Colin Sutton: Met only interested in proving McCann parents innocent

1. Introduction

“A man [or anybody for that matter] is known by the company he keeps” – Aesop

We have waited to see who Ian Horrocks was associated with before giving an opinion on his latest opining about what happened to Maddie in a post called exactly “What happened to Madeleine McCann?” on a website called BGP-Global services.

If dung was truffles, Horrocks’ production would be auctioned at Sothebys for an absurd amount of money such would be the competition to get the hands on such a rare, exquisite and refined piece of crap.

Before too long, on May 4th, Martin Brunt was retweeting Horrocks latest offering.

Not surprisingly, Summers and Swann are also following Horrocks on twitter.


2. Horrocks and the dogs

And even for a creator of platinum-quality twaddle like Horrocks is, he summarily ditches Edgar’s theories and the bungled burglary in just a half a paragraph:

“The talk of Madeleine being kidnapped by a paedophile ring, or people traffickers, for a client in some distant place, or some of the even more far-fetched theories may be worth discussion, but are not in my opinion credible. Likewise, the idea that a random burglar suddenly deciding to take a child instead of valuables is also unlikely.”

Horrocks libels Portugal by stating as truthful something that has been absolutely and completely denied by the Portuguese authorities: “In saying that, there were a number of instances of burglary throughout that part of the Algarve that were not investigated adequately. Some of these involved sex attacks against young children.”

The following exchange of tweets about the importance of the dogs’ findings Horrocks mentions in his blog post – “The farcical conspiracy theory that the last photo of Madeleine was photo shopped, the spurious and often inaccurately reported forensic findings, the irrelevant behaviour of the cadaver dogs” – is quite interesting to read:

“P_R @Papa___Rico
"Irrelevant" cadaver dogs? Do relatives of disaster victims recovered by these highly trained animals agree with your peculiar view? #McCann
Inserted:
Ian @BGPGlobalWhat happened to Madeleine McCann? My view. (link: http://www.bgpglobalservices.com/happened-madeleine-mccann-2/) bgpglobalservices.com/happened-madel… #MadeleineMcCann
9:30 AM · 14 May 2017”

“Ian @BGPGlobal
Replying to @Papa___Rico
Irrelevant behaviour in these specific circumstances. Cadaver dogs are excellent and a valuable resource. Thanks for the comment
11:42 AM · 16 de mai de 2017”

Horrocks is very clear that cadaver dogs are excellent and a valuable resources, except only when it comes to the specific circumstances of the McCanns.


3. What Horrocks thinks happened to Maddie

In short, Horrocks has no evidence about what happened to Madeleine; just a belief that she was taken by somebody unspecified who probably spoke English and that she is still alive, somewhere unspecified.

One of the reasons he states for his belief that the parents were in no way involved is, believe it or not, because there is no family history!

“The thought that Kate and Gerry McCann had anything to do with the death of their daughter, whether being directly responsible, or covering up an accident, is as far as I am concerned frankly preposterous. Although many believe this, as far as I am aware, there is not one shred of credible evidence, either direct or otherwise to indicate that this is even a remote possibility.

There are many reasons for saying this. Firstly, and importantly, there is no family history that would point in any way to this.”

Is this a new profiling discovery we are unaware of?

Could it be because there’s no similar McCann/Healy family history that involve cadaver and blood dogs that makes Horrocks believes the dogs to be irrelevant. Maybe to him due to the lack of family history every time the dogs barked were always false positives.

We urge (NOT) the British authorities to immediately do a survey among all prisoners, from the commonest criminal to the most heinous ones, and ask each and any of them if anyone in their family had done a similar thing. If not, release them at once as they are, according to Horrocks, evidently innocent.

This is probably also true of many people convicted of serious crimes, including Dr Shipman and completely irrelevant.

Is Horrocks party to the criminal history (or lack of) of the relatives of both parents? As a retired officer, can he access the criminal records’ database? Given that the answer should be NO, how can he state this with any certainty?

Anne Guedes with “IAN HORROCKS 2 MADELEINE MCCANN REPORTS 03/07/2012 & 14/10/2013 COMPARISON” has provided a very useful comparison of 2 articles written by Horrocks in 2012 and 2013, showing how he made adjustments to the 2013 article in the light of Redwood’s belief that Tannerman was probably an innocent dad taking his own child home.


