PeterMac's FREE e-book: What really happened to Madeleine McCann?

This relates to the article in ABC posted by Clarke on his Facebook page.

THE HUNTER OF MONSTERS.
THE JOURNALIST IN PURSUIT OF MADELEINE’S ASSASSIN
The British reporter started following the trail of the little girl the day after her disappearance.

“ABC is a Spanish national daily newspaper. It is the second largest general-interest newspaper in Spain, number one in Madrid, and the oldest newspaper still operating in Madrid. Along with El Mundo and El País, it is one of Spain’s three newspapers of record. ABC is known for generally supporting conservative political views. On 25 September 2009, ABC made its complete archives, dating back to 1903, available online, giving modern readers a chance to see contemporaneous news about the Spanish Civil War.”

So although it is published in a small stapled format it is definitively not a Red Top Tabloid.

For Clarke to get his book ‘advertised’ or featured on a double-page spread with full colour photo in a ‘Newspaper of Record’ is the equivalent of a piece in the Daily Telegraph or the The Times. It is beyond price, and will live in the archive forever. This press immortality perhaps explains why he is so proud of it. The Kudos is immense.

The ABC article was written by one of their professional Journalists, JJ Madueño.
Madueño lists English as one of his languages on LinkedIn and other professional sites. Clarke speaks Spanish, refined after 20 years living and working in Spain turning everyday Spanish into Tabloid English.

The Muck Rack web site is –
The all-in-one PR software you’ve been waiting for – A centralized Public Relations Management (PRM) platform to help your team build media relationships, collaborate from anywhere, and measure success.
Muck Rack for Journalists – Tens of thousands of journalists rely on Muck Rack’s free tools to showcase their best work with automatically updated portfolios, analyze news or receive alerts about any topic, and measure the impact of published stories.



Madueño has his own page on Muck Rack. The article Clarke is so proud of appears there.

Translation

On that very 3 May 2007, a call to a telephone in Ronda requested his presence. Mobile phones were not so widespread and the major British newspapers were looking to contact Jon Clarke (Cambridge, 1968) in this town in Malaga. He picked up, and was asked if he could go to Portugal. An English girl had disappeared there. << It didn't seem like an important case, but I went. I arrived at half past one in the morning in Praia da Luz >> recalls Clarke about his first contact with the disappearance of Madeleine McCann.


This is clearly the first two paragraphs of the article. Journalists themselves post these extracts or summaries. They are not edited or touched by the site.

Here it is crystal clear that Clarke is saying – and it is in Spanish quote marks, indicating his direct speech – << I arrived at half past ONE in the morning in Praia da Luz >>.
The place is clear and the time is clear. From the context of the telephone call on ‘that very’ 3rd May, meaning that exact day, we can calculate that he arrived on Friday 4th May. At 1:30 am.

The final printed and on-line article, which has been slightly altered still quotes Clarke as saying
“It didn't seem like a big case, but I went to Praia da Luz," Clarke recalls of his first contact with the disappearance of Madeleine McCann. That same night he met the little girl's parents, Gerry and Kate McCann.”

That same NIGHT from a 3rd May phone call means exactly the same thing. Clarke got to PdL in the early hours of Friday 4th. He was THERE after midnight of the night of 3rd/4th May 2007.

The implications are wide-ranging.


To drive to PdL and arrive at 01:30 means leaving his home by or before 20:30 and driving through the night, a lot of it along unlit rural roads. There was a waning gibbous moon, but cloud cover both in Malaga and Seville. This only cleared towards Faro airport.

The distance is given as 404 km, plus about 2km in PdL, and another 2km to his rural house outside the small village beyond Ronda. The time is quoted as 4h 11 min from the centre of his village to the roundabout on the main road leading to PdL, so at least 4h 30min in total driving time door to door overnight.
To this we must add a comfort and/or fuel stop, which he describes in detail in the book, and we may note that driving at night on unlit rural roads with the ever present danger of wild animals, boar, ibex, fox, badger, red or fallow deer jumping out of the woods either side is likely to moderate normal driving speed slightly.
Allowing his stated half hour to get ready and take his leave of his family after the alleged phone call, puts the call no later than 20:00 [8 pm.] on 3/5/7, and very possibly considerably earlier.

Ponder that for a moment.

The alarm was raised just before 22:00 [10 pm.] 3/5/7. Portuguese time or 23:00 Spanish time.

Even if we suspect that Clarke is still confusing Spanish time for arrival, this only moves the phone call to some time before 21:00 [9 pm.] 3/5/7 Spanish time. It does not alter the central issue, that the phone call was made not only a significant time BEFORE the report of the disappearance, but also well BEFORE the ’window of opportunity’ for any Abduction given in the signed and accepted statements of the McCanns and the Tapas 7.

Many years ago Clarke was faced with this exact suggestion and reacted in his usual aggressive contemptuous way. The article in the Olive Press by Clarke himself is dated 11th May 2017, and includes –

“He accused me of lying about the case, and crucially claimed I could not have got to Praia da Luz so quickly on the day after her disappearance.
He suggested I was actually staying there.”

Now, some 14 years after the original events, but only 4 years after that article, Clarke has clearly confessed to a fellow but more senior and respected journalist, and has admitted that he was there, did get there “so quickly” and by extension WAS staying there before his second appearance at 09:45 later that morning.

Whilst research continues to discover several more facts there remains an unease about Clarke’s future.

The ”official story” promulgated and broadcast so early and so long and hard by Clarke was designed to protect those who may have been responsible for the organisation and the selective release of information. Several have specifically denied their involvement in any greater scheme, and specifically of any prior knowledge at all of any “event’ before 10pm 3/5/7.

Clarke’s new admission that the Press telephones were ringing long before that time may be the earth tremor which eventually causes the edifice to crumble.

Many whose reputations and even their liberty depend on that fact’s NOT being known may not be pleased.
And when it is realised that small apparently unconnected pieces of evidence and fully documented personal communication already in the hands of researchers are now validated by Clarke’s admission, some may get very cross indeed. Including the McCanns and their backers.

As they were with the late Brenda Leyland, hounded to alleged suicide; with Mr Bennett, sentenced to imprisonment; with DCI Amaral, pursued through three tiers of courts and impoverished despite being completely vindicated; with several private detectives who allegedly discovered and reported inconvenient facts, who are variously dead in suspicious circumstances or in prison on supposedly unrelated issues.

They were not dismissed as cranks, or fools. They were not merely shrugged off as ignorant of the facts, as ill informed or misguided.
No. They were pursued at enormous expense.

Someone, or some organisation, spent a vast amount of money instructing Carter-Ruck to pursue Mr. Bennett right up to and then actually into the High Court. Forget Kate’s “pro bono” claim. The McCanns may not have paid for the work, but someone did.

Someone, or some organisation, paid a vast amount of money pursuing Dr Amaral through the Portuguese Court of First Instance, the Appeal court, the Supreme court - TWICE - and is now still paying for a case in the European Court of Human Rights.
That is out of the financial reach of normal people, (which is of course why they froze Dr Amaral’s assets and income from the start, hoping he would not be able to mount a proper defence.).

Someone directed Martin Brunt of Sky News to hound Brenda Leyland to her (alleged) suicide.
He didn’t decide to do it on his own. Both MetPol and LeicPol had stated there were no offences to investigate. Someone paid him to do it. And that Someone may also be funding this.

We may never know the true identity nor the motivation of the “Fat controller”, [Chapter 41] –
but Jonathan Lucian Stewart Clarke may inadvertently have taken us closer to discovering his or her identity, and that may not go down well.

If the Security Services were involved in this case, which some believe possible, Jon Clarke might do well to consider the adequacy of his Life Insurance, and pray he does not share the fates of Dr Kelly and Mike Todd.

****

The discovery of this admission and confession does go some way to explaining but not excusing Clarke’s 14-year history of being vague, inaccurate and untruthful about the time of his arrival in Praia da Luz and his various alleged immediate actions once there. He has clearly been under considerable stress caused by the ‘cognitive dissonance’ of having to fit a patently inaccurate account into known and provable facts.

We still do not know or understand much about Clarke’s movements, still less about his motivation nor of his level of understanding of his personal involvement in what increasingly appears to be something far more serious than “Tabloid Journalists Writing Rot”.

Given the time of his alleged phone call, it must have been clear even to Clarke that being called some considerable time before the “Abduction”, let alone the Alert, might make people following this case slightly suspicious.

Was the phone call simply to tell him everything was in place, and it was safe for him to leave because he would arrive after the alert, perhaps with a reminder that he should ring back about 5am so that the stories already on the presses and in the News rooms could be printed and released for the early morning editions?

Clarke has said, very clearly, that he arrived in Praia da Luz about 1:30 AM. [Clarke “Llegué a la una y media de la madrugada’, or alternatively 'that same night', which bears the same meaning but allows for any confusion between Spanish and Portuguese time.]. He has said that, it has been published in a Journal of Record in the name of a highly respected journalist, and he has encouraged his followers to read it.

The onus of explanation now shifts to Clarke.

And as another researcher has suggested – If Clarke was summoned to Praia da Luz just before, at, or even just after the time the McCanns and the Tapas 7 raised the alarm, he may well be guilty of Perverting the Course of Justice by withholding from the PJ right from the start that vital information which could have made an absolutely crucial difference to the course of the entire investigation. Instead of this Clarke told the world that he knew instantly that the McCanns were innocent.

Has Clarke suffered 14 years of chronic anxiety that the PJ, DCI Amaral, the Portuguese Public Prosecutor, Operation Grange, the German lawyer H. Fülscher and the prosecutor H. Wolters, not to mention the Home Secretary and the Commissioner of the Met., would one day find out the truth about his nocturnal visit to PdL, and would therefore realise that the stories that he first arrived at various times later that morning were untrue ?

If so, he can relax.
They do now.

Can Clarke now claim that this whole thing has been a big mistake; a misunderstanding; that the meaning got “lost in translation’ between two people each fluent in the other’s language; that it was written by nothing more than a Tabloid journalist who sensationalised or completely invented the story paying no attention to the facts, purely to increase circulation and sell a foreign language paperback book . . . ?

Let me assist.
NO.   He can not.
How can we know that ?

We placed a question on Clarke’s Facebook page. The first question was ’deleted’ within a day, so we replaced it.
We gave Clarke the “right to reply”; the time to explain; to issue an exculpatory statement; to blame others for misunderstanding or misquoting;
or other wording he chose.


After a week he had not chosen to do so.
It seems he stands by what was written in ABC.

It may of course be that yet again Clarke is blatantly lying or being so ludicrously boastful that he has failed to see that his fantasy cannot possibly fit the ‘official story’.
If so, then he has surely forfeited the right to describe himself as a serious Journalist.
If not, his admission may have fatally compromised the entire 14 year investigation.


