Netflix to screen documentary on Madeleine McCann disappearance

[Zable]

I've always been of the opinion that they had a hand in her disappearance, but with the scale of the media circus that surrounded them when on earth could they have taken the body elsewhere?

About the media:

I don’t think the media camped outside 24/7. I suspect they only appeared like a rugby scrum whenever there was a pre-announced event, such as an announcement or visitation by bigwigs or they got wind of something new. I’m more inclined to think they were mostly holed up in their watering hole or, if bored on a quiet day, were wandering off some place to do something. I gather the international media who had not forged long-time contacts within the PJ and who couldn’t speak the lingo took to making a certain bar their work base: in the mornings, they paid someone multilingual and with access to 'inside info' to translate the local & Spanish news from a variety of publications, then piggybacked off that information to write the regurgitated stuff more incorrectly but more colourfully during the afternoons.

Robert Murat was an arguido before the McCanns. He was staying at his mum’s house. For two intensive days teams of officers tore up her entire garden and the surrounds, covering every centimetre of it. The media never found out at the time it happened, according to Dr Amaral.

The entire time Dr Amaral was the case coordinator, he was holed up in an apartment in the Ocean Club resort and apparently the media never discovered the hideout. No mean feat that, not getting spotted entering or leaving, considering he was living there months on end with a dedicated team of men, apparently all packed in like sardines.


Maddie’s vanishing:

I feel she was removed the night before the Press arrived. I suspect she was removed either just before or immediately following the alarm being raised by Kate. Before anyone other than the Tapas 9 were around. Possibly, the alarm was raised earlier than told to police. Some folk who spoke with the PJ had thought that.

Btw, a resort worker told police he’d been collecting laundry and had seen a man behaving suspiciously near the stairwell of Gerry’s block around 6pm that Thursday. He later looked at photographs and picked someone out – who turned out to be Neil Berry. Hence the reason why British police interviewed Neil, who denied he’d ever been in that block. Also, he didn’t recall resort workers collecting laundry at that time.

I’ve seen aerial pictures of large sections of the resort and surrounds posted online, allegedly taken the day (possibly just in the morning) after the alarm was raised about Maddie. The streets were deserted. Not a soul in sight. Many of the night searches had been called off between 4-4.30am. Some still searched till 5amish. Perhaps folk (from both resort and town) were sleeping in.


Strictly speculative:

I think Maddie was in bed that Thursday night when the parents left but died not too long after. That Kate was unaware of what had really happened until a later date; which possibly could have been as early as the pre-dawn hours of the next morning – circa 4.30am when she set off with Gerry to search by themselves (or so Kate thought). That alone-time might have been when he confided in her what had happened to Maddie. I think both were genuinely distraught from the beginning, only for different reasons. One knowing their child was dead. The other believing their child had been taken.

Gerry deleted his mobile phone call list for an entire block of time for that Thursday night. Kate was selective in the calls she deleted. What first alerted the PJ to this deletion was that Kate had left undeleted a phone call to Gerry but it did not show on his call list. So there was something that night itself that needed to be concealed. Perhaps the help of a third party; maybe a relative.

Gerry could have moved Maddie from A to B himself, with B being outside apartment G5A – because the cadaverine ‘trace’ lead out the patio way (which is not the front door that the Sun marks as “patio door”). B would have been a place somewhere close by, as Gerry would have been on foot. He might have contacted a third party to move Maddie from B to C a place somewhat further away, perhaps taken in a vehicle. When he was able to rent a car, perhaps he and Kate were able to make a second to final pilgrimage….

Whatever the case, it is sad. So terribly sad.

 

[Zable]

I think if they'd taken part in the series they could have given it some heart - the biggest thing consistently thrown at them is their coldness and arrogance, which, I still get now when I see them.

If in 12 years, they’ve never projected heart, then why expect that they suddenly would? It’s hard to change the human psyche and hard to believe folk will suddenly change their minds. Participating in TDoMM would have invited only continued odium for the McCanns, IMHO.

 

[Rove]

The books, the court cases, the libel cases and the general circus of it all, all overshadowing the fact that a gorgeous 3 year old, innocent, happy young child had vanished into thin air.

After watching this series during the last week this is exactly how I felt. Far too many people made money out of a little girl who vanished. There is something really distasteful about this whole sorry episode. And why do the McCann family get defensive about a series which puts a fresh focus on Madeleine's disappearance? To me that is rather odd behaviour.

 

[Sarah]

No need to apologise @Zable - I guess I'm just hopeful she will be found alive one day. Stranger things have happened. Look at Natascha Kampusch and Elisabeth Fritzl.

I'm really sorry to hear about Eddie Those dogs, any dogs are stars in my opinion.

I don't know what to believe - the documentary didn't reveal anything that I didn't already know from reading about the case. What I will say though is that nobody, not her family or Madeleine herself for all the age of her, referred to her as Maddie. She was always Madeleine.

Part of me does continue to believe that the parents did do it - and are deflecting it away from themselves by creating this media storm. Who knows for sure. Either way I don't know how they have been able to continue on.

 

[Zable]

Why, when a multi millionaire is paying for the continued search are the police still allocating money towards it

Which multi-millionaire is paying for the continued search Pete? Are you referring to the Brian Kennedy featured in TDoMM?

I’m under the impression that he’s not, though he might well be a loyal supporter of the Madeleine’s Fund.

My understanding is that this BK stopped funding the private investigations (on behalf of the McCanns) into Maddie’s disappearance some 10-11 years ago.

Clarence Mitchell, the long serving McCann family spokesman, gave this statement to the Press back in 2009 on March 6th at an event at the Oxford Union, where he spoke about his career:

“I was working for the government when the news of Madeleine’s abduction broke. I was asked to go to Portugal to help with the media frenzy that was developing. In September I decided I wanted to work full-time to help the McCanns with their campaign so I left the government and Brian Kennedy stepped in to pay my salary. Some months ago Brian Kennedy withdrew from funding it and so the Helping to Find Madeleine Trust is now paying me to help continue the search for Madeleine. “​

A few days earlier, March 1, he’d told the Independent newspaper that he was being paid a 28,000 pounds sterling-a-year retainer from the Help Find Madeleine Trust for his PR job.

What I don’t understand is why Mitchell refers to the Help Find Madeleine Trust. Did it exist separately to the Madeleine’s Fund (the fund that folk donate to)? Does anyone know?

Why did the McCann's pay off their mortgage with the fund people had paid into, to find Maddy?

Madeleine’s Fund is a not-for-profit company. Not a charity. http://www.findmadeleine.com/about_us/madeleines-fund.html

My understanding is that the Brian Kennedy who is listed as a member of the board of Madeleine’s Fund here is Kate Healy McCann’s maternal uncle. Some media have identified him as Brian Healy. Healy is his brother-in-law’s family name.

I don’t know if K&G did pay off their mortgage with the money this company received from the public, Pete, but it really should be a non-issue. One of Madeleine’s Fund’s stated objective is “to provide support, including financial assistance, to Madeleine’s family”.

If folk have donated money to this fund without doing their due diligence & don’t like the fact that Maddie’s immediate family can draw on the money received for their personal use, then that’s their problem & hang-up, IMHO. It’s clearly stated beside the site’s “donate online” button that “your donations will be used within the guidelines of the fund”. They should check out those guidelines.

any dogs are stars in my opinion.

I kinda know what you mean. At my family home, we had 3 generations of dogs. Months after I moved out, the grandma dog died. I went back to bury her, removing her collar and licence first. That collar with its licence hangs on my front door knob – has done for over 20 years. So a part of the furniture, I sometimes forget it’s there.

nobody, not her family or Madeleine herself for all the age of her, referred to her as Maddie. She was always Madeleine.

Then, milady, you do not know that Baby Crèche nanny Charlotte Pennington told police Madeleine had introduced herself to her as Maddie.

That Charlotte is said to be the very same Charlotte Pennington who later played Libby Bailey in Kiwi soap Shortland Street.

I call Madeleine Maddie as I knew a Magdalene in Kindy and primary school. Calling Maddie by her full name conjures both up at the same time. I prefer not to have memories of the two intertwined.

