Madeleine McCann: Scotland Yard Flexible and Obliging in Crime Reconstruction

William Seward Burroughs was an American author best known for his novel, Naked Lunch, which is composed of a blend of "reality" and hallucinatory illusions/delusions which can be summed up as REALITY. Burroughs was a heroin addict. The book is confusing. He wrote other stuff and is considered an important 20th century author. I remember one vignette from another novel of his, I think it was Cities of the Red Night, which is pertinent to a discussion of the sensitivities of doctors.

In the vignette a surgeon serving in the US Navy is aboard a naval vessel cruising off the Korean coast during the Korean War. The sea is very heavy during a storm and the doctor is in the midst of operating on a wounded serviceman as the ship pitches and rolls. Finally, in exasperation, the surgeon, in the middle of a procedure, puts down his scalpel, rips off his mask and stalks out of the operating theatre shouting, "I can't work under these conditions!"

We never learn the fate of the serviceman. Nurses probably soldiered on to patch him up. Shurely.

Similarly, Scotland Yard, abandoned to its own devices, soldiers on to do a reconstruction of the abduction of Madeleine McCann without the participation of her sensitive parents, parents so concerned about the mood of the Portugese Police that they have insisted that Scotland Yard do the reconstruction of the incident, the alleged abduction of a child from a village in Portugal, in Spain!!!

www.dailystar.co.uk...

Harrowing scenes, including when the distraught mum found Madeleine was missing, will be played out by actors.

The couple turned down a request from Scotland Yard to be involved in the Crimewatch reconstruction as “it would be far too upsetting for them,” a family source revealed yesterday.

A three-year-old with a “striking” similarity to Madeleine will double for her in the programme a week tomorrow.

Kate and Gerry have also banned the re-enactment taking place in Portugal, where she vanished, through fear of angering the country’s police.

The couple, who have eight-year-old twins Sean and Amelie, asked for filming to take place in Spain.

A close source said: “More than anything in the world Kate and Gerry want to find out what happened to Madeleine.

“But they did not want to take part in the reconstruction and they were against it being filmed in Portugal.

“Even after six years it would have been emotionally and mentally draining for Kate and Gerry to face a lookalike of their daughter on set. Can you imagine it? It would be traumatic.”

I feel like such an awful clod for writing what follows. I am such an oaf. I am so insensitive. I could never qualify as a surgeon in the US Navy, that is for sure.

Anyway, Gerry has actually participated in a reconstruction of the alleged abduction. It is shown in the video Madeleine Was Here. He and Jane Tanner actually disagreed about a detail of the reconstruction and had a little debate about it that was smoothed over by the retired police officer hired by the Madeleine Foundation to investigate the case. "There are always inconsistencies." he said, or words to that effect.



I think that original reconstruction showed potential. It uncovered one inconsistancy in witness statements. I wonder if a more thorough reconstruction would uncover more inconsistancies and possibly lead to a breakthrough in the case.

I wonder, in Cities of the Red Night, if it had been General MacArthur himself on the operating table, would the doctor operating on him have overcome his sensitive surgeon's nature and carried on, in deplorable conditions, to struggle to save the General's life. The General may not have been related to the doctor, or even liked by the doctor, but he was important to the war effort. Maybe the doctor would have carried on for General MacArthur.

Maybe I'm being overly dramatic about the whole thing. Maybe I am an insensitive oaf. Maybe the British press is right to let these developments pass unremarked.

We wouldn't be discussing any of this if they had been like most parents (over 99%) and had not left their kids in an apartment, locked or unlocked that they didn't have direct access and line of sight on. As a parent i would never consider doing what they did with their kids. But i surmise if you're a doctor or 2 you think you can get away with anything.

If it was down to me i would have prosecuted the pair of them for child neglect at the very least

reply to post by ipsedixit


Hi ipsedixit

I don't think you're an oaf. I think it is important to question occurrences when our children go missing, simply because children are important. And our response, as adults, matters. Do we want to be a society that doesn't care what happens to a three year old girl? I don't want to be a part of that.
I have 4 children; 5, 4, 2 and 6 months. I know that if one of them went missing I would not rest until they were found. Would I hinder an(other) investigation? I doubt it.
At the risk of coming over a bit Miss Marple, there is definitely wickedness at the root of this case.

reply to post by FFS4000


I agree with your statement.
Certainly, no way would I be even back home now. I would rather be a vagabond on the streets of Portugal looking for my baby. I would never leave Portuguese soil until I had found her!!

hx

I don't think a reconstruction done without the original participants in the event and in the location where the event took place will be very effective. We are told that Kate and Gerry are too sensitive to undergo a reconstruction of the events, but I don't believe that is the truth.

