MMRG letter sent to BBC in 2013 re Crimewatch programme

Apologies in advance for any formatting issues as copying from a pdf.

Name and address redacted

7th October 2013

Mr Gavin Cappelle, Production Co-ordinator and  Mr Joe Mather, Series Editor,
BBC Crimewatch Programme
BBC Broadcasting House
Portland Place
LONDON
W1A 1AA

Also for the attention of presenters Kirsty Young, Matthew Amroliwala and Martin Bayfield
By email to: 
gavin.chappelle@bbc.co.uk
joe.mather@bbc.co.uk   
kirsty. young@bbc.co.uk
matthew.amroliwala@bbc.co.uk
martin.bayfield@bbc.co.uk 

Dear Mr Cappelle and Mr Mather 

Proposed Crimewatch programme 14 October 2013 - Madeleine McCann

I have a number of concerns about the above proposed programme.

I understand that there is to be a ‘live’ interview with the McCanns and that a 
reconstruction of events will be shown, presumably of part of Thursday evening 3 May 
2007, the day Madeleine was reported missing.

The BBC has said that it will be showing a reconstruction of Madeleine’s ‘abduction’. 
The alleged ‘reconstruction’ is reported in various media as taking place ‘abroad’ or in 
Spain but not in Portugal, and certainly not, therefore in Praia da Luz.

The duties of the BBC and Crimewatch    

I understand that the BBC Charter requires that it be truthful and accurate and, where 
appropriate, must provide 'balanced' coverage of any issue, and that OFCOM has the 
power to investigate complaints.

‘Crimewatch’ has a formidable reputation, based on setting before the public accurate 
information about a crime, and asking for the public’s help in identifying the perpetrators. 
These principles must apply just as rigourously to the case of the reported disappearance 
of Madeleine.

Given the controversial, sensitive and high profile nature of this case, I must assume that 
the research done by Crimewatch into the background for any reconstruction and interview 
of the McCanns has been exceptionally thorough and meticulous. You will be aware that 
there are thousands of pages of witness statements, experts’ reports, forensic reports, 
photographs, videos and other material, which was made public on DVDs by the 
Portuguese Police as long ago as August 2008, and all of which has been translated into 
English, read and analysed in great detail on numerous internet websites, blogs and fora. 
You will no doubt for example have read all the relevant information on the McCannfiles 
blog (www.mccannfiles.com), a library of factual material about the case.

Was Madeleine McCann abducted?

Given the claim by the BBC in its advance publicity for your proposed programme that 
Madeleine McCann was ‘abducted’, the first question that the producers and editors of any 
Crimewatch programme have to answer is whether or not this is established as a fact

I hope, therefore, that you have considered the following:

•       The detailed investigation Interim report by Inspector Tavares de Almeida dated 10 
September, and publicly available on the internet, giving numerous clear reasons for 
concluding that Madeleine died in the McCanns’ holiday apartment and that they and/or 
others hid her body
•       The contents of the book ‘ The Truth Of The Lie’, written by Dr Gonçalo Amaral, 
which as you will be well aware is currently the subject of the final trial in the-long running 
libel action the McCanns brought against him
•       The fact that the content of Dr Amaral’s book has been repeatedly shown to be 
entirely consistent with the contents of the police files released to the general public in 
2008 (indeed this fact has been repeatedly emphasised during the first six days of this 
trial)
•       The fact that the concluding report signed off by the regional Attorney-General in 
July 2008, whilst archiving the investigation and deciding there was insufficient evidence to 
charge anyone, made it plain that the Portuguese judicial authorities by no means 
established as a fact the McCanns’ claim that Madeleine had been abducted
•       indeed the probability that Madeleine had died in her parents’ apartment and her 
body hidden was explicitly acknowledged in the very same report.

