"Note: The law allows fair use of copyrighted material and allows you to make ‘fair comment’ on the contents.
The ground rules are essentially that you must not quote large chunks of the book, but you ARE able to reproduce modest-sized sections for comment and then comment on them."
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Were their daughter's Perfect Little Genitals being torn apart such a funny topic? It was to them!
- to see for yourselves, scroll down to the bottom page -
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Source for the following quotes: http://mccannexposure.wordpress.com/2011/05/13/madeleine-by-kate-mccann-extracts-and-comment-on-chapters-12-to-15-and-pp-62-72-129-and-283-4/
Exposing myth, distortion, corruption and truth
Everything must be considered in its relations and in its development
Madeleine by Kate McCann – Extracts and Comment on Chapters 12 to 15 and pp. 62-72, 129 and 283-4
13 May 2011
PAGE 129 of madeleine by Kate McCann:
SUMMARY AND CRITIQUE
Chapter 12 ‘ Morocco’
p. 179
The chapter begins with the McCanns flying out to Rabat, Morocco, on Sunday 12 June.
Dr Kate was ‘terrified’ flying in a small ‘pre-war propeller plane’ because the jet for Morocco had broken down.
At a hotel in Rabat a camera crew was waiting for them.
p. 180
They had questions about a statement by Mari Olli, a Norwegian who swore she’d seen Madeleine in Marrakesh and had rung the Spanish police. Dr Kate explains how the Spanish and Portuguese police did nothing about it. The CCTV camera in the shop wasn’t checked in time. Dr Kate insists in the book that the girl Mari Olli saw could really be Madeleine.
They spent that night at the British Ambassador’s Morocco residence.
The following day the McCanns met several ‘important and powerful figures’, the Chief of Police and two government Ministers among them – they ‘must have had permission from the King of Morocco’.
p. 181
Later that day the McCanns met a ‘crowd of children’ who were waving placards with Madeleine on them; this had been organised by the government. The McCanns met with some Muslim leaders and asked them to pray for Madeleine which they agreed to do. Telling a slight white lie, they said they ‘lived in Leicester’, where there are a lot of Muslims. (There aren’t many Muslims in Rothley).
p. 182
Clarence was out there with them and they had to say goodbye to Clarence who had to go back to his job at the Media Monitoring Unit for a while.
p. 183
On 22 June Justine McGuiness arrived. Dr Kate recounts the story of the Dutch newspaper publishing a report of how Madeleine might be buried at Odiaxere, which turned out to be false.
In one of many passages in this book about Dr Kate’s emotions, she says: “…cold hard reality was hitting me with a sickening thud” and she goes on to refer to her “suffocating fear”.
p. 184
On 17 June there was a report in the Portuguese press claiming that the PJ said that ‘the crime scene was contaminated by the McCanns and their friends’. Dr Kate says: “I was livid” and “…this hurt badly”. (In fact, around 16-18 people tramped round the alleged scene of the crime – their apartment – before the police arrived).
Dr Kate reports how Gerry reacted with fiery indignation and rang John Buck, the Ambassador, Bill Henderson, the Consul, Bob Small from leicestershire C.O.D. and Ricardo Paiva demanding ‘an explanation and redress’.
pp. 185-6
Alex Woofall told them all not to talk to any reporter because ‘there was nothing to be gained’ by doing so. That led to the ‘Pact of Silence’ story which Dr Kate says was the first negative story about them. She complains that someone had given all their friends their mobile ’phone numbers, Dr Kate says it could only be someone in the PJ.
pp. 186-7
The McCanns are approached by Danie Krugel who speaks of his ‘matter orientation system’. He needs some of Madeleine’s hairs to establish where she is. The McCanns are ‘excited’ and arrange to get five hairs and two eyelashes from Madeleine pillow and clothing and they are duly despatched to Mr Krugel. He comes back soon and pinpoints Madeleine as still in Praia da Luz, but says he needs to come to the Algarve to get a more precise location. The McCanns agree. Krugel doesn’t let anyone examine his machine ‘to protect my trade secrets’.
p. 188
Dr Kate raises with police inspector Luis Neves the significance of her friends Fiona, Rachael and Russell all saying they reported seeing Robert Murat hanging around the Ocean Club on the night Madeleine was reported missing. Luis Neves reacts and gets agitatated, snapping: ‘No, Kate!’
The chapter ends with more emotion: “There were so many unanswered questions going round and round my brain; so many days when all I wanted to do was pull the duvet over my head and for it all to go away”.
SUMMARY AND CRITIQUE
Chapter 13 ‘ The Tide Turns’
p. 189
On 5 July the McCanns discuss with Inspector Luis Neves their outrage with the ‘Pact of Silence’ article and the leaks of their friends’ mobile ’phone nos. to the police.
p. 190
Dr Kate agonises over the press involvement: “No longer was it about our lovely missing daughter; it was becoming the Kate and Gerry show”.
p. 191
We hear how the McCanns suddenly learnt about all the world’s ‘missing, exploited and trafficked children’ and started campaigning: they felt “…a moral obligation to try to do something to make Europe a safer place for all children”
p. 192
Gerry spent almost an hour on the ’phone to important people in Washington and afterwards Dr Kate says Gerry was ‘almost radiant’ (but obviously not quite) at the prospect of a trip to Washington.
p. 193
The attempt by a Dutch man to extort money, his arrest and prosecution is covered in some detail.
pp. 193-4
The McCanns get an invitation to lunch from Sir Clement Freud, who has a house in Praia da Lyz. The McCanns accept and all go along with Trish and Sandy Cameron and Justine McGuiness. They all go along at mid-day. Clement Freud opened the meeting by asking Dr Kate: “Can I interest you in a strawberry vodka?” Dr Kate says: “Er, OK then, That would be nice” She enthuses about the lunch: “Lunch was bloody marvellous: watercress and egg salad followed by a chicken and mushroom risotto – the best risotto we’ve ever tasted before or since. Clement cheered us up with his lugubrious wit…” They later kept in touch by e-mail.
p. 195
Dinner at Ricardo Paiva’s house: “…it was a good evening, though I found it hard to allow myself to really relax and enjoy it. Ricardo made us a great martini and his wife had prepared a fantastic meal”.
