Madeleine McCann: a sacked detective, a con and blood
Madeleine McCann returns in a story about a man’s death. The Star’s front-page headline bleeds: “MADDIE DETECTIVE DIES IN ‘BLOODBATH'”!
Yikes!
Maddie McCann private eye killed as blood-soaked body of ‘£300k conman’ found at mansion
A PRIVATE detective who allegedly conned the Maddie McCann fund out of £300k has been found brutally murdered.
Murder!? The body is that of Kevin Halligen, found at a home in Guildford, Surrey. Hired to look into the disappearance of Maddie McCann in May 2008, he “was later accused of conning the fund out of £300,000”. Accused is not a judgement in a court of law. He allegedly conned the McCann family. But that lacks sensation. He denied misusing funds.
So what of the “murder”? Well, the police tell us:
“We were called to an address in Cobbett Hill Road, Normandy, Guildford, on Monday following a report of a man in his 50s having been taken unwell, who subsequently died.
“The death is being treated as unexplained and a file will be passed to the coroner’s office in due course.”
What about the blood, then?
The BBC hears from Adrian Gatton, a TV director and investigative journalist, who made a documentary with Halligen in 2014:
“There was blood around the house, probably caused by previous falls when he was either drunk or blacking out,” he said. “His house was full of empty drink bottles. A lot of people wished him ill but his death is almost certainly related to alcoholism.”
Not went blood, then. Dried, old blood.
What else do we know? The Mirror notes:
After being sacked from the McCann investigation, Halligen was arrested in the UK and extradited to America on fraud charges for an unrelated case.
He pleaded guilty to defrauding Trafigura, based in the Netherlands, who had hired him to help free two company executives arrested in Ivory Coast in 2006.
He received about $12 million to provide “security, intelligence and public relations”.
Trafigura gave Halligen an additional $2.1 million to “hire lobbyists and influence officials in the United States on Trafigura’s behalf”. The next day, Halligen used nearly $1.7 million of that money to buy a large home with a swimming pool.
Such are the facts.
Posted: 15th, January 2018 | In: Madeleine McCann, Tabloids Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