 

[Sarah]

Madeleine would say 'My name is MADELEINE' to anyone who called her Madeleine apparently @Zable So I don't believe Charlotte.

Do feel free to introduce me as 'Milady' however

 

[Zable]

Madeleine would say 'My name is MADELEINE' to anyone who called her Madeleine apparently

The child thought folk were deaf?

No wonder she asked one of her parents why that parent wouldn’t come when she cried. Or, so the PJ were told by a little bird.

It left the PJ scratching their heads, because Kate and Gerry each then claimed she’d said it to them. But they couldn't get their stories straight as to which one of them it was. Meanwhile, Kate’s uncle’s wife, Janet Kennedy, was telling police that K&G’s parenting style was not to let the child keep crying.

So I don't believe Charlotte.

Yes, it’s hard to take dear Lotte seriously when she tells the Daily Mail one thing and the Dispatches programme another within mere weeks of each other.

She told DM in Sept 2007 she saw Maddie, the twins, and their parents on the evening of Thursday, May 3rd: she was helping serve the children’s high tea at the Tapas and it ended later than normal at 6pm because everyone was having a jolly good time.

In October, she told Dispatches (Searching for Madeleine) that she’d read a story to Maddie that Thursday. Then, “around lunchtime. That’s the last time I saw them together as a family.”

Go figure. To which media did she lie?

Or, did DM, to help out Team McCann, with the help of Charlotte (or, maybe without her knowledge) concoct a credible but false sighting of Maddie by someone outside the Tapas 9 who had sufficient familiarity with Maddie to positively recognize her? ….Charlotte knew Maddie because the Baby Crèche was next door to the Mini Club – the two crèches shared common physical space – and Charlotte would participate in Mini Club activities during the hours that the 2 infants in her care had naps.

What do you think, milady?

 

[Zable]

Kate refused (based on advice) in case her answers and timelines differed to what Gerry had said, providing the police with more doubt of their guilt/innocence.

Maybe, Pete. I can’t speak to Kate’s motives for not responding to 42 questions out of the 49 that I know of that was asked during her interrogation as an arguida; at which her lawyer was present, btw. But since you reside in Portugal, you must know that under its laws, unlike mere witnesses who must answer the questions put to them, an arguida or arguido has responsibilities and rights, including the right of silence.

For the arguido interviews, Kate was questioned before Gerry was, that same day in September 2007.

However, by that time, each had already given 2 witness statements; on 3 different days in May & Sept.

IMO, by the time of the arguido interviews, whatever damage that could have been done to K&G –arising from giving differing replies to questions asked + their statements being at odds with others: the one by the apartment cleaner, for instance, over where the cots had been during the week – had already been done.

Kate maintains, to this day if I’m not mistaken, that at the time she found Maddie not in her bed, the bedroom window was open. That window has a fixed pane, and a pane that slides. (So a person only has half the width of the window for entry or exit.) Kate told police she saw the window opened to the left.

Silvia Batista, the resort’s maintenance & services director who’d acted as interpreter between Gerry and GNR first responders, told police she’d noticed that the room’s window was shut; and said Gerry had explained to them that he’d shut it because of the twins were still asleep in the room. He told them that when he’d been told of Maddie’s disappearance, he’d found the window and shutters open and curtains moving in a draught.

I think it’s normal for family members to have their prints found on windows, be they on the pane, sill or frame. On Wednesday, the apartment cleaner had cleaned the window. Of the family members, only Kate’s fingerprints (not her palm print as said on TDoMM) were found on the window in Maddie’s room. Forensic examination of the window and bedding showed that gloves hadn’t been used, according to Dr Amaral in his book. I ask: did Gerry really close the window? With what?

The arguido interviews were opportunities to demystify matters. Kate for some reason was advised to stay silent. Who knows if Kate or her lawyer knew beforehand that Gerry would be opening his mouth all the way through his arguido interview/interrogation.

Aside:

TDoMM mentions the legal battle the McCanns launched in Portugal against Dr Amaral (and others). It was over Dr Amaral’s book. I forget exactly what was said, it’s a blur and I can’t remember if TDoMM wove in the libel suit or not. I think it did, as if everything was all one case. ….I know I noticed TDoMM simply posted at the end of that segment that Dr Amaral had won in the Appeals Court. And, I was miffed. Because it hadn’t included a couple of lines to say something about the Portuguese Supreme Court’s judgment & final verdict it rendered after reviewing its own judgment.

That Last Terrible Judgment (as Gerry characterized it) came in late January, 2017, 3½ months before the 10th anniversary of Maddie’s disappearance. Production company Pulse Films clearly had time to mention it, given that it ended TDoMM with the church service on the 10th anniversary of Maddie’s disappearance.

So, to say what TDoMM didn’t make clear, or chose not to: the McCanns as a family (the twins included) brought 2 lawsuits against Dr Amaral. One sought a book injunction (among other things), the other sought damages for libel arising from the publication of the book and a Portuguese documentary that was made based on it. The McCanns lost the book injunction case in the Appeals Court, and the libel case in the Supreme Court, the highest court in Portugal.

Aside to the aside:

Testimony was heard from Trish Cameron, Gerry’s sister, who said that Kate had been devastated to be made an arguida.

Another person who testified was K&G’s trauma psychologist, Alan Pike. He’d first met and counselled them on May 5th 2007 in his capacity then as a crisis counsellor and had developed that professional relationship with them over the years. He said they’d given him permission to speak on their behalf.

Alan told the court that Kate had suffered a second trauma (after the trauma of having her daughter vanish) when she viewed the documentary based on Dr Amaral’s book.

He testified that second traumas were worse in their impact than the original trauma. Asked if wouldn’t being made arguida have been the second trauma, the psychologist replied “no”, explaining that K&G had come to know Portuguese laws and were expecting it; and, in fact, Gerry had wondered why they hadn’t been made arguidos earlier!

Gerry sounds like he was all for “hey, man, bring it on!” while Dr Amaral sounds like he regrets police took the kids glove approach against the Tapas 9, not asking at the start for wire-tapping and personal surveillance as he legally could have.

 

[Zable]

Revisiting....

Madeleine’s Fund is a not-for-profit company.

The company’s full name: Madeleine's Fund Leaving No Stone Unturned Limited. Incorporated on May 15th 2007. Registered with: Companies House (England & Wales).

Along with it, but not set up by the McCanns, was another sort of fund….

On Sunday, May 13th 2007, two days before Madeleine's Fund was registered, the News of the World offered a 1.5 million pound reward for info leading to Maddie’s safe return.

NotW said 2 types of sources would feed the reward monies: “pledges” made by organisations and people & actual "donations". It published the number of a bank account for donations to be paid into.

NotW promised that if the reward wasn’t paid out, that portion that comprised donations would be shared among 3 children’s groups: Barnado’s, the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children and Childline. Just before midnight that May 15th, NotW posted on its website that celebrities had also donated to its fund, ballooning the reward amount.

Then, on July 11th 2011, the 168-year-old NotW died ingloriously, done-in by a massive phone hacking scandal: between 2006 and 2011, it had illegally intercepted messages for or listened-in to phone calls of an estimated 4,000 people.

There was been no official word on what happened to the reward money.

It’s been claimed that:

_a Press officer for News International (as it was known then), which owned NotW, stated in a reply to someone’s email enquiry that “the funds raised by the appeal” had been paid out earlier that April – into Madeleine’s Fund.

_both Barnado’s and the NSPCC said they did not have any dealings with NotW regarding being made the beneficiaries of the donations if the reward was not paid out to an informer. So that appears to have been the unilateral decision of NotW (or its parent company). And, somehow, there was a change of mind, but the public weren't told.

The phone hacking scandal which engulfed NotW led to the Leveson Inquiry, among other things. This was a judicial public inquiry into the ethics, culture and practices of the British Press, which was heard over 2011-2012.

circa 4.30am when she set off with Gerry to search by themselves

Re: circa 4.30am. My bad. Kate’s diary says that search was at 6am.

That diary of hers became a case in point during the Leveson Inquiry. K&G managed to have themselves heard there.

