Madeleine McCann: Watching Robert Murat
MADELEINE McCann is missing. Still missing.
But now the police have a name. And, more importantly, so do the papers.
Robert Murat is all over the front pages. He is a suspect in the hunt for Madeleine McCann. But what of the evidence against him?
The Evidence
“Kidnapping has weird echoes of Soham case,” says the Express’s front page. “MADDY SUSPECT BEHAVED JUST LIKE HUNTLEY.”
Huntley is, of course, Ian Huntley the man who murdered Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman, crimes for which he is serving two life sentences. Huntley is the man who had a female accomplice, one Maxine Carr, given three-and-a-half years for conspiring to pervert the course of justice.
Is this what the Express means? Is Murat’s mother Jenny, who has been doing her bit to help the hunt for Madeleine, abetting her son’s crime? At his trial, it emerged that Huntley had been accused of having sex with underage girls and of rape several times in the past. Has Murat a history of criminal depravity?
One thing at a time. We would not want to jump the gun and hang Murat without a full investigation. Of Murat’s mother, the Express says he has advised her son not to return to the family home while he is under suspicion. We hear him tell her: “I am innocent. I am very upset and I think that Portuguese police are just trying to find and Englishman to blame.” But there is no suggestion she is involved in any crime. No-one has questioned her.
Sex
And of Murat’s warped sex? You mean “SEX SECRETS OF MADDY SUSPECT”. You mean the “kinky threesome with pool cleaner and wife”.
Star readers have every right to be appalled at such a front-page headline. It’s not as if the paper that carries adverts for sex phone lines (“Cheap and Dirty”; “Hot and Horny”; “Filthy 4 Free”; Unzip and Unload”) is used to such things.
Readers will be relieved to hear that the threesome is not so shocking. The Star says Murat has been the lover of German Michaela Wulczuch for over a year. And during that time, Wulczuch has been living with her husband, Luis Antonio, a Portuguese swimming pool cleaner.
Readers looking for tales of illicit and degenerate sex may be less than impressed. And we advise them to watch daytime telly and see Armani identify her baby’s father by way of Jeremy Kyle’s DNA test kit and affairs exposed by lie detector.
This is Murat’s “TANGLED LOVE LIFE” (Mirror). All points of this love triangle have been questioned by police. We are not told why, nor what form the questions took.
Murat. Wulczuch. Antonio. This makes one woman and two men, the outline of the people seen with a child at a service station on the road out of Praia da Luz. Walczuch has light, auburn hair.
Is this the evidence? Is this a why they have been questioned?
Jekyll and Hyde
“SUSPECT OR SCAPEGOAT?” asks the Mail. “I’ve been made a scapegoat,” says Murat. The Mail says Murat is the sole suspect in the case of Madeleine McCann. So much for Walczuch and Antonio.
“It’s ruined my life,” says Murat. “It’s made things very difficult for my family here and in Britain. The only way I’ll survive this is if they catch Madeleine’s abductor.”
But the talking has started. This is Murat, of whom Paul Titcombe, an ex-boss speaks. Titcombe is troubled by Murat’s past. He has seen Murat in action, at children’s parties. Says she: “Instead of mingling, he’d go straight to the bouncy castle and jump around. He got a bit of a name for himself. It seemed like a fixation.”
The Sun hears from Murat’s former work colleague Ji Stanton. Says he: “If he didn’t take his medication, he could be very Jekyll and Hyde. People did see him as creepy.” Ji once accused Murat of trying to nick his sale: “Rob just flipped out in seconds. He went berserk, eyes bulging. I was freaked out.”
Such is the evidence. Such is the case against Robert Murat.
Meanwhile, Madeleine McCann is missing…
Madeleine McCann: Robert Murat And More Questions
May 16th, 2007 at 10:37 am
We do appear to be starting the whole ‘trial by media’, which has been a feature over recent years. Bit of a shame really that the papers are prepared to do a character assassination on an individual, and then just drop it without so much as an apology when they have been found innocent. Lives wrecked ‘while u wait’. Perhaps the Portugese legal system has the right idea.