The McCanns move to the villa on 2 July.
p. 196
Dr Kate writes of the ‘confrontation’ between Robert Murat and Fiona, Rachael and Russell on 11 July at Portimao Police Station as to whether he was outside the Ocean Club the night Madeleine was reported missing. Dr Kate says they were sitting so close their knees were practically touching each other; Murat eyeballed each of them intently as they were speaking.
pp. 196-7
Gerry gets invited by the Rupert Murdoch-owned Sun newspaper to a ‘Bravery Awards’ police ceremony in London. He is applauded there. Before that, he spends the afternoon having a tour of CEOP HQ.
On July 15 and 16 Danie Krugel is in town with his ‘matter orientation system’ which he claims is ‘80% successful’. They are not sure about him but want to make sure ‘no stone is left unturned’. Dr Kate says she is “…so destroyed, so consumed by our pain and fear…we felt our role as [Sean and Amelie’s] parents had been compromised’.
pp. 198-9
Dr Kate: “Maternal guilt often weighed heavily on my shoulders…I was so engulfed by Madeleine that I worried I might not have enough love left over for Sean and Amelie. Something else to beat myself up about”.
Wednesday 18 July marked ‘a turning point’. Speaking of the PJ investigation, she writes: “…their lack of progress whipped up a storm of fury in me that was completely out of character. It seems to me now as if for several months I was possessed by some demonic alien that infiltrated my thoughts and filled me with anger and hatred. I needed a face on which to pin all this rage, someone to blame. And although, as I now know, the PJ had no case against Murat, they handed him to me on a plate. Since they had insinuated throughout that he might be the person responsible for the unimaginable fear and pain suffered by our little girl, is it any wonder I felt as I did?”
Later in the meeting the PJ said that Danie Krugel’s machine had come up with a ‘static signal’ that suggested that Madeleine might be dead and buried on the beach, close to the Rocha Negra cliff. This ‘plunged me into despair’. “There would be endless tears, out-of-control hysteria and feverish sessions of prayer. And there would be several visits to ‘my rocks’ – a quiet part of the beach away from the promenade…here I would simply sob to a friend on the ’phone for hours on end…I still go back there on my visits to Praia da Luz to be on my own”.
p. 200
On 20 July the PJ asked the National Policing Improvements Agency for ‘advisory assistance’. A Serious Organised Crime Officer, Jose de Freitas, who was bilingual, came over to Portugal to help with the enquiry. “We found out later (much later) that the UK team had been instructed by the PJ to proceed on the basis that Madeleine had been killed and her body dumped”.
p. 201
Dr Kate: “At this stage, I was also still giving some credence to the information [sic] we were receiving from psychics, some of whom were suggesting that we should scour nearby territory again”.
On 22 July the Sunday Express ran the headline: ‘MADDY’S PARENTS TO FACE INQUIRY’. It was “incredibly hurtful…”
Dr Kate: “However unwittingly, we’d given this predator an opportunity”.
p. 202
“We had not been there for Madeleine. And, as I’ve said before and will say again, our guilt over that is a heavy cross we will bear for the rest of our lives…the abductor must have been smiling smugly to himself and thinking: ‘Keep blaming the parents, just leave me out of it, hidden and anonymous, to carry on doing what I do – stealing children”.
SUMMARY AND CRITIQUE
Chapter 14 ‘ Warning Sirens’
p. 203
Gerry McCann flies to Washington to meet the Attorney-General, CEO of the National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children, and has a TV interview on the ‘America’s Most Wanted’ show.
Dr Kate ’phoned Ricardo Paiva to get a couple of letters translated but he was ‘strange’, ‘not his usual self’; “I distinctly remember him saying: ‘Our investigation will be changing direction’.”
Dr Kate now refers to Krugel’s machine as ‘an unknown and untested magic machine’.
p. 204
A University Professor in Belfast described Krugel’s machine as ‘pseudo-science-fiction’.
“At bedtime one evening while Gerry was in the States, Amelie said to me in a small voice: ‘Daddy at work. Mummy not going to work. Mummy not going anywhere. Mummy stay here”.
Thursday 26 July, Gerry flies back from Washington. Sunday 29 July, Trish and Sandy Cameron return home to Scotland.
pp. 205-6
“On Monday we had what would turn out to be our last regular meeting with [Inspectors] Luis Neves ands Guilhermino Encarnacao”.
2 August: They were planning the drive to Huelva with Jon Corner. But: “As I was dropping Sean and Amelie off at the Toddler Club, I had a ’phone call from Gerry. The police wanted to come over at 10am. Something to do with forensics…”
“We’d never lied about anything – not to the police, not to the media, not to anyone else. But now we found ourselves in one of those tricky situations where we just didn’t seemto have a choice. As it happened, Gerry had a mild stomach upset which we used as an excuse to postpone the trip…can you imagine what would have happened if we’d announced to the journalists heading for Huelva that the police were coming to do some forensic work in our villa?”
The police showed up late, at 5pm, the following day. “Left with only the clothes we were wearing, we were all asked to leave the villa”.
“When we were allowed back, we found four detectives at the house…I was confused…and devastated: as well as all of our clothes, they had taken my Bible, Cuddle Cat and my diaries”.
p. 207
“The Bible had been lent to me by Bridget’s husband Paddy a week after Madeleine’s abduction. My journals were private and full of personal thoughts and messages to Madeleine. I felt violated”.
“When you are innocent, it doesn’t occur to you that you could be considered in any other light”.
The Huelva trip is described in just four lines.
“The police returned our belongings to us later that day, thrown into big black bin bags, creased as hell…”
They plan for the 100th day since Madeleine was reported missing: 11 August. “We were preparing to launch a ‘Don’t You Forget About Me’ channel on YouTube. We also had quite a few media interviews lined up”.
p. 208
Saturday 4 August: Murat’s mother’s house is surrounded by police cars, journalists and cameras.
