Media Mayhem - MCCANN MEDIA NONSENSE OF THE DAY

MADDIE BLAST

Madeleine McCann’s parents tell ex-cop who has cashed in £350k by accusing them of covering up her death to ‘shut up’

OK have it your way.   Which would you prefer, shutter up or shutter down - the ball is in your court..




PeterMac - Apartment 5a, Ocean Club complex, Praia da Luz

Kate McCann: why didn’t they believe her?

The disappearance of her daughter drove the doctor and mother-of-three to the brink of suicide, she says. Cassandra Jardine reports.

By Cassandra Jardine
8:12PM BST 09 May 2011

So far there has been only one public recantation. A tabloid journalist wrote yesterday that he “rues the day” he rubbished the McCanns’ version of the disappearance of their daughter, Madeleine, four years ago. Many others might follow suit having read Kate McCann’s account of events, which will be published this Thursday, to mark Madeleine’s eighth birthday.

From advance extracts of her book, Madeleine, she emerges not as the hatchet-faced blonde who generated so many vicious blogs, comments and column-inches, but as an ordinary woman who reacted to catastrophe by appearing tight-lipped and dry-eyed. That didn’t mean she wasn’t feeling everything any woman would feel after she checked the holiday apartment in Praia de Luz, in Portugal, at 10pm on Friday, May 3, 2007. In her children’s room, she found the two-year-old twins, Sean and Amelie, sleeping soundly but in three year-old Madeleine’s bed, only Cuddle Cat was to be found. Seeing the patio windows open, a succession of emotions raced through her brain: “Nausea, terror, disbelief, fear. Icy fear. Dear God, no! Please, no!”

In the days, weeks and years that followed, she tells us that she was prey to such despair that, at times, she contemplated suicide by swimming out to sea. Oblivion would have been preferable to imagining what a paedophile might be doing to her daughter, the guilt that tormented her and those terrible mornings when, having dreamt of being reunited with Madeleine, she awoke to harsh reality.

Many of us would prefer not to revisit this painful story again, especially since there is no resolution to one of the great mysteries of our time. Four years ago, we gorged on every detail of the Tapas Seven, the man seen carrying a child in a blanket, and the DNA testing of the car that the McCanns hired for their Algarve holiday. It was a latter-day Grimms’ fairy story, one that stirred up every parent’s fears because we have all taken tiny risks, whether it be leaving children in the car while dashing to the cashpoint or nipping to the loo when they are playing in water.

Accidents are always foreseeable, but only with hindsight, and most don’t happen. As I wrote then, having visited the crime scene in Praia de Luz, I too would have left my children asleep in the McCanns’ apartment, which was visible (though not entirely) from the resort restaurant. I might not even have checked them as often as the diligent tapas diners, who returned to the rooms every 15 minutes.

Others disagreed vociferously. Men and women have accused Kate, a part-time GP, of being a bad mother and worse, while Gerry, her cardiologist husband, has had a relatively easy ride. Her critics may chiefly wish to reassure themselves that such bad luck could never befall them, but their venom suggests a lingering prejudice against working mothers, especially those who dress neatly, express themselves crisply, go to church and jog in order to keep up some semblance of normality amid emotional chaos.

Had Kate not been pretty, middle-class and educated, she might have received more sympathy – like, say, Karen Matthews, mother of Shannon, who wept fetchingly for the cameras the following year, although her daughter had not in fact been abducted, only hidden for mercenary reasons. Loaded magazine was one of her few supporters when, crassly, it put the bereft mother on a most-fanciable list. That angel face encouraged the fanciful to think that she must be a devil in disguise, guilty if not of murder then of negligence, just like Lindy Chamberlain, whose child disappeared in the Australian outback 27 years previously. Chamberlain served four years in prison before the child’s clothes were found in a dingo’s lair.

Kate was made an arguida – chief suspect – by the Portuguese police, who could not amass enough evidence for a charge. But her book doesn’t have the plaintive tone of a woman seeking to exonerate herself. She chose to write, it seems, not so much to silence those who still call her a wicked woman, but to raise money for the campaign to find Madeleine. With no police force actively pursuing the case, the McCanns want to continue to employ private investigators.

The book should add considerably to the £130,000 left in the kitty. Despite the fine-tooth comb applied to the evidence four years ago by the press, if not the police, fascinating new details emerge from her account. One that made me shudder was that the nine adults in the McCanns’ party block-booked the restaurant near their apartments because it was so close to their sleeping children. Very sensible. But anyone looking for an unattended child could have known this, because a thoughtless member of staff wrote down both the booking, and the reason for it, on a desk at the pool reception, where it could have been easily observed by a paedophile on the lookout for unattended children.

“Who’s thinking about child abductions in a sleepy, out-of-town tourist resort?” asked Gerry McCann, expressing the common view among parents that places stuffed full of other parents with small children are supremely secure. Chillingly, the McCanns learnt after the abduction that not only are such resorts an obvious target for paedophiles, but also that parents should have been warned to be vigilant. In 2008, when the Portuguese police officially stopped pursuing the case, their files revealed that in the three years preceding Madeleine’s disappearance, three intruders had been disturbed in children’s bedrooms within an hour’s drive of Praia de Luz and five children had been abused in their beds while on holiday in the Algarve. Evidence had not been collected, let alone collated or publicised.

Among the known paedophiles who could have been in the area are a British couple, Charles O’Neill, 48, and William Lauchlan, 34, both of whom are now in prison for murder in Britain. In May 2007, they were living in Spain, and possibly Portugal, on false passports. The previous year, they were posing as cleaners in a holiday villa complex in Gran Canaria when a child, Yeremi Vargas, went missing. Another possible suspect is Martin Ney, 40, who last month was arrested for the murder of Dennis Klein, a nine-year-old who vanished on a school trip in Germany in 2001. Ney resembles the photofit of the man seen carrying a child by one of the Tapas Seven, shortly before Madeleine’s bed was found empty.

One day, perhaps, the McCanns will have their answer. They are determined not to give up. Carrying on the fight may be a key reason why they have remained together when differing approaches to shock and grief often drive a wedge between parents. James Bulger’s parents parted soon after he was murdered by children in 1993. So too did those of Sarah Payne, who was abducted by Roy Whiting in Sussex in 2000. Kate is not the first woman to have found her husband’s preference for working all hours to shut out the pain “almost offensive”.

The McCanns have two other children, who have been both a solace and a binding influence. But the thought that saved them from despair was that if Madeleine were found, she would wish to come back to a happy home, not one fractured by grief. It is possible that, like Jaycee Dugard or Natascha Kampusch, the girl in the red dress with the unusual eye will one day reappear.
If so, she will find that her mother and father have behaved in a dignified manner – which is more than can be said of some of their critics.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/madeleinemccann/8503610/Kate-McCann-why-didnt-they-believe-her.html

Verdi wrote:
So far there has been only one public recantation. A tabloid journalist wrote yesterday that he “rues the day” he rubbished the McCanns’ version of the disappearance of their daughter, Madeleine, four years ago.

Any idea who she is talking about here? I'd like to read his 'recantation' (lol). Whatever can have changed his mind?

Jonal wrote:

Verdi wrote:
So far there has been only one public recantation. A tabloid journalist wrote yesterday that he “rues the day” he rubbished the McCanns’ version of the disappearance of their daughter, Madeleine, four years ago.

Any idea who she is talking about here? I'd like to read his 'recantation' (lol). Whatever can have changed his mind?

Et voila..


Kate McCann's haunting account makes me rue the day I doubted them Daily Mail

David Jones - 9th May 2011

Tiptoeing into her holiday apartment to check on her three sleeping children, a young mother immediately senses something isn't quite right. Strangely, the bedroom door, which she had left only slightly ajar after reading them stories and kissing them goodnight, is now wide open.

And when she tries to return it to its original position it suddenly slams shut — seemingly blown by a draught from the window, whose wooden shutters, she knew, had been tightly closed.

With a mother's thoughtfulness, she resists the urge to turn on the light for fear of waking her children: two-year-old twins and a beautiful pixie of a daughter who will celebrate her fourth birthday in nine days' time. Instead she peers through the darkness, trying to discern them slumbering beneath the covers.

For a few seconds time seems to freeze. And then, realising the oldest girl's bed is empty, her heart lurches, and she dashes frantically around the apartment, checking every cupboard and wardrobe.

Told for the first time in harrowing, moment-by-moment detail, this is Kate McCann's first-hand account of how she discovered that her daughter, Madeleine, had been snatched away from her.

In her 384-page memoir, serialised in The Sunday Times, which is sure to top the best-sellers list when it is published this Thursday – Madeleine's eighth birthday – Kate describes the maelstrom of emotions that overcame her ('nausea, terror, disbelief, fear, icy fear, dear God, no') as she was confronted with every parent's ultimate nightmare.

The personally-penned book, which took her nine months to complete, and was written both as a catharsis and to fund the campaign to find Madeleine, answers many of the questions which have helped make this the most perplexing and darkly compelling missing child case of modern times.

Former GP Kate, now 43, reveals how losing their daughter drove her to the brink of suicide and came close to breaking up her marriage to cardiologist Gerry McCann.

Distressed by the vicious and highly personal vendetta against them – which continues to poison the internet – she also explains why the couple have sometimes tested public sympathy with their apparently aloof and unemotional demeanour.

It wasn't indifference, as some cruelly interpreted, but shock, she said. 'It's quite frightening when I see myself in those early days. To me I look incredibly fragile and confused and lost.

'When I look back at the appeal I did to the abductor, I look as though I'm not connecting. That day, I remember we were concerned we weren't crying. We felt detached from it all and because of that we were worried; would the appeal be so effective?’

Privately, she says, she was – and sometimes still is – 'consumed' by overwhelming guilt and anguish.

By day, she would replay hideous images of Madeleine's broken body 'lying cold and mottled on a big, grey stone slab'; or in the hands of some twisted sex fiend.

'The idea of some monster like this, touching my daughter, stroking her, defiling her perfect little body, just killed me over and over again,' she writes.

'It didn't make any difference that this might not be the explanation for Madeleine's abduction (and please God it isn't). The fact that it was a possibility was enough to prevent me from shutting it out.'

An entry from her diary during those early days reads: 'Crying in bed again. The thought of Madeleine's fear and pain tears me apart. The thought of paedophiles makes me want to rip my skin off.'

At night, her torment comes by way of vividly lifelike recurring dreams. Kate has three, and they are broadly the same. Madeleine is still alive, and so tangible her mother can 'smell her, feel her snuggling into me, like she always did'.

Then she wakes up, and the daughter she and Gerry strove so hard to conceive after months of IVF treatment is no longer in her arms. It is as if she has been ripped away from her all over again.

Though her 42-year-old husband was able to resume a semblance of normality much sooner than his wife, his outwardly tough exterior is deceptive, she suggests.

One day, watching his daughter's favourite Dr Who episode with the twins, she found him silently dissolving into tears.

Reading Kate's haunting account, it is impossible to feel anything but the deepest empathy. In all but the sickest of minds, it will dispel any scintilla of doubt about their involvement in Madeleine's disappearance.

Having started investigating the case soon after she vanished from that ground-floor flat in Praia da Luz, on May 3, 2007, and – to my lasting regret – voicing early suspicions that they might be somehow implicated, I just wish the McCanns had felt able to show this very human face much sooner.

Drawn from Kate's diaries, it is the little details and 'what if's that make it so heart-rendingly human; and so authentic that even the most cynical Portuguese detective will surely no longer doubt its veracity.

Fate began to take its course on New Year's Day, 2007, when their friends Fiona and David Payne said they were planning a week's break at a resort on the Algarve, with two other families, and invited them along.

Four months later, on Saturday, April 28, the McCanns boarded a Portugal-bound plane, and despite tripping on the aircraft steps and cutting her shin, Madeleine was filled with excitement.

Arriving in the chilly, half-deserted out-of-season resort, she pleaded with her mother to join her in the freezing pool, and Kate, who dislikes the cold, simply couldn't refuse.

With a veranda overlooking the resort's garden and tennis courts, the apartment was not only 'lovely' but seemed perfectly secure.

British police later told the couple that its location, on the ground-floor corner of a five-storey block accessible from both the front and side, and partly hidden by trees, made it an ideal target for a child abductor.

