Kyron Horman And Shades Of Madeleine McCann

KYRON Horman is missing. You can read the news so far on Anorak. Reader Karen spots shades in this story of when Madeleine McCann, Robert Murat and Kate and Gerry McCann, and more, were eaten alive by a voracious media.

Terri Moulton Horman, Kyron’s step-mother – the last person known to have seen the seven-year-old boy alive – is the target of whispering campaign amplified by a desperate media and not exactly discouraged by a yet-more-desperate police force eager to look as though it is making progress.

All the power of media and police seem to be focused solely on Terri Horman. But she is not a suspect. Hell,, she’s not even an arguido. The media is going to town.

Writes Karen:

Anorak

Posted: 8th, July 2010 | In: Madeleine McCann | Comments (9)

Madeleine McCann: Will Theresa May Reopen The Case?

MADELEIEN McCANN: Kate and Gerry McCann are to meet with Theresa May, the Home Secretary. They will discuss how the search for the missing girl is “progressing”.

The case in Portugal and the UK has been shelved. The police are, of course, willing and ready to take any call should evidence emerge. But the only people really looking for Madeleine McCann are the family’s private detectives.

Sky News reports:

Mrs May’s interest in the case follows an internal review of evidence ordered by former Labour Home Secretary Alan Johnson last year. Mr Johnson wanted an outline of how a new investigation into Madeleine’s disappearance might work.

He wanted to outline for an investigation into a child who went missing three years ago, and on whom there is a welter of speculative pros, libel litigation but so evidence – might work?

The report is understood to be almost complete and there is speculation that a fresh probe into the case could be ordered. However, the Metropolitan Police have said there are no plans to reopen the investigation.

So. What will Theresa May do with the case of a missing child who has become the benchmark for all missing children?

Anorak

Posted: 5th, July 2010 | In: Madeleine McCann | Comments (16)

Madeleine McCann Spotted At World Cup

MADDIE WATCH – Anorak’s at-a-glance guide to press coverage of Madeleine McCann: CAN Madeleine McCann somehow be linked to the World Cup and, specifically, England’s failure to win it?

Tom de Castella tells BBC online readers that she can. Roy Greenslade provides the answer:

“Make no mistake the papers set the agenda. And today we have feeding frenzies. Savage as it sounds the Madeleine McCann story sold papers and previously there was Princess Diana. The World Cup is another first class example of a feeding frenzy that electrifies the newspapers.”

Anorak

Posted: 29th, June 2010 | In: Madeleine McCann | Comment

Madeleine McCann: Rothley Man Arrested For Child Porn

MADDIE WATCH – Anorak’s at-a-glance guide to press coverage of Madeleine McCann: MICHAEL Nolan has been jailed for possessing 17 photographs of naked children at a printing shop in Grafton Street, Dublin.

Images were found on a memory stick Nolan was using to print images from. He said he had “found it in a library“.

But what has this to do with the media’s Our Maddie?

Anorak

Posted: 23rd, June 2010 | In: Madeleine McCann | Comments (5)

Madeleine McCann: Charles O’Neil And 30 ‘Sex Beasts’

MADELEINE McCann: The News of The World says 30 “twisted” sex beasts are “on the run abroad”. Charles O’Neil is mentioned. He’s the new man in the Our Maddie frame.

The headline screams:

30 Scots sex beasts on the run abroad

At the end of the article we hear a spokesman for Scotland’s police chiefs say:

“Offenders who have left the country continue to be monitored.”

Anorak

Posted: 20th, June 2010 | In: Madeleine McCann | Comments (55)

Madeleine McCann: Is Charles O’Neill The New ‘Maddie Paedo’?

MADDIE WATCH – Anorak’s at-a-glance guide to press coverage of Madeleine McCann: RAYMOND Hewlett is dead. The “Maddie paedo” – as the tabloids called him – is dead. None of these men have been found. Introducing Charles O’Neill.

A SERIAL paedophile linked to the Madeleine McCann case was yesterday jailed for life for murder.

Linked how?

Charles O’Neill has repeatedly refused to be quizzed by detectives working for Maddie’s parents Kate and Gerry.

Is he a suspect because he does not want to meet with private detectives? And if he is, have the Portuguese police spoken with him? Is he now media “Maddie paedo”?