If you have considered the above facts, I am not sure how the BBC can proceed with this 
programme at all, or to continue to refer to ‘the abduction’ of Madeleine.  The alerts of two 
sniffer dogs belonging to top police dog handler Martin Grime cannot be ignored in 
considering whether or not Madeleine was abducted. The McCanns for example have 
never been able to explain the dogs’ alerts to the past presence of a human corpse in four 
locations in the McCanns’ flat, on three items of their clothing, in the hired car and other 
locations associated with them, and in no other places.  Dr Gerald McCann has claimed 
that sniffer dogs are  ‘incredibly unreliable’ despite the fact that their reliability is well 
established and their use in ever more fields of detection, drugs, explosives, medicine and 
other disciplines is growing rapidly. There are excellent BBC programmes on this very 
subject, the most recent showing a dog detecting early cancer of the kidney from urine.

To reinforce this point, let it be stated clearly  -  the only ‘evidence’ of abduction is the 
say-so of the McCanns themselves.

I believe that a complaint may be made to the disciplinary body of the National Union of 
Journalists if any member of the NUJ had contributed to a dishonest programme which 
ignored or set aside relevant facts. 
The history of reconstructions or attempted reconstructions    

In the Portuguese criminal justice system, reconstructions of events surrounding a murder 
or disappearance or other crime are used to test the validity of the witnesses’ statements. 
The actual persons involved in such events are the witnesses themselves. They will be 
invited to the scene of the crime. Such reconstructions are commonly video-recorded for 
the benefit of the criminal investigation. This is especially true where there are obvious 
contradictions between the witnesses’ statement, as is manifestly the case regarding 
Madeleine’s disappearance. Your researchers must be fully aware of these. They have 
been extensively catalogued and analysed (a) in the interim report of Tavares de Almeida 
(b) in the Attorney-General’s final report (c) in Dr Gonçalo Amaral’s book and (d) on 
numerous Madeleine McCann information and discussion sites on the internet.

This type of ‘reconstruction’ is very different from a ‘Crimewatch’-style televised 
reconstruction.  

Dr Amaral wanted to do such a reconstruction as it was clear in the first days of the 
investigation that there were significant inconsistencies in the witnesses’ statements, even 
between various statements made by the same witness.   As he explains in his book, he 
decided not to do one because of the intense media spotlight he and his team were under.

A reconstruction of some of the events of 3 May 2007 was shown on the BBC’s Panorama 
programme on 19 November 2007.  

A second attempt by the Portuguese police to hold a reconstruction occurred in the spring 
of 2008. The McCanns and their friends all declined to take part, after taking legal advice, 
giving a variety of reasons for not doing so. Dr Gerald McCann specifically said at the time 
that he saw no purpose in such a reconstruction as the police would not be showing the 
reconstruction on TV. He said he wanted a ‘Crimewatch-style’ reconstruction.  Therefore 
the proposed Portuguese police reconstruction could not proceed.

The Channel 4 reconstruction, 2009 

In May 2009, Channel 4 screened a reconstruction made by Mentorn Media.  This was 
heavily criticised by many on a number of grounds, including these:         

•      It featured the description of a possible abductor by Jane Tanner, despite numerous 
indications that her alleged ‘sighting’ was fabricated (see below) 
•      It attempted to link an alleged sighting of a man carrying a child by Martin Smith, at 
around 10.00pm in a different part of Praia da Luz, with Jane Tanner’s claimed ‘sighting’ at 
9.15pm. The improbability of any abductor walking around the village for 45 minutes or 
more carrying a child is so obvious as to hardly require mention
•      It attempted to suggest that the man allegedly seen by Jane Tanner and the man 
allegedly seen by Martin Smith were one and the same, despite Jane Tanner describing 
the man as having ‘long, black hair’ whilst the man described by Martin Smith had ‘short, 
brown hair’
•      Three witnesses, namely Jane Tanner, Jeremy Wilkins and Dr Gerald McCann 
gave significantly contradictory statements about the very moment when Jane Tanner 
claimed to have seen the abductor at 9.15pm. These were contemptuously dismissed on 
the TV reconstruction by the McCanns’ then chief private investigator, ex-Detective 
Inspector Dave Edgar, as ‘inevitable inconsistencies’.  Any serious detective would have 
probed the contradictions, which should have been fully aired on the programme
•       The man shown in the documentary as carrying a child away from near the 
McCanns’ apartment did not look the same as Jane Tanner’s description. In any case, of 
course, Jane Tanner admitted to not seeing his face.       

