Re: Prosecution Exhibit 1: 'madeleine' - What's in the book?

by **PeterMac** 13.05.11 8:02

Do you really want an 8 year old to read her own mother's description of her ******* , and to realise it has been published across the entire world ?
I wish some things coud be un-read.

by ufercoffy 13.05.11 8:09

I suppose it's good that Kate, at least, described them as "perfect" and not defected like her eye, which was a good marketing ploy.

Oh wait! The "perfect genitals" is also a good marketing ploy too cos it's in a book designed to make money roll

by **Tony Bennett** 13.05.11 8:54

SUMMARY AND CRITIQUE

Chapter 14 ‘ Warning Sirens’

p. 203

Gerry McCann flies to Washington to meet the Attorney-General, CEO of the National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children, and has a TV interview on the ‘America’s Most Wanted’ show.

Dr Kate ’phoned Ricardo Paiva to get a couple of letters translated but he was ‘strange’, ‘not his usual self’; “I distinctly remember him saying: ‘Our investigation will be changing direction’.”

Dr Kate now refers to Krugel’s machine as ‘an unknown and untested magic machine’.

p. 204

A University Professor in Belfast described Krugel’s machine as ‘pseudo-science-fiction’.

“At bedtime one evening while Gerry was in the States, Amelie said to me in a small voice: ‘Daddy at work. Mummy not going to work. Mummy not going anywhere. Mummy stay here”.

Thursday 26 July, Gerry flies back from Washington. Sunday 29 July, Trish and Sandy Cameron return home to Scotland.

pp. 205-6

“On Monday we had what would turn out to be our last regular meeting with [Inspectors] Luis Neves ands Guilhermino Encarnacao”.

2 August: They were planning the drive to Huelva with Jon Corner. But: “As I was dropping Sean and Amelie off at the Toddler Club, I had a ’phone call from Gerry. The police wanted to come over at 10am. Something to do with forensics…”

“We’d never lied about anything - not to the police, not to the media, not to anyone else. But now we found ourselves in one of those tricky situations where we just didn’t seemto have a choice. As it happened, Gerry had a mild stomach upset which we used as an excuse to postpone the trip…can you imagine what would have happened if we’d announced to the journalists heading for Huelva that the police were coming to do some forensic work in our villa?”

The police showed up late, at 5pm, the following day. “Left with only the clothes we were wearing, we were all asked to leave the villa”.

“When we were allowed back, we found four detectives at the house…I was confused…and devastated: as well as all of our clothes, they had taken my Bible, Cuddle Cat and my diaries”.

p. 207

“The Bible had been lent to me by Bridget’s husband Paddy a week after Madeleine’s abduction. My journals were private and full of personal thoughts and messages to Madeleine. I felt violated”.

“When you are innocent, it doesn’t occur to you that you could be considered in any other light”.

The Huelva trip is described in just four lines.

“The police returned our belongings to us later that day, thrown into big black bin bags, creased as hell…”

They plan for the 100^th day since Madeleine was reported missing: 11 August. “We were preparing to launch a ‘Don’t You Forget About Me’ channel on YouTube. We also had quite a few media interviews lined up”.

p. 208

Saturday 4 August: Murat’s mother’s house is surrounded by police cars, journalists and cameras.

Monday 6 August: Gerry was asked to meet the police in a café in Portimao, but the police kept the car and took Gerry home in the car. It was the day Eddie and Keela were set loose to examine 10 cars. At lunchtime the McCanns were besieged by hostile journalists. That morning’s Portuguese press ‘suggested that Gerry was somehow involved in Madeleine’s disappearance. Sniffer dogs had discovered traces of Madeleine’s blood in apartment 5A, it was claimed. It was insinuated that she had died there and her body had been dumped in the sea”.

p. 209

The next day there was another media frenzy: “We left as planned for the Belavista Hotel in Luz, where I was scheduled to be interviewed on BBC Radio 4’s ‘Woman’s Hour’ via satellite radio.

p. 210

The BBC’s Steve Kingstone says: “Do you know what they’re saying? They’re saying that you killed Madeleine”. They agree to do an interview with the BBC’s Richard Bilton. Gerry, says Dr Kate “…kept his fury in check”.

Wednesday 8 August: Interview at the Tivoli Hotel for the programme: ‘Heaven and Earth’. “We teetered on the edge of a new precipice…”

Dr Kate questions her faith and suggests that perhaps religion was ‘invented merely to maintain order in society, promoting compassion and justice and provide solace…’ (the media have described them both as ‘devout Catholics’).

p. 211

Alex Woolfall ’phones to tell the McCanns that they can’t use the Toddler Club any more because other parents have complained about the ‘media scrum’ there every morning: “I was so upset. The injustice of it all was starting to get to me. Poor Amelie and Sean. They were the ones who would suffer. We’d tried so hard to provide them with stability, to make sure they had other children to play with and lots of activity, and now even this was to be taken away from them. My immediate reaction was to angrily blame these guests for their selfishness”.

Later she says: “No, it was the media who were at fault”. Later still, Sean and Amelie were able to return to the club.

Inspector Joao Carlos returned the McCanns’ car at lunchtime, minus a piece from the boot. Instead of meeting for an informal chat at the British Consulate, as they normally did, this time the McCanns were summoned to meet at Portimao Police Station. The children were dropped off with Haynes and Susan Hubbard.

p. 212

Today Luis Neves and Guilhermino Encarnacao “looked serious and cold”. They were no longer optimistic that Madeleine was alive. Dr Kate: “Almost instantaneously I could feel my breathing pattern altering and that familiar constriction in my throat. Gerry asked if any evidence had come to light to suggest that Madeleine was dead but they wouldn’t reply…Gerry was then asked to leave the room. Now the sirens in my head were deafening…I was on my own and afraid”.

Dr Kate was then asked to state exactly what happened on the evening of 3 May. She did so, but “…this time they responded by just staring at me and shaking their heads. I was reeling with confusion, disbelief and panic. What the hell was going on?”

p. 213

“Neves stated bluntly that they didn’t believe my version of events. It ‘didn’t fit’ with what they knew. What did they know? “.

“They proposed that when I’d put Madeleine to bed that night, it wasn’t actually the last time I’d seen here. But it was. It was!…I was in no doubt no that they were trying to make me say I killed Madeleine or knew what had happened to her…This was their theory and they wanted to shoehorn me into it, end of story”.

p. 214

Then Gerry was interviewed, again on his own: “Through his tears he pleaded with the two men: ‘Do you have evidence that Madeleine is dead? We’re our parents, you have to tell us’. ‘It’s coming’, Neves told him. ‘It’s coming’.”

Dr Kate was praying. “I was beginning to come unstuck”.

Dr Kate: “Before long I was ordered back into the room to join Gerry for round three”.

Luis Neves asked Dr Kate why she wasn’t looking at him straight in the eye: “There was no reason, other than I was incapable of looking at anyone properly: my own eyes were so swollen and sore that I was struggling to keep them from closing completely”.

p. 215

The McCanns collected Sean and Amelie from the Hubbards. “Susan suggested I wnt and had a bath as I was still pretty shaky. |In her bathroom I leaned over the washbasin and peered into the mirror. My eyes were narrow slits in fat, purple lids. My blotchy face seemed to be ageing by the day…What’s going to become of us all?”

Gerry made several calls asking for help and advice, including to the Director of the counselling service from Skipton, Alan Pike.

The nest day and the day after “we had a host of interviews scheduled to mark the hundredth day since Madeleine was taken from us. My immediate instinct was to cancel them all…But this would have broken one of our rules: keep your focus and don’t let others push you off track. We were doing interviews for Madeleine”.

p. 216

“It was a terrible day: both the atmosphere and the line of questioning followed by the press were intensely antagonistic…We wanted to talk about one hundred days without Madeleine, and the launch of ‘Don’t You Forget About Me’ on YouTube; they wanted to talk about blood and dogs”.

Dr Kate: “We felt like two lone figures with catapults fighting an army”.

“What made it worse was our distress that all the time and effort we’d put into publicising the hundred-day landmark and the plight of other missing children was being trampled underfoot. It was exasperating…the disrespect and injustice we felt on Madeleine’s behalf were very hard to stomach”.

“Alan Pike…flew out [to us] from the U.K. on a mercy mission. We were very grateful for the opportunity to reconnect with him face to face for a dose of his calm, considered advice. It all helped to strengthen our armour”.

by **Tony Bennett** 13.05.11 11:13

SUMMARY AND CRITIQUE

Chapter 15 ‘ One Hundred Days’

p. 217

Saturday 11 August. There was a ‘One Hundred Days of Hope’ service for Madeleine and ‘missing children everywhere’ in the church.

“Haynes led the service. He is such a strong man, his trust in God unwavering”.

p. 218

“I wrote in my diary: ‘I have no doubt the local Portuguese community are behind us. We were kissed to death again!’”

Olegario de Sousa had given a statement to the BBC saying there was new evidence that Madeleine was dead but that the family and friends ‘were not suspects’. Dr Kate: “The chaotic and upsetting events and rumours of recent days and the complete lack of information were compounding our already unbearable agony”.

Ricardo Pavia then came round to their house and explained that two springer spaniels had been in Praia da Luz, a bloodhound who had found traces of blood in the apartment, and a ‘cadaver’ dog who had indicated that ‘somebody had died there’.

p. 219

“I trusted Ricardo back then but I struggled to understand how, never mind why, somebody could have killed Madeleine and removed her body within such a short time frame…this ‘evidence of death’ seemed tenuous in the extreme. The police appeared to be telling us, on the say-so of a dog, that someone had definitely died in Apartment 5A”.

“Supposing she had been taken out of the apartment within minutes. Did they really believe that a dog could smell the ‘odour of death’ three months later from a body that had been removed so swiftly? They were adding two and two together and coming up with ten”.

“The merest suggestion from Ricardo that it was even possible she had been killed in that flat was like knife being twisted into my chest. My eyes, so tired of tears, succumbed to them yet again”.

Dr Kate wrote in her diary that day: “So Madeleine’s dead?…Psychopath? Burglary gone wrong? I need her body before I can believe this. I just can’t accept this”.

That evening they watched the Premiership football highlights. Bill Kenwright, the Chairman of Everton Football Club, had made the players wear Madeleine T-shirts and wristbands, and said that “The pressure on football clubs and managers at the start of the new football campaign was nothing compared to the pressure Gerry and Kate are under”. (FOOTNOTE: Bill Kenwright, an impresario, is a great friend of Michael Barrymore. When Barrymore was arrested the second time on suspicion of murder in June 2007, he was staying at Bill Kenwright’s north London home).

p. 220

“The following three weeks felt like an eternity. It was like being on some kind of endurance course run by sadists. The newspapers…churned out endless damning pieces that were at best speculative and mostly complete fabrications…While selling papers and making money, these stories very effectively distorted the opinions of the readership…Evidently it didn’t matter to the newspaper editors whether there was any truth in these tales or not…”.

p. 222

Diary entry 17 August: “Finding it hard to talk to anyone at then moment as I’m full of so many negative emotions - anger, bitterness, frustration, desperation…”

Gerry began talking about going home to Rothley.

