Citation

"Grâce à la liberté dans les communications, des groupes d’hommes de même nature pourront se réunir et fonder des communautés. Les nations seront dépassées" - Friedrich Nietzsche (Fragments posthumes XIII-883)

Chapitres 16-19 (5)


Why did they do this ?
Any child could have told them they would be found out.
SHUTTERS
Let us start with the first thing they told their own family and friends.
• . . . the window in the bedroom . . . and shutters were jemmied open
• She told me, 'They have broken the shutter and the window"
• Kate said the shutters of the room were smashed.
• She just told me . . . that the shutters of the apartment had been forced
It was the first statement they made. They said this to close family and friends, who clearly (???) had instructions to repeat it to the Press. In so doing they involved their close friends and relatives in the web of deceit. WHY ? How did they ever imagine they could get away with this ?
THE STRANGE CASE OF MADELEINE'S NAME
Kate McCann : "My consolation is that on the cover he calls her Maddie, the name that the media have invented. We never called her anything like that."
". . . but she hated it when we called her Maddie - she'd say, 'My name is Madeleine', with an indignant look on her face." [- but you just said you never called her that . . . which is it ? ]
Everyone else
Gerry McCann 'April 2005 - Back in Leicester and looking for a job. Now father of three with Sean and Amelie joining Maddie.' [entry on Friends Reunited ]
"Today we think that if Maddie had been taken or killed quickly, there would have been evidence [of this]."
Trish Cameron (Gerry's sister) "When Kate checked, she came out screaming. Maddy had gone.
Eileen McCann (Gerry's mother) "Anyone who knows Gerry and Kate knows that they cherished Maddie."
John McCann (Gerry's brother) "They're much more positive about things that can be done to get Maddy back."
Jon Corner (Close friend)"She just told me that Maddy had been abducted,
Mark McQueen (Sean's godfather) "We know Maddie very well.
“We never called her anything like that”
How did they ever imagine they could get away with this ?
THE STRANGE CASE OF THE EYE DEFECT
The eye blemish — often referred to as the "mark of Madeleine" - has formed a key part in the campaign to highlight her disappearance. It is played up prominently on posters and videos. It is actually what doctors call a coloboma - or defect - of the iris.
Gerry McCann “ The iris is Madeleine’s only true distinctive feature. Certainly we thought it was possible that this could potentially hurt her or her abductor might do something to her eye . . . but in terms of marketing, it was a good ploy.”
The McCann family has asked health professionals to look out for Madeleine McCann, a 4-year-old English girl with a coloboma of her right iris, who was abducted while on holiday in Praia Da Luz, Portugal, on May 3, 2007. (The Lancet: Vol 369, No.9576, p.1846, 2 June 2007)
K. McCann: If I'm honest, we haven't put too much emphasis on her eye, because I think you have to be very close to her to see it. “ IF I’m honest . . . ! “How did they ever imagine they could get away with this ?
CURTAINS
Kate McCann noticed that the door to her children's bedroom was completely open, the window was also open, the shutters raised and the curtains open, while she was certain of having closed them all as she always did.
OR . . . if you prefer a completely different version, try this -
Kate McCann - and literally, as I went back in, the curtains of the bedroom which were drawn,… were closed, … whoosh … It was like a gust of wind, kinda, just blew them open
And this is the photo of the room, showing
• shutters DOWN
• shutters NOT broken,
• curtains trapped behind the chair and between the bed and the wall.
At 10 pm the wind speed was around 4m/s, Force 2. And what wind there was, was westerly, moving gently along the road, parallel to the apartment, not directly at the window.
How did they ever imagine they could get away with this ?
PUBLICITY - WHERE DO THEY STAND?
Leveson - under OATH ! 
Mr Jay: Of course, we all here understand that your overriding objective is the continuing search for your daughter. We've seen from your statements, or we will see, once the statements are publicly made available, that in terms of reporting, you've experienced what I might call the good, the bad and the particularly ugly side of the press. One might ask this: is it helpful to have Madeleine permanently in the public eye?
MR McCANN: I've talked about this on several occasions in the past, and I do not feel it's helpful, and particularly at the time when there were daily stories running throughout 2007 and 2008. It became very apparent to us early on there was an incredible amount of speculation and misinformation. It led to confusion amongst people. All we need to do is periodically remind the public who have supported us so much that Madeleine is still missing, there's an ongoing search and those responsible for taking her are still at large and have to be brought to justice.
MRS McCANN: I was just going to say obviously there was a period when Madeleine was on the front page of a paper every day, and I know occasionally people would say to me "That has to be a good thing, hasn't it? She's in the public eye", and that isn't the case because when the story is so negative about her, and we'll come into that, obviously then that is not helpful. As Gerry said, I think it's a reminder that's important, that's all.
Compare and Contrast . . .! 


