Madeleine McCann: Gerry McCann Talks With Vanity Fair
MADDYWATCH - Anorak’s at-a-glance guide to press coverage of Madeleine McCann
DAILY MIRROR front page: “MADELEINE: THE BIG INTERVIEW”
“Our regret”
“GERRY: I wish we have never gone to the tapas bar”
“KATE: I wish I’d seen the stranger watching us”
“READ THEIR HEARTBREAKING WORDS INSIDE”
Voyeurs, campaigners, police and handwringers come see the pain, the suffering the agony. Prepare to be heartbroken!
“Riddled with guilt, the distraught” Gerry will tell all to the Mirror. Well, not to the Mirror, rather to Vanity Fair magazine. Journalist Judy Bachrach spoke with Gerry in October near the family home in Rothley, Leicestershire
And the interview is not with Gerry and Kate. Only Gerry McCann was interviewed, says the Mail. Kate McCann’s words come via friends and family
Pages 4 and 5: “I WISH”.
It reads very much like a prayer, or a camping speech by Barack Obama. Says Gerry McCann:
“I wish I hadn’t gone to the tapas bar.
“I wish I’d have stayed in the apartment that night
“I wish I’d stayed in the room when I checked on her five minutes longer”
A wish…
Says Gerry McCann: “”At the time we did it, it was not irresponsible. Of course we feel guilty about not having been there and that is just something we have to deal with for the rest of our lives. You are not asking anything we don’t think about on a daily basis. We live this 24 hours a day”
Gerry says his world went “all black, with maybe tiny points of light” in the days after Madeleine vanished. “We can’t cry our eyes out every day because that’s not helping. So after three days I picked myself up…quicker than Kate could. Grief washes over you. It’s like a big wave, mostly I was able to beat it back”
And the Madeleine ‘Look into my eyes’ campaign? Says Gerry: “We thought it was possible this could hurt her. Her abductor might do something to her eye. But in marketing terms it was a good ploy”
THE SUN: “Life’s bleak but I cling to hope”
Says Gerry McCann: “People can support you in your darkest hours and in our case the darkest hour was of course when Madeleine went missing. Now it is just bleak”
In next month’s Vanity Fair: “The interview with Gerry came as it emerged GORDON BROWN has snubbed the McCanns’ request for a meeting; furious Kate EXPLODED when cops first told her she was a suspect; and family spokesman Clarence Mitchell has given a university SPEECH on the topic Missing Maddie McCann — the perfect PR campaign
“A pal of the McCanns said Kate, 39, believes the family were STALKED by Maddie’s kidnapper in the days before she went missing”. WOW
COUPLE hit back on film. Says Clarence Mitchell, the spokesperson: “It is not us being greedy. It is us being needy“
DAILY MAIL: “It’s all my fault, admits Maddie’s father”
Well, not quite. Gerry McCann is making no confession. He maintains that the fault lies with a kidnapper. Says the Mail: “Gerry McCann is tortured by guilt that Madeleine’s disappearance is his fault”
Will he tell all? Mr McCann tells Vanity Fair’s Judy Bachrach: “I can’t talk to you about the details of what happened. I live under threat from the Portuguese - if I do talk - of two years’ imprisonment”
“THIRD POLICE SUSPECT BREAKS HIS SILENCE” – Says Robert Murat to Vanity Fair: “All I can say is that I am innocent”
DAILY EXPRESS front page: “MADELEINE - MOTHER IS SHUNNED BY PRIEST”
Page 9: “KATE’S SCREAMS AS POLICE TOLD HER: YOU’RE A SUSPECT – KATE McCann screamed when told by police that she was a suspect in Madeleine’s disappearance, it emerged yesterday. Opening the door of her rented villa to a Portuguese officer the family had come to know, Kate, 39, shouted: ‘Do you honestly believe that I would murder my own child?’”
Gerry McCann is a “39-year-old cardiologist”. Facts!
On the speculation: “Gerry says bitterly: ‘Yes, yes, I know. Kate killed her in a frenzy, Madeleine was sedated by us, she fell down the stairs – in which case you would have thought they’d have found her body. I’ve heard all of that. There are a huge number of theories in the media. But what I want to know is, who told them all that?’”