REFS:

1. https://muckrack.com/jj-madueno-1/articles

2. https://sevilla.abc.es/andalucia/malaga/sevi-periodista-britanico-madeleine-enf-202110212008_noticia.html

3. Original ABC article in Spanish.

https://sevilla.abc.es/andalucia/malaga/sevi-periodista-britanico-madeleine enf-202110212008_noticia.html

Jon Clarke, 14 años para resolver el misterio de la pequeña Madeleine
El reportero Jon Clarke, editor de una publicación inglesa editada en la Costa del Sol, comenzó a seguir el rastro de la pequeña el día después de su desaparición
Advierte del peligro del presunto asesino, Christian Brueckner, un alemán que vivió en poblados 'hippies' de Granada y podría haber cometido más delitos
J.J. Madueño
MARBELLA Actualizado: 22/10/2021 18:49h

4. https://whatreallyhappenedtomadeleinemccann.blogspot.com/


https://whatreallyhappenedtomadeleinemccann.blogspot.com/2016/08/chapter-48-part-two-and-now-stunning.html

Chapter 49 My Search for the Madeleine Call: One Researcher’s 14-year Hunt to Solve Europe’s most Elusive Phone Call.

First a brief re-cap.
In September 2021 Jon Clarke, owner and editor of a small free ad-sheet and newspaper available at supermarket check-outs in parts of southern Spain released a book entitled
“My Search for Madeleine: One Reporter's 14-Year Hunt to Solve Europe's Most Harrowing Crime”

[We gloss over the solecism inherent in the title, with the strangely confused concatenation of ‘hunting for the person’ and attempting to ‘solve the crime’, and remember that Clarke is before all else a Tabloid Journalist, and therefore his poor grammar, vocabulary and syntax must be accepted or overlooked]

The publishing of the book was preceded and accompanied by a publicity drive which included an appearance on Sky News on Kay Burley’s morning show; a longer down-the-line interview on a local radio channel; Twitter: notices on the internet on the Olive Press on-line pages; the OP facebook page;
and on Jon Clarke’s own FaceBook page. https://www.facebook.com/jon.clarke.3745. REFS 1,2,3

(This publicity strategy rapidly extended to removing less than effusive reviews on Amazon, whilst ensuring that the more sycophantic ones, including one posted in his own wife’s name, remained despite not being marked as ‘confirmed purchase’.)

On his Facebook page Clarke also posted a shot of the full double-page spread in the renowned Spanish newspaper ABC, inviting people to read it, and saying
“For those of you who speak Spanish, an interesting article about my work - and the Olive Press - in Spain’s oldest national newspaper ABC yesterday.
And for those that don’t; I’m not a monster but a ‘hunter of monsters’. Some of them will comment below :”



It certainly turned out to be an ‘interesting article’, including as it did the following words (in translation - original in the appendix)
“On that very 3 May 2007, a call to a telephone in Ronda requested his presence. . . . That same night he met the little girl's parents, Gerry and Kate McCann.“

[Explanation of the translation of the word “mismo” to mean the emphatic ‘that VERY day’, or ‘that EXACT day’ may be found in Chapter 48a]
The meaning is clear, but to ensure that this was not a gross or negligent error on the part of the journalist in question, one of ABC’s more senior and experienced journalists, we contacted Sr. JJ Madueño himself, and the website Muckrack.

The Muckrack website has been discussed in Chapter 48a, but essentially ‘scrapes’ the work of journalists on its extensive list, and posts the first 150 words of their articles within a very short time of that journalist's hitting the ‘Return’ or ‘Enter’ key on the computer to upload it to the public domain.

(It will come as no surprise to find that as with all things McCann, there are at least two versions)

The Muckrack entry is even more specific and detailed
“That very 3 May 2007, a call to a telephone in Ronda requested his presence. . . << It didn't seem like an important case, but I went. I arrived at half past one in the morning in Praia da Luz. >>, recalls Clarke about his first contact with the disappearance of Madeleine McCann.”

We must bear in mind that Madueño has had no known involvement or interest in this case. The words he uses are put in quote marks, to indicate direct speech from Clarke. It is also clear for those who have followed this case that the article, almost in its entirety, will have been virtually dictated by Clarke, even if he did not write the actual words himself.

When Sr. Madueño was approached about the entry he denied knowledge of the Muckrack site, and said he would investigate what had been posted. Journalists can easily correct, edit or delete any of their own work. Two months later however the original entry has not been amended, even to bring it in line with the final published article.

This must surely leave his readers to believe that
– this is what he first wrote and uploaded,
– although the wording in the final printed version has been slightly amended it clearly means almost exactly the same thing, and that therefore
– he stands by both versions

Clarke was approached about the article and the Muckrack entry. The excoriating FAPE judgment against the Olive Press and Clarke himself was also mentioned. He responded in characteristic fashion, as he does when cornered, by issuing abuse, threats and attempting to intimidate.

On the first occasion he dodged the question entirely, rolled out the expected ad hominem abusive “Troll”, and suggested the interlocutor spent more time with his family. [Perhaps a bit rich, coming from a man who cheerfully boasts to the entire world in his book that he abandoned his own wife and children for several months]

The correspondence continued, to be replied to thus :
“Ha - I think one official complaint in 16 years (not even stood up [sic] - or contested) is a fabulous accolade! And you’ve got MANY MANY facts wrong - partly because FAPE only put one side out… [sic]
On top of that, one last time: I got to PDL early and spoke to the McCanns briefly - what’s the problem/issue? it was 14 years ago and neither I, they or the PJ,- and certainly not a troll - can know that exact time”
[One way might be to check with independent sources. Photos, news reel video, . . . Just a thought !]

The exchange continued and the next reply included the threat
“WRONG, WRONG, WRONG M*** - you are not only a bad liar but you clearly don’t understand Spanish - the girl was NOT pictured, the home was NOT identified.. and NO hordes of tourists descended on the house or the village…
You are getting close to libelling the newspaper and me … be careful… it’s taken very seriously here and in the UK”

The FAPE judgment has been dealt with elsewhere, [Ch. 31, Clarke, Lies, and Videotape] but one extraordinary thing about Clarke’s defence of his untenable position is that he seems to forget, neglect or ignore not only what he wrote in his own book, the subject of this entire enquiry, but also what he has published in his own paper about Libel in Spain.

To refresh memories, and to hammer home Clarke’s continuing egregious manipulation of facts and distortion of truth,
“we ran the story with two pictures, one of the village in which they lived and one of the name of the house, which inadvertently also gave the house number.”     (Book. p 113) REF 4

and





Spain, a modern democracy recently released from the clutches of a far-left Fascist dictatorship, has a modern written constitution in which freedom of speech and expression is high on the list of Citizens’ Rights. Portugal has the same and for the same reasons, as the McCanns discovered when they attempted to extort a huge amount of money from DCI Amaral for writing a factual account of the investigation.

Neither jurisdiction is interested in Libel cases based on lies told by the Plaintiff.

What then are the possibilities ?

First that it is simply UNTRUE
That Madueño is a negligent, poor, and casual journalist, who does not bother to ask questions or check anything he is told, or perhaps alternatively that he is from the Tabloid stable, and simply invents things he believes may flesh out a story he is writing.

Second that it is actually TRUE
That Clarke told Madueño the facts. Madueño then wrote the article including the facts he had noted, downloaded the photo of Clarke totally surrounded by two copies of his book, and the longer piece of script about the book itself from Clarke, arranged the double page for publication, and uploaded the finished article.
It was then ‘scraped’ for posterity by Muckrack.
Some little time later he went back into the article and made the time slightly less exact, for what reason we can only guess, changing “half past one in the morning”, to “that same night”, which makes little difference. It is not as exact, but just as precise.

Which is the more likely option ?
Clarke clearly solicited the inclusion of his book in ABC, and then advertised the article on his own Facebook page, with the words
“For those of you who speak Spanish, an interesting article about my work - and the Olive Press - in Spain’s oldest national newspaper ABC yesterday.”
He was urging people to read it, and is clearly proud that it appears in a newspaper of record.

There is no hint of a caveat, no suggestion of mistake or misinterpretation.

Madueño was clearly told the exact time of arrival and either wrote it in his journal or keyed it in direct, and he was also clearly told that the phone call was on that EXACT day, that fateful day, the day in question, which he clarifies so there shall be no absolutely no doubt, no mistake, not even the remotest possibility of a misunderstanding – in both versions – by giving the date as 3rd May 2007.

Can Clarke now accuse him of being nothing more than the lowest rank of gutter press Tabloid journalist, prepared to make up stories and fill in with invented details, who will lie and libel purely for financial gain . . . ?

No he cannot.
Madueño is a respected and trusted senior journalist employed by a paper of record.
He wrote what he did in good faith.

*****

Has Clarke finally been caught out, this time not by his lies or by stretching the truth beyond its elastic limit, but by inadvertently having told the truth ?
Has one proven mendacious and libelling journalist been exposed by a decent and honourable one ?

It might help to explain the quite extraordinary sequence of ‘versions of the truth’ he has given the world over the past 14 years relating to his arrival and presence in PdL, each apparently tailored to suit the particular story under discussion at the time or to appeal to a particular audience.
The arrival time now spans 0130; 0900; 0930; 0945-1015; noon; later that day; that evening; and very possibly several more which have not yet come to light.

As we have seen in a previous chapter the time of the call now moves to 8pm 3/5/7 at the latest, some time before the alleged events and a considerable time before the official announcements to the press.
Although individuals like Mitchell and Clarke himself may not have known the full background details, and in some cases would be used as ‘useful idiots’ and have the facts actively concealed from them, it is probable that the more senior members of the network did know rather more.
CEOPS, SIS, editors, Sky, and so on, appear to have been alerted a long time before, to enable them to get the outline logistical framework in place.

That the agreed story was badly developed, under-rehearsed and poorly executed was perhaps not to be expected of eight professional people, as it might have been thought that they would have come up with something a little better; certainly more persuasive and more coherent, and perhaps even backed by some evidence.

In this scenario, Clarke, Kandohla and Gusmaroli are mere stooges. Not-quite innocent victims.
Mitchell does not inspire belief in his intellectual agility and may also be a dupe, although some of his pronouncements lead to the belief that he may know much more.

Looking back at Clarke’s articles it is notable that the boastful ‘first on the scene’ idea does not appear until 2017. The 2007 piece makes no reference to his arrival, and by 2008 Clarke was telling the world he had arrived at ‘noon’, with no mention of speaking to the McCanns.
“I had been in Praia da Luz since noon on the day after her disappearance.”

The first/only journalist nonsense started on the 10th anniversary article in Olive Press, 2017, where both the ‘first on the scene” and speaking to the McCanns were seen for the first time. Since then both have been twisted and manipulated in a form of linguistic and logical torture which has squeezed any element of truth or meaning out of them.

Over the decade and a half we have noted and analysed various of the many outright untruths told by many of the parties, the McCanns, the Tapas 7, Mitchell, Solicitors, and many more. Many of the untruths and distortions were exculpatory, trying to get themselves out of impossible situations in which the objective facts placed them, but served merely to prove their infinite respective capacity for being economical with the ‘vérité.

Clarke’s lies are on another plane. He was not trying to get out of a situation. He was putting himself into a specific situation; attempting to position himself spatially and temporally – at a specific place at a specific time.

That at least was the theory, until now.

