Madeleine McCann: The A-Team, Ruining Lives And Spinning The Single Thread
MADDIE WATCH - Anorak’s at-a-glance guide to press coverage of Madeleine McCann, Kate McCann and Gerry McCann
DAILY STAR: “SECRET A-TEAM IN HUNT FOR MADDIE”
In 1972, a crack commando unit was sent to prison by a military court for a crime they didn’t commit. These men promptly escaped from a maximum security stockade to the Los Angeles underground.
Desperate Kate and Gerry McCann have forked out £500,000 on an “A-Team” of former top spooks to find missing daughter Madeleine.
Can the plan come together?
The couple now have “a global operation” of dozens of retired FBI, CIA and even MI5 agents dedicated to solving the mystery of her disappearance. The top secret team has been given six months to solve the riddle.
Pah! The A Team can do it in 40 minutes WITH ad breaks…
Says the McCanns’ spokesman – and still the McCanns’ spokesman – Clarence Mitchell:
“They have been on board for a few months and are on a six-month contract. For security reasons we can’t go into detail of the experts involved but it would not be wrong to say some are former military and police personnel with a degree of expertise.”
If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find them, maybe you can hire… The A-Team.
THE GUARDIAN: “Diary: Esther Addley”
Our sympathies today are split, however, for we must also spare a small pang of pity for the security guard in Brussels who on Tuesday told the Sun about his sighting of a young girl who absolutely, definitely, without question was Madeleine McCann. “I saw her face and recognised that it was her,” said the man. “I would bet everything I own that it was her.”
It was our Maddie?
And sure enough, Belgian police later confirmed - dear reader, you are ahead of me - that it wasn’t. We can find nothing, as yet, on eBay, but Kate and Gerry McCann will be heartened that the man is without doubt now living under a cardboard box with only his own gnawed fists and his shame for sustenance.
The McCann case ruins lives..?
SPIKED: “‘Our Maddie’ makes a media comeback - The silly-season resurrection of the McCann tragedy shows that this was always a cynical, elite-scripted drama.”
Not that the absence of anything beyond hypothesis has inhibited the frontpage speculation. Indeed, the absence of hard evidence at the heart of the Maddie phenomenon has been its lifeblood. With nothing known beyond the barest of facts, anything, no matter how macabre, can be guessed at. And what better than a mail-order paedophile ring based, of course, in Belgium? In lieu of evidence, good old-fashioned prejudice will do. Indeed, over the past year, two pictures showing obviously Muslim women carrying or walking with a blonde-haired girl have been splashed under the headline: ‘IS THIS MADDIE?’ Well, Arab women with a European-looking child – it’s got to be dodgy.
Madeleine McCann: spinning news from a single thread
Posted: 14th, August 2008 | In: Broadsheets, Madeleine McCann, Tabloids Comments (527) | Follow the Comments on our RSS feed: RSS 2.0 | TrackBack | Permalink
Comments
August 14th, 2008 at 2:00 pm
Daisy Says:
August 14th, 2008 at 1:50 pm
“”I have read on another site that apparently Amaral has stated in an interview
that he does not believe the parents are responsible for whatever happened
to the child.”"
Not quite Daisy….he was asked “”if the McCann’s were responsible for MM’s
death”"
Relevant part of interview….
“”Focus – Are Madeleine McCanns’ parents responsible for their
daughter’s death?
G.A. – No. There is a neglect in the guard [of the children]. There are no
doubts that those children were not safe, because if they were, one of them
wouldn’t have disappeared. Now, saying that “the responsibility of the death
belongs to…” We had to understand, to collect data about what happened
from there on. The reconstitution is essential. I did not understand, but I
accepted the decision from a hierarchical team that I was part of, why the reconstitution was not done right away. The possibility of trying to make
a new reconstitution was opened, but the arguidos had already left Portugal.
A thing like this is only done with arguidos. The ideal is to have everyone,
but even only with the couple, that were arguidos at that point in time, the reconstitution could have been carried out.”"”
August 14th, 2008 at 1:54 pm
Pink Flying Pigs?
At least when you have heard enough you can launch it.
http://www.myredpacket.co.uk/product.php/4101/53/the-oinking-flying-pig/c96dd632d5971bb111772716499fbf2e
—
M&A
Artemis
Gifts for women?
Diamonds are probably a better bet.
August 14th, 2008 at 1:52 pm
Mercedes,
Thank you for your answers.
Is the dossier about the DNA samples public?
August 14th, 2008 at 1:51 pm
Julie Says:
August 14th, 2008 at 1:37 pm
Only reserved for reticent’s…..
And you are never reticent. IMO
August 14th, 2008 at 1:50 pm
Sorry, M&A, I’ll try again (I’m not English nor am I in the UK):
I have read on another site that apparently Amaral has stated in an interview that he does not believe the parents are responsible for whatever happened to the child.