Sean and Amelie thought that Madeleine must be at their home in Rothley: “Gerry rang the child psychologist David Trickey for advice. It broke my heart to hear Gerry explaining gently to the children afterwards that Madeleine wasn’t there. Sean looked quite confused, and perhaps a bit scared…”

“In mid-July I had slowly started to come round to Gerry’s way of thinking - we had to return some time..”

p. 223

19 August diary entry: “Madeleine, sweetheart, it’s not getting any easier at this end. I just have to hope that whoever is with you loves you too and is treating you kindly and fairly

20 August dairy entry: “There’s so much shit that’s been written, much of it outrageous”.

Dr Kate: “By this time, we felt as if we had been completely cut adrift”.

On 20 August Gerry contacted a human rights lawyer, Carlos Pinto de Abreu, “who’d been recommended to us”. The McCanns went to see him the very next day. There they met with Carlos, his wife who acted as a translator, and three colleagues.

p. 224

In her diary for that day, Dr Kate wrote: “A bit upset on the way back…I had ‘flashes’ of Madeleine in my head being hurt, abused and screaming for us - but we weren’t there. So awful”.

23 August, an interview with ‘Telecinco’, a Spanish TV news programme. The McCanns had told them in advance that they couldn’t discuss the investigation at all because of the judicial secrecy rules. The interview took place in Justine McGuiness’s flat.

Dr Kate: “It was stifling in the small flat. It was a hot August day, hotter still under the TV arc lights, and we were pretty uncomfortable before we even started. We readied ourselves for the interviewer’s first question. It was about the investigation. And the second question? About the investigation. As was the third. Blood and dogs were mentioned again. It was as if the conversation we’d had [before the interview] had never taken place. After five or so of these unanswerable prompts, Gerry, who was suffering badly from the heat, removed his mike, visibly exasperated and upset…I carried on, attempting patiently and politely to explain why my husband had reacted as he had”.

p. 225

Dr Kate: “The papers gleefully reproduced stills of Madeleine’s distressed father under headlined like: ‘GERRY CRACKS’ and ‘GERRY STORMS OFF’.”

Gerry flew to Scotland to appear at the Edinburgh TV Festibal. This “had been arranged back in early June”, when it was agreed that “Highly respected ‘Newsnight’ presenter Kirsty Wark” would carry out the interview.

On Friday 24 August, a Portuguese newspaper Tal e Qual published an article: ‘PJ BELIEVE PARENTS KILLERD MADDIE’. Dr Kate: “I think this was probably the last straw for Gerry, and he completely lost it. I was equally gobsmacked. Initially my fury was directed not at the police but at the paper…”. It was “ridiculous, disgusting nonsense”.

p. 226

The McCanns ’phoned Bob Small of Leicestershire Police. Dr Kate: “…he was perplexed at the apparent fixation of the PJ on the idea that Madeleine had died in the apartment. He told Gerry he thought they’d get a shock when the forensic results came back”.

Dr Kate: “The next day, Gerry rang Ken Jones, Head of the Association of Chief Police Officers. He, too, was beginning to despair of the investigation and the way it was being handled…Carlos Pinto de Abreu advised us to sue Tal e Qual. We did begin proceedings, but shortly afterwards, the paper went bust…”

p. 227

Dr Kate says that ‘a faction’ within the PJ had leaked the story to Tal e Qual “…in order to make everyone else believe it, to ‘solve’ a case they wer eudner immense pressure to conclude. What better way was there to achieve that than to harness the power of the media? So much for the law of judicial secrecy”.

Dr Kate says there were some Portuguese police officers who ‘worked very hard to get to the truth’ but “their efforts…were being undermined by these disgraceful actions”.

On Monday 27 August the McCanns got a call from one of the Board members of the Find Madeleine Fund trust, Esther McVey, a Conservative parliamentary candidate. She was, said Dr Kate “scared by our current situation” and urged the McCanns to come home. The same day, the McCanns learned that they had to leave their villa by 11 September. The McCanns say that they then made plans to depart from Portugal on Monday 10 September.

p. 228

Dr Kate: “I knew, though, that O would be returning to Luz when I could, to reconnect with the last place I had seen Madeleine and to remind the authorities that I was not going to allow my daughter’s disappearance to be forgotten. I could just imagine the police and the government rubbing their hands with glee at seeing the back of us at last and wrapping up the case with unseemly haste”.

The McCanns had been given many toys by well-wishers and they gave away many of these to local orphanages.

Dr Kate recalls Madeleine’s favourite DVD: ‘Barbie: The Princess and the Pauper’. Madeleine would pretend to be Erika and Dr Kate would pretend to be Anneliese.

p. 229

August 30: this would have been Madeleine’s first day back at school. “I had pictured her in class, having fun and making lots of new mates…I’d see her standing there on her new uniform, smiling at me. I cried, I prayed and I held my husband and children tightly. We could make things right for her. If only we could get her back we could work through anything and everything she’d endured. We would make sure that her life was as full and happy as it should always have been”.

The McCanns get a call from Clement Freud. He teases them: “Is it true, Gerry? That you’re close to a breakdown and needing medication”.

He explains. “I have a lot of empathy with the Express. You see, we both suffer form poor circulation”.

Dr Kate: “Clement kept us smiling”.

p. 230

Dr Kate: “On the night of 1 September I dreamed about Madeleine for the first time on four months…it was such a dreadful experience…Although I was dreaming, I could feel her. It was as if parts of my body that had been hibernating for months suddenly began to stir. I could sense the cold, dark days lifting as I luxuriated in warmth and light. And Madeleine was holding me, her little arms wrapped tightly round me, and it felt so good, I could smell her, I could feel her with every one of my senses as I soaked up this heavenly moment. My Madeleine. I wanted to stay like this for ever. And then I woke up. Ice began to course through my body, driving out every endorphin and remnant of warmth. I didn’t understand. What was happening? How could this be? I could still feel her! A heavy boot connected with my stomach and the ache in my chest was worse than I’d known it. I was struggling for breath, almost as if I were being strangled. Please God, don’t let her go! Stay with me, Madeleine. Please stay with me. Don’t go - stay with Mummy. Please, sweetheart, hold on. I love you so much. I started to cry. The crying built into seismic sobs. An unearthly sound, like the howl of a wounded animal, was coming out of my mouth. The crushing pain in my chest intensified to the point where I thought I was going to die. I’d been with her. And then she was gone. Again”.

by mama 13.05.11 11:44

i joined this forum as a mother whose daughter aged 8 was sexually molested. the offensive writing on pg119? defies belief.to write this in a book for the whole world to read is truly bizarre.

by Wendy 13.05.11 12:11

mama wrote:i joined this forum as a mother whose daughter aged 8 was sexually molested. the offensive writing on pg119? defies belief.to write this in a book for the whole world to read is truly bizarre.

Welcome mama, and I'm truly sorry to hear about your little girl. roses

by Guest 13.05.11 12:32

Wendy wrote:
mama wrote:i joined this forum as a mother whose daughter aged 8 was sexually molested. the offensive writing on pg119? defies belief.to write this in a book for the whole world to read is truly bizarre.

Welcome mama, and I'm truly sorry to hear about your little girl.

Yes, welcome mama, so sorry about your little girl, from me too roses

by lj 13.05.11 15:31

Hi mama, sorry to hear about your girl.

It is not only bizarre, it is sick. It is also the best proof yet that she knows Madeleine is never going to read that book. How could she ever thake the chance she will, no mother would do that. But then, no real mother would leave her babies alone, especially not after one of them asked "why didn't you come when Sean and I were crying".
That all just to get p#ssed in a bar with your friends because "it was our vacation too".

I have always said from day 1 that Kate is the sick one from this whole bunch of deviants. Her diary more or less proved that and what I have seen from her book only reinforces that opinion.

She might be sure Madeleine will never read this, but she can be equally sure that the twins will one day. So not only do they have to read mommy and daddy dearest left them alone and in harm's way night after night, put them back in the same creche where the "abductor" very well may have spotted Madeleine, left them alone again to fly allover the world when just their world was turned upside down because their sister "was taken by a monster", no they also have to read about Kate's sick fantasies and their parents sex life. What a mother will have their kids read this crap? Or does she really think she can stop them from doing that? Sick, sick, sick.

I have often thought that justice for Madeleine would come through the twins. Who knows this book will facilitate that. And Kate be assured of one thing: there is not one mental health professional that, after reading this book, will think you are normal.

by Gracias 13.05.11 15:40

I wonder what Kate's ma and pa think of Kate's porn book?

by tiny 13.05.11 15:43

if they are any thing like thier daughter they wont bat an eyelid

by **Tony Bennett** 13.05.11 15:50

SUMMARY AND CRITIQUE

Chapter 16 ‘ Fantasy Land’

p. 231

Dr Kate: “The day after the dream had been a difficult one. That night I’d gone to bed with puffy eyes.

Dr Kate: “Alan Pike was back in Praia da Luz today to see how we were coping with recent events and our preparations for returning to the U.K. the following Monday” (What? - they were going back to England anyway and Alan Pike had to fly out to Praia da Luz just a week ahead of their return home? Why??)

Dr Kate: “We spent several hours talking about low episodes and the support we were going to need at home…At one point I remarked sardonically: ‘They’ll be hauling us in as suspects next’. Alan replied: ‘Now you’re wandering into fantasy land’.”

p. 232

Ricardo Pavia came round to the villa told the McCanns to bring a lawyer with them to the police station for questions on Wednesday and Thursday. Dr Kate: “Gerry smelled a rat”.

Gerry asked: “Isn’t it unusual for witnesses to be questioned with their lawyer present”. Paiva explained that the McCanns would be ‘arguidos’.

Dr Kate: “I began to shake and cry. I shouted at Ricardo: ‘What are you doing? Why are you doing this? I can’t believe what is going on! This is ridiculous. It’s despicable’. I shook my head over and over again. ‘This can’t be happening. This just cannot be true. What kind of country was this?…I remember crying out in despair, ‘What will our parents think? How will they cope with this? What are you trying to do? Destroy our family completely?’”

p. 233

Dr Kate: “Trisha and Eileen were staying with us for what was intended to be our final week in Luz. Hearing the commotion from the next room, where they were playing with Sean and Amelie, they came running in demanding to know what was happening. Within seconds there were more tears and shouts of dismay and disbelief…Ricardo left, looking every inch the sheepish messenger boy he was”.

Dr Kate: “If this farce continued in the same vein, and we ended up being accused of doing something to Madeleine, people were going to start calling for the twins to be taken away from us. I could feel the panic building up inside me. Between sobs I blurted out my fears to Trisha and Eileen”.

Dr Kate: “Our plans for the evening went out of the window. We cancelled an interview we were scheduled to give ‘Paris Match’ and dinner with Clement Freud’.

