Media Mayhem - MCCANN MEDIA NONSENSE OF THE DAY

Hi Verdi,time for the Team to stock up on the" Duty Free's" at the public's expense,£168,000 for the next six months please,cheers Mr Javid.

Yes,Operation Grange,the operation of all operations,costing Millions of pounds and not investigating the closest personel involved with Madeleine McCann's disappearance an anomaly,eh A/C Mark Rowley or Cognitive Dissonance,more likely?

As people have stated before,"Keystone" can now be overruled as the Government Collusion continues with Kate,Gerry,just what could the stranglehold be?
The only thing running longer than any unsolved Murders by Police force's is "Child Abuse"and the parties associated to these proclivities,somehow allowed to consistently escape from Police Capture,but Not Mr Frank Beck and his Accuser(GJ)?
How was it possible for One Accused person to know supposedly the "Identity" of who supplied the confidential information to the Police,when the same police force were then told by the Original Accused person,to investigate that person, who had complained,about (GJ),which they then did,aka the "Untimely death's" of Mr frank Beck and his Solicitor?

No Cover Up involved with Mr Frank Beck and the Leicestershire Police Force,about turn,"Protecting Confidential Information,a Witness",How did (GJ) know who is Accuser was,or did (GJ) take an Educated guess when he was questioned on child abuse allegations,Your Lordship?

The police have tracked down all known paedophiles


Dave Edgar

Français

“The Portuguese police have tried to find and interview all known paedophiles” has admitted a source close to the investigation quoting the detectives of the McCann’s.

According to this source, who is still quoting the two English detectives, “the questionings were not as complete as they could have been” leading them to verify all the leads developed by the Judicial Police up until the archiving of the case.

According to the investigation reports (volume II pages 293 to 297), one part still being under the secrecy of justice, the work carried out by the PJ to find and question all the individuals reported for the practise of sexual crimes, started immediately after Maddies’ disappearance – on May 6, the inspectors Manuel Lico, Nuno Martins, Luis Fontes, Frederico Louro, Pedro Maia and José Matos have investigated more than 14 suspects, among them, an individual who is working as an expert at the Judicial Court of Portimão.

“All the individuals known or suspect in paedophilia cases or sexual assault were verified quickly” said a PJ source, adding that “only the English were verified later, because the information took a long time to get to us, but we have not found any link between the suspects and the disappearance of the little girl”.

Questioned about the work of the Portuguese authorities, a former private investigator of Kate and Gerry McCann admitted that “Gonçalo Amaral did exactly everything that could be done, and any team trying to investigate Maddies’ disappearance can only hope for a stroke of luck.”

The detectives want to question a very violent predator

Charles O´Neill, the man who the two former police officers hired by the parents of Madeleine McCann want to interrogate now, is a Scot who lived in Gran Canaria and who is in jail awaiting trial for homicide. The private detectives, who continue with the McCann’s campaign, admit not knowing whether the man was at least in Portugal the night of Madeleine’s disappearance, but are saying that he is one of seven people of “interest” to their investigation.

The Scot, described as an “extremely violent paedophile predator”, has a past filled with paedophilia crimes where the victims were always boys. According to the Spanish authorities, who have investigated the predator’s criminal career in their country, nothing indicates the existence of a link with Maddies’ disappearance, but the man is one of the suspects “who deserves to be investigated at length in the disappearance cases that occurred in the archipelago of the Canaries” confirmed an investigator.

The private detectives have already ruled out some of the first suspects, including two Portuguese who live close to Praia da Luz, Mário and Joaquim, and a German, but still maintain an interest in a British citizen identified as Andrew.

Duarte Levy
....................

24Horas

20th August 2008

Mysterious photos interest the PJ

Judiciária "attentive" towards new evidence in the Maddie case

Police investigate the possible existence of new photos from the night that Madeleine McCann disappeared

The Judiciária is analysing the case of the supposed existence of photographs that were taken by a tourist inside the Tapas Bar restaurant on the day that Madeleine disappeared, a source at the PJ stated to 24horas.

"Despite the archiving of the judicial process, we remain attentive to any fact or any piece of evidence that allows for us to clarify the circumstances under which the child disappeared", the same source referred. If the facts justify it, the process may even be reopened.

Yesterday, 24horas published statements from French journalist and blogger Duarte Lévy, in which he says that he saw some of the 24 photos that a tourist says he took inside the Tapas Bar between 8.10 and 10.15 p.m. on the 3rd of May.

At that time, the McCann couple dined with the group of seven British tourists that accompanied them in their Algarvian holidays, until the moment, at around 10 p.m., when Kate got up from the table. She would return shortly afterwards, saying that Maddie had disappeared.

Easily identifiable

According to Duarte Levy, the images "are not consistent" with the report that was made by the English to the PJ, about what happened that evening.

According to the journalist, the photographs were taken by a tourist who was having dinner at the Tapas Bar, in the company of his wife and another couple.

Based on this description, the PJ should not have any difficulties in reaching the owner of the photos, given that at a certain point in the process the reservation list of the restaurant was apprehended.

24horas has been able to establish that on the 3rd of May, apart from the McCann group – that had booked a table for 8.30 p.m. and where 9 persons were seated – there were only three other tables that were occupied by four persons, identified by their surnames: Edmonds, Buller and Patell. All of them were already inside the Tapas Bar when Kate and Gerry McCann arrived there, only a few minutes after the scheduled hour.
...................

Could this exposé per chance be the photographs Philip Edmonds allegedly handed over to the police and the McCanns, sometime before or after his departure from Praia da Luz on Friday 4th May 2007? Whatever, as far as I'm aware the photographs never materialised from either source - Duarte Levy nor Philip Edmonds.

The plot thickens.

Madeleine McCann's death 'covered up by parents who faked kidnap', court hears

[Allegations against Kate and Gerry McCann presented in court on first day of couple's libel case against Portuguese detective] Please note this is an old article that has recently been shared online

By Fiona Govan in Lisbon
10:30PM GMT 12 Jan 2010

Update 22 July 2015: The article below was first published in 2010 and the information in it relates to information that was current at that time. For the most up to date information, please refer to this article on the ongoing search for Maddy.




Update 29 October 2013: Since the publication of this article Gerry and Kate McCann have launched a libel action against former Portuguese detective Goncalo Amaral over his allegation that they were involved in the disappearance of their daughter. They vigorously deny the allegations which have been widely discredited. The libel case is ongoing.



Madeleine McCann died in an accident in her family's Algarve holiday apartment and her death was covered up by her parents who then concocted a tale of kidnap, a Portuguese court was told.

Kate and Gerry McCann, both 41, were in court to hear how the detectives leading the investigation into their daughter’s disappearance believed they had lied to hide the truth.

“She died in the apartment as a result of a tragic accident and the parents simulated an abduction after failing to care of their children,” Tavares de Almeida, former chief inspector at Portimao police station during the initial months of the investigation, told the court in Lisbon.


“These were the conclusions of a police report signed by me on September 10 2007,” he added.
The allegations against Kate and Gerry McCann, both 41, were presented in court on the first day of a hearing to challenge the publication of a book written by Algarve detective Goncalo Amaral.

Lawyers for the detective, who led the team that made the McCanns arguidos – suspects – in their daughter’s disappearance, called witnesses to support the claims outlined in his book. The McCanns arguido status was lifted after ten months in July 2008 when the Attorney General ruled there was no evidence against them.


The pair, from Rothley, Leics, came face to face with their detractor for the first time since they were officially made argiuidos in September 2007, four months after they daughter vanished days before her fourth birthday.

Mr Amaral, 50, led the initial investigation into Madeleine’s disappearance from a holiday apartment in Praia da Luz on May 3 2007 while her parents dined with friends at a tapas bar nearby. He was sacked from the case, which remains unsolved.

His book, entitled “The Truth of The Lie”, published in July 2008 claims that Madeleine died in the apartment and questions her parents’ account of events that evening.

It became a bestseller in Portugal selling more than 200,000 copies and went on to be published in six languages and made into a documentary film.

After a year long campaign the McCanns succeeded in getting a temporary injunction banning further sales and it was withdrawn from shelves last September. The couple are suing for libel becuase they believe that the book is damaging the search for their daughter by asserting that she is already dead.

They are expected to ask a judge for around £1million in damages which they will use to pay for their own continuing hunt for their daughter, who they believe was kidnapped and could still be alive and being held somewhere.

Mr de Almeida told the court: “We have always spoken of a tragic accidental death – not homicide. The McCanns did not kill her but they concealed the body,”


Mr de Almeida, who worked under Amaral and was also taken off the case in September 2007, said the decision to designate the McCanns 'arguidos' was made by police after sniffer dogs brought to Portugal from England had carried out their searches.
Giving evidence, Mr de Almeida said that the dogs had identified blood and the scent of a human corpse inside the childrens’ bedroom and the dining room of the McCanns’ holiday flat.


The animals also reacted to traces on a piece of cloth in a villa rented by the McCanns after they left the apartment and in the boot of a rental car hired by the family several weeks after Madeleine disappeared.

Mr de Almeida also complained that Portuguese police efforts to investigate the McCanns had been frustrated by their British counterparts. “We were told that the UK would not accept any investigation of the McCanns – there was a lack of cooperation,” he said.

But later he said that the theory that the parents had covered up Madeleine’s death as outlined in Amaral’s book was one reached by British police on the ground in Portugal too.

“This wasn’t something invented by Amaral,” he insisted. “It was a conclusion reached by the team of Portuguese investigators as well as British police.”


Mrs McCann wearing a dark coloured floral dress sat impassively in the front row of the court room beside her husband. The pair held hands and exchanged occasional whispers and nods as they were passed notes by interpreters informing them of court proceedings, which were carried out in Portuguese.

Mr Amaral, dressed in a dark suit and purple tie, was seated at the bench beside his legal team, fifteen feet away from the couple. He spent much of the proceedings with his eyes closed avoiding the direct gaze of the McCanns.

Tuesday’s court hearing in the Portuguese capital was an opportunity by Mr Amaral to have the temporary injunction against publication of his book overturned. Neither he nor the McCanns will be called to give evidence in the hearing which is expected to last a minimum of three days.

A third witness said the turning point of the investigation came following a tearful call from Mrs McCann who, after a dream, told police where to search for her daughter’s body.

Police Inspector Ricardo Paiva, who acted as a liason between the McCanns and Portuguese police in the days following their daughter’s disappearance told the court he had received the phone call in late July 2007.

“Kate called me, she was alone as Gerry was away and she was crying,” he said. “She said she had dreamt that Madeleine was on a hill and that we should search for her there.


“She gave the impression that she thought she was dead – it was a turning point for us.”

The senior detective said the land was searched but nothing was found. “That is when we decided to send the specialist dogs in. British police informed us about how they could detect the scent of death.”


He admitted that the police had been suspicious of the McCanns from the start of the investigation. “They disobeyed our request to keep quiet about the details of their daughter’s disappearance while we conducted our investigation. Instead they turned it into a media circus and that gave rise to some suspicions.”

He said that the McCanns should have faced prosecution for leaving their children alone. “They should have been pursued for neglect. People have been arrested for far less – even in the UK.”

The case continues.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/portugal/6974917/Madeleine-McCanns-death-covered-up-by-parents-who-faked-kidnap-court-hears.html

Hi Verdi,thanks for your latest article,Portugal Court proceedings?

The main points of how the UK Police came to an arrangement for the "McCann's untouchables",but agree the thesis that Portugal PJ followed,but totally disagreed with their findings,quite remarkable in fact on a supposed "Joint Investigation",we have an hopped out agenda to follow!

Another interesting aspect, that Tavares De Almeida was also dismissed by the Portugal PJ,insubordination for backing Mr Gonaclo Amaral Thesis,"Truth Of The Lie"?

The allegations facing the McCanns



The silver Renault at the centre of the investigation 

By Andrew Alderson and Tom Harper
12:01AM BST 09 Sep 2007

Claim 1: Sedation?
Newspapers in Portugal - apparently briefed by the local police - have reported that Madeleine was sedated by one or both of her parents to help her sleep. This, in turn, has led to growing speculation that Madeleine was accidentally killed by an overdose and her body disposed of to cover up the blunder.

Counter claim:
The McCanns insist that they did not sedate any of their children. They angrily deny they killed Madeleine and say it would have been impossible for them to have removed her body from their holiday apartment without being noticed. The McCanns are suing Tal & Qual, the Portuguese newspaper that claimed they had accidentally killed their daughter.

Claim 2: Blood in hire car?

Related Articles

• Madeleine's McCann's parents flying back to UK
  09 Sep 2007
  

The latest and perhaps most serious allegation against the McCanns is that Madeleine's blood was found in the boot of the silver Renault Scenic car that the couple hired more than three weeks after their daughter went missing on May 3. The blood is said to match DNA from Madeleine found in the apartment. The suggestion is that one or both of the McCanns placed Madeleine's body in a temporary hiding place before later moving it to a new location.

Counter claim: The McCanns say it would have been impossible for them to move around their own daughter's decomposing body. The authorities could have accidentally cross-contaminated the forensic evidence, either mixing it up with DNA from Madeleine's twin siblings or taking evidence from the apartment to the hire car. The McCanns have not ruled out the possibility that officials are trying to "frame" them.

Claim 3: Dogs smelling death?
Specially trained sniffer dogs are alleged to have detected the scent of a corpse in the McCanns' apartment, particularly on Madeleine's favourite Cuddle Cat toy and on Kate McCann's clothes and Bible. The dogs, from Britain, were allegedly put in the apartment early in August.

Counter claim:
Experts have dismissed the accuracy of such evidence obtained three months after Madeleine disappeared. John Barrett, a retired dog handler with Scotland Yard, said yesterday that police dogs can only detect such scents up to 28 days after the event. 


Claim 4: Home alone?
Newspapers in Portugal have reported claims from unidentified "locals" that the McCanns often left their three children alone and crying in their holiday apartment while they went out drinking with friends. Reports have cast doubt on the regularity with which the McCanns say they checked on their children on the night Madeleine disappeared.

Counter claim:
The McCanns insist they are responsible and diligent parents, who regularly checked on their children while they ate a meal at the nearby Ocean Club tapas restaurant. Gerry McCann said he checked on the children at 9.05pm and that a friend checked again at 9.30pm but only listened at the door. Mrs McCann says she discovered Madeleine missing at 10pm.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1562579/The-allegations-facing-the-McCanns.html

Madeleine McCann: Tycoons withdraw support

By Caroline Gammell in Praia da Luz - 13th September 2007

Two millionaire businessmen who gave money to help find Madeleine McCann refused today to contribute to the legal fight to clear her parents' name.

