Les articles de presse concernant l'affaire MC ont été archivés sur le forum de discussion The Maddie Case Files où l'on peut encore les consulter. Ce sont des documents précieux autant par les fausses que par les vraies nouvelles qu'ils ont propagées. Ils fournissent surtout des repères quant au moment où les informations, vraies, fausses, semi-vraies ou semi-fausses, les rumeurs et les spéculations se sont déversées dans la sphère publique, donnant la mesure de leur impact sur les nombreux individus qui, en général par compassion, se sont intéressés à la disparition de MMC.
Que soient loués et remerciés ici ceux qui ont mené à bien ce travail de conservation, d'archivage considérable.
MADELEINE :
It
was on New Year’s Day 2007 that the idea of a spring holiday in
Portugal was first raised. Fiona and David Payne, who had come with
their children Lily and Scarlett to spend the day with us, were planning
a week’s break at a Mark Warner resort in the Algarve, probably with
two other couples and their families, all originally friends of David and Fiona’s, and they asked us if we’d like to join them.
We
had never been on a Mark Warner holiday, either, but the others had, to
Sardinia and Greece. Everybody had been very impressed by the
locations, accommodation and amenities.
Gerry
was quite keen on the Portugal idea, attracted by the sporting
facilities, children’s clubs and activities on offer. I was more
reluctant. It wasn’t that I didn’t fancy the resort – and it certainly
wasn’t that I had some kind of premonition, because I didn’t. My
reservations were more practical. The holiday was quite pricey, and
although Madeleine, Sean and Amelie were good travellers, I just wasn’t
sure that it was worth all the packing and hassle involved in flying
three children under the age of four to Portugal when there were plenty
of alternatives in the UK. We’d had two great breaks to Center Parcs the
previous year and I was sorely tempted to stick with something similar
this time.
On our arrival we had lowered the blind-style shutters on the outside of the windows, which were controlled from the inside, and closed the curtains. We left them that way all week. This early in the season, the nights were not that warm, there was no need to open a window and we reasoned that having the shutters down and the curtains drawn would keep it cool during the day. La chambre était au nord, aucun soleil n'y entrait. Although it meant the room was very dark, the children weren’t going to be in there in the daytime, and at night we always left the door ajar to let in a little light.
On our arrival we had lowered the blind-style shutters on the outside of the windows, which were controlled from the inside, and closed the curtains. We left them that way all week. This early in the season, the nights were not that warm, there was no need to open a window and we reasoned that having the shutters down and the curtains drawn would keep it cool during the day. La chambre était au nord, aucun soleil n'y entrait. Although it meant the room was very dark, the children weren’t going to be in there in the daytime, and at night we always left the door ajar to let in a little light.
Most
Mark Warner resorts provided a baby-listening service – basically,
members of staff listening at regular intervals at the doors of the
apartments and villas to check that none of the children inside had
woken up. This service was not offered by the Ocean Club, presumably sûrement
because it was less of a ‘campus’ resort than others, with apartments
scattered over a greater area. Instead there was a crèche, where
children could be looked after from about 19h30 to 11h30. Check this !
Given that our children needed to be in their beds by the time it
opened, the crèche wasn’t really workable for us. Sure then what about
paying a babysitter ! We both felt it would be too unsettling for them
and would disrupt their sleep.
As the restaurant was so near, we collectively decided to do our own child-checking service. Ils ont collectivement décidé que chacun effectuerait la surveillance de ses propres enfants ! Sans doute cela signifie-t-il qu'ils ont tous été d'accord pour 1) ne pas faire appel à une baby sitter ni à la crèche de nuit et 2) pour ne pas organiser de surveillance collective. This decision, one that we all made, has naturally been questioned time and again, not least by us. It goes without saying that we now bitterly regret it, and will do so until the end of our days. But it is easy to be wise after the event. Speaking for myself, I can say, hand on heart, that it never once crossed my mind that this might not be a safe option. This is exactly the questioning part ! Their unconsciousness ! If I’d had any doubts whatsoever, I would simply never have entertained it. I love my three children above everything. Everybody is convinced of that ! This is not in question !They are more precious and special to me than life itself. And I would never knowingly place them at risk, no matter how small a risk it might seem to be. But this decision was scatter-brained ! She just didn't imagine the situation !
If we’d had any concerns we could have hired a babysitter. Now the fact they didn't hire a babysitter, instead of showing that they didn't see the necessity to spend money this way, should prove that they are honest when they saw no risk at all. Of course they didn't and this is exactly the problem ! I could argue that leaving my children alone with someone neither we nor they knew would have been unwise, This wouldn't be an argument, as the kids were left during all day to the same nannies ! and it’s certainly not something we’d do at home, but in fact we didn’t even consider it. We felt so secure we simply didn’t think it was necessary. Our own apartment was only thirty to forty-five seconds away, and although there were some bushes in between it was largely visible from the Tapas restaurant. Two high walls...This is a lie and anyhow the kids were on the other side, even a sudden light in their bedroom they wouldn't have seen !We were sitting outside and could just as easily have been eating on a fine spring evening in a friend’s garden, with the kids asleep upstairs in the house. C'est le couplet répété, répété...
As it was, we were in an apparently safe, child-friendly holiday complex full of families just like ours. The children were fast asleep and being checked every thirty minutes. Even if there had been a baby-listening service it would not have given our kids as much attention as our own visits did. La disparition semble démentir cela. Il n'y avait pas de service d'écoute parce que les appartements étaient trop distants les uns des autres pour qu'une nanny surveille globalement. There was no listening service because the flats were too distant from each other, a nanny wouldn't have been able to listen globally ! We were going into the apartments and looking as well as listening. We later heard it was an option that had been chosen by many other parents at similar resorts before us. But I’m willing to bet not many since.
Bringing up children – like all aspects of life – involves making hundreds of tiny and seemingly minor decisions every single day, balancing the temptation to mollycoddle them with the danger of being too laissez-faire. Sometimes, with hindsight, our judgement proves to have been right, sometimes wrong. Mostly when you make the wrong call you can just chalk it up to experience and do it differently next time. It is our family’s tragedy that this particular decision would have such catastrophic consequences. Mais ils étaient les seuls à avoir au moins une fois laissé une porte ouverte.
As the restaurant was so near, we collectively decided to do our own child-checking service. Ils ont collectivement décidé que chacun effectuerait la surveillance de ses propres enfants ! Sans doute cela signifie-t-il qu'ils ont tous été d'accord pour 1) ne pas faire appel à une baby sitter ni à la crèche de nuit et 2) pour ne pas organiser de surveillance collective. This decision, one that we all made, has naturally been questioned time and again, not least by us. It goes without saying that we now bitterly regret it, and will do so until the end of our days. But it is easy to be wise after the event. Speaking for myself, I can say, hand on heart, that it never once crossed my mind that this might not be a safe option. This is exactly the questioning part ! Their unconsciousness ! If I’d had any doubts whatsoever, I would simply never have entertained it. I love my three children above everything. Everybody is convinced of that ! This is not in question !They are more precious and special to me than life itself. And I would never knowingly place them at risk, no matter how small a risk it might seem to be. But this decision was scatter-brained ! She just didn't imagine the situation !
If we’d had any concerns we could have hired a babysitter. Now the fact they didn't hire a babysitter, instead of showing that they didn't see the necessity to spend money this way, should prove that they are honest when they saw no risk at all. Of course they didn't and this is exactly the problem ! I could argue that leaving my children alone with someone neither we nor they knew would have been unwise, This wouldn't be an argument, as the kids were left during all day to the same nannies ! and it’s certainly not something we’d do at home, but in fact we didn’t even consider it. We felt so secure we simply didn’t think it was necessary. Our own apartment was only thirty to forty-five seconds away, and although there were some bushes in between it was largely visible from the Tapas restaurant. Two high walls...This is a lie and anyhow the kids were on the other side, even a sudden light in their bedroom they wouldn't have seen !We were sitting outside and could just as easily have been eating on a fine spring evening in a friend’s garden, with the kids asleep upstairs in the house. C'est le couplet répété, répété...
As it was, we were in an apparently safe, child-friendly holiday complex full of families just like ours. The children were fast asleep and being checked every thirty minutes. Even if there had been a baby-listening service it would not have given our kids as much attention as our own visits did. La disparition semble démentir cela. Il n'y avait pas de service d'écoute parce que les appartements étaient trop distants les uns des autres pour qu'une nanny surveille globalement. There was no listening service because the flats were too distant from each other, a nanny wouldn't have been able to listen globally ! We were going into the apartments and looking as well as listening. We later heard it was an option that had been chosen by many other parents at similar resorts before us. But I’m willing to bet not many since.
Bringing up children – like all aspects of life – involves making hundreds of tiny and seemingly minor decisions every single day, balancing the temptation to mollycoddle them with the danger of being too laissez-faire. Sometimes, with hindsight, our judgement proves to have been right, sometimes wrong. Mostly when you make the wrong call you can just chalk it up to experience and do it differently next time. It is our family’s tragedy that this particular decision would have such catastrophic consequences. Mais ils étaient les seuls à avoir au moins une fois laissé une porte ouverte.
Pas un mot de la quiz girl le 1er mai.
and I only remember it (une insignifiance) at all because of what subsequently happened.
Mercredi 2 mai (conséquence de la quiz girl le soir d'avant)
and I only remember it (une insignifiance) at all because of what subsequently happened.
Mercredi 2 mai (conséquence de la quiz girl le soir d'avant)
At
about 11.50pm, Gerry abruptly announced, ‘Right, I’m off to bed.
Goodnight.’ As he turned to leave, Dave said jokingly, ‘She’s not that
bad, Gerry!’ Les répliques de ces gens-là sont vraiment surprenantes ! I
must admit I was slightly hurt that Gerry should just go off without
me, as if I was unimportant – irrelevant, even – and Dave’s remark was
an indication that it wasn’t just me being over-sensitive.