Bob Small of Leicestershire Police was said to be ‘astounded’ by developments.

p. 234

Dr Kate rings Clement Freud at 9.50pm who says ‘Come on round’. Dr Kate accepts “a giant glass of brandy”. He jokes: “So, Kate, which of the devout Catholic, alcoholic, depressed, nymphomaniac parts is correct?” On the dogs, he also joked: “So what are they going to do? Put them on the stand? One bark for yes, two for no?” (Some people might think this is funny).

Dr Kate: “A couple of hours later, fortified by our brandies…”

p. 235

The next day the McCanns ‘reluctantly’ allowed photographers to picture them “going into church and sitting on the rocks”.

Dr Kate: “This was all about us, not Madeleine, which was precisely what we’d been striving to avoid for two months or more”. The afternoon is spent at the Hubbards’ house. The Hubbards “were a gift from God”.

p. 236

Wednesday 5 September: The police interviews are postponed; the Evening Standard runs a headline: ‘RESULTS BACK: ARRESTS IMMINENT’. The McCanns say the police were trying by various tactics “to make us crack’.”

p. 237

Dr Kate: “All I could do was tell the truth - again - and hope that was what they were actually interested in”.

It was a windy night: “The Algarvian wind was wild and menacing overnight, howling eerily, sweeping around the walls of the villa and battering the shutters backwards and forwards”. On the way to the police station, they stopped at the church for prayer. “We prayed fervently for Madeleine, for strength and justice”.

p. 238

Dr Kate: “Strangely, I was feeling OK…I’d switched on to autopilot and an inner strength and calmness I hadn’t expected to find had begun to take over. My instinct to protect my child was more powerful than my fear…I suppose the situation was so extreme, so nonsensical, that my brain struggled to register it as real. I had somehow floated out of my body and was watching events unfold as though they were happening to somebody else”.

Dr Kate: “At 1.15pm Gerry drove me to the police station in Portimao…There were hordes of people…” She doesn’t mention the fact which we all heard on TV that many of the crowd were booing her as she arrived at the police station.

p. 239

The interviews started at 2.55pm. Three officers were present: Ricardo Paiva, Paulo Ferreira and Joao Carlos, who asked most of the questions, “all of which I answered in as much details as I could”.

Dr Kate: “At one point early on, something was read out from my initial statement, given on 4 May. It wasn’t quite accurate and I explained to the officer that the original meaning seemed to have been lost slightly in translation. To my astonishment, the interpreter became quite angry and suddenly interrupted; “What are you saying? That we interpreters can’t do our job? The interpreter will only have translated what you told her!’ I was staggered…she was wrong…My trust in her took a dive”.

At a break in the questioning at 5.00pm, Dr Kate’s lawyer, Carlos, “…came over and told me not to be so definite in some of my answers…Carlos’s stance bothered me. I tried to take his guidance on board. But it did rather undermine my confidence”.

p. 240

Interviews stopped at 7.50pm and there was then a delay of 2¼ hours. Interviews resumed and concluded at 12.40am. “Paulo Ferreira stopped me in the corridor and said in a portentous tone: ‘You must go back now and listen very carefully to your lawyer. He has something important to say to you’.”

p. 241

Dr Kate: “Back at the villa…Carlos looked very concerned. There was a great deal we needed to discuss, he told us. He reiterated that the situation was not good. The PJ had a lot of ‘evidence’ against us, and I was certain to be made an arguida in the morning”.

Carlos explained that in the morning the videos of the dogs would be shown, and the McCanns were told that the blood samples matched Madeleine’s with a ’15 out of 19 match with her DNA’.

Dr. Kate: “I was totally perplexed. This news, if true, seemed to add weight to the possibility that Madeleine had at the very least been physically harmed…what we were being told didn’t make sense. If, as the PJ alleged, Madeleine’s blood was in the boot of the car, which we had not rented until 27 May, how on earth had it got there? Did this mean someone had planted it? I could see no other explanation. The police theory, it seemed. Was that we had hidden Madeleine’s body, then moved it later, in the car, and buried it elsewhere”.

p. 242

The police then went on to draw attention to the crumpled page of the Bible, from 2 Samuel Chapter 12, which dealt with the death of a child born to King David’s wife.

The police also queried why the McCanns had asked to see a priest the night Madeleine was reported missing, claiming it was evidence they wanted their sins forgiven.

Dr Kate: “A witness claimed to have seen Gerry and me carrying a big black bag and acting suspiciously. This was absolute nonsense, but ‘evidence’ of this kind came down to one person’s word against another”.

Dr Kate: ‘If you were Portuguese’, Carlos said with an air of resignation, ‘this would be enough to put you in prison’. The only conclusion I could draw was that we’d been framed, though this seemed completely implausible…but maybe anything was possible…Even our own lawyer appeared to think, based on what he’d been told, that the police had a good case against us. I could see by this time that Gerry was starting to crack”.

p. 243

Carlos said the police were offering a deal: confess to having hidden and disposed of the body, then they’d get a much more lenient sentence, just two years; otherwise they would face a homicide charge.

Dr Kate: “Pardon? I really wasn’t sure if I could possibly have heard him correctly. My incredulity turned to rage. How dare they suggest I lie? How dare they expect me to live with such a charge against my name?…Did they really expect me to confess to a crime they had made up, to falsely claim to the whole world that my daughter was dead, when the result would be that the whole world stopped looking for her? This police tactic might have worked in the past, but it certainly wasn’t going to work with me. Over my dead body. Carlos insisted: ‘You need to think about it. It would only be one of you. Gerry could go back to work’, I was speechless’.”

Dr Kate: “Gerry was distraught now. He was on his knees, head hung low. ‘We’re finished. Our life is over’, he kept saying over and over. The realisation that we were at the mercy of an incomprehensible criminal justice system had hit him hard. It was excruciating to see him like this…he is usually so strong…I felt like a character in a soap opera. Ant time now the director would call ‘Cut!’ and this scene would be over”.

p. 244

Carlos kept repeating the phrase: ‘This is the point of no return’.

Dr Kate: “I could feel myself shaking. ‘Do you want me to lie? What would you do, Carlos?”

Dr Kate explains how she has started to lose confidence in carlos, as even he seems to doubt their story.

Dr Kate: “My anger and ferocious maternal instinct began to permeate Gerry’s despair. He was regaining his composure, his powers of reason and his fighting spirit. ‘They’ve got nothing!’, he fired at Carlos. He began pointing out the many flaws in the PJ’s ‘evidence’ and the complete absence of any logic.

Dr Kate: “Trisha and Eileen, disturbed by the noise, appeared from their room. Keeping a lid on my anger for long enough to enable me to communicate clearly, I brought them up to speed. Within seconds there were three raging lionesses pacing the villa. Recognising the need to switch into crisis-management mode, we calmed each other down. Gerry and I made it very clear to Trisha and Eileen that if we didn’t return from the police station the next day, they should take the children out of the country as soon as possible”.

p. 245

Carlos their lawyer left around 4.00am.

Dr Kate: “We’d experienced many periods of despair since our beloved daughter had been taken away, but this one would take some beating…Despite the time, Gerry rang Bob Small and, in a voice laced with panic, explained what was going on. Bob was shocked. He wasn’t aware of any forensic results, he told us, And certainly none suggesting what had just been shared with us. ‘Just tell then the truth, it’ll be OK’, he insisted.

Dr Kate’s diary entry that night:

“We will keep fighting, darling, and we will keep searching for you. Hang in there, Madeleine”.

by Cheshire Cat 13.05.11 16:49

Carlos explained that in the morning the videos of the dogs would be shown, and the McCanns were told that the blood samples matched Madeleine’s with a ’15 out of 19 match with her DNA’.

Dr Kate: “We’d experienced many periods of despair since our beloved daughter had been taken away, but this one would take some beating…Despite the time, Gerry rang Bob Small and, in a voice laced with panic, explained what was going on. Bob was shocked. He wasn’t aware of any forensic results, he told us, And certainly none suggesting what had just been shared with us. ‘Just tell then the truth, it’ll be OK’, he insisted.

The first set of DNA results which corroborated the dogs findings !

So the McCanns took action, by calling Bob Small.

If true, I bet Bob was having kittens! To find out that the first results had slipped through the net and reached the PJ.

I bet there were some frantic phone calls and then the FSS were 'leant' on.

Not evidence that the McCanns harmed Madeliene or were even "involved" in her death, but evidence they knew she was dead and had been in contact with the corpse.

by **Tony Bennett** 13.05.11 18:33

SUMMARY AND CRITIQUE

Chapter 17 ‘ Arguidos’

p. 246

Friday 7 September

Dr Kate: “It was time to go [for my police interview]. I vividly remember standing quietly for a few minutes in the sitting room. There were several thoughts scrolling through my mind. There’s going to be a riot when this news reaches the U.K….There’s no way our government will stand for this…The PJ can beat me up and throw me in a prison cell but I will not lie…I know the truth and God knows the truth. Nothing else matters. It’ll be OK. I was still in control and I felt strong”.

p. 247

Dr Kate and Justine McGuiness called in at the Toddler Club to see the twins and hold them in case she wasn’t coming back. Dr Kate: “After all, I had no idea whether I’d be coming back.

Dr Kate: “Just when it seemed the whole situation couldn’t get any more surreal, before turning the corner to the police station, Justine McGuiness stopped the car, took her lipstick out of her bag and, looking into the rear-view mirror, began to reapply it”.

After she got out of the car: “I walked calmly towards the entrance, my head held high. I felt strangely invincible. There was some jeering from the locals as I passed by, apparently, but I didn’t hear it”.

Dr Kate: “The police were not looking for Madeleine, I reminded myself. They hadn’t been looking for my baby for weeks. The mere thought of that incensed me. There was no way I was going to let her down too”.

p. 248

Dr Kate: “Today Carlos had advised me not to answer any of the questions put to me. He explained that his was my right as an arguida and it was the safest option: any responses I gave might unintentionally implicate me in some way…it struck me as prudent to accept his advice”.

Dr Kate: “I sat there quietly, trying to compose myself despite the anger bubbling beneath the surface. They haven’t been looking for Madeleine… Then they started. What had I seen and heard after entering apartment 5 at 10pm on 3 May 2007?…I was very weary and at least repeating ‘No comment’ didn’t involve engaging my brain”

p. 249

Dr Kate explains that Ricardo Paiva outlined the significance of the dogs’ evidence: “Now Ricardo was giving me his spiel about the dogs. ‘These dogs have a 1900% success rate’, he said, waving an A4 document in front of me. ‘Two hundred cases and they’ve never failed. We have gone to the best laboratory in the world using low-copy DNA techniques’…I just stared at him, unable to hide my contempt. What did he know about low-copy DNA? I was so tempted to ask him to elaborate”.

Dr Kate was then shown the video of Eddie the cadaver dog searching their apartment: “At one point, the handler directed the dogs to a spot behind the couch in the sitting room, close to the curtains. He called the dogs over to him to investigate this particular site. The dogs ultimately ‘alerted’. I felt myself starting to relax a little. This was not an exact science”.