4. Horrocks and his friends

This is not the first time we speak of Horrocks. We spoke of him in our post of June 5 2012 “Friends reunited”.

Now Horrocks negates Edgar, who in 2017 maintains that Maddie disappeared as a result of sexual motives but does support Edgar who in 2009 maintains she was taken by a caring couple..

We have since corrected in our post “Blackmail” what we had said in that post about Andy Redwood.

As far as we are aware, Andy Redwood was not involved with Ian Horrocks, Hamish Campbell or Simon Foy in the investigation of the Jill Dando case.

The coincidence between the 2 cases is that Campbell and Foy were part of Operation Grange in the earlier stages.

Out of curiosity we can add that the journalist referred to in the post, Mazher Mahmood, was sentenced to 15 months imprisonment for conspiring to pervert the course of justice in October 2016.

It seems Horrocks congratulations to the News of the World for their story was questionable, given the circumstances.

Commander Simon Foy has recently expressed his opinion about the case to Richard Bilton on Panorama on May 3rd 2017, with much negative head shaking, you knows and over- earnest attempts to be convincing:.

Foy: “Even on the first glance of what we looked at, and when we took the information back and ran it through our own understanding and you know, verified sightings and accounts and statements and all the rest of it, it was perfectly clear to us that the McCanns themselves had nothing at all to do with the actual disappearance.” [that last sentence may be true as it refers to disappearance only]

Bilton: “Why?”

Foy: “Because, because It was just obvious from the, you know, that everything stacked up that  they, you know, they were where they said they were when the child went missing.”

It seems Foy and Horrocks are still singing from the same hymn sheet.


5. Sutton and Horrocks

Enter the scene Colin Sutton, on Twitter about Horrocks’ drivel:

“SilverLining @Ev3ryCloud
@colinsutton Seems former Chief Insp. of Met Ian Horrocks has this take on Madeleine #McCann ...Any thoughts?
Inserted
What happened to Madeleine McCann? - BGP Global Servicesbgpglobalservices.com
1:52 PM · 16 May 2017”

“Colin Sutton @colinsutton
Replying to @Ev3ryCloud
We've spoken, we disagree on a number of things but he is a good man and I respect his right to have and voice his opinion, of course.
1:57 PM · 16 May 2017”

“SilverLining @Ev3ryCloud
Replying to @colinsutton
Thank you for your response, appreciated. We all have right to voice opinion, but to ignore obvious is alarming? #McCann
2:02 PM · 16 de mai de 2017”

Quite a surprisingly evasive and dismissive answer, from the newest hero in town to what is an article evidently filled with absurd falsities.

As SilverLining correctly put it, ignoring the obvious is ALARMING.

Is it just us or there is something rather strange about the conversations going on between these former police officers, the links between some of them and the involvement of Martin Brunt in promoting Horrocks’ opinions on twitter?


6. New knight in town

“Shalt thou speak against the McCanns and thine is the glory, the respect and the awe owed to a hero by his fellow citizens”

This is an effective motto used by some to fool many. And it does fool many.

Remember Katie “we will never know what happened to Maddie” Hopkins?

Or Karen “I’ll be sued by the McCanns because I dared to say they were neglectful” Danczuk?

Where are they now?

So it was sufficient for Colin Sutton to have as a headline “UK detective refused to head up Madeleine McCann probe because 'Scotland Yard would order him to prove Kate and Gerry were innocent and ignore other leads'” to be considered the new knight in shining armour riding into town on his white horse.

The subtitles of that particular article were very clear what it was all about:

“- Colin Sutton said he was warned by senior friend in the Met about case in 2010

- Friend said he would be told 'who to talk to and what to investigate', he claimed

- 'Narrow focus' would be to prove Kate, Gerry and Tapas Nine innocent, he said”

The wording is very clear: James Dunn, has stated that Colin Sutton said a senior friend in the Met told Sutton about the case in 2010 that Sutton would be told who to talk to and what to investigate because the narrow focus would be to prove Kate, Gerry and Tapas Nine innocent.

This is not a ‘source of the family’, nor is it a ‘source of the police’, this is James Dunn transcribing what Colin Sutton told him.

