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

The kidnapper would have no knowledge of when the next check was to be made, 
so at what point would he/she have decided was the best time to make their move.


But if the 'kidnapper' had been watching and making notes ( KM) then
he/she/it/they would have noted that the 'window of opportunity' was vanishingly small.
ONE minute and 20 seconds to be fairly precise.   Every check involved wandering past 5A in BOTH directions,
and since it is on a corner, three sides of the apartment, both doors, and all the windows are in view for much of the time 
any passer-by is passing by.
It is not like walking past the 12' front of a terraced house. It is like walking right round a semi.


even Jez Wilkins has to be added into the pot-pourri of diligent watchers, as we must also 
now add Dr Totman wandering in the wrong direction with his child held as if on a fork lift.

There is barely room to squeeze him in the graphic.

Wasn't it Jane Tanner who spoke of the eerie quiet streets of Praia da Luz, when she was flip-flapping her way around - like a soul lost in the dark?
 
The night of 3rd May must have been the proverbial exception to the rule - people congestion off peak!

We realize that Madeleine’s abduction has been hard for every parent to bear. It has brought home to everyone how vulnerable our children are and how fragile our lives. I have come to understand that some of these critics have been acting out of self-preservation. Holding us culpable in some way makes them feel their own children are safer. Who knows how we might have reacted if this had happened to another family and we had been the ones watching from the sidelines?

Whatever lies at the root of these negative reactions, they have never stopped us doing what we think is best for Madeleine, and they won’t do so now. As long as we are acting in her interests, we will withstand whatever slings and arrows we must face.

madeleine by KATE MCCANN

[For research and study only]

" we will withstand whatever slings and arrows we must face " 

Aah yes " the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune " ! 

All done in Madeleines interest of course , that " outrageous fortune " that was supposed to pay for " the search " named The Fighting Fund . 

The taxpayer suffers the " slings and arrows of outrageous fortune " paying for Operation Grange .

ABOUT THE BOOK

‘The decision to publish this book has been very difficult, and taken with heavy hearts … My reason for writing it is simple: to give an account of the truth … Writing this memoir has entailed recording some very personal, intimate and emotional aspects of our lives. Sharing these with strangers does not come easily to me, but if I hadn’t done so I would not have felt the book gave as full a picture as it is possible for me to give. As with every action we have taken over the last four years, it ultimately boils down to whether what we are doing could help us to find Madeleine. When the answer to that question is yes, or even possibly, our family can cope with anything …
What follows is an intensely personal account, and I make no apology for that …
Nothing is more important to us than finding our little girl.’

Kate McCann, May 2011
_______________________________________________

‘It is a sad fact that not a single police force anywhere is proactively looking for Madeleine (as is the case for many other missing children). I am sure this book will re-energize the search for our daughter and the public will get behind the Find Madeleine campaign once again. It is simply not acceptable that the authorities have given up on Madeleine – especially when no comprehensive review of the case has been undertaken. Our daughter, and whoever took her, are out there. We need your help to find them.’

Gerry McCann, May 2011

madeleine by KATE MCCANN

[For research and study only]

Friday 4 May. Our first day without Madeleine. As soon as it was light Gerry and I resumed our search. We went up and down roads we’d never seen before, having barely left the Ocean Club complex all week. We jumped over walls and raked through undergrowth. We looked in ditches and holes. All was quiet apart from the sound of barking dogs, which added to the eeriness of the atmosphere. I remember opening a big dumpster-type bin and saying to myself, please God, don’t let her be in here. The most striking and horrific thing about all this was that we were completely alone. Nobody else, it seemed, was out looking for Madeleine. Just us, her parents.

madeleine by Kate McCann

Our apartment was cleaned on the Monday and Wednesday (another perk) by a middle-aged Portuguese lady. On Tuesday 1 May, after my tennis lesson, two maintenance workers came to have a look at our washing machine, which I couldn’t get to operate. Gerry had also managed to break the window shutter mechanism in our bedroom shortly after we’d arrived, in spite of the sign asking guests to be gentle with it. What can I say? It’s the Gerry touch . . . The two men looked at the washing machine first. Once they’d established that the problem was something simple – not quite as simple as me not having pressed the ‘on’ button, but not much more complicated than that – I went to meet Gerry, whose lesson had started at ten-fifteen, leaving them to fix the shutter.

madeleine by KATE MCCANN

[For research and study only]

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.

