New BBC Documentary

SEARCH FOR THE TRUTH
When is Madeleine McCann: 10 Years On on BBC One? Documentary examining the investigation into Maddie’s disappearance


Madeleine McCann disappeared in May 2007 while on holiday with her family in Portugal
By Ellie Genower
26th April 2017, 2:58 pm


GERRY and Kate McCann have been searching for their daughter Madeleine McCann for ten years after she vanished on May 3 2007.
We take a look at a new Panorama documentary which examines the police investigation into the three-year-old’s disappearance.

When does Madeleine McCann: 10 Years On air on BBC1?

The documentary airs on Wednesday May 3 at 9pm, exactly 10 years after Maddie vanished.
The programme sees reporter Richard Bilton visit the Portuguese resort of Praia da Luz, where Maddie went missing.
Bilson has covered the story for the BBC since the first days of Maddie’s disappearance.

What issues will the McCann documentary explore?

The documentary explores the “contradictory conclusions” reached by the investigative police forces in Portugal and the UK.
Bilton examines the evidence and tracks down the men British police have questioned about the case.
He also visits Lisbon to interview the Deputy Head of the Policia Judiciaria.

When did Madeleine McCann go missing?

Madeleine, three, vanished on May 3, 2007, when her family, from Leicestershire, were holidaying in the Algarve, Portugal.
Parents Gerry and Kate left their three children – including toddler twins Sean and Amelie – sleeping in their apartment while they dined at a nearby tapas bar.
When Kate returned to check on the kids at around 10pm that evening, she discovered that Maddie was not in her bed and was missing.

What are the latest developments in the case?

Detectives working on the case are still pursuing “critical” leads as the 10th anniversary of her disappearance approaches, a Scotland Yard chief has said.
Metropolitan Police Assistant Commissioner Mark Rowley said there are “significant investigative avenues” that are of “great interest” to both the UK and Portuguese teams.
Veteran investigative journalist [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.].
He is convinced she left the apartment in Praia da Luz looking for her parents before being abducted and possibly sold to gypsies.
Former Scotland Yard detective [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] for Maddie’s disappearance is a targeted kidnap – possibly to replace some grieving parents’ own dead child.
A Portuguese probe into Madeleine McCann’s disappearance was archived in July 2008 before being reopened in May 2014 after convicted burglar Euclides Monteiro, a former employee at the Ocean club holiday resort where the youngster vanished from, was identified as a suspect.
His widow Luisa Rodrigues has always insisted the Cape Verdian immigrant, who died in a tractor accident in 2009, is an innocent man but he has never been officially ruled out of the inquiry.

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DCI Andy Redwood & Reporter Richard Bilton

Think I'll give it a miss. 

I simply can't stomach more lies and deception.

An old report from the Guardian - 25th November 2007, well worth another read..

Panorama walk-out over McCann film


Why did TV journalist David Mills, the producer of a Panorama film on the McCann affair, quit the project before it was transmitted last week? The Observer's David Rose reveals the inside story of the latest row to hit the BBC's flagship show.

In the credits at the end of last week's Panorama special on the disappearance of Madeleine McCann, one name was conspicuous by its absence - that of David Mills, the programme's original producer. His name had disappeared from the end credits despite the fact that it was his company, Mills Productions, that had done all the research and was responsible for bringing the exclusive footage at the film's heart to the [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.].

Two weeks before transmission last Tuesday, Mills - one of Britain's most respected documentary-makers, who in his 40-year career has made 120 investigative films for broadcasters including the BBC, Granada, Thames and America's CBS - walked out of the programme after a furious row with Panorama's editor, Sandy Smith, over the programme's approach and argument.

He then wrote a stinging email to the BBC attacking Panorama for losing its journalistic passion. It has created a stir in the media world, mixing as it does the controversial issues of the McCanns and how their story is covered, journalistic balance and television current affairs.

