Madeleine McCann: Call Off The Dogs, Kate McCann’s Tears And Fatima
MADDYWATCH - Anorak’s at-a-glance guide to press coverage of Madeleine McCann.
THE TIMES page 9: “McCanns send to US for help against evidence of sniffer dogs.”
Gerry and Kate McCann have consulted lawyers working on behalf of Eugene Zapata in Madison, Wisconsin.
In October 1976, Zapata’s wife, Jeanette, went missing. Her body has never been found. Last year sniffer dogs were brought in and Zapata was charged with her murder. The case went before Judge Patrick Fielder who said the evidence – dogs had picked up the scent of a corpse in Zapata’s basement – was inadmissible. He said the dogs were unreliable.
The dogs have yet to make a comment.
DAILY MIRROR front page: “MADDY JUDGE: LET ME TELL ALL.”
Pedro Daniel dos Anjos Frias wants to “speak freely” about the case.
Pages 6 and 7: “Mum’s tears at 11am Mass.” Once again the Mirror is all eyes for Kate McCann’s eyes. She is crying.
In church, Father Keith Tomlinson narrates the parable of the Prodigal Son. An eight-year-old child called Molly Earp reads “Jesus please continue to love and protect us, until she is found.”
And then Jesus can have a rest and the police can resume normal duties…
Pages 8 and 9: “On the beach Gerry gave Maddy loads of hugs and kisses, he was a perfect dad..The next time I saw him was about midnight..I saw a man alone, desperate. He was crying and screaming her name over and over and over again.” Words from a “WAITER AT MADDIE’S LAST MEAL” before she vanished.
THE SUN front page: “Maddie ‘gag’ lift.” Friends of Kate and Gerry McCann are hopeful of being allowed to speak out and defend themselves. A judge has asked for a lifting of Portugal’s secrecy laws.
Pages 6 and 7: “AGONY TO COME.” The Sun produces a picture of Kate and Gerry McCann’s wedding day. They are holding Kate’s goddaughter Ellie. There is also a new picture of Madeleine McCann “looking angelic”. Have you seen her? Or are you watching the parents?
THE EXPRESS front page: “MADELEINE. POLICE TO SEARCH SHRINE FOR BODY.” The McCanns went to Fatima. The McCanns car clocked up 1,709 miles in the fives weeks after their daughter went missing.
THE WORLD’S GREATEST NEWSPAPER Pages 2 and 3: “Hand in hand, McCanns go to family church.” The “devoutly Catholic couple” are leaving for church from their “£600,000 home”. Kate McCann is carrying Cuddle Cat.
Pages 4 and 5: “1,000 letters each day in support of the McCanns. Between 500 and 1,000 letters a day arrive at the McCanns’ home. “There are some crank letters,” says a spokesman for the family, “but that’s inevitable.”
None of these letters are believed to point to the whereabouts of Madeleine McCann.
Alex Cayles, a former neighbour of the McCanns, says “I never heard Kate or Gerry raise their voices to their children or anyone else.” Can the same be said of any parents of three very young children?
DAILY MAIL front page: a picture of Kate McCann smiling.
“MADELEINE:
• Doubt cast on sniffer dogs
• Police frontman quits investigation
• Branson funds the McCanns’ defence
• Witness’s vital new evidence”
Pages 10 and 11:2 “Maddie: Is the case crumbling?”
Chief inspector Olegario Sousa has resigned “in disgust” at the way in which fellow Portuguese officers have been briefing the media behind his back.
DAILY STAR front page: “MADDIE MUM ON MURDER RAP. Now cops claim to have found ‘a motive’.”
The Star says police have read Kate McCann’s diary and “claim it reveals she had a motive to kill”.
Pages 4 and 5: “DID KATE HAVE A MOTIVE?”
Well, we haven’t read the diary, but…
“The idea that Portuguese detectives are looking at my daughter’s most personal thoughts and taking them out of context is terrible,” says Kate McCann’s father Brian Healy.