Exactly what Colin Sutton said a senior friend in the Met had told him.

Mr Sutton has no complaints about what was written in the Daily Mail article, in fact on May 8 he praises the courage of the Daily Mail in publishing the story.

“Colin Sutton @colinsutton
Replying to  @McCannCaseTweet
1- I hoped Grange was doing other work in the background; 2- When I decided to speak it took a while to find an MSM outlet who would listen.
10:33 PM · 8 May 2017”

On May 9, in his blog, in a post called “Madeleine McCann and Operation Grange” he starts to correct his hand slightly by saying :

“However, before this, just a few days after the NotW story I did receive a call from a senior officer in the Met whom I knew quite well.  This officer told me I would do better to avoid the McCann investigation if it did happen, because "You wouldn't be happy leading an investigation where you were told what you could look at and what you could not".

That is the totality of the advice I received. It was made clear that this was an ‘unofficial’ call and that it was made in my interest – so that I might not end up taking on a task which would ultimately frustrate me.  As such I never pressed the caller for more information, nor will I ever be in a position to disclose who the officer was.”

Here, the friend no longer says that the ‘narrow focus’ would be to prove Kate, Gerry and Tapas Nine innocent. He just said “an investigation where you were told what you could look at and what you could not”.

But the Daily Mail’s article says: “The source [the high-ranking friend] warned that he would be tasked with proving her parents Kate and Gerry were innocent and ignoring any alternatives to the abduction theory, he [Sutton] claims.”

Either is Mr Sutton is lying in his blog or James Dunn is doing that when he writes that Sutton claims what is said he claimed.

Either one, the other or both have to be accountable for what was written. We will see the importance of this later on.

Sutton confirms in his blog that this conversation took place over the phone as the Mail says it did: “Colin Sutton said a high-ranking friend in the Met called him and warned him not to lead the case when Scotland Yard announced it would get involved in 2010.”

Basically the scenario described by Sutton is that of someone trying to recruit someone to head Operation Grange, apparently one high-ranking Met officer had refused – we don’t know how many others did the same as the article does not clarify that – and that one officer out of friendship called Sutton to warn him how biased such an investigation would be.

We will overlook the friend’s absolute lack of trust in Sutton’s morality demonstrated by that high-ranking Met officer, as he advises against – so admits it possible – Sutton accepting such a morally corrupt investigation.

It seems that he, the one high-ranking Met officer, had the good sense to make the decision of refusing such a task all by himself, so why advise Sutton? Didn’t he trust Sutton to do the same and decide for himself as well?

If that one high-ranking Met officer couldn’t be the recruiter otherwise the scenario would be one of hey pal, I’m going to invite you to accept something which I strongly advise you don’t…


7. Question that was asked

We must confess that once we saw that the headline was on the Daily Mail, we smelled a rat. A huge rat, at that.

But before we debunk this alleged conversation between Sutton and his friend, let’s understand how realistic it is in the first place.

To be a minimally realistic scenario it had to be able to answer this question: was it possible for Operation Grange to have been set up to clear the McCanns?

The answer is an evident no, because if that was possible it would have been closed a long time ago.

And the key words in the sentence above are “if that was possible”.

We are certain that in 2010, a time when no newspaper article online about Maddie and/or the Mccanns accepted any comments from their readers, it would be obvious to whoever would be deciding that the couple was not popular at all as everyone believed they were guilty, at the very least, of neglect and no one believed there was an abduction.

With this background, to pursue a project that would make – note, not attempt to make – the McCanns innocent would be a very serious decision to take.

Whoever was responsible for such a decision, would demand to see with their own eyes how the whole thing could be pulled off.

We, who are familiar with the files, can see immediately that to officially clear the McCanns was, and is, an impossible task.

There is no possible storyline that takes the McCanns out of the picture.

Note that these conversations, briefings or meetings would be circumscribed to the highest political level.

One must remember that by 2010 Team McCann had been able to ‘convince’ the general public that the couple had been cleared by the Portuguese justice system, and whoever tried to say otherwise risked facing the heaviest of libel axes.

In 2010, the Maddie case was an absolute sleeping dog.

Only we in this blog and very few others still spoke about it on the net and the case was tending to dwindle away quite quickly.