Monday 6 August: Gerry was asked to meet the police in a café in Portimao, but the police kept the car and took Gerry home in the car. It was the day Eddie and Keela were set loose to examine 10 cars. At lunchtime the McCanns were besieged by hostile journalists. That morning’s Portuguese press ‘suggested that Gerry was somehow involved in Madeleine’s disappearance. Sniffer dogs had discovered traces of Madeleine’s blood in apartment 5A, it was claimed. It was insinuated that she had died there and her body had been dumped in the sea”.
p. 209
The next day there was another media frenzy: “We left as planned for the Belavista Hotel in Luz, where I was scheduled to be interviewed on BBC Radio 4’s ‘Woman’s Hour’ via satellite radio.
p. 210
The BBC’s Steve Kingstone says: “Do you know what they’re saying? They’re saying that you killed Madeleine”. They agree to do an interview with the BBC’s Richard Bilton. Gerry, says Dr Kate “…kept his fury in check”.
Wednesday 8 August: Interview at the Tivoli Hotel for the programme: ‘Heaven and Earth’. “We teetered on the edge of a new precipice…”
Dr Kate questions her faith and suggests that perhaps religion was ‘invented merely to maintain order in society, promoting compassion and justice and provide solace…’ (the media have described them both as ‘devout Catholics’).
p. 211
Alex Woolfall ’phones to tell the McCanns that they can’t use the Toddler Club any more because other parents have complained about the ‘media scrum’ there every morning: “I was so upset. The injustice of it all was starting to get to me. Poor Amelie and Sean. They were the ones who would suffer. We’d tried so hard to provide them with stability, to make sure they had other children to play with and lots of activity, and now even this was to be taken away from them. My immediate reaction was to angrily blame these guests for their selfishness”.
Later she says: “No, it was the media who were at fault”. Later still, Sean and Amelie were able to return to the club.
Inspector Joao Carlos returned the McCanns’ car at lunchtime, minus a piece from the boot. Instead of meeting for an informal chat at the British Consulate, as they normally did, this time the McCanns were summoned to meet at Portimao Police Station. The children were dropped off with Haynes and Susan Hubbard.
p. 212
Today Luis Neves and Guilhermino Encarnacao “looked serious and cold”. They were no longer optimistic that Madeleine was alive. Dr Kate: “Almost instantaneously I could feel my breathing pattern altering and that familiar constriction in my throat. Gerry asked if any evidence had come to light to suggest that Madeleine was dead but they wouldn’t reply…Gerry was then asked to leave the room. Now the sirens in my head were deafening…I was on my own and afraid”.
Dr Kate was then asked to state exactly what happened on the evening of 3 May. She did so, but “…this time they responded by just staring at me and shaking their heads. I was reeling with confusion, disbelief and panic. What the hell was going on?”
p. 213
“Neves stated bluntly that they didn’t believe my version of events. It ‘didn’t fit’ with what they knew. What did they know? “.
“They proposed that when I’d put Madeleine to bed that night, it wasn’t actually the last time I’d seen here. But it was. It was!…I was in no doubt no that they were trying to make me say I killed Madeleine or knew what had happened to her…This was their theory and they wanted to shoehorn me into it, end of story”.
p. 214
Then Gerry was interviewed, again on his own: “Through his tears he pleaded with the two men: ‘Do you have evidence that Madeleine is dead? We’re our parents, you have to tell us’. ‘It’s coming’, Neves told him. ‘It’s coming’.”
Dr Kate was praying. “I was beginning to come unstuck”.
Dr Kate: “Before long I was ordered back into the room to join Gerry for round three”.
Luis Neves asked Dr Kate why she wasn’t looking at him straight in the eye: “There was no reason, other than I was incapable of looking at anyone properly: my own eyes were so swollen and sore that I was struggling to keep them from closing completely”.
p. 215
The McCanns collected Sean and Amelie from the Hubbards. “Susan suggested I wnt and had a bath as I was still pretty shaky. |In her bathroom I leaned over the washbasin and peered into the mirror. My eyes were narrow slits in fat, purple lids. My blotchy face seemed to be ageing by the day…What’s going to become of us all?”
Gerry made several calls asking for help and advice, including to the Director of the counselling service from Skipton, Alan Pike.
The nest day and the day after “we had a host of interviews scheduled to mark the hundredth day since Madeleine was taken from us. My immediate instinct was to cancel them all…But this would have broken one of our rules: keep your focus and don’t let others push you off track. We were doing interviews for Madeleine”.
p. 216
“It was a terrible day: both the atmosphere and the line of questioning followed by the press were intensely antagonistic…We wanted to talk about one hundred days without Madeleine, and the launch of ‘Don’t You Forget About Me’ on YouTube; they wanted to talk about blood and dogs”.
Dr Kate: “We felt like two lone figures with catapults fighting an army”.
“What made it worse was our distress that all the time and effort we’d put into publicising the hundred-day landmark and the plight of other missing children was being trampled underfoot. It was exasperating…the disrespect and injustice we felt on Madeleine’s behalf were very hard to stomach”.
“Alan Pike…flew out [to us] from the U.K. on a mercy mission. We were very grateful for the opportunity to reconnect with him face to face for a dose of his calm, considered advice. It all helped to strengthen our armour”.
SUMMARY AND CRITIQUE
Chapter 15 ‘ One Hundred Days’
p. 217
Saturday 11 August. There was a ‘One Hundred Days of Hope’ service for Madeleine and ‘missing children everywhere’ in the church.
“Haynes led the service. He is such a strong man, his trust in God unwavering”.
p. 218
“I wrote in my diary: ‘I have no doubt the local Portuguese community are behind us. We were kissed to death again!’”
Olegario de Sousa had given a statement to the BBC saying there was new evidence that Madeleine was dead but that the family and friends ‘were not suspects’. Dr Kate: “The chaotic and upsetting events and rumours of recent days and the complete lack of information were compounding our already unbearable agony”.
Ricardo Pavia then came round to their house and explained that two springer spaniels had been in Praia da Luz, a bloodhound who had found traces of blood in the apartment, and a ‘cadaver’ dog who had indicated that ‘somebody had died there’.
p. 219
“I trusted Ricardo back then but I struggled to understand how, never mind why, somebody could have killed Madeleine and removed her body within such a short time frame…this ‘evidence of death’ seemed tenuous in the extreme. The police appeared to be telling us, on the say-so of a dog, that someone had definitely died in Apartment 5A”.
“Supposing she had been taken out of the apartment within minutes. Did they really believe that a dog could smell the ‘odour of death’ three months later from a body that had been removed so swiftly? They were adding two and two together and coming up with ten”.