The focus of the press should still be on finding Madeleine, not on idle speculation on a man who is a suspect, not yet a convict.
May 16th, 2007 at 10:38 am
I suppose the fact that this takes their focus away from the mothers anguish is a good thing, but probably not from Mr Murat’s point of view!
May 16th, 2007 at 10:46 am
For sure
May 16th, 2007 at 11:03 am
It seems that the only evidence about the character of Robert Murat leads to the following conclusions:
1. He is a genuinely concerned person who has a child of his own of the same age and this is his motivation to help.
2. He is an attention seeker who craves importance and wants to be in on the action.
Now, everything is crawling out of the woodwork to say that they knew all the time that he was peculiar. If the real perpetrator of this crime is not found, he will be dogged by this smear campaign for the rest of his life.
Can we not reserve our judgement until there is some concrete forensic evidence?
May 16th, 2007 at 11:10 am
i really don’t believe the police would tear his life apart on the basis of just that!
just because it’s all they are telling us doesn’t mean it is the only evidence. i suspect the police know much more than they are telling us.
How long was it afterwards that we heard that Ian Huntley had commited previous sex offences?
May 16th, 2007 at 11:21 am
i really hope that maddie is found safe and well because if that was my little girl i would be full of worry the police really need to start to find this person or people or whoever because if they arent found they will be able to do it again and again, and just to point out another thing that i have just been reading about robert murat, this man has a history of accuations i really dred to think to what they are doing to that poor incocent little girl, ITS NOT FAIR!!!!! and i feel that whoever has maddie needs to return her to her family, but as many other people have said no one can pass judgements untill there is some forensic evidnence, and also untill the person repsonisble is found and proven gulity,
May 16th, 2007 at 11:27 am
Kath - Remember the case against Colin Stagg, who was accused of murdering poor Rachel Nickell on Wimbledon Common. It was an horrific crime - a woman brutally murdered in front of her child. Stagg fitted the bill. A young blonde policewoman took the alias of “Lizzie James” and tried to engage Stagg’s interest. She told him of her fantasies to kill. Loner, unattractrive Stagg indulged her. He wrote: “I’ve written the story on the lines of what I feel you are into.” The honeytrapp led Stagg to court. Mr Justice Ognall dismissed the police operation as “deceptive conduct of the worst kind”. The case was thrown out. Stagg is innocent. But Stagg’s name is still linked to the murder. And always will be.
May 16th, 2007 at 12:10 pm
I dunno, I can’t help thinking this was done under the noses of the media to give the police a chance to get on with real investigating elsewhere.
Did you see the police searching the back of the green vw laughing at the cameras?
May 16th, 2007 at 1:08 pm
I wonder what Arthur Miller would have made of the situation?
May 16th, 2007 at 1:46 pm
The press have their blame/hate figure now.
***Exactly*** the same reaction from the press as the first time that Barry George’s name was linked with Jill Dando’s murder. Send the hacks out to dig up any possible guff to support their angle, including some totally irrelevent bullsh!t from former colleagues, neighbours, etc.
The UK tabloid press really sucks.
May 17th, 2007 at 10:55 am
[...] May ROBERT Murat’s face is known to all. Did you see his one eye? His face contorted with rage? His smoking a cigarette? Camilla Cavendish sees Murat beeing tried by innuendo. I began [...]
May 17th, 2007 at 11:37 pm
to my mind this is the guy who kidnapped Madeline. I believe this has echoes of Soham and the Monster Huntley. Murat’s behaviour is identical, Huntley brought suspicion on himself by ‘meddling’ with the investigation in a seemingly ‘helpful’ way, just like this guy Murat. This seems to be a common pattern with paedo’s.
Wouldn’t surprise me if he(Murat)and the Russian guy (the web expert), were involved in some kiddie porn ring probably incorporating Murat’s fiancee and her ex-husband and that they are a ring of paedophiles who have multiple images of children on computers etc for their own sick gratification or to sell on the web.
