Madeleine McCann: five theories, three ex-coppers and 10 years of nothing
Madeleine McCann: A look at reporting on the missing child. It remains frenzied, speculative, lurid and light on news.
Daily Mail: “Did Madeleine McCann wander off and have an accident? Was she stolen to order? Or was it a burglary gone wrong? Detective lays out theories about her disappearance.”
In short: did any crime befall Madeleine McCann? The detective isn’t sure if one did. But, then, he’s isn’t a professional detective. He’s a “former Scotland Yard detective” who “believes he has come up with the five most plausible theories to explain the disappearance of Madeleine McCann”.
Only five. This is progress. On May 10 2007, the Daily Mirror produced SIX theories. They were: the “PAEDOPHILE GANG”, the “LONE PAEDOPHILE”, the “JEALOUS MOTHER”, Madeleine wandering off and “DROWNED”, the “OPPORTUNIST PAEDOPHILE”, the “CHILDLESS COUPLE”.
Colin Sutton is the “detective” with the five-fingered theory. He first told it to the Mirror, which is the source for the Mail’s story.
Daily Mirror: “Was Madeleine McCann stolen to order, taken by lone paedo or did she just wander off? The scenarios that could explain her disappearance.”
Sutton’s Five Theories that could be useful are:
1 The McCanns or the Tapas Seven
The McCanns have been libelled. Take care. Speculation hurst lives. Says Sutton:
I can understand why the Portuguese police asked questions about the McCanns and the Tapas Seven. As uncomfortable as it is, the first place I would have started looking is their group. Without any other information to go on, the most likely scenario when a three-year-old girl disappears into thin air is that someone close to her knows what happened.
However, the police do appear to have decided quite quickly that was the only line of investigation they were going to take.
By concentrating just on that scenario they may have missed tips or other lines that meant going down a completely different investigation route.
After that he adds a further four theories:
2 Targeted kidnap by a trafficking gang
This is the most likely scenario once those closely linked to Madeleine have been ruled out.
Concluding;
Given all the facts we know, it’s the most likely and credible scenario.
But why did they take her?
A trafficking ring is more likely than a lone paedophile or paedophile ring. Yes there are paedophiles, yes she is a little blonde girl. But I think six and seven-year-old girls are much more at risk from paedophiles or child abuse rings.
Paedophiles target blonde girls more than, says, brunette or black girls? We know that the media prefers blonde victims.
Looking at the trafficking angle, unless the order was specifically for a young blonde girl, why her and not one of the twins?
Dunno. Got a theory?
Babies have less memories than a three-year-old. If Madeleine is alive she will probably remember she had another mother and father and used to live in another house.
Probably. Or not. The theories contain more theories.
If you were stealing on spec you would have taken one of the twins. Not both, just one. So it goes back to a specific order for a young blonde girl.
Has a young blonde girl died and their parents want to replace her? Or is there another reason for stealing to order? When you pick it all apart it’s the most likely scenario.
He picks, but he comes up with no answers, just more questions. The scab grows back over the wound:
3 She wandered off and had a fatal accident
He says Madeleine McCann left Cuddle Cat, her toy, behind. He says the fact of the toy remaining in the holiday flat makes this theory unlikely.
4 Opportunist abducted her
This is less likely than other scenarios. The chances of a predatory paedophile just happening across Madeleine and being able to abduct her without being detected are just so remote.
Sarah Payne, right, who was eight (when she was killed by Roy Whiting in 2000), and five-year-old April Jones (who was killed by Mark Bridger in Wales in 2012) are probably the only cases that match something like that.
Yeah, Probably.
5 Killed as part of a burglary gone wrong
This is extremely unlikely. If you have got a burglar who has gone into the apartment for material theft, the chances are once they find there are kids in there they will run a mile.
The Mirror concludes this flight of fancy by telling readers: “Anyone with information about Madeleine McCann’s disappearance should call the Find Madeleine investigation line on: 0845 8384699 or email: investigation@findmadeleine.com.”
Exactly. If you know anything, tell the police. If you know nothing, tell the readers.
The Sun: “MADDIE SUSPECTS – Convicted British paedo, heroin-addicted burglar and bogus charity collectors among main suspects in Madeleine McCann disappearance, says top cop.”
The top cop is Sutton As as for the smack head being a child snatcher, well, he told the Mirror: “Junkies don’t take three-year-old girls.” The convicted British paedo is Raymond Hewlett. He’s dead.
Having conjured suspects from the ether, the Sun adds in a second story: “WAS MADDIE KIDNAPPED TO ORDER? Top Brit ex-cop says Madeleine McCann could have been snatched by traffickers to replace grieving parents’ own dead child.”
As Sutton of the newsroom guesses – is that big reward still on offer? – and the newspaper lap up his thoughts, the Mirror turns to another ex-cop for more theories.
