Madeleine McCann: Facing Facts With Lee Rainbow
MADELEINE McCann: Times is hard and members of the Metropolitan Police Force’s Governing body are rightly upset and confused by UK Premier David Cameron’s request the London Woodentops carry out a review of the strange case of missing child Madeleine McCann.
They want to know who is going to foot the bill? That answer is easy…everyone.
Cameron’s decision to involve Scotland Yard was defended by Downing Street officials as a whirlwind of complaint struck with cries of “Foul” around claims intervention was a “PR exercise”. Others say the move could take years and cost millions.
It is complicated by: time since the disappearance, the lack of facts, answers, trace of the child or her body and the ensuing publicity storm surrounding the events which have developed into pro and anti-McCann camps
Critics point out the Portuguese remain the lead investigators since no crime is known to have been committed in Britain and the child disappeared while in the care of her parents the Doctors Gerry and Kate McCann.
It is correct permissions have to be sought and given and then all documents will have to be translated and read by Scotland Yard detectives ( a loose term since any chief Woodentop could be based at any London Police Station).
Coincidently, for those not in London and the immediate environs, London has TWO Police Forces – the Metropolitan lot and the City of London Police.
The choice of the Met for this probe is interesting because the City of London’s Force’s investigations into long and complex fraud cases would seem to give it a better track record for this sort of review.
Lord Harris of Haringey, a Labour Party supporting Peer and member of the Metropolitan Police Authority, says the Tory PM’s intervention undermines the independence of the force and the investigation would use up valuable resources.
“While no-one doubts the desirability of doing what can sensibly be done to find out what has happened to Madeleine McCann, I can imagine that the senior leadership of the Metropolitan Police are not exactly happy about this,” said the Labour peer.
Better Place
It is true the investigating team set up by the Met will have a long and difficult task. Translations are not always the best place to start.
There is perhaps a better place…right in their own back yard. For the past few years British Police Forces have used the skills of criminal profilers to help them with extremely difficult cases.
The Madeline McCann Case is more than difficult, it is baffling, it is the Marie Celeste all over again: No body, no clues, no answers to vital questions and for some time now no investigation at all since the Portuguese Police authority leading the investigation says it has no evidence on which to proceed. That and the reaction to it are all well documented here in Anorak and elsewhere.
Basics
Police work and ‘proper’ journalism have one thing in common, begin at the beginning and ask the five Great Questions:
What?
Who?
Where?
Why?
When?
There is a good starting point which does not need any translation team to start an immediate review.
Britain’s highest ranking criminal profiler had a clearly expressed view which he told the Portuguese police they should follow after they had also asked for help.
Strangely the information was revealed after the Drs McCann had demanded suppression of a book published by the once lead investigator into the circumstances surrounding the disappearance of their daughter.
The advice (again from Britain’s top criminal profiler) was reported in the Mirror:
The National Policing Improvement Agency ( NPIA) expert wrote a report to Algarve police chiefs giving advice.
Details of the confidential report emerged during the final day of a libel trial involving former Portuguese detective Goncalo Amaral, who led the Maddie investigation.
Amaral is trying to overturn a worldwide injunction banning the publication of his book Maddie: The Truth of the Lie. In it he claims Kate and Gerry were involved in Maddie’s death and staged her disappearance. His lawyer, Antonio Cabrita, told the court Rainbow wrote: “It was Madeleine’s father who was the last one to see her alive.
“The family is a lead that should be followed. The contradictions in Gerald McCann’s statements might lead us to suspect a homicide.”
The details were in evidence led in a Lisbon Court last year and prompted a whirlwind PR campaign on the court’s steps immediately after the revelation.
Mickey Mouse
Then Anorak said: “The probe suggestion came from the man heading Britain’s TOP criminal profiling unit. Not a Mickey Mouse operation, the very top unit which all UK police forces are able to use as a resource when investigating crime. There was nothing in the advice saying there was any evidence to support the suggestion.”
It was said there were contradictions in the statements Dr Gerry McCann had given and he should be considered as part of any investigation.
There should be nothing unusual about that since police would have looked at the family involved first in almost every missing child case.
Lee Rainbow the criminal profiler was featured here when The Times talked to him in rare interview. He then headed a five man team.