I am not sure why I was miffed by his lack of social graces that
particular evening. Perhaps because the other guys in the group were all
attentive ‘new men’, compared with Gerry, at least, and I was a bit
embarrassed. Anyway, I followed him a few minutes later. He certainly
was tired, because by the time I got into the apartment, he was asleep –
snoring, in fact. Still feeling a bit offended, I decided to go and
sleep with the children. This was highly unusual; unprecedented.
I suppose it was because there was a bed made up and ready in the other bedroom and at that moment my peaceful, slumbering babies were more attractive room-mates than my snoring husband.
I suppose it was because there was a bed made up and ready in the other bedroom and at that moment my peaceful, slumbering babies were more attractive room-mates than my snoring husband.
03
KMC Diary (rédigé plus tard) - Milk and biscuits for the kids. I left them with this and books and games and went to have a quick shower/wash my hair. M tired—sitting on my lap—I read the story of Mog (favourite children's book).
Brush teeth. To the bedroom with the kids. M pulls away and puts her head on pillow. Kisses goodnight for M. Pulled the door to as far as possible without shutting it. Silence. Dry hair. Put make-up on. Glass of wine. Restaurant.
MADELEINE
I awoke in the children’s bedroom. I can’t remember who was up first but I know we had all surfaced by about 7.30am. I’m not even sure whether Gerry had actually noticed I’d slept in the other room and I chose not to mention it. Un peu contradictoire puisqu'elle l'avait fait pour se venger. At breakfast time, Madeleine had a question for us. ‘Why didn’t you come when Sean and I cried last night?’ Ici, c'est “last night”, ce n'est pas le cas dans les dépositions. We were puzzled. Did she mean when they were having their bath? we asked her. Even if she had said “last night” ? Et ils ne prenaient quand même pas leur bain tout seuls. Or just after they’d gone to bed? Children often get a bit fractious around bedtime, though I had no recollection of any tears from either Madeleine or Sean before they settled the previous evening. And it certainly hadn’t been in the early hours, because I’d been in the room with them, even closer than usual. Plus tôt non plus puisque Rachael, de l'autre côté de la cloison, n'avait rien entendu.
Madeleine didn’t answer or elaborate. Instead she moved on to some other topic that had popped into her head, apparently unconcerned. If something had happened to make her cry, it was pretty unlikely that she wouldn’t tell us about it, assuming she remembered what it was.
Gerry and I were disconcerted. Could Madeleine and Sean have woken up while we were at dinner? If so, it was worrying, obviously, but it didn’t seem very probable. As I’ve said, not only did they rarely stir at all at night, but if they did it was hardly ever, and I mean ever, before the early hours. Once is enough and all things have a start ! If they had done so on this occasion, it would mean they’d woken up, cried for a while, calmed themselves down and fallen asleep again – all within the space of half an hour. Or forty-five minutes, if it had been after our last check. Children usually need some soothing back to sleep once they’ve woken, especially if two of them are awake and upset at the same time, and it seemed highly unlikely they’d have gone through all these stages without one of them overlapping with one of our checks. It wasn’t impossible, but it seemed implausible. May be they didn't check as often as every half hour..
Not for a moment did we think there might be some sinister reason for this occurrence, if indeed anything had occurred. If only foresight came as easily to us as hindsight. Within hours, the explanation for this would seem hugely important, and so haunted have I been ever since by Madeleine’s words that morning that I’ve continued to blame myself for not sitting down and making completely certain there was no more information I could draw out of her.
Why hadn’t this rung any alarm bells with me? How did I manage to conclude, subconsciously or otherwise, that if she had woken it was simply a rare aberration with a benign cause: a bad dream, perhaps? If in fact I ever did come to any real conclusion. It was more a case of her question just hanging there quietly, unanswered. This could have been my one chance to prevent what was about to happen, and I blew it. Perhaps because what Madeleine tried to tell her mum wasn't that a big bad wolf had entered their bedroom (she would have told such thing) but simply that she knew they had been left alone ! In the infrequent moments when I’m able to be kinder to myself, Bourreau d'elle-même ! I can acknowledge, if only temporarily, that there was absolutely nothing to give me any reason for suspicion and that we can all be clever after the event. But it is my belief there was somebody either in or trying to get into the children’s bedroom that night, and that is what disturbed them. C'est complètement contradictoire avec ce qu'elle a dit plus haut de MMC : If something had happened to make her cry, it was pretty unlikely that she wouldn’t tell us about it,
The
only other unexplained detail I remember from that morning was a large,
brown stain I noticed on Madeleine’s pink Eeyore pyjama top. I couldn’t
recall seeing it the night before and I had no idea how it might have
got there. It looked like a tea stain.
The morning continued like the others with kids’ clubs and tennis. After my lesson, I hung around on the grassy play area, watching Gerry on the court and chatting to Russell, who I’d found there. Another guest appeared with a video camera to record his three-year-old daughter playing mini-tennis. He looked a little embarrassed and laughingly remarked to us that filming in this way made him feel like a dirty old man. It led to a conversation between the three of us about paedophiles. I remember Russell talking about how everything had got a bit out of hand, that these days people were so untrusting you hardly dared speak to children you didn’t know. What he was effectively saying was that the world had become paranoid; that he wanted his daughters to grow up with confidence and a sense of freedom. It would be some days before Russell and I were able to acknowledge to each other the horrible irony of this conversation.
A little later, near the sun-loungers at the Tapas end of the swimming pool, some of our group were discussing whether to cancel our dinner booking in the evening and take the kids to the Millennium instead. Curiously none of the TP7 mentions this. Il était trop tard pour décommander décemment, puisque les clients désireux de dîner au Tapas avaient déjà été refoulés. We’d heard that another couple we’d met had tried unsuccessfully to book a table at the Tapas restaurant and we wondered whether it was fair of us to be taking over the place.
I returned to our apartment before Gerry had finished his tennis lesson and washed and hung out Madeleine’s pyjama top on the veranda. After preparing some lunch, I went with Fiona to pick up Madeleine and Scarlett, who was in the adjoining Baby Club, taking her on the quicker route through the grounds of the Ocean Club, which she hadn’t yet discovered. What does she mean ? And why is she mentioning this here ? Fiona and Dave had been windsurfing that morning and had seen Madeleine’s group, who had gone down to the beach for their ‘mini-sail’ activity. We heard later that they’d been on a speedboat as well as a dinghy. Fiona told me she’d spotted Ella there but not Madeleine. Didn't she ask Madeleine what she had done ? Compare with statement where neither G nor K remembers the mini-sail.
Some images are etched for all time on my brain. Madeleine that lunchtime is one of them. She was wearing an outfit I’d bought especially for her holiday: a peach-coloured smock top from Gap and some white broderie-anglaise shorts from Monsoon – a small extravagance, perhaps, but I’d pictured how lovely she would look in them and I’d been right. She was striding ahead of Fiona and me, swinging her bare arms to and fro. The weather was a little on the cool side and I remember thinking I should have brought a cardigan for her, although she seemed oblivious of the temperature, just happy and carefree. I was following her with my eyes, admiring her. I wonder now, the nausea rising in my throat, if someone else was doing the same. ...I took what has turned out to be my last photograph to date of Madeleine. Gerry and I had booked an hour-long couples’ tennis lesson with the professional coach at three-thirty, and as the courts were unoccupied, we decided to have a knock-up for half an hour first. Near the end of our lesson, as I strove desperately to improve my substandard backhand, another guest appeared, and he and Gerry decided to have a game together.
The morning continued like the others with kids’ clubs and tennis. After my lesson, I hung around on the grassy play area, watching Gerry on the court and chatting to Russell, who I’d found there. Another guest appeared with a video camera to record his three-year-old daughter playing mini-tennis. He looked a little embarrassed and laughingly remarked to us that filming in this way made him feel like a dirty old man. It led to a conversation between the three of us about paedophiles. I remember Russell talking about how everything had got a bit out of hand, that these days people were so untrusting you hardly dared speak to children you didn’t know. What he was effectively saying was that the world had become paranoid; that he wanted his daughters to grow up with confidence and a sense of freedom. It would be some days before Russell and I were able to acknowledge to each other the horrible irony of this conversation.
A little later, near the sun-loungers at the Tapas end of the swimming pool, some of our group were discussing whether to cancel our dinner booking in the evening and take the kids to the Millennium instead. Curiously none of the TP7 mentions this. Il était trop tard pour décommander décemment, puisque les clients désireux de dîner au Tapas avaient déjà été refoulés. We’d heard that another couple we’d met had tried unsuccessfully to book a table at the Tapas restaurant and we wondered whether it was fair of us to be taking over the place.
I returned to our apartment before Gerry had finished his tennis lesson and washed and hung out Madeleine’s pyjama top on the veranda. After preparing some lunch, I went with Fiona to pick up Madeleine and Scarlett, who was in the adjoining Baby Club, taking her on the quicker route through the grounds of the Ocean Club, which she hadn’t yet discovered. What does she mean ? And why is she mentioning this here ? Fiona and Dave had been windsurfing that morning and had seen Madeleine’s group, who had gone down to the beach for their ‘mini-sail’ activity. We heard later that they’d been on a speedboat as well as a dinghy. Fiona told me she’d spotted Ella there but not Madeleine. Didn't she ask Madeleine what she had done ? Compare with statement where neither G nor K remembers the mini-sail.
Some images are etched for all time on my brain. Madeleine that lunchtime is one of them. She was wearing an outfit I’d bought especially for her holiday: a peach-coloured smock top from Gap and some white broderie-anglaise shorts from Monsoon – a small extravagance, perhaps, but I’d pictured how lovely she would look in them and I’d been right. She was striding ahead of Fiona and me, swinging her bare arms to and fro. The weather was a little on the cool side and I remember thinking I should have brought a cardigan for her, although she seemed oblivious of the temperature, just happy and carefree. I was following her with my eyes, admiring her. I wonder now, the nausea rising in my throat, if someone else was doing the same. ...I took what has turned out to be my last photograph to date of Madeleine. Gerry and I had booked an hour-long couples’ tennis lesson with the professional coach at three-thirty, and as the courts were unoccupied, we decided to have a knock-up for half an hour first. Near the end of our lesson, as I strove desperately to improve my substandard backhand, another guest appeared, and he and Gerry decided to have a game together.
