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The documentary the McCanns don't want you to see, 30 April 2009

'A Verdade da Mentira', 'Maddie: The Truth Of The Lie' Clarence Mitchell: "...the station that broadcasts it will be sued by our lawyers." The documentary - based on Gonçalo Amaral's book, 'The Truth Of The Lie' - was broadcast on Portuguese channel TVI on Monday 13th April 2009. Documentary also available in a 6-part English narration version: Click here

Latest news/Newly added old articles of interest

	Kevin Halligen remanded in custody, 01 September 2010
	Kevin Halligen remanded in custody By Nigel Moore 01 September 2010, 11:30am Statement concerning Kevin Halligen's hearing this morning: 'The case has been adjourned to 20th September 2010, 10.30am, for the full Extradition hearing, Mr. Halligen remains in custody.' Source: City of Westminster Magistrates' Court

'I know who took Madeleine': Paedophile suspect claims abduction clue in deathbed letter, 01 September 2010

'I know who took Madeleine': Paedophile suspect claims abduction clue in deathbed letter Daily Mail By DAILY MAIL REPORTER Last updated at 9:02 AM on 1st September 2010 A paedophile suspected of being involved in the disappearance of Madeleine McCann reportedly 'confessed' to knowing what happened to the little girl on his deathbed. Raymond Hewlett apparently wrote to his estranged son denying he played a part in the three-year-old's abduction, but claimed he knew she had been 'stolen to order' by a gypsy gang. Cancer sufferer Hewlett, who has a record of raping and abducting children, had previously claimed to have seen the missing toddler twice before she vanished in 2007. But he vowed only to reveal where he was the night she went missing if he was paid thousands of pounds. Kate and Gerry McCann's private detectives refused the request. Today his son Wayne claimed to the Sun that the letter was delivered to him by a mystery man a week after he died in April. Wayne, who has had no contact with his father for 20 years, claimed his father insisted he had nothing to do with Madeleine’s disappearance – but that he knew who did. He said: 'He said a very good gipsy friend he knew in Portugal had got drunk and "let it out" that he had stolen Maddie to order as part of a gang. 'My dad said this gang had been operating for a long time and had snatched children before for couples who couldn't have children of their own. 'Maddie had been targeted. They took photos of children and send them to the people they were acting for. And they said Yes or No.' Private detectives working for the McCanns are said to be 'extremely interested' in the claims and are preparing to interview Wayne. Wayne, 40, says he burned the letter because it 'unnerved' him so much. The Sun reported they learned of the existence of the note through another source and confirmed they had not been approached by Wayne originally. Madeleine went missing from The Ocean Club Hotel in Praia da Luz in the Portuguese Algarve while her parents dined at a restaurant on the resort. Hewlett was living with his family on a campsite an hour's drive away at the time.

I know who took Maddie, 01 September 2010

I know who took Maddie The Sun By ANTONELLA LAZZERI and ANDY CRICK Published: Today (01 September 2010) MADELEINE McCann suspect Raymond Hewlett confessed on his deathbed that he KNEW what happened to the little girl, The Sun can reveal. In a letter to his estranged son Wayne, he denied having anything to do with Maddie's disappearance. But he said he knew she had been stolen to order by a gipsy gang who kidnap children for wealthy couples unable to have kids or adopt. Hewlett, a serial paedophile seen near the spot where Maddie was snatched in Portugal, said they had a "shopping list" of potential targets - such as a little girl with blonde hair like Maddie. Private detectives working for Maddie's parents Kate and Gerry are "extremely interested" in Hewlett's claims. A source close to their ongoing investigation said: "What he says fits the No1 theory, which is that she was stolen to order." Hewlett died of throat cancer in April, aged 62, after persistently refusing to meet the McCanns' detectives. He became a suspect because of his appalling record of rape and abduction of children. And he was living as a nomad in Portugal with his second family when Maddie vanished from the McCanns' holiday apartment in Praia da Luz in May 2007. Hewlett's letter to builder Wayne, 40, was delivered to the son by a mystery man - thought to be a solicitor or a private eye - a week after he died. Most of it was an apology for how his vile crimes had affected his first wife Susan and Wayne. But then he went on to write about Maddie, who was nearly four when she went missing. Wayne, of Telford, Shropshire, said: "It was a bolt from the blue and I shook when I read it. "He stated he didn't want to go to his grave with us thinking he had done such a horrible thing. "He said he had had nothing to do with taking Maddie but did know who had. "He said a very good gipsy friend he knew in Portugal had got drunk and 'let it out' that he had stolen Maddie to order as part of a gang. "My dad said this gang had been operating for a long time and had snatched children before for couples who couldn't have children of their own. "Maddie had been targeted. They took photos of children and sent them to the people they were acting for. And they said Yes or No. "Dad said the man told him it was nothing to do with snatching children for a paedophile gang or for a sexual reason. "He said there were huge sums of money involved. And he totally believed what this man was saying." The account fits with others surrounding the Maddie mystery. Several strange men were seen taking photos of children around the Ocean Club resort in the days before she vanished. And The Sun revealed earlier this year that a British expat thought he had seen Maddie in a white van driven by a gipsy couple the day after she was lost. Wayne, who had no contact with Hewlett for nearly 20 years, said his father's letter seemed "very genuine". He added: "I don't know if this is what happened to Maddie or not, but it does make sense. I can't believe he'd go to those lengths to make up some elaborate lie when he was so weak and ill." Wayne said he considered going to Kate and Gerry with the letter but was worried it could cause them more heartache if it gave them false hope. He added: "I actually burned it because it unnerved me so much. "To have a letter from someone you hated for so long was just mind-blowing. I couldn't deal with it." Wayne did not contact The Sun about the message. We learned of its existence through a friend. But now he intends to sit down with the Maddie detectives to tell them everything he knows. The McCanns' spokesman Clarence Mitchell said last night: "We are extremely grateful to Wayne for coming forward with this information and the detective team will be interviewing him as a matter of priority."

Madeleine McCann investigator didn't listen to ANY tip-offs given to hotline - and squandered £500,000, 29 August 2010

Madeleine McCann investigator didn't listen to ANY tip-offs given to hotline - and squandered £500,000 Mail on Sunday By DANIEL BOFFEY IN WASHINGTON Last updated at 12:06 PM on 29th August 2010 A private eye whose company was paid £500,000 from a public fund to find Madeleine McCann squandered the money on a series of bizarre schemes that had no chance of locating the missing child. Kevin Halligen, who claimed to have experience in the British secret services, was arrested last week in an Oxford hotel after an FBI manhunt over an unrelated £1.3million fraud case in America. His investigations company, Oakley International, was taken on in March last year by the Find Madeleine Fund and her parents Kate and Gerry McCann. But The Mail on Sunday can reveal today that despite setting up a hotline for potential informants and witnesses, none of the hundreds of calls received by a call centre hired by Halligen, 48, was listened to by Oakley investigators - and Halligen also bragged to his colleagues that he had executed a series of peculiar tactics to find Madeleine. He claimed to have hired an actor to pretend to be a 'drunken priest' who would seek confessions as he toured the bars of Praia da Luz, the resort where Madeleine disappeared in May 2007. And he told colleagues that a family with a Madeleine lookalike daughter had been paid to set up home in a nearby resort in order to tempt out a potential kidnapper. Meanwhile, a paper trail obtained by The Mail on Sunday shows that Halligen, a former director of a catering firm, launched an extraordinary spending spree on hotels, cigar bars, restaurants and luxury goods while he was in the pay of the Find Madeleine Fund, and in the period shortly after he was fired last summer. Documents show that in his first two months as lead investigator in the search for Madeleine, Halligen spent £7,000 on a personal chauffeur. A few months later, on a short trip to New York with a girlfriend, he lavished £1,600 on Salvatore Ferragamo leather goods, £5,500 on handbags, £500 on an Italian meal, £150 on a pair of designer glasses and £900 on a three-night stay at the five-star Renaissance Hotel. And in a one-month visit to Washington, where he owned a £1.5million mansion, he spent more than £3,000 on dining out and £6,000 on a room at the US capital's Intercontinental Hotel. He also paid out more than £50,000 on plumbing and mosaic tiling for his house in Great Falls, Virginia - a property in which he has never spent a night because of constant home-improvement work. The revelations will dismay everyone who donated to the Find Madeleine Fund. But perhaps of most concern is the lack of attention paid to the hundreds of phone calls received by the Madeleine hotline. Halligen and Oakley International, based in Washington, failed to listen to a single call received on the hotline set up for potential informants by Kate and Gerry McCann last year. Johan Selle, the director of operations at iJet, the US firm that managed the Find Madeleine phone line, revealed that for a year nobody even asked his company if they could listen to any of the calls received. Mr Selle said his operators, in Annapolis, Virginia, had answered 'hundreds of calls', but the information seemed wasted - possibly squandering valuable leads. He said: 'We delivered Oakley a report with a summary of the calls and said if they wanted to come back they could listen to the recording, but nobody did. 'For someone with an understanding of the case it would be very easy for some to say that maybe 80 or 90 per cent of the calls were hogwash, but there may be a percentage where one would say maybe we should listen to this one or listen to that one. But our understanding is that this never took place. 'We are not sure whether Halligen provided our report to the family or to the trust or to those working with them or to the teams working after him, because no one came back to us. 'We sent the report to Oakley group and our assumption was that they were using it as a piece in the puzzle. But it appears that wasn't the case.' The firm says it was not paid for it services by Halligen or Oakley International. Two of Halligen's former colleagues in the investigation, John Taylor and Dr Richard Parton, said they became concerned early on in their working relationship with the self- styled 'super-spy'. Dr Parton, whose company Psyintel was employed for its expertise on interview techniques, said he and his partner had been encouraged by Halligen to get involved with the high-profile case. Halligen had also mentioned other future projects that could net them millions of pounds, although these schemes never came to fruition. But Dr Parton said fears over Halligen's suitability for the job first arose when the private detective suddenly asked him to stop calling him Richard, the name by which they had known him for several years. He then also raised details of Halligen's extraordinary tactics to find Madeleine. Dr Parton, who claims he was later left with an unpaid invoice for £50,000, said: 'It was very strange. I had met him years earlier and it had been Richard. Then before a meeting with some people who wanted a presentation on my techniques, I was asked to call him Kevin from then on. I thought it was odd but he was so secretive and that was just the way he was. 'Whenever we had a meeting he would also always immediately say that he needed to leave for a flight. Every time. He would always also try to get the conversation around to talking about the psychological characteristics of a sociopath.' Dr Parton added: 'I repeatedly told him his investigators on the ground in Portugal were not doing a proper job but he insisted lots of things were going on I didn't know about. 'That is when he told me about some of his schemes, such as the drunken priest seeking confessions from people drinking in the bars of Praia da Luz and the family with a girl who looked similar to Madeleine. This family were set up, apparently, in a resort near to Praia da Luz just to sit and wait and see what happened. 'It was all such a waste of money and time.' However, it was only later, when tape recordings of interviews undertaken in Praia da Luz were sent to Dr Parton and Mr Taylor, in Washington, that they started to fear the worst for the investigation. Mr Taylor said: 'The quality of the interviews was terrible, very amateurish. The noise in the background was bad, the interview questions were useless and the subjects were irrelevant. I told them to stop wasting time and money on such low-key figures - homeless people and receptionists who knew nothing.' Things came to a head after Halligen reneged on repeated promises to pay their invoice. Dr Parton said: 'I took him to one side and asked when I was due to be paid. Three days later he disappeared. He had fled to Rome with his girlfriend.' It was then that Dr Parton and Mr Taylor started to contact others who had been hired by Oakley International. Mr Taylor added: 'He would hire lots of people to do work but only pay a few of them. Meanwhile, he was spending lots of money on his own lifestyle. It only gave the appearance that work was being done.' They also contacted Maria Dybczak, a trade lawyer for the US Commerce Department, whom they understood to be Halligen's wife. It emerged she had agreed to go along with a fake wedding service to keep up appearances for Halligen. Dr Parton said: 'She admitted she wasn't proud of it but she had been tricked, too. He claimed that a job he was doing with the CIA meant that he couldn't have his name on a marriage certificate. 'She was manipulated into going along with a fake wedding with an actor posing as a priest. He said they would get properly married a few weeks later, but that never happened.' Shortly afterwards Halligen fled to Rome with a girlfriend, named in a writ filed by another former colleague as Shirin Trachiotis, a glamorous doctor based in Washington. Almost immediately after arriving in Rome on their first-class Lufthansa tickets, Halligen withdrew hundreds of thousands of pounds more from Oakley International's bank accounts and spent £8,000 on a luxury hotel before slinking back to the UK a few months later. Dr Parton said: 'He has left a trail of debts across America and the UK. But the horrible truth is that he stole from the McCanns what they really couldn't afford - time.' Following a short hearing at Westminster Magistrates' Court last week, Halligen was refused bail and was remanded in custody until December 2, when the next stage of his case for extradition will be heard. The US Department of Justice issued an indictment for Halligen, from Surrey, earlier this month alleging that he tried to defraud a London law firm. They claim he took £1.3million as part of a deal to secure the release of Dutch business executives arrested in the Ivory Coast. Instead, it is claimed, he spent it on a mansion, a gift to his girlfriend, cash machine withdrawals and debit-card transactions. Kate and Gerry McCanns' spokesman Clarence Mitchell refused to be drawn on the details of Oakley's investigation, much of which, it is understood, the McCanns were unaware of. He said: 'The first phase of the contract was satisfactorily seen through, such as the setting up of the hotline. Towards the end of it there were question marks about delivery and the relationship was terminated. 'Given Mr Halligen is in custody it is inappropriate to comment further.'

