Looking For Madeleine McCann: All Show And No Punch (Murat’s Car And Malinka’s Release)
MADELEINE McCann is missing. Still missing. But Madeline McCann is not missing on the front page of the Mail.
The Mail has news on how readers can learn Spanish in a week, or at least learn to speak Spanish the way Spaniards should speak it. There’s the offer of a The Darling Buds of May DVD. And the news that Nigel Havers is getting married for the third time.
But no Madeleine McCann.
Murat’s Motors
Madeleine McCann does gets a mention on the Sun’s front page. But there’s no picture of the missing four-year-old. The image if of Kelly Brook’s bra.
We do learn, however, that Robert Murat ordered a hire car two days before Lori Campbell of the Sunday Mirror told the local police she found him “creepy” and he was taken in for questioning. Before being released without charge.
Readers can get more on this story via the Sun’s page 7. After stories about Andrew Lloyd Webber’s money (he made £122million last year), swimming pools in five jails, Emma Thomason loading up her boyfriend’s van with her boyfriend’s clothes and driving it into the sea, there is news of Madeleine McCann.
Maria Rocio, of Auto Renta111 (number on application), fielded the call from one-eyed Murat. “I didn’t understand why he wanted another car when he had one of his own already,” says Rocio. “I could tell in his voice he was in a real hurry.”
Oh? “He wanted it then and there. It was lunchtime last Saturday and Madeleine had already been missing for eight days.”
Murat did not want this “car fast” in the moments immediately preceding or following the theft of Madeleine McCann. It was eight days later.
Says Rocio: “He said the English couple who were looking for the little girl needed his car and wanted to put posters on it.” Did they? Were posters put on Murat’s car? The Sun fails to say, but it does tell readers that Kate and Gerry McCann “ALREADY had a hire car”.
Watching Madeleine
While Sun readers wonder about Robert Murat, and everyone else wonders what good knowing about such things can do, the Mirror sticks to the story.
The paper that kept its weapons of mass destruction counter going well into the Second Iraq War knows how to stick to a story.
“25 MILLION hearts go out to you,” says the front-page headline. There’s a picture of Madeleine McCann’s mother. And another of Madeleine.
News is that millions of you have logged onto the website created by the family to aid the search for Madeleine. Tributes have been flooding in to www.findmadeleine.com. Readers learn that the family has been “overwhelmed” by the support shown.
The campaign is designed to raise Madeleine’s profile. (Not to spread anxiety about child kidnap. That’s the tabloids’ job.) And it is working. Many know the name Madeleine McCann. Many know what she looks like.
Everyone’s A Potential Suspect
But no leads have come from the site. And buried in the story of the traffic attracted to the website is news that Russian “web geek” Sergey Malinka has been released without charge. He is not a suspect. He is being treated as a “witness”. Lead detective Olegario Sousa tells us: “It’s a very dramatic investigation. A witness could be in the future a suspect. There may be more suspects for all we know.”
Yes, there may be. They may be tens, hundreds, thousands of suspects. Robert Murat may be the first of many. Robert Murat, he of the bouncy castle “fixation”, may be innocent. Robert Murat’s family may come out of hiding.
Maybe. And maybe. And maybe.
The case goes on. But things are staring drift. Many want to look at Madeleine. Many want to find her. But where she is remains a mystery that no-one appears any closer to solving.
And there are signs of the media becoming tired of the story…
Posted: 18th, May 2007 | In: Tabloids Comments (66) | Follow the Comments on our RSS feed: RSS 2.0 | TrackBack | Permalink
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August 16th, 2008 at 12:36 am
It is ok everyone posting comments (myself included now) but where is this innocent little baby? I have 3 children and never in my wildest dreams would I leave them alone, ever. However Gerry and Kate did for reasons best known to them, and I will not call them for it. But someone out there must know something no matter how small. It breaks my heart and I can not comprehent how the family are feeling. This innocent child is hopefully out there just wanting Mummy, Daddy, Brother and Sister as she knew back. Someone have a heart and step up….Please. iknow Madeleine is not the only child to be missing and I want the same for them all. This is a cruel world we live in and one of the thoughts I cling to is that “God only lends us our children and will take them back when he wants. They are so precious!
September 12th, 2007 at 10:09 pm
Señores McCann, aqui en Perú, hay una persona que es vidente, el sale en la televisión canal 20, y tiene multiples de testimonios yo tengo mucha fe que el le pueda decir si su hijita aun esta viva o si ha sido secuestrada, el es una persona acertada y tiene creibidad, por favor hagan un esfuerzo por su hijita Madeleine y vengan a Perú. Esperando se solucionen su problemas pronto y se sepa la verdad me despido. Luz.