M&A
Artemis
Thank you, Daisy.
August 14th, 2008 at 1:49 pm
brandon flours Says:
August 14th, 2008 at 1:37 pm
If he say’s something slanderous….it’s slander.
August 14th, 2008 at 1:37 pm
Whats clarence’s legal position as a spokesman and libel ?
Does he have to prove that they told him to say what he says ?
Does it mean hes immune ?
August 14th, 2008 at 1:37 pm
OUCH
… Bully!
August 14th, 2008 at 1:35 pm
Julie Says:
August 14th, 2008 at 1:32 pm
I never grovel.
I tend to use thumb screws when they get a bit uncooperative.
Works wonders on reticent PP’s and AG’s.
August 14th, 2008 at 1:32 pm
…. always HAS to me (IMO of course)
Matt … you’re really gonna have to grovel to the very nice Mr Public Prosecutor and Mr Attorney General for those DNA docs, howzabout starting with :
Dearest Kindest Honourable Sirs,
……
August 14th, 2008 at 1:30 pm
Carmen
August 14th, 2008 at 1:03 pm
I also translated your “brilliant” questions (http://tinyurl.com/5dcfeb), I am sure that between all, we will be able to give Madeleine what she deserves…
Justice and respect.
Marie Nicholas
August 14th, 2008 at 1:08 pm
For what we know the Birmingham Lab has said they can’t do a “third” test becouse the “can’t find” the samples…
We will have to wait until Mr. Pascal, Mr. Paulo Reis ande Mr. Duarte Levy, tell us what es “really” on the dossier.
August 14th, 2008 at 1:29 pm
It stinks of a cover up now!
August 14th, 2008 at 1:24 pm
brandon flours Says:
August 14th, 2008 at 1:01 pm
Re…..DNA….
“”GA -The technique of residue collection using special dogs like these, CSIs,
is usual in England, in the United States and it has already led to more than
200 condemnations. The laboratory where the samples [of blood, cadaver
odour and DNA from Maddie] were analyzed has corroborated these
experts’ work.
Focus – It has corroborated it, but it does not specify that they belong to
Maddie McCann.
G.A. – They can only match that from Madeleine McCann, because the lab
had the twins’ DNA and it was not a match. Those are 15 out of 19 markers
that match.”"
Come on Mr Public Prosecutor and Mr Attorney General…let’s be having the
DNA documents…in their entirety.
Thanking you in anticipation.
August 14th, 2008 at 1:23 pm
I think that re-affirms what most of us have been saying and thinking all of these months BF! This is not just your plain, simple “missing child” scenario … it goes very deeper than this.
There was a programme on the radio here many years ago, called “Strange But True” … it had this very eerie music as a theme tune ….
August 14th, 2008 at 1:20 pm
Julie
He was removed the day he focused on something important.
August 14th, 2008 at 1:16 pm
Astro & Joana … I take my humble hat off to both of you … the persistence of people such as yourselves (and many others, including Mr Amaral) will eventually turn into Justice for Madeleine!
I had a little giggle to meself when I read the last question and answer … talk about leaving the drum roll go on …..
August 14th, 2008 at 1:15 pm
MN
There have certainly been no winners in this case; my subjective impression is that the Portuguese authorites concluded that there was no useful purpose in continuing on the merry go round.
It is also my subjective impression that Team McCann didn’t really believe that the files would be opened; they wanted access to them themselves, but they didn’t bank on others being able to see them also.
Some facts would be nice, though…
August 14th, 2008 at 1:15 pm
Does clarence get to use their high ranking lawyers or does he have to get his own?
Very interesting
August 14th, 2008 at 1:11 pm
I always thought astro was a lady
Astro and joana - Well done and thank you
August 14th, 2008 at 1:08 pm
Thank you Mercedes!
Chenier
I agree with you about the reconstruction. There is also that obscure point about the DNA. Was the sample really lost in the lab as has been said - how often does such a thing happen? The credit cards accounts would have been interesting.
Wouldn’t it be better for the MCs that everything had been done thoroughly, from their point of view?
August 14th, 2008 at 1:07 pm
Yes Jo and astro are GREAT
August 14th, 2008 at 1:06 pm
Is Amaral going to sue the pink one ?
Are the uk police investigating the fund?
August 14th, 2008 at 1:01 pm
julie
Read jos blog now!!!!
August 14th, 2008 at 1:00 pm
brandon flours Says:
August 14th, 2008 at 12:58 pm
OMIGOD
____________
WASSUP?
August 14th, 2008 at 12:58 pm
Marie Nicholas and Jo
You are both very kind with your comments, but I must clarify that I am not a journalist, just a person who wants to know the truth.
