Madeleine McCann: Suing Amaral, Mark Lawson’s Fact And Fiction, And Bloggers Beware
MADDIE WATCH - Anorak’s at-a-glance guide to press coverage of Madeleine McCann
THE GUARDIAN: “The Panama Mystery - Mr and Mrs Canoe’s case fascinates but can’t match crime fiction’s satisfying motives and denouement”
Mark Lawson does so love a good ending to a work of fiction and fact. A super-fiction. Take care you don’t confuse the two.
In his piece Lawson name checks them all: John and Anne Darwin, Radovan Karadzic, Fred and Rose West, Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman, Ian Huntley, Harold Shipman and…
As the trial was coming to a close, I was at the Harrogate Crime-Writing Festival, and newspapers were reporting the latest developments in the Madeleine McCann case.
Bingo! Where were you?
One of the reasons for the huge popularity of crime fiction is that the genre explores, in a sanitised environment, the fear and prurient fascination we feel when faced with murders and abductions. Real-life criminality and fiction have become a loop, communicating with each other: several of the books discussed at Harrogate featured missing children; in two years, expect a slew of novels about husbands and wives who mysteriously disappear.
Can you tell the difference between fact and fiction? Now read on…
THE SUN: “McCanns to sue cop over book”.
DEVASTATED Kate and Gerry McCann are to launch a legal blitz in Portugal after the publication of a scandalous book about the disappearance of their daughter Maddie.
In The Truth Behind The Lie, ex-police chief Goncalo Amaral details ludicrous allegations about the couple and the pals they dined with when Maddie vanished in Portugal last year.
Who gets sued?
The McCanns plan to take action against Amaral, Portuguese newspapers which reprinted parts of the £10 book and bloggers who discussed it.
Anorak did not discuss the book’s merit. We did not reproduce a single quote from the book. But can bloggers who did be sued effectively? Many are men and women of straw. What can the outcome be? Best for bloggers, perhaps, to avoid the matter? Or get a crack moderation team – like Anorak. But what, then , of freedom of speech?
Says Amaral: “This book is not revenge, it is not persecution. We can discuss the case in court if they want.”
In the context of a libel case, they might well…
DAILY MAIL: “We failed, says Maddie police chief… but he refuses to apologise to her parents”
Says Amaral: “’There will be no apology, I was just doing my job.”
As a writer…?
DAILY TELEGRAPH: “Madeleine McCann case: Portuguese police admit failings
The police detective who led the search for Madeleine McCann has admitted that there were some failings in the investigation but refused to accept responsibility for not solving the case…
Several hundred people queued up to collect copies of “Maddie The truth of the Lie” and many congratulated Mr Amaral for his courage to speak out.
BELFAST TELEGRPAH: “McCann case detective’s book to get English translation”
Who will review it if it published in the UK?
THE HERALD: “Sympathy for McCanns must be tempered”
Letters to the editor:
How kind Colette Douglas Home is to Gerry and Kate McCann (Comment, July 22). She uses many column inches pouring scorn on the Portuguese police (perhaps justifiably, I don’t know), showering Gerry and Kate with sympathy (I, too, feel for them), but only makes passing reference to the action that, had it not happened, would have prevented this heartbreaking event from occurring in the first place.
This is clearly their “decision to leave her sleeping while they met friends for dinner”.
- Allistair Matheson, Selkirk.
Colette’s opinion - that Gerry McCann is handsome and Kate McCann beautiful - is irrelevant. The eye of the beholder? Colette states: “And they will always carry the burden of their decision to leave her sleeping while they met friends for dinner.” What kind of parents, in a foreign land, needlessly leave their child, not yet four years old, asleep without a child-minder and out of sound or sight, while they indulge themselves with their friends?
The McCanns deserve all the anguish they brought upon themselves through poor judgment, and not endless public sympathy. Madeleine is the victim. I hope and pray that she is unharmed and is being looked after in loving care, however wrongfully.
- Donald C Irving, Ayr.
