
Madeleine McCann: Michaela Walczuch At The Door, JonBenet Ramsey And Metodo 3 ‘A Pup’
MADDY WATCH - Anorak’s at-a-glance guide to press coverage of Madeleine McCann
SUNDAY MIRROR: “Did they want my girl?”
Karen Sixsmith is in conversation with the Mirror. It is an “EXCLUSIVE”. She is in an apartment at the Ocean Club, Praia da Luz. It is a month before Madeleine McCann went missing
A woman knocks at her door. She claims to be a Jehovah’s Witness. “German-born” Michaela Walczuch is a Jehovah’s Witness, or has been. The “mysterious woman” at the door is with a man.
Says Sixsmith: “It was a blonde woman, 35 to 40 years old, English-speaking. She had a pamphlet and I knew straight away that she was a Jehovah’s Witness. She asked if she could come into the apartment to talk about her faith. I took the pamphlet from her and closed the door. I now think it may have been Murat and his girlfriend”
Michaela Walczuch is 34
Karen has a daughter called Kate – “Kate is strikingly similar to Madeleine…Kate would have stood out a mile with her blonde hair and blue eyes - just like Madeleine”
Says the Mirror: “Her testimony - given to the Sunday Mirror so we could pass it on to the McCanns’ private investigators Metodo 3 in Barcelona”
NEWS OF THE WORLD: “Snatch bid last year at Maddie flat”
“A man tried to kidnap a child at the same apartment Madeleine McCann vanished from SIX MONTHS before she went missing,” says a British nanny who “caught the pervert trying to climb in through the ground floor window while a baby slept inside”
DAILY EXPRESS: “BABYSITTER SAW WINDOW MAN”
A source says “A babysitter has given detectives a statement in which she claims she caught a man trying to climb in through a window of apartment 5A – the apartment later occupied by the McCanns”
THE PEOPLE: “SICKENING SMEAR CAMPAIGN - FAMILY’S EMOTIONAL PLEA FOR MISSING DAUGHTER’S RETURN”
“Cops spent days investigating a theory the couple did it because they were desperate for cash”
It is a “sickening smear” making headlines in Portuguese paper 24 Horas
“NO QUIZ FOR MURAT LOVE” - Tuck Price, “a pal of German born Walczuch”, reveala: “I know for sure she’s been going to her Jehovah’s meetings and I know for sure the police haven’t contacted her. If this was true I’m sure the police would have been on to her”
“Find Maddie and give us a miracle for Christmas..” - “Maddie’s grandfather Brian Healy revealed how the family are convinced that she is alive and how they are now hoping for the ultimate Christmas miracle.” Says he: “We will all buy her a Christmas present and they will be under the tree waiting for her when she comes home”
GLASGOW SUNDAY MAIL: “Fury Over ‘Maddie Sold’ Slur”
An “outrageous slur”
A source says: “For several days the judicial police team investigated the possibility that the child had been sold by her own parents because of financial difficulties”
DAILY STAR: “MADDIE: 10 NEW SUSPECTS”
“Spanish investigators hunting for Madeleine McCann have narrowed their search to a hit list of ten paedophiles, we can reveal. Detectives working for the Metodo 3 agency are blitzing locations in Europe and Africa to find the known sex offenders”
Why this ten? Why ten?
Says Clarence Mitchell: “We have every confidence in Metodo 3. They can get to places faster and work quicker than anyone else and have the capacity to work worldwide”
BURNLEY EXPRESS: “Girls’ symbolic silence for Madeleine McCann”
Chelsea Gallagher and Gemma Lee, both 13, raised £450 for the Madeleine McCann Fund with a sponsored cuff-and-silence.
“For an entire school day, Chelsea and Gemma, 13, were handcuffed together and remained silent.” Says Chelsea: “The handcuffs symbolised the people who will be caught, and the silence because we haven’t heard anything about Madeleine”
DAILY TELEGRAPH: “Madeleine McCann: is there no hope left?”