The couple's official spokeswoman, Justine McGuinness, has also decided to step down, it emerged this afternoon. Exhaustion, and the McCanns' need for a PR adviser with more legal experience, are said to be behind her decision.

Kate and Gerry McCann, 39, have hired top lawyers in Britain and Portugal after they were named official suspects in their daughter's disappearance.

Detectives believe Mrs McCann may have accidentally killed her daughter and relied on her husband to help cover up the crime. Although the couple insist the claims are baseless, the cost of trying to clear the "cloud of suspicion" is expected to run into tens of thousands of pounds.

Although the fighting fund set up to find Madeleine has raised more than £1 million, the trustees said the couple - who did not want to take the money anyway - would not be able to make use of the funds.

One entrepreneur, who refused to be named because of the delicate nature of the case, has given his backing in the past.
But today he told the Evening Standard: "I am not going to contribute any more. It is a difficult issue and it is not something I propose to get engaged in.

"It is the most confusing scenario anybody has ever seen. I am not judge and jury and I hope what I am reading is wrong. I have not yet been approached [a second time] but I wouldn't put any money in.

"If they can turn the tide in some form maybe there will be loads of backers. But right now this does not look a good place to go."

A number of well known figures have publicly supported the McCanns including JK Rowling, Virgin boss Sir Richard Branson, Topshop owner Philip Green and EasyJet founder Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou.

A second wealthy businessman, who has given £100,000 to the fund, said: "We won't be pledging any more right now.

"I don't think that at the moment we would allow the money to be swapped to cover defence costs, but this is a difficult position and a very sensitive issue." The McCanns, from Rothley in Leicestershire, returned to the UK on Sunday, 48 hours after being declared suspects by Portuguese police.

Ms McGuinness, the McCanns' spokeswoman, is expected to step down this weekend if a replacement can be found in time.

The Media Guardian website is reporting that the couple are looking for a "big hitter" to work as their full-time PR representative as the investigation into their daughter's disappearance enters a new phase.

Phil Hall, the former News of the World and Hello! editor, who has been acting as a consultant to the McCanns in recent months, is thought to be the leading contender.

The world's leading expert in DNA cast doubt on a key facet of the alleged forensic evidence against Kate and Gerry McCann last night as he offered to act as an expert witness for the couple.

Sir Alec Jeffreys, who invented DNA fingerprinting, said a match did not necessarily demonstrate a person's guilt or innocence.
It follows claims that DNA samples matched to Madeleine had been found in her parents' hire car and holiday apartment.

Sources said the traces were being treated by Portuguese detectives as strong evidence that Madeleine's body was placed in the car.

However, Sir Alec told BBC's Newsnight programme: "There are no genetic characters in Madeleine that are not found in at least one other member of the family.

"So then you have an incomplete DNA profile that could raise a potential problem in assigning a profile to Madeleine given that all other members of that family would have been in that car."

Sir Alec, 57, added: "DNA testing seeks to establish whether DNA sample A from a crime scene came or did not come from individual B.

"So if you get a match there's very strong evidence that it did come from B. It is then up to investigators, the courts and all the rest of it to work out whether that connection is relevant or not.

"So DNA doesn't have the words innocence or guilt in it - that is a legal concept. What it seeks to establish is connections and identifications."

Off-camera, Sir Alec said he was prepared to act as a witness for the McCanns.

His caution came as a leading genetics expert also called into question the value of DNA evidence in its own right. Dr Paul Debenham, a member of the advisory body the Human Genetics Commission, said there could be legitimate reasons as to how DNA from Madeleine found its way into the hire car.

Prosecutors would need to establish that it got there as part of a criminal process and not through chance contact, he said.
Dr Debenham said: "With the current highly sensitive DNA methodologies we can deposit DNA as a trace amount just from contact with a fabric. And that fabric can touch another surface where the DNA is passed on.

"So there is a situation where there is a legitimate or a possible explanation as to how the DNA got on the back seat despite the individual not being there, but through some legitimate transfer of garments, clothes or soft toy.

"It questions the value of that particular evidence in interpreting what happened."

The development came as it emerged that Portuguese prosecutors have applied for Gerry McCann's laptop and his wife's personal diary to be handed over to the authorities investigating their daughter's disappearance.

Detectives in the Algarve are particularly keen to track emails sent by Mr McCann, a cardiologist, from the computer he used while in Portugal to keep an almost daily blog on the campaign to find Madeleine.

An urgent application for access to the personal artefacts was made by public prosecutor Jose Cunha de Magalhaes e Meneses to a judge in Portimao yesterday.

Philomena McCann, Mr McCann's sister, said she advised her sister-in-law to keep the diary to show Madeleine how much they loved her.

She told The Sun: " I said to Kate that it would be a good idea if someone wrote down, for Madeleine, notes on everything that was happening, because we have to prove to Madeleine how much we looked for her and how much we love her.

"That wee girl will be thinking, 'They're not looking for me. My mummy, daddy and my aunties - they don't love me because they can't find me'.

"I was just thinking about how insecure Madeleine would be, so Kate has been keeping that journal faithfully every day.

"She's been writing down everything that we've been doing so we can prove to Madeleine that we have worked so hard to try and find her, that we've put our lives on hold to search for her and show our love for her is unending."

Gerry's brother John McCann said last night that his brother believed the Portuguese police had "gone up a cul-de-sac".

He told BBC's The One Show: "Gerry keeps telling me that they have gone up a cul-de-sac and have lost track of what they should really be doing."

Asked whether the fact the case was being dealt with at such a high level in Portugal gave him confidence, he said: "It does and it doesn't. There is data out there, there's all these leaks.

"There is so much speculation going on as to what the actual information the Portuguese police have.


"If they have got something that suggests Madeleine really is dead then for goodness sake tell the family who have the strongest feeling for this."

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1562995/Madeleine-McCann-Tycoons-withdraw-support.html
....................

All sorts of meat to chew on there ^^^!  What a jumble of misinformation.

Meanwhile, an alternative take on the demise of Justine McGuinness, the McCanns former campaign manager and later appointed spokesperson a la Mitchell..

JUSTINE McGUINNESS  (Campaign Manager)

A FORMER parliamentary candidate from Dorset played a major role in the hunt for little Madeleine McCann. Justine McGuinness, who grew up in Bradford Peverell and now lives in Herrison near Dorchester, was manager of the Find Madeleine campaign. The former Lib Dem candidate for West Dorset finished second behind Conservative MP Oliver Letwin in the 2005 general election. She was chosen for the position by Madeleine's parents Kate and Gerry because of her background in politics and lobbying.

Miss McGuinness, who has her own PR company, has worked in strategic communications for 11 years. She left the campaign under poor terms when she submitted an excessive over-time and expenses bill making her a total income of £51,000 for 89 days work.

[Acknowledgement pamalam at gerrymccannsblog]

Just how many high profile PR pundits do two innocent middle Englanders need?

Madeleine McCann: Key witness accuses Portuguese police of not taking his vital prime suspect evidence seriously

Retired businessman Martin Smith provided details for an e-fit of the prime suspect after spotting the mystery man close to where Maddie vanished

ByTom Pettifor
Marie Kierans

07:59, 16 OCT 2013Updated11:38, 16 OCT 2013

A key witness in the Madeleine McCann case claimed yesterday that Portuguese police failed to take his evidence seriously.

Retired businessman Martin Smith, 64, provided details for an e-fit of the prime suspect after spotting the mystery man carrying a child at 10pm close to where the three-year-old vanished more than six years ago.

But he said his information was virtually ignored by local officers because they were too busy chasing up another sighting of a man near Kate and Gerry McCann’s holiday apartment in Praia da Luz 45 minutes earlier.

Scotland Yard detectives reinvestigating the case after six years have now established that the suspect Portuguese police were so keen to trace – spotted by holidaymaker Jane Tanner at 9.20pm – was just an innocent British tourist returning his own child from a crèche.

Mr Smith, a former Unilever executive, made a statement along with his wife Mary, daughter Aoife and son Peter soon after Madeleine vanished on May 3, 2007.

He helped compile e-fits a year later – but the images were not released at the time and were only made public for the first time earlier this week.

Speaking from his home in Drogheda, Co Louth, Mr Smith said that the Portuguese police did not seem to think his sighting was significant.

He added: “It looked as if they put 90% credence on the Jane Tanner sighting, maybe that wrong-footed them and they didn’t take our sighting as seriously. I was surprised it took six years to rule out the other sighting.”

He said he has met with Scotland Yard detectives twice over the past 18 months to help them with the new probe. He added: “We‘d all love to see the police get to the bottom of what happened.”

“We think about Madeleine a lot and we would love to see a conclusion to this case.

Mr Smith was with his wife, daughter, son, daughter-in-law and two grandchildren on the night that the three year old vanished.

The family described the man they saw as white, with short brown hair and of average build and height, aged between 20 and 40.

Commenting on the Crimewatch documentary which was broadcast on Monday night he added: “The only new thing in the investigation is the elimination of Jane Tanner’s sighting.

“Apart from that from our point of view everything else remains the same in relation to what we said to the police and the media at the time. We have nothing more to add.”

At least two callers who responded to the TV appeal gave the same name for the two e-fits provided by the Smiths.

Finding the man and determining whether he was in Praia da Luz on the night the three-year-old vanished is a top priority of Scotland Yard detectives.

Around 1,000 people have contacted police as a result of the appeal.

They include a number of British people who were in the Algarve resort at the time. At least one ex-pat called from the town on Monday night.

Senior investigating officer Det Chief Inspector Andy Redwood said his team are working through the calls and material generated by the appeal.

A total of 330 calls were made to the Operation Grange incident room and 400 to BBC1 Crimewatch as well as 220 emails.

In a statement issued through their spokesman, Kate and Gerry McCann said: “We are absolutely delighted with the overwhelming public response to Crimewatch, which was broadcast last night.

“We know that the public desperately want to help the search for Madeleine.

“We are genuinely hopeful that one of more of these responses will lead to a major breakthrough in the investigation.”

They added: “If anyone was in Praia da Luz around the time of Madeleine’s abduction and has not spoken to the Metropolitan Police, or if they know who any of the e-fits might be, please have the courage to come forward and speak to the police in confidence.”

DCI Redwood added: “Detectives are now trawling through and prioritising that material. This will take time.”

Mr Redwood, who travelled to Holland yesterday to continue the appeal, said: “I will be repeating similar appeals in Holland this evening and in Germany tomorrow night.”

A reward of up to £20,000 is being offered for information leading to the identification, arrest and prosecution of those responsible for Madeleine’s abduction, he said.

There are 40 people answering calls at any time, and officers waiting to “action the information”.

Crimewatch editor Joe Mather said the response to the programme was “truly unprecedented”.

He said: “They received several names for the key 10pm sighting, the sighting of a man carrying a child towards the beach.

“Several different names but also several callers mentioned the same name for that man.”

Mr Mather said there were “inevitably a fair few calls” which were not helpful but there were “genuinely calls that were helpful” after last night’s broadcast.

During last night’s programme, Mr and Mrs McCann urged people to “rack their brains” and come forward with information.

Kate said: “Please, please have the courage and confidence to come forward now, and share that information with us, and you could unlock this whole case, so please.”

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/madeleine-mccann-key-witness-accuses-2433328

Maddie: Irishman provides dramatic new clues Daily Mail (appeared in paper edition only)

EXCLUSIVE: Tourist met rude man carrying child in blanket on night Madeleine vanished

By SANDRA MURPHY, VANESSA ALLEN
January 3, 2008

AN IRISH holidaymaker has spoken publicly for the first time of his disturbing encounter with a man carrying a child wrapped in a blanket on the night Madeleine McCann disappeared.

Now investigators hired by Madeleine's parents hope Martin Smith and his family can provide a crucial breakthrough.

Speaking from his home in Drogheda, Co. Louth, Mr Smith recalled the sighting, which is strikingly similar to one by a friend of the McCanns, Jane Tanner. In hindsight, the retired Mr Smith said, the mans rude behaviour should have aroused his suspicions.

He explained: "The one thing we noted afterwards was that he gave us no greeting.

"My wife Mary remembered afterwards that she asked him, 'Oh, is she asleep?' But he never acknowledged her one way or another.

"He just put his head down and averted his eyes. This is very unusual in a tourist town at such a quiet time of the year."

Their description of the barefoot child and the man, who wore beige trousers, echoes that of Miss Tanner, who said she saw a man carrying a sleeping child away from the McCanns apartment about 9.15pm.

Though the Smith family believe they met an almost identical man closer to 10pm, the coincidence prompted them to contact police after they returned to Ireland. Mr Smith said: "Luz is such a small place and so quiet, we felt a duty to tell police and let them decide if it was important."

Last night, McCann family spokesman Clarence Mitchell said detectives from the Spanish agency Metodo 3 now hoped to speak to the family. "Metodo 3 is being very methodical, working through a number of people they think might be able to help them, and this family will be on their list."

On the night of the disappearance, Mr Smith was dining with his wife in the Dolphin restaurant in Praia Da Luz, where they are frequent visitors.

The couple were with their daughter Aoife, their son Peter and his wife Sile,as well as four grandchildren Tadhg, Cole, Aisling and Eimear.

All nine met the man holding a child but their recollection differs slightly from Miss Tanner's.

"In the image she gave, the man was holding the child forward in his arms. The man we saw had put the child over his shoulders. But Luz was very, very quiet at that time of the year and the likelihood of two young children being carried around like this is very small.

"Also, our timings are a bit different. She saw the man at 9.15pm. We say 9.45or 9.50pm and the sighting was only a five-minute walk from where the child was staying.

"I dont know if this information will help the McCanns. We kept interested in whats going on but we tried to avoid the limelight."

The father of six yesterday said the Irish family would do anything they could to help the McCanns find their missing daughter.

"We have not been contacted by the private detective hired by the McCanns, and have had no contact with the investigating police since May 26 last year.

"But anything we can do to help try to solve it, we will." Recalling the event she witnessed, Mr Smith said it was some time before the family realised they could be star witnesses

"We were out the night it happened. My son and his family were leaving on the Friday and we were going for a family meal. We went home about 9.50pm and we heard nothing at all about Madeleine McCann until the next day.