Now the suspicion grows that his previous attempts to place himself in PdL at a particular time were to conceal the fact that he was there at another time completely.
And that camouflage has now been stripped away. The cover story has been blown.
He is exposed, and trapped.

Strangely the FaceBook piece with all the remaining comments and questions has not been “whooshed” as were many previous ‘embarrassing’ questions or comments.



But perhaps even more strange is that Clarke has not posted anything else on his site since 23 October.
He has gone to earth; gone very quiet. It appears that all his bluster, abuse and threats have been exhausted, for the time being at least.

But the article itself is still on display. He has not taken it down.

It is still there and it says very clearly that










REFS:

1. https://twitter.com/search?q=%23olivepress&src=typd&f=live&vertical=default

2. https://www.facebook.com/OlivePressNewspaper

3. https://www.facebook.com/jon.clarke.3745

4. Clarke, Jon. MY SEARCH FOR MADELEINE: One Reporter’s 14-Year Hunt To Solve Europe’s Most Harrowing Crime (pp. 113-114). OP Books. Kindle Edition.

5 https://www.theolivepress.es/spain-news/2011/11/07/24455/


ABC Article – Original as Printed
El mismo 3 de mayo de 2007 una llamada a un teléfono de Ronda requirió su presencia. Los móviles no estaban tan extendidos y los grandes periódicos británicos buscaban contactar a Jon Clarke (Cambridge, 1968) en esta ciudad de Málaga. Acudió y le preguntaron si podía ir a Portugal.

Allí había desaparecido una niña inglesa. «No parecía un caso importante, pero fui a Praia da Luz», recuerda Clarke sobre su primer contacto con la desaparición de Madeleine McCann. Esa misma noche conoció a los padres de la pequeña, Gerry y Kate McCann. «Estaban destrozados y sentían que nadie les ayudaba», describe el periodista, que está afincado en la Costa del Sol.


ABC. Translation: [DeepL, edited]
On the very 3 May 2007, a call to a telephone in Ronda requested his presence. Mobile phones were not so widespread and the major British newspapers were looking to contact Jon Clarke (Cambridge, 1968) in this town in Malaga. He went and was asked if he could go to Portugal.

An English girl had disappeared there. "It didn't seem like an important case, but I went to Praia da Luz," recalls Clarke about his first contact with the disappearance of Madeleine McCann. That same night he met the little girl's parents, Gerry and Kate McCann. "They were devastated and felt that no one was helping them," describes the journalist, who is based on the Costa del Sol.


Muckrack article
El mismo 3 de mayo de 2007 una llamada a un teléfono de Ronda requirió su presencia. Los móviles no estaban tan extendidos y los grandes periódicos británicos buscaban contactar a Jon Clarke (Cambridge, 1968) en esta ciudad de Málaga. Acudió y le preguntaron si podía ir a Portugal.

Allí había desaparecido una niña inglesa. «No parecía un caso importante, pero fui. Lleguéa la una y media de la madrugada a Praia da Luz», recuerda Clarke sobre su primer contacto con la desaparición de Madeleine McCann.


Muckrack. Translation: [DeepL, edited]
On the very 3 May 2007, a call to a telephone in Ronda requested his presence. Mobile phones were not so widespread and the major British newspapers were looking to contact Jon Clarke (Cambridge, 1968) in this town in Malaga. He went and was asked if he could go to Portugal.

An English girl had disappeared there. "It didn't seem like an important case, but I went. I arrived at half past one in the morning in Praia da Luz", Clarke recalls about his first contact with the disappearance of Madeleine McCann.

https://whatreallyhappenedtomadeleinemccann.blogspot.com/2016/08/chapter-49-my-search-for-madeleine-call.html

Chapter 50: February 2022 A quiet Month for Madeleine watchers ?

As we have already noted, the Red Top gutter Tabloids were strangely quiet for the whole of February.
Possible reasons might include a ‘revelation’ that they had been wrong all along (unlikely); an executive decision to print no more rubbish without concrete evidence of the facts (equally unlikely); nervousness at the possible result of the law suit taken by Christian Brückner against SAT 1 and a named presenter/journalist Jutta Rabe (unlikely, but possible); lack of content generated by the Olive Press or similar fantasy machines (more probable) . . .

But behind the scenes some thing very strange has been happening.
A long email correspondence has been going on between the writer and Jon Clarke, owner, editor and journalist for the said Olive Press tabloid supermarket free advert-sheet.

I use the word “Correspondence” loosely. There is convention amongst civilised and educated people that a formal letter or email is at least acknowledged on receipt, even if the contents are merely ‘noted’. Clarke operates on a different level, and clearly thinks it is acceptable simply to ignore emails which pose embarrassing questions or raise inconvenient issues. (He has ‘form’ for this even when contacted by his own professional and disciplinary body in Spain – FAPE, Federación de Asociaciones de Periodistas de España. about a complaint. He simply ignored documents and/or emails sent to him which led to a judgment in absentia which he subsequently sought to vilify as unfair for lack of due process. Needless to say FAPE were “not amused”.)

It started with a long and threatening email, beginning with the deathless, pompous and utterly risible phrase “It has come to my attention…“
Here on his throne, master of his media and property business empire, sits the great man at whose feet unworthy minions scurry to and fro’, humbly bringing things to his attention.
He did not compound the ludicrous cliché with ‘and I view with increasing concern. . .’ . Instead he used “yet again,” but the comic effect was no less.

Comic because in those few words are contained a statement fatal to the subsequent argument. The use of that phrase shows clearly that the author has no first hand knowledge, no evidence, no documentation to support what follows, and is resorting to pomposity and rhetoric to try to conceal that.

And the substance of the complaint which had come to his attention ? An angry accusation that I had published details of his home and his family.

Which of course I had not.

THE END ?

Well yes, but only in theory.

I replied asking for details so that I could take immediate action to rectify any inadvertent slip of the type he was describing.

His reply was more agitated, refusing – or being totally unable – to identify any specifics, reverting to the slightly pathetic “you know where they are“, and making vague references to photos of sign posts, ‘his road’, his wife’s and children’s names, and finished off, most strangely, with an insistence that I remove all reference to the name of his lawyer.

Over the next three emails it gradually became clear that the only thing he could point to was the ‘Open Letter’ which I wrote shortly after the publication of Clarke’s strangely titled book, “MY SEARCH FOR MADELEINE: One Reporter’s 14-Year Hunt To Solve Europe’s Most Harrowing Crime" (Available world-wide on Amazon, in Print and Kindle editions, price £10.99.)

In the Open Letter I had actually praised the lawyer for his work, and out of courtesy referred to him by name. And where did I find the name ? In the book “MY SEARCH FOR MADELEINE: One Reporter’s 14-Year Hunt To Solve Europe’s Most Harrowing Crime". (Available world-wide on Amazon, in Print and Kindle editions, price £10.99.)

But because I detected a possible tension between him and his lawyer, and it did not materially alter the thrust of whatever argument I was making, I did change the wording to remove the name, though as I observed I was not sure how… “your lawyer, whom you have asked me not to name, but who is fulsomely thanked on the Acknowledgements page for helping you out of ‘plenty of scrapes’ has clearly been worth his weight in gold, and the ad hominem attacks on me are slightly more muted and vague than before. . .” was a significant improvement on the original. The lawyer’s name is of course still to be found in the book, “MY SEARCH FOR MADELEINE: One Reporter’s 14-Year Hunt To Solve Europe’s Most Harrowing Crime". (Available world-wide on Amazon, in Print and Kindle editions, price £10.99.). at p.iv

I then looked further at the Open Letter, and at the short paragraph in which I defended myself against a specific allegation in the book. In the book Clarke, amongst other wholly irrelevant and gratuitous information, tells the world through his Amazon world-side sales, that he abandoned his wife and family for several months. He uses the word “separated” as men usually do, but since it is commonly the man who leaves the wife and children and goes off to seek excitement and fields of oats to sow, and it is usually the mother who remains loyal to her responsibilities to her children, the word is clearly a euphemism.

In my Open Letter response I simply told how I had visited the house and left chocolate coins with the child-minder to put under the Christmas tree for the children. And that was it. I had of course no idea about, nor any interest in, Clarke’s marital breakdown. And still don’t. I didn’t want to know, and I cannot imagine there is anyone else on the planet who ‘frankly, gives a damn’. But it is there in all its grisly and gratuitous detail in the book “MY SEARCH FOR MADELEINE: One Reporter’s 14-Year Hunt To Solve Europe’s Most Harrowing Crime". (Available world-wide on Amazon, in Print and Kindle editions, price £10.99.) at p.68.

He seems proud of what he did. What his wife and his children think of being abandoned, and of his publishing the details, we may never know.

Clarke has then turned, or “spun” that into a bizarre allegation that I revealed details of the location of the house and of his wife and the children.

For those details one only has to read the book “MY SEARCH FOR MADELEINE: One Reporter’s 14-Year Hunt To Solve Europe’s Most Harrowing Crime". (Available world-wide on Amazon, in Print and Kindle editions, price £10.99.) where dates of birth of children and wife are easy to determine.
Assuming of course that anyone is remotely interested in so doing.
The reality is that the book is stuffed with irrelevant detail which dilutes and diverts from the whole intended ‘who-dun-it’ effect.

But it gets better. Or worse, depending on your point of view.

I shall try to resist the temptation to use the words “extraordinary, strange, weird, ridiculous, and ludicrous,” but readers should sprinkle them liberally into what follows to get the full effect.

Clarke then went on to accuse me of a whole string of other ‘high crimes and misdemeanours’, endlessly repeating this meme about my having revealed details of the location of his house.

What is bizarre about this is that Clarke and his wife run a successful high-end rental business, centred on their own house. It follows, logically, surely, that at some stage in the rental procedure the location of the house has to be revealed. And so it turns out. Even searching for a place to rent in that top-end price bracket will take anyone to detailed maps, mostly from maps.google where it is pinned by name. Both names in fact.

I didn’t do that. It comes from Clarke’s and his wife’s own websites. So as not to incur Clarke’s feigned anger I shall not tell you where to look. But it is not difficult to find.
Why he accuses me of having done so may become clear later.

In one of the tirade of emails he also accused me of inventing the idea that he had been in PdL the night before.

I had to gently point out that it was his own publicity machine for the book, including his own Facebook page on which he trumpeted his double-page spread in one of Spain’s best newspapers, ABC, in which his allegedly verbatim quotes of having received the phone call “that same night” and having arrived in PdL at “one thirty in the morning” were recommended to all his readers. They are incidentally still there for the entire world to see, nearly six months later, as they are on the journalist-in-question’s Muckrack page. But he clearly objects to my discussing the issues raised by the claim.
Chapter 48 covers it in more detail.

Quite why he objects to his own words being quoted I have no idea, but would be open to suggestions.

**

I return now to the strange accusation that I have revealed details of his wife and children, and very specifically that I have deliberately thereby actively and knowingly endangering his family by revealing them. Precisely how it endangers anyone to know a date of birth, or that one child was named after a English king, and the other merely had the middle letter inserted (assuming this was not an inadvertent typographical error overlooked during negligent proof-reading) is not entirely clear.

