Media Mayhem - MCCANN MEDIA NONSENSE OF THE DAY

My profound apololgize for again posting old news, news that may or may not be known, here's a corker..

Taxi driver 'drove Madeleine McCann, three men and a woman' the night after she disappeared

Driver's claims could provide vital clues in the case

   Kiran Randhawa
   Wednesday 2 May 2012 09:48



A taxi driver who could help solve the mystery of Madeleine McCann’s disappearance has been ignored by Portuguese police, it was revealed today.

A lawyer for her parents told how the man, who says he saw the toddler a day after she vanished, is a crucial witness who could provide vital clues in the case.

Today, on the eve of the fifth anniversary into her disappearance, the cab driver told the Standard, how he has never been interviewed by detectives.

Antonio Castela says a young girl, who looked like Madeleine, got into the back of his taxi with four adults near the Spanish border in the Algarve, the night after she went missing.

Despite telling the Policia Judiciaria, the Portuguese police's investigative unit, what he saw, he has never been questioned.

The 72-year-old said he picked up three men, a woman and a child at 7:50pm on the May 4 2007, from Monte Gordo, about an hour's drive from Praia da Luz, where Madeleine vanished the night before.

He drove them two miles to the Hotel Apolo in Vila Real de Santo Antonio near Faro, where they got into a blue jeep and drove away.

He said: "The little girl, who looked like Madeleine was sat on the lap of a man sitting at the back of the cab. I remember thinking it was odd because they did not speak a word during the entire journey apart from at the end when the man sat in the passenger seat said to me; how much?"

Speaking from his home in Vila Real de Santo Antonio, he added: "Only when I heard about Madeleine going missing and seeing her picture on the TV did I contact the police as the little girl in the back of my taxi had that same distinct mark in her eye as Madeleine does."

Mr Castela, who has been a taxi driver for 23 years, said the girl, who was dressed in pink pyjamas, was awake, but did not speak and was just "staring ahead" as though she had been doped.

"After I went to the police, I never heard anything from them again" he said. "They did not seem to take me seriously and never questioned me. They simply took down the details and that was it. I am amazed that it has been five years and nobody has ever asked me what I saw that night. I am absolutely certain it was her."

Kate and Gerry McCann's lawyer in Portugal, Isabel Duarte, said Mr Castela's account is one of several important leads that the Portuguese police have failed to follow up.

Scotland Yard, which last year launched a £2million review of all known evidence in the case, says there are 195 new leads in the case adding they believe she is still alive.

A team of detectives, based in Oporto in northern Portugal, has been appointed to re-examine the case but so far say there are no credible new facts to justify re-opening the investigation.

Kate and Gerry McCann said today they have "no doubt" that the Portuguese authorities will eventually re-open the investigation into their daughter Madeleine's disappearance.

Police in Portugal said last week they had found "no new element" to justify re-launching their inquiry into how the little girl vanished on a family holiday to the Algarve in May 2007. But the McCanns, speaking on the eve of the fifth anniversary of Madeleine going missing, added their voice to calls from Scotland Yard for the case to be re-opened.

Mr McCann, 43, said: “I think the most important thing is that a lot of the investigation opportunities are in Portugal.

“I think it’s fairly clear that the case will have to be re-opened for those to be pursued adequately.

“We weren’t expecting a knee-jerk reaction by any means. This is an ongoing dialogue, and I am sure the investigation will get opened again in due course.

“I have no doubt about that. It will get re-opened.”

His wife, 44, added: “It’s certainly the best way that we’re going to find Madeleine, and who took her. If people want to find Madeleine, and want to find the person who took her, then we need the case to be re-opened.”

The officer leading Scotland Yard’s review of the original investigation into Madeleine’s disappearance spoke last week of his belief that the case can still be solved and said there is evidence she could still be alive.

Detective Chief Inspector Andy Redwood said the Metropolitan Police would like the case to be re-opened, but stressed that the decision was one for Portugal.

Mr McCann said: “The only way everyone will be able to move on is for the case to be solved, and that is for Madeleine to be found and the perpetrators brought to justice. Until then it’s not going to go away. It can’t go away.”

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/taxi-driver-drove-madeleine-mccann-three-men-and-a-woman-the-night-after-she-disappeared-7706355.html

I would have posted it on the other thread as another example of Portuguese ineptitude but it doesn't fit the required criteria of first 24 hour time scale.  Still, I think it rightlfully belongs here as another example of UK media ineptitude.

Again I ask - where was Clarence Mitchell, he who controls what comes out in the media, when all this negative media coverage was going on?

I think it's an example of the perceived ineptitude, which was actually prejudice when you unpack it. At 7.30 I don't think KM had even started on the NZ wine!

I think it's an example of  >>>  



Planticus Asparagus Virginus Vulgaris - common name Cast Iron Plant

Lest they forget - the Irish contingent, never far from the hub..

‘It’s likely to be painful’: Madeleine McCann’s 10th anniversary

A decade of reporting without ‘conscience’ has persecuted the missing child’s parents

Sat, Apr 29, 2017, 05:00 Updated: Sat, Apr 29, 2017, 10:30

Kathy Sheridan

Wednesday, May 3rd , marks 10 years since three-year-old Madeleine McCann vanished from a Portuguese holiday apartment while her parents dined with friends in a tapas bar about 50m away.

Ten years of a relentless search for a child by her parents, by three police forces, by a slew of private investigators. Ten years of tabloid splashes and libel suits, of suspects fingered, cleared or never traced; of books, documentaries and pet theories. Ten years of blame games.

Few issues flush out more self-righteous bile than other people’s parenting. From the earliest days, one thing has remained constant: the public vilification and online persecution of the missing child’s parents, Kate and Gerry McCann.

Ten years on, tweets critical of the couple continue to roll in at a furious rate. According to a recent pilot study of online trolling, tweets with the hashtag #McCann were averaging 100 an hour.

“It doesn’t ever stop. Somewhere in the world, someone is doing this. . .and you’re either with them or against them,” says Dr John Synnott, a Dubliner and senior lecturer in investigative psychology who led the study at the University of Huddersfield.

A distinguishing feature of the so-called anti-McCanns is their organisation and in-group bonding. Operating in what the academic calls an “anti-social network”, the group has a strong female presence and many have made this part of their identity, the first thing they do when they wake up and to which they devote inordinate time.

As such, they do not regard themselves as “trolls”, he says, rather “as campaigners, as seekers of justice, as proprietors of morality”.

The bigger picture of the study is that Twitter – unlike Facebook – facilitates anonymity. Posters can hide their true identities for the most part, and as such may engage with impunity in casual savagery of word and tone.

The anti-McCanns are bound by a common goal: to prove Kate and Gerry McCann guilty of their daughter’s disappearance. In this hostile online environment, anyone who argues otherwise is a “shill”, in the paid employ of the McCanns and/or is engaged in a criminal cover-up with a sinister media, government and justice complex to protect paedophiles.

The anti-McCanns’ pin-up is Gonçalo Amaral, the 57-year-old Portuguese lead investigator who was taken off the case in 2007 after giving an interview criticising the British police. Amaral’s 2008 book, which earned him £344,000 (€407,000) according to the British Sun, drew a civil lawsuit for damages from the McCanns who were awarded £430,000 plus interest in damages. This was overturned on appeal, and the Portuguese Supreme Court went on to uphold Amaral’s right to freedom of expression.

Almost forgotten in this social-media free-for-all is the child who would turn 14 on Friday week, whose strikingly pretty, blonde and blue-eyed image is still given the splash treatment over and over to illustrate the latest crackpot theory .
Class conquers everything

Why, of all the missing person cases reported each year, Madeleine McCann’s exploded into the public consciousness and remained there, is no mystery.

Social class overarches everything, says Prof Roy Greenslade, of City University London, a Guardian media commentator and a former editor of the Daily Mirror.

“It played a part in two ways. Initially, the idea of a middle-class professional couple with a lost child probably got more publicity than a working-class child would have. But then it turned in a classist way – ‘okay, can we believe everything they say?’

“It became a contest, putting the couple almost on trial, asking various questions which would be legitimate for a policeman to ask in the privacy of an interview room, but tough to be asked continually, in public, with every bizarre theory explored.”

The suggestion that the McCanns were complicit in their daughter’s disappearance was bounced around with impunity until the couple sued the Daily Express for libel and won £550,000 (plus £375, 000 for the so-called Tapas Seven, their holiday companions).



Greenslade believes they could have sued virtually all the tabloids. “It was no surprise to me that they were key witnesses in the Leveson [hacking] inquiry. They really had a point.”

The McCanns were not alone in getting damages from a story-hungry media. The first arguido or official suspect was a Portuguese property consultant called Robert Murat, whose home was searched 12 days after Madeleine’s disappearance. After being formally cleared in 2008 , he won £600,000 in libel damages from 11 British papers.

Yet, editors “really never appreciated how badly they acted”, says Greenslade. They had paid their fines, they argued, and everyone else was doing it. Peter Hill, the then Daily Express editor, told Greenslade after the libel case: “It was a huge story, and every adult in the country had an opinion on it. I admit it helped to sell the paper.
Vile theories

“There were many factors involved, such as the way Maddy’s parents sought publicity in an unprecedented way. All the way through, our principal focus was on ‘what’s happened to Maddy?’ The Portuguese police and British legal sources were leaking stories that implied the McCanns were guilty in some way. We were not to know that the Portuguese police were ineffectual.”

“It was disgraceful”, says Greenslade, “thinking they were engaged in legitimate journalism, when most of the stories emanated from dodgy Portuguese sources and were then repeated by papers that hadn’t checked them out.”

It was this behaviour, Greenslade contends, that “supported the level of vilification that hit the McCanns from the public, that gave licence to people to air their vile theories”.

A few months after Madeleine’s disappearance and before social media had taken a foothold, Greenslade attended a seminar at the London School of Economics, chaired by the BBC’s Steve Hewlett. He was astonished at the “vile” nature of the questions and the way they were put by some audience members.

“It was as if human trolls had turned up, suggesting the parents were guilty either of murdering the child or of abandoning the child. It was like being in front of a mob – and you realised there is no wisdom in the mob. Ever. And it’s been terrible since.

“[Journalists’] job is to keep these things in the front of the public eye, absolutely. But it’s the way it’s done in this case that is beyond the pale”.

Since Madeleine McCann’s disappearance, there have been 8,685 reported sightings of her across 101 countries, including Belgium, New Zealand, Brazil, Bosnia, Sweden, Holland, India and Malta and many more.

Theories propounded by contributors to a documentary aired by Australia’s Channel 7 this week suggest that Madeleine was kidnapped by a human-trafficking gang “working to order”, that she was stolen by a paedophile gang and could still be alive, that she had been roaming around looking for her parents on the street and was run over by a drunk driver who hid her body in one of 600 wells.

Much of the programme reflects the theory-heavy nature of coverage of Madeleine McCann’s disappearance.

Prof Dave Barclay, a senior lecturer in forensic science at Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen, also appeared on the documentary. “I’m sure the reason this case has run as long as it has and still arouses fantastic interest even now is because every single one of the explanations, the possible explanations, is implausible, and yet we know one of them must be correct,” he said.

“It might be solved if Madeleine’s body is found and there is evidence either on the body or in the location where the body is found that would point to somebody but otherwise, I don’t think it will ever be solved.

“There is just no physical evidence whatsoever that we can use at this time, even to eliminate some of the theories.”

The early stages of the search for Madeleine McCann ensured there would be no physical evidence.

Early suspects

It took hours for border guards to be alerted and for roadblocks to be put in place, and several days for a global missing person alert to be issued by Interpol.

As well as that, vital evidence was probably destroyed that night by the failure to close off the crime scene, allowing some 20 people to roam through the rooms and the yard.

Kate and Gerry McCann became early suspects. The police theory was that they accidentally killed Madeline sometime after the last independent sighting of her at 6pm, possibly by a sedative overdose. According to this theory, they concealed the body, faked the abduction and, nearly a month later, transported her body in a hire car to dispose of it.

This avenue of investigation had the effect of taking the heat off the police but also meant vital early evidence was ignored.

A hint of the prejudice and hypocrisy inflicted on Kate and Gerry McCann from both police and media is contained in the Daily Express editor’s part-explanation of his actions, that “Maddy’s parents sought publicity in an unprecedented way”.

