Madeleine McCann: Bugalugs Reconsidered

Here is a quotation from Goncalo Amaral concerning the timeline in the Madeleine McCann case.

www.mccannfiles.com...

'CM newspaper' programme: Maddie Case

cmtv.sapo.pt...

Gonçalo Amaral: As far as accurate times are concerned, there are only three: The time at which they pick up Maddie from the crèche, which is at 5.30 p.m., the time of the payment at the restaurant by the Irish family, which is at 9.22 or 9.27 p.m., and the time of the phone call to GNR (Note: Guarda Nacional Republicana), which is at 10.47 p.m. From there on, nothing is certain.

en.wikipedia.org...

Law enforcement in Portugal is the responsibility of three bodies:

Guarda Nacional Republicana - National Republican Guard. A Gendarmerie who mainly work in rural areas too small to warrant the PSP, and provide a national highway patrol and fiscal guard.
Polícia de Segurança Pública - Public Security Police. Civilian police force who work in larger urban areas.
Polícia Judiciária - Judicial Police. Overseen by the Public Ministry, they investigate criminal cases.

Amaral's concern in this, one assumes, is that a proper reconstruction of the events of the night of May 3, 2007, might provide one or two more indisputably accurate points on the timeline of this missing person's case. The Smith family's (the Irish family's) sighting of someone carrying a small blonde girl five or ten minutes walk from the McCanns's Ocean Club apartment must be coordinated with movements of the Tapas 9 to and from the Tapas bar and therefore those movements must be known as accurately as possible. A reconstruction of events, involving the Tapas 9, all of them, is the most efficient way to pin those movements to the evening's timeline..

No adequate reconstruction has ever been done.

The most important reconstruction done to date has been the reconstruction done in connection with production of the video Madeleine Was Here, in which Gerry McCann and some of the Tapas 7 took part.

During that reconstruction an inconsistancy emerged between what Gerry McCann said and what Jane Tanner said about a specific point, the location of a chat between Jeremy "Jez" Wilkins and Gerry. The disagreement was smoothed over by the retired detective the McCanns had hired to investigate Madeleine's disappearance on their behalf.

The McCanns and the Tapas 7, their holiday travelling companions, have been very skittish about helping the police reconstruct the events of May 3, 2007.

Here is a statement of position, given by Gerry McCann to The Portugal News in 2009, on the case, and especially on the subject of participating in a reconstruction of events surrounding Madeleine's disappearance.

www.mccannfiles.com...

Closing arguments in Amaral libel case set for January

Speaking to The Portugal News in early 2009, Gerry McCann stressed "that there is no evidence that Madeleine is dead and there is no evidence to suggest that Kate and I were involved in any theories."

Gerry McCann also insisted they would have been legally compelled to be available for a reconstruction due to their status as arguidos, even the motives of Portuguese police were questionable.

"Don't get me wrong, we had major concerns as to why the reconstruction was being done", arguing that "the police reconstruction was not aimed at finding Madeleine, but rather to look for inconsistencies. There were 12 or 15 people involved and it is inevitable there would be inconsistencies."

Dr. McCann's statement, above, in fact and on the contrary, might actually be seen as a cause for "major concerns" among the police investigators as to why a reconstruction was being avoided.

Dr. McCann's statement appears to imply that he himself is way ahead of the police on this investigation. It implies that there is no cause to suspect or to eliminate from consideration any of the Tapas 7 from involvement, even inadvertent involvement, in his daughter's disappearance.

Dr. McCann's statement appears to imply that it would not be helpful for the police to attempt to determine precisely the moments when Madeleine might have been snatched.

Dr. McCann's statement appears to rule out the possibility that there might be Ocean Club staff involvement in Madeleine's disappearance or alternatively that Ocean Club staff anywhere on the property of the resort at the time might have seen something, at a particular moment, that could put investigators on Madeleine's trail.

Dr. McCann's position would appear to be that the best place to pick up that trail is at a considerable distance from where it started; Spain, the Netherlands, Morocco perhaps.

This position is hard to take seriously. It is as if a doctor attempting to diagnose a patient's illness were to start the diagnosis in another ward of the hospital from the one containing the patient.