“Bristling with bravado before the television cameras last week, Francisco Marco, the portly boss of the Spanish-based detective agency Metodo 3, sneeringly dismissed the Portuguese police investigation into the disappearance of the couple’s daughter, Madeleine, as ”bumbling”, and boasted: ‘’We know who the kidnappers are and we are very, very close to catching them.’ Off camera, he admitted: ‘No, I can’t disclose any more yet. But I will be proved right.’”
Marco will get his man. A PI always does. Sign the contract. Pay the fee…
A source “close to” the McCanns says: ”The harsh fact is that they were pinning their remaining hopes on Marco’s outfit when they hired them on a six-month contract in September. But, in the past few weeks, they have conceded that they might have been sold a pup. There’s no doubt they’ve worked round the clock, but they don’t have a lot of experience with this type of investigation”
But there are for months left on the contract…
THE GUARDIAN: “Panorama walk-out over McCann film”
“Why did TV journalist David Mills, the producer of a Panorama film on the McCann affair, quit the project before it was transmitted last week? The Observer’s David Rose reveals the inside story of the latest row to hit the BBC’s flagship show”
Sensationalism? Tabloid journalism? Crime as entertainment?
Mills wrote a script. It was not used. “His original film would have compared Madeleine to the JonBenet Ramsey case in Colorado, about which Mills has made three previous documentaries. After the body of JonBenet, a child beauty pageant winner aged six, was found in her parents’ Boulder home, they were vilified by the police and media, despite their continued insistence that they had nothing to do with her death. They claimed she had been killed by an intruder…Years later DNA evidence proved beyond doubt that JonBenet had been killed by an intruder. John Ramsey told Panorama: ‘It’s a life-time damage. No question about it.’”
Posted: 25th, November 2007 | In: Madeleine McCann Comments (680) | Follow the Comments on our RSS feed: RSS 2.0 | TrackBack | Permalink
Comments





November 25th, 2007 at 11:48 am
Eric I was not aware that there was a doubt about Jane Tanner having left the table at all,that us until I saw Soothsayer was claiming she never had.I did a bit of searching about and there are serious doubts in various quarters as to the validity of anything said by Jane Tanner and her leaving the table at all.Perhaps Tony may know something about this,as Jane Tanners utterances seem to be central to many theories here.
November 25th, 2007 at 11:47 am
44- Brishop Brennan- hear hear (hope that’s the right spelling!)
November 25th, 2007 at 11:47 am
41
Logic
if it was accident ,they would told that to police.That’s not a crime,even if they left the children alone,the P.J. ,wouldn’t acuse them. They are more tollerant with foreigners, than with Portuguese
November 25th, 2007 at 11:47 am
Tony.
Also fro WP:
With such contradictory evidence, a grand jury failed to indict the Ramseys or anyone else in the murder of JonBenét. Not long after the murder, the parents moved to a new home in Atlanta. Two of the lead investigators in the case resigned, one because he believed that the investigation had incompetently overlooked the intruder theory, and one because he believed that the investigation had failed to successfully prosecute the Ramseys.[2] There have also been accusations of a cover-up in the district attorney’s office.
With respect, Wilkilipedia is at best a very unreliable source especially on matters like this. Any Tom, Dick or Harry can add their two penny worth to any entry. In fact there is an entry on another matter which has remained there for a period of four months. And I know it’s false, because I wrote it!
November 25th, 2007 at 11:44 am
Good Morning, Can’t say No. !!
Would like to ask you a question, please.
November 25th, 2007 at 11:44 am
“Sickening Smear Campaign” goes the headline in the People. When I saw that, I thought they meant the “ludicrous” mud-slinging and innuendo being levelled against Murat’s girlfriend. Now that IS a smear campaign. The evidence? Murat’s dodgy eye, and her being a Jehovas Witness. And the press are giving it full credibility - all to back up the abduction nonsense…
November 25th, 2007 at 11:43 am
36
leslie Says
perverting the course of Justice
I think ,the mcc already perverted the course of Justice ,in All
November 25th, 2007 at 11:43 am
28…pat
Who knows for sure, Pat.
