Madeleine McCann, Shannon Matthews: A British ‘Spanish Maddy’
MADDYWATCH - Anorak’s at-a-glance guide to press coverage of Madeleine McCann and Shannon Matthews
SUNDAY PEOPLE: “Maddie’s parents in cash offer
“DAY 19 OF HUNT FOR MISSING SCHOOLGIRL.. AND FRIEND TELLS OF HER HEARTBREAK.”
Are there shades of a melodrama in this story?
“The parents of Maddie McCann yesterday pledged cash to boost the hunt for Shannon. Gerry and Kate, whose daughter has been missing for 10 months, are “deeply concerned” at the plight of Shannon’s family. Kate, 39, said: “My heart goes out to them. We always hoped and prayed that no other family would have to suffer like we have.”
The McCanns are the media voice of missing children. Providers of the easy quote.
“Money from the Find Madeleine Fund could perhaps pay for a massive poster campaign.”
Perhaps.
McCann family spokesman Clarence Mitchell said: “Kate and Gerry have no control over the money. The board will want to know what it is needed for.” The fund now stands at £544,000.
Perhaps not.
GLASGOW SUNDAY MAIL: “Maddie Parents Pray For Tragic Mari’s Family.”
“THE parents of Madeleine McCann yesterday offered prayers for the family of tragic Mari Luz Cortes.”
No money. No more posters. Prayers.
Their McCanns’ spokesman Clarence Mitchell says: “Gerry and Kate are extremely sad. They had developed a sense of unity with Mari Luz’s parents as both families were going through similar agonies.”
Mari Luz is dead. Her body has been found.
As the Sunday Mirror screamed: “Spanish ‘Maddy’ Mari Luz Cortes found dead in river.”
SUNDAY MIRROR: “’Two women broke into our home and tried to snatch our little girl. I had to fight them off.. I thought of Madeleine’.”
This is: “EXCLUSIVE BRITISH MUM’S COSTA TERROR.”
Another “Spanish Maddy”?
A British mum told yesterday how she fought off two intruders who tried to snatch her toddler daughter in Spain - in a chilling echo of the abduction of Madeleine McCann.
Madeleine McCann went missing in Portugal. It has not been established what happened to her. Her parents have been named as suspects in her disappearance. So too has a Robert Murat.
To Moraira, Costa Blanca…
Brave Adele Spencer, 28, wrestled with the Moroccan-looking women when they broke into her home and tried to pluck 18-month old Annabelle from her high-chair.
A swarthy foreigner. A swarthy foreign child snatcher. In Morocco. Morocco. Like him in Malta. Malta. And him in Belgium. And them.
And last night aides to Kate and Gerry McCann said they are keen to find out more about both cases - to see if there are any links to four-year-old Madeleine’s abduction in Praia da Luz, Portugal, last May.
Yesterday tearful Adele cuddled her blonde daughter and admitted: “If I had been 10 seconds later she would have been gone. I’m just thankful I managed to get to Annabelle in time to save her. “I never thought we would come close to suffering the same fate as Madeleine’s parents. You read about horrific stories like theirs but you don’t expect it to happen to you.”
Adele’s fiancé is called Carl. Says he:
“What has happened to Madeleine is awful and it so nearly happened to us. No other parent should have to go through that suffering. We are happy to help Kate and Gerry in any way we can. Our heart goes out to them for what they are going through.
“For a brief moment we came close to losing our child and the pain is beyond words.”
Did the shocked parents volunteer the comparison or were they asked to comment on Madeleine McCann? Provide their trauma with context. Make their trauma newsworthy?
Says the McCanns’ spokesman, Clarence Mitchell: “The parents have done the right thing by contacting the police. Our investigators will be seeing if there are any links between them and the disappearance of Madeleine.”
DAILY TELEGRAPH: “Missing Shannon’s mother rues lack of concern”
It is the knock on the door that Karen Matthews fears most. At night, in the brief interludes when she can sleep, she dreams of answering a persistent rap to find an apologetic police officer at her door mouthing words of sympathy.
In his hand is her nine-year-old daughter Shannon’s pink-and-black swimsuit, or perhaps her blue striped towel. Sometimes her black puffa jacket, her school sweater or her distinctive pink and grey Bratz boots.
Something that Mrs Matthews recognises instantly as belonging to Shannon and with which her daughter would not willingly have parted.
