Madeleine McCann: Rachel Nickell, Adam Walsh And Tabloid Bingo
MADDIE WATCH – Anorak’s at-a-glance guide to press coverage of Madeleine McCann, Kate McCann and Gerry McCann; introducing the murder of Rachel Nickell and Adam Walsh
THE GUARDIAN: Pressure on police to find Wimbledon killer put the wrong man in the frame
Robert Napper killed Rachel Nickell. Colin Stagg did not kill Rachel Nickell. Napper murdered Nickell, stabbing her to death in front of her son on Wimbledon Common in July 1992.
The story is now added to that game we all love so much: Tabloid Bingo:
“…it had all the ingredients of the classic media murder story: the beautiful blonde victim, the lyrical summer setting, the child witness, the murderous stranger at large – and all taking place in Greater London. Inevitably, the police were under enormous and immediate pressure to capture the killer of someone whose face smiled out of the front pages of every newspaper.
“Someone out there must know who did this,” said Detective Superintendent John Bassett as he made the first of what were to be many appeals. “He had to be covered in blood so I would think that some mother, wife, lover, sister or even boyfriend must know who perpetrated this crime.”
Eyes down…
It was clear that this would be a high-profile investigation. Perhaps only two cases since have attracted a similar type of coverage: the murder of Jill Dando and the disappearance of Madeleine McCann. All three shared the characteristics of a photogenic victim and “stranger danger”.
Big shock for those of you with Princess Diana on your game cards…
Rachel Nickell was murdered. Jill Dando was murdered. And, well, the police have no idea what happened to Madeleine McCann…
PORTUGAL RESIDENT: “Madeleine McCann”
LAWYERS FOR Kate and Gerry McCann are said to be looking into a book written by retired lawyer Anthony Bennett about the disappearance of Madeleine McCann.
The book, which is being sold on the internet for three pounds sterling, sets out 60 reasons against the belief that Madeleine was the victim of kidnap. According to Anthony Bennett, “readers will find things not published in any newspaper. I can prove it all”.
So tell the police; give them your evidence. Why write a book?
NEW STATESMAN: “Wishful thinking for 2009, by John Pilger”
October: The Booker prizewinner Anne Enright apologises to Gerry and Kate McCann, parents of the missing child Madeleine McCann, for speculating in the London Review of Books about the possible involvement of the McCanns in the disappearance of their daughter.
That’s a dream for 2009?
INDEPENDENT: “Murder that horrified US solved after 27 years”
Police name paedophile as only suspect in killing of six-year-old that launched America’s Most Wanted
Eyes done:
The family of Adam Walsh, the “little boy in the baseball cap” whose murder inspired the TV show America’s Most Wanted, have finally found out who killed their son almost 30 years after he was abducted from a shopping mall.
Police in Florida announced late on Tuesday that they had identified the man responsible for Adam’s killing, which turned his grieving mother and father into celebrities and struck fear into the hearts of a generation of parents.
At a crowded press conference, Chadwick Wagner, the police chief in Hollywood, the town near Miami where Adam disappeared, announced that Ottis Toole, a convicted paedophile and murderer who died in 1996, was their “only real suspect” in the investigation and declared the case officially closed.
And:
The incident stunned America and turned a photograph of the freckle-faced Adam in his baseball kit into a symbol of lost innocence on a par with Madeleine McCann. For years, parents would invoke his name when instructing their children about the dangers of accepting gifts from strangers.
Madeleine McCann is missing…
Posted: 19th, December 2008 | In: Madeleine McCann, Reviews Comments (38) | TrackBack | Permalink
