ‘madeleine’, is that the dogs made ‘false’ alerts because of ‘the conscious or unconscious signals of the handler”. This amounts to an attack on the professional integrity and judgment of Mr Grime and implies that the dogs were ‘mistaken’ in all of their 17 alerts to corpse scent and blood.

A fifth photograph, of Gerry McCann sitting by a pool with his daughters Madeleine and Amelia, is claimed by the McCanns to have been taken at 2.29pm on the day Madeleine was reported missing.

And...
end of quotation missing

10 The former Prime Minister acceding to a request made by his friend Rebekah Brooks, CEO of Rupert Murdoch’s News International empire, to set up Operation Grange, reportedly after threatening him with ‘a week of bad headlines about Theresa May.

It's the little things that mean a lot

Would it be appropriate or necessary to include under Brian Kennedys list of involvement that he reportedly met with Robert Murat ( originally a suspect) and "offered him a job"...?

Also agree about mentioning the money the McCanns paid out to be "front page news" may be a good idea.

As for the Prime Minister "reading" this letter, for what it's worth, I think she will have no choice than to do so due to the high profile of the case etc, even if she delegates it to provide answers/reply of which we are yet to see. I'm 100% behind sending this to Theresa May and believe she has a vested interest, IMO

by Liz Eagles 24.09.16 18:16

Yorkshirgel wrote:Sorry to say I have to agree with [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] when he says the letter will not get to Theresa May. I do not think it will either although it is an excellent letter. Politicians like to hide things away if it may not get them brownie points to reveal them. Dave Cameron is a good example of that. I do not think bullet points should be in the letter, it is not a report is it. We were asked to comment. Did you mean 'comment' or did you mean 'criticize'? Not meaning to be rude here. I thought one of the rules was not to attack another member?

Oh dear, another 'don't attack another member' nonsense, when no-one is attacking anyone, between yourself and Roidininki you have just over 80 posts, yourself having only five and yet you speak of forum rules. I really wish time wasters would bugger off.

It's lovely though to see how the cockroaches come out when something meaningful happens on this forum.