Sunday Mirror: “Ex-top cop breaks Madeleine McCann silence to say where he thinks she was taken.”
Madeleine McCann was snatched and taken to a warren of caves nearby that have never been searched, a Portuguese investigator has suggested.
The theory comes from ex cop Paulo Pereira Cristovao – who became the boss of Portugal’s missing children agency in the same year the three-year-old disappeared.
He says: “I think this case has lots of mistakes – from many persons, from many situations, from the police and maybe from the government. At the end of the day we all forgot one person: Madeleine McCann.”
No. We don’t. There has been ten years of reporting on the case. The innocent child has not been forgotten – she has, though, be turned into the benchmark for all missing children and used to sell papers. And, like all ex-ops with opinions, Cristovao didn’t take long to add a “maybe” to what he thinks.
We’re not told why Cristovao is talking now, only that he has imagined what he’d have done if he had kidnapped a child in Praia da Luz. He thinks Madeleine McCann is dead:
“I put myself in the role of someone who knew nothing about the streets or the region. Where would I put the body of a girl? I stood at the apartment door – to the right is the town of Portimao. There are lots of people there, lots of buildings. If I had kidnapped her that’s not the way I’d want to go. I would want to go left, and find the first side road. I put my car on that road, and I went straight to Burgau. It’s a nearby beach, with a lot of rocks with caves.
“It’s a good place to put somebody. As far as I know the police never went there, because you would need divers.”
As far as he knows. Good idea to check, no? Aren’t facts useful when you’re investigating and theorising?
“In a case where you hear theories like aliens and gypsies kidnapping Madeleine, I think this is as good as all the others.”
Alien abduction is notoriously hard to verify. Police divers looking in a lake less so.
“We’ve heard theories so stupid over these 10 years,” he adds without irony.” When we don’t understand something, we complicate it. I think sometimes – always – the best solution is the simple solution.”
Clydebank Post: “Madeleine McCann breakthrough: Aussie TV show claims to have solved mystery of tot’s disappearance.”
Pull up an armchair. You too, detectives.
Channel 7’s Sunday Night show has released a teaser clip of this weekend’s programme in which it promises to be a “landmark television event”.
The video claims the show has a new line of inquiry which could bring investigators closer to solving the mystery of the youngster’s disappearance.
Trailing a theory about what happened to Madeleine McCann is grim. A post on the channel’s Facebook says:
“The disappearance of Madeleine McCann has continued to captivate the world for nearly ten years. Maddie was only three years old when she vanished from her family’s holiday apartment in Portugal. The police search that followed became the largest in Portugal’s history – but no trace of the missing toddler was ever found. Now, new developments in the case could finally reveal the truth about what happened to little Maddie.”
Could. Or could not. Stay tuned. We’re right back after these ads.
Daily Star: “Madeleine McCann: Missing Maddie now 13 and looks like THIS.”
She’s alive! The Star knows it. In the paper’s rush to dash out an “exclusive” artist’s rendering of what the child might look like, it produces this (below). The person on the left looks a lot like Kate McCann.
Daily Record: “Cop in Madeleine McCann case remains utterly unrepentant after damning book blaming Kate and Gerry.”
The hatchet job on Goncalo Amaral begins:
Despite becoming a shadow of his former self, Goncalo Amaral still has no sympathy for the parents of the missing youngster.
F*** the policeman:
On the side of the run-down apartment building, the grafitti reads “Foda a policia”. You don’t need to be fluent in Portuguese to figure out the expletive-laden translation.
This crime-ridden Lisbon estate is home to the ex-detective once tasked with solving Madeleine McCann ‘s disappearance.
In the early days, he was alleged to work just four-and-a-half-hours a day. Sporting a large beer belly, he regularly enjoyed three-hour lunches.
Amaral, 57, split from second wife Sofia in 2012, blaming the pressures of the case. He moved back to the tough Lisbon suburb of Olivais, where he grew up. His expensive suits and fedora are gone.
So too has the beer belly and chauffeur-driven Mercedes, replaced by a battered Citroen Picasso.
His slimming is a negative?
But the arrogance remains – as the Mirror discovered when we confronted Amaral last week. Amaral also refused to apologise for the mistakes that hampered the early days of the probe. Instead, he threatened to have our reporter and photographer arrested.
But it was his cruel refusal to offer any sympathy to Kate and Gerry that was the most damning.
Is the purpose of the Mirror’s barrage of ‘Our Maddie’ articles aimed at securing an exclusive with the McCanns?
Daily Mirror: “Madeleine McCann’s parents Kate and Gerry met as junior doctors and had perfect life until their daughter vanished.”
That’s pretty much the entire story, which shows no sign of reaching an end.
Such are the facts.
Posted: 23rd, April 2017 | In: Madeleine McCann, Reviews, Tabloids Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