However, it was only 18 months later, when the Portuguese authorities formally shelved the inquiry and opened the case file, that Kate and Gerry discovered the chilling gamble they had unwittingly taken by holidaying in such a vulnerable location on the Algarve.

Logged in the papers were five reports where British parents had complained that their children had been sexually molested in their beds as they slept and three more where the intruder had been disturbed before he could assault his would-be victims – again, young Britons on holiday.

Not one of these cases had been mentioned to the McCanns, and Kate says there was 'a familiar thread' – that none appeared to have been taken seriously, either by the Portuguese police or the tour operators concerned.

Of course, this raises extremely serious questions. Was a serial child predator on the loose at the time, and was this covered up for fear of damaging the tourist industry?

If so, this makes the police's determination to focus their inquiries on the McCanns, and make them official suspects, even more inexcusable. The pattern for the holiday was set on their first day. Most mornings and afternoons, the children joined in activities at the toddler and mini clubs whilst the adults sunbathed or played tennis.

But they were all together for a couple of hours at lunch and tea-time, and Kate and Gerry would have fun with Madeleine and the twins in the play area before putting them to bed.

As the resort complex's main restaurant was located about half a mile away, the nine adults in the group decided to dine together every night at the poolside tapas bar, just 30 to 45 seconds' walk from the apartments.

It meant they could easily take turns to nip back to check on the children every half an hour, and wouldn't need to disturb their sleep patterns by taking them out late, or rely on strangers to babysit them.

It was only later, again whilst combing through the police files, that Kate discovered an unintended, though glaring flaw, that could have left the children exposed.

Since the tapas bar had only 15 places, the group had block-booked their reservation for the week. But this request was written in a staff message book left on the reception desk beside the pool.

'This book was by definition accessible to staff, and albeit unintentionally, probably to guests and visitors, too. To my horror I saw that, no doubt in all innocence, the receptionist had added that we wanted to be close to our apartments as we were leaving our children alone there and checking on them intermittently.'

Her final few minutes with Madeleine are forever etched in her memory.

Madeleine, in her Marks & Spencer Eeyore pyjamas, nuzzling her toy Cuddle Cat beneath a 'princess' blanket ... Madeleine asking, and being permitted, to wear her mother's engagement ring for a few moments before she settled down to sleep.

Was the kidnapper already hiding in the apartment when, having ordered dinner, Gerry returned to make the first check, at 9.05pm? It now seems appallingly possible, for the door to the children’s bedroom was open much wider than they had left it.

Glancing into the room, however, their father was reassured. Madeleine was lying on her side, exactly as they had left her.

'He paused for a couple of seconds to look at her and thought to himself, she's so beautiful,' recalls Kate.

Then he pulled the door back to its original position and, after using the bathroom, he returned to the dinner party.If only his suspicions had been aroused by the open door and he had scoured the apartment. If only they had followed their hearts and stayed in that night.

If only ... if only. Doubtless this poor, wretched couple will forever torture themselves with the what-might-have-been.

One only hopes the many questions raised in Kate's book will prick the conscience of the Portuguese authorities and prompt them to review the woeful police investigation.

I hope that the royalties from it will keep the McCanns' private investigators in business long enough to turn up a crucial lead.

And I hope, though not with too much expectation, that it will finally silence those internet ghouls who seek to exacerbate their agony by casting blame and making vicious attacks on their character.

The McCanns were just two decent, loving parents enjoying a family holiday – and, after reading Kate in her own, excruciatingly raw words, I am certainly sorry that I ever thought otherwise.

The Daily Mail

Madeleine McCann's Parents: The Real Royal Couple?

Four years after a British girl disappeared, there are more questions than answers

Chris Freind - 10 May 2011

April was a busy time for the Royal Couple.

Preparations had been underway for months to deal with all the publicity that was sure to come. Facebook pages were established, marketing pieces created, a book written and carefully scripted interviews arranged, as publicists and advisors worked round-the-clock for the famous British duo. No detail was too small when planning such a momentous event, as the global media once again turned its focus on two of Great Britain's most...interesting people.

Most amazing, all of this was accomplished despite the distractions caused by the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton.

May 3rd marked the fourth anniversary of the disappearance of then-3-year-old Madeleine McCann, who disappeared from a resort in southern Portugal because her parents chose to leave her — and her two younger twin siblings — alone in an unlocked room while they ate and drank the night away with friends.

But when you're Gerry and Kate McCann, you take a backseat to no one, and certainly no wedding is going to upstage your "anniversary." And so, in typical McCann fashion, they put on another strong display of offense in the ongoing "search" — not so much for their missing daughter, but for self-promoting headlines.

Who can blame them? Playing defense is no fun, doesn't raise money nor generate publicity. And best of all, blaming everyone but themselves for an eminently preventable tragedy allows the McCanns to ignore reality about a poor little girl's horrible fate.

*****

For the folks needing a refresher, you read it right. The McCanns, both physicians from Rothley, Leicestershire, in England, left their three children — with a COMBINED age of seven — alone, night after night, in their ground-floor resort apartment. Despite ample financial resources, they chose not to bring a nanny and refused to utilize the resort's babysitting services.

Instead, they deemed it safer for the children to go it on their own, entrusting Madeleine to get her siblings and herself to safety in the event of a fire — hence the alleged reason for the unlocked door. Hey, I'm all for self-reliance, but, she was 3!

The story perpetuated by the McCanns is that Madeleine was kidnapped, despite virtually no evidence to support that claim. But the tragic nature of a girl gone missing gained international attention, and the search was on. Well, at least by the people who were actually out there looking for Madeleine.

Gerry and Kate took a different approach. Rather than get bogged down in the grunt work of looking for their daughter in places she might actually be, the parents decided that becoming international globetrotting celebrities was a lot more fun. Putting blood, sweat and tears into finding a missing child is tough, but hanging out with celebs and dignitaries is, well, cool!

So they arranged a private audience with the Pope, traveled to the United States to meet with America's top leaders, kept web diaries about Gerry's daily jogs, and threw lavish affairs. Of course, if Madeleine really had been kidnapped, she wouldn't be in America, at black-tie events or in the Vatican.

If only they had thought to turn the "Find Madeleine" campaign into a money-maker! Oh wait, they did. To the tune of millions. And the result? To this day, many more questions than answers.

Despite being named suspects by the Portuguese police based on evidence that raised eyebrows — inconsistencies in G and K's stories; elite dogs, trained to identify death, providing positive responses in Madeleine's room; reports of Madeleine's blood found in the trunk of a car the McCanns' rented 25 days AFTER she disappeared; more blood discovered behind a sofa in the apartment, to name just a few — the case was eventually suspended without any arrest. And for that, we can thank the British government that exerted enormous pressure on the Portuguese.

With the complicity of the British media, everyone but the parents was blamed for Madeleine's disappearance. The Portuguese detectives bumbled the investigation, the resort's security was too lax, leads weren't followed up in a timely fashion. And as numerous publications discovered, anyone who dared question the McCanns' role were slapped with libel lawsuits by England's most powerful barristers. And don't forget the lead Portuguese investigator who was legally banned from giving interviews and publishing his book courtesy of Team McCann (those rulings were subsequently overturned) and was sued for millions in "damages."

Kate's book on the affair, (in which rumors spread that she was assisted by world-famous Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling) will be released this week. In it, she blamed the resort restaurant for making a note in their reservation book that the McCanns wanted a table within sight of the room, since the children would be alone.

"[The reservation] book was by definition accessible to all staff and, albeit unintentionally, probably to guests and visitors, too...To my horror, I saw that, no doubt in all innocence, the receptionist had added that we wanted to eat close to our apartments as we were leaving our young children alone there and checking on them intermittently."

Nice try, Kate. But somehow, you forgot to mention the "horror" your daughter must have felt after being abandoned by her parents night after night, left alone in an unfamiliar environment in a foreign nation. And you also conveniently left out the fact that you couldn't see the apartment from your table anyway, due to the six-foot wall obstructing the view. Translation: the tapas were more important than your three children, two of whom, interestingly enough, weren't "kidnapped."

So we're supposed to believe that a child kidnapper just happened to be dining at the resort's restaurant that night, on the off-chance some British couple's child-care arrangements (or lack thereof) would be recorded in the restaurant's reservation book? Which, by the way, is usually kept behind a desk, not in public view.

Either that, or someone on the kitchen staff, waiting in the wings for one of the McCanns to return from allegedly "checking" on the children. Maybe that's why the tapas were so late in being served!

Frankly, I'm surprised that Osama bin Laden snatching Madeleine wasn't in the book as a potential theory. Or that evil Voldemort from Harry Potter wasn't somehow responsible.

Which brings us back to Rowling.

After hundreds of articles stating that Rowling was helping Kate write the book, the family spokesman finally got around to stating that Rowling did not, in fact, have ANY role in the book.

As with most things McCann, the facts here are loose and the truth sketchy. But as they say, "Any publicity is good publicity!" And Team McCann rolls on, garnering headlines and raking in the dough.

*****

Perhaps most ironic is Kate's stated reason for the book:

"My reason...is simple, to give an account of the truth."

Rowling's help or not, discovering the real story behind the disappearance of little Madeleine McCann will take more than wizards and magic. Too bad we don't have one of Harry Potter's Remembralls, though, which fans will recall is the clear orb containing smoke that turns red when detecting that the user has forgotten something.

In Gerry and Kate McCann's case, I'm betting the Remembrall would be glowing red-hot, since it seems they have forgotten the only thing that can help Maddie.

The real truth.

The Philly Post

Next Chapter in the Search for Madeleine

The Irish Times - 7th May 2011

Profile:  Kate and Gerry McCann

 For four years the deeply private parents of Madeleine McCann have exposed themselves to the media to keep the search for their daughter in the public eye, writes KATHY SHERIDAN . Now they're publishing a book about it.

Few issues flush out more self-righteous bile than other people's parenting. For critics of Kate and Gerry McCann the loss of a daughter was never sufficient punishment for a bad parenting decision. They have had to shoulder accusations of neglect and murder, in screaming headlines, across several countries. Message boards call for them to be lynched.

"If the McCanns were from Norris Green [a troubled Liverpool housing estate] and their child had gone missing while they were playing bingo, they would be national hate figures," commented one poster this week on a report of a Mass in the city to mark the fourth anniversary of Madeleine's disappearance.

The McCanns' error was to leave their small children sleeping in an unlocked ground-floor apartment while they dined with seven friends at a tapas bar about 120m away, in the Portuguese resort town of Praia da Luz. They left the apartments unlocked for fear of fire, they later explained; they chose not to use the babysitting service because they didn't want to leave their children with strangers. Members of the party were to take turns checking on all the children at 30-minute intervals. The catastrophic outcome was the disappearance of Madeleine from her bed. She was a few days short of her fourth birthday.

For the traditional media "Maddy" was circulation gold. For the pseudonymous bloggers and message-board posters, her parents became a magnet for poisonous, malicious speculation. The case became "a sort of blogging Viagra", as one journalist put it in a remark related by Roy Greenslade of the Guardian. Every new reference to the McCanns triggered a surge of casual savagery online, fuelled by the traditional media’s gleeful splashes of unsubstantiated leaks.

The least of the accusations was that the McCanns had escaped censure for child neglect because they were white, middle-class and attractive.

The worst, wildest accusation was that Kate had killed her daughter and Gerry had helped to cover it up. Always entangled among them were baseless allegations that he was not the natural father, that she was on medication, that the children had been sedated, that the couple's relentless campaigning was all about the money.

Kate McCann's problem from the start was that she failed to fit the role of grieving mother. Too controlled, too fit, too good looking, too middle-class, too attached to "parading herself before the world", clutching her missing daughter's favourite toy.

The online supersleuths believed they had her measure early on: "It was Kate McCann NEVER appearing in any pictures for weeks after Madeleine went missing without Cuddle Cat being superglued to her hand that made me start to suspect that everything they did was totally false and stage managed. One face for the cameras and another one behind closed doors," commented one of the most printable posters.

McCann's stoicism, natural reserve and grimly maintained jogging routine merely inflamed delicate tabloid sensibilities. Her unwillingness to break into choking sobs for the cameras or to claw the earth in remorse for her admitted parenting mistakes supposedly proved she wasn't a natural mother. Leaks from inside the investigation claimed that her controlled public appearance, and even her carefully applied make-up, indicated a "cold and manipulative" personality. Right from the beginning, it was said, the Portuguese police suspected her because their wives were telling them she looked too controlled, didn't weep enough.