The police, accustomed to absolute secrecy, were outraged at the couple’s use of the media to raise awareness.

Kate McCann’s stoicism, her grimly maintained jogging routine, and refusal to claw the earth in remorse for her admitted parenting mistakes were deemed proof that she was not a natural mother.

‘Cold and manipulative’

Leaks from within the investigation claimed that her controlled public appearance, even her carefully applied make-up, indicated a “cold and manipulative” personality. Portuguese police suspected her from the very beginning because they could not believe parents would leave their children unattended.

Gerry McCann explained that he and his wife had been advised that self-control might have most impact on a putative kidnapper tuning into their many television appeals. She continued to give tearless, self-flagellating interviews, admitting their mistakes and revealing that their three, much-wanted babies were the result of IVF treatment.

Their choice was stark: give up the search and with it the foul rumours, suspicion, malice and abuse; or continue to ride the media tiger in the hope it would flush out information about Madeleine.

In July, the pressure was piled on when two British sniffer dogs – Eddy and Keela – were brought in. One was trained to sniff out traces of human blood, the other to scent corpses. The dogs raised alerts in the McCanns’ apartment and their hire car.

Though Portuguese police told journalists the DNA tests were a “100 per cent match” for Madeleine, they were in fact, inconclusive. In September 2007, the McCanns were named arguidos. It was almost a year before they were declared no longer suspect by the Portuguese attorney general, and the investigation was archived due to a lack of evidence. It was reopened in 2013, led by a team of officers in Porto.

At that stage, any sensible pair of killers would have breathed a sigh of relief and let the story die. Instead the McCanns pursued a loud, relentless, multimillion-euro global campaign to keep the investigation alive. They set up the Leaving No Stone Unturned campaign, distinguished by its quasi-corporate professionalism, with media professionals, full-time private investigators, travel packs for people going on holidays, 24-hour multilingual call centre and ubiquitous posters.

Their efforts ensured that Madeleine’s case remained live to the point that in 2011, the then British home secretary, Theresa May, announced a review of the evidence by Scotland Yard. After revelations that possible key sightings and artists’ impressions of suspects had been kept from the public for years, that became a full, £10 million criminal inquiry in 2013, to concentrate, said the police pointedly, on a “criminal act by a stranger”.

Chief among those unpublicised sightings was one by an Irish couple, who saw a man 500 yards from the McCann apartment at about 10pm, awkwardly carrying a child matching Madeleine’s description towards the beach. E-fits of him were released in 2013 to coincide with a BBC Crimewatch reconstruction, and he remains a suspect.

Just as usefully, police were able to eliminate a well-publicised prime suspect, a man seen by one of the “Tapas Seven” close to 10pm, carrying a small child in pink pyjamas. Only in 2013 was he revealed to be a British holidaymaker taking his daughter back from the Ocean Club’s evening creche.
Abduction or burglary

Among those being tracked by police at that stage were bogus charity collectors seen knocking on doors in the area and who may have been doing reconnaissance for either an abduction or a burglary, plus a number of fair-haired men, seen loitering suspiciously close to the McCann’s apartment all that day.

Separately, four suspects were questioned on suspicion of being part of a burglary gang that possibly panicked after accidentally killing Madeleine – a prime theory – but they were released.

Mobile phone tracking showed that Euclides Monteiro, a convicted burglar with a drug habit, who had been sacked from the Ocean Club the year before, was also in the area that night. Though he died in a tractor accident in 2009, Portuguese police reopened the investigation later when he was identified as a suspect.

And apparently, leads remain. London Metropolitan Police Assistant Commissioner Mark Rowley said this week that police had no definitive evidence as to whether Madeleine was alive or dead.

“Where we are today is with a much smaller team focused on a small number of remaining critical lines of inquiry that we think are significant. If we didn’t think they were significant, we wouldn’t be carrying on.”
Crime in the Algarve

One of the most startling aspects of the case is the crime context in the Algarve. Between 2004 and 2010, there had been 12 crimes where an intruder broke into the properties of UK families, within a 60km radius of the McCanns’ resort, including two in Praia da Luz itself.

In six of those, the intruder either got into bed with or sexually assaulted a young female child. At one point, British police were researching the backgrounds of 530 known sex offenders, including 59 regarded as high interest.

There had also been a fourfold increase in the number of robberies in the area. Only weeks before the McCanns’ arrival, there had been two unsolved burglaries in the Ocean Club holiday apartment block. A childminder at the creche has reportedly claimed that the resort was considered so unsafe that nannies were given rape alarms and told not to go outside alone.

Prof David Barclay did not mince his words about the absence of this important context from the reporting frenzy back in 2007: “The Portuguese police and the Portuguese tourist board would have been quite keen not to feature the number of burglaries that were going on in Praia da Luz and other towns on the Algarve.

“And the fact there were random paedophiles going around taking children out of holiday apartments would have probably been quite a disincentive to families turning up for their holidays. So they wouldn’t want to feature that.

“I think that’s possibly an explanation why the Met, recently, were able to find more examples of indecent assaults on children than we’d been told about previously.”

Meanwhile, the McCanns are bracing themselves for the anniversary on May 3rd. “It’s likely to be stressful and painful and more so, given the rehashing of old ‘stories’, misinformation, half-truths and downright lies which will be doing the rounds in the newspapers, social media and ‘special edition’ TV programmes,” said Kate McCann this week.

“I truly hope that those reporting on the ‘story’ over the next couple of weeks will have a conscience.”

They referred to the 10-year anniversary as “a horrible marker of time, stolen time”.

https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/people/it-s-likely-to-be-painful-madeleine-mccann-s-10th-anniversary-1.3064959

Greenslade believes they could have sued virtually all the tabloids. “It was no surprise to me that they were key witnesses in the Leveson [hacking] inquiry. They really had a point.”

If I might point out - they also had a highly payed UK government Media Monitoring Unit director on - one who controls what comes out in the press !!!

'Cracker' experts search for Maddie Metro

Two 'Cracker'-style experts have been flown to Portugal from Britain in the search for missing Madeleine McCann.

John Higginson
9th May, 2007

Criminal behaviour experts flew to the Algarve to join Portuguese investigators as the hunt enters its sixth day.

Police have refused to release an E-fit of the suspect only showing it to a few potentially significant witnesses.

But one witness that has seen it Algarve internet owner Simon Russell, 40, said it is nothing more than an 'egg with a side parting'.

He said: 'The picture I was shown was a head with no face, no eyes, no facial features of any kind. It was an outline like an egg. Basically I was looking at nothing more than an egg with brown haid and a side parting.'

The experts from the Child Exploitation and online Protection Centre (Ceop) - which tackles international child sex abuse - flew in yesterday.

The move comes after details of British paedophiles with links to the Algarve were handed over to Portuguese investigators, local reports said.

British Ambassador to Portugal John Buck has also defended local police who have coming under increasing criticism.

Police in the country have already followed up 350 different leads, interviewed 100 people and taken hundreds more calls from the public but their response to Madeleine's disappearance has been criticised.

Meanwhile Maddie's uncle, Brian Kennedy, told the Mirror: 'It took the police a long time to get things moving. The early stages could have been much quicker.'

Criticism of the handling of the case has been intensified by a news blackout imposed by Portuguese law which bans police from revealing details of a case under investigation.

British Ambassador to Portugal John Buck said: 'They (the McCanns) are very pleased with the collaboration of the British authorities, they are in close touch with Interpol and Europol and I know Kate and Gerry, with whom I have just been speaking over the last hour, are very grateful for their efforts.'

But despite scant details on the direction the investigation is taking the case has captivated - and stunned - Portugal.

In the UK Portuguese football superstars Cristiano Ronaldo and Paulo Ferreira became the latest to add their support to efforts to trace her with appeals in two languages.

England captain John Terry read a statement which was translated into Portuguese appealing for people to give the police information.

'It's a terrible thing for her family to go through, she's only young so please, please come forward,' he said.

A vigil was held in Madeleine's home village in Rothley, Leicestershire, last night as family and friends prayed for the youngster to be found safe and well.

The three-year-old disappeared on Thursday night after she was left with her brother and sister, two-year-old twins Sean and Amelie, in a holiday apartment.

Her parents had been dining in a nearby restaurant and checking on them regularly.

A campaign in the making - and only ten days after Madeleine McCann was reported missing..

Parents to launch global fund for Maddie

Charitable foundation likely to be set up as offers of help flood in for lost toddler

John Follain in Praia da Luz, Mark MaCaskill and Jon Ungoed-Thomas
May 13, 2007

THE family of Madeleine McCann are to launch a charitable fighting fund to help promote an international appeal to track her down.

They are consulting lawyers about a charitable foundation that would continue to fund the hunt and pay for private investigators if required. John McCann, Madeleine's uncle, said this weekend that the family were overwhelmed with offers of financial support and help.

Gerry and Kate McCann, Madeleine's parents, are determined the hunt for her should not fade from international attention and with their family are planning a worldwide campaign.

An appeal for sightings of Madeleine will be made at the Spanish Grand Prix this weekend. The family hope that a similar appeal will be made at Hampden Park, Scotland's national stadium, when it hosts the Uefa Cup final on Wednesday between two Spanish teams, Espanyol and Sevilla.

Detectives in Praia da Luz, where Madeleine disappeared 10 days ago, are trying to track down a number of possible suspects. The Sunday Times has established that Portuguese police have a detailed photofit of a suspect who was spotted loitering outside the McCann apartment and was later thought to have been seen in a white van.

"We have a good network of people in Glasgow and beyond who are coming forward to help and it reflects how popular both Gerry and Kate are," said John McCann. "Tears are fine, but tears are only good for release. After that, what next?

"We've been inundated with financial offers. It's been amazing. Friends have said, 'How much do you need? We'll get it to you within two days'. I got a phone call from a guy I play rugby with who knows Kate and he offered £50,000."

McCann said a poster campaign was being launched showing Madeleine's distinctive right eye, where the pupil runs into the blue-green iris. "We want to make the most of it, because we know her hair potentially could be cut or dyed," he said.

Gerry and Kate spent their daughter’s fourth birthday yesterday in quiet reflection in a private villa before attending mass in the evening. Their momentary relaxation as they were greeted by crowds of wellwishers was in sharp contrast to the last days, when Kate has looked broken and haunted by the unknown fate of her daughter.

One of Kate's closest friends, Jill Renwick, who alerted British media to Madeleine’s disappearance, said: "There’s nothing anyone can say or do to make her eat. Day to day she’s looking more and more stressed."

People who have been with the couple say Gerry is "focused" and always asking: "What can we do next?" They are trying to keep to their usual routine, spending time alone in the evenings with their two-year-old twins Amelie and Sean.

Gerry revealed the couple's attitude remains positive, telling the congregation at yesterday evening's mass: "We are looking forward to the day when Madeleine returns to us as a joyous one. We walk out of this church believing that we will see Madeleine soon and she will be safe and well and we will continue to hope."

The McCanns have pledged to leave "no stone unturned", but they know the prospects of Madeleine being found alive are increasingly remote. According to investigators, most "stranger abductions" end within 24 hours.

After that, the chances of finding a child alive "drop like a stone".

If Madeleine is not found soon, looming before them is the terrible decision about when to gather up their belongings, leave the supportive embrace of Praia da Luz and return home to Rothley, Leicestershire.

Hamish Brown, a former detective with Scotland Yard's specialist crime directorate, said: "They've been so dignified in their response, but you can't begin to imagine what this is like.

"You would hope to have a development in the first few days, but it hasn't happened. It is what detectives in this country call a 'sticker', which means you're in for the duration."

Compounding the McCanns' anguish has been the knowledge that they gave opportunity to whoever took Madeleine by leaving the three children in the apartment while they dined nearby. Counselling has helped, but any parent would find it impossible not to replay endlessly the events of the night she disappeared, with one refrain — "if only".

Alan Pike, from the Centre for Crisis Psychology, has been counselling the couple. "My work with the McCanns began on Saturday. We are reviewing what they went through on the night Madeleine disappeared, what happened and how they discovered she had gone," he said.

"The aim is to help them to understand what was happening to them physically and emotionally because it can be debilitating. That allows them to focus on what needs to be done."