DAILY STAR: “Anguished and painfully thin, his wife Kate was too upset to answer even a single question during the interview with glossy US magazine Vanity Fair. Gerry revealed in the 7,500-word magazine article he had to be coaxed by a counsellor into talking publicly about his daughter in the days after she disappeared”
DAILY RECORD: “Maddie’s Dad: Slim Chance Of Getting Her Back”
“Distraught Gerry McCann has admitted the chances of him seeing his missing daughter Madeleine again are ‘slim’”
VANITY FAIR: “Unanswered Prayers”
“After three-year-old Madeleine McCann disappeared on a family vacation in Portugal, her parents pursued a high-stakes strategy: media saturation. It succeeded beyond their wildest imaginings—winning the aid of everyone from J. K. Rowling to the Pope—and failed miserably. Getting the first in-depth interview with Gerry McCann since he and his wife, Kate, were declared suspects, the author re-traces their footsteps to their daughter’s empty bed”
And then a policeman appeared. His name Ricardo. “Because for months they used to have regular weekly meetings with the Portuguese police, and then they stopped,” recalls Gerry’s older sister Trish Cameron
“Do you have something to tell us?” Ricardo asked.
“No,” Kate replied. “Do you have something to tell us?”
“He nodded. “Yes. You are being made arguidos”…
Eight months of talking - read it all…
Posted: 10th, January 2008 | In: Madeleine McCann Comments (1,344) | Follow the Comments on our RSS feed: RSS 2.0 | TrackBack | Permalink
Comments
- Kelley Lynch on Phil Spector’s Hair Performs With Ronettes
- June on The Pirelli 2010 Calendar In Artful Nudity (NSFW)
- June on Susan Boyle: World Divided Over SuBo And Lady Susan
- Tony on Daily Mail And Tax Payers’ Alliance Attacks BBC Over Its Free Trees For A Better Planet
- Cheryl on Susan Boyle: World Divided Over SuBo And Lady Susan
January 10th, 2008 at 6:06 pm
779 Matt
Don’t let that witch cast spell on you they are both as guilty as each other and that’s what the judges will say. IMO
_————–
Mods and Admin
She isn’t a witch!
January 10th, 2008 at 6:01 pm
777…sabrina
Dr G P fits that bill.
Dr K maybe just a tag along.
January 10th, 2008 at 6:00 pm
775…chenier
If he had nothing to do with the death…helping to dispose of the body would
be a very very stupid thing to agree to..
January 10th, 2008 at 5:58 pm
687
Tinsel Says:
January 10th, 2008 at 4:26 pm
_______________________________________________________
Perhaps the McCanns are sociopaths. This would explain their strange behaviour,
their lack of genuine emotional feelings.
January 10th, 2008 at 5:57 pm
773…man on a hill
Dr G P certainly would.
They would have gone to sleep before Dr K managed to get through her
blackmail lines though. @_
January 10th, 2008 at 5:56 pm
746
Matt. Says:
January 10th, 2008 at 5:21 pm
..There has to be something else.
——————————————————–
Well, I tend to regard the destruction of his career as a powerful motivator.
He’s not looking at a trade-off on prison sentences; he’s looking at his life…
January 10th, 2008 at 5:55 pm
770,
Ade
Great fun! I saw them when they were still smashing up their guitars.
Marc Bolan on Dave (digital 19) - saw him live too, from the wings
January 10th, 2008 at 5:53 pm
746 Matt
Yeah , i know you still have to believe that OB and JT cared that much for their career and social standing which i agree can be viewed as doubtful. You’ve got to admit though, K and G could make an exceptional pair of blackmailers, it could be so them, allegedly
January 10th, 2008 at 5:51 pm
Hi everyone,
Just been browsing on the Martin Brunt “Dark Forces at Work” site. I don”t know how to
cut and paste but there is an interesting article from Fox News posted by Bubbles today at 15.10pm.
It”s rather long but worth reading.
January 10th, 2008 at 5:49 pm
Mods & Admin
Just had a G & T to help me trawl through.
cheers!!!
