Madeleine McCann: An EastEnders Celebration And The Twins Were There
MADDIE WATCH – Anorak’s at-a-glance guide to press coverage of Madeleine McCann – Interviewing the McCanns’ children, a play and EastEnders’ best bits…
The Sunday Express has news of a lead in the disappearance of Madeleine McCann:
‘MCCANN TWINS MAY HOLD CLUES’ SAYS CRIMINAL PROFILER
May?
THE country’s most senior criminal profiler suggested Madeleine McCann’s brother and sister should have been interviewed about her disappearance.
Does this top ‘tec not think the parents Gerry and Kate McCanns have asked their children what they saw that fateful night? Since we are being invited to imagine, can we imagine that? It tusn out the story is based on documents presented to court in the matter of McCanns v Goncalo Amaral.
Twins Sean and Amelie were aged just two years and three months when Madeleine was snatched from a holiday apartment on the Algarve in Portugal in May 2007 shortly before her fourth birthday.
A month later, Lee Rainbow, senior behavioural investigation consultant at the National Policing Improvement Agency, wrote a report for Portuguese detectives which may have altered the course of the inquiry.
Mr Rainbow urged them to “consider the possibility of exploring the potential of interviewing Sean and Amelie McCann”.
Well, he also suggested that the parents should be investigated. They are no longer arguidos. They are innocent. There are no suspects nor proof presented to readers of a crime that befell Madeleine McCann.
The children, now five, were sharing a bedroom with Madeleine when she was taken. As reported last year in the Sunday Express, the McCanns believe the kidnapper may have entered the apartment the evening before because Madeleine complained she had been woken by Sean crying.
Facts.
The last time British police seriously interviewed such a young child was in 1992. Rachel Nickell was murdered in front of her two-year-old son, Alex Hanscombe, on Wimbledon Common, south-west London. Despite his age, Alex was able to give detectives valuable and credible information.
The horrific murder of a woman in front of her young child – a case that saw the police get it so wrong that Colin Stagg’s name is forever sullied and Robert Napper get away with it for years – can be linked the disappearance of Madeleine McCann, whose parents are desperately trying to keep alive memory, spirit and person?
Child psychologists worked closely with police to draw information from Alex in a painstaking exercise which lasted months. Former Portuguese detective Goncalo Amaral has presented Mr Rainbow’s report to a civil court in Lisbon as he attempts to lift a ban on selling his book about the case, The Truth Of The Lie.
In the summary of the 30-page report Mr Rainbow wrote: “The potential involvement of the family in the disappearance of Madeleine McCann cannot be discarded, and it can be considered that, when pondering the basis for research, this hypothesis deserves as much attention as the criminal with sexual motivations that has been previously prioritised.
“It should be stressed that there is no evidence to directly support an involvement of the family, yet given the absence of decisive evidence to prove the contrary, such a scenario has to be explored.” At court last week, Mr Amaral’s lawyer, Antonio Cabrita, read out a section of 37-year-old Mr Rainbow’s report which said: “The family is a lead that should be followed.”
You want more facts? Here they are:
Doctors Kate and Gerry McCann, both 41, from Rothley, Leicestershire…
Still doctors. Still from Rothley. Only the age changes. Such are the facts. As for the Express’ story:
It is not known whether Sean and Amelie were formally interviewed by police. The children are thought to have slept through the kidnap. The McCanns have always insisted they had no involvement in Madeleine’s disappearance.
So the McCanns’ twins might have been interviewed by police already. How’s that for a scoop?
In other news, it’s 25 years of EastEnders, the show that eats up a huge chunk of the BBC TV budget to show us low-lives and no-marks in cartoon profile. What are the 25 most amazing facts about the show? The NoTW has the list:
15. A kidnap story involving Dawn Swann’s baby in 2007 was scrapped because of similarities to the abduction of Madeleine McCann.
In another Madeleine McCann Entertainment Update, Our Maddie is on the stage:
In the electrifying London fringe premiere of The Early Bird, by Leo Butler, a couple obsessively replay fragments of the past, pacing around inside a glowing, glass-walled chamber. This is a psychological prison where Catherine Cusack’s Debbie and her husband, Alex Palmer’s Jack, are forever condemned to brood over the disappearance of their little girl, Kimberley.
Wait for it…
She was, we gather, abducted on her way to school, maybe by a stranger, maybe by a vicious gaggle of coevals. There are only faint echoes of Jamie Bulger and Madeleine McCann, although The Early Bird bears some resemblance to Ian McEwan’s The Child in Time.
If the echoes are faint why mention them? Is it because Madeleine McCann is the benchmark for missing children? Or is it because a desperate and voracious media merge fact with fiction to make a story to entertain the armchair detectives and ghouls at home?
Posted: 14th, February 2010 | In: Madeleine McCann Comments (13) | TrackBack | Permalink
