Abuse Of Power By Those In Power

If there is one thing that's clear to the naked eye and the naked mind, the case of missing Madeleine McCann has been privileged to unprecedented support and protection by the UK establishment.  By careful observation and acceptance of evidence in the public domain, this simple fact can't be denied unless the observer is in denial or will not accept the compelling evidence for whatever reasons, reasons best known to themselves I hasten to add.

Well I, like so many others who relentlessly probe this case looking for the missing piece of the jigsaw, will not tolerate such injustice in the name of a little three year old child without a voice.  People who genuinely care about little Madeleine McCann are here year in year out wanting answers to explain why the case hasn't been satisfactorily resolved - why the people with the means fail to persue the end but instead deny little Madeleine the justice she so richly deserves.  Madeleine and Madeleine alone is the victim - she is the only person who matters in the minds of good decent people.

This thread has been initiated to highlight the many high and low profile UK establishment representatives who have willingly and energetically sold their soul to the devil in support of the prime suspects of a  heinous crime, in preference to supporting  the victim - Madeleine McCann.  This sad occurrence cannot and will not go unnoticed, at least not here on CMoMM.  Much of the anticipated information will already be somewhere on the forum but it's important to collate it all into one place in order to reveal the full extent of the so far unexplained support of Gerry and Kate McCann.

It is a reference thread only which will be expanded as and when, until all persons of interest have been exposed - if ever.   Should members wish to comment on any one entry here, please feel free to copy and paste on the forum's debate section.

What better place to start than the recorded words of the former chief of the Metropolitan Police - Sir Bernard Hogan Howe, broadcast on LBC radio in April 2016..

Transcript..

Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe LBC Radio phone-in April 2016:  Madeleine McCann investigation could end soon

Caller: Hi, good morning, my question is regarding to Madeleine McCann...

Nick Ferrari (host):   Oh yes.

Caller:  ...what chances can we find this girl?

Nick Ferrari:   This is I think another additional 95,000 pounds that has been earmarked by the Home Office, I think, for Scotland Yard Sir Bernard, and that would mean around six months the investigations can continue.

Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe:  Yeah, Michael (the caller) as you know there's been a lot of investigation time spent on this is, it's a terrible case isn't it, it's a child who went missing and everybody wants to know if she is alive if she is, where is she, and if suddenly she is dead then we need to give some comfort to the family, so it needed us to carry out an investigation together with the Portuguese and other countries have been involved and there is a line of inquiry that remains to be concluded and it's expected in the coming months that will happen. The size of the teams came down radically, I think we're now down to two or three people in that team, at one stage was about 30 officers in it, ahm, essentially it's a Portuguese inquiry...

Nick Ferrari:   What do thirty people do all day Commissioner?

Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe:  Well, the first steps they had to do was to actually review and look at all the things the Portuguese had done, to see whether or not there was anything we could offer that, you know, might help with that investigation, had they missed anything, now we do that for ourselves and the Portuguese review. So we thought, well, we were asked by the Prime Minister before I arrived, to see whether or not there was anything we could do to help that investigation. Our review...

Nick Ferrari:  It takes thirty officers?!

Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe:  Well, err, yep, but just bear in mind what happened there, so you got thousands of pages, I went in to one of our police stations back in 2011 and there was a whole room full of documents that this inquiry had produced, you know, from the hundreds of witnesses statements, to all every card they checked out, from all, you know, these inquiries for those who don't get involved in them don't realize just what they generate, huge amounts of material, and of course, these all have to be translated.

Nick Ferrari:  Yes.

Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe:  This didn't start out in English.

Nick Ferrari:  Sure.

Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe:  They were translated into English.

Nick Ferrari:  Have you moved forward in any way?

Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe:  I, well, that's what I'm indicating, is that first of all we had to extinguish the possibilities that existed in terms of inquiry, I think some of those have been stopped and there is a line of inquiry I think is, well, everybody agrees, is worthwhile pursuing.

Nick Ferrari:  How long will this go on? When will you finally be prepared to stand down operation, I think it's Operation Grange, isn't it?

Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe:  Well, really at the moment it will be the conclusion of this line of inquiry, unless something else comes up.

Nick Ferrari:  So, you'd spend more money, again? Another 95,000 pound?

Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe:  Well, if somebody comes to me, if somebody comes forward and gives good evidence we'll follow it.

Nick Ferrari:  Yes.

Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe:  We always say that, ahm, you know, a missing child inquiry is never closed.

Nick Ferrari:  Yes, but there are a hundred eighty-seven missing children in Britain, not all fortunately of the circumstances of Madeleine McCann. How come this one attracts so much attention and indeed funding?

Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe:  Well, of course, you know, this was a decision of the government, that in this case they wanted to fund the Metropolitan Police to make this inquiry. If you remember, of course, this poor girl came from Leicestershire area, and was obviously aboard in Portugal at the time. So, we went, the Home Office, the government asked the Met to get involved and we have done our best as anybody humanly can, to try and find this girl, and that's surely the thing that drives us all. Newspapers have got involved, private investigators got involved..