But whoever opted for M3 must be a very stupid chooser of “Detective Agencies” .
Couldn’t have picked a worse one really.
Their claim that Madeleine was 100% certain to be alive…and that they would
find her within 6 months, surely must have made someone in Team McCann
raise an eyebrow.
November 25th, 2007 at 11:42 am
10 Patch
I really don’t feel that I want the McCanns to suffer endless torture. As I’ve said before, if an accident happened, even if one of them lost their temper and killed her, if they were contrite, one could feel some sympathy for them and their loss. I am beginning to feel that this case is bringing out the worst in me. My 17 year old son said to me, “But, Mum, what if they’re innocent?” and it would be a terrible thing if they were innocent and were being hounded. The thought makes me feel like a monster myself!
But it’s the lies that worry me. The patios were NOT unlocked - no-one goes out leaving their flat unlocked. And then there’s the profit-making and selling of Maddie goods. As I said to my son, “If you disappeared, would you expect me to put your photo on T-shirts and get money from it?” He admits it is very suspicious and strange. And then there are the high profile people!
These are the reasons I don’t think the case should just be “dropped”. The public now need to know. If K or G killed in anger, then we need to know. Not so that we can bang them up for lif to punish them. But it shouldn’t be rolled under the carpet.
Patch, I am not criticising you for your vehement feelings - it’s just that I am beginning to feel bad myself!
November 25th, 2007 at 11:42 am
The Metado 3 are being used like pawns in an ugly game
November 25th, 2007 at 11:40 am
36 leslie
I’m grateful. Thanks very much!
November 25th, 2007 at 11:40 am
morning
“MADDIE: 10 NEW SUSPECTS”
I’m glad ,i wasn’t in Algarve by that time
November 25th, 2007 at 11:39 am
32 Eric Voglin says: (November 25th, 2007 at 11:34 am): “Tony - public opinion polls mean nothing!”
REPLY: So why do marketing people and governments spend billions of pounds a year on them? And what made Gordon Brown change his mind about calling a General Election?
November 25th, 2007 at 11:38 am
Tony
23
The Moroccan authorities expelled a British citizen, a few days ago, after he contacted staff from a gas station near the city of Marrakesh. A source from “Sureté Nacionale”, Moroccan security and intelligence services confirmed that the British citizen offered a large amount of money to several employees, in exchange for specific statements about a sighting concerning a blonde girl. British embassy in Morocco, contacted by SOS Madeleine, refused to comment. The possibility of having private detectives working in their country was referred, by the same source, as “an offence and a violation of national sovereignty”.
A source from PJ also told SOS Madeleine that “any person who undertakes a private investigation about a crime, in Portugal, is committing a crime - perverting the course of Justice – and will be arrested.” The McCann hired a private Spanish company, Metodo 3, to set up a hotline for people having information about Madeleine.
The hotline number has replaced the police phone numbers in the official page of FindMadeleine campaign. But according to Spanish Law and the specific regulations concerning private detective’s activity, any information received concerning a crime must be immediately forwarded to police.
Duarte Levy and Paulo Reis
Version Française
November 25th, 2007 at 11:37 am
JONBENET RAMSEY AND THE RANSOM NOTE
Extract from Wikipedia
Ransom note
Investigators determined that the ransom note was written on a sheet of paper that belonged to the Ramsey family[3].
A Sharpie felt-tip pen similar to the one used to write the note was found in a container on the Ramseys’ kitchen counter, along with other pens of the same type.[3]
A practice sheet for the ransom note was found on the same pad of paper, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. No fingerprints could be detected on the note. The text of the note had many odd features, including the fact that $118,000 was demanded—$100,000 in $100 bills and $18,000 in $20 bills.[4], a figure that closely matched a $118,117.50 company bonus that John Ramsey had recently received.[1], and his financial liabilities, recorded on a home computer, of $1,118,000 [3].