Or if you prefer 
 Source: ‘The Establishment: and how they get away with it’, by Owen Jones
How did they ever imagine they could get away with this ?
TO FEE, OR NOT TO FEE. THAT IS THE QUESTION
17 May 2007 - Brian Kennedy - explains about the Fund - so the money can be used, errr . . .for all sorts of reasons, but probably mainly for legal expenditure
18 Sept 2007 - This week, prospective MP Esther McVey, one of the six trustees of Madeleine's fund, met with lawyers to examine the legality of breaking into the £1m worth of public donations. . . "Fund directors have decided not to pay for Kate and Gerry's legal defence costs," said Esther.
29 Jan 2009 - Support for her parents - Kate and Gerry - was rocked when Portuguese police named them as suspects, and when it emerged they had used public donations to pay two £2,000 instalments on their mortgage. The fund spent £111,522 on legal fees and expenses - (not the McCanns’ Defence Lawyers .)
News from a UK tabloid that the parents of Madeleine McCann are banking on money donated to the Find Madeleine Fund to pursue former PJ policeman Gonçalo Amaral through the courts has caused a major stir on social media - not least because the couple vowed in 2007 that this could never happen.
A report in Sky News said nine years ago that trustees had announced that “Money from the Find Madeleine campaign will not be used to fund Kate and Gerry McCann’s legal costs".
* * *
But according to Jerry Lawton of the Daily Star, this has all now changed. They have been ordered to pay both their own and Amaral’s court costs, he said, but this will clearly be suspended while their new “legal bid to silence the former detective” is considered by Portugal’s Supreme Court.
“If they lose, the legal bill could wipe out the Find Madeleine Fund set up using public donations to help the search for their daughter”, Lawton warns.
“If they lose there will be a big legal bill to pay”, said the friend - confirming the money would have to “come from the fund set up to find Madeleine”.
19 JAN 2013 - Madeleine McCann's mum ploughs £1m from book sales into search for missing daughter. She ploughed the money into the search fund for her missing daughter which had run dangerously short of cash [Front cover - “All royalties donated to Madeleine’s Fund” ! ]
2 Sept 2015 - Family spokesperson Clarence Mitchell said today: “They realise it cannot go on forever.” He told how former GP Kate and heart doctor Gerry, both 37, of Rothley, Leics., had moved money from the publicly-backed Find-Maddie Fund into a special account in anticipation of having to finance the hunt for their daughter themselves.
A source close to the family said: “Kate and Gerry firmly believe Madeleine could still be alive and when the police investigation ends, they have vowed to continue looking for her." They don’t know when this will be, there has been so suggestion yet, but they want to be ready and have set aside huge chunks of money for this reason.”
How did they ever imagine they could get away with this ?
PRIVATE EYES
In 2007 the McCanns engaged Metodo 3 to “find Madeleine”. The company is based in Barcelona, at the diagonally opposite corner of the peninsula from PdL, and has no power to investigate in Portugal.
”Mitchell says the decision to hire M-3 on a six-month contract from September was taken ''collectively'' by Gerry McCann, and the family’s lawyers and backers, on the grounds that the agency had the manpower, profile and resources to work in several countries."
After inventing sightings in Morocco, saying that they would “have Madeleine back by Christmas” - a fact denied by the McCann’s lawyers, but admitted by both the McCanns and by Mitchell - Giménez Raso was held on remand for 4 years for alleged drug dealing, and the company subsequently went bust. A recent book (La Cortina da Humo) has shown the extent to which the Fund was being defrauded, apparently under the noses of the Accountants and Solicitors.
Both firms deny negligence and threaten “defamation”.
Next was Oakley International and Kevin Halligen. He defrauded the Fund of another half a million sterling. Clarence Mitchell first described them as “the big boys, the best there is in international investigation". Subsequently Mitchell said: 'The first phase of the contract was satisfactorily seen through, such as the setting up of the hotline. Towards the end of it there were question marks about delivery and the relationship was terminated. [In fact not a single message to the hotline was EVER followed up] Given Mr Halligen is in custody it is inappropriate to comment further.'”
Halligen was extradited to the US and imprisoned for offences there. He has never been prosecuted in the UK for offences against the “Fund”, nor it seems has any attempt been made to recover the monies defrauded.
The Solicitors and Accountants accuse anyone who enquires - of defamation.
Then Mitchell announced the hiring of “a team of crack detectives“. He gave the clear impression that this was Alpha Investigations Group of the USA, a respectable company. In fact the two long-since retired Det Sgt and Det Insp set up the company ALPHAIG, with a company address in a pigeon loft in Wales, many weeks after Mitchell had made this extraordinary and obviously mendacious announcement.
Their net contribution to the “search” was to fail utterly to investigate an alleged incident involving a prostitute in the dock area of Barcelona, then to invoke “chloroform” which Kate McCann and Fiona Payne, as anaesthetists, must realise was ludicrous, and then to come out with: “She is being held in a Hellish Lair, in the Lawless hinterlands, within 10 miles of Praia da Luz.”
The contract appears to have been terminated soon after.
No attempt has apparently ever been made to search for the Hellish Lair.
No attempt has apparently ever been made to recover the monies defrauded
How did they ever imagine they could get away with all this?