“That is my dread. That is what I live in fear of,” Mrs Matthews says. “During the day I dismiss those thoughts, I force myself to stay positive. But at night you can’t control your imagination.”
Grim. Faces of children. Faces of children not there. A newspaper story.
Mrs Matthews, 32, has wept on television, begging for news of the nine-year-old, who seems simply to have vanished. And yet Shannon’s face is nowhere near as familiar to the public as those of, for example, Madeleine McCann, snatched 10 months ago in Portugal, or Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman, who vanished and were found murdered in Soham.
But Shannon Matthews is making news. She is making news because she is not Madeleine McCann.
The plight of Mrs Matthews is no less real or anguished than that of Madeleine’s parents. Indeed, on the surface there are many similarities between the two cases: Shannon, like Madeleine, has a favourite toy which the family now cherish; she has a two-year-old baby sister, Courtney, who weeps for her elder sibling, as do the McCanns’ younger children.
But it is the differences that are most immediately apparent. Mrs Matthews does not possess the poise or eloquence of Kate McCann, something which helped that family attract wide publicity and generate a worldwide search for their missing four-year-old.
Nor does she have the benefit of a focused and driven husband. Instead, Shannon comes from a deeply fractured family with a complicated home life.
Shannon Matthews’ family is poor. Not middle-class. The Telegraph’s readers are middle class. They read on about this poor, poor woman…
icWales: “‘Girls all think I’m their boyfriend’”
AS EVIL Shaun Jerome awaits sentence for his sickening sex assaults on two young girls, Wales on Sunday can reveal how he preyed on his victims using the internet.
Just months after his release from prison, Jerome, 24, began contacting teenagers in online chat-rooms and through the social networking site Bebo.
The convicted paedophile even had the cheek to post a message mentioning missing four-year-old Madeleine McCann, saying: “support the girl who’s missing in Portugal xx”.
Using Madeleine McCann to get what you want.
March 9th, 2008 at 7:59 am
9th
March 9th, 2008 at 8:00 am
mornin’ all
March 9th, 2008 at 8:00 am
Say Ade, what colour is swarthy?
March 9th, 2008 at 8:06 am
Penster, ade … Good morning
Fourf?
March 9th, 2008 at 8:08 am
Before I toddle off to do my normal Sunday thingie
…
Thinking of you posters in the UK who are expecting that terrible storm to hit some time this evening, I hope and pray that you will all be OK and not suffer too much damage! <>
March 9th, 2008 at 8:09 am
3 penster
swarthy?
darkish i’d say
and greasy
like this:
http://www.gerrymccannsblogs.co.uk/photofit.jpg
March 9th, 2008 at 8:10 am
mornin’ julie
4th it is
March 9th, 2008 at 8:11 am
thinking of eggmen with swarthy faces, has jane “ozzy” tanner changed her story again this week?
such fun
March 9th, 2008 at 8:12 am
The world is not flat, it has lumpy bits on it, allegedly.
Good morning.
Mods + Admin, after much sleuthing, finally I unearthed directly attributable quotes to a PJ named spokesman.
The link is to see if it is of any relevance to todays debate, Sunday.
The quote about not even being sure if the DNA is/was human or animal, puzzled me.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/panorama/7106086.stm
March 9th, 2008 at 8:12 am
off to make a cuppa
March 9th, 2008 at 8:13 am
Yeah ade, unfortunately I was a bit slow off the mark this morning (possibly the dancing and drinking of last night had something to do with it
), and the geetar playing down the passage is not helping the head much 
March 9th, 2008 at 8:15 am
The fund now stands at £544 000.
Really? Have the accounts been published?
“Kate and Gerry have no control over the money. The board will want to know what it is needed for.”
That wasn’t always the case. Back in the glory days, the fund directors were mere rubber stamps for the dubious duo. It seems someone has drawn the directors to one side, and mentioned matters such as breach of fiduciary duty, and fraud, and prison.
But it’s nice to know the Spanish buccaneers are going to be up a cool half-million or so. It’s an ill wind.
” ‘Allo, ‘Allo, Meester Mitchell? We needa more moula pronto. Hit de Paypal button, honcho.”
March 9th, 2008 at 8:15 am
Gandy, do you HAVE to mention lumpy bits this morning? The tummy’s a bit weak at the moment
March 9th, 2008 at 8:18 am
13 Hardly surprising you’re feeling swarthy if the guitar was playing in your passage overnight.
March 9th, 2008 at 8:19 am
who put the wart in swarthy?