'I had written a draft script and had already been told it was compelling,' Mills said. 'Sandy turned up with a completely different version and basically imposed it on me. I told him, "I cannot edit the film to this: it's a completely different show, and I'm not going to do it." To have this happening is very depressing.'

The incident - one of several controversies Panorama has faced this year - suggests, Mills said, that 'the BBC is no longer interested in serious current affairs'. BBC sources confirmed last night that the decisions about the programme's shape had been taken 'close to the top' of the BBC management hierarchy - which has already conducted a series of internal meetings over how the corporation should approach McCann case coverage in general.

As one of those interviewed by Mills and the programme's reporter, Richard Bilton, I can attest to how different the programme shown was to what they told me less than a month ago that they were envisaging. Along with The Observer's Ned Temko, who has covered the case for this newspaper, I ended up on the cutting-room floor. At that stage - as Mills's draft script makes plain - his intention was to make an analytical, investigative programme that would have been very critical of the Portuguese police, not only for the errors in their investigation, but for their apparent campaign of disinformation designed to put pressure on Madeleine's parents, Kate and Gerry McCann. It would also have criticised both the local and British press over allegations that they recycled unfounded rumours with little sign of fact-checking or detachment.

It would, as Mills confirmed again yesterday, have scrutinised the various allegations that have been floated against the McCanns and concluded they are baseless: 'We had an investigative team looking into the story for weeks. Our assessment was that the purported DNA evidence was weak and inconclusive, while so far as we could tell the supposedly significant "discrepancies" between the stories told by the McCanns' friends about the night of Madeleine's disappearance amount to very little indeed.'

The original film would have compared Madeleine to the JonBenet Ramsey case in Colorado, about which Mills has made three previous documentaries. After the body of JonBenet, a child beauty pageant winner aged six, was found in her parents' Boulder home, they were vilified by the police and media, despite their continued insistence that they had nothing to do with her death. They claimed she had been killed by an intruder. Mills's version of the McCann Panorama featured an interview - eventually not used - with JonBenet's father, John, in which he said that the Colorado police 'did a great job of convincing the media and the world that we were guilty, but they couldn't charge us, because of course they had no case'. Years later DNA evidence proved beyond doubt that JonBenet had been killed by an intruder. John Ramsey told Panorama: 'It's a life-time damage. No question about it.'

The programme on the McCanns that was broadcast by Panorama was much less ambitious. It recited the case both for and against the McCanns, but had nothing harsh to say about either the police or the media. It did include new material, including a video diary shot of the McCanns in Portugal by their friend John Corner - footage that had been acquired by Mills and had led to his company getting the BBC commission.

It also cast doubt on some of the wilder claims published by the tabloids, and contained the first interview with Jane Tanner, one of the McCanns' companions on the holiday in Praia de Luz last May, who said that she was certain she had seen a girl who looked like Madeleine being carried in the street by a strange man around the time she is thought to have disappeared. But the programme avoided firm conclusions.

Having handed the film's editing over to a colleague, Mills emailed Smith on Monday, the day before transmission, saying he felt compelled to remove both his name and his company's from the credits. 'In part this is because its muddled structure and lack of narrative drive means it is far below the standard of any work that I or my company would wish to be associated with,' the email said. 'In part, too, my decision reflects the programme's intellectual impoverishment. The McCann case poses issues of real importance which Panorama should have examined. That it is instead running a laboured, pedestrian, extended news report is shameful.

'But the most important reason for my decision is that because the programme is insufficiently analytical it verges on the dishonest. Our lengthy investigation revealed that there is no meaningful evidence against the McCanns... The real question must be how, without any meaningful evidence, the Portuguese police and the media in Portugal and Britain have been able to convince most people that the couple were involved.'

Mills had been working closely with a CBS team, which also used the video diary footage. They, he told Smith, had concluded it was 'ludicrous' and 'crazy' to think the McCanns could have caused the death or disappearance.