Cuts hold up Maddie UK probe, 29 August 2010

Cuts hold up Maddie UK probe News of the World Who'll pay, ask police By Lucy Panton 29/08/2010 A NEW probe by British cops into missing Madeleine McCann is being held up in a row over funding, we can reveal. Police forces face cuts of tens of millions of pounds to their budgets leaving no spare cash to pay for what would be a costly re-investigation. Home Secretary Theresa May held a meeting with Kate and Gerry McCann early this month to discuss the search for their daughter. Senior officers at Scotland Yard have been consulted about taking on the case. But despite the apparent early progress we can reveal that there are two key stumbling blocks. No police force can afford to take on the job which could take at least two detectives away from other duties for as long as a year. A source said: "The real issue that needs to be resolved is who is going to pay for it? No police force can afford to agree to take on the case without knowing where the funding will come from. "The other issue which is as important to resolve is to ensure that British officers will have full access in Portugal. "At the moment there is no agreement in place that the Portuguese authorities are going to allow and co-operate with a British re-investigation. "The review has highlighted the need for a thorough re-investigation starting from scratch. The Metropolitan Police have been consulted and are likely to be given the job, but not until all the problems have been ironed out." The McCanns, from Rothley, Leicestershire, appealed directly to former Home Secretary Alan Johnson and now Mrs May for extra help. Madeleine was three when she went missing from her family's holiday flat in Praia da Luz in May 2007. This year we broke the news that the Met's Homicide Command have been approached to discuss taking on the investigation. Jim Gamble, head of the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre, told Labour ministers there were huge holes in the original inquiry.The treasury are set to slash eight per cent of the policing budget for the next three years threatening jobs. Keir Simmons - ITV News Twitter 29 August 2010 News of the World claims a new UK police invest. into Madeleine McCann is held up by funding issues and lack of co-operation from Portugese. 11:48 AM Aug 29th via HootSuite @macybea Not sure. This is the Home Sec asking for an invest, but UK police unable to fund it and worried about Portugese co-op. #McCann 11:56 AM Aug 29th via HootSuite in reply to macybea @macybea I doubt that UK police would be allowed to fund an investigation from a private source - esp. one requested by the Home Sec #McCann 12:00 PM Aug 29th via HootSuite in reply to macybea @macybea Don't have it confirmed from the Home Office yet but I think the Home Sec may well have asked for new #McCann invest. Am checking. 1,283,076,382,000.00 via HootSuite in reply to macybea Home Office source: Reports that Home Secretary is asking for new police invest into Madeleine McCann led by Scot Yard are not true. 1,283,088,368,000.00 via HootSuite @Headlines2day The Crime Editor wrote it - it prob came from a Yard source. CM not really doing #McCann now - you lot are obsessed with him. 1,283,091,996,000.00 via HootSuite in reply to Headlines2day

Maddie McCann investigator to get legal aid in battle against U.S. fraud charges, 29 August 2010

Maddie McCann investigator to get legal aid in battle against U.S. fraud charges Daily Mail By CHRISTOPHER LEAKE and MARK HOLLINGSWORTH Last updated at 4:16 AM on 29th August 2010 A private detective whose firm was paid up to £500,000 from publicly donated funds to find Madeleine McCann is to get tens of thousands of pounds in legal aid to fight extradition to the US for fraud charges. Kevin Halligen, 50, told Kate and Gerry McCann he could find their daughter but allegedly spent the cash on a lifestyle of first-class flights, chauffeured cars, nightclubs and luxury hotels and goods. In a separate alleged scam he was arrested last November at the £700-a-night Old Bank Hotel in Oxford. US authorities issued an extradition warrant accusing Halligen of defrauding a law firm of £1.3 million by ­claiming he could help free two men jailed in war-torn Africa. It is claimed he instead spent the money on a mansion. A document filed in the District Court of Columbia claims he took money, saying his firm could help secure the release of two executives from the multi­national company Trafigura jailed in Ivory Coast in 2007 for allegedly dumping toxic waste. He is said to have suggested a rescue operation to fly in South African mercenaries, but it was cancelled. The duo were freed a few months later after a reported £120 million payment. Halligen, who claimed to have worked for MI5 and the CIA, linked up with the McCanns a year after the 2007 disappearance of three-year-old Madeleine on a family holiday at Praia da Luz, Portugal. He boasted of 'contacts' in Washington who could provide satellite imagery to help the search. Oakley International, a company run by Halligen, was hired by the fund set up by Madeleine’s parents, but was dropped after six months due to claims of too little progress and too much spending. Now British taxpayers are to pay for top-flight lawyers to fight Dublin-born Halligen's extradition. His team includes a leading extradition barrister whose fees are thought to be at least £2,000 a day. Additional fees for renowned London fraud solicitors Janes will boost costs even further. The award of legal aid to ­Halligen, remanded at a London jail since arrest, was confirmed by Westminster magistrates this month. His next extradition hearing is on Wednesday. Last night a spokesman for Kate and Gerry McCann would not comment on the case. A spokeswoman for the Legal Services Commission said last night: 'The decision on whether legal aid is required is made by the court.' A Ministry of Justice spokeswoman said: 'We've announced the start of a fundamental look at the legal aid system.'

ITV1 commissions The Suspicions of Mr Whicher adaptation, 26 August 2010

ITV1 commissions The Suspicions of Mr Whicher adaptation The Stage By Matthew Hemley Published Thursday 26 August 2010 at 09:58 Red Riding actor Paddy Considine is to star in an adaptation of Kate Summerscale's book The Suspicions of Mr Whicher for ITV1. The two-hour drama is being made by Hat Trick Productions and adapted by Neil McKay, whose credits include Mo and See No Evil - The Moors Murders. Set in 1860, the true story tells of the investigation into the murder of three-year-old Saville Kent. The Suspicions of Mr Whicher will film on location around London in October. It is being directed by James Hawes and the executive producer for Hat Trick Productions is Mark Redhead. Redhead said: "This a very modern story. It gripped the country in the way that the case of Madeleine McCann has done in our day. It became an obsession for the press and was even debated in the House of Commons. Perhaps for the first time, the Rode Hill House murder exposed the darkness that lay behind the solid front door of the respectable English home. As a story it is riveting but also deeply touching." The production was commissioned by ITV director of drama commissioning Laura Mackie and controller of drama commissioning Sally Haynes.