And on it goes…
Posted: 25th, July 2008 | In: Broadsheets, Madeleine McCann, Tabloids Comments (626) | Follow the Comments on our RSS feed: RSS 2.0 | TrackBack | Permalink
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July 26th, 2008 at 12:23 am
Absolutely Chatelaine - but there is a very good message in that report - one that, in my opinion, should be noted by the Camp. Neverthelesss, once you start to dig a hole, sometimes the only way out is to jump in and be buried in it!!
July 26th, 2008 at 12:23 am
Ah. Evening Sam
July 26th, 2008 at 12:21 am
Châtelaine Says:
July 26th, 2008 at 12:20 am
I scared everyone away?
Well, good night
i’m still here reading, but goodnight if you’re gone
July 26th, 2008 at 12:21 am
Last time I’ve written a bedtime story … Really.
July 26th, 2008 at 12:20 am
I scared everyone away?
Well, good night
July 26th, 2008 at 12:14 am
annie1 Says:
July 26th, 2008 at 12:08 am
Please read this - in my opinion, it says it all for me!!
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1038719/Platells-People-Is-best-way-help-Maddie.html
****
Excellent.
Pity, that for the “superficial” reader the venom is in the tail …
July 26th, 2008 at 12:08 am
Please read this - in my opinion, it says it all for me!!
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1038719/Platells-People-Is-best-way-help-Maddie.html
July 26th, 2008 at 12:00 am
Julie Says:
“Leave them in place …. they may, hopefully, wishfully, succeed in the end :twisted:”
Now this is getting interesting.
July 26th, 2008 at 12:00 am
Nite Garth; you have been missed.
You really didn’t want to know that, did you?
It’s a hello and goodnight from me, also…
July 25th, 2008 at 11:59 pm
GARTHY BABE, will you please do the honour of marrying me ??? “hearts” “hearts” “fluffy thingies” ? :grinL
July 25th, 2008 at 11:58 pm
M & A
yes holidays in UK are becoming more popular however you should take a your bitch to Portugal……….dont forget to get it chipped
**********
ah they are all boys, and chipped/tattooed anyway
July 25th, 2008 at 11:58 pm
For anyone who doubts the reliability of the sniffer dogs
and for those who like fairy tales:
Once upon a time there was a little girl, who disappeared at night from a holiday apartment in a Southern European country.
It shook the world in waves as it hit all media the same evening.
It was at first believed that she was abducted, but there was no proof of this, apart from one witness, who changed her statement 3 times and therefore had to be considered to be unreliable.
It was also thought that she might have woken up and wondered off [whilst her parents and friends dined nearby, yet out of sight and hearing]. However, that was considered to be impossible too as she was too small to have been able to open the doors [said her mother; and she could know].
Then it was suggested that something terrible happened to her and she never left the apartment alive!
So dogs were brought in from the Royal country in the North West. And they spotted blood and the scent of death.
They spotted blood and the scent of death in the holiday apartment. That made sense with this theory. But … where was the body?
But then these dogs also spotted blood and scent of death in a car that was rented by her parents [both doctors] weeks after she disappeared.
The theory started to crumble. How on earth could she have come to her sad fate in the apartment, yet be weeks later in that car?????
How was she hidden? Froozen? Cooled? Embalmed???? And how could she have been transported in that car to her final resting place in hiding, under the eyes of the world [e.g. the police and the press]????
The attentive reader will have observed that her parents were doctors. Doctors know more than the average citizen about DNA and cadaverine and other complicated things regarding bodies and corpses. Doctors are very well aware that it is next to impossible to completely eliminate whatever trace for the “CSI” technologies of modern detection. [To avoid conspiracy theories, for the moment secret services of whatever sort are not part of the story...].
Smoke and mirrors!
It is not possible for the dogs to tell WHO is dead. They only can tell that they smell a corpse. And … aha … [Hi Ganda
] the scent of dead bodies is for sale.
Eureka: planting cadaverine in a place where it could not possibly have been
and …
thus discrediting whatever the dogs detected in a very important other place.
It’s going to take a little while before the end of this story can be written and it’s probably not going to the classic end, like “living happily ever after”.
I’m sorry.