So why take such a high unnecessary risk against popular opinion without the absolute certainty of success?

If that certainty existed, then Operation Grange would have lasted only a few months and the McCanns would quickly have been cleared officially by the British justice system and we know that hasn’t happened 6 years after it was launched.

This lapse of time tells us that no one proposed to the higher political echelons a sure-fire way to exonerate the McCanns.

If such was not proposed, as we are certain it wasn’t, the government wouldn’t embarked in such adventure.

But something we do know is that Operation Grange was launched, so it must have been another reason that motivated the government to have done so.


8. Let’s suppose it was possible

But let’s suppose someone found such a possibility – which our intelligence cannot think up – one that would “prove Kate, Gerry and Tapas Nine innocent.”

Then someone has to tell us why on earth would Gamble be forced out by resignation in October?

Note that one of the subtitles of the Mail article says this:

“- [Sutton] Spoke on Sky Documentary based on leaked Home Office report that revealed 'turbulent relationship' between McCanns and police in London and Portugal”

The report requested from Gamble by the Home Office which we spoke of in our post “Sky News - The clarifying report”.

For some reason the Home office requested such a report from CEOP and not from the Leicestershire Constabulary nor from the Met. It shows clearly that until then Gamble had been the operational leader then with whatever had to do with Maddie.

It showed that it was Gamble, the head of CEOP, who coordinated the various British police forces involved in the Maddie case.

CEOP – Child Exploitation Online Protection was nationally coordinating a case, in which before Robert Murat was named arguido, the only computer involved was one which the Moyes lent to the Gerry for him to use.

So, does it make any sense at all that if the political deciders wanted a biased investigation to clear the McCanns would force off the case – by forcing him out of CEOP on October 2010 - the man who most knew about the case?

No it doesn’t make any sense at all.

And does it make any sense that if the idea was to prove the McCanns innocent that it would be allowed for Kate to write a self-incriminatory book?

A book filled with inconsistencies from what there is on the files?

Of course not, it would be throwing a pile of wood into the bonfire to see the flames grow brighter.

Besides, an attempt to whitewash the McCanns image had already been tried in 2009 with the 2009 Channel 4 Mockumentary with disastrous results.

Who can forget the Gerry/Tanner discrepancy between which side of the street Jez and Gerry were? Jane says it was on the left, Gerry says it’s on the right and Edgar, the referee, informs Jane she is much lower down on the food chain than Gerry, and so decided that it had been on the right even though the files states specifically that it was on the left.

If the idea was to clear the McCanns, their silence would be pivotal.

No book, no interviews, only experts would be allowed to communicate the ‘findings’.

The sleeping dog would be awoken just to be put to sleep as quickly as possible.

Kate’s book is a footprint that will never wash away in this case.

And if the idea was to prove the McCanns innocent, would everything fall silent immediately after Operation Grange was launched?

Kate aged years in those days, the Sun did not serialise the book as it had promised to do, Operation Grange said absolutely nothing and Maddie and the McCanns were wiped from the media for months with the exception of a piece about the Indian Maddie – remember her? – in July if we’re not mistaken.

If the issue had been studied as it surely would have been, then a well-oiled and coordinated machine would be rolling smoothly as planned.

But the contrary happened. It was evident from day one that something went immediately wrong with Grange.

That can only mean one thing: whatever was intended was quickly realised was not possible. And that realisation came after the operation was launched.


9. Question that was not asked

We believe that happened because the real the remit of Operation Grange was the exact opposite of what Collin Sutton has stated: it was to prove Kate, Gerry and Tapas Nine were guilty.

To be logical and coherent, if the remit was what we say it was, to prove the T9 guilty, a similar question would have to have been asked like the one we spoke of before: was it possible for Operation Grange to have been set up to find the McCanns guilty?

We believe such a question was indeed asked and it was answered almost immediately: of course!

After all, in September 2007 the McCanns were literally yanked out of Portugal because there was more than enough evidence to condemn them if there had not been any political interference as we know there was.

The FSS report had to do a sudden U-turn on forensics and produce something totally specious.

So when that question was asked and got a very quick and assertive answer, the questions stopped being about whether the objective was reachable but about how and where and when to achieve it.