Severe doubts about the credibility of Jane Tanner

The reasons for doubting the evidence of Jane Tanner are many but include:
•       changes in her accounts, such as changing the direction in which the person she 
claimed to have seen was walking 
•       her recollection of details about the abductor and the child improving with time, 
such as ‘recollecting’ on a second interview precise details of the pattern of the pyjamas of 
the girl being carried (in line with what she then knew about Madeleine’s pyjamas, but 
crucially miscalculating the length of the pyjama bottoms )  
•       rambling and over-elaborate descriptions of the abductor and what he was wearing, 
both when interviewed by the Portuguese police and later when re-interviewed by 
Leicestershire Police
•       her positive identification on 13 May 2007 of Robert Murat as the person she’d seen 
carrying a child away from near the McCanns’ apartment - only for her to change her mind 
about this months later
•       her willingness to claim that the person she claimed to have seen looked like a 
moustachioed man seen in a sketch by a Mrs Gail Cooper, despite the fact that Jane 
Tanner admitted on 3 May never having seen the man’s face
•       the fact that at a press conference in August 2009, the McCanns’ chief investigator, 
Dave Edgar, said that Jane Tanner might have been mistaken and seen a woman carrying 
a child, not a man
•       the fact that her story was so vague and inconsistent that the Portuguese police 
dismissed it as a fabrication from very early on in their investigation.           
      
Other facts that the BBC should perhaps take into account if they are to proceed with this 
broadcast  
 I invite you to consider the following additional points:

•       The thread of criminality running through the McCann Team’s investigators. If 
the BBC has researched the background material to this case then you will be aware that 
the McCanns’ first preferred detectives, the Spanish firm Metodo3, has a long record of 
criminal conduct. Two of Metodo3’s investigators who worked very closely with the head of 
the McCann Team’s private investigators, Cheshire businessman Brian Kennedy, have 
served time in prison.
•       Antonio Giminez Raso spent four years in prison on remand due to his association 
with a 27 strong gang of drug-dealers who were convicted of serious criminal charges in a 
Barcelona court last year. 
•       Julian Peribañez who also worked very closely with Brian Kennedy has spent much 
of this year after his arrest for illegally taping the conversations of Spanish politicians, an 
offence he has now admitted and for which he is awaiting sentence. 
•       The McCanns also employed Kevin Halligen, who charged the McCann Team 
£500,000 plus expenses yet, as exposed in a 2009 article in the Evening Standard and 
elsewhere, spent most of the time he was employed by them on high living in London, 

Oxfordshire  and the U.S. with his girlfriend Shirin Trachiotis, and was arrested in 2009 on 
serious fraud charges in the U.S. which he eventually admitted. He spent a total of four 
years in Belmarsh and another top security prison in the U.S.  None of these investigators 
had any experience in locating missing children but most had expertise in such areas as  
money laundering and fraud.

These private detectives have together with the McCann Team produced a bewildering 
variety of so-called ‘suspects’ and ‘persons tightly of interest’,  21 in total so far, two of 
them women, a fact which also undermines the credibility of the McCann Team’s private 
investigators, not to mention Tanner’s statements.
  
Should the BBC continue to promote the claim that Madeleine McCann was abducted, you 
must take full account of these and indeed many other matters of real concern about the 
McCanns’ private investigations, which again your researchers must know.        

•       Dr Kate McCann’s refusal to answer any one of 48 questions put to her on 
interview by the Portuguese police on 7 September 2007. 

