Madeleine McCann: Kate And Gerry’s Blood, Threat And Tears
MADDYWATCH - Anorak’s at-a-glance guide to press coverage of Madeleine McCann.
THE SUN front page: “KATE’S AGONY – CONFESS & YOU’RE OUT IN A YEAR.”
“Deal of blood, threat and tears.” Kate McCann is being interviewed by police. This is a “highly-charged confrontation, Portuguese officers citing forensic evidence told the GP she would receive a jail sentence of between two and three years if she signed a confession.”
Kate McCann is “horrified”. Says she: “How dare you?”
A source tells the paper: “The police were trying to get Kate to say she had amnesia or was in shock or had a breakdown. They said if she signed the confession she’d serve a year and that her husband would not be charged and could go home. It was effectively emotional blackmail.”
“SHOCKED” Gerry McCann has been named as a formal suspect.
THE SUN SAYS: “But the allegations made yesterday against Madeleine’s distraught mother Kate are astonishing and, in places, farcical. A suspicious page of the Bible left open? A call to a priest on the day of Maddie’s disappearance? Not exactly a smoking gun.”
Do all crimes involve a smoking gun?
The Sun concludes: “The Sun desperately wants justice for Maddie. But the greatest pity is that she is the one person who seems to have been forgotten in this mess of incompetence.”
And the Press continue to watch the parents.
DAILY EXPRESS front page: “MADELEINE: DEATH ON MUM’S BIBLE.”
THE WORLD’S GREATEST NEWSPAPER writes of “THE DAY THE JEERING STARTED”.
“Just two days ago Kate McCann, 39, was regarded almost universally as a victim who had suffered unimaginable agony. Families everywhere shared her heartbreak at losing her beautiful daughter. But it was clear yesterday, as the GP arrived to be formally named as a suspect in her daughter’s disappearance, that much of that sympathy has now gone.”
The crowd outside the police station – 400-strong – goes into a “frenzy” when Kate McCann arrives. “There were whistles, then jeers and boos before some in the crowd began to shout insults. ‘Whore… daughter of a whore,’ some yelled in Portuguese.”
The Express translates.
A local man says: “They will find this more and more because in Portugal harming a child is the worst thing…The Portuguese people took them to their hearts and now we feel cheated. It will not be nice in Portugal for them now.”
Kate is “cool and collected”.
DAILY MAIL front page: “THE ACCUSED. Portuguese police’s staggering grilling of Madeleine mother.
• Why was her blood in your car?
• Did you drug her that night?
• Confess and get just two years.”
DAILY STAR front page: “YOU KILLED MADDIE.”
DAILY MIRROR front page: “MADELEINE SENSATION. We have found her blood in the boot of your hire car.. DID YOU KILL HER BY ACCIDENT?” This is “what police asked Kate McCann during 16-hour grilling”.
THE GUARDIAN front page: “Mother, victim…suspect: police target Kate McCann.”
THE TELEGRAPH: “Kate and Gerry McCann named as suspects,” says the headline.
“Mr McCann stared straight ahead as his suspect status was announced and refused to answer questions from awaiting journalists. A crowd which had been attending a concert in the town square earlier listened to the announcement and several people gasped audibly.”
In “Villagers back Madeleine McCann’s parents”, the paper journeys to Rothey, Leicestershire, the McCanns’ home town. Michelle Canilleri, who lives in Rothley, shares with the world: “I can’t believe it. This is such a shock. They have got the wrong people. No way in the world would either Kate or Gerry harm any of their children.”
THE INDEPENDENT front page: “FROM ANGUISHED PARENT, TO GRIEVING MOTHER, TO SUSPECT.”
“Shortly before 11am, Mrs McCann’s spokeswoman, Justine McGuinness, revealed that the 39-year-old GP was being made an arguida – official suspect – in the case. And then she uttered the six short words which will be inconceivable to some who have followed this case and a confirmation of long-held suspicions to others. ‘Kate fears she will be charged,’ Ms McGuinness said.”
THE TIMES front page: A picture of the McCanns meeting the Pope.