The police regarded the ransom price as a suspiciously low amount of money in proportion to John Ramsey’s income and net worth [3] (in excess of $6 million, also reported on the home computer). The writer of the note claims “We are a group of individuals that represent a small foreign faction. We respect your bussiness (sic) but not the country that it serves.”[5]
The parents have always maintained that the crime was committed by an intruder, and a group of investigators in the employ of the Ramsey family favor that theory.
Handwriting samples were taken from a number of suspects who might have written the ransom note. Forensic analysis cleared everyone except for Patsy Ramsey, whose writing style bore some resemblance to the ransom note.[4][6]
November 25th, 2007 at 11:36 am
16 Christoph
I am amazed that you say this. Cortisol, the stress hormone, has a huge impact on the body and immune system. I know, from events in my own life, this to be true. I have also been told this by several pain consultants. This is not ‘New Age’ science but accepted medical fact.
November 25th, 2007 at 11:35 am
24 Peter Mac
That is interesting- I may go find them on the net in a bit.
I was wondering why the papers have commented that the Metado 3 are not experienced enough in this kind of work.
I was led to believe by some report that they are the experts and have found 20 odd missing children that’s why the Mcc’s hired them.
But if fraud is their forte then they will have plenty of experience in this field and maybe they have uncovered a can of worms.
November 25th, 2007 at 11:34 am
Tony - polls on public opinion mean nothing!
November 25th, 2007 at 11:33 am
but why would Metodo3 - or indeed any PI agency - be willing to be a part of so-called ‘credible sightings’?
Because they want to impress their customer that they are making progress, to justify the fee and hopefully get a new contract!
November 25th, 2007 at 11:31 am
22 Eric Voglin
Here is one account of public opinion on the JonBenet Ramsey case, from Boulder, in 1999:
QUOTE
BOULDER — And you thought everybody had an opinion about who killed JonBenet Ramsey?
In a Colorado News Poll of Colorado residents, nearly four of 10 respondents said they didn’t know or were unsure who killed the child beauty queen. Talmey-Drake Research & Strategy of Boulder conducted the poll for the Denver Rocky Mountain News and KCNC-TV News 4 from June 16 to June 27.
Questions were posed to roughly 400 men and women in the metro area, plus about 200 in other parts of Colorado. The margin of error is plus or minus 4 percentage points.
In the poll, 38% of the 594 people questioned said they didn’t know who killed JonBenet.
There are those with opinions, however. Twenty-five percent of the respondents believe the 6-year-old’s mother, Patsy Ramsey, killed her. Far fewer, 6 percent, think John Ramsey killed his daughter. JonBenet’s 12-year-old brother, Burke, was suspected by 5 percent of those surveyed, even though police and prosecutors earlier this year cleared him in the 2 1/2-year-old case. It was an intruder, 7 percent said. And 4 percent refused to answer the question.
The Ramsey family has denied involvement in JonBenet’s death. Attorneys for family members refused to comment Wednesday.
In the poll, 98 percent of the respondents said they had heard about the Dec. 26, 1996, slaying.
Pollster Paul Talmey said he has rarely seen such high public awareness of a crime. “It’s right up there,” he said. “There is a broad, broad awareness of this case.” Talmey was not surprised by the number of people who said they didn’t have an opinion about who killed JonBenet.
“People have really a strong feeling about not claiming somebody’s guilty unless they have a fair amount of information,” he said. “People think, ‘Gee, it has dragged on. If it was really clear who did it, there would have been an indictment by now.”‘ Still, the acquittal of O.J. Simpson of murder charges has caused the public to be far more willing to sound off on major crimes, said Mimi Wesson, a professor at the University of Colorado School of Law and a mystery novelist.
“People have come to grips in a dramatic way with the fact that the criminal-justice system doesn’t always produce a just outcome,” she said. “And once people acknowledged that, then I think they felt freed up to substitute their own reasoning and information gathering processes for the criminal-justice process.”