There was initially criticism of the McCanns by Portuguese residents, but this has faded with the huge swell of sympathy for their plight. One resident in the Mark Warner Ocean Club complex where the McCanns were holidaying is said to have heard Kate berating herself after the disappearance. "We've let her down," she is said to have cried.

The same resident said she heard Madeleine crying for her father on Tuesday evening, but this has not been confirmed by police.

Last week was a frustrating one for the McCanns, with a series of possible leads but no breakthrough. The police, stung by claims that they were slow to react to the abduction, are now involved in one of best-resourced and high-profile investigations the country has ever seen.

Among the initial criticisms were that police failed to preserve the crime scene, with one former British detective describing it as as the worst he had ever encountered. Most embarrassing was an initial photofit said to be so vague it resembled an "egg with hair". There was also incredulity among some British investigators that details of Madeleine's pink and white speckled pyjamas were not publicised until Thursday.

Olegario Sousa, a chief inspector of the Policia Judiciaria, said the investigation had to comply with Portuguese law, which allows few details to be divulged. The inquiry now has considerable resources, including the help of British psychological profilers.

Police have identified one possible suspect after a British woman is understood to have drawn up a photofit of a man seen acting suspiciously outside the McCanns' apartment on the afternoon Madeleine vanished.

A source also confirmed this weekend that sniffer dogs tracked Madeleine's scent to two apartments in the resort, where two women and a man were staying. Their nationality has not been confirmed, but they have been interviewed by police.

Detectives are also investigating reports from a witness in Sagres, 16 miles from Praia da Luz, that a man was photographing children without permission. After he was challenged he left with a woman in a Renault Clio.

Police are said to have shown the Sagres witness CCTV footage of a woman and two men at a service station on the motorway between Praia da Luz and Faro soon after Madeleine’s disappearance. The woman is said to have been with a toddler with blonde hair.

According to reports, the witness said she had "no doubts" that one of the men and the woman at the service station were the couple who had been in Sagres. Portuguese investigators have refused to comment.

Villagers in Burgau, near Praia da Luz, have also been questioned by police. They say they have been shown pictures of two separate groups of adults.

The McCanns are believed to have stayed once before in Praia da Luz and had returned because they considered it a safe resort. According to a member of staff, the McCanns were so confident of safety they left the french windows to their apartment unlocked when their children were alone last Thursday week.

Inquiries by The Sunday Times have found that the Ocean Club complex was recently targeted by criminals, despite the confidence of holidaymakers in its security. One resident, in an apartment a short distance from where the McCanns were staying, said an intruder had entered about three weeks before Madeleine’s disappearance.

"I was sitting watching TV when I saw an arm coming out of my bedroom and reaching for the light," the woman resident said. "I screamed, 'What are you doing?' at the top of my voice. He [the intruder] jumped out of the window onto the roof, then he must have climbed down the tree."

Despite the risk of break-ins, there was no extra advice for holidaymakers to be on their guard. Mark Warner sends customers security advice with their travel brochure, but the only recommendation is that valuables are left at reception.

The appeal for Madeleine's safe return is likely to remain in the public eye for a considerable time. Up to 600 Portuguese motorcyclists plan to travel the country, distributing appeals for information.

Crime experts said last week that it should not be assumed that Madeleine had been taken by a child abuser. Ray Wyre, a consultant on sexual crime and abuse, said: "You need the message to go out to potential witnesses that no one should be discounted."

The Sunday Times
....................

Indeed, the day that followed this..

PJ accuses English police of favouring the McCann couple - Diario de Noticias

PAULA MARTINHEIRA
JOSÉ MANUEL OLIVEIRA
02 October 2007

"The British police has only been working on the issues that the McCann couple wants, and which are convenient to them." It was with an explosive and rebellious tone that the coordinator of the investigation into the Madeleine case, Gonçalo Amaral, commented in brief statements to DN the news that was published yesterday in several English newspapers. This news was about an anonymous email that was sent to Prince Charles' official site, which accuses an ex-employee of the Ocean Club of kidnapping the four-year-old girl, as an act of revenge against the resort's administration, after having been dismissed.

"That situation is completely set aside, and it has no credibility whatsoever to Portuguese police", the leader of the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) of Portimao told DN, considering that his English colleagues "have been investigating leads and information that were created and worked by the McCanns, forgetting that the couple is suspected of the death of their daughter Madeleine".

"That story of a kidnapping for revenge is another fact that was worked by the McCanns", Gonçalo Amaral accused, stressing that the Ocean Club "is located in Praia da Luz and not in London, which means that everything that concerns the resort and its employees (present or former) was already or is being investigated by Policia Judiciaria".

"It's not an email, even less an anonymous one which is easy to track, that is going to distract our investigation line", he said.

Gonçalo Amaral, before entering the CID in Portimao, was at the PJ's Directory in Faro, having been mainly responsible for fighting drug traffic.

The opinion of the coordinator of CID in Portimao coincides with statements that were made to DN by the president of the Union of Criminal Investigation Employees (ASFIC), Carlos Anjos, who accuses Gerry and Kate McCann of "trying to distract and confuse the investigation by announcing a new fact on a daily basis". For him, as DN could report, "the McCanns have launched a campaign to discredit the Portuguese police when it presented the theory of the girl's death, substituting that of an abduction, which was very convenient to them". "As long as the theory of the disappearance because of a suspected abduction subsisted, the PJ was very pleasant company for the couple. When things changed and the death theory emerged, there was a radical change in the stance of the McCanns, who by the way never helped or facilitated, since the beginning, the investigation".

In late August, early September, a few days before Gerry and Kate were constituted arguidos, for suspicions of the negligent death of their daughter Madeleine, a top member of staff of Judiciaria commented the following: "After buying ourselves a war with the British media, we are now buying one with the English police."

Over the last few weeks, the Policia Judiciaria has been silent, which was helped by the fact that the spokesman of this force for that case, Olegario Sousa, has left that function, which he occupied since the child's disappearance.
..................

Note: The day after this article appeared, 03 October 2007, Alipio Ribeiro reportedly sent a brief fax to Mr Amaral's office in Portimao on the detective's 48th birthday, reading: "Transfered to Faro for convenience of the service".



[Thanks to Nigel Moore of mccannfiles.com]

A day in the life of a dodgy journalist - bumped for posterity..

A paedophile took Madeleine McCann, not her parents

Jon Clarke analyses why her parents were not involved and recalls the shocking way he ended up accused of being involved

Jon Clarke (Publisher & Editor) - 11 May, 2017

As the case of missing Madeleine McCann reaches its tenth anniversary, Olive Press editor JON CLARKE – the first journalist on the scene – analyses why her parents were not involved… and recalls the shocking way he ended up accused of being involved.

I RECEIVED the call at 7.15am from the Daily Mail foreign desk. It was a Friday morning as we approached deadline for one of the first editions of the Olive Press, then in its early fledgling stage.

The daughter of a pair of British doctors had gone missing on the Algarve the night before. Could I get over and investigate?

I was on the road half an hour later from Ronda, where we had our office, based out of a cowshed next to my home.

As a stringer for Associated Newspapers in Spain, I was long used to these early morning calls that invariably led to wild goose chases around the Iberian countryside…but this journey would lead to one of the biggest news stories in history.

It was a tale as sad as it was intriguing, and it would keep me in Praia da Luz where four-year-old Maddie went missing for the best part of a month.

It would lead to over a dozen stories in the Olive Press linked to sightings and possible culprits around Spain, with a number making the front pages in the UK.

There were claims that she was put on a ferry in Tarifa, claims she had been sold in Barcelona and even claims that she was living in a small village in Malaga province.

There was even the deluded former deputy chief superintendent, who trolled long and hard from his villa in Andalucia, convinced that the parents were guilty.

Finally, I would even find myself accused, more of which later.

Of course, the best whodunnits are always complex and far-fetched. But for a couple of loving parents to murder their daughter, bury and cover all traces in an hour while on holiday is stretching it just a bit too far.

But this didn’t stop the Portuguese police from charging them… and to this day, one notorious ex-detective continues to publish books claiming they were involved.

No care that Kate and Gerry McCann were educated doctors with not a blemish on their names.

That they were on holiday with two other families.

And that they had invited the world’s press to help in the search.

These are just some of the reasons why I am convinced the McCanns did not kill their daughter.

It is perhaps too obvious to point the finger at the parents.

After all, they say that in cases of child molesting and abducting, more than half the time it is family members to blame.

But accusing them had more to do with the ineptitude of the Portuguese police investigation, which didn’t bring in specialists to pick up vital strands of DNA evidence strewn around the flat, until THREE months later.

Then they seized the hire car of the McCann’s, found so-called ‘key, crucial DNA evidence on the back seat,’ and finally allowed them to have it back to drive around.

And, of course, they allowed dozens of local people, including one of the main suspects, Robert Murat – and even me – to wander around the crime scene.

Nor did they shut the border with Spain until the next day.

From the word go, they did not take this crime seriously.

And, in a way, who can blame them?

Praia da Luz sits in the sleepy south west corner of Europe, just short of Sagres. There had been no kidnappings, murders, or any serious crime reported for three years, as it turned out.

The Mark Warner holiday club that charged thousands to parents like the McCanns, did not even have security cameras, or secure premises.

There was no suggestion of putting families on higher floors and anyone could walk into the complex through a small side gate.

All the more perfect for a predatory paedophile who lived in the area.

I was completely shocked by the laid back manner the local authorities were dealing with the case that Friday morning.

When I arrived at about 11.45am I was firstly able to walk into the apartment, where I introduced myself to the McCanns and told them I would do everything I could to help.

The only reporter on the scene till late that evening – apart from Sky News reporter Kay Burley, who happened to be on holiday there – I spent time grilling neighbours, before noticing that a road crew was still digging up the street to lay sewage pipes literally right outside the apartment. The trench was nearly two metres deep and three men continued to shuffle around inside it.

Nobody had stopped them.

Incredibly, we had to wait till late afternoon before a couple of sniffer dogs had arrived, which was amateur to say the least, given that Maddie had been reported missing a full 18 hours earlier.

I am not going to be able to solve the mystery, but I am convinced she was snatched by a local paedophile, who had been watching the family’s movements.

It was coming to the end of their holiday. The fifth night they had put their children to bed and gone down to have dinner with their friends, all doctors bar one.

The apartment door was shut, but within easy reach and in full view of the road and the small village had apparently very little crime . . . until you scratched the surface.

While there had only been one murder of any substance for nearly three years in the area, there was, it turned out, a seedy underworld inhabited by numerous expatriates.

One woman told me how she had been the victim of an attempted snatch at midnight in nearby Lagos a month earlier. A long term English couple, who lived in a nearby hamlet, told me there were ‘half a dozen’ paedophiles living there alone.

One of these is still being sought.

It was sketchy and unsubstantiated, but there was no doubt – as in any place where northern European expatriates drift in their hundreds – there were a number of bad eggs among them.

Then, there was the Russian connection. Murat’s friend Sergei, a handsome young man, who masqueraded as an estate agent and had a number of connections to boats.

I discovered he worked out of a small office in Lagos, where the police had been the day before to find he had suspiciously just wiped his computer clean.

He refused to comment, but I discovered that he and Murat, who lived in direct sight of the Maddie apartment, allegedly talked a number of times within half an hour of the girl going missing.

While he was never charged, and Murat was later exonerated, it summed up the sense of paranoia that everyone felt in the resort that month.

Whatever happened I am sure the McCanns could not have done it.

Much has been made of the missing hour-and-a-half window between 7pm and 8.30pm on May 3, between Madeleine being put to bed and the parents coming down to dinner.

While Gerry was seen playing tennis, Kate was apparently in the flat . . . she must be guilty then? Not really. She was probably relaxing, having a bath, putting on her make up for the evening.

One Portuguese tabloid claimed Kate had killed Maddie and then hid the body in the fridge of their apartment before ‘passing it through various locations’ and finally moving it in a hire car, perhaps on a ‘suspicious’ trip to Huelva three weeks later.

But given that the apartment fridges are tiny, they would have had to chop her up first. Would they have then calmly sat at dinner with their friends at 8.30pm, showing no sign of a struggle or the anguish of murdering their daughter to their pals?

