Madeleine McCann: Kate McCann’s Diary, The Maddy Catty And Portugal’s A Banana Republic
MADDYWATCH - Anorak’s at-a-glance guide to press coverage of Madeleine McCann
THE SUN: “Police want Kate’s diary”
“COPS moved closer to charging the parents of Madeleine McCann last night after demanding mum Kate’s diary be seized as trial evidence”
The police want the original, having copied it once and handed it back to Kate McCann. The court only considers original documents
“Cardiologist Gerry, 39, is said to be portrayed as an absent dad happy to leave his wife to shoulder the burden while he relaxed on holiday”
A cardiologist. Kate is a “GP”. Such are the facts
A source close to the family says: “The McCanns fear the police want to show a judge they are in position to move the case forward”
DAILY MAIL: “Portuguese police want to seize Madeleine’s Cuddle Cat again”
“Police in Portugal have begun a fresh trawl for evidence which could incriminate Gerry and Kate McCann. Among the items they are said to want to seize is their missing daughter Madeleine’s Cuddle Cat toy, which was examined by forensic teams in the summer. They have also demanded Mrs McCann’s diary”
Why a diary?
“She was advised by a trauma counsellor to keep a journal and to include the days before Madeleine vanished from a holiday apartment in Praia da Luz on May 3”
The police: “They have suggested the toy was cleaned to destroy any potential DNA evidence, such as blood. Mrs McCann said it had simply become too grubby”
DAILY TELEGRAPH: “Don’t go to Portugal for your holiday”
Writes Simon Heffer: “I think it is time that the British people showed yet more solidarity with Gerry and Kate McCann, who have been named by the Portuguese police as the main suspects in the presumed murder of their daughter. If the McCanns killed Madeleine, then I am Barack Obama”
Well…
“The utterly useless Portuguese police have nowhere else to go, because their initial bungling of the investigation has robbed them of vital clues. It is deeply unpleasant of them to try to scapegoat the child’s grieving parents to try to concoct for themselves an impression of competence
“Portugal has revealed itself to be little more than a banana republic through the handling of this case. Whether you have small children or not, you would be mad even to think of having a holiday there”
Portugal is Britain’s oldest ally – or was…
THE INDEPENDENT: “Deborah Orr: The dark deeds that fire the imagination”
“Likewise, the terrible fascination with the Madeleine McCann case can be viewed, with some validity, as collective wish-fulfilment. There is no substantive evidence of murder, but there is a strong undertow of longing all the same for the culprit to turn out to be someone of the professional class living a respectable life somewhere in the suburbs”
Orr quotes form George Orwell’s 1946 essay The Decline of the English Murder: The murderer should be a little man of the professional class – a dentist or a solicitor, say – living an intensely respectable life somewhere in the suburbs, and preferably in a semi-detached house, which will allow the neighbours to hear suspicious sounds through the wall … He should go astray through cherishing a guilty passion for his secretary or for the wife of a rival professional man, and should only bring himself to the point of murder after long and terrible wrestles with his conscience. Having decided on murder, he should plan it all with the utmost cunning, and only slip up over some tiny unforeseeable detail. The means chosen should, of course, be poison”
January 5th, 2008 at 8:12 am
Writes Simon Heffer: “I think it is time that the British people showed yet more solidarity with Gerry and Kate McCann, who have been named by the Portuguese police as the main suspects in the presumed murder of their daughter. If the McCanns killed Madeleine, then I am Barack Obama
Therefore I MUST be SPARTICUS
January 5th, 2008 at 8:14 am
I’m Spartacus
2nd?
January 5th, 2008 at 8:15 am
ok stan - you beat me - you can spell it
January 5th, 2008 at 8:22 am
How are we supposed to show our solidarity?
Marches? Petitions? Writing xenophobic abuse in the tabloids?