I suspect that the refusal to participate in a reconstruction is based on a fear that numerous inconsistencies in witness statements will be brought to light. I think there is a fear that a reconstruction will open lines of inquiry for the police that many of the principals in the case would prefer remain closed.

The idea that DCI Redwood is unaware of reservations of this sort with regard to the reconstruction is absurd.

What is Scotland Yard doing? Are they letting the line play out in hope of catching a big one? Do they believe Kate and Gerry are truly innocent of their daughter's disappearance?

All we can do is wait.

One of the themes that runs through this case is abdication of responsibility.

Do the McCanns, despite their sensitivities, have a responsibility to participate in a reconstruction of Madeleine's alleged abduction, a reconstruction which, after all is intended, according to the McCanns, to lead to the recovery of the child?

Surely they do have that responsibility. Why are they shirking their responsibilities again? They didn't check on the child properly while they were dining at the tapas restaurant. There can be no debate about that. And now they are not willing to participate in a reconstruction of the events of the night Madeleine is alleged to have been kidnapped in order to assist in her recovery. We are told it would upset them too much.

Perhaps they could do the reconstruction under light sedation. A calming sedative of the sort that is often prescribed for overwrought people could be taken just before the reconstruction and thus enable the very sensitive McCanns to get through the ordeal without too much upset.

The police might think to reassure them that their suffering is a small price to pay for the recovery of the missing Madeleine. Perhaps a police psychologist or a police hostage negotiator could be brought in to remonstrate in a sensitive way, should the sedated Kate and Gerry still insist that their suffering is too much of a price to pay for the recovery of Madeleine.

What do you think, DCI Redwood? What do you think, British press?

reply to post by ipsedixit


Oh, come on. They're not too sensitive to set up a website with an online donation centre are they? Or a fund with which to 'continue their search'?
I think you're right about their negation of responsibility and it does seem to be dependant on their mood. The police department have family liaison officers who are not stupid; they would (I assume) help them through another difficult chapter. But your points have led me to question why do the McCann family seem to have so much power? They do seem to dictate what happens in this investigation, which is unusual to say the least.
As far as I remember, the McCanns met with David Cameron to urge him to reopen the case. And now they claim it would be too distressing to participate in an event which could reunite them with their daughter? It really doesn't add up to me.

P.S. I love W. Burroughs!

reply to post by beansidhe


I think the McCanns have been spinning a lot of yarns since Madeleine's disappearance and now they are beginning to be entangled in those yarns.

How about this as a slogan for the Find Madeleine fund:

"Please give generously toward the search for Madeleine. Kate and Gerry promise to do all they can with the exception of assisting the police with a crime reconstruction."

If the extensive police inquiry underway at the moment does not yield any significant lead to what happened to Madeleine, despite going far afield after any known connection to pedophilia or scurrilous activity of that sort in the Algarve and indeed in all of Western Europe, will Scotland Yard, at that point, having exhausted all other possibilities, narrow its circle of investigation to those known to Madeleine or living in close proximity to her in Praia da Luz?

Will they hold that option until they have brought an exhaustive search to North America and then to the other continents?

Eventually, if they eliminate everyone else on earth, Scotland Yard will be faced with a terrifying prospect, that of seriously investigating the McCanns themselves. What are they going to do then?

I think 80% or thereabouts of missing child cases involve someone close to the child, known to the child or related to the child as perpetrator.

I would ask DCI Redwood, "Have the McCanns been acting like people with something to hide?"

Ah, the Mcanns in the news again.

Has the money from their fund run out already?

I'm limiting my comments due to site T&Cs and libel/slander laws.

Here is an embed of the BBC presentation of Scotland Yard's crime reconstruction and updated information for the Madeleine McCann case.



My initial reaction to this presentation as it started to unfold was that the BBC seemed to be airing a puff piece for the McCanns. It was hard to stomach but I'm not complaining too much about it.