O’Neill, 47, is believed to have been in Portugal when Maddie, then three, vanished…

Anorak

Posted: 11th, June 2010 | In: Madeleine McCann | Comments (17)

Madeleine McCann: Kate McCann’s Art For Sale On eBay

MADELEINE MCCANN: For sale on eBay – a Kate McCann artwork.

Kate McCann, mom of Maddy McCann, original art for PACT

PACT: Not Producers Alliance for Cinema and Television. Our Maddie is not a form of entertainment. No, really.

But the Parents & Abducted Children Together

Anorak

Posted: 10th, June 2010 | In: Madeleine McCann | Comments (10)

Madeleine McCann Is A Mental Condition

ELIZABETH Renzetti is the Globe & Mail’s woman in London. She’s talking about childhood freedoms with hard drinking mums and dads. Thoughts turn to Our Maddie:

Reader, I gave up. There was an unbridgeable chasm between the nostalgia we all felt for our helmet-free childhoods, with their parent-shaped holes and wonderful freedoms, and the chances we are willing to take with our own children. No one wanted to admit that childhood is safer now, by every empirical measure, than it was when we were young. Instead, they have the ubiquitous picture of three-year-old Madeleine McCann, who disappeared in 2007 from the hotel in Portugal where she was staying with her parents, stamped on their brains.

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Anorak

Posted: 3rd, June 2010 | In: Madeleine McCann | Comments (4)

Madeleine McCann: Gypsies, Child Alerts And Coronation Street

MADDIE WATCH – Anorak’s at-a-glance guide to press coverage of Madeleine McCann: The Sun brings news that Our Maddie has been spotted, and a new child alert scheme is launched, and Coronation Street is on hold…

A DRAMATIC sighting of missing Madeleine McCann the day after she vanished is being urgently followed up by private investigators.

…spotted three years ago. We are not told whan the sighting was reported to police.

A man has reported seeing a girl he is now sure was Maddie lying in the back of a van. She was wearing pyjamas identical to the pair Maddie had on when she was abducted.

Anorak

Posted: 25th, May 2010 | In: Madeleine McCann | Comments (2)

Madeleine McCann: Sunday Express Publishes Picture Of ‘Suspect’

THE Sunday Express’ front page features a photo of Madeleine McCann and a figure.

And there is a question:

“Did this man take Maddie?”

The image is like something you get looking through frosted glass.

The man has dark hair and is not black.

Other than that, it’s hard to see any more.

So. Now you have the evidence. Did he take Our Maddie?

Anorak

Posted: 15th, May 2010 | In: Madeleine McCann | Comments (11)

Madeleine McCann: Kate McCann Raises Jimmy Mizen’s Media Profile

MADDIE WATCH – Anorak’s at-a-glance guide to press coverage of Madeleine McCann: Jimmy Mizen was killed. He was 16.

Jimmy Mizen was at the Three Cook’s Bakery in Lee, London, with his older brother Harry. Jake Fahri entered. There was a scuffle. Fahri tossed a glass dish at Jimmy Mirzen. It hit his neck. The glass severed his jugular vein. Jimmy Mizen died.

Madeleine McCann went missing from her family holiday flat. We do not know what happened to her.

So, then, to a service held in memory of young victims of knife and gun crime. And there is Kate McCann sharing a “sympathetic hug with Barry and Margaret Mizen on the steps of Westminster Cathedral”.

It’s all heart-breaking stuff. The Mail says Kate McCann was there having been personally invited by Mrs Mizen because “they were both mothers who had lost their children”.

Anorak

Posted: 11th, May 2010 | In: Madeleine McCann | Comments (10)

Madeleine McCann: The ‘Suspect Photo, Scotland Yard And A New Maddie

MADDIE WATCH – Anorak’s at-a-glance guide to press coverage of Madeleine McCann – the ‘suspect’ photo, the new Our Maddie and Scotland Yard investigates…

Daily Express: “MADELEINE SUSPECT ‘ON BEACH SNAP’”

Gail Cooper is in Praia da Luz, at the Express’s expense. She says she saw the man who might have kidnapped Madeleine McCann. He’s the suspect who looks like the late George Harrison (see images below).