"I was taking my son Peter to the airport and on my way back, I heard that a kidnapping had happened in the village of Luz.

"We were looking at all the commotion on Sky News and we really felt quite helpless.

"We had two grandchildren with us at the time, aged four and five, and it had a terrible effect on them.

"They all wanted to sleep in the same room as us until we went home on the Wednesday.

"We were home two weeks when my son rang up and asked was he dreaming or did we meet a man carrying a child the night Madeleine was taken. We all remembered that we had the same recollection. I felt we should report it to the police.

"I rang the Portuguese police and they took a statement from me on the phone.Then they asked me to make a statement to gardai, which I did in Drogheda two weeks after the disappearance.

"Two days later, Leicestershire police got on to us and said they wanted to speak to all nine of us. But we felt there was no point dragging grand children and the whole lot out to Portugal so just my eldest son, Peter, and youngest daughter, Aoife, and I flew to Luz to make a statement.

"The police were fairly busy and the station was pretty typical. They didnt seem to be the most efficient police you ever came across but they are probably no different to police anywhere else. We were interviewed separately and told them what we saw, and showed them on the map where we met the man and child.

"We spent the whole day there from 10.30am to 7pm with an interpreter. That day, May 26 last year, was the last time we had any contact with the investigation.I remember clearly because it was my wedding anniversary.

"I told them we went for dinner at the Dolphin Restaurant and then went on to have just one drink in Kelly's bar, just 50 yards away.

"We would normally have stayed out longer but my son and his family were going home the next day.

"As we made our way back to our apartment in Estrella da Luz, we met a guy with a child that appeared to be asleep.

"It looked like a blonde child, and I thought she might be four years old, as she was the same size as my grandchild who was with us.

"It was around 9.55pm and it was getting dark and he was looking downward so I couldnt tell you exactly what he looked like.

"None of us was 100 per cent sure what he was wearing but we all told police he was wearing beige trousers and a darker top. We all put him in his early 40s. I didnt think he was Portuguese." Insisting he knew chief suspect Robert Murat visually for years, Mr Smith told police the person he saw carrying a child could not be him.

"I told police it was definitely not him because the man wasn't as big as Murat. I think I would have definitely recognised him."

So this little exercise was just to back up the Jane Tanner sighting?  The one that was ruled out by Andy Redwood when the man allegedly turned up,  years later.

Suddenly, the blanket re-appears.

But seriously, you're on holiday with your family.  Its 9.30 and its dark, you see a total stranger carrying a child, he is probably walking quite quickly and you don't even know if he speaks English.  Would you really approach him and ask if the child is asleep?   If he doesn't speak English, he wont understand the question, so why assume that he is just rude?

sharonl wrote:So this little exercise was just to back up the Jane Tanner sighting?  The one that was ruled out by Andy Redwood when the man allegedly turned up,  years later.

Suddenly, the blanket re-appears.

But seriously, you're on holiday with your family.  Its 9.30 and its dark, you see a total stranger carrying a child, he is probably walking quite quickly and you don't even know if he speaks English.  Would you really approach him and ask if the child is asleep?   If he doesn't speak English, he wont understand the question, so why assume that he is just rude?

It's on public record that Martin Smith said he was misquoted when requesting a retraction of statements published in the press. If he was misquoted then he must have been interviewed by the press which runs counter to what he said about giving no press interviews.



Have I ever seen a retraction published by the press? No I haven't - and that's an emphatic no! Have I ever seen proof that this request was ever made to the press? No, only as reported by the press - and that's an emphatic no! Have I ever seen a direct quote from Martin Smith rather than a source close to the .... ? No I haven't - and that's an emphatic no!

It carries no weight.

If Gerry McCann did take Madeline and was seen by the Smiths then maybe when he went back to the Tapas bar he needed someone to discredit the eventual witness by getting someone (Jane Tanner)to give a false discription and forgot to tell her how the child was being carried hence the over the arms description.

Hi Hobbs,Ref: Sir Alec,

DNA,Gerry,Kate=Madeleine.
DNA,Gerry,Kate=Amellie,Sean.Twins.
Unless there is proof of DNA being different from your explanation,there is No confirmation that Gerry,Kate McCann were Not the Parents of Three siblings?

'I could shake my daughter and the Tapas 7 for leaving Madeleine alone,' says Kate McCann's mother

Last updated at 15:48 29 April 2008

Madeleine McCann's grandmother has attacked her own daughters' decision to leave her three children alone in their holiday apartment on the night the three-year-old vanished.

Kate McCann's mother, Susan Healy, admits she is totally astonished that she thought it was safe to leave Madeleine and their two other younger children unsupervised.

She has revealed that she asks herself again and again why their whole group, the so-called Tapas Nine, all believed it was fine to go out for dinner without their children.

Just days ahead of the one-year anniversary of Madeleine's disappearance, she vents her frustration, saying: "I could shake all of them, every single one of them."

In an interview with the Liverpool Echo, she admits: "I can read articles that say Kate and Gerry should never have left their children and I can accept that.

"You find yourself over and over again in your head thinking: 'Why did they think it would be all right?' "Why did they think - all of them - it was OK to do this?

"I think they were misled into thinking it was OK - but there was no CCTV, no security. There is this acceptance among couples with young children, like Kate and Gerry and their friends, that these are good resorts and safe environments."

Astonished: Madeleine's grandmother, Susan Healy, with her husband Brian. She has admitted she cannot believe Kate left her children alone on the night she vanished

Mrs Healy says the fact Madeleine was left alone on the night she vanished was something the wider family, and not only the McCanns, had had to come to terms with.

But she also defends them, insisting that they must have believed their children would be safe before deciding to go out on their own.

"I understand Kate and Gerry and the others ate in a restaurant without their children. It's something we had to address and Kate and Gerry have had to address it every single day," she says.

"But at the end of the day they thought they had taken adequate provision . . . no one looks after their children better than Kate and Gerry. That's why it's so amazing they can be in this situation."

Despite her frustration at the "Tapas Nine", the 62-year-old describes their vilification in the press as "awful" and says their lives will never be the same.

"This is a group of friends who have all suffered a terrible trauma," she said. "They all did the same thing and what happened could have happened to any one of them. It's changed all their lives."

She also claims her family being dubbed "Team McCann" had made them seem like an "organisation without feelings".

Kate and Gerry McCann have admitted they feel guilty about going out for dinner on the night Madeleine disappeared
Of the damaging headlines, she says: "Every time it happens it's like a slap in the face. You have to stop to think 'Do these people not know what they are doing?' - not just to us, but to other people."

While most people have been kind, there have been a "small minority" who have shown a different side since last May and some have even sent threatening letters to her and her husband, Mrs Healy reveals.


She begs that people do not lose sight of what the family wants above all else - for Madeleine to be found.

"Remember what this is all about - a little four-year-old child who was loved and cherished and cared for," she pleads.

"She was the greatest gift anyone in our family ever had. She is somewhere and she may be frightened and unhappy."

Reliving the night of May 3rd, she tells how her son-in-law rang her up at around 11.30pm to say Madeleine had been taken.

"He said something like 'It's a disaster'. I was grappling to understand 'disaster'. "His next words were 'Madeleine has been abducted from her bed in the apartment'.

"I said 'No, Gerry' and he said 'Sue, Sue'. He reiterated it in a strong way. I asked him 'Where were you?'"

She added: "We just sat all night and then went to Portugal the next day. I didn't know what day it was - some people packed my bags for me and the police drove us to Manchester Airport.

"I remember, after we got to the hotel complex, looking at the little paddling pool and all the children there. I was thinking 'This time yesterday, Madeleine was playing there'."


Her husband, Brian, adds that he will never forget laying eyes on his devastated daughter that day.

"I remember Kate's first words to me - I'll never forget them. She said: 'She'll be so frightened.'"

His wife said: "I don't know who I hugged first, but I'll never forget how Kate and Gerry were that day - they were absolutely wailing."

Five months later, to her parents' disbelief, Kate McCann and her husband were made official suspects in the case.

Madeleine's grandmother recalls: "Gerry did ring to warn us that they were likely to be made arguidos - I think it was a few days before. I nearly had a dicky fit. I was amazed and angry. Very angry.

"They had told the police they were going to come home. I think that moved things on for the police and they told Kate and Gerry they wanted to question them again.

"But their attitudes had changed before then, when the British police and dogs went out. When they were made arguidos I placated myself, never believing that anyone could think they were responsible for Madeleine's disappearance.

"Some people, though,, picked up on certain things, despite it being a ridiculous situation. "They centered in on anything negative."

The family are bracing themselves for the one-year anniversary of Madeleine's disappearance this Saturday.

She disappeared from their apartment in Praia da Luz on May 3 during a family holiday to the Algarve resort.

Her parents were at a restaurant with their friends 40 yards away but had returned to the flat during the night to make regular checks.

They are not returning to Portugal at the weekend and plan to stay at their home in Rothley, Leicestershire.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-562756/I-shake-daughter-Tapas-7-leaving-Madeleine-says-Kate-McCanns-mother.html

I wonder why the police drove them to Manchester airport !?!

The homecoming: The McCanns return to Britain without Madeleine

• By Ian Herbert
  
• Monday 10 September 2007
  

The eyes of the world might have been on their homecoming, but the end-of-holiday mundanities were the same as any when Kate and Gerry McCann tried to put Portugal behind them on their return to Leicestershire yesterday.

First, there were their two-year-old twins to stir from half-sleep after the drive home from the airport. It was left to Kate to unbuckle Amelie and carry her to the oak front door which the GP had last passed through joyfully, with three children in tow and a beach holiday in sight, on a spring day more than three months ago.

There was some help with their four large black suitcases from the Special Branch officers who had chauffeured them the 16 miles from East Midlands airport to Rothley.

But only Mr McCann seemed to have the know-how to unfasten the two child seats from the unmarked police car. Palpably exhausted, he spent three minutes grappling with them – close enough to one of the 100 journalists at the gate to hear his live running commentary, while a TV network's helicopter buzzed overhead. Just a few more dreadful moments in a passage of his life which has been full of little else in recent months.

The McCanns, awakening to their first day in Britain without Madeleine today, are "quite upbeat and quite buoyant" to be home, according to one family friend – their return giving them "a new confidence" that they will clear their names despite their status as arguidos (suspects) in the police investigation into Madeleine's disappearance. But the break in Gerry McCann's voice as he spoke in the heat of the apron at East Midlands airport, his son Sean in his arms, provided a different perspective on quite what it meant to leave Britain with three children and return with two.

"Despite there being so much we wish to say, we are unable to do so, except to say this: we played no part in the disappearance of our lovely daughter Madeleine," he said.

As the 39-year-old spoke, the mysteries surrounding the Portuguese police investigation were as baffling as ever, with reports in the Portuguese press suggesting yesterday that a judge had rejected a police application to keep the couple in Portugal.

Members of the McCann family disclosed on Friday that police had told the couple their suspicions that Kate accidentally killed Madeleine stemmed from an apparent trace of the child's blood found in the back of a Renault Scenic car they hired 25 days after her disappearance. It was said to have been detected by the Forensic Science Service (FSS) in Birmingham.

But FSS sources have now cast doubt on that and suggest that DNA samples found in the back of the car were too degraded to provide a complete match with Madeleine's DNA. Portuguese police are awaiting the results of further tests being carried by the FSS.

The McCanns' decision to return to Britain came at the 11th hour. Although a rental agreement on the house they have used in Praia da Luz was due to expire next week, they initially decided after the events of last week to extend their stay in Portugal.

In the words of one family friend, they did not want to appear to be "running scared" and as late as Saturday, their resolve was intact. But the growing backlash against them in Portugal and the increasing unpredictability of the police investigation drove their decision, disclosed in the early hours of yesterday, that it would be better for them and their children if they left.

If the beach holiday had run its natural course, they would have returned on a Thomsons flight to Coventry, months ago.

Instead, yesterday's journey started with them driving themselves up the Algarve's A2 motorway, with photographers in pursuit, before catching the 9.30am easyJet flight 6552 to East Midlands. They were given a VIP room during their brief time at Faro airport and were afforded what privacy is available on a budget flight – the two front rows were cleared on the aircraft for their group – though that did not stop curious holidaymakers approaching them with questions as they endeavoured to settle the children.

The couple's family had done what they could to assist their return to their home, Orchard House, a detached mock-Victorian property on a five-year-old housing development. Mrs McCann's uncle, Brian Kennedy, carried in a bag of provisions shortly before they arrived. The front lawn was freshly cut and the laurel hedge neat. A yellow ribbon was visible on the Vauxhall Corsa parked outside the double garage.

But the short drive from airport to house was full of dreadful reminders for mrs McCann, returning to Rothley for the first time. From her seat behind the driver in the Special Branch Ford Galaxy, she might well have seen the image of her child in the local newsagents' window advertising Madeleine "bands of hope". Or else the cluster of cameras around the eternal flame for Madeleine which burns across the road from the newsagents.

Every other telegraph post advertised last Saturday's funfair at the local Bunny's Field – an event which, had fate taken a different course, the five McCanns might have attended.

At the house, Mr McCann asked Mr Kennedy to communicate that there would be no more statements unless the police investigation develops in some way. And so it was left to this most loyal supporter of the couple, who has had his own wife's illness to contend with of late, to communicate the enormity of recent events. "It has been the most trying three or four days of their lives," Mr Kennedy said. "They are very tired, shattered – as anyone would be."

The events of the past few days have affected the people of Rothley, too – with a sense that ambiguities now exist where they didn't before. "I don't know what I think because I don't know the facts," said one villager, who would not be named.
When Madeleine first went missing, that kind of statement would have been considered a profanity in a village where the war memorial was festooned with yellow ribbons and flowers.

"There's a surprising amount of uncertainty among people here," said a local newspaper journalist. "There was anything but, in the early days. We couldn't even gauge people's opinions about whether they felt there was an element of neglect [in the McCanns' leaving Madeleine unattended] without upsetting people."


But empathy for Mrs McCann and what she is going through was also in evidence. "I've been begging them to leave," said Tracey Warburton, from Birmingham, who travelled to the Algarve to join the search for Madeleine, in the early days of the inquiry, and who met Mr McCann in the process. "The last time she [Mrs McCann] drove that road [home] she had her baby with her," Ms Warburton pointed out.

James McDonald, a villager who works at the Leicester Royal Infirmary, said there was "a feeling of warmth" in the village and the hospital. "There's a sense for me that they're kindred spirits, being medics," he said.