If they had killed Madeleine and then somehow driven her body away in the tiny time scale, they would have needed to have gone more than 25 miles – the distance from the resort sniffer dogs and police searched.

That would mean driving for at least half an hour on the windy backroads inland from the Algarve. They did not know the back roads, nor a good spot to hide the body. How would they have hidden the body? Using a shovel? Hold on, would not there then be a shop somewhere that sold them a shovel? Is anyone still missing a shovel? If so, please call the Olive Press newsdesk.

It is all so far fetched it is quite ridiculous. And then I got accused of being involved!!!

It came after I inadvertently found myself interviewing a former nightclub bouncer in Huelva, who claimed he know who snatched Maddie.

A huge Angolan chap, he told me she had been taken on order and was now, most likely, in America.

We double checked his credentials, ran it past Maddie’s family and published a carefully worded and, I believe, sensitive piece, which then of course got picked up by the Sun to be splashed on its front page. Not so sensitively.

And all hell broke loose.

Within a week there was a 5,000-word essay from an anti-McCann ‘troll’ named Tony Bennett, a solicitor, who was later found guilty of contempt of court over his repeated claims that the parents were guilty.

In his article, still online, ‘Jon Clarke’s role in Maddie in US claim’, he made numerous wild accusations about me and my integrity, named my wife and children and even where I lived.

He accused me of lying about the case, and crucially claimed I could not have got to Praia da Luz so quickly on the day after her disappearance.

He suggested I was actually staying there.

More alarmingly, it emerged, he had close connections to the aforementioned former UK police chief, who is still based in Andalucia.

When I went to confront this ex-copper, who I vaguely knew, he refused to back down and thrust me a pamphlet entitled ‘What Really Happened to Madeleine?’, which gave 60 reasons insisting she was not abducted.

It’s fair to say we do not see eye to eye, but he is sadly one of millions of people around the world who still think the McCanns are guilty.

One thing for sure, it made me think long and hard about doing my job and how evil and pernicious the internet and its many trolls can be.

I doubt the case will ever be solved, but I am certain the parents were not involved.

And nor, should I add, was I.

http://www.theolivepress.es/spain-news/2017/05/11/madeleine-mccann-olive-press-editor-talks-first-journalist-scene-10th-anniversary-disappearance/

[The Olive Press is a campaigning, community newspaper representing the huge and growing expatriate community in southern Spain]

Old Olive get's in everywhere don't she?

The last family picture of Madeleine McCann

Steve Bird and David Brown in Praia da Luz and Adam Fresco
May 24, 2007

It is an ordinary picture of a family enjoying a holiday abroad together. A father sits next to his two daughters on the edge of a swimming pool, the children wearing hats to protect them from the sun.

But for Kate and Gerry McCann it is the last picture they have of their daughter Madeleine, who was snatched from her bed less than eight hours later.

The picture was taken by Madeleine's mother Kate, 38, on her own camera in the holiday resort of Praia da Luz, Portugal, where they were staying.

It shows Madeleine's father smiling, wearing sunglasses and looking straight at the camera proudly sitting with his two young daughters by his side.

Next to him in an orange top is his two-year-old daughter Amelie who is a twin with brother Sean.

Beside her is her big sister Madeleine, who was then three but looking forward to her fourth birthday at the end of the family holiday.

Madeleine is shown smiling, wearing a pink smock top, white shorts and a sun hat.

The picture was taken at 2.29pm on May 3 - Mrs McCann’s camera clock is one hour out so the display reads 1.29pm.

Later that evening, before 10pm, Madeleine disappeared.

She had been sleeping in the family's holiday apartment next to the twins, when she was snatched.

Mr and Mrs McCann were just yards away at the time having dinner and her disappearance has been publicised around the world, but despite an extraordinary campaign to make her image known across Europe there has been no news of her whereabouts for three weeks.

Mr and Mrs McCann, backed by an army of friends and family, remain convinced that Madeleine is alive, 22 days after she disappeared, but they have revealed that they are growing increasingly frustrated with the failure of Portuguese police to find their daughter.

It is the first time that the parents have expressed concerns about the way detectives in the Algarve are handling the case.

A source close to the couple, both 38 and from Rothley in Leicestershire, said: "They are getting concerned and frustrated at the apparent slowness of the Portuguese investigation."

It is understood their main concern is that Portuguese police have to conduct their inquiries in secret, have abandoned the search and that detectives have not issued a high-profile appeal for help in tracing the girl.

Instead Mr and Mrs McCann have had to spearhead their own campaign to ensure the public is aware of the hunt for Madeleine, a campaign they plan to promote by visiting various European countries.

"Kate and Gerry are increasingly frustrated and they are considering how they can move things forward themselves," the source continued. "It's fair to say that they are frustrated with the Portuguese system and the many delays it causes. They want to do positive things in their search for Madeleine.

"They feel that some processes are taking a very long time and they are not being informed fully by the police of any developments."

It is thought that the couple have been irritated by discovering more about the investigation from newspapers and television rather than from senior detectives in the case.

"The British police have been great, but even they are not in the loop," he continued. "At every stage throughout this the couple have been putting their own questions and concerns to British police and in turn to Portuguese authorities.

"While they remain content with the overall thrust of the investigation they do at times hope that their questions and concerns are addressed more quickly.

"They fully comprehend the restrictions that the Portuguese legal system places on everyone involved in this but naturally as parents who want their little girl back some of the delays that are occurring are frustrating.

John McCann, Madeleine's uncle, said: "Obviously if Madeleine is still not back we are very disappointed. I will not go as far as to say frustrated, but disappointed.

"It is important that the authorities are going to explore more avenues and focus resources very much on sightings and other information that is reported.

"Our attitude remains exactly the same. We remain absolutely determined to explore all ways to get Madeleine back. That will focus on the criminal investigation but we have to, as a family, be open to other ways. We have to take advice from the professionals."

Meanwhile Manuel Neto Quintas, the Catholic bishop of the Algarve, had offered to become a go-between with any kidnapper. He offered to make himself available if Madeleine's abductor chose to contact him.

The parents also held an informal discussion today with John Buck, the British Ambassador to Portugal, consular officials and British police. Madeleine's disappearance is expected to form the centrepiece of events to mark International Missing Children's Day tomorrow.

Timesonline

My ten years of looking for Madeleine: how the McCann case has dominated my life

• Martin Brunt, Sky News Crime Correspondent
  

2 May 2017


I know so much about the story of Madeleine McCann, the heartbreakingly little girl who vanished into thin air.
In the ten years since she disappeared I’ve spoken to her parents, their friends, the heads of Scotland Yard and the Portuguese police, private investigators, Government ministers and diplomats, witnesses and suspects, the family’s supporters and their trolls.

In the resort where she went missing I’ve chatted for many hours with residents, expats, taxi drivers, waiters and bar owners. A lot of bar owners.

But what do I really know? What do I know about the only thing that matters, what happened to three-year-old Madeleine after her parents left her and her two-year-old twin siblings Sean and Amelie sleeping in their rented holiday apartment in Praia da Luz on a breezy, late Spring night 10 years ago on Wednesday?


The answer, of course, is nothing. There are theories galore and wild speculation, but for all the time and money spent by police, journalists and armchair detectives, nobody has unearthed the slightest proof to explain her fate. For crime reporters, as an unsolved case it stands alone.

There have been two Portuguese police investigations and Scotland Yard has spent more than £11 million since it began its own inquiry in 2011. In six years the British detectives identified 600 ‘potentially significant’ individuals, all of whom have been ruled out. They have one significant line of enquiry which may or may not provide an answer.

And that’s why I’m sitting here in an editing room, more baffled and fascinated by the story than I was 10 years ago, putting the final touches to a TV documentary that hopes to shed some light, at least on what’s happened since.

‘Madeleine.’ That’s all I have to say to colleagues, friends or family who ask me what I’m working on. I don’t even have to say her surname for them to understand what’s keeping me busy. By her first name, she is so well known as the little girl at the heart of an enduring mystery.

I’ve been back to Praia da Luz 20 times or more and have struck up friendships with several people. They greet me warmly enough, but they don’t like why I’m there. I don’t think there’s a word for the look on their faces, a mixture of smile and scowl.

In the absence of facts there’s a vacuum filled by speculation and opinion, more often than not tinged with a lack of sympathy for her parents. That is especially true in Portugal, where I’ve seldom met anyone who cannot get over the hurdle of Kate and Gerry McCann leaving their three  asleep while they dined with friends across the holiday complex. Kate McCann has described tomorrow’s anniversary as ‘a horrible marker of time, stolen time’.

Nobody can beat up the parents for leaving the children more than the couple do themselves. Long ago they acknowledged they made a mistake, one they have to wake up to each morning.

Yet, the level of hostility the McCann family continues to attract, mainly on on social media, is dreadful - heaping more misery on their blighted lives. A recent posting on a Facebook page which is devoted to the theory that Madeleine’s body is buried in Praia da Luz carried an apparent photograph of her brother Sean, attributing to him a ‘comment’ in which he criticises his parents.

One of those behind the posting told me he had contacted Sean’s school in a bizarre attempt to enlist its help in a campaign to retrieve Madeleine’s body. I knew Scotland Yard was aware of the activity, but they appeared to have done nothing about it. I was told it was something they did not want to discuss with me.


Two months ago someone posted an apparent photograph of the family having lunch in a restaurant. While they were still eating, the picture was put on Twitter, followed by a map and directions to the restaurant along with many vile comments such as ‘Are the kids with them or are they also home alone?’ And ‘Shame they didn’t choke.’ One poster suggested spitting in their food, another wanted to pour beer over them.

As far as I know, none of the McCanns has ever been physically attacked, but I’ve learned as well as anyone the human impact social media activity can have.

Three years ago Leicestershire police were sent a dossier of the online anti-McCann hostility, which included death threats. After six months they decided to take no action against anyone.

I confronted one of the McCann critics, Brenda Leyland, a woman who had Tweeted many nasty comments. She invited me into her home for a chat, though she didn’t want to be interviewed formally. Four days later she took her own life.
In an interview for our documentary the former Home Secretary Alan Johnson said he couldn’t understand why police refused to investigate the McCann trolls.

The former head of the Child Exploitation and Online Protection centre (CEOP), Jim Gamble, described the thousands of online attacks as “a legacy of bile” that would always be there on the Internet to confront Madeleine’s younger twin brother and sister.

We reveal in the documentary details of a secret report Mr Johnson commissioned from CEOP in 2009 to explore the possibility of Scotland Yard getting involved. It led to the Metropolitan Police reviewing the case in 2011 and then launching their own full investigation two years later.

The document exposes the early failures of the first Portuguese investigation and the chaos added by many British agencies competing to help. They included the Association of Chief Police Officers, the National Policing Improvement Agency, the Serious Organised Crime Agency, the Crown Prosecution Service and others. It led to the Portuguese authorities  accusing Britain of acting like “a colonial power.”

In turn, says the leaked report, it lead to growing distrust between the McCanns and both Portuguese and UK police. So much so, that when the McCanns later hired a series of private investigators, the couple refused to share the information that was gathered with either force.

We’ve also spoken to former detective Colin Sutton, who was in the running to head the Scotland Yard investigation before he retired. He says that a senior officer rang and warned him that if he took on the case he would not be able to do everything he wished. He interpreted that as a ban on any formal interview with the McCanns.

Mr Sutton says that if Scotland Yard really did intend to “re-analyse and re-assess everything, accept nothing”, as Det Chief Insp Andy Redwood told BBC Crimewatch in 2013, it should have interviewed the McCanns under caution at the start, if only to rule them out. Mr Sutton says that from the beginning they did accept something, the abduction theory.


The Metropolitan Police has confirmed it didn’t formally interview the McCanns because it was satisfied the couple had been ruled out by the initial Portuguese investigation.

Without that interview, says Mr Sutton, the Scotland Yard inquiry was flawed from the start and so the McCanns have still not had the “proper” investigation Alan Johnson promised them.



The growing distrust between the McCanns and police was so bad that when the McCanns later hired private investigators, they refused to share the information gathered



The 10th anniversary has been an excuse for me to contact my fellow hacks who spent many weeks in Praia da Luz in the summer of 2007 to see if they have learned anything more than me.

