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

by Guest 07.03.21 21:04

After Madeleine was taken from us, my sexual desire plummeted to zero. Our sex life is not something I would normally be inclined to share and yet it is such an integral part of most marriages that it doesn’t feel right not to acknowledge this. I’m sure other couples who have been through traumatic experiences will have suffered similarly and perhaps it will reassure them to know that they are not alone. To those fortunate enough not to have encountered such heartache, I hope it gives an insight into just how deep the wounds go.

Apart from our general state of shock and distress, and the fact that I couldn’t concentrate on anything but Madeleine, there were two continuing reasons for this, I believe. The first was my inability to permit myself any pleasure, whether it was reading a book or making love with my husband. The second stemmed from the 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.

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 didn’t make any difference that this might not be the explanation for Madeleine’s abduction (and, please God, it isn’t); the fact that it was a possibility was enough to prevent me from shutting it out of my mind. Tortured as I was by these nauseating images, 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; the person who had taken away our little girl and terrified her; the person who had caused these additional problems for me and the man I loved. I hated him. I wanted to kill him. I wanted to inflict the maximum pain possible on him for heaping all this misery on my family. I was angry and bitter and I wanted it all to go away. I wanted my old life back.

I worried about Gerry and me. I worried that if I couldn’t get our sex life back on track our whole relationship would break down. I know there is more to a relationship than sex, but it is still an important element. It was vital that we stayed together and stayed strong for our family. Gerry was incredibly understanding and supportive. He never made me feel guilty, he never pushed me and he never got sulky. In fact, sometimes he would apologize to me. Invariably, he would put a big, reassuring arm around me and tell me that he loved me and not to worry.

madeleine by KATE MCCANN

[A study in behavioural patterns in human nature for research only]

Prosecution Exhibit 1: 'madeleine' - What's in the book? - Page 16 Scre1320

by Guest 07.03.21 21:23

Sex features rather a lot, it seems.

by **crusader** 07.03.21 21:30

Snipped from @Verdis post.
I would lie in bed, hating the person who had done this to us; the person who had taken away our little girl and terrified her; the person who had caused these additional problems for me and the man I loved. I hated him. I wanted to kill him. I wanted to inflict the maximum pain possible on him for heaping all this misery on my family. I was angry and bitter and I wanted it all to go away. I wanted my old life back.

Was that subliminal, did she mean Gerry, I wonder.

Wasn't she advised not to show any emotion when Madeleine went missing, in case the kidnapper "got off on it" and here she is laying it all out in print.

by **sandancer** 07.03.21 23:20

" The person who had caused these additional problems for me and the man I loved "

" Additional problems " ? So there were already problems in the marriage ?

" It was vital we stayed together "

Almost 14 years later they are still together , iin a prison of their own making that neither because of the guilty knowledge they possess can ever leave . IIf I decided to talk the other will have answers prepared .

" In fact sometimes he would apologise to me "
Why did Gerry feel the need to apologise , and what for ?

There is imho no doubt Gerry is controlling and has to be in charge , Kate is not as many think under his control , she is as bad as he is but hides it better by playing the fragile little woman . She has a huge sense of entitlement, a volatile temper and a foul tongue.

Has anyone ever said " NO " to Kate I wonder ? Cross her at your peril !

by Guest 07.03.21 23:58

sandancer wrote:There is imho no doubt Gerry is controlling and has to be in charge , Kate is not as many think under his control , she is as bad as he is but hides it better by playing the fragile little woman . She has a huge sense of entitlement, a volatile temper and a foul tongue.

Has anyone ever said " NO " to Kate I wonder ? Cross her at your peril !

I couldn't agree more, Kate McCann is not the quivering little shrinking violet dominated by her husband as so many people believe, it's all part of the double act. The designer plan that she gets the blame and the sympathy whilst he appears to be the power over her - and himself.

They are acting out a play, they work in unison. Any decent human beings with the tragedy of losing a child, under any circumstances, wouldn't last five minutes in the relationship. As with the grieving process, not necessarily in any particular order - anger, self loathing, blame, recriminations, sadness, hatred, isolation, depression, suicidal thoughts - till death do us part! It never goes away, the loss of child is the worst possible tragedy to hit any living being. It will stay with you until you die - the partnership will not!

