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Madeleine McCann: Robert Murat And More Questions

murat.jpgMADELEINE McCann is missing. Still missing.
But today there is news. The daily front-page shots of Madeleine’s traumatised parents are moved further within the papers to make space for the head of Robert Murat.

“MADELEINE BRITISH MAN IS QUIZZED!” says the Mirror’s front-page headline.

Robert Murat

After the speculation the paper delivers a welter of facts. Robert Murat lives with his mum. Robert Murat is in his 30s. Robert Murat lives with his mother in a villa 150 yards from the apartment where Madeleine McCann was snatched.

The Sun (“MADDIE: BRIT QUIZZED”) says Murat lives 100 yards from that McCann apartment. Like the Mirror, the Sun produces a front-page picture of “one-eyed Murat”. The Mail hears that Murat lost his eye in a BMX accident when he was a boy. The Mail says Murat lives 80 yards from Madeleine’s holiday apartment.

Murat is “stocky”. He offered to help the police hunt as a “translator”. He lives in Casa Liliana, with his mum Jenny.

The Suspect

The Sun’s Julie Moult considers the evidence. And delivers a piece entitled “stories of a fantasist”. “He always seemed so eager to get involved in the police investigation,” says the Sun’s woman–on-the-scene. “Robert claimed he had a daughter just like Madeleine and said he felt compelled to do anything he could. But to me he seemed like classic fantasist.”

The Sun introduces Martin Brunt, the crime news correspondent from its sister organ, TV’s Sky news.

He says Murat told him he’d been taken inside the McCanns’ apartment by police.

Sky news correspondent Ian Woods says he asked Murat to help him speak with locals.

“I met him and had a conversation with him. I tried to find out as much as I could about him,” says Woods, who checked out Murat’s details. “They did check out, and I left it at that for the time.”

The Mail’s Neil Sears also spots Murat. In “My encounters with a man ‘who just wanted to help’”, Sears tells Mail readers, “There was something more to the friendly expat who called himself ‘Rob’ than met the eye.”

Murat made Sears “feel slightly uncomfortable”.

But it was the Sunday Mirror’s Lori Cambell who alerted police to Murat’s behaviour, she saw as “creepy”.

Writing Wrongs

So much for investigative journalism. Questions were asked but nothing more was done. Murat is with police because he made a show of himself, because he acted as if working in an official capacity. Even though the Times says Murat was acting as “an official translator”.

So now the man in the chinos, with the glass eye, who lives with him mum and whose estranged wife, from Hockering, near Norwich, tells a neighbour “How could someone do something so terrible to little girl like that?’ is all over the papers.

Is Murat guilty? The papers produce nothing to indicate that he is. But if Murat is involved, look out for the stories of how British journalism cracked the case.

And look out for Madeleine McCann. Still missing…


Anorak

Posted: 15th, May 2007 | In: Madeleine McCann Comments (1,192) | Follow the Comments on our RSS feed: RSS 2.0 | TrackBack | Permalink

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