March 9th, 2008 at 8:19 am
Julie, I am having breakfast , Stella and a funny fag, not necessarily in that order, no lumpy bits, just possibly suspect DNA.
March 9th, 2008 at 8:22 am
Gandy … WHO IS STELLA
…. I thought your wife’s name was Rona? 
March 9th, 2008 at 8:22 am
15
Incisive point ade. What we have here is a cryptic crosswart.
March 9th, 2008 at 8:23 am
Gandolf
Don’t make yourself ill - that sounds a worse breakfast than I’d have.
I’m off to Church - will be back by 11.
March 9th, 2008 at 8:24 am
Stella, is a rather charming golden nectar.
March 9th, 2008 at 8:24 am
Gandolf do you pour the bong water over your cereal?
March 9th, 2008 at 8:25 am
penster, I never watch Coronation street.
March 9th, 2008 at 8:26 am
Swarthy. adj. “foreign”, ” not British”, “not one of us”
Tabloid Press Dictionary
March 9th, 2008 at 8:28 am
Aaaaah Gandy, this is Stella?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stella_Artois
Ok, in that case I wont feel so bad heading for the fridge to try and get rid of this rather ill feeling
, after all, I am two hours ahead of you 
March 9th, 2008 at 8:28 am
I’ve never seen it either Gandolf. Your breakfast sounds like the lyrics of a C&W song.
March 9th, 2008 at 8:30 am
I shouls have added, the DNA quote puzzled me, because I had posted to Scarlett on this board a few weeks ago, that I had heard it was Equine DNA.
But I had never seen any official quotes on the matter.
Julie I haven’t been to bed, legs playing up.
March 9th, 2008 at 8:32 am
Aww, I’m sorry about the leg Gandy, is it the cold weather that’s making it uncomfortable?
March 9th, 2008 at 8:39 am
913
agw (previous thread)
‘Alternatively Ian may making an attempt at satire / irony; a deliberate goad perhaps’
Yes- it amused me and I think (and vey much hope) that irony was the intention..otherwise his company ’s investment in the law studies will be
March 9th, 2008 at 8:39 am
9 Gandolf
I take it you mean this from ‘Bilton’ -
‘We understand evidence has been recovered from the underside of the carpet lining in the boot of that Scenic. Fluid and hair from a corpse, not necessarily human, and a separate DNA sample that’s a partial match from Madeleine and comes from a primary source.’
You may need a little more evidence than this, but judging by your view that Scotland is in some way superior in the context of rugby because of yesterdays result, I think you need a little more than one tiny reference by a media man. Why do I say this? Well, I’d remind you of this…
‘The Scots, thanks to magnificent defence, deserved their first victory of the tournament that ended England’s lingering hopes of fighting for the title on the final weekend next Saturday.
Scotland, with only their third win over England in 19 Tests but their second in a row at Murrayfield, had the visiting side on the back foot for the opening quarter with Paterson putting them ahead with his first penalty’
An good vctiry and well done to Scotland, but in the context of the ‘usual’ results I’d say that England played badly and allowed Sctoland to play well. Remember,’One swallow does not a summer make’. The chances are much greater that the DNA did match Madeleines, its only one part of much more evidence - however, who provided the primary source I wonder?
I would draw your attention to the often cunningly ignored fact that this is a ‘civil law’ investigation - non-adversarial, where the judge looks to see if a crime has been comitted and by whom, as opposed to the UK system where a crime is taken to have be committed and the approach is to prove an identified person did it.
Its always interested me that the McCanns seem to be acting as if it were a UK investigation, whilst the PJ continue to investiagate holistically.
Im waiting patiently to see how much the McCanns donate (why the fuck a poster funding donation? Is it going to be a poster with Madeleine and Shannon on it? I bet it is!).
Kate and Gerry have no control over what the money is spent on? LOL! The holy ones being distanced so when no real to the family donation is made (why cant Shannons mums ‘rent’ payed as the McCanns was maybe?) they can look sanctified and pious in the wings!
They (the McCanns) really do appear to trying hard to make a career out of the loss of Madeleine arent they! Of course, its just my perception - like Maria ‘I could be wrong’ he simpered.
March 9th, 2008 at 8:40 am
No Julie, it is more to do with not taking Doctors advice, perhaps I should ask him about the DNA, I see a couple of “they did it” posters have carefully avoided Inspector Carlos Anjos’s direct quote, now why could that be.