She told her mother, Susan Healy, "If I weighed another two stone, had a bigger bosom and looked more maternal, people would be more sympathetic."

There are sound precedents for her theory. In the so-called dingo baby case in Australia, in 1980, Lindy Chamberlain was adjudged too "cold" by jury and media and convicted of murdering her baby, serving many years in prison before fresh evidence led to her vindication.

Gerry McCann explained that he and his wife had been advised that self-control might have most effect on a putative kidnapper tuning in to their many television pleas. His wife gave self-flagellating interviews, admitting their mistakes and revealing that their three much-loved babies were the result of IVF treatment. The British and Portuguese news media had found their own circulation Viagra, the gift that kept on giving: photogenic, affluent, professional folk; strikingly pretty, blond missing child; controversial parenting decisions; sunny foreign resort; suggestion of lurking paedophiles; questionable police investigation; deepening hostility between the two sides; and a resultant poisonous trickle of leaks.

PETER HILL, THE now retired Daily Express editor, presided over stories that suggested the couple were complicit in their daughter's disappearance. For those libels and defamatory reports in the group’s other titles, Express Newspapers had to pay the McCanns £550,000 (plus £375,000 to the Tapas Seven, who announced they would be giving the money to the Find Madeleine fund). He now regrets it, "of course", he told Greenslade.

So why did it happen? "It was a huge story, and every adult in the country had an opinion on it. I admit it helped to sell the paper. There were many factors involved, such as the way Maddy's parents sought publicity in an unprecedented way. All the way through our principal focus was on 'what's happened to Maddy?' The Portuguese police and British legal sources were leaking stories that implied the McCanns were guilty in some way. We were not to know that the Portuguese police were ineffectual and, in some cases, corrupt."

They (and their lawyers) deemed these stories fit to print anyway, inflicting collateral damage on innocent lives, but paid a price for it. The bloggers and posters pursue their agenda with impunity, never pausing to wonder why, if they had killed their child, the McCanns worked tirelessly to keep the case alive.

In an interview to mark the first anniversary of Madeleine's disappearance Gerry McCann felt obliged to remind people that they were real people: "We are not characters in a soap opera or a fiction."

He returned to work as a consultant cardiologist at Glenfield Hospital in Leicester about six months after the tragedy, often cycling the eight kilometres to work. His wife, who never returned to her position as a GP, jogs around the country lanes of Rothley, the Leicestershire village where they live, after getting the children off to school; then she returns to their new-build house, in a quiet cul de sac, to work on the campaign to find their daughter. Though not a shrine, Madeleine's bedroom remains largely untouched, awaiting her return, according to the Daily Telegraph.

THE COUPLE ARE caught in a desperate dilemma: give up the search, and spare themselves the torture of the alleged sightings, the con men, the rumours, the malice and the abuse, or continue to ride the media tiger in the hope that it will flush out Madeleine's whereabouts.

Their relentless, costly Leaving No Stone Unturned campaign, ensuring that the public continues to be alert for the little girl, has been distinguished by its quasi-corporate professionalism. Staffing has included a campaign manager and a media manager, plus teams of full-time private investigators (currently led by two British former policemen). Services include a 24-hour multilingual call centre, travel packs for people going away on holiday, posters and multilingual prayer cards with photographs and contact details.

Clarence Mitchell, a former BBC journalist, resigned from his job with the British government's media-monitoring unit to become spokesman, his salary paid by a Cheshire businessman, Brian Kennedy. High-profile names such as Richard Branson have also donated generously; Branson gave £100,000 towards their legal costs.

Another fund supporter, JK Rowling, author of the Harry Potter books, is believed to have introduced Kate McCann to her agent, Christopher Little, when Kate McCann's forthcoming book was proposed. The account of their ordeal, which Kate wrote herself, and is to be published next Thursday, Madeleine's eighth birthday, is expected to be hard-hitting, particularly about the Portuguese police.

In it she will also relive the first days after Madeleine's disappearance and chart the media storms in the following months, when the couple became suspects. The legal firm Carter-Ruck has combed through the manuscript for possible libels.

Kate McCann, a deeply private woman, undertook to write the book with a heavy heart, and only because the campaign fund needs the £1 million she hopes it will raise. Although she has become notably more confident in her dealings with the press, marketing plans do not include public book signings, for fear of verbal or even physical abuse.

IN MANY WAYS, however, the tide is against them. Although Kate McCann is reported to have made several secret trips back to Praia da Luz, where she stays with an Anglican priest and his wife, and finds strength there, local businesspeople are desperate to shake off the dark legacy. Unsurprisingly, there is a marked reluctance in the town to discuss the story, reports the Daily Telegraph. The once ubiquitous photographs of the little girl around the little church of Our Lady of Light are gone.

Apartment 5a of the Ocean Club complex, from which Madeleine disappeared, has remained unoccupied and was put on the market two years ago at £50,000 below the market price, but it hasn’t received a single inquiry. Instead it has become a ghoulish attraction for tourists who want their photographs taken outside. The infamous tapas bar is now a pizzeria and no longer opens in the evenings.

Four years on Kate McCann is sustained by her devout Catholic faith: "I know the truth and God knows the truth and nothing else matters." Gerry McCann has said that his own faith has deepened since Madeleine's disappearance, and the family attend Sunday Mass together. In an interview on BBC Radio Kate said that she includes in her prayers the police and investigators and other children who are missing or have been exploited, but also "the people who have taken Madeleine, the people who know what's happened to Madeleine and the people around and related to the person who’s taken Madeleine".

Curriculum vitae

Who are they? A Leicestershire cardiologist and GP whose daughter Madeleine vanished in Portugal while they ate in a nearby tapas bar in 2007.

Why are they in the news? Kate McCann's book, Madeleine , will be published on Thursday, the child's eighth birthday.

What makes them so different? White, good looking professionals; controversial parenting decisions.

Hmm. Anything else? A relentless, multimillion euro global campaign to keep the investigation alive.

Verdi wrote:

Jonal wrote:

Any idea who she is talking about here?

Et voila..

Merci beaucoup.

It's what I thought, not a 'recantation' but the same old rehash: family holiday, model parents, fear of fire, that bizarre note in reception (does it even exist?), abductor in the apartment, shock of discovery, stoic holding back of emotion, hopes and fears.

I hoped the contrite journo might have given the reasons for doubt and why this was overturned. Turns out he'd seen extracts from the book (I've not read Harry Potter so I can't judge on style) and the carefully contrived diary. Wool, eyes, etc. Aren't journalists told to check their sources?

That piece from Chris Freind is like a breeze whooshing away a bad smell.

Please keep up the good work posting articles. I think there could be a Masters degree for someone doing media studies looking back on it all. Unbelievable.

Jonal wrote:

Verdi wrote:

Jonal wrote:

Any idea who she is talking about here?

Et voila..

Merci beaucoup.

It's what I thought, not a 'recantation' but the same old rehash: family holiday, model parents, fear of fire, that bizarre note in reception (does it even exist?), abductor in the apartment, shock of discovery, stoic holding back of emotion, hopes and fears.

I hoped the contrite journo might have given the reasons for doubt and why this was overturned. Turns out he'd seen extracts from the book (I've not read Harry Potter so I can't judge on style) and the carefully contrived diary. Wool, eyes, etc. Aren't journalists told to check their sources?

That piece from Chris Freind is like a breeze whooshing away a bad smell.

Please keep up the good work posting articles. I think there could be a Masters degree for someone doing media studies looking back on it all. Unbelievable.

There's no shortage of material - Clarence Mitchell will go down in the annuls of history as the master media manipulator of all time.

Personally I prefer the videos.  There can be no misquoting nor misunderstanding and the body language is oh so revealing   . 

If only Gerald would drop the snotty supercilious smug attitude and the missus would drop the victim look of poor little me.

They are as bad as each other, it's a double act, a drama, acted out to fool the world - me Tarzan you Jane or King Kong swinging from the summit of the Empire State building !!!   Even the Scottish play knew when to avoid tempting providence.

Mac ... err ... err ... err ...

T

Verdi wrote:

Jonal wrote:

Verdi wrote:

Jonal wrote:

Any idea who she is talking about here?

Et voila..

Merci beaucoup.

It's what I thought, not a 'recantation' but the same old rehash: family holiday, model parents, fear of fire, that bizarre note in reception (does it even exist?), abductor in the apartment, shock of discovery, stoic holding back of emotion, hopes and fears.

I hoped the contrite journo might have given the reasons for doubt and why this was overturned. Turns out he'd seen extracts from the book (I've not read Harry Potter so I can't judge on style) and the carefully contrived diary. Wool, eyes, etc. Aren't journalists told to check their sources?

That piece from Chris Freind is like a breeze whooshing away a bad smell.

Please keep up the good work posting articles. I think there could be a Masters degree for someone doing media studies looking back on it all. Unbelievable.

There's no shortage of material - Clarence Mitchell will go down in the annuls of history as the master media manipulator of all time.

Personally I prefer the videos.  There can be no misquoting nor misunderstanding and the body language is oh so revealing   . 

If only Gerald would drop the snotty supercilious smug attitude and the missus would drop the victim look of poor little me.

They are as bad as each other, it's a double act, a drama, acted out to fool the world - me Tarzan you Jane or King Kong swinging from the summit of the Empire State building !!!   Even the Scottish play knew when to avoid tempting providence.

Mac ... err ... err ... err ...

The eponymous hero of the Scottish play said he had a ‘charmed life’....just before his demise ! 
Overconfidence.

This press report is no longer available online but thanks to Nigel Moore of the defunct mccannfiles.com and pamalam of gerrymccannsblog, it's been preserved for posterity..

 Madeleine Suspect Police Interview Claim Sky News

 17th December  2007
 
Portuguese police allowed Madeleine McCann suspect Robert Murat to sit in on interviews with members of the so-called Tapas Seven, it has been claimed.
 
Newspaper reports suggest detectives let Mr Murat act as a translator during interviews with friends of Kate and Gerry McCann who were dining with the couple on the night their daughter disappeared.
 
Days later the 33-year-old was named as an "arguido", or official suspect.
 
The Daily Mirror said Mr Murat was allegedly present during the interviews of Rachael Oldfield and Dianne Webster.
 
However, a source close to the McCanns said it was understood that although Mr Murat did attend Ms Webster's questioning, he was not present when Mrs Oldfield was with police.
 
The McCanns' spokesman Clarence Mitchell said: "We can't comment on anything that's contained within the police file and clearly records of interviews and who attended them make up part of that file.
 
"Any serious questions to be answered about the way the original interviews were conducted or who attended them will be central to our own private investigation, and the detectives who have been employed on our behalf will be looking into that.
....................

Now, of all the UK based news outlets, I consider Sky News to possibly be the most reliably informed.  Not necessarily because it is part of the Murdoch empire but more because of Martin Brunt's direct involvement, both as a journalist and also having some close connection with the Murat faction.

Clarence Mitchell's alleged comment is very odd considering the date of this report - over six months before release of the PJ files into the public arena?

Hi Verdi,don't forget the Martin Brunt/Sky News Corporation contract with Mr Murat,not to mention the Job offer from Mr Double Glazing salesman,accessed by legal representatives from "Both" parties!

It's amazing what is hidden in the small print isn't it?

But you understand no persons are culpable of committing "Perjury"as non of them has appeared before a Court room yet,which seems the main objective?

This has got to rank above the most ridiculous of all media reports relative to the case of missing Madeleine McCann.  I challenge anyone to surpass it..

Witness who saw 'Madeleine' in Morocco receives Mafia death threats

5th November 2007

Naoual Malhi says men claiming to work for the Morocco's crime barons have warned her to keep her mouth shut
Naoual Malhi, 24, says men claiming to work for the country's crime barons have warned her to keep her mouth shut about what she saw - and ditch plans to probe the sighting herself.

The mum-of-one, whose daughter Ines is Madeleine's age, has told how one growled: "Let this lie if you know what's good for you, your daughter and the rest of your family, otherwise you're a dead woman next time you're in Morocco."