There are at least thirty-six references in Clarke’s own book to his wife, his children and all their birthdays, including a botched attempt to conceal his wife’s name then negated by use of her familial abbreviation.

Let us remind ourselves that this purports to be a book about Madeleine McCann, and either the ‘search for her’ or the ‘investigation into the alleged crime’. The two issues become strangely elided with the ungrammatical and syntactically confused sub-title “One Reporter’s 14-Year Hunt To Solve . . .”

[For non-english speakers:
In standard English the verb ‘to Hunt’ can be intransitive or transitive. You can Hunt, or Hunt for, an animal, a child or a solution to a problem. When used as a noun the same rules apply. You cannot conduct A Hunt – followed by a verb. You cannot Hunt TO Solve.
A Quest to solve, or A Hunt for an explanation or for a solution would be acceptable. Language is Clarke’s tool. He is a wordsmith, and should know better. Not even the excuse of 25 years of continuously writing to the dumbed down standard of the Tabloids excuses illiteracies and solecisms like this. And to have it in the sub-title of the book “MY SEARCH FOR MADELEINE: One Reporter’s 14-Year Hunt To Solve Europe’s Most Harrowing Crime". (Available world-wide on Amazon, in Print and Kindle editions, price £10.99.) is embarrassing, humiliating, or funny, depending on your point of view]

What the ‘Hunt to Solve’ has got to do with Clarke’s family or any of the other padding in the first third of the book is not clear. And yet he accuses me of having released these details and thereby of endangering his family.

It is not only in Clarke’s book “MY SEARCH FOR MADELEINE: One Reporter’s 14-Year Hunt To Solve Europe’s Most Harrowing Crime". (Available world-wide on Amazon, in Print and Kindle editions, price £10.99.) that he reveals details of his family.

In his own newspaper Clarke regales his readers with personal details of a family a trip to Rome to watch a Euro ’20 match. He illustrates this by publishing a large full-colour full-face selfie photo of his entire family eating sausage rolls at the stadium. And then further down the same page he publishes another photo of the entire family, now back home at their secret location, again full-face and full-length. In neither photo are his children’s eyes obscured in accordance with normal journalistic practice for the protection of minors.
Elsewhere in his own newspaper he has published a full length standing photo of him and wife, captioned with both their names. That particular photo was taken several years ago, but he published all the above within the past eight months. It is recent. He is still doing it.

Again I will not give the links to enable readers to find them, but it is all available on his website for which helpfully he provides a good internal search engine.

Do we assume that Clarke had the recommended full and meaningful conversation with his wife and his children about their own personal rights to privacy before doing this ?
I quote
“Children’s rights advocates have been urging parents to think twice before sharing information about their kids, including their pictures, because there is a conflict between the kids’ right to privacy and their parents’ right to post. Experts believe it’s important to ask your child whether they want their pictures to be shared with the world or not. These conversations will give kids the necessary feeling of autonomy, respect, and parental support, and help them develop their private and public identities.” Unquote

But even if he did, and then published, in print and STILL on the internet, why is he now accusing ME of having done it ?
He did.
I didn’t.
He exonerates himself but blames me.
Can anyone work that out ? (Answers on a postcard please)

There are several possible explanations, none of which may be correct.

Clarke may realise he has been ‘hoist with his own petard’; has been caught in his own trap. He may therefore be metaphorically either hiding under the blanket, the evidence for which is his refusing to reply to emails and pretending letters have not been delivered, or more possibly is acting like a cornered wild beast, liable to lash out at random in its attempts to escape.
If he was acting on the un-evidenced hearsay of a third party – whose identify we may guess at – he may now regret his actions, but be too proud to apologise, in the same way that he never admits that only one of the six or seven versions of his arrival in PdL can be the definitive one.

But that also suggests a large element of cowardice. An inability to come out into the open, state his case and defend his position.
In that regard he is of course following the pattern of all the “Abduction by paedophile” faithful. After fourteen long years they still have no case to put, no evidence to adduce, no position to take, and no defence except endless repetition of the original statement made by the two principal suspects, accompanied by attempts to silence any who dare to question it. And when they fail to silence they resort to ad hominen abuse, smears, sneers and innuendo, before resorting to failed appeals to the law.

There may be psychological issues which may underline this behaviour. A sense of self-importance, which morphs into narcissism, and in turn to one of the well known emotional signs, that of projection – the mental process by which people attribute to others what is in their own minds. More commonly projection refers to “unconsciously taking unwanted emotions or traits you don't like about yourself and attributing them to someone else.” The cheating spouse accuses the partner of infidelity; the boss accuses employees of submitting false overtime claims, whilst himself neglecting his own tasks and spending working hours playing golf, are the classic examples. “Projection does what all defence mechanisms are meant to do: keep discomfort about ourselves at bay and outside our awareness,” “This form of emotional displacement makes it much easier to live with ourselves … because everyone else is responsible for our misery – not us!
As a result of externalising our emotions and perceiving them in others, we create false self-images that portray us as “the victim” or “the good/righteous person” when the reality is that we aren’t.”

We see suggestions of this in another of his favourite attacks on me. That of describing me as ”a senior career detective”, and “a former career detective of three decades long [sic !]”

Quite apart from the infant-school solecism and basic illiteracy of the latter (p.117 Kindle) the facts – sorry to use that rude word – are easy to find.
Anyone who knows me, – or bothers to ask – will know that I was a detective officer for some time in my early service and was then selected and promoted into the training department to pass my skills to the next generation of officers. Later in my service I had “executive supervisory” responsibility for the CID under my command as the Divisional Operational commander. My front-line detective service amounts to less than one quarter of my total service.
All this he could have checked either by research on the internet, or by sending me an email or giving me a ring. He did in fact know it already though I concede he may have forgotten.

Just as he could have discovered the facts about Jill Havern, who he sneeringly refers to in his book “MY SEARCH FOR MADELEINE: One Reporter’s 14-Year Hunt To Solve Europe’s Most Harrowing Crime". (Available world-wide on Amazon, in Print and Kindle editions, price £10.99.), as “a controversial blogger by night and driving instructor by day”.

Clarke actually DID contact her by email a long time ago, and seemed delighted to be able to crow that he had discovered she was a driving instructor and that she lived in Cheshire.

Except of course, (those annoying and inconvenient FACTS again), she isn’t and she doesn’t.

So far as she can remember Jill has never been to Cheshire in her life, and has not been a driving instructor for a very long time. Nor was she when Clarke’s book “MY SEARCH FOR MADELEINE: One Reporter’s 14-Year Hunt To Solve Europe’s Most Harrowing Crime". (Available world-wide on Amazon, in Print and Kindle editions, price £10.99.) was in preparation, and for more than half a decade before his email.

Wrong about the county. Wrong about the town. Wrong about the occupation.
Close enough for a geography student turned Tabloid “hack” (his word), turned Press magnate, turned amateur detective I suppose. But not the sort of attention to detail on which you could base a prosecution.

And remember that all this was available via a polite email or phone call. Most of the ‘facts’ in Clarke’s book “MY SEARCH FOR MADELEINE: One Reporter’s 14-Year Hunt To Solve Europe’s Most Harrowing Crime". (Available world-wide on Amazon, in Print and Kindle editions, price £10.99.) were not so easily available, and would have required extensive collation and cross-checking, neither skill common amongst “tabloid hacks”.

Talking of politeness my final three emails, two urgent ones to ask for details, links, references, screen shots or quotes to let me address and correct the alleged offences, and the final one, running to some seven pages, with documentary evidence in the form of the photos and screen shots I have mentioned, dismantling the entire series of allegations and accusations received not even an acknowledgment, let alone the courtesy of a reply.

I might have expected that from Clarke, who as we have noted has “form” for ignoring inconvenient letters and emails, but I did not expect that his lawyers to whom I copied the email, would similarly breach their professional codes. Neither replied. Whether this was on Clarke’s instructions, a breach of common courtesy, or Professional Negligence is impossible to ascertain at this point.

Or perhaps they too are going to claim they never received them.

And what was the point of all this nonsense ?

In his first email Clarke said that what I had done was highly illegal, and finished by telling me the email was a warning and that he would be launching legal action against me if I failed to remove the posts.
In his second he again demanded that I remove the personal information and photos I had posted on [sic] his home, plus his wife and children’s details.
By the third the tone became more muted as he realised he had no evidence, and the phrase “You know where they are” appeared, but he sought reinforce his stance with a threat of a costly law suit “if and when” he approached the UK courts.

Given that there were no posts, no photos, and no details, it made removing them rather tricky. And in a further email Clarke admitted that he did not have the time to “pick through the thousands of words . . .”

Or in plain English, either genuinely did not have the time to find the evidence to support his outrageous accusation, or more likely had come to the realisation that there was none.
Unfortunately in both this case and the Madeleine McCann case, and indeed every other case or which I have ever been involved or of which I have ever heard, evidence IS required.

It also, in English law, makes his whole tirade against me a specific offence under s2(1), Protection from Harassment Act 1997. Worthington-v-Metropolitan is the current leading case. The judgment was interesting in that the Justices of Appeal had some comments about clients who lie to their lawyers, and about lawyers who repeat the lies without asking even the simplest questions of their clients to establish the facts.

In Worthington the specific threat was also of legal action, and as in that case it is clear that the specified conditions which Clarke demanded I change did not in fact exist.

Whether his lawyers were complicit in all this and are now deeply embarrassed and ashamed at having been duped, again we may never know.

It goes without saying that since then there has been a deafening silence. From Clarke, from his lawyers and from the many others to whom he copied the entire correspondence. Whether he copied my final email to them including all the attachments. – the evidence – is unclear.

February was not quite as quiet as it looked.

https://whatreallyhappenedtomadeleinemccann.blogspot.com/2016/08/chapter-50-february-2022-quiet-month.html

CHAPTER 51 SOME RANDOM UNRELATED THOUGHTS

In a week when even the BBC has apologised and paid out a lot of your, the licence payers’ money for the disgraceful conduct and a series of blatant lies and libels by one of their top ‘journalists’ to get a sensational and “exclusive” story, and then covering it up at the highest levels in management for over a quarter of a century, I browsed through other organs of disinformation and junk ‘exclusive’ stories. In some cases “Exclusive” apparently means ‘appearing in no more than five other papers’, (rather like the definition of “top secret” meaning “tell no more than twelve”)
I focussed on some of the nonsense, including lies and libels published over the past 14 years, which continue to be covered up, denied, or simply ignored.

But first an Update.

In Chapter 50, “February 2022, A Quiet Month for Madeleine Watchers” I relate the extraordinary series of unfounded allegations and accusations made by Jon Clarke, owner, editor and journalist the Olive Press, levelled at me in a series of e-mails.
They included a totally false suggestion that I had identified the location of his house and thereby exposed him, his wife and children to some unspecified danger. I showed how Clarke himself with his wife had done exactly this as an obviously very necessary part of their property rental business, centred on the house in question, and sent Clarke, his wife and his two lawyers the documentary evidence, with the suggestion they they might like to take the appropriate steps themselves.
I have of course received neither acknowledgement nor reply from any of them.
But my attention was drawn by another researcher, to the fact that rental house is now tagged on maps.google with “Permanently closed”. This is a strange and ineffective way of anonymising it, unless of course it genuinely is permanently closed.
All very strange, and for anyone still remotely interested, intriguing. Or perhaps not.
***

Back to the nonsense.
My browser alerted me as always to the ever-absorbing Olive Press.