“The merest suggestion from Ricardo that it was even possible she had been killed in that flat was like knife being twisted into my chest. My eyes, so tired of tears, succumbed to them yet again”.
Dr Kate wrote in her diary that day: “So Madeleine’s dead?…Psychopath? Burglary gone wrong? I need her body before I can believe this. I just can’t accept this”.
That evening they watched the Premiership football highlights. Bill Kenwright, the Chairman of Everton Football Club, had made the players wear Madeleine T-shirts and wristbands, and said that “The pressure on football clubs and managers at the start of the new football campaign was nothing compared to the pressure Gerry and Kate are under”. (FOOTNOTE: Bill Kenwright, an impresario, is a great friend of Michael Barrymore. When Barrymore was arrested the second time on suspicion of murder in June 2007, he was staying at Bill Kenwright’s north London home).
p. 220
“The following three weeks felt like an eternity. It was like being on some kind of endurance course run by sadists. The newspapers…churned out endless damning pieces that were at best speculative and mostly complete fabrications…While selling papers and making money, these stories very effectively distorted the opinions of the readership…Evidently it didn’t matter to the newspaper editors whether there was any truth in these tales or not…”.
p. 222
Diary entry 17 August: “Finding it hard to talk to anyone at then moment as I’m full of so many negative emotions – anger, bitterness, frustration, desperation…”
Gerry began talking about going home to Rothley.
Sean and Amelie thought that Madeleine must be at their home in Rothley: “Gerry rang the child psychologist David Trickey for advice. It broke my heart to hear Gerry explaining gently to the children afterwards that Madeleine wasn’t there. Sean looked quite confused, and perhaps a bit scared…”
“In mid-July I had slowly started to come round to Gerry’s way of thinking – we had to return some time..”
p. 223
19 August diary entry: “Madeleine, sweetheart, it’s not getting any easier at this end. I just have to hope that whoever is with you loves you too and is treating you kindly and fairly
20 August dairy entry: “There’s so much shit that’s been written, much of it outrageous”.
Dr Kate: “By this time, we felt as if we had been completely cut adrift”.
On 20 August Gerry contacted a human rights lawyer, Carlos Pinto de Abreu, “who’d been recommended to us”. The McCanns went to see him the very next day. There they met with Carlos, his wife who acted as a translator, and three colleagues.
p. 224
In her diary for that day, Dr Kate wrote: “A bit upset on the way back…I had ‘flashes’ of Madeleine in my head being hurt, abused and screaming for us – but we weren’t there. So awful”.
23 August, an interview with ‘Telecinco’, a Spanish TV news programme. The McCanns had told them in advance that they couldn’t discuss the investigation at all because of the judicial secrecy rules. The interview took place in Justine McGuiness’s flat.
Dr Kate: “It was stifling in the small flat. It was a hot August day, hotter still under the TV arc lights, and we were pretty uncomfortable before we even started. We readied ourselves for the interviewer’s first question. It was about the investigation. And the second question? About the investigation. As was the third. Blood and dogs were mentioned again. It was as if the conversation we’d had [before the interview] had never taken place. After five or so of these unanswerable prompts, Gerry, who was suffering badly from the heat, removed his mike, visibly exasperated and upset…I carried on, attempting patiently and politely to explain why my husband had reacted as he had”.
p. 225
Dr Kate: “The papers gleefully reproduced stills of Madeleine’s distressed father under headlined like: ‘GERRY CRACKS’ and ‘GERRY STORMS OFF’.”
Gerry flew to Scotland to appear at the Edinburgh TV Festibal. This “had been arranged back in early June”, when it was agreed that “Highly respected ‘Newsnight’ presenter Kirsty Wark” would carry out the interview.
On Friday 24 August, a Portuguese newspaper Tal e Qual published an article: ‘PJ BELIEVE PARENTS KILLERD MADDIE’. Dr Kate: “I think this was probably the last straw for Gerry, and he completely lost it. I was equally gobsmacked. Initially my fury was directed not at the police but at the paper…”. It was “ridiculous, disgusting nonsense”.
p. 226
The McCanns ’phoned Bob Small of Leicestershire Police. Dr Kate: “…he was perplexed at the apparent fixation of the PJ on the idea that Madeleine had died in the apartment. He told Gerry he thought they’d get a shock when the forensic results came back”.
Dr Kate: “The next day, Gerry rang Ken Jones, Head of the Association of Chief Police Officers. He, too, was beginning to despair of the investigation and the way it was being handled…Carlos Pinto de Abreu advised us to sue Tal e Qual. We did begin proceedings, but shortly afterwards, the paper went bust…”
p. 227
Dr Kate says that ‘a faction’ within the PJ had leaked the story to Tal e Qual “…in order to make everyone else believe it, to ‘solve’ a case they wer eudner immense pressure to conclude. What better way was there to achieve that than to harness the power of the media? So much for the law of judicial secrecy”.
Dr Kate says there were some Portuguese police officers who ‘worked very hard to get to the truth’ but “their efforts…were being undermined by these disgraceful actions”.
On Monday 27 August the McCanns got a call from one of the Board members of the Find Madeleine Fund trust, Esther McVey, a Conservative parliamentary candidate. She was, said Dr Kate “scared by our current situation” and urged the McCanns to come home. The same day, the McCanns learned that they had to leave their villa by 11 September. The McCanns say that they then made plans to depart from Portugal on Monday 10 September.
p. 228
Dr Kate: “I knew, though, that O would be returning to Luz when I could, to reconnect with the last place I had seen Madeleine and to remind the authorities that I was not going to allow my daughter’s disappearance to be forgotten. I could just imagine the police and the government rubbing their hands with glee at seeing the back of us at last and wrapping up the case with unseemly haste”.
The McCanns had been given many toys by well-wishers and they gave away many of these to local orphanages.
Dr Kate recalls Madeleine’s favourite DVD: ‘Barbie: The Princess and the Pauper’. Madeleine would pretend to be Erika and Dr Kate would pretend to be Anneliese.
p. 229
August 30: this would have been Madeleine’s first day back at school. “I had pictured her in class, having fun and making lots of new mates…I’d see her standing there on her new uniform, smiling at me. I cried, I prayed and I held my husband and children tightly. We could make things right for her. If only we could get her back we could work through anything and everything she’d endured. We would make sure that her life was as full and happy as it should always have been”.