Madeleine McCann The Public Spectacle
Posted: 8th, September 2007 | In: Madeleine McCann Comments (1,454) | Follow the Comments on our RSS feed: RSS 2.0 | TrackBack | Permalink
Comments
September 8th, 2007 at 7:55 pm
m.e. 401
I don’t know.
I don’t see how they could gain anything by planning to kill Madeleine before they left Britain.
If they did… and I admit it would explain why they were so quick to advocate the organized paedophile ring… something they may be familiar with… then the only motive I can see is sexual abuse, torture, sadism, or something similar.
Not that I see any substantive difference between raping or torturing a three-year old… the physical pain must be intense in either case.
However, as I’ve said above, I don’t see any reason to believe this is the case. It’s possible. But I don’t put any stock in parents’ behaviour as being much of a useful guide.
People react so differently.
Shorter answer? Yes, it’s possible.
September 8th, 2007 at 7:52 pm
BBC is biased and unbalanced. Who says so? The BBC.
September 8th, 2007 at 7:51 pm
yes but does your (possibly correct) rationale explain my last paragraph (395) Still dont buy it yet. What do you think?
September 8th, 2007 at 7:51 pm
has the police questioned the oddness of the cuddle cat supposedly found by Kate McCann on a high ledge.
Would an abductor take a security object out of a child’s hands? and if the abductor did touch the security object, would he feel the need to put it down somewhere? and if the child weren’t holding the security object would the abductor notice it at all?
I feel for the two remaining children who will have villified parents.
September 8th, 2007 at 7:51 pm
397, Christoph, Never though of that
September 8th, 2007 at 7:49 pm
Doctor & Rosemary:
Fascinating puzzle (better than Cluedo, except for the terrible human suffering involved - but then fascinating puzzles associated with human suffering are, in a way, what doctors are all about).
Madeleine clearly wasn’t effectively sedated when she cried 2 hours for her father (not mother!) on 1 May. Presumably someone (O’Brien?) found a solution on 2 May, as Doctor suggests. Then a possible adverse reaction to the second administration of the same sedative on 3 May might explain a lot (or maybe not, of course).
PS: Rosemary - sorry not to reply to your 1:01 post abouut Penny Wark. I went off to watch Pavarotti’s funeral on TV, partly because I’d been in Modena a few weeks ago. Anyway, I didn’t really see what you meant, the piece seemed pretty tame to me.
What was more interesting, was finding - as I tried to check your reference - another Wark piece, by Kirsty, in the same paper, explaining how she’d been almost immediately drawn in as the BBC facilitator by a mutual acquaintance of hers and the McCanns’ in Glasgow.
This explains the McCann celebrity appearance at Edinburgh, and perhaps also the rather biased and unbalanced BBC reporting of the circus.
September 8th, 2007 at 7:47 pm
And possibly give the twins and the other doctor’s child more time to have the drug wear off…
September 8th, 2007 at 7:46 pm
m.e., perhaps I wasn’t clear.
I’ve said several times, maybe on other threads, I think she was dead before the dinner.
I think any “games” planned may have been for an earlier time.
I think this dinner was a cover to create an alibi.
September 8th, 2007 at 7:43 pm
Christoph..
still dont buy it. why not sedate when you return or an approprite time before returning? It appears she was dead much earlier than would be logical to me for this scenario
Do you really think the parents behaviour and the subsequent ‘professional’ bandwaggon that has ensued can possibly be the result of an unplanned, tragic accident on that night? It might be so but cant help thinking the answer lies elsewhere.
September 8th, 2007 at 7:42 pm
385.
Maybe the Pope’s blessing of Madeleine’s photograph was meant to make up for the lack of a Christian burial?
If the death-smell rental car was unattended for that time, the McCann’s lawyers will certainly make something of it. But I can’t help thinking the police have covered that possibility.
September 8th, 2007 at 7:42 pm
390
I think they’ve been visiting that little church everyday to pray for forgiveness…
September 8th, 2007 at 7:42 pm
Arthur, I have one word: Haloperidol
September 8th, 2007 at 7:40 pm
I agree with everything you say, Hector.