September 8th, 2007 at 7:25 pm
*Subedai - what a prat!*
Yeah yeah, Anglomug - carry on thinking you’re a member of the Establishment because you read the Telegraph.
Sucker.
July 10th, 2007 at 2:44 pm
Subedai - what a prat!
July 10th, 2007 at 2:44 pm
no more discussion the end
May 29th, 2007 at 6:24 pm
I am a dutch woman living in Tunisia I just hope Madeleine will be find safe. What is the matter that their parents got more help as others? Madeleine is a child and why we should be yalours on the help to find her?
Ones I lost my nephen just for 4 hours and after 40 years it still feel like an eternety just 4 hours!!! I pray for Madeleine and her parents and I look several times on the web and hope there is positive news.
How we can discuss if we are alright wich the help of peaple!! She is just a child and really I hope she will be find. Please think of the sorrow of her parents,
May 29th, 2007 at 4:11 pm
*it’s not going to do any good just sitting there making “elequant” statements about how unfair the media are, that’s not going to bring about anything positive.*
Well, neither is making wild accusations spuriously equating males who have affairs with child abductors, is it?
What I take from this story is a disturbing misandrist trend emerging in the Anglo-American media:
1. Female children (especially white middle class ones) are more life-worthy than males/blacks/the poor.
2. Males can be subject to wild accusations by the media without a shred of evidence to link them to any crime.
Interesting how all the English ‘child lovers’ were so quick to exonerate the obviously guilty Louise Woodward. But then, she was a white middle class female, her victim was male… Early press reports suggested the abductor was female. This seems plausible - a child is more likely to yield to a female’s overtures. Why was this avenue of investigation so swiftly buried? Is it because the Anglo media have a pro-female, anti-male agenda?
May 28th, 2007 at 10:32 am
i just wish people would stop focusing on the parent and whether they should have been dining outside, and focus on what they can do to help this situation - or other issues going on in this world. if we all did this, it would be a much safer, happer world. we need to take responsibilty for ourselves and others - a lovely defenceless little girl has been abducted, how about we help in what ever way we can. it’s not going to do any good just sitting there making “elequant” statements about how unfair the media are, that’s not going to bring about anything positive.
May 26th, 2007 at 2:01 pm
*I agree entirely with Edwina - this case would not recieve anywhere near the amount fo attention if this had happened to a family that was -
non white
poor
working/lower class
living on benefits
no ccess to media/celebrities/money*
You forgot ‘male’ on that list…
May 23rd, 2007 at 2:59 pm
please help find madeleine,pray for her safe return,my prayers and thoughts are with her family.
Keey from South Africa
May 22nd, 2007 at 6:52 pm
mazzy32 - I wasn’t aware they gave out MScs free in bags of Quavers, you lying cow.
Your ‘judgements’ on Soham are totally false. Maxine Carr was nowhere near Soham when those kids went missing, she was in Grimsby at her mother’s house. Her only ‘crime’ was to tell Police she had been in Soham that day, something she was almost certainly pressured to do by Huntley.
Her life has been ruined, along with many others (a woman in Peterlee was beaten half to death because some clown like yourself put posters up outside her house claiming she was Maxine Carr). A ‘maternal figure’ to ‘lure’ children in, when she was hundreds of miles away?
Ugh.
You paedo-obsessed crazies make my head hurt.
Madeleine McCann is either down a well or at the bottom of someone’s unmaintained pool, or in the sea.
May 21st, 2007 at 8:36 am
HERE’S A TIP FROM THE LAND OF OZ. THE PORT/ COPS ARE SMART. THEY’LL TAIL THE RUSKI AND MURAT WHILST NOT CHARGED. AFTER THAT, WATCH ‘EM TEAR THE MURAT VILLA APART, BRICK BY STONE BY MOLECULE….THEN SEND IN THE SNIFFER DOGS!
SMUDGIE
May 20th, 2007 at 5:05 pm
Mazzy32 -
You suggest just because Huntley hung about it is therefore the ‘manner in which’ paedophiles behave after the fact.
Was there even evidence that Huntley sexually abused those girls?
Come to think of it was Huntley even a paedophile? I don’t recall him being charged or labelled a suspect by the Police for sexually abusing pre-pubescent children.
Regardless, one case, especially that case does not create a strong foundation for building a profile on Paedophile predators and how they might behave after the offence.