Another Place and Time, 02 August 2010

Another Place and Time EXCLUSIVE to mccannfiles.com By Dr Martin Roberts 02 August 2010 ANOTHER PLACE AND TIME The place is a solidly middle-class establishment in Victorian Wiltshire. The time, Friday 29 June, 1860. Head of the household, Samuel Kent, is asleep with his second wife in their first-floor bedroom. Three younger children and live-in nursemaid Elizabeth Gough have likewise retired for the night. Several older children from a previous marriage, including a teenage son and daughter, are installed on the floor above. At 5.00 a.m. on the Saturday morning, the nursemaid notices one of the younger children, Saville Kent (3 yrs.,10 months), is not in his cot, but assumes he has been taken by his mother into her own bed. After a couple of hours she is disabused of her supposition and a hunt begins for the missing infant. With no immediate sign of Saville, attention is drawn to an open window in the downstairs drawing room. The assumption that an intruder had absconded with the child quickly gains widespread support. Until, that is, the young boy's body is found lodged against a 'splash board' in the shaft of an outside 'privy.' At this point the research and narrative skills of author Kate Summerscale must be fully acknowledged. Her 2008 publication 'The Suspicions of Mr Whicher or The Road Hill House Murder' is the complete source for this story as well as the quotes which follow, the first of these taken from The Morning Post of 10 July, 1860: '...in spite of all these proverbial sanctities, a crime has just been committed which for mystery, complication of probabilities, and ludicrous wickedness, is without parallel in our criminal records...the security of families, and the sacredness of English households demand that this matter should never be allowed to rest till the last shadow in its dark mystery shall have been chased away by the light of unquestionable truth...The secret lies with someone who was within...the household collectively must be responsible for this mysterious and dreadful event. Not one of them ought to be at large till the whole mystery is cleared up...one (or more) of the family is guilty.' Given the seriousness of the crime and the mysterious circumstances in which it had been committed, local magistrates saw fit to solicit the Home Office for assistance. Despite initial reluctance, come 14 July, Detective Inspector Jonathan Whicher of the Metropolitan Police was assigned to the case. A time-served member of the constabulary and senior representative of the more recently established detective arm, 'Jack' Whicher was not your everyday copper, even for the age in which he lived and worked. As unprepossessing as he may have been physically, his efficacy as a detective was the stuff of legend. Indeed, it formed the basis of later detective fiction. In one of his earliest reports on this case to Commissioner Sir Richard Mayne, Whicher wrote of the drawing room window: 'This window which is about ten feet high, comes down within a few inches of the ground and faces the lawn at the back of the house, and opens by lifting up the bottom sash, which was found up about six inches at the bottom. These shutters were fastened with a Bar inside, consequently no entry could be made from the outside...Therefore it is quite certain that no person came in by that window...I therefore feel quite convinced that the window shutters were merely opened by one of the inmates, to lend to the supposition that the child had been stolen.' Consistent with Whicher's documented interpretation, Summerscale informs her readers that "At first Samuel (Kent) did his best to point the police away from the rooms of his family and servants. Like Elizabeth Gough, he insisted that a stranger had killed Saville." D. I. Whicher's 'nose' led him to a fairly swift conclusion. Pursuing both the evidence, such as it was, and the behavioural characteristics of the various members of the Kent household, on 20 July he reported his suspicions to Wiltshire magistrates, who in turn required that he arrest the suspect in question; an act which would inevitably go against the grain of Victorian society with its much vaunted faith in family and the social order. Through shrewd background enquiries, Whicher had elicited a telling fusion of character references, but more immediate physical evidence, that he knew to have been a feature of the crime, was conspicuous by its absence, namely a nightdress seemingly unaccounted for. "Then as now, many clues were literally made of cloth - criminals could be identified by pieces of fabric." Frustratingly for Whicher and the watching world, it was this very omission, together with eloquent appeals from the accused's legal representative, Barrister Peter Edlin, which decided the Magistrates against committing the suspect for trial after all. The accused had held out and was unexpectedly well positioned to exploit the situation. Summerscale describes a relevant precedent thus: "Madeleine Smith had shown that by being cunning and immovable a middle-class murderess could become a figure of glamour and mystery, a kind of heroine. And if she kept her nerve she might never be caught." The situation rebounded on Whicher directly, as Summerscale again explains: "On 15 August...Whicher was denounced in Parliament. Sir George Bowyer, the leading Roman Catholic Spokesman in the Commons, complained about the quality of Britain's police inspectors, using Whicher as an example. 'The recent investigation with regard to the Road murder afforded striking proof of the unfitness of some of the present officers', he said." And it didn't end there. "Petitions were sent to the Home Secretary asking for a special commission to investigate the Road Murder - a Bath solicitor was appointed to conduct an 'investigation.'" The Suspicions of Mr Whicher is an extraordinary book, dealing with an extraordinary historical event, and it would be inappropriate here to reveal the denouement of the story. Suffice to say however that 'what goes around comes around.' There was a comeuppence, and Summerscale is later able to inform us: "The Somerset and Wilts Journal reminded its readers of the 'merciless and almost universal...censure' to which this 'able and experienced' officer (Whicher) had been subjected." Art reflects life - reflects art - and Summerscale repeatedly includes examples of the influence this real-life case had on the development of detective fiction subsequently. "In 'The Moonstone', as at Road Hill, the original source of the crime was a wrong done in a previous generation: the sins of the father were visited on the children like a curse." In her postscript to the paperback edition, Summerscale postulates, with some justification, that Samuel Kent, the father, was already 'plotting the first book about the murder of Saville Kent' in the winter of that same year, 1860. Was it not Aristotle's contention that there are only seven basic plots?

Varieties Of Honesty, 22 August 2010

Varieties Of Honesty EXCLUSIVE to mccannfiles.com By Dr Martin Roberts 22 August 2010 VARIETIES OF HONESTY A search of 'McCannfiles' for the phrase 'To be honest', preceded by 'Kate McCann', has yielded a total of 57 instances (Google returned with 7 pages-worth). Whilst the citations are not all attributable to Kate, her own usage of the phrase is disconcertingly frequent nevertheless: Kate McCann: And obviously I can't talk too much about the investigation, umm, but, just trying to get through one day at a time to be honest Jenni. ... 9 Mar 2010 ... Kate McCann: It does and it doesn't. I mean, every day, to be honest, is... is quite difficult. I guess Mother's Day is another reminder ... Kate McCann says she searches the flat three times before raising the alarm. .... KATE: To be honest I don't actually think that. It's a case. ... Kate McCann: To be honest, I don't actually think that is the case. I think that's a very small minority of people that are ... Kate McCann: I mean, I'd like to go back but… not for this, to be honest, it's kind of just below the surface, and I, just you know… I'd be scared, I think, ... Sarah Montague: Could you consider going back to work, Kate? Kate McCann: Errr... not at the moment, it just doesn't... doesn't feel right, to be honest. ... Kate McCann: I mean, to be honest... SIC Reporter: Do you still have the hope to tell them of a story in the future? Kate McCann: Oh, you know. ... Kate McCann: I mean, the main thing for us is knowing if the sighting is credible or not, really. Errm... to be honest we don't go through that, … Disappointed: Gerry and Kate McCann believe police should be doing more to find their ... "To be honest, most people were just really glad to see me. ... It is the first time Kate McCann has left Portugal since Madeleine's abduction. .... I can't really think about that at the minute, to be honest." ... Latest news on Madeleine McCann, Maddie, Kate McCann, Gerry McCann, Goncalo Amaral, ... and to be honest, I might have been tempted to turn round then, ... ...the ones that Madeleine has done I just can't pull down to be honest. ...... Distraught Kate McCann broke down in tears on Oprah as she made a TV appeal … Gerry and Liverpool-born Kate McCann need the signatures of 393 members - that is more .... Kate: I think perhaps you are avoiding the issue to be honest. ... Kate McCann: Well, they're not gonna show anything to implicate us, so I'm not... you know, I'm not concerned, if I'm honest. 20 Feb 2010 ... His wife added: "It's heartbreaking, to be honest. Gerry and Kate McCann have given their first interview since their daughter Madeleine was abducted. ..... KM: I can't think about that Ian, to be honest. ... Kate McCann: Errr... not at the moment, it just doesn't... doesn't feel right, to be honest. I mean, I'm very busy at the moment, there's a lot going on, ... 1 May 2008 ... Kate and Gerry McCann are set to take part in an ITV documentary marking the .... I felt like I was going to fight the world to be honest. ... Kate and Gerry McCann interviewed by Telecinco, 23 August 2007 ..... and we switched off and, to be honest, we stopped reading the newspapers. ... Kate McCann: "I do, maybe even more so, I strongly believe that Madeleine is out there, ...... These are the times when I go off to church, to be honest. ... Tapas Seven Friend Flies Out To Kate McCann, 14 January 2010 ..... "If I'm honest, our daughter's been taken and nothing's ever going to be as bad as that," ... In chapter 5 of his illuminating book, 'I Know You Are Lying' (2001: The Marpa Group), Mark McClish has the following to say in discussing an example of 'honesty': 'The applicant stated "You know..." The problem is we do not know if he is being honest. He has to tell us he is being truthful. Even if he were to say, "You know I am being honest" we still have a deceptive statement. He has not told us he is being honest. He expects us to take his honesty for granted. Believe what people tell you. If he tells you he is being honest, believe him. If he doesn't tell you he is being honest, you have to believe that too.' Chapter 9 (Words And Phrases That Indicate Deception) and McClish is even more specific: 'In an effort to get you to believe their answer, people will sometimes use words or phrases designed to emphasise their truthfulness. However, studies have shown that when people use these words or phrases they may be giving you a deceptive answer. The following is a list of some of the more common deceptive words and phrases: "Honest to God."          "Truthfully" "To be honest."            "I swear to God." "To tell the truth."        "I swear on my mother's grave." '...when you hear these words or phrases in a statement that light bulb in your head should go off. You should pay even closer attention to what the person is telling you.' The point in relation to the above catalogue of Kate McCann's 'honest' remarks is that, in every instance, it is an 'in principle' honesty to which she refers, not her own exactly. 'To be honest' is not 'being honest' necessarily. Language offers us different structures for different logical purposes and, whether we are conscious of it or not, we choose the one which best fits the circumstances, or what it is we wish to convey exactly. This catalogue of Kate McCann's pronouncements makes for an interesting archive when one considers that, in every instance, the statement in question may be negated by the very caveat intended to promote it.

Briton arrested in Algarve for child beach photos: My 80 pictures are 'for research', says clothes buyer, 22 August 2010

Briton arrested in Algarve for child beach photos: My 80 pictures are 'for research', says clothes buyer Daily Mail Last updated at 11:30 PM on 22nd August 2010 A British business executive has appeared in a Portuguese court after being accused of taking photos of children on a beach. Parents had been alarmed when they saw 48-year-old grandfather Rhys Jones - who works for international clothing retailer Peacocks - arrive at an Algarve holiday resort alone and start taking pictures of boys in their swimwear. When the parents complained, a row developed, police were called, and father-of-two Mr Jones was arrested. The beach is 50 miles from where Madeleine McCann disappeared from her parents' apartment in Praia da Luz in May 2007. It is understood that 80 pictures of boys aged eight to 15 were found on the camera. But Mr Jones has told the Daily Mail that while he had been 'absolutely stupid', he had an innocent excuse - he was impressed by the youngsters' swimwear, wanted his firm to copy it, and was taking photos as research. The businessman, who was holidaying in a hotel in Vilamoura with his wife Ann and his 14-year-old son, spoke before appearing in an Algarve court on Friday afternoon. The keen amateur sportsman, who runs an under-14s football team and is chairman of the Welsh Club Cricket Conference, has worked for Peacocks for 30 years and is international operations and development controller. Last Thursday he was on the beach at Vilamoura when he said he realised young male holidaymakers were wearing swimwear unlike that stocked by Peacocks. On the spur of the moment, he said, he began photographing boys playing in the sand, with the aim of showing them to colleagues to suggest they stocked similar trunks, particularly for sales in Peacocks stores in Cyprus and Malta. Police were called after parents objected. Mr Jones said: 'I was absolutely stupid. When parents approached me I realised what an idiot I'd been. 'I can fully understand the parents' reaction. I've been bloody stupid. My wife keeps telling me I'm an idiot – she's right, I was. 'But I didn't try to sneak any pictures, I did it all openly.' Mr Jones said he is worried about his job at Peacocks, which is based close to his home in Cardiff. Portuguese police commander Marques Ferreira said: 'A 48-yearold Englishman was seen photographing children on the beach at Marinotel in Vilamoura and was arrested by the Maritime Police. 'We were able to verify the existence of many photographs of children aged between eight and 15.' A police source said witnesses said, 'The man pointed his camera several times at children who were playing in the sand by the water'. Mr Jones has been named an 'arguido', or formal suspect, and appeared in a court on Friday with a local lawyer to answer initial questions, but is understood to have been allowed to return home with his wife and son at the weekend. He will be recalled to Portugal if the court decides to take the case further. Taking photographs of children without their parents' permission is a crime in Portugal. Mr Jones was on Saturday due to play cricket in his position as captain of the Lisvane Second XI in Cardiff and is due to go on a cricket tour of Berkshire today. One of his friends said last night: 'He has been one of the stalwarts of the cricket club for many years, joining as a teenager just after its foundation in the late 70s. 'I can't believe he has ended up in a Portuguese court. He's a straightforward guy with a great sense of humour.'