There is news of a man in a photo:

DETECTIVES have been handed a photograph showing a man behaving oddly in the days before Madeleine McCann was kidnapped.

Today we reveal that one of Mrs Cooper’s friends, Leanda Hodson-Mackey, took a snap of her husband Stephen, 34, and son, then aged two, and the man appeared in the background, walking along the beach during a downpour.

Anorak

Posted: 9th, May 2010 | In: Madeleine McCann | Comments (5)

Madeleine McCann: The Election, A Joke And In The Emirates

MADDIE WATCH – Anorak’s at-a-glance guide to press coverage of Madeleine McCann – Can Madeleine McCann feature in the election and advertise the Emirates?

Matthew Flinders: Yorkshire Evening Post:

Can Madeleine McCann be part of the election?

Let us not pretend that the Telegraph’s coverage of the MPs’ expenses scandal was concerned with public propriety, just as the tabloids’ focus on Madeleine McCann is not driven by concern for the child. The word “Madeleine” sells: the word “sleaze” sells. My message to politicians is simple: “Stand up, dust yourself down and begin to fight back”

Anorak

Posted: 6th, May 2010 | In: Madeleine McCann | Comment

Madeleine McCann: Katie Price, JonBenet Ramsey And PR Paedos

MADDIE WATCH – Anorak’s at-a-glance guide to press coverage of Madeleine McCann – THE third anniversary of Our Maddie approaches. The PR offensive is in full swing. The McCanns are doing what they hope will keep their child in the public eye and bring her back alive and well to them. And the media is lapping it up:

The Independent: “Terence Blacker: Depressing clichés sadly perpetuated”

The decision to release images of Madeleine McCann wearing make-up seems misguided.

The Katie Price factor, right? She put her daughter in fake lashes and we got the predictable tabloid story that paedos would see the images and be unable to resist Princess. Blacker asks:

Can the McCanns be thinking straight?

We are invited to wonder about the McCanns’ mental state? We have been watching the McCanns – and now we are analysing them. Blacker see the altered image of Our Maddie, the one in which she is wearing blue eye-shadow.

It seems a bizarre and unsettling development. Clearly, Kate and Gerry McCann have been living through a nightmare of unimaginable horror and perhaps, even after three years, they are not thinking straight.

Anorak

Posted: 4th, May 2010 | In: Madeleine McCann | Comment (1)

Madeleine McCann: A New Video For The Emotional Trigger

MADDIE WATCH – Anorak’s at-a-glance guide to press coverage of Madeleine McCann – Madeleine McCann’s latest video has been released. The innocent child who became the media’s “Maddie” approaches the third anniversary of her disappearance.

Madeleine McCann: New Suspect Captured On Video

Our Maddie is seen playing dress ups. She is wearing pink hair ribbon and a gold necklace. She wears blue eye-shadow. A round-up o the news can be read here – please do so.

A child is missing. Can she be found alive and well? Anyone sane would hope so. But in the meanwhile, let’s just stare at the parents.

Anorak

Posted: 2nd, May 2010 | In: Madeleine McCann | Comments (9)

Madeleine McCann: New Suspect Captured On Video

MADDIE WATCH – Anorak’s at-a-glance guide to press coverage of Madeleine McCann – The Daily Express leads with news of a new suspect. And they have been caught on “film”.

As we approach the third anniversary of Our Maddie, a new suspect is introduced. Before that  a prayer:

Daily Mirror: “HOPE FOR A MIRACLE”

Parents Kate and Gerry have worked tirelessly to find out what happened to her. So it’s poignant when their five-year-old son Sean tells them not to give up hope – as they never will. Neither should we.

Mawlish. Exploitative nonsense. These are easy, lazy words trotted out by a paper keen to foment emotion in its readers. Do all Mirror readers pray for Our Maddy? No. The child has become an emotional totem. We do not care all that much for the parents. We just stare at them. They entertain the masses. The McCanns distract us from our own problems. And the ‘what ifs’ entertain the ghouls. Amazing if the child were found alive and well – a happy ending to the story. But it would not be a mircale. It would not be a sign of God’s love.