Cet autre villégiateur doit être le fameux dr Julian Totman, alias Crechedad, alias Tannerman.
Having arranged for Gerry to meet the children, I opted to go for a run along the beach, where I spotted the rest of our holiday group. They saw me and shouted some words of encouragement. At least, I think that’s what they were shouting! I remember feeling fleetingly disappointed that we hadn’t known they were all heading for the beach, as it might have been nice to have joined them, especially for the kids. I wondered whether Madeleine had been OK about staying behind at Mini Club when Russ or Jane had collected Ella.
I had finished my run by five-thirty at the Tapas area, where I found Madeleine and the twins already having their tea with Gerry. Madeleine was sitting on the Tapas terrace, eating. She looked so pale and worn out, I went straight up to her and asked if she was all right. Had she been OK at the club when Ella left to go to the beach? Yes, she said, but now she was really tired and wanted me to pick her up, which I did. Ten minutes later, the five of us went back to our apartment. I was carrying Madeleine. Because she was so exhausted we skipped playtime that evening. Il faut un motif pour expliquer qu'ils ne soient pas allés sur le terrain de jeu comme les autres jours.
Gerry was meeting Dave, Matt and Russell at 6pm for the men’s social tennis night. We decided we’d bath the children early, especially as they were all tired, and then I might take them down to the play area in their pyjamas for a little while, if they weren’t quite ready for their beds. Contradictoire, fatigués ou non fatigués ? Gerry left just before six, as I was drying the kids and putting on the twins’ nappies. When they were all in their PJs, we went through to the sitting room and I brought them some milk and a biscuit. (Actually, as a very special treat, tonight they had a few crisps as well.) They had had their tea half an hour before ! While they were looking at their books and playing with their games, I took a quick shower. Every other evening I’d waited until the children were asleep before showering, but as we were ahead of schedule, This doesn't make sense. If they were ahead, then the kids would fall asleep earlier and she would then be able to shower earlier. Who would leave 3 kids on their own during 10 minutes with the balcony door open (as tells DP) ? and I wanted to freshen up after my run, I thought I’d take advantage of these quiet few minutes. At around six-forty, as I was drying myself off, there was a knock on the patio doors and I heard David’s voice calling me. Swiftly wrapping my towel around me, I stepped into the sitting room.
David had popped his head round the patio door, it was open then looking for me. The others had met up with Gerry at the tennis courts and he’d mentioned we were thinking of bringing the kids to the play area. Dans une audition (septembre) elle dit qu'ils avaient renoncé au terrain de jeu.. Dave had nipped up to see if he could give me a hand taking them down. As they were all ready for bed and seemed content with their books, I decided they were probably past the stage of needing any more activity. So he went back to the tennis while I quickly dressed and sat down on the couch with the children.
Here is another of those vivid, now cherished memories: Madeleine, in her Eeyore pyjamas, sitting on my lap and cuddling in – something of which she was especially fond when she was tired. We were on one of the two blue sofas, the one facing the patio doors, with Sean and Amelie to our right. I read them a Mog story by Judith Kerr. Auntie Ail – my cousin Aileen – and Uncle Andy had bought this for Madeleine on her third birthday and it remained one of her favourites. She asked if she could wear my engagement ring, which she often liked to do. I took it off and she put it on her middle finger for a few minutes. Gerry arrived back promptly at 7pm, sat down on the other couch and we all chatted for a while. Then we shepherded our three weary little ones through to the bathroom to brush their teeth and for Madeleine to do her bedtime ‘wee-wee’.
I took them all into their bedroom. Madeleine got into her bed and then Amelie, Sean and I settled ourselves on top of it, with our backs against the wall, for our final story, If you’re happy and you know it!, another present to Madeleine, this one from Great-Auntie Janet and Great-Uncle Brian. If you’re happy and you know it, clap your hands! says the monkey. Stamp your feet! says the elephant. Compare with the tidiness of the bed photo by the PJ. ...We were in no doubt that all three would be asleep in an instant. As always, we left the door a few inches open to allow a glimmer of light into the room.
Between 7.15 and 7.30pm Gerry took his shower and I went to blow-dry my wayward fringe and put on a bit of make-up. We then sat down together in the sitting room for three-quarters of an hour or so and relaxed with a drink. We talked about the holiday and whether we’d do anything differently if we were to come again, which we had been considering.
We both thought that another time we’d quite like to stay in the apartment on our own some evenings (the other couples probably felt that way, too), have a leisurely dinner in the sitting room or on the veranda, and enjoy one of our famous early nights. In fact, we’d wondered about doing that tonight, but as it was such a short holiday, and almost over, it seemed a bit unsociable not to join in with everyone else. Another decision that could have gone either way. L'épisode rapporté par MMC eût été un bon prétexte. Dans le documentaire d'Emma Loach ils avaient pensé aller au Millenium...
Just after 8.30pm, Gerry checked on the children and then we left for the Tapas restaurant. We exited via the patio doors at the back, facing the restaurant and pool area, just as we had done the previous three nights. Lundi, mardi, mercredi, nouveauté par rapport à e qu'elle a annoncé à table et qu'a rapporté Fiona. There was a lamp on in the sitting room. The long curtains on the inside of the glass doors were drawn and the doors themselves closed but not locked. We shut behind us both the child safety gate at the top of the short flight of steps and the gate at the bottom, as we always did. Ni elle ni Gerald n'ont dit cela à la PJ. Pourquoi fermer, puisque les jumeaux ne pouvaient sortir de leurs lits ? We headed straight to the restaurant without seeing anyone else. We were the first of our party to arrive. Catching sight of Steve and Carolyn Carpenter, a couple from Gerry’s tennis group, at a small table near the one reserved for us, we stood talking to them for five minutes or so. As we chatted, our friends began to appear. Jane arrived first, at about eight-forty, followed a few minutes later by Rachael and Matt. Next came Russell, and finally Fiona, David and Dianne. Jane reported that Evie was still a little off her food, despite being her usual cheery self. By 9pm we were all seated and had begun ordering drinks, starters and main meals. She forgets completely that MO went to check around 9 !
Having arranged for Gerry to meet the children, I opted to go for a run along the beach, where I spotted the rest of our holiday group. They saw me and shouted some words of encouragement. At least, I think that’s what they were shouting! I remember feeling fleetingly disappointed that we hadn’t known they were all heading for the beach, as it might have been nice to have joined them, especially for the kids. I wondered whether Madeleine had been OK about staying behind at Mini Club when Russ or Jane had collected Ella.
I had finished my run by five-thirty at the Tapas area, where I found Madeleine and the twins already having their tea with Gerry. Madeleine was sitting on the Tapas terrace, eating. She looked so pale and worn out, I went straight up to her and asked if she was all right. Had she been OK at the club when Ella left to go to the beach? Yes, she said, but now she was really tired and wanted me to pick her up, which I did. Ten minutes later, the five of us went back to our apartment. I was carrying Madeleine. Because she was so exhausted we skipped playtime that evening. Il faut un motif pour expliquer qu'ils ne soient pas allés sur le terrain de jeu comme les autres jours.
Gerry was meeting Dave, Matt and Russell at 6pm for the men’s social tennis night. We decided we’d bath the children early, especially as they were all tired, and then I might take them down to the play area in their pyjamas for a little while, if they weren’t quite ready for their beds. Contradictoire, fatigués ou non fatigués ? Gerry left just before six, as I was drying the kids and putting on the twins’ nappies. When they were all in their PJs, we went through to the sitting room and I brought them some milk and a biscuit. (Actually, as a very special treat, tonight they had a few crisps as well.) They had had their tea half an hour before ! While they were looking at their books and playing with their games, I took a quick shower. Every other evening I’d waited until the children were asleep before showering, but as we were ahead of schedule, This doesn't make sense. If they were ahead, then the kids would fall asleep earlier and she would then be able to shower earlier. Who would leave 3 kids on their own during 10 minutes with the balcony door open (as tells DP) ? and I wanted to freshen up after my run, I thought I’d take advantage of these quiet few minutes. At around six-forty, as I was drying myself off, there was a knock on the patio doors and I heard David’s voice calling me. Swiftly wrapping my towel around me, I stepped into the sitting room.
David had popped his head round the patio door, it was open then looking for me. The others had met up with Gerry at the tennis courts and he’d mentioned we were thinking of bringing the kids to the play area. Dans une audition (septembre) elle dit qu'ils avaient renoncé au terrain de jeu.. Dave had nipped up to see if he could give me a hand taking them down. As they were all ready for bed and seemed content with their books, I decided they were probably past the stage of needing any more activity. So he went back to the tennis while I quickly dressed and sat down on the couch with the children.
Here is another of those vivid, now cherished memories: Madeleine, in her Eeyore pyjamas, sitting on my lap and cuddling in – something of which she was especially fond when she was tired. We were on one of the two blue sofas, the one facing the patio doors, with Sean and Amelie to our right. I read them a Mog story by Judith Kerr. Auntie Ail – my cousin Aileen – and Uncle Andy had bought this for Madeleine on her third birthday and it remained one of her favourites. She asked if she could wear my engagement ring, which she often liked to do. I took it off and she put it on her middle finger for a few minutes. Gerry arrived back promptly at 7pm, sat down on the other couch and we all chatted for a while. Then we shepherded our three weary little ones through to the bathroom to brush their teeth and for Madeleine to do her bedtime ‘wee-wee’.
I took them all into their bedroom. Madeleine got into her bed and then Amelie, Sean and I settled ourselves on top of it, with our backs against the wall, for our final story, If you’re happy and you know it!, another present to Madeleine, this one from Great-Auntie Janet and Great-Uncle Brian. If you’re happy and you know it, clap your hands! says the monkey. Stamp your feet! says the elephant. Compare with the tidiness of the bed photo by the PJ. ...We were in no doubt that all three would be asleep in an instant. As always, we left the door a few inches open to allow a glimmer of light into the room.