Will try and write a better nighttime story for you
July 25th, 2008 at 11:57 pm
# JuneJohnson Says:
July 25th, 2008 at 11:53 pm
Garth
XXXXXX
————–
Stop playing with me jj. Ive told you before……..
Now off to bed to dream up plan b for tomorrow
Nite little ladies …………..
M and A
Shall look out a nice cod to wrap round yer chops tomorrow garfy
(now we know how to shut him up)
July 25th, 2008 at 11:56 pm
Careful now Garth, you cant even look at You Tube these days without being sued - please be careful in what context you use brand names!!!
July 25th, 2008 at 11:55 pm
Chihuahua GARTHY DEAR …. you’re not the brightest smartie in the box at all are you?
July 25th, 2008 at 11:55 pm
Garth - FINK? isn’t that a brand name??
July 25th, 2008 at 11:54 pm
I myself have never been on holiday to Mallorca…one has heard it is full of charvas….has anybody holidayed there?
***********
M and a
I holiday in the Uk,and take the dogs
July 25th, 2008 at 11:53 pm
Garth
XXXXXX
July 25th, 2008 at 11:53 pm
# clouseau Says:
July 25th, 2008 at 11:49 pm
I myself might be clueless…however my dogs may fink different…………..anybody want to test the boys and girls
————–
What you got? chiuauas? (firk knows how you spell it)
chiuahuas
July 25th, 2008 at 11:53 pm
Garth Says:
July 25th, 2008 at 11:51 pm
oh come on hurry up……. the suspenders are killing me!
____________________________
Leave them in place …. they may, hopefully, wishfully, succeed in the end
July 25th, 2008 at 11:52 pm
Hello, despite my good intentions - I have to have a look in again!! Can anyone tell me - what was the eventual fate of Sharon Matthews Mum? Was she charged with anything? She didnt abandon her kid, so they couldnt charge her with that - was it just a charge of deception? I was away when it all concluded and I was thinking about it today - anyone know?
July 25th, 2008 at 11:51 pm
oh come on hurry up……. the suspenders are killing me!
July 25th, 2008 at 11:51 pm
whats all this about G using the front door to do his checks?
Is this his story to cover up the blind fiddling rumour?
July 25th, 2008 at 11:50 pm
with?
July 25th, 2008 at 11:50 pm
# Julie Says:
July 25th, 2008 at 11:48 pm
Don’t think Amaral is a crook at all - no matter what he looks like! Are you basing this question on that pathetic poor image you see in the mirror every morning Garthy??
————–
I take it thats without?
July 25th, 2008 at 11:49 pm
I myself might be clueless…however my dogs may fink different…………..anybody want to test the boys and girls
July 25th, 2008 at 11:48 pm
Don’t think Amaral is a crook at all - no matter what he looks like! Are you basing this question on that pathetic poor image you see in the mirror every morning Garthy??
July 25th, 2008 at 11:47 pm
# Julie Says:
July 25th, 2008 at 11:45 pm
Garth Says:
July 25th, 2008 at 11:40 pm
Typical
Clueseau the clueless gets a nice welcome and poor old Garthy gets nothing but abuse.
_________________________________________
Clouseau deserves nice welcome …. you on the other hand deserve something like me in your life ……. I’ll show you how to tread that line inch by inch, day by day …… until you fall off that line - and then you’re useless - unlike Clouseau who’s useful ….
————–
I’ll take your word for it
July 25th, 2008 at 11:45 pm
Anyway, on a more serious note…….. do we think Amaral looks more like a crook with or without the tache?
M and A
Its a given that most cops do look like criminals, look at the company they keep.
Garth I am always civil to you… if I said ‘good evening Garth how are you today’ you’d get upset and wonder what you had done.
But I do always try to whack you, you like it,you know you do….
July 25th, 2008 at 11:45 pm
Garth Says:
July 25th, 2008 at 11:40 pm
Typical
Clueseau the clueless gets a nice welcome and poor old Garthy gets nothing but abuse.
_________________________________________
Clouseau deserves nice welcome …. you on the other hand deserve something like me in your life ……. I’ll show you how to tread that line inch by inch, day by day …… until you fall off that line - and then you’re useless - unlike Clouseau who’s useful ….