But brave Naoual is pressing ahead with plans to defy the threats and return to her homeland to look for the girl she saw.

She is also getting the calls - which come from withheld numbers - taped so she can hand them over to police helping in the hunt for the missing four-year-old.

Naoual, who lives near Marbella, Spain, said: "I'm not frightened by the mafia.

"It's obvious I'm on to something otherwise they wouldn't be calling.

"They've warned me I'm going to be killed next time I step on Moroccan soil unless I shut my mouth about Madeleine.
"But I know the girl I saw getting into that taxi was her and I'm not going to stop until I find her.

"We're taping all the phone calls and I'm going to give them to police to investigate.

"It could provide them with another good clue to her whereabouts."

Naoual claims to have seen a blonde girl with Madeleine's distinctive right iris in the arms of a middle-aged woman in Fnideq, northern Morocco, at the end of September.

She lost them after they headed to the former Spanish garrison town of Al Hoceima, further east along the Mediterranean coast.

Last month she travelled to north Africa with private investigators working for the McCanns - and says she received hundreds of phone calls from people who had seen the pair in various locations in Morocco's Rif Mountains.

They were last spotted in the remote town of Karia Ba Mohamed near Fez - but the trail is now thought to have gone cold.

Naoual says she and her family have been receiving death threats on a Moroccan mobile she put on a picture poster of Madeleine distributed throughout the area.

Her Fez-based family have been answering the phone and taking information down from callers since she returned to Spain on October 16.

Kate and Gerry McCann believe Morocco is the place their daughter is most likely to be - and consider Naoual's information to be "highly credible".

They insist Portuguese police are wrong in believing Madeleine died by accident in their apartment on May 3 when she was last seen - and they disposed of her body.

Naoual, who describes herself as a qualified doctor, said: "All I want to do is reunite the McCanns with their daughter.

"I have a young girl the same age so I know how they must feel.

"There is no doubt in my mind Madeleine is in Morocco. Blonde girls are highly sought after there. I suspect the woman she is with is looking after for someone until she is old enough to be forced into child prostitution.

"After the death threats I've received, I'm more certain than ever that that someone is the Moroccan mafia.

"It's not nice to get these calls. But they just make me more determined to get to the bottom of this. I'm preparing to return to Morocco as soon as I can."

Metodo 3, the private investigators working for the McCanns, has said it also believes Madeleine is alive and being held against her will in Morocco.

They are currently trawling lists of Portuguese paedophiles in the belief a local man stole her to order fro m her Algarve apartment and took her to Morocco after crossing the border with Spain hours after the snatch.

A Norwegian tourist and two Spanish tourists have also reported sightings in the north African country.

A newspaper reported at the weekend that criminal Godfathers in Morocco have been told police will scale back drug busts against them if they agree to help the Madeleine probe.

Police chiefs in Morocco have angrily denied their country is a child sex haven and say their searches for Madeleine have produced no evidence she is there.

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/witness-who-saw-madeleine-in-morocco-receives-mafia-death-threats-6686202.html



May I remind people out there that when Operation Grange undertook the infamous review into the case of missing Madeleine McCann, they included detail of the 'investigations' undertaken the the private detectives hired by the Find Madeleine Fund Co. Ltd.  In this particular instance ^^^ Metodo3.

Unbelievable!

Naoual Malhi says men claiming to work for the Morocco's crime barons have warned her to keep her mouth shut
Naoual Malhi, 24, says men claiming to work for the country's crime barons have warned her to keep her mouth shut about what she saw - and ditch plans to probe the sighting herself.
The mum-of-one, whose daughter Ines is Madeleine's age, has told how one growled: "Let this lie if you know what's good for you, your daughter and the rest of your family, otherwise you're a dead woman next time you're in Morocco."


I call bull on this one, a whole herd of bulls even.

If this was a warning from a mafia crime baron making threats about Maddie and threatening to kill her next time she visits Morocco why wait till she is in Morocco?
If she is such a danger why wait till she visits there, why not do it where she currently is?
She won't have the chance to do any investigating at all.
Her point of arrival could point to a specific area so why wait?
They know where she is, they know what she wants to do and where she wants to go and probably also people she wants to speak to, why wait given her plans?
Common sense would be to stop her in her tracks and also use it as a warning to others that they are not safe wherever they are.
Their reach goes far beyond Morocco.

Naoual, who describes herself as a qualified doctor, said: "All I want to do is reunite the McCanns with their daughter.
Interesting that they tell us what she describes herself as rather than what she really is.
Presuming that she is not a certified doctor such as a GP or working in a hospital i would be asking what she does, probably holistic?
Perhaps a doctor of something rather than an actual medical doctor.

Which private investigators would that be then?

Just another nonsense story.

The Madeleine McCann industry: How a three-year-old’s disappearance became a troubling national obsession

More than 11 years on, the story of the girl who went missing from her holiday apartment continues to generate a lot of heat - but not necessarily much light

• Adam Lusher
  
• 5 days ago
  

You can read it on the official Find Madeleine website: the statement of Kate and Gerry McCann from last year’s tenth anniversary of their daughter’s disappearance. 
“Madeleine, our Madeleine,” write the parents of the missing girl. “Ten years… a horrible marker of time, stolen time.”
You can watch their “heartbreaking ” interview with the BBC’s Fiona Bruce, marking the tenth anniversary of three-year-old Madeleine’s disappearance from a holiday apartment in Praia da Luz, Portugal, on 3 May 2007.
Or you can consider the words of Kate and Gerry’s web statement: “We are bracing ourselves for… the rehashing of old ‘stories’, misinformation, half-truths and downright lies which will be doing the rounds in the newspapers, social media and ‘special edition’ TV programmes.

“[We] truly hope that those reporting on the ‘story’ over the next couple of weeks will have a conscience.”
Then you can read the newspapers: “Maddie ‘cremated’ – heartbreaking new slur by Portugese ex-cop”; “Maddie body hidden in coffin” [the same ex-cop, who is involved in a long-running legal battle with the McCanns]; and “World exclusive: prime suspect is a woman” (as followed by this website and many, many others.)
Then, if you want, you can read the online discussion forums, still going strong after all these years, where every story is dissected, and where some feel able to assert, with the unshakeable confidence of those convinced they know the truth – (though they might not know, or have met, the McCanns) – that “revolting” exploitation and deceit are involved.

And if you fear you might have missed something, your friendly newsagent may still be able to supply you with one of the pull-out supplements that some newspapers have produced for the most recent anniversary of little Maddie’s disappearance.
How you view it all probably depends on your hunch – (and who doesn’t have one?) – about what happened to Madeleine.
Some will praise fearless public interest investigation, possibly emphasising that most of it has been done by those outside the mainstream media (MSM).
Others will suggest the story has only been kept alive by slick PR beyond the resources of less savvy, less middle class parents with less photogenic children. Sometimes this is swiftly followed by the accusation that the parents, both of them highly intelligent doctors, have “something to hide”.
Still others will despair that Madeleine McCann has become an industry, making money for journalists, commentators and lawyers – while doing precious little for the missing girl herself.
Those seeing it as an industry may – fairly or unfairly – seek to examine one of those “special edition documentaries” broadcast last month by Australia’s Sunday Night programme.
First there was the headline-generating build-up: a cinematic trailer promising major new developments and a “groundbreaking TV event”.
Then came the show itself, mentioning theories that Madeleine had been killed by a drunk driver, or snatched by human traffickers, and saying that detectives wanted to talk to a Praia da Luz resort worker who may know more than they have so far divulged.

The show also discussed a claim that MI5 might have helped hide Madeleine – it came from Goncalo Amaral, the talkative Portugese ex-cop behind the ‘Maddie cremated’ line, who was sacked as lead investigator in the case in October 2007 after accusing British detectives of only chasing leads the McCanns wanted following.
Then came the programme’s aftermath: no arrests, so far, but a statement from the lawyer of one of the experts featured in the show.
US-based criminal profiler Pat Brown has said she was misrepresented, and has, according to her attorney, identified “multiple claims” against the programme makers – who may well be instructing their own lawyers to challenge the allegations.
This comes six years after other lawyers got involved over Ms Brown’s self-published book casting doubt on the McCanns’ account of how their daughter disappeared. After Amazon heard from libel law firm Carter-Ruck, acting for the McCanns, the book was withdrawn from the online bookseller.
In a lengthy blog post, Ms Brown has now explained how she became a television commentator and why she participated in the Australian documentary.
“I never expected to be on television,” she wrote. “But, after I started working in criminal profiling, I got a call from one of the big cable networks. They were in a panic because the guest they had invited couldn’t make it at the last moment.
“I did the interview. I started getting calls for more interviews.”

Fifteen years later, she said, she has made more than 3,000 media appearances – far from all of them about Madeleine McCann. As well as current investigations, she has been a “valued expert” in the documentaries The Unsolved Death of Cleopatra and Mystery Files: Jack the Ripper.
“What I wanted to do,” she explained, “Was change methods of crime analysis so we would not have so many cold cases languishing in every state in the country.”
Her participation in the Australian show, she stressed, was not about the money.
“I doubt any participants were paid,” she said, “And, if they were, believe me, these kind of shows are cheap”.
She acknowledged there would be two schools of thought: “Pat Brown is not a real profiler. She is a McCann hater and published her book because she wants to make money off the pain of the parents and an innocent missing child.”
And among her supporters: “Pat Brown is the one professional outside of Goncalo Amaral who has not backed down from speaking the truth.”
“I did the show,” she said, “Because I wanted the truth out there in the MSM. It was an opportunity to speak out on the Madeleine McCann case, something that had been off limits for over seven years in the MSM.”
The idea that the case is off limits to the mainstream media might amaze some, including the McCanns. 
In November 2011 they told the Leveson Inquiry that British newspapers had declared “open season” on them.
At least in the early days, some reports seemed to do little more than repeat speculation in the Portuguese and Spanish press, with the addition of quotation marks and words like “allegedly” to give a little bit of legal distance from the initial allegation.
Some editors, it seemed, had noticed how a McCann splash could generate the kind of interest hitherto reserved for the latest “sensational twist” in the Diana, Princess of Wales story.

“We had anecdotal evidence from the British journalists in Praia da Luz that the story of Madeleine’s disappearance had caught the imagination of the British public and was driving sales in the UK,” Gerry McCann told the Leveson Inquiry. “As a result those journalists were under intense pressure from their newsdesks to file more copy.”
It is possible, however, that the involvement of the lawyers has taken at least some of the edge off the media frenzy.
In March 2008 the Daily Express and the Daily Star had to make front page apologies after the McCanns started libel proceedings in relation to more than 100 articles published by the two daily newspapers and their Sunday sister editions. The High Court heard the false claims included allegations that the McCanns killed their daughter, sold her to pay off debts, or were involved in “wife-swapping”.
Then in July 2008 the McCanns started proceedings against Mr Amaral after he published his book The Truth of the Lie, in which he claimed the McCanns faked the abduction of their daughter after she died because of an accident in the family’s holiday apartment.

The McCanns won an initial libel case against Mr Amaral in 2015, but this was overturned on appeal and in a judgement in Portugal’s Supreme Court. The McCanns told Fiona Bruce they will now be appealing to the European courts because the rulings against them were “terrible”.
The ongoing legal disputes, then, may have persuaded journalists to tread carefully – but it seems there is no shortage of material allowing them to plod on.
The known, indisputable facts may be few: Madeleine was reported missing at 10.14pm on the evening of 3 May 2007; her parents said they had left her sleeping in the apartment and gone to dinner with friends at a tapas bar 50 yards away, with one of the group checking on the toddler every half hour.
But out of that has grown a near infinity of leads or blind alleys – as well as incessant questioning from critics armed with hindsight and demanding to know why the McCanns didn’t play safe and get a baby sitter (especially after it emerged there had been burglaries in a resort described in the first, sympathetic reports as a secure middle-class haven).
On 25 April, Metropolitan Police Assistant Commissioner Mark Rowley, the man in charge of Operation Grange, Scotland Yard’s six-year, £11m review of the case, wrote of his team having examined over 40,000 documents, out of which thousands of enquiries were generated. 
“We continue to receive information on a daily basis,” he said. “The team has looked at in excess of 600 individuals who were identified as being potentially significant to the disappearance.”
There was, he added, to a television interviewer, “a significant line of inquiry which is worth pursuing.”
“Ourselves and the Portuguese are doing a critical piece of work and we don’t want to spoil it by putting titbits of information out publicly.”
Of course, such a tantalising hint became a headline.