Dr Kate then describes the video of the same dog sniffing around 10 cars in an underground garage. She pours scorn on the dog and the dog handler: “It was hard to miss our Renault Scenic: the windows were plastered with pictures of Madeleine. [This exercise] was susceptible to bias. One of the dogs ran straight past our car, nose in the air, heading towards the next vehicle. The handler stopped next to the Renault and called the dog,. It obeyed, returning to him, but he ran off again. Staying by the car, P.C. Grime instructed the dog to go back several times and directed it to certain parts of the vehicle, before it eventually supplied an alert by barking. Each time the dog gave a signal, Ricardo would pause the video and inform me that blood had been found in this site and that the DNA from the sample matched Madeleine’s. He would stare at me intently and ask me to explain this…I remember feeling such disdain for Ricardo at this point. Under my breath, I found myself whispering: ‘Fucking tosser. Fucking tosser’. This quiet chant kept me strong, kept me in control. This man did not deserve my respect. ‘Fucking tosser’…”

Dr Kate explains that dogs may respond not to the scent of corpses and death, but just to their handlers’ signals: “Gerry would discover that false alerts can be attributable to the conscious or unconscious signals of the handler. From what I saw of the dogs’ responses, this certainly seemed to me to be what was happening here. We would later learn that in his written report, P.C. Grime had emphasised that such alerts cannot be relied upon without corroborating evidence”.

p. 251

Dr Kate challenges Ricardo Paiva: “Why did you ask us over for dinner that night? Had it been a strategic invitation”. Paiva replies: “Like everyone else, we trusted you”.

Carlos ’phoned to say that the McCanns might be in court on Monday and might not be allowed to leave the country.

Dr Kate arrived back after the interview at the Hubbards’ home: “I squeezed my beautiful babies tightly, pressing my nose against them to inhale their sweet scent, not wanting to let them go. A sense of wellbeing and warmth swept over me. This was what was important. This was why we needed to keep battling: our family, our children”.

Kate rang Alan Poke ‘to talk through the day’s events.

p. 252

Dr Kate explains that she and Philomena McCann agreed to tell the British media about the ‘deal’ offered by the PJ, despite Gerry’s misgivings.

Dr Kate: “Publicly suspected of killing my precious daughter or at least disposing of her body. The mere idea made me ant to vomit. The world was not only cruel, it was mad. This scenario would be considered too far-fetched even as a plot for a movie, surely. I was burning with the injustice of it all and my heart broke that bit more for my little girl”.

Gerry got back from his interview at 1.30am. Gerry had intended to make no comment throughout, but Dr Kate explained:

”His intention had been to take Carlos’s advice and refuse to answer any questions. But when the first question - along the lines of ‘Did you dispose of your daughter’s body? - was put to him for the third time, incensed by its sheer absurdity and offensiveness and by the way the interviewing officer was goading him, he simply couldn’t stop himself…unfortunately our inconsistent responses to the interrogation led to me being portrayed as ‘difficult’ or even ‘guilty’ in certain sections of the media and, of course, by the nutters who pour forth their bile on the internet”.

p. 253

Gerry dismissed the dogs’ evidence as “the most subjective piece of intelligence-gathering imaginable”.

Gerry asked to see the DNA report. Dr Kate: “Ricardo became quite flustered, waving P.C. Grime’s document in the air and saying, ‘It is the dogs that are important’. At that point Gerry began to feel a lot better…They had no proof that Madeleine was dead. All they actually had was the signal of a dog trying to please its instructor in an apartment from which Madeleine had been taken three months earlier. As we now know, the chemicals believed to create the ‘odour of death’, putrescence and cadaverine, last no longer than thirty days. There were no decaying body parts for the dog to find. It was simply wrong”. (COMMENT: Where on earth does she get that from? It is well-established hat the scent of a human corpse - human cadaverine - can linger in the spot where a corpse has once lain for years and even be detected many feet underground).

Then comes Dr Kate’s trump card regarding the DNA forensics:

“It would be eleven months before we learned the truth from the released PJ files: the full report from the U.K. Forensic Science Service, sent to them before they interrogated us, had concluded that the DNA results were ‘too complex for meaningful interpretation’.”

pp. 253-4

Dr Kate: “The prospect of being separated from Sean and Amelie, holed up in jail unable to prepare our defence properly, was terrifying. Gerry was seriously considering sneaking us into a car and driving us all across the border to Spain. It would have been crazy. The whole world would have thought we were guilty…”

p. 254

Dr Kate: “Thankfully, we resisted the urge to flee. When we left Portugal, it would be with the blessing of the PJ and our heads held high”.

Saturday 8 September: Dr Kate: “We were on tenterhooks all day, waiting to hear whether we would be allowed to go home. Rachael had found a couple of criminal lawyers in London she was sure could help: Michael Caplan Q.C. and Angus McBride of Kinsley Napley had worked on several high-profile cases, including the Pinochet extradition proceedings and the Stevens inquiry. Gerry gave them a call…”

Dr Kate: “Late that afternoon, we were notified by Liz Dow, the British consul in Lisbon, that Luis Neves and Guilhermino Encarnacao had declared is ‘free’ to leave the country whenever we wished. Thank you, God. On the advice of lawyers, we decided to get out as soon as possible. We would go the next day rather than leaving it until Monday”.

p. 255

Dr Kate explains how she wanted to attend an ‘ecumencial feast-day service’ at the church that evening.

Dr Kate: “We heard from Clarence that evening. Before long, Justine would be moving on to pursue her political career and we’d always hoped he would be able to return as our family spokesperson. The government, however, had other ideas. They forbade him from any further involvement with us because of our arguido status. Clarence was very upset, as were we. This was the first sign we had of doors starting to close on us because of this unwarranted stigma”.

p. 256

The following morning the McCanns said a ‘tearful farewell’ to the Hubbards.

Dr Kate: “It was incomprehensible to be going home as a family of four - something that still sends shivers down my spine…Of course, many sections of the press would suggest we were running away, but as I’ve recounted, the decision had been made several weeks earlier”. (COMMENT: That is not in fact what she said in an earlier chapter).

p. 257

Dr Kate then describes the journey from the villa: “The heaviness of our hearts almost took second place to sheer terror on that journey. We were chased the whole way, mainly by the Portuguese and Spanish press, who tailgated us dangerously. There were torsos hanging out of sun-roofs, huge video cameras balancing on shoulders and heavily laden motorbikes brushing the side of our car as they skimmed past. A helicopter hovered overhead. It was utter madness, and extremely frightening for the children as well as for us. An image of Princess Diana flashed through my mind. It was easy to see how her tragic death had come about…I’d said so many prayers over the last four months but I’d never anticipated having to beg the Lord to protect us on the A22”.

p. 258

Some journalists booked on the same plane that was taking the McCanns back to the U.K. Some asked how the McCanns were feeling.

Dr Kate: “…full of a confusing mixture if relief, disbelief, oppressive sadness, piercing guilt and pain, The sadness, guilt and pain were dominant. We were going home without Madeleiee. I was leaving her behind. I’m her mother and I’m leaving her behind. My heart ached as it was torn away from my last geographical link with my little girl”.

Dr Kate: “When we touched down in the Midlands, I couldn’t hold back the tears any longer, even though I could see how they were worrying Amelia…My chest hurt, my throat felt swollen and my head began to spin…I glanced up at Gerry’s face to see the strain and his red, watery eyes. He was being strong but I knew he was dying inside”.

Dr Kate: “On reaching the tarmac, Gerry gave a short statement to the waiting reporters and film crews. He was breaking, his voice tight as he fought the persistent urge to bawl…”

p. 259

Dr Kate: “A Special Branch officer drove us to Rothley”.

On reaching their cul-de-sac: “Uncle Brian, Auntie Janet and our friend Amanda were already there, waiting to let us in and welcome us home. I cuddled them all, needing to be held tightly, and then I cried and cried and cried”.

She then describes her feelings on entering Madeleine’s bedroom.

p. 260

Dr Kate: “It was straight down to business. Michael Caplan Q.C. and Angus McBride arrived that afternoon fore a thorough discussion of our situation…When they left 3½ hours later we felt more positive, confident that we now had the right people to guide us through this mess”.

Dr Kate: “Whatever the case, when we climbed into bed shortly before midnight, life felt momentarily tolerable. And we still had our hope. This wasn’t over yet”.

by ufercoffy 13.05.11 19:24

Tony Bennett wrote:Dr Kate then describes the video of the same dog sniffing around 10 cars in an underground garage. She pours scorn on the dog and the dog handler: “It was hard to miss our Renault Scenic: the windows were plastered with pictures of Madeleine. [This exercise] was susceptible to bias. One of the dogs ran straight past our car, nose in the air, heading towards the next vehicle. The handler stopped next to the Renault and called the dog,. It obeyed, returning to him, but he ran off again. Staying by the car, P.C. Grime instructed the dog to go back several times and directed it to certain parts of the vehicle, before it eventually supplied an alert by barking. Each time the dog gave a signal, Ricardo would pause the video and inform me that blood had been found in this site and that the DNA from the sample matched Madeleine’s. He would stare at me intently and ask me to explain this…I remember feeling such disdain for Ricardo at this point. Under my breath, I found myself whispering: ‘Fucking tosser. Fucking tosser’. This quiet chant kept me strong, kept me in control. This man did not deserve my respect. ‘Fucking tosser’…”

Ringo wrote:It's interesting though that Grime stopped by the McCanns car for so long though don't you think? He didnt walk on as he had with the other cars, didn't follow the dog on to the cars that it had run towards - why was that? Could it have anything to do with the fact that the car was plastered in posters of Madeleine? Anyway - all now completely irrelevant as no evidence was found.

Kate sounds like Ringo, Ringo sounds like Kate, Kate sounds like crazytony....they all use the same mantra winkwink

by Cheshire Cat 13.05.11 19:47

ufercoffy wrote:
Tony Bennett wrote:Dr Kate then describes the video of the same dog sniffing around 10 cars in an underground garage. She pours scorn on the dog and the dog handler: “It was hard to miss our Renault Scenic: the windows were plastered with pictures of Madeleine. [This exercise] was susceptible to bias. One of the dogs ran straight past our car, nose in the air, heading towards the next vehicle. The handler stopped next to the Renault and called the dog,. It obeyed, returning to him, but he ran off again. Staying by the car, P.C. Grime instructed the dog to go back several times and directed it to certain parts of the vehicle, before it eventually supplied an alert by barking. Each time the dog gave a signal, Ricardo would pause the video and inform me that blood had been found in this site and that the DNA from the sample matched Madeleine’s. He would stare at me intently and ask me to explain this…I remember feeling such disdain for Ricardo at this point. Under my breath, I found myself whispering: ‘Fucking tosser. Fucking tosser’. This quiet chant kept me strong, kept me in control. This man did not deserve my respect. ‘Fucking tosser’…”

Ringo wrote:It's interesting though that Grime stopped by the McCanns car for so long though don't you think? He didnt walk on as he had with the other cars, didn't follow the dog on to the cars that it had run towards - why was that? Could it have anything to do with the fact that the car was plastered in posters of Madeleine? Anyway - all now completely irrelevant as no evidence was found.