The author of the article is Mr. Pascal Enfantés Kidnappés, I’ve only translated it into Spanish, like all other articles which can be found on the blog. “Hasta que se Sepa la Verdad”
Even though there something that you’re not wrong, Mr. Pascal DOES know what he is talking about and he will not publish anything about what he isn’t sure.
Thank you. Mercedes - From Spain.
August 14th, 2008 at 12:58 pm
MN said:
Yet, this is only an impression, since I haven’t read the files. What gives me the impression is all the spinning that goes on, and the incapacity of the journalists so far, to give us a clear picture of what made the investigation come to a standstill. What is still lacking?
————-
The reconstruction.
That is why the PJ archived the case. That is why Clarrie is spinning desperately via Lori ‘Thick as Two Short Planks’ Campbell.
If I were feeling cynical I might even hazard the guess that the Portuguese authorities decided that the financial burden of following up the lunatic ideas proffered by or on behalf of Team McCann should now fall on someone else’s shoulders.
Remember, the AG said it would be re-opened if there was ‘credible’ evidence.
And nothing we have seen of Clarrie’s ‘leads’ falls even remotely under the heading of ‘credible’.
However, I would argue that the spin has worked very successfully; Clarrie has got people thinking in his own terms. Those wonderful ‘leads’ are being discussed here as if ‘leads’ were what an investigation is about…
August 14th, 2008 at 12:58 pm
OMIGOD
August 14th, 2008 at 12:53 pm
Carmen Says:
August 14th, 2008 at 12:45 pm
Hello Julie!
Has the postman been yet?
______________
Not yet!
_______________
Yes, there is a vacancy for a dishwasher - I had imagined something small, square and white, but so long as it’s efficient and doesn’t take up too much space, then anything will do.
______________
It’s only the square part that doesn’t fit my profile
________________
Are you any good at texting - I need someone I can trust with my mobile number to text me updates?
_________________
Whizz kid at texting …
August 14th, 2008 at 12:52 pm
jos blog update WOW !!
August 14th, 2008 at 12:48 pm
They had just ordered starters when the routine of checking began. Matt Oldfield went first at 8.55 to check his own apartment and to hurry up the Paynes, who had still not arrived.
He was followed by Gerry, who entered his apartment at about 9.05 through the patio doors to the lounge. Earlier that week the McCanns had used a key to go in through the front door next to the children’s bedroom but, worrying the noise might wake the children, they began using the patio doors, leaving them unlocked.
When he entered the apartment, Gerry immediately saw that the children’s bedroom door, which they always left just ajar, was now open to 45 degrees. He thought that was odd, and glanced in his own bedroom to see if Madeleine had gone into her parents’ bed. But no, she and the twins were all still fast asleep.
Gerry paused over Madeleine, who – a typical doctor’s observation, this – was lying almost in “the recovery position” with Cuddle Cat, the toy her godfather, John Corner, had bought her, and her comfort blanket up near her head, and Gerry thought how gorgeous, how lovely-looking she was and how lucky he was. Putting the door back to five degrees, he went to the loo and left to return to the restaurant. That, of course, was the last time he would see his daughter.
As he walked down the hill, Gerry saw Jes Wilkins on the opposite side of the road pushing a child in a buggy. Gerry called hello and crossed over to talk. Wilkins and his partner were eating in their own apartment that night, but their youngest still wouldn’t settle. It reminded Gerry of the fraught time he and Kate used to have with Madeleine when she was a baby. In his memory, they could never eat a meal together when they went out, as she was always disturbing them and needing to be wheeled off to sleep.
As Jane Tanner walked up the hill, she saw Gerry talking to Jes and, as she passed them, she saw ahead of her a man walking quickly across the top of the road in front of her, going away from the apartment block, heading to the outer road of the resort complex. The man was carrying a little girl who was hanging limply from his open arms. The sighting was odd, but hardly exceptional in a holiday resort.
Her daughter fine, Jane returned to the table. At 9.30, Kate got up to make the next check on her children, but Matt Oldfield was checking too, as was Russell O’Brien, and Matt offered to do Kate’s check for her, which she accepted. Gerry teased that she would not be excused her turn at the next check.
In the McCanns’ apartment, Oldfield noticed the children’s bedroom door was again open, but that meant nothing to him, so he merely observed all was quiet and made a cursory glance inside the room, seeing the twins in their cots but, agonisingly, not directly seeing Madeleine’s bed from the angle at which he stood. Afterwards, he could not say for sure if she had been there or not. Nor could he say if the window and shutter had been open.
He would get a hard time from the police because of this, during his interviews not long afterwards, being aggressively accused of taking Madeleine – you passed her out of the window, didn’t you! – being suspected because he had offered to take Kate’s turn.