Look hard enough, and you will find stories about how lessons have not been learnt about the failure to find Madeleine, and about how all the speculation has drowned out debate about how to respond to a similar child disappearance in the future. 
But such stories seem to gain far less traction than the latest “hugely significant new clue” or “sensational new development” or even – “What was Madeleine’s cuddle cat and how important was it to the police investigation”?
And Madeleine is still missing.

This article was first published on 1 May 2017


https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/madeleine-mccann-case-theories-parents-kate-gerry-latest-developments-new-leads-evidence-media-a8632846.html

Madeleine McCann 'is in a secret lair'

Ulster detective leading the hunt on why he thinks she’s being held captive just like Jaycee Dugard

By Aaron Tinney
September 13 2009




The Ulster detective leading the search for Madeleine McCann today reveals his most chilling theories yet, exclusively to Sunday Life. Hardened ex-RUC cop Dave Edgar told us he is convinced that little Maddie is imprisoned in a hellish lair – just like kidnapped sex slave Jaycee Lee Dugard.

He insisted the “back from the dead” reappearance of Jaycee – and the cases of Austrian cellar girls Elisabeth Fritzl and Natascha Kampusch – confirmed his suspicion.

And despite fresh leads taking his probe to Australia and Barcelona, the east Belfast man insists the golden-haired youngster is being held just 10 miles from where she was snatched in Praia da Luz two years ago.

But he warned that the sprawling wilderness where he believes Maddie is languishing is almost impossible to search completely.
Belfast-born Dave revealed the grim theories when he opened his case files to us.

We spent the day at the Cheshire office he uses to conduct the world’s biggest missing person case.

Sunday Life can now lift the lid on how his Alpha Investigations Group private eye agency really operates and what it is like to search for the world’s most famous missing youngster, who disappeared two years, four months and 10 days ago.

When we visited Dave’s headquarters, US kidnap victim Jaycee Lee Dugard had still not been rescued and the world had long forgotten her name.

But even then Dave said he was convinced Maddie was entombed by an abductor in a cellar or dungeon, like Austrian cellar victims Natascha Kampusch and Elisabeth Fritzl.

“Maddie is most likely being held captive, possibly in an underground cellar, just like Natascha or Elisabeth, and could emerge at any time,” he told us.

Days later, news broke that tormented Jaycee had been freed from the foul compound where she was abused for 18 years by monster Phillip Garrido. Dave simply said: “This just supports my theory that Maddie is alive and imprisoned.”

There was further backing for his theory when American boy Ricky Chekevdia was found hiding with his mother in a tiny “secret room” two years after he was kidnapped while caught in a custody battle.

Former detective inspector Dave, who grew up on Belfast’s Woodstock Road, was drafted in by Kate and Gerry McCann last November after Spanish investigators failed to find new leads.


Renowned for leaving no stone unturned in his UK murder investigations, Dave now spends his days with a four-strong team probing every lead that comes in to his office.

His partner Arthur Cowley has more than 30 years’ policing experience in north-west England – and the pair are backed up by a translator and an ex-police administrator.

They have sifted through thousands of emails, answerphone messages and letters to get that one breakthrough lead.

Last month, the information took Dave’s probe to Australia and Barcelona to track a ‘Victoria Beckham lookalike’ suspect, who spoke with an Australian or New Zealand accent.

She was seen asking two British tourists at a marina in Barcelona if they were there to deliver her “new daughter” – three days after Maddie disappeared.

But he told us he is now back to focusing on his original theory.

He still feels Maddie was snatched by a man spotted by the McCanns’ friend Jane Tanner, one of the so-called ‘Tapas Seven’ who dined with them the night Maddie went missing.

Dave said: “Jane is a very reliable witness and there were other sightings of this man, who Jane saw carrying a little girl in a blanket, in the days leading up to the disappearance.”

He feels this is the lone prowler who has Maddie stashed in a cellar or dungeon in the lawless villages around Praia da Luz.

But Dave warned: “This rural, sprawling terrain makes it extremely difficult to search. You could quite easily keep a child there for years and no-one else would know.


“The person who has Maddie is most likely a paedophile or a person so desperate for a family they were willing to kidnap for it.
“I wouldn’t like to speculate on what is happening to her.”

Dave says the region where he feels Maddie is being held has attracted many strange characters, including convicted sex offenders.

“I don’t want to generalise or make gross exaggerations, but there are people there living on the edges of society,” Dave said.

He added there were as many as nine child sex attacks in the area round Praia da Luz from 2005 to 2007 and the victims included British kids.

Some happened as close as 20 miles from Praia da Luz, and six of them were on girls between the ages of three and 10.

He is now investigating leads on six child sex offenders, 78 other rapists and sex attackers and 22 vagrants.

In a glimmer of hope, Dave said: “The key thing is no body has been found.

“When paedophiles kill, they often dump the body nearby, and this isn’t the case here.

“Even if Maddie had been dumped in the sea nearby the resort, the ocean often gives up his victims.
“Until I find evidence that she is dead, I will keep going.”


And his plans for the future?

“I don’t know. We could still be sitting here in 10 years.

“If Maddie is being held, she may be being brought up to speak a different language and not even remember her own name or where she was from.

“All we can do is try and keep public awareness high – and try and reach as much of that mountainous region outside the resort as we can.”

https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/sunday-life/madeleine-mccann-is-in-a-secret-lair-28494565.html

I make no apologies for reverting to the Crimewatch 2013 Madeleine McCann Special over and over and over again.  A criminal act in itself..

Reconstruction of the disappearance of Madeleine McCann to be shown on Crimewatch

The BBC’s Crimewatch will broadcast a new version of the events surrounding the disappearance of Madeleine McCann.

By Robert Mendick and agencies
12:01AM BST 13 Oct 2013               

[Note default time ^^^]


It will show tomorrow what detectives say are “significant changes” to the “accepted version of events”. E-fits of several men police want to trace will also be screened.

The footage features a three-year-old girl as Madeleine. She is shown collecting tennis balls for her parents, Kate and Gerry McCann, as they played on a tennis court.

It recreates one of the last photographs taken before Madeleine vanished from a holiday apartment in Praia da Luz in the Algarve in May 2007 when she was three.

Police said yesterday they were issuing the e-fits “to try to identify these men, to eliminate any innocent sightings or to establish if they are connected in any way”.


The fact police will publish several will raise suggestions the men might have been acting in a paedophile gang. Det Chief Insp Andy Redwood, said: “The timeline we have now established has given new significance to sightings and movements of people in and around the Praia da Luz complex.”

A full reconstruction lasting 25 minutes will feature in the Crimewatch programme, which airs on Monday at 9pm.

In another clip, the McCanns are asked how often they think of their daughter, who went missing when she was three years old in May 2007 from a holiday apartment as her parents dined at a nearby tapas restaurant with friends.

Mr McCann says: "When it's a special occasion, when you should be your happiest and Madeleine's not there, that's when it really hits home. Obviously, Madeleine's birthday goes without saying."


Mrs McCann adds: "It's when you have big family occasions really. That's it isn't it? 'Family occasion' and you haven't got your complete family."


Crimewatch presenter Kirsty Young will speak to the McCanns live in the studio during the programme, while presenter Matthew Amroliwala has been to Praia da Luz to explore the new focus of the police investigation.

During the programme, senior investigating officer, Detective Chief Inspector Andy Redwood, discusses how the police have approached the inquiry.


"Primarily what we sought to do from the beginning is try and draw everything back to zero if you like. Try and take everything back to the beginning and re-analyse and reassess everything, accepting nothing," he says.


"The careful and critical analysis of the timeline has been absolutely key. Primarily, we're focused on the area between 8.30 and 10. We know at 8.30 that was the time Mr and Mrs McCann went down to the tapas area for their dinner and we know that around at 10pm that was when Mrs McCann found that Madeleine was missing," he adds.

An incident room will be staffed during tomorrow's appeal and the days that follow, when the appeal moves to Holland and Germany.

Mr Redwood and his team recently revealed a vast log of mobile phone traffic.


Scotland Yard detectives, who have interviewed 442 people as part of their review-turned-investigation, hope to track down as many people present in the Portuguese town at the time.

Since launching its own investigation, 41 people of interest have been identified by the Metropolitan Police, including 15 UK nationals. A large but "manageable" list of phone numbers identified as being present in Praia da Luz - though not necessarily used to make phone calls - has been drawn up by detectives with a "significant" number unattributed to any named person.

Detectives have issued 31 international letters of request (ILOR) to mostly European countries in relation to some of the persons of interest as well as accessing phone records.

Ahead of the programme, Mr Redwood, said: "The timeline we have now established has given new significance to sightings and movements of people in and around Praia da Luz at the time of Madeleine's disappearance. Our work to date has significantly changed the timeline and the accepted version of events that has been in the public domain to date."


"It has allowed us to work with Crimewatch to build the most detailed reconstruction as yet, and highlight very specific appeal points.

"I hope that when the public see our investigative strands drawn together within the overall context of that appeal, it will bring in new information that moves our investigation forward."


The Portuguese investigation officially closed but authorities there are backing the Scotland Yard inquiry and officers from both countries will work together in pursuing new leads.

The Metropolitan Police now has a team of six Portuguese detectives based in Faro, who are carrying out inquiries on its behalf.
The McCanns are currently suing former police chief Goncalo Amaral for libel over claims in the book The Truth Of The Lie.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/madeleinemccann/10375101/Reconstruction-of-the-disappearance-of-Madeleine-McCann-to-be-shown-on-Crimewatch.html
....................

So, seven and a half years later, having made the transition between a case review into a full-blown investigation, well in excess of £12 million of our money sqaundered - what has been achieved?

Ah yes, that's it - back to zero !!!

What happened to Madeleine McCann? Five possible scenarios explained

With interest in the case showing no signs of abating, the chances are that unless Madeleine is found, the theories will keep proliferating

• Adam Lusher
  
• Wednesday 14 November 2018 10:21
  

In the 11 years since Madeleine McCann went missing from an apartment in the Ocean Club resort in Praia da Luz, Portugal, there have been a near-infinite number of theories as to what happened to her.

Having started reviewing the case in 2011, Scotland Yard are still investigating, receiving £150,000 in new government funding to pursue the matter on 13 November 2018.

With interest in the case showing no signs of abating, the chances are that unless Madeleine is found, the theories will keep proliferating.
For now, though, the most commonly discussed scenarios seem to be:

The parents were involved


On September 7 2007, four months after Madeleine’s disappearance, Kate and Gerry McCann were made “arguidos”, formal suspects in the case.

The theory seems to have been that the two doctors killed their daughter by accident, possibly by giving her too much sedative in the hope that she would sleep while they went out to dine with friends at a tapas restaurant 50 yards away.


The McCanns are then supposed to have hidden the body, faked Madeleine’s abduction, and then, weeks later, with the search for the three-year-old in full cry, put the corpse in the boot of a hire car and hid it in some super-secret location.

The Portugese police appear to have been bolstered in the belief that this – or something like it – could be possible by the reactions of two sniffer dogs brought to the Algarve by British officers in July 2007.

The two dogs, one trained to detect human blood, the other the smell of dead bodies, were taken to numerous locations, but only gave alerts inside the McCanns’ holiday apartment.  The cadaver dog later gave another alert signal while inside the Renault Scenic hire car that the McCanns had rented 24 days after their daughter went missing.

Analysis of hair and other fibres taken from the hire car and apartment were analysed by the UK’s Forensic Science Service.  Four days after the FSS analysis was complete, the McCanns were made arguidos, with Portugese officials citing DNA evidence as one of the grounds for suspicion.

It later transpired, however, that neither the sniffer dog or DNA evidence were as watertight as some observers assumed.

Sniffer dog evidence has been the subject of research questioning its reliability, and in one US court case, a judge agreed with analysis of three cadaver dogs’ performances which found they were wrong 78 per cent, 71 per cent and 62 per cent of the time.

The DNA evidence, meanwhile, came with a major ‘health warning’ from the FSS.