People who have followed this case closely will know that there are reasons, libel lawsuit fright and political embarassment, why questionable theories of criminal investigation have been allowed to flourish in the press and indeed prevail in the police departments of two countries, over historically established theories of criminal investigation, theories of the sort advocated by the Policia Judiciaria and the Leicestershire Constabulary.

The following is excerpted, with minor modifications, from one of my posts in an earlier thread, Madeleine McCann: Vector Addition.

www.abovetopsecret.com...

There are some good repositories of research devoted to the case of the missing Madeleine McCann, mccannfiles.com and others. Some blogs contain information that one doesn't see often, if ever. One poster to a Madeleine forum, Truth for Madeleine, writing as bugalugs1970 tracked down the first mainstream press story about this case.

truthformadeleine.com...

The current URL of the story that appearin the Telegraph is:

www.telegraph.co.uk...

Three year-old feared abducted in Portugal

By staff and agencies

12:01AM BST 04 May 2007 Comments

A three-year-old British girl has gone missing while on a family holiday in Portugal, the Foreign Office said today.

Portuguese police are investigating the disappearance from a holiday complex in Praia da Luz in the western Algarve.

A Foreign Office spokesman said that he understood the girl's parents had gone to have dinner once their children were asleep last night, but returned to check on them only to find the girl had gone missing.

"They reported it straight away," he said, adding that consular assistance was being offered.

The dateline of this story is 12:01AM BST 04 May 2007. In Portugal the time would have been the same 12:01 AM, because that country is in the same timezone as the UK.

There is some dispute as to the exact time that Madeleine's disappearance was discovered and reported by Kate McCann. For the sake of discussion, let's say that the disappearance was reported at 10:00 PM on May 3, 07.

A British child goes missing in Portugal and exactly 121 minutes later a press story appears on the website of the Telegraph newspaper announcing that there is a child missing in Portugal and this announcement is made by the British Foreign Office.

121 minutes!!!

Let's try to construct a timeline of events working backward from the precise moment at 12:01 AM when someone pressed the key on their computer to upload the story to the web.

12:01 AM 04 May 07: Story is uploaded.

11:58 PM 03 May 07: Story is typed up and proofread.

11:45 PM 03 May 07: Data entry staff receives email from editor containing story after having been phoned and alerted to situation.

11:35 PM 03 May 07: Night editor of Telegraph receives phone call from publisher or editor in chief informing him of the details of the story which he takes down over the phone. There is minimal discussion. He relays story and instructions to publish immediately to his staff.

11:15 PM 03 May 07: Foreign Office press officer phones Telegraph publisher and relates the substance of the story and requests immediate publication of it. He agrees to accept attribution of the story to the Foreign Office. There is some minimal discussion. The publisher agrees to print the story in accordance with long established protocols between the press and the FO.

11:13 PM 03 May 07: Mr. X, a functionary of the Foreign Office at a level somewhere in support of the Minister of State for Europe, Geoffrey Hoon (in 2007), gives instructions to the FO press officer, above.

11:00 PM 03 May 07: Mr. X is instructed by a superior in the Foreign Office to relay the substance of the story of the disappearance of Madeleine McCann to the Telegraph through established channels.

This is irregular and it is difficult to understand the purpose of it. Mr. X would have remarked this undoubtedly. Usually such stories would be "broken" independantly by the press itself or through official statements from Interpol or other police agencies.

The "Foreign Office" attribution for the story is the sticking point.

Keep in mind that only a little over an hour has passed since the disappearance of the child! What if the child were to be found? Twenty minutes later the Foreign Office might have to issue another press release with the happy news.

If the British ambassador in Portugal were the first member of the Civil Service to hear of this story and wished to expedite press coverage of it, he would normally use backchannels of his own to alert the press and ask for an "unnamed sources" attribution of the story.

Keep in mind that even a quickly solved child disappearance is a winner in press circles. The ambassador would not have to twist arms to get the story published, or would he?

Does the press normally publish stories about children who have been missing only for a little over an hour?