So far, despite recent headlines about breakthroughs and new leads, they haven’t. Over the years we have all tried very hard to beat each other to exclusives, sometimes going to extraordinary lengths. I remember turning up one January to discover that three of my rivals had spent Christmas in Praia da Luz and shared a lonely festive lunch in the dimly-lit Fortaleza restaurant with the sound of freezing waves crashing on the rocks below.

It was a reminder that Madeleine’s disappearance has played such a big part in our lives and, as long as it remained a mystery, we couldn’t let it go.



There’s talk of a reporters’ reunion, but that would hardly be appropriate. Now, Madeleine’s safe return, wouldn’t that be a cause for celebration for us all?

Searching For Madeleine is on Sky 1 on Tuesday, 2 May at 10pm, and on Sky News on Wednesday, 3 May at 8pm



https://www.telegraph.co.uk/men/thinking-man/ten-years-looking-madeleine-mccann-case-has-dominated-life/

Madeleine McCann's parents back new rules to ban "awful and upsetting" trolls criticising them for leaving three-year-old alone

By
Stephen JonesDeputy News Editor

• 16:03, 23 AUG 2017
  
• Updated16:12, 23 AUG 2017
  

Madeleine McCann's parents are calling for more to be done to stop internet trolls plaguing them with vile abuse.
Kate and Gerry have approved a set of rules to help curb online hatred which they say is "so awful and upsetting".

According to research, they are targeted by 150 vile tweets every day - much of which blames the couple for being responsible for their daughter's disappearance.

Mum Kate has described the abuse as "shocking, striking and quite hard to get your head round".


The research has also discovered that most of the abuse is written by women.

The McCanns revealed recently their battle to shield their 12-year-old old twins Sean and Amelie from the abuse - which is both cruel, false and libellous, but continues despite them not being active on social media personally themselves.

Heart doctor Gerry, 49, explained: "We have told them that people are writing things that are simply just untrue and they need to be aware of that. People just need to think twice before what they write."

The McCanns are now urging their supporters not to post anything that will encourage tormentors.

Their move comes as the Government launches a crackdown on online abusers; the CPS has revised its guidelines and wants online abuse to be treated as seriously as abuse made face-to-face.

Kate and Gerry from Rothley, Leicestershire, are backing the new 'Rules of the Road' on the official Find Madeleine Campaign website - which promotes positive, helpful comments and now wants trolling banned.

A friend of the couple who runs the associated Facebook page endorsed by them posted: "Please do not feed trolls. Trolls feed on havoc and causing chaos. If we do not feed them they will starve for attention and hopefully spread their hate someplace else."

The rules on their campaign page state:

• Do not use obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy or excessively violent language
  
• Do not harass, insult, taunt, provoke, demean or personally attack other people on the page. Be friendly even if others are not
  
• Do not ask questions about the investigation. We will not post investigation information on an open page
  
• Please don't post your opinion on leaving children alone. Doing so will result in you being banned. No questions asked.
  

At the top of the page it states:

"We do not ban on a whim, but anyone criticising Madeleine or her family in any way, will be banned. This is not a place for you to post your negative opinions about the McCann family.

"We are not a debate page, nor a place to analyse the investigation. This is a support and information page for Madeleine's family and the Official Find Madeleine Campaign.

"If you feel these rules are something you cannot abide by, please unlike the page."

The then three-year-old Maddie was snatched from her hotel room in Praia da Luz, Portugal, in May 2007 - and the 10-year-hunt for her whereabouts is widely expected to end this year.

She would be aged 14 now.

In a TV interview in May this year to mark the decade apart from their daughter, Kate said the abuse has been "shocking".
She asked: "Why would someone in a position of ignorance write that, add to someone's upset?


"It is so awful and upsetting and it becomes more of a talking point."

Psychologist Dr John Synott, who carried out the study into the online abuse, said: "Most trolling behaviour has a lifespan of a couple of days.

"This has gone on for ten years, and you cannot see it ever ending. That is the legacy of the McCann case.

"In the physical world there are repercussions. You couldn't get away with saying these things in the street. But in the virtual world there are no consequences."

He called for action against the trolls to be taken - including the right to make abusive comments anonymously via pseudonyms.

The couple are reported in MailOnline to be anxiously waiting to find out if Operation Grange, the £12million inquiry into Maddie's disappearance, will be extended with a new cash boost in October.

Two months ago Scotland Yard announced their "investigation is continuing with focus and determination" - but as yet no new significant clues have been unearthed.

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/madeleine-mccanns-parents-back-new-11040069
.................

Bit of a poser wouldn't you say?

Whilst I totally agree with the basis of this report, it is beyond doubt wrong for anyone, anonymous or otherwise, to openly abuse or threaten an individual or individuals - no matter what the subject under discussion, I feel the McCanns are using that simple fact to their advantage.  Fair enough some might say but their own precarious position should be taken into account when dishing out criticism about the actions of others.

Moving on .... if you're going to introduce an anti-trolling law or code of practice, firstly you need to define the word troll so there is no disparity.  At the moment the word comprises anyone with an opinion contra to the prescribed remit dictated by the so-called victim.  Secondly you seriously need to practice what you preach.  The McCanns for example repeatedly stress that they don't use or take notice of social media, yet they appear to be totally aware of what's being said about them and the case of their missing daughter.  So much so, they are in fear of their twins future - still, maybe they have their own internet trollers (definition:  ones who troll) who monitor the internet and report back.

If that were me, I can say without fear of contradiction, my priority would be finding the truth about my missing 'abducted' daughter - not worrying about what people say.  They say themselves that people are talking about things they know nothing about so why does it worry them so much?  What people say is not affecting what they do in any way (are they doing anything?), that's tantamount to saying Dr Amaral's book affected their 'search'.

Much like their stance on the media issue, you can't have only positive coverage without negative coverage.  Any high profile personality will tell the same - indeed many use the negative publicity to their advantage.

Now, there's a thought .

Why would anyone criticise Madeleine?  And how dare anyone express an opinion about people who leave their children alone; especially those that go wining and dining with their friends for 5 consecutive evenings, leave the door unlocked, and as a consequence one of them is "kidnapped". And then solicit money from members of the public.

wallad wrote:Why would anyone criticise Madeleine?  And how dare anyone express an opinion about people who leave their children alone; especially those that go wining and dining with their friends for 5 consecutive evenings, leave the door unlocked, and as a consequence one of them is "kidnapped". And then solicit money from members of the public.

That's the thing isn't it. They invite you into their living room and then complain when you start picking holes in their domestic arrangements.

Start kicking-off and folk become even more curious - it's human nature.

Culture

2 June 2011
Madeleine

Headlines, hate mail and Kate McCann.

One May afternoon in 2007 in Praia da Luz, Portugal, barely 48 hours before their daughter Madeleine disappeared, Kate and Gerry McCann took their three young children down to the beach. It began to rain, and the children were grumpy, but the promise of an ice cream worked its magic.
Kate and the kids sat on a bench as Gerry went over to the shop, about 25 feet away. When he called to Kate to come and give him a hand with the five ice creams, she was "momentarily torn. Would the children be OK on the bench while I nipped over? I hurried across, watching them all the time."

Life as a parent, as anyone with children knows, is crammed with such split-second judgements and (sometimes) misjudgements, so when the McCanns' story hit the press just a couple of days after that afternoon ice cream, parents all over the world caught their breath, recognising the situation. Would we have chosen to eat dinner while our children slept, unguarded, a matter of yards away? Some of us would, some of us wouldn't, but I doubt there is a parent on this earth who hasn't negotiated with their child's safety in similar ways at one time or another.

Kate McCann says her main motive in writing Madeleine was to "give an account of the truth". Given how much false information has been circulated about the family, this impulse to exert a little control excites my full sympathy. One night, exhausted and sad, she switched
on the TV for light relief, only to see a picture of her daughter with the headline "She's dead" as the following day's newspapers were previewed. The McCanns often felt that they were kept in the dark by the police, so, for all she knew, a body could have been found - but time and again, she and Gerry were forced to pick their battles, to shrug off the lorryloads of critical comment, because anything that impeded the search for their daughter had to be ignored.

Much of the comment certainly has been negative. Even now, I am not sure I understand how the McCanns came to be considered as arguidos (named suspects). Although I imagine that the Portuguese police would offer a different version of some of the events described here, no UK official believed that the McCanns were in any way responsible for their daughter's disappearance. That didn't stop the headlines and the hate mail, however, so it seems both understandable that Kate should want to take this opportunity to set the record straight and fair that she should do so.

Yet the book clearly has another reason for existing: Kate wrote it because she knew that there was a market for it. The search for Mad­eleine can continue only if there is money, and all royalties go to the fund set up in her name. With no evidence that their daughter is dead, the McCanns are determined to go on looking. Meanwhile, it's a particularly gruesome limbo they are condemned to inhabit. Kate depicts it here with chilling precision.

Before tragedy struck, this was an ordinary family. Kate tells of her happy Catholic childhood in Liverpool, where her grandad had been "chief clerk for a firm importing nuts and dried fruits". She recalls midnight feasts of pickled onion crisps and dancing to Seventies disco hits. Then came Gerry, youngest in a "boisterous" family of five, growing up in a one-bedroom tenement in Govan. Both he and Kate did well at school and went on to study medicine, she at Dundee and he at Glasgow - which is where, as junior doctors, they met.

These were clearly hard-working and driven young people. Even so, their early married years were tough. There was the hard graft of moving between jobs as he trained in cardiology. She specialised as an anaesthetist, but, wanting more sociable hours, eventually opted to be a GP. Then there was the trying - and failing - to conceive a child. I was startled to read that all three McCann children were IVF babies. Mad­eleine, their first, arrived after many attempts. "Suddenly," Kate writes, "your world revolves around this little bundle, and you don't mind in the slightest."

Madeleine is crammed with clichés of this kind, but I confess that, far from bothering me, they drew me in. Kate McCann is not a writer and makes no claims to be one - the power of her book lies in its straightforward, chatty ordinariness. It is hard, too, not to admire its complete lack of self-pity, bolstered by the McCanns' uncomplicated though sorely tested religious faith. The agony lies in the small, casual detail.

Take how, when friends first suggested a spring holiday in the Algarve, Kate wasn't keen. It seemed like a lot of effort, with three children who were so small - all that equipment to lug around. But, not wanting to spoil things, she came round to the idea. "It was the first in a series of apparently minor decisions I'd give anything to change now."

Another factor was how and where they put their children down to sleep at the resort. The McCanns' apartment was on a corner with easy access from the street. It is now considered likely that someone was keeping an eye on their comings and goings. And it wasn't until a whole year later, when finally they were given access to the police files, that Kate discovered that anyone checking the book at reception would have seen a note stating that the McCann party wished to eat in the tapas restaurant every night because they were leaving young children alone in the apartments and needed to be able to check on them easily.

The story of how Madeleine went missing need not be repeated here, but the book gives us what the press never could: a sense of the misery of that first night and those that followed. The slow breaking of dawn, followed by the sickening job of telling the news to relatives in the UK. Kate's inability to stop banging and bruising her fists on the metal railings of the veranda, "trying to expel the intolerable pain inside me". Gerry breaking down and "roaring like a bull".

The McCanns were soon, and wisely, given access to a trauma specialist, who immediately reassured the couple that they seemed like model parents. "I cannot overstate how much such kind reassurance meant to us at that moment," Kate writes. He explained to them the importance of taking control little by little, "starting with tiny actions as simple as making ourselves a cup of tea".

In fact, kindness and forgiveness - being gentle with yourself in the face of unrelenting shock - is the core, though perhaps unwitting, theme of Kate McCann's book. Her husband was able to shut off his pain for hours at a time in order to deal with the world - something that she admits she occasionally resented. With touching self-awareness, she describes how she could not do the same. She was unable to settle to anything that did not relate directly to finding Madeleine: "I could not even sit down unless it was for a purpose, to eat or to work at the computer."

She conjures a heartbreaking image of the bereft mother, condemned to pace up and down eternally, sniffing for her young. It was two years before she could listen to music or watch television, or allow herself to take pleasure in anything at all without feeling that she was letting her daughter down.

