Anorak

Anorak News | 20 new Maddie suspects help Detective Chief Superintendent Hamish Campbell retire in a blaze of publicity

20 new Maddie suspects help Detective Chief Superintendent Hamish Campbell retire in a blaze of publicity

by | 18th, May 2013

mccann 20 suspects

MADELEINE McCann: Anorak’s at-a-glance look at the missing child in the news: 20 new suspects with Detective Chief Superintendent Hamish Campbell:

The Front Pages:

Daily Mail (front page): “20 New Suspects”
The Sun (front page): “Brit Cops List 20 Maddie Suspects”
The Star (front page): “Maddie: Cops Hunt New Suspects
Express (front page): “Police Identify Maddie Suspects”
Daily Mirror (front page): She May Be Alive”

Why is Madeleine McCann front-page news? Well, yesterday, Detective Chief Superintendent Hamish Campbell, the retiring Met copper involved in the Maddie Case Review, told us that his team had made progress. He named no names. He made no mention of suspects. The tabloids need an easy summertime story so ‘Our Maddie’ is back on the front pages.

The Daily Mirror’s report pretty much sums up the no-news news.

There’s the usual absence of hard facts:

Kate and Gerry McCann have been given new hope in the hunt for missing daughter Madeleine after police identified a number of suspects who could have taken her.

The linking of Maddie to pretty much any global event:

The release of three women from the House of Horror in Ohio has given police new energy in the hunt for the youngster

The sly dig at the Portuguese for letting the Brits down:

Scotland Yard detectives today handed the names to their Portuguese counterparts and begged them to reopen the investigation into the three-year-old’s abduction.

 The unnamed “source”:

But a source close to the family, from Rothley, Leicestershire, added: “Kate and Gerry are ­encouraged by what Hamish Campbell has said. They have been impressed from day one with how Operation Grange has been progressing and how the Met Police are handling it. They both feel like something is finally being done to solve what happened to their daughter and find her. It was always going to be the case that the review would flag up people that need to be interviewed again, even if it is just to eliminate them. They have never, and will never, give up hope that Madeleine will one day be found alive.”

The dead paedo:

Last November, the Mirror revealed officers were looking again at links between British ­paedophile Raymond Hewlett and Madeleine’s ­disappearance.

The Daily Mail focuses on the Portuguese, who shelved the case in 2008. Will they reopen it?

One well-placed source described the deadlock as ‘a Mexican stand-off’. 

It’s a chicken-and-egg situation. Significant new evidence can be found if the leads uncovered by the Yard are investigated. There are two major obstacles to a joint investigation: the money to fund it in Portugal and the loss of face they would suffer from having to agree to such an inquiry.’

We’re still blaming the Portuguese.

The story is rooted in the words of DCS Campbell, who retired today as head of the Met’s Homicide and Serious Crime Command. He’s gone out in a blaze of publicity.

Madeleine McCann is missing. And that’s pretty much all we do know.



Posted: 18th, May 2013 | In: Madeleine McCann, Reviews Comment | TrackBack | Permalink