The diary was kept between April 28th 2007 (the start of their PdL holiday) and July 31st 2007. ….Gerry told the Leveson Inquiry that Kate had actually begun it 2 weeks after Maddie disappeared: circa May 17th then – which means the start of the diary, if not more sections of it, are ‘catch-up notes’.

Gerry’s sister, Philomena, told UK’s The Sun that it was she who gave the idea of a diary to Kate, to give to Madeleine when the child was found. Reportedly, she told Kate:
“…we have to prove to Madeleine how much we looked for her and how much we love her.
“That wee girl will be thinking, ‘They're not looking for me. My mummy, daddy and my aunties – they don't love me because they can't find me.’
“I was just thinking about how insecure Madeleine would be, so Kate has been keeping that journal faithfully every day.
"She's been writing down everything that we've been doing so we can prove to Madeleine that we have worked so hard to try and find her, that we've put our lives on hold to search for her and show our love for her is unending.”

Kate told the inquiry that the personal diary was seized by the PJ at a time when K&G were staying in the PdL villa they’d rented, and it was returned to her within 48 hours.

TDoMM briefly mentions Dr Amaral’s claim of British political pressure. It also highlights the Leveson Inquiry, and features former The Sun editor Kelvin MacKenzie in that segment. But, if memory serves, the doco doesn’t bring up Kate’s diary. A pity that.

That diary contains some evidence about how K&G had wanted Maddie’s disappearance to be managed. For instance, entries on May 23rd, 2007 say:
_"Left a message for Gordon Brown to call us in order to increase the political pressure". (Mr Brown was then prime minister-in-waiting.)
_ "Gordon Brown called and spoke with Gerry – very sympathetic and gave strength. Somewhat emotive feeling afterwards." (The call came just 3 hours later, apparently.)

Cherie Blair and, at a later date, hubby Tony (still PM) were among those who called offering support. “Just ask” seemed the theme.

Other entries include the visit by the Lisbon-based British ambassador John Buck to their Ocean Club apartment in PdL on May 4th 2007. ….Dr Amaral says in A Verdade da Mentira that Mr Buck also visited the PJ office in Portimao that morning; where someone overheard him speak on the phone, saying the Portuguese police weren't doing anything. ….As well, some British diplomatic staff who’d served in Portugal at that time have said Mr Buck gave them instructions which shocked them: to the point that they felt they need to cable home to higher authorities, and were instructed to keep up the pressure.

Other entries in Kate’s diary mention foto-opportunities given to the British Press, with pre-arranged walkabouts & visits to places: to applease them because the British Press were upset that K&G had returned to the UK at some point during their Portugal stay without them being informed by the McCanns’ PR team.

We know these things from the diary because the Portuguese daily Correio da Manhã was the first to serialize it in 2008, with headlines unflattering to the McCaans.

Then, in September that year, the News of the World, claiming to have obtained a copy of the diary from a Portuguese reporter, published excerpts. ....Kate told the Leveson Inquiry the wording of her diary entries in the NotW felt like it had been translated from Portuguese. Gerry informed the inquiry that a Portuguese judge had told the PJ the diary was not connected to the case and the judge had ordered the PJ to destroy any copies.

Left unspoken, if memory serves, was how that pro-McCann Portuguese reporter who supplied NotW with its copy got a copy for him or herself.

At the time of publication, the NotW claimed it was publishing the diary excerpts with the purpose of showing the British public how “Her words [Kate’s] destroy the litany of lies told by Portuguese cops to paint them [K&G] as cold and calculating.”

Kate told the Leveson Inquiry that NotW had not sought her permission to publish. The BBC reported that she'd told the inquiry she’d felt violated.

Daniel Sanderson, the NotW reporter who wrote the news article that contained the excerpts told the Leveson Inquiry he would apologize to Kate. He said he’d assumed one of his bosses, who was “in daily contact” with McCann family spokesman Clarence Mitchell had done the needful.

If memory serves Kate did not bring up the serialization of her private diary by Correio da Manhã during the inquiry.

 

[Zable]

Revisiting....

the Tapas 9 family group

They comprised 9 adults + 8 children, aged 4 and younger. Namely:

_Dave & Fiona Payne + 2 children

_Diane Webster (Fiona’s mum)

_Russell O’Brien & Jane Tanner + 2 children

_Matt Oldfield & Rachel Mampilly + 1 child

_Gerry McCann & Kate Healy + 3 children​

The Tapas 7 = All the adults excluding the McCanns.


Aside

When Maddie vanished abroad, the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office considered her to be a missing child and not as a child who had been abducted.

‘Missing’ was her status; and may still be, despite more than 7 years having passed (the time that UK law say needs to lapse before she can legally be declared dead). I commend TDoMM’s makers for allocating a portion of the doco to discussing missing children.

child negligence vs child abandonment

When Maddie vanished, the PJ officially listed her as the 9th child missing in Portugal.

However, according to Britain’s Telegraph, she was not ‘recognised’ as such by the Portuguese Association for Missing Children (APCD). In its news report of Dec 8th 2007, the Telegraph gave some details of what the incoming head of APCD, Paulo Pereira Cristovao, had said to 24 Horas, a Portuguese daily.

Reportedly, Mr Cristovao, who had been in the PJ, said “I was asked what I thought about inviting the McCanns to the APCD. I said no, because they're suspects …She is (the ninth child on the PJ's missing people page) but the case involves a criminal investigation which is still on the boil, with the parents as suspects.”

According to the Telegraph, Mr Cristovao told 24 Horas: “When the parents told police that they went to dinner and left the children at home alone, they confessed to the crime of abandonment and should have been charged on that first day … The penalty of abandonment is at least three years imprisonment,” he stated reiterating previous calls [where from?] for them to face prosecution for their actions.

First, K&G confessed to no such crime: why would Mr Cristovao have said that they had? Unless, what he’d really done was state that in his opinion/judgment abandonment had been the crime they were confessing to when they'd said what they said.

Second, leaving your children alone at home when you’re out to dinner sounds like nothing more than what would be considered child negligence in the UK. Why would it be child abandonment in Portugal?

Most countries draw a line in the sand between child negligence and child abandonment. Portugal, I understand, doesn’t distinguish between the two, but takes the high road, so to say, by making abandonment the crime; like an all or nothing deal. Which may be why some perceive Portugal as being lawless, for not seeing as crimes what would be considered crimes in other places.

My understanding of what is Portugal’s idea of child abandonment is one where a child is deliberately left alone with the intention that it comes to harm. (Please, if anyone knows this to be different, let me know.)

Dr Amaral observes in A Verdade da Mentira that it isn’t easy to arrest someone in Portugal. For instance, the crimes for which K&G were made arguidos didn't carry custodial sentences.

If Mr Cristovao offered 24 Horas any reasons why the McCanns deliberately wished their children harm, and why those reasons should have been obvious to the PJ/GNR that first day, or even any information how the concept of abandonment differed between the 2 countries, then the Telegraph didn’t report it.

 

[Zable]

Revisting....

When the Polícia Judiciária archived the Maddie case (not closed) in July 2008, the bulk of their investigative files was made available to the public

I erred. The files were released to the public the month following the archival; August 4th, per http://mccannpjfiles.co.uk – which is my go-to reference site for English translations of witness/arguido statements and other documents the Polícia Judiciária had in its files.

nobody, not her family or Madeleine herself for all the age of her, referred to her as Maddie.

Please listen carefully to this video, at a little after 3 minutes, to the response Kate gets when she asks the question “Who’s your other sister?”

From out of the mouths of babes….

The child thought folk were deaf?

No wonder she asked one of her parents why that parent wouldn’t come when she cried. Or, so the PJ were told by a little bird.

It left the PJ scratching their heads, because Kate and Gerry each then claimed she’d said it to them. But they couldn't get their stories straight as to which one of them it was.

The joke’s on me. There are 2 crying stories, actually, and I got them muddled. I’ll straighten this mess out in another post or two or three in May, hopefully.

The company’s full name: Madeleine's Fund Leaving No Stone Unturned Limited.

That’s wrong, .
Legal name: Leaving No Stone Unturned Limited.
AKA Madeleine’s Fund.