Smith emailed Mills back, accusing him of wanting to broadcast 'advocate journalism', and pointing out that the broadcast version did describe some of the allegations against the McCanns as 'tenuous, to put it mildly'. Smith said that, while it was true that the programme 'changed substantively,' this was because 'it is a current affairs programme and it was overtaken by events'. He added: 'To get Jane Tanner and some of the McCann family meant that some of the other stuff moved to the edge, and the original version was just not journalistically as important.'


Mills disagrees. 'So far as I can see, investigative journalism at the BBC is over,' he said. 'The broadcast script contains nuances that suggest that the McCanns still have a case to answer. The BBC should have had the courage to state that this is simply not so.'

Clarence Mitchell, the former BBC reporter who is the McCanns' spokesman, said Kate and Gerry were 'content' with the broadcast version and accepted that events meant it had to change. He said they had spoken to Bilton and told him they considered the film to be 'fair'.

Other McCann family members were less happy. John, Gerry's brother, whose interview was broadcast, said: 'It wasn't the programme that I was told they were going to make. They've made something very different, and I am disappointed, because I'd hoped the full story was going to be told. Nevertheless I'm pleased they interviewed Jane Tanner. She said she saw Madeleine being abducted, and we want people to remember that.'

The row follows controversies over previous films this year, such as a report on Scientology by former Observer journalist John Sweeney, in which he lost his temper and turned - in his words - into an 'exploding tomato,' and a story claiming that wi-fi technology might be harmful, which was denounced by some scientists as 'irresponsible'.

As someone who once spent a year reporting for Panorama myself, I know that no BBC programme is more closely scrutinised and, sometimes, fought over. The fact remains some of its most distinguished contributors, including Tom Mangold and John Ware, have left in recent years, and that it has been repeatedly accused of punching below its weight. Mills is not a marginal figure, and the CBS film with which he was collaborating was much firmer in its conclusion that the McCanns had to be innocent.


Last night the BBC hierarchy was closing ranks to resist Mills's arguments. Outside the corporation, they may not be as easily dismissed.

'Your programme verges on the dishonest'

From: David


Sent: 19 November, 2007 12:12

To: 'Sandy Smith'

Subject: credit

Dear Sandy,

As you know, in the end I felt I could not leave either my name or my company credit on the programme.

In part this is because its muddled structure and lack of narrative drive means it is far below the standard of any work that I or my company would wish to be associated with.


In part, too, my decision reflects the programme's intellectual impoverishment. The McCann case poses issues of real importance which Panorama should have examined. That it is instead running a laboured, pedestrian extended news report is shameful.

But the most important reason for my decision is that because the programme is insufficiently analytical; it verges on the dishonest. Our lengthy investigation revealed that there is no meaningful evidence against the McCanns. Our CBS colleagues concluded that it was 'ludicrous' and 'crazy' to think them involved and that ... 'the child was abducted'.

The real question must be how, without any meaningful evidence, the Portuguese police and the media in Portugal and Britain have been able to convince most people that the couple were involved. Yet while the programme drips innuendos against the McCanns, it does not put a single challenging question to anyone in the Portuguese police or to anyone in the media. This is truly astonishing.

David Mills

Let's hope we get a fair hearing for the evidence.

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JulieC wrote:Think I'll give it a miss. 

I simply can't stomach more lies and deception.

Oh I will definitely give it a miss too, Julie!  All it will be is a load of 'the McCanns are innocent,' and 'Maddie was abducted' tosh, dressed up as an investigation!

From: David

Sent: 19 November, 2007 12:12

To: 'Sandy Smith'

Subject: credit

Dear Sandy,

BLAH.. BLAH... BLAH...

The real question must be how, without any meaningful evidence, the Portuguese police and the media in Portugal and Britain have been able to convince most people that the couple were involved. Yet while the programme drips innuendos against the McCanns, it does not put a single challenging question to anyone in the Portuguese police or to anyone in the media. This is truly astonishing.

David Mills

This is truly astonishing.

Goes deep doesn't it.