Now that it looked as if we were going to be based in Praia da Luz for the long haul, with frequent journeys to airports and regular meetings set up with the police at the British Consulate in Portimão, we’d decided it would be easier if we had our own car. We’d duly taken possession of a rented Renault Scenic on 27 May.

We left for Madrid on Thursday 31 May, taking a flight from Lisbon airport. Again it was horrible leaving Sean and Amelie. As well as the huge, central agony of missing and fearing for Madeleine, there were lots of other heartaches, and I resented being put in the position of having to make choices like this. I cursed the person who had brought such pain and suffering to our family. Our only comfort was that these essential separations seemed to affect Gerry and me far more than they did the twins.

At the check-in desks at Lisbon airport I looked around for pictures of Madeleine. I couldn’t see a single one. I was dismayed. I talked to one of the staff, who explained that there were some notices pinned up behind a few of the desks. The tears pricked my eyes yet again. This just wasn’t enough. Lisbon turned out to be one of the few European airports we visited that wasn’t plastered with Madeleine’s image. Poor Phil almost got herself arrested later for trying to rectify this by putting up some of our posters. The Portuguese, it seemed, took a less liberal view of flyposting than that encountered by our supporters elsewhere.

Sitting in an airport café, I couldn’t avoid casting my eyes over the people rushing for planes or pushing trolleys backwards and forwards aimlessly. Where were they all going? Did they not know a little girl had been stolen? How could they take a holiday, or a business trip to talk in meetings about projected sales figures, when Madeleine was missing? Not for the first time, and certainly not the last, I had an overwhelming urge to shout, ‘Stop! Everybody stop! ’ It’s so hard to accept that for everyone else life goes on, but of course it does.

We were met at Madrid airport by several British Embassy staff, a liaison officer and two press officers, as well as a crowd of journalists and photographers, and taken to the hotel where we were to spend the night. Clarence briefed Gerry and me about the meetings and press conferences arranged for the next day and then we went up to our room to get some rest.

madeleine by KATE MCCANN

[For research and study only]

Being based in Praia da Liz for " the long haul " didn't last did it !

sandancer wrote:Being based in Praia da Liz for " the long haul " didn't last did it !

We were going home without Madeleine. 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.

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 Amelie. We were home at last; home without Madeleine. Soon we would be walking into our house, the house we’d only ever lived in with Madeleine. My chest hurt, my throat felt swollen and my head began to spin. Gerry put his arm round me. I glanced up to see the strain on his face and his red, watery eyes. He was being so strong but I knew he was dying inside.
Slowly and solemnly, we came down the steps from the aeroplane, Gerry with a sleeping Sean resting against his chest and me with Amelie, tired but awake, on my hip. What did the future hold for our family now?

madeleine by KATE MCCANN

[For research and study only]


Image: Slowly and solemnly, we came down the steps from the aeroplane, Gerry with a sleeping Sean resting against his chest and me with Amelie, tired but awake, on my hip.

It was time to go. 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 news of all this reaches people back in the UK . . .

There’s no way our government will stand for this. (Four months down the line and still so naive!) The PJ can beat me up and throw me in a prison cell but I will not lie . . . I will do everything I can to help Madeleine and to preserve our family . . . I know the truth and God knows the truth. Nothing else matters. It’ll be OK.

madeleine by KATE MCCANN

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.

We felt that our government had abandoned us. It hadn’t occurred to me that they wouldn’t protect us and I berated myself, once again, for my naivety.