10:XX - 11:00PM: Information and a request for assistance in the matter of the disappearance of Madeleine McCann moved from Portugal to a ministerial level in the UK where discussions took place and a decision was made to issue an alert to the press, with Foreign Office attribution, for a child who had been reported missing less than an hour before.

10:00 - 10:XX Madeleine was discovered to be missing and after searching for less than an hour, political help in the situation was sought in the UK and received.

End of excerpt.

Has anyone reading this thread ever tried to get a government department to do ANYTHING after 10:00 PM?

Good luck trying. Pack a lunch. Bring a sleeping bag.

Securing the Foreign Office press release had to have been done through a special channel and considering the mechanics of actually doing such a thing, must have required a channel to the highest level of government in the UK at the time, to either Prime Minister Blair himself or to someone else with enough power to make functionaries at the Foreign Office move immediately, even in the middle of the night.

But why?

The Foreign Office could not scour the Portugese hinterland for Madeleine.

In fact the press release gives the appearance of having almost nothing to do with Madeleine. There is no description of Madeleine in the press release. All it contains, beside the fact of an anonymous missing three year old, is an account and virtual validation of the conduct of the parents of the missing child.

Recalling what Goncalo Amaral said at the beginning of this post, and assuming it is accurate, we know that the first call made to the Portugese police in this case was received at 10:47 PM, and it was made to the GNR, the Portugese local police in Praia da Luz, which is also, importantly, the highway patrol.

Did the McCanns or their friends make calls to political friends immediately or only after becoming frustrated with the response of the GNR? If the latter, the time line to the Foreign Office press release is nearly impossible to believe.

The McCanns are stated to have alerted to Madeleine's disappearance at 10:00 PM. The GNR was telephoned at 10:47 PM according to Goncalo Amaral. The press release from the Foreign Office was on the Telegraph website one hour and fourteen minutes later at 12:01 AM.

Is this doable, even with a direct line to the Prime Minister's personal cell phone or bedside line? Perhaps, but one is still left with the question, "Why do it?"

According to the Portugese police officers, the McCanns were presenting as hysterical when they arrived on the scene. Maybe one grasps at cabinet level connections when one is hysterical, "eyeless in Gaza" so to speak, over the disappearance of a child.

Maybe one simply responds to the hysteria with compliance. Maybe one files the press release and forgets to actually describe the child because one knows that the press release is a useless exercise anyway.

It does make sense. Just.

Star and flag! I am linking to Amaral's Blog where he has posted his book "The Truth of the Lie". He pretty much goes over the whole investigation there and it is a pretty revealing read. I tend to think the parents had something to do with it after reading this book.

The Truth of the Lie

I think there was pressure on the Portuguese Police to implicate and if possible blame the parents because of the effect of children being abducted by strangers might have on the Algarve tourism industry.

Excellent thread and extremely intriguing.

Thanks for the responses.

One thing that I keep reminding myself is that plausibility is not a guarantee of verity. A believable story should not always be believed.

I would very much like to know exactly how and when the connection was made between Praia da Luz and the Foreign Office.

The cadaver dog issue is also a major one. We really do need an explanation from the police as to what exactly is going on with respect to the cadaver dog indications. I would like to hear chapter and verse on that aspect of the case. There are many unanswered questions.

I still think Madeleine died accidentally and that her parents covered it up. It's actually the simplest explanation and it fits with the case.

reply to post by JameSimon

If that is what happened, and many people think so, then a monumental fraud has been perpetrated by Madeleine's parents to hide this fact.

The case could be seen as a classic example of people trying to get out of a hole by continuing to dig.

It's very perplexing in the way it has unfolded.

The psychological basis upon which the parents have been operating is grotesque and fascinating. It's a testimony to the power of mind over matter. Gerry's cognitive dissonance on the subject of the cadaver dog indications is astonishing. The couple's flamboyant over compensation for previous negligence is unprecedented in peacetime history. One is led to recall people like Hitler, Stalin and Mao engaging in examples of behavior that resonate with the same degree of projective intensity as the behavior of the McCanns.

What is going on is appalling and frightening.