May 20th, 2007 at 5:46 am
Gazeta Digital - Madeleine’s abduction - “Special Report - Part I” - Highligths (posted at 05:05 am, May 20 2007)
“The main suspect (and only one, until now) in the Madeleine McCann abduction, Robert Murat, was under close police surveillance since the morning of May 4, the following day to the child disappearance.”
(…)
“Murat took the initiative to talk with two Portuguese journalists, saying that (…) he was “deeply disturbed with the abduction, because he had a three year old daughter who, by coincidence, was also called Madeleine”. His daughter, as was later revealed, is called Sophia.”
(…)
“That day (Saturday 5th) around 7:00 pm, a Portuguese journalist saw him sitting at a table of Batista’s supermarket terrace, chatting with a young man – the Russian computer expert Sergei Malinka who was also questioned by police and is a witness in this case.”
(…)
“Murat’s business web site, Romigen.com, (…) was registered in April 6, 2006, at 07:11 pm, but with the name of Robert Muray (a possible mistake, as letter “t” and “y” are togheter in the keyboard). The address is from Casa Liliana, the residence of Murat’s mother, Mrs. Jennifer Ann Murat. The home number and mobile phone are from Murat’s mother.”
(…)
“The site was closed on May 16, at 23:00 pm and put back online May 19, 01:36 am, sources told Gazeta Digital. On May 15, Polícia Judiciária declared formally that they had a suspect, later revealed by he media to be Robert Murat.”
(…)
“Portuguese TV channel SIC also said that Murat, a regular Internet user, stopped accessing the Net on the day Madeleine was abducted, during almost one week.”
Paulo Reis
pjcv.reis@gmail.com
Gazeta Digital
News and Opinion in English, Portuguese and 時事新聞
URL: http://gazetadigital.blogspot.com/
May 20th, 2007 at 12:17 am
Still cannot get my head round the fact that sicko’s are making money out of the McCann’s misfortune .. so can anyone tell me why is it deemed ok for neo labour government to tax the madeleine fund? It is absolutley appalling.. Sort it out brown .. if you wanna stand a chance as a primeminister with a backbone .. Sicko’s everywhere
May 20th, 2007 at 12:06 am
Isnt there such a thing as sattelite cameras? Do these things actually work or are they just staring at sweet f.a. Im starting to wonder if maybe the only people who could actually execute something like this would be governments themselves?
May 19th, 2007 at 9:25 pm
I dearly hope Edwina (Warwick) hasn’t any children as no doubt they will grow into racist bigots, just like their mother…
If you don’t like Britain dear, there are plenty of airports to choose from….JUST GET YOURSELF A ONE-WAY TICKE OUTA HERE!
May 19th, 2007 at 9:16 pm
I have an MSc in forensic criminology and have studied the behaviour of child predators in many cases.
I must say that the fact that Murat has lingered around the police and press is not a clear sign of guilt but in the ‘manner in which’ paedophiles behave after the fact, this is a classic example of such behaviour.
Remember Huntley and the cold calculated way he stood before TV cameras live on breakfast TV to advocate finding Jessica and Holly alive Knowing full well they were dead?
These callous sick individuals are truly devious to the hilt and defy logic and reason. With regards to Murat and the Russian guy, nothing must be left to chance and all leads followed. Apparently Murat hired a car for a few days after Madeline disappeared, he already had a car himself, WHY HIRE ANOTHER?
I remember Huntley had 4 new tyres fitted to his car whilst the investigation for Jessica and Holly was underway. The garage thought it strange as the tyres discarded were in good order. This was an atempt to avoid detection through tracks found at the scene where Jessiac and Holly were eventually found. There are clear similarities here to Huntley which must be considered .
Remember child predators are much more devious than your rank and file burglar!! My gut feeling is that Murat has had something to do with Madeline’s dissappearance - it wouldn’t surprise me if there is some sort of child internet porn connection involving third parties, possibly the Russian guy and Murat’s girlfriend and her ex-husband under the guise of other activities.
Again, as the Huntley case proved, a woman (Maxine Carr) is on many occasions involved as a maternal figure to gain the child’s trust…Sickening thought but a realistic probability.
May 19th, 2007 at 5:45 pm
I think if anyone stands to make money because a little girl is missing .. it should be given to the madeleine appeal .. It confirms the dire state of this world when you have desperate souls without a conscience .. I hope Madeleine is found soon and that the McCanns can heal THEIR torment .. but Im not sure the media will ever allow this freedom
May 19th, 2007 at 4:33 pm
My bit of press-watching today reveals that the Mail and the London Evening Standard as well as Sky News, all heavily invested in the It Must be Murat line have TOTALLY IGNORED the story of the Norwegian woman’s sighting in Morocco. It sounds to me like the best lead yet and one which could use a bit more light on it a) because someone else might have seen something and b) because there are questions to be answered as to whether her report was acted on immediately and action started at the scene. Of course it is a line of enquiry which almost certainly takes the heat off Murat and Malinka - could that be why they are not interested because they are now desperate to justify their premature judgement of the pair (founded on a Journalist-as-Hero fantasy shared by many of the Press Corps it seems)with something or another no matter what? It will be interesting to see how the Sunday Mirror handles itself tomorrow too.