The more important reservations I have about this presentation are criticisms of points of "fact". What the BBC has given us is a very misty, foggy, fogbound, "McCann idealized" version of the events of that night. It is a sketchy account that glosses over some of what was said earlier on other occasions by the McCanns and glosses over Jane Tanner's sighting with a bizarre tale of another parent alleged to have been fetching another child from a creche nowhere near Tanner's sighting and in a different direction from the one from which the person she sighted appeared and who failed for six years to tell anyone about an alleged connection to Tanner's sighting!

It's a kind of "Jack be nimble, Jack be quick, Jack jump over the candlestick" rendition of events that I am sure will be criticized intensely and contrasted with earlier versions of the same events told by the McCanns and their travelling companions.

The most significant things to come out of the presentation are a couple of E-FIT drawings of the man seen by the Smith family. This has long been regarded as the most credible sighting by Goncalo Amaral and anyone who knows a little about the case. Why it took this long to get the drawings done is a mystery wrapped in an enigma.

Here is a screen grab of the E-FIT faces plus a shot of Gerry carrying one of the twins.



I could have thrown more pictures of Gerry in. I wonder what would happen if the two E-FITS were morphed together? They are supposed to be of the same man as seen by two of the Smith family, I assume.

I think the resemblance between Gerry and the drawing to the immediate left is close enough to get my attention if I were an official investigator in this case.

I do agree with the McCanns that there must be people who have information that would help in solving the case. It seems clear that in Portugal the "done" thing is to give the police a wide berth if possible.

There are a host of questions about this case that have never been answered by the police. "Why did they reject the cadaver dog indications", is an important one. They really need to come clean about their attitude to Martin Grime and his dogs. Why have Scotland Yard dropped him down the memory hole?

Anyway, best wishes to the McCanns. I hope the reconstruction leads to Madeleine's recovery.

I don't want to be "flip" about this but I think a case can be made that there is more than a distant similarity between the appearance of Gerry McCann and one of the E-FIT drawings made by Scotland Yard.



Well, DCI Redwood?

Here's another comparison.

Link to the photo of Gerry is, www.itv.com...



Here is a statement made by Martin Smith to police in Ireland on the subject of the sighting upon which the new E-FIT drawings were made.

www.mccannfiles.com...

Additional statement by Martin Smith, 30 January 2008

I hereby declare that this statement is true to the best of my knowledge and belief and that I make it knowing that if it is tendered in evidence I will be liable to prosecution if I state in it anything which I know to be false or do not believe to be true.

I would like to state that the statement I made on 26th May 2007 in Portugal is correct. The description of the individual that I saw on 3rd May 2007 carrying a child is as follows. He was average build, 5 foot 10” in height, brown hair cut short, aged 40 years approximately. Wearing beige trousers and darkish top maybe a jacket or blazer. He had a full head of hair with a tight cut. This individual was alone. I saw Gerard McCann (sic) going down the plane stairs carrying one of his children on 9th September 2007 BBC news at 10 PM, I have been shown the video clip by Sergeant Hogan which I recognise. A clip I have seen before on the Internet. In relation to the video clips of Gerard McCann and the person I saw on 3rd May 2007 when I saw the BBC news at 10 PM on 9th September 2007 something struck me that it could have been the same person. It was the way Gerard McCann turned his head down which was similar to what the individual did on 3rd May 2007 when we met him. It may have been the way he was carrying the child either. I would be 60-80% sure that it was Gerard McCann that I met that night carrying a child. I am basing that on his mannerism in the way he carried the child off the plane. After seeing the BBC news at 10 PM, footage on the 9th September 2007 I contacted Leicestershire police with this information. During that time I spoke to all my family members who were with me on the night of 3rd May 2007 about this and the only one who felt the same way as me was my wife. She had seen the video clip of Gerard McCann walking down the stairs of the plane earlier that day. We did not discuss this until some days later. This statement has been read over to me and is correct.

I wanted to write something about the other E-FIT drawing, the one that doesn't look very much like Gerry and doesn't look very much like the drawing that I think does look like Gerry. One would think that two E-FIT drawings done of the same man seen at the same time by two different people would look a lot alike. In this case no.

Why?



The most obvious imperfection in this drawing and one that speaks ill of the skill of the person doing the E-FIT, is the figure's lopsided ears. The ears should be very close in size and situated at the same height on the head. A line drawn from ear lobe to ear lobe should be perpendicular to the vertical axis of the head unless there is a deformity of some sort. I don't think a deformity is being indicated here, just lack of skill.