•       The numerous contradictions in the witnesses’ evidence about the events of 
3 May 2007. 
This is a vast subject. Again, no doubt your researchers, together with D.C.I. Andy 
Redwood and his team, are aware of the following contradictions and changes of story etc. 
These contradictions would need to be resolved if possible before any realistic 
reconstruction could possibly take place. If you proceed with a reconstruction, you will be 
faced with the problem of which version of events you will be presenting to viewers. I 
believe the only honest way for the BBC to proceed would be to present the viewer with all 
the contradictions, letting the viewer see what they are, and allowing us to draw our own 
conclusions.  Among the main contradictions are the following:

•       Three different versions about a claimed ‘high tea’ that Madeleine is said to have 
had with her parents  and crèche staff at about 5.30pm 
•       Two entirely different versions (Dr Kate McCann and Dr David Payne) of an alleged 
visit by Dr Payne to the McCanns’ apartment, when he claims to have seen all three 
children alive   
•       Three different accounts (Dr Gerald McCann, Jane Tanner and Jeremy Wilkins 
(whom we understand may have worked for Crimewatch before)) about events at around 
9.15pm on 3 May, the time when Jane Tanner claims she saw a man carrying a child
•       Whether or not the curtains of the children’s room in the apartment were  wide open 
(Dr Kate McCann’s first version) or closed (Dr Kate McCann’s later version)
•       Whether you will be showing the shutters smashed, broken, and jemmied open (the 
McCanns’ first versions) or completely undamaged (reality - and subsequently admitted as 
such by the McCanns’ spokesman, Clarence Mitchell)
•       Whether you will be showing Dr Gerald McCann entering through the ‘front door 
using his key’ (Dr McCann’s first police statement), or ‘going in through the unlocked patio 
door’ (Dr Gerald McCann’s second police statement)
•       Whether you will be showing Madeleine tucked up in bed because it was a cold 
night (Dr Kate McCann’s version -  the cold also being testified to by the rest of the 
McCanns’ friends and indeed by weather records ) - or lying on top of the covers because 
it was so hot (Dr Gerald McCann’s version).

•       The extremely limited ‘window of opportunity’ for any claimed abductor to 
have removed Madeleine from the apartment.  

On the basis of statements made by Dr Gerald McCann,  Jane Tanner and Jeremy 
Wilkins, with very precise timing included within them ( Dr McCann for example says he 
left the table at 9:04 by his watch, and the apartment at 9.10pm, and Jane Tanner says 
she saw a man carrying a child in the area at 9.15pm )  the time available for the abductor 
to remove Madeleine is somewhere between 1 minute 20 seconds, and three minutes. 

 During this time, the McCann Team suggest that an intruder could have entered the 
apartment (either via the open patio door with the father directly outside, or by having a 
key to the front door), sedated three children, selected one of them, picked her up, turned 
her round so that her feet are now to the right, opened the curtains, window and shutters 
as some kind of ‘red herring’ (see ‘red herring’ statement made by Dr Kate McCann) and 
then exit, all of this being accomplished without being seen or heard by anyone except 
Jane Tanner and without leaving any forensic trace. (The suggestion that Madeleine and 
the twins were sedated is a repeated theme of the McCanns and their team over the past 
six years.  They moved from strong denials and threats to sue, to an acceptance that it 
must have happened, even though there is no known substance which could have been 
used within that time frame.  Dr Kate McCann is a qualified anaesthetist and must be 
aware of this ).

 •      The only fingerprints on the window found by police being those of Dr Kate 
McCann, strongly suggesting that she opened the window in order to promote the 
abduction scenario.   

 •      In the very unlikely event that Madeleine is still alive and is being held by the 
abductor or others, has BBC Crimewatch assessed the risk that its programme could 
lead to Madeleine being harmed by the person who now has her ? 

A useful summary of the many contradictions, changes of story and other inconsistencies  
amongst the witness statements in this case can be read in an e-book by Michael McLean 
at: 

http://freepdfhosting.com/9099bef539.pdf 
or
http://freepdfhosting.com/d2238cdf6b.pdf   

Yours sincerely

Redacted