REST OF REPORT SNIPPED
November 25th, 2007 at 11:30 am
Tony 23
I don’t doubt that the McCanns are lying about something (it could just be the ‘regular checking’), but why would Metodo3 - or indeed any PI agency - be willing to be a part of so-called ‘credible sightings’? I mean, it assumes that the PIs have been TOLD to make things up. Would the McCanns risk something like that? How would the McCanns put it to the PIs?
GM to Marco: Listen here, mate. We’re responsible for our daughter’s disappearance. I’ll give you a couple of hundred thousand euros if you can get some Moroccans to say they saw our lovely daughter Madeleine.
I find it very suspicious that the McCanns have employed the best legal counsel, but the worst PIs. It looks like they’re trying to save themselves rather than find their child.
November 25th, 2007 at 11:29 am
21 Matt
I wonder how true some of the reports have been in the newspapers? Metado 3 could be very p*ss*d off- and wish they never touched this case as this looks like it could finish them if they don’t come up with something
November 25th, 2007 at 11:29 am
Good post Stevie.
My theory has always been on this that they regularly left the kids for the whole evening without checking, or at least that’s not how it started, but as the holiday went on the dinner party became the priority each night and complacency set in and very little checking was done on the night in question. This is what they are trying to cover up. They were all pissed and gave different stories which a day or so after they couldn’t remember but it was too late to go back on. Madeline wasn’t killed by any of them. There was a huge window of opportunity for abduction which they are denying. In other words they are gulity of serious neglect which is what they have all been trying to cover up for so long and when the parents became suspects it became even more important to stick to their original stories - which of course don’t add up.
November 25th, 2007 at 11:22 am
16 Christoph says (November 25th, 2007 at 10:57 am): “Leave medical pronouncements to the professionals - the doctors - like Kate and Gerry McCann…”
REPLY: Like: ‘The smell of death on my clothes and Cuddle Cat was because I took Cuddle Cat to work and had been working on six corpses in the two weeks before I went on holiday”. Or: “It felt so right/was at worst naive” to leave three childen under 4 on their own with an unlocked door exposing them to the risks of fire, abduction, injuring themselves or becoming severely distressed. Or: “Body fluids found in the spare wheel well of our hired car were dirty nappies or rotting meat”.
November 25th, 2007 at 11:16 am
As Mr McCann explained: “The distance is so small, it was so close it was almost like having dinner in your garden. What we were doing was rigorous with multiple people checking at regular intervals.”
When asked if Madeleine might have wandered out through the unlocked patio windows towards the swimming pool, or beyond to the beach, the McCanns dismiss it out of hand.
“We’re absolutely certain. We double and treble-checked and have no doubt she was taken,” said Mr McCann. Yet another scenario is now emerging in the local press. It is built on the recollections of other guests and workers at the resort.
The official story from the McCanns is this. Mr McCann said he checked on his three children at 9.05pm. He noticed that a door in the apartment which had been left shut was ajar.
He thought nothing of it but it may have indicated that a kidnapper was already there. But his daughter was fast asleep so he went back to the tapas bar.
Another of the group, Jane Tanner, says she took her turn 10 minutes later. She claimed later to police that she saw a dark-haired man of about 35 carrying a child as she walked back to the bar afterwards but thought nothing of it.
Soon after her return - at 9.45pm - Dr Oldfield did his round of the bedrooms. In a first statement to police, it is unclear if he actually went inside the McCann flat.
Indeed, one scenario is that many of the checks of the children were not visible, but involved listening at doors or even from outside the apartments.
However, in a second statement Dr Oldfield insists he did look in Madeleine’s bedroom, believes he saw her there, and that there was light coming in through the windows as though the heavy shutters had been opened.
Again, he thought little of it until afterwards. Then, of course, it was Mrs McCann’s turn. She found Madeleine gone.
Madeleine’s aunt Trish Cameron recalled that she received a call later that night from her younger brother, Mr McCann, who told her: “I went back to check the children at nine o’clock. They were all sound asleep, windows shut, shutters shut.”