If one were to draw a box around the eyebrow line in the figure including the lower lip line one would see a rectangle higher than it is wide. In the drawing that looks more like Gerry, this rectangle would be close to a perfect square.

Why such a discrepancy? Well, if the person giving the description to the maker of the E-FIT was suffering from a fairly common condition of the eyes, astygmatism, what a person with perfect vision saw as a square would be perceived by a person with astygmatism as a rectangle, either higher or wider than a perfect square.

Does one of the Smiths have this condition? We don't know, but I suspect that the person who did the E-FIT we are discussing may well have astygmatized vision.

Here is the same drawing reduced by 15% in height only, as might be the case in something seen by a person with astygmatism of that kind.



Here is a comparison between (from left to right) the original E-FIT drawing, a photo of Gerry and the E-FIT drawing with a 15% reduction in height only.

Link to the source photo of Gerry.

www.mirror.co.uk...



In this case the drawing is closer to the proportions of Gerry's face but we are clearly not talking about the same person. The man in the drawing is not Gerry.

But is this a useful E-FIT? The lopsided ears argue "no".

What good are E-FITS if they can vary so much? Is it an eyewitness problem or is it a problem with the technician who is doing the E-FIT?

Unlike most people on ATS, I have actually done an artist's drawing for use by the police. I did it the old school way, by asking carefully calculated questions of the witness, taking into consideration the lighting conditions under which the sighting took place and the witness's vantage point. Was that done in this case?

The dreadful revelations in this case just never stop coming it seems.

www.mccannfiles.com...

Maddie: An English look tvi24

The abduction theory now focuses on the sighting that existed at 22:00 and from which the English police unveiled a new e-fit. The pictures were actually created in 2008, according to what the British confirmed to i newspaper, and are based on the testimony of the Smith family who have always said they were 80% sure that the man carrying a child was, in fact, Gerry McCann.

If the information in the above paragraph is true, it is truly emblematic of the entire case and an absolutely devastating indictment of law enforcement and the justice system in the UK.

I hope to hell that those recently released E-FITS were created recently as a result of Scotland Yard's re-examination of this case because if they have been sitting around for 5 years, somebody in British justice has a lot of explaining to do.

The impression such a situation, the withholding of E-FIT drawings from 2008, would create in me, were that to be the case, is that the British have probably known for five years that they might possibly have their man, that at least one arrest should already have been made in this case and that a large scale fraud may possibly have been allowed to continue for obscure reasons known only to the police and their controllers.

I hope I am wrong in entertaining those kinds of inferences, but isn't that just the kind of thing that has been suspected all along in this case?

Here is a link to an interesting discussion of the E-FIT drawings by a former Portugese police officer who was not a principal in the original investigation. In a nutshell, he says that they are useless.

joana-morais.blogspot.com...

I am very confused about the E-FITS alleged to have been made by the Smith family.

I think people need a COMPLETE account of them. When, what year, were they made and by whom? Scotland Yard? Metodo 3? Were they really updated/aged by a computer program?

What would be the purpose of that since people who might have seen potential suspects would have seen them in 2007 or would have photos from that time to compare with the E-FITS? The press has been atrocious on these issues as on so much else in this case.

If these E-FITS are old documents, drawn from descriptions from different sources, collated to form one or two drawings and then aged 5 years, it almost appears as if an attempt is being made to simply give the public a more sophisticated version of Jane Tanner's "Egg Man", a Cheshire Cat like version of nobody who vanishes into nothing except for a smile.

The dogs DCI Redwood, what about the dogs?

That's a question that the British press can ask without fear of being sued. They should ask it.

What`s always got me about this case is.in the uk hundreds of children go missing with no investigations, nothing yet this couple (who if where anybody else would have been charged with child neglect) remain in the headlines years after the event...why? .Oh yes that's right they are both members of "Common Purpose"....waits for knock on door.

Here is another interesting link that I came by, courtesy of the always helpful mccannfiles.com:

joana-morais.blogspot.com...

In the linked story, Goncalo Amaral alleges that the recently released Smith family E-FITS were deliberately made to look a little like Gerry McCann in order to discredit the original Smith family sighting report to the PJ, which was a positive identification of Gerry McCann as the man they saw that night in Praia da Luz.

That's a subtle point.