January 10th, 2008 at 5:47 pm
754 firestar
“The unnamed source said: “Who do the McCanns think they are?”
mad moonie knows:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JgWQ1erBnMo
now that’s an old recording studio
great fun
January 10th, 2008 at 5:45 pm
768…Ferdinand
The PJ have seen much more than any videos of the Mccann’s and they
think otherwise.
January 10th, 2008 at 5:43 pm
762 Matt. Says:
“I trust Mr Rebello’s information.”
I have viewed the available McCann videos again and again, and I think they are odd, but innocent of the alegged crimes.
January 10th, 2008 at 5:42 pm
761
Ferdinand, If you think the English Authorities know M. is alive, why do they let the PJ go on with their expensive enquiry, which keeps them busy and stops them taking care of other cases? Why don’t they warn them off saying the little girl is probably not alive?
January 10th, 2008 at 5:41 pm
765…Carmen
Seconded !!
January 10th, 2008 at 5:38 pm
763
brandon flours Says:
January 10th, 2008 at 5:36 pm
night
lone pigeonx
Good night x
January 10th, 2008 at 5:36 pm
night
lone pigeonx
January 10th, 2008 at 5:35 pm
763…Ferdinand
I understand the meaning.
But I would not bet on such either outcome myself.
I trust Mr Rebello’s information.
January 10th, 2008 at 5:32 pm
755 Matt. Says:
“But Madeleine is deceased…the PJ are quite certain of that.”
I place my bet on her life.
January 10th, 2008 at 5:32 pm
oops sorry got distracted and didnt cut
January 10th, 2008 at 5:31 pm
745
Ade Says:
January 10th, 2008 at 5:18 pm
================
I take the p*** out of the Paddy’s all the time - and I am one (well a female one).
I know you like sattire - you would have loved my pub (one of them) in west of Ireland where Father Ted was filmed. The whole cast used to come in for a pint during breaks, in their clerical gear - well…..pure class. Great craic! To think dear aul Ireland banned it for 2 yrs…says it all ey.All to do with the church of course…..mighty feckin fun (as you’d say)
January 10th, 2008 at 5:29 pm
you may as well say
an unknown source said ‘the mccanns should be burnt at the fucking stake, their ashes ground up and scattered into a vat of acid’ for that matter
January 10th, 2008 at 5:29 pm
Madeleine search was ‘hijacked’ by McCann publicity machine, Portuguese police claim
Last updated at 17:22pm on 10.01.08
Add your view
The search for Madeleine McCann has been hijacked by her parents’ “gigantic propaganda machine”, Portuguese police have claimed.
Officers lashed out against Kate and Gerry McCann’s slick PR operation after learning they had granted an interview to glossy magazine Vanity Fair, and could even make £2million from a film about their daughter’s disappearance.
A source close to the investigation said detectives were furious about the latest publicity, which came as formal requests for the McCanns’ friends to be reinterviewed were sent to Britain.
Police are also skeptical about “a surge” of new witnesses traced by the couple’s private detective agency, Metodo 3, the Portuguese newspaper Correio da Manha reported.
The unnamed source said: “Who do the McCanns think they are?
“The discovery of new witnesses in the last few weeks have led authorities to believe they are battling against a gigantic propaganda machine.
“The McCanns have some very powerful people on their side - millionaires, celebrities and even politicians.”
A second official dismissed the work of the couple’s detective agency as “diversion tactics”, aimed at distracting police away from the McCanns, who are still official suspects in the case.
He said: “Their tactics are really beginning to annoy us. Whenever a decisive date approaches the company takes a new rabbit out of the hat.”
The attacks are a clear indication of the anger that the McCanns’ publicity campaign has caused in Portugal, where police investigations are usually carried out in secret.
They came as Gerry McCann revealed he is tortured by guilt that Madeleine’s disappearance is his fault.
In an interview with Vanity Fair, he also admitted there was only a “slim” chance his daughter was alive - the closest he has come to conceding the fact.