Some Philosophical thoughts.
In which we examine Logic and the absence of evidence.
I want to go through this slowly, and at some length, partly because it is important that any error, misunderstanding, or false logic may be identified and challenged, and partly because the subject may not be familiar, or at least not currently at the forefront of people’s minds. For that reason some of the themes are repeated each time they become relevant.
Any who wish to explore further could do worse than to start with Wikipedia.
Once we have covered the logic and philosophy we can begin to apply it to the case in question.
Evidence of Absence.
‘Evidence of absence’ is evidence of any kind that suggests something is missing or that it does not exist. We remember the traditional aphorism, "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence". But here we are considering positive evidence of this kind, and realise that is distinct from a lack of evidence or ignorance of that which, had it existed, should have been found already,.
When we say positive evidence, we mean of course the lack of something we might have expected to find. Not that we simply didn’t look, or didn’t find it, but that we did look, hard, and it was not there.
So there is a difference between saying - - - - I don’t know if it was there or not, and saying firmly - - - - I can state that it was not there. That is a significant difference, and philosophers and logicians down the ages have played with the concept.
One example 
In some circumstances it can be safely assumed that if a certain event had occurred, evidence of it could be discovered by qualified investigators. In such circumstances it is perfectly reasonable to take the absence of proof of its occurrence as positive proof of its non-occurrence. Irving Copi - Introduction to Logic (1953) p. 95
Others have taken the concept further, and have refined the circumstances under which the lack of evidence moves from negative to positive proof. The best remembered example is perhaps this one:
If someone were to assert that there is an elephant on the quad, then the failure to observe an elephant there would be good reason to think that there is no elephant there. But if someone were to assert that there is a flea on the quad, then one’s failure to observe it would not constitute good evidence that there is no flea on the quad. The salient difference between these two cases is that in the one, but not the other, we should expect to see some evidence of the entity if it in fact existed. 
Moreover, the justification conferred in such cases will be proportional to the ratio between the amount of evidence that we do have and the amount that we should expect to have if the entity existed. If the ratio is small, then little justification is conferred on the belief that the entity does not exist.
For example, in the absence of evidence rendering the existence of some entity probable, we are justified in believing that it does not exist, provided that
1) it is not something that might leave no traces and
2) we have comprehensively surveyed the area where the evidence would be found if the entity existed.
JP Moreland & WL Craig, Philosophical Foundations
It is settled in logic, as well as in most legal systems, that when two parties are in a discussion and one asserts a claim that the other disputes, the one who asserts has the burden of proof to justify or substantiate that claim. There are exceptions to this. For example when one person asserts something which is held to be generally known or scientifically established. 
In the language of logic - either a proposition is assumed to be true because it has not yet been proved false or a proposition is assumed to be false because it has not yet been proved true. This may have the effect of shifting the burden of proof to the person criticising the proposition. This is the basis of the scientific method.
In English law, for example, it is clear that the burden of proof is always on the Prosecution, which is required to show
1 That an offence known to law has been committed, and
2 That the accused committed it
But even here, there are times when although the burden of proof does not shift, inferences may be drawn from absence of evidence.
So, for example. Adverse inferences may be drawn in certain circumstances where before or on being charged, the accused:
fails to mention any fact which he later relies upon and which in the circumstances at the time the accused could reasonably be expected to mention;
fails to give evidence at trial or answer any question;
fails to account on arrest for objects, substances or marks on his person, clothing or footwear, in his possession, or in the place where he is arrested; or
fails to account on arrest for his presence at a place.
Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994
[This has in fact just been invoked in the case against the man accused of murdering the MP Joe Cox. (22/11/2016). He refused to offer any defence, and the jury was told they might draw proper inferences. He was found Guilty ]
And the Police Caution, given before questioning of a suspect has changed from
"You do not have to say anything unless you wish to do so, but what you say may be given in evidence."
to
"You do not have to say anything. But it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence."
Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984, s.28
The burden of proof is still on the prosecution, but the philosophical position of absence of evidence becoming evidence of absence is now covered. And note that it talks of of Harming the Defence, not proving the case. There must be other evidence. Only an inference is raised. Silence alone cannot convict.
So what do we learn
In order for Absence of Evidence to transmute into Evidence of Absence we need to show
1) it is not something that might leave no traces
2) a comprehensive survey of the area where the evidence would be found
3) Ideally using Qualified Investigators
A few more examples of how people have dealt with this
Argument from ignorance (argumentum ad ignorantiam), is also known as appeal to ignorance. Here ‘ignorance’ is used in the sense of "a lack of contrary evidence". It is a fallacy in informal logic. It asserts that a proposition is true because it has not yet been proved false (or vice versa). This is a type of false dichotomy in that it excludes a third option, which is that there may have been an insufficient investigation, and therefore there is insufficient information to prove the proposition be either true or false. Nor does it allow the admission that the choices may in fact not be two (true or false), but may be as many as four, True, False, Unknown, Unknowable.
This fallacy can be very convincing and is considered by some to be a special case of a false dilemma or false dichotomy in that they both fail to consider alternatives. A false dilemma may take the form:
If a proposition has not been disproved, then it cannot be considered false and must therefore be considered true.
If a proposition has not been proved, then it cannot be considered true and must therefore be considered false.
Such arguments attempt to exploit the facts that (a) true things can never be disproved and (b) false things can never be proved. In other words, appeals to ignorance claim that the converse of these facts are also true.
Therein lies the fallacy.
Duco A. Schreuder, Vision and Visual Perception
Or again -
Because there is always the faint possibility that evidence hasn't been observed yet, a common maxim is that "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence" - and is often used by people to hang on to their beliefs even when faced with a lack of evidence for them.
However, this is technically an incorrect maxim; if evidence is lacking when we expect it to be abundant, then it very much allows us to dismiss a hypothesis, and absence of evidence clearly becomes evidence of absence.
A parting shot
The only case in which absence of evidence is not evidence of absence is when no attempt whatsoever has been made to obtain evidence ...
But that is not absence of evidence, it is absence of investigation.
And we can compare and contrast all the above with evidence of existence, where just one piece of credible evidence may establish the point beyond doubt. Why is this important ?
Back to the real world
Let us take the above and apply it to the question of the Complete Mystery of the Disappearance of Madeleine Beth McCann
We surely look for "evidence of existence", where just one good piece of evidence would establish the point. (‘Existence’ meaning ‘of the abduction’).