May 19th, 2007 at 4:10 pm
Anorak, yes, good thought. As I see people like Paolo are to be encouraged, a step towards breaking the mass media stranglehold on hearts and minds with some direct information? Reporters and editors and the dreaded opinionators of the popular press badly need to be subjected to some of the same public scrutiny and analysis of their every judgement and action that they are used to inflicting on others. From what I can see Paolo has a press card and is accountable therefore not just some random rumourmonger with an axe to grind.
May 19th, 2007 at 1:12 pm
I’m thinking of featuring posts by Paulo Reis, a journalist in Portugal. He’s on the scene…
May 19th, 2007 at 1:00 pm
find madeline !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
May 19th, 2007 at 11:07 am
yes, the british are becoming a humourless bunch of xenophobes that dont even recognise sarcasm when its staring them in the face.
May 19th, 2007 at 10:57 am
Think this website is beginning to show the worst in British society, the biased, xenophobic, racist and stigmatising culture that we live in.
May 19th, 2007 at 10:52 am
stephen:
i don’t actually presuppose his guilt, personally i think he had nothing to do with madeleine, but is guilty anyway for just looking like a pervert, in my mind having a glass eye is enough to be under scrutiny… and that cellar… man, only a real pervert would have a cellar. he should be flayed alive.
i expect he will make a mint from this selling his story to the crass uk press about how his life was destroyed.
everyones opinion is formed from media coverage my dear, how else could someone 1000’s miles away form any opinion… unfortunately were not all psychic and have to get our opinions from the gutter.
May 19th, 2007 at 10:14 am
So if he was middle class and respectable that would be ok then?? His profession or his relationships are not relevant. Your opinion has obviously been formed by the coverage? Scott free from what? - he presuppose he is guilty even though the police have no evidence? Grow up
May 19th, 2007 at 9:12 am
er… spare a thought for murat !
he’s just a con man, probably an ex-timeshare salesman. more property dealers in the algarve are on the make. he will probably get off scott free and make a mint sueing the arse off someone, or selling the story of his love affair with the rusky dude.
May 19th, 2007 at 7:11 am
Spare a thought for Mr Murat. His life, as he has said, will NEVER be the same. Not only his but that of his family. I would imagine that he is possibly suicidal? But wouldn’t that just suit the media down to the ground? Suicide by association implies guilt?
Once again the British media have sunk to rock bottom in their quest for news. Remember Matthew Kelly and the persecution that the British press did to him? Oh yes and he was innocent and has successfully re-established himself because of his fine acting. There are are many out there who can’t put their case once the press have crucified them.
I also endorse the comments that Madeleine & her siblings should NOT have been left alone and their parents as professional intelligent people should have realised this.
For Robert Murat’s sake I hope that Madeleine is soon found alive and well.
May 19th, 2007 at 2:50 am
Cant believe what a whining, arrogant, judgemental herd of sheep most people are .. this is what the media makes you .. negative thinkers
Susana is right you havent a clue what kind of efforts the Portugese Authorities are making .. Is it all just a game of cluedo in your little minds eye? As for handing out blame on the McCann’s, why state the obvious? Do you really think they arent aware of their mistakes?
In short wise up or shut up
May 19th, 2007 at 12:25 am
How can you say that the portuguese police “have no effort to find Madeleine McCann at all”? What do you know about that? You are reading Sky News for sure!!!
No-one knows about the evidences, the clues, and the results of the dna and others tests are not all done yet. In Portugal they can’t talk about that untill the end of the investigation, and respect that please, because this is happening in Portugal and it is for the good of Madeleine.
“If it was in Britian she would have been found within the week” - Before saying such thing, you should inquire about the real numbers.
However, you can’t compare geographically the UK and Portugal. In Portugal it is much easier to escape out of the country (by car or boat to Spain-France-etc, by boat to Morocco).
Imagine now if it was a little portuguese in the UK? I don’t believe the UK police would concern as the portuguese police are about Madeleine.
So I think you are unfair, ignorant, and should be thankfull on the passionate attempt of the portuguese police in finding her, and in the concern and support of all the portuguese.