Pages 6 and 7: “HUNT AT HOLY SHRINE.” Is Madeleine McCann’s body buried at Fatima, one of the Catholic Church’s holiest sites? The Star says the couple went there three weeks after their daughter went missing.
We wonder. Is she? Or is she buried in Germany, America, London or Morocco, places also visited by the McCanns?
DAILY TELEGRAPH: “New allegations against McCanns - As the McCanns begin a new campaign to clear their names, further allegations emerged over the weekend.”
Oh?
“The hire car: The Renault Scenic hired by the McCanns 25 days after Madeleine went missing. New claims centre on its high mileage. Between May 27 and July 3, it was driven 1,700 miles, with police looking into the possibility that it may have been used to dispose of a body…There were also reports that detectives were waiting for permission from a judge to seize and dismantle the car to search for ‘traces of skin’.”
THE GUARDIAN: No Maddy news today.
Madeleine McCann The Public Spectacle
Posted: 17th, September 2007 | In: Madeleine McCann Comments (1,074) | Follow the Comments on our RSS feed: RSS 2.0 | TrackBack | Permalink
Comments
September 17th, 2007 at 2:50 pm
we didnt see her before madeleine went missing,
she could have been happy then
September 17th, 2007 at 2:50 pm
350 Anonymous the 1st
No, my original statement was correct. The article you quoted was dated 8th Sep.
This one is dated 2nd Sep. and PREDATES their being made formal suspects.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/crime/article2368594.ece
September 17th, 2007 at 2:49 pm
437 Billy
Hear hear …… and there is a story in today’s King of the Tabloids, The Sun, where a woman is standing by her man, who has just been convicted of 13 acts of a sexual nature against young kids.
Surely this can NOT be normal?
September 17th, 2007 at 2:49 pm
426 - Seymour
“Kate is a stunningly attractive woman”
I beg to differ. She is quite average looking to me. If anything, she seems very gaunt and has always looked a bit too slim to be healthy. She wears a frown and has very poor eye contact. Given the recent allegations that she is a suspect, I’m not surprised by that. But…she has looked like that from day one.
Looking back at Kate’s earlier photos (wedding pics etc.), I can see she looked more attractive and looked far happier. I know she’s hardly going to be smiling if she’s lost a child through whatever reason, but there’s always that possibility that she was chronically depressed and it escaped the notice of her family and friends.
September 17th, 2007 at 2:48 pm
427 ~ helsangel…. I’m with you all the way of this one… but lest you forget this is the mccanns we are dealing with here …. top lawyers, high ranking QC, leading pr firm, civil servant first on secondment then gives up job to work for TM full time, british tabloid press [erm... no forget that one ...they're shite] and and richard mcbranson… markmy words there are higher forces greater than god at work here….
September 17th, 2007 at 2:48 pm
420 - Dog evidence is not perssible in UK courts either and for very good reason.
A dog cannot be cross examined.
September 17th, 2007 at 2:47 pm
No matter how the media spins things, the facts are that the McCann’s did not care for their three 2/3 year olds when they went out and that when g. mccann took his turn at checking on them, he only checked on the twins. He said that he never saw Madeleine. He obviously wasn’t checking on her, only the twins. Nobody at all cared where Madeleine was.
The McCann’s are losers. The media uses them, callously throwing bones at the wolfing masses. The bone of the day: Gerry McCann was a good father. As in a good father from hell. They forgot that part.
September 17th, 2007 at 2:47 pm
whatever happens one day they will have to look in those poor 2 twins faces and explain why that quiz tappas was more important than them
poor little mites
September 17th, 2007 at 2:46 pm
432 Clearly he really IS after the part as JB 007
September 17th, 2007 at 2:46 pm
426. She has the surface hollow attarctiveness of an Orange County housewife or a Connecticut businesswoman. Or a White Chocolate Easter Bunny. You can easily find women who look exactly like Kate in the US. This type is a dime a dozen as the Yanks would say.