Panorama is a big gatekeeping propaganda program and David Mills made a lot of them.

Didn't get his way.

Cuddecat thrown out the pram.

Verdi wrote:
A Portuguese probe into Madeleine McCann’s disappearance was archived in July 2008 before being reopened in May 2014 after convicted burglar Euclides Monteiro, a former employee at the Ocean club holiday resort where the youngster vanished from, was identified as a suspect.
His widow Luisa Rodrigues has always insisted the Cape Verdian immigrant, who died in a tractor accident in 2009, is an innocent man but he has never been officially ruled out of the inquiry.

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

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DCI Andy Redwood & Reporter Richard Bilton

And neither have the flipping McCanns 

Rogue-a-Tory wrote:

Verdi wrote:
A Portuguese probe into Madeleine McCann’s disappearance was archived in July 2008 before being reopened in May 2014 after convicted burglar Euclides Monteiro, a former employee at the Ocean club holiday resort where the youngster vanished from, was identified as a suspect.
His widow Luisa Rodrigues has always insisted the Cape Verdian immigrant, who died in a tractor accident in 2009, is an innocent man but he has never been officially ruled out of the inquiry.

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

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

DCI Andy Redwood & Reporter Richard Bilton

And neither have the flipping McCanns 

Bit tricky being ruled out of an inquiry when you've never been officially friggin' ruled in!  No evidence no evidence no evidence!  He's a dead man - easy target when he can't defend himself.

My money's still on Hewlett as the ultimate patsy, cos someone (I think) said they saw him on a camp site in Morocco with a white van when it should have been a blue van - or was it the other way around ?

Verdi wrote:An old report from the Guardian - 25th November 2007, well worth another read..

Panorama walk-out over McCann film


Why did TV journalist David Mills, the producer of a Panorama film on the McCann affair, quit the project before it was transmitted last week? The Observer's David Rose reveals the inside story of the latest row to hit the BBC's flagship show.

In the credits at the end of last week's Panorama special on the disappearance of Madeleine McCann, one name was conspicuous by its absence - that of David Mills, the programme's original producer. His name had disappeared from the end credits despite the fact that it was his company, Mills Productions, that had done all the research and was responsible for bringing the exclusive footage at the film's heart to the [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.].

Two weeks before transmission last Tuesday, Mills - one of Britain's most respected documentary-makers, who in his 40-year career has made 120 investigative films for broadcasters including the BBC, Granada, Thames and America's CBS - walked out of the programme after a furious row with Panorama's editor, Sandy Smith, over the programme's approach and argument.

He then wrote a stinging email to the BBC attacking Panorama for losing its journalistic passion. It has created a stir in the media world, mixing as it does the controversial issues of the McCanns and how their story is covered, journalistic balance and television current affairs.

'I had written a draft script and had already been told it was compelling,' Mills said. 'Sandy turned up with a completely different version and basically imposed it on me. I told him, "I cannot edit the film to this: it's a completely different show, and I'm not going to do it." To have this happening is very depressing.'

The incident - one of several controversies Panorama has faced this year - suggests, Mills said, that 'the BBC is no longer interested in serious current affairs'. BBC sources confirmed last night that the decisions about the programme's shape had been taken 'close to the top' of the BBC management hierarchy - which has already conducted a series of internal meetings over how the corporation should approach McCann case coverage in general.

As one of those interviewed by Mills and the programme's reporter, Richard Bilton, I can attest to how different the programme shown was to what they told me less than a month ago that they were envisaging. Along with The Observer's Ned Temko, who has covered the case for this newspaper, I ended up on the cutting-room floor. At that stage - as Mills's draft script makes plain - his intention was to make an analytical, investigative programme that would have been very critical of the Portuguese police, not only for the errors in their investigation, but for their apparent campaign of disinformation designed to put pressure on Madeleine's parents, Kate and Gerry McCann. It would also have criticised both the local and British press over allegations that they recycled unfounded rumours with little sign of fact-checking or detachment.