Hugging friends whom she hadn't seen since before Madeleine disappeared, she would find she could "hardly bear to let go", because she knew that the moment she stepped back and saw their faces, she would be reminded of "days spent together with Madeleine". She also says candidly that her sex life with Gerry suffered and that she finally took "a cognitive approach" to getting it back on track.

Years later, even beginning to feel more normal brings its own problems. She worries about what people will think if they see her speaking crossly to her other children in public. Or that, if "people saw me smile or laugh, they'd think it inappropriate". She has a fear that if anyone spots her shopping in Marks & Spencer, they will frown on her "for not going somewhere cheaper like Aldi and putting the pennies saved into Madeleine's fund".

If Kate McCann doesn't feel she deserves to be forgiven, it is striking nevertheless that this is a boldly empathetic and forgiving book. She writes without bitterness about the people whose correspondence goes straight into the "nutty box".

As doctors, she and Gerry have some professional experience of dealing with mental illness, and are not surprised that their tragedy attracts such attention - "within days of Madeleine's disappearance, several people with major psychiatric problems made their way over to Praia da Luz". And although the trauma specialist had warned them that they would lose some good friends (and they did), she is grateful for the "quiet majority". Astonishingly, perhaps, she still believes that "most human beings are inherently good".

Even though I am sure there is a readership for Madeleine, many others will feel free to discuss and comment on the book without having read it. I would urge them to be as kind and non-judgemental as Kate McCann has been. Although she and Gerry come across as remarkably strong - clearly their love for their two remaining children, together with the search for Madeleine, has kept them going - I don't think anyone should underestimate how vulnerable they are.

To endure tragedy of this sort, followed by relentless press attention, leaves you raw, your skin feeling stripped right off. One night almost a year after they lost Madeleine, the couple woke in the night in Leicester to find the whole room shaking. "With the occasional death threat turning up in our morning mail, it is perhaps not surprising that our first instinct was to think we were being attacked."

Thankfully the "attack" turned out to be an earth tremor. You hope for the McCanns' sake that, whether or not they ever discover what happened to their daughter, the agonising rawness - like the tremor - will eventually subside to nothing.

https://www.newstatesman.com/books/2011/05/kate-mccann-madeleine-children

Move over Enid Blyton - there's some serious competition on the block!  Written in 2011?  Clearly this New Statesperson doesn't keep abreast of the times.  What a load of old mawkish treacle.

McCanns may sue over claims they killed Madeleine

By SAM GREENHILL

Last updated at 23:40 23 August 2007

Kate and Gerry McCann are considering legal action to stem the endless tide of smears against themselves and their friends in the Portuguese media.

They have suffered a hurtful whispering campaign implying they or members of the group they dined with on the night their four-year-old daughter Madeleine disappeared had been involved in her murder or abduction.

The couple have endured the slurs with dignity, but now they appear to be ready to fight back.

And one particular target appears to have fallen into their sights - glamorous Portuguese TV reporter Sandra Felgueiras.

For the Portuguese people, the blonde broadcaster has become the face of the Madeleine story, bringing live updates to their living rooms on national television station RTP.

But the McCanns are incensed over at least one live broadcast by Miss Felgueiras, 30, in which she is said to have implied Mrs McCann could have murdered her own daughter.

Now the McCanns are considering taking libel action under Portuguese human rights laws protecting the right to a 'good name', said a friend.

In the week leading up to the 100-day anniversary of Madeleine's disappearance, there was a flurry of media reports based on the police theory that the little girl died the night she vanished.

Some implied that the McCanns or their friends, with whom they were dining at the Mark Warner resort in Praia da Luz, were somehow involved in her disappearance.

A source close to the McCanns said: "This is about trying to stop lurid accusations being aired. She [Felgueiras] was outrageous that week in the run-up to the 100 days. She really was outrageous."

The source claimed Miss Felgueiras's report 'encouraged a media frenzy', adding: 'Both the McCanns are hard-working, law abiding professionals. It is very important to protect their reputation.'

The exact wording of Miss Felgueiras's live report is unknown, because nobody has specified which one of many is at issue.

Miss Felgueiras said last night she had no idea which report it might be and denied ever branding either of the McCanns a 'murderer'.

She said: "I never said that and I never insinuated anything like that. I never in my life put anyone under suspicion but just told viewers that police are investigating the possibility that Madeleine has died and that it is murder or an accident.

"I'm absolutely sure that everything I said was only what the police were telling us concerning this new lead of the investigation.

"If the McCanns presume that this is an accusation against them, then that is their assumption, not mine. My conscience is completely clear."

Miss Felgueiras, who has personally interviewed the McCanns on several occasions, added: "I am the most moderate reporter. Sometimes other channels talk about things that I refuse to talk about. I even made a live report saying everybody is innocent until they go to court.

"Also I never talk about Kate and Gerry in an isolated way, I always talk about the couple. So it's very strange to be accused of saying Kate did something."

The McCanns and their friends have been battling adverse publicity for the past three weeks following a series of leaks from Portuguese police to the local media.

Fuelled by an absence of clues as to what really happened to Madeleine, Portuguese newspapers have made allegations as offensive as they are unlikely.

The McCanns have been accused of doping their children to get them to sleep, leaving them alone for hours on end while getting drunk, and of mounting a cover-up.

Their holiday friends have been accused of giving conflicting accounts of the evening, and one, Dr Russell O'Brien, was forced to defend himself against the hurtful and untrue suggestion that he was 'missing' at the time Madeleine vanished.

Mr McCann is set to talk for the first time about how becoming "household names' has taken its toll on his family.

He will travel to the Edinburgh International Television Festival this weekend where he has been invited to speak about the "double-edged sword" of launching such a wide public appeal to try to get his daughter back.

The campaign has so far failed to achieve a breakthrough, and the spotlight has turned on the parents, who have been upset by the "aggressive and intrusive" Portuguese paparrazi, said a source close to the McCanns.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-477214/McCanns-sue-claims-killed-Madeleine.html



Who put that ^^^ there!

Oh yes of course , it must be he ^^^ who put that there.

Former BBC man to speak for McCanns

Profile: Clarence Mitchell

The parents of Madeleine McCann today stepped up their campaign to maintain their innocence with the appointment of a media expert to act as their spokesman.

Clarence Mitchell, speaking outside Gerry and Kate McCann's home in Rothley, Leicestershire, confirmed he had resigned from a senior post in the civil service to handle the intense international press interest in the case of Madeleine, who vanished while on holiday with her family in Portugal.

Mr Mitchell, a former BBC reporter, spent a month with the family as the representative of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, during the summer.

Speaking with the couple at his side, Mr Mitchell said he had spent up to 14 hours a day with the couple and had never seen anything to suggest they had had anything to do with the four-year-old's disappearance.

"All I saw was a loving family that has been plunged into a dreadful situation - two parents trying to cope amidst their loss. To suggest that they somehow harmed Madeleine accidentally or otherwise is as ludicrous as it is nonsensical. Indeed, it would be laughable if it was not so serious," he said.

Mr Mitchell said he was "proud" to be able to help the McCanns deal with the pressure of the media interest.

The McCanns have been named by Portuguese detectives as official suspects.

Mr Mitchell said his job in the Cabinet Office as head of the media monitoring unit was "untenable" from the moment he accepted an invitation from the family, supported by their legal team and financial backers, to represent them.

"More importantly, I have [resigned] because I feel so strongly that they are innocent victims of a heinous crime that I am prepared to forego my career in government service to assist them."

He said the McCanns were happy to continue cooperating with the Portuguese authorities and that attention must return to finding Madeleine, who disappeared on May 3 from the family's holiday home in the Algarve resort of Praia de Luz while the parents dined nearby.

"The focus must now move away from the rampant, unfounded and inaccurate speculation of recent days, to return to the child at the very centre of this: Madeleine," he said.

Mr Mitchell said the family would like to appeal to the media to stop taking photographs of, or filming, the McCanns' younger children, two-year-old twins Sean and Amelie.

Mr Mitchell was reported to have been earning around £70,000 in his post at the Central Office of Information.

Later he told Sky News that his new job was being paid for by a "generous financial backer who wishes to remain anonymous". He was not receiving money from Mr or Mrs McCann or the Find Madeleine appeal.

As for accusations about DNA evidence against the McCanns, Mr Mitchell said that there "were wholly innocent explanations and Gerry and Kate will be able to explain everything if it gets to that stage. To suggest they harmed Madeleine is just plain daft."

During his time with the McCanns in the summer, Mr Mitchell spent most of the day with the family accompanying them on trips around the Algarve and to a number of countries to publicise the case.

Earlier, the Correio da Manha newspaper reported that Judge Pedro Daniel dos Anjos Frias had rejected a police request to have the McCanns brought back to Portugal for further questioning.

Instead Mrs McCann could be re-interviewed this week by British police acting on behalf of Portuguese authorities.

A UK police source said it would be "unusual" for British officers to carry out interviews on behalf of a foreign police force but stressed that "anything is possible" in a major inquiry. It is more common for officers from other countries to visit Britain to question witnesses or suspects in person with the assistance of the local force.

Sir Richard Branson has donated £100,000 towards the couple's legal costs, stating he "trusted them implicitly" and wanted them to have a fair trial if they were brought before a Portuguese court.

The Virgin boss confirmed that he had been in talks with other wealthy people to encourage them to contribute to a legal fund, and said at least one other anonymous donor had already been signed up.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2007/sep/18/ukcrime.marketingandpr

Hi Verdi,Clarence the Magician must be losing his touch"Cambridge Analytica" a "Bridge Too Far",even for the master of all Spin Meisters,"He lies with as many Teeth he has in his head" one Clarence,"Pinnocio" Mitchell?

Last seen with his Head buried into Operation Grange review case,which has cost the Metropolitan Police service to lose five very senior officers,retire,"Move On" to pastures new!
But where is DCI Simon(nodding head) Foy,on his amazing assumption,conclusion of the innocence of Kate, Gerry,"they were,where,where they were" on the night Madeleine disappeared,Cognitive dissonance time?
As anyone got the recorded video event involving Richard Bilton,Panorama Special,classic,"Churchill" moment?

McCann DNA evidence 'exaggerated'

Police images show the Algarve room after Madeleine disappeared

The parents of Madeleine McCann have accused police in Portugal of exaggerating DNA evidence before naming them suspects in her disappearance.

A UK forensic scientist had already warned DNA in their hire car was "inconclusive", it has been revealed.

His e-mail was in thousands of pages of evidence now been made public.

Madeleine vanished, aged three, on a holiday in the Algarve on 3 May 2007. Kate and Gerry McCann are no longer suspects in the case.

Lack of evidence
The papers, which also include photographs of the family's deserted apartment, make clear that the McCanns came under suspicion following a visit to Portugal by UK detectives last August.
Portuguese police cited DNA evidence as grounds for their suspicions.

Kate and Gerry McCann's spokesman, Clarence Mitchell, said police had told Mr McCann during interrogation that his missing daughter's DNA had been found in the boot of the car - hired 24 days after her disappearance.


The McCann's spokesman Clarence Mitchell says that the files will be investigated privately

The investigation papers show a sniffer dog detected the apparent odour of a body in their hire car and apartment, but tests on a sample from the car were inconclusive.

British forensic scientist John Lowe said the sample contained 15 out of 19 components of Madeleine's DNA which were not "unique to her".

Mr Mitchell told the BBC: "I can confirm in his interview the police put to Gerry as a matter of fact that DNA - Madeleine's DNA - had been found in the vehicle.

"You can see from the official report that wasn't the case. It was inconclusive at best.

"You have to ask yourself what the police were trying to achieve by overstating evidence they simply didn't have in that way to Gerry."

The police inquiry into her disappearance was wound up last month due to a lack of evidence.

The McCanns and a third British national, Robert Murat, were declared to be no longer formal suspects when the police closed the case. The McCanns and Mr Murat, 34, always strongly denied having had any involvement in what happened to Madeleine.

Madeleine went missing in May 2007 days before her fourth birthday

Lawyers for the McCanns, both 40, from Rothley, Leicestershire, were given access to the documents last week.

They are studying the papers for fresh leads that the couple's private detectives could follow up.

Mr Mitchell said: "One of the great frustrations for Kate and Gerry, through all this, was that they just didn't get any information from the Portuguese of any real note at all.