Portugal, I understand, doesn’t distinguish between the two, but takes the high road, so to say, by making abandonment the crime; like an all or nothing deal.

I confess this does me noggin in. At the time I wrote this it made perfect sense.

 

[Zable]

Madeleine Was Here (MwH): Part 1_Overview

If you’ve watched The Disappearance of Madeleine McCann and had watched Madeleine Was Here before it, then you’d have seen familiar faces, images and scenes from MwH scattered throughout TDoMM.

Faces such as:

_Ernie Allen, the former president of the US National Centre for Missing and Exploited children who, back in 2009, gave K&G an age-progressed picture of Maddie;

_Jane Tanner & Matt Oldfield who, along with Gerry, participated in an unofficial re-construction of events in Portugal;

_Kate + pics of Dave Edgar & Arthur Cowley, the private investigators working for the McCanns at the time that MwH was made.

As well, the sketches of suspects Bundleman & Cooperman (drawn by police sketch artist Melissa Little whom TDoMM featured). Cooperman has either an alias or a
doppelgänger known as Creepyman. Also, there's Mr Spotty, aka Scareface/Pimpleman.

Plus, the scenes of Gerry with his patients & clips of the re-enactments.

MwH was made by the UK’s Channel 4 programme The Cutting Edge. A voice-over informs us, “the second anniversary of Madeleine’s disappearance is approaching. Kate and Gerry want to use media attention to keep the search in the public’s mind.”

When Maddie vanished in 2007, K&G began a Find Madeleine campaign.

From the very first day of Maddie’s disappearance, the Tapas 9 have maintained that she was abducted. To this day, the Find Madeleine website speaks of Maddie in the present tense, and as an abducted child. On the site’s homepage, her family gives 4 reasons why they persist in searching for her. Chief among them: “There is absolutely nothing to suggest that Madeleine has been harmed.” http://findmadeleine.com

When the McCanns moved out of their accommodation in the Luz Ocean Club and into the villa they rented, Gerry turned a section of their bedroom into an office, and set up a blog site. A post he made on his blog for June 21st 2007 (marked Day 49) began: “Met with the Portuguese police today for an update. Their committemnt [sic] to find Madeleine matches ours and we all hope for that vital breakthrough every day.”

The Find Madeleine website that was built for the Find Madeleine campaign used to contain a link to Gerry’s blog posts, but no longer.

K&G returned to the UK for good on Sept 9th 2007, two days after being made arguidos. The following July, their arguido status was lifted; but contrary to what we hear announced on MwH and elsewhere, they weren’t “cleared as suspects” by the PJ – whose lead working hypothesis was that Madeleine had been a victim of a violent/accidental death in her family’s holiday unit at the Ocean Club.

The PJ also had another working hypothesis, that Maddie had been abducted.

For each of these hypotheses, the PJ had an arguido/arguida – Robert Murat for abduction, K&G for concealing Maddie’s death. That lasted until Portuguese authorities decided to archive the case in 2008 for insufficient evidence. That was the point at which the arguido/arguida status of all three had been lifted.

It’s important to remember, though, that police suspicion of every one of them remained because (a) the fact that they had become official suspects in the first place meant there had been strong grounds for that to have happened; and (b) there not being sufficient evidence to charge them did not mean they were cleared of wrong-doing. ….If I understand the judgment of Portugal’s Supreme Court of Justice properly when it said the McCanns had not been “cleared as suspects”, this is also how the court had thought.

But it shouldn’t have taken the Supreme Court of Justice to ram this message home. This was something that had been obvious to others before then. For instance, now retired British detective superintendent Colin Sutton (who enjoyed a reputation for being a cold case specialist) had felt the need to publicly remind folk some years ago that Portuguese police had never cleared K&G as suspects.

Up until the Supreme Court of Justice’s final ruling in 2017, K&G and their spokesman Clarence Mitchell had repeatedly said publicly that they had been cleared. Nine years of claiming that. IMO, if K&G genuinely didn’t know this to be untrue, then they must have had lousy legal advice. If they hadn’t ….the suspicion is we were being conditioned to believe that what they said was true.

***0***​

According to MwH, the McCanns had obtained some 30,000 of the PJ’s investigative files and had spent some 100K quid from a fund (supposedly * The Find Madeleine Fund per MwH) to have the files translated.

(*Note: I could be wrong, but I doubt a Find Madeleine Fund was officially set up. Perhaps that’s simply money from Madeleine’s Fund that was set aside for the Find Madeleine campaign and not for the family’s personal use.)

MwH debuted on May 7th 2009. The Cutting Edge voice-over informs us that “Kate has spent the last six months going through every document”. Kate says she wanted to do it herself because she knew she’d be using “a fine tooth-comb”.

In the doco, Gerry says of Maddie: “She’s either out there or she’s not. And, there’s nothing to say she’s not out there alive. So, it’s simple: She’s out there until proven otherwise.”

The Cutting Edge asks him, “Who is actually looking for Madeleine at the moment?”

Gerry responds: “…but in terms of an investigative strategy then there is no law enforcement agency that is proactively doing anything. It’s pretty amazing really when you think about it. It’s a very serious crime, and we’ve got to do it.” That crime he’s talking about can only be an abduction.

The Cutting Edge informs us, “They plan to return to Praia da Luz to reconstruct key events around Madeleine’s disappearance, hoping to provoke a response.”

The first time I watched MwH, I took its contents at face value. When I’d first heard about the Maddie case, it was being reported as an abduction. I never followed the case. Years later, by chance I stumbled on the doco on YT and decided to watch.

When it got to the part “hoping to provoke a response”, my reaction was this: Provoke a response from whom?

I mulled the strange use of the word “provoke”, its appropriateness. If I’d kidnapped your four-year-old two years ago and had kept her alive all this time, I think I’d have had more immediate things to worry about ….such as her still-fresh memories of her family ….her likely vocal distress about the alien environment around her sans anyone she’d ever known. If the folk around me hadn’t ratted on me by this time, if the child’s ‘alerts’ on outings to the outside world that I/my family was a stranger to her hadn’t borne fruit in this time, would I now feel threatened by your “reconstruction of key events”? What provoked response do you seek from me? What do you want me to do, kill your child?

Kate has repeatedly said that the US National Centre for Missing and Exploited had encouraged the McCanns to keep Maddie in the public’s eye. http://www.missingkids.org/gethelpnow/isyourchildmissing#whattodoifyourchildismissing

Back in 2007, on June 3rd, the Daily Express published an article where it reported that Sir Elton John had been playing “an emotional DVD of Madeleine at his concerts but now believes a larger effort would do more to raise awareness of her predicament”. The news report appears to have been run with these headlines: “Let’s hold a Madeleine Day for the whole world”.

DE then quoted Gerry: “One of the ideas is maybe getting all the people who have publicly supported us to come together. I don’t just mean from the UK but from different parts of the world. We want a big event to raise awareness that she is still missing.

“We would look at high-profile people who have already pledged support. It will be some sort of focus around an anniversary, to tell people that Madeleine’s still missing. I think it would be later this year, once media attention has dropped, to bring it back up, hopefully, for a short period.”

Further down in the same article, DE reported: A month after the sleeping Madeleine was snatched from her bed, Gerry and Kate McCann have betrayed the first signs that their hopes of finding her alive are starting to fade.

The couple confessed that they are haunted by the harrowing thought of her being held captive by a pervert. ... Kate said: “We don't know where she is. We’d like to think she’s still in Portugal, she might still be in Portugal.

“But we know there’s a possibility she’s gone over the border – or several borders. We know there are bad people out there, but we know there are also a lot of sad people. We hope it’s the latter.”

Gerry added: “Of course we believe Madeleine is still alive but you would be incredible if you hadn’t considered the worst scenario, that she’s dead.

“Kate and I discuss it – not a lot, but we talk about hope, and that while there’s some we will not give up. At the minute, there’s loads of hope.”

Kate writes on findmadeleine.com, “Gerry and I have been criticised at times for publicising Madeleine's disappearance. We did what we felt was best at that time, obviously having no experience of such ordeals. Thankfully NCMEC has assured us that this was the right thing to do.”