Many years ago, before tabloid journalists were roundly rebuked and shown to be ignorant, uneducated, scientifically illiterate, inaccurate, and apparently incapable even of basic and cursory research, they published on a fairly regular basis totally invented stories about burglaries where the house/apartment/camper van/tent had allegedly been filled with anaesthetic gas to facilitate the crime.
The story has a long history, and as recently as the expensive foray with their invented company ALPHAIG into the McCann case, Cowley and Edgar were solemnly and ridiculously invoking chloroform as the active stupefacient.
Proving, if any ever doubted it, that they were ill-educated charlatans without an ‘O’ level or CSE in Chemistry between them, and with no access to modern means of research. But far more seriously, that they had not taken into account that both their clients did have this knowledge, one having even been a Junior Registrar Anaesthetist, and that both would immediately realise the “Fund” was being defrauded. The contract was terminated shortly after this.

But the Olive Press and other tabloids ran nonsense stories of this type over several years, until finally the Royal College of Anaesthetists issued their statement dismissing the stories as ludicrous fantasy for all time. And the sequence of stories faded away with a whimper.      REF 1

But never one to pay much attention to anything as mundane as Facts, some years after this the press including the OP ran yet another two similar stories, one allegedly involving Richard Hammond and a second two pensioners in Spain. The issue was assigned to the cat-litter tray with due contempt.

Interestingly the Broadsheets queried the ”official story”. It seems the OP did not.     REF 2. REF 3

Now again we have something different but strangely similar as you may observe.

In the edition of 13th July 2022 the OP reports “Four women report being drugged intravenously at Pamplona’s San Fermín festival.”

I will give the full text so that readers may savour the delicious ironies (and marvel at the trademark strange syntax)      REF 4


“Four women have come forward after apparently being injected by strangers with drugs during San Fermin on Saturday night and early Sunday morning.
“The victims went to the emergency services in Pamplona reporting symptoms of dizziness and feeling as though they were about to lose consciousness.
“The first case allegedly took place on Saturday night, with several more reported about 2am.
“The four women stated that they felt disorientated after feeling a prick in their arm in what they described as a sensation similar to the feeling of being administered an injection.
“Police said they were taking the reports extremely seriously and advised anyone who suspects they are the victim of drugging or who felt dizzy or disorientated to seek medical assistance immediately.
“In recent months there are have been a number of cases of women reporting they had been drugged intravenously.
“In October of last year, a spate of druggings at nightclubs in the UK were reported across several cities, with victims being injected with unknown substances.
ENDS

As Tanner once notoriously said “I’m not making this up, you know”

I hardly know where to start.
Intra-venous. Means into the vein.
As opposed to intra-dermal, meaning into the skin, sub-cutaneous, meaning under the deeper layer of the skin, or intra-muscular, meaning into the muscle.
There are many other names for different injection sites, which are specialised and of no importance here.
But twice the OP insists it is Intravenous. Into the vein.
Anyone who has ever given blood for transfusion, had some taken for a blood test, or had a drip set up will know of the time and the skill required to find and visualise a suitable vein and then to puncture and slide the needle accurately and almost horizontally into it. There is a whole profession devoted to exactly this. Phlebotomists.
A drug administered in this way has a very rapid effect, as it is circulated to the entire body and particularly to the brain within a few heartbeats. Anyone who has had general anaesthesia will understand.

But the OP insists this was done to no fewer than four women, we may suppose given the time frame at a night club or dance hall, on the penultimate night of one of the most famous and well attended Fiestas in Spain. And that they then sought medical attention from the emergency services.

Is it not more likely that even if it happened at all, it could have been intramuscular, like the COVID and any other vaccination jab, into the deltoid or any other conveniently exposed muscle.
If it happened. To receive an injection involves a considerable degree of cooperation, at its most basic that of keeping STILL, and not twisting away as a natural reflex to the adverse stimulus, which can in turn cause tissue damage and acute pain.
We are told that the cases in the UK involved “unknown substances”.
Would not a medic in A&E when presented with this set of “facts” take a blood sample and send it immediately and urgently for analysis to identify the substance before the patient were considered for discharge ?

Then we are told that they felt “dizzy and disorientated”. That is surely the whole point of going to a night club after a entire day in the sweltering heat of July in Spain, watching bulls being run though the town and then ‘played’ and killed in the bull-ring, refreshing yourself constantly with the obligatory cerveza or vino tinto, before having a late dinner and being picked up by some young men in dashing uniforms of white T shirt and white trousers, with the red sash and neckerchief, and taken to the local discotheque, there to be spun round on the dance floor and bought drinks all night, before having to make a decision about where (and with whom) to sleep.
The music and the spinning and flashing lights are themselves capable of making most people ‘dizzy and disorientated’. Other ‘herbal substances’ are not unknown at these venues.

Is the OP once again pretending knowledge by giving too much detail and using specialised vocabulary, with the exact opposite effect when it is shown to be erroneous ?

There are dangers in detail.

One of the features regularly encountered when guilty persons try to exculpate themselves is that they have rehearsed the ‘story’ so many times that they add far too much detail, and fill in what they perceive as gaps which might be fatal to their account.

We have looked at this before, and have observed the many instances

“9:04 by his watch” being one of the first and most obvious.
No one would look at a watch in those circumstances when going to check a child, and no one would then make a mental note of the time to the nearest minute.
“after pudding” or ‘before the coffee” would have been perfectly intelligible. Even “I suppose a bit after nine’ would have been acceptable
But “9:04 BY HIS WATCH” is ludicrous, and clearly an invention.
A skilled detective will not ask too many questions at the start.
She will invite the witnesses or suspects to tell the story in their own words, and will not challenge even when something is said which is blatantly wrong.

The attention to detail comes in when the subsequent statement is analysed.

In one allegation against Brückner the victim was said to be clear that her assailant had a cross-shaped scar on his left thigh. Eventually the legal process allowed an inspection of his body by a medical practitioner, and one assumes a Scenes of Crime photographer to record anything found, or NOT found.
The nature of highly detailed evidence of that sort means that IF Brückner had such a scar he might, but only might be the person involved. If he didn’t he definitively wasn’t.

[SPOILER ALERT. – – – He didn’t. ]

Nor has he had facio-maxilliary and orthodontic surgery. But Clarke is so determined to frame his latest suspect that he seems to be convinced this must have happened to fit him into the photofit and very detailed description of the buck teeth and overbite given by another victim/witness in another case.
Indeed the whole of the past 14 years has, for Clarke and several others, been a question of imagining – but without detail – what happened, deciding who did it, and then looking for, or inventing, scraps of evidence and ‘sightings’ which can be interpreted or manipulated to support that pre-conception.

The more old fashioned way is to gather all the available evidence – of course including what the victim says – even if there are different “versions” from the same witness – and then seeing what it indicates, deducing from it a theory or theories about possible scenarios, and then testing each in turn to see which stands up to rigorous destructive criticism.

With Clarke things are different
MURAT : It must be him because . . .he has a glass eye, [he doesn’t] and speaks Portuguese
HEWLETT: It must be him because . . .he is a foreign itinerant. And dead.
MONTIERO: It must be him because . . . he is foreign and black. And also dead.
UN-NAMED FAMILY: It must be them because. . . they have a blonde girl called Maddie
(and even though I knew it wasn't her I printed the story anyway)
GERMAN at Alcossebres: It must be him because . . .he is foreign and has a VW van and a blonde girlfriend.
and now
BRÜCKNER: It must be him because he is foreign (see above) speaks German, once had long hair, and has convictions.

We must remember that in not one of these cases was there a single shred of evidence that any of them had done IT, largely because no one, not the PJ, not Grange, not the BKA, not M3, not Oakley International, not ALPHAIG, not the McCanns, not the Tapas 7, and not any of the hundreds of journalists and commentators, bloggers or tweeters, nor anyone else in the press, including Clarke himself, have ever been able to spell out coherently what IT actually IS; what happened; or how and when IT was or could possibly have been accomplished.
After 14 years of investigation that seems still to be the case.

Elsewhere in his book Clarke inserts a few more names, for reasons of his own. (Perhaps in case one of them ends up being convicted of something, when he will be able to say “I told you so”)
REID: conveniently dead
and then
NEY: It must be him because . . . (see above and fill in as necessary)
But here Clarke lets his guard slip when Ney is eliminated and he eloquently and revealingly uses the phrase . . . “It was so disappointing” [“MY SEARCH FOR MADELEINE: One Reporter’s 14-Year Hunt To Solve Europe’s Most Harrowing Crime". (Available world-wide on Amazon, in Print and Kindle editions, price £10.99.) at p. 63.]

In 2012 Clarke published an ’exclusive’ about a man and child seen on a flight to Ibiza. Complete with photo. He did not apparently contact the PJ or Grange in the first instance but sent it to the Sun, Mirror, Star and Record, who syndicated it to 12 countries, whose own tabloid gutter press went to work on the story and published the photo of the little girl who was definitively NOT Madeleine.

In his book he comments on this, not with a sense of shame or with an unreserved apology for the unwarranted intrusion on privacy, but with the strangely worded phrase – even for Clarke – that he was “delighted … when Mitchell … praised the sighting”. [op.cit. p.59]

Quite what this is meant to convey is far from clear, but we may deduce that it reveals Clarke’s true motivation.
What he was eventually paid for this nonsense will never be known. But clearly in his murky and unprincipled world a third-hand unconfirmed story, complete with a photo of someone else entirely is worth a lot of money. As it was for Clarke with Kidman and Murat, both of which disgraceful episodes he details in his book without a hint of remorse for his actions.

It may be that by not reporting the sightings to the police he may hope he cannot be accused of Wasting Police Time. Except with Murat, obviously, and he can always blame Lori Campbell for that, since he is clearly still frustrated and furious with her having taken all the “glory” for framing him. [op.cit. p.24]

For the record three of his victims received libel damages, though notably not from Clarke, who is able to off-load his Libels to his paymasters.
Kidman £undisclosed but donated to a Children’s Charity, Murat £600,000. Malinka £ 100,000
***

When we try to work out what happened to Madeleine Beth McCann, we must recognise that is not a simple Cartesian proposition “cogito ergo sum” I think therefore I am.

IT doesn’t work like that. We cannot argue from bogus philosophical principals
‘Madeleine is not in bed, therefore she must have been abducted by a predatory paedophile’
and yet that is the intellectual level to which the Abduction acolytes and apologists have sunk.

Answering a question with a question does not make the first question go away. It simply doesn’t answer it, and by not so doing encourages listeners to repeat it, or to assume that the refusal to answer bears some hidden significance.