Maddie beach perv, 21 August 2010

Maddie beach perv The Sun By HARRY MILLER Published: Today (21 August 2010) A BRITISH tourist has been arrested for allegedly taking photos of children - on a beach near where Madeleine McCann went missing. Three sets of parents noticed the 48-year-old taking snaps of kids playing on Portugal's Algarve coast, police said yesterday. Officers found "many" photos on his camera of children "aged between eight and 15". Taking pictures of minors without their parents' permission is illegal in Portugal. The suspect was arrested at about 3pm on Thursday after concerned mums and dads contacted the Maritime Police. The man, who has not been named, was held on the Marinotel beach in Vilamoura. The beach is about 50 miles east of Praia da Luz, where Maddie disappeared in May 2007. She was then aged three. Police commander Marques Ferreira said: "A 48-year-old Englishman was seen photographing children. We verified the existence of many photographs." He said the suspect had been alone when taking the photos. The man was made an "arguido", or formal suspect, on Thursday. He was bailed by police and was due in court yesterday in the town of Loulé.

British tourist arrested for taking photos of eight-year-old children on Algarve beach, 20 August 2010

British tourist arrested for taking photos of eight-year-old children on Algarve beach Daily Mail By TOM WORDEN Last updated at 4:46 PM on 20th August 2010 A British tourist has been arrested on suspicion of taking photographs of children on a beach on the Algarve. The 48-year-old was held after three sets of parents noticed him taking pictures of youngsters. Police said they found a number of photos of children aged eight to 15 on his camera. He was arrested by officers from the Maritime Police on the Marinotel beach in the popular resort of Vilamoura at around 3pm on Thursday. The beach is around 50 miles east of Praia da Luz, the seaside village where  Madeleine McCann disappeared in May 2007. Commander Marques Ferreira said: 'A 48-year-old Englishman was seen  photographing children on the beach at Marinotel in Vilamoura and was arrested by the Maritime Police. 'We were able to verify the existence of many photographs of children aged  between eight and 15.' A police source said witnesses claimed 'the man pointed his camera several  times at children who were playing in the sand by the water'. A Portuguese holidaymaker told newspaper Diario de Noticias: 'When the police arrived on the beach, they were able to see the man still taking photos.' The suspect, who has not been named, was due to appear at a court in the nearby  town of Loule this morning. Police made him an 'arguido' or formal suspect on Thursday evening  before releasing him on bail.

Englishman who photographed children at the beach arrested, 19 August 2010

Englishman who photographed children at the beach arrested Diário de Notícias By MIGUEL FERREIRA 19 August 2010 Parents complained. Tourist was arrested and his camera had several images of children between eight and 15 years A man suspected of photographing minors on the Marinotel beach, in Vilamoura, was arrested yesterday afternoon by the Maritime Police (PM). The intervention of the police was prompted by the complaints of three sets of parents who were concerned at the odd behaviour of the individual, a 48-year-old British citizen. According to a source from the South Maritime Zone Command, the complainants testified that "the man pointed his camera several times at children who were playing in the sand by the water." Without speaking to the suspect, at around 15:00, the parents of the children decided to call the Maritime Police to identify the man and to confirm whether the stranger was taking photos of minors without the consent of their parents. "'When the police arrived on the beach, they were able to see the man still taking photos," a Portuguese holidaymaker, who was on the beach, told DN. When approached, the Englishman, 49, did not resist the authorities request to view the memory card from the camera used to take the photographs, which he had in his hands. "We were able to verify the existence of many photographs of children aged between eight and 15" on that memory card, South Offshore Commander Marques Ferreira confirmed to DN. Thereupon, the individual was taken into custody by agents of the Maritime Police. In accordance with that which the PM found with the Judicial Police, the British citizen, who has no [criminal] record, was presented to the Public Prosecutor of Loulé. The defendant was constituted an arguido, but walked away free with conditions regarding his identity and residence [i.e. released on bail]. He should be heard by a judge today at 10.00am, again in the Criminal Court at Loulé. On the beach, apart from the parents who complained, few realized about the activities of the tourists and the police. This is the second recorded case of an adult photographing minors on Algarve beaches recorded in five days.

As cleared as mud, 18 August 2010

As cleared as mud The Blacksmith Bureau Mr Cunha de Magalhaes e Menezes being interviewed by Sandra Felgueiras Posted by John Blacksmith at 16:10 Wednesday, 18 August 2010 When the Bureau criticised Amaral's legal team in the strongest terms recently we mentioned its apparent inability to profit from the open door provided by the testimony of the prosecutor, Mr Cunha de Magalhaes e Menezes, at the gagging appeal hearings. The report that the prosecutor had written, the one which the parents in their inimitable way claimed "cleared" them, came to form the basis of the McCanns' legal case against the inspector. The original case, a typical piece of McCann disingenuousness dependent on the case papers not being widely read, was that Amaral was a loose cannon, a "disgrace", a loner with whom none of the other police - decent chaps - agreed. Studies of the case files destroyed this argument. Unfortunately the short suicide note, or gift horse, that Goncalo's "dead in the apartment" gaffe amounted to enabled the lawyers to slip away from the original claim and shift their ground:  Yes, the Inspector Tavares De Almeida's interim police report in September 2007 undeniably reflected a virtually unanimous case against the parents - but it was only interim. The prosecutor's final report of 2008 was the summation of the case - and Amaral had ignored it in his book. He had, therefore, picked out evidence which suited him, and by implication his book sales, and ignored evidence which did not support his case in the same way. That was not what a genuinely impartial person looking for the truth would, or should do. The transition was complete. This clever and elegant restatement of the case, which eventually nailed Amaral at the gagging hearings had, however, its vulnerabilities, as the legal team knew. There were two: the first was the startlingly ambiguous nature of the final report itself which correctly outlined the lack of any convincing evidence of parental guilt likely to gain a conviction, but followed it up with explicit evidence of non-co-operation by the Tapas 9. The second, the crucial area, the point of balance of the whole case, was what exactly happened in the interval between the two reports. We know to the point of exhaustion what Amaral's team did but what exactly did Rebelo's officers add to the investigation? As for the first, Amaral's lawyer, if he was any good, would clearly be expected to draw the prosecutor out on the matter of inferences. From the lack of solid evidence for parental involvement that would convince a "reasonable man", the prosecutor inferred in his report the possibility of their innocence. From the evidence of non-co-operation, on the other hand, he refused to make any inferences at all. Why the difference? A lawyer like James Dingemans QC, granted perhaps the best legal brain in the UK, would have been rubbing his hands at the prospect of taking the prosecutor through this shambles of a report line by line. As for the second area, even the phlegmatic Mr Dingemans might have grown excited. What exactly had changed between the writing of the two reports apart from a failure to strengthen the beliefs of the investigators into a 51% likelihood of conviction for an offence? What evidence had Rebelo uncovered to invalidate the conclusions of the interim report rather than merely giving  up on the hope of using them in court? How, for example, had the original forensic findings regarding the shutters, window etc, which had implanted severe doubts over the possibility of abduction in the police team's minds, been countered or corrected? Had the contradictions in the Tapas group's timelines been clarified? The McCanns' defence team avoided this whole area as if it were a piece of stinking fish because there's nothing there, is there? All that differs in the two phases are the opinions, the interpretations as to the likelihood of a conviction of the parents for anything, which is something very, very different from evidence of exoneration. A glance at what happened to the third arguido Robert Murat is sufficient. The case against him was not left in any doubt, or re-interpreted: it was dismantled, leaving nothing of the original suspicions and not the slightest evidence that he had failed to co-operate with the investigation – on the contrary. The contrast with the other two arguidos, the pair who ran away from Portugal, is clear and brutal. This is why the McCanns' legal team, particularly the UK end, where all the research had been done, was by no means confident of a result before the start of the gagging hearings, since they had no convincing fallback if the two vulnerabilities were properly exploited. They had no need to worry. Goncalo Amaral's lawyer, who will be remembered chiefly for going sick before the first hearing, decided not to ask why the claim that Amaral was a Lone Ranger had been expunged and to go for the time warp defence: wheeling out the witnesses as if it were May 2007 and staying clear of researching the investigative details of the Rebelo phase. That, apparently, remains a job to be done. Humpty Dumpty after giving up the olive oil and losing 10 kilos. Someone is whispering in his ear. That was bad enough. But if, through lack of focus and research the lawyer couldn't ask the prosecutor what facts had changed or emerged during the time interval to justify the reverse gear into which the report had been slammed, he could still salvage something with the contradictions and the differing attitude to inferences. Why, exactly, he could ask, as he went through the report line by line, why had the stuff about contradictions in the T9 evidence been put into the report? Why exactly was the failure to participate in the reconstruction mentioned so prominently? Now we know the answer to that – the police were insistent that it had to go in – but it would have been good to hear the prosecutor's view together with the killer question: was there a deficiency of information regarding the parents' role as a result of the aborted reconstruction, yes, or no? Could a successful reconstruction have altered the conclusions of your report? Yes or no? In fact the lawyer could have spared us all and gone off for a cup of tea rather than cross-examining Mr Cunha de Magalhaes e Menezes. Not only did he not go through the report in this way but he hardly found it worthy of notice that the Portimao prosecutor had volunteered the information that the Tapas 9 had not been completely truthful. Some desultory questioning around the edges of this potential gold-mine led to airy hand-waving from the prosecutor as he explained briefly that it wasn't crucial. And that was it. What wasn't crucial? Were the police on record as saying they weren't crucial? Can you give us some examples please? Now, can we turn to the letters from all of the 7 refusing to attend the reconstruction – can we go through their reasons please? Do you believe those reasons hold water? And so on. Instead the lawyer moved on to other things, presumably to the sound of popping champagne corks around the UK team's television screens. And then onto eventual defeat, though whether things will remain that way in the future we don't know. It need hardly be added that the Bureau does not suggest that Inspector Amaral was correct in his claims that the child died in the apartment and the parents, with help, covered it up. Nor do we think that Humpty was corrupt, a stooge or anything other than someone struggling to bring a conclusion to a case that was going nowhere and which the infinitely flexible Portuguese legal system wanted shot of. The question, at root, is did the failure to make a case against the McCanns - and we can all agree there was no case - derive from lack of co-operation by the Tapas 9 or not? The chance to cross-examine the Portimao prosecutor on this question and the cirumstances surrounding his intellectually weak and politicised report was missed: a loss not just to Amaral but to the historical record, to  all of us, including the parents and their hopes of "exoneration". Still, back to these "non-crucial" fibs. or inaccuracies. They are a subject dear to the hearts of McCann supporters, in what one might call the fallback case. The claim waiting in the wings, as it were, is that if the group are shown to have lied or misled in their original statements why, let's face it, be reasonable, be realistic, they were all just worried that they might be accused of neglect by the child-protection fascists and their innocent lapse punished wrongly and disproportionately. OK, not completely frank but only for that reason, nothing to do with anything sinister. We can turn to that one next, bearing in mind one very interesting fact: whatever the media columnists - we've all done it - and good old friends 'n' family might have hinted, the parents, and indeed the Tapas 7 have never so much as whispered about this possible reason for telling "non-crucial" untruths. Complete silence. Now why might that be?