Nick Ferrari:  So, you don't see any standing down in the near future of Operation Grange?

Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe:  Well, I thought it was clear, which is first of all, the line of inquiry that is being pursued, that obviously is important, it's important in the coming months that is resolved and I think it will be, if something new comes forward of course we'll investigate it, but that line of inquiry probably is, at the moment, is the conclusion of this inquiry.

Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe, discusses progress in the Madeleine McCann case.

Radio 5 Live:  Broadcast 20th February 2014

Nicky Campbell: Errm... Adeal in London... no, I tell you what, we'll go to a caller in Cardiff. Brief points please because there's only eight minutes left, so make your questions as... as, errr... well edited as you can. Hi.

Caller: (phone in) Good morning. Good morning, Sir Bernard.

Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe: Good morning.

Caller: I'd like to ask you, errr... on the progress of Operation Grange.

Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe: Right, we have a lots of Op... Operations, so you're going to have...

Nicky Campbell: Operation Grange, just...?

Caller: Operation Grange.

Nicky Campbell: Which is?

Caller: It's the investigation into the disappearance of Madeleine McCann.

Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe: Ahh, right, thank you for helping...

Caller: That's okay.

Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe: ...but we do have a lot of Operations in London, so I'm sorry if I didn't recognise it immediately.

Nicky Campbell: The Portuguese police really mess... really messed up, didn't they?

Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe: Yes. [spoken in acknowledgment of the reference to the 'Portuguese police' and before Nicky Campbell has finished his sentence]

Caller: Yes... no [seemingly spoken in echo of Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe's 'yes' but then realises it could be misconstrued and makes an attempt to change it to 'no'. See her next comment]

Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe: Errm... I'm not going to respond to Nicky's comments.

Caller: (in background) Did they Nicky?

Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe: I'm just going to... Let me just... let me just help. Where we are at the moment: We've sent three letters of request for international assistance to the Portuguese, errr... Judiciary, because that's the way their system works, and also with the police - we are working closely with them. Errm... obviously the Portuguese police have got a line of inquiry which is different to the Metropolitan Police's but we're working together to try and resolve that. Errm... we're trying our best to keep the family informed and I think in the middle of all this, quite often their torment gets lost. Have they lost a child or, errr... by being murdered or... sadly... or have they lost a child by someone else stealing them.

Nicky Campbell: Awful.

Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe: Either way, errr... they've got that terrible uncertainty, so we're all trying our best to help resolve that. We...

Nicky Campbell: Do you have suspects?

Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe: Errr... yes, we've said very clearly that, you know, we've got lines of inquiry that, errm... are different to the Portuguese police and we're working with them to try and resolve that and I'm only going to... you know, that comment you made at the beginning, about, you know, what they did or didn't do. We've got to work together on this and I don't mean that as a naïve thing; I just think, generally. We've generally got to work together. We can't police Portugal, they can't do everything over here; we must work together. So, we're insist... you know, we really can work in genuine partnership on this. We're making some progress, errm... let's see how it comes over the next few months.

Nicky Campbell: If you'd been involved at the outset, do you think we might have got further with this investigation?

Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe: Errr... I think that's a bit unf... that would be unfair. I mean there's been inquiries in, errm... in the UK, where we know that the police could have done better. I think to be too judgmental in these cases is... is wrong and I wasn't there and I'm not going to judge them. The main thing we're all committed to is trying to find that little girl.

Nicky Campbell: And you have lines of inquiry, you have 'suspects' lines of inquiry; you have names.

Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe: That's right.

Nicky Campbell: Errm... and I appreciate how you can't, at this stage, go any further, errr... and have you spoken to those people?

Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe: Errm... I'm not going to go any further, really. Because that's what you just said you didn't want!

Nicky Campbell: I'm sure when you were interviewing people in that... in that little room you'd try and sneak one in like that, Sir Bernard. I bet you have in your time.

AC Sir Mark Rowley reflects on the tenth anniversary of the disappearance of Madeleine McCann

Blog post • Apr 25, 2017 21:00 BST

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As an investigation team we are only too aware of the significance of dates and anniversaries. Whatever the inquiry, we want to get answers for everyone involved.

The disappearance of Madeleine McCann is no different in that respect but of course the circumstances and the huge public interest, make this a unique case for us as police officers to deal with. In a missing child inquiry every day is agony and an anniversary brings this into sharp focus. Our thoughts are with Madeleine's family at this time - as it is with any family in a missing person’s inquiry - and that drives our commitment to do everything we can for her.

On 3rd May 2017, it will be 10 years since Madeleine vanished from her apartment in Praia Da Luz, a small town on the Algarve. In the immediate hours following her disappearance, an extensive search commenced involving the local police, community and tourists. This led to an investigation that has involved police services across Europe and beyond, experts in many fields, the world’s media and the public, which continues to this day. The image of Madeleine remains instantly recognisable in many countries across the world.