Pictures Of All The Madeleine McCann Suspects

It’s front-page news:

NO1 SUSPECT IS ON VIDEO

“Key witness reveals existence of important new evidence”

Anorak

Posted: 2nd, May 2010 | In: Madeleine McCann | Comments (5)

Madeleine McCann: Kate McCann’s Suicide, World Service And Catholics

MADDIE WATCH – Anorak’s at-a-glance guide to press coverage of Madeleine McCann – Kate McCann’s death, suicide, three years of looking – three years of watching the parents – Facbook trolls and pain…

SKY News: “Kate McCann: I Thought Of Dying To End Pain”

Kate McCann is on BBC World Service. The world listens as she says:

“I used to have thoughts like we’ll get wiped out in the car on the motorway. So it would just happen, we’d all be gone, and the pain would be away… But what I do know now for sure is that I don’t want that.”

Kate McCann will not commit suicide – read all about it! The story of a missing child is the story of a family’s survival. Once it was the story of Robert Murat’s survival.

Madeleine McCann: Three Years Of Watching Kate And Gerry McCann In Pictures

Daily Mail: “Gerry McCann breaks down as he tells how hunt for Madeleine ‘is shaking his Catholic faith’”

Choking back tears, she told for the first time how she had wanted her life to end but insisted she had never contemplated suicide.

Anorak

Posted: 1st, May 2010 | In: Madeleine McCann | Comment

Madeleine McCann: Three Years Of Watching Kate And Gerry McCann In Pictures

MADDIE WATCH – Anorak’s at-a-glance guide to press coverage of Madeleine McCann – FOR three years Anorak has covered the case of Madeleine McCann. In that time, we have discovered that the media is viscious and voracious. And we have learnt nothing more. There are no suspects. There is no sign of the missing child.

Today, Kate and Gerry McCann, the parents of missing Madeleine McCann want to show you pictures of them in Leicester as they mark the third anniversary of their daughter’s disappearance while on holiday in Portugal.

Madeleine McCann: Watching The Parents

After three years we are still watching the parents in a mawkish, unending spectacle of grief. In three years, Madeleine McCann has become the benchmark of missing children and her parents have turned into emotional exhibits.

Madeleine McCann is missing – still missing. No suspects. Everyone is innocent. No clues. But lots of press…

Madeleine McCann: Martin Samuel’s Fear As A Parent Suffering From Our Maddie Sickness

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Anorak

Posted: 1st, May 2010 | In: Madeleine McCann | Comments (3)

Madeleine McCann: Martin Samuel’s Fear As A Parent Suffering From Our Maddie Sickness

HAVING heard Esther Rantzen patronise the McCanns for the independent MPs, spreading the fear and addressing Kate and Gerry McCann from the bottom of a bucket of syrup marked “FEAR”, the Mail lets Martin Samuel lose on Our Maddie and emotional exhibit Kate McCann.

In “Maddie, the heartrending dilemma”, Samuel, one of Anorak’s favourite writers, says:

There are, it is roughly estimated, as many as 180,000 missing children in the United Kingdom. According to the home Office, the number of full-time police in England and Wales is 142,000.

They are not all missing, presumed stolen. Many have gone off with parents.

You see the problem, yes? Even if we took one officer and told him his only job was to find Madeleine McCann, he would still have to take alternate Thursdays off to help investigate some other disappearance.

Well, if every missing child was thought to have been the subject of a crime, then yes. But they are not. Samuel is using the big numbers to prove a point but missing the facts.

Anorak

Posted: 30th, April 2010 | In: Key Posts, Madeleine McCann | Comments (12)

Madeleine McCann: After Labour And The Tories, Esther Rantzen Patronises Our Maddie And James Bulger

MADDIE WATCH – Anorak’s at-a-glance guide to press coverage of Madeleine McCann – HAVING buttonholed David Cameron’s Tories and Home Secretary Alan Johnson, the McCanns have overlooked the independent MPs. But help is here in the form of Esther Rantzen, wannabe MP for Luton South.

In today’s Mail, Esther Rantzen steps in to make herself part of the political drive to find Our Maddie. It’s an open letter to Kate McCann:

The headline trills:

Our hearts go out to you Kate, but the truth is it’s time to find some peace…

Madeleine McCann Is An Election Issue As The Home Office Wades In

Dear Kate,

Dear Mrs McCann.