It is important to stress, repeatedly, the Burden of proof has not moved. It is still on the McCanns to show evidence of abduction. Merely repeating “abduction” endlessly and threatening to sue for libel those who question the assertion is NOT proof sufficient to move the burden of proof to sceptics.
Remember that in a criminal case the prosecution has to show that a crime known to law has been committed before moving on to the person who committed it.
So let us try to help the McCanns, and those acting on their behalf - the police officers, Forensic experts, dog handlers and all the other professionals, including their lawyers, family members and witnesses, and list what the Qualified Investigators would concentrate on in their comprehensive survey of the area where the evidence would be found.
In a case of Abduction they would look for
. point of entry, point of exit
. evidence of physical presence at the location, inside and outside
. fingerprints, DNA, blood, saliva, other bodily fluids, hair, skin cells,
. dust, mud, gravel, any artefact ‘foreign’ to the scene, fibres from clothing,
. evidence of disturbance of bedclothes, movement of furniture,
. evidence of searching,
. footprints, shoe marks, scuff marks, glove marks
and much more on a detective’s list
But we find - Nothing. Not one piece of good evidence to establish the point beyond doubt.
And we reiterate that this alleged crime was emphatically NOT
1) . . . something that might leave no traces
but the absence of evidence WAS after
2) a comprehensive survey of the area where the evidence would be found
3) [ . . .] using Qualified Investigators
During extensive interviews of the main players, and of many other people in and around the area, no evidence was found of a credible suspect. The one that was kept in the public domain for years was officially dismissed by the senior British detective in charge of the operation
This level of absence of evidence of intrusion and of abduction surely begins to amount to evidence of absence.
Simply saying ‘there is no alternative, what other explanation is there ?” as Gerry McCann did outside the court in Portugal, was perhaps supposed to be a rhetorical question.
It is not. There are many other possible explanations, some stronger than others, and some backed by other available evidence, both positive and negative.
Saying, as they do on the web site - The abduction is for us the only hypothesis - may simply be evidence of a closed mind, but may indicate something else.
On Proof
We talk of Proof. Simply stating something does not make it so. Even if stated several times, the position does not alter. Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) used the device humorously in the epic nonsense poem The Hunting of the Snark,
Just the place for a Snark! the Bellman cried,
As he landed his crew with care;
Supporting each man on the top of the tide
By a finger entwined in his hair.
Just the place for a Snark! I have said it twice:
That alone should encourage the crew.
Just the place for a Snark! I have said it thrice:
What I tell you three times is true.
This is instantly recognisable as ridiculous nonsense, and yet it was exactly the technique used by the propaganda minister of the Third Reich.
In the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily.
often misquoted or paraphrased as "The bigger the lie, the more it will be believed."
(It is actually from Mein Kampf (1925), A.H. vol 1, ch 6 “If you repeat a lie often enough, people will believe it, and you will even come to believe it yourself.”)
Variants include
If you repeat a lie often enough, it becomes the truth.
If you repeat a lie often enough, people will believe it.
If you repeat a lie many times, people are bound to start believing it.
A digression on Belief
Now let us look at what the “believers” say.  I believe Madeleine was abducted..
But they then fade out. Not one, so far as I know, has added the subordinate clause... because there is clear evidence of X, Y, or Z. I believe the parents were not involved in her disappearance... but again they fade out. Not one, so far as I know, has added the subordinate clause... because there is clear evidence that X, Y, or Z.
They simply express a belief. At times this is based on totally irrelevant supposed knowledge of the previous ‘good conduct’ of the parents, or the fact that they are professionals. 
The most notorious example of this was the hapless Mrs Martorell, speaking for Carter-Ruck, under oath in the High Court of England, who had indirectly expressed her belief, no fewer than three times, that Madeleine had been abducted, but when asked on what evidence she based that belief had no useful answer, and simply faded into an embarrassed silence. Tugendhat J realised the significance of that, and mused, on the record, about the legal situation if it could ever be shown that there had been no abduction.
The next bit is sometimes argued over, but is a neat, if simplistic way of putting it.
Belief without evidence is strictly called Faith. Faith is different from belief. 
Belief is a statement or idea of pre-knowledge or pre-understanding that can be verified and tested using the scientific method. A belief can be proven true or false.
Faith is irrational belief, in the sense that it is belief that cannot be tested. If someone who has never seen the sea says “I believe that the sea flows and recedes . .” this is susceptible to verification and testing. If someone says “I have Faith that one day we shall be visited by extra-terrestrial beings . . .” there is simply nothing we can usefully say, except perhaps “I am sorry, but I do not share your Faith.”
So the statement “I have Faith that the parents were not involved” - is unanswerable. It can also be cheerfully ignored as it adds nothing to the debate. Whereas “I believe that the parents were not involved” can be tested, forensically, that is - in a Court of Law
So where does this take us ? If we apply the test to everything that the McCanns and the Tapas group reported and what the experts discovered, what we find is a total absence of any evidence of abduction.
Abduction of a 3 yr. old child with a history of unsettled sleep, from a cramped (exiguë) and darkened bedroom she was sharing with two other small children, with shuttered and locked windows, in an apartment with a locked front door, the only unlocked entrance directly facing the location where the parents and friends were dining, and carrying out overlapping visits, each every half hour . . . and so passing and re-passing every few minutes is NOT, on any test
1). . . something that might leave no traces
We may wish to recall that there was
2) a comprehensive survey of the area where the evidence would be found
and that
3) [. . . ] Qualified Investigators - were in fact used
And so the Absence of Evidence does allow us with some considerable force to argue that this provides overwhelming Evidence of Absence of the Abduction. Remember, as we have observed, a single credible piece of evidence would be sufficient to challenge this proposition. Of course, as we know there is evidence, but what there is indicates the exact opposite scenario.
The changing stories, the inconsistencies, the forged Last photo, the nonsense stories about shutters and about simultaneously wide-open and tight-closed whooshing curtains, the clear prevarication by witnesses who should reasonably have been expected to tell the truth, gross and blatant alterations in testimony and public stories apparently to retrofit inconvenient findings or alternate theories being put forward, and above all the alerts of the highly trained and wholly reliable dogs.. all this is clear positive evidence that the abduction story is a fabrication.
When we add this conclusion to the evidence of absence of abduction, we find that it all firmly points in the direction the PJ, and the Public Prosecutor indicated. We must surely be permitted to “purport” the theory, and to agree with Police and Prosecutors that
B) a simulation of an abduction took place;
D) Kate McCann and Gerald McCann are involved in the concealment of the cadaver of their daughter, Madeleine McCann;
F) from what has been established up to now, everything indicates that the McCann couple, in self-defence, doesn’t want to deliver the cadaver immediately and voluntarily, and there is a strong possibility that it was moved from the initial place of deposition.
(Report by Chief Inspector Tavares de Almeida to the Coordinator of the Criminal Investigation)

The archiving dispatch perhaps put this whole issue somewhat more succinctly than I have managed. But then they are trained and skilled and experienced in their profession.
« Despite all of this, it was not possible to obtain any piece of evidence that would allow for a reasonable man, under the light of the criteria of logics, of normality and of the general rules of experience, to formulate any lucid, sensible, serious and honest conclusion about the circumstances under which the child was removed from the apartment (whether dead or alive, whether killed in a neglectful homicide or an intended homicide, whether the victim of a targeted abduction or an opportunistic abduction), nor even to produce a consistent prognosis about her destiny and inclusively – the most dramatic – to establish whether she is still alive - or if she is dead, as seems more likely.
Republic’s Prosecutor (José de Magalhães e Menezes)/Joint General Prosecutor (João Melchior Gomes)



Was Madeleine “Abducted” ? 
The Paid . . . . say "So" 
Not Paid . . . . . say "No" 
In Paid we include those paid directly in money, but also those who received benefit from saying "so". We include those who would never think of compromising a family member. We include those who received other benefits, but more indirectly - from book sales, or TV appearances, newspaper sales, radio interviews . . .
So who are they ?
Gerry and Kate - obviously
Close family members
Clarence Mitchell
Paid shills on various web-site and social media outlets
Web site manager
Alan Pike. The crisis councillor who pretended to be a psychologist
PR firms, notably Bell Pottinger ( £ 0.5m), and Hannover (£ not known)
Summers and Swan,
Danny Collins and other authors who have wilfully avoided presenting or considering the evidence
Antonella Lazzeri
The SUN - generally
Olive Press - in the form of Jon Clarke - of Angolan basketball player fame
Other newspapers - possibly
Metodo 3 - Francisco Marco, Antonio Gimenez Raso, Julian Peribañez, Antonio Tamarit
ALPHAIG - Edgar and Cowley
Oakley - Kevin/Richard Halligen, Henri Exton,
Gary Hagland
Oprah Winfrey
MISSING PEOPLE - who have undoubtedly raised their profile, even though it has had the effect of causing people to investigate their internal waste of money.
Melissa (e-fits to fit) Little
Jim Gamble
and then LAWYERS !
This is more tricky, since some species of lawyer have a duty to speak for their client, whether they believe them or not. That decision is not theirs to make.
English barristers are obliged to accept a brief if the fee is paid, and to argue it to the best of their professional ability. Often they deliberately do not speak to the parties concerned. Their client is the instructing solicitor.

Solicitors are slightly different. They have a role in advising the client on the best course of action - which may be to stop ! 
It is not clear for example whether Carter-Ruck ever investigated the McCanns’ account of events, and the performance of Mrs Martorell in the High Court tends to suggest they deliberately did NOT ask any pertinent or searching questions, perhaps in case they got answers which would have deprived them of a fee.

Carter-Ruck, in the persons of Adam Tudor and Mrs Martorell 
Edward Smethurst
The 20 or so other lawyers paid - in money - by the McCanns
Isabel Duarte, who brought the ultimately failed case in the Portuguese courts
and several others.
So, from the above list of those who say so, how many genuinely believe the story ?
It may be that some do, but of course it is not actually necessary for any of them to believe it. Money and family ties could provide the incentive to repeat the word “abduction” as often as possible. We may note that over the past few years their word of choice has become “disappearance”. Even Mitchell now uses this form.

In "Not Paid", we include all those who although they are clearly in receipt of their salaries, are not paid directly or indirectly to do anything other than their professional duty, and to be impartial.

The Portuguese GNR
The PJ
The fingerprint expert
DCI Gonçalo Amaral,
DCI Paulo Rebelo
CI Tavares de Almeida - investigation co-ordinator - wrote final report
The public prosecutors - Magalhaes e Menezes, Gomes
The judges in the Court of Appeal - De Almeida, Manso, Branquinho,
Martin Grime (dog handler)
The British police officers sent to Portugal
The British Police advisor Mark Harrison
The British Police advisor Keith Farquharson
NPIA Criminal profiler Lee Rainbow
The British consular and Embassy staff
and so on, not forgetting many amateur researchers, and hundreds of people who have followed the evidence and the debate on the internet.

All those who had a duty to investigate and consider the evidence in any depth are of the same view. It is not believed that a single instance exists of someone with professional skills or training and taking a dispassionate and detached look at the scene, or the evidence, or the files released by the PJ, coming to the conclusion, even on balance, or even allowing a remote possibility, that there was an abduction.

 To this must now be added the name Peter Hyatt, a statement analyst, who works with, and trains law enforcement agencies in the US. He was recently invited to look at the film and the transcript of an interview with the McCanns done in Australia some years ago. It seems he had little, if any, knowledge of the research into the various issues he addressed. His conclusion was that within the interview there is a series of ‘Embedded confessions’, as well as many outright lies. For example he identified the story about the open window and the whooshing curtains as a lie, even though he had no knowledge that this had already been so identified by consideration of the weather reports, and the lack of any such details in any other statement. He had no knowledge of the photos of the curtains trapped behind the bed and the chair, nor of the fact that Kate had previously stated that the curtains were wide open.
He went on to show how the McCanns provide all the details, about a fall, death, cuddling the dead body, and the concealment and disposal themselves.They volunteer the information, whilst believing they are denying it. So again we have an independent person - an accredited expert - who for good reasons, which he spells out so that everyone can understand them, comes to the same conclusion as others who have come from a different angle.

Third Category
There is then a third category - lest I be accused of false dichotomy.

These include the British police officers, in Leicester and the Metropolitan forces, who seem to have failed to investigate, or to properly and impartially consider the evidence, and in some cases have presented themselves as openly supportive of the McCanns. They include
Det Supt Stuart (call me Stu) Prior, Leicestershire Police
Det Ch Supt Hamish Campbell ( remit - as if the abduction had been in Britain)
DCI Redwood (Madeleine alive is not in accordance with all of our thinking, we have found crecheman)
DCI Nicola Wall (haven’t yet done very much except cut the team from 38 to 4)
Det Ch Supt Mike Duthie (still believe Madeleine could be found alive)
and sundry others who have had years to revise their views in light of the evidence they have collected, and that which has been sent to them, but still appear to be doing nothing substantive.

The Met officers who were given a strangely restricted remit - to investigate an abduction - seem powerless to act. One has to consider whether going outside the remit, and actually investigating, or considering the logic behind the absence of evidence, has been and is still being officially prohibited. If so, this could amount to something else entirely.
Whether any of the members of this category actually believe there was an abduction, is an entirely different matter which cannot at present be ascertained.

So how has this story been perpetuated for so long ?
On Proof and Truth [this is copied from the previous chapter, but is included here, so that the reader does not have to refer back]
We talk of Proof. Simply stating something does not make it so. Even if it is stated several times, the position does not alter. Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) used the device humorously in the epic nonsense poem The Hunting of the Snark,

Just the place for a Snark!" the Bellman cried,
As he landed his crew with care;
Supporting each man on the top of the tide
By a finger entwined in his hair.
"Just the place for a Snark! I have said it twice:
That alone should encourage the crew.
Just the place for a Snark! I have said it thrice:
What I tell you three times is true.

This is instantly recognisable as ridiculous nonsense, and yet it was exactly the technique used by the propaganda minister of the Third Reich.
". . in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily," often misquoted or paraphrased as:
"The bigger the lie, the more it will be believed."
(It is actually from Mein Kampf (1925), A.H. vol 1, ch 6 “If you repeat a lie often enough, people will believe it, and you will even come to believe it yourself.”)
Variants include
If you repeat a lie often enough, it becomes the truth.
If you repeat a lie often enough, people will believe it.
If you repeat a lie many times, people are bound to start believing it.
So the long term strategy of having the word “abduction”, associated with the name Madeleine McCann, and endlessly repeated in newspapers, TV, radio, and books, for the past ten years, has probably led to a significant part of the population subliminally thinking it has been established as some sort of fact.
If so, the strategy of paying vast amounts to Bell Pottinger, Hannover and Clarence Mitchell was well worth the expense.
The use of frankly mendacious, not to say “ludicrous” stories to fill out this farrago has reinforced this. The story of Madeleine whizzing down the water slide is a perfect example. In the next sentence she is said to be wearing a pink top and a blue skirt, and a sun hat. The obvious contradiction does not register in the script writer’s mind. She is then said to have played football for an HOUR. Still in the skirt and sun hat. Kate was said to be sunbathing whilst this was going on.
All this might be dismissed as journalistic hyperbole, but the FACT that there is no water slide, and that on the day in question it was dull, cloudy, cold and windy, and the FACT that Kate makes no mention of any such incident in her autobiography, giving a totally different account of events on the day in question - is also inconvenient factual detail which would otherwise spoil the story.

The damage to the truth has been done. Readers may not remember the article, nor where they read it, but the totally false impression is left. I leave it for you, the reader, to make up your own mind.



Richard Hall’s filmed interview with Peter Hyatt

Every parent, every teacher, every police officer, solicitor, immigration officer, and Magistrate - in fact everyone - is able to identify when an untruth is being told.

Some are better at it than others.

Please Sir, it wasn’t me . . . .

Mummy, I didn’t eat the biscuits, it must have been Johnny . . .

Officer, I really don’t know how that got into my suitcase - it’s been planted . . .

I have been shown a CCTV clip and I now recall that I was in fact there, but...

are known to all.

Statement analysts have developed this. They seek to look beyond what is so often called gut instinct or a copper’s nose, or just a hunch to find out why and how we can identify what is going on, and to formalise their findings.

Richard Hall has recently released a series of three interviews with Peter Hyatt. Hyatt is by trade a Statement Analyst - someone who is developing the skills of looking at what people say, and importantly what they do not, and the way they say them, the vocabulary they use, and a host of other things, to form a considered and justified opinion on whether they are telling the truth. His thesis is that denials and lies can in fact reveal an “Embedded Confession”, which is the title of the films.

I have transcribed short extracts from the films. If there are errors they are entirely mine. I want to consider parts of what he said, and then to compare his opinion with what other researchers have discovered. There is a remarkable coincidence. To start with Hyatt explains the importance of detecting hesitation or a disruption of the normal pattern of speech. Some people are naturally fluent, some have less articulacy. It is the disruption of the normal pattern which is important. He goes on to explain that answering a question with another question may indicate an attempt to buy time, as well searching for a word. The inclusion of unnecessary words and phrases, and particularly of going into unnecessary detail may also assume importance. He then looks at a full transcript of the interview by SN TV channel in Australia with Gerry and Kate McCann in 2011.

PH: "Deceptive people, who have guilty knowledge of what happened to their child don’t want to talk about it, because it causes internal stress - so they talk for a great deal of time about what happened beforehand" Film 1 21:00

He was then asked specifically if this was scientific or his opinion, and replied:

"If I say I believe someone, or I don’t believe someone - as a Statement Analyst - it is my opinion and here’s why I have this opinion. I’m going to explain why" 1 27:39

"When someone speaks we presuppose that everything they are telling us is the truth - unless they talk us out of it, deceiving us. What they say in detail can reveal what happened." 1 27:57
Le détail non plausible du volet, de la fenêtre et des rideaux qui finit par devenir un red herring.

He then develops the idea of the ‘need to persuade’ and narrative building. He refers to the McCanns’ emphasising that it was a normal evening, and comments:

“Why do you have to convince me that is was a normal evening”

Statement analysis says more about what one doesn’t say. He listens to further extracts from the interview and says: “Who are they most concerned about. Madeleine, or themselves ? They are always justifying themselves.” 1 43:20

PH: "They give a lot of detail, but not about Madeleine, about themselves.

What happened is limited to a finite number of things . . . When someone tells us what didn’t happen, there can be an infinite number of things. We are on high alert for deception." 2 3:10

He then watches and listens to the ‘whooshing curtains’ story. Hyatt describes this as narrative building and having considered this whole story he says

“She’s Lying. This is deception” 2 35

In a powerful statement he says of Kate’s story about what happened when she visited the apartment - "The room just magically opened itself up and said “Look, look at the evidence . . .”

She’s lying. This tells us Madeleine was not kidnapped.” 2 41:10

A little later he is discussing Gerry’s reported reaction to Kate’s returning to the Tapas bar, which includes the phrase “She can’t be . . .” before he stops himself, Hyatt fills it in for us “Can’t be . . . - What ? . . . Dead ?” 2 45:18

Gerry continues “And I was saying to Kate as we were both running”

PH: "He has a need to persuade that both were in earnest, both were upset, both were in emergency mode. Because they weren’t. Those who are in emergency mode don’t need to tell us they're in emergency mode, and they certainly don’t need to persuade us.

He has a need to persuade us that they were in emergency mode.

This tells us that this was not unexpected. This was not an emergency."

Richard: "He’s lying.” 2 45:40

The three films are highly recommended viewing. It is also instructive to view the original interview in full after having seen the analyst at work.

Some Observations

It has been established that Peter Hyatt, although he was aware of the Madeleine McCann case, had not looked at it in any depth. He was unaware of the research and analysis of the weather and wind charts for the week in question. He did not know of the details in the Tapas 7’s statements, nor of their rogatory interviews. He did not know of the lack of evidence of violent gusts of wind. He was unaware of the body of evidence ???????????????????? that begins to suggest that whatever happened to Madeleine probably happened on the Sunday evening to Monday morning. He was unaware of the work done around the few available photos. ??? He worked purely with the content of the interview. In other words - He worked purely with what the McCanns told him during the interview.

Those who have researched or followed the developments in this case will pick up immediately on Gerry’s comment in the interview where he states “We loved to photograph her, and she loved to be photographed”.
Ce n'est pas GMC qui dit cela.

The fact that for the entire week’s holiday only three credible photos seem to exist of Madeleine, or indeed of the twins, is something which has been commented on before. The lack of photos is itself a considerable pointer towards a deliberate decision ??? not to take them.

What we are left with is a remarkable coincidence between what Hyatt found, for example on examination of the story about the slamming doors and whooshing curtains, and exactly this same conclusion reached independently. (See Chapter 12, Floppy Sunhat and Flapping Curtains). C'est de la physique basique ! Hyatt did not know of the work that has been done, and of the many photos of the 'McCanns' body language during their public interviews. He did not know that the McCanns had changed both their first Police statements in several material particulars. He did not know of the Rogatory interviews with the Tapas 7. He did not know that these professional people, all University graduates, many with post graduate qualifications, some who routinely teach and profess their own specialism and who all may, therefore, be assumed to be reasonably at ease with the English Language, to be reasonably articulate, to use normal grammar and syntax, and who would be expected to possess a wide and deep vocabulary... were reduced to gibbering incoherence when they were faced with an English police officer, speaking English and asking a pertinent question in English.

He was working from the transcript of one short interview. He did not know all the rest.

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