GM used this tactic outside the Court in Lisbon, Portugal, in February 2010 when asked a perfectly simply question by a perceptive journalist.

Journalist: What evidence do you have that there was an abduction?
KM: I know, I was there. I found my daughter gone. I know more than you do.
GM Where… where is ... where is… where is the child ? What other explanation can explain why she’s not here?

                                                                                YouTube video at 7:05.     REF 5

Neither of which, with respect, answers the question.

The question remains unanswered, even after 14 years.

********

CLARKE SABOTAGES PROSECUTION CASE, AND LETS BRÜCKNER WALK FREE ? [EXCLUSIVE]

It is now eight months since Jon Clarke posted an article advertising his book from ABC, the renowned Spanish Newspaper on his FaceBook Page.
As we noted in Chapters 48 and 49 the article and the Muckrack entry associated with it state unequivocally that Clarke received the phone call alerting him to the missing child “that VERY day” [3/5/7], and that he arrived in Praia da Luz in “the early hours of the morning” or in his own words, quoted verbatim “at 1:30 am”.
As we have calculated that puts the time of the phone call at around 8pm
He has been questioned about this detail, and has refused to answer, even characteristically resorting to “whooshing’ perfectly sound questions from the page.
A further question was posted a few weeks ago, and so far it remains on display. Unanswered.
So I preserve it here.         REF 6

Since my last post was "whooshed", I shall again ask the simple question. Do you stand by the content of this article and the Muckrack entry by Sn. Madueño associated with it , or not?

As we noted in Chapters 48 and 49, it is of the utmost importance to know the truth about this.
If it is wrong and misquoted or a misunderstanding, or simply an excess of braggadocio, then Clarke should say so, and finish the matter.
If he does not then Grange, the PJ, the BKA and now particularly H. Fülscher and Brückner will surely take an interest.
H. Fülscher might even subpoena Clarke to appear as a defence witness.

Let us spell out why.

IF the prosecution insists that the McCann’s and Tapas 7’s time-line is correct and that the ‘offence’, whatever it was, took place on 3/5/7 between 9:25pm and 9:28pm, and that the first phone calls to the police were made after 10:00pm . . .
THEN evidence that a phone call about a missing child was received about 8pm kills the prosecution case stone dead on Day 1 of the trial . . .
BECAUSE what is alleged against Brückner clearly did not and COULD NOT have happened. It is 14 years too late for the McCanns and Tapas 7 to change the timelines. Any of them.

The trial cannot proceed, and Brückner walks free, even if he did IT.

If Clarke can understand that he may realise he has a duty to tell the truth, on this occasion at least. The evidence he has put into the public domain thus far may be the key to the release of a man whom clearly he believes to be Guilty.

He is trapped. Only the truth will set him free. Wahrheit Macht Frei.



REFERENCES AND LINKS

1  https://www.rcoa.ac.uk/news-and-bulletin/rcoa-news-and-statements/statement-alleged-gassing-motor-vehicles

Statement on alleged gassing in motor vehicles

Despite the increasing numbers of reports of people being gassed in motor-homes or commercial trucks in France, and the warning put out by the Foreign Office for travellers to be aware of this danger, this College remains of the view that this is a myth.
It is the view of the College that it would not be possible to render someone unconscious by blowing ether, chloroform or any of the currently used volatile anaesthetic agents, through the window of a motor-home without their knowledge, even if they were sleeping at the time. Ether is an extremely pungent agent and a relatively weak anaesthetic by modern standards and has a very irritant affect on the air passages, causing coughing and sometimes vomiting. It takes some time to reach unconsciousness, even if given by direct application to the face on a cloth, and the concentration needed by some sort of spray administered directly into a room would be enormous. The smell hangs around for days and would be obvious to anyone the next day.
Even the more powerful modern volatile agents would need to be delivered in tankerloads of carrier gas by a large compressor. Potential agents, such as the one used by the Russians in the Moscow siege are few in number and difficult to obtain. Moreover, these drugs would be too expensive for the average thief to use.
The other important point to remember is that general anaesthetics are potentially very dangerous, which is why they are only administered in the UK by doctors who have undergone many years of postgraduate training in the subject and who remain with the unconscious patient throughout the anaesthetic. Unsupervised patients are likely to die from obstruction of the airway by their tongues falling back. In the Moscow siege approximately 20% of the people died, many probably from airway obstruction directly related to the agent used.
If there was a totally safe, odourless, potent, cheap anaesthetic agent available to thieves for this purpose it is likely the medical profession would know about it and be investigating its use in anaesthetic practice.
14 July 2014


2
Times
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/tv-presenter-s-family-robbed-by-gas-thieves-lkn6wlw03
HEADLINE Richard Hammond’s family ‘robbed by gas thieves’. [note the inverted commas]
“The knockout gas burglars of Saint-Tropez are either callous criminals or a myth fuelled by the accounts of traumatised victims.”

Telegraph
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/09/02/richard-hammonds-family-robbed-sleep-amid-fears-saint-tropez/
“Fears are emerging that Saint Tropez's knockout gas burglars have returned after Richard Hammond's family were robbed in their sleep.”

But then further into the article the Telegraph observes
“Experts have doubted the claims, saying gasses such as ethers and chloroforms would cause coughing and spluttering to anyone exposed to high doses. It would not be possible to pump high enough concentrations of alternative gasses, such as nitrous oxide, through an entire villa to knock victims out for long enough, some experts have said.”

3
Olive Press
EXCLUSIVE: GANG GAS BRITISH EXPAT PENSIONERS BEFORE LOOTING HOME AND TORCHING CAR AFTER USING IT FOR MORE ROBBERIES IN SOUTHERN SPAIN
John and Jacqueline A, 72 and 70, had their car stolen from outside their house, after they were gassed at night by brazen thieves.
“I’m a light sleeper and our dog barks at the slightest noise so police are 100% sure we were gassed.






5 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3k5Q7QZNfFA
Outside Lisbon Court 10 Feb 2010
At 7.05 onwards
Reporter: What evidence do you have that there was an abduction ?
KM: I know, I was there. I found my daughter gone. I know more than you do.
GM Where… where is... where is…. where is the child ? What other explanation can explain why she’s not here ?






6
https://www.facebook.com/jon.clarke.3745

https://whatreallyhappenedtomadeleinemccann.blogspot.com/2016/08/chapter-51-some-random-unrelated.html

CHAPTER 52




For those who keep their eye on the “newsnow.co.uk” site it certainly seemed that August was ‘All quiet on the Madeleine front’ the only entries being the ludicrous stories about Rebecca Vardy’s having (allegedly) received threats and denigratory comments on her social media, including the insane one that she was in some way linked to the case of Madeleine McCann, and even (allegedly) accusing her of having been the one who ’snatched’ her.
This nonsense was duly churned by the red top Tabloids with their trademark lack of attention to detail.

***
When the previous Chapter, 51, “Some Random Unrelated Thoughts”  was referenced on the usual facebook pages, Jon Clarke of the Olive Press, who had been mentioned more than once, retorted in characteristic ad hominem (abusive) fashion . .    I quote:
"Jon Clarke
What a sad man - more lies and long, boring oft-repeated conjecture.
Sitting longer in a dark room than normal, but I suppose it must be hot there in Nerja - or is Maclewd [sic] hiding from someone or something?
His hatred for the media must have some basis in something - not that anyone on this dwindling forum will care to probe.”
There were of course no details of what was supposed to be untrue, any more than details were ever provided of how, where, when, or to whom I was supposed to have revealed details of his house and his family, an alleged act for which he threatened me with legal proceedings – to be started by midnight nine months ago –  and involved two firms of solicitors in the ‘conversation.   As a matter of record neither has had the decency or professional courtesy even to confirm receipt of my email reply.  But then neither has Clarke nor his wife who was copied by Clarke into all the exchanges.  (Vide Chapter 50, “A Quiet Month for Madeleine Watchers?”
I felt constrained to answer the specific point about the ridiculous and totally untrue allegation that I hold a “hatred for the media”, which I copy here so that readers will know where I stand.
 
QUOTE
“The day after this Chapter was published and ‘churned’ to various Facebook sites, Clarke responded in characteristic belligerent fashion, denouncing it as lies, and finishing with
“His hatred for the media must have a basis in something…”
which is as we might expect completely untrue. 

I do not hate the ‘media’
I am second to none in my admiration for good, and particularly for diligent investigative journalism.
We remember 
* Bernstein and Woodward, who brought down a President “the single greatest reporting effort of all time”, 

• Heather Brooke who spend over five years delving into MPs’ expenses, to reveal when it was finally published (by the Telegraph) that it was a scandal which led to several being imprisoned, others losing their seats, and to a wholesale review of internal systems within the heart of Parliament
  
  
• Sue Reid whose focus on the Tavistock Clinic has led to its being closed this very week
  
  
• Nick Davies on the phone hacking scandal
  
  
• Andrew Norfolk on grooming and trafficking in Northern towns
  
  
• Claire Newall on the corruption at the heart of FIFA
  
  
• and many more
  
  

What do they have in common ?
They all refused to accept the “Official Story”.  
Each one was determined to challenge of at least to check what they had been told, what the ‘experts” and the politicians and the Police and the Spokesmen were telling them.

… ‘that it was just a routine burglary (Watergate); that all receipts were properly inspected (expenses);  that this was recognised medical practice and did not cause harm to children (Tavistock)’ . . .

They refused to accept this and to drift away.
And the others ?   The hacks who turn up at incidents, ask damn-fool questions to which the answers are obvious anyway, and even more stupid ones which they must know cannot be answered for various reasons of legality, security or common decency ?   I do not hate them.  I pity and deplore them and the Tabloids which then publish the tripe they write, but I do not hate them.

The gutter press has a place to keep the illiterate masses happy.  Page 3 of the Sun was there for a reason.
The News of the World had its infamous place in the order of things, as do the Star and the Record

I reserve my contempt for those who passively accept the official line on anything whilst falsely claiming to be independent and to be investigating.  For those who pretend that pursuing a suspect who has already been exonerated is in some way helping an enquiry.  For those who by refusing to look at evidence, even as basic as a registration plate on a motor vehicle or the shutter on a window, and who by concealing facts make a saleable stories out of falsehood.   For those who fail to do even basic research, invent ‘facts’ to fit a story, or mistake personal prejudice for evidence.

But that is not “hatred’.   It may be contempt, pity, despite, scorn or many other things, but not Hatred. 
That may be reserved for those who use their publishing power to lie, libel and abuse those who lack adequate means of reply.”

END QUOTE

And so it is with the pathetic people who allegedly accused Rebecca Vardy of having been in PdL and having ‘snatched” Madeleine McCann. [Assuming of course that Vardy’s evidence can be believed.  It wasn’t in the High Court !]

But is there a qualitative difference between making that inane allegation, and printing the ridiculous and incidentally very serious allegation in a paper and on-line that Ms. Kay Burley of Sky News was in PdL at the time of the incident ?  It is clear to the entire world that she was not, since she was in the studios presenting the very news reports as the situation unfolded.  Everyone knows that.   The timed and dated video evidence can be found on YouTube, and yet Jon Clarke published in his own newspaper and on-line years later that it was so.