It would, as Mills confirmed again yesterday, have scrutinised the various allegations that have been floated against the McCanns and concluded they are baseless: 'We had an investigative team looking into the story for weeks. Our assessment was that the purported DNA evidence was weak and inconclusive, while so far as we could tell the supposedly significant "discrepancies" between the stories told by the McCanns' friends about the night of Madeleine's disappearance amount to very little indeed.'

The original film would have compared Madeleine to the JonBenet Ramsey case in Colorado, about which Mills has made three previous documentaries. After the body of JonBenet, a child beauty pageant winner aged six, was found in her parents' Boulder home, they were vilified by the police and media, despite their continued insistence that they had nothing to do with her death. They claimed she had been killed by an intruder. Mills's version of the McCann Panorama featured an interview - eventually not used - with JonBenet's father, John, in which he said that the Colorado police 'did a great job of convincing the media and the world that we were guilty, but they couldn't charge us, because of course they had no case'. Years later DNA evidence proved beyond doubt that JonBenet had been killed by an intruder. John Ramsey told Panorama: 'It's a life-time damage. No question about it.'

The programme on the McCanns that was broadcast by Panorama was much less ambitious. It recited the case both for and against the McCanns, but had nothing harsh to say about either the police or the media. It did include new material, including a video diary shot of the McCanns in Portugal by their friend John Corner - footage that had been acquired by Mills and had led to his company getting the BBC commission.

It also cast doubt on some of the wilder claims published by the tabloids, and contained the first interview with Jane Tanner, one of the McCanns' companions on the holiday in Praia de Luz last May, who said that she was certain she had seen a girl who looked like Madeleine being carried in the street by a strange man around the time she is thought to have disappeared. But the programme avoided firm conclusions.

Having handed the film's editing over to a colleague, Mills emailed Smith on Monday, the day before transmission, saying he felt compelled to remove both his name and his company's from the credits. 'In part this is because its muddled structure and lack of narrative drive means it is far below the standard of any work that I or my company would wish to be associated with,' the email said. 'In part, too, my decision reflects the programme's intellectual impoverishment. The McCann case poses issues of real importance which Panorama should have examined. That it is instead running a laboured, pedestrian, extended news report is shameful.

'But the most important reason for my decision is that because the programme is insufficiently analytical it verges on the dishonest. Our lengthy investigation revealed that there is no meaningful evidence against the McCanns... The real question must be how, without any meaningful evidence, the Portuguese police and the media in Portugal and Britain have been able to convince most people that the couple were involved.'

Mills had been working closely with a CBS team, which also used the video diary footage. They, he told Smith, had concluded it was 'ludicrous' and 'crazy' to think the McCanns could have caused the death or disappearance.

Smith emailed Mills back, accusing him of wanting to broadcast 'advocate journalism', and pointing out that the broadcast version did describe some of the allegations against the McCanns as 'tenuous, to put it mildly'. Smith said that, while it was true that the programme 'changed substantively,' this was because 'it is a current affairs programme and it was overtaken by events'. He added: 'To get Jane Tanner and some of the McCann family meant that some of the other stuff moved to the edge, and the original version was just not journalistically as important.'


Mills disagrees. 'So far as I can see, investigative journalism at the BBC is over,' he said. 'The broadcast script contains nuances that suggest that the McCanns still have a case to answer. The BBC should have had the courage to state that this is simply not so.'

Clarence Mitchell, the former BBC reporter who is the McCanns' spokesman, said Kate and Gerry were 'content' with the broadcast version and accepted that events meant it had to change. He said they had spoken to Bilton and told him they considered the film to be 'fair'.

Other McCann family members were less happy. John, Gerry's brother, whose interview was broadcast, said: 'It wasn't the programme that I was told they were going to make. They've made something very different, and I am disappointed, because I'd hoped the full story was going to be told. Nevertheless I'm pleased they interviewed Jane Tanner. She said she saw Madeleine being abducted, and we want people to remember that.'