Can it really be only three years since your little daughter Madeleine disappeared? It feels like a century ago when her three-year-old face first began to haunt us.

True enough.

Her angelic expression and solemn eyes engraved themselves on to our hearts; they reached out to us from posters that went up everywhere, from airports to village shops.

Anorak

Posted: 29th, April 2010 | In: Madeleine McCann | Comments (12)

Madeleine McCann: Sofa So Terrible As Lorraine Kelly Explains

MADELEINE McCann – Anorak’s at-a-glance guide to press coverage of Madeleine McCann: Kate and Gerry McCann are on GMTV with Lorraine Kelly. The McCanns are talking. Their children Sean and Amelie are talking, too:

The Mail (front page): “Police have given up on Maddie says McCanns”

Page 11: “McCanns beg police to start again in the search for Madeleine”

Did they ever look to begin with – really look?

Leicestershire Police has carried out its own inquiries as has the taxpayer-funded Child Exploitation and On-Line Protection Centre. But neither is actively seeking the little girl.

But she has been looked for:

The three-year saga has already cost UK taxpayers nearly £500,000.

More can be done. Always more can be done because Our Maddie has not been found.What of the facts?

The couple, from Rothley, Leicestershire, told GMTV’s Lorraine Kelly it was ‘incredibly frustrating’ that police in Portugal and the UK are not doing more to find Maddie…

The Sun (front page): “We’ve finally told twins that Maddie was stolen”

Pages 14-15: It’s an exclusive with Lorraine Kelly.

“Mummy was a doctor but now her job is to find Madeleine – WHAT TWIN TOLD SCHOOLGIRL PAL”

Lorraine Kelly has already scored an interview with the McCanns on the GMTV sofa. Now she writes of that meeting.

KATE and Gerry McCann are making plans for their daughter’s seventh birthday – but the little girl will not be opening her presents or blowing out the candles on her cake.

They light the candles? Not that much light is shone on what happened to Our Maddie. On a brighter note, at least each birthday is marked in the national press. The missing child continues to feature. But what is the purpose of the article?

Kate told me: “Her birthday is actually much more difficult than May 3rd. It is a day when we should be celebrating Madeleine – and celebrating WITH Madeleine.”

This is pain exposed. But how does this help find the missing girl? We are staring at the parents. They are inviting us to stare. But we must be careful what we say. Kate and Gerry McCann are innocent. And they are also litigious. Still, Lorraine Kelly isn’t looking at the facts nor for the child – she too is watching the parents:

Kate is bone thin and looks very fragile and, while Gerry might appear to be coping well on the outside, you can clearly see the pain in his eyes.

They both have a haunted, strained look but somehow they manage to get through the day.

Well, they don’t always look like that. And while the stress has been manifest, Gerry McCann has always looked remarkably together and composed in front of the media. And Kate McCann look pretty good.

Time, now, for an anecdote:

Kate, a GP, said that one of Sean’s playmates had asked her “Are you a doctor?” She recalled: “Sean just came in and said, ‘Mummy was a doctor but her job now is to find Madeleine’. He was straight in there. So they understand that we have got a lot of support.”

The kids are now talking:

Kate said: “I think it was last year Amelie said to me, ‘Has Madeleine run away?’
“And she kept asking me in a public place so it was a bit tricky at first, and she said, ‘Because it’s not nice to run away’.

“That really upset me because I thought I don’t want her to think that Madeleine is at fault. So, probably about the third time she asked when we were at home we just explained that someone had taken Madeleine.”

Who?

“But we tried to make them understand in as gentle a way as possible. It’s a bit like stealing, you know. That’s how they understand it. So they know someone has taken her and they know it is wrong.”

Try not to spread the fear in kids’ minds. You know, like thsoe adverts for Our Maddie before Shrek the Third. Whodunnit?

Gerry said: “They believe it was a man that took her. It was a naughty man and we need to try and find them. So part of what they say is that mummy is working to try and help find Madeleine.”

Such are the facts. Kelly says that the story of Our Maddie has “a dark side”. Yep, darker than a child going missing.

Kate and Gerry found themselves accused of being neglectful parents and even complicit in Madeleine’s disappearance.