If so they should hang in public.
Seems to close for comfort this. The Russian computer web-designer expert. Murat’s business interests (maybe child porn). Perverted sexual deviances with his girlfriend and her ex.
Murat ddoesn’t sound like the ‘innocent’ bystander to me.
I hope to God Whatever has happened Maddy is still alive, but if my hunch is true, I doubt it.
Funnily enough whilst writing this, so sensitive a guy am I, that I feel physically sick.
May 18th, 2007 at 8:46 am
What are you basing this on?
All that any of us have (apart from those that know the man) is what the media has told us. How do we know that we have the whole story? How do we know that what has been reported is any more than suppostition and innuendo?
All that you will ever be told by the press is what they want to tell you, and that is all too frequently twisted into one direction or the other in order to present the particular paper’s angle on the story.
May 18th, 2007 at 7:00 pm
I belive she is a live and well and soon she will be with her family.
May 31st, 2007 at 1:47 pm
I also pray Maddie is alive and not suffering every day of her baby life. I hope some caring women who lost a child an needed another to over come her grief has looked after her, I hope she comes to her sences and gives her back because she was never hers to take. To think of Maddie in any other way or circumstance just makes me sick.
GIVE HER BACK FOR CHRIST SAKE……A little tiny child who loves her parents and was on holidays. Geez!!!!! You better have not hurt her.. that’s all I can say..
June 1st, 2007 at 2:52 pm
All i know is she it missing and she needs’ to be found talk is cheep, I see lots of it. little girl is missing and all the press seeem to be making a profit from a childs life.
Sick world no wonder we have terrorists.
If the kidnapper reads any of this i would say please do the right thing people want to find her. safe and sound!
June 3rd, 2007 at 11:05 pm
hiya i really hope you find her beacuase i think shes still living out there
and who ever has got her please give her back to where she belongs please its really upsetting i bet she was a good kid her family are heart brocken if you see her please try to report to the police please shes a really cute girl who wants her family back shes 5 years old she missed her birthday
i really hope you find her xxxx
love jess xxxx
June 5th, 2007 at 12:18 am
I too have been following the Madeleine case, very upset at times and have got her “missing” posters up in my windows and classroom. I really don´t know what to make of Rovert Murat. My first instinct was……. HE¨S THE ONE.. it stunk of Ian Huntley. Surely though, after all this time, if there is more than a slight suspicion, the Portugese police should have detained him??
As for the “triangle”. That stinks too! Early reports suggested two men and a woman. Too close to home with Murat and company. Come on, somebody must know something, somewhere. Has Murat got a dogdy past??? Have the reasons for his separation from his wife been unfolded? Is there something his ex-wife knows but isn´t saying? What about people who know him? Read something on here about “if he didn´t take his medication….” What medication????
I live in hope that Madeleine will be found soon and returned to her family.
September 13th, 2007 at 2:25 am
i’m confussed, i want to believe maddy is missing and is safe with her addopted mother but the media is making me think the macanns are guilty..why does Kate Macann look so good all the time..ie…hair done,make-up perfect ect.If i had a missing child i would look like i was dragged through a hedge!
November 19th, 2007 at 7:55 am
[...] witness tells detectives (private ones) she “saw Michaela Walczuch hand a youngster to a man 90 miles from Praia da [...]
November 19th, 2007 at 2:54 pm
[...] 20 Responses to “Madeleine McCann: Watching Robert Murat” (Anorak)We do appear to be starting the whole ‘trial by media’, which has been a feature over recent years. Bit of a shame really that the papers are prepared to do a character assassination on an individual, and then just drop it without so much as an apology when they have been found innocent.www.anorak.co.uk [...]
November 20th, 2007 at 8:02 am
[...] detectives fear Robert Murat, girlfriend Michaela Walczuch and her estranged husband Luis Antonio were part of an organised ring that snatched the [...]
April 29th, 2008 at 7:42 pm
I feel so scared i wanna beat up this bastard