As Rebekah Brooks was involved in the process, we are certain David Cameron was convinced that the 4th anniversary would be best for dramatic effects.

In this scenario “let’s get the McCanns”, forcing Gamble off the boat makes sense. He worked for those protecting the couple and so represented an obstacle rather than any sort of added value.

Kate’s book also makes sense. As said above, it was highly self-incriminatory and would serve as further evidence against the evil couple.

So, those of us who followed the case in 2010/2011, the commemorations of that 4th anniversary started around the last quarter of 2010, with the announcement of the book being written and then all went into a crescendo, a noticeable one, through the first 4 months of 2011 in anticipation of the publication of the book.

And then it was published.

And it was a dud.

Why?

Because as we have explained in our post “Monkeys in business” the 2010/2011 Deciders were not that same ones and most of the ‘monkeys’ who had fought valiantly for the other side had either left or were different.

What no one remembered in 2010 to ask was the most essential question: is it possible to prove the T9 guilty, them and only them?

The answer, is no, it’s not possible.

And that was what it was painfully discovered AFTER they launched Operation Grange.


10. The stalemate

We think Cameron walked off the ‘podium’ after announcing Grange and told May, right, go get and charge them.

What immense political gains he would get from arresting the vile McCanns and close once and for all the Maddie case!

May, we think, in turn turned to Bernard Hogan-Howe and told him the same, and so down the hierarchy went down the message went, until it reached the person who sat at the computer and was tasked to type the charges.

Then, that person asked their superior what exactly the charges were and the superior replied oh, for God’s sake charge them with having killed Maddie and then… then that they took the body… the body to… hmmm, let me see… the body… ooops, we have a major problem! Let me ask my boss.

And up the hierarchy the question went and no one was able to answer it.

Thus the stalemate of 2011.

The McCanns suddenly realised they were being hunted which made Kate McCann age in days the equivalent of years when she realised she had been fooled into writing her own entrapment.

The other side quickly realised the true remit was to hunt the McCanns and were reeling by it.

The government found itself with a problem that it couldn’t solve.

No one knew what to do and no one did anything.


11. The first signs

We on the blog saw that the tide was turning in 2010 when the 6-cleaner story broke out. It was the first time someone outside the T9 was being involved in the case.

The other side responded and played a very, very high card: the make-up photo.

It’s not by chance that this photo appears only in 2010.

The problem for the other side was that the government misunderstood its message, or better said, failed to see the full picture, so to speak.

It misunderstood the message to the point of thinking there was no problem at all in continuing and so decided to do so  and let’s go get the McCanns operation it had set out to launch was fired away… and ooops.

We apologise to our readers but this little bit is for only a very few readers who we know fully understand us and please do not ask us to expand it any further.


12. Colin Sutton and the truth

All we have mentioned above shows very clearly that Colin Sutton is being very economical with the truth when he says that the objective of Operation Grange was to prove the McCanns innocent.

If one reads the opening paragraph of his blog, one can see that truth is not exactly his main objective:

“At the outset I should say that I don't know what happened to Madeleine McCann.  All the evidence available to me – and there is more and deeper information available to the public on this than any case I have looked at – does not convince me of any theory or scenario being proved.  Soon, in the coming months when my other projects are less busy, I hope to take a proper analytical look at it all and come up with some conclusions.  But as things stand my position is that I don't know.”

Anyone minimally interested in the case and it seems he has read a lot about it “All the evidence available to me – and there is more and deeper information available to the public on this than any case I have looked at” may speculate on how, why, when, where and by whose hand Maddie died but there’s one absolute certainty: Maddie is dead.

“I don't know what happened to Madeleine McCann”, says Sutton.

Everyone genuinely seeking the truth knows Maddie is dead. It has been said in headlines and no one has been sued or threatened to be sued because of it.

Where is it all leading? Is Sutton really expressing genuine doubts about the exclusion of the McCanns as potential suspects?

Will Sutton and Horrocks reach a meeting of minds on the case or is it about self-publicity, with both eventually claiming they would have been able to solve the case if Operation Grange reaches no conclusions?

Forgive our scepticism, but when something just doesn’t feel right, we say so.


13. The role of Sutton

We think Sutton has 2 objectives.

His main one, and in which he was successful we will speak of in a later post, when we will speak about the BBC Panorama programme.