Other villagers fear the couple's return will presage an unwelcome switch of media focus from the Algarve to Rothley. "I saw the TV helicopter at the golf club this morning," said Norman Ellis, 62. "It's unsettling. For a time we thought it was a police chopper. It's all taken us a bit by surprise."

Among neighbours, there was also uncertainty about how to approach the couple. Nigel Warner, a financial services executive who lives in the same cul-de-sac and who had grown accustomed to seeing the McCanns with their children in the 18 months since the doctors moved into the village, will wait until the time is right before delivering a card in support.

"I'll be guided by anybody who talks to them first," he said. "No one wants to stand on anybody's toes."

At the McCanns' house, there were friends on hand to help them pass what must already seem like endless hours and deal with the enormity of what they have experienced. "It's just good to have them back," said one friend, Amanda. "We're going to rally round as much as we can, and whatever Kate and Gerry need, we'll be there for them."

There was also a sense that the twins, at least, were relishing the return to normality which their parents crave for them. Both took great delight in removing from the window sill a long line of cuddly toys.

But life is far more uncertain for their parents. Though the couple's Portuguese lawyer expects no developments for several days and has returned to Lisbon, evidence could be passed, in their absence, at any time to the public prosecutor in Portimao, where they have been questioned. The police investigation "is not over by any means", police spokesman Olegario Sousa said.

For the McCanns, there is nothing to do but wait.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/the-homecoming-the-mccanns-return-to-britain-without-madeleine-401866.html
...................

Prime Suspect or Prime Minister?

Oh LOQK - a glossy..

Hello! magazine No. 1032, 05 August 2008 (issue date: 29 July 2008) (article not available online)

Broadcaster and ex-Crimewatch host Nick Ross on the shameful treatment of the parents of Madeleine McCann

A leading current affairs journalist, Nick, 60, has specialised in crime reporting. He hosted the flagship BBC show for more than 20 years, until leaving in 2007

I have just won a £100 flutter. The wager – rather tasteless in retrospect – was made last year with one of Britain's best investigative reporters, who bet that Madeleine McCann had been murdered by her parents. I have always been sure she was abducted by an intruder and that the case against Kate and Gerry would come to nothing

I, like every parent, felt for the McCanns. As the drama unfolded we all wanted Madeleine’s safe return and, failing that, for someone to be held accountable. When the drip feed of press rumour turned on the family itself it was little wonder people felt unsettled. Remember those tearful appeals for missing people made by relatives or friends who were later convicted of their murder?

But my defence of the McCanns was more than a hunch. I have had no special access to the investigation but in more than 20 years of working with victims and police on Crimewatch I have spent hundreds of hours analysing evidence of major crimes alongside top detectives. I learned to look at probabilities, and from the start I was appalled at the rush to blame Kate and Gerry for their own daughter's disappearance.

Finger of suspicion

For them these last 14 months must have been the cruellest imaginable. To lose a three-year old child and then become a formal suspect, with the world pointing fingers, must be almost unbearable. If the family survives intact it will be a miracle, and a testament to quite exceptional fortitude. If it doesn't, we should hang our heads in shame at the way they have been treated.

A year ago I pointed out that all the indications were that Kate and Gerry were victims of rare and appalling circumstances and deserved our sympathy, not a baying mob outside Portimão police station when they were questioned. It is true that adults sometimes kill their children, but usually it is stepfathers or live-in lovers, and most often in dysfunctional families; or alternatively in the first year after birth when the mum has postnatal depression – this is why we have a special category of homicide called infanticide.

Madeleine was almost four, living happily in a stable family with no history of serious discord, let alone physical abuse. There were wild rumours that Kate and Gerry had given their children sedatives to keep them quiet, but it was simply a press invention.

In any case, you only need to look at the sequence of events, The parents were dining with friends just around the corner from their apartment, with all of the group occasionally checking on their kids. It is simply not plausible that having discovered Madeleine had died unexpectedly either Kate or Gerry cleverly disposed of the body – so brilliantly that it was never found – and was back at the tapas bar within moments, as though nothing had happened. Or are we to suppose that each of the other "tapas seven" hurriedly agreed to hush it up, a conspiracy that has stayed watertight?

I think it is almost certain that the forensic evidence is just as threadbare. Today we are used to hearing about microscopic particles and other scientific clues that it’s tempting to suppose they are infallible in identifying guilt. But the data you get out are only as good as the samples you put in, and in this case there was nothing of substantive evidential value.

No forensic experts were called in until the apartment had been comprehensively tramped through by well-meaning helpers and police. Almost another six weeks went by before minute traces of blood were found in the apartment – but it would hardly be surprising if a boisterous three-year old had a minor cut. In any case, why would that suggest that Kate and Gerry killed her? Are we to suppose that instead of overdosing her they bashed her to death or took a knife to her, before hurriedly agreeing a cover-up and heading back to finish supper?

And are we to take seriously the reports that a dog trained to sniff for bodies got excited when searching the McCanns' hire car? After all, they didn't rent it until more than three weeks after Madeleine disappeared. Are we to deduce that the couple shook off all the attention, dug up their own child's putrefying body from a temporary hiding place and drove around unobserved for a more suitable disposal? I know from dozens of cases I have looked into that truth is often stranger than fiction, but even so this macabre scenario simply isn't credible.

What then of the argument that there cannot be smoke without fire; that the Portuguese prosecutors would only have made the McCanns arguidos if there were grounds to distrust them? Well, unless we are to assume that every suspect is guilty, the arguido status is no more proof than some detectives had suspicions, suspicions which we now know have come to nought.

In any case the local police were hopelessly out of their depth. Child abductions are rare. Most are taken by a parent as part of a custody battle or by partners as a result of a dispute. But stranger kidnappings by paedophiles are even more extraordinary, so much so that a small country like Portugal inevitably has little experience of how to deal with them.

Looking the wrong way

Their police failed to convict because they were looking the wrong way – something that tragically happens quite a lot in major investigations – and Alipio Ribeiro, the former head of Portugal's police, was right to say the inquiry should not have been closed but should look "in other directions".

What's more it should be regarded as a murder case. I have no doubt that Madeleine has been dead since early last May, and we should acknowledge the utter implausibility of her survival. We all want to keep up hope, but it must be unhealthy for the McCanns to stretch their faith into continued anticipation that she is out there somewhere waiting to be found.

It must also be unhealthy that a sacked detective is hawking his memoirs by implying – or allowing the implication – that the McCanns are guilty after all. Apparently, Gonçalo Amaral thinks Madeleine "died in the apartment", which for all I know may be true, though I strongly doubt there is sufficient forensic evidence to prove it. In any case, why would that implicate one person rather than another?

One day, with any luck, the truth will out, and the real culprit will be found. Meanwhile the family deserves our support in coming to terms with their loss and what, in all reason, must be a great deal of bitterness too.

Well, the McCanns multi-millionaire benefactor can always bail them out if the need be.  A cool half a million is pocket money to a giant of his proportions.

Lest they forget..


Madeleine McCann: 'I listened for 15 seconds and knew they were innocent’

A wealthy British businessman was moved to help search for Madeleine McCann after her parents Kate and Gerry became suspects

By Anthony Summers and Robbyn Swan
7:05AM BST 10 Sep 2014

Gerry and Kate McCann never ceased doing what they could to move forward the investigation – which they saw as stalled – into Madeleine’s disappearance. They held, always, to the belief that their daughter could still be alive.

When they returned to the UK from Portugal in September 2007, Gerry insisted it did not mean they were giving up their search for her. ''As parents we cannot give up on our daughter until we know what has happened.”

Three days later, someone who was to be of great and lasting assistance to them got in touch. Brian Kennedy, a wealthy British businessman, had been following events as they unwound in Portugal and wanted to help.

“I was incredulous,” he told us. “I’d been losing all hope and faith in human nature. I had been asking myself, 'How is this possible?’ [Kate] is grieving. My instincts were telling me there was a great injustice being done. I called my lawyer and said, 'I want you to reach out to these poor folks and see if we can help them’.”

Kennedy, the Scottish-born, Cheshire-based son of a window cleaner, then aged 47, had leapfrogged from trainee accountant to a management role in a kitchen-equipment company, then to the mobile-phone business, double-glazing and plastics. By 2007 his net worth as head of his company, Latium Enterprises, was said to be £250 million.

An experiment with retirement had driven him “nuts” and he was back in the business fray. When he began talking about trying to help the McCanns, friends and colleagues told him not to get involved, that his intervention would end in tears. “What,” he recalled someone saying, “if the parents turn out to be guilty?”

“I remember replying, 'What happens if they’re innocent?’ Can you imagine the horror of losing your daughter… and then the world turning against you and accusing you of being responsible for her murder? Is it not bad enough, the terror, the agony they are going through? I could understand it – I’ve got five kids. I told my lawyer, 'If you feel they’re innocent, then we’ll get behind them and help them’.”



_{Kate McCann in Portugal moments after she had been named an official suspect}



His lawyer made contact with the McCanns and they met Kennedy in London. “Within 15 seconds of listening to Kate,” he said, “I made a decision, using all the emotional intelligence one builds up over many years. I was 100 per cent convinced of their total innocence. I told them that, one, we would find a top Portuguese lawyer to defend them, and get them off as arguidos [the McCanns had been designated “named suspects” by the Portuguese authorities days before they returned to England]. Two, we’d do everything in our power to influence the public’s perspective and views. And, three, we’d support them in setting up some private investigators … The Portuguese police had stopped investigating. It was urgent to get some other guys on to it.”

Top-level legal help was found in Portugal. At Kennedy’s bidding and at his expense, Clarence Mitchell – a government adviser who had previously acted as the McCanns’ spokesman in Praia da Luz, the holiday resort from where Madeleine had disappeared – quit his Whitehall job and came back on-board.

Kennedy prefers not to reveal how much he spent on helping the McCanns, beyond saying that there were “substantial” outgoings – principally legal and media-related costs. Stephen Winyard, the owner of Stobo Castle Spa, in Peebleshire, and Sir Richard Branson also contributed. However, it was Madeleine’s Fund – the not-for-profit company established to find her in 2007, the board of which Kennedy’s then lawyer joined – that would, in time, deal with the cost of private investigators, once that effort went into high gear.


Brian Kennedy, the wealthy British businessman who was moved by the McCanns' plight

Present at Kennedy’s first meeting with the McCanns in London were representatives of Control Risks, a firm specialising in security and crisis management. It had already sent detectives to Portugal to see the couple right after Madeleine’s disappearance, at the expense of an anonymous donor whose identity has never been revealed.

Kate McCann had not enjoyed that first encounter. One of the Control Risk operatives was a mysterious figure who introduced himself only as “Hugh”. He was one of the many former intelligence officers the company employed, and a main part of his role now was as a potential kidnap negotiator. Kate, already distraught, had not liked the James Bond atmosphere he brought with him. Besides, there would never be anybody other than hoaxers with whom to negotiate.

As the McCanns’ renewed use of Control Risks began to be mentioned in the press, noises of disapproval came from Portugal. “You cannot have private detectives intervening in criminal cases,” sniffed Carlos Anjos, head of the Polícia Judiciária’s union.

The McCanns resolved to go ahead, motivated by advice Gerry had noted during a research trip to the US earlier that summer.
A document issued by the US Justice Department for use by parents of missing children, The Family Survival Guide, recommended considering using private detectives if they could “do something better or different than what is being done by law enforcement”. Given what they saw as the fiasco of the Portuguese police probe, the McCanns nurtured that hope.

“I had no experience at all with private detectives,” Kennedy remembered. “But the way you run a business is all about surrounding yourself with people who understand industries that you don’t understand.” He initially hired two former Metropolitan Police detectives, and in late September decided to follow up a rumour that Madeleine might have been sighted in Morocco. Kennedy and the detectives, who flew out aboard his private jet, hired a Moroccan tourist guide to accompany them to the mountain village where it was reported the missing girl might be. She was not there, but the guide – promised a reward – subsequently spoke of having travelled vast distances circulating Madeleine’s picture. “If I find her,” he said, “I will be rich. I have been promised I will never have to work again – maybe a million pounds.”

“I suppose,” Kennedy said later “we had been looking for low-hanging fruit. After a few weeks, though, we decided we needed to go about it in a very professional way.”

Brian Kennedy had set a potentially useful process in motion. Months earlier, the Portuguese police had produced a poor drawing of the man the McCanns’ friend, Jane Tanner, had seen carrying a child near the holiday apartment in which the McCanns had been staying on the night Madeleine vanished. Now, in England, a British forensic sketch artist took on the job of extracting more and relevant information from Tanner. This fresh image got major media coverage – raising the possibility of new leads.


Kennedy then cast around for suitable private investigators to hire, and picked Método 3, a Spanish company. The agency’s claims included having located 23 missing children and teenagers. Given that it was not legitimate for investigators to work for the McCanns in Portugal while the police probe was still under way, it was hoped that Método 3 – with its knowledge of the region and its connections in Spain – might prove effective.

It seemed, briefly, that the private detectives could also rebuild bridges with the Portuguese Polícia Judiciária. At the request of the head of Spain’s anti-kidnapping unit, two PJ officers met Método 3 operatives. But the points the private detectives raised did not interest the Portuguese.

Método 3 followed up on a vast number of potential openings in the hunt for Madeleine. Nothing tangible resulted, but they made some startling statements that kept the case in the public eye. “We are 100 per cent sure,” their boss, Francisco Marco, told the American network CBS, “that she is alive. We know the kidnapper. We know who he is and how he has done it.” On the BBC’s Panorama programme, he said: “We are very close to finding the kidnappers.” Then, in early December, he announced:

“We believe she is in an area not very far from the Iberian peninsula and North Africa. And we have a fairly certain idea who she is with.”


No facts emerged, however, to back up these claims. According to The Daily Telegraph, a source close to the McCanns said the couple had begun to think “they might have been sold a pup”. A veteran Spanish police detective was derisive. Método 3 would solve the case, he said, “cuando las ranas crecen los pelos” – “when frogs grow hair”.

As the months slipped by, the McCanns made a move they were to regret. A contract was agreed with Oakley International, a US-based company described by a source close to the couple as being apparently “absolutely the best, but extremely secretive”. Oakley was said to employ former FBI, CIA and US Special Forces personnel. It was reportedly agreed that Madeleine’s Fund would pay the company £500,000 under a three-stage contract – with more to come should Madeleine be found alive.