The McCanns get a call from Clement Freud. He teases them: “Is it true, Gerry? That you’re close to a breakdown and needing medication”.
He explains. “I have a lot of empathy with the Express. You see, we both suffer form poor circulation”.
Dr Kate: “Clement kept us smiling”.
p. 230
Dr Kate: “On the night of 1 September I dreamed about Madeleine for the first time on four months…it was such a dreadful experience…Although I was dreaming, I could feel her. It was as if parts of my body that had been hibernating for months suddenly began to stir. I could sense the cold, dark days lifting as I luxuriated in warmth and light. And Madeleine was holding me, her little arms wrapped tightly round me, and it felt so good, I could smell her, I could feel her with every one of my senses as I soaked up this heavenly moment. My Madeleine. I wanted to stay like this for ever. And then I woke up. Ice began to course through my body, driving out every endorphin and remnant of warmth. I didn’t understand. What was happening? How could this be? I could still feel her! A heavy boot connected with my stomach and the ache in my chest was worse than I’d known it. I was struggling for breath, almost as if I were being strangled. Please God, don’t let her go! Stay with me, Madeleine. Please stay with me. Don’t go – stay with Mummy. Please, sweetheart, hold on. I love you so much. I started to cry. The crying built into seismic sobs. An unearthly sound, like the howl of a wounded animal, was coming out of my mouth. The crushing pain in my chest intensified to the point where I thought I was going to die. I’d been with her. And then she was gone. Again”.
SUMMARY AND CRITIQUE
Chapter 16 ‘ Fantasy Land’
p. 231
Dr Kate: “The day after the dream had been a difficult one. That night I’d gone to bed with puffy eyes.
Dr Kate: “Alan Pike was back in Praia da Luz today to see how we were coping with recent events and our preparations for returning to the U.K. the following Monday” (What? – they were going back to England anyway and Alan Pike had to fly out to Praia da Luz just a week ahead of their return home? Why??)
Dr Kate: “We spent several hours talking about low episodes and the support we were going to need at home…At one point I remarked sardonically: ‘They’ll be hauling us in as suspects next’. Alan replied: ‘Now you’re wandering into fantasy land’.”
p. 232
Ricardo Pavia came round to the villa told the McCanns to bring a lawyer with them to the police station for questions on Wednesday and Thursday. Dr Kate: “Gerry smelled a rat”.
Gerry asked: “Isn’t it unusual for witnesses to be questioned with their lawyer present”. Paiva explained that the McCanns would be ‘arguidos’.
Dr Kate: “I began to shake and cry. I shouted at Ricardo: ‘What are you doing? Why are you doing this? I can’t believe what is going on! This is ridiculous. It’s despicable’. I shook my head over and over again. ‘This can’t be happening. This just cannot be true. What kind of country was this?…I remember crying out in despair, ‘What will our parents think? How will they cope with this? What are you trying to do? Destroy our family completely?’”
p. 233
Dr Kate: “Trisha and Eileen were staying with us for what was intended to be our final week in Luz. Hearing the commotion from the next room, where they were playing with Sean and Amelie, they came running in demanding to know what was happening. Within seconds there were more tears and shouts of dismay and disbelief…Ricardo left, looking every inch the sheepish messenger boy he was”.
Dr Kate: “If this farce continued in the same vein, and we ended up being accused of doing something to Madeleine, people were going to start calling for the twins to be taken away from us. I could feel the panic building up inside me. Between sobs I blurted out my fears to Trisha and Eileen”.
Dr Kate: “Our plans for the evening went out of the window. We cancelled an interview we were scheduled to give ‘Paris Match’ and dinner with Clement Freud’.
Bob Small of Leicestershire Police was said to be ‘astounded’ by developments.
p. 234
Dr Kate rings Clement Freud at 9.50pm who says ‘Come on round’. Dr Kate accepts “a giant glass of brandy”. He jokes: “So, Kate, which of the devout Catholic, alcoholic, depressed, nymphomaniac parts is correct?” On the dogs, he also joked: “So what are they going to do? Put them on the stand? One bark for yes, two for no?” (Some people might think this is funny).
Dr Kate: “A couple of hours later, fortified by our brandies…”
p. 235
The next day the McCanns ‘reluctantly’ allowed photographers to picture them “going into church and sitting on the rocks”.
Dr Kate: “This was all about us, not Madeleine, which was precisely what we’d been striving to avoid for two months or more”. The afternoon is spent at the Hubbards’ house. The Hubbards “were a gift from God”.
p. 236
Wednesday 5 September: The police interviews are postponed; the Evening Standard runs a headline: ‘RESULTS BACK: ARRESTS IMMINENT’. The McCanns say the police were trying by various tactics “to make us crack’.”
p. 237
Dr Kate: “All I could do was tell the truth – again – and hope that was what they were actually interested in”.
It was a windy night: “The Algarvian wind was wild and menacing overnight, howling eerily, sweeping around the walls of the villa and battering the shutters backwards and forwards”. On the way to the police station, they stopped at the church for prayer. “We prayed fervently for Madeleine, for strength and justice”.
p. 238
Dr Kate: “Strangely, I was feeling OK…I’d switched on to autopilot and an inner strength and calmness I hadn’t expected to find had begun to take over. My instinct to protect my child was more powerful than my fear…I suppose the situation was so extreme, so nonsensical, that my brain struggled to register it as real. I had somehow floated out of my body and was watching events unfold as though they were happening to somebody else”.
Dr Kate: “At 1.15pm Gerry drove me to the police station in Portimao…There were hordes of people…” She doesn’t mention the fact which we all heard on TV that many of the crowd were booing her as she arrived at the police station.
p. 239
The interviews started at 2.55pm. Three officers were present: Ricardo Paiva, Paulo Ferreira and Joao Carlos, who asked most of the questions, “all of which I answered in as much details as I could”.
Dr Kate: “At one point early on, something was read out from my initial statement, given on 4 May. It wasn’t quite accurate and I explained to the officer that the original meaning seemed to have been lost slightly in translation. To my astonishment, the interpreter became quite angry and suddenly interrupted; “What are you saying? That we interpreters can’t do our job? The interpreter will only have translated what you told her!’ I was staggered…she was wrong…My trust in her took a dive”.