I believe that a similar paradigm can be seen in the behavior of the United States when, faced with mass murder committed by traitors at home, it launched the full, cognitively dissonant and murderous fury of its military, its press and its entertainment industry at complete innocents abroad, destroying and poisoning their countries and killing them en mass, simply because the land of the free and home of the brave did not have the intestinal fortitude to confront its own demons.

I'm not a psychiatrist and the above is probably psychobabble but a layperson is struck by the psychological element in the Madeleine case and grasps at straws to describe it.

This is one of the most fascinating criminal cases ever, even if Madeleine died accidentally, as many believe.

reply to post by ipsedixit

As you have clearly given this case a great deal of thought I would like to ask you what your educated guess would be concerning what actually happened to Madeliene.

Since the start of this case I have always had the gut feeling that this poor girl is dead. And buried at sea. One day the truth will come out.

hotel1
reply to post by ipsedixit

 

As you have clearly given this case a great deal of thought I would like to ask you what your educated guess would be concerning what actually happened to Madeliene.

This is the realm of speculation of course.

My own educated guess is that Madeleine is dead, as indicated by the cadaver dog. Her death, in the apartment, makes it hard to believe that an outsider could have been present at the death and then have removed the dead body. That would be a statistical longshot, although still in the realm of remote possibility.

The problem with the theory that the parents successfully removed and hid the body is that there was a very small window of opportunity for this to have happened, unless Madeleine actually died the day before it was announced, as Johanna at the Unterdenteppichgekehrt (Sweptunderthecarpet) blog believes.

The parents and their travelling companions, the Tapas 7, are not fully cooperating with the police and have not fully cooperated with the police from day one (May 3, 2007), for example, going to the press almost immediately, against police requests to keep the press out of it in the first hours of the investigation.

Their general demeanour has been to continue to disapprove the diligences of the police in Portugal, while being very generous to themselves in not taking on too much responsibility for what happened to Madeleine in the first place.

They have ruled out and refused to assist police to complete a thorough investigation of just what happened on the night Madeleine disappeared.

To say that they have left a very bad impression by their conduct is an understatement. Insofar as they themselves have conducted an investigation, it is a shambles, with much waste of money.

Every time you look at them they are "walking and quacking" like something unpleasant. If this conduct represented a marked changed of personality, it would be more worrying, but is it the couple's normal behavior anyway? Here's Gerry on the way to Portugal. lol.



But hey, I'm a guy too. I'm not criticizing him too much for his moods. I think we've all been there.

Gerry presents as a classic "little brother". If his life has been true to type, he had an easier time growing up than his older brother John or sister Philomena. He was indulged and defended and wasn't one of his parents "experimental" children as the older siblings were. He achieved more than they did in the professional world. He is more sophisticated than them and is unscrupulous enough to play the game in the medical profession in a way that would be unthinkable for his brother John, for example, who seems to be humble and self-effacing in ways that would never occur to Gerry.

Gerry is a tough mo'fo who is defending his family from circumstances that got out of hand. I respect that. I understand it. Sometimes ya gotta do what ya gotta do.

The question is, "What were those circumstances, exactly?"

Kate and Gerry have been manoeuvering in ways that prevent the police from knowing that.

hotel1
I think there was pressure on the Portuguese Police to implicate and if possible blame the parents because of the effect of children being abducted by strangers might have on the Algarve tourism industry....

Based on what evidence?

I've read quite a bit on this case and I honestly cannot think of any piece of evidence that supports the PJ trying to 'pin' this on the parents.

Right from the word go, the PJ were suspicious because the parents insisted their daughter had been snatched, yet there was not a single piece of physical evidence of it, There were no broken shutters or abductor foot prints, DNA, Hair, fibres or anything else anywhere! The parents did not look for the girl and complained when the police wanted them to come and identify a possible sighting of their daughter...strange behaviour!

ipsedixit

The psychological basis upon which the parents have been operating is grotesque and fascinating. It's a testimony to the power of mind over matter. Gerry's cognitive dissonance on the subject of the cadaver dog indications is astonishing. The couple's flamboyant over compensation for previous negligence is unprecedented in peacetime history. One is led to recall people like Hitler, Stalin and Mao engaging in examples of behavior that resonate with the same degree of projective intensity as the behavior of the McCanns.