January 5th, 2008 at 8:24 am
From ‘Correio da Manhã’5/1/08:
Rogatory letters: PJ delivers requests. The PJ wants to attack friend’s silence pact
The Judiciary Police is going to England to question the McCanns friends.These interrogations are considered crucial, the researchers believe that they could break the silence pact of the English group who accompanied the couple on holidays in the Algarve, in the first days of May last year.
The questions that will be made to the nine people were already written by the Portuguese researchers that will accompany the British police. They can not themselves ask questions, but they may give indications to their congeners.
This diligence is thus considered essential for the research. The PJ believes that there is a pact of silence due to the practices of the group - all of them had small children who slept imperatively at 20:00hrs and stayed in the rooms alone while the parents dinned - which might have created a ’strange’ unity , which dictated silences, omissions and even complicity in some facts when it became public the disappearance of Madeleine.
It is in the context of these interrogations that the Judiciary Police believes they may have a coup of luck. One detail, a loose edge,can lead the researchers to trace the child - that the police believes is dead and whose body might have been hidden still on the night of May 3 in the vicinity of the village of Praia da Luz.
When this interrogation takes place and the results are sent to Portugal the PJ will study the possibility to re-examine the child’s parents - situation that would force a new rogatory letter and the same bureaucracies of the ones that will follow to England, which took nearly three months to be prepared.
It should be noted that, as the CM reported yesterday, the diligence now released - will be fulfilled still this month - the authorities will also seize the journal of Kate McCann. The document was written after the disappearance of the child and the authorities believe is indicative of the personality of the mother. Copies of it are attached in the process, but the authorities want to obtain the original. In this diary Kate complained that the children were hysterical and lamented the lack of support from Gerry monitoring the twins Sean and Amelie, which are less than two years.
The Judiciary Police meanwhile asked the criminal judge the seizure of the diary, since is considered an element that reveals private life. The Portuguese law considers that its seizure obeys to specific rules and can only be seized in special circumstances……..
LIKELY DEAD
The Judiciary Police insists on the hypothesis that Maddie McCann is dead.The parents are suspects of negligent homicide, concealment of corpse and simulation of a crime, but none of the crimes in question involves preventive arrest. The extradition to Portugal, in the case of public prosecution, is not possible in the light of the English law.”
http://www.correiomanha.pt/noticia.asp?id=272327&idselect=10&idCanal=10&p=200
Presumably, the last sentence means they would have to be charged, before they could be extradited? Tony B will be able to answer this, no doubt.
January 5th, 2008 at 8:29 am
I think Deborah Orr has a deep desire for it not to be someone from the professional class who lives in the suburbs.
But she’s talking rubbish. The Madeleine McCann case is fascinating because it’s unsolved and because Madeleine’s parents launched a professional P.R. campaign and it’s Gerry’s stated ambition to keep the story in the headlines till she’s found.
Why blame the public for showing the level of interest the parents are demanding?
January 5th, 2008 at 8:32 am
Who has any faith in the police, I have faith in Simon Heffer
January 5th, 2008 at 8:36 am
6 Karen
Yes, these papers talk rubbish. From ‘The Sun’, commenting on Kate’s diary:
“Cardiologist Gerry, 39, is said to be portrayed as an absent dad happy to leave his wife to shoulder the burden while he relaxed on holiday.”
Come on, get real ‘Sun’. Gerry wasn’t relaxing on holiday – he was playing tennis three times a day!!!
January 5th, 2008 at 8:39 am
This article is so unbelievable, limit xenophobic.
Let’s just justice work.
January 5th, 2008 at 8:39 am
Pam - I have faith in Simon Cowell lol, though i do plan to get help over this issue
January 5th, 2008 at 8:40 am
The inefficient PJ wants investigate the Cuddle Cat eight months later!!!! What kind of policy is this? Why didn’t it on May3? Why did not take into account the testimonies of witnesses on May 3?
Garbage! Waste!
Pj has behaved as if they lost the pin out of a shirt, not a little girl.
PJ is a shit!!!!
January 5th, 2008 at 8:40 am
Morning all!
January 5th, 2008 at 8:40 am
I was talking about the daily telegraph!