Kate sounds like Ringo, Ringo sounds like Kate, Kate sounds like crazytony....they all use the same mantra

Well Kate and Ringo are both scousers who like to hit inanimate objects! Prosecution Exhibit 1: 'madeleine' - What's in the book? - Page 2 82678

by littlepixie 13.05.11 23:14

Can I just say a big Thank You to Tony for giving us a summary of the book so quickly.

by ufercoffy 13.05.11 23:21

littlepixie wrote:Can I just say a big Thank You to Tony for giving us a summary of the book so quickly.

Ditto

Glad I didn't buy it though titter

by **Tony Bennett** 14.05.11 11:52

SUMMARY AND CRITIQUE

Chapter 18 ‘The Fightback Begins’

p. 261

Dr Kate - first day back home in Rothley: “…we needed to clear our names, comprehensively and quickly, before we could continue the search for Madeleine on any effective level. While suspicions remained among the authorities and the public that we had somehow been involved in our daughter’s disappearance, fewer people were going to be looking for her”.

Dr Kate: “The media coverage was absolutely huge, driven, it seemed, by the ‘ultimate twist’: the parents who were conducting an international campaign now rumoured to be suspected of hiding their own daughter’s body. It was despicable given that the basis for the stories was simply untrue”.

p. 262

Dr Kate: “Over the next few weeks our days would be filled with ’phone calls, e-mails and meetings, interspersed with hours holed up in the study in front of computer screens, researching and gathering information. We worked 16-hour days and frequently fell into bed at 2am. We rarely left the house…”

Dr Kate: “We were [sometimes] able to squeeze on a short, head-clearing run or spirit-boosting visit to the local church”.

The McCanns had four main issues to deal with:

protecting our children
ensuring the safety of our family
preparing our defence with lawyers
trying to stop the press publishing lies.

They immediately contacted their GP, bearing in mind the ‘wild’ stories appearing in the press about Dr Kate’s ‘fragile mental state’, ‘inability to cope’ and ‘hyperactive children’. These stories, says Dr Kate, were ‘complete bullshit’.

Dr Kate: “Not once had our GP been contacted for any information about us, nobody asked him if we were well and healthy, whether he’d ever had any concerns about us or if we were on any medication; the police had not sought access to our medical notes…”

p. 263

The McCanns asked to see someone from Social Services. A Social Services manager and a child protection officer came round. Dr Kate: “I could tell they felt uncomfortable about having to subject us to this sort of scrutiny”. They ‘went through various formalities’ and were ‘totally professional’. Dr Kate does not disclose whether specific child protection procedures were followed e.g. putting the twins’ names on the Child Protection Register.

The police visited within 24 hours; sensor alarms were fitted in their home, the McCanns were given personal alarms, their back fence was increased in height, making it 12 feet high…Control Risks Group ‘sent a technical expert to check on our ’phone lines and rooms for any bugging devices’.

The media camped outside the house for two days, then retreated to the end of the cul-de-sac.

p. 264

Dr Kate: “…the frustrating necessity to shore up our defences not only distracted us from the search for Madeleine, it also robbed us of time with the twins”.

“The twins were both a little unsettled at night…”

Tuesday 11 September: A telephone ‘conference call’ between the McCanns and Michael Caplan Q.C., Angus McBride and Justine McGuiness… “Justine and Angus would visit the editors of the main tabloid newspapers and Angus would explain to them that there was absolutely no evidence to support our involvement in Madeleine’s disappearance”, but…“Angus and Justine’s action seemed to make next to no difference…”.

The press referred to a ‘100% DNA match’ pf samples with Madeleine’s DNA> Dr Kate: “Even if this had been true (which it turned out it wasn’t), it was perfectly feasible that Madeleine’s DNA could have been in the car for entirely innocent reasons…[or] the DNA [could have been] mine, Gerry’s, Sean’s or Amelie’s, since Madeleine inherited her DNA from Gerry and me (as have the twins), she possesses strands common to us all…”

p. 265

They had many letters of support from ‘people who could see through the lies and speculation’.

The lawyers suggested getting hold of the Renault Scenic, ‘left with a friend in Portugal’ for a ‘full forensic screen’.

Angus McBride flew out the same day to Portugal to talk to Carlos Pinto de Abreu, ‘Bob Small paid us a call’…“We knew he cared about us, about Madeleine, and about justice”. But Dr Kate was ‘exasperated’ that Bob Small kept saying he was ‘constrained by my position’, and wrote in her diary: “Very frustrating. You wonder, if the shit really hits the fan, who will actually put their necks out and stand up for us?”

p. 266

Dr Kate began a ‘detailed chronological account’ of ‘all our movements from 3 May to 7 September’, especially ‘filling in gaps in the first three weeks’…“I worked on this almost solidly for the next three weeks”.

Dr Kate: “I also contacted Foreign Office officials and consular staff to confirm details of all our meetings with them”.

Dr Kate: “My journals were so comprehensive, covering everything down to the most insignificant and boring incidents you can imagine, that by the time I had finished I was able to account for what we did and where we were at virtually ant given time over the whole four months. I would have put Sherlock Holmes out of a job, if I say so myself…[but] it was a travesty I’d had to produce it at all”.

Dr Kate: “Since 4 may, practically every step we’d taken outside our mark Warner apartment or the villa had been followed on TV by the entire world. How could we possibly have secretly hidden our daughter’s body, in such a safe place that it hadn’t been discovered, and then removed it (if our hiding place was that good, I wonder why would we have bothered), transport it in our Renault Scenic (which we hadn’t hired until 27 May) and buried her elsewhere - all without our media stalkers noticing a thing? It simply wasn’t feasible”. (COMMENT: The McCanns managed to throw off their ‘media stalkers’ for the trip to Huelva).

p. 267

Dr Kate: “…by the time I went to bed at night I often felt close to exploding with exasperation”.

An extract from Dr Kate’s diary:

”Gerry’s had a few tough days…was upset earlier on today…he seems very stressed…What have we done to deserve this? Immoral, inhumane, a total injustice. I don’t know how the Portuguese police sleep at night. Madeleine, nobody here…is going to stop looking for you…”

“By this time Gerry was deep into his next task: researching the validity of responses produced by blood and cadaver dogs”. She quotes a ‘US lawyer’ who cast doubt on their ability, claiming that cadaver dogs had ‘an abysmal performance’. The lawyer’s report (dated 1996) says: “…with respect to residual odour. The dog-handler teams performed significantly worse than if the handlers had simply flipped a coin to speculate as to the presence of residual odour at each location”.

p. 268

Dr Kate quotes from another report, dated 1990, which says:

“Almost all erroneous alerts originate not from the dog but from the handler’s misinterpretation of the dog’s signals. A false alert can result from the handler’s conscious or unconscious signals given by them to lead a dog where the handler suspects evidence to be located”.

Wednesday 12 September: Dr Kate says that this was the date they were first contacted by lawyer Edward Smethurst (COMMENT: I suspect that there is quite a lot left out of this book about the precise sequence of events relating to Edward Smethurst and Brian Kennedy).

Smethurst said he worked for Brian Kennedy, who is said to have said: “I can no longer sit idly by and watch…I want to step in and help the McCanns financially”.

A meeting was held with Brian Kennedy and Edward Smethurst at the offices of Kingsley Napley (where Michael Caplan Q.C. and Angus McBride were also based. Angus McBride drove up to Rothley to fetch the McCanns down to this meeting (!) Brian was “Much younger than I was expecting…relaxed, personable…from Edinburgh, married with five children, a self-made man who had started out as a window-cleaner...” He asked for an account of what happened on 3 May then said: “OK, that’s enough, I’ve always believed you…”

p. 269

Brian Kennedy said we must get the allegations against us out of the way and then we would be able to concentrate on finding Madeleine. Dr Kate: “I wanted to cry. Well, actually, I did cry. Here was somebody, at long last, who could see through all this rubbish and the damage it was doing”.

Dr Kate: “Discussions between ourselves, Brian and Ed, our lawyers and representatives from Control Risks continued through the afternoon”.

Let’s see who was attending those discussions:

1) Gerry McCann

2) Dr Kate

3) Brian Kennedy

4) Edward Smethurst

5) Michael Caplan QC

6) Angus McBride

7) and 8) Probably at least two staff from Control Risks Group.

A high-powered group. What did they talk about? This was Friday 14 September.

Dr Kate: “Everyone had agreed that it would be a great help to have Clarence Mitchell back on board to take care of media liaison, communications and public relations. We knew he was keen to rejoin us in spite of the government’s edict. Within three days, Clarence had resigned from the civil service and was back in the fold, his salary generously taken care of by Brian. We were absolutely delighted - as, incidentally, were the many little old ladies who wrote to tell us that they were sleeping much better since the return of that nice ‘Mr Mitchell’.”

p. 270

The children asked questions about where Madeleine was. One day, Sean, whom Dr Kate now calls ‘Seany’, “was wandering around the house telling anybody within earshot: ‘We can’t find Madeleine’.”

p. 271

Dr Kate recalls memories of Madeleine in the nursery school, at Stonehurst Farm and around the home etc. She cries.

Thursday 20 September: Dr Kate: “Gerry and I travelled to London again to meet no fewer than five lawyers” - Michael Caplan QC, Angus McBride, Edward Smethurst, Carlos Pinto de Abreu, and Rogerio Alves, another Portuguese lawyer, who was ‘President of the Portuguese Bar’ (barristers’ association).

(NOTE: Edward Smethurst was subsequently to be described as ‘The McCanns’ co-ordinating lawyer’. The cost of this meeting, including paying for the time and expense of travelling from Portugal, must have been tens of thousands of pounds).

p. 272

It was agreed that Carlos Pintu de Abreu would represent Gerry while Rogerio Alves would represent Dr Kate. They decided to ‘petition the prosecutor, asking to be informed of the evidence against us’. The McCanns would:

submit their own information
submit a detailed and full account of their movements from May to September 2007
submit a record of all their trips in the Renault Scenic
submit the findings of Gerry’s research on the unreliability of bloodhounds and cadaver dogs.

Dr Kate: “The meticulous record of events in my journals enabled us to account for every journey we made in the Renault Scenic, taking us to within a few kilometres of the much publicised ‘unexplained mystery mileage of the McCanns’ hire car’ which, of course, was no a mystery at all”.

p. 273

Then McCanns also supplied a list of witnesses they thought should be interested. The witnesses included the McCanns’ relatives, their ‘Tapas 7’ friends, their GP and staff at Madeleine’s nursery school.

Dr Kate: “Trisha and Sandy [Cameron]’s testimony would, you’d have thought, been particularly relevant to the hypothesis that we had ‘stored’ Madeleine’s body, since they were with us the whole time’ (NOTE: Trisha and Sandy Cameron did not go on the Huelva trip).