	Kevin Halligen remanded in custody, 18 August 2010
	Kevin Halligen remanded in custody By Nigel Moore 18 August 2010, 14:30pm Statement concerning Kevin Halligen's hearing this morning: 'Remanded in custody until 01/09/2010 at 10:00 in court City of Westminster Magistrates' Court,  Basis: in proceedings under section 2(7) of the Extradition Act 2003. Direction that live television link be used.' Source: City of Westminster Magistrates' Court

	Carter-Ruck letter to Tony Bennett, 03 August 2010; with response, 16 August 2010
	Carter-Ruck letter to Tony Bennett The Madeleine Foundation (PDF) 3 August 2010 And by email: ajsbennett@blinternet.com STRICTLY PRIVATE & CONFIDENTIAL Mr Tony Bennett 66 Chippingfield HARLOW Essex CM170DJ Urgent Dear Sir Gerry and Kate McCann We refer to your letter of 21 July 2010 and your email of 19 July 2010. We note that you claim to have taken legal advice upon our letter of 15 July 2010. Given the frankly incoherent and illogical contents of your letter, we must say that we find it difficult to believe that you have taken any legal advice. We should be grateful if you would confirm the name of the solicitor whom you consulted, as the legal advice you claim to have received, or at least your understanding of it, appears to be incorrect in a number of fundamental respects. You have speculated as to the financial basis on which our clients instruct us. This is, of course, no concern of yours, but suffice it to say that your speculation about our clients' funding arrangements is entirely misplaced. In particular, we have never been paid a penny by the Find Madeleine Fund. While our clients dispute much of the content of your letter to the Home Secretary, no complaint was made about the fact of your having sent that letter. Our clients' complaint related to your publication of the letter (and the defamatory allegations contained therein) on the internet, for which there can be no defence. Neither we nor our clients have any knowledge of a Mr Ian West or of anyone with the internet user name "muratfan," and have not leaked our letter to him or to anyone else as you implicitly allege in your letter. It is noteworthy however that while you seek to criticise us for having leaked our letter, which was marked "Strictly Private and Confidential", you have posted it on the newsletters page of your website. While you claim to be complying with the requests contained in our letter of 15 July 2010, including that you do not continue to publish the "48 questions" video you made, we are aware that you are actively encouraging others to circulate the recording (or versions of it) and copies of the 48 questions, and that you have recently been republishing articles/postings by others, many of which clearly allege that our clients are guilty of, or are to be suspected of, causing the death of their daughter Madeleine McCann. In the circumstances, we must require your immediate response to this continuing clear breach of the undertakings which you gave to the Court, which appears to demonstrate how disingenuous your purported assurances are. Yours faithfully Carter-Ruck Response from Tony Bennett The Madeleine Foundation Due to the inordinate length of Tony Bennett's reply it has been moved to the bottom of The Madeleine Foundation page, on this site, for those interested in reading it - or it can be viewed on the link above.

If it walks like a duck..., 14 August 2010

If it walks like a duck... The Blacksmith Bureau The daddy of them all, Nixon's spokesman lying Alastair Campbell, war hero, "spinning" Posted by John Blacksmith at 13:38 Tuesday, 10 August 2010 The departure of the Labour Government has, probably temporarily, left the air as sweet as a woodland misty morning. Even that declining constituency, the news media, seems almost relieved that the incessant double talk from government has drastically diminished, and that the new prime minister is actually willing to speak directly and risk being stuck with comments he can't deny. And the budget for the Central Office of Information, once an old-fashioned department for providing the public with neutral information, latterly a propaganda machine full of paid puffers and failed newsreaders, is due to have its huge budget cut back to - note the date - 1996 levels. The media management project which began to rot and founder after the Iraq war had by 2007 sunk into a culture of defensive secrecy, behind which lay the impossibility of selling a paranoid loser like Gordon Brown to the public and the impending doom of the expenses scandal. Chris Mullin, one of the token idealists in the government, seduced into it by the wily charm of his hero Tony Blair, was a hair-shirted puritan who could hardly bring himself to use government cars; this worthy wrote in his diary that "everyone" (in government) knew that the expenses stuff was going to come out one day. A pity he couldn't bring himself to tell the public about it. Nothing takes us back from the clean August air of 2010 to the foetid gloom of that horrible period as rapidly as the  Madeleine McCann affair. The episode showed that the culture of news management had spread like an infection across British public life, a private game played between the media and anyone – business, local government, the police, the NHS, the Natwest banker thieves – who wanted to present a version, a "story" to the public through PR and spokesmen. In other words lies. Alex Woolfall, ex-spokesman for Enron, working Spokespeople are paid liars: that is their sole function. Of course they, and the people who employ them, deny it – what else would one expect? The media themselves know it since many of its members have moved smoothly between the declining fourth estate and the cancerously growing PR industry over past decades. Only the public isn't let into the game. Whether you've shot an innocent Brazilian by mistake, lost a patient under an incompetent's knife or dumped toxic waste all over African villagers, it's all the same: set up a meeting, call in the spokespeople, work out a "line" – that is, a version of events - and then start dialling the editors. A smooth lie machine. And of course, properly presented, lies sell newspapers and bring in TV advertising. We know how it works, we have the transcript evidence of how it's done going back forty years, from when President Nixon, the klutz, bugged himself and his aides working out the daily "line" as they struggled to head off impeachment and prison, then calling the press spokesman into the meeting to rehearse it and look for "vulnerabilities" in the lie. Twenty five years later, in 1997, Campbell and chums sorted out a "line" for the coming day – yes, sometimes they sound like cokeheads, don't they? – before calling up the editors to get their version in first. A story a day was key to the project – it plopped into editors' and journalists' laps, saving them the trouble of investigating for themselves, it was backed up with links to photo-ops or other "evidence" and if they wanted clarification, why they could always ring Campbell and co. back. All unattributable, of course. Remember this one? "Every morning, [in the weeks after May 3] Woolfall and the McCanns worked on a strategy for the day after they had brainstormed ideas overnight with a close circle of friends in Britain. They then organised a series of carefully scheduled statements, interviews and photo-opportunities." The coffin, making us laugh Sound familiar? But, of course, it wasn't a "line", was it? No, it was the heroic attempt to gain publicity for the sad parents and their missing child, you know those parents who really, really, needed publicity, the poor forgotten things.