Between 7.15 and 7.30pm Gerry took his shower and I went to blow-dry my wayward fringe and put on a bit of make-up. We then sat down together in the sitting room for three-quarters of an hour or so and relaxed with a drink. We talked about the holiday and whether we’d do anything differently if we were to come again, which we had been considering.
We both thought that another time we’d quite like to stay in the apartment on our own some evenings (the other couples probably felt that way, too), have a leisurely dinner in the sitting room or on the veranda, and enjoy one of our famous early nights. In fact, we’d wondered about doing that tonight, but as it was such a short holiday, and almost over, it seemed a bit unsociable not to join in with everyone else. Another decision that could have gone either way. L'épisode rapporté par MMC eût été un bon prétexte. Dans le documentaire d'Emma Loach ils avaient pensé aller au Millenium...
Just after 8.30pm, Gerry checked on the children and then we left for the Tapas restaurant. We exited via the patio doors at the back, facing the restaurant and pool area, just as we had done the previous three nights. Lundi, mardi, mercredi, nouveauté par rapport à e qu'elle a annoncé à table et qu'a rapporté Fiona. There was a lamp on in the sitting room. The long curtains on the inside of the glass doors were drawn and the doors themselves closed but not locked. We shut behind us both the child safety gate at the top of the short flight of steps and the gate at the bottom, as we always did. Ni elle ni Gerald n'ont dit cela à la PJ. Pourquoi fermer, puisque les jumeaux ne pouvaient sortir de leurs lits ? We headed straight to the restaurant without seeing anyone else. We were the first of our party to arrive. Catching sight of Steve and Carolyn Carpenter, a couple from Gerry’s tennis group, at a small table near the one reserved for us, we stood talking to them for five minutes or so. As we chatted, our friends began to appear. Jane arrived first, at about eight-forty, followed a few minutes later by Rachael and Matt. Next came Russell, and finally Fiona, David and Dianne. Jane reported that Evie was still a little off her food, despite being her usual cheery self. By 9pm we were all seated and had begun ordering drinks, starters and main meals. She forgets completely that MO went to check around 9 !
We
mentioned to the others what Madeleine had said that morning.
Obviously, we didn’t want any of our children waking and wondering where
we were even for a few minutes, si le5s rondes étaient toutes les demi-heures, il était possible qu'un enfant pleure pendant plus de 25 minutes and
if the chances of that happening seemed remote, it was enough of a
concern to make us absolutely prompt with our checks on the kids. That
is why Gerry and I were subsequently able to be so accurate about timings.
But on that night between 8:30 and 10, G checked only once and K as well...
After ordering his food, Gerry left to do the first check just before 9.05 by his watch. He entered the apartment via the patio doors and noticed almost immediately that the children’s bedroom door was further ajar than it had been. He glanced into our room to make sure Madeleine hadn’t wandered in there, Gerald n'a pas dit ça dans ses dépositions. Il est du reste extraordinaire qu'il aille voir dans sa chambre avant d'entrer dans celle des enfants, alors que MMC est censée ne se réveiller jamais avant 1h ou 2h du matin. as she was prone to do if ever she woke in the small hours. Seeing no little body curled up in our bed, he went over to look in on the children. Madeleine was lying there, on her left-hand side, her legs under the covers, in exactly the same position as we’d left her. C'est Gerald qui a vérifié que tout le monde dormait avant de partir au restaurant. He left her on, not under the covers ! The perp hadn't done nothing yet. And the window and shutters were closed... For Gerry, this became one of those images I described earlier, pictures that fix themselves indelibly, almost photographically, in the memory. He paused for a couple of seconds to look at Madeleine and thought to himself, She’s so beautiful. After pulling the bedroom door to, restoring it to its original angle, he went to the bathroom before leaving the apartment.
As he closed the gate to the street behind him, Gerry saw Jes – Jeremy Wilkins, a guy from his tennis group – walking towards him on the other side of Rua Dr Francisco Gentil Martins, pushing his younger child in a buggy. With his meal already ordered, Gerry hesitated about pausing to speak to Jes and took a few strides before making up his mind and crossing over to say hello. He hesitates to loose time because of his food but crosses... Anyway Jes says he was the one to cross and JT confirms.
Jes explained that he was pushing his baby around in the buggy to try to get him off to sleep, and Gerry told him about our own childcare arrangement. He had told on the night before according to BOD. The conversation probably lasted only a few minutes but it was long enough for me to wonder where Gerry had got to. On his return he mentioned he’d met Jes. By this time Jane had left to make sure her daughters were OK. En route to her apartment, we learned later, she had seen Gerry and Jes on the street.
For the record, there was subsequently some uncertainty about which side of the road Jes and Gerry were actually on. Jane and Jes remember it as the same side as the Tapas entrance, whereas Gerry is sure he crossed the street.
Either way, exactly where they were standing is not crucial. What may be important is that all three of them were there. Not crucial, says the PI ! As long as JT could see the abductor ! Important that all three were there wherever they were, because they gave alibis to each other !
At 9.30pm I stood up to go and make our second check. Almost simultaneously, Matt got to his feet to see to Grace. As his apartment was right next door, he offered to look in on our three while he was there. Son appartement n'avait pas changé de place, il avait toujours été à côté de celui des MC ! One expects then MO to check listening at the window. Remarquer que Kate ne demande pas à Matthew d'entrer tout court ! I hesitated. I was quite happy to go myself but it seemed a bit silly to insist when Matt was going anyway. ‘Oh, OK, then. My turn next.’ But in fact at 10 there was no question that she would check baby Grace !
When Matt returned he reassured us, ‘All quiet!’
At 10pm I went back to the apartment myself. I entered the sitting room via the patio doors, as Gerry and Matt had done, Soudain Matt est entré ! Then this was not “right next door any more ! and
stood there, listening, for a few seconds. All was silent. Then I
noticed that the door to the children’s bedroom was open quite wide, not
how we had left it. At first I assumed that Matt must have moved it. I
walked over and gently began to pull it to. Elle ne va pas voir les enfants donc, à quoi sert d'entrer ?
Suddenly it slammed shut, as if caught by a draught. A little
surprised, I turned to see if I’d left the patio doors open and let in
the breeze. Retracing my steps, I confirmed that I hadn’t. Returning to
the children’s room, I opened the door a little, and as I did so I
glanced over at Madeleine’s bed. I couldn’t quite make her out in the
dark. Remember how GMC had seen her so lovely with pink blanket etc. But on that night between 8:30 and 10, G checked only once and K as well...
After ordering his food, Gerry left to do the first check just before 9.05 by his watch. He entered the apartment via the patio doors and noticed almost immediately that the children’s bedroom door was further ajar than it had been. He glanced into our room to make sure Madeleine hadn’t wandered in there, Gerald n'a pas dit ça dans ses dépositions. Il est du reste extraordinaire qu'il aille voir dans sa chambre avant d'entrer dans celle des enfants, alors que MMC est censée ne se réveiller jamais avant 1h ou 2h du matin. as she was prone to do if ever she woke in the small hours. Seeing no little body curled up in our bed, he went over to look in on the children. Madeleine was lying there, on her left-hand side, her legs under the covers, in exactly the same position as we’d left her. C'est Gerald qui a vérifié que tout le monde dormait avant de partir au restaurant. He left her on, not under the covers ! The perp hadn't done nothing yet. And the window and shutters were closed... For Gerry, this became one of those images I described earlier, pictures that fix themselves indelibly, almost photographically, in the memory. He paused for a couple of seconds to look at Madeleine and thought to himself, She’s so beautiful. After pulling the bedroom door to, restoring it to its original angle, he went to the bathroom before leaving the apartment.
As he closed the gate to the street behind him, Gerry saw Jes – Jeremy Wilkins, a guy from his tennis group – walking towards him on the other side of Rua Dr Francisco Gentil Martins, pushing his younger child in a buggy. With his meal already ordered, Gerry hesitated about pausing to speak to Jes and took a few strides before making up his mind and crossing over to say hello. He hesitates to loose time because of his food but crosses... Anyway Jes says he was the one to cross and JT confirms.
Jes explained that he was pushing his baby around in the buggy to try to get him off to sleep, and Gerry told him about our own childcare arrangement. He had told on the night before according to BOD. The conversation probably lasted only a few minutes but it was long enough for me to wonder where Gerry had got to. On his return he mentioned he’d met Jes. By this time Jane had left to make sure her daughters were OK. En route to her apartment, we learned later, she had seen Gerry and Jes on the street.
For the record, there was subsequently some uncertainty about which side of the road Jes and Gerry were actually on. Jane and Jes remember it as the same side as the Tapas entrance, whereas Gerry is sure he crossed the street.
Either way, exactly where they were standing is not crucial. What may be important is that all three of them were there. Not crucial, says the PI ! As long as JT could see the abductor ! Important that all three were there wherever they were, because they gave alibis to each other !
At 9.30pm I stood up to go and make our second check. Almost simultaneously, Matt got to his feet to see to Grace. As his apartment was right next door, he offered to look in on our three while he was there. Son appartement n'avait pas changé de place, il avait toujours été à côté de celui des MC ! One expects then MO to check listening at the window. Remarquer que Kate ne demande pas à Matthew d'entrer tout court ! I hesitated. I was quite happy to go myself but it seemed a bit silly to insist when Matt was going anyway. ‘Oh, OK, then. My turn next.’ But in fact at 10 there was no question that she would check baby Grace !
When Matt returned he reassured us, ‘All quiet!’
I remember looking at it and looking at it for what was probably only a few seconds, though it felt like much longer. It seems so daft now, but I didn’t switch on the light straight away. Force of habit, I suppose: taking care to avoid waking the children at all costs. Si elle réveillait, ce serait la m... When I realized Madeleine wasn’t actually there, I went through to our bedroom to see if she’d got into our bed. Si MMC n'est pas dans son lit, elle est dans celui de ses parents. That would explain the open door. N'avait-elle pas déjà une explication pour ça, Matt ? On the discovery of another empty bed, the first wave of panic hit me. As I ran back into the children’s room the closed curtains flew up in a gust of wind.