Walking together, holding hands, laughing only days, weeks, months after losing their child does not fit the bill. How stupid they were to play out their drama under the public eye. With or without the release of the PJ files into the public domain,the evidence of their duplicity is there for all to see. They courted the media and unfortunately for them, it turned around and bit them on the bum.

The price you pay for audacity and vanity.

Whatever, they must be living in hell of their own making.

I still can't locate that video showing Kate McCann throwing daggers with her eyes.

by Guest 08.03.21 0:08

Kate McCann wrote:My reason for writing it is simple: to give an account of the truth. It has always been my intention to set down a complete record of what happened to our family, for our children, Madeleine, Sean and Amelie, so that, when they are ready, the facts will be there for them to read. I wanted to make sure they would always have access to a written chronicle of what really happened, no matter how many years have passed.

Kate McCann wrote:Our sex life is not something I would normally be inclined to share and yet it is such an integral part of most marriages that it doesn’t feel right not to acknowledge this.

To your own children Mrs McCann?

by **sandancer** 08.03.21 13:19

Any teenagers reaction to their parents talking about sex !

by Guest 08.03.21 13:34

How anybody could mention a child's defiled body in the same paragraph as her own sex life is beyond normal comprehension.

by Guest 05.04.21 0:45

At 10pm I went back to the apartment myself. I entered the sitting room via the patio doors, as Gerry and Matt had done, and stood there, listening, for a few seconds. All was silent. Then I noticed that the door to the children’s bedroom was open quite wide, not how we had left it. At first I assumed that Matt must have moved it. I walked over and gently began to pull it to. Suddenly it slammed shut, as if caught by a draught.

A little surprised, I turned to see if I’d left the patio doors open and let in the breeze. Retracing my steps, I confirmed that I hadn’t. Returning to the children’s room, I opened the door a little, and as I did so I glanced over at Madeleine’s bed. I couldn’t quite make her out in the dark. I remember looking at it and looking at it for what was probably only a few seconds, though it felt like much longer. It seems so daft now, but I didn’t switch on the light straight away. Force of habit, I suppose: taking care to avoid waking the children at all costs.

When I realized Madeleine wasn’t actually there, I went through to our bedroom to see if she’d got into our bed. That would explain the open door. On the discovery of another empty bed, the first wave of panic hit me. As I ran back into the children’s room the closed curtains flew up in a gust of wind. My heart lurched as I saw now that, behind them, the window was wide open and the shutters on the outside raised all the way up. Nausea, terror, disbelief, fear. Icy fear. Dear God, no! Please, no!

madeleine by KATE MCCANN

[Excerpt for research and study only]

by Guest 05.04.21 1:02

Thursday 3rd May 2007

Everybody sprinted back to our apartment, except for Dianne, who remained in the Tapas area, and Jane, who was away from the table seeing to her kids. I remember feeling frustrated when David said, ‘Let’s just check the apartment.’ I’d done that, and I knew, I knew, that Madeleine had been abducted.

I ran out into the car park, flying from end to end, yelling desperately, ‘Madeleine! Madeleine!’ It was so cold and so windy. I kept picturing her in her short-sleeved Marks and Spencer Eeyore pyjamas and feeling how chilled she would be. Bizarrely, I found myself thinking it would have been better if she’d been wearing her long-sleeved Barbie ones. Fear was shearing through my body.

In the children’s room, Gerry lowered the shutter at the open window. Rushing outside, he made the sickening discovery that it could be raised from this side, too, not just from inside as we’d thought.

madeleine by KATE MCCANN

[Excerpt for research and study only]

by Guest 26.04.21 14:26

What tipped the balance in our decision is the continuing need to fund the search for Madeleine. While she remains missing, the onus is on us to keep looking for her since there is no longer any law-enforcement agency at all actively inquiring into her disappearance.

Investigations and campaigns cost money, which has to be raised by us. It is still a struggle for me to see beyond tomorrow.