Dr Kate: “Brian Kennedy arranged for Jane tanner to see an FBI-accredited forensic sketch artist [NOTE: Melissa Little] to try to create an image of the man she saw carrying a child on 3 May”. A forensic team had been despatched from the U.K. to carry out a full forensic search of the Renault Scenic (NOTE: And the cost of this?)

Dr Kate: “…on 24 September, a forensic scientist from Control Risks came to take samples of hair from Sean, Amelie and myself”. (NOTE: See how often Control Risks Group is mentioned in Dr Kate’s account).

Dr Kate: “On the night Madeleine was taken, you may remember, Gerry and I had been very concerned that Sean and Amelie had hardly moved in their costs, let alone woken up, despite the commotion in the apartment (NOTE: When the McCanns, their friends and staff from Mark Warners were trampling all over the ‘crime scene’ contaminating the evidence).

Dr Kate: “…we had always suspected that all three children might have been sedated by the abductor. We mentioned this to the police that night and several more times in the following weeks, but no testing of blood, or hair, which could have revealed the presence of drugs, had ever been done”.

p. 274

The McCanns provided samples of hair from the twins and Dr Kate, because: “I was fed up with the constant insinuations that I took tranquillisers, sleeping pills or any medication, for that matter”. They lost “loads of hair”…”I cried as I heard the scissors in their baby-blond hair. I felt angry that the children had to go through this further insult…I cursed the abductor and the PJ…all the hair samples produced negative results. Whilst this didn’t totally exclude the possibility that the children had been sedated…it meant nobody else (including the PJ and the media) could prove otherwise. It also confirmed that I didn’t ‘abuse’ sedative medication. It is sad that we had to go to such lengths to demonstrate this; sadder still that such tests weren’t carried out at the time”.

Dr Kate then recites 7 hostile news headlines, among many.

p. 275

Dr Kate: “Angus McBride paid a second round of visits to newspaper editors, this time with Clarence. Michael Caplan Q.C. had write to the Chief Constable of Leicestershire [Matt Baggott] asking him to intervene. On 17 September, the Chief Constable wrote to newspapers and broadcasters urging restraint, to little effect. On 8 October, he sent a further letter, again making it clear that much of the media coverage simply had no foundation and that rumour appeared to have taken precedence over due diligence”.

Dr Kate then has a paragraph on her feelings: “…nights that were the worst…my brain would wander unbidden down black and terrifying avenues, I struggled constantly to think nice thoughts…the demons had me in their grip and would torture me mercilessly with images too frightening and painful to share…”

Paragraphs on the McCanns’ ‘sex life’ follow. “My sexual desire plummeted to zero…I was unable to permit myself any pleasure, whether it was reading a book or making love with my husband, and [there was] revulsion stirred up by my fear that Madeleine had suffered the worst fate we could imagine: falling into the hands of a paedophile. When she was first stolen, paedophiles were all we could think about, and it made us sick, ate away at us”.

p. 276

Dr Kate: “The idea of a monster like this touching my daughter, stroking her, defiling her perfect little body, just killed me, over and over again…it’s probably not surprising that even the thought of sex repulsed me. I would lie in bed, hating the person who had done this to us…I hated him. I wanted to kill him. I wanted to inflict the maximum possible pain on him for heaping all this misery on my family. I was angry and bitter…”

Dr Kate: “I worried that if I couldn’t get our sex life back on track our whole relationship would break down…I knew there were only two solutions: bringing Madeleine back or conquering my mental block. Since the first was not within my control, it was up to me to try to train my mind and my thought processes. So that is what I applied myself to doing”.

p. 277

Dr Kate refers to the children climbing into their bed during the night.

She then refers to Madeleine’s ‘star chart’, which she explains as follows:

“For a few weeks around the end of 2006 and the beginning of 2007, Madeleine had gone through a phase of coming through to our room before morning. We’d generally been very disciplined about taking her straight back to her own bed. I’d helped her make a reward chart, still pinned on the kitchen wall today, on which we’d stuck a star for every night she stayed tucked up. When she’d earned enough stars, she’d be allowed a special treat”. She said the PJ referred to it as a ‘punishment chart’.

p. 278

25 September: Dr Kate: “…we heard that a little blonde girl resembling Madeleine had been spotted with a group of Moroccan peasants. We received a photograph, taken by a Spanish tourist, in which the child was being carried on a woman’s back…a contingent of press had already jumped on the ’plane to Morocco to try to track down ‘Madeleine’. In the meantime, CEOP were using special IT techniques to improve the resolution of the photograph, then facial-recognition software to try to establish whether or not the child could be Madeleine Brian Kennedy called us later that evening to ask if we would like him to fly out to Morocco to find out for certain…we weren’t sure if this was either necessary or wise, but…off Brian went on his plane to northern Morocco.” (NOTE: There are major question marks about the provenance of this photograph and the precise sequence of events which led to its publication on the front page of almost every British newspaper. We will say more about this on our website in due course).

p. 279

Dr Kate: “The following day, we learned that the little girl was not Madeleine”.

On October 2. Goncalo Amaral was removed from the Portuguese investigation into Madeleine’s disappearance by Alipio Ribeiro: Dr Kate: “The reason for his removal, it was said, was that he had made controversial remarks about the involvement of the British authorities in the investigation”.

Dr Kate says that four months later, “Ribeiro would remark in an interview that the PJ’s decision to make us arguidos had been ‘too hasty’ Finally, we thought, someone in authority was showing common sense and decency”.

by Anon 14.05.11 13:41

Tony Bennett wrote:The police visited within 24 hours; sensor alarms were fitted in their home, the McCanns were given personal alarms, their back fence was increased in height, making it 12 feet high…Control Risks Group ‘sent a technical expert to check on our ’phone lines and rooms for any bugging devices’.

The McCann's were suspects in the death and concealment of their daughter...why were they given personal alarms, sensor alarms, high fences etc? Who paid for all this? What/who were they being protected from? Do other criminals get this sort of protection? They had more protection than they gave their children. They didn't have personal alarms or a high fence to protect them.

by Guest 14.05.11 13:55

Anon wrote:
Tony Bennett wrote:The police visited within 24 hours; sensor alarms were fitted in their home, the McCanns were given personal alarms, their back fence was increased in height, making it 12 feet high…Control Risks Group ‘sent a technical expert to check on our ’phone lines and rooms for any bugging devices’.

The McCann's were suspects in the death and concealment of their daughter...why were they given personal alarms, sensor alarms, high fences etc? Who paid for all this? What/who were they being protected from? Do other criminals get this sort of protection? They had more protection than they gave their children. They didn't have personal alarms or a high fence to protect them.

And why would you worry about bugging devices. It is normally only the police that would do that sort of thing, if inside the house,(he says rooms) newspapers and the like wouldn't have access. So why would you think they would do that?

by Guest 14.05.11 14:04

The involvement of CRG is important. The company was apparently retained as part of a “crisis management” team by Bell Pottinger on behalf of Mark Warner. Some CRG specialist were probably in Luz before 13th May 2007 but Mr Farrow is the ex-head of the Economic Crime Unit in the City of London Police and Mr Keenan an ex-Superintendent from the Metropolitan Police with specialist fraud and investigative experience.

So why would those out to protect the image of Mark Warner, be also out to ensure that the McCann's were not being bugged?

by **Tony Bennett** 14.05.11 15:11

SUMMARY AND CRITIQUE

Chapter 19 ‘Action on Three Fronts’

p. 280

Dr Kate discusses the need to appoint private investigators: “Once we were declared arguidos, it became frighteningly clear to us that [the PJ] were no longer looking for Madeleine. What they were looking for now, it seemed, was a conviction”.

p. 281

Dr Kate: “We had no option but to launch our own investigation”.

Dr Kate: “We knew nothing about private investigators…We pictured a smart, intuitive lone operator, scornful of authority, who somehow always manages to see what everyone else has missed and never fails to get his man”.

Dr Kate: “Venturing into unfamiliar territory [i.e. the world of private investigators] of any sort is never easy, and exploring the field of private investigation has been a total minefield for us. We were approached by many firms and individuals in several countries, all claiming to have the relevant expertise…How do you choose?”

p. 282

There is a lot of vague waffle about the investigation teams they have chosen…”…we have continued to review our progress and explore new strategies and options…often someone with something extra to bring to the search will come along…we change or add to the team to keep the search moving forward…the time and energy it takes to brief a new team is immense. Just bringing them up to speed is an exhausting and emotional process”.

Metodo 3 is discussed, with (not very convincing) reasons given why they were chosen.

p. 283

There is more waffle about how difficult it is to choose the ‘right’ investigators and how naïve and inexperienced they were in all this, then comes this:

Dr Kate: We have no doubt that Metodo 3 made significant strides, but unfortunately, in mid-December, one of their senior investigators [NOTE: Actually their boss, Francisco Marco!) gave an overly optimistic interview to the media. He implied the team were close to finding Madeleine and declared that he hoped she would be home by Christmas Gerry and I did not pay much heed to these bullish assertions”.

COMMENT: The McCanns were content for these utterly false, bogus claims to be recycled on front pages by British tabloids. Metodo 3 even had the effrontery to claim that they ‘knew Madeleine was alive’, that they ‘knew where Madeleine is’ and that their men were ‘closing in on the abductors’.

Besides that, Dr Kate claims that ‘Metodo 3 made significant strides’. But that claim is utterly contradicted by the plain fact that after the McCanns have used at least seven private investigation teams, and spent millions of pounds of public money, and after the expiry of four years, neither they, nor their lawyers, nor their advisers, nor their private investigators, can give any of us even one usable fact about who the alleged abductor might have been and where (if anywhere) he took Madeleine. The whole world has been asked to search for Madeleine, yet apart from two contradictory accounts of a person said to be carrying a child on the evening of 3 May (one man is said to have had ‘long black hair’, the other ‘short brown hair’), we have nothing.

Dr Kate McCann refers to Metodo 3’s lies about knowing where Madeleine is and falsely boasting that she would be ‘home by Christmas’ as “a glitch” (p. 283).

Dr Kate: “That glitch apart, Metodo 3 worked very hard for us and, just for the record, their fees were very low: most of the money they were paid was for verified expenses…we maintain good relations with Metodo 3 today. We had the sense that they genuinely cared about Madeleine’s fate…”

COMMENT: The McCanns’ accounts show that they paid Metodo 3 a lump sum of £250,000 for about six months’ work. Dr Kate in her book has totally ducked the involvement of Metodo 3 in financing a strange lawyer from Madeira, Marcos Aragao Corriea, to search the Arade Dam for Madeleine’s remains, an issue we cover in detail on our website: see John Whitehouse’s article: ‘The McCanns’ Private Investigators: We Investigate”.

There's not much else about their private investigations, though Kevin Halligen gets a mention.

Dr Kate writes (p. 283):

"We had one particularly bad experience with a man named Kevin Halligen (or Richard, as we knew him). Halligen was the CEO of a private-investigation foirm calld Oakley International which was hired by Madeleine's Fund for six months from the end of March 2008..."