The row follows controversies over previous films this year, such as a report on Scientology by former Observer journalist John Sweeney, in which he lost his temper and turned - in his words - into an 'exploding tomato,' and a story claiming that wi-fi technology might be harmful, which was denounced by some scientists as 'irresponsible'.

As someone who once spent a year reporting for Panorama myself, I know that no BBC programme is more closely scrutinised and, sometimes, fought over. The fact remains some of its most distinguished contributors, including Tom Mangold and John Ware, have left in recent years, and that it has been repeatedly accused of punching below its weight. Mills is not a marginal figure, and the CBS film with which he was collaborating was much firmer in its conclusion that the McCanns had to be innocent.


Last night the BBC hierarchy was closing ranks to resist Mills's arguments. Outside the corporation, they may not be as easily dismissed.

'Your programme verges on the dishonest'

From: David


Sent: 19 November, 2007 12:12

To: 'Sandy Smith'

Subject: credit

Dear Sandy,

As you know, in the end I felt I could not leave either my name or my company credit on the programme.

In part this is because its muddled structure and lack of narrative drive means it is far below the standard of any work that I or my company would wish to be associated with.


In part, too, my decision reflects the programme's intellectual impoverishment. The McCann case poses issues of real importance which Panorama should have examined. That it is instead running a laboured, pedestrian extended news report is shameful.

But the most important reason for my decision is that because the programme is insufficiently analytical; it verges on the dishonest. Our lengthy investigation revealed that there is no meaningful evidence against the McCanns. Our CBS colleagues concluded that it was 'ludicrous' and 'crazy' to think them involved and that ... 'the child was abducted'.

The real question must be how, without any meaningful evidence, the Portuguese police and the media in Portugal and Britain have been able to convince most people that the couple were involved. Yet while the programme drips innuendos against the McCanns, it does not put a single challenging question to anyone in the Portuguese police or to anyone in the media. This is truly astonishing.

David Mills

The BBC were instructed by somebody probably high in the government to publish the party line so that the British public , the GORMLESS UNTHINKING British public will believe what we jolly well want them to believe. Untenable? Yesterday, nearly 10 years on I visited a news stand. Almost every non broadsheet had as a front page headline about how "Police are close to solving the mystery of Madeleine McCann's disappearance". What absolute tosh. I read a report in my lunchtime inn I think it was the daily mail that stated "Madeleine's parents were cleared of involvement in 2008".
10 year on we have ushered in a new generation that relies upon tweets , facebook and linkedin. Are they going to be as GORMLESS as the gullables of 2007 to believe the party line of events? Forum members they are your children and grandchildren, the onus is upon you.

I'm a bit confused by all of this. My understanding is that Miller wanted to discredit the Portuguese investigation and Panorama wanted to present something more balanced.

Anyhooo, none of it matters really. Being swept up by tittle-tattle media war is just a distraction.

aquila wrote:I'm a bit confused by all of this. My understanding is that Miller wanted to discredit the Portuguese investigation and Panorama wanted to present something more balanced.

That is exactly what he wanted to do.

Mills wanted full blown propaganda AGAINST the PJ.

BlueBag wrote:

aquila wrote:I'm a bit confused by all of this. My understanding is that Miller wanted to discredit the Portuguese investigation and Panorama wanted to present something more balanced.

That is exactly what he wanted to do.

Mills wanted full blown propaganda AGAINST the PJ.

Mills did a flounce and now it's introduced into the bubbling cauldron of spin in the lead up to the tenth anniversary of Madeleine's disappearance.

There has been a newspaper article in which the McCanns are described as devout Catholics but the tenth anniversary will be marked by an Anglican service in Rothley.

It's all bull.

Does Madeleine McCann need a PR machine? Hell no!

Does Madeleine McCann need Operation Grange who bow to her parents? Hell no!

Does Madeleine McCann need a police operation that works without fear or favour to discover the truth about what happened to her? No need to answer that.