Every day I wake up hoping this will be the day we find Madeleine. But having lived through four painful years without my dear daughter, I have reluctantly been forced to acknowledge that our quest could take weeks, months or yet more years, and the reality is we have to ensure we have adequate funding for the long term. Every penny we raise through the sales of this book will be spent on our search for Madeleine. Nothing is more important to us than finding our little girl.

madeleine by KATE MCCANN - Published April/May 2011.

by Guest 26.04.21 14:29

11th May 2007..

One of Gerry’s colleagues, for example, had called to say that the staff in his department wanted to make a donation to assist with the search for Madeleine but didn’t know how or where to deposit it.

IFLG told us that we needed to set up a ‘fighting fund’. They would devise the objectives of the fund and instruct a leading charity law firm, Bates Wells and Braithwaite (BWB), to draw up articles of association.

by Guest 26.04.21 14:33

With little chance of learning a great deal from the PJ, we tried to focus on the imminent launch of Madeleine’s fund and on coming up with ways to put the accumulating donations to the most effective use.

The response of prominent philanthropists and the general public alike to our daughter’s plight and Gerry’s call to arms had already been fantastic. That weekend, well-wishers had queued at St Andrew’s Cathedral in Glasgow to join a vigil for Madeleine. Football star David Beckham had appealed for information and there had been words of support, too, from prime-minister-in-waiting Gordon Brown. In Portugal, hundreds of bikers set off to ride the length of the country with leaflets and posters.

It was an ex-colleague of Gerry’s in Glasgow who had suggested the Beckham appeal. Gerry’s ex-boss, who was the Scotland football team doctor, spoke to Sir Alex Ferguson on our behalf, Sir Alex got in touch with David Beckham, and he instantly agreed to do it. We are so grateful to him: he said his piece with such feeling that it couldn’t fail to touch people. Sir Alex Ferguson was also behind the appeal made by Cristiano Ronaldo, the world-famous Portuguese footballer who played for him at Manchester United. There followed more spontaneous messages from other players, including Chelsea’s John Terry, Ricardo Carvalho and the Ukrainian Andriy Shevchenko, who made his appeal in several languages.

BWB, the law firm drawing up the articles of association for the fighting fund, had talked to the Charity Commission about whether it would be eligible for charitable status. As its objectives were limited to the search for a single child and the beneficiaries were essentially one family, it was deemed that the ‘public benefit’ test would not be met. So the fund took the form of a not-for-profit, private limited company. It was set up with great care and due diligence by experts in the field. From the outset everyone agreed that, despite the costs involved, it must be run to the highest standards of transparency.

There needed to be independent directors as well as family representatives, and people from a variety of professions joined my uncle Brian Kennedy and Gerry’s brother Johnny on the board.

At the time, though, we had little idea how important these measures would prove to be in enabling us to withstand the massive scrutiny to which the fund would be subjected, especially when the tide turned against us.

[For research and study only]

by **PeterMac** 26.04.21 14:45

It was BWB who so patently failed to do "Due Diligence' on the three sets of private detectives, and threatened me with a suit for libel when I wrote to them about it.
HaysMcIntyre baled out of the Fund very shortly afterwards, without apparently preparing a final account, leaving the financial governance in the hands of one of the Directors, who then died in office.
So much for transparency.
And we remember Kate's Bestest Friend In All the World – Esther McVey – also baled out very shortly after announcing that the Fund would not be used for legal defence expenses.

More recently of course, the pending result of the ECHR case is touted by the gutter press as being likely to "Wipe out the Madeleine Fund".

Which is it ?

by Guest 04.05.21 2:27

The European 'Campaign'

On we pressed with our campaign to spread the word across Europe.

We had decided it would further our cause to visit one or two key countries ourselves and appeal personally to their people for help, seeking assistance and advice from politicians and children’s charities.

We wanted to reach some of the hundreds of potential witnesses from elsewhere on the continent who had been on holiday in the Algarve around the time of Madeleine’s disappearance. Perhaps even more importantly, it was quite possible that Madeleine was in another country now. Had anyone noticed a little girl who seemed out of place, or somebody behaving suspiciously?