At a break in the questioning at 5.00pm, Dr Kate’s lawyer, Carlos, “…came over and told me not to be so definite in some of my answers…Carlos’s stance bothered me. I tried to take his guidance on board. But it did rather undermine my confidence”.
p. 240
Interviews stopped at 7.50pm and there was then a delay of 2¼ hours. Interviews resumed and concluded at 12.40am. “Paulo Ferreira stopped me in the corridor and said in a portentous tone: ‘You must go back now and listen very carefully to your lawyer. He has something important to say to you’.”
p. 241
Dr Kate: “Back at the villa…Carlos looked very concerned. There was a great deal we needed to discuss, he told us. He reiterated that the situation was not good. The PJ had a lot of ‘evidence’ against us, and I was certain to be made an arguida in the morning”.
Carlos explained that in the morning the videos of the dogs would be shown, and the McCanns were told that the blood samples matched Madeleine’s with a ’15 out of 19 match with her DNA’.
Dr. Kate: “I was totally perplexed. This news, if true, seemed to add weight to the possibility that Madeleine had at the very least been physically harmed…what we were being told didn’t make sense. If, as the PJ alleged, Madeleine’s blood was in the boot of the car, which we had not rented until 27 May, how on earth had it got there? Did this mean someone had planted it? I could see no other explanation. The police theory, it seemed. Was that we had hidden Madeleine’s body, then moved it later, in the car, and buried it elsewhere”.
p. 242
The police then went on to draw attention to the crumpled page of the Bible, from 2 Samuel Chapter 12, which dealt with the death of a child born to King David’s wife.
The police also queried why the McCanns had asked to see a priest the night Madeleine was reported missing, claiming it was evidence they wanted their sins forgiven.
Dr Kate: “A witness claimed to have seen Gerry and me carrying a big black bag and acting suspiciously. This was absolute nonsense, but ‘evidence’ of this kind came down to one person’s word against another”.
Dr Kate: ‘If you were Portuguese’, Carlos said with an air of resignation, ‘this would be enough to put you in prison’. The only conclusion I could draw was that we’d been framed, though this seemed completely implausible…but maybe anything was possible…Even our own lawyer appeared to think, based on what he’d been told, that the police had a good case against us. I could see by this time that Gerry was starting to crack”.
p. 243
Carlos said the police were offering a deal: confess to having hidden and disposed of the body, then they’d get a much more lenient sentence, just two years; otherwise they would face a homicide charge.
Dr Kate: “Pardon? I really wasn’t sure if I could possibly have heard him correctly. My incredulity turned to rage. How dare they suggest I lie? How dare they expect me to live with such a charge against my name?…Did they really expect me to confess to a crime they had made up, to falsely claim to the whole world that my daughter was dead, when the result would be that the whole world stopped looking for her? This police tactic might have worked in the past, but it certainly wasn’t going to work with me. Over my dead body. Carlos insisted: ‘You need to think about it. It would only be one of you. Gerry could go back to work’, I was speechless’.”
Dr Kate: “Gerry was distraught now. He was on his knees, head hung low. ‘We’re finished. Our life is over’, he kept saying over and over. The realisation that we were at the mercy of an incomprehensible criminal justice system had hit him hard. It was excruciating to see him like this…he is usually so strong…I felt like a character in a soap opera. Ant time now the director would call ‘Cut!’ and this scene would be over”.
p. 244
Carlos kept repeating the phrase: ‘This is the point of no return’.
Dr Kate: “I could feel myself shaking. ‘Do you want me to lie? What would you do, Carlos?”
Dr Kate explains how she has started to lose confidence in carlos, as even he seems to doubt their story.
Dr Kate: “My anger and ferocious maternal instinct began to permeate Gerry’s despair. He was regaining his composure, his powers of reason and his fighting spirit. ‘They’ve got nothing!’, he fired at Carlos. He began pointing out the many flaws in the PJ’s ‘evidence’ and the complete absence of any logic.
Dr Kate: “Trisha and Eileen, disturbed by the noise, appeared from their room. Keeping a lid on my anger for long enough to enable me to communicate clearly, I brought them up to speed. Within seconds there were three raging lionesses pacing the villa. Recognising the need to switch into crisis-management mode, we calmed each other down. Gerry and I made it very clear to Trisha and Eileen that if we didn’t return from the police station the next day, they should take the children out of the country as soon as possible”.
p. 245
Carlos their lawyer left around 4.00am.
Dr Kate: “We’d experienced many periods of despair since our beloved daughter had been taken away, but this one would take some beating…Despite the time, Gerry rang Bob Small and, in a voice laced with panic, explained what was going on. Bob was shocked. He wasn’t aware of any forensic results, he told us, And certainly none suggesting what had just been shared with us. ‘Just tell then the truth, it’ll be OK’, he insisted.
Dr Kate’s diary entry that night:
“We will keep fighting, darling, and we will keep searching for you. Hang in there, Madeleine”.
SUMMARY AND CRITIQUE
Chapter 17 ‘ Arguidos’
p. 246
Friday 7 September
Dr Kate: “It was time to go [for my police interview]. I vividly remember standing quietly for a few minutes in the sitting room. There were several thoughts scrolling through my mind. There’s going to be a riot when this news reaches the U.K….There’s no way our government will stand for this…The PJ can beat me up and throw me in a prison cell but I will not lie…I know the truth and God knows the truth. Nothing else matters. It’ll be OK. I was still in control and I felt strong”.
p. 247
Dr Kate and Justine McGuiness called in at the Toddler Club to see the twins and hold them in case she wasn’t coming back. Dr Kate: “After all, I had no idea whether I’d be coming back.
Dr Kate: “Just when it seemed the whole situation couldn’t get any more surreal, before turning the corner to the police station, Justine McGuiness stopped the car, took her lipstick out of her bag and, looking into the rear-view mirror, began to reapply it”.
After she got out of the car: “I walked calmly towards the entrance, my head held high. I felt strangely invincible. There was some jeering from the locals as I passed by, apparently, but I didn’t hear it”.
Dr Kate: “The police were not looking for Madeleine, I reminded myself. They hadn’t been looking for my baby for weeks. The mere thought of that incensed me. There was no way I was going to let her down too”.
p. 248
Dr Kate: “Today Carlos had advised me not to answer any of the questions put to me. He explained that his was my right as an arguida and it was the safest option: any responses I gave might unintentionally implicate me in some way…it struck me as prudent to accept his advice”.
