General discussion about the latest news (not search related)

[John]

She lived and worked in NZ for some years, and that is just how we would express ourselves around here.

Its terminology used frequently by Irish people and as both parents were Irish...

[G-Unit]

Why do some commentators think they know the motivations of those who doubt the McCann abduction story? Perhaps it's just their way of enabling themselves to dismiss the points those who have doubts raise?

From Nick Cave to Kate McCann, it’s time we judged parents a little less

Hadley Freeman
Saturday 6 May 2017 09.00 BST

Parents of missing children are demonised by a public needing to reassure themselves it could never happen to them



Kate and Gerry McCann give an interview to the BBC to mark the 10th anniversary of Madeleine McCann. Photograph: Getty Images


This is a story about missing children, and what happens to those who are left behind. Last week marked the 10th anniversary of the disappearance of Madeleine McCann, a story told so many times it has taken on the form of a litany: Praia da Luz, the tapas restaurant, the open window. Madeleine vanished, but she is ever-present in the public consciousness, whereas thousands of missing children are just that – wholly missing.

There has been much hand-wringing in the media over this disparity: was it because Kate and Gerry McCann are white and photogenic? Or because Madeleine was blond and cute? Or because she vanished in a country where journalists also take their cute kids on holiday? To which the answers are yes, obviously, but this is to miss the point; the argument should be not that the McCanns deserve less attention, but that other missing children should get more. In an interview last weekend, Kate McCann said she felt “guilty” and “embarrassed” about the £11m spent on the search for her daughter. The only people who should be embarrassed are those who sneer that there should be some kind of cap on the amount of sympathy, or a time limit placed on a parent’s hope. In recent weeks, the tabloids have been eagerly publishing spurious decades-old sightings of Madeleine, seen crying for her mother in the company of “suspicious men”. It is hard to see what any of this is supposed to achieve, beyond torturing the McCanns.

The common take on the McCann coverage is that middle-class newspaper readers related to them and so cared more about the story than, say, that of Ben Needham, the British toddler who vanished in Kos in 1991. And yet in both cases the parents were instantly vilified: Kerry Needham for being working class, Gerry and Kate McCann for being too self-possessed and attractive. The parents of missing children are often demonised by a public that need to reassure themselves that this could never happen to them. Those parents were feckless, foolish, bad – not like us, the good parents. If anything, the relatability of the McCanns made them even more terrifying, and thus more necessary to condemn.

When Nick Cave’s 15-year-old son Arthur died in 2015, after falling off a cliff while on LSD, parts of the media were so keen to blame his father they became self-parodic. Much was made of the singer’s previous drug habit, as though no other parent on the planet had ever taken drugs, while the Times tutted that Cave had “an obsession with death” and watched “super-violent” films with his children. (The paper later removed the article from its website.)

In an extraordinary interview in American GQ, Cave recently said: “I don’t want to give too much oxygen to the matter of responsibility because it raises a point that only someone who knows nothing about parenting, drug-taking or bereavement would suggest.” Even so, he added: “You can find yourself indulging in all sorts of irrational and self-destructive thoughts – self-pity, self-blame – because they form a direct connection to the small but present part of you that just wants to die.”

I have written a lot about missing or dead children: Etan Patz, the six-year-old who vanished in New York in 1979, and whose face haunted American parents in the 80s; JonBenét Ramsey, the six-year-old beauty contestant found dead in her home in 1996; Noah Pozner, the youngest victim of the 2012 Sandy Hook shootings. All very different stories, all connected by a vilification of the parents by a public so terrified of anything like that happening to them. A police officer once described it to me like this: “You know that moment when you lose sight of your child in a shopping mall? Imagine that feeling lasting for 30 years.” But there is no need for anyone to pull an Andrea “as a mother” Leadsom here; anyone can feel that fear, as if your arm has been ripped off your body and your heart pulled out after it.

The cynical take on Madeleine McCann is that she is gone for good: why are we still talking about this? “Her parents need to accept their share of the blame and let her go,” one notoriously bilious columnist wrote. There is a condescension towards parents of missing children and their magical thinking, their desperate hope that the family will one day be reunited. But it’s their critics who are engaging in the worst kind of magical thinking, believing that if they turn bereaved parents into the demonised Other, they will protect their own children. All they are doing, really, is revealing that they know the terrible truth: that this could happen to any of us, and we would never stop looking.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/may/06/nick-cave-to-kate-mccann-time-judged-parents-less

[Brietta]

Why do some commentators think they know the motivations of those who doubt the McCann abduction story? Perhaps it's just their way of enabling themselves to dismiss the points those who have doubts raise?