"Now there is a chance to analyse this, and if there's anything that needs priority action in terms of finding Madeleine.

"Such as was this area searched or not? Was there another sighting in a certain place, or not?

"All of that will be moved on quickly. But Kate and Gerry themselves are not fully aware of the mass of detail yet, they're waiting for the lawyers to tell them in due course."

Police questions
Some 20,000 pages of evidence were released on Monday to journalists who had made a formal request to prosecutors, including the BBC.

The sniffer dog's apparent detection of the odour of a body was followed by a second dog detecting what was thought to be blood in the same locations.

The BBC's Steve Kingstone said the documents showed an initial report from Britain's forensic science service saying the samples indicated some compatibility with the components of Madeleine's DNA.

However the laboratory did not draw firm conclusions and stressed that the samples contained the DNA of more than one person.

In an e-mail dated 3 September 2007, John Lowe of the major incidents team of the Forensic Science Service (FSS) said it was impossible to conclude whether the material taken from the car came from Madeleine.

The McCanns want to follow any leads that come from the police documents

The e-mail was translated into Portuguese the following day and four days later Portuguese detectives named the McCanns arguidos - formal suspects - citing DNA evidence as grounds for their suspicions.

In his message to Det Supt Stuart Prior, head of the British side of the inquiry, Mr Lowe said a sample from the boot of the McCanns' hire car, which they rented 24 days after Madeleine went missing, contained 15 out of 19 of her DNA components.


But he cautioned that this result - based on the controversial "low copy number" DNA analysis technique which uses very small samples - was "too complex for meaningful interpretation or inclusion".

The expert said the components of the missing girl's DNA profile were not unique to her - in fact some were present among FSS scientists, including himself.

"We cannot answer the question: is the match genuine, or is it a chance match," he wrote.

Subsequent interview transcripts reveal that Kate McCann was asked directly: "Did you have anything to do with the disappearance of your daughter?"

She refused to answer this and dozens of other questions, as was her legal right.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7541810.stm

Pet cremator is asked: Did you burn Madeleine McCann's body



By Caroline Gammell

12:01AM BST 21 Sep 2007

A convicted Dutch terrorist who runs a business cremating dead family pets was asked by Portuguese police last night if he had burned the body of Madeleine McCann.

Eef Hoos, 61, uses a site 20 miles from where the four-year-old disappeared. Officers believe Madeleine is dead and that her body has been destroyed.

Two detectives visited Mr Hoos at his run-down farm near Monchique. The property, which has a roundabout and swings in the garden, is marked by a turreted portcullis entrance and guarded by three Alsatians.

From there Mr Hoos operates Creon Starlight, which disposes of animals in huge outdoor ovens built in converted freight containers behind his red-roofed villa.

He said he was asked if a body could have been hidden in one of the dead animal carcasses, but said he told police that he checked everything that was burned.

"I have the names of the people and I see what's in the bags. The police want to see my list of clients," he said.

Mr Hoos said the police asked him if he had anything to do with Madeleine's disappearance.

"They asked if I had spoken with the parents of Madeleine McCann," he said. "They claimed they knew I had spoken to the parents, but it's not true.

"I know there are lots of paedophiles in the area where Madeleine went missing."

He said he told the police he was having an eye operation on May 3, the day Madeleine disappeared.

Two weeks ago, he said, helicopters had hovered above his house for two hours.

Mr Hoos, white-haired and bespectacled, said the police had told him to report to Portimao police station on Monday morning because of his notorious reputation.

He spent seven years in jail in Holland after a series of bomb attacks in 1988, in which one person was seriously injured.

"I blew up a police office, it was political," he said.

Mr Hoos's furnace was shut down in February after neighbours complained about the smell. He still carries out incinerations at a site in Lisbon.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1563735/Pet-cremator-is-asked-Did-you-burn-Madeleine-McCanns-body.html

How macabre, it curdles the blood. There certainly was a blitz of media coverage in August/September 2007, at the time the spotlight turned on the McCanns.

NOTE: For those who still believe the Telegraph published a report on Madeleine'es disappearance at 12:01 on 4th May 2007 - please take note of the time of this particular article.

A"Wall of Silence" just like a"Pact of Silence" that Doctor David Payne insisted,"It was No One Else's Business",especially when conducting, ERRR interviews to DCI 4078 Ivor Messiah,do you have anything to say on the disappearance of Madeleine McCann,reply from (DP), Yes,"but I don't think this is the right forum", Okay end of Interview!

So if you thought Leicestershire Police force were acting in an independent manner,why did a "serving Police Officer" decide to terminate an interview with Doctor David Payne,who told in his statements to Portugal PJ Officers,he had last seen Madeleine McCann,"Alive and Well", dressed like Three little Angels" on the bed in apartment 5a on 3rd May 2007 at 18.30pm?

Did you Not seek the okay from Gerald to assist with the"Bathing of the children",helping Kate out for30 seconds err minutes?

did something happen at"Bathtime",eh Dave,"it's no One else's business"?

Clarence Mitchell to the rescue..

Madeleine McCann 'died from overdose'

By Gary Cleland

7:00AM BST 14 Sep 2007

Madeleine McCann died from an overdose of sleeping tablets, reports in a French newspaper claimed yesterday.

Guilhem Battut, an investigative reporter for the French tabloid France Soir, said Portuguese police had given prosecutors a file detailing how they thought Madeleine had died.

Battut - an experienced journalist who has worked on a number of major inquiries - claims police believe that evidence found in the McCanns' hire car will "prove that the little girl had ingested medicines, without doubt sleeping pills, in large quantities".

A source at the newspaper claimed: "We are not simply repeating rumours carried in other papers. This is not a theory, but a fact contained in hard evidence in the hands of the Portuguese authorities.

"It is all very well putting theories and opinions forward, but in the end this case will be decided on evidence. As journalists, we have been trying to establish what evidence is available."

DNA evidence which has reportedly been found in the hire car includes hair, blood and bodily fluids which match Madeleine's.

Police are said to want to examine the vehicle again. It is currently being kept in a safe place by the family who are considering having their own tests carried out on it as they strive to prove their innocence.

Portuguese police are said to be drawing up a list of 40 new questions that they want to put to Mrs McCann. But British forensic experts expressed doubts over the claim.

Alan Baker, of the independent forensic science organisation Bericon, said: "These samples are likely to be far from ideal. If it is just a smear or dried deposit you could detect the drug but not how much."

Last night friends of the family dismissed the latest speculation. Gerry McCann reportedly told a friend: "There are large craters in every one of these theories, in these ludicrous accusations.'

"As far as Kate and I are concerned there is no evidence to suggest that Madeleine is dead. We are 100 per cent together on this, not one grain of suspicion about each other."

A close friend of Mrs McCann's said: "She is a gentle mother who loves her children very much.''

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1563090/Madeleine-McCann-died-from-overdose.html

Convince me that the master media manipulator wasn't behind this story. Good publicity v. Bad publicity - all publicity is good!

willowthewisp wrote:A"Wall of Silence" just like a"Pact of Silence" that Doctor David Payne insisted,"It was No One Else's Business",especially when conducting, ERRR interviews to DCI 4078 Ivor Messiah,do you have anything to say on the disappearance of Madeleine McCann,reply from (DP), Yes,"but I don't think this is the right forum", Okay end of Interview!

So if you thought Leicestershire Police force were acting in an independent manner,why did a "serving Police Officer" decide to terminate an interview with Doctor David Payne,who told in his statements to Portugal PJ Officers,he had last seen Madeleine McCann,"Alive and Well", dressed like Three little Angels" on the bed in apartment 5a on 3rd May 2007 at 18.30pm?

Did you Not seek the okay from Gerald to assist with the"Bathing of the children",helping Kate out for30 seconds err minutes?

did something happen at"Bathtime",eh Dave,"it's no One else's business"?

Hi Verdi,there are at least,"Three" occasions,where,"Bathing" has been brought into a subject.

(1) When Madeleine, shaun cried,Wednesday,like when they cried being tired for Bed or"Bathtime"?

(2) The Gasper statements,Gerry,David,how the Gaspers then changed their routine on"Bathing"and who was to carry it out.

(3) Doctor Payne asking,"Gerald" if it was Okay to help Kate at "Bathtime" for thirty seconds or minutes,dressed in a Towel,which Dave didn't notice?

The little trunks of information came from the"Horses Mouth"voluntary.
I maybe stretching credibility on this"Thesis" but isn't it stated they all liked to be present around children's ablutions times?

I guess it's only coincidence that this Express front page splash exposes fantasist Heather McCartney nee Mills, directly below the McCanns contrived apology.

Don't mention the half million £out of court settlement.

Clarence Mitchell, the face behind the media campaign - a force to reckon with by any other name.

We feel the McCann's pain as well

THE wife of Portuguese detective Goncalo Amaral has denied they are locked in a personal battle with Kate and Gerry McCann and has spoken of their pity for the distraught couple.

By James Murray:  9th September 2009



GRIEF: Gerry and Kate McCann in Lisbon last week where they met with lawyers

“Everyone thinks we are fighting the McCanns but this is not true,” said 38-year-old Sofia Leal in an exclusive interview with the Sunday Express.

“I tell people all the time that they are having to endure the hardest pain in the world, which is losing a child.

“As a mother I cannot imagine what kind of pain that is. It is so hard.

“Like Kate McCann, I am a ­Catholic. The image of pain in the Catholic church is not Christ on the Cross but Mary holding her child in her arms. It is the pain of the loss of a child and there is no worse pain in the world. We are sorry for that.”

That pain was etched on the face of Kate McCann when she made a fleeting visit to Lisbon last week to meet her lawyers and to appeal for help in finding her daughter, snatched in May 2007 from a holiday apartment in Praia da Luz on the Algarve.

Close to tears, Kate said: ‘‘She’s six now but we’ve just got to keep going. It has been very harrowing and draining. But there is no choice, she needs us to find her and bring her home.”

In Portimao, 20 miles up the coast from Praia da Luz, Sofia spoke of the anguish suffered by her husband, who coordinated the McCann investigation. The McCanns are suing him for £1million they believe he has made with his book about the case, The Truth Of The Lie, and a documentary.

They are particularly angered over his claims that Madeleine is not alive. Civil servant Sofia says her 49-year-old husband suffered post traumatic stress after he was removed as head of the Madeleine investigation in September 2007. He took early retirement the following month, even though he lost two-thirds of his pension.

“It was a bad time for Goncalo,” said Sofia. Even in his sleep he was going over in his mind what had happened to him and how his career was brought to a premature end.

“I heard him talking in the night ­because of nightmares. Everything he did, every action he took was going through his head.

“I was worried ­because he is such a calm, tender man but luckily over the past few months the nightmares have stopped.”

Sofia, who works in the Portimao mayor’s office and is responsible for three major projects, including a new Algarve airport, speaks English fluently and is both amused and angered by comments aimed at her husband from some people in Britain. “We know how Goncalo is portrayed in Britain, the caricature of a foreign detective missing the clues, but the reality is that you will not find a better detective in Portugal.

“There were many times in the investigation when his bosses said, ‘You have done enough’ but he kept working and working, chasing all the leads.

“There are satellites which probably have close-up pictures of what was happening on the ground that day. He tried to get the images but he couldn’t. The US said the satellites were trained on Morocco at the time and that was it. That is what annoys him because he says the inquiry was not completed to his satisfaction.

“Goncalo loves me and our three girls very much but he lives for his job. For him an investigation is like a mathematical equation.

“One and one has to make two. Until the answer is found he will not give up.” From the proceeds of the book her husband has bought a Jaguar car but she insists he has not made a lot of money and that he will defend the legal action.

“We are now living on one-third of our budget for the month but that is OK for us because he made the right decision,” she said.

“If he was financially motivated, he would have stayed in his job for the full pension but that is not his way.”

His 25-year-old daughter from his first marriage, also called Sofia, has just passed a law degree. His wife has a daughter Rita, 11, from her first ­marriage and she has a daughter, Agnes, with Goncalo who will soon be six.

This week there is a double birthday celebration, Sofia’s today and her ­husband’s 50th on Friday.

“We will see all our family and friends and enjoy ourselves,” she said. “We are so lucky to have three beautiful girls in the family.