On The Other Hand..., 12 August 2010

On The Other Hand... EXCLUSIVE to mccannfiles.com By Dr Martin Roberts 12 August 2010 ON THE OTHER HAND... There is a well-known puzzle based upon a mythical search for two independent villages buried deep in the jungle, the inhabitants of which tell only the truth on the one hand, lies on the other. An intrepid explorer encounters a pair of natives, sitting, one on either side of a fork in the pathway ahead, where each new route leads to one or other village. Our adventurer is a seeker after the truth and the puzzle is enshrined in the one and only question he is permitted to put to either stranger. That question must lead him to his desired destination, and it is this: "Which path would the other man suggest I take?" This little tale is a classic example of logical consistency; one paradigm the McCanns have conspicuously failed to adopt from the outset. A number of the McCanns' (and others') inconsistencies have been repeatedly discussed already but, like a bottomless pit almost, there are always new examples to be discovered it seems. Furthermore, and with reference both to the anecdotal tale of jungle exploration and the inescapable fact that certain statements were not only made to the police but signed off as being true, one would be wholly justified in pointing up any flagrant discrepancies as lies, pure and simple. Like the villages, they are not difficult to find. Let's first of all examine Gerry McCann's witness statement of 10 May, 2007. (I rather wish I had re-read this particular script before submitting an earlier contribution 'The Land that Time Forgot', as the narrative flows peculiarly from a discussion of Tuesday, to Thursday, then Wednesday, and back to Thursday once more). In all of the examples which follow, the statements underlined are the focal points for present purposes: 'On the day that MADELEINE disappeared, Thursday, 3 May 2007, they all woke up at the same time, between 07H30 and 08H00. When they were having breakfast, MADELEINE addressed her mother and asked her "why didn't you come last night when SEAN and I were crying?" That he thought this comment very strange given that MADELEINE had never spoken like this and, the night before, they had maintained the same system of checking on the children, not having detected anything abnormal. When he questioned her about the comment, she left without any explanation. 'On Wednesday night, 2 May 2007, apart from the deponent and his wife, he thinks that DAVID PAYNE also went to his apartment to check that his children were well, not having reported to him any abnormal situation with the children. On this day, the deponent and KATE had already left the back door closed, but not locked, to allow entrance by their group colleagues to check on the children.' All very organised it would appear. Except that there was no regime of inter-apartment checking at all. 'He (GM) adds that he did not enter any other part of the residence, where he was for only two or three minutes, leaving yet again through the back door, that he closed but did not lock. He clarifies that he returned without checking any other couple's children, even because he had not been asked to do so.' 'Concerning the half-hourly checking of the children, it had been inspired by the MARK WARNER system called "baby listening", as referred to previously.' The 'half-hourly checking of the children' is a mythical schedule pertaining to the McCanns and the McCanns alone. From Kate McCann's witness statement of 6 September we learn: 'Concerning the checks on the children, she said that Gerry was the first one to check on the children, this was decided on the spot, at around 9-9:05 p.m. He got up from the table and entered the apartment through the balcony door. He came back to the table ten minutes later; he implied that the children were asleep and that he'd met a tennis friend by the name of Jez, with whom he had a chat. During this check, she thinks that Gerry did not check on the children of any other couple, because it was usual just to check on their own children. She never checked on any other child, other than her own.' The question this raises of course is why the McCann children should have been considered so special as to entail their invigilation by others whose own children clearly did not benefit from any concern shown by the McCanns? The reality is that each was responsible for their own - exclusively. Nothing is confirmed by apologetic supposition, whether on the part of witness Kate in September: 'At 9:30 p.m. she got up to go and check on her children at the same time as Mathew, who said he was going to check on his daughter Grace in apartment 5B, and could check on her children. She hesitated, however he said not to worry as he was going anyway. 'After less than ten minutes Mathew returned to the Tapas, saying all was quiet. At that time she did not ask him if he went inside the apartment, however she assumed he had checked on her children, entering through the balcony door which was closed but not locked.' Or arguido Gerry in September: 'The second person to go and check on the children should have been Kate, but Matt offered to go as he was going to check on his own daughter. When Matt returned to the restaurant the arguido asked him if all was well; Matt replied that all was quiet. The arguido is not absolutely sure, but he is under the impression that he asked Matt if he entered their apartment, to which Matt replied yes.' And circumstancial checker, Matthew Oldfield - what has he to say on the matter? The truth had to wait for his Rogatory interviews: 4078 "Well, mainly all of your apartment and Gerry and Kate's obviously. Up until the Wednesday night, from what you have already said then, you didn't go into Gerry and Kate's apartment... well, sorry, you didn't check on Gerry and Kate's children?" Matthew Oldfield "No". 4078 "Had you been into their apartment before?" Matthew Oldfield "Errm... I don't think so. It's hard to remember now, at this point, because I know what it looks like. I mean, we certainly knew the back, where their patio was. And it may have been on the first day that we actually looked at everybody's apartment, because we had the smallest, errm... apartment, because we only needed one bedroom and they needed two, errm... so we may have had a brief walk through, or as far as the kitchen. But I can't say with any certainty that I'd been in". And later: 4078 "Okay. So take me through from there then, what happened after that?" Matthew Oldfield "So, errm... back to the table, errm... we have... oh, back to the table, Gerry got up to go and... to go and check on his kids, I mean, and I'd come back and said, you know, 'I didn't hear any noise when I listened outside your room', so I thought it was a little bit odd that, you know... not kind of a wounded pride, that he sort of didn't trust me but errm... I just thought, 'oh', you know, 'I've just checked, you don't really need to check and...' sort of, you know, sort of, 'go back', but, errm... he sort of got up and went back to check on, errm... on his kids. But, you know, you don't... you know, we're all sort of responsible for our own children and you wouldn't sort of say, you know, 'you don't need to do that', I just sort of felt, 'oh I've listened', you don't need to do that because I've kind of just done it, but I hadn't gone into the apartment, so, errm..." 4078 "Was that the first time that you had taken it upon yourself to check on somebody else's child?" Matthew Oldfield "Yeah, I'd not done it before, it was only because, you know, I was there and I was... and it may not have happened if I'd actually gone in and checked on Grace through the room, you know, I might not have just been next to their shutter in terms of to actually have a listen, you know, I was just there, it was only like four steps further. But, no, I didn't, even though we now knew each other for the week and I felt a bit more comfortable about their kids knowing me, as I said before, errm... I wouldn't normally sort of impose that sort of check on somebody else unless they'd, errm... unless they'd suggested it. It'd be almost like a step, not a step too far, but, errm... it's not really our place to, you know, to do that". Here we have Matthew Oldfield discussing events on the Thursday evening and announcing, quite unequivocally, that he had not 'checked' on anyone else's child beforehand. That would, of course, have included the Wednesday - the day when, according to Gerry McCann's signed statement to the police, 'they had maintained the same system of checking on the children. On this day, the deponent and KATE had already left the back door closed, but not locked, to allow entrance by their group colleagues to check on the children.' Which group colleague(s) would that have been exactly? Certainly not Oldfield, who would not take responsibility for checking up on other people's children unless they themselves suggested it. But hasn't Kate already told a different story? Indeed she has: 'At 9:30 p.m. she got up to go and check on her children at the same time as Matthew, who said he was going to check on his daughter Grace in apartment 5B, and could check on her children. She hesitated, however he said not to worry as he was going anyway.' Here it is Kate who is hesitant at the other's suggestion, and Oldfield who is mildly insistent. Oh dear. What path would the other person suggest again? As for the 'system of checking on the children', Kate McCann (6 September statement) 'thinks they went to the flat four times, one every half hour: Gerry twice and herself twice, at around 9, 9:30, 10, and 10:30 p.m.' That was on the Tuesday night. What about the Wednesday? 'On that night they also checked on the children every half hour; however she thinks that 45 minutes had gone by from the time of the last check to when they arrived, as exceptionally they went to the Tapas' bar. On this day she thinks that Gerry arrived at the apartment around 23:50 and she arrived 5 minutes later.' Dear Kate. The interval of time elapsed between 10.30 p.m. (your last 'check') that Wednesday night and husband Gerry's return to the apartment at 23.50 p.m. is precisely one hour and twenty minutes. Matthew Oldfield was nowhere to be seen in the meantime. He's said so himself. This shameful interval is construed by Kate as the window of opportunity for Madeleine's crying episode: 'Regarding this night she said that none of the children cried, which she would have noticed as she was in the room. Regarding the fact that on the next morning, Thursday, during breakfast, Madeleine said to both of them that she had been crying and that nobody had come to her room, she presumes that this crying must have been before she and Gerry returned to the apartment.' Odd then that Rachael Oldfield, who was in her own apartment all night, from before 9.00 p.m., and could hear the McCanns in their bathroom next door if she chose to listen, heard nothing at all. Mrs Fenn on the other hand, from the floor above, reported hearing crying from the McCanns' apartment on the Tuesday night, and for almost exactly the same period of time, i.e. one hour and fifteen minutes. She did not report hearing any crying on the Wednesday night either. Tuesday night. Wednesday night. Crying for more than an hour. And no one comes? More now from Kate on 6 September: 'When asked about the fact her daughter had been crying on Tuesday night for one hour and 15 minutes, between 10:30 and 11:45 p.m., she says that is not true. She says that on that night, after midnight, Madeleine went to their room and said that her sister Amelie was crying, so she stayed to sleep with her and Gerry in their bedroom. She says that before Madeleine appeared in her bedroom, she had already heard Amelie crying, however she did not go to the room, as Madeleine came into the room almost at the same time she heard the crying. She does not remember if afterwards she, or Gerry, went to the children's room, however she asserts that Amelie cried for a short time.' Gerry, in May: 'He cannot say exactly, but he thinks that on Monday or Tuesday MADELEINE had slept for some time in his bedroom, with KATE, as she had told him that one or both twins were crying, making much noise.' And almost, but not quite, the same story from arguido Gerry in September: 'When asked, he says that on one night, he cannot say which, Madeleine slept in his room and in his bed. He thinks it might have been shortly after their arrival at the apartment. Madeleine came to his room saying that Amelie was crying and she couldn't sleep. He thinks that he didn't hear the crying before, and was alerted to this by Madeleine. He does not know if it was him or his wife that comforted Amelie. That night Madeleine slept in his bed.' On one night (say, Tuesday) Madeleine arrives at her parents' room to report Amelie crying, which Kate had already heard but Gerry did not. She stays to sleep with Kate. Or does she? That's what she did according to Gerry in May. September's version of events has her sleeping with him, in his bed. Neither parent can recall which of them, if any, attended Amelie in her distress. (Which bed would the other person say Madeleine slept in?) One gets the distinct impression that Madeleine McCann was the progeny of parents who literally did not know the time of day, or even what day it was. Intriguingly, Kate nowhere denies the reported crying incident, but instead goes on to make great play of it herself, at dinner on the Thursday night and afterwards. She places it on the Wednesday night - when absolutely no one heard it - and quite independently of the bed-hopping antics attributed to the Tuesday. But two consecutive late night visits to the Tapas bar would make that particular experience something other than 'exceptional' and, frankly, unforgivable into the bargain. Yet maybe it didn't happen like that. Maybe we are really being presented with an account of the one night, Tuesday, sub-divided for convenience; the convenience of not having to account separately for the Wednesday. Kate on 6 September: 'Back to the description, the deponent says that on the 3rd they left the apartment leaving the children sleeping. Knowing that Madeleine sometimes woke and got up, she did not worry about leaving her alone, because when this happened, and it wasn't always, it was around 2 – 3 a.m., at which time they would be back in the apartment already.' Gerry tells it somewhat differently, also in September: 'When questioned, he says that Madeleine usually sleeps well at night. During the first months of her life she had some difficulties sleeping, due to feeding problems. After moving to their house in Rothley in April 2006, twice a week Madeleine woke up, left her bed and went into their room; this sometimes happened between 23:00 – 24:00 for no apparent reason, maybe because she was used to sleeping with [* blank *]. 