The Met’s dedicated team of four detectives, continues to work closely on the outstanding enquiries along with colleagues of the Portuguese Policia Judiciária. Our relationship with the Policia Judiciária is good. We continue to work together and this is helping us to move forward the investigation.

We don't have evidence telling us if Madeleine is alive or dead. It is a missing person’s inquiry but as a team we are realistic about what we might be dealing with - especially as months turn to years.

Now is a time we can reflect on an investigation which captured an unprecedented amount of media coverage and interest. The enormity of scale and the complexity of such a case brings along its own challenges, not least learning to work with colleagues who operate under a very different legal system. The inquiry has been, and continues to be helped and supported by many organisations and individuals. We acknowledge the difference these contributions have made to the investigation and would like it known that we appreciate all the support we have and continue to receive.

Since the Met was instructed by the Home Office to review the case in 2011, we have reviewed all the material gathered from multiple sources since 2007. This amounted to over 40,000 documents out of which thousands of enquiries were generated. We continue to receive information on a daily basis, all of which is assessed and actioned for enquiries to be conducted.

We have appealed on four BBC Crimewatch programmes since April 2012. This included an age progression image which resulted in hundreds of calls about alleged sightings of Madeleine; an appeal for the identity of possibly relevant individuals through description or Efit; and information sought relating to suspicious behaviour or offences of burglary. These programmes collectively produced a fantastic response from the public. The thousands of calls and information enabled detectives to progress a number of enquiries. This was in addition to over 3,000 holiday photographs from the public in response to an earlier appeal.

The team has looked at in excess of 600 individuals who were identified as being potentially significant to the disappearance. In 2013 the team identified four individuals they declared to be suspects in the case. This led to interviews at a police station in Faro facilitated by the local Policia Judiciária and the search of a large area of wasteland which is close to Madeleine's apartment in Praia Da Luz. The enquiries did not find any evidence to further implicate the individuals in the disappearance and so they are no longer subject of further investigation.

We will not comment on other parts of our investigation - it does not help the teams investigating to give a commentary on those aspects. I am pleased to say that our relationship with the Portuguese investigators is better than ever and this is paying dividends in the progress all of us are making.

We are often asked about funding and you can see that we are now a much smaller team. We know we have the funding to look at the focused enquiry we are pursuing.

Of course we always want information and we can't rule out making new appeals if that is required. However, right now, new appeals or prompts to the public are not in the interest of what we are trying to achieve.

As detectives, we will always be extremely disappointed when we are unable to provide an explanation of what happened. However the work carried out by Portuguese and Met officers in reviewing material and reopening the investigation has been successful in taking a number of lines of interest to their conclusion. That work has provided important answers.

Right now we are committed to taking the current inquiry as far as we possibly can and we are confident that will happen. Ultimately this, and the previous work, gives all of us the very best chance of getting the answers – although we must, of course, remember that no investigation can guarantee to provide a definitive conclusion.

However the Met, jointly with colleagues from the Policia Judiciária continue the investigation into the disappearance of Madeleine McCann with focus and determination.

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ITV's Daybreak (morning talk show) with DCI Andy Redwood, broadcast April 27, 2012

Dan Lobb: Where are we at now with regards to ... the dialogue you have with the Portu ... Portuguese authorities - and how happy are you with the response you've got from, er, the request you have made?
 
Andy Redwood: OK, well I am meeting now on a very regular basis - at least once a month - with a Portuguese counterpart in Porto - north-west Portugal - um, she leads a review team of officers who are committed, and dedicated to working with us, collaboratively, um, to establish what has happened to Madeleine McCann.
 
Dan Lobb: Will they reopen the case?
 
Redwood: Well the situation at the moment is ... is ... is ... is quite simple: we in the UK in terms of our relationship with Portugal, operate two completely different legal systems. And we acknowledge and respect that, and indeed, in terms of how the Portuguese operate is ... is ... it's the judicial authority that actually makes the decision around any re-opening.
 
Dan Lobb: But you, you still, you still have that hope, do you ...
 
Redwood: Yes.
 
Dan Lobb:  ... do you, and that's what you're pushing for?
 
Redwood: Yes, absolutely ... 100%, the dialogue I have with my colleague in Portugal is very positive, and they do want to reopen in due course.
 
Kate Garraway: We've heard mention of these 195 'investigative opportunities'.
 
Redwood: Yes.
 
Kate Garraway: What does that - what does that mean, does that mean - leads? - chances? - of finding Madeleine?
 
Redwood: Yes, well our responsibility, we have a unique position, if you like, in terms of where are at present. We are drawing together three key strands, never done before - UK, Portuguese and private investigation material all into one place er in our incident room at Belgravia - and it is through that process that we are identifying investigative opportunities in our careful, systematic trawl through the material - er, so those 195 have come from our review of the history ...
 
Kate Garraway: So those ... that means they are basically ... being tied together? - links and ...
 
Redwood: Yes.
 
Kate Garraway: Basically tying together - links.
 