We are at a critical juncture in this case, which may turn abruptly after the court case involving the lawsuit against Amaral is concluded. If Amaral defends the suit successfully, it will be a serious setback for the McCanns.

Personally, I am all out of faith in Scotland Yard, but never say never. Maybe they will finally rationalize this case or as Amaral might put it, re-rationalize it.

A sleeping giant wakes.

It looks like the "used food" has finally hit the fan in the British press with regard to the now confirmed fact that the E-FIT drawings recently released to the public by Scotland Yard were made by the Smith family through Oakley International private investigators, were known about by Kate and Gerry and were withheld for five years after a letter of instruction was issued by the Find Madeleine Fund's lawyers.

www.mccannfiles.com...



Maddie Crimewatch pictures kept secret for five years

Note: from the Daily Star article:

Former MI5 undercover operations chief Henri Exton, 62, who led the Oakley probe, said the fund took legal action to stop his team divulging its findings.

He said: "A letter came from their lawyers binding us to confidentiality."

It stopped him handing the report to Scotland Yard's Operation Grange team until detectives had written permission from the fund, he added.

. . .

Madeleine clues hidden for 5 years The Sunday Times (paper edition)

But the trail was left to go cold for five years because the McCanns and their advisers sidelined the report and threatened to sue its authors if they divulged the contents.

The report, seen by the Sunday Times, called for the E-Fits to be released immediately and said "anomalies" in statements by the McCanns and their friends must be resolved.

A source close to the McCanns said the report was considered "hypercritical of the people involved" and "would have been completely distracting" if made public.

Is this whole fiasco starting, at long last, to unravel? One can only hope.

If Kate and Gerry's story were true, what possible excuse could there be for withholding E-FIT drawings, even if they were to increase the couple's discomfort? Doesn't the search for a missing daughter trump everything?

It would seem, from appearances, not in the minds of these parents.

I think this is just the beginning of very strange days in this ugly case.

It would appear that lawyers hired by the Find Madeleine fund have actually been used to retard the search for Madeleine in the sense that they forced, according to the London Times, the withholding from police investigators of witness descriptions in the form of E-FIT drawings of a man seen by the Smith family carrying a little blonde girl the night Madeleine disappeared.

Is there a charge in law applicable to that situation? Breach of trust? Obstruction of justice? Accessory after the fact?

The obstruction of justice, if it was that, is easy to prove. It is clear cut.

How much more meddling in this case, by the McCanns and the people working for the Find Madeleine fund, are the police and the justice system in the UK going to put up with?

Here are questions that the British press can ask without fear of being sued,

"In view of the apparent rejection by Gerry McCann and Scotland Yard investigators, of multiple cadaver dog alerts in the Madeleine McCann case, will police in the UK stop using cadaver dogs in the investigation of crimes? If not, what are the criteria used to determine whether or not to accept cadaver dog indications as an investigative tool in any given case?"

I don't believe that Euclides Monteiro had anything to do with the disappearance of Madeleine McCann, but I do understand why the British press may be trumpeting his story far and wide. In most jurisdictions it is not legally possible to libel the dead. Mr. Monteiro died in a tractor accident four years ago. Coverage that might well get the press sued for libel, if printed about a living person, will go a long way to help make up losses from lawsuits filed by the McCanns and Robert Murat as the press drags Mr. Monteiro's name through the mud.

www.mccannfiles.com...

Madeleine McCann prime suspect pictured: Heroin addict who worked at hotel club

Junkie and ex-jailbird Euclides Monteiro was sacked by the Ocean Club in Praia da Luz, Portugal, the year before the blonde three-year-old ­disappeared on May 3, 2007.

Yesterday, as the first picture of the 6ft 2in ex-waiter emerged, detectives were investigating the possibility that he kidnapped Madeleine after being disturbed as he broke into her ­family's ­apartment.

Reading this one must keep in mind that Mr. Monteiro, a native of Cabo Verde in Africa is of black African descent and looks nothing like the European man described by the Smith family as having been seen carrying a little blonde girl the night of Madeleine McCann's abduction.



Also, the police reported no sign of a break-in at the McCann's Ocean Club apartment. There was no sign of an intruder having been in the apartment. Nothing in the apartment had been disturbed.

Is that the way that junkie burglars handle their break ins? Maybe junkie burglars are especially neat in Portugal.

Mr. Monteiro's casting is over. Next please.