His second objective was as we said, to undermine the Operation Grange degrading by its credibility.

We recommend readers to read our post “The McCann trial” to understand that it would help pass the message that the McCanns have been punished enough and as Operation Grange was a mess from its start, best say that things are out of control and the best thing is to archive the whole thing and restart with a confidential process that will only move along in case there’s new evidence.

To have Operation Grange do after 6 years what the Portuguese did after 18 months.


14. The libellous Sutton

Now, it must be said that Colin Sutton may bring some very consequences onto himself as what he is saying is that David Cameron and Theresa May launched a morally corrupt investigation intentionally.

That’s libellous.

The reader may say that Gamble did worse by calling May a liar under oath on Panorama.

As we will explain when we do a post on the BBC Panorama post, neither Gamble or May lied.

In fact, that may have been be the most important moment of the entire Panorama programme.

But Colin Sutton is clearly libelling May and Cameron.

Maybe, or probably, that’s the reason why he backs off in the article by the Australian 9news by Mark Saunokonoko, published May 15 2017 “UK police guilty of flawed tunnel vision in hunt for Maddie McCann answers, former top cop says”:

“In 2010, with planning underway to launch Operation Grange, Sutton received a phone tip off from “a very senior Metropolitan police officer”, warning him about the looming investigation and how it would be handled.

The insider told Sutton, who served 30 years with London's Met before retiring in 2011, that the dozens of murder detectives assigned to Operation Grange would be instructed where they could and couldn't look.

“I immediately assumed that what was meant was that the [McCann] family and Tapas 7 [the group of seven friends on holiday with the McCanns] were a no-go area,” Sutton said.”

Sutton now assumes, and is no longer certain, that the “You wouldn't be happy leading an investigation where you were told what you could look at and what you could not” was about proving the McCanns being innocent, so he could be wrong, after all assumptions are just assumptions.


15. Conclusion

We continue to urge people to be very wary of the many Pied Pipers that abound.

In terms of the game, it seems to be going well.

The Panorama programme was a very interesting move but we will leave that for a future post.



POST SCRIPTUM:

We would like readers to watch the following video, although all of it is interesting to watch, from 02:29 onwards:


We would say that Sutton, who according to his own words got to know in 2010, that the Operation Grange was totally biased in proving the innocence of the McCanns and their friends, was strangely optimistic and rather cooperative with the circus Operation Grange had set up in Luz in 2014.

Also interesting to read the following exchange of tweets:

“SilverLining @Ev3ryCloud
Replying to @Ev3ryCloud and @YouTube
@colinsutton How come you were in PDL 2014 for dig for Madeleine #McCann Thought you only involved past few months for interviews/skydocu?

 “Colin Sutton @colinsutton
Replying to @Ev3ryCloud and @YouTube
I was working with ITV news, on procedures and what was happening there and then, not discussing 2007.
11:00 PM · 18 May 2017”

The video is from the Telegraph but Sutton says clearly on his tweets that then, in 2014, he was working for ITV.

In 2017 it's the Daily Mail giving him visibility.

Top cop spearheads new probe into the disappearance of Madeleine McCann

By Lucy Panton, NoW Crime Editor

BRITAIN'S top murder cop has been lined up to spearhead a new probe into the disappearance of Madeleine McCann, we can reveal.

Det Chief Insp Colin Sutton, 49, who has been involved in some of the UK's biggest inquiries - including the murder of Milly Dowler and the terror reign of the Nightstalker sex beast - is seen as the best man to handle the challenging review.

Senior child protection officer Jim Gamble has asked Scotland Yard to take a fresh look at the three-year investigation.

He blasted Portuguese cops for their handling of the hunt for Maddie - who vanished aged three from her family's Algarve holiday apartment in 2007. Now the Met Police are set to review all leads in the case, using technology and standards expected in a UK homicide or kidnap.

It will delight Maddie's parents, Kate and Gerry McCann. A senior police source said: "They deserve reassurance that everything that can be done has been done."

in News of the World 09.05.2010”

Interesting to see that as early as May 2010, Jim Gamble ASKS for an investigation from the Met and the article seem to imply he WANTED none other that Det Chief Insp Colin Sutton to lead it.