We chose Spain first, as it is so close to Portugal. After the British and Irish, most other visitors to the Algarve are German or Dutch, so we added Berlin and Amsterdam to the itinerary.

Finally, we felt we needed to venture beyond Europe, to north Africa. Morocco was so easily accessible from Praia da Luz – ferries make the thirty-five-minute crossing from Tarifa in Spain to Tangiers several times a day – that there was a distinct possibility Madeleine could have been taken there.

The Foreign Office helped us by arranging consular assistance in all these countries.

madeleine by KATE MCCANN

[Extract for research and study only]

The Foreign Office went way above and beyond The Line of Duty in this instance.

Question is, who facilitated the Foreign and Commonwealth's unprecedented influence. By all appearances Clarence Mitchell played a big part but he could only have been the go-between, his line of business at the time was primarily media related. He had no jurisdiction over the political regime per-se.

Who was the king pin - or queen pin to keep it politically correct.

by Guest 23.05.21 14:56

On 22 May I had a phone call from our lead investigator. He warned me that a British tabloid would be running a piece the following day about a convicted paedophile called Raymond Hewlett, who had been staying in Tavira on the Algarve in May 2007. The proximity of Tavira to Praia da Luz and the fact that this man was a paedophile ticked all the boxes for the redtop papers, and they jumped on the story. All of a sudden, Hewlett was cast as the man who could have taken Madeleine.

We were exasperated. We now knew that there had been hundreds of paedophiles on the Algarve at that time and if, God forbid, one of them had been involved, Hewlett seemed a less likely candidate than a lot of others. He was in his sixties, for a start, much older than the man seen by Jane and other witnesses. But to the press that was irrelevant. They had a name and a photograph and they were off.

We were desperate for somebody to investigate Hewlett, not because we thought he had anything to do with taking Madeleine but because we wanted to eliminate him from the inquiry and quickly put an end to the media speculation. But the UK authorities told us they couldn’t help. (‘It’s a Portuguese investigation . . .’)

My main worry was that Hewlett, who had terminal throat cancer, would die before anyone took an official statement from him. Then the media would take the line that it was probably him, Madeleine was dead, game over, and we would be left with an uphill struggle to prevent this theory from becoming established. All the hard work we’d done recently to motivate the public to believe in our search again, and to undo the harm being done by Gonçalo Amaral, would be ruined. Sometimes it seemed as if we spent as much time trying to clear the path for our investigation as we did actually investigating. I wasn’t sure I had the strength for another battle. It was so frustrating.

Sure enough, the tabloid interest in Hewlett raged on until July. In the meantime, he was questioned in connection with a case dating back to 1975, but not by Leicestershire or Portuguese officers. He also spoke to the tabloids, but refused to see our investigators unless we paid him to do so. He died a few months later.

madeleline by KATE MCCANN

[Extract for research and study only]
.....................

Madeleine McCann's parents believe German probe into key suspect is 'beyond bizarre'

Kate and Gerry McCann have raised concerns as key suspect Christian Brueckner has not yet been questioned.
By dailyrecord.co.uk

04:30, 13 DEC 2020

https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/madeleine-mccanns-parents-believe-german-23159156

Madeleine McCann’s Parents Angered by Netflix Documentary

Mar 20, 2019

by **PeterMac** 24.05.21 10:35

Madeleine McCann's parents believe German probe into key suspect is 'beyond bizarre'

Kate and Gerry McCann have raised concerns as key suspect Christian Brueckner has not yet been questioned.
By dailyrecord.co.uk

Or, just by rearranging a few words . . .

German suspect believes probe into key suspects is 'beyond bizarre'

Christian Bruekner has raised concerns as key suspects Kate and Gerry McCann have not yet been questioned.
By dailyreward.co.uk

by Guest 25.05.21 16:02

British consul Bill Henderson and Ambassador John Buck were visiting us on a fairly regular basis and we were seeing the Leicestershire FLOs every day.

The flow of information, however, was slow and limited. The Portuguese police were divulging very little to the British police and vetoing many of their suggestions – bringing out specialist dogs, for example, or staging a reconstruction.