Interviewed by the BBC a couple of years ago, Gerry referenced the NCMEC and said that one of the things that had stuck with them since making contact with NCMEC was the notion that the younger a child was at the time he or she was taken, the higher the chances the child was taken to be kept alive.

Former Arts and Entertainment Editor for The Times (of London) Tim Teeman wrote about MwH the day after it was first broadcast. https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/...in-the-family-extreme-male-beauty-9plpw50lrqx

Excerpt:

To keep the chances of finding her alive, the McCanns have to keep the story alive, and The Cutting Edge observed the McCanns at home: a picture of determinedly amiable domestic life emerged. But the family is uncomfortably beached between a desire for privacy and a desire for as much publicity as possible to find Madeleine.

This presents a problem for them, and for documentary-makers and journalists. The drip-feed of information (like the new suspect) and access to the McCanns is controlled by the family and their Press representative Clarence Mitchell. The journalism of the The Cutting Edge documentary was thus skewed to whatever the McCann’s agenda was. It was hard to see what material The Cutting Edge had uncovered itself: it seemed to just record whatever the McCanns wanted us to see.​

I’ve no idea to whom Tim was referring when he wrote “the new suspect”. Possibly, either Pimpleman or Creepyman. With hindsight, it appears to me that with MwH the McCanns were revisiting the old to recast/restate things new.

 

[Sarah]

Well then M'Lady may have been misinformed!

 

[Zable]

Fret not, dear lady. T'was the parents who put that out.

 

[Zable]

Madeleine Was Here (MwH): Part 2a_Going to Town with Mr Spotty


Mr Spotty is from Sketchland. He has a permanent home on the Find Madeleine website. He’s instantly recognizable by his ugly mug. Scarfaceman and Pimpleman are monikers he’s known by. What’s his story, and should we believe it?

We first hear of him shortly before the original air date of Madeleine Was Here (May 7th 2009). A colourful character, he’s a person of high interest to the Find Madeleine (FM) campaign.

Per Daily Mail/mailonline (May 7th 2009)
(Mr Spotty sketches accompany news report)​

A prowler spotted outside Madeleine McCann’s holiday apartment was yesterday revealed as a new prime suspect in the hunt for the missing girl.

The heavily scarred stranger was seen five times in the four days before the three-year-old disappeared, prompting fears he could have been watching the McCann family.

Although he was seen by four witnesses, each of whom gave statements to Portuguese police, astonishingly it has taken almost two years for their accounts to be linked.

**

The couple [K&G] have carried out their own six-month trawl of the 30,000-page Portuguese police files, which were released last year when the investigation was shelved.

This uncovered the four witness statements about the prowler buried in the dossier.

**

Clarence Mitchell, the McCanns’ spokesman, said: “This man needs to be traced urgently and eliminated. These witnesses did talk to Portuguese police but it appears that nothing was done to find him. He is a vital part of the jigsaw.”

Full report: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1178177/Did-man-Madeleine-New-ugly-prime-suspect-prowler-seen-outside-McCanns-apartment.html

Per Diário de Notícias (May 8th 2009)​

In a statement to DN, Gonçalo Amaral, a former Polícia Judiciária inspector who coordinated the investigation of the Madeleine McCann case, has devalued the appearance of a new photo-fit concerning a possible suspect of the abduction. “During the investigation, we collected numerous testimonies of people who mentioned others with strange behaviours, and we identified everyone,” he stated to DN.

Yesterday, some English newspapers revealed the photo-fit of a new suspect who is pointed out by the McCann couple, Kate and Gerry. A drawing that is part of a documentary that was made by English television channel Channel 4.

“We had information about strange people in the area of the McCanns’ apartment. And we identified them: one was an English musician, another one was a man who slept in a van, and there was also a gardener,” said Gonçalo Amaral.

**

The sketch of the new suspect was created based on elements that are part of the Portuguese investigation, which were worked upon by two retired English policemen, Dave Edgar and Arthur Cowley, both aged 52. The new suspect is described as “very ugly”, thin and with holes in his skin.

“Locally, there is someone living in the area who has the answer to this and it’s not further than 10 or 15 kilometres from Praia da Luz,” Dave Edgar says in the documentary, cited in a text that was publicised by Channel 4, to promote the documentary.

Arthur Cowley, who was a police detective for 30 years, agrees that “the answer lies in Praia da Luz”.

**

The possibility of an abduction was the first theory that was explored by the PJ in Portimão, that investigated the case since the beginning.

But according to the process, after every lead that could sustain the abduction theory was explored, the investigation decided to focus on the activity of the group of English citizens that accompanied the McCann couple on their holidays in the Algarve, in 2007.

Per the Daily Star (9th May 2009)​

A flood of “sightings” across Europe followed the release of an image of a spotty man seen watching the holiday apartment in Portugal from which the tot vanished two years ago.

Clarence Mitchell, spokesman for the McCann family, said yesterday: “The leads are extremely encouraging and are being checked out right away.

“Some of the calls came from Portugal. They are particularly encouraging because that is where our detectives believe the answer to this still lies.

“The response has given Madeleine’s mother and father fresh hope.”

**

Spokesman Mr Mitchell added: “The McCanns’ investigators believe Madeleine was snatched by a two-man team in a carefully planned operation.”

He said it was believed that – after the spotty suspect had “cased” the apartment – an abduction was carried out by an accomplice who was seen by one of the McCanns’ dinner pals, Jane Tanner, 42, carrying Madeleine away.

The investigators think this man was seen again 40 minutes later and half a mile away by 12 members of an Irish family walking near the beach.

Both they and Jane thought it was an innocent dad carrying his sleeping child.

Full Report: https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/latest-news/79947/Maddie-50-leads-in-hunt-for-Mr-Spotty


Okay, so we know Team McCann think Mr Spotty partnered the abductor, by acting as a 'caser'. We know the Mr Spotty sketches had been created before MwH was aired.

We're told the Irish family thought "it was an innocent dad carrying his sleeping child". ...Er, why did they think he was an innocent man if McCann lead private eye, Dave Edgar, said on MwH that the man acted "furtive"? What was it about him that spelt D.A.D?

I'll get to that man in another post, because that sighting was highlighted in TDoMM.

For now, indulge me, please. I wish to go on a long walk to town with Mr Spotty. He needs to be aired.

At the core of the re-enactment discussions we’re privy to in MwH, there’s the belief that Mr Spotty is one and the same person several folk had seen loitering on Rua Dr Gentil Martins in the days before Maddie vanished -- that belief partly evidenced by where we see the re-enactments taking place on MwH.

Rua Dr Gentil Martins is the sloping road which runs by the side of the McCann corner unit. Going uphill, the apartment (block) is on its left, not far from the top of the road. At the top of the road, Rua Dr Gentil Martins meets Rua Dr Agostinho da Silva at a T junction. The McCann apartment block with the carpark fronting it is basically nestled in the left corner of the T junction.​

It's the back of the McCann apartment block that faces the Tapas restaurant and surrounds. Because the McCann unit is on the corner, its garden gate opens on Rua Dr Gentil Martins. The garden gates of all the units (of all the blocks there) lead to the patios/verandahs of the apartments, which are on higher ground. For the other units that weren't corner units, their garden gates opened onto a little lane (alleyway) at the back of the blocks.

(The Rua Dr Gentil Martins entrance to this lane was just before the McCann's garden gate, if one were walking up hill. Downhill, on the same side of Rua Dr Gentil Martins, was the entrance to the resort's secondary reception building -- through which the Tapas restaurant & bar and all the other recreational amenities in that part of the resort could be accessed.)

MwT snapshot [Circa 16:26 minutes] at the offices of the McCann search team, where sketches of Mr Spotty are pinned up. There's a whiteboard with notes and diagrams. Dave Edgar and Arthur Cowley are in discussion:

DE: The most important one, apart, obviously, from Jane, is sighting No. 3, the man in the alleyway at the back of the apartment. No.3 is definitely a very important sighting cos it links them.

There’s a voice-over, then…

DE: You’d think, it’s gotta be the same person, wouldn’t you, really?

AC: And all three say he was watching the apartment.

DE: Yeah.
Sighting No. 3, we’ll learn, was made by a girl on her way to school. How does that sighting link them all?