The McCanns and Kennedy at first got the impression that Oakley was doing its job. Its investigators appeared to be collating and following up information that came in as a response to the parents’ appeals, and were conducting covert interviews in Portugal.

But it later emerged that hundreds of calls to a dedicated hotline were never checked by Oakley. Tapes of interviews conducted in Portugal were said to be useless, involving people irrelevant to the case. Specialists used by Oakley began to find that their bills went unpaid. An undertaking to deliver satellite images of Praia da Luz on the night of May 3, 2007, when Madeleine had disappeared, resulted only in pictures grabbed from Google Earth. With little or no real progress, and as funds continued to haemorrhage, Brian Kennedy called time.

Oakley’s boss Kevin Halligen, it turned out, was a fraud. After his involvement in the Madeleine case, Halligen was arrested in the UK in connection with charges relating to a trading company fraud, and extradited to the United States. He was convicted there on the fraud matter, then deported to Europe.

“The Oakley episode went sort of sweet and sour,” Kennedy told us. “There were genuine guys breaking their back, trying to make a breakthrough. The lion’s share was spent on the investigation, despite what the newspapers say… [But] it all ended in tears.”

It was a major setback, but Kennedy and the McCanns did not give up. On the recommendation of the head of Manchester’s Serious Crime Squad, they went on to hire an experienced former senior police officer, David Edgar. He put in much arduous, systematic work – and held the fort until 2011, when, following an appeal to David Cameron, Scotland Yard began investigating. The dossier the McCanns’ private detectives had gathered was passed to the Yard, and its probe continues today – as Operation Grange.


'Looking For Madeleine’ by Anthony Summers and Robbyn Swan (Headline, £18.99) is available from Telegraph Books for £16.99 + £1.95 p&p (0844 871 1514 or visit books.telegraph.co.uk)



https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/madeleinemccann/11077525/Madeleine-McCann-I-listened-for-15-seconds-and-knew-they-were-innocent.html
....................

There you go - a nice little plug for the hapless duo Winters and Goose - yet another Irish connection!

Todays nonsense comes from the Mail Online

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6192905/German-police-question-suspect-girls-2001-disappearance.html

Suspect confesses to dumping the body of 'German Madeleine McCann' who disappeared 17 years ago on her way home from school but denies killing her

VILE MADDIE JOKE Fury as sick Scots Facebook account pretending to be Madeleine McCann claims ‘am back f***ers’ as 10,000 share vile post

The hoax profile, pretending to be missing Maddie, joined the social media site on Thursday before posting a picture captioned: “Am back troops, been a long 10 years, whos onit x"

By Alice Walker
21st September 2018, 2:14 pm
Updated: 21st September 2018, 3:11 pm

A SICK fake account pretending to be Madeleine McCann has emerged on Facebook, claiming “am back f***ers”.

The hoax profile, which appears to be Scottish, joined the social media site on Thursday before posting a picture captioned: “Am back troops, been a long 10 years, whos onit x.”



In the intro section of the account, it also says “am back f***ers”, while the profile picture is supposed to show how the missing girl might look now.

The profile claiming to be missing Maddie has now been shared almost 10,000 times on the social network.

But furious users have responded to the vile post, branding the person behind it “sick in the head”.

Facebook user Danielle Cassidy said: “Some people are just sick in the head. Absolutely shocking.”





https://www.thescottishsun.co.uk/news/scottish-news/3242512/madeleine-mccann-maddie-mccann-facebook/
....................

As plants go, this must be the biggest Aspidistra in the world.  The case certainly attracts a lot of social media f*****r's - curious.

Hi Verdi,Scots Facebook false Madeleine.

I suppose the person's who made the original pictures up of how a "Supposed Madeleine aged 14/15 would look now after 10 yrs",Kate,Gerry?

They need to take some responsibility for producing the image that has been abused by nefarious people!

The Parents cannot simply state they have No Knowledge of how the Facebook,Twitter accounts work,eg Mrs Brenda Leyland,who they quickly wanted silenced for specific reasons,where the "Dogs of War" were unleashed,Martin,Big Jim and Gerry and Metropolitan Police Commander Sir Bernard hogan Howe in full charge?

Looking for the "Sympathy vote",tide turning against them!

Madeleine McCann still alive - and could be minutes from where she disappeared, claims ex-detective

By  Tony Allen

August 28 2017

BARREN scrubland, caves and sun-baked rural communities stretch for miles beyond the orderly white buildings that make up the resort where Madeleine McCann disappeared.

It is somewhere in that unregulated, sprawling wilderness that Dave Edgar believes the little girl with the unusual imperfection in her right eye is languishing.

   No motive for Maddie's parents to kill her, detective rubbishes cover-up claim

His theories of what is now happening to her will bring no comfort to heartbroken parents Kate and Gerry.

Dave believes two things about Maddie — the now 14-year-old is alive and is most likely being held as a sex slave or being brought up by a family.

After three years scouring the world for the youngster, he is sure she is being held just 10 or 15 miles from where she was snatched.

The former RUC man, whose search for Maddie stretched from 2009 to 2011, told Sunday Life that believing Maddie is not dead also keeps her ex-GP mum Kate (49) and heart doctor dad Gerry (48) clinging to the hope that one day they will be reunited with their daughter.

“There’s one reason I’m sure Madeleine is alive — a body hasn’t been found,” he said.

“In my experience as a detective, when strangers kill children, or if strangers kill anyone for that matter, they do one thing very quickly and almost automatically — they dump the body of their victim so they’re not caught with it. That’s just the way it works.

“So, without a body, somebody must have taken Maddie away and be keeping her alive.”

Dave’s theory is drawn from the 30 years of experience he accrued in the RUC and Cheshire Police.

As an officer in the RUC, which he joined in 1978 aged 22, he was shaken by the deaths of two of his pals.

Sergeants Stephen Fyffe (28) and William McDonald (29) were killed in the 1983 IRA bombing of the Ulster Polytechnic in Jordanstown.

As a Detective Inspector in Cheshire, Dave solved some of the most gruesome abduction and murder cases in British criminal history.

The retired investigator, who grew up on Belfast’s Woodstock Road, said: “Another element in cases where strangers commit murder is that they often dispose of their victim’s body in the open.

“People just often make little or no effort to conceal the body. Again, that’s just the way it is.

“All my experience tells me a stranger or strangers took Madeleine and that she’s still alive.”

The reason Dave thinks Maddie is being held so close to the Ocean Club’s resort in Praia da Luz, where she was last seen by her family, is that his investigation has taken in most of the world, with no success.

Together with former Merseyside Detective Sergeant Arthur Cowley (65), Dave formed the Alpha Investigation Group to hunt for Madeleine.

[and they said it couldn't be !?!]

Dave and Arthur were recruited along with an interpreter/translator and former police administrator when the McCanns became disillusioned with the work of Spanish detective agency Método 3.

The Barcelona-based business began to look for Madeleine in 2007 after the McCanns became convinced Portuguese police had given up. It reportedly charged £50,000 a month and its director, Francisco Marco, was criticised after boasting about his ability to locate Madeleine. In December 2007, he caused a stir by claiming he knew who had kidnapped her and hoped to have her home by Christmas. Método 3’s six-month contract ran out in January 2008.

During Dave and Arthur’s time on the case, they investigated leads in Australia, Germany and Barcelona.

While Dave investigated child sex offenders, almost 80 rapists and more than 20 vagrants as part of his worldwide hunt, he could never shake the feeling Maddie was being held in a cellar or underground cave in the wasteland a short hike from Praia da Luz.

“When you get beyond the Algarve, it turns into countryside and there are any number of small villages where Maddie could have been kept,” he explained.

“I’m not talking miles and miles into the countryside. When you get up 10 or 15 miles beyond Praia da Luz, there are loads of very rural communities — farming communities concerned with growing oranges and crops. She could be being kept in one of those quite easily.”

Despite previous reports, Dave told Sunday Life he did not believe an organised child sex trafficking gang or paedophile ring snatched missing Maddie.

Rather, he feels a Josef Fritzl-esque character seized the child and may still be keeping her as a sex slave.

“I don’t believe it was an organised group that kidnap children for sex who took Maddie,” he said.

“If that had been the case, someone would have broken ranks by now and come forward.

“They would have done it to either get the money, because there was so much reward money on the table at one point, or they would have been caught doing something else and they’d have wanted to trade information about Maddie to save their skin.”

Dave does believe the youngster could have been taken by a single sex predator who could be keeping Maddie underground or in a cellar in one of the many rural communities near Praia da Luz.

However, he feels that if that is the grim reality facing the youngster, her captor is being protected by a loved one or partner in crime.

“I believe, if it was a lone wolf kidnapper, they would have confided in someone else,” Dave said. “These type of people just can’t keep a secret like that inside.

“Whether they have told a lover, wife, husband, sister or associate, I believe someone else other than Maddie’s kidnapper knows where she is.”

In April, former police chief Paulo Pereira Cristovao said he believed Maddie was being held in a network of caves at Burgau beach, under the resort where she was snatched.

But Dave doesn’t agree. “I stick by the theory she is in the countryside,” he said. “Those caves are hard to get to and there is a distinct lack of real evidence that’s where Maddie was taken.”

Dave first spoke to Sunday Life about his search for Madeleine in 2009, when he claimed the youngster could be oblivious to the worldwide hunt for her as her captor or captors could have brainwashed her into forgetting her family and taught her a different language.

There are now a string of cases around the world supporting his theory that she may still be alive.

In 2009, the year Dave started his search for Maddie, US kidnap victim Jaycee Dugard was released from her sex offender kidnapper Phillip Garrido, who grabbed her from the street when she was 11 and raped her repeatedly, with Jaycee fathering two of his children.

Elisabeth Fritzl had seven children by her father, Josef Fritzl, after he lured her into his windowless cellar when she was 18, keeping her there for 24 years.

Austrian Natascha Kampusch was just 10 years old when Wolfgang Prikopil snatched her from the streets in 1998, subjecting her to eight years of sex slavery before she escaped.

These cases and Dave’s theories will be torture for the McCanns. On the one hand, they will want their daughter to be alive but, on the other, will not want to imagine her suffering like Elisabeth Fritzl.

But Kate McCann has shown her steely mindset by speaking about how she researched the realities of child sex slavery as part of her search for her little girl.

She wrote on the Find Madeleine website: “Child sexual exploitation and child pornography, in particular, is sadly and shockingly extensive worldwide.

“It is a multibillion-dollar industry aided by the use of the internet, with the ‘thirst’ for younger victims growing.

“My ‘bubble’ of a life burst as I began to discover the facts relating to this now global crisis.

“As we travelled through Europe in an attempt to raise awareness of Madeleine’s abduction and appeal for help, we were repeatedly made aware of the unbelievable existence of such a horrifying activity and its vastness in our so-called civilised society.

“My eyes have certainly been opened to a whole new world out there — a very worrying one.

“As a parent of an abducted child, I can tell you that it is the most painful and agonising experience you could ever imagine.

“My thoughts of the fear, confusion and loss of love and security that my precious daughter has had to endure are unbearable — crippling. And yet I am not the victim, Madeleine is. No child

Belfast Telegraph Digital

https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/sunday-life/madeleine-mccann-still-alive-and-could-be-minutes-from-where-she-disappeared-claims-exdetective-36076016.html

I'll wager if you came upon a camel drover in the middle of the Sahara he'd have a camel named Dave or Andy .  Or was it Gerald Durrell who said that?

Daily Mail proprietor felt 'concern' at Madeleine McCann coverage

Viscount Rothermere says he is 'deeply sympathetic' to McCanns but that he stood by editor Paul Dacre

Josh Halliday - Mon 12 Dec 2011 18.48 GMT

Viscount Rothermere, the controlling shareholder of the Daily Mail, said he had a "personal concern" about his title's coverage of the disappearance of Madeleine McCann in 2007 as he gave evidence to parliament on Monday.

In a rare public appearance, Rothermere told a parliamentary committee on privacy and injunctions that he was "very deeply sympathetic" to Kate and Gerry McCann but that he stood by Paul Dacre, the Daily Mail editor-in-chief, over the title's coverage of the couple's search for their daughter.

Asked by Labour MP Paul Farrelly if the Daily Mail's coverage of the McCann family gave him cause for concern, Rothermere said: "My paper writes about many things that give me personal cause for concern but I feel it's my duty to allow editors the job to edit.
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"If I picked up the phone every single time I disagreed with an article then I would make their job a lot harder to do. I rely on the processes within the organisation and their obeyance of them in order to run a professional outfit."

Asked again whether he had any concerns before the McCanns sued, Rothermere said: "I am very deeply sympathetic to everything the McCanns have gone through."

Pressed by Farrelly, Rothermere admitted: "I had personal concerns, yes. I think what the McCanns went through was very difficult for them but I did not bring up the issue with Paul Dacre, if that answers your question."

The McCanns told the Leveson inquiry into press standards three weeks ago how they were subject to a string of "disgusting" and "offensive" stories after their daughter Madeleine went missing in Portugal four years ago.

Associated Newspapers, publisher of the Daily Mail and formerly of the Evening Standard, made a substantial donation to the McCanns in 2008 after they sued for libel. The Daily Mail agreed to carry free adverts on behalf of the Find Madeleine campaign but refused to apologise, according to Gerry McCann. The Evening Standard agreed to publish an apology.

Rothermere, who rarely makes public appearances on behalf of the company, added that it was important for proprietors to "fiercely protect" editors of their newspapers as long as there had been "no gross dereliction" of duty. "I do not believe and the board does not believe that any of the instances you've brought up today qualify under that," he added.

Earlier, Farrelly compared Rothermere to James Murdoch, referring to the proprietor's "dispassionate replies" when pressed on standards. "I do care about standards. Standards are important," Rothermere said. "I think that your comparison to News International is unfair."

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2011/dec/12/daily-mail-madeleine-mccann-viscount-rothermere

WHO WERE THEY? Mystery couple ‘seen clambering over wall and fence directly behind apartment where Madeleine McCann was sleeping on night she vanished’

Brit police probed key witnesses about the information
Exclusive
By Charles Yates and Sam Christie
3rd May 2017, 2:02 pm
Updated: 4th May 2017, 7:07 pm

A MYSTERY couple were seen clambering over a wall and fence directly behind the apartment where Madeleine McCann was sleeping just moments before she went missing, it has been claimed.