Mrs Cameron related that when Mrs McCann went to the two apartment a little under an hour later: “The shutters had been jemmied open. They think someone must have come in the window and gone out of the front door with Madeleine.”
But what is now perturbing Portuguese police is how could she be abducted when the McCann group were checking so often? Or have reports inadvertently exaggerated how vigilant the parents really were?
A worker at the tapas bar says that only a tall man, believed to be Russell O’Brien, got up from the table during the entire evening. Of course, this witness might be wrong. A busy barman could not have eyes on the McCann party for two and a half hours.
And what of Najova Chekaya, the aerobics teacher running the quiz? She was invited over to the McCann table by Mr McCann himself when the game ended at 9.30. She stayed for half an hour. She later claimed to friends that nobody left the table.
There is another conundrum too. It concerns the sighting by Jane Tanner of the man carrying a child. He was wearing beige trousers and smart black shoes. Her report is taken seriously by police.
Yet a British holidaymaker, Jeremy Wilkins, has given a deposition that does not support her evidence. He knew Mr McCann because he played tennis with him, and was walking his eight-month-old son in the night air when the drama unfolded.
He says that he met Mr McCann, who had come out of his apartment at 9.05pm, and had a word with him. Soon after that Jane Tanner would have crossed paths with Mr Wilkins and his baby.
Mr Wilkins says he saw no man carrying a child or Jane Tanner herself. “It was a very narrow path and I think it would have been almost impossible for anyone to walk by without me noticing,” he said.
So today the questions remain. Was Madeleine kidnapped or killed? Or unwatched, did she simply walk out and get lost? How could there be a break in with a jemmy through metal shutters without waking the twins or alerting a passerby?
Someone, somewhere must know the answers
November 25th, 2007 at 11:16 am
17 Pat,
Uncovering more than the McCs want them to know ?
Look at the Metodo3 website. English version
Divisions -
Insurance
Financial
Legal
Franchises
Fraud
Mutual Insurance
Patent and Copyright Falsification
Information Protection
Due Diligence and Disloyal Competition.
(Nothing about missing children. )
But then under ENTERPRISE -
para 4 sentence 2
“Our motto and objective is to turn all of our efforts into the creation and development of a union of European detectives in the fight against (- wait for it !!-) CORPORATE FRAUD.
Pat, I think you may be on to something here.
November 25th, 2007 at 11:14 am
METODO 3, MOROCCO AND AN EXPULSION ORDER
Several weeks ago, when the ‘Madeleine-was-kidnapped-to order-by-a-paedophile-gang-and-is-now-in-Morocco’ fever was at its height, there was a report in a couple of newspapers that an unnamed British man had been expelled (deported) from Morocco.
The report added that the reason he had been expelled was that they had received numerous complaints from hotel owners that this man had been chatting up hotel staff and others offering sums of money if they would come forward and claim to the authorities that they might have seen ‘Madeleine’. Did anyone else see this report?
I am trying to track down the report which I may have on file, but I can’t get it right now by Googling.
It occurred to me that Team McCann and Metodo 3 were trying to promote ‘credible sightings’ of Madeleine by this totally underhand method.
If I can find out more, I will post it here
November 25th, 2007 at 11:11 am
REPLY: I don’t think so. The best-researched book on the subject, published recently, is very clear that JonBenet Ramsey was done to death by a furious mother in an uncontrollable rage. The parents then hid the body in the basement and only a very thorough police search found it
That’s biased as well Tony. One book came to that conclusion. It is certainly right of you to point out that there was no final DNA match to anyone but DNA of an ‘unknown’ Caucasian male was found on the body. The case in most people’s view remains open.
November 25th, 2007 at 11:07 am
19…pat
As the Public tended to discredit them from day one… Team McCann have been
very slow to catch on. @)
November 25th, 2007 at 11:04 am
16…Christoph
Thank you, Dr LOL.