And despite the passage of time, despite its having been pointed out to Clarke over several years, and despite himself appearing on Burley’s own news ‘show’, Clarke has never amended the on-line version, nor to my knowledge published a correction to the hard copy.

(IT IS STILL THERE on Clarke’s own website.   I have just accessed it to check.  The reference screen shot shows clearly the time and date Tue 13 Sep. 13:15 [EEST])

That same paragraph contains the preposterous lie about the deep trench. 
Here it is in all its gruesomely and risibly mendacious detail.
“The only reporter on the scene till late that evening – apart from Sky News reporter Kay Burley, who happened to be on holiday there – I spent time grilling neighbours, before noticing that a road crew was still digging up the street to lay sewage pipes literally right outside the apartment. The trench was nearly two metres deep and three men continued to shuffle around inside it.”

Olive Press Exclusive ?  Buy One Lie, Get One Free ?.   Actually get TWO free, since he wasn’t the first journalist on the scene either, (till late evening or at any other time, but we’ll charitably count that as One)
What can one say ?  What do we do with the extraordinary suggestion that having been first at the “scene”, he spent time footling around ‘grilling neighbours” BEFORE even noticing a six foot deep trench “literally” right outside the apartment . . . ?
Despair ?
Perhaps it is a mercy that everyone else can see right through this, and can find the truth.

To explain to newcomers, or to ram it home to those who want to believe something else . . .
…only reporter on the scene – – – – – he wasn’t
…Kay Burley on holiday there – – – – – she wasn’t
…trench - literally right outside – – – – – there wasn’t

Three lies on one short sentence. Even for Tabloid journalist that is pushing towards a record.

Also still on-line, on Clarke’s own Facebook Page is the article and advert for his book, “MY SEARCH FOR MADELEINE: One Reporter’s 14-Year Hunt To Solve Europe’s Most Harrowing Crime". (Available world-wide on Amazon, in Print and Kindle editions, price £10.99.).

The article in the one of the three leading Spanish newspapers, ABC,  and under the name of one of their most respected journalists, Sr. JJ Madueño, first quoted Clarke as having said he got the phone call ‘that same day’ which can only refer to Thursday 3/5/7, and that he arrived in PdL at 1:30am the following morning, which can only mean Friday 4/5/7.
This was amended a little time later in the print and on-line version to arriving in the “early hours of the morning”, which amounts to the same thing, but the original was accurately copied by the MuckRack website, as well as by diligent ‘investigative researchers’ who took screen shots and noted links, and is preserved to this day.

This has been discussed before, at Chapter 48 “My Search for Madeleine”.  and assuming it was different from either of the printed versions, Clarke has failed or refused or been unable to explain the details of what actually did happen.

He has however left the article on his Facebook page, and after 11 months it must surely be the case that the reading public are entitled to be permitted to analyse its veracity.

The reference screen shot shows the date and time, Tue 13 Sep 13:38  [EEST]
It also shows that this has been on-line, presented by Clarke as the “journalistic truth” since 23 October 2021.
I quote from a commentator writing recently in the context of lockdown for COVID, and the revelations which are gradually unfolding that the advisors and the PM were NOT in agreement, and that decisions were being made which were NOT in accordance with the best advice.
“Journalists Knew that it was either wrong, or as least not the unanimous and settled solution as they presented it.  They were therefore either coerced, or conspirators.”
“It is not the function of journalists to be the gatekeepers. It is their duty to report all the facts, and not their job to select.”
He goes on to say
“Decent journalists are becoming exasperated at the unprofessional nature of what their colleagues are doing.”

There are of course, still some decent journalists in the world.

Readers may recall the uproar after Meghan Markle (Duchess of Sussex) claimed that when she attended the premiere of ‘The Lion King’ in 2019, a cast member from South Africa told her, “When you married into this family, we rejoiced in the streets the same we did when Mandela was freed from prison.”
This was swiftly debunked by a couple of real investigative journalists, who tracked down the only South African cast member, and found he had not even been at the Premier. 
They followed by ‘tirelessly’ investigating further – by making another phone call – and spoke to the only other South African, the composer of the soundtrack. He HAD been there and had spoken to Meghan, but denied having discussed anything of the sort, and reported that he only spoke to her for a few minutes about the film itself and didn’t mention Mandela at all.
Is this a case where “recollections may vary” or was it a simple Lie ?

There is also at least one other decent journalist who wrote and published a simple account of the proceedings before the ECHR in the case of “McCann & Healy -v- Portugal”, pointing out, contrary to the nonsense in the Tabloid press that it was NOT a case against Dr Amaral, that case having been concluded in Portugal in 2017.
But the gutter press continue to churn out nonsense.  It is inconceivable that not one Editor, sub-editor or member of the legal team does not understand the legal process.  That they continue to publish the same parallel untruths could lead sentient people to believe they are being controlled and paid.

And now the inevitable judgment has been handed down – that one of their complaints was not even admissible, and the other whilst legally admissible was rejected partly on the grounds of the McCanns’ own behaviour – Editors are showing either that they still don’t understand, or that they are in the pay of someone who is still controlling what they write. 

*****
What do we know and what can we prove about Clarke and his visit to PdL ?

We know he was there.  We have independent evidence, timed and dated photographs and video of that, some of it aired on Sky news bulletins, by Kay Burley herself, on the day in question.
We know he looked towards the window and the shutters. We have independent evidence, timed and dated photographic and video, of that. 
We may surmise that he observed that the shutters were not broken, forced, smashed or jemmied.  It is possible, though extremely unlikely, that this did not register with him.  What is certain is that he remained in PdL for some days or weeks, during which the lies surrounding the shutters were circulated, and that he had time to revisit to scene to make his own independent observations.
In any event he did not, and does not to this day, tell his readers the facts. They have to resort to their own research for that.

Whilst conducting the necessary research for this chapter, checking references and ensuring that quotes were copied accurately, I came across YET ANOTHER more recent ‘version of the truth’.

This one was clearly written by Clarke himself, and appears under his sole authorship.
It is in the ‘i’ newspaper, and may be viewed on-line at the address in the reference section.  [It is behind a paywall, but this can be defeated by using the 12ft.io/ site as the prefix, as can most paywalls.  I give the original link, and the amended one for those who choose not to pay a subscription for nonsense.]

The first paragraphs will indicate to regular readers and followers of the endless changes of Clarke’s story that all is well. Nothing has changed.  He continues to alter the story as time goes on.

“I was one of the first reporters on the scene after Madeleine McCann’s disappearance. This is what I remember”

Note:  Not THE first. He is now ONE OF the first.  This is demonstrably TRUE, but a reversal of what he has been violently arguing for the past 14 years.

“It’s been 15 years and five days since I rolled into the sleepy seaside resort of Praia da Luz as a journalist covering the Iberian Peninsula, expecting a three-year-old toddler to have turned up either dead in a pool or alive by a miracle.”
Note:  This directly contradicts one of the statements in his own book, where he talks of his financial situation, and eagerly grasps the opportunity to take on a “MEATY” case, whilst only a few pages before saying he thought Madeline might have been found even before he arrived.   Attempts have been made to reconcile these two positions, so far without success.   [pp. 21 & 37/437. Kindle ed.]

“I was on the scene only 12 hours after Madeleine McCann went missing and I am as certain today as I was then that she was abducted by a predatory paedophile.”
Note:  This implies that immediately on arrival he became convinced of “abduction by predatory paedophile”, without a moment of consideration of other possibilities, or of the lack of evidence for this particular assertion.

“What was remarkable back then, during those early hours, was just how lackadaisical the police effort was to find her. When I arrived, a couple of local cops milled around, while a few expats scratched their heads.“
Note:  Now that Clarke is admitting he arrived around 10am, his insistence that there were only a “couple of cops” is directly contrary to the known and observable facts, though interestingly this might have been more persuasive for an arrival time of 1:30am, as was reported in his article in ABC.   He is filmed on several occasions with GDR police, with PJ officers, close to dog handlers and their dogs and vans, forensic staff, quite apart from the many fellow journalists with whom he seen comparing notes.  All this is supported by contemporaneous news-reel video and photographs, the links to which are provided below in the references.

Then comes the remarkable revelation > > >

“So unsecured was the crime scene I could literally walk up some steps under a flimsy piece of police tape and right into the apartment. I would have been nearly the 30th person to have left my DNA imprint in the holiday rental in just a few hours. Thankfully, I had the good sense not to try.”

In this extraordinary paragraph the first sentence is in the simple past, and indicates – in standard usage – that Clarke DID walk up some steps.   His [mis]use of the word “literally” has been commented on before, in the context of the “Deep trench”.  (:copyright: J Clarke)    See Chapter 33 “Entrenched Lies”
He seems to believe it acts to negate what follows, rather than merely to exaggerate and emphasise what is being said in the informal usage, without being ‘literally’ true in the formal sense of ‘exact’.

The second sentence uses a conditional perfect “I would have been . . .”, indicating that he did was not and not.
And the final sentence tells us definitively that he did not.

[for non-native English speakers “I could walk” = I did walk. It was possible and I did.
 “I could have walked = I didn’t walk, even though it was possible
“I would have been nearly the 30th person = I wasn’t, because I didn’t do it, though it was possible ]

But in his own book, written, proof-read and edited by him, and vetted for content by two solicitors, Clarke tells us that, in fact, he DID.

“… I walked up the short flight of stairs to the apartment, number 5A, – completely unimpeded by police – to speak to the parents, as any decent journalist is programmed to do on arrival at a job like this. I walked inside the open front door and bumped straight into the McCanns,…”

[Clarke, Jon. MY SEARCH FOR MADELEINE: One Reporter’s 14-Year Hunt To Solve Europe’s Most Harrowing Crime (p. 23). OP Books. Kindle Edition. at p 22/437]

And in many other articles he has told us the same, that he did enter, sometimes up the stairs from the side entrance and through the patio doors, sometimes by the front door, and that he spoke to the McCanns, either briefly or at length, or as they were leaving, sometimes not until later that day, or alternatively at the press conference. On other occasions there is no mention of this important meeting, leading us to believe that on balance it may not have happened at all.

I made a crude attempt in Chapter. 46 “Jon Clarke through the Looking Glass” to list the many ‘versions’, and in Appendix A I have revisited and updated this list.  Readers will be able to judge for themselves the veracity of Clarke’s writings, and then to assess for themselves the likelihood of anything else he writes or has ever written being remotely associated with the facts.   

The rest of the article includes the by now familiar litany of Brücker’s admittedly sordid and criminal past, but at the end, where Clarke clearly loses editorial control, the whole effect and purpose of this sales enterprise is destroyed by the ‘advert’ for the book.

“Jon Clarke is an author and journalist. His book ‘MUST LEAVE: My Search for Madeleine’ [sic] is available on Amazon.”

On Amazon.es a search for this brings up two items; one a book about “Big Potato and the strange things people search for”; the other a table top game “The Search for Planet X”.
Which may inadvertently and gratifyingly be serendipitously appropriate under the circumstances.