In the documentary it is when the curtains whooooosh that she sees Madeleine isn't in her bed. Very dramatic picture ! Seule la moitié de la fenêtre est ouverte cependant...
My heart lurched as I saw now that, behind them, the window was wide open and the shutters raised all the way up. Nausea, terror, disbelief, fear. Icy fear. Dear God, no! Please, no!
On Madeleine’s bed, the top right-hand ??? corners of the covers were still turned over, forming a triangle. Cuddle Cat and her pink princess blanket were lying where they’d been when we’d kissed her goodnight. I dashed over to the second bed, on the other side of the travel cots where the twins slept on, oblivious, a bit tricky with the cots and without a light... and looked out through the window. Pas dans les dépositions. I’ve no idea what I expected to see there. Madeleine of course ! There is no mention of calling for Madeleine. Kate does not tell what she saw through the bedroom window when she looked out. Kate did not go out the front door to check the street.
Refusing to acknowledge what I already knew, as if she had planned it and perhaps automatically going into a well-practised medical-emergency mode, I quickly scoured the apartment to exclude all other possibilities, mentally ticking boxes that I knew, deep down, were already ticked. I checked the wardrobe in the children’s room. I ran into the kitchen, throwing open all the cupboard doors, into our bedroom, searching the wardrobes, in and out of the bathroom, all within about fifteen seconds, before hurtling out through the patio doors and down towards Gerry and our friends. There is no mention of calling for Madeleine during this phase of the search. Remarquer la contradiction entre la supposée proximité visuelle de l'appartement et son apparent éloignement sonore. Salcedas montra que l'on entendait très bien de l'esplanade Tapas quelqu'un appelant sur la véranda du 5A. Les Moyses sur leur balcon deux étages au dessus des MC entendaient mieux qu'ils ne les distinguaient les convives attablés sur l'esplanade.
As soon as our table was in sight I started screaming. ‘Madeleine’s gone! Someone’s taken her!’ It's not “they've taken her anymore... Encore un effet des forums. Mais ce n'est pas le someone ou le they qui intrigue ici, c'est qu'au lieu de dire sobrement et efficacement que Madeleine n'est plus là, fait qui devrait inciter tout le monde à la chercher, elle identifie la cause, qui ainsi mise en relief devrait inciter le groupe à se précipiter non vers le lieu de la disparition mais sur un téléphone pour appeler à l'aide.
Everyone seemed frozen for a split second, perhaps unable, as I’d been, to process this information. Then they all jumped up from their chairs and ran towards me. I remember Gerry saying, ‘She must be there!’ By now, I was hysterical. ‘She’s not! She’s gone!’ Everybody sprinted back to our apartment, except for Dianne, who remained in the Tapas area, and Jane, who was away from the table seeing to her kids. I remember feeling frustrated when David said, ‘Let’s just check the apartment.’ I’d done that, and I knew, I knew, that Madeleine had been abducted. I ran out into the car park, flying from end to end, yelling desperately, ‘Madeleine! Madeleine!’ It was so cold and so windy. Tout ça est dû aux reproches des forums, pas un mot dans les dépositions de mai et de septembre sur ce qu'on s'attendrait qu'elle ait fait en premier lieu. L'aurait-elle fait, que Pamela Fenn l'aurait entendue.
I kept picturing her in her short-sleeved Marks and Spencer Eeyore pyjamas and feeling how chilled she would be. Bizarrely, I found myself thinking it would have been better if she’d been wearing her long-sleeved Barbie ones. Pas bizarrement peut-être, il convient d'insister sur les manches courtes car AS a vu des manches longues. Fear was shearing through my body.
In the children’s room, Gerry lowered the shutter at the open window. Rushing outside, he made the sickening discovery that it could be raised from this side, too, not just from inside as we’d thought. Yes but with some difficulty and then it doesn't stay open, it falls !!!! Encor de l'intox pour le lecteur. Gerry, David, Russell and Matt split into pairs. This is not what Fiona tells in the rogs There is no mention of who paired with whom. There is no detail of which adjacent apartment blocks they went around. There is no mention of whether they were calling or not. There is no mention of how far they went, in any direction. There is no mention of what they saw. and dashed around the adjacent apartment blocks, meeting back at our flat within a couple of minutes. Just after ten past ten, Gerry asked Matt to run to the Ocean Club’s twenty-four-hour reception to get the staff to call the police. Why not the Tapas, closer ? En fait selon Fiona et Matthew, c'est la première qui a demandé au second d'aller à la réception principale. All the screaming and shouting had now alerted other guests and staff that something was amiss and various people were beginning to appear outside the apartment, front and back. There is no mention of who these people were or where they came from. There is no mention of asking them if they had seen a little girl as they went to 5A. I vividly recall sobbing, ‘Not Madeleine, not Madeleine, not Madeleine.’ I was trying so hard to suppress the negative voice in my head tormenting me with the words, ‘She’s gone. She’s gone.’ Even now, when the dark clouds close in on me, I find myself shaking my head manically and repeating over and over again, ‘Not Madeleine, not Madeleine. Please God, not my Madeleine.’ Horrible, terrible event. Gerry and I were standing in the living room clutching each other, utterly distraught. I couldn’t help myself, let alone try to soothe Gerry, who was in a state too harrowing for me to bear, howling for his precious little girl. Comme si MMC était morte, pas comme s'il n'y avait pas une minute à perdre pour la chercher. I kept blaming myself – ‘We’ve let her down! We’ve failed her!’ – which increased Fiona’s own distress. ‘You haven’t, Kate. You haven’t,’ she insisted. By this time the Mark Warner people had rounded up as many of their colleagues as they could, off-duty staff as well as those just finishing their shifts, rousing some of them from their beds. Close to ten-thirty they activated the company’s ‘missing child search protocol’ un protocole valable pour les activités de crèche de jour and mobilized people to comb the complex and its environs. At 10.35 the police had still not arrived, Pas de mystère, personne n'avait appelé la police à cette heure-là et la police n'est pas clairvoyante. KMC le sait parfaitement, à moins qu'elle ne dise pas la vérité quand elle dit qu'elle a étudié les PJFiles, il est pro able que ce qu'elle veut donc, c'est convaincre les lecteurs. Meanwhile Mrs Fenn had called from her balcony and offered her phone, ce qui fut refusé !
so Gerry asked Matt if he would go back down to the twenty-four-hour reception and find out what was happening. John Hill, the Mark Warner resort manager, came up to the veranda behind our apartment. I remember screaming at him to do something. ‘Where are the police?’ I yelled at him. He tried to reassure me they’d be with us soon but I could tell that he, too, was finding the waiting difficult. Minutes felt like hours. Il est alors 23h50 et le premier appel à la GNR a été effectué 9 minutes auparavant à l'initiative de John Hill.
I was just so overwhelmed by fear, helplessness and frustration, I was hitting out at things, banging my fists on the metal railing of the veranda, trying to expel the intolerable pain inside me. Instead of searching for Madeleine... Gerry had been over to the Mini Club above the twenty-four-hour reception, Quand ? Personne ne l'a vu. thinking that if Madeleine had been left somewhere, she might possibly make her way back to any place that was familiar to her. Gerry’s route, what he saw, and whether he spoke to anyone is not mentioned.
Our friends were running to and from the Tapas area, pleading with people to ring the police again from there. Personne n'a mentionné cela et la seule personne qui a proposé son téléphone, à 22h30, a été éconduite?
Despite the horror of the situation, some sense of the necessity to approach the crisis calmly and methodically appeared to kick in among our friends as they tried to exert a modicum of control over the chaos. What could be done? What should be done? Aware that we were only an hour and a quarter’s drive from southern Spain, and beyond that lay the borderless continent of Europe – not to mention the short hop across the Strait of Gibraltar to north Africa – David was saying, ‘We need roadblocks set up. The borders to Spain, Morocco and Algiers need to be alerted.’ Russell later asked us for our digital photos of Madeleine and went off somewhere with our camera. Ils semblent ignorer l'espace Schengen.
Gerry, meanwhile, was running from pillar to post, There is no description of where Gerry went or what he saw. urging me to remain in the apartment with the twins so that I’d be on hand if Madeleine was found and brought back there. He’d asked Fiona to stay with me. I was in our bedroom, on my knees beside the bed, just praying and praying and praying, begging God and Our Lady to protect Madeleine and help us find her. They had heard many a supplication from me in the past but none so intense, nor so important, as these. At some point, Emma Knights, the Mark Warner customer-care manager, came in and sat on the bed near me. She was very nice and tried her best to comfort me, but my grief was so agonizing and so personal that I wasn’t sure whether I wanted her there or not. I didn’t really want anyone around me but people I knew well. Another British woman, in her late forties or early fifties, turned up on our veranda at one point and kept trying to put her arm round me. She was quite drunk and smelled of cigarettes and I remember willing her to go away. Then a lady appeared on a balcony – I’m fairly certain this was about 11pm, But it wasn't, read Gerry's statements ! Le JT de la BBC venait de finir (22h30) et, habitant juste au dessus du 5A, Pamela F ne pouvait pas ne pas entendre, elle proposa son téléphone à Gerald before the police arrived – and, in a plummy voice, inquired, ‘Can someone tell me what all the noise is about?’ I explained as clearly as I was able, given the state I was in, that my little girl had been stolen from her bed, Selon Gerald c'est à lui que PF s'est adressée to which she casually responded, ‘Oh, I see,’ almost as if she’d just been told that a can of beans had fallen off a kitchen shelf. I remember feeling both shocked and angry at this woefully inadequate and apparently unconcerned reaction. I recollect that in our outrage, Fiona and I shouted back something rather short and to the point. Au moment d'élaborer "Madeleine", Kate MC avait une sérieuse raison d'en vouloir à PF qui rapporta avoir entendu un enfant pleurer pendant plus d'une heure dans le 5A, le 1er mai, un fait que, bien qu'ils n'étaient pas là, les MC ont nié.
