Madeleine McCann: Inside The Flat, New Clues And Bad Parents
MADDIE WATCH – Anorak’s at-a-glance guide to press coverage of Madeleine McCann
NEWS OF THE WORLD (front page): “MADDIE”
More?
“WORLD EXCLUSIVE: FIRST PICTURES INSIDE FLAT”
“Maddie’s bedroom”; “front door” – the flat from Madeleine McCann supposedly went missing is for hire, and the NOTW has been to look it over.
Has the NOTW turned into a holiday brochure, got into the timeshare game?
Now the rest of the flat has been redecorated and is ready to welcome more holidaying families to Portugal.
Can the flat be rented by the minute, and because of its history does it come with a surcharge? For now, the paper wants to show readers “How fiend could have kept out of sight”.
Our detailed survey of the flat reveals a host of places Maddie’s abductor could have hidden when it’s most likely he was almost caught in the act by dad Gerry as he checked on her and twins, Sean and Amelie, at 9.05pm on May 3 last year…
Details. You have noted the door and the bedroom. Now look at the inside of a “WARDROBE”.
But our on-site reconstruction proves that if the kidnapper was already in the flat, as the McCanns fear, he had a full TEN SECONDS to conceal himself after hearing Gerry open the patio doors and enter the apartment.
Although if Gerry McCann moved slower than the NOTW’s estimated speed of 2.34 mph, the kidnapper might have had ELEVEN seconds, or perhaps even TWELVE seconds to hide.
But where to hide?
And he had no fewer than FOUR boltholes to choose from—behind Madeleine’s BEDROOM DOOR, inside her roomy WARDROBE, in her parents’ nearby BEDROOM or in the family BATHROOM.
What about under the BEDS, behind the CURTAINS, on the CEILING or in the SHOWER? Or in the BED?
If one year on, the News of the World found clues, surely the detectives could have established more AT THE TIME?
Clues. the NOTW has found doors and rooms. In one year of tabloid tales, much has been established.
The stillness and silence of the apartment now is just as it would have been after the McCanns left the children asleep in bed that fateful night.
All that can heard is the gentle click, click click of cameras, the sound of a reporter scrambling for a story and the trace of last night’s prawns in garlic butter…
IRISH INDEPENDENT: “Summer sun brings out first Bad Parent story”
“It’s hard to resist a little pain-free moral gloating sometimes, writes Eilis O’Hanlon.”
Like the first cuckoo of spring, the sighting of the first Bad Parent story of the summer is always a heartwarming, life-affirming event; and by a happy coincidence, the latest incarnation of this media phenomenon arrived bang on time, just as the weather started to hot up and our thoughts turned sunwards. At last we can say the holiday season has truly begun.
Normally, of course, it’s some foul-mouthed painted doxy from a sink estate in the north of England who hits the headlines after flying off to be with her Spanish waiter in the sun, leaving behind her gaggle of variously-fathered children in their council flat with only a tin of beans, the keys to the drinks cabinet, and Grand Theft Auto IV on the Playstation to occupy themselves until she gets home — if and when she can be bothered.
The Irish now see the English as the English once saw the Irish, albeit without the beer, bombs and potatoes.
The McCanns. The McGuckins.
The media phenomenon of the Bad Parent story, ritually trotted out to appease the secret guilt of other parents everywhere, is a curious one, no doubt about that. It can’t be much fun to be caught in the middle of the latest outbreak of media moralising, but it’s best just to put it down to experience and move on as quickly as you can.
THE SCOTSMAN: “McCanns ‘won’t mark’ Madeleine’s fifth birthday”
Family spokesman Clarence Mitchell said of the birthday: “Gerry will be at work and Kate will be at or around home. Sadly, for them it is just another day without Madeleine.”
Madeleine McCann: When will the anniversaries stop?
Posted: 11th, May 2008 | In: Madeleine McCann Comments (471) | TrackBack | Permalink