The news was revealed by British police to key witnesses as they questioned them in 2015 over Maddie's disappearance.



British holidaymakers Paul and Susan Moyes told the Sun Online how officers asked them about a mystery man and woman while questioning them about what they remembered from the night Maddie went missing on May 3, 2007.

Paul, 68, said officers asked them about the potentially explosive information two years ago - after swabbing both he and his wife for their DNA.

The retired accountant said: "The Met police came here about two years ago and both times they came into our house.

"The first time they interviewed us in separate rooms and took our DNA and that visit lasted more than an hour.

"The second visit was about three months later and lasted more than an hour and that was to pursue a lead and to make sure we were convinced on our timeline.

"The lead was that a couple had climbed over the fence and the back garden wall and they asked if that was us. It wasn't."



The couple said they had no idea who the mystery couple were but the information was "a few times removed" and had been spoken about in restaurants in the area.

The news comes after the Sun Online revealed how police are currently looking for a mysterious woman in purple seen by one witness hanging outside the apartment in the hours before Maddie went missing.

Paul and Susan, who still have the same apartment in the complex, also revealed to The Sun that despite having a prime view of both the tapas bar where Kate and Gerry McCann were with friends and the apartment where Maddie and her siblings were sleeping, they were never questioned by Goncalo Amaral - the cop who who lead the initial hunt for the three-year-old.

The now retired detective was removed as head of the investigation after criticising British detectives.

In July 2008, Amaral released a book called “The Truth of the Lie” which claims the McCanns faked the abduction.

Paul said: "It was not long afterwards (Maddie went missing) that the Portuguese police came into the apartment with a sniffer dog. They went round the apartment and we were not asked too many questions.

The couple still regularly holiday in Praia du Luz, though they are currently selling their 200,000-plus Euros apartment.

The pair purchased a villa in the resort in 2014.

Mr Moyes described Praia du Luz as idyllic and safe and his wife added: “It is paradise.”

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/3429641/mystery-couple-seen-clambering-over-wall-and-fence-directly-behind-apartment-where-madeleine-mccann-was-sleeping-on-night-she-vanished/

'The f***ing b******s have taken her': Witnesses tell of Kate McCann's screams on the night Maddie went missing 10 years ago

Paul and Susan Moyes revealed what they saw from two floors above McCanns'
They said Kate McCann was screaming as Gerry sobbed on a friend's shoulder
Comes as another witness said she saw 'British looking' driver near apartment
Also claims to have seen woman standing outside the apartment then 'hiding'

By James Dunn For Mailonline

Published: 09:59, 3 May 2017 | Updated: 12:00, 4 May 2017

Holidaymakers describing the night Madeleine McCann disappeared today revealed how they saw her distraught mother screaming 'the f***ing b******s have taken her'.

Speaking for the first time since she went missing ten years ago, Paul and Susan Moyes revealed what they saw from the apartment two floors above the McCanns'.

Mr Moyes, 68, said: 'The McCanns were in bits, he was crying on the shoulder of a friend. She was screaming "the f***ing b******s have taken her".'

Speaking to The Sun, he added: 'There was no doubt about the emotion that night.'

The couple, from Middlwich, Cheshire, claim they saw the McCann parents and their friends - known as the Tapas Nine - from their balcony before going to bed.

They were then reportedly woken by a friend of the McCanns banging on their door around an hour and a half later, at around 11.30pm on May 3 2007.

Another resident has also revealed key information on the night three-year-old Madeleine disappeared from her bed in the resort in Praia da Luz in the Algarve.

Jenny Murat, who lives 100 yards from the Ocean Club complex where the McCanns were staying, saw a car driving towards their apartment.

Speaking about the sighting for the first time, Mrs Murat told BBC Breakfast it was driving the wrong way down a one-way street.

'It was one of the small cars, like the rental cars – the normal, everyday sort of rental cars,' she said.



'I saw the driver, I was beside the driver. Both of us looked at each other. I think he had a very British look about him.'

Mrs Murat also described seeing a woman standing outside the family's apartment on the night Madeleine went missing.

'I noticed her there and she kind of looked as if she was trying to hide from me. I do remember she was wearing a plum-coloured top,' she said.

Mrs Murat's son Robert, a translator, was the first person to be made an arguido – a named suspect – in the case.

He told the BBC he still cannot face reading about the case on the internet, despite being cleared of any involvement.

'The internet is full of theories – I want to know the truth, not theories,' he said.

'I just want to know why that was the case. It didn't only lead to me being destroyed, it led to my whole family being destroyed, affected by those allegations. It was completely untrue.'

A special church service will be held at the Church of Nossa Senhora da Luz for all missing people, including Madeleine, at 9pm on Wednesday.

A candle bearing Madeleine's name and a card with her picture on have been placed outside the church in Luz where the service will later take place.

The card, reading 'Maddie with love' features a photograph of the little girl surrounded by diamante stickers, with a butterfly, yellow bow and flower.

Yellow ribbons, to signify hope, were placed around the village at the time of Madeleine's disappearance.

The news comes after new information about the investigation was revealed this week by a Home Office report into the case.

A detective tipped to head up the Madeleine McCann probe was warned he would be ordered to prove she was abducted and ignore other leads.

Colin Sutton said a high-ranking friend in the Met called him and warned him not to lead the case when Scotland Yard announced it would get involved in 2010.

The source warned that he would be tasked with proving her parents Kate and Gerry were innocent and ignoring any alternatives to the abduction theory, he claims.

Speaking to Martin Brunt on Sky News, he said: 'I did receive a call from a very senior met police officer who knew me and said it wouldn’t be a good idea for me to head investigation on the basis that I wouldn’t be happy conducting an investigation being told where I could go and where I couldn’t go, the things I could investigate and the things I couldn’t.

Asked to clarify what he meant, he added: 'The Scotland Yard investigation was going to be very narrowly focused and that focus would be away from any suspicion of wrongdoing on the part of the McCanns or the tapas friends.'

The Tapas Nine refers to the McCann parents and the seven friends they were out to dinner with when Madeleine disappeared in 2007.

They were interviewed by Portuguese Police, who have always worked on the basis that Madeleine was abducted from her room, but Mr Sutton said other possibilities should be entertained.

Speaking on Searching for Maddie, which looks at the case ten years on from her disappearance, he criticises the narrow focus of both Portuguese and British police.

He added: 'If you are conducting a re-investigation you start at the very beginning. Look at all the accounts all the evidence all the initial statements and go through them and make sure they stack up and they compare.'

The documentary revealed details from a Home Office report on the case, ordered by then Labour minister Alan Johnson before the 2010 election, seen by Sky News' Martin Brunt.

The report shows that Gerry and Kate McCann's relationship with Portuguese police after they closed the investigation into her disappearance.

The Met took the unusual step of getting involved in the case in 2010 after the report was compiled, and recommends police collaborate with private investigators hired by the McCanns because of the 'unique nature of the case'.

However, it also reveals that much of the information gathered by investigators had not been shared with police investigating the case so far.

Highlighting the 'turbulent relationship' between the parents and detectives, it describes how the McCann's felt badly treated by the Portuguese authorities.

They were called in to speak to officers then asked to wait for hours, only for a detective never to appear, in treatment they described as 'inhumane'.

The relationship broke down entirely when Portuguese police closed the investgation in to Madeleine's disappearance in in Praia de Luz.

When the Met Police came in, they also fell out with local police. The Met would later fall out with the McCanns too, the report revealed.

Mr Johnson wanted to find out if the Met should intervene further in the case so the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre investigated.

It was commissioned in late 2009, completed by March 2010 and published in May 2010, MailOnline understands.

In May 2011 the Home Office launched the Scotland Yard review of the case. The Met's investigation has cost £11million so far.

The report said: 'It is clear that from the beginning the McCanns felt there was a lack of clarity and communication on the part of the Portuguese police.

'Despite the involvement of British consular staff, they were, by their own accounts, left for long periods without any updates or communication with the investigators.

'They state they were taken to the police station on more than one occasion and then left for hours waiting to speak to someone who never materialised.

'They describe this situation as inhumane, with no real consideration for their emotional and physical wellbeing.'

The report also reveals tensions between the Portuguese and British police, with the Met accused of acting 'like a colonial power'.

The report says: 'Clearly, the McCanns have had a turbulent relationship with both Portuguese and UK law enforcement. They now openly acknowledge that there is a distinct lack of trust between all parties.'

The police in Britain and Portugal say they are working together to find Madeleine, who vanished on May 3 2007.

The documentary was aired just hours after it emerged the former Portuguese detective Goncalo Amaral claimed Madeleine's body was cremated in a TV interview.

The detective, one of the leading investigators early in the case, made the wild statement hours after her parents vowed to take him back to court over other claims.

Amaral made his latest statement on a TV documentary to be aired on the 10th anniversary of her disappearance from the Praia da Luz resort in Portugal.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4468916/Algarve-resident-tells-car-sighting-near-Madeleine-McCann-apartment.html

Madeleine McCann witness breaks her silence

By Martina Smit

2:46PM GMT 14 Dec 2007

Minutes before his daughter Madeleine disappeared, Gerry McCann told a fellow holidaymaker that he and his wife would have stayed in with their children if they had not been holidaying with friends.

The revelation has been made by Bridget O'Donnell, a former BBC Crimewatch producer who got to know the McCanns at the Mark Warner resort in Praia da Luz, Portugal. She has now told her story for the first time.

"I have always believed that Kate and Gerry McCann are innocent," Miss O'Donnell wrote in an article published by The Guardian.

On the night of May 3, while walking their baby son to sleep, her partner Jes Wilkins bumped into a "relaxed and friendly" Mr McCann who had just checked on his children. "They talked about daughters, fathers, families," Miss O'Donnell wrote.

"They discussed the babysitting dilemmas at the resort and Gerry said that he and Kate would have stayed in too, if they had not been on holiday with a group."

Every night, the McCanns and their friends - whom Miss O'Donnell dubbed "The Doctors" - booked a large table at the Tapas restaurant at the Mark Warner resort.

"One man was the joker," she recalled. "He had a loud Glaswegian accent. He was Gerry McCann."

The night before Madeleine went missing, Miss O'Donnell and her partner - also a television producer - were placed at a table next to "The Doctors". Mr McCann invited them to join the group.

"We discussed the children," Miss O'Donnell wrote. "He told us they were leaving theirs sleeping in the apartments. While they chatted on, I ruminated on the pros and cons of this."

Sit-in babysitters at the resort were expensive and booked long in advance, while a group baby sitting service at the kiddie club meant that the children had to be put to sleep twice - both there and then back at their parents' apartments.

"I admired (the McCanns), in a way, for not being paranoid parents, but I decided that out apartment was too far off even to contemplate (leaving their children)," Miss McDonnell wrote. "Our baby was too young and I would worry about them waking up."

Nevertheless, the producer said she was glad her family did not get the McCanns' apartment. "It was on a corner by the road and people could see in. They were exposed."

The next day, after her partner played tennis with Mr McCann, Miss O'Donnell observed the couple. "Kate was calm, still, quietly beautiful; Gerry was confident, proud, silly, strong."

But two days later, after the events of that night, "the physical transformation of these two human beings was sickening" as she saw the McCanns at the pool.

"Kate's back and shoulders, her hands, her mouth had reshaped themselves in to the angular manifestation of a silent scream... Gerry was upright, his lips now drawn into a thin, impenetrable line."

On the Friday, locals and holidaymakers had started circulating photocopied pictures of Madeleine. "We didn't see any police," Miss O'Donnell wrote.

A uniformed Portuguese policeman and a translator - whom she later found out was Robert Murat, named by the Policia Judiciara as an arguido or suspect in the case - later questioned Miss O'Donnell and her partner in their apartment.

"The translator had a squint and sweated slightly," she described Mr Murat. "He was breathless, perhaps a little excited. He reminded me of a boy in my class at school who was bullied."

They answered a few questions and gave their details, which the policeman took down on "the back of a bit of paper", Miss McDonnell wrote. "No notebook."

"Then he pointed to the photocopied picture of Madeleine on the table. 'Is this your daughter?' he asked. 'Er, no,' we said. 'That's the girl you are meant to be searching for.'

"My heart sank for the McCanns."

Even when the McCanns were named suspects along with Mr Murat, Miss O'Donnell still believed they were innocent.

"There were no drug-fuelled 'swingers' on our holiday; instead, there was a bunch of ordinary parents wearing Berghaus and worrying about sleep patterns. Secure in our banality, none of us imagined we were being watched.

"One group made a disastrous decision; Madeleine was vulnerable and was chosen. But in the face of such desperate audacity, it could have been any one of us.

"And when I stroke my daughter's hair, or feel her butterfly lips on my cheek, I do so in the knowledge of what night have been.

"So my heart goes out to them, Gerry and Kate, the couple who we remember from our Portuguese holiday. They had a beautiful daughter, Madeleine, who played and danced with ours at the kiddie club. That's who we remember."

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1572560/Madeleine-McCann-witness-breaks-her-silence.html

Home » The Times Online

‘Madeleine McCann was abducted by an opportunistic paedophile’

Mark Williams-Thomas: Analysis
April 28, 2008

The investigation into the disappearance of Madeleine McCann is like no other I have seen before.

I have followed this case from the beginning. I visited the village of Praia da Luz within hours of Madeleine’s disappearance and have returned on numerous occasions to examine what happened on May 3 last year.

I believe that Madeleine was abducted outside her family’s apartment by an opportunistic paedophile with local connections. And I would be very surprised if this person has not been back to the area or still frequents it.

On the evening she disappeared I believe Madeleine woke up and cried for a short time while her parents were dining at a nearby tapas bar at the Ocean Club resort. When she realised that her parents were not there she climbed out of bed and walked around the apartment. She found the back patio door partly open so she walked out, went down the small flight of steps, through the metal gate and turned right down towards the entrance to the tapas bar. It was at this point that she was abducted. Interestingly, police dogs first tracked a scent down this exact route. It is a vital clue that has been largely ignored. Unfortunately, although this area is in range of a CCTV camera at the nearby super-market, it was not working that night.

Statistically the abduction of a child is very rare. On average it happens to six children a year in Britain. However, if we look at the abduction and murder of Sarah Payne in July 2000 we can see that she was snatched by a passing stranger while her brothers were just steps behind.