What was forthcoming, particularly in terms of the quality and depth of the investigation, would become increasingly concerning to us. Grounds for elimination, for instance, often seemed very flimsy. I remember Gerry and me exchanging quizzical looks after the FLOs tried to explain how one couple had been ruled out of the inquiry. When we asked them if they were comfortable with this decision, there was an awkward pause before they replied, ‘No, not really.’

madeleine by KATE MCCANN

by Guest 25.05.21 16:06

On Monday 4 June, we recorded an appeal to be screened the following evening on Crimewatch, the long-running BBC programme that has a good track record in helping the police to solve crimes using information supplied by the public. Our appeal was aimed in particular at any British holidaymakers who had been in the Algarve at the time of Madeleine’s abduction.

Frustratingly, Crimewatch was not allowed to film a reconstruction of the abduction. This was something we had wanted from the beginning, in the hope that it would encourage potential witnesses to come forward.

In Britain the police often broadcast reconstructions through programmes likeCrimewatch and news channels, but we were told that this was not possible in either Portugal or Britain because of the judicial secrecy law.

by Guest 25.05.21 16:08

In the spring of 2008 – almost a year after Madeleine was last seen – the PJ decided they wanted to conduct a re-enactment in Praia da Luz of the night of 3 May 2007. The participants required were Gerry, me, Fiona, Dave, Jane, Russ, Rachael, Matt, Dianne and Jes Wilkins, to whom Gerry chatted in the street that night just after his last glimpse of Madeleine. They weren’t interested in using actors or stand-ins. So either everyone agreed or the reconstruction wouldn’t go ahead.

Our understanding was that as arguidos, Gerry and I were obliged to attend. The other witnesses received reasonably friendly emails from the PJ, via the British police, inviting them to take part. They were a bit baffled and replied requesting more details about the purpose of this belated re-enactment. It seemed it would not be filmed, or at any rate, not for information-gathering through public broadcast.

Our friends had watched, with increasing horror, what had happened to us. If they were suspicious that the PJ might be trying to use them to somehow strengthen a flimsy case against us, or even to implicate one of them, it would be understandable. There were worries, too, about the likelihood of a media furore blowing up around the whole thing, especially as the proposed dates had already been leaked to the newspapers. The biggest concern, though, for all the witnesses approached, was how a reenactment of the kind the PJ were proposing could actually help to find Madeleine. This question remained unanswered.

At that point the tone of the correspondence grew more brusque and what had seemed to be a request began to sound more like a summons. Some people decided they wanted to take legal advice before agreeing to anything. In the end there was no quorum and the plan was abandoned.

madeleine by KATE MCCANN

by Guest 25.05.21 16:20

And Emma Loach. Emma is one of the most selfless people I have ever come across and her input on so many levels has been invaluable.

She played a significant role in our campaign for a child rescue alert system across Europe and in 2009 worked with us to produce a filmed reconstruction of the events surrounding Madeleine’s abduction.

She has also responded willingly to my many queries and requests for an opinion on my writing. Even more importantly, she has helped me through the darkest and most unfathomable times over the three years I have known her. Our friendship is precious to me and I thank God that she walked into our life.

madeleine by KATE MCCANN

https://jillhavern.forumotion.net/t13561p1000-media-mayhem-mccann-media-nonsense-of-the-day#436926

by **crusader** 25.05.21 16:22

Verdi wrote..
What was forthcoming, particularly in terms of the quality and depth of the investigation, would become increasingly concerning to us. Grounds for elimination, for instance, often seemed very flimsy. I remember Gerry and me exchanging quizzical looks after the FLOs tried to explain how one couple had been ruled out of the inquiry. When we asked them if they were comfortable with this decision, there was an awkward pause before they replied, ‘No, not really.’

I wonder who this couple were, Kate mentioned to Yvonne, the social worker that a couple had taken Madeleine.

by Guest 26.06.21 1:05

Thank God for the nice ‘quiet majority’, as they often describe themselves, though they haven’t been quiet to us.