“I wish I hadn’t gone to the tapas bar,” Mr McCann told the society magazine. “I wish I’d stayed in the apartment that night. I wish I’d stayed in the room when I checked on her five minutes longer.
“Of course we feel guilty about not having been there and that is just something we have to deal with for the rest of our lives. We live this 24 hours a day.”
Mr McCann, 39, gave the interview alone in October, without his wife Kate, after being approached by the magazine.
Vanity Fair also spoke to the couple’s friends and family as well as to the other suspect in the case, Robert Murat.
Mr McCann’s sister Philomena told the magazine that he had called her on the night Madeleine vanished and sobbed: “It’s all my fault, because Kate and I went out to dinner.”
Clarence Mitchell, the family’s spokesman, said Mr McCann had not been paid by Vanity Fair and had instead requested donations to the fund in return for cooperation with future projects.
He said the Find Madeleine campaign was to take on a “commercial dimension” to keep it in the black. It emerged on Tuesday that the couple could make £2million from a film about Madeleine’s disappearance.
Other projects could include a book deal and even TV chat shows which the McCanns have shunned in the past for fear of seeming like celebrities.
The £1.2million fund to finance the search for Madeleine has been halved by the cost of hiring private detectives, running adverts and paying the family’s living costs.
Only £600,000 remains and the balance is expected to drop to only £346,000 by April and possibly zero by June.
Scroll down for more …
Still missing: Madeleine McCann vanished on May 3
In the Vanity Fair interview, Mr McCann, from Rothley in Leicestershire, said: “I know now that, probably, the chances of getting Madeleine back are slim.
“You might never see her again. But still you have the hope. Still.”
He told how he sank into a depression after his daughter’s disappearance from a resort villa in Praia da Luz, Portugal, on May 3. He said the world then seemed “all black, with maybe tiny points of light”.
But the consultant cardiologist said he pulled himself out of the “darkest hours” by throwing himself into the campaign to find his daughter, adding: “Grief washes over you - it’s like a big wave, mostly I was able to beat it back.
“We can’t cry our eyes out every day, because that’s not helping. So after three days I picked myself up - quicker than Kate could.”
He conceded that his wife remained “fragile” and had struggled to deal with the loss of Madeleine, who vanished a few days before her fourth birthday.
The couple, who are both suspects in their daughter’s disappearance, insist she was taken from her bed while they ate dinner with friends nearby.
Scroll down for more…
Kate McCann goes to be questioned at a Portuguese police station: Gerry said he and his wife live under threat of the police
Portuguese secrecy laws mean they are not allowed to speak directly about the investigation, or the events of May 3.
Mr McCann told Vanity Fair writer Judy Bachrach: “I can’t talk to you about the details of what happened.
“I live under threat from the Portuguese - if I do talk - of two years’ imprisonment.”
But Trish Cameron, Mr McCann’s sister, told Vanity Fair of Kate’s dramatic reaction when policeman Ricardo Paiva told her she was being made a suspect.
She said Kate screamed at the officer: “Do you honestly believe that I would murder my own child?”
The McCanns were interviewed and formally named as suspects on September 7 and Mrs McCann was allegedly offered a two-year jail sentence if she confessed to accidentally killing Madeleine and hiding her body.
Mrs Cameron said Kate, a 39-year-old family doctor, rejected the deal saying: “I’m not going to f****** lie!”
The couple’s psychologist, Alan Pike, who counselled them every day for a fortnight in May, said Mrs McCann was threatened with losing her other children, two-year-old twins Sean and Amelie.
He told Vanity Fair: “The police told her during the interviews that her other two children might be taken away.”
Another friend told the magazine that Mrs McCann was tormented about her daughter’s welfare, saying she constantly said: “I hope whoever has Madeleine is giving her blankets, is feeding her properly, is keeping her warm.”
Jon Corner, another friend interviewed by Vanity Fair, said Mrs McCann told him she was tortured by the idea that she might have glimpsed the abductor.
He said: “She told me ‘I wish I could roll back time and go back to the day before Madeleine was abducted. I would slow down time. I’d think: Where are you? Who are you? Who is secretly watching my family? Because someone was watching my family very, very carefully. And taking notes’.”