Madeleine became the victim of an opportunist and predatory paedophile. The abductor either lives in or had contact with Praia da Luz. This is not the sort of resort you just happen upon. For the past 12 months the Portuguese police have pursued only two lines of inquiry: that Gerry and Kate McCann were involved or that their daughter was abducted by a stranger. They have focused steadfastly on the first line. It is quite correct for the police to consider the parents as suspects because most murdered children are killed by a relative or someone they know. But the police do not seem to have any real evidence against Mr and Mrs McCann and they have vehemently denied any involvement.

Mr and Mrs McCann believe their daughter was abducted and trafficked abroad but Madeleine does not fit the profile. Girls are trafficked into the sex trade as prostitutes or for domestic slavery, both with financial gain to the seller and purchaser. Who was to gain from her trafficking?

The so-called sightings in other countries, although genuinely intended, are a distraction and prove to be of little value after the initial two weeks. After all who is going to openly walk out with the most wanted child in the world? For months it was genuinely assumed the abductor had entered the apartment and taken Madeleine from her bed. But I do not believe that a paedophile was watching the apartment or that an offender entered the apartment.

This would be too high risk as the offender would not know that someone was not inside. Britain has not seen a single case of a predatory paedophile entering premises and abducting a child where the occupants of the house are unknown to the offender.

The problem with the police investigation was that it was crucially flawed from the very start. It was the worst-preserved crime scene I have seen.

The investigation is now all but closed. The police have insufficient evidence to charge Mr and Mrs McCann and when their arguido status is lifted the couple could return to Portugal without fear of arrest or prosecution.

They could then properly coordinate an investigation to find out what really did happen to Madeleine.

Mark Williams-Thomas is a former detective and authority on paedophile crimes

The BBC - again !!!

Sunday 6th May 2007

The 'family-friendly' holiday firm

Three-year-old British girl Madeleine McCann was abducted from a Mark Warner resort in Portugal's popular holiday area, the Algarve.

The holiday firm had just one chalet when it began 33 years ago, but now takes about 50,000 people abroad every year, and has developed a family-friendly reputation.

The Ocean Club in the village of Praia da Luz is Mark Warner's only resort in Portugal.

It was from an apartment there that Madeleine McCann, from Leicestershire, was taken on Thursday evening.

The resort offers babysitting and creche services but Madeleine's parents, Gerry and Kate, dining just yards away, were popping back regularly to check on their three children.

Mark Warner describes the Ocean Club as offering individual villa-style accommodation, set around a series of private areas with their own pool and bar, cafe, and restaurant facilities.

It is a very relaxed, very British-focused place, English-speaking staff - many of them have professional child-care qualifications

Its childcare services include a creche with an outdoor play area, and nannies who organise supervised activities for children.

There is also babysitting, and a "dining-out" creche service in the evenings for children aged four months to nine years - parents eating in the resort's restaurants drop the children off and pick them up later.

Prices for a fortnight at Ocean Club rise to £1,675 per adult at the height of the season.

Paul and Susan Moyse, who are regular holidaymakers at Ocean Club, have always regarded the resort as a safe place.

Mr Moyse said: "It's an idyllic resort. Fantastic place."

Mrs Moyse added: "It's paradise. Nothing ever happens here, never."

Simon Calder, travel editor for the Independent newspaper, says Mark Warner has developed a reputation for "extremely family-friendly" holidays, offering "everything from giving face-painting classes to younger children, to teaching older children snorkelling and windsurfing".

"It's not quite an all-inclusive resort in the traditional sense but it is a very relaxed, very British-focused place, English-speaking staff - many of them have professional child-care qualifications," he said.

The facilities for the children are probably better than the facilities for the adults
James Wilkinson
holidaymaker

He added: "The situation at the Ocean Club in Portugal is that this is part of a larger complex, so it's not exclusively Mark Warner, but what the company does provide is a couple of services.

"First of all they've got something called a drop-off creche which means if you're dining in one of the resort restaurants you just leave your children there.

"A lot of parents will think 'Well, we don't actually want to do that because we don't want to disturb them when we're taking them home'.

"There is also baby-sitting available at an extra charge."

Off guard

Mr Calder said Mark Warner had a "flawless record", and like any British tour operator had a legal and moral obligation to keep the highest standards.

Ocean Club in Luz in the Algarve
Madeleine was last seen by her father sleeping soundly

"But this is a holiday resort, it's not a prison camp. This is somewhere where people go to relax and it is a very lovely part of the world," he said.

"You can completely understand people maybe being off their guard, and certainly you don't get the high fences that you might find in some other resorts with security guards, simply because nobody would imagine you would ever need them."

James Wilkinson and his wife, from Chorleywood, Hertfordshire, will be going to Mark Warner in Greece for the fourth year running this summer, with their two children aged four and two.

Mr Wilkinson said: "Mark Warner is a fantastic family holiday where parents can get some time to themselves.

"The facilities for the children are probably better than the facilities for the adults. They know if the children are happy the parents will be happy.

"What I do know about this Portugal resort is it is quite different from other Mark Warner resorts.

"All the resorts we've been to have been pretty much self-contained and away from the local town.

"I've never once had any concern at all about safety and security."

Swiss beginnings

Mark Warner was founded in 1974 with just one chalet in the Swiss ski resort of Verbier.

Originally the idnowea was to offer activity-based breaks for adults, but over the years facilities have been developed to improve accommodation and offer better childcare.

Its summer destinations feature 10 beach resorts in Corsica, Egypt, Greece, Portugal, Mauritius, Sardinia and Sri Lanka, plus two in the French Alps.

The firm, which is based in London, says it is committed to doing all it can to support the McCanns.

It has sent out two counsellors, while directors of Mark Warner are also in the resort to help "in any way possible".

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/leicestershire/6627799.stm

Reality alert !!!   This is the 21st century - nowhere on earth is a safe haven.  Would you leave your car unlocked overnight?  Oh yes, I guess you would if was getting a bit whiffy.

Lies, beatings, secret trials: the dark side of police handling Madeleine case

• Saturday 15 September 2007 22:07
  

According to his friends, Chief Inspector Goncalo Amaral of the Portuguese Policia Judiciaria, co-leader of the investigation into the disappearance of Madeleine McCann from the Mark Warner Ocean Club in Praia da Luz, is a dedicated and capable detective, determined to do whatever it takes to find her – or those responsible for murdering her.

As a foreign reporter in Portugal, it is difficult to form a view. Thanks to the country's stringent judicial secrecy laws, Amaral is officially forbidden from talking to the media.

I confronted the sweaty, corpulent figure in an ill-fitting jacket twice last Friday: the first time at 10am, as he sat slurping coffee and cakes at the Kalahary cafe in Portimao with his colleague, Chief Inspector Guillermino Encarnacao; the second just before 3pm, when the two men made their way from a restaurant to a waiting black Mercedes, in which they were driven 400 yards to meet officials at the courthouse.

The reaction was the same both times: "No speak! No speak!" was all Amaral would say, making a swatting motion as though batting away an insect.

But Amaral's official silence is not the only difference between him and his counterparts in Britain.


In the UK, it is unlikely he would be leading the McCann inquiry at all.

Madeleine's parents Kate and Gerry may never be charged with anything, despite their present status as arguidos, or official suspects, and by the end of last week, apparently well-placed sources were admitting that any case against them is circumstantial and weak.

Amaral, however, is in a similar position. He, too, is an arguido, facing possible trial on a serious criminal charge arising from a murder case brought to court in 2004, the last occasion a little girl vanished in the Algarve.

The Mail on Sunday can today reveal new details of this case, the subject of a draconian judicial order that has stopped most sources who know about the case from talking to the Portuguese Press.

According to the order, documents about the case have been restricted to a handful of officials, while the next stage of the process – a hearing at which Amaral and four fellow officers may be asked formal questions – will be conducted in secret.
It is believed that this is set for next month.

Three of Amaral's senior PJ colleagues have been made suspects for the torture of the missing girl's mother, Leonor Cipriano, who has been convicted of killing her daughter Joana, aged eight, and jailed for 16 years.


As for Amaral, the claim against him is "omisado de denuncia" – that he tried to hide the evidence of the alleged torture or, in other words, attempted a cover-up. He is said to deny it strenuously.

In internet blogs and newspaper columns, Amaral's supporters have claimed that the Cipriano case is built on lies – a vicious smear against a decent detective trying to do his job.

It has, they say, "no connection" to the Madeleine McCann inquiry.

Experienced lawyers in Portimao, the town 12 miles from Praia da Luz where Amaral is PJ chief, disagree.

The case against the detectives began as a complaint lodged by Cipriano's lawyer, they pointed out, but has now been adopted by the public prosecutor.

"In order to bring formal charges, the public prosecutor has to believe there is a strong case," said Oliveira Trindad, who has practised law in the area for more than ten years.


"That means that after assessing all the evidence, he thinks that if the case goes to trial, a conviction is more likely than not."
That decision is likely to be made well before the McCann case is closed.

There are, to be sure, many differences between Leonor Cipriano and Kate McCann.

But there are also similarities, starting with the fact that although the bodies of their daughters have not been found, Amaral and his PJ colleagues have long been convinced that both girls are dead.

No one would suggest that in the course of the marathon interrogations that preceded their departure from Portugal last weekend, Kate or Gerry McCann were the victims of physical violence.

But at times it seemed they were also being subjected to torment, albeit of a different, psychological kind.

It, too, say Portimao's criminal defence lawyers, may have been inspired by PJ officers desperate to achieve the end they sought with Cipriano – a confession.

It isn't hard to locate the source of some of the McCanns' current difficulties: Hugo Beaty's bar.

There, amid the burnt orange concrete of the Estrela apartment complex, a five-minute walk from the Ocean Club, most of the seats along the shady terrace and more inside will be taken all day by reporters with laptops, authors of a daily verbal torrent that has come to seem unstoppable.

After Kate and Gerry's abrupt return to Leicestershire last Sunday, almost nothing happened in the McCann case last week.

The only verified fact is that after considering a ten-volume PJ dossier about Madeleine's disappearance on May 3, Pedro Miguel dos Anjos Frias, a junior judge in Portimao, decided to grant certain requests made by the prosecutor, Joao Cunha de Magalhaes.


Every news outlet covering the story – a waterfront that now extends across the whole of Europe to the major American TV networks and even, unbelievably, a paper in war-torn Somalia – has stated that these requests were for warrants to seize items including Kate McCann's private diary, Gerry's computer and (though this seems slightly less certain) Madeleine's beloved cuddle cat.

There is, however, nothing approaching official confirmation of these claims.

Like everything else about the case, the details of the prosecutor's approach to the judge are covered, supposedly, by the judicial secrecy laws, under which the penalty – in theory – for making unauthorised disclosures is two years in prison.

Thus it is that like almost everything else being broadcast and published beyond Portugal's borders about the hunt for Madeleine, the claim that the police want to read Kate's diary has reached its audience via Hugo Beaty's bar.

Every day there starts the same way shortly after it opens at 9am, with an informal briefing to the foreign Press by a locally resident British woman who normally makes a meagre living acting as an occasional interpreter – for the Policia Judiciaria.

Every morning, the woman – who asked me not to publish her name – goes through the Portuguese tabloids and translates their ever-more febrile articles.

Every afternoon, the foreigners – almost none of whom can speak more than the most basic Portuguese, nor claim a single, genuine source inside the police investigation – recycle the tales for consumers abroad.

Portuguese police reportedly fear that they will never find Madeleine McCann's body.

By the end of last week, some of the assertions made by the Portuguese had become part of a settled consensus.

For example, it was reported from Berlin to Baltimore that the police had already made a photocopy of Kate's diary – which, if true, would mean they had broken the law – and merely wanted to obtain the judge's approval to use it as evidence.
The reason they are so keen on it, it was alleged, is that it suggests she found her children "hyperactive" and difficult to handle, while railing at her husband's allegedly dilatory, hands-off approach.

The claims about the diary's contents were first published on Thursday by Jose Manuel Ribeiro, crime correspondent for the Lisbon daily Diario de Noticias.

By chance I ran into him that same afternoon, outside the apartment where Madeleine disappeared.

I congratulated him on his scoop, but he shook his head, disconsolate. Already, he complained, it was turning to dust.

Ribeiro said he had been given the story by an impeccable inside source, but already officials in Lisbon were denying it, and the source himself could no longer assure him it was true.


"Why is bad information getting out to the public?" he asked. "Because we're being given it."

Somehow, however, the denials that had made Ribeiro so angry did not get through to the foreigners.

If the questionable leak had been planted for a purpose – to increase the pressure on the hapless McCanns – it may well have succeeded.

And, in the foreign public's mind, the germinating notion that Kate might have killed her daughter because she could not handle her had been nurtured by a further dollop of manure.

A similar, apparently sanctioned but inaccurate leak had already gone around the world to still more devastating effect.

Early on Monday evening, TV channels began to report that British forensic scientists had made a "100 per cent" DNA match to Madeleine from "biological material" – said to be hair and "bodily fluids" – recovered from the Renault Scenic that the McCanns did not hire until 25 days after she vanished, suggesting that they had hidden her body on May 3 and moved it weeks after her death.

With no time for reporters to make checks before their deadlines, the story spread like foot and mouth to almost every British front page the next morning.


It was only in the ensuing days that it began, spectacularly, to unravel.

The match was not 100 per cent after all, it transpired, but 80 per cent or less – a level that, according to Professor Alec Jeffries, DNA matching's inventor, might mean that the material had not come from Madeleine at all, but another member of her family.

Even if it had, other experts said, it would prove very little.

Among readers who followed the forensic details, the case against the McCanns had been seen to suffer damage.

But others were left with a clear impression – that the PJ now believed they had real evidence that the McCanns must have been responsible for Madeleine's (still unconfirmed) death.

As for those who still harboured doubts, more rococo "revelations" were being published widely by the end of the week, such as the claim that having bundled Madeleine's body into the car, the McCanns drove it to the marina in nearby Lagos.

There they are said to have hired a boat, swore its owner into their conspiracy, then sailed into the Atlantic, into which they tipped their child, weighted down with rocks.

Could such stories really be part of a conscious PJ strategy? Some lawyers around the Portimao courthouse believe that they could.

"Portuguese journalists aren't just making this stuff up," said Oliveira Trindad.

"They are getting it from the police, of course, and the justice officers, the people working for the prosecutors. It's obvious that some information is coming from the PJ."

Some of it, he added, appears to be accurate – so making it that much easier for the same sources to seed disinformation.