An email from John Lowe, of the FSS team, stated that only 15 out of a set of 19 components of Madeleine’s DNA profile had been found in the hire car.
Mr Lowe cautioned: “The individual components in Madeleine's profile are not unique to her; it is the specific combination of 19 components that makes her profile unique above all others. Elements of Madeleine's profile are also present within the profiles of many of the scientists here in Birmingham, myself included.

“It's important to stress that 50 per cent of Madeleine's profile will be shared with each parent. It is not possible, in a mixture of more than two people, to determine or evaluate which specific DNA components pair with each other. ... Therefore, we cannot answer the question: Is the match genuine, or is it a chance match."

Kate and Gerry McCann had their formal arguido status removed in July 2008.  They have always maintained their innocence.  They have dismissed as “ludicrous” theories about how they might have used the hire car to dispose of the body in a location that Algarve locals didn’t know about.

They are also continuing their legal action against Goncalo Amaral, the former lead Portugese investigator in the case, who in 2008 wrote a book claiming they had faked their daughter’s abduction after her accidental death.

Burglary gone wrong


According to this theory, thieves broke into the apartment, then killed or abducted Madeleine when she woke up and saw what they were doing.

It is understood that the Scotland Yard review team has not yet ruled out such a scenario – even though you might expect it to involve thieves acting in panic, making hurried mistakes and leaving a trail of obvious clues in their wake.

At one time, though, the Met detectives had identified four Praia da Luz locals who seemed as if they might have fitted the bill.   Their backgrounds, mobile phone contact and locations around the time of Madeleine’s disappearance all seemed to fit the pattern of men involved in a burglary that had gone wrong.

The men were questioned in 2014 – but Scotland Yard has now announced there was no evidence to implicate any of them and abandoned the case against all four.

Paulo Ribeiro, one of the men, has also told BBC Panorama how amazed he had been when approached by British detectives.

"I thought it was incredible," he said. "I knew of nothing when the police arrived at my door with a piece of paper that had a drawing on it, saying it bore a likeness to me and that someone had said I was involved and that I looked like the person who had kidnapped Maddie.”

He and the other three men, were also backed by Pedro do Carmo, deputy director of the Policia Judiciaria, who told Panorama he had never considered them to be suspects.

He said: "I can only say that we questioned those people on request of the Metropolitan Police and only based on the request of the Metropolitan Police.
"We never questioned those people. We never saw or looked at those people as suspects of the crime."

And, despite British detectives still considering the idea of a burglary gone wrong to be plausible, Carlos Anjos, the former head of the Policia Judiciaria officers' union, told Panorama: "This burglary theory is absurd. Not even a wallet disappeared, no television disappeared, nothing else disappeared. A child disappeared."

Abducted or killed by a local paedophile


In 2009 there were reports that some of those investigating Madeleine’s disappearance believed the Algarve had been “awash with paedophiles” when she went missing.

One source was quoted as saying: “There are 38 known sex offenders in the Algarve.  The area is a magnet for paedophiles. There have been seven sexual assaults involving the children of tourists in the Algarve in the last four years.

“They all have the same modus operandi as Madeleine's disappearance - that is, a break-in at a holiday apartment and children molested.

“Five happened before Madeleine's abduction, and two afterwards. One took place a month before she vanished.”

Could a local serial paedophile have escalated his activities to the point where instead of leaving a molested foreign child in situ, they progressed to abduction or killing?

Names have been proposed, and either categorically denied or conclusively disproven.

In this respect, probably the most bizarre twist came last year when it emerged that the broadcaster, wit and ex-MP Sir Clement Freud, who had a Praia da Luz holiday home and who had befriended the McCanns, was also a paedophile who sexually abused girls for decades.

One of Freud’s victims told ITV News she felt “very uneasy” after discovering that the former politician had befriended the McCann family:

"He was a private man, not the type to suddenly befriend  a couple who had intense media attention. It really jarred with me, left me feeling very uneasy.  Nobody else would have thought Freud capable of abuse and rape but he did it to me.”

Some investigators, however, have cautioned against the whole idea of the involvement of a local paedophile.  They point out that only very rarely do predatory paedophiles take the risk of sneaking or breaking into a building to get at a child.

Abducted by slave traders or paedophile child traffickers


There have been numerous variations of this theory, placing Madeleine in locations from Belgium to Africa.


In 2008, for example, it was reported that police were examining claims that Madeleine was taken on the orders of a Belgium-based paedophile ring that had placed an order for a “young girl”.

The highly organised gang, it was said, may even have taken a photograph of Madeleine beforehand so the Belgian paedophiles could confirm she fitted their requirements and give the go-ahead for the abduction.

Other theories have suggested Madeleine could have been taken to Lagos marina, five miles from Praia da Luz, and put on a boat bound for Morocco.

There have been reports of girls fitting Madeleine’s description being seen in Morocco around the time of her disappearance, and in the first few weeks of the hunt for their daughter, the McCanns did visit the north African country to appeal for information.

Morocco also fits into theories that Madeleine was sold into slavery: it is on the trafficking route to the Saharan desert country of Mauritania.

Mauritania was the last country in the world to abolish slavery, outlawing the practice only in 1981.  There are rumours that significant numbers of people remain in slavery in the country to this day, and that gangs operating out of Mauritania sell children to rich Middle Eastern families.

Colin Sutton, an ex-Scotland Yard detective, told the Mirror last month: “The Mauritania line is certainly a possibility and needs to be looked at.

“If someone wanted to get a three-year-old child into Africa it’s the obvious route. The infrastructure and contacts for people smuggling are clearly there.”

Madeleine woke up, wandered from the apartment, and was involved in an accident


If Madeleine had woken up and gone to see her parents at the tapas restaurant, it has been claimed, there were a number of potentially fatal accidents that could have befallen her.

If she lost her way in the dark and took a wrong turn, a walk of less than 200 yards would have taken her to some roadworks.

It has been reported that workers repairing drains had dug a 6ft-deep, 4ft-wide trench.  Had she fallen in, causing her to die or be knocked unconscious?  And had she then not been noticed when the trench was filled in the next morning?

This theory has been disputed by the engineer and the foreman in charge of the works, who have both insisted the trench was checked by them and the police.
Other accident theories have posited a drink driver who runs over Madeleine, panics, and hides the body.  A local might know hiding places where a body could lie undiscovered for ten years: the surrounding countryside is sparsely populated with plenty of scrubland and many old, long-abandoned wells.

Such scenarios, though, would require unusual behaviour from a little girl going in search of her parents.

Kate McCann has pointed out that Madeleine, coming up to her fourth birthday, would have had to have been able to open the curtains, slide open the patio door and then shut both of them behind her.  Then she would have had to open and shut the garden gate leading to the road.

During her holiday, she had got to know the way that took her to the pool complex where her parents were eating.  So why would this little girl have continued down the dark, lonely path leading to the roadworks, instead of turning towards the reassuring lights and noise coming from where she knew she could find her mum and dad?

This article was first published on 3 May 2017


https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/madeleine-mccann-disappearance-latest-what-happened-scenarios-a8632886.html


The UK press seem to have themselves in a bit of a pickle trying to keep this fairytale alive for over eleven years - they're repeating themselves.

 
https://jillhavern.forumotion.net/t13561p500-media-mayhem-mccann-media-nonsense-of-the-day#393600

Maddie cops ‘ignored claims her body was dumped in reservoir’

By TOM GOODENOUGH

25th November 2014, 2:15 pm
Updated: 4th April 2016, 11:55 pm

POLICE searching for Madeleine McCann ignored a claim her body may have been
dumped in a lake, it has been reported.

A note — found outside the flat from which Madeleine disappeared — suggested
the three-year-old’s body may have been dumped in a remote “Reservoir of
Wilderness” just miles from the holiday resort of Praia da Luz.

The letter described the murky waters as a “perfect” place to hide a
body.

The unnamed handyman who found the note, who did not wish to be named, said:

“It clearly said Madeleine’s name at the top. It was written in Portuguese.

“Beneath it was a location for what it claimed was her final resting place

He went on to say that after handing cops the letter – found a year after
Maddie went missing – nothing was done.

The remote Barragem da Bravura lake is just 15 miles from Praia da Luz, where
Maddie was last seen.

Police searched the surrounding woodland after Madeleine vanished in 2007 but
it is thought they did not dredge the lake itself.

https://www.thesun.co.uk/archives/news/546615/maddie-cops-ignored-claims-her-body-was-dumped-in-reservoir/

Divers search lake for Madeleine McCann

By Martina Smit and agencies
12:01PM GMT 04 Feb 2008    [Note default time]

Divers are searching a remote Algarve lake for Madeleine McCann after being hired by a Portuguese lawyer who believes her body has been dumped there.

Marcos Aragao Correia is thought to be spending more than £1,000 a day to keep up the dive hunt at the Barragem do Arade reservoir, 35 miles east of Praia da Luz where the four-year-old went missing on May 3 last year. Five days into the search, the divers - of the local firm Dive Time - have already found a 15-ft length of blind cord knotted together from several pieces. "It is now with the police," Mr Aragao said. "I think it could turn out to be significant."



The human rights lawyer said underworld criminals told him Madeleine was raped, murdered and then dumped in a nearby lake that was "deserted with lots of trees and a beach area". The Barragem do Arade, which is the second closest to Praia da Luz after another reservoir which police have already searched, was the only one that fitted the description, Mr Aragao said.

He claimed to have told Portuguese police of his tip-off three days after Madeleine disappeared. "So far they haven't acted upon my information," he said. "I'm determined to carry on with this until I find Madeleine's body or satisfy myself she is not here." But he added that Metodo 3, the private investogators hired by Madeleine's parents, thought his information was "important" because of the reservoir's proximity to the town of Silves, where a girl like Madeleine age was seen being swapped between cars.
The dive search comes as it emerged that Kate and Gerry McCann are set to remain suspects in their daughter's disappearance despite an admission by Portugal's top policeman that detectives were "hasty" in naming them as such.

Alipio Ribeiro, the national director of the Policia Judiciaria (PJ), told a radio interviewer at the weekend that there "perhaps should have been another assessment" before the McCanns were declared "arguidos" - formal suspects - four months after Madeleine vanished.

His remarks were sezied upon by Clarence Mitchell, the McCanns' official spokesman, who almost immediately issued a statement urging Portuguese authorities "to act humanely by removing their arguido status as swiftly as possible".

However, an unnamed source at Portugal's Attorney General's Office told the newspaper 24 Horas: "We will be saying nothing officially about Mr Ribeiro's comments. The fate of Madeleine's parents will be reassessed at the appropriate moment."

Although Portugal's Public Prosecution Service have the power to remove someone's arguido status before the end of a criminal investigation, it rarely happens. The McCanns are likely to have to wait until the end of the police investigation to find out whether they will stand trial.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1577580/Divers-search-lake-for-Madeleine-McCann.html

Madeleine McCann's body 'may no longer exist'


The McCanns spent Friday in London consulting their lawyers



By Caroline Gammell in Praia da Luz
14 Sep 2007

Portuguese police have allegedly asked UK forensics experts to examine evidence to see if Madeleine McCann might have previously been drugged, as they turn their attentions on the apartment next door to the one from which she vanished, it has been claimed.

The latest speculation on the police investigation into the missing four-year-old emerged as detectives in the case admitted they may never find her body.

There is speculation her corpse may have been weighed down with rocks and dumped in the sea or even destroyed in an incinerator.

The new claims, in the Evening Standard, centre on the apartment neighbouring the McCanns' and police are said to believe it may hold the key to the whereabouts of any body in the hours after she was reported missing.

They also follow reports in the newspaper France Soir that Madeleine allegedly died from an overdose of sleeping pills.

Further claims in the Evening Standard take the theory one step further suggesting that the Forensic Science Service in Birmingham has been asked to look for evidence that she had been given drugs on the night she went missing and on earlier occasions.

The McCanns have always emphatically denied that they ever sedated any of their children.

Madeleine's parents Kate and Gerry have been formally named as suspects, but police have admitted that they do not have enough evidence to charge them.

Mrs McCann, 39, is expected to be recalled to Portugal in the next few days to face further questioning as police work on the theory that she may have accidentally killed her daughter while her husband helped cover up the crime.

The couple have vehemently denied these claims.

