MADDY WATCH - Anorak’s at-a-glance guide to press coverage of Madeleine McCann

DAILY EXPRESS front page: “MADELEINE – MUM FACES TEN YEARS IN JAIL. Now parents could be charged with abandoning their children”

Abandoning - to go for some tapas down the road?

Says lawyer Jose Olimpio: “The fact the McCanns were made arguidos means that there are justified suspicions against them of committing a crime.” But there is no proof they have…

And: “Mr Olimpio claimed the Portuguese penal code states that placing a person’s life in danger by abandoning them is punishable with a jail sentence of between one and five years. But the sentence rises to between three and 10 years if the victim is a child and the crime is committed by a parent or guardian”

Says Clarence Mitchell (not a lawyer): “They have committed no offence under Portuguese, British or any country’s laws”

DAILY MIRROR front page: “NO ALIBI - EXCLUSIVE Murat lover ‘was not at church as she claimed’”

“An alibi by Robert Murat’s lover for the night Madeleine McCann vanished is a LIE, it was claimed yesterday”

It’s “German born” Michaela Walczuch, who “claims” she was at a Jehovah’s Witness meeting four miles away when the four-year-old was snatched.

But church elder Brother Teofilo Castela says: “She was thrown out of the church more than a year ago and doesn’t attend. There was some problem with the rules and she was cast aside. It was before this year. I haven’t been interviewed by police and the police haven’t been here”

Murat’s lawyer Francisco Pagarate says: “Michaela says she was at the Jehovah Witnesses in Lagos on May 3. She remembers being there”

THE SUN front page: “MADDIE: THE FALSE ALIBI – Suspect’s girl accused over Jehovah claim”

A member of the religious organisation says Michaela Walczuch, was thrown out for “breaking the laws of the Bible” months before Madeleine McCann went missing

Oh? The laws of the bible – there are many. But the Sun boils things down:

“It is not clear which rules Michaela has broken. But the religion’s strict moral code considers adultery and premarital sex to be sins. Michaela started dating Murat almost two years ago, while she was still married to Luis Antonio, 37”

DAILY STAR front page: “MADDIE DRUG TEST SHOCK”

“GP” Kate McCann took a drugs test after she was named a suspect in her daughter’s disappearance

She did it to “fight police claims that she was ‘mentally unstable’’ and could have been on anti-depressants”. Her two-year-old twins Sean and Amelie were also tested. All the tests proved negative. So say the lawyers working for the McCanns

DAILY MAIL: “Madeleine: Now Murat’s girlfriend’s alibi falls apart”

Michael Walczuch is a “German-born mother-of-one”

“The Jehovah’s Witnesses follow what they believe is a ‘purer’ form of Christianity, based on the First Century Church. The ultimate sanction on those who break the rules is excommunication, known as disfellowship”

Such are the facts of the case…

DAILY TELEGRAPH: “No peace for McCanns”

“A senior policeman says they created ‘a monster of information they lost control of’. Meanwhile, the plods who failed to take control of the crime scene on the night Madeleine disappeared and who bungled every step of the investigation that followed, are blameless, obviously”

The Telegraph Liz Hunt fails to spot that Goncarlo Amaral was demoted and any number of tabloid stories on “bungling” Portuguese cops

“Without a trace” - The paper looks at other British children who have one missing abroad “not the story of Madeleine McCann”

“When Katrice Lee vanished in Germany in 1981 there was no blanket media coverage, no poster campaign, hardly even a mention on the national news. And today, 26 years later, her family still have no idea what happened to her”

Christmas Book: Crime fiction” - However fascinated we are by the real-life mysteries of Diana, Princess of Wales or Madeleine McCann, and even as we devour the newspapers with what Margery Allingham saw as “the bright ghoul’s eyes of the calamity fancier”, we return to crime novels because they provide us with the satisfaction of a solution”

Expect lots of books on Madeleine McCann; and Diana 

THE TIMES: “Casey Affleck, the brother in arms - Not just Ben’s kid brother – Casey Affleck shows he’s a serious contender in a fine new western”

“His roots seem important to Affleck, and he’ll next be seen playing the lead in the older Affleck’s directing debut Gone Baby Gone, a dark child-abduction drama set in Boston, where the pair grew up. However, in the wake of the Madeleine McCann case, this adaptation of Dennis Lehane’s 1998 novel was withdrawn from this year’s Times/bfi London Film Festival because of its sensitive subject matter, and may never be released in the UK”

Because viewers might confuse a work of Hollywood fiction with real life…

THE GUARDIAN: “Kate McCann ‘agreed to drug tests’”

Says Edward Smethurst: “There were various stories circulating that Kate might somehow be unstable and might be depressed and whatever, but the tests demonstrated that the kind of drugs she might be on did not show up”

CAMDEN NEW JOURNAL: “Author says Freud slipped up in Oedipus ‘obsession’”

“One of Britain’s most popular authors, Salley Vickers, will speak…about her influences, including the hysteria surrounding the Madeleine McCann case, and the work of Clement Freud”

An author making headline on the McCann case… The Oedipus complex and Madeleine McCann… Booker prize winner Anne Enright… Look at me!

Says Ms Vickers: “There’s quite a strong body of opinion in Britain that would have really liked the McCanns to have murdered their own child. They would have been quite excited by it”

The news and speculation so far

Posted: 24th, November 2007 | In: Madeleine McCann. Follow the Comments on our RSS feed: RSS 2.0