Another Portimao lawyer, who asked not to be named, claimed the PJ was fighting a "propaganda war" with the McCanns.
"It is the fault of the British Press," he said.

"They were the ones who started saying, 'You're no good, you're no good.'

"If you say a lie like that many times, so many people believe it. You cannot blame the PJ for wanting to hit back."
But there might be another reason.

"Some people think journalists pay their PJ sources," the second lawyer said, citing a case where an officer from Lisbon is facing criminal charges after being caught red-handed copying secret documents about a fraud case, allegedly for private profit.

"But they also have an interest in the case and its coverage."

With the forensic evidence apparently confused and contradictory, "it seems the main goal of the PJ now is to get a confession. It's like in the films, 'Aha, we have a confession, let's take them to court.'

"It's normal to want a confession when they don't have much else."

Intense interrogation of the McCanns has so far failed. But perhaps, the lawyer implied, using the media might be another way of applying the third degree.

"I want to believe that the Portuguese police do everything the right way," said Joao Grade, the lawyer for Leonor Cipriano.

"But sometimes, if they really think someone is guilty, as they did with Leonor, they may find other ways to get what they want. It's only human.

"When they believe someone has killed a child, it's normal that they will apply pressure.

"In the McCann case, it seems that the police have what they consider half-proofs.


"But it's not airtight, it doesn't interlock, so maybe they need more."

As he spoke, I found myself recalling British miscarriages of justice: cases such as the Birmingham Six, wrongly convicted of IRA pub bombings that killed 21, where the police, under tremendous pressure to "get a result", built dishonest but convincing prosecutions based around confessions.

Could the same thing be happening to the McCanns? The pressure on the police is certainly intense.

The loss of a child evokes horror everywhere. On the Algarve, however, the need to solve the case – and, perhaps, not to leave the fear that Madeleine was killed or abducted by an unknown paedophile – has other roots as well.

"The Algarve is a family destination, and situations like this are not agreeable to anyone," said Elderico Viegas, the regional tourism authority president.


"Our reputation for safety is one of our most important values – especially with the British, who make up our biggest market."
And Algarve tourism, worth about £2.8billion a year and growing rapidly, is, Viegas said, the single biggest component of the entire Portuguese economy.

The police had, he added, mishandled the media, giving rise to damaging speculation.

"But for me, the details are not important. What's important is the economy. I was born and brought up here and I can't remember the last time a tourist was murdered." So far, he added, visitor numbers this year are up.

Central to many British miscarriages of justice was a shared, deeply ingrained belief among police and prosecutors that their suspects "had" to be guilty.

With the Birmingham Six, it was founded on botched forensic tests that "told" investigators that the men had been handling the explosive nitroglycerine – false positives that arose because they had been playing with cards coated in the harmless chemical nitrocellulose.

In Praia da Luz, there are signs of a similar mindset at work, derived from equally tendentious "evidence".

For example, said a local source who knows several of the PJ inquiry team, from an early stage detectives laid great weight on Kate McCann's apparent composure when she appeared in public.


One of the strangest aspects of Portuguese coverage of the case has been frequent recourse to media psychologists, who have made all manner of deductions about her personality and state of mind by "analysing" her TV image, claiming that the absence of tears and presence of carefully applied make-up indicates a "cold", "manipulative" or even "psychopathic" personality.

In other words, someone capable of reacting instantly to the death of her daughter, whether deliberate or accidental, by deciding that she had to hide the body and conceal what had happened, and able to persuade her husband and perhaps other "accomplices" to go along with her plot.


Disturbingly, said the local source, such analysis has not been confined to the media.

"Pretty early on, they had forensic psychologists in, studying hours of video footage, drawing extremely unfavourable conclusions about Kate's personality," she said.

"You could say she's been damned by her stiff upper lip."

There have been reported claims that Kate McCann had "confessed" to killing Madeleine to a local Catholic priest.


But the Rev Hubbard Haynes, the Anglican vicar who lives in Praia da Luz and got closer to the McCanns than anyone during their months in Portugal, refuted them with controlled fury.

A young, passionate Canadian, who took up his post a week after Madeleine's disappearance, he said: "When I mention Maddie, Gerry and Kate in my own prayers, I find myself weeping.

"I have gone out into the fields and looked in the hedgerows, begging God for some sign that will help us find her, and I have wept because He has not given it to us yet.

"All I can say is that my tears are as nothing to the tears I have seen shed by Kate and Gerry.

"They may not have cried for the cameras, but to say they do not weep in private is facile and offensive.

"The man and woman I have known for the past four months are a couple whose lives have become unbearably empty because their little girl was missing.

"I do not recognise those people in recent media reports, and I find the idea that they had anything to do with her disappearance just inconceivable.


"There is great evil in this world, and someone has taken this child."

Other aspects of the emerging mindset against the McCanns seemed equally questionable.

Several Portuguese lawyers and journalists, along with a uniformed police officer from the National Republican Guard I spoke to outside the Ocean Club apartment, told me solemnly not only that the McCanns and their friends were "swingers" who had taken their holiday together to indulge in group sex (an assertion made repeatedly by the Portuguese Press), but that "everyone knows" that its tolerance of orgies is the Mark Warner Ocean Club resort's main selling point.

One afternoon I decided to test this proposition, approaching two holiday reps there, dressed in their red Mark Warner sweatshirts. "Er, is this a good place for swingers, then?" I asked.

They looked at me in total bafflement. "Swingers?" one replied.

"Look around you, sir. Most of our guests are retired, or families with children."

Another assertion published several times last week is that, on the night that Madeleine disappeared, the McCanns phoned Sky TV before contacting the police – another claim echoed by the uniformed cop.

Outside the Portimao courthouse, I asked Sky's reporter Ashish Joshi if he thought this might be true.

He rolled his eyes wearily. "It's just nonsense," he said.

"The first anyone at Sky knew about Maddy was when the story appeared on the Press Association wire.

"I was asked about this just yesterday by a Portuguese reporter. I told him it was crap. And this morning, his paper printed it."
I passed this on to the Republican Guard officer, but he was unmoved.


His unit, he said, had handled the case in its early stages, and from the start he and his colleagues had been convinced there was something fishy about the McCanns.

"My partner was there on the night of May 3," he said, "and I can tell you, that apartment was full of people, Kate was screaming – and yet her twins didn't wake up.

"How do you explain that? They must have been drugged. Nobody on the force believed their story about a kidnap for a moment.

"That little girl is dead, for sure. Soon you will see the truth."

Why the need for such bizarre allegations? The answer, I believe, is that there is a massive hole at the heart of the emerging PJ theory.


When Madeleine disappeared the McCanns did not have a car.

The Ocean Club is in the middle of a busy resort, and the notion that somehow the McCanns found a way to conceal her without transport, and then went to dinner with their friends as if nothing were amiss is beyond credibility.

One Portuguese journalist suggested to me that they might have hidden her on a scrubby headland a few minutes' walk away.


But as I found when I attempted to go for a run there, at night it is inhabited by feral dogs, whose barking would have made the digging of some putative shallow grave impossible.


The PJ enjoys a high reputation in Portugal.

"They are ranked among the top five police forces in the world," attorney Trindad said, albeit admitting he did not know the source of this curious international ranking.

Most PJ officers are graduates, and would-be entrants face severe competition, with a battery of psychometric, physical and academic tests before they can even be considered for the PJ training school.

The force's Press office likes to compare the PJ to the American FBI: "We are an elite," spokeswoman Ana Mouro said.

But beneath the veneer, as the case of Leonor Cipriano suggests, the reality can look less impressive.

"She is nothing like Kate McCann," her lawyer Joao Grade said.

"She is very poor, with maybe only three years of schooling, and her children have several fathers.

"She did not get to meet the Pope and she did not have the support of Sky and the BBC.

"But I tell you this: if Kate had been treated like Leonor, she would have done what Leonor did – ended by saying, 'OK, OK, I'm guilty, and this is how I did it.'"


The special judicial order – imposed on top of the usual Portuguese secrecy – means not only that Grade is prevented from disclosing virtually anything about the Cipriano case, but that pre-trial hearings of the charges against the detectives, due as soon as next month, will be held in camera.


The Mail on Sunday has established crucial alleged details from other legal sources in Portimao.

After Joana disappeared in September 2004, Leonor was arrested by the PJ in Portimao on October 14 at 8am.

Held there and in the city of Faro without access to a lawyer, she was interrogated without sleep for 22 hours.

Then, after a two-hour respite, she was interrogated again until 7am on October 16.


By this time, as photos published by the Portuguese media make clear, her face was a mass of bruises.


According to Grade: "Not just her face but her whole body was black and blue."


The police said she "tried to commit suicide" by throwing herself down stairs.

If the alleged torture was to force a confession, it succeeded – only for Leonor to withdraw it when she finally saw her lawyer the next day.

The supporters of the accused police have claimed that the officers must be innocent because Cipriano could not pick out her alleged attackers in an identity parade.

However, according to the sources in Portimao, this is because they are not alleged to have beaten her themselves, but to have brought in paid thugs.


In any event, she was convicted and sentenced to 21 years.

Last June, this was reduced on appeal to 16 – though one of the five appeal court judges issued a dissenting opinion, stating that he was convinced she had been assaulted in custody and was innocent.

If the criminal case against the PJ officers does lead to convictions, Grade said, she will appeal again. He has also lodged a case in the European Court of Human Rights.


Strangely enough, Chief Inspector Goncalo Amaral is not the only link between the Cipriano and McCann cases. Another of the senior officers who is now an arguido is the recently retired Chief Inspector Paulo Pereira Cristovao.


He is one of the McCanns' principal scourges – not as a detective, but in his new capacity as a columnist for Diario de Noticias, among the most active of Portuguese newspapers in its pursuit of stories about Madeleine derived from leaks.

"There is another link between the Cipriano and McCann cases," a Portimao lawyer claimed.


"You know, it's like if Manchester United lose a big game: next week the pressure they have to win is very big.
"The PJ are beginning to worry that now they might lose the Cipriano case.

"If that happens, they have to win with the McCanns."

Of course, there is yet another connection.

If Leonor Cipriano did not kill Joana, the chances of discovering the truth – or indeed her body – are now remote.


And as the McCanns have stated repeatedly, if they are innocent, the enormous effort being poured into trying to blame them is effort diverted from the search for a missing four-year-old girl, and the person or persons who abducted her.

That is a thought so grim that it almost makes one wish that the mindset so evident around Praia da Luz had a real foundation.
My fear is that it has as much solidity as the sandcastles on the beach.

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/lies-beatings-secret-trials-the-dark-side-of-police-handling-madeleine-case-6622113.html
....................

What an utterly disgraceful example of fake journalism.  No wonder there is no name attached to it.

Is The Cry a true story? The inspiration behind the gripping BBC hit starring Jenna Coleman

The thriller has been adapted from Helen FitzGerald's 2013 book of the same name.

By
Emily Sheridan

• 14:42, 5 OCT 2018
  
• Updated16:09, 5 OCT 2018
  

Jenna Coleman 's new series The Cry has had viewers gripped since it started on BBC1 on Sunday.

The four-part thriller tells the story of a young mother Joanna (Jenna), who travels from Scotland to Australia with her husband Alistair (Ewen Leslie) and their baby son Noah.

The family have jetted Down Under so Alistair can fight for custody of his daughter Chloe from his Australia ex-wife Alexandra (Asher Keddie).

However, the couple are rocked when little Noah is abducted from their hire car while they pop into a store in a small rural town in Victoria.

The series is adapted from the 2013 novel of the same name, written by Australian author Helen FitzGerald.

Helen, 52, grew up in Australia but moved to Scotland as an adult where she worked in a high risk offenders unit and HM Prison Barlinnie in Glasgow.

She then went on to work as a criminal justice social worker in and around Pasiley, but has recently take a break from her day job.

Now a mother to two grown-up children Anna and Joe, Helen admits being inspired to write The Cry following two particularly hellish long-haul flights from the UK to Australia when she was a young mother.

She told Crime Fiction Love in 2013: "A few hours after my Dad was diagnosed with a brain tumour, I jumped on a plane with my two children, then five and two.

"I was upset and worried, and not particularly in control of my toddler, who was having great fun running up and down the aisle while I was sobbing in my seat.

"When the air hostess approached me, I was expecting her to ask if she could help in any way, but she leant down and said: 'Your children are upsetting the passengers.' I went a bit nuts. This is basically what happens to Joanna in the first chapter of the book."

Nine years later, when making the same flight when her father's cancer had returned, Helen was sat behind a woman with screaming children.

She recalled: "I had no children with me for this flight, but the woman in front of me had three under five. They screamed for eight hours, and I wanted to kill her. How quickly we forget…


"Despite the screaming children, I wrote the final scene of The Cry on that flight."

In The Cry, viewers see Jenna's character Joanna's mental anguish as she deals with being a new mother and the aftermath of her baby's abduction.

Helen admits her own time as a new mother struggling to cope also inspired her novel.

She told The Herald : "When I look back on that time now, I know what it was. I've just been through a period of serious anxiety and depression, so now I understand what was happening to me then.

"It's a common sign of post-natal depression, the feeling that everyone else is coping. I was obsessed with child-rearing books too, desperate to get it right."


The writer also revealed she was influenced by two high-profile child abductions.

She was growing up in Australia in 1980 when Lindy Chamberlain was wrongly convicted of murdering her nine-week-old daughter Azaria.

Lindy and her now ex-husband Michael maintained a dingo snatched their baby when she was sleeping in a tent during a camping trip to Uluru (Ayers Rock) in Australia's Northern Territory.

After being convicted, Lindy spent several years behind bars for the death of her daughter. However, the conviction was quashed in 1988 following the discovery of further evidence.

Helen was also interested in the ongoing search for British girl Madeleine McCann, who vanished from a Portugal holiday apartment in May 2007.



She told The Herald: "I have always believed both of them. But thinking about their cases made me wonder – what kind of couple would get away with something like this? What would have to be going on behind the scenes in that relationship?

"Lindy was incredibly naïve and open and just had no clue, and she got slaughtered by the media. Her case was really the first example of trial by television.

"Women are always the target, especially when babies are involved. No matter how much we talk about parental or gender equality, that’s what happens."

The Cry: Episode 2 returns to BBC1 on Sunday 7 October at 9pm.


https://www.mirror.co.uk/tv/tv-news/cry-true-story-inspiration-behind-13367789

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