She then refers to three 'phases' of the Halligen investigation, saying only that during the third phase, "...we began to have concerns".

Later (p. 284), she admits:

"Several months later, one of the investigators subcontracted by Oakley contacted us to demand paymet for his services. We had already settled Oakley's bill for this work months before, but apparently the company had not paid him. He was not the only one...We were upset..."

There is no mention whatsoever by Dr kate of any attempt by either the McCanns or by the Find Madeleine Fund to sue Halligen for his obviously fraudulent conduct.

p. 283

Dr Kate claims: “The first and second phases of the contract [with Oakley International] ran fairly smoothly; they had put in place systems to gather, collate, prioritise and follow up the information coming in as a result of appeals Gerry and I made around the first anniversary of Madeleine’s abduction. There is lttlle doubt that at that stage progress was being made”.

COMMENT: Again, what ‘progress’? Kevin Halligen and his Oakley International achieved precisely nothing. We must also remember that the fraudster and con-man Halligen and his essentially one-man band ‘Oakley’ outfit were falsely described by the McCanns’ reputation manager Clarence Mitchell as ‘the big boys of international private investigations’. That now seems like a calculated lie by Mitchell.

p. 284

Brushing aside the ‘Madeleine home by Christmas’ ‘glitch’ by Metodo 3 and the utterly disastrous and wasteful employment of Kevin Halligen, Dr Kate sails bravely on with: “For the most part, though, our experiences with independent investigators have been good”, once again ignoring the fact that, collectively, these highly-paid investigators have yielded precisely nil information of any use.

The arrival of Dave Edgar

Dr Kate now refers obliquely to the appointment of former Detective Inspector Dave Edgar (and his colleague Arthur Cowley) to head up their investigation. In other places, the McCanns say this came about in November 2008; please see articles on our website about Dave Edgar, notably the recent one (May 2011) again filed by our John Whtehouse.

Dr Kate writes: “Our current tried and tested team has more or less been in place, with a few modifications, since October. It is spearheaded by a former police officer…” [Dave Edgar].

There is then a paragraph puffing up the quality and expertise of their private investigation team, which once again we say has brought no results whatsoever of any practical value. Dr Kate: “…there is input from strategy advisers and specialists in various fields as required, enabling us to recruit the best-qualified people available to handle particular tasks…it’s a system with which we have made encouraging progress”.

p. 285

There’s a paragraph about Gerry and his work at Glenfield Hospital. Dr Kate: “Almost every evening, after the kids are in bed, he is at his computer or on the ’phone meeting the demands of his other job: continuing the campaign to find Madeleine”.

The next paragraph gives rather convoluted explanations as to why she ‘could not’ go back to work herself…“…I’m sure some of my patients would undoubtedly find it awkward dealing with me”.

Dr Kate: “…handling the mail is virtually a full-time job, and some projects, such a analysing the PJ files once they were released to us, have involved months of work”.

p. 286

Dr Kate talks about preparations for Christmas: “One morning in November, Amelie talked incessantly about her sister on the way to nursery, ‘Madeleine’s getting a big teddy bear for Christmas’…I was quite tearful…it was the mention of Christmas that tipped me over the edge”.

Dr Kate: “…O switched on the TV…and caught a review of next morning’s paper...I was confronted by Madeleine’s face on the front page of a tabloid beneath a headline screaming: ‘SHE’S DEAD’. I got little sleep after that. I thought I would never be able to stop crying. The pain was crippling”.

Later, Amelie said: “Mummy, Madeleine’s coming…Santa’s going to give her a big cuddle then bring her to Mummy’.

The McCanns went to relatives in Yorkshire and Scotland over Christmas. In Scotland, Amelie arranged the beds: “Girls together. Mummy, Amelie and Madeleine. I’ll save this place here for Madeleine’.

Dr Kate: “We had hoped that the judicial secrecy restrictions would be lifted early in 2008, giving us access to the police files…”

p. 287

On 8 January there was a newspaper headline: ‘IT WAS HER BLOOD IN PARENTS’ HIRE CAR’…“How could the press be so heartless?”

The McCanns had consulted Adam Tudor of Carter-Ruck in 2007; now they consulted him again after some lurid headlines and ‘three completely untrue stories’ in the Daily Express.

p. 288

Carter-Ruck took on the case on a ‘no-win no-fee’ basis which “certainly made our decision a lot easier”. The Express Group “finally conceded that their stories were untrue”. They paid £550,000 to the Find Madeleine Fund. The McCanns had cited over 100 libellous articles in their claim against the Express Group.

There is then a homily on how the press should behave responsibly.

p. 289

The McCanns list their four main benefactors and helpers:

Brian Kennedy
Edward Smethurst
Richard Branson
Stephen Winyard.

The McCanns later got more damages from Associated Newspapers. The amount paid is not disclosed by Dr Kate. The ‘Tapas 7’ got £375.000. Robert Murat got £600,000 from four newspaper groups and then even more from SKY TV.

Dr Kate: “Adam Tudor and his colleague Isabel Hudson continue to do a vast amount of work for us, without payment, most of it quietly, behind the scenes. They have given us invaluable advice, for example, in our attempts to deal with the widespread defamatory material circulating on the internet. We have taken action against one or two websites, but it has proved almost impossible to get this stuff removed from some of them, particularly those hosted in the U.S.A…You could spend your whole life doing nothing but trying to shut down crank websites with little prospect of success”.

p. 290

The next few pages details the McCanns attempts to get linked to various ‘Missing Children’ campaigns, such as the proposed E.U.-wide ‘Amber Alert’ system. Dr McCann calls them CRAs - ‘child rescue alerts systems’.

Dr Kate: “It had always been part of our plan for the future of the Find Madeleine campaign to use our resources, and the attention focussed on us, to try to save other children and their families from the same nightmare…As a result of the unprecedented publicity surrounding our case, Madeleine’s image had become almost iconic, the face that represents all missing children”.

p. 291

There’s a paragraph about the ‘massive scale’ of the problem of missing and trafficked children - and a slew of statistics: “What is not in doubt is that the available statistics underestimate the scale of the problem”.

pp. 292-5

The next three pages discuss the E.U. Amber Alert system and the McCanns’ appearance at the European Parliament to campaign for its adoption across the European Union. Dr Kate writes (p. 298): “The media presence at the press conference that followed was impressive. We were told there hadn’t been such a turn-out since Prince Charles and the Dalai Lama had appeared at the parliament”. Dr Kate then gets quite worked up about the lack of E.U. action about the problem of missing children and writes in her diary on 1 March: “Unbelievable! I feel so angry with Europe and thus so-called European ‘Union’! We need to start demanding. We need information: everyone who was in Praia da Luz for a start”.

p. 295

Dr Kate: “If Madeleine’s abductor was a sex offender or a child trafficker, for example, the chances are that he would have offended before. I cast my mind back to what the British consul had told me in the police station in Portimao that first day about the reports there had been of intruders getting into bed with children. I needed to know more about this”.

Dr Kate spoke to the retired British consul on the Algarve who gave details of a meeting with tour operators in August 2006 when a minor spate of child molestations had occurred.

pp. 296-7

Dr Kate: It was believed that this offender (or offenders) watched for patterns and routines in a family’s behaviour, establishing ‘weaknesses’ in the security of the apartment and determined in advance where parents and children slept. Cold shivers ran down my spine as it hit home that this might have applied to us”.

Dr Kate: “I pressed the former British consul on what happened afterwards. Had there been an investigation? Had anybody been convicted? He wasn’t sure, but thought that an immigrant construction worker had been arrested and released pending trial, which was likely to take place some years down the line. Unbelievable!”

Dr Kate describes her visit to Washington with Gerry at the end of March. They met with Ernie Allen at the National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children, then with Jeff Sedgwick, Assistant Attorney General and national Amber Alert Co-ordinator. They also met Ed Smart, father of Elizabeth Smart, who was notoriously abducted in very controversial and mysterious circumstances. A year later, Elizabeth Smart was in London and came up to spend a Saturday afternoon with the McCann family. Elizabeth was ‘amazingly well-adjusted…a real survivor, body and soul. I hope with all my heart that the same is true of our Madeleine”.

p. 298

The chapter concluded with the arrival of the PJ to be present while Leicestershire Police carried out s-called ‘rogatory’ interviews with the McCanns, their ‘Tapas 7 friends, and certain other witnesses.

“While we were finishing lunch [in Brussels], Clarence had a ’phone call from a Spanish journalist who told him that he’d been given what appeared to be witness statements made by Gerry and me to the Portuguese police…he was interested on Madeleine’ comment to us on the morning of the day she disappeared: ‘Why didn’t you come when Sean and I creid last night?’ I don’t think I need to remind anyone how I have been tortured by this question since the moment Madeleine was taken from us…As Clarence relayed this conversation with the journalist, I could feel my anger and frustration building. Not again! How many of the leaks would we have to bear before this whole nightmare was over? Needless to say, Clarence was besieged by calls from the media…The news of our efforts in Brussels would be spiked and replaced by ‘MADELEINE LEFT ALONE TO CRY; or whatever attention-grabbing headlines took the fancy of the sub-editors. I don’t remember many occasions when I’ve been as angry as I was that day…How had this information come to be released -completely illegally, I might add - today of all days ,when Gerry and I were trying to do something positive for child protection?…We were gutted…As we’d feared, the day’s McCann story changed and the media ran with the leaks from our statements”.

p. 300

Dr Kate: “We were determined not to let our frustration at this injustice get to us”. She explains that they lobbied until by September 2008 they had got the signatures of 418 MEPs in the European Parliament supporting the declaration in support of an E.U.-wide Amber Alert missing child system. Dr Kate: “We were relieved and delighted. We knew that this was no more than one small step in achieving our aim, but it had been a shot in the arm of a frustratingly slow bureaucratic process…”

by **Tony Bennett** 14.05.11 19:21

SUMMARY AND CRITIQUE

Chapter 21 ‘ The Good, the Bad and the Mad’

This chapter is all about the ‘Good’ (those who support and back us’ and the ‘Bad’ and ‘Mad’ (those who are either evil or lunatics because they do not believe our story and in some cases campaign against us).

The Madeleine Foundation and myself come in for criticism, as was to be expected, on pages 311 and 312. There are several hostile references, but Dr Kate can bear to mention by name neither The Madeleine Foundation nor myself.

On page 311, she writes:

"...there are the publicity-seekers, like one group set up by a man who had the gall to use our daughter's name in the title of his nasty little organisation. He and his cohorts prey on vulnerable families who have experienced tragedy. We are not the first to be targeted and, sadly, we probably won't be the last".

She continues:

"...this bunch have been more of a nuisance than anything else. The only time their activities have seriously distressed me was when they leafleted our village just before Sean and Amelie were due to start primary school". She adds how a lady in the village knocked on her door and handed her 'the offensive pamphlet'.

She goes on:

"Apparently, this had been delivered to all the houses in Rothley except ours and handed out in the village during the day".