I knew the situation was bad but I still didn’t fully appreciate just how detrimental the recent turn of events would be to us and to Madeleine.

madeleine by KATE MCCANN

[For research/study only]

Night after night, I read of depraved individuals, British paedophiles, Portuguese paedophiles, Spanish, Dutch and German paedophiles, and of the horrific crimes they’d committed. The police went to visit some of them, looked around their apartments and recorded merely, ‘No sign of the minor.’ Was that enough to eliminate these vile characters from the inquiry? If more had been done, there was certainly nothing in the files about it. No description, no photograph, no alibi, no DNA. Just ‘No sign of the minor.’

madeleine by KATE MCCANN

That word again ....

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.

madeleine by KATE MCCANN

[For research and study only]

Déjà vu?

There are a number of references to Belgium in 'the book', all relating to child sex abuse and/or abduction and/or trafficking.

Here is an example..

We also met Charlotte from Child Focus, an NGO for missing and exploited children in Belgium. After suffering a spate of child abductions and murders in the 1990s, Belgium had set out to tackle these heinous crimes head on. The establishment of Child Focus in 1997 was a part of this strategy. Charlotte told us she was the case manager at Child Focus for Madeleine. We were speechless. We couldn’t believe there was actually a lady in Belgium working officially on Madeleine’s behalf. I was so grateful I burst into tears. I cried at sad news, I cried at heartwarming news. I did a lot of crying! Those who criticized us for appearing too controlled didn’t know the half of it.

~~~

There had been plenty of crank calls and letters from all over Europe. The reason why this claim had been singled out by the newspaper as a story (not that there ever has to be a reason, or so it seems) was that the letter was apparently very similar to one received the year before regarding the location of the bodies of two young girls abducted in Belgium. They had been found later the same day, albeit fifteen kilometres away from the location given.