Redwood: Yes. This history of the case, where we've obviously started, is one part of the review, and that is where those 195 opportunities come from ... across a broad range of issues ... but it's just simply that we're unable to answer them ...
 
Kate Garraway: Mmm ...
 
Redwood:  ... in the United Kingdom, which is where our really important dialogue with the Portuguese police takes place.
 
Dan Lobb: Do you believe she is still alive?
 
Redwood: Yes, I do.
 
Dan Lobb: Why?
 
Redwood: I believe she's still alive because, at the beginning of this case ... it's a huge privilege for us at the Metropolitan Police to be part of this investigation ... er, investigation review. Is that we came with a completely open mind.
 
We were untouched by anything that's gone before, and, as part of that, two key elements of it is to go: 1 Madeleine is alive and the other is, sadly she's not ... and in relation to her being alive, yes, there is a real possibility that she's alive.
 
Kate Garraway: So what are the things that make you think that ... because I think you know we're all clinging to the hope, aren't we?
 
Dan Lobb: Yeah. I mean it's kind of hard evidence but there is still going to be hope - as long as she's not found dead
 
Redwood: Yes, I mean, you know, we have conducted a forensic analysis of the timeline, and there is clearly opportunity there - for Madeleine McCann to have been removed from that apartment alive - and it is our belief, as experienced investigators - on the evidence, that, um that you know, that that, that is as a criminal act - and that has been, you know, undertaken by by a stranger, and so from that - she's ...  and there are other cases around the world, as you know where, many years later, people have been taken and been found alive.
 
Dan Lobb: Very quickly, let's take, take another - another look at that picture that you guys have released - the age-progression picture, and in, in what ... what help this could possibly do to the investigation?
 
Redwood: It's a critically important stage for us, if you look at the image, you will see that it has great resemblance to a school photograph, this is the sort of image that every parent proudly presents - on their, on their dining room um you know, you know, your dining room table This image has been carefully prepared by a United Kingdom forensic specialist in human identification and ... and art and - close collaboration with Mr and Mrs McCann who agree that this is a close - close resemblance to their, to their daughter - and my appeal to the public today is clear - look at the image carefully please -
 
Dan Lobb: OK
 
Redwood:  ... you if you know where Madeleine McCann is, then please call us - or if you know, or if you have information about what has happened to her, again, please call us

Tuesday 8th May 2007


As we were walking up from the beach at about 5pm, I had a call from Cherie Blair, in her final days as wife of the prime minister (her husband Tony would announce his resignation two days later and leave office the following month). She was kind and helpful. She told me it was amazing but encouraging that Madeleine was still the first topic on the news every night.

This was only five days after the abduction: as it turned out, our poor daughter would continue to headline the bulletins for some time to come. Cherie also warned me, ‘Whatever happens, your life will never be the same again.’ She mentioned that a friend of hers, Catherine Meyer, was the founder of PACT – Parents and Abducted Children Together – and said she would get in touch with her on my behalf. Doubtless I asked Cherie if there was anything the British government could offer the Portuguese in the way of resources to assist or expedite the search for Madeleine. It wasn’t my intention to make her feel uncomfortable by asking this, and I’m sure I didn’t.

We were just so desperate I couldn’t let the opportunity go by.

Kate McCann

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Transcript of interview between AC Mark Rowley (MR) and broadcast media for use from 21:00hrs on Tuesday, 25 April 2017.

Q: Six years’ on of Scotland Yard’s involvement, a team of largely 30 people, £11/12 million you’ve spent, what have you achieved?

MR: We’ve achieved an awful lot. I think you know that we have a track record for using cold cases on serious old cases, and we solve many cases that way. This is no different in one respect but is particularly complicated. I think people get seduced perhaps by what they see in TV dramas where the most complex cases are solved in 30 minutes or 60 minutes with adverts as well. What we started with here was something extraordinary. We started with 40,000 documents. We’ve got the original Portuguese investigation and six or eight sets of private detectives who’ve done work and we did appeals to the public, four Crimewatch appeals, hoovering as much information as possible. Sifting that, structuring it and working through it is an immense effort. It’s much more ‘hard slog’ in reality than it is inspiration. That takes time and it takes systems. That’s what we’ve been working on. And what you’ve seen in the bits which have been reported publically is those appeals, when we’ve announced suspects, when we’ve made particular announcements, slowly crunching through it and focusing our attention and making progress. And of course at one stage we had 600 people who at one stage have been of interest to the enquiry, that doesn’t mean that they are suspects, people who were suspicious at the time or have a track record which makes us concerned about them, sifting, which focused the enquiry increasingly and when you’re doing this then across a continent and with multiple languages and having to build working relationships with the Portuguese, you put that together and that takes real time.

So we’ve achieved complete understanding of it all, we’ve sifted out many of the potential suspects, people of interest, and where we are today is a much smaller team, focused on a small remaining number of critical lines of enquiry, which we think are significant. If we didn’t think they were significant we wouldn’t be carrying on.

Q: So when you talk of success and progress, it’s really a case of eliminating things? You’re not getting any nearer to finding out what happened?