But the couple, who spent Friday in London consulting lawyers about their arguido status, have been told the case against them is weak if a body is not found.

A senior Portuguese police source said there was very little for detectives to pin on the McCanns.


"We have nothing concrete," he told Portuguese newspaper 24 Horas. "There are a lot of indications but without more information it is impossible to determine what happened in those four vital hours in the case between 6pm and 10pm.

"Even if the blood and traces gathered in the car or in the apartment were confirmed to correspond to 100 per cent of the little girl's DNA, that wouldn't prove anything."

Madeleine disappeared from the family's holiday apartment 5A in the Mark Warner Ocean Club resort on May 3.

For several weeks forensic scientists in Birmingham have been examining bodily fluids and hair found in the back of the couple's Renault Scenic hired 25 days after their daughter went missing.

As the investigation continued, Portuguese newspaper Diario de Noticias said police had admitted Madeleine's body "may no longer exist".

A source told the paper: "One theory is that the body may have been thrown in a bag filled with stones into the high sea from a yacht in Lagos marina."

Mr Murat, a 33-year-old property developer, is the only other named suspect, or arguido in the case.


Family friends of the McCanns have demanded to know why he is not facing the same amount of scrutiny as Madeleine's parents.


They insist he was involved in the preliminary search for the little girl while he maintains he was at home with his mother in their villa 150 yards from the McCanns' apartment.

The Portuguese authorities are still trying to track down Mrs McCann's personal diary to gain an insight into her psychological state before and after Madeleine disappeared. It is understood they have photocopies of extracts and are now trying to get the papers formally accepted as evidence.

The investigating judge Pedro Miguel dos Anjos Frias, has until next Thursday to authorise any further police activity in the case against the McCanns after being handed a 4,000 page file by the public prosecutor last Tuesday.


Police are on standby to carry out searches along the coast to the west of Praia da Luz and attention has also focused on the area surrounding the town's church.

In the UK, Mr McCann's sister Philomena said the couple and extended family would be prepared to sell their homes to help foot the legal bill to clear their names.


Mr and Mrs McCann have appointed lawyers in Portugal and the UK after being named official suspects in their daughter's disappearance.


The couple's £640,000 home in Rothley, Leicestershire, has been besieged by the world's media since the McCanns flew home last Sunday.


Their battle to shift suspicion has been hampered by the fact that they are not allowed to hire their own private investigator.

Under Portuguese law, no independent inquiry can be carried out while a criminal investigation is underway.

It is only when a person has been charged with a crime that they are entitled to appoint their own experts – such as forensic specialists – which have to be approved by the court.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1563185/Madeleine-McCanns-body-may-no-longer-exist.html

Madeleine McCann: is it time for the press regulator to step in?

Roy Greenslade - 9th May 2014

Is the Press Complaints Commission going to find itself dealing with one last controversial complaint or will it become the first headache for the new Independent Press Standards Organisation?

I refer to the concerns aired about current media coverage of the renewed search for Madeleine McCann by both her parents and the police.

Madeleine's parents, Gerry and Kate McCann, have issued a statement, which is posted on Facebook, registering their disquiet at "interference" by journalists in the new investigation into their daughter's disappearance. It states:

"We are dismayed with the way the media has behaved over the last couple of days in relation to our daughter's case.
There is an on-going, already challenging, police investigation taking place and media interference in this way not only makes the work of the police more difficult, it can potentially damage and destroy the investigation altogether – and hence the chances of us finding Madeleine and discovering what has happened to her.
As Madeleine's parents, this just compounds our distress. We urge the media to let the police get on with their work and please show some respect and consideration to Madeleine and all our family."

This came the day after the Metropolitan police assistant commissioner, Mark Rowley, sent a letter to editors appealing for restraint because of the potential for the Portuguese to halt the investigation.

Rowley explained that the British police were operating under Portuguese law and his opposite number in Portugal, in the policia judiciaria, did not intend – as had been the Met's practice – to brief the media on the search.

He said that the Portuguese police chief had been clear "that if we provide any briefings or information on the work they are undertaking on our behalf, or if reporters cause any disruption to their work in Portugal, activity will cease".

It would mean that Scotland Yard detectives would be unable to excavate sites around the resort of Praia da Luz where the then three-year-old Madeleine went missing on 3 May 2007.

But where exactly should the press draw the line? What happens if reporters discover facts without having had police briefings? Is it wrong for British papers to reproduce every story appearing in the Portuguese press? Where does factual reporting stop and intrusion into grief begin?

With the questions in mind, let's look at how have the press has reacted to the call for restraint.

The Daily Mirror has been in the forefront, running a "world exclusive" splash on Monday, "Maddie cops to start digging up resort". The story appeared to be well sourced.

On Wednesday, the Mirror splashed on an "exclusive new lead" headlined "Maddie cops to dig yards from apartment". A similar story was the splash in the Daily Star, "Maddie: police dig up 3 sites" and in the Daily Express, "Police dig in new hunt for Maddy."

If factually accurate, as appears to be the case, the problem for the Met with these stories was that it was bound to raise suspicions by the Portuguese police about off-the-record briefings (even if that was not the case).

The Sun also ran a page lead that morning, "Kate had dream of where to dig", in which Mrs McCann was alleged to have told a family liaison officer about her dream of where officers should look.

By Wednesday evening, Sky News was reporting that "disagreements over leaks to the media may delay British police in their efforts to scour areas they will be given access to."

Its crime correspondent, Martin Brunt, reported from Praia da Luz, on "what appears to be a developing row between the British authorities and the Portuguese authorities about essentially Scotland Yard giving out information to journalists about what is going to happen.

"The Portuguese are making it very clear that they were not happy with journalists being briefed."


Brunt also spoke about another "blow for Scotland Yard" because - according to a report in a local Portuguese newspaper, the News Journal - the authorities had rejected a Scotland Yard plea to search the homes of three men accused of burglaries at the Praia da Luz complex at the time Madeleine vanished.

The Daily Mail also referred to "ongoing tensions between British and Portuguese authorities" It quoted Met commissioner Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe as saying: "There are always going to be complications when you have got one police force in one country working with the police force of another. We have both got to be sensitive to these things."

British newspaper editors cannot be other than aware of the sensitivity surrounding the Madeleine McCann story. Her parents spoke movingly at the Leveson inquiry of their unfortunate treatment by certain papers some seven years ago.

They remain acutely concerned about intrusions into their privacy despite acknowledging the need for continuing publicity about the case.

They and their friends, along with a local man wrongly identified as a suspect, were paid large sums in libel damages for inaccurate, defamatory reports in the aftermath of Madeleine's disappearance.

Although it is obvious that editors would not wish to repeat the sins of the past, they are fascinated by the story and remain wedded, as always, to the kind of scoop journalism that can lead them to overstep the mark.

I can accept that it is difficult to suppress information - and, of course, to accept the diktats of the Portuguese authority - but editors will surely wish to avoid scuppering the police operation.

One aspect of the reporting, however, does require more attention. The Mirror's article on Wednesday quoted "a source close to the McCanns" as saying: "This is an emotional time for them."

And the inside story, drawing again on the unnamed source, referred to the couple as "tormented parents" facing "their worst nightmare". Some people may not be regard it as intrusive. But it is surely bordering on poor taste to attribute feelings to this couple in such circumstances.

Will the current regulator, the PCC, step in before this gets out of hand again? Or will it leave it to the incoming Ipso?

https://www.theguardian.com/media/greenslade/2014/may/09/madeleinemccann-national-newspapers
.................... 

Someone should remind Messrs McCann how they totally ignored the Portuguese authorities when asked not to contact the media back in the summer of 2007.  Not a PJ whim but a Portuguese legal requirement to accord with their police investigation protocol of secrecy at the time of Madeleine McCann's disappearance.

Gerry and Kate McCann ....

"We are dismayed with the way the media has behaved over the last couple of days in relation to our daughter's case.
There is an on-going, already challenging, police investigation taking place and media interference in this way not only makes the work of the police more difficult, it can potentially damage and destroy the investigation altogether – and hence the chances of us finding Madeleine and discovering what has happened to her.
As Madeleine's parents, this just compounds our distress. We urge the media to let the police get on with their work and please show some respect and consideration to Madeleine and all our family."

Spin is not the answer

Mark Lawson - 26th October 2007

By hiring their very own Alastair Campbell, the McCanns have fuelled the doubts they seek to allay

The pattern was familiar from politics: following a major interview, public and pundits dissect the answers given and not given, while the official press spokesman for the interviewee takes to the airwaves to explain what the responses really meant.

The latest subjects of this strategy, however, were not politicians, but Kate and Gerry McCann. Listening to Clarence Mitchell answering on their behalf on numerous news outlets yesterday morning, it struck me that one of the most remarkable aspects of the Madeleine McCann case is that her parents are the first private citizens to have their very own Alastair Campbell.

And yet, listening to the phone-in callers piling in with still more sceptical derision after their Spanish television interview and Mitchell's glossary on it, I also felt that their decision to respond to family tragedy with political methods has been a terrible error. By using manoeuvrings designed for vote-grabbing, they increasingly risk the treatment that politicians receive: the belief that they are public property and that everyone has a right to an opinion on their character and veracity.


Admittedly, in one way the McCann case has gone far beyond the political model. The two most celebrated image-manipulators of modern politics - Alastair Campbell and James Carville - had a rule about the attention span of the media. They believed that there was a limited length of time - Clinton's man first put it at nine days, Blair's at 11 - for which the same story would stay on the front pages before other events provided a distraction.

The disappearance of a four-year-old on holiday, though, has shattered these calculations. The name of Madeleine McCann has now appeared on the front pages of the Daily and Sunday Express for getting on for 180 days now, with most other mainstream papers of all kinds coinciding for at least half of those. Judged by sheer unanimity of coverage across all titles, the last equivalent story was probably the second world war.

Some of this has happened because of a change in media priorities: a retreat from serious political events towards the kind of news that could plausibly be the storyline for a Hollywood film - the obsession with Princess Diana, who has occasionally been allowed to share an Express front page with Madeleine, began this bias in reporting.

But, above all else, this domination of the front pages has happened because the McCanns have encouraged it and their financial backers have funded it. The reason the nine-day/11-day rule has not applied is that Campbell and Carville were working on a model in which the subject of the journalism wants the coverage to stop, and therefore adopts tactics - of silence or diversion - which encourage reporters to look elsewhere. If the events in Portugal were to have a clear ending of any kind, Madeleine's parents would share the usual human desire to halt media interest but, for the moment, their desperate desire to keep the public looking for their daughter has led them to court publicity.

It was presumably for this reason that the McCanns became the first doctors to have a spin doctor. Previous civilians who have attracted public interest, usually through sex with a celebrity, have had Max Clifford speaking on their behalf, but his role is not usually spokesman but broker, placing their revelations in a single paper for a slice of cash. Clarence Mitchell, in contrast, briefs universally for free in the style established by the White House and followed by Downing Street.


It's easy to see how the McCanns fell into the trap of getting a press spokesman. Though firmly protesting their innocence of the insinuations by Portuguese press and police, those suggestions of guilt have caused them to believe that they need their own counter-voice.

The problem with this approach is that the traditional purpose of spin doctors is to convince people that a leader hasn't quite done what he probably did. The more often the press guy comes to the podium, the closer his boss's career is to being over.

Another difficulty is that Mitchell is usually commenting on events of which he has no firsthand knowledge, so his briefings tend to elide fact with assertion. And his habit of answering one question but then deflecting the next on the grounds that a response would break Portuguese judicial rules may be legally necessary but transmits a sense of slipperiness.

The biggest drawback, though, is that the McCanns have turned to spin and media manipulation at the precise moment these arts are most discredited in politics. What they say in an attempt to keep their child's face in people's minds has the effect of turning a daily spotlight on them. Anecdote and phone-ins suggest these appearances increase the resentment and suspicion they are aiming to defuse. Their tragedy is becoming a public relations disaster.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2007/oct/26/comment.comment

Madeleine documentary claims UK sex offender still a suspect

Mon, Dec 24, 2007, 00:00

Theo Usherwood

BRITAIN:Only one British sex offender with links to the Algarve remains a suspect in the hunt for Madeleine McCann, a television documentary claims today.