Dr Kate: “I sat there quietly, trying to compose myself despite the anger bubbling beneath the surface. They haven’t been looking for Madeleine… Then they started. What had I seen and heard after entering apartment 5 at 10pm on 3 May 2007?…I was very weary and at least repeating ‘No comment’ didn’t involve engaging my brain”
p. 249
Dr Kate explains that Ricardo Paiva outlined the significance of the dogs’ evidence: “Now Ricardo was giving me his spiel about the dogs. ‘These dogs have a 1900% success rate’, he said, waving an A4 document in front of me. ‘Two hundred cases and they’ve never failed. We have gone to the best laboratory in the world using low-copy DNA techniques’…I just stared at him, unable to hide my contempt. What did he know about low-copy DNA? I was so tempted to ask him to elaborate”.
Dr Kate was then shown the video of Eddie the cadaver dog searching their apartment: “At one point, the handler directed the dogs to a spot behind the couch in the sitting room, close to the curtains. He called the dogs over to him to investigate this particular site. The dogs ultimately ‘alerted’. I felt myself starting to relax a little. This was not an exact science”.
Dr Kate then describes the video of the same dog sniffing around 10 cars in an underground garage. She pours scorn on the dog and the dog handler: “It was hard to miss our Renault Scenic: the windows were plastered with pictures of Madeleine. [This exercise] was susceptible to bias. One of the dogs ran straight past our car, nose in the air, heading towards the next vehicle. The handler stopped next to the Renault and called the dog,. It obeyed, returning to him, but he ran off again. Staying by the car, P.C. Grime instructed the dog to go back several times and directed it to certain parts of the vehicle, before it eventually supplied an alert by barking. Each time the dog gave a signal, Ricardo would pause the video and inform me that blood had been found in this site and that the DNA from the sample matched Madeleine’s. He would stare at me intently and ask me to explain this…I remember feeling such disdain for Ricardo at this point. Under my breath, I found myself whispering: ‘Fucking tosser. Fucking tosser’. This quiet chant kept me strong, kept me in control. This man did not deserve my respect. ‘Fucking tosser’…”
Dr Kate explains that dogs may respond not to the scent of corpses and death, but just to their handlers’ signals: “Gerry would discover that false alerts can be attributable to the conscious or unconscious signals of the handler. From what I saw of the dogs’ responses, this certainly seemed to me to be what was happening here. We would later learn that in his written report, P.C. Grime had emphasised that such alerts cannot be relied upon without corroborating evidence”.
p. 251
Dr Kate challenges Ricardo Paiva: “Why did you ask us over for dinner that night? Had it been a strategic invitation”. Paiva replies: “Like everyone else, we trusted you”.
Carlos ’phoned to say that the McCanns might be in court on Monday and might not be allowed to leave the country.
Dr Kate arrived back after the interview at the Hubbards’ home: “I squeezed my beautiful babies tightly, pressing my nose against them to inhale their sweet scent, not wanting to let them go. A sense of wellbeing and warmth swept over me. This was what was important. This was why we needed to keep battling: our family, our children”.
Kate rang Alan Poke ‘to talk through the day’s events.
p. 252
Dr Kate explains that she and Philomena McCann agreed to tell the British media about the ‘deal’ offered by the PJ, despite Gerry’s misgivings.
Dr Kate: “Publicly suspected of killing my precious daughter or at least disposing of her body. The mere idea made me ant to vomit. The world was not only cruel, it was mad. This scenario would be considered too far-fetched even as a plot for a movie, surely. I was burning with the injustice of it all and my heart broke that bit more for my little girl”.
Gerry got back from his interview at 1.30am. Gerry had intended to make no comment throughout, but Dr Kate explained:
”His intention had been to take Carlos’s advice and refuse to answer any questions. But when the first question – along the lines of ‘Did you dispose of your daughter’s body? – was put to him for the third time, incensed by its sheer absurdity and offensiveness and by the way the interviewing officer was goading him, he simply couldn’t stop himself…unfortunately our inconsistent responses to the interrogation led to me being portrayed as ‘difficult’ or even ‘guilty’ in certain sections of the media and, of course, by the nutters who pour forth their bile on the internet”.
p. 253
Gerry dismissed the dogs’ evidence as “the most subjective piece of intelligence-gathering imaginable”.
Gerry asked to see the DNA report. Dr Kate: “Ricardo became quite flustered, waving P.C. Grime’s document in the air and saying, ‘It is the dogs that are important’. At that point Gerry began to feel a lot better…They had no proof that Madeleine was dead. All they actually had was the signal of a dog trying to please its instructor in an apartment from which Madeleine had been taken three months earlier. As we now know, the chemicals believed to create the ‘odour of death’, putrescence and cadaverine, last no longer than thirty days. There were no decaying body parts for the dog to find. It was simply wrong”. (COMMENT: Where on earth does she get that from? It is well-established hat the scent of a human corpse – human cadaverine – can linger in the spot where a corpse has once lain for years and even be detected many feet underground).
Then comes Dr Kate’s trump card regarding the DNA forensics:
“It would be eleven months before we learned the truth from the released PJ files: the full report from the U.K. Forensic Science Service, sent to them before they interrogated us, had concluded that the DNA results were ‘too complex for meaningful interpretation’.”
pp. 253-4
Dr Kate: “The prospect of being separated from Sean and Amelie, holed up in jail unable to prepare our defence properly, was terrifying. Gerry was seriously considering sneaking us into a car and driving us all across the border to Spain. It would have been crazy. The whole world would have thought we were guilty…”
p. 254
Dr Kate: “Thankfully, we resisted the urge to flee. When we left Portugal, it would be with the blessing of the PJ and our heads held high”.
Saturday 8 September: Dr Kate: “We were on tenterhooks all day, waiting to hear whether we would be allowed to go home. Rachael had found a couple of criminal lawyers in London she was sure could help: Michael Caplan Q.C. and Angus McBride of Kinsley Napley had worked on several high-profile cases, including the Pinochet extradition proceedings and the Stevens inquiry. Gerry gave them a call…”
Dr Kate: “Late that afternoon, we were notified by Liz Dow, the British consul in Lisbon, that Luis Neves and Guilhermino Encarnacao had declared is ‘free’ to leave the country whenever we wished. Thank you, God. On the advice of lawyers, we decided to get out as soon as possible. We would go the next day rather than leaving it until Monday”.
p. 255
Dr Kate explains how she wanted to attend an ‘ecumencial feast-day service’ at the church that evening.