What is going on is appalling and frightening.

I believe that a similar paradigm can be seen in the behavior of the United States when, faced with mass murder committed by traitors at home, it launched the full, cognitively dissonant and murderous fury of its military, its press and its entertainment industry at complete innocents abroad, destroying and poisoning their countries and killing them en mass, simply because the land of the free and home of the brave did not have the intestinal fortitude to confront its own demons.

I'm not a psychiatrist and the above is probably psychobabble but a layperson is struck by the psychological element in the Madeleine case and grasps at straws to describe it.

This is one of the most fascinating criminal cases ever, even if Madeleine died accidentally, as many believe.

You're right (about this case and the US!) It is fascinating how the McCann's will not shift from their strange logic that their daughter is not dead but unharmed and living with a nice family somewhere. For two educated people to ignore all the evidence and statistics in favour of a fairy tale is so odd. It could only really make sense if they are convinced that some very powerful people are backing them, that leads to some very unsettling theories on what happened to their daughter.

DrHammondStoat
You're right (about this case and the US!) It is fascinating how the McCann's will not shift from their strange logic that their daughter is not dead but unharmed and living with a nice family somewhere. For two educated people to ignore all the evidence and statistics in favour of a fairy tale is so odd. It could only really make sense if they are convinced that some very powerful people are backing them, that leads to some very unsettling theories on what happened to their daughter.

When you have intelligent people abandoning common sense and logic and doing irrational things (publicizing the coloboma), using search funds to hire lawyers and playing to the middle of the demographic bell curve where the largest number of softer heads are located, it gives one pause.

One begins to suspect insincerity. One begins to think to oneself, "These are well educated people who can't possibly be stupid enough to believe their own baloney. So, what are they doing?"

Are they covering up guilt of criminal negligence? Are they covering up a more serious sort of culpability?

They simply can't, genuinely, be as stupid as they are manifesting.

I'm finding this thread a bit hard to follow!

There are little hints here and there - about powerful interests being involved in some way.... or powerful people backing up the McCanns. Maybe even the government?

Who are we talking about here? Why is no-one just coming out and saying it? Or at least give us some better hints so we can follow what you're rather subtly alluding to, hehe.

Why would the government, or these powerful people, be getting involved? What is their motivation? I'm really interested in knowing now - you've really got my interest! Thanks.

Millions
Who are we talking about here? Why is no-one just coming out and saying it? Or at least give us some better hints so we can follow what you're rather subtly alluding to, hehe.

Why would the government, or these powerful people, be getting involved? What is their motivation? I'm really interested in knowing now - you've really got my interest! Thanks.

It would help if you read the thread, Madeleine McCann: Vector Addition.

www.abovetopsecret.com...

This subject is discussed a little in the course of a long thread. In a nutshell, I believe that the McCanns, perhaps through political operators connected to Gerry McCann, contacted people at or near the very top of the, at that time, governing Labour Party and got them to push for UK government assistance for the McCanns in their dealings with the Portugese police.

The Foreign Office issued their press release, essentially endorsing the actions of the McCanns, in less than two hours after her disappearance was announced by Kate McCann.

The Portugese began to feel diplomatic pressure from the UK government, the Ambassador to Portugal, etc., almost immediately.

www.abovetopsecret.com...

In the ensuing weeks many famous and influential people rallied publicly to the support of the McCanns.

Personally, I believe that if the McCanns are guilty and if the police would have charged anyone else in a similar situation, that charges have not been filed in this case, because friends in high places are not so much protecting the McCanns as protecting themselves.

There is something deeply politically savvy about how the McCanns have acted in their circumstances.

Like a weak swimmer drowning, who somehow handcuffs himself to a powerful swimmer, who is then compelled to save them both, the McCanns appear to have been superb force multipliers in the situation.

As the situation developed and the investigation started to take shape, British diplomats and police involved with the case began to express reservations about the degree of commitment the government had given to the McCanns. In spite of this the government persisted in supporting them.

There is a lot of speculation as to why this occurred, but political motivations undoubtedly trumped law enforcement issues by this time.