Next she says: "This incident grieved me more than I would have expected. Up to that point, this man's activities had always been confined to the internet and therefore, presumably, to like-minded individuals. Now he was spreading them in the community and, worse still, in our community. I knew most of the villagers were behind us..."

On page 312:

"...I feared that any unpleasant gossip might poison the atmosphere at the twins' new school and create problems for them at this crucial time. How could someone do this to two four-year-olds?"

She continues that she logged a formal complaint about the leafleting with Leicestershire Police but that they didn't do anything about it.

Then she mentions the threat of legal proceedings against me, pointing out that I paiod £400 court costs to them. She writes:

"..he undertook not to repeat his allegations. It hasn't made a great deal of difference. He is still going around insinuating that we were involved in Madeleine's disappearance, only now he is just being slightly more careful about how he says it".

Well, back to the beginning of the chapter, p. 301:

p. 301

Wednesday 27 February 2008, 1am: Dr Kate and Gerry are awoken…”the room appeared to be shaking…a photograph of Madeleine toppled over on my chest of drawers…I prayed for our safety. With the occasional death threat turning up in our morning mail, it is perhaps not surprising that our first instinct was to think we were being attacked…” It was an earth tremor. Dr Kate: “I started to cry as we hugged each other, fear and then relief giving way to a deep sadness at what our life had become”.

p. 302

Dr Kate: “…we know the British police considered aspects of the investigation to be substandard and we honestly don’t think they believed we were involved in Madeleine’s disappearance, Comments made to us privately by several officers (including the most senior ones) confirmed this …”

At the foot of the page is a tortuous explanation of why the McCanns and their friends refused to have anything to do with a proposed reconstruction of events on 3 May 2007, the day Madeleine was reported missing. The excuses for not attending include: ‘Our friends were a bit baffled…wanted more details about the purpose…they were suspicious…it might strengthen a flimsy case against us…worries about a media furore blowing up...there was no answer to the question: How could it actually help us to find Madeleine?’”

p. 303

The events around the first anniversary of Madeleine’s disappearance are discussed…”Our aim was to relaunch the search for our daughter by appealing to the public directly for as much information as possible about her disappearance…the U.K. police were simply passing on all leads they received to the PJ without sharing anything with us or our independent investigators…a dedicated ’phone line had been set up for this purpose, which people could call anonymously and confidentially”.

COMMENT: The availability of the telephone line was flatly contradicted by the manager of lJet, a company based in Virginia, U.S.A., which was contracted by the McCanns, Brian Kennedy and Kevin Halligen to handle ’phone calls during 2008 to the McCanns’ confidential hotline. The iJet manager said that he had taken details of the callers, but that neither the McCanns nor those who were paying me followed up any of the voice-mail messages left on that ’phone line.

Dr Kate: “The correspondence [about the reconstruction] grew more brusque…it began as a request but began to sound more like as summons. Some people wanted to take legal advice…In the end there was no quorum and the plan was abandoned”.

COMMENT: For reasons only they can explain, the McCanns and their ‘Tapas 7’ friends refused to attend a reconstruction that might have shed light on what happened to Madeleine that night.

p. 304

On 3 May 2008 the McCanns attended church services in Rothley and Liverpool to mark the anniversary of Madeleine’s disappearance, while some relatives attended a similar service in Praia da Luz. Dr Kate says that people were asked to remember Madeleine at 9.15pm, the moment she was abducted.

COMMENT: The wrong time was put on the publicity at the time because many people were told to remember Madeleine at 9.45pm.

Dr Kate: “The Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu, wrote a special prayer for Madeleine and urged everyone to redouble their efforts to pray for her safe return”.

Monday 12 May - Madeleine’s 5^th birthday. Dr Kate: “If I’d known on her fourth birthday that she wouldn’t be back with us for this one, either, I’m sure I’d have gone under”.

p. 305

Dr Kate describes what happened on Madeleine’s birthday - they had a ‘tea party’, with “presents going into Madeleine’s room to await her return”. Madeleine’s best friend Sofia, who shares the same birthday, was also there. Dr Kate: “The children sometimes borrow toys [from Madeleine’s room] to play with but they always return them for Madeleine”.

Dr Kate then talks about the massive amount of mail they get: “There were periods in the first year when we had to go to the post office day after day to collect several crates of letters…the volume we have received over the past four years is absolutely staggering - and we still get a bundle almost very day”. Post is sorted into:

Information/for follow-up
Well-wishers
Psychics/dowsers/visions
Nasty
Nutty.

“The ‘Well-wishers’ box is always by far the fullest, I’m glad to say. The ‘Nasty’ pile has never been huge…The nonsensical letters destined for the ‘Nutty’ box, though, have arrived fairly consistently. We have seen the best and the worst of mankind in our postbag…we have experienced behaviour and attitudes so offensive and cruel that we would never have believed they existed, [but] the goodness that lies within the vast majority of people has shone through it all”.

p. 306

On this page Dr Kate talks effusively about all the well-wishing letters and present she received and how the teddy bears etc. were distributed to local schools and charities such as ‘Operation Christmas Child’, who took some toys to Belarus (White Russia).

p. 307

On this page we learn about a separate group called ‘Helping to Find Madeleine’, says Dr Kate: “A group made up primarily of working Mums (and a few Dads) from around the world who badly wanted to help…”

There is more about other support groups.

Dr Kate: “We’ve had people put money for the Fun in our hands on trains, in car parks, and in the supermarkets; cabbies who tells us to donate their fare. Such warmth and compassion is another trigger for tears”.

COMMENT: One wonders how a cabbie who donates his fare is dealt with in the accounts of the Find Madeleine Fund?

Dr Kate: “Amelie and Sean [have been] puzzled when faced with a mother who is smiling and crying at the same time. ‘Are they happy tears, Mummy?’, they ask anxiously.

pp. 308-9

There is appreciation for ‘the wealthy and successful who have come to our aid’, with a special mention for Brian Kennedy: Dr Kate: “…his friends and business associates tried to discourage him from getting involved with us, ‘just in case’, but neither his generosity and passion nor his faith and trust in us have ever faltered”.

There is then two pages of discussion about mentally ill people, psychics and visionaries. Dr Kate writes in some detail about various psychiatric problems, then goes on: “Within days of Madeleine’s disappearance, several people with major psychiatric problems made their way over to Praia da Luz and somehow managed to get to see Gerry and me”. Also, worryingly, “Some afflicted by conditions such as schizophrenia and bipolar disease appear to have become fixated on Madeleine and her plight”.

This is of course one of the many consequences, many of them adverse, about the excessive publicity given to this one case. As is well known, many people get fixated on celebrities, sometimes with dangerous consequences; it is only necessary to mention the example of John Lennon. The McCanns have also become celebrities.

p. 309

Dr Kate: “On our return to the U.K., we had a number of such callers turn up on our doorstep, along with assorted psychics and visionaries. Sometimes I would open the door and immediately wish I hadn’t…”

p. 310

Various nasty, ‘poison pen’ type letters are discussed and quoted from. These nasty letters “almost pushed us over the edge”.

Dr Kate then moves on to the internet: “The internet has provided individuals like this with a largely unregulated opportunity to set up websites and forums and blogs where they can share their bile and hate with other faceless, anonymous lowlife, all locked away in their bedrooms talking to each other online…I learnt to ignore it and pity these people”

pp. 311-2

There then follow the passages quoted earlier about The Madeleine Foundation, where Dr Kate groups us under the heading: ‘Publicity-seekers’.

p. 312

Then Dr Kate moves on to ‘time-wasters’ who “falsely claim to know where Madeleine is”. They “hinder the rearch”

p. 313

Finally there is an attack on: “people in positions of trust, the very people who ought to be acting in Madeleine’s best interests. Unfortunately, there have been a few of them”.

Clearly piqued by some who do not completely tow the McCann line, Dr Kate writes: “There are journalists and ;criminologists’ I could name whose interest in Madeleine has far less to do with recovering an abducted child than with profiting form her misfortune”.

That seems to be more than a nod in the direction of Mark Williams-Thomas, a self-styled criminologist who has often pontificated on the Madeleine McCann case.

Dr Kate concludes this chapter: “You wonder what drives some of these people. Avarice? The need to feel important? Or perhaps something lacking in their lives? Perhaps they are consumed by a sense of worthless and hatred”..

COMMENT: She evidently does not consider the possibility that some just might be interested in the case because they genuinely doubt the McCanns’ claim of abduction (which their reputation manager Clarence Mitchell conceded is only a ‘working hypothesis)’and believe they have good reason for doing so.

by Wendy 14.05.11 19:30

“The ‘Well-wishers’ box is always by far the fullest, I’m glad to say. The ‘Nasty’ pile has never been huge…"

Why the need for police protection, personal alarms, high fences etc?

by Lara 14.05.11 21:49

Comments of a mother who has followed this case since day 1....

The next paragraph gives rather convoluted explanations as to why she ‘could not’ go back to work herself…“…I’m sure some of my patients would undoubtedly find it awkward dealing with me”.

No kidding..............................

On page 312:

"...I feared that any unpleasant gossip might poison the atmosphere at the twins' new school and create problems for them at this crucial time. How could someone do this to two four-year-olds?".............

(Sits on hands)

Wednesday 27 February 2008,
1am: Dr Kate and Gerry are awoken…”the room appeared to be shaking…a photograph of Madeleine toppled over on my chest of drawers…I prayed for our safety. With the occasional death threat turning up in our morning mail, it is perhaps not surprising that our first instinct was to think we were being attacked…” It was an earth tremor. Dr Kate: “I started to cry as we hugged each other, fear and then relief giving way to a deep sadness at what our life had become”......

(I see dead people)

“The ‘Well-wishers’ box is always by far the fullest, I’m glad to say. The ‘Nasty’ pile has never been huge…The nonsensical letters destined for the ‘Nutty’ box, though, have arrived fairly consistently. We have seen the best and the worst of mankind in our postbag…we have experienced behaviour and attitudes so offensive and cruel that we would never have believed they existed, [but] the goodness that lies within the vast majority of people has shone through it all”.

(A nod's as good as a wink to a blind bat :D) howdy

Dr Kate then moves on to the internet:
“The internet has provided individuals like this with a largely unregulated opportunity to set up websites and forums and blogs where they can share their bile and hate with other faceless, anonymous lowlife, all locked away in their bedrooms talking to each other online…I learnt to ignore it and pity these people”

(Don't you wish we were "all locked away in their bedrooms talking to each other online"…) Well we wont ignore or pity you, trust me.
pop2

Dr Kate concludes this chapter:
“You wonder what drives some of these people. Avarice?

(Greed? No hun we have got our kids with us, we might not be rich or have a 'god' complex, but we can sleep at night) The need to feel important? ( don't make me laugh,) Or perhaps something lacking in their lives? ( hmmmmmmmmm not my child, funny that, I like to look after my babies )

Perhaps they are consumed by a sense of worthless and hatred”.

Is this for real? lmao. Hatred maybe, because you are full of fan