From Nick Cave to Kate McCann, it’s time we judged parents a little less

Hadley Freeman
Saturday 6 May 2017 09.00 BST

Parents of missing children are demonised by a public needing to reassure themselves it could never happen to them



Kate and Gerry McCann give an interview to the BBC to mark the 10th anniversary of Madeleine McCann. Photograph: Getty Images


This is a story about missing children, and what happens to those who are left behind. Last week marked the 10th anniversary of the disappearance of Madeleine McCann, a story told so many times it has taken on the form of a litany: Praia da Luz, the tapas restaurant, the open window. Madeleine vanished, but she is ever-present in the public consciousness, whereas thousands of missing children are just that – wholly missing.

There has been much hand-wringing in the media over this disparity: was it because Kate and Gerry McCann are white and photogenic? Or because Madeleine was blond and cute? Or because she vanished in a country where journalists also take their cute kids on holiday? To which the answers are yes, obviously, but this is to miss the point; the argument should be not that the McCanns deserve less attention, but that other missing children should get more. In an interview last weekend, Kate McCann said she felt “guilty” and “embarrassed” about the £11m spent on the search for her daughter. The only people who should be embarrassed are those who sneer that there should be some kind of cap on the amount of sympathy, or a time limit placed on a parent’s hope. In recent weeks, the tabloids have been eagerly publishing spurious decades-old sightings of Madeleine, seen crying for her mother in the company of “suspicious men”. It is hard to see what any of this is supposed to achieve, beyond torturing the McCanns.

The common take on the McCann coverage is that middle-class newspaper readers related to them and so cared more about the story than, say, that of Ben Needham, the British toddler who vanished in Kos in 1991. And yet in both cases the parents were instantly vilified: Kerry Needham for being working class, Gerry and Kate McCann for being too self-possessed and attractive. The parents of missing children are often demonised by a public that need to reassure themselves that this could never happen to them. Those parents were feckless, foolish, bad – not like us, the good parents. If anything, the relatability of the McCanns made them even more terrifying, and thus more necessary to condemn.

When Nick Cave’s 15-year-old son Arthur died in 2015, after falling off a cliff while on LSD, parts of the media were so keen to blame his father they became self-parodic. Much was made of the singer’s previous drug habit, as though no other parent on the planet had ever taken drugs, while the Times tutted that Cave had “an obsession with death” and watched “super-violent” films with his children. (The paper later removed the article from its website.)

In an extraordinary interview in American GQ, Cave recently said: “I don’t want to give too much oxygen to the matter of responsibility because it raises a point that only someone who knows nothing about parenting, drug-taking or bereavement would suggest.” Even so, he added: “You can find yourself indulging in all sorts of irrational and self-destructive thoughts – self-pity, self-blame – because they form a direct connection to the small but present part of you that just wants to die.”

I have written a lot about missing or dead children: Etan Patz, the six-year-old who vanished in New York in 1979, and whose face haunted American parents in the 80s; JonBenét Ramsey, the six-year-old beauty contestant found dead in her home in 1996; Noah Pozner, the youngest victim of the 2012 Sandy Hook shootings. All very different stories, all connected by a vilification of the parents by a public so terrified of anything like that happening to them. A police officer once described it to me like this: “You know that moment when you lose sight of your child in a shopping mall? Imagine that feeling lasting for 30 years.” But there is no need for anyone to pull an Andrea “as a mother” Leadsom here; anyone can feel that fear, as if your arm has been ripped off your body and your heart pulled out after it.

The cynical take on Madeleine McCann is that she is gone for good: why are we still talking about this? “Her parents need to accept their share of the blame and let her go,” one notoriously bilious columnist wrote. There is a condescension towards parents of missing children and their magical thinking, their desperate hope that the family will one day be reunited. But it’s their critics who are engaging in the worst kind of magical thinking, believing that if they turn bereaved parents into the demonised Other, they will protect their own children. All they are doing, really, is revealing that they know the terrible truth: that this could happen to any of us, and we would never stop looking.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/may/06/nick-cave-to-kate-mccann-time-judged-parents-less

"The common take on the McCann coverage is that middle-class newspaper readers related to them and so cared more about the story than, say, that of Ben Needham, the British toddler who vanished in Kos in 1991.

And yet in both cases the parents were instantly vilified:
Kerry Needham for being working class, Gerry and Kate McCann for being too self-possessed and attractive.