They have helped to keep our faith in humanity alive and confirmed to me that my innocent, pre-May 2007 view of the world was not so wide of the mark: most human beings are inherently good.

madeleine by KATE MCCANN

by Guest 27.06.21 15:19

As we were walking up from the beach at about 5pm, I had a call from Cherie Blair, in her final days as wife of the prime minister (her husband Tony would announce his resignation two days later and leave office the following month). She was kind and helpful. She told me it was amazing but encouraging that Madeleine was still the first topic on the news every night. This was only five days after the abduction: as it turned out, our poor daughter would continue to headline the bulletins for some time to come. Cherie also warned me, ‘Whatever happens, your life will never be the same again.’ She mentioned that a friend of hers, Catherine Meyer, was the founder of PACT – Parents and Abducted Children Together – and said she would get in touch with her on my behalf. Doubtless I asked Cherie if there was anything the British government could offer the Portuguese in the way of resources to assist or expedite the search for Madeleine. It wasn’t my intention to make her feel uncomfortable by asking this, and I’m sure I didn’t. We were just so desperate I couldn’t let the opportunity go by.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Another valuable source of information was Lady Catherine Meyer, the friend Cherie Blair had mentioned to me in her phone call. Catherine, the wife of the former British ambassador to the US, had set up PACT (Parents and Abducted Children Together) after her own two sons were abducted by her ex-husband. She has fought tirelessly ever since for a better international response to such crimes. I so admire her commitment to and passion for protecting children. She is feisty, determined, has a good sense of humour and is not afraid to say what she thinks. Such qualities are essential in this field, where there is so much red tape to be dealt with.

madeleine by KATE MCCANN

[Extract for study and research only]

by Guest 07.07.21 13:04

AFTERMATH

At the police station that first afternoon, Guilhermino Encarnação had briefly mentioned three potential explanations for Madeleine’s disappearance: a burglary that had ‘changed direction’, abduction and the possibility that she had wandered off by herself.

In the coming months we would learn that burglaries were rife on that stretch of the Algarve coast (in Praia da Luz, burglars were ‘like mice’, according to one resident), and although it is difficult to imagine how a burglary could escalate into an abduction, we now know that this is not unheard of.

However, I have always found the third suggestion insulting to our intelligence, frankly. Obviously, the police are obliged to consider all possible scenarios but there was no doubt in our minds that Madeleine had not left that apartment of her own accord. For a start there was Jane’s sighting of what was, in all likelihood, Madeleine being carried off.

Even if you set that aside, there was no way a three-year-old would have been able to raise the shutters and open the window in the children’s room. To give any credence whatsoever to the idea that Madeleine could have walked out on her own you would have to accept that she had gone out the back way, pulling aside the sitting-room curtains and drawing them again, then opening the patio door, the child-safety gate at the top of the stairs on the veranda and the little gate to the road – and carefully closing all three behind her. What three-year-old do you know who would do that? And we knew our Madeleine. She simply would not wander off like this.

This theory was not only insulting, it was, much more importantly, frighteningly damaging to the chances of finding Madeleine quickly. If the police were wasting precious time pursuing it they were not going to be looking in the right places, or taking the appropriate type of action. In the first few days we gained the impression that this was exactly what was happening. Certainly their initial searches were all geared to looking for a stray child who had become lost in or around Luz.

madeleine by KATE MCCANN

[Extract for study and research only]

Too much information - a still tongue makes a wise head.

by Guest 20.07.21 1:46

Oh the irony of it all .... The Last Photograph!

The PJ required access to the McCanns camera/s, strangely no mention of mobile phones with camera function - routine policing! However despite the obvious reasons for viewing the McCanns holiday photographs, the camera was carefully edited by the McCanns before presentation to the PJ.

The poolside photograph was not included , that came later after Gerry McCann's first visit to the UK, about three weeks after Madeleine's disappearance!

Again I say, with such a photograph of Madeleine so readily available to assist the police, why did the McCanns give the PJ an outdated photograph of Madeleine for identification purposes?