Dr Kate: “We heard from Clarence that evening. Before long, Justine would be moving on to pursue her political career and we’d always hoped he would be able to return as our family spokesperson. The government, however, had other ideas. They forbade him from any further involvement with us because of our arguido status. Clarence was very upset, as were we. This was the first sign we had of doors starting to close on us because of this unwarranted stigma”.
p. 256
The following morning the McCanns said a ‘tearful farewell’ to the Hubbards.
Dr Kate: “It was incomprehensible to be going home as a family of four – something that still sends shivers down my spine…Of course, many sections of the press would suggest we were running away, but as I’ve recounted, the decision had been made several weeks earlier”. (COMMENT: That is not in fact what she said in an earlier chapter).
p. 257
Dr Kate then describes the journey from the villa: “The heaviness of our hearts almost took second place to sheer terror on that journey. We were chased the whole way, mainly by the Portuguese and Spanish press, who tailgated us dangerously. There were torsos hanging out of sun-roofs, huge video cameras balancing on shoulders and heavily laden motorbikes brushing the side of our car as they skimmed past. A helicopter hovered overhead. It was utter madness, and extremely frightening for the children as well as for us. An image of Princess Diana flashed through my mind. It was easy to see how her tragic death had come about…I’d said so many prayers over the last four months but I’d never anticipated having to beg the Lord to protect us on the A22”.
p. 258
Some journalists booked on the same plane that was taking the McCanns back to the U.K. Some asked how the McCanns were feeling.
Dr Kate: “…full of a confusing mixture if relief, disbelief, oppressive sadness, piercing guilt and pain, The sadness, guilt and pain were dominant. We were going home without Madeleiee. I was leaving her behind. I’m her mother and I’m leaving her behind. My heart ached as it was torn away from my last geographical link with my little girl”.
Dr Kate: “When we touched down in the Midlands, I couldn’t hold back the tears any longer, even though I could see how they were worrying Amelia…My chest hurt, my throat felt swollen and my head began to spin…I glanced up at Gerry’s face to see the strain and his red, watery eyes. He was being strong but I knew he was dying inside”.
Dr Kate: “On reaching the tarmac, Gerry gave a short statement to the waiting reporters and film crews. He was breaking, his voice tight as he fought the persistent urge to bawl…” Urinate?
p. 259
Dr Kate: “A Special Branch officer drove us to Rothley”.
On reaching their cul-de-sac: “Uncle Brian, Auntie Janet and our friend Amanda were already there, waiting to let us in and welcome us home. I cuddled them all, needing to be held tightly, and then I cried and cried and cried”.
She then describes her feelings on entering Madeleine’s bedroom.
p. 260
Dr Kate: “It was straight down to business. Michael Caplan Q.C. and Angus McBride arrived that afternoon fore a thorough discussion of our situation…When they left 3½ hours later we felt more positive, confident that we now had the right people to guide us through this mess”.
Dr Kate: “Whatever the case, when we climbed into bed shortly before midnight, life felt momentarily tolerable. And we still had our hope. This wasn’t over yet”."
[...]quoted source: jill harvern's forum
Note: The law allows fair use of copyrighted material and allows you to make ‘fair comment’ on the contents.
The ground rules are essentially that you must not quote large chunks of the book, but you ARE able to reproduce modest-sized sections for comment and then comment on them."
11 Responses to Madeleine by Kate McCann – Extracts and Comment on Chapters 12 to 15 and pp. 62-72, 129 and 283-4
___________________________________________________________
| On September 2007: "A Special Branch officer drove us to Rothley" well that is quite explicit, whoever other suspect gets THAT attention fleeing from abroad in a hurry? However it's deformed and summed-up to minimise the fact and avoid expanding on it. To Kate it's normal that Special Branch takes great care of main suspects in a child homicide case, potentially, so she felt like boasting about it just a little bit. The truth is that Special Branch had ALSO CUT OFF ALL TRAFFIC, there was no one else on these roads but them! Special Branch was also watching from above by helicopter.... can't have been the media paying such an outstanding coverage like they did for Japan recently... or was it. GERRY was driving, not special branch, but that's just another little lie that Kate is not bothered about, visibly - she's not at counting the lies in that book, she has much else to do. I wonder if the book contains the intervention part on the same day by Jacqui SMITH then Home Secretary (part of her job was being the head of the Social Services then) who URGED and ORDERED everyone in the UK to leave the McCanns alone and in peace! (and she added, as they had suffered enough. Hadn't Madeleine? All was well that ended well? How would the "responsible parents" now enjoy their back garden, would the twins be SAFE with them? Ask Jacqui.) |
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On the text-photo [PAGE 129] above at the BlogPost Start :
Apart for the much discussed : "her perfect little genital parts torn apart",
, we can find out that she was mentioning
this and some of her other 'visions' of a paedophile nature to her husband on
the beach - on that famous day.
If we remember correctly there is a shot where the pair is caught on camera laughing, trying to disguise their expressions, however they were clearly having a great laugh about their conversation.
Were their daughter's Perfect Little Genitals being torn apart such a funny topic?
Apart for the much discussed : "her perfect little genital parts torn apart",
, we can find out that she was mentioning
this and some of her other 'visions' of a paedophile nature to her husband on
the beach - on that famous day. If we remember correctly there is a shot where the pair is caught on camera laughing, trying to disguise their expressions, however they were clearly having a great laugh about their conversation.
Were their daughter's Perfect Little Genitals being torn apart such a funny topic?
Mr. Grime, the British dog handler, is now described as telling the dogs when and where to give the alert. Please tell me what motivation does he have to incriminate the McCanns, he was recommended by the English authorities was he not?
Who the hell plans events to coincide with a certain number of days that their child is missing?
That strange, what word should I use, inappropriate passage referring to torn genitalia makes you even more suspicious about the mental state of these two.
By the way the Portuguese police have not received any request to review the case files."