Diplomats who began to have questions about the McCanns were not summarily removed from the scene but they were rotated out of the picture in due course. The Leicestershire Constabulary, who had been liasing with the Policia Judiciaria and who are reported to have been in agreement with the PJ about the case were not allowed to comment on the case and were eventually relegated to the background.

Eventually, after the case had been "archived" in Portugal, Scotland Yard was called in as a result of pressure by the McCanns, to go over the investigation and ultimately reopen the case. This happened after a change of government, the Conservatives under David Cameron having replaced the Labour Party in the last general election in the UK.

Scotland Yard has stated that despite the cadaver dog indications, it believes that Madeleine McCann might still be alive. Personally, I find it astonishing that they would make such a statement.

At this point people are waiting to see what Scotland Yard makes of this case and are wondering if political pressure continues to exert influence on the case that is not in the interest of efficient law enforcement or, finally, of justice.

reply to post by ipsedixit


I dont find it astonishing at all that Scotland Yard would have a differing opinion than the cadaver dog. There are many methods for training cadaver dogs.. and without a large portion of the body, the positive hits MUST be questioned. People think that cadaver dogs have this ungodly high success rate, but in reality they dont. Finding a BODY or PART of a body.. theyre pretty darned good. Recovery searches are greatly aided by them. Latent scents with corpus in absentia... not so much. Theyre a tool.. one among many.. not an answer. If the cadaver dog hit on things that would be inconsistent with the factual timeline or other actual evidence, then they have every reason to disregard this information or concentrate investigation on confirming. Each dog has a success rate chart.. if they are a professional HRD. If you dont have this information and all of the information about the method of training and what was hit on.. even what was used in the dogs training ( cadaver parts, teeth, pseudoscent, etc) .... then you havent the data to base a decision on if SY was being negligent or not. The dogs are great.. dont get me wrong.. but there are a lot fo misconceptions concerning them and being able to sniff a possible dead body coming in contact with someones shirt or stuffed animal after considerable time and exposure.

Im not being a snot. I dont know much about this case.. but this much I do know and wanted to pass it on

reply to post by Advantage

I agree completely and have said as much in other places.

In this case the cadaver dog indications are very consistent. They alerted several times and always to places and objects associated with the McCanns.

I think the dog handler faked an alert at the Vista Mar Villa, where the McCanns stayed after leaving Ocean Club apartment 5A, but overall, if I were a detective, I would have high confidence that Madeleine McCann was dead and died in the apartment.

I would not close my mind to other possibilities for reasons you mention, but I think the police are absolutely right, I am talking about the Amaral investigation here, to have wanted a thorough reconstruction of the events of the night of May 3, 2007, involving all of the Tapas 9.

I think an investigator who believes that the McCanns are innocent of removing Madeleine's body from the scene would have the onus, among investigators at least, of proving it. The McCanns resistance to a crime scene reconstruction that might prove they couldn't have removed the body is suspicious.

Gerry McCann is not a competent criminal investigator as the history of his own investigations shows.

Remember these people sat on E-FIT drawings for 5 years before releasing them.

There are numerous reasons to suspect the McCanns in this case and those reasons simply reinforce the idea that the cadaver dog got it right.

reply to post by ipsedixit


WHO HONESTLY CARES ANYMORE?
The kid is dead- probably used as a sex slave and tortured beyond belief.

In saying that- why don't I see threads on here about the thousands of young Filipino girls who were killed or went missing this year?

OHHHHHHHHHHHHH thats right! They weren't blond and didn't have blue eyes....

reply to post by samuel1990

It's a topic that people are interested in.

But you are right, there are many kidnappings and outrageous crimes committed every year. There should be threads about them all.

I don't think racism is the issue here. Madeleine's parents got government support and created a media circus. Phillipinos never do that.

reply to post by ipsedixit


Oh, no. I didn't mean it in a race way. Just that it seems like more kidnapping cases are covered (or more concerned about) when it's a young white girl.

IDK. The whole thing just seems weird....

reply to post by samuel1990

I agree that the whole thing is weird. The weirdness has gotten steadily weirder too and that probably contributes to the longevity of interest in the case.