In the programme, The Madeleine McCann Mystery, Sky News crime correspondent Martin Brunt claims that all 52 British sex offenders with links to the Portuguese holiday destination have been investigated and only one remains in the frame as the search for the missing four-year-old continues.

The documentary comes as Madeleine's parents, Kate and Gerry, face their first Christmas without their daughter.
The programme features forensic expert Prof David Barclay, who says it is unusual for children of Madeleine's age to be abducted by paedophiles.

He said: "There are two options. She [ Madeleine] came to harm at the hands of some member of the family or of friends, or that it was some paedophile who happened to be passing by. Both are really, really unlikely, but we know she's gone.

"Abduction for sexual purposes of children is eight, nine, 10-year-olds. It is really, really unusual to want to take a child of three-and-a-half.


"It would be somebody overcome by the urge at that time. I mean, how often can you do that and get away with it? There are no people in Praia da Luz that have got that sort of history. I know people who have got that, they have been looked at but they [ the Portuguese police] didn't check up on the other people staying in the apartments."

Prof Barclay criticises the fact the McCanns' apartment in the resort of Praia da Luz was not protected as a crime scene, following Madeleine's disappearance on May 3th. He claims that in similar cases, police have bought the house so they could keep it until after any trial.


Brunt also claims a blue tennis bag used by Gerry McCann (39) hours before Madeleine disappeared has gone missing.

The McCanns' spokesman, Clarence Mitchell, rejected the claim. He said: "As far as Kate and Gerry are concerned, there's no missing tennis bag. They came back from holiday with everything except of course, tragically, Madeleine."

The programme hears from Robert Murat's aunt, Sally Eveleigh. She said: "All the people that know Robert, that were out on that night, that own bars, businesses, restaurants, that closed them all up to go and search for Madeleine, were interviewed and questioned by the police and they all didn't see him.


"Of course they didn't see him, he wasn't there. But three complete strangers who have never met him before say that they saw him in the dark with his dodgy eye, which is actually a detached retina, it is not a glass eye. I can't understand that."

Asked who those people were, she added: "The friends of the McCanns."

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/madeleine-documentary-claims-uk-sex-offender-still-a-suspect-1.994231

McCanns' Christmas message to Madeleine

By Nick Britten
8:07AM GMT 21 Dec 2007

Madeleine McCann's parents today make a heartfelt Christmas appeal to their missing daughter, urging her to "be brave".

Standing in front of a Christmas tree at their Leicestershire home, Gerry and Kate McCann tell the four-year-old: "Our only Christmas wish is for you to be back with us again."

Their three-minute video appeal for Madeleine's safe return is being released worldwide today, seven months after she went missing from their holiday apartment in Praia da Luz, Portugal.

It includes three clips of Madeleine filmed last Christmas which have not been seen publicly before.

In one she is shown excitedly opening a parcel containing the same pink bag she took on the fateful holiday. In another she is carrying a gift from her to her brother Sean while in a third she is standing on the kitchen table.

Sitting in front of the family Christmas tree with his wife by his side, Mr McCann said next week will be the "hardest Christmas imaginable".

The couple discuss the possibility that someone knows what happened to their daughter, who vanished while they were eating in a tapas restaurant at the holiday complex where they were staying.

They had left Madeleine and their two-year-old twins, Sean and Amelie, asleep in the apartment while they ate nearby.
And they make a direct appeal to her kidnapper to end their "despair and anguish".

Speaking directly to the camera, addressing her daughter, Mrs McCann says: "Madeleine, it's mummy and daddy here. Just know how much we love you, Madeleine. "We all miss you so much.

"Sean and Amelie talk about you all the time every day.

"We're doing everything we can, Madeleine, to find you and there are so many good and very kind people helping us.

"Be brave sweetheart.

"Our only Christmas wish is for you to be back with us again and we're hoping and praying that that will happen.

"Love you Madeleine."

Turning her attention to her kidnapper, she says: "If that person is you, we understand that you may be staying silent because of fear for yourself or through misguided loyalty to other people.

"But you must understand that you hold the key to ending all this despair and anguish, for both us and Madeleine.

"At this time of year, when so many families are coming together we beg you to help us be reunited with Madeleine. Please do the right thing and come forward."

Making a direct appeal for information, Mr McCann says: "This special time of year is all about families coming together with love and peace.

"Clearly for us and the rest of our family it's going to be the hardest Christmas imaginable without Madeleine here."

He adds: "Since Madeleine was taken from us on May 3, someone knows what happened to her and may well know where she is now. That person has it within their power to show us the compassion to end this terrible ordeal for us."

The McCanns, who remain official suspects in Madeleine's disappearance, have not spoken publicly about what they have bought for Madeleine for Christmas this year.

Writing in his internet blog earlier this month, Gerry McCann said the family would be having a very quiet Christmas, attempting to preserve as much normality for Sean and Amelie.

"Despite not yet being three, they both seem to understand they will be getting presents from Santa," he said.

"They have also asked if Santa will be bringing Madeleine home, which just about broke our hearts."

The couple have been inundated with gifts from around the world for Madeleine, which they said would remain unopened until she returned home.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1573396/McCanns-Christmas-message-to-Madeleine.html

And then some..

McCanns: it will be a tough Christmas

12:01AM GMT 16 Dec 2007

The parents of Madeleine McCann are bracing themselves for "an incredibly difficult" Christmas.

Gerry and Kate McCann said they were planning a quiet Christmas with family and are expected to spend the festive period in their home village of Rothley, Leicestershire.

They said they wanted to give their twins, Sean and Amelie, as normal a Christmas as possible with a tree and presents.

The couple, who are Roman Catholics, will attend a midnight mass on Christmas Eve at which prayers will be said for their missing daughter.

The four-year-old vanished on May 3 while the family were on holiday in Praia da Luz, Portugal. Mr and Mrs McCann refused to comment on whether they were buying presents for their oldest child in her absence.

In a statement, the couple said: "Christmas 2007 will be an incredibly difficult time for us if Madeleine is not found.

"We plan to have a very quiet, private Christmas with family in the UK. We would like to thank everyone who has supported us… and ask you to stay with us as the search for our daughter continues."

Last week, a witness in the case broke her silence to protest the innocence of the parents. Bridget O'Donnell and her partner, Jeremy Wilkins, made friends with the McCanns in Portugal during their holiday.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1572704/McCanns-it-will-be-a-tough-Christmas.html

Gerry McCann returns to work

By Nick Britten - 1st November 2007



Gerry McCann has returned to work for the first time since his daughter's disappearance and admitted he was not anticipating any breakthrough in the case.

Mr McCann, a consultant cardiologist, will begin on three days a week but hopes to be working full time early next year.

Six months after Madeleine's disappearance, and with the police investigation apparently not following any direct lines of inquiry, Mr McCann said it was now time to take the next step as he and his wife, Kate, try to resume as normal life as possible.

Speaking on his way into Glenfield Hospital in Leicester, Mr McCann said he was returning confident that he had done everything he could to find four-year-old Madeleine.

He said: "We have always said that at six months we didn't want to look back and say 'I wish we had done that and wish we had done this'.

"But now we feel we have done everything we can do to establish the search for Madeleine on an ongoing basis and we feel we have the proper infrastructure now in place to find her."

He said he was focused on his job and was keen to "get back a degree of normality with a working routine".

While Mrs McCann has confirmed she will not be returning to her job as a GP, Mr McCann always said he would return to his job.
Neither have earned anything since May and some instalments of the couple's mortgage on their home in Rothley have been paid from the Find Madeleine fund.

Doug Skehan, clinical director of the Glenfield's cardio-respiratory directorate, said he was confident Mr McCann could handle a return to his £75,000-a-year post, adding: "His trauma is well known but his professionalism is high. Many people who work in hospital have difficulties outside but they do engage with their clinical practice."

Mr McCann, who remains an official suspect in his daughter's disappearance in Portugal, specialises in general cardiology and has a sub-speciality of MRI scanning of the heart and his return will be phased.

He will initially split his time between assessing the results of MRI scans of patients, which involves "limited contact", and research for the British Heart Foundation.

He aims to have more direct contact with patients in clinic in a month, and early in the new year return to full clinical care.
His return earned a mixed reaction from visitors to the hospital, with some suggesting his mind might still not be on his job.

Sybil Berry, 87, of Leicester, who was visiting as a respiratory patient, said: "I think I would find it a bit embarrassing if I met up with him. For a start, I wouldn't know whether I should bring up Madeleine or not.

"But I do think some people might be worried, because he has been out of practice for six months while all of this has been going on."

Karen Wales, 50, from Groby, Leics, said: "The hospital has stressed he won't be seeing anyone for a while, so it shouldn't be a problem. But I think it's important that the people in charge are 100 per cent sure that he is fit to work on patients before they let him do so. If Gerry McCann was treating me or a relative I would want to know his mind was fully on the job."

It has emerged that Mr McCann would be earning his full salary of £75,000 despite only working part time initially.

An NHS spokesman said: “Gerry will be paid his salary and this is entirely consistent with what happens with other staff returning to work on a phased basis after a period of time away.”

Clarence Mitchell, the family spokesman said: “Gerry is entitled to receive this pay on whatever basis the NHS deems appropriate.”

On Saturday, the McCanns will attend a church service to mark six months since their daughter went missing from their holiday apartment in Praia da Luz.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1568014/Gerry-McCann-returns-to-work.html

Oh my, how I miss those halcyon days of cornflakes with the Kate and Gerry weekend show.  How times have changed since the memorial 10th anniversary finale of little Madeleine McCann's disappearance, leaving only the remnants of days gone by with the obligatory reminder by the errant columnist - Tracey 'Olive Oyl' Kandohla, lost is the mists of nostalgia.



Madeleine McCann: Parents were convinced they found missing daughter and had plane on standby

• Hatty Collier
  
• Saturday 29 April 2017
  

Private investigators searching for Madeleine McCann were so convinced they had found her that a plane was put on standby with its engines running ready to collect the missing girl.

Clarence Mitchell, the McCann’s media spokesman, has revealed two heartbreaking moments in the first 12 months after the girl’s 2007 disappearance in which her parents, Kate and Gerry, believed they had found their daughter.

Writing in the Telegraph, Mr Mitchell, who has acted as the family’s spokesman for the last decade, described how a blonde, English-speaking girl was located in the Atlas Mountains of Morocco.

He said: “All the information coming back to us suggested heavily that it could be Madeleine, so much so that an aircraft was put on stand-by, with its engines running, waiting to fly to pick her up.

“Kate and Gerry sat tight. They had learned by that stage to be sceptical, not to give in to natural hope only for it to be dashed. They preferred to wait until the Moroccan authorities had checked it out. And when they did, it became clear she was not Madeleine.”

Mr Mitchell also described another occasion in which Madeleine’s parents believed they may have found their daughter after he received chilling phone calls from a man repeatedly naming a farm where she was being hidden.

The moment came when they family were still in the Portugese resort of Praia de Luz just weeks after she vanished from the family’s holiday apartment there on May 3. Mr Mitchell had been sent by the British government to the Portugese resort to assist the family with the huge media interest.

He said: “Shortly after I arrived, I started to get phone calls, always at three o’clock in the morning, always the same ghostly man’s voice, repeatedly naming a farm where she was being hidden.”

Mr Mitchell said British police recorded the calls and a farm, fitting the man’s description, was located near Seville, over the border in Spain.
He said the farm was raided and looked exactly as described but Madeleine was not found and the tip-offs were never explained.
It comes as the McCann’s prepare to mark the 10th anniversary of their daughter’s disappearance.

The family, of Rothley, Leicestershire, have vowed to "never give up" hope of finding their daughter, who would be 13 now.
Earlier this week Assistant Met Commissioner Mark Rowley said there were "significant investigative avenues" of "great interest" to police.

Last month the Home Office confirmed £85,000 was being given to police to cover operational costs from April to September. More than £11 million has been spent on the UK’s inquiry so far.

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/crime/madeleine-mccann-plane-was-put-on-standby-with-engines-running-ready-to-pick-up-missing-girl-after-a3526946.html

Clarence Mitchell wrote:Shortly after I arrived, I started to get phone calls, always at three o’clock in the morning, always the same ghostly man’s voice, repeatedly naming a farm where she was being hidden

  Blimey, that sounds a bit fishy!