I wandered into the children’s bedroom several times to check on Sean and Amelie. They were both lying on their fronts in a kind of crouch, with their heads turned sideways and their knees tucked under their tummies. In spite of the noise and lights and general pandemonium, they hadn’t stirred. They’d always been sound sleepers, but this seemed unnatural. Scared for them, too, I placed the palms of my hands on their backs to check for chest movement, basically, for some sign of life. Fiona tells she placed her hand in front of their noses... Had Madeleine been given some kind of sedative to keep her quiet? Had the twins, too? Aucune remarque là-dessus à la police.
It was not until about 11.10pm that two policemen arrived from the nearest town, Lagos, about five miles away. To me they seemed bewildered and out of their depth, and I couldn’t shake the images of Tweedledum and Tweedledee out of my head. In her state of mind this is amazing! I realize how unfair this might sound, but with communication hampered by the language barrier and precious time passing, their presence did not fill me with confidence at all. We did not appreciate until later that these two officers were from the Guarda Nacional Republicana, or GNR, who are essentially military police, like the Gendarmes in France or Guardia Civil in Spain, run by the Interior Ministry. Instituée en 1801 la Guarda Nacional Republicana, GNR) est une des quatre forces de sécurité intérieure. Sous sa forme et appellation actuelle, la Garde nationale républicaine existe depuis 1911. Ayant la même facultée que la gendarmerie française, la GNR exerce des missions de police judiciaire, de police administrative, de police militaire et diverses. Dans le cadre de la police judiciaire, une loi d'août 2001 octroie à la GNR de nouvelles prérogatives en matière judiciaire. Elle est désormais compétente pour traiter 80 % des infractions sur 90 % du territoire. Cependant, certaines infractions complexes ou graves demeurent le domaine réservé de la PJ (service de police relevant du ministère de la Justice). They deal with matters like highway patrol and crowd control, and are also responsible for law enforcement in more rural areas like the Algarve, but they do not handle criminal investigations. At that stage, of course, we weren’t familiar with the various tiers of the Portuguese police system. As far as we were concerned, they were simply ‘the police’. We tried to explain what had happened. David reiterated his concerns about roadblocks and border notification and I reported my fears that all three children could have been sedated. This is in no police report on that night ! A lady called Sílvia, who worked at the Ocean Club, had arrived to help out with translation. We learned later that she was the maintenance and services manager. I remember her telling me that she had two grown-up daughters herself. She was very kind and I was glad of her help and support. I didn’t yet know that at around 9.15pm Jane had seen a man on Rua Dr Agostinho da Silva carrying a child who appeared to be asleep. Appeared more dead than alive, one must admit ! When I’d discovered that Madeleine was missing she had been in her apartment three doors along. Hearing the commotion, she had come out and discovered what was going on. Taking Fiona to one side, she told her how, after leaving the restaurant to make her first check on her children, and having passed Gerry and Jes talking on Rua Dr Gentil Martins, cela, très précisément, Jane ne l'a dit à personne, ni à Fiona, ni à Rachael, i à Russell, ni aux gendarmes, ni à Silvia Batista. she had seen this man crossing the junction with Rua Dr Agostinho da Silva, ten or fifteen feet in front of her, walking from left to right. Cela aussi n'est pas ce qu'elle a dit, selon Gerald et le gendarme ! Obviously, at the time she had thought little of it: as far as any of us knew, Madeleine was asleep in her bed, and, having just seen Gerry, Jane was well aware that he had been in our apartment only a few minutes before. How could she deduce the "before" ? G could have met J on his way TO the flat ! Quite naturally, she’d assumed the man was a father with his child, perhaps on their way home from a crèche. Selon la direction décrite, il ne pouvait revenir de la crèche de nuit à moins de grands détours. As soon as she heard about Madeleine’s disappearance, everything fell into place and she felt sick. She immediately reported this sighting to the police. Gerry was informed but, given the condition I was in, he did not share this development with me until the morning. There is no mention of the time at which the police were informed, nor whether any of the party decided to search further in the direction taken by Tannerman.
While the officers looked around, Gerry called his sister, Trisha. Il ne cherche pas, il téléphone. The timings of their first calls would be interesting ! As difficult as it was to tell our family, we knew we needed help from home, and quickly. Trisha, who is a nurse, and her husband, Sandy, are Madeleine’s godparents and two of life’s copers débrouillards. Gerry was a mess – ‘roaring like a bull’, as Trish put it – and sobbing down the phone. She could barely make out what he was saying. It was painful for me to see my strong, assertive husband unravelling, and frightening for her to hear her ‘wee bro’ in this state. I could hear him crying over and over again, ‘She’s gone, Trisha. She’s gone.’
After Gerry rang off, Trisha and Sandy called the Foreign Office in London, the British Consulate in the Algarve and the British Embassy in Lisbon, requesting assistance. It was also left to them to tell the rest of Gerry’s family. Trish drove over to their mum’s. This was not news that could be broken to her over the phone.
At 11.52pm, it is not clear why this timed precisely to 11;52 Gerry spoke to my Uncle Brian and Auntie Janet in Rothley, at my request. Janet is a woman of strong faith and I wanted her to start praying for Madeleine as soon as possible. Brian then got in touch with the duty officer at the Foreign Office in London.
The call I’d been putting off now had to be made. My mum and dad completely adore Madeleine and I just couldn’t bring myself to shatter their world. I dreaded to think what this would do to them. So, just after midnight, it was Gerry who had to tell them. Distraught, they rang friends and family who immediately rallied to their support. She doesn't tell what story (shutters/window/locked doors) they told to all these people !
I’m pretty sure that initially the GNR officers assumed Madeleine had simply wandered off by herself. By midnight, however, evidently they were concerned enough to inform the Polícia Judiciária (PJ), the main force that actually investigates crimes, under the aegis of the Ministry of Justice. The PJ were based in the larger town of Portimão, twenty miles or so from Praia da Luz, and took over an hour to arrive. It felt more like a day to Gerry and me. Eventually, shortly after 1am, two officers walked in. Once again, the events of the evening were relayed to them and brief statements taken from us. Dave asked whether we should get the media involved to increase awareness and recruit more help. The reply was swift and unambiguous. ‘No media! No media!’
People had been in and out of the apartment for the last three hours, and until one of the PJ officers stuck a piece of police tape across the doorway of the children’s room, it was Gerry who tried to make sure everyone kept clear of it. Ah! Mais pourquoi alors avoir laissé entrer et sortir du 5A après avoir expérimenté l"ouverture du volet de l'extérieur, etc ! Now one of the PJ men (I remember him very distinctly: he was quite young and, I assumed, probably quite junior) entered the room, where the twins were still asleep, with a brush and a pair of latex gloves. He also tried to take fingerprints from Gerry and me. Unsuccessfully, as it turned out: we had to provide them again the next day at the police station. Then they asked for our passports, including Madeleine’s.
Meanwhile, desperate for God’s intervention, for ourselves and for Madeleine, I asked the resort staff if they might be able to find a priest to come and pray with us and support us. I think they tried, but either they couldn’t contact anyone or there was no priest available, so I carried on praying on my own. The pain, terror and the suffocating helplessness I felt are indescribable. There just aren’t the words to adequately convey such torment. Just after 2am, I spoke to my friend Father Paul Seddon, the priest who had married Gerry and me and baptized Madeleine. He offered me words of comfort and then prayed for our little girl.
Next I called my best mate, Michelle. I needed her to get her large Catholic family praying, too. Perhaps not surprisingly, given the hour, nobody answered the home phone. Eventually, at about 3am, I managed to get hold of Michelle’s partner, Jon Corner, on his mobile. When I told him what had happened, I don’t think he believed me at first. He even said, ‘You’re joking, aren’t you?’ ... He said that Michelle was asleep, implying that it wasn’t a good moment, as if I’d phoned for a desultory chat at an inconvenient time. I urged him to wake her up. ‘No one’s listening!’ I wept. ‘Nothing’s happening!’ The world goes around KMC !
The next thing I knew, the PJ officers were heading for the front door. I felt another surge of panic. When I asked them anxiously where they were going, they said they had finished for tonight. They told us we could take whatever we needed for the twins from the children’s room. Rather more frantically, I tried to establish what would be happening next and for the remainder of the hours of darkness. The only answer the officers gave us was that they would come back in the morning. But others stayed and searched all night, even with dogs ! Les ellipses de cette narration sont incroyables. On sait à travers les PJFiles que les jumeaux ont été transportés par un gendarme dans un nouvel appartement attribué par MW, où Kate et Fiona sont restées jusqu'à l'arrivée de Gerald, vers 4h30, lorsque les deux OPJ sont partis. Pressed as to when, they said it would be after nine. And with that they were gone, leaving us to our own devices. It was incomprehensible. But it isn't true ! Why doesn't she report the police statements ? Surely that couldn’t be it for the night? The sense of helplessness and agitation just kept intensifying.
Dave, seeing Gerry’s anguish and frustration at how little was being done, knew Madeleine needed more help than she was getting. Ils l'avaient laissée seule dans un appartement dont une porte n'était pas fermée à clef et l'autre était entrouverte, méritait-elle cela ? At some point before the PJ left, a retired British couple in a nearby apartment lent him their computer and he sent an email to Sky News alerting them to the abduction of our daughter, using an address listed on their website. No media !
Evidently this wasn’t the best way of contacting Sky, because, as it turned out, Dave’s email remained buried in some inbox. Despite the fabricated tales that later emerged in certain quarters, suggesting that we had contacted the media before we’d even called the police, apparently the first Sky heard of Madeleine’s disappearance was from the Press Association, and from seeing one of our friends on GMTV, later that morning. Il est vrai qu'il y a eu une rumeur comme quoi ils avaient appelé les médias avant d'appeler la police, mais le fait qu'ils n'ont pas appelé la police tout court ! Au lieu d'appeler la police, GMC altérait la scène de crime en manipulant le volet ! En revanche comme ils ont abondamment appelé leurs proches et connaissances au RU, certains de ceux-ci ont alerté les médias... Though we knew little of what was going on at the time, it is true that the news filtered through overnight. Rachael had contacted a friend of hers at the BBC seeking help and advice and several friends les frère et soeur de GMC et l'oncle de KMC in the UK informed the press some time after 7am.