Jane Tanner, too, would be accused of fabricating or misremembering her sighting of this stranger with a child. There could be no answer to such an accusation – except that she was an ordinary, honest person who knew what she had seen. Sometime after 10pm, Rachael Oldfield would go to Jane’s apartment to tell her Madeleine had been taken and Jane would say: “Oh my God. I saw a man carrying a girl.”
It perhaps needs to be stated openly that all these timings and details, the way in which they weave and dovetail together, are based on witness accounts – corroborated not just by the McCann group but by others, such as Jes Wilkins – and that, despite suggestions to the contrary, there are no obvious contradictions or differences between them. Nor has any of the McCann group, at any time since, said they wanted to retract or change their statement.
That suggestion too is a lie.
Russell O’Brien checked his own daughter at 9.30 and found she had been sick. Jane returned to the apartment to be with her daughter, and Russell went back to the table. Russell would later fall under suspicion too, because of those few minutes he spent away from the table.
Finally, at 10pm, it was Kate’s turn to check the apartment. She only became alarmed when she reached out to the children’s bedroom door and it blew shut. Inside the room the window was open, the shutter was up and Madeleine’s bed was empty. Kate quickly searched everywhere and ran back down the hill and into the restaurant: “Madeleine’s gone, somebody’s taken her” or “Madeleine’s gone, someone’s taken her.”
Gerry stood up. “She can’t be gone.” “I’m telling you she’s gone, someone’s taken her.”
It was reported that Kate had said “They’ve taken her,” as if it was someone that she knew. She did use those words, but only later, back in the apartment, in her despair, as she said: “We’ve let her down. They’ve taken her.”
Matt went down to the 24-hour reception at the bottom of the hill to raise the alarm. The call to the police went in at 10.15. They arrived 55 minutes later. It is widely believed among the Portuguese media, and perhaps the police too, even now, that the McCanns called Sky News before they called the police. For the record, Sky News picked up the story from GMTV breakfast television, at around 7.30am the following day.
There was a latch lock on the sliding glass window, and the McCanns thought, but could not be sure, that they had locked it at the start of the holiday. They would later discover it was common for cleaners to open the shutters and windows to give the rooms an airing, so there was no way of knowing whether the window was locked that night or not and no forensic trace to indicate where and how an abductor had gone in and out. They could easily have used the front door, perhaps even had access to a key.
In the McCanns’ minds now, there is no doubt Jane Tanner saw their daughter being taken, but there was so little time to talk in the first few days that it was not until Jane saw the description of Madeleine’s pyjamas in the media, around Monday or Tuesday of the following week, that she told them the little girl she had seen was wearing the same design: pink top and white bottoms with a floral design.
While searches began, Gerry was worried about Kate, as she was so distraught and kept talking about paedophiles, saying Madeleine would be dead. He tried to be reassuring, but of course he was thinking the same things.
It all came pouring out of him at 23.40 – from his phone records – when he called his sister Trish in Scotland ranting and raving semi-coherently on the phone about Madeleine being taken, and Trish kept trying to get him to calm down. A sharp contrast with the way he would be later, particularly in public, once he had regained his self-control.
The detectives from PJ arrived at about 1am. By 3.30am they had gone and there was no police action at all, or none visible to the McCanns.
Four times that night they put in calls via the British consul; four times the message came back from the PJ, a message that the McCanns would never forget: “Everything that can be done is being done.”
One of the PJ officers had put on surgical gloves and begun trying to dust down the bedroom, but his powder was not working properly. He tried to take the McCanns’ fingerprints for elimination, but that didn’t work either. It all had to be done again the next day.
The twins slept on like logs, just as they always did at home, though even their parents were fleetingly worried – had they been sedated by an abductor? – that they should be quite so comatose. The Ocean Club gave them another apartment, but the McCanns did not want to be alone, so the twins were taken to the Paynes’ apartment, and Kate and Gerry went there later too, to try to rest.
They got up at first light and went to search alone on the open scrubland beyond the resort, wandering around, calling Madeleine’s name. It was cold and lonely – there was no answer.
Gerry had asked the departing PJ detectives at half three about contacting the media to make an appeal. One of the officers had reacted with surprising agitation, waving his hand emphatically: “No journalists! No journalists!” That, of course, was not quite how it worked out.
From The Sunday Times
December 16, 2007
Kate and Gerry McCann: Beyond the smears
For six months David James Smith has examined the evidence surrounding the disappearance of Madeleine McCann for The Sunday Times Magazine. In this, the most comprehensive — and authoritative — investigation yet, he addresses the key issues facing Gerry and Kate as they prepare for Christmas without their daughter
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Lets see the flaws and spin in this now