The unit has helped in high profile cases such as the Ipswich prostitute murders and the disappearance of Shannon Matthews
When the information was revealed in court it was largely ignored by the UK Media. The Daily Mail seemed to be the only British national featuring the formerly secret information which was revealed by a lawyer acting for the former head of the investigation team into the child’s disappearance in a hearing into a ban on his book “The Truth of the Lie“.
Skilful
It would seem to be a logical and very good place for any British detective to now begin. Call in the very top man for a chat and seek his opinion on the way the investigation should proceed.
Why? Because that is why Mr Rainbow was paid (by the Home Office which has complied with the Prime Minister’s bidding and requested/ordered/suggested/asked? for the inquiry). Lee Rainbow is recognised as the most skilful and adept adviser the UK has in its armoury.
There’s more: the use of Behavioural Investigative Advisers in serious cases is recommended at all senior detective training courses. Guess who is considered at the very top of the list of advisers? One Lee Rainbow; he wrote the paper.
No PR campaign can ever diminish or cloud that fact. His opinion and views have to be faced and dealt with.
It could the start the ball rolling and as in all good detective stories you should begin right at the beginning and don’t stop until the Sherlock announces who-done-it.
There is one last and as yet unasked or answered question…just who gets the result of this specialist review, who reads it and forms judgement upon it? Premier Cameron had better insure the answer to that question is also everyone.
PR, whether publicity or a voting system, doesn’t always produce the desired result. – AGW
Posted: 15th, May 2011 | In: Key Posts, Madeleine McCann Comments (18) | TrackBack | Permalink
June 5th, 2014 at 4:48 pm
Comments are closed
May 30th, 2011 at 7:17 am
It is called by ‘triagulation’. If in science empirical evidence does not fit we call in other disciplines to add to this phenomena.
By experiments the reconstruction shows in certain conditions what cannot be done, and has not been done. Profiling is part of this in behavioural sciences and as such a Profiler can have many other disciplines to enable him to write on matters of logistics of a scenario. It really is about if you have been fed the matter of hotel or no hotel and really been there as I think Lee Rainbow had to be to see if this was scientifically actually possible and repeatable. Triangulation is how we validate evidence when there is a sterile thesis placed on a diagnosis. Any medical person knows that.
May 16th, 2011 at 9:31 pm
June I don’t think the sightings will ever end.
Think Lord Lucan, Elvis, the late Diana POW, and now MM.
May 16th, 2011 at 8:58 pm
Stig
Well said!!
June
Are you ever going to get over the fact that the Mccanns left their children alone??
Yes we all know it was very wrong, but I would be “yelling and bellowing too, if I was unfortunate enough to be in their position.
Do you expect them to sit back and do nothing about finding their child?
May 16th, 2011 at 2:26 pm
Here we go, video clips this time
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/3581834/Kate-and-Gerry-in-Maddie-video-bid.html
the first response to it eurgh – I feel ur pain…
May 16th, 2011 at 2:06 pm
How about the “cognitive interview”? It seemed to work a treat with Jane Tanner, apparently improving her eyesight to Great Horned Owl standards, although it did somewhat fall on its arse with Our Lady of Rothley – can’t win ’em all, I suppose.
May 16th, 2011 at 1:52 pm
Forensic psychology is another ‘science’ I have suspicions about to be honest. Sorry, I’m a cynic on these things and I think in practice, they have a very poor record in predicting outcomes.
May 16th, 2011 at 1:42 pm
http://www.expertsearch.co.uk/cgi-bin/find_expert?6631
Absolutely – who needs these experts, when you have Lorraine Kelly?
May 16th, 2011 at 1:35 pm
The whole circus stopped being about MM in September, 2007, when it became “The Kate and Gerry Show”, complete with supporting cast of assorted sycophants and bandwagon-jumpers – this latest episode is just another ill-advised leap over the shark.
May 16th, 2011 at 1:34 pm
LOL @ Stig.
During the Joanna Yeates case, an ‘expert’ criminal profiler claimed that the perp would probably have killed before and would have a high level of ‘forensic awareness’. He also thought there would be more than one culprit – perhaps a couple.