'When asked about a chart highlighting the characteristics of the children, at the house in Rothley, he says that he does in fact have such an object, where several stars show the nights when Madeleine did not get up, as she was rewarded this way. 'When questioned if it was therefore safe to leave Madeleine in the apartment, given the fact that she woke and got up at night, he says that this rarely happened, and then only after her parents were in bed.' So Madeleine had a tendency to wake in the night, 'not always' according to Kate, 'rarely' according to Gerry. And yet at home in Rothley it occurred twice a week and the 'several stars', which one would understand to be relatively few in number, represented those nights when Madeleine did not wake up. All of which rather suggests that she woke more often than not, sometimes, and ominously, between 11.00 and 12.00 p.m. On the anniversary, almost, of Madeleine's disappearance, Kate McCann was interviewed by Dermot Murnaghan on behalf of Sky News (1 May, 2008). The relevant exchange is recorded as follows: Dermot Murnaghan: "Was Madeleine upset the night before, about being left alone. Had she... had she had a moment and got out of bed and started crying and started looking for you?" Kate McCann: "I mean, I don't want to dwell on it too much, I mean, I don't know if you saw the documentary last night, so, I mean, I have talked about it, errm... Madeleine made a comment, errm... in passing, that, errm... 'Where were you when I cried?' Not just to mummy, by the way, just generally, errm... and it just seemed a bit odd. I mean, it was a very, kind of, passing remark and we just thought, 'Oh, she doesn't usually wake up' and, she woke up; that means that, you know, she must have fallen back asleep very quickly, errm... and then she moved on… you know, she moved on." On the strength of what both parents earlier stated as fact to the police, how could they possibly think 'Oh, she doesn't usually wake up'? Is a doctor's diagnosis usually arrived at by ignoring the symptoms? McCann confederates Jane Tanner and Matthew Oldfield were, as we know, called upon to play supporting roles in the ensuing Rothley Towers production of Madeleine Was Here, a documentary account of the affair. A third ally, not offered a speaking part, was David Payne. His 'little angels' description of the McCann children has a comforting ring to it, whereas reference to their being 'at peace', strangely, does not. Moving forward in time to the evening events of May 3, the saga of his doorstep encounter with the scantily clad Kate McCann is well worth examining. Of that early evening, May 3, Kate explains (in her 6 September interview): 'After the children's bath, already alone, she put pyjamas and nappies on the twins, and gave them each a glass of milk and biscuits. Before bathing the children and because it was early, they had thought of taking them to the recreation area, but then decided against this because of tiredness.' How, one wonders, did Kate dress Madeleine? Both parents being quick to tell the PJ exactly what pyjamas Madeleine had been wearing when she was 'taken', one would have thought her inclusion in the pyjama dressing and milk rosta would have been a formality. 'While the children were eating and looking at some books, Kate had a shower which lasted around 5 minutes. After showering, at around 6:30/6:40 p.m. and while she was getting dry, she heard somebody knocking at the balcony door. She wrapped herself in a towel and went to see who was at the balcony door. This door was closed but not locked as Gerry had left through this door. She saw that it was David Payne, because he called out and had opened the door slightly. David's visit was to help her to take the children to the recreation area. When David returned from the beach he was with Gerry at the tennis courts, and it was Gerry who asked him to help Kate with taking the children to the recreation area, which had been arranged but did not take place. David was at the apartment for around 30 seconds, he didn't even actually enter the flat, he remained at the balcony door. According to her he then left for the tennis courts where Gerry was. The time was around 6:30-6:40 p.m.' In his own Rogatory interview, David Payne offers up a slightly different version of events: 'So I walked back, errr... from the tennis courts, errr... back to, errr... you know Kate and Gerry's apartment and the time, you know, looking at... you know, we've looked obviously at photographs since then and, you know, the time that we've got that I was, you know, going to Kate's, about six thirty, errr... and I went into their apartment through the patio doors. The three children were all, you know, dressed, you know, in their pyjamas, you know; they looked immaculate, you know, they were just like angels, they all looked so happy and well looked after and content and I said to Kate, you know, 'it's a bit early for the...', you know, 'for the three of them to be going to bed', she said, 'ah, they've had such a great time, they’re really tired' and, you know, errr... so I say, you know, I can't remember exactly what, what, you know, the night attire... what the children were wearing but white was the predominant, errr... colour, but, you know, just to reinforce they were just so happy, you know, seeing, you know... obviously Gerry wasn't there but they were just all, just so at peace...' Payne speaks of three children in pyjamas, then proceeds to admit that he couldn't remember exactly what they were wearing. Might this be because he only glimpsed them across Kate's shoulder, while speaking to her briefly at the patio door, as she had stated beforehand? Payne's statement has a curiously confirmatory air about it: His entrance through the (unlocked) patio door - unannounced and uninvited (I bet he and Kate were both rather surprised), and definitive reference to 'the three children.' The 'predominant colour' being white rather suggests that Payne's eyes were predominantly focussed on Kate's bath towel, as the distinctive colour worn elsewhere ought to have been pink. If Jane Tanner can see, at night, at some distance, and under a near sodium light, that a pair of child's pyjamas, although glimpsed in transit, are largely pink (even though the top is not visible and the trousers are, in fact, white), then David Payne should have had no difficulty in recalling this same colourway to mind, especially as it would have been sported by two of the three children. It was Amelie's 'Eeyore' pyjamas that were later to tour Europe. They were not retrieved from Rothley to that end (Gerry's first trip home being on May 21st) as they had already been used for photographic purposes in order to aid the investigation. With two children therefore cavorting on a sofa and dressed in exactly the same, largely pink pyjamas, you'd have thought David Payne's memory would scarcely need jogging. If, however, the pyjamas on view were predominantly white, then one would have to suppose that Amelie at least was wearing a second set. Madeleine must have been wearing the pink pyjamas she was later 'taken' in after all. Amelie then has two pairs of pyjamas on holiday, in a climate where pyjamas washed in the morning are dry by the afternoon, as demonstrated by Kate that very Thursday. Why should Kate have found it at all necessary therefore to dress little Amelie in her sister's pyjamas subsequently? According to John McCann: "Kate dressed Amelie in her sister's pyjamas and the baby said: 'Maddy's jammies. Where is Maddy?' But she is too young to understand. And how do you explain? All we know is that Madeleine needs her family. She loves us, we love her. It is time for her to come home."' (Sydney Morning Herald, 15 May, 2007). If Kate ('I know the truth, Sandra') McCann is to be believed, then David Payne is another destined to beat a path toward the village of liars. He will not travel unaccompanied. There's a hoary old Christmas cracker joke which reads: 'When is a door not a door?  Answer: When it's ajar.' The McCanns' early police statements usefully reveal the extent to which Madeleine's bedroom could be said to have incorporated a receptacle as opposed to an obstacle. Gerry McCann, on May 10: 'He walked the normal route up to the back door, which being open he only had to slide, and while he was entering the living room, he noticed that the children's bedroom door was not ajar as he had left it but half-way open, which he thought was strange, having then thought that possibly MADELEINE had got up to go to sleep in his bedroom, so as to avoid the noise produced by her siblings. Therefore, he entered the children's bedroom and established visual contact with each of them, checking and he is certain of this, that the three were deeply asleep. He left the children's bedroom returning to place the door how he had already previously described, then went to the bathroom. Everything else was normal, the shutters, curtains and windows closed, very dark, there only being the light that came from the living room.' The situation is clear. Door left 'ajar' initially. Later discovered half-open. Returned to original position before departure. Madeleine present and asleep. Later Gerry asserts: 'The deponent ran into the apartment accompanied by the rest of the group who, at the time, were seated at the table. When he arrived at the bedroom he first noticed that the door was completely open, the window was also open to one side, the shutters almost fully raised, the curtains drawn back, MADELEINE's bed was empty but the twins continued sleeping in their cots. He clarifies that according to what KATE told him, that was the scenario that she found when she entered the apartment.' Both parents report (Gerry to the police and Kate to Gerry beforehand) having discovered the door completely open. Remember this from the opening salvos of the McCann's own documentary? Kate McCann: "I did my check about 10.00 o'clock and went in through the sliding patio doors and I just stood, actually, and I thought, 'oh, all quiet', and to be honest, I might have been tempted to turn round then, but I just noticed that the door, the bedroom door where the three children were sleeping, was open much further than we'd left it. I went to close it to about here and then as I got to here, it suddenly slammed and then as I opened it, it was then that I just thought, 'I'll just look at the children'" Two people had previously entered the bedroom to check on the children, as far as Kate was aware, but we know (because Gerry has told us) that on finding the door 'half open' he returned it to its preferred position, i.e. 'ajar.' Now, if we can just bring Clarence Mitchell in at this point ('There was no evidence of any break in. They got out of the window fairly easily.') he will remind us of the hypothesis that Madeleine's abductor escaped with her through the window. Hence the door will have remained untouched once Gerry had reset it. In carrying out his 9.30 check Matthew Oldfield stopped half-way across the living room, from which vantage point he claims to have been able to see both twins breathing, but not Madeleine, whose bed was immediately behind the partition wall. And this through a chink, not a yawning gap don't forget (an impossibility, as anyone can verify for themselves. There is nothing magically transparent about the doors inside apartment 5A of the Ocean Club complex). Since Oldfield did not so much as touch the bedroom door, it would have remained ajar after he had left the apartment also, unless, that is, the wind caught it before Kate's arrival, when it would have closed, just as Kate herself claims to have experienced, not 'opened much further than we'd left it.' And yet we have Kate McCann only 'just noticing' that the door is now completely open. With an ever widening market for tourism, safaris have become quite commonplace. Jungle tours are no doubt now on offer too, including, I dare say, day trips to 'liars' village.' All aboard!