It seems to me that the use of polonium-210, implicated in the murder of Derek Lysenko by the Uzbek Secret Service (USS) a few months back, cannot be ruled out in the case of the McCanns. Doctors have ready access to the stuff in their hospitals. What I want to know is––has a hazmat team scanned the hire car (and the Bible for that matter) with a Geiger Counter? The half-life of polonium-210 would mean that even minute quantities of the substance would be detectable even 30 years from now. As for the poor the twins (and, hey, are they REALLY twins? Has anyone actually seen them both at the same time except in easily manipulated photographs?) they would still be lit up like a Christmas tree. The car should be impounded, even if that means the European Broadcasting Union picking up the tab till it’s all over. Like Bernice, I said from the very beginning that there was something very dodgy about Jimmy McCann’s fake Glasgow accent and strange squint. I’d like to know EXACTLY where Dr Doolittle was the day Glasgow Airport was attacked. Dyeing Barak Obama’s beard no doubt for his next DVD.
Ellen––you’re right; sorry about getting the little gir’s name wrong. But I promise you––I’ve been wearing my Mary McCann wristband and tshirt since Day 1. Not sure that can be said of many people on this board.
Arthur
September 8th, 2007 at 7:40 pm
Doctor 387, if what you’re saying is true, particularly about leaving the children while they went half a mile away, and drugging them… then they are hideous monsters. Period. End of story.
Whether Madeleine was seized by someone else or whether they disposed of her, they predictably killed her in the most sociopathic way.
September 8th, 2007 at 7:39 pm
384, Martin, A doctor once prescribed Vallergan for my child - one teaspoonful guarantees 8 hours sleep. I was surprised to discover, after talking to other mothers, how widespread the use of Phenergan was, especially when travelling, to get children to sleep soundly. I used the Vallergan once, in exceptional circumstances. The doctor did warn me that it could produce the opposite effect, extreme hyperactivity, on rare occasions.
September 8th, 2007 at 7:35 pm
#13 Edna Hi
You are not imaginary LOL
Your question #13 I wondered the same thing when reading news. Yes.
I’ll check back maybe a few on Sunday and back to normal Tuesday. Today soon will be like a tornado.
Take care.
September 8th, 2007 at 7:35 pm
380
Someone made a good point this site the other day, that the only time they paid for the child care facilities was during the daytime to get rid of them when they should have been enjoying time with them! I think the rational reason is simple arroagnce, ‘winging it’… they knew better, they had their own way around the baysitting issue. Apparently they were half a mile away in a restaurant on a previous evening. The probability of getting 3 such children to sleep together like that and remain asleep naturally is too low to go that far. Their sleep surely must have been ‘assisted’.
September 8th, 2007 at 7:34 pm
I think it would be wise to prepare for the absolute worst. It’s been like a horror film thus far. The behaviour of Madeleine’s parents has been weird throughout to say the least. Even the ‘it was an accident’ line of thinking could be wrong. At this point nothing would surprise me.
September 8th, 2007 at 7:34 pm
Something really puzzles me. If they hired the car 25 days after Madeleine disappeared that would give us the date of the 28th May. On the 29th May the McCanns flew to Rome and saw the Pope the 30th May. For the next two weeks they were touring Europe and not in Portugal at all.
Therefore, where was this car? Was it taken on their trip or did it remain in Portugal? Was it left at the airport, allowing it to be tampered with, for Madelieine’s DNA evidence to be planted ready for when they returned.
Otherwise, why the hell did they hire a car and then go off for 2 weeks?
Very puzzling. Can anyone provide any information to answer this?
September 8th, 2007 at 7:33 pm
Doctor 374:
OK, thanks again (and sorry for mis-spelling piriton). I’ve often noticed on the little information sheets that come with medicines that among the main possible side-effects you very often see exaggerted forms of precisely the symptoms the drug usually mitigates. So I thought perhaps a bad reaction of the elements of the immune system that the drug operates on might actually make sense, even when the drug itself usually produces precisely the opposite.
If a sedative was used for the first time on Madeleine on May 2, then again on May 3, then perhaps it was provided by O’Brien. I suppose it’s all just getting a bit too obsessive now, but what sort of drug would O’Brien possibly have brought with him to sedtae his own children, that might have caused a fatal adverse reaction, or symptoms that might have led someone (Kate McCann, say) to cause fatal neck-injury through panic intervention?