~~~

I think it would be fair to say that Europe is at least twenty years behind the US in dealing with this issue. At the time of Madeleine’s abduction only two of the twenty-seven countries in the European Union had a national child rescue alert system in place: France and Belgium

~~~~

In the wake of our 2008 campaign calling for a coordinated Europe-wide child alert rescue system, the European Parliament dedicated one million euros to fund projects aimed at developing interconnecting child rescue alerts. Two of the grants went to schemes designed to strengthen cross-border compatibility and coordination. Since then, I am pleased to say that significant progress has been made. According to the European Commission, which allocates the funds, eight EU member states (Belgium, France, Greece, UK, Netherlands, Luxembourg, Portugal and Germany) now have CRAs in place. The UK’s new nationally coordinated child rescue alert was launched on International Missing Children’s Day, 25 May, 2010. A further three countries (Italy, Romania and Cyprus) are due to introduce similar systems soon.

madeleine by KATE   MCCANN

[Extracts for research and case study only]

Combing through the files, I despaired. It was only now that I became aware of just how cursory some of the police work had been. Vital questions had not been asked, alibis not verified, lines of inquiry left dangling or, at best, not adequately documented. There is no doubt that the police were overwhelmed, both by having to deal with a crime of this nature under such scrutiny and by the sheer volume of information pouring in. The systems and resources they needed simply weren’t there. I felt some sympathy with them over the challenges they faced, and it was clear that Paulo Rebelo, who replaced Gonçalo Amaral as coordinator of the investigation, had tried to make up for some of the initial inadequacies by checking back for anything that had been overlooked. But the discovery of each missed opportunity was another twist of the knife in my chest.

It was here I found the receptionist’s note in the Ocean Club staff message book explaining that we wanted to book the Tapas restaurant for the rest of the week because we were leaving our children alone in our apartments. I was dismayed. This was a glaring green light to a child-taker – and yet no mention is made of it in the files until December 2007. December 2007! Seven months after Madeleine’s abduction! I could only conclude that its relevance had not been appreciated by the police.

Door-to-door inquiries appeared to have been delayed and haphazard. If nobody was at home, too bad: as far as I could tell they didn’t get a second visit. Many of the witness statements looked extremely vague and brief, crying out for what seemed blindingly obvious and essential questions to be asked and answered. Those made by the Ocean Club staff in particular were very sketchy, even allowing for the fact that almost 130 employees were interviewed in the space of just a few days. We have discovered since that there were staff who were not interviewed at all.

Night after night, I read of depraved individuals, British paedophiles, Portuguese paedophiles, Spanish, Dutch and German paedophiles, and of the horrific crimes they’d committed. The police went to visit some of them, looked around their apartments and recorded merely, ‘No sign of the minor.’ Was that enough to eliminate these vile characters from the inquiry? If more had been done, there was certainly nothing in the files about it. No description, no photograph, no alibi, no DNA. Just ‘No sign of the minor.’

madeleine by KATE MCCANN

[For research and study only]

No Stone Unturned [Oh the irony!]

We gave another statement to the media outside the apartment that Monday and on this occasion answered a few questions. Then, early in the evening, we heard that Robert Murat, our erstwhile translator, had been taken in by the police for questioning. We had no prior warning of this from the police. The first we knew of it was when we happened to catch the ‘breaking news’ on television, the same as everybody else. We stood there, paralysed, watching live pictures of the police going in and out of Murat’s home, removing computer equipment and boxloads of other stuff. We were terrified that the next thing we were going to see was an officer carrying out a little body bag.

Was it really too much to ask to be spared this harrowing experience? Whether the police were simply being completely thoughtless or whether this was something to do with the judicial secrecy law I cannot say. Sandy and Michael walked up to the Murat family home, Casa Liliana – which was only 100 yards from our Ocean Club apartment – to try to find out what was happening. A Sunday Times journalist filled them in on a few more details. A little later, one of the British FLOs popped up to our apartment to apologize for the lack of warning. It wasn’t his fault, of course, but the damage had already been done.

Murat, the thirty-three-year-old son of a Portuguese father and British mother, was described in the press as a self-employed property developer. He lived at Casa Liliana with his mother. He had been reported to the police by a Sunday Mirror journalist, Lori Campbell, suspicious of what she felt was his odd behaviour – apparently he had been hanging around the media pack, constantly asking questions. Taking what others perceive as an unusual level of interest doesn’t make you a criminal, of course, but it worried several people among the press corps.

We soon found out that Murat had been made an arguido. This formal status meant he would be officially treated as a suspect in the crime. It also confers various rights, such as the right to remain silent and entitlement to legal representation. For this reason it is possible and indeed not unheard of for a person being questioned as a witness, with less protection from the law, to declare himself arguido, for example if he feels that the line the police are taking suggests they suspect him.

madeleine by KATE MCCANN

[For research and study only]