It's not too late, 11 August 2010

It's not too late The Blacksmith Bureau Posted by John Blacksmith at 17:55 Tuesday, 11 August 2010 A high-profile defended UK libel trial is a winner-takes-all game. Ideally success requires a number of things. First, a long purse. Without it nothing can be done. The English civil justice system uses a high proportion of the best legal brains in the world, and they rightly earn a great deal of money. The meticulous research effort required to put a case together that will stand up to the ferocious ability of these lawyers to shred and dismantle weakly based claims – and UK civil lawyers leave prosecutors standing in their courtroom skills - means the preparation of the case has to call on more of the finest brains available, this time as researchers and experts in the appropriate field. A network of specialist assistants and private investigators, on hourly and daily charges, working for the lawyers, has to perform the mundane but, again, expensive, task of simply locating these people, from anywhere in the world, to assist in the case. Everything has to be paid for: paper, paperclips, copying, transcript services, phone calls – the bill for those alone, before a single professional fee is paid, will run into thousands. It is pointless embarking on such a venture, therefore, without at least a million pounds available to finance it, either by owning it, earning it, or setting up a powerful fund to raise that kind of money. The latter, in turn, requires a large number of people emotionally committed to a simple-to-understand cause and an expert group, including volunteers, able to mobilise them. There is no evidence that Goncalo Amaral has either. Some of the books written by participants in the Irving v Lipschitz libel case are models of how a well-planned, but above all professional, defence can be financed and led. It is difficult to see many parallels with the inspector's case. Financially Goncalo Amaral is weakened and the (literally) world-wide constituency of potential supporters has clearly not rallied, or been encouraged, to his side with large-scale contributions; there has, indeed, been little evidence of international campaigning with the object of raising serious amounts. Nor, very surprisingly, is there any evidence of rich individuals in Portugal rallying to his cause with their own funds. The McCanns have had both a fund and a bank of public sympathy to call upon, neither of them yet drained, as well as wealthy individuals willing to spend in their support. And that is before we turn to the merits of the case. My own belief is that there is evidence, much of it summarised in previous Bureau entries, of conduct by the parents that amounts to a "suggestive pattern of behaviour", one consistent with a desire for the Portuguese investigation into their child’s death to "fail". There could be many reasons why the parents felt and acted in such a claimed way, loss of confidence in the abilities of the Portuguese police, lack of belief in their objectivity and the fear that they might be unjustly accused obviously among them. But there is certainly a less charitable case that can be made and then it would be for the court to decide it on the  merits of the evidence, including cross examination. Inspector Amaral himself would have a status within this framework as someone more than the author of an accusatory book: if, as Carlos Anjos alleged, there was actual obstruction of the investigation, then the inspector himself was possibly a victim of such obstruction, both via the media briefings against him and in the circumstances preceding  his resignation. But that's just my view and there is no guarantee of victory. There may be another strategy, a different attack or defence; whatever it might be, though, there has to be a foundation slab of factual evidence underlying it  to offer the slightest chance of success. And, given the profile of the McCann affair, it needs a top lawyer to build it. I have seen no evidence of such a case being marshalled in the classic  sense – assistants and volunteers organizing research work, appeals for information in Portugal, private investigators or, again, volunteers, making the rounds of those participants who have retired and are free to speak, or any other manifestations of a determined and focused case-building exercise. Instead we have, as we know from the pronouncements of the inspector and his supporters, a number of scattergun assertions and suspicions about the possible guilt of the McCanns and their circle – the Gaspar stuff, the belief that "The British Empire" is against Portugal, the fraudulent fund claims, the belief that that benighted incompetent Gordon Brown had protected the gang – the list goes on. Some of Goncalo Amaral's widespread and diffuse suspicions might have an element of truth behind them, but as libel courtroom evidence they would not even fail: any decent English lawyer would tell the inspector – "we simply can't go into court with this stuff, the judge will just throw it in the bin: it's worthless." It is English lawyers, their fangs sharpened by the adversarial English system to a degree that I don't believe Iberian lawyers can conceive, who jumped on the assertion that the child was dead, together with the implication that the parents knew it. Given that assertion, combined with the exceptionally unwise and incorrect statement in the Truth of the Lie documentary that the McCanns' version of the abduction was "impossible" they simply rubbed their hands and waited for the money to roll in. They knew immediately that the McCann legal teams in both countries didn't even have to make a case: they only had to invite Amaral to provide any evidence for two libellous claims. And of course there isn't any; opinions yes, evidence no. I believe that Inspector Amaral is a brave man whose career may have been wrecked through the possible failure of the Tapas Nine to help wholeheartedly with the investigation into the death of Madeleine McCann, a failure which as we know from the performance of Jane Tanner in front of the Leicester police, reached as far as the UK as well. And I believe he deserves justice. His professional advisors are something else. No lawyer should ever have let him make the above statements: he either failed to use one or he was dreadfully, appallingly, advised. His current lawyer, or lawyers, are, as the injunction hearings showed, totally out of their depth. Not only were they unaware of the treaty rigmarole which had to precede any appearance by officer De Freitas, thus leaving both that officer and Amaral to be humiliated by Scotland Yard and the Home Office, but the case they presented was a disgrace, warmed leftovers from 2007 and an apparent inability to respond to real-time events in the courtroom. The prosecutor's testimony that the couple had not told the truth was a gaping open door – which Amaral's lawyer failed even to see, let alone to kick aside. It was hard, very hard, to listen to the English press outside the courtroom impatiently and contemptuously asking, "yes, yes, but what's new?" The McCanns' lawyer, the umbrella wielding Isabel Duarte, not the most impressive advocate since Cicero, was able to bellow her way to victory without any problems from her opponent. And then there are the unprofessional advisors, the not very intelligent, not very scrupulous, individuals who have invited themselves into the inspector's circle, one or two of them in the UK. Until the inspector has a house-cleaning he will remain within a group of people who simply cannot be taken seriously by lawyers, policemen or even, outside Portugal, journalists. By their constant search for shadowy culprits, their lazy posturing on Portuguese television screens and their collective inability to put a case together that can command respect - rather than kid's comic stuff - as well as their transparent exploitation of Amaral's fame for their own ends, they are enclosing the inspector in a very dangerous bubble of illusion. It may be that the inspector no longer wishes to go to the UK courts via an edition of the Truth of the Lie. But nothing stands still and the power of the McCanns' professional advisors will still reach as far as the Portuguese courts, so whatever happens something new is surely necessary. Goncalo, there are people who are gaining by their association with you, professionally and otherwise, but if things go tits up it's only you who will pay the price. Wake up before it’s too late: start afresh!

Cameron must help Kate and Gerry, 08 August 2010

Cameron must help Kate and Gerry The Sunday Post By Lorraine Kelly Sunday, 08 August 2010 I'VE been on holiday in Spain where there are still posters of Madeleine McCann on display. The search never stops for Maddie's parents, Kate and Gerry. They recently met Home Secretary Theresa May. Before he became prime minister David Cameron assured them he would do all he could. Now he has to make good on that promise. The McCanns are convinced new evidence would come to light if there was a review. It's more than three years since Madeleine went missing in Portugal and her family are more determined than ever to find her.

No one wants to buy Maddie's Apartment, 08 August 2010

No one wants to buy Maddie's Apartment Diário de Notícias By JOSÉ MANUEL OLIVEIRA 08 August 2010 With thanks to Joana Morais for translation The property, belonging to an Englishwoman, was put on sale in 2008 for 200 thousand euros, but so far it is only out of curiousity that people have shown an interest in seeing the flat. Tours from the North of the country even include the place in their program itineraries. The apartment 5 A at the Ocean Club resort, in Praia Luz, Lagos, from where the 3-year-old English girl Madeleine McCann mysteriously disappeared whilst on vacation with her parents and twin siblings, also minors, on the night of May 3, 2007, remains closed and for sale since August 2008 for 200 thousand euros; even though the notice board with that information was removed. The worldwide media coverage surrounding the case does not "diminish nor increase" the property value of the T2 ground-floor apartment, situated about 200 metres from the beach, said the real estate investors to DN. Note: 'T2' is real estate jargon for a 2 bedroom apartment.

McCanns meet May in Madeleine probe, 06 August 2010

McCanns meet May in Madeleine probe The Press Association (UKPA) – 11:00am Kate and Gerry McCann have held talks with Home Secretary Theresa May to discuss the search for their missing daughter Madeleine. The couple used the meeting on Wednesday to appeal for extra help from the coalition Government to look for the little girl. It is more than three years since Madeleine disappeared from a holiday resort in southern Portugal. Mr and Mrs McCann, from Rothley, Leicestershire, want a full independent review of the police investigation into what happened to their daughter. They complained in February that they encountered "reluctance" when they asked the British authorities to re-examine all the information held by law enforcement agencies around the world. Mr McCann said: "I think people are reluctant to undertake a review because there's been difficult, sensitive issues. But Madeleine's rights should be put first. She's missing, she's innocent and whoever's taken her is still out there, and that has to be of paramount importance." A Home Office spokesman said: "The Home Secretary held a private meeting with Kate and Gerry McCann on Wednesday to discuss the case of their missing daughter Madeleine. The Government's primary concern in this matter is the wellbeing of Madeleine McCann and to ensure that everything feasible is being done to progress the search for her." Madeleine was three when she went missing from her family's holiday flat in Praia da Luz in the Algarve on May 3 2007 as her parents dined with friends nearby. Portuguese police launched a massive investigation with the support of British officers but the inquiry was formally shelved in July 2008 without reaching any firm conclusions about the child's fate. Private detectives employed by the McCanns are continuing to investigate the case. McCann family spokesman Clarence Mitchell said: "I can confirm that Kate and Gerry met the Home Secretary on Wednesday to continue their discussions with the Government over what can be done to assist the search for Madeleine. As with all their private Governmental contacts, the details of the discussion with Theresa May will remain confidential."

Maddie hunt plea, 06 August 2010

Maddie hunt plea The Sun By ANTONELLA LAZZERI Published: Today (06 August, 2010) MISSING Madeleine McCann's parents have been given new hope after a secret meeting with the Home Secretary, The Sun can reveal. Kate and Gerry McCann spent more than an hour on Wednesday with Theresa May to beg the new government to help them. And they left the meeting "more optimistic than ever". A source close to the couple said: "They asked for help in furthering the hunt for Madeleine. They have not given up on her and they don't want the Government to either. They especially want help in putting pressure on the Portuguese government to agree to a joint British-Portuguese review of the case. "They feel there may be clues and leads that could have been missed." Just before the election in May, the couple met David Cameron who pledged that if elected Prime Minister he would do whatever he could to help them. A Home Office source said yesterday: "Kate and Gerry were given renewed hope that their daughter will be found. "With the might of the coalition Government behind them, they left looking more optimistic than ever that every effort is still being made to find Madeleine." Maddie went missing in Praia da Luz, Portugal, on May 3, 2007, when she was three. A private investigation team employed by the McCanns now continues the hunt for her.

Like Madeleine McCann, Another Little Girl Vanishes, 04 August 2010

Like Madeleine McCann, Another Little Girl Vanishes Sky News - Life of Crime Blog By Martin Brunt August 04, 2010 12:20 PM So far, the story has reached only a little further than the Geelong Advertiser, a morning paper in Victoria. But the circumstances of six-year-old Kiesha Abrahams's disappearance are likely to attract a far wider audience if Aussie detectives don't find her soon. Her mother said she tucked Kiesha in bed in the family home at 9.30 on Saturday night. The next morning the front door, thought to have been left unlocked, was ajar and Kiesha was missing. It's early days and there are many differences, but so far, like Madeleine McCann, another little girl appears to have vanished into thin air. Related: Kiesha Abrahams press reports

Maddie-truck crossed Belgium, 31 July 2010

Maddie-truck crossed Belgium Gazet Van Antwerpen 31 July 2010 The parents of Madeleine McCann never think about giving up the search for their missing daughter. They now have a truck, bearing a message to look for the girl, crossing through Europe. The ten ton truck even pulled by our country. The blonde girl disappeared three years ago on holiday in Portugal. Maddie was three years old at that time. Note: This appears to be something of a 'non-story'. The article below confirms that the 'ten ton truck' was actually an Eddie Stobart lorry - as previously seen in the UK - which just happened to be 'spotted' in Belgium. Maddie-truck rumbles by Belgium Nieuwsblad Saturday 31 July 2010, 06h00 The parents of missing British girl Madeleine McCann continue to search for their daughter. Amongst the other British trucks, which drove by our country today, there was still one - three years after her disappearance - asking people to look for the little blonde girl who disappeared without trace, from the apartment of her parents, whilst on holiday in Portugal. The truck is travelling across Europe. Madeleine McCann was three-years-old when she disappeared.

Analysis of the Disappearance of Madeleine McCann, 22 July 2010

'Analysis of the Disappearance of Madeleine McCann' by Daniela Prousa Amazon.de 22 July 2010 This new book debates whether the McCanns are victims or perpetrators in the disappearance of their daughter - based on a psychological investigation of their public appearances on media, TV, blog and webpage. Considerable effort has been made on the analysis of the blog entries, of their form, style and content. The author concludes that Madeleine died accidentally in the apartment following a fall from the couch, either immediately after the parents left the apartment or after Gerry's check. It is her conviction that it was Kate who found Madeleine and hid her initially, whereas Gerry only came in later in her support. _________________ http://unterdenteppichgekehrt.blogspot.com/