The simplest explanation for the later publication of the 'last photograph' would be to provide evidence that Madeleine was alive and well at lunchtime on 3rd May 2007 but that's all it explains. Everything else surrounding the photograph is suspicious to say the least.

Family friend Jon Corner, the media guru, features prominently as regards the portfolio of Madeleine McCann photographs.

From the book..

At the Toddler Club near the Tapas restaurant Fiona collected Lily and headed back to her flat. Madeleine and I met up with Sean, Amelie and Gerry and returned to ours for lunch. As the children were getting quite restless in the apartment we decided to get them out in the fresh air before the afternoon’s activities. We went to the play area, which was such a hit with our three that they never seemed to get fed up with it. We then sat round the toddler pool for a while, dipping our feet in, and I took what has turned out to be my last photograph to date of Madeleine. Heartbreaking as it is for me to look at it now, it encapsulates the essence of Madeleine: so beautiful and so happy.
~~~

You may be wondering not only what relevance all these minute details might have to anything, but also how I can recall them so distinctly and how accurate my recollections can possibly be. The answer is that, within a couple of days, every single apparently inconsequential thing that happened on that holiday would become vitally important, and Gerry and I would soon be painstakingly trying to extract from our brains every tiny incident, no matter how small, that might have been significant. Armed with notebook, pen and dated photographs, I would be challenging myself to piece together as comprehensive an outline of the sequence of events as I could. The regular routines of the week helped to make any deviations from them stand out and undoubtedly made this easier.
~~~

The texts and phone calls kept coming. By this time our friend Jon Corner, a creative director in media production in Liverpool, was circulating photographs and video footage of Madeleine to the police, Interpol and broadcasting and newspaper news desks. This was in accordance with the standard advice of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in the US, which advocates getting an image of a missing child into the public domain as soon as possible.
~~~

The very next evening Gerry’s sister Phil sent a chain email round the world asking every recipient to help find our little girl. It came with a downloadable poster featuring a photograph of Madeleine, the one of her holding the tennis balls, taken two days before she vanished. This led the following day to the first conversation, between Phil, a teacher, and Calum Macrae, a former pupil of hers and an IT whizzkid, about establishing a website for Madeleine. Jon Corner had opened up the file transfer protocol he’d set up on 4 May to circulate Madeleine’s image to family, friends and other supporters. No, I didn’t know what one of those was, either: basically, it provided access via a password to a repository for photographs and other material, allowing people to share their resources. Helpers could post their material on a dedicated server via the FTP and use that supplied by others to create flyers, posters and so on. The press already had the password, which gave them access to pictures and video footage.
~~~

Gerry was taken in to be interviewed while I remained downstairs. I made use of the long wait I anticipated by sitting down with a notebook, pen and my camera, containing dated photographs of the holiday, and trying to write a detailed account of everything that had happened the week before.
~~~

We were represented there by a large contingent of family and friends and saw it ourselves live on TV in Praia da Luz. Jon Corner had produced a DVD of photographs and video images of Madeleine to the soundtrack of the Simple Minds song ‘Don’t You Forget About Me’.
~~~

At Monday’s meeting with the British police, Gerry was told about plans to launch an appeal in the UK aimed at holidaymakers who had been in the Algarve in the weeks leading up to Madeleine’s abduction. They would be encouraged to send in to the Child Exploitation and Online Protection agency any photographs they had taken in which people they didn’t recognize could be seen in the background. CEOP would use facial-recognition software to screen these pictures for known offenders who might have been in the area. To us this seemed a massive step forward, a sign that the unique collaboration between the UK and Portuguese police was beginning to bear some fruit.

[Excerpts for study and research only]

thinking

The poolside photograph, the last photograph, plays an important part in this saga. So much emphasis .... too much emphasis!

by Guest 23.07.21 0:48

We came in for some criticism, of course, for leaving the children in the apartment while we had dinner. Some initial reports were very misleading, suggesting that we had been sitting several hundred metres away.

Journalists who were actually in Praia da Luz and saw the proximity of the Tapas restaurant to the apartment (as the crow flies, just under fifty metres; a little further walking round ‘the road way’) were clearly shocked that Madeleine had been grabbed at such close quarters, and we were given the definite impression that they wanted to help. This also went for their bosses, the TV executives and newspaper editors.