Kate McCann wrote:Combing through the files, I despaired. It was only now that I became aware of just how cursory some of the police work had been. Vital questions had not been asked, alibis not verified, lines of inquiry left dangling or, at best, not adequately documented. There is no doubt that the police were overwhelmed, both by having to deal with a crime of this nature under such scrutiny and by the sheer volume of information pouring in. The systems and resources they needed simply weren’t there. I felt some sympathy with them over the challenges they faced, and it was clear that Paulo Rebelo, who replaced Gonçalo Amaral as coordinator of the investigation, had tried to make up for some of the initial inadequacies by checking back for anything that had been overlooked. But the discovery of each missed opportunity was another twist of the knife in my chest.

It was here I found the receptionist’s note in the Ocean Club staff message book explaining that we wanted to book the Tapas restaurant for the rest of the week because we were leaving our children alone in our apartments. I was dismayed. This was a glaring green light to a child-taker – and yet no mention is made of it in the files until December 2007. December 2007! Seven months after Madeleine’s abduction! I could only conclude that its relevance had not been appreciated by the police.

Door-to-door inquiries appeared to have been delayed and haphazard. If nobody was at home, too bad: as far as I could tell they didn’t get a second visit. Many of the witness statements looked extremely vague and brief, crying out for what seemed blindingly obvious and essential questions to be asked and answered. Those made by the Ocean Club staff in particular were very sketchy, even allowing for the fact that almost 130 employees were interviewed in the space of just a few days. We have discovered since that there were staff who were not interviewed at all.

Night after night, I read of depraved individuals, British paedophiles, Portuguese paedophiles, Spanish, Dutch and German paedophiles, and of the horrific crimes they’d committed. The police went to visit some of them, looked around their apartments and recorded merely, ‘No sign of the minor.’ Was that enough to eliminate these vile characters from the inquiry? If more had been done, there was certainly nothing in the files about it. No description, no photograph, no alibi, no DNA. Just ‘No sign of the minor.’

madeleine by KATE MCCANN

So Kate McCann expected the PJ to investigate just every paedophile or creepy man under the sun (or in the Algarve area), although she states that "the resources they needed simply weren't there"?
Op. Grange seems to have done just what Kate demanded, they apparently checked out every creepy dude, which produced no results whatsoever.
The sense of self-entitlement of this woman never fails to amaze me.

Exactly:-)!

The note mentioned is not on the DVD although Tapas reservation lists are here: tapas bookings


https://mccannpjfiles.co.uk/PJ/MISSING_PAGES.htm


McCann PJ Files does not have Access to the Original DVD.

How can Kate complain about this not being mentioned in the Files until December 2007, when they were first made Public in August 2008? Did she get a full Copy beforehand?

You are missing the point.

That aside I think Kate McCann talks in retrospect.

She refers to mention of the subject matter in December 2007, having read the translated files. Not a premonition of events before the PJ files were released into the public domain in the summer of 2008.

Careless talk costs lives.

If any member wishes to continue discussion on this particular subject let me know and I will move to the appropriate thread.

Meanwhile, in Portugal, Gonçalo Amaral, removed as coordinator of the investigation in October 2007, reared his head again. On 30 June he retired from the police force altogether. His reason for doing so was, he said, to regain his ‘freedom of speech’. Nine months after his removal from the investigation, Amaral’s association with it appeared to have increased remarkably. As speculation about the closure of the case mounted, he, along with several of his ex-PJ friends, began to appear in newspapers and on television. His purpose appeared to be to convince the Portuguese nation that Madeleine was dead. He had, he said, written a book about the case that would be published very soon.

On Monday 21 July, the Portuguese attorney general’s office announced that the investigation of Madeleine’s disappearance was to be archived, pending further evidence. The case files were to be released and the arguido status of Gerry, myself and Robert Murat was to be lifted. There was no evidence to suggest that Madeleine had come to serious harm and no evidence to implicate Gerry, me or Robert Murat in what had happened to her.

Gerry and I received no official notification of this from the Portuguese authorities. I heard the news at about 4.30pm from a French news agency via Sky News and BBC News 24. It did not come as a great surprise as both the day of the announcement and its content had been pre-empted by the newspapers on Friday and we had been tripping over photographers and news crews at the end of our road all day.

It may sound odd, but in some ways we were glad the investigation had been closed. As I’ve said, we were far from convinced that there was any real investigation taking place anyway, so to have it officially brought to an end didn’t feel like as big a loss as might have been expected. While the PJ had continued to supply the usual response – ‘The official investigation continues. All credible lines of inquiry will be pursued’ – we had been receiving messages from concerned people who had tried to pass on information to the police, only to be told, ‘The child is dead.’ Now that this ‘investigation’ had concluded, reports could be channelled directly to our own team, which would give them, we hoped, more to go on. It was certainly better than nothing.

As for the dropping of our arguido status, it was hardly a cause for celebration. All it meant was that, after eleven months of being pilloried, we were back where we started. Madeleine was still missing and we still had to find her. All the same, it was a relief, of course. In spite of my disgust with the whole business, I could appreciate that not being an arguida was preferable to being an arguida and that Gerry and I were in a better position than we had been the day before. It was also a public acknowledgement that the Portuguese authorities had nothing to implicate us in Madeleine’s disappearance, just as we’d always insisted. And we hoped that some of the doors that had been closed to us since September 2007 would now reopen.

madeleine by KATE MCCANN

[For study and research only]