MR: So our mission here is to do everything reasonable to provide an answer to Kate and Gerry McCann. I’d love to guarantee them that we would get an answer, sadly investigations can never be 100 per cent successful. But, it’s our job, and I’ve discussed it with them, we’ll do everything we can do, reasonably, to find an answer to what’s happened to Madeleine. And I know, Pedro, the senior Portuguese colleague I’ve worked with and his team, have a shared determination, to find an answer. That’s what we’re going to do.

Q: You’ve described it as a ‘unique’ case. Why is it unique?

MR: I think it’s unique in two or three respects. First of all the way its captured attention in different countries is quite unusual. You’ll get a very high-profile case in a particular country, the way it has captured interest across countries, I think is significant. The length of it. And it’s unusual to have a case like this where you’re doing a missing persons investigation, where ten years on, we still don’t have definitive evidence about exactly what’s happened. And that’s why we’re open minded, even if we have to be pessimistic about the prospects, we are open minded because we don’t have definitive evidence about what happened to Madeleine.

Q: You say you haven’t got definitive evidence, do you have any clues at all which might explain what happened to her?

MR: So, you’ll understand from your experience, the way murder investigations work, detectives will start off with various hypotheses, about what’s happened in a murder, what has happened in a missing person’s investigation, whether someone has been abducted. All those different possibilities will be worked through. This case is no different from that but the evidence is limited at the moment to be cast iron as to which one of those hypotheses we should follow. So we have to keep an open mind. As I said we have some critical lines of enquiry, those linked to particular lines of enquiry, but I’m not going to discuss them today because they are very much live investigations.

Q: Do you have some evidence, in your six years of investigation, have you unearthed some evidence to explain what happened?

MR: We’ve got some thoughts on what we think the most likely explanations might be and we’re pursuing those. And those link into the key lines of enquiry we’re doing now. As I said, those are very much live investigations and I know that’s frustrating when you’re doing a programme looking back but it’s hard to talk about that now, it’s going to frustrate the investigation.

Q: I know it’s not your money, it has come from the Home Office, but how do you justify spending so much on one missing person?

MR: Big cases can take a lot of resource and a lot of time and we have that with more conventional cases which Scotland Yard gets involved with that run over many years. I think it’s worth noting that this cold case approach we do, every year we’re solving cases that have gone cold years ago. I think in the last year it’s 35 rape cases, and two murder cases. Some of those reaching back to the 1980s. The cold case approach does have some expense, it is time-consuming, looking back at old records, but it does help solve old cases and you give families and victims an understanding of what went on. It’s worthwhile. This case is unusual, it’s not in Scotland Yard’s remit to investigate crimes across the world normally. In this case, in 2011, the Portuguese and British prime ministers were discussing the case and agreed that Scotland Yard would help and recognising that it’s not what we’re normally funded for, we were given extra money to put a team together to work with the Portuguese and that’s what we’ve been doing ever since. We’ve tried to be careful about public money and we started with that massive sifting and we’ve narrowed the enquiry, the funding has reduced accordingly. And we will stick with it as long as the funding is available, as long as there are sensible lines of enquiry to pursue.

Q: You’ve talked about 600 people. You at one point had four suspects. Can you tell me the story about how they came into the frame?

MR: So, one of the lines of enquiry, one of the hypotheses was could this be a burglary gone wrong? Someone is doing a burglary, panicked maybe by a waking child, which leads to Madeleine going missing.

Q: Most burglars would just run out.

MR: Possibly.

Q: Difficult for the public to understand that potential theory, given that every child wakes up.

MR: In my experience, if you try to apply the rational logic of a normal person sat in their front room to what criminals do under pressure, you tend to make mistakes, so it was a sensible hypothesis, it’s still not entirely ruled out, but there was also lots of material about people acting suspiciously, a potential history of some recent thefts from holiday apartments. Working through that it was a sensible thing to pursue, and we had some descriptions to work with, and that led to us identifying amongst the 600, a group of people who were worth pursuing, have they been involved in this activity, have they had a role in Madeleine going missing? Because what the hypothesis was, then we’ve got some searches, we’ve worked with the Portuguese, they were spoken to, and we pretty much closed off that group of people. That’s one example of the journey I spoke about, you start with this massive pool of evidence, you understand it, structure it, prioritise it, you work through and you try and sift the potential suspects, and then you end up where we are today with some key lines of enquiry.

Q: As I understand it, the key to your suspicion about those four suspects was very much to do with their use of mobile phones and one of the criticisms of the original Portuguese police investigation was that they didn’t interrogate the mobile phone data as thoroughly as they could have done. How important was it for you as that part of your investigation for you to pick up and thoroughly investigate the mobile phone data?

MR: So that phone data is always something we will look at and we wouldn’t have had it available if the Portuguese had not got hold of it at the time so we need to be careful about criticism. But we had the data available and we worked with the Portuguese and that was part of the background to do with phone data and various sightings. There was enough there to say, not to prove the case, but there was something worth looking at in more detail and that’s what we did.