January 5th, 2008 at 8:41 am
Pam
Hire him to find Madeleine then.
January 5th, 2008 at 8:47 am
Karen
Good idea!
January 5th, 2008 at 8:48 am
Solidarity -
Let’s create National leave your babies at home whilst you go on the piss week in the first week of May.
If you haven’t got babies of your own find somebody locally and offer them a cover story for free in case anything goes wrong
Or change the law, lets call it “maddies law” whereby anyone from the age of 3 upwards can legally look after babies of less than 2 years old whenever their parents want to go on the piss
January 5th, 2008 at 8:49 am
Naddo
Better idea.
January 5th, 2008 at 8:53 am
Simon Heffer - Solidarity? Count me out.
January 5th, 2008 at 8:57 am
Morning SteveT
The Telegraph should be ashamed of itself for publishing Paul Heffer’s ‘article’ ! I’ve sent a very calm response to the ‘Telegraph’, but don’t expect any negatives will be published.
I suggest everyone who disagrees with the content of Heffer’s article sends a comment in, so at least they get the message of how we feel about it.
January 5th, 2008 at 9:01 am
11 Joy
“Pj has behaved as if they lost the pin out of a shirt, not a little girl”
And many of us think the McCanns have behaved as if they have lost a bicycle instead of a little girl!
January 5th, 2008 at 9:01 am
19
Swannie
They certainly should be ashamed! They must have some pretty good inside information by now that would blow this story out of the water.
January 5th, 2008 at 9:02 am
20
Swannie
11 Joy
“Pj has behaved as if they lost the pin out of a shirt, not a little girl”
“And many of us think the McCanns have behaved as if they have lost a bicycle instead of a little girl!”
They might have got off their asses and looked for a bicycle!
January 5th, 2008 at 9:04 am
20
Swannie
11 Joy
“Pj has behaved as if they lost the pin out of a shirt, not a little girl”
“And many of us think the McCanns have behaved as if they have lost a bicycle instead of a little girl!”
They might have got off their asses and looked for a bicycle!
(The McCanns that is)
January 5th, 2008 at 9:10 am
naddo - i like your idea - but being a wimp - I don’t really want to leave my kids alone so do you think simon heffer (or one of his collegues) would lend me theirs to leave?
January 5th, 2008 at 9:11 am
24
noseycow
I like your thinking!
January 5th, 2008 at 9:15 am
Thanks Steve T - It’s my week to have the family brain cell
Do you think that the pj want kates diary / cuddle cat to present to a court as evidence? I understand that the photocopies that they have are not admissable in a court. I can’t think of any other reason for them wanting the origionals.
Could this mean that we are close to ’something’ happening?
January 5th, 2008 at 9:24 am
26
noseycow
I think they will want them for court evidence but also the press are trying to use it to say the PJ are incompitent. (bad at spelling!)
January 5th, 2008 at 9:25 am
Fat Si, the McCann’s latest best new mate is getting a pasting over on the Telegraph.
He’s got form for stupid comments. This is from Wickipedia:
“In 2004, Heffer wrote the unsigned editorial in The Spectator critical of Liverpudlian “vicarious victimhood”, for which Boris Johnson was forced to apologize to the city.
In 2006, Heffer sharply criticised the film The Wind That Shakes The Barley, a movie by director Ken Loach about the Irish War of Independence despite not having watched it.”
Doesn’t look like he’s the type of chap to have kids either, so anyone who wanted to borrrow them for the piss up week is out of luck
January 5th, 2008 at 9:29 am
26 noseycow
“Do you think that the pj want kate’s diary / cuddle cat to present to a court as evidence?”
I’d imagine so. Unless they need Cuddle Cat to open up a new feline of enquiry!
Or perhaps Rebelo just wants to carry it around a bit as a prop.
What if Kate’s destroyed the diary and, heaven forbid, Cuddle Cat??
January 5th, 2008 at 9:32 am
29
Swannie
I think Cuddlecat might be on the run! When did we last see it.