MwT snapshot [Circa 9:50 mins] A detective’s words to remember:

AC: For me, it’s quite simple, whether it be a high profile murder or any investigation. It’s a jigsaw puzzle and it’s just the case of putting little pieces in and that’s what we’re doing. You start at the beginning, you do the basics right and everything else comes together. And, that’s what, we, hopefully, we’ve done.


MwT snapshot [Circa 17 mins] Kate and the FM campaign coordinator join Dave and Arthur “to discuss the pending reconstruction that we want done”.

K: So, basically, it looks like we’ve got five sightings, really. Two, a man with a child; and three, just a suspicious individual.

DE: Yeah.

K: And three, the three with the suspicious, suspicious, of the suspicious individual, kinda, tie-in together.

DE: They all tie in together.

FM campaign co-ordinator: They’re all at similar times and place.

DE: There’s three in exactly the same location. I don’t know what the Portuguese authorities have done to actually eliminate these people from the enquiry. So, we’ve gotta presume that they haven’t done it and go with that. So, it’s just important, that we actually, we are accurate in what we know and make sure that that’s what we’re going with. No speculation. It’s gotta be the facts that we know and not try to fill in the gaps that we don’t know.

Oh, dearie me. Why presume that and risk destroying your professional reputation if your’re mistaken? Especially if there were facts you ought to have known about by this time. Fighting words to die by.


[COMING NOT SOON: Madeleine Was Here (MwH): Part 2b_Will the Real Mr Spotty Please Stand Up]

 

[Zable]

Watching TDoMM sealed my impression that Madeleine McCann had become the poster child for sex-trafficked children, regardless of whether she had been or not.
The most recent example that this is the case: https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/la...s-cops-child-sex-slavery-rutherford-institute

 

[Zable]

Revisiting...

When the Polícia Judiciária archived the Maddie case (not closed) in July 2008

From Portugal, comes confirmation that the Maddie case ‘remains open’.

Per a May 3rd 2019 news report in Notícias ao Minuto https://www.noticiasaominuto.com/pais/1245747/pj-confirma-que-continua-em-aberto-investigacao-ao-caso-maddie

Run the article through the quaint and gender-blind Google Translate and you get:

THE Judicial police confirm that the disappearance of Maddie McCann is still an open case.

"In the face of news coming to the public today [Friday] and the numerous requests for clarification by the way," informs the Judiciary Police that "the investigation into the disappearance of an English child, occurred in Praia da Luz in 2007 , remains open, within the scope of an investigation supervised by the Public Prosecutor of Portimão ".

Moreover, PJ reports, this investigation "has been developed in articulation with international authorities, obeying the rules of judicial and police cooperation, which the circumstances of the situation justify".

The clarification comes after the publication, this Friday, in the newspaper Correio da Manhã of a news that says that the Judiciary Police is following new clues related to the abduction of Maddie.

The newspaper also reveals that PJ inspectors are following a new lane that will involve a new suspect, but that the goal is to try to keep the operation in complete secrecy.

Little Madeleine McCann disappeared from a tourist complex on Luz beach in Lagos, Algarve, precisely 12 years ago. He was only three, he would do it four days later, on May 12.​

 

[Zable]

Revisiting...

...this Friday, in the newspaper Correio da Manhã of a news that says that the Judiciary Police is following new clues related to the abduction of Maddie. .... PJ inspectors are following a new lane [line of enquiry] that will involve a new suspect,

Mail Online reports the “new” suspect to be a convicted child murderer (of boys) and paedophile now behind bars in Germany after being jailed for life in 2012. He had been one of many paedophiles/suspected paedophiles previously questioned by Portuguese police. Scotland Yard is reported to have received new information about this man that was previously unknown. MO also reports that there is a second ‘new’ suspect but gives no information on that. MO interviewed McCann family spokesman Clarence Mitchell. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6993149/Madeleine-McCann-investigators-focusing-convicted-German-paedophile.html


Meanwhile, The Sun is now reporting about this specific individual as an exclusive: https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/9004618/madeleine-mccann-suspect-german-paedophile-child-killer/

But when The Sun first reported its so-called “new” masked suspect (with the words "Midnight Raid" in its headlines) https://www.thescottishsun.co.uk/news/4198880/madeleine-mccann-suspect-paedophile-daddy-mask/ it had no name to give and its report was simply a mish-mash of old news and even older news.

How much older news? Compare details with this Guardian news report of 2014: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/mar/19/madeleine-mccann-police-intruder-girls-algarve


Edited to add something that was stated in the Final Report of the PJ’s Investigative Criminal Department of Portimão (June 20th 2008). Per the English translation at http://mccannpjfiles.co.uk/PJ/P_J_FINAL_REPORT.htm :

“….it should be referred that this investigation moved itself under conditions of exceptional media exposure, with the publication of many ‘news’ of imprecise, inexact or even false contents, which did not help, in the least, the discovery of the truth and created, many times, a climate of unusual commotion and of lack of serenity.”​

 

[Zable]

Madeleine Was Here (MwH): Part 2b_Will the Real Mr Spotty Please Stand Up (Part 1)

MwH snapshot [Circa 22: 18 mins] Raison d’etre

The Cutting Edge voice-over: [McCann lead private investigator, and ex-Royal Ulster Constabulary & ex-Cheshire detective inspector] Dave Edgar is in Praia da Luz to oversee filming of significant events described in witness statements. Statements which he believes strongly suggest someone was watching the McCann family. He hopes that the reconstructions will lead to discovering who that someone is.

Dave E, quoted by the Irish Times https://www.irishtimes.com/news/mccann-detectives-speak-out-1.839979:

“The reconstruction is based on statements taken by the Portuguese police. We’re not speculating on anything or theories, it’s evidence that we’ve got from the file.”
He added: “In my experience random just doesn’t happen, someone just doesn’t go in, a passer-by, and pick up a child and take it, these things are planned.
“So someone will have been in the vicinity of apartment 5a, the Ocean Club, and they may even have been watching the apartment for a week or more.”​

The previous year, back in August 2008, barely 3 weeks after Portuguese authorities had archived the Maddie case, The Telegraph published a news articles with the headline: Madeleine files: the key disclosures.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/madeleinemccann/2564721/Madeleine-files-the-key-disclosures.html ​

Among other things, its reporter wrote:

Madeleine could have been abducted by a stranger, seen by both a British holidaymaker and a British expat, loitering around the family's holiday resort at the time. Pictures of the stranger and descriptions were not circulated by police.
​

Oh, Mr Spotty, is that you? The someone. The stranger. I for one think that both are supposed to be you.

First, there’s the release of those sketches of you and your doppelganger – Mr Spotty and Mr Less Spotty – just a couple of days ahead of the MwH broadcast, and you were being reported as the new suspect. Clarence Mitchell said it was urgent we find you. If sketches of anyone else was released around this time, then I’m unaware of it.

Aside:
Mr Spotty aka Pimpleman/Scarface couldn’t have been both “spotty” and “less spotty” at the same time, could he now? I’m thinking the portraits aren’t simply a front-profile and a side-profile of a man. Could they be two alternative versions of Mr Spotty because two witnesses with slightly different memories had IDed what appears to be the same man? ….But then again, this is what the Daily Star reported in a Mr Spotty story of May 21st 2009: One woman helped investigators compile the image of the suspect after they unearthed her witness testimony in 17 volumes of police files on the case which has been archived “unsolved”. https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/latest-news/81521/Maddie-cop-on-trail-of-Mr-spotty .… Er, “investigators” = McCann private investigators?​

Second, even the MwH makers seem to think the Someone/Stranger was Mr Spotty.

During the voice-over which follows after Dave E claims “No. 3 is the sighting which links them”, MwH snapshot [circa 16:44 mins] the camera cuts to a visual of a whiteboard with the two portraits of Mr Spotty.

At the same time, we hear the The Cutting Edge voice-over: The investigators have examined the statements from the 3 different witnesses and are now convinced… (Mr Spotty portraits appear) …the McCanns were being watched. The team hopes that this new information will give them the breakthrough they will need.