Is that dark? But the story is not about the parents. It’s about finding the missing child, isn’t it? Can we speculate? Gerry McCann says we can:

“What I would say is people have got to put themselves in our position and ask what would you do if it was your daughter?”

Well… What would you do? Imagine if your child went missing. There for the grace of god, and all that. A child goes missing and we all get to play along. And the Government can join in, too:

In their ongoing campaign, Kate and Gerry would dearly love to see a full government review of the case.

Gerry said: “It is not right that an innocent, vulnerable British citizen is, essentially, given up on. We don’t think it is right that, as parents, we have to drive the search. Of course, we will but not everyone has the same resources that we have had.”

No word on Our Maddie in the Daily Star, Daily Express and Daily Mirror (which long ago dispensed with its yellow ribbon).

So much for the reporting. What of the actual case:

“The benefits of biometric systems… In the case of the disappearance of Madeleine McCann (2007), the UK police asked visitors at the Resort in Portugal in the two weeks prior to child’s disappearance to provide any photographs of passers-by for use in a biometric facial recognition system….”

Our Maddie – pictures:

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Anorak

Posted: 28th, April 2010 | In: Madeleine McCann | Comments (21)

Madeleine McCann: Leicestershire Police, Jet Trips And Maddie Cops

MADELEINE McCann has not been in the news much of late. But the Mirror can now report that “Maddy cops £22K bill for 196 jet trips”.

Yep, just over £112 for each flight, or jet trip, as the Mirror calls travelling by air. Nto much when you look at like that. But, still, where did the “Maddie cops” fly and what did they discover?

The flights were taken to Portugal by Leicestershire Constabulary from May 2007 to July 2008. The exact cost was £22,055.

The force said:

“Officers used budget airlines.”

Anorak

Posted: 26th, April 2010 | In: Madeleine McCann | Comments (3)

Madeleine McCann: Rewarding Lorraine Kelly In Pictures

THE Third anniversary of Madeleine McCann’s disappearance approaches. May 3 2010 will mark the day. And Madeleine McCann’s parents are to be interviewed by Lorraine Kelly on the GMTV sofa. It is billed as their only TV interview to mark the day.

Says the Mirror.

“Lorraine’s been very supportive of the family,” said a source. “This is a thank you and a reminder that she’s still missing.”

A thank you to Lorraine Kelly by appearing on her show? This is how top celebrities and minor royals behave. And this is the same understanding Kelly who opeined on the matter of Josef Fritzl:

“The Austrian police should have a massive recruitment drive and set up a special unit to search every single cellar in their entire country. Who knows what more vile horrors would be revealed.” The cops should “start arming themselves with pickaxes, torches and strong stomachs and start searching those cellars”.

Anorak

Posted: 22nd, April 2010 | In: Madeleine McCann | Comments (10)

In Pictures The Story Of Madeleine McCann: Libel, Hate, Hope And A Media Feeding Frenzy

MADELEINE McCANN went missing on Thursday May 3, 2007. An innocent, blonde, photogenic girl disappeared and a voracious media went to work. It was a feeding frenzy. We were introduced the names that have become mainstays of the news media. The middle-class, educated parents, Kate and Gerry McCann, were libelled. Robert Murat had his life almost destroyed. The Tapas 7 were examined. Goncalo Amaral was accused. Clarence Mitchell spoke. And for all the heat and noise there was no light. Madeleine McCann went missing. She is still missing. There are no suspects. There is no evidence of what happened to her. This is the story in pictures:

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Anorak

Posted: 11th, April 2010 | In: Key Posts, Madeleine McCann | Comments (2)

Madeleine McCann: ‘Maddie Peado’ Raymond Hewlett Dies

MADELEINE McCann – Raymond Helwett had died.

The “Maddie paedo” – as the tabloids called him – is dead.

Still, at least now we can all gawp “Gypsy snatchers“, Maria Alice dos Santos Silveira, Jorge Vitorino Cabral Martins and Yvone Albino.

Hewlett, a convicted sex attacker, became a person of interest. He became the “Maddie paedo” and the media’s “Maddie Pervert”. He’s dead.

No death bed confession.

Pictures Of All The Madeleine McCann Suspects

Anorak

Posted: 11th, April 2010 | In: Madeleine McCann | Comments (7)