We probably could have stayed in our apartment, Il n'en était pas question, la première chose que les OPJ ont faite a été de demander à MW de loger les MC dans un autre appartement. but who would have wanted to? Looking back, it’s inexplicable, of course, that we should ever have been left in what was now a crime scene. No comment. We shouldn’t even have been allowed to take things out of the children’s bedroom. Mark Warner had prepared another flat for us on the first floor of an adjacent block, but Gerry and I were in no condition to be on our own. We couldn’t look after ourselves, let alone the twins. So the staff put up two extra cots in Fiona and David’s apartment and we carried a sleepy Sean and Amelie into their sitting room. Les témoignages du "staff" ne disent pas cela. But I needed to keep them close to me. I lowered myself down on to the couch with Fiona. She took a twin from me and we both sat there hugging my children. Holding one of my babies provided me with some much-needed comfort, albeit fleetingly.
On my insistence, Gerry and Dave went out again to look for some sign of Madeleine. They went up and down the beach in the dark, running, shouting, desperate to find something; please God, to find Madeleine herself. Gerald n'a pas mentionné cela à la police en septembre. Il a dit n'être sorti qu'une fois pour aller à la réception principale où personne ne l'a vu du reste. It was only much later that Gerry told me he’d already started remembering cases of other missing children and acknowledging the horrific possibility that Madeleine might not be found. Curious ! They're found dead usually and close by, mais on les trouve. Du reste il dit dans une interview que très peu d'enfants disparaissent à l'étranger, qu'en fait il ne connaît que le cas du petit Ben Needham. It was a possibility I could not have begun to contemplate.
I don’t know whether the Mark Warner staff were still searching. Elle surveille pourtant ! I couldn’t see anyone about by this time, comment verrait-elle de l'intérieur de l'appart ? except for a couple of GNR police cars in the road outside and a handful of officers hanging around. None of them appeared to be doing very much. I couldn’t stand the thought of nothing happening while time marched inexorably onward. Madeleine could be miles away by now. At one point I went out to speak to the police, needing some reassurance. It was difficult and exasperating as communication was so limited, and there was no reassurance to be had. I walked briskly up and down Rua Dr Agostinho da Silva, sometimes breaking into a jog, clinging to the hope that I’d spot something in the dark. The fear of Madeleine being dumped somewhere and dying of hypothermia started to hijack my thoughts. Mais cela avait l'idée des nombreux gendarmes et autres chercheurs, toute la nuit, pas seulement à 5h du matin.
Back in the apartment the cold, black night enveloped us all for what seemed like an eternity. Dianne and I sat there just staring at each other, still as statues. ‘It’s so dark,’ she said again and again. ‘I want the light to come.’ I felt exactly the same way. Gerry was stretched out on a camp bed with Amelie asleep on his chest. He kept saying, ‘Kate, we need to rest.’ He managed to drift off but only briefly, certainly for less than an hour. I didn’t even try. I couldn’t have allowed myself to entertain sleep. I felt Madeleine’s terror, and I had to keep vigil with her. I needed to be doing something, but I didn’t know where to put myself. Drôle que chercher ne lui soit pas venu à l'esprit. I wandered restlessly in and out of the room and on to the balcony.
At long last, dawn broke.
03-04>10 MAI : 460 articles dont 7 portugais (1,5%) Moyenne/jour : 57,5
Police hunt for missing girl feared abducted in Pt The Scotsman...KMC Diary (idem) - No sleep, Gerry and I started looking through the streets around 06.00 as it was starting to get light. Nobody around. Why not? Desperate. Minutes seem like hours. Outside of the apartments masses of people asking questions about that night and for descriptions of Madeleine. Long day.
Nobody from the police introduced themselves. Nobody offered us a drink or food. All the police dressed informally and smoking. No sympathy was shown and far from inspiring.
I believe my statement would have been around 15.00 and such. They allowed G to come in with me but seated behind me. Translator present.
The police officer who took us by car to the station was the one asking the questions and afterwards typed the answers on a typewriter. Morose.
We left the police station around 7.30pm to 8pm. After 15 minutes we received a call from the PJ saying we had to go back but they didn't tell us why. We turned around and flew back at around 200 kilometres an hour. Once again frightening. Did they find her? Please God. Is she dead? Prayers. We arrived—they showed us a photo of a girl they'd forgotten to show us from the close circuit TV footage. Not M. Devastating.
Version Rachael
Maddie is still missing - Observatório do Algarve
According to Lusa, the resort which consists of individual apartments, bars and shops, did not have a security system and therefore access to the resort is not controlled and there are no security cameras.
Concern grows for missing child in Algarve - Algarve Resident John H qui signale qu'il existait un dinner out service, dit qu'il n'y a pas de signe d'effraction, que rien n'a été endommagé, qu'il était douteux que l'enfant ait été enlevée, MAIS Jill R dit que les parents sont si attentifs, si dévoués à leurs enfants, etc.
Toddler missing in Algarve - The Sun Foreign Office, Jill R et John H enlèvement discutable
Where's our Maddie? - The Sun
Le communiqué du 4 mai.Idem Metro
The Sun has put up a £10,000 (15,000 euros) reward in a bid to help find little Madeleine and printed posters looking for information in Portugal. If you live in Portugal you can download a copy of the poster, by clicking here, to play your part in the search for Madeleine. FO, Jill R, John H et Trish
Madeleine's father in plea for help - Daily ExpressLe communiqué du 4 mai.Idem Metro
Missing child sparks memories of missing Ben Needham - Daily Mail
Ben 21 mois Grèce 1991, mère se souvient
Ben 21 mois Grèce 1991, mère se souvient
Toddler's parents fear Algarve abduction - guardian.co.uk
article le plus complet Jill R John H FO interrogent collègues etc.
article le plus complet Jill R John H FO interrogent collègues etc.
Three year-old feared abducted in Portugal - Telegraph
Effraction Trish John H FO
Kate and Gerry McCann returned at about 2145 GMT to find an empty bed and the apartment door and window wide open. Certainement l'info de Rachael MO, compte tenu de son contact
Video - Parents Pray For Missing Girl In Portugal - Channel 4
Pas de mention d'effraction, mais police ne fait pas assez, enfants seuls
Ms Renwick said of the holiday: “This is the first time they have done this. They are very, very anxious parents and very careful and they chose Mark Warner because it is a family-friendly resort.”
The manager of the resort, John Hill said around 60 staff and guests at the complex had searched until 4.30am while local police notified border police, Spanish police and airports.
British girl, 3, 'abducted' from resort in Algarve - Times OnlineThe manager of the resort, John Hill said around 60 staff and guests at the complex had searched until 4.30am while local police notified border police, Spanish police and airports.
Effraction Trish John H FO
British girl missing on Algarve holiday - Independent
A Mark Warner spokesman said looking after the McCanns was their "first priority", along with finding their daughter, and added that if necessary it would fly other family members out to the Ocean Club, which it has run for two years.
Speaking to the BBC later, Ms Renwick said the McCanns, holidaying with three other British families, had felt let down by police in Portugal.
"I spoke to them this morning and they said the police had done nothing overnight and they felt as if they'd been left on their own.
"They just don't know where to turn."
Toddler 'abducted' during holiday - BBC A Mark Warner spokesman said looking after the McCanns was their "first priority", along with finding their daughter, and added that if necessary it would fly other family members out to the Ocean Club, which it has run for two years.
Speaking to the BBC later, Ms Renwick said the McCanns, holidaying with three other British families, had felt let down by police in Portugal.
"I spoke to them this morning and they said the police had done nothing overnight and they felt as if they'd been left on their own.
"They just don't know where to turn."
But resort manager Mr Hill said this was not true, and that police had been searching with dogs overnight and continued to search today.
He said: "The police have their dogs in and have been conducting sweeps of the beach and rocky areas very close to the village.
He said: "The police have their dogs in and have been conducting sweeps of the beach and rocky areas very close to the village.
Kate and Gerry McCann returned at about 2145 GMT to find an empty bed and the apartment door and window wide open. Certainement l'info de Rachael MO, compte tenu de son contact
Video - Parents Pray For Missing Girl In Portugal - Channel 4
Pas de mention d'effraction, mais police ne fait pas assez, enfants seuls
Family's despair over missing tot - ITN
Le communiqué du 4 mai. Idem Daily Express
Effraction, Hill parle de verrous sophistiqués, ne dit pas mais implique enfants seuls, PJ en contact avec SOCA
Parents'distraught'over missing holiday girl - Metro
John H dit que pas d'évidence d'enlèvement, mais Jill R rapporte effraction
Parents' plea for daughter's return - Metro Le communiqué du 4 mai. Idem Daily Express
Kidnap fears for girl, 3, at MW resort - London Evening Standard
Éloge des parents avec témoignages, déclaration d'effraction de JillR.
C'est la version "Rachael". Pas de mention d'effraction mais 21h45 et porte et fenêtre ouvertes. Foreign Office officials worked through the night, liaising with Portuguese authorities to find the child. He believed the restaurant was part of the hotel complex. The Foreign Office was informed about an hour after the alarm was raised. "The girl's parents reported it straight away à qui ? and our people were rung up about it fairly quickly," said the spokesman, "The tour operators reported it."
Holiday girl kidnap fear - London Evening StandardÉloge des parents avec témoignages, déclaration d'effraction de JillR.
Little girl missing in Portugal - Leicester Mercury
La source ici est Jon C, volets pulvérisés appuyés par Jill R. John H's enlèvement douteux passe inaperçu.