***0***​

Per The Times online report of May 2nd 2009: Several tourists had told Portuguese detectives that they had seen a suspicious-looking short-haired man in his twenties hanging around outside the family's apartment block. He is different from the long-haired man spotted carrying a small girl dressed in pink pyjamas away from the block on the night Madeleine disappeared. It has prompted the programme makers to carry out a Crimewatch-style reconstruction that will be seen in the documentary.

On MwH, the first 3 main reconstruction witnesses are, in order:

_main witness #1: a British mum who’s a tourist; she was with her child in one of her two sightings of the same man. Going by what The Telegraph reported, she could potentially be the British holidaymaker it mentioned.

_main witness #2: a British-born schoolgirl who’s lived in Portugal since she was two months old, and presently resides in the same neighbourhood as the Ocean Club resort. She was walking with her mum (and their dogs) in the first of her two sightings of the same man. She could potentially be the British expat mentioned by the The Telegraph.

_main witness #3: an elderly Englishman from Cheshire who was on an extended holiday in Praia da Luz with his life partner; staying at an apartment he owned in the neighbourhood. The couple only saw the man once while walking. He only became suspicious to them after the fact of Maddie’s disappearance because of where they’d seen him standing; remembering he’d been staring intently in the direction of the McCann apartment diagonally across the road, specifically the garden gate area, close to which a white van was parked. The elderly Englishman as well could potentially be the British holidaymaker the The Telegraph mentioned.

Hence there was 5 sightings among them, but of 1 man or 3 men?

IMV, the visual impression we get from the first three re-enactments shown on MwH is that Team McCann were now seeking to know the identity of just the one person. That’s because the re-enactments use the same actor, wearing the same clothes in all the sightings (with or without a jacket and sunglasses) even though he was seen on different days. Would you agree?

The visual impression that it’s one and the same guy reinforces what we’re already seen and heard earlier in MwH:

MwH snapshot [Circa 15:54 mins] Note that the word “men” isn’t used.

The Cutting Edge voice-over: Kate and the FM campaign coordinator travel to the search teams offices. They want to discuss the details of the upcoming reconstructions and three potentially key witness statements that all tell of a man hanging around the McCanns’ apartment in the days leading up May 3rd 2007.

MwT snapshot [Circa 16:53 mins] Were The Cutting Edge folk mislead by Arthur Cowley?

DE: You’d think, it’s gotta be the same person, wouldn’t you, really?
AC: And all three say he was watching the apartment.​

Buy before that, it was the impression we got from the news. We read and heard that the man in the sketches was the new suspect.

Aside:
I find it interesting that Clarence M was saying in the Press that their investigators thought the abduction was a 2-man job – caser + abductor – while Dave E, the McCann lead investigator at the time, was going on record both in the Press -- for example, read the Daily Mirror report headlined Lone kidnapper clue as British cops join the hunt for Madeleine McCann, published May 2nd 2009 https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/lone-kidnapper-clue-as-british-cops-391741 -- and on MwH as saying he thought it was a one-man job.​

***0***​

Okay, back to the first three main reconstruction witnesses. You might be bored, but I’m now primed to learn how Team McCann made the deduction that the man each of the first three main reconstruction witnesses saw was Mr Spotty, be he version 1 or 2; and how “No.3 is definitely a very important sighting cos it links them.”

MwH snapshot [Circa 22:58-26:41 minutes] The first 3 re-enactments.

I watched them and re-watched. Heck, I’m none the wiser. Are you?

I don’t even understand how this segment of the reconstruction of events can possibly assist the McCann private investigators/Team McCann to ID the man the witnesses saw. What the hell am I not seeing other than the pointlessness of these 3 re-enactments? It seems to me like clickbait fodder for a televised appeal-to-the-heart.

I look into the PJ files released to the public and I wonder how, with Kate’s fine toothcomb and the McCann’s first professional investigators on the job (Dave E’s claim), they didn't see what was already there.

The makers of MwH appear to have been equally blind. Or, they saw very well and chose not to confront Team McCann with the puzzle pieces.


What MwH doesn’t tell us

_For reasons best known to them and Team McCann, the first three reconstruction witnesses aren’t identified on MwH. But they let us know obliquely….

MwH Snapshot [Circa 16:26 minutes] In the scene where Dave Edgar and Arthur Cowley are talking among themselves, there’s a whiteboard. In the upper left-hand portion of the whiteboard is a numbered list of sightings with initials besides them. Some of them have dates. One set of initials seen is JT = Tapas 9 member Jane Tanner.

We also see the initials of the first three main reconstruction witnesses:
Witness #1 is JW;
Witness #2 is TS; and
Witness #3 is DF.

Match these sets of initials against a list of those people who gave statements to the PJ that are on the DVD released to the public, and you'll get hits for two sets of initials. Then read the statements to verify the content. The statements that align with the re-enactments identify the witnesses in the re-enactments. ….If you’d read the PJ’s Final Report from the CID in Portimão first, you’d have matched names to the initials quicker. Read the statements in the cross-referenced pages and you should have no doubt that TS & DF are the reconstruction Witnesses #2 & #3 portrayed in the MwH re-enactments.

The mystery is the identity of JW. Since she was a holidaymaker, and saw the man who unnerved her in the vicinity of the McCann apartment, it’s possible she stayed at the Ocean Club. However, like Witness #3, she may have owned an apartment in the neighbourhood. ….Anyway, I checked the guest list for the OC and got a potential hit: one guest had the initials JW, and was from the UK. From speculation to possibility, not probability.

There is no witness statement by JW to the PJ in the files released to the public on DVD. Not even a copy of a statement given to British police was in the PJ files released. If the The Telegraph reporter had JW in mind as the British holidaymaker who’d seen a stranger hanging around, then the reporter didn’t get that information from the publicly released PJ files.

Yet in 2009 Team McCann had information which she’d given someone. MwH snapshot [Circa 17:07 mins] gives a momentary glimpse of a document Kate is holding. In the bottom left corner is typed within brackets “Source: JW Statement 2”, and we glimpse a partial date – sometime in April 2007. JW looks to have given someone 2 statements, then.

It’s possible the PJ had taken statements from her. Or, were given copies by British police and for whatever reasons those statements may have qualified for one of those categories that Portuguese law prohibits from being released to the public.

So how is it that Team McCann have her statements? ….Clarence M is on record as saying the McCanns had access to police information not available to the public. Either they got her statement(s) from the police, or they got fresh statements from JW. Maybe she called the FM hotline. Or, Kate called her.

My gut feel that this JW is the JW who was an Ocean Club guest. That's strengthened by seeing the words “tennis court” and “pool” in the document that MwH shows as Kate is talking.

But if she is who many people think she is, then it adds another layer of mystery, because British Press have reported that she reported to British police that she saw a suspicious woman.


[To be Continued]

 

[Zable]

Madeleine Was Here (MwH): Part 2b_Will the Real Mr Spotty Please Stand Up (Part 2)


_For reasons best known to the doco makers and, perhaps, Team McCann, the The Cutting Edge voice-over identifies reconstruction Witness #3 (DF) as someone from Cheshire (a county that is in the north-west of England). That someone was one Derek Flack. In his formal statement to the PJ on May 6th 2007, he’d said he was from Ilford in Essex (a county in the south-east of England). Perhaps Mr Flack had moved by the time of the reconstruction in 2009. Perhaps.

DF first gave an informal statement to the PJ at its operations base at the Luz Ocean Club on May 5th 2007.

Below are excerpts from DF’s formal statement of May 6th. Some sentences have been edited out, or repositioned from their original place in the narrative, or duplicated in different sections:

Route: He owns a holiday home on Rua do Ramalhete in Praia da Luz. …On the late morning or early afternoon of either 2nd or 3rd May, not being certain which, the deponent and his partner [C.M. Dale; identified as Christine Dale by British Press] were out walking. ….he does not recall the exact route taken but they walked … then down Rua Dr. Francisco Gentil Martins where the “[Luz] Ocean Club Gardens" is situated.

White van: At that time as they passed the residential block [LOCG] he noticed a light commercial vehicle, (in all respects the same as an Opel Corsa Van), white in colour but dirty, with only one side window in the 'hanging' door, but not knowing the exact make, model or other identifying characteristics - including the number plate. .…he judged it to be an old model. ….the van was situated close to the gateway on the side of the building, [which] led to the veranda of the apartment in question [apartment 5A]. ….the deponent could not be certain if the vehicle was directly next to, slightly above or slightly below, the gateway. However, he was certain that it was a very short distance from, and directly in the path of the gate.

Seeing the suspicious man: When going down [Rua Dr Francisco Gentil Martins] he [DF] passed an individual standing on his left at the beginning of a path and at the entrance of a small car park opposite the reception of the resort. ….the deponent had seen him face-on because he [the suspicious man] was facing the opposite direction to which he [DF] was walking, and appeared to be watching attentively [the] movements [occurring] adjacent to the parked vehicle. ….he [DF] was aware that the man's attention was fixed on the area in question [adjacent to the van] in such a way that he [the man] was unaware of the deponent's presence.

…he [DF] had associated the man with the van because [the man] had looked deliberately at the area around it. ….the van was situated close to the gateway on the side of the building, [which] led to the veranda of the apartment in question [apartment 5A]. Hence, one could conclude that the man was monitoring the movements next to that gate and, possibly, of the interior of the apartment.

Description of suspicious man: ….the deponent said he was Caucasian, dark-skinned, medium stature, 1,70 to 1,75m tall, about 25 to 35 years old … had dark and thick hair but with no noticeable fringe [at the front]. Regarding [the man's] apparel he [DF] adds that he didn't observe this in detail, judging that [the man] wore a plain T-shirt, possibly yellow.

The deponent wished to clarify that he was convinced that the man was not one of the many tourists who frequented that area, considering his features and physical appearance. … The deponent is not sure if he would recognise him again in the event that they should meet.

White van (additionally, from DF’s informal statement of May 5th): He adds that near to where the individual was watching, on the other side of the road, was a parked vehicle, van type, white, with a person (he does not remember whether the person was inside or outside the vehicle). He cannot describe that person. … A sketch was drawn up at his request, identifying the suspicious man as No. 2 and the parked car with the other person about whom he can remember no further details as No 1.

The retrato robot (robot portrait, ie, computer-generated, not hand sketched) of suspicious man No. 2 that DF helped the PJ to create is here: http://www.mccannpjfiles.co.uk/P1/01_VOLUMEIa_Page_205.jpg Do you think that’s Mr Spotty or Mr Less Spotty? Or someone who’s close to being their doppelgänger?

Since Team McCann included DF’s sighting in their Mr Spotty re-enactments on MwH and got someone to play him and Ms Dale, one might assume TM had not seen in the PJ files released to the public the retrato robot that he’d helped to create.

I find that hard to believe that Team McCann and MwH’s makers weren’t aware of the existence of the retrato robot.

Circa August 5th/6th the previous year, the Daily Mail and MailOnline had taken it upon themselves to reveal the retrato robot to their British and American readers (and whoever else got their news), being very indignant that Portuguese police had not publicised it from the get-go, or let the McCanns know about it much earlier. ….The Mail report of 2008 contained a direct quote from Mr Flack, indicating he’d spoken to the reporters the day before publication, and he was identified as being from Ilford.

If, in fact, DF had not changed residence by the following year, the situation to be considered is whether the makers of MwH were helping Team McCann and/or DF to try and conceal his identity. Or, were the The Cutting Edge folk simply mistaken? I observe that during the re-enactment of his sighting, no mention was made of the other person DF had seen in or around the van. Did they think the sighting of that other person was too insignificant to be mentioned? Or, were they trying not to draw attention to the fact that this Witness #3 was the Mr Flack the Daily Mail & Mail Online reports had identified, who was now being made a party (whether knowingly or not) to 2 different ‘photo-fits’ of The Man Who Watched Intently?

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In the PJ’s Final Report, it’s said: A witness, DEREK FLACK, heard at page 200, reported the presence of a suspect, who was allegedly looking at the target apartment, near a white truck, pages 145 and following pages. It was not possible to identify this person, despite having been made a portrait-robot, page 205. However, we believe there are very strong possibilities of being construction workers – who were there making small works - a gardener (fls. 973), or BARRINGTON NORTON (fls 833), inquired at page 704. The latter is a regular of Praia da Luz, engaged in the activity of musician on the streets of the town. Nothing was found relevant to the investigation.

The PJ makes clear that suspicious man No.2 – who must be the suspect referred to because the retrato robot is mentioned – could not be identified.

But I don’t know whether something got lost in the translation, or not. According to Dr Gonçalo Amaral, Mr Norton was the owner of a white van (not of the model DF mentioned), which he lived in, and he’d once parked it near the McCann unit when he went to a supermarket; so if anything I’d say BN was more likely to have been man No.1 that DF saw or someone else rather than man No. 2.

In any case, an external inquiry report in the PJ’s files shows that police did show DF photographs of BN with the aim “to make a final determination as to whether the latter could be the individual who [Derek] reported”.

The external inquiry report goes on to say: “… Derek Flack states that, although not definitely able to recognise the individual in question … the physical features of Barrington Norton are in general, similar to those of the individual whose presence relates to his statement … However, he emphasises that he is unable to offer any formal recognition (given that he reiterates that he was not able to see the detailed features of the individual in question) [and] … the individual he reported … appeared much younger than … Barrington Norton.

This is a copy of Mr Norton’s photograph in the PJ documents which IDed him: http://www.mccannpjfiles.co.uk/P3/03_VOLUMEIIIa_Page_710a.jpg Note that his hair appears white, whereas DF had described dark hair.

The reports relating to DF are here: http://www.mccannpjfiles.co.uk/PJ/DEREK_FLACK.htm

The News of the World did a number on Mr Norton. (And, it told its readers “Our own investigation uncovered Barrington Norton”. Yeah, by reading the PJ’s Final report, like me. Then, approaching BN anyway after digging up all his stuff, because NotW obviously wasn’t going to take the PJ’s final word on things.) The Portugal resident has a version of that story: https://www.portugalresident.com/2009/08/17/algarve-resident-hounded-by-madeleine-mccann-case/

I can understand the PJ checking on who was working outdoors, hence the mention of construction workers and a gardener. In fact, the PJ files has a number of statements from folk who worked primarily as gardeners at the Luz Ocean Resort. Dr Amaral said on Portugal’s SIC TV that all those individuals investigated in connection with the sightings that were the focus of the first three reenactments of Team McCann’s reconstruction turned out to be British, including a gardener he didn’t name.

I’m guessing that was expat George James, a gardener and cleaner who worked once-a-week, on Wednesdays, at Block G4 in the Gardens section of the Luz Ocean Resort. From his *statement, seen here http://www.mccannpjfiles.co.uk/PJ/GEORGE-JONES.htm, we know he’d park his car “in the area of Block 4” – which should include Rua Dr Agostinho da Silva and around the corner of the intersection (T-junction) with Rua Dr Francisco Martin Gentils alongside the McCann unit. *Note: the folk at mccannpjfiles have erroneously tagged Mr James as George Jones in the website's link.

If DF and his partner had made their sighting of Suspicious Man No. 2 on May 2nd and not May 3rd, and if their walk was in the early afternoon and not morning, and they'd passed by the LOC Gardens section after 2pm, then possibly one of the two men DF had seen in the vicinity of the McCann apartment was George J.

Unfortunately, I don’t have a picture of George to compare and contrast with DF’s retrato robot (whom I’ve christened Flackman) and Mr Spotty.

Speaking of the latter….

Can you help us identify them, the Find Madeleine website asks on its home page. Click the link to Mr Spotty’s home on the website http://findmadeleine.com/campaigns/unidentified_people.html and you’ll find this stated about him: The picture shows a man that was seen several times by different witnesses during the days leading up to Madeleine's abduction on May 3rd 2007. He was described as ugly with pock-marked skin and was said to be watching the family's apartment intently.

Which different witnesses pray tell, dear Team McCann. Did Derek F tell police (Portuguese or otherwise) that someone looking just like Mr Spotty was watching the McCanns’ holiday unit intently? No.


[To be Continued]