Madeleine McCann: Idle Talk Wastes Police Time
“MADELEINE.” The Express begins in traditional fashion. “WE ARE JUST HOURS FROM THE SOLUTION.”
That “we” is not the Express, which has been leading with no news of Madeleine McCann for weeks. The paper’s front-page headline refers to the Portuguese police.
Yes, the same bundling foreign cops who give the Mail its headline: “We were too busy to tell the McCanns we think Maddie’s dead, say police.”
Alipio Ribeiro, director of the Policia Judiciaria, says his officers have “no idea” what happened to Madeleine McCann. But they are working on the “strong hypothesis” that she could be dead.
One other hypothesis, equally strong, is that she could not be alive. But the police have not swayed either way. And as Ribeiro says of Kate and Gerry McCann: “They are being informed into what happens but this is a very dynamic investigation with many hypotheses and more can still arise. We cannot explain everything to them that we investigate.”
In short, Ribeiro is a professional policeman who will not engage in speculation, least of at a press conference. He does not tell the McCanns their daughter might be dead or that she might be alive or that she might be sat in a Belgian café quaffing strawberry milkshake.
As for being on the verge of cracking the case, as the Express suggests, Ribeiro says: “In the next hours one of the keys of the case will become clear.”
Ribeiro deals in facts. As the Express hears him say: “There has been a lot of speculation, and if I denied everything erroneous that had been published I would have no time for anything else.”
Back To The Parents
But the Express can fill in the gaps and confirm that accusations made against are, in the words of Madeleine McCann’s grandmother Eileen McCann, “ridiculous” and “obscene”.
The McCanns are not under investigation but we are, nonetheless, invited to watch them. They are on the Mirror’s front page. “YOU GIVE US HOPE,” says the headline. Kate and Gerry McCann are sat among a sea of cards and letters, some of the 20,000 messages of support they have received.
Inside, there is a picture of the parents smiling. Says the Mirror: “Every morning Kate and Gerry McCann wake up with hope that maybe this time the new day will release them from their ordeal. Every night they go to sleep with their hopes shattered yet again. Another day with no news of their vanished daughter Madeleine.”
Emotive stuff. But we at least do get news…of the parents. But now news of Madeleine. Not yet…
Posted: 17th, August 2007 | In: Madeleine McCann Comments (67) | TrackBack | Permalink