Q: How old were the suspects because I think you interviewed them originally through the Portuguese beginning of July 2014?

MR: By the end of the year we were happy to have brought them out and we were moving on to other parts of the investigation.

Q: Do you have any other suspects at the moment?

MR: So, we have got some critical lines of enquiry that are definitely worth pursuing and I’m not going to go into further detail on those. Another I would say though is, these lines of enquiry we have to date, they are the product of information available at the time and information that has come from public appeals that we have done. Four Crimewatch appeals, and other media channels have been incredibly helpful, including yourselves, and thousands of pieces of information have come forward, some useful some not, but amongst that have been some nuggets that have thrown some extra light on the original material that came from the time and that is one of the things that has helped us to make progress and have some critical lines of enquiry we are pursuing today.

Q: The question of other suspects, is there anyone like those four who have been dismissed, is there anyone who has the “alguido” status?

MR: I’m not going to give that level of detail away, we have got some critical lines of enquiry and we are working with the Portuguese on that, we are both interested in. Disclosing any more information on that will not help the investigation.

Q: You said the burglary gone wrong theory is not completely dismissed. What are the other theories? You have spoken in the past, Andy Redwood spoke in the past about focussing on the idea of a stranger abduction, is that still the focus, or a focus?

MR: Whilst we’ve got some lead ideas there is still a lot of unknown on this case. We’ve got a young girl gone missing 10 years ago. Until we get to the point where we have solved it, we’re unlikely to have definitive evidence as to exactly what happened at the time. All the hypothesises that you or I could come up with, they all have to remain open and the key lines of enquiry open today focus on one or two of those areas but we have to keep them all open until we get to that critical piece of evidence that narrows it down and helps us to be more confident as to exactly what has happened on the day Maddie went missing.

Q: Over the years you have appealed for a number of what could be called suspicious-looking men, watching the apartment, watching the apartment block. Knocking on the doors touting for a bogus charity. You have issued E-fits, have you been able to identify and eliminate any of those?

MR: Some of them have been identified and eliminated but not all of them.

Q: The theory of a sex predator responsible for Maddie’s disappearance is something the Portuguese police have focussed on. How big a part of your investigation has that been, because there were a series of sex attack on sleeping, mainly British children in nearby resorts. So how important has that
been to your investigation?

MR: That has been one key line of enquiry. The reality is in any urban area, you cast your net wide and you find a whole range of offences and sex offenders who live nearby and those coincidences need to be sifted out; what is a coincidence and what could be linked to the investigation we are currently dealing with and just like we do in London we have been doing in Portugal so offences which could be linked have to be looked at and either ruled in or ruled out and that’s the work we have been doing.

Q: Andy Redwood, the first senior investigating officer, said in one interview his policy was to go right back to the beginning, accept nothing, but one thing you appear to have accepted is that this was an abduction. It’s in your first remit statement, it refers to ‘the abduction’, which rather suggests right from the start you had a closed mind to the possibility of parents’ involvement, an accident or Madeleine simply walking out of the apartment.

MR: Two points to that, firstly the involvement of the parents, that was dealt with at the time by the original investigation by the Portuguese. We had a look at all the material and we are happy that was all dealt with and there is no reason whatsoever to reopen that or start rumours that was a line of investigation. The McCanns are parents of a missing girl, we are trying to get to the bottom of. In terms of Andy using the word abduction, she was not old enough to set off and start her own life. However she left that apartment, she has been abducted. It is not a 20-year-old who has gone missing and who has made a decision to start a new life, this is a young girl who is missing and at the heart of this has been an abduction.

Q: One of the biggest criticisms of the Portuguese investigation, which they acknowledge as well, is that they did not interrogate the parents from the start, if only to eliminate them. When you started your investigation, you appear to have done the same. Did you formally interview the McCann’s under caution, ever consider them as suspects?

MR: So when we started, we started five or so years into this and there is already a lot of ground been covered, we don’t cover the same ground, what we do is pull all the material we had at the start, all the Portuguese material, private detective material, with all the work that had been done, what that evidence supports, what rules these lines of enquiry out, what keeps them open and you progress forward. It would be no different if there were a cold case in London, a missing person from 1990, we would go back to square one look at all the material and if the material was convincing it ruled out that line of enquiry we would look somewhere else. So you reflect on the original material, you challenge it, don’t take it at face value. You don’t restart an investigation pretending it doesn’t exist and do all the same enquiries again that is not constructive.

Q: The first detective in charge of the case said he was going right back to the start of the case and accepting nothing. It seems very much he was suggesting that it was going to be a brand new investigation.

MR: It’s a brand new investigation, you are going in with an open mind. You are not ignoring the evidence in front of you. That would be a bizarre conclusion. You would look at that material, what does it prove, what it doesn’t. What hypothesis does it open what does it close down and you work your way through the case.

Q: Just to be clear you did not interview the McCanns as potential suspects?

MR: No

Q: Let’s move to today, recently you were given more funding £84,000 to £85,000, how is that going to be used?

MR: As you understand we started with a full-sized murder team of 30 officers, that was a standard
operating approach at the time. So we start with that team and work through the massive amount of investigation. The Home Office has been funding that and of course it is public money so they review that from time to time and as the enquiry has gone on we suggested we could run it with a smaller group of people and that is what happened. That recent level of funding reflects that it’s keeping the team going for the next six months and we will want to keep this running as long as there are sensible lines of enquiry and keep asking the Home Office to fund it as long as there are those open lines of enquiry.

Q: I know you don’t want to go into detail but are there more forensic tests, is that what is going on?

MR: I’m not going to talk about detail of the type of work going on but there are critical lines of enquiry of great interest to ourselves and our Portuguese counterparts and there are some significant investigative avenues we are pursuing that we see as very worthwhile.

Q: Are you still waiting for answers to new ‘rogatory’ letters. I understand how the system works if you want something in Portugal, you have to send ‘rogatory’ letter and get that approved over there. Are there letters in the post?

MR: That process you describe reflects the first four or five years of our work there, sifting through mass amounts of material, putting together with new evidence that comes from appeals, generates new enquiries and the legal requirements the Portuguese have is quite labour intensive in terms of dotting I’s and crossing T’s and working through that detail. Where we are now is much narrower much more focussed.

Q: Is there anyone you are still looking for?

MR: Where we are now is much narrower and much more focussed.

Q: There was a report recently that there was an international manhunt in regards to a person you were interested in talking to, maybe not even a suspect, maybe a witness?

MR: There are odd headlines and odd stories in newspapers on a regular basis and most of those are nonsense.

Q: You say in your statement, you are getting information on a daily basis, new information, what sort of information?

MR: First of all it is indicative of the level of interest in this case, not just in this country but across the world. The team are getting emails, phone calls, new information all the time and it ranges from the eccentric, through to information that on the surface looks potentially interesting and needs to be bottomed out and are constantly sifting through them.

Q: Are you any closer to solving this then you were six years ago?

MR: I know we have a significant line of enquiry that is worth pursuing, and because of that, it could provide an answer. Until we have gone through it, I won’t know if we will get there or not.

Q: What area is that enquiry?

MR: Ourselves and the Portuguese are doing a critical piece of work and we don’t want to spoil it by putting titbits out on it publically.

Q: How confident are you this will solve it for you?

MR: It is worth pursuing
Q: What does your instinct say about what happened to Maddie?

MR: If I start going in to my instinct having read the material of interest we are dealing with at the moment it would give away what we are looking in to so I’m not going to answer that. But what I would say from my experience of dealing with cold cases and these types of investigations is that this time, even sadly after 10 years of Maddie being missing there are nuggets of information and lines of enquiry that are worth pursuing and it is possible they may lead to an answer. As long as we have the resources to do it, and as long as we have those sensible lines of enquiry because if we can provide an answer to a family in this horrible situation that is what we must do.

Q: Do the significant lines of enquiry suggest to you Maddie is alive or dead?

MR: As I said earlier on we have no definitive evidence as to whether Maddie is alive or dead. We have to keep an open mind that is why we describe it as a missing person enquiry. Of course we understand why after so many years people would be pessimistic but we are keeping an open mind and treating it as a missing person enquiry.

Q: You’ve said you are realistic about what you are dealing with, what do you mean by that?

MR: We are realistic about the prospects and the assumptions people will make 10 years on when a little girl has gone missing but there is no definitive evidence and as long as that is the case we have to have an open mind and treat it as a missing person enquiry.

Q: If she is alive, she is nearly 14, do you have any idea what she might be doing, where she might be, the circumstances she might be living?

MR: That is such a hypothetical question I cannot begin to answer.

Q: There is a chance she may still be alive.

MR: We have to keep an open mind, it is a missing person enquiry, we don’t have that definitive evidence either way.

Q: How confident are you that you will solve the case?

MR: I wish I could say we will solve this. We solve more than 90 per cent of serious cases at Scotland Yard. I wish I could say I could definitely solve it but a small number of cases don’t get solved. What I have always said on this case and I’ve said to Kate and Gerry. We will do everything we can that is possible to try to find and answer. I hope to find an answer but can’t quite guarantee and as a professional police officer and dealing with the families in awful situations it always hurts you can’t guarantee success, but we will do everything we can to try to get there.

Q: How long might it keep going, your investigation?

MR: It is impossible to be exactly clear. We have a small number of ongoing lines of enquiry, they are critical and we need to deal with those and see how long it takes.

Q: You talk about lines of enquiry because last year the ex-commissioner said there was one piece of work still to be done and when that was completed that would be the end of the investigation. You are rather suggesting things have moved on since then and there is more to pursue, is that true?

MR: We have a small number of lines of enquiry and that’s what we are focussed on.

Q: But he was the boss and he was quite specific ‘one piece of work to do’, you are saying something different?

MR: We have a small number of lines of enquiry, that is what we are pursuing today.

At risk of provoking people, here is another way of looking at the Mark Rowley interview –

I fully accept it is Cherry Picking.
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MR: And I know, Pedro, the senior Portuguese colleague I’ve worked with and his team, have a shared determination, to find an answer. That’s what we’re going to do.
Shared determination to find AN answer


MR: We’ve got some thoughts on what we think the most likely explanations might be and we’re pursuing those. 
But I’m not going to tell you what they are.


 MR: So that phone data is always something we will look at and we wouldn’t have had it available if the Portuguese had not got hold of it at the time so we need to be careful about criticism. But we had the data available and we worked with the Portuguese and that was part of the background to do with phone data and various sightings. There was enough there to say, not to prove the case, but there was something worth looking at in more detail and that’s what we did.
There WAS something worth looking at in detail . . . and we did !  


MR: I’m not going to talk about detail of the type of work going on but there are critical lines of enquiry of great interest to ourselves and our Portuguese counterparts and there are some significant investigative avenues we are pursuing that we see as very worthwhile.
great interest to ourselves AND our Portuguese counterparts


MR: Where we are now is much narrower, much more focussed.
Q: Is there anyone you are still looking for?
MR: Where we are now is much narrower and much more focussed
= No there isn’t anyone we are looking FOR.  We know all the players, and where they live.


Q: You say in your statement, you are getting information on a daily basis, new information, what sort of information?


MR: First of all it is indicative of the level of interest in this case, not just in this country but across the world. The team are getting emails, phone calls, new information all the time and it ranges from the eccentric, through to information that on the surface looks potentially interesting and needs to be bottomed out and are constantly sifting through them.
So some of the information received is interesting and needs more work and sifting !  


MR: Until we get to the point where we have solved it, we’re unlikely to have definitive evidence as to exactly what happened at the time. All the hypothesises that you or I could come up with, they all have to remain open and the key lines of enquiry open today focus on one or two of those areas but we have to keep them all open until we get to that critical piece of evidence that narrows it down and helps us to be more confident as to exactly what has happened on the day Maddie went missing. 
= We don’t accept the official story as to what happened.


Q: Are you any closer to solving this then you were six years ago?
MR: I know we have a significant line of enquiry that is worth pursuing, and because of that, it could provide an answer. Until we have gone through it, I won’t know if we will get there or not.
Q: What area is that enquiry?
MR: Ourselves and the Portuguese are doing a critical piece of work and we don’t want to spoil it by putting titbits out on it publicly.
A critical piece of work.  A piece = ONE


Q: How confident are you this will solve it for you?
MR: It is worth pursuing
= I am not going to answer that


And note this use or words . . .
MR: However she left that apartment, she has been abducted.
Abducted
Can the word be used for the removal of a body ? 
Yes, it can be and is, but for obvious reasons (I hope) I do not want to give the full quotes here.
It is an unusual usage, but in a case where both facts, evidence, logic, and language have been mutilated by so many parties, it is entirely possible that MR was following AR


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Detective Chief Inspector Andy Redwood had said the assumption that Madeleine had been alive when she left the apartment "may not follow with all our thinking" on the case. To clarify: those quoted words actually came after Redwood had referred to the assumption that Madeleine had been abducted. However, Redwood did say during the same press conference that police were considering the possibility that Madeleine was not alive when taken from the apartment as well as the possibility that she was.
Which really rubbed it in !

So, to precis, Operation Grange still a facade, still ruling out the McCanns and still considering it an abduction by a third party.

It may turn on a question of interpretation.

MR: And I know, Pedro, the senior Portuguese colleague I’ve worked with and his team, have a shared determination, to find an answer. That’s what we’re going to do.
Shared determination to find AN answer

An answer (that the public can be persuaded to believe) as opposed to THE answer

Hobs wrote:MR: And I know, Pedro, the senior Portuguese colleague I’ve worked with and his team, have a shared determination, to find an answer. That’s what we’re going to do.
Shared determination to find AN answer

An answer (that the public can be persuaded to believe) as opposed to THE answer

Then with a fine sprinkle of"Fairy Dust",they all lived happily,the now official Operation Grange prose to close operation down by who ever has the poisoned chalice as Head of the Met?

Crimewatch - Madeleine McCann - October 14th 2013:  The Reconstruction

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All logic points to a cover up - but it must involve someone bigger than the McCanns.

I don't see why so much trouble would be made for them.

With the insanity which pervades the entire world these days, I can't think of anything which warrants a cover up of such duration, so many people, and the increasingly vast expense. We hear daily of murder, child abuse, drug fuelled crimes, and laughable sentences - sometimes, no sentence at all. Often, the great and the good (sarcasm) are involved, and we are not surprised. We are used to it. So what merits such prolonged conspiracy? I can't imagine any situation, or person, important enough.

CaKeLoveR wrote: I can't imagine any situation, or person, important enough

I believe it's a matter of what - not who!

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