And she’s just as stupid as her American doppelgangers. I’m sure she’d trade her cheekbones right now for the smarts to care for children properly?
Or would she?
September 17th, 2007 at 2:46 pm
400 jessica fletcher
Re abduction theory
U suggest that it seems implausible that they could both be 100% behind each other if the abduction theory is correct.
Why?
Rosemary was totally behind Fred.
Myra was a willing accomplice for Ian.
Kathleen folbigg killed 4 of her kids in 10 yrs ,her husband stayed with her until her trial.
Do not underestimate how evil people can be given the correct situations.
None of us were in the apartment in the mid afternoon or early evening of 3rd May, therefore we have no idea of what atrocities may have occured.
Just because the Mccanns are Drs do not fall into the trap of believing that they could have no doing in this matter.
Mental health or murderous impulses can strike or be nurtered given the correct situations in anyone.
Just look through any annuls of crime and murder.
There is no common link. Other than they were caught or confessed.
September 17th, 2007 at 2:45 pm
430 My point - I’ve no idea what they thought the pope could do either.
September 17th, 2007 at 2:44 pm
414 - “If I hear one more person on this site say that their kid looks or looked like Madeleine, I’m going to screaming bloody muyder!!…..
…..I have pictures of me when I was a 3 - 4 year old. I also look a bit like Madeleine.”
So start screming
September 17th, 2007 at 2:44 pm
429 Impressed
Because you persuaded me to quit!!!
September 17th, 2007 at 2:43 pm
415 - Brilliant! I’m more restrained in my language and tone than you but I agree 100%
Looking back, what sickens me the most is that they did most of that gallivanting in the days after she went missing. They formed a limited company, did the media stuff, the touring, and hey…they jogged on the beach in a normal daily routine without batting an eyelid.
I wish people would understand that the psychology of losing a child is going to make you behave in a way that shows some outward signs of grieving. The McCann’s have become business gurus and to hear Gerry talking in interviews, you’d think he was a Newsnight presenter or someone similar talking about someone else’s kid.
September 17th, 2007 at 2:43 pm
426 You make me howl Seymour, are you now suggesting that everyone who thinks the McCanns did it is ugly, and the opposite is true. I love the way you write!
September 17th, 2007 at 2:42 pm
427 Helsangel
I don’t understand all this Pope sidetracking. Did you see the Golden Child last night on Film4? THAT is who we need.
September 17th, 2007 at 2:41 pm
421 ~ maria Says:
September 17th, 2007 at 2:34 pm
415, what about if the stay in Portugal was all about buying time for all the evidence to fade away and sticking to harmless activities like meeting the Pope, adverting Madeleine and jogging on the beach?
maria all i will say is…the mccanns have been getting crap advice…..
September 17th, 2007 at 2:40 pm
422 Keep up Toni, I quit under advisement from Impressed who felt that my reputation would suffer it was seen I was getting into bed with Clarence I’m not related to Peggy and Phil Mitchell.
I am now no longer spokesperson extraordinaire, but have gone back to being normal old SSS, mother of the extremely Magnificent Seven
September 17th, 2007 at 2:40 pm
424 Impressed -my point was if I’d placed my faith in the great man (God, whoever) all this time, and my child was snatched, I’d be seriously pissed off and NOT go and see the pope.
September 17th, 2007 at 2:38 pm
I think I will leave it with the following observation, even though it is in questionable taste.
Kate McCann really is a stunningly attractive woman - she would have been the catch of her year at medical school.
Her beauty seems to have had a polarising affect what what - is there a man/female divide; attractive/unattractive divide as well as the class divide that I explored earlier
I am not suggusting for a moment that the guility faction are all unattrractive, lower order females, or males married to the same. That would be unfair. But….
September 17th, 2007 at 2:37 pm
420 I have been a champion of Eddie from when I first heard all this nonsense about the dogs being unreliable. Any other witness would have his credentials reviewed , why can’t they review Eddie’s. I hear his are impeccable
September 17th, 2007 at 2:37 pm
418 ~ helsangel …. who ever your god may be…. its here on earth that we be judged and for the mccanns they are no exception….
September 17th, 2007 at 2:35 pm
414 Ursula
Don’t scream. It’s the hair cut. Very popular ‘do, which along with chubby cheeky smile and sidelong cheeky looks, looks like most kids that age.
September 17th, 2007 at 2:35 pm
ta 4 that SSS
I dont tend to read what the spokespersons say LOL but well done, I will keep searching the game parks though
September 17th, 2007 at 2:34 pm
415, what about if the stay in Portugal was all about buying time for all the evidence to fade away and sticking to harmless activities like meeting the Pope, adverting Madeleine and jogging on the beach?
September 17th, 2007 at 2:32 pm
Readers may remember my post on yesterday’s thread regarding the irrelevance of releasing wedding pictures when a child disappears a decade later.
I concluded (mockingly) that the JP should be shown these pictures.
“It’ll blow their case right out of the water”.
I chose this phrase as a recognisable cliché, a stock phrase, which bespoke crime dramas, cop shows, etc and was not in current use in either news writing or legalese.
Then today, the Mirror use this very phrase on pages 6 -7 to headline a Madeleine story on the supposed inadmissibility of sniffer-dog evidence in court*:
“WE’LL BLOW THE POLICE CASE OUT OF THE WATER”.
(The Mirror’s online version of this story does not use this headline preferring the lower case “Maddie Judge: let me speak”)
Perhaps we should try and revive other stock phrases here in this discussion of tabloid coverage and see how long it takes for said phrases to seep back into the tabloids themselves.
Then we’d have them….. BANG TO RIGHTS.
THEY’RE GOING DOWN.
IT’S A FAIR COP.
ER.. THAT’S IT
*ITN news had an interesting item on Eddie the cadaver-detecting hound a couple of weeks ago. It was video footage used in a case in Northern Ireland to secure a conviction for murder and showed Eddie indicating that he had detected the scent of a corpse in a burnt out car.
Should the fact that a US court didn’t like dog evidence (from a different canine) be more relevant to the McCann case than the experience of the UK legal system and the track record of this particular hound (or canine officer as I believe he would quaintly be called in the US)?
September 17th, 2007 at 2:32 pm
413. That’s what I don’t understand - I would be A. Blaming myself for leaving them (without qualifications like ‘it felt so right at the time’ B. Blaming everyone else around me who might have saved her, but didn’t.
I know everyone reacts differently - but nothing they do or say seems natural.
September 17th, 2007 at 2:31 pm
415 Applause - applause - say it like it is. I would think if you were genuinely shocked at your child’s abduction as they’d have us beleive - you’d stop believing in God altogether, or at least be very angry at him. or Him
September 17th, 2007 at 2:31 pm
411.
Okay so my old school detective skills are shit. Fine. That is your opinion and you are morethan welcomed to express them.
Yet why don’t you and people like Seymour ever address these strange facts:
The McCann’s have trademarked their missing daughter’s name? They have trademarked a logo design of her unusual eyes? They started a company for profit with money given to them as donations. They did not use these donations to start a charity they created a limited company for profit. They did not travel to any location where Madeleine was allegedly spotted?
Either way your examples are not relevent because the McCann’s are claiming that she was abducted by either an illegal adoption ring or by paedos. In old fashioned detective work a lot can be accomplished. What frigg’n difference does it make about buildings & where they are kept? Are you on drugs? Are you on the RIGHT drugs? OF course she’s inside somewhere. A detectives job is to break through the obfuscation of created by criminals, people’s reservations at getting involved, walls, buildings, fears, shame. degradation - you name it.
The plight of exploited women and children is not anything you or Mr Laws can teach me anything about. (With all due respect. I mean I know you are dudes and I;m just a girl and everything but while we’re on the subject dudes are the reason their is so much violence and exploitation. Women learn very early how to protect themselves and how to be very good detectives because of the world you wonderful men have created.)