The couple endured a swing in public opinion against them after they were named as suspects and Mr McCann said this was a “bleak” time.
They also lost some of the support they had attracted from politicians, including Gordon Brown, who had telephoned them to pledge his help.
Mr Mitchell said the couple had been offered only a medium-level consular meeting by Downing Street, which they rejected.
In the interview, Mr McCann spoke frankly about how he and his wife employed a “strategy” to keep their daughter’s plight in the headlines.
They were criticised in Portugal for circulating pictures of Madeleine and revealing the distinctive fleck in her eye, which police said could have put her life in danger.
He admitted the plan was risky but that “in terms of marketing, it was a good ploy”.
Mr McCann said he had considered the plans for a documentary-drama only because it could address issues such as alert systems to help find lost children.
• The third suspect in the Madeleine McCann case broke his eight-month silence yesterday to insist: “I am innocent.”
Robert Murat, an expat Briton, has never spoken publicly about the decision of Portuguese police to make him an “arguido” in the case.
But he told Vanity Fair: “All I can say is that I am innocent. There is no way I was at the resort that night. Full stop. I was in my mother’s kitchen until 1am. I spent the night at the house.”
Relatives of the 34-year-old say he spoke “off the record” to the magazine’s writer, Judy Bachrach, while he drove her around Praia da Luz.
They said he was not paid and had not broken Portugal’s secrecy laws which ban arguidos and witnesses in criminal cases from speaking about the alleged crimes or the police investigation.
Mr Murat, who has a daughter in Britain from a failed marriage, was named as a suspect last May 14 and his girlfriend, Michaela Walczuch, and her estranged husband, Luis Antonio, were interviewed as witnesses.
Reader views (12) Add your view | Show all
Here’s a sample of the latest views published. You can click view all to read all views that readers have sent in.
If they suspected that their appartment was under observation they are more stupid than I have already believed them to be for leaving young children alone in an unlocked room while they went drinking with friends.
- Ron, Guildford UK
Ellen Tong - the article means that with retrospect Kate McCann believes that someone was watching her family.
Those readers who wish to vilify Madeleine’s parents should consider this: they have two more children who need their family. If by some miracle Madeleine is ever found, she will need her family too. Blaming the parents is cruel in circumstances where they would no doubt lay down their lives to have her back. Hindsight is a wonderful thing, but we all make mistakes and when we do, we should be helped back up, not stomped on by the braying public. I doubt that anyone regrets what happened that night more than Gerry and Kate McCann. That is their issue that they must deal with. It really isn’t a matter for individuals unconnected to the case to try to punish them further.
These poor people, I pray they get some resolution.
- Barbara, London
Wise words Rone Rie.
- Squiz, Islington
January 10th, 2008 at 5:27 pm
714
dcb Says:
January 10th, 2008 at 4:40 pm
694
Tinsel Says:
The floor tile in 5A was wood parquet — fitted together in a sort of tongue and groove way, it pops right up with a little prying.
++++++++++
Where do you get that information from?
*****
I saw it in photos of the apartment and from the Panorama video. It’s wood parquet about 2×5 inch pieces–guessing at size.
January 10th, 2008 at 5:26 pm
says a lot actually, if they can’t even tell us who said that.
January 10th, 2008 at 5:24 pm
best unknown source comment so far.
The unnamed source said: “Who do the McCanns think they are?
January 10th, 2008 at 5:24 pm
748…Ferdinand
But Madeleine is deceased…the PJ are quite certain of that.
January 10th, 2008 at 5:23 pm
748
Somebody might be blackmailing the Government? From abroad?
January 10th, 2008 at 5:23 pm
Madeleine search was ‘hijacked’ by McCann publicity machine, Portuguese police claim
By VANESSA ALLEN and ANDY DOLAN - More by this author »
Last updated at 16:33pm on 10th January 2008
Comments (124)
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=507182&in_page_id=1766&ito=1490
January 10th, 2008 at 5:22 pm
was diane webster getting “a bit of a seeing to” (as delboy would say) and at it like rabbits with by the good mr j buck?
we should be told