The parents of missing children are often demonised by a public that need to reassure themselves that this could never happen to them.
Those parents were feckless, foolish, bad – not like us, the good parents.

If anything, the relatability of the McCanns made them even more terrifying, and thus more necessary to condemn."



The difficulty with attributing motivation to 'doubters' is the myriad of doubts they lay claim to and the malice with which some have promulgated their doubts and the burning need of some to "educate" others with those doubts.

The majority of which are based on false information and innuendo and an esoteric belief system.

From the remove of ten years new audiences are puzzling about the whys and wherefores of those who 'doubt' and who fiercely defend and promote them.
Their intention is that their doubts should be publicised and discussed since which the pains taken to promote them on the public domain attest.

How can there possibly be complaint that commentators have actually read their narrative and having found it wanting have commentated on it and have questioned if there is a legitimate basis for it.

A ten year long obsession to vilify the parents of a missing child invites opinion and comment ... and I think that is exactly what is happening.

[Alfie]

Why do some commentators think they know the motivations of those who doubt the McCann abduction story? Perhaps it's just their way of enabling themselves to dismiss the points those who have doubts raise?

From Nick Cave to Kate McCann, it’s time we judged parents a little less

Hadley Freeman
Saturday 6 May 2017 09.00 BST

Parents of missing children are demonised by a public needing to reassure themselves it could never happen to them



Kate and Gerry McCann give an interview to the BBC to mark the 10th anniversary of Madeleine McCann. Photograph: Getty Images


This is a story about missing children, and what happens to those who are left behind. Last week marked the 10th anniversary of the disappearance of Madeleine McCann, a story told so many times it has taken on the form of a litany: Praia da Luz, the tapas restaurant, the open window. Madeleine vanished, but she is ever-present in the public consciousness, whereas thousands of missing children are just that – wholly missing.

There has been much hand-wringing in the media over this disparity: was it because Kate and Gerry McCann are white and photogenic? Or because Madeleine was blond and cute? Or because she vanished in a country where journalists also take their cute kids on holiday? To which the answers are yes, obviously, but this is to miss the point; the argument should be not that the McCanns deserve less attention, but that other missing children should get more. In an interview last weekend, Kate McCann said she felt “guilty” and “embarrassed” about the £11m spent on the search for her daughter. The only people who should be embarrassed are those who sneer that there should be some kind of cap on the amount of sympathy, or a time limit placed on a parent’s hope. In recent weeks, the tabloids have been eagerly publishing spurious decades-old sightings of Madeleine, seen crying for her mother in the company of “suspicious men”. It is hard to see what any of this is supposed to achieve, beyond torturing the McCanns.

The common take on the McCann coverage is that middle-class newspaper readers related to them and so cared more about the story than, say, that of Ben Needham, the British toddler who vanished in Kos in 1991. And yet in both cases the parents were instantly vilified: Kerry Needham for being working class, Gerry and Kate McCann for being too self-possessed and attractive. The parents of missing children are often demonised by a public that need to reassure themselves that this could never happen to them. Those parents were feckless, foolish, bad – not like us, the good parents. If anything, the relatability of the McCanns made them even more terrifying, and thus more necessary to condemn.

When Nick Cave’s 15-year-old son Arthur died in 2015, after falling off a cliff while on LSD, parts of the media were so keen to blame his father they became self-parodic. Much was made of the singer’s previous drug habit, as though no other parent on the planet had ever taken drugs, while the Times tutted that Cave had “an obsession with death” and watched “super-violent” films with his children. (The paper later removed the article from its website.)

In an extraordinary interview in American GQ, Cave recently said: “I don’t want to give too much oxygen to the matter of responsibility because it raises a point that only someone who knows nothing about parenting, drug-taking or bereavement would suggest.” Even so, he added: “You can find yourself indulging in all sorts of irrational and self-destructive thoughts – self-pity, self-blame – because they form a direct connection to the small but present part of you that just wants to die.”

I have written a lot about missing or dead children: Etan Patz, the six-year-old who vanished in New York in 1979, and whose face haunted American parents in the 80s; JonBenét Ramsey, the six-year-old beauty contestant found dead in her home in 1996; Noah Pozner, the youngest victim of the 2012 Sandy Hook shootings. All very different stories, all connected by a vilification of the parents by a public so terrified of anything like that happening to them. A police officer once described it to me like this: “You know that moment when you lose sight of your child in a shopping mall? Imagine that feeling lasting for 30 years.” But there is no need for anyone to pull an Andrea “as a mother” Leadsom here; anyone can feel that fear, as if your arm has been ripped off your body and your heart pulled out after it.

The cynical take on Madeleine McCann is that she is gone for good: why are we still talking about this? “Her parents need to accept their share of the blame and let her go,” one notoriously bilious columnist wrote. There is a condescension towards parents of missing children and their magical thinking, their desperate hope that the family will one day be reunited. But it’s their critics who are engaging in the worst kind of magical thinking, believing that if they turn bereaved parents into the demonised Other, they will protect their own children. All they are doing, really, is revealing that they know the terrible truth: that this could happen to any of us, and we would never stop looking.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/may/06/nick-cave-to-kate-mccann-time-judged-parents-less

Spot on, that article.

[G-Unit]

Missing Madeleine McCann: Inter-force ‘trust, co-operation and understanding’ issues still exist

09 May 2017

Dr Graham Hill: 'Not much
further ahead today'

European police forces should create a specialist hub to manage future investigations into child abductions that cross international boundaries to avoid “mistakes” that blighted the Madeleine McCann case being repeated, a leading criminologist argues.

Ten years on from the disappearance of the Leicestershire toddler, the lessons of the failed investigation have not been learned, says a senior British officer who worked on the case in Portugal.

Ex-Detective Chief Superintendent Graham Hill claims the same “lack of trust, co-operation and understanding” continues to exist today between forces either side of The Channel.

Talks on a co-ordinated approach to abduction cases were held after Madeleine went missing but they became stymied in territorial issues and European Union bureaucracy, said Dr Hill, founder and first head of Behaviour Analysis at the National Crime Agency’s Child Exploitation Online Protection centre (CEOP).

Suggesting “we’re not that much further forward,” Dr Hill added: “Now is a good time to say enough is enough; what are we going to learn from this, or are we not going to learn anything?

“Are we going to walk away and say we’ve spent umpteen million in taxpayers’ money and not learnt anything?”

The hunt for Madeleine began on May 3, 2007 when the three-year-old went missing while on a family holiday at Praia da Luz on the Algarve.

She was asleep in an apartment with her twin siblings when it is believed that she was abducted while her parents, Kate and Gerry McCann, dined with friends in the same holiday complex.

The couple, now aged 49 and 48, say they will do "whatever it takes, for as long as it takes" to find their missing daughter as they applauded the Metropolitan Police Service for the “real progress” made over the last five years. "There is still hope that we can find Madeleine," Mrs McCann added.

Theorising by “armchair experts” about what might have happened to Madeleine had drowned out debate about how to respond to a similar incident in future, Dr Hill added.

As head of behavioural analysis at CEOP in 2007, he was sent to the Algarve to assist the Portuguese investigation.

He told The Times: “I don’t think they really wanted us there. The lead detectives saw our presence as an insult. It became clear we were just being told little bits of information but we were kept away from what was really happening.”
http://www.policeprofessional.com/news.aspx?id=29219


He was one of the behavioural analysts from CEOP sent out to Portugal by the Foreign Office.

Two forensic behavioural analysts from the CEOP Centre have been assisting with this inquiry. They have been made available to the authorities to ensure they have the full range of expertise available for every possible avenue of investigation.
https://ceop.police.uk/Media-Centre/Press-releases/2007/Disappearance-of-Madeleine-McCann-Web-Appeal-for-Information/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1gOOkyaPAU

[John]

Members are reminded that abusive personal comments aimed at other members are prohibited on this forum.  Attack the comments by all means but not the poster.

[G-Unit]

Another uninformed piece. How did he walk into the apartment and introduce himself to the McCanns on the morning of 4th May?  I don't think Kay Burley was there. and the small side gate led to 5A, not a 'complex'.

A paedophile took Madeleine McCann, not her parents
Jon Clarke analyses why her parents were not involved and recalls the shocking way he ended up accused of being involved

By Jon Clarke (Publisher & Editor) - PUBLISHED -  11 May, 2017 @ 15:00 LAST UPDATED: 11 May, 2017 @ 15:22 4
SHARE

Madeleine McCannAs the case of missing Madeleine McCann reaches its tenth anniversary, Olive Press editor JON CLARKE – the first journalist on the scene – analyses why her parents were not involved… and recalls the shocking way he ended up accused of being involved.

I RECEIVED the call at 7.15am from the Daily Mail foreign desk. It was a Friday morning as we approached deadline for one of the first editions of the Olive Press, then in its early fledgling stage.

The daughter of a pair of British doctors had gone missing on the Algarve the night before. Could I get over and investigate?

I was on the road half an hour later from Ronda, where we had our office, based out of a cowshed next to my home.

As a stringer for Associated Newspapers in Spain, I was long used to these early morning calls that invariably led to wild goose chases around the Iberian countryside…but this journey would lead to one of the biggest news stories in history.


 
It was a tale as sad as it was intriguing, and it would keep me in Praia da Luz where four-year-old Maddie went missing for the best part of a month.

It would lead to over a dozen stories in the Olive Press linked to sightings and possible culprits around Spain, with a number making the front pages in the UK.

There were claims that she was put on a ferry in Tarifa, claims she had been sold in Barcelona and even claims that she was living in a small village in Malaga province.

There was even the deluded former deputy chief superintendent, who trolled long and hard from his villa in Andalucia, convinced that the parents were guilty.Madeleine McCann

Finally, I would even find myself accused, more of which later.

Of course, the best whodunnits are always complex and far-fetched. But for a couple of loving parents to murder their daughter, bury and cover all traces in an hour while on holiday is stretching it just a bit too far.

But this didn’t stop the Portuguese police from charging them… and to this day, one notorious ex-detective continues to publish books claiming they were involved.

No care that Kate and Gerry McCann were educated doctors with not a blemish on their names.

That they were on holiday with two other families.

And that they had invited the world’s press to help in the search.

These are just some of the reasons why I am convinced the McCanns did not kill their daughter.

It is perhaps too obvious to point the finger at the parents.

After all, they say that in cases of child molesting and abducting, more than half the time it is family members to blame.

But accusing them had more to do with the ineptitude of the Portuguese police investigation, which didn’t bring in specialists to pick up vital strands of DNA evidence strewn around the flat, until THREE months later.

Then they seized the hire car of the McCann’s, found so-called ‘key, crucial DNA evidence on the back seat,’ and finally allowed them to have it back to drive around.

And, of course, they allowed dozens of local people, including one of the main suspects, Robert Murat – and even me – to wander around the crime scene.

Nor did they shut the border with Spain until the next day.

From the word go, they did not take this crime seriously.

And, in a way, who can blame them?

Praia da Luz sits in the sleepy south west corner of Europe, just short of Sagres. There had been no kidnappings, murders, or any serious crime reported for three years, as it turned out.

The Mark Warner holiday club that charged thousands to parents like the McCanns, did not even have security cameras, or secure premises.

There was no suggestion of putting families on higher floors and anyone could walk into the complex through a small side gate.

All the more perfect for a predatory paedophile who lived in the area.

I was completely shocked by the laid back manner the local authorities were dealing with the case that Friday morning.

When I arrived at about 11.45am I was firstly able to walk into the apartment, where I introduced myself to the McCanns and told them I would do everything I could to help.

The only reporter on the scene till late that evening – apart from Sky News reporter Kay Burley, who happened to be on holiday there – I spent time grilling neighbours, before noticing that a road crew was still digging up the street to lay sewage pipes literally right outside the apartment. The trench was nearly two metres deep and three men continued to shuffle around inside it.

Nobody had stopped them.

Incredibly, we had to wait till late afternoon before a couple of sniffer dogs had arrived, which was amateur to say the least, given that Maddie had been reported missing a full 18 hours earlier.

I am not going to be able to solve the mystery, but I am convinced she was snatched by a local paedophile, who had been watching the family’s movements.

It was coming to the end of their holiday. The fifth night they had put their children to bed and gone down to have dinner with their friends, all doctors bar one.

The apartment door was shut, but within easy reach and in full view of the road and the small village had apparently very little crime . . . until you scratched the surface.

While there had only been one murder of any substance for nearly three years in the area, there was, it turned out, a seedy underworld inhabited by numerous expatriates.

One woman told me how she had been the victim of an attempted snatch at midnight in nearby Lagos a month earlier. A long term English couple, who lived in a nearby hamlet, told me there were ‘half a dozen’ paedophiles living there alone.mccann2

One of these is still being sought.

It was sketchy and unsubstantiated, but there was no doubt – as in any place where northern European expatriates drift in their hundreds – there were a number of bad eggs among them.

Then, there was the Russian connection. Murat’s friend Sergei, a handsome young man, who masqueraded as an estate agent and had a number of connections to boats.

I discovered he worked out of a small office in Lagos, where the police had been the day before to find he had suspiciously just wiped his computer clean.

He refused to comment, but I discovered that he and Murat, who lived in direct sight of the Maddie apartment, allegedly talked a number of times within half an hour of the girl going missing.

While he was never charged, and Murat was later exonerated, it summed up the sense of paranoia that everyone felt in the resort that month.

Whatever happened I am sure the McCanns could not have done it.

Much has been made of the missing hour-and-a-half window between 7pm and 8.30pm on May 3, between Madeleine being put to bed and the parents coming down to dinner.

While Gerry was seen playing tennis, Kate was apparently in the flat . . . she must be guilty then? Not really. She was probably relaxing, having a bath, putting on her make up for the evening.

One Portuguese tabloid claimed Kate had killed Maddie and then hid the body in the fridge of their apartment before ‘passing it through various locations’ and finally moving it in a hire car, perhaps on a ‘suspicious’ trip to Huelva three weeks later.

But given that the apartment fridges are tiny, they would have had to chop her up first. Would they have then calmly sat at dinner with their friends at 8.30pm, showing no sign of a struggle or the anguish of murdering their daughter to their pals?

If they had killed Madeleine and then somehow driven her body away in the tiny time scale, they would have needed to have gone more than 25 miles – the distance from the resort sniffer dogs and police searched.

That would mean driving for at least half an hour on the windy backroads inland from the Algarve. They did not know the back roads, nor a good spot to hide the body. How would they have hidden the body? Using a shovel? Hold on, would not there then be a shop somewhere that sold them a shovel? Is anyone still missing a shovel? If so, please call the Olive Press newsdesk.

It is all so far fetched it is quite ridiculous. And then I got accused of being involved!!!

It came after I inadvertently found myself interviewing a former nightclub bouncer in Huelva, who claimed he know who snatched Maddie.

A huge Angolan chap, he told me she had been taken on order and was now, most likely, in America.

We double checked his credentials, ran it past Maddie’s family and published a carefully worded and, I believe, sensitive piece, which then of course got picked up by the Sun to be splashed on its front page. Not so sensitively.

And all hell broke loose.

Within a week there was a 5,000-word essay from an anti-McCann ‘troll’ named Tony Bennett, a solicitor, who was later found guilty of contempt of court over his repeated claims that the parents were guilty.

In his article, still online, ‘Jon Clarke’s role in Maddie in US claim’, he made numerous wild accusations about me and my integrity, named my wife and children and even where I lived.

He accused me of lying about the case, and crucially claimed I could not have got to Praia da Luz so quickly on the day after her disappearance.

He suggested I was actually staying there.

More alarmingly, it emerged, he had close connections to the aforementioned former UK police chief, who is still based in Andalucia.

When I went to confront this ex-copper, who I vaguely knew, he refused to back down and thrust me a pamphlet entitled ‘What Really Happened to Madeleine?’, which gave 60 reasons insisting she was not abducted.

It’s fair to say we do not see eye to eye, but he is sadly one of millions of people around the world who still think the McCanns are guilty.

One thing for sure, it made me think long and hard about doing my job and how evil and pernicious the internet and its many trolls can be.


I doubt the case will ever be solved, but I am certain the parents were not involved.

And nor, should I add, was I.
http://www.theolivepress.es/spain-news/2017/05/11/madeleine-mccann-olive-press-editor-talks-first-journalist-scene-10th-anniversary-disappearance/

[Alfie]

Excellent article, from someone who was actually there at the time and knows what he's talking about.  G-Unit's nit-picking of a few trivial details in an attemt to rubbish the whole article is a bit desperate IMO.

[G-Unit]

Excellent article, from someone who was actually there at the time and knows what he's talking about.  G-Unit's nit-picking of a few trivial details in an attemt to rubbish the whole article is a bit desperate IMO.

I think it's a bit desperate to applaud every article just because they say what you want to hear.

[ShiningInLuz]

Another uninformed piece. How did he walk into the apartment and introduce himself to the McCanns on the morning of 4th May? They were with the police in Portimao at the time quoted. I don't think Kay Burley was there. Malinka was a computer person not an estate agent, and the small side gate led to 5A, not a 'complex'.

A paedophile took Madeleine McCann, not her parents
Jon Clarke analyses why her parents were not involved and recalls the shocking way he ended up accused of being involved

By Jon Clarke (Publisher & Editor) - PUBLISHED -  11 May, 2017 @ 15:00 LAST UPDATED: 11 May, 2017 @ 15:22 4
SHARE

Madeleine McCannAs the case of missing Madeleine McCann reaches its tenth anniversary, Olive Press editor JON CLARKE – the first journalist on the scene – analyses why her parents were not involved… and recalls the shocking way he ended up accused of being involved.

I RECEIVED the call at 7.15am from the Daily Mail foreign desk. It was a Friday morning as we approached deadline for one of the first editions of the Olive Press, then in its early fledgling stage.

The daughter of a pair of British doctors had gone missing on the Algarve the night before. Could I get over and investigate?

I was on the road half an hour later from Ronda, where we had our office, based out of a cowshed next to my home.

As a stringer for Associated Newspapers in Spain, I was long used to these early morning calls that invariably led to wild goose chases around the Iberian countryside…but this journey would lead to one of the biggest news stories in history.


 
It was a tale as sad as it was intriguing, and it would keep me in Praia da Luz where four-year-old Maddie went missing for the best part of a month.

It would lead to over a dozen stories in the Olive Press linked to sightings and possible culprits around Spain, with a number making the front pages in the UK.

There were claims that she was put on a ferry in Tarifa, claims she had been sold in Barcelona and even claims that she was living in a small village in Malaga province.

There was even the deluded former deputy chief superintendent, who trolled long and hard from his villa in Andalucia, convinced that the parents were guilty.Madeleine McCann

Finally, I would even find myself accused, more of which later.

Of course, the best whodunnits are always complex and far-fetched. But for a couple of loving parents to murder their daughter, bury and cover all traces in an hour while on holiday is stretching it just a bit too far.

But this didn’t stop the Portuguese police from charging them… and to this day, one notorious ex-detective continues to publish books claiming they were involved.

No care that Kate and Gerry McCann were educated doctors with not a blemish on their names.

That they were on holiday with two other families.

And that they had invited the world’s press to help in the search.

These are just some of the reasons why I am convinced the McCanns did not kill their daughter.

It is perhaps too obvious to point the finger at the parents.

After all, they say that in cases of child molesting and abducting, more than half the time it is family members to blame.

But accusing them had more to do with the ineptitude of the Portuguese police investigation, which didn’t bring in specialists to pick up vital strands of DNA evidence strewn around the flat, until THREE months later.

Then they seized the hire car of the McCann’s, found so-called ‘key, crucial DNA evidence on the back seat,’ and finally allowed them to have it back to drive around.

And, of course, they allowed dozens of local people, including one of the main suspects, Robert Murat – and even me – to wander around the crime scene.

Nor did they shut the border with Spain until the next day.

From the word go, they did not take this crime seriously.

And, in a way, who can blame them?

Praia da Luz sits in the sleepy south west corner of Europe, just short of Sagres. There had been no kidnappings, murders, or any serious crime reported for three years, as it turned out.

The Mark Warner holiday club that charged thousands to parents like the McCanns, did not even have security cameras, or secure premises.

There was no suggestion of putting families on higher floors and anyone could walk into the complex through a small side gate.

All the more perfect for a predatory paedophile who lived in the area.

I was completely shocked by the laid back manner the local authorities were dealing with the case that Friday morning.

When I arrived at about 11.45am I was firstly able to walk into the apartment, where I introduced myself to the McCanns and told them I would do everything I could to help.

The only reporter on the scene till late that evening – apart from Sky News reporter Kay Burley, who happened to be on holiday there – I spent time grilling neighbours, before noticing that a road crew was still digging up the street to lay sewage pipes literally right outside the apartment. The trench was nearly two metres deep and three men continued to shuffle around inside it.

Nobody had stopped them.

Incredibly, we had to wait till late afternoon before a couple of sniffer dogs had arrived, which was amateur to say the least, given that Maddie had been reported missing a full 18 hours earlier.

I am not going to be able to solve the mystery, but I am convinced she was snatched by a local paedophile, who had been watching the family’s movements.

It was coming to the end of their holiday. The fifth night they had put their children to bed and gone down to have dinner with their friends, all doctors bar one.

The apartment door was shut, but within easy reach and in full view of the road and the small village had apparently very little crime . . . until you scratched the surface.

While there had only been one murder of any substance for nearly three years in the area, there was, it turned out, a seedy underworld inhabited by numerous expatriates.

One woman told me how she had been the victim of an attempted snatch at midnight in nearby Lagos a month earlier. A long term English couple, who lived in a nearby hamlet, told me there were ‘half a dozen’ paedophiles living there alone.mccann2

One of these is still being sought.

It was sketchy and unsubstantiated, but there was no doubt – as in any place where northern European expatriates drift in their hundreds – there were a number of bad eggs among them.

Then, there was the Russian connection. Murat’s friend Sergei, a handsome young man, who masqueraded as an estate agent and had a number of connections to boats.

I discovered he worked out of a small office in Lagos, where the police had been the day before to find he had suspiciously just wiped his computer clean.

He refused to comment, but I discovered that he and Murat, who lived in direct sight of the Maddie apartment, allegedly talked a number of times within half an hour of the girl going missing.

While he was never charged, and Murat was later exonerated, it summed up the sense of paranoia that everyone felt in the resort that month.

Whatever happened I am sure the McCanns could not have done it.

Much has been made of the missing hour-and-a-half window between 7pm and 8.30pm on May 3, between Madeleine being put to bed and the parents coming down to dinner.

While Gerry was seen playing tennis, Kate was apparently in the flat . . . she must be guilty then? Not really. She was probably relaxing, having a bath, putting on her make up for the evening.

One Portuguese tabloid claimed Kate had killed Maddie and then hid the body in the fridge of their apartment before ‘passing it through various locations’ and finally moving it in a hire car, perhaps on a ‘suspicious’ trip to Huelva three weeks later.

But given that the apartment fridges are tiny, they would have had to chop her up first. Would they have then calmly sat at dinner with their friends at 8.30pm, showing no sign of a struggle or the anguish of murdering their daughter to their pals?

If they had killed Madeleine and then somehow driven her body away in the tiny time scale, they would have needed to have gone more than 25 miles – the distance from the resort sniffer dogs and police searched.

That would mean driving for at least half an hour on the windy backroads inland from the Algarve. They did not know the back roads, nor a good spot to hide the body. How would they have hidden the body? Using a shovel? Hold on, would not there then be a shop somewhere that sold them a shovel? Is anyone still missing a shovel? If so, please call the Olive Press newsdesk.

It is all so far fetched it is quite ridiculous. And then I got accused of being involved!!!

It came after I inadvertently found myself interviewing a former nightclub bouncer in Huelva, who claimed he know who snatched Maddie.

A huge Angolan chap, he told me she had been taken on order and was now, most likely, in America.

We double checked his credentials, ran it past Maddie’s family and published a carefully worded and, I believe, sensitive piece, which then of course got picked up by the Sun to be splashed on its front page. Not so sensitively.

And all hell broke loose.

Within a week there was a 5,000-word essay from an anti-McCann ‘troll’ named Tony Bennett, a solicitor, who was later found guilty of contempt of court over his repeated claims that the parents were guilty.

In his article, still online, ‘Jon Clarke’s role in Maddie in US claim’, he made numerous wild accusations about me and my integrity, named my wife and children and even where I lived.

He accused me of lying about the case, and crucially claimed I could not have got to Praia da Luz so quickly on the day after her disappearance.

He suggested I was actually staying there.

More alarmingly, it emerged, he had close connections to the aforementioned former UK police chief, who is still based in Andalucia.

When I went to confront this ex-copper, who I vaguely knew, he refused to back down and thrust me a pamphlet entitled ‘What Really Happened to Madeleine?’, which gave 60 reasons insisting she was not abducted.

It’s fair to say we do not see eye to eye, but he is sadly one of millions of people around the world who still think the McCanns are guilty.

One thing for sure, it made me think long and hard about doing my job and how evil and pernicious the internet and its many trolls can be.


I doubt the case will ever be solved, but I am certain the parents were not involved.

And nor, should I add, was I.
http://www.theolivepress.es/spain-news/2017/05/11/madeleine-mccann-olive-press-editor-talks-first-journalist-scene-10th-anniversary-disappearance/

Thank you very much for this.  It is a true classic.  It was very enjoyable, unfortunately for all the wrong reasons.

[slartibartfast]

I think it's a bit desperate to applaud every article by every know-nothing just because they say what you want to hear.

It's a form of goading.

[Mr Gray]

It's a form of goading.

I think that is a denial of reality....both your posts and gunits are attacking the posters...which is a form of goading

[Alfie]

I think it's a bit desperate to applaud every article by every know-nothing just because they say what you want to hear.

I think it's the height of arragance to believe you know more about something that someone who was actually there and who actually met the McCanns and who has followed this case closely from day one.  "Know-nothing"?  What incredible arrogance.

[Alfie]

It's a form of goading.

As is that.

[Alfie]

I think I will drop Jon Clarke an email so he can read this exchange.  Perhaps he'd like to defend himself agsinst accusations of knowing nothing.