The article is also stylistically “Vintage Clarke”. He cannot resist the usual sneering scorn when he describes Mark Williams-Thomas as “Ex-policeman turned Journalist . . . “
As opposed to “ex-Geography student turned hack reporter” perhaps ?

Nor can he resist moving his own goalposts, when he says, confidently, “and over the next year or two Christian Brueckner will finally be charged with the murder of Madeleine McCann.”
For a long time Clarke has been telling any who bothered to listen that Brückner would be charged within weeks, or by the summer.   Now the months and the summer have come and gone his ground seems to be less firm. Or possibly his ‘mole’ in Wolters’ office has been unearthed.

Strangely, given the wealth of detail in his book, in this article he does a “reverse ferret”, a U turn, a complete altering of course as he accuses the PJ of incompetence.    “It comes after first pointing the finger at Murat (an unusual chap, who has never explained three late-night phone calls on the night Maddie went missing), when the facts, assuming the book is accurate on this, are that HE, Jon Clarke, in collusion with Lori Campbell pointed the finger at Murat.  They set him up.  The PJ had a look at him. The British gutter press feasted on him, and he was awarded £600,000 in libel damages, none of which was payable by Clarke or Campbell, of course.
[And by the way, despite the lie Clarke keeps publishing, Murat does NOT have a glass eye.  He has a detached retina.]

But Clarke cannot let him go.  “He has never explained three late-night phone calls . . .”
The McCanns have never explained the 64 deleted calls and SMS messages on their phones, a fact which Clarke does not merely gloss over.  He studiously (or obediently ?) never mentions it.

And then the endless Lie Eternal, believed only by acolytes and apologists, but provably FALSE.
”the parents, who were quickly cleared of any involvement in her abduction…”
How often do reasonable and sane people have to keep pointing out that this is NOT TRUE ?
How long before the gullible and factually challenged begin to realise they have been lied to ?

Firstly – It wasn’t Quickly. The McCanns were Arguidos from 7/8 Sept 2007 to 21 July 2008, a period of some ten and a half months.

Secondly – the Parents were not and have not ever been CLEARED.  That is what half of the entire case in the ECHR was about.  The parents themselves KNOW they were not cleared.  That is why they have spent so much money complaining about it.
Why journalists of a certain persuasion cannot understand this is unclear.
The suspicion is that most of them do fully understand, but are paid to pretend otherwise.
Alternatively they could just admit to being stupid.

Notably there has not to date, and to my knowledge, been any mention of the ECHR judgment in the Olive Press.

Let me once again quote the Justices of the Supreme Court of Justice of the Portuguese Republic, sothat perhaps with repetition it begins to sink in.  I have bolded some parts to assist in this process.

“"It should not be said that the appellants were cleared via the ruling announcing the archiving of the criminal case. In truth, that ruling was not made in virtue of Portugal's Public Prosecution Service having acquired the conviction that the appellants hadn’t committed a crime.
"The archiving of the case was determined by the fact that public prosecutors hadn't managed to
obtain sufficient evidence of the practice of crimes by the appellants.
"There is therefore a significant, and not merely a semantic difference, between the legally
admissible foundations of the archive ruling. It doesn't therefore seem acceptable that the ruling,
based on the insufficiency of evidence, should be equated to proof of innocence."
They added: "It's true that the aforementioned criminal inquiry ended up being archived, namely
because none of the apparent evidence that led to the appellants being made 'arguidos' was
subsequently confirmed or consolidated.
"However even the archive ruling raises serious concerns relating to the truth of the allegation that
Madeleine was kidnapped."
The ECHR held that this was an entire neutral and correct statement of the legal position, and in no way implied guilt. It simply did not permit the parties to infer their own innocence.

The depth and breadth of misinformation / lack of understanding / deliberate mendacity / paid dissembling, or whatever it is which drives some journalists is on of the factors which has made this case so remarkable.  

Never in the Field of Modern Journalism have so Many been lied to for so Long by so Few.  
[with apologies]


https://whatreallyhappenedtomadeleinemccann.blogspot.com/2022/09/chapter-52-august-was-also-quiet-month.html


Appendix

CHAPTER 52



There are five separate details of his initial involvement which Clarke changes ad libitum.

• Time of the initial phone call
  
  
• Time of his arrival in PdL
  
  
• Number of journalists present on his arrival
  
  
• Entry to Apartment 5A
  
  
• Speaking to the McCanns
  
  

And there are now at least Sixteen sources of ‘information’.    Many are written by Clarke or were clearly under his editorial control.  All are different.

• Article Olive Press 2008. 
  
  
• Article Olive Press 2017  
  
  
• Article Olive Press 2019. 
  
  
• Interview with Sandra Felguerias within the Netflix transcript. 2019
  
  
• Netflix publicity 2019 
  
  
• Netflix Documentary - transcript 2019.
  
  
• Article CLOSER Magazine 2020.  
  
  
• Article BELLA Magazine 2021.   
  
  
• “My Search For Madeleine” - Book by Jon Clarke 2021. 
  
  
• Article ABC - JJ Madueño, but clearly written or dictated by Clarke Oct 2021 
  
  
• Article ABC - JJ Madueño, amended version Oct 2021
  
  
• Muckrack entry - JJ Madueño Oct 2021
  
  
• Interview for Ex-pat Radio Channel  Sept 2021
  
  
• Interview for Sat.1, German  31 Jan 2022
  
  
• Article CLOSER Magazine online – May 2022.  
  
  
• ‘i’ newspaper - May 2022
  
  

• Time of the initial phone call
  
  

0630   – Book (estimated from ‘left before 7, after ablutions and cup of tea and saying goodbye . . .’
0715.  – Olive Press 2017
0700-0730. – Olive Press 2019
0700-0730.  – Sandra Felguiras Interview
0700-0730. – Netflix Transcript
approx 2000 Thursday 3/5/7. – calculated from time of arrival in article in ABC
approx 2000 Thursday 3/5/7. – calculated from time of arrival in Muckrack entry

• Time of his arrival in PdL
  
  

Noon (1200). “been there since noon;  …. some 15 hours after Madeleine disappeared” – Olive Press 2008
1145 (or 1045)  [NB: 1145 may be Spanish time, 1045 Portuguese time] – Olive Press 2017.  
0945-1015.  – Book
0130.  – Article in ABC (1st version as printed)
“That same night” = 3/5/7.  – Article in ABC (2nd version as printed)
0930   (This is arrival “at the scene”.  0130 is given as arrival in PdL)   – Article in ABC (both versions).
0130  – Muckrack entry
‘just hours after” –  Closer online 2022
12 hours after Madeleine’s disappearance  – The ‘i’ paper


Available Independent Evidence:   
Video film exists, was shown across the world, and is preserved on YouTube showing that Clarke was in PdL by 0945, and was already and by then familiar with the scene and with some GNR officers, with whom he is observed shaking hands as he leaves the group of journalists outside the stairwell serving apartment 5H.

• Number of journalists present on his arrival
  
  

Not stated.   – Olive Press 2008
Only reporter – ‘till late that evening, – apart from Kate/Kay Burley …’   – Olive Press 2017
First journalist        – Olive Press 2019
First UK Print Journalist.   – Netflix Publicity
One of the first Journalists.  – Closer magazine 2020
First British Journalist.  – Book
‘First British Journalist under contract to a British Newspaper’ ( paraphrase) – Expat radio interview
First journalist – Closer online 2022
One of the first Journalists.  – The ‘i’ paper 2022

Available Independent Evidence:   
Video film exists, was shown across the world, and is preserved on YouTube showing Clarke in PdL at 0945, speaking to and sharing notes with the group of five other journalists outside the stairwell serving apartment 5H.

Video also exists and is preserved on YouTube of British Journalist Len Port, an ex-pat who lives just along the coast in Portugal, walking round within the Ocean Club complex, by the pool towards the Tapas bar.
Port reports having arrived at 0830.  The length and the orientation of the shadows of the palm trees round the pool confirm this time.

• Did Clarke Enter Apartment 5A ?
  
  

NO MENTION. – Olive Press 2008
YES – “I was firstly able to walk into the apartment.”  – Olive Press 2017
NO –  “It wouldn’t have been difficult to walk in… It wasn’t Fort Knox “ – Olive Press 2019
NO –  “It [the tape or the prohibition] went up and I looked in.”  – Netflix transcript
YES – “up the short flight of stairs to the apartment. I walked in the front [sic] door.”   –  Book
YES – “I crossed, knocked on the door and the parents came out.”  – ABC - both versions
NO –  “went straight up to the apartment “  [? 5H  ?] –   Expat radio interview
NO –  “That evening I saw the parents up close for the first time…”.  SAT.1 interview
NO –  “I could literally walk… Thankfully I had the good sense not to try.”    – The ‘i’ paper


Available Independent Evidence:   
The McCanns moved out of Apartment 5A in the early hours of the morning and the scene was sealed after initial photographs were taken.  They spent the rest of that night with the Paynes in Apartment 5H, variously “keeping vigil” (Kate), or sleeping (Gerry) whilst hundreds of residents and holiday makers supervised by Police searched the entire resort for several hours.
The relevant piece in Kate McCann’s book “madeleine” makes it quite clear that they did not return to 5A that day.

The ExPat radio interview is capable of being interpreted as a visit by Clarke to Apartment 5H, the Payne’s apartment, and speaking to a third party who relayed the message and the answer to and from the McCanns.  On Clarke’s admissions the information gained seems to have been “Madeleine”,  and “Thanks”.

• Did Clarke speak to the McCanns, and if so, when ?
  
  

NO MENTION.     – Olive Press 2008
YES - “In the apartment”.     – Olive Press 2017
YES - “as they were leaving.”     – Olive Press 2019
POSSIBLY – “I think I tried to speak to them [sic]”      – Netflix Transcription
YES –  “a few hours after arriving;  later that day”  – Closer Magazine
YES – “at a press conference that night”.  – Bella Magazine
YES – “in the apartment”. – Book
YES – “that same night (Thursday 3/5/7).  – ABC both version
YES –  “I … knocked on the door and the parents came out”.  ABC both versions
NO (or YES via third party) “I asked, yer know, could I speak to the parents . . . they just told me the name . .
And, yer know, I said who I was and from the Mail and I would do my best to help, and they were like
“thanks” and that was that.    So I didn’t, I can’t say I really interviewed them.”    Expat Radio interview
NO – “That evening I saw the parents up close for the first time and realised how traumatised they were and how much they were grieving.”  [from German]  SAT.1 interview
NO MENTION –   The ‘i’ paper

Available Independent Evidence:   
The Senior crime correspondent for Sky News, Martin Brunt was in PdL for 10 days.  During that time he admits he did not manage to speak to the McCanns

Clarke clearly states during the ExPat Radio interview that he did not interview the McCanns.
The implication from the SAT.1 interview is also clear.  


https://whatreallyhappenedtomadeleinemccann.blogspot.com/2022/09/52-appendix-updated-from-chapter-46-jon.html


References
https://whatreallyhappenedtomadeleinemccann.blogspot.com/2022/09/chapter-52-references-1-2-httpswww.html