…Or of course, maybe she just got frustrated that a stressed Madeleine, worried by constant parental desertion, wouldn’t sleep even when sedated, and damaged her neck in a fit of desperate rage that she wasn’t been allowed by Madeleine to go out and enjoy her last night.
Final thought: is it completely certain that a body has NOT been recovered? A British police source in the Mail said today we should get ready for even more surprising and dramatic developments in the next few days.
Or maybe the neck thing derives from messages intercepted in Britain or Portugal.
OK, definitely getting too obsessive. Better go and cook, and wait for the Sunday papers, or the O’Brien-as-suspect announcement.
September 8th, 2007 at 7:31 pm
m.e., I think something was planned. My best guess is adult sex play hence sedate the kids. The thing that I think makes that more likely is the other doctor’s child vomiting.
Sedating the kids so you can enjoy dinner — when you could just as easily get a babysitter — makes no sense.
Sedating them so you can enjoy whatever you have planned without the kids being aware of it while hideous, makes sense.
September 8th, 2007 at 7:29 pm
Doctor 379, considering how forensic science is advancing by leaps and bounds, what advantage is there in ever wanting it found?
If it’s not found, well then obviously there is a possibility that she was abducted and obviously they didn’t abduct her. If it’s found, then she was murdered and they are among the possible suspects. So no advantage. And the risk of physical evidence unknown to them still being present.
So I don’t see why they’d want the body to be found, ever.
September 8th, 2007 at 7:25 pm
379.
Do you think if the body were recovered now, it could still yield evidence of a drug?
September 8th, 2007 at 7:24 pm
Could someone tell me if we have a rational reason for no babysitter that night? Did they use one on other nights? Did they go out every night like this? how many days are we talking here? Until then I can only come to the conclusion that these people consciously wanted no strangers around for whatever reason……mere child neglect may indeed be a red herring to cover whatever was ‘planned’ . And I cannot get out of my head that whatever happened there was some form of planning. Cant feasibly see how even a complete psycho could hold themselves together so well if it were a true accident of some description….
September 8th, 2007 at 7:19 pm
376
I think the McCanns wouldn’t want the body to remain undiscovered forever… just long enough that the cause of death couldn’t be established by post mortem / toxicology. They would want it to be found eventually so that the rest of the world draws a line under it and moves the spotlight elsewhere.
September 8th, 2007 at 7:17 pm
368, Thanks anyway. Isn’t science amazing?
The lie-detector route would have been a good one early one, and I’ve read Americans faced with this situation often insist on taking one to make sure they are not implicated in their child’s disappearance.
A private investigator would have helped - with all that money in the fund it would have been no problem for them. Perhaps they did and we don’t know about it.
I thought there may also have been ransom demands that were hushed up.
Why should we expect to know everything?
September 8th, 2007 at 7:16 pm
i was absolutly sure i had seen gerry before all of this first started.
if I remember rightly it was on a midget porn video
September 8th, 2007 at 7:13 pm
371.
Here’s an idea about the need to move the body: 25 days after Madeleine’s disappearance, the 1st of June was approaching. This is a big day for arriving vacationers, and the press pointed out that many of the homes that were closed up and unoccupied at the time of the initial search would be opened up. The police were hoping for a breakthrough because of this, as I recall. Maybe the body was in an unfrequented place (an unoccupied house, garage, garden) and the return of the summer crowd would have increased the possibility of someone finding it.
September 8th, 2007 at 7:10 pm
This sums it all up in my opinion.
http://i237.photobucket.com/albums/ff186/puppysandwich/ThreeArguidos.jpg
September 8th, 2007 at 7:07 pm
363
Yes it could. The only problem I have with chlorpheniramine (Piriton) is that whilst it does cause drowsiness, the primary indication for it is allergy. It’s what we use to treat mild allergic symptoms (itch, rash etc). So whilst not impossible (you can be allergic to virtually any drug) you’d have to be doubly unlucky to a) be allergic to a drug and b) be allergic to the drug used to treat allergy.