There was unquestionably a sense of ‘There but for the grace of God go I.’ I looked on them as allies in the search for Madeleine. And although I don’t doubt that many of them did genuinely want to help, it was a while before I realized that finding our child came some way down their list of priorities and learned the hard lesson that the media are not about spreading news but selling products. Their overriding concern was not us or, sadly, Madeleine, it was someone shouting down the phone that the editor needed eight hundred words by ten o’clock.

For the first few days after Madeleine was taken, with the apartment full of people, the English-language news from Sky or the BBC was on pretty consistently in the background. We saw quite a bit of the coverage ourselves but once the speculation mushroomed it crucified us. Gerry said to me, ‘We have to stop watching this.’ We also began to avoid the English newspapers, readily available from Baptista on the same day as they were published at home.

madeleine by KATE MCCANN

[Extract for study and research only]

Al publicity is good publicity - you can pick and choose what to favour and what to condemn.

by Guest 23.07.21 1:02

Our audience with Pope Benedict XVI, as part of a public session at St Peter’s, was confirmed the following day and scheduled for Wednesday 30 May.

Sir Philip Green kindly offered us the use of his private jet. But what would people say? That we were hobnobbing with celebrities and swanning around in the lap of luxury while our daughter was suffering?

The unpleasant scrutiny we were under was soon to become an integral part of our lives whether we liked it or not. In the end we accepted Sir Philip’s offer for logistical and emotional reasons. The key factor was that it would dramatically reduce the period of time we’d need to spend away from Amelie and Sean.

Not for the last time, we agreed to a small group of UK and Portuguese journalists and photographers travelling with us on the plane.

To this day, I wonder why on earth we did. We would have been under some gentle and well-meaning pressure from Clarence, a journalist himself until fairly recently, who was working so closely with the media that he was keen to maintain a friendly relationship with them. I know it’s the way politicians do things, but our situation was rather different.

Obviously, the press were going anyway, and travelling with us made their lives much easier, but it meant we couldn’t relax or let our guard down for fear that something we said or did would turn up in the papers, spun to suit a particular story. From time to time, inevitably, we forgot that while on a personal level some of the journalists were lovely to us, they were there to do a job.

madeleine by KATE MCCANN

[Extract for study and research purposes only]

by Guest 23.07.21 7:22

It's hard to believe the book's title is 'Madeleine', isn't it? Me, us, we, I, our...

by Guest 03.08.21 13:25

Press replay..

We had been given a key to the church so that we could go there and pray whenever we wished. We cherished these little oases of relative peace and solitude.

One night early in the week – I think it was that Tuesday evening – while we were praying privately at Nossa Senhora da Luz, Gerry had an extraordinary spiritual experience. He suddenly became aware of a long tunnel with light at the far end of it. He felt himself enter the tunnel and, as he went deeper and deeper inside, it became wider and wider and brighter and brighter. He had never known anything like this before and he immediately interpreted it as a sign urging us to do absolutely everything within our power to find Madeleine ourselves.

From that moment he was convinced that we did not have to sit back passively, issuing statements and waiting for others to bring her home. We needed to take the initiative. Straight away he shared this revelation with me and tried to explain what it meant to him. We had to start right now to mobilize all the resources available to us.

His ‘vision’ – I don’t know what else to call it – in that beautiful little church had a huge impact on Gerry. It was this experience that laid the foundations of our organized campaign to find our daughter.

From the minute he got up the next morning, Gerry was on a mission. Among the first people he spoke to was the ambassador, John Buck. The foreign secretary, Margaret Beckett, also happened to call him. He pleaded with them both to try to improve the way the investigation and the search were being handled. We needed it to be far better than this, he told them. They knew that, too, I’m sure. Many friends and colleagues also heard from Gerry that day, asking them to think hard. What could help us to find Madeleine? Who could help? ‘Think about your contacts, then think about the contacts of your contacts. Can they help?’

madeleine by KATE MCCANN

[Excerpt for research and study only]

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