Oppose discours de John H (enlèvement discutable) et celui de Jill R
British girl, 3, missing on Algarve holiday - Press Association
FO et Jill R version
British girl missing in Portugal (update) - Press Association
John H, Ambassade et Trish version
Missing 's parents 'checked her every half hour' - Press Association
John H déclare que bien que les proches aient déclaré que le volet était cassé, il n'y avait aucun signe d'effraction. Toujours Jill R...
Hunt for missing holiday girl - Press Association
Les MC trouvent que la police ne fait pas ce qu'il faudrait
Britain's sixth most popular holiday destination - Press Association
Considérations touristiques sur l'Algarve et PDL
BBC Radio Scotland - Press Association (Scotland)
La disparition est un des titres d'info.
Parents' plea for missing daughter's return - Press Association
Trish version et communiqué
Holiday company has good childcare reputation - Press Association
Description de l'OC, des crèches, des nannies, etc.
Kidnapping concern for missing girl in Portugal - Reuters
Anguish of missing girl's parents - BBC
Volunteers join Madeleine search - BBC
Search goes on for girl feared snatched - Liverpool Daily Post
Resort offered nanny service - Liverpool Daily Post
Frantic hunt as British girl feared abducted - Yorkshire Post
Parent's worst nightmare became a reality - Yorkshire Post
Lost girl hunt has chilling echoes of Ben - Yorkshire Post
Tracker dogs join hunt for Madeleine - Yorkshire Evening Post
Fears For Holiday Girl Abducted From Her Bed - The Scotsman
Police seal off resort in hunt for missing Madeleine - The Scotsman
Please Let Maddie Come Home to Us - Daily Record
late-night search for Madeleine - breakingnews.ie
'Evidence indicates Madeleine was kidnapped' - Irish Examiner
Police scour PT resort for missing toddler Madeleine - Irish Examiner
Police Fear British Girl Was Abducted - Irish Examiner
Missing Madeleine's Father Makes Plea For Help - Irish Examiner
Missing UK Girl Kidnapped in Portugal: Police - Reuters
British girl, 3, ‘snatched in Portugal - Gulf Times
'Missing UK girl kidnapped in Portugal' - IOL
Papers ponder 'holiday abduction'. BBC
Volunteers join Madeleine search. BBC
Madeleine’s father in plea for help. Metro
Holidaymakers tell of late-night search for Madel...breakingNEWS.ie
Mum Went to Check on Kids...and Ran Out Screaming. The Mirror
Holiday Girl 3 Taken As She Slept Daily Express & Daily Star
British girl, 3, ‘snatched in Portugal. Gulf Times
Holiday Apartment was Easy to Attack. DdN
Where is Maddie? Jornal de Notícias
Les vacanciers cherchent. L'idée d'enlèvement s'installe pour durer.
MADELEINE
06 : 59 Titres dont 2 PT
A Missing Girl is the Parents’ Responsibility - Diário de Notícias
MADELEINE:
It was Sunday, and despite my fragility I was determined to go to Mass. The discovery that it was also Mothers’ Day in Portugal made it even more relevant and important. From the moment Madeleine had gone, I’d turned instinctively to God and to Mary, feeling a deep need to pray, and to get as many other people as possible to pray, too. I believed it would make a difference. Although in the early days I struggled to comprehend what had happened to Madeleine, and to us, I’ve never believed it was God’s fault, or that He ‘allowed’ it to happen. I was just confused that He had apparently not heeded the prayer I’d offered every night for my family: ‘Thank you God for bringing Gerry, Madeleine, Sean and Amelie into my life. Please keep them all safe, healthy and happy. Amen.’ Please keep them all safe. It must be said that when I’d prayed for their safety I’d been thinking: please don’t let them fall off something and bang their heads, or please don’t let them be involved in a car accident. I’d never considered anything as horrific as my child being stolen. that's where she failed, she didn't pray God to keep her children safe from abduction ! But I had kind of assumed my prayer would cover every eventuality. Now, in spite of not knowing where Madeleine was or who she was with, I tried to reassure myself that God was still keeping her safe.
We all, family and friends, went to Mass at the local church, Nossa Senhora da Luz, in the centre of the village. Given the state we were in, and with the waiting press primed to follow our every move, on this occasion we were taken down by car. Alex Woolfall, well aware that we were not going to be able to go anywhere without a huge media entourage, had decided he had better accompany us, too. ...green, the colour of hope in Portugal,...yellow, the colour that has come to symbolize hope for the safe return of a loved one in the US and latterly in Britain, too.
That first Sunday saw two further arrivals in Luz: my childhood friends Michelle and Nicky both wanted to be with me, and both were naturally very upset, for Madeleine and for me.
... So grateful were we to have our nearest and dearest around us, we failed to notice that our ballooning party of supporters was becoming unwieldy. It took Alan Pike, who was keeping a watchful eye on us and our family and friends, to gently draw our attention to this situation. ... the presence of so many loved ones, some of them in almost as bad a state as we were, was proving counter-productive. Alan pointed out that all our family and friends had their own needs but that ours, Gerry’s and mine, had to be paramount...He felt, too, that we would function better ourselves within a more streamlined, focused team of helpers. Listening to Alan, it all seemed so obvious. But of course, it left us with the problem of deciding who should go and who should remain, not to mention telling them.When it came to talking about it, however, we discovered that Alan, who had spent time with our friends and family as well as with us, had already broached this subject with them, which made it all much easier. Having said that, we ended up getting down to the nitty-gritty rather earlier than anticipated – that Sunday evening, in fact – and not in the way we had planned, either. Gerry had gone round to one of the other apartments our party was occupying, where apparently something was said that annoyed him, precipitating the discussion we’d intended to hold in a rather calmer atmosphere. We can laugh about it now, but at the time, Gerry and I couldn’t laugh at anything. After the bombshell had been dropped, Gerry’s mum had turned to my mum and said, ‘Well, Sue – it looks as if we’re on the “Granny Express” home!’ We also heard that after Gerry left, there had been a few cracks about ‘Big Brother evictions’. However bleak the situation, whenever a roomful of Glaswegians and Liverpudlians is gathered together, you can guarantee some gallows humour will break through. Still, a decision had to be made and, as it turned out, it was the right one for everybody.
As some of our family and friends prepared to return to the UK in a day or so, we were beginning to become aware of the help being offered locally. We had that Sunday morning experienced the warmth and sympathy of the Portuguese community and soon we would find supporters among the British expatriates living permanently in Praia da Luz, who organized a search of the area around Luz the next morning, Monday 7 May. The volunteers were joined by most of our family and friends, keen to do something practical to help while Gerry and I were tied up with Andy Bowes attaché de presse de l'ambassade and Alex Woolfall. Once we were left with our leaner support group, we allocated general roles: Trisha and Nicky took over the childcare, while Sandy and Michael dealt with mail, admin and finances. Trish and Sandy ended up staying with us for three solid months. I don’t know what we’d have done without them.
In fact I would soon be advised by British police experts to try to stay as calm as possible and not to show any emotion in public, so it was probably no bad thing that my feelings seemed to be temporarily on holiday that day. The thinking behind this advice was that Madeleine’s abductor might get some kind of perverted kick out of my distress and perhaps change his behaviour in some way. De quelle manière ? Very much criticized by Pat Brown. Of course we were terrified by the implications of this theory. It meant that quite natural actions or expressions of emotion caught on camera could potentially jeopardize Madeleine’s safety.
Alex and Andy had arranged for the appeal to be handled on a ‘pooled’ basis, which meant that one company, in this instance the BBC, would be chosen to record it and they would then distribute the film to all the other media outlets. This was a system we would use often, because as well as significantly reducing the time we would otherwise have spent recording separate statements and interviews, or facing a barrage of cameras and microphones, it involved dealing with only one reporter and one cameraman, which made the whole experience less intimidating. ..
British consul Bill Henderson and Ambassador John Buck were visiting us on a fairly regular basis and we were seeing the Leicestershire FLOs every day. The flow of information, however, was slow and limited. The Portuguese police were divulging very little to the British police and vetoing many of their suggestions – bringing out specialist dogs, for example, or staging a reconstruction. Tiens, on croyait que les chiens étaient incredibly unreliable... Une reconstruction n'est pas une reconstitution. What was forthcoming, particularly in terms of the quality and depth of the investigation, would become increasingly concerning to us. Grounds for elimination, for instance, often seemed very flimsy. I remember Gerry and me exchanging quizzical looks after the FLOs tried to explain how one couple had been ruled out of the inquiry. When we asked them if they were comfortable with this decision, there was an awkward pause before they replied, ‘No, not really. These guys didn't speak Portuguese.
Maddy Mum's New Appeal - Daily Mirror
Courage, Courage, Courage - Daily Mirror
'Corrupt cops do not want to know' - Daily Mirror
I saw suspects with a girl like her - Daily Express
Did kidnapper slip out of the country?- Daily Express
Please. . . don't stop praying for my Maddy - Daily Star
Police admit: 'We don't know if Maddy is alive' - Daily Mail
Wasted days in hunt for Maddy - Daily Mail
The nightmare of the MCs: There but for the grace of God go us - Daily Mail
Full text of the McCanns' appeal to Maddy's kidnapper - Daily Mail
Mother appeals to Madeleine's abductor - Guardian
Sketch of suspect held back in case panics·3 PO fly to PT to help - Guardian
Clues That Point To A History Of Criminal Actions - Telegraph
Leaving through the front door, after forcing entry through the window, indicates that he or she was most likely carrying the sleeping child and was fairly confident of not encountering one of the parents.
09 : 83 Titres dont 1 PT
[No title] - Diocese do Algarve
Madeleine search hits web - The Sun
'Cuddle Cat' eases mum's pain - The Sun
Prowler spotted before ;Scruffy weirdo hunted over brit tot - The Sun
Prowler fiddled with window - The Sun
Maddie cops have e-fit - The Sun
Voice of the Daily Mirror: Wait and pray - Daily Mirror
A Day In The Grief Of The McCanns - Daily Mirror
Optimism amid the torment of 'if onlys' - Daily Mirror
Soccer Stars In TV Please For Tot - Daily Mirror
Clueless - Daily Mirