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
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September 17th, 2007 at 6:33 pm
The McCann’s always say they are “convinced” Madeleine is still alive. What a stupid thing to say without evidence!
September 17th, 2007 at 6:30 pm
657 - Gressin
Yep, extreme good luck on the part of an abductor.
No cries from Madeleine…no sound of a car speeding away…no sightings (other than the extremely dubious one by Jane Tanner).
Unless there was a car nearby, a 4 year old toddler is no small weight to carry far. Either of the twins would have been a far easier target. Plus, the twins were virtually comatose weren’t they?
And…the abductor had OCD - neatly placing Cuddle Cat on the shelf!
The McCann’s story is too riddled full of holes to even be close to what really happened.
September 17th, 2007 at 6:27 pm
Maicen Says:
September 17th, 2007 at 6:16 pm
625 Seymour Laws..again .. oh dear!!
“They asked for Charity Status and were turned down, on the grounds that it is not charity to be getting donations for sole purpose of finding their own missing child. rather than anyone’s/ everyone’s missing child.”
——————————————
I did not know they had asked and had been turned down (happy was on holiday for much of May)- I was looking at the problem in the abstract - and was right - see the doubts I expressed about qualifying for charitable status.
September 17th, 2007 at 6:26 pm
641
I thought Kate was named a suspect on the SECOND day of questioning.
638
Are there still building-works going on in Fatima? Madeleines corpse could have been disected. Maybe a reason why PJ are looking in various places, including building works around Our Lady of Light church.
September 17th, 2007 at 6:25 pm
649- Peter darling,
1 mile = 1.61 kilometers.
Conversions darling, coversions!
September 17th, 2007 at 6:25 pm
One thing that does not seem to have come into the discussion, tabloid or otherwise, to date is the extreme good luck of the unseen, abductor.
1) What are the chances of a predator coming across an unlocked apartment. With three small children in it. Mathematically? Really, I would be interested to find out.
As Gerry himself said in one of his promo films (it’s on Youtube somewhere), child abductions from bedrooms are incredibly rare, if not unheard of.
To wish to enter an apartment and take a child puts the abductor in a tiny minority of abductors. The fact that he (or she) found an unlocked apartment must put them in an infinitessimal percentile of predators.
2) And then to be handed the further luck of taking the child from a family who does not have the usual knowledge of crime scenes most of the rest of the population have gleaned from CSI, the Bill, Law & Order et al.
They apparently did not know that the scene should be preserved for forensic examination and instead let in 20, friends and family who, in the words of Mr Sousa who has just resigned from the case could potentially “have destroyed all the evidence. This could prove to be fatal for the investigation”.
The luckiest abductor in the world.
Obviously I hope that his (or her) luck runs out very soon. But that doesn’t stop me speculating on the enormity of that luck so far.
September 17th, 2007 at 6:22 pm
653 - Canada
Yes, you’re right. Since the McCann’s got back to the UK they seem to have come up with new disinformation stories. You’re probably right that the media campaigners come up with most of the “sources said” stories as well.
I’m confident the police have more than we can ever imagine and we’ll all be surprised by the information when it’s all made public.
September 17th, 2007 at 6:22 pm
645- “Actually you must be wrong about that. Some how the pope knew a day before Kate became a suspect - and removed the FindMaddie page from his website! Heck he knew before the Portugal papers!!!
Who else other than God could have told him this?????
I am not catholic but I admit the pope has got great contacts!!!”
LOL - Angelo - you gave me a good chuckle ;-0
Yes - I presume He was tipped off by the same people that racked up 1,700 miles on the rental car no doubt!! I believe there may be a “murder in the cathedral” aspect to all this.
Hmmm…this is turning into quite a page turner. I hope they get the right person to write this story in the end. The amount of coincidences, parallels, 6 degrees of separation, and branches of this investigation are truly unlike anything I’ve read in a long while. If ever.
I have another idea, but, for fear of retribution, I’ll bottle it up and contain it within my own creative juices. Although the road to hell is paved with good intentions, I still don’t want to end up there.
September 17th, 2007 at 6:19 pm
637 Maicen Says:
September 17th, 2007 at 6:01 pm
Seymour.. you say this board is prejudiced..what of the UK press and media outlets.. they are NOT
Prejudice I have no problems with - it is the risk prejudicing a fair trial that worries me.
If there was the prospect of a trial in the UK, it would not have been possible for the press to print a great detail of the stuff that has been printed to date- that is half the fun of it.
Since all this forum does is recite the various offerings of the tabloids, with varying degrees of accuracy, and inject personal theories of varying levels of plausibility and rationality - you are right it is no worse than than press and, in may respects, better.
It is just that if we had been talking about something that was justiciable in the UK, I, like any sane practising barrister, would not touch it, even under the name of Seymour Laws.
Though perhaps as Cecil Poole, the Junior Clerk of the Court, I may chance my arm what what
September 17th, 2007 at 6:18 pm
Doesn’t anyone else find it strange that ever since someone new took over for the McCann’s PR campaign, we have alot of media headings of the evidence being refuted, sniffer dog evidence unreliable, new campaign to find Madeleine started, by the way I think if someone did abduct Maddy, this campaign probably sealed her fate to die since I would think he wouldn’t want to be caught dead with the missing girl. I think the McCann PR team are the ones responsible for the daily “evidence in doubt” stories.
September 17th, 2007 at 6:17 pm
Seymour Laws you’re boring. Can’t you back to one of your previous incarnations? Even gecko100 was more interesting than the toss you’ve posted today.
September 17th, 2007 at 6:16 pm
625 Seymour Laws..again .. oh dear!!
They asked for Charity Status and were turned down, on the grounds that it is not charity to be getting donations for sole purpose of finding their own missing child. rather than anyone’s/ everyone’s missing child.
I ,thankfully, do not need a lawyer, but if I did, it sure would not be you ,as you are not up to scratch.
September 17th, 2007 at 6:15 pm
I wonder where the mobile phone tracer will show they went in the car.
I imagine K and G took the phone everywhere with them in case a call from God cam through!
September 17th, 2007 at 6:15 pm
Don’t want to be picky, but does a car using kilometres have a mileage?
September 17th, 2007 at 6:13 pm
Right on Judge Dredd… I’m taking it one step further…
Crimes against humanity are DEFINATELY triable in the UK whilst committed abroad… That’s what I would pin on them!!
hmmm
Allegedly
September 17th, 2007 at 6:13 pm
632 - LOL - now, you’re killing me Moderation!! I find that VERY hard to believe, considering you are on this forum 20 hours a day. Sorry, I don’t buy it and I don’t watch Soap Operas either.
Funny, you seem to take such quick offense at others criticizing you. But you do dish it out more regularly than most posters.
I won’t even ask for a translation of “codswallop” ? LOL! But I am getting hungry just typing the word out….being an old salty, anything to do with fish gets me big tummy growling.
But it sounds like “hogwash” to me.
Back to reality, I stand by my original post - 1,700 miles in one month is a huge amount of miles to drive. Especially since none of these long journeys were even recorded on Gerry’s blog - other than frequent short drives to the local airport which Gerry did write about on his blog. Wonder why he wouldn’t have mentioned where all the other miles accumulated from. If it did not stand out like such a sore thumb, then it wouldn’t have even been commented upon.
Accusing me of watching Soap operas…..and speculation…pffftttt!!!
Is that a self fulfilling prophecy Moderation??
September 17th, 2007 at 6:11 pm
628 - Real Stig
The Lindy Chamberlain case bears little resemblance to this story. In that case, from the moment the baby disappeared, the reason given was that a dingo took the baby.
The Madeleine case isn’t being turned from an abduction case into any other kind of case.
The Madeleine case has always been one of a missing girl. The ONLY people using the word “abduction” from day 1 has been the McCann parents. They never knew it was an abduction any more than you or I did. They just used that word. There are many explanations for why Madeleine is missing - not just abduction.
You’re entitled to your own opinions like the rest of us but do you always have to ram it down everyone’s throat like they’re idiots? You, like Gerry McCann need to get off your high horse.
September 17th, 2007 at 6:09 pm
638.Gennifer Jonze - Popes are not mindreaders, psychics or channelers, they are not even healers either. They are “intermediaries” between God and the People and head of the Roman Catholic Church.
Hell -next we’ll be reading that the Pope should be reading palms or tarot cards.
- Actually you must be wrong about that. Some how the pope knew a day before Kate became a suspect - and removed the FindMaddie page from his website! Heck he knew before the Portugal papers!!!
Who else other than God could have told him this?????
I am not catholic but I admit the pope has got great contacts!!!
September 17th, 2007 at 6:08 pm
636 - “The point seemed fairly simply, any charges against the McCanns will be tried in Portugal under their non-jury trial system.”
Under European licence they could be tried in England under English law, (Kate being English), or Scotland (Gerry being Scottish), under Scottish law.
I hope it is not the latter because in addition to guilty and not guilty, thay also have a not proven verdict.
September 17th, 2007 at 6:04 pm
Unless the PJ have a daily log of the hire car usage they cannot prove the McCanns did any specific amount of milage.
The car was used by other family members while the McCanns were in Italy, Spain, Germany, USA, etc.
September 17th, 2007 at 6:03 pm
619 - “Another point is this. If the McCanns were responsible for Madeline’s death, then the Pope, if he was a true man of God, he would have been able to discern that something was wrong”
You are EVIDENTLY not Catholic. Popes are not mindreaders, psychics or channelers, they are not even healers either. They are “intermediaries” between God and the People and head of the Roman Catholic Church.
Hell -next we’ll be reading that the Pope should be reading palms or tarot cards.
You are confusing the “miracles’ attributed to Saints with the “power” of a Pope.
Popes are not Saints. They are Popes - human beings - who are spiritual, sometimes visionaries but not magicians or illusionists.
September 17th, 2007 at 6:01 pm
550 Seymour.. you say this board is prejudiced..what of the UK press and media outlets.. they are NOT prejudiced ????
This board is in 3…the doubters, the supporters, and the on the fence.That is a fair balance methinks and far more so than press and media who are one track on this.
September 17th, 2007 at 6:01 pm
662 - Andrew, I am a lawyer. The point seemed fairly simply, any charges against the McCanns will be tried in Portugal under their non-jury trial system. Hence, whatever I say could not possibly have anything to do with UK legal proceedings.
Forever, the press in the UK have been subject to reporting restriction regarding matters that may prejudice the right to fair trial - these restrictions have been held compatable with the European Convention on Human Rights.
The interesting point is what happens with blogs, on-line forums etc - if they are widely read (and not cupboards for a relative handful of nutters which I suspect is nearer the case) why should they not end up subject to the same reporting restrictions?
Contrary to what you say there is not at present an unqualified right to free speach. I am not saying this right, but that is the present state of affairs
September 17th, 2007 at 6:00 pm
Like I care. Any Lawsuit Lawyers, contact me and I will give you my name, address, date of birth.
I’ve said nothing wrong at all
Allegedly
September 17th, 2007 at 5:59 pm
lol @ McCann Mole.
Lets play devils advocate and go along with the McCanns suggestion that they are being framed.
It would be difficult to get a lot of people to hide a secret. There would have to be a …pact of silence….which is what the police have said the McCanns friends have made…out of coincidence!
Therefore lets assume one rouge cop has planted the evidence…he has planted blood samples in the apartment and dna in the hire car. Okay - only it would be difficult to get hold of Madeleines blood without killing her himself.
And it would be difficult to get dna samples from her corpse without killing her himself and hiding the body.
Lets assume he did this - a police officer has killed Madeleine and planted evidence in the McCanns apartment and car.
He will now also have to lay a corpse scent trail from the apartment to the Church.
He will also have to get the scent of the corpse onto the cuddly toy - only remember he killed her fresh and did not have time to get the scent of a corpse on the toy - so he would have had to put the scent on the toy just before it was sniffed by the dogs.
Strange how the sniffer dogs did not detect the corpse scent on the policemen that carries all these body parts around with him in his pocket!
And then the samples are taken to Britain to be tested.
Why did he pick this couple in the first place? Not exactly an easy target. Easier to pick up one of the children that is awake and running around on the beach at nightime - this one would have neede to be watched for a couple of days - but isnt he a police officer on duty???
Nope - if it is a set up it would have had to involve the British sniffer dog police, the Sniffer dogs, the dna experts from around the world and the police officers that collected the samples. In fact it would have had to involve the whole of the Portuguese and British police force and scientists - whose motive is?????
Okay so what motive would the McCanns and some of their friends have to cover up a murder? - and if you cover up an accidental death by no means can you call it an accident!!!!!!
Well the only way you can get a pact of silence is if all parties are involved in some way.
Dr.McCanns and Dr.friends sedated their children every night - drugs are in their childrens bloodstream - therefore they are guilty of a criminal act!!!!
There you have it - case closed!!!!!
The McCanns and family and friends said the Portuguese police were doing a brilliant job - when they were looking for Madeleine outside the circle of silence - but when the police focused on the circle of friends and their pact of silence the McCanns and family and friends all say what a bad job they are doing!
Duh!!! If this was a film we would have all worked the plot out by now!!!!!
September 17th, 2007 at 5:58 pm
well to all of you regardless of which side of the fence you are on….good night….. and a foot note to all you posters who are uk resident…. the net is a great place for free thinkers…. but alas the laws of libel still apply ….. and from this moment forth clarence is watching you….[and he is a very powerful man with friends in high places] ….don’t say you havn’t been warned…. adios….
September 17th, 2007 at 5:58 pm
Gennifer Jonze you talking absolute codswallop. None of your hypothese have anything to do with the case but everything to do with watching too many soap operas! IT’S SPECULATION.
Mileage? I live in UK and do around 1200 miles a month no porblem….. and mines the second car out of three in the family.
September 17th, 2007 at 5:57 pm
I’m surprised to have seen no comparisons between the British media complicity with Team McCann since May, and their complicity in another staggering campaign of misinformation from November 2002 onward.
Remember Saddam’s WMD that - despite nearly all the manipulated evidence showing no such thing - were an imminent threat to Britain? Remember how long nearly all the media remained in a weird collective denial as Blair’s media circus looked more and more threadbare to a growing majority of the public?
What is it about our new collective insecurity after the trusty old commie bogeymen quit the job?
And why THIS particular story of a middle-class child stolen by evil perverted foreigners while abroad (but in a kind of apparently secure ‘Little England’ in southern Portugal)?
I’ve read lots in the press about the story, and the ’story of the story’ (which is the historically significant bit).
But I’ve seen no good analysis and explanation of why this particular form of mass hysteria (in the long tradition of child-stealing gypsies) should have surfaced in such a - literally - spectacular form just now.
I think it’s something to do with the collective need for a new ‘other’, and a sort of displacement of the obvious new bogeymen from the Middle East onto the more touchy-feely scale of the nuclear family and its archaic fears (rather than an incomprehensible ‘war’ against an abstract noun).
I think it’s to do with the appetite for reality TV, and an explosion of Crimewatch-style programming in particular (which so often these days takes over the main news).
I think it’s to do with the first post-religious society in history needing another channel for mass hysteria - first seen after Diana’s death.
I think it’s about a sort of new mythology or folklore replacing complicated formal religion, with the world structured by a play of simplistic archetypes or fairytales, that secular power clings to with a blind faith more appropriate to a church, until that new transitory reality has to be ditched in favour of some new folktale.
One of the most fascinating aspects, here, is watching the media becoming disoriented (especially last weekend) as the initial ‘paedophile abduction’ folktale falls apart before their eyes, and they begin to grasp around for some alternative reality.
There will be many PhD theses exploring this new mythological frame of tabloid reality in the years to come.
September 17th, 2007 at 5:55 pm
593………..Moderation ..
If you read ALL my posting I have said many times I do not give a stuff about the parents really.I care about this wee child being found dead or alive to end this Saga
I have accused them of being the fault of whatever happened because they let their kids down by neglecting to take responsible measures to ensure they safety while they enjoyed adult time out.
Meeting someone does make his opinion truth or more valid than any of the doubters up here.
It is a criminal fact that many serious crimes are committed by utterly charismatic and outwardly nice people.That does not make McCann’s guilty, so far, of anything but neglectful irresponsible parenting skills which left whatever ha happened to their daughter happening in first place.
September 17th, 2007 at 5:50 pm
Surely as they have set up a Ltd Co, the income generated by the fund is subject to corporation tax, and so the taxman will get 20% or so of the fund unless they spend it all before the end of the financial year?