A respectable, professional Dutch boffin with a squeaky clean criminal record never really featured in any of his theories.
http://glasgowunihumanrights.blogspot.com/2011/01/criminal-profiler-dr-gary-macpherson.html
May 16th, 2011 at 1:13 pm
The Fund’s gone missing?…………………….. I mean MM
May 16th, 2011 at 12:33 pm
As we’re consulting the oracles, let me peer into my crystal ball and predict the outcome – a group of “career-minded” Met detectives will be carefully hand-picked and given the remit of analysing the files, searching for a sliver of information that will point the finger away from the parents, towards a new suspect. He will, preferably, already have a criminal record and, even better, be dead, thus reducing the risk of potential fallout – this will then be “released” to the media, who will act as judge, jury and executioner. Job done and much mutual backslapping all round – Cameron can bask in the reflective glory and all will be right with the world, except for one small detail. Can you guess what it is, yet?
May 16th, 2011 at 12:29 pm
Stig
The parents have been yelling and bellowing that noone is ‘looking for Madeleine’, the PM was publicly accused of not caring about’ his British citizen’, so he calls in the MET to prove he does care about his only British citizen that is’ every parents worst nightmare’ and heigh ho there’s a hullaballoo.
Personally I wish the shebang would go away, and laws made that British parents provide care for their children in their absence anywhere in the world.
May 16th, 2011 at 12:06 pm
Here we go again, bring in the best that Britain has to offer because everyone knows it’s going to be oh-so-much better than anything those backward, lazy and incompetent sardine-munching Portuguese could come up with.
.
The last time the oh-so-competent British Police were called in to ‘advise’ their criminilogically-challenged compatriots in Portugal, their advice was to focus on the parents, as stranger abductions are infinitesimally unlikely. If memory serves, there is every indication the Portugese did indeed heed the advise of their betters. Just look at Amaral, he saw the light and has been a dogged follower of the faith ever since. Look at the amazing results that have been achieved by doing things the British way. Not a scrap of evidence but a shed load of belief.
.
And now we have another much vaunted and feted British expert – Mr Lee Rainbow. All hail the infallible expert. As you do so, please try and forget those other two much vaunted – and touted to be ‘infallible’ – British experts who were previously called upon to bring superior British expertise to those poor and inexperinced Portuguese – Eddie and Keela. Please don’t for one second think that Mr Rainbow could possibly be a two legged version of the four legged failures.
.
Personally, I think criminal profiling is about as genuinely useful as palmistry or reading tea leaves, but I will play along. I have a bit of the ‘sight’ myself, and with the aid of the entrails of a freshly slaughtered goat, I forsee that this case will never be solved through the involvement of any British ‘expertise.’ The entrails never lie.
.
Suspecting the parents involvement is such a new concept. I can’t imagine why no one thought of it before – oh, that’s right, they did – didn’t they! The mighty Amaral stated he suspected them from the beginning – and one assumes, directed the following investigation accordingly. Then the British experts were called in and advised him to look closely at the parents too – pity he never thought of that by himself, he might have conducted his investigation accordingly and really achieved something.
.
Suspecting the parents and investigating accordingly, seems to be about all that has ever been done in this case. The results have been less than one might have hoped.
.
In science, if a hypothesis does not hold up to scrutiny against facts, it is usually dropped in favour of formulating a new one.
May 15th, 2011 at 9:50 pm
Interesting piece – unfortunately, however, I suspect that the chances of this review being allowed to come to any “off-message” conclusions are less than zero. There are far too many high-profile reputations at stake, should this particular bandwagon be derailed.
May 15th, 2011 at 9:37 pm
I wonder if the proceeds of he book are going to be handed over to the Met to help with costs? Or are the McCanns going to use that to search really useful places themselves-like the Bahamas, or the French Riviera.
May 15th, 2011 at 9:11 pm
I’m no fan of the McCanns but in their defence, the ‘science’ of criminal profiling has been shown up to be at best flawed, at worst a crock of you know what. (I’m not talking about geographic profiling so much as criminal personality profiling).
It was a criminal profiler who led the Met to Colin Stagg, after which the gallant force didn’t even bother to see if there was actually any hard evidence to link the hapless Mr Stagg to the crime he was accused of. Of course there wasn’t any evidence but that didn’t stop the Met/CPS bringing it to trial anyway, only for it to be hurled out of court by a very brave, honest and decent judge on the very first day.
I’d take any opinions of criminal profilers with a gallon of salt.
May 15th, 2011 at 5:46 pm
Frist!
So we can anticipate quite a lengthy period before we hear anything credible or substantial.
Hopefully an end of the ‘sightings’