“Goncalo is very proud of them all. He is very good with them at home but my only complaint is that he is not strict enough with them. He lets them do what they want where I have to be a little stricter.

“He never yells at them but he can also be a little overprotective. He is always worrying about them having accidents in the playground or ­wherever. I could not wish for a better father.”

The couple met 10 years ago through a friend and married in June 2000. They spent their honeymoon in the Azores, where her husband dreams of ­spending his retirement.

https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/130241/We-feel-the-McCann-s-pain-as-well
....................

He deserves to be miserable and feel fear ....

madeleine by KATE MCCANN

Well, you certainly achieved your objective there didn't you Ms McCann?  If only you'd put that much effort into 'searching' for your precious lost daughter - eh?

Kate McCann: My struggle to control 'very difficult' Madeleine

Last updated at 19:06 17 September 2007

Kate McCann has revealed that she struggled to control Madeleine McCann after the birth of her and Gerry's twins, it was revealed today.

Missing Madeleine would run around 'screaming...shouting for my attention', the mother-of-three said.

In an interview given to a Portuguese magazine before she was named as a suspect in the case of the four-year-old's disappearance, Kate also said the first six months of Madeleine's life were "very difficult" and that the girl had suffered from colic.



The revelations come as police said they were trawling through Kate's medical records amid suspicions in Portugal that she may have had a history of depression.

The detailed analysis of her medical notes could provide them with significant evidence against the GP, who is a suspect in the case of Madeleine's disappearance.

Speaking about Madeleine's upbringing, Kate, a 39-year-old GP, told Portugal's Flash! magazine: "She cried practically for 18 hours a day. I had to permanently carry her around."



This period explained "the strong bond between mother and daughter", she said.

Although the arrival of the twins Sean and Amelie shook up Madeleine's life, she accepted them very well, said Kate.

"She managed to deal perfectly with this new reality, although she herself at the time was still a baby.

"The worst thing is that she started to demand lots of attention, especially when I was breast-feeding them.

"She would run up and down screaming in the background, shouting for my attention."

Mrs McCann also insisted that she and her husband were "truly responsible parents" and had committed no crime.

Speaking of the night Madeleine disappeared, she said: "I was sure immediately that she didn't walk out of that room. I never doubted that she had been taken by someone.

"I went through a phase of guilt for not knowing what happened to her. I blamed myself for thinking that the place was safe.
"But the certainty that we are truly responsible parents has helped me carry on.


"I know that what happened is not due to the fact of us leaving the children asleep. I know it happened under other circumstances."

Asked about whether she and her husband were responsible for their daughter's disappearance, she said: "It cannot be considered a crime. Someone committed one, but not us."

Portuguese newspapers continued to report today that Mrs McCann will be re-interviewed in the UK this week by British police on behalf of the Algarve authorities.

But a spokeswoman for the McCanns said the couple had to date received no request for new interrogation.

The judge in the case, Pedro Daniel dos Anjos Frias, rejected prosecutors' request to have the McCanns brought back to Portugal for further questioning, the Correio da Manha said.

He insisted that the fresh interviews should be carried out by British police in the UK, according to the paper.

The re-interviewing will only take place when further DNA testing in Birmingham is completed, either tomorrow or Wednesday.


A letter of appeal will be sent to Britain, setting out all the questions Portuguese detectives want to ask the couple, along with the evidence supporting their hypothesis, the Correio da Manha reported.

A source told the paper there was only a "very low" probability that Portuguese officers would be allowed to sit in on the interviews.

A McCann family spokeswoman said today: "We have been in touch with the lawyers to try and get a steer on what is in the Portuguese papers.

"They assure us we have had no request to date for any further questioning, either from the Portuguese police or in the UK."
She could not say whether the McCanns' legal team was expecting the couple to be re-interviewed.

Since Kate and Gerry McCann were named as official suspects last week, there have been suggestions in Portugal that Madeleine was given drugs on the night of her disappearance.

The accusations have been strenuously denied by the couple but have not been ruled out by police. Although the order to seize medical files came from the Portuguese authorities, the background searches are being carried out by Leicestershire police.


A copy of Mrs McCann's diary has also been seized by police, who are now waiting for permission from the judge to seize and dismantle the McCanns' hire car so they can search for "traces of skin".


It has been reported that DNA evidence with a match to Madeleine was found in the Renault Scenic 25 days after their daughter vanished.


Yesterday it emerged the McCanns are trying to knock down potential evidence retrieved after two British sniffer dogs, capable of detecting blood and human remains, were used in the investigation in August.

One of the dogs picked up a "scent of deathî on items ranging from Mrs McCann's clothes to Madeleine's favourite soft toy Cuddle Cat.

Leaked reports from the investigation have suggested that Madeleine's parents could have accidentally killed her and then disposed of her body using the car. Although they do not know the full details of the Portuguese prosecutors' case against them, the McCanns are concerned that it may rest on the dog's reaction.

The couple's legal team has now consulted the lawyers of an American man accused of murdering his estranged wife in a case where "cadaver dog" evidence was central. They want to highlight the judge's dismissal of such evidence in the high-profile Eugene Zapata murder trial in Madison, Wisconsin.

Mr Zapata's estranged wife, flight instructor Jeanette Zapata, was 37 when she vanished in October 1976 after seeing her three children off to school.

Her body has never been found. Detectives suspected Mr Zapata of involvement in her disappearance but did not charge him because of a lack of evidence.

Police decided to conduct new searches using cadaver dogs and Mr Zapata, 68, was charged with firstdegree murder last year after the dogs indicated that they had scented human remains in an underfloor crawl space at the former family home and other properties linked to him.

But the judge ruled that the dogs' ability to detect remains was too unreliable, noting that no remains had actually been found.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-482238/Kate-McCann-My-struggle-control-difficult-Madeleine.html

Kate McCann 'renowned for alcoholic binges' at university

Last updated at 11:00 23 September 2007

Kate McCann was nicknamed 'Hot Lips Healy' during her carefree student days at Dundee University.

Kate Healy, as she was then, was 'renowned for alcoholic binges and dance till you drop nocturnal activities', according to her year book of 1992.

However friends say Kate, was one of the most popular students in the medical department and have spoke of their shock at the allegations made by the Portuguese police.

One former classmate, now a doctor, said: "Kate was great fun, always up for a laugh and a party. She was certainly more interested in going to the pub than she was in her studies. Although she seemed to pass her exams with ease."



Her light-hearted attitude to her studies is illustrated, friends say, by the yearbook entry written by her colleagues at Dundee.

It reads: "Kate 'Scouser' Healy-chops 'ferried' over from Merseyside five years ago and rapidly became the most prominent member of the H.G. Girlies.

"Renowned for frequently indulging in alcoholic binges and 'dance till you drop' nocturnal activities, she immediately led the rest of her fellow colleagues astray.


"Hot Lips Healy maintained a consistent Friday night appearance in the Union throughout the whole of first year."

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-483392/Kate-McCann-renowned-alcoholic-binges-university.html

Madeleine McCann IS Alive And The Case Can Be Solved Insists UK Detective

'Children are taken as infants and years later are found alive.'

   By Sara C Nelson:  3rd April 2017

Missing Madeleine McCann is alive and the mystery surrounding her disappearance WILL be solved, insists a retired detective who has probed the matter as a private investigator.

Former Det Insp Dave Edgar shared his findings with the Met Police in 2011 and is certain the case will be cracked. He has even offered to rejoin the search for the missing girl once more.

Edgar told The Sun: “I believe Madeleine is still alive and the case can be solved. I would strongly consider coming back to help as a private investigator if required. In fact, I would be happy to come back on board.”



Madeleine was nearly four when she vanished in 2007 from her family’s holiday apartment in Praia da Luz as her parents dined with friends at a tapas bar nearby. The McCanns have spoken of their bitter regret about leaving her and two-year-old twins Sean and Amelie alone. The missing girl would now be a teenager and the family have never given up the search and remain hopeful she is alive.

Edgar also defended the £13million spent on the search so far, which will soon enter its 10th year, as “not nearly enough for a crime of this complexity and scale.”

Stating Scotland Yard have some “very good lines of inquiry to follow”, he added: “Every few months you hear of cases of missing people around the world that are solved. Children are taken as infants and years later are found alive.”



Last month the 60-year-old said he believes Madeleine’s kidnappers are being protected but are likely to have confided in someone.

“Someone knows, it must be on someone’s conscience,” he said.

“If anyone confided in you, now is the time to come forward.”

Edgar is certain the little girl was taken by a lone kidnapper or gang, that the motive was sexual and that it was a carefully planned abduction.

He also warned they could strike again: “It’s the type of crime they cannot help themselves, certainly if it was sexually motivated.”

He added: “There was a very narrow window of opportunity for them to get away with Madeleine. So it does point to it being planned and some level of surveillance, perhaps of the apartment.”

Edgar and his team profiled a number of suspects named over the years, including late convicted paedophile Raymond Hewlett, who lived close to where Madeleine was taken from, and Euclides Monteiro, a former worker at the resort the McCanns’ stayed at, who died in a tractor accident in 2009.

There was no definitive evidence against either man, Edgar found.

As the 10th anniversary of Madeleine’s abduction approaches, Edgar is pushing for a Europe-wide appeal, believing whoever is responsible will have shared their secret.

He said: “They can’t keep it to themselves and research has shown they always confide in someone else.

https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/madeleine-mccann-is-alive-and-the-case-can-be-solved-insists-uk-detective_uk_58e21ec3e4b0b3918c84b318?guccounter=1

Verdi wrote:Madeleine McCann IS Alive And The Case Can Be Solved Insists UK Detective

'Children are taken as infants and years later are found alive.'

   By Sara C Nelson:  3rd April 2017

Missing Madeleine McCann is alive and the mystery surrounding her disappearance WILL be solved, insists a retired detective who has probed the matter as a private investigator.

Former Det Insp Dave Edgar shared his findings with the Met Police in 2011 and is certain the case will be cracked. He has even offered to rejoin the search for the missing girl once more.

Edgar told The Sun: “I believe Madeleine is still alive and the case can be solved. I would strongly consider coming back to help as a private investigator if required. In fact, I would be happy to come back on board.”



Madeleine was nearly four when she vanished in 2007 from her family’s holiday apartment in Praia da Luz as her parents dined with friends at a tapas bar nearby. The McCanns have spoken of their bitter regret about leaving her and two-year-old twins Sean and Amelie alone. The missing girl would now be a teenager and the family have never given up the search and remain hopeful she is alive.

Edgar also defended the £13million spent on the search so far, which will soon enter its 10th year, as “not nearly enough for a crime of this complexity and scale.”

Stating Scotland Yard have some “very good lines of inquiry to follow”, he added: “Every few months you hear of cases of missing people around the world that are solved. Children are taken as infants and years later are found alive.”



Last month the 60-year-old said he believes Madeleine’s kidnappers are being protected but are likely to have confided in someone.

“Someone knows, it must be on someone’s conscience,” he said.

“If anyone confided in you, now is the time to come forward.”

Edgar is certain the little girl was taken by a lone kidnapper or gang, that the motive was sexual and that it was a carefully planned abduction.

He also warned they could strike again: “It’s the type of crime they cannot help themselves, certainly if it was sexually motivated.”

He added: “There was a very narrow window of opportunity for them to get away with Madeleine. So it does point to it being planned and some level of surveillance, perhaps of the apartment.”

Edgar and his team profiled a number of suspects named over the years, including late convicted paedophile Raymond Hewlett, who lived close to where Madeleine was taken from, and Euclides Monteiro, a former worker at the resort the McCanns’ stayed at, who died in a tractor accident in 2009.

There was no definitive evidence against either man, Edgar found.

As the 10th anniversary of Madeleine’s abduction approaches, Edgar is pushing for a Europe-wide appeal, believing whoever is responsible will have shared their secret.

He said: “They can’t keep it to themselves and research has shown they always confide in someone else.

https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/madeleine-mccann-is-alive-and-the-case-can-be-solved-insists-uk-detective_uk_58e21ec3e4b0b3918c84b318?guccounter=1

So from 3/4/17, if not before, Edgar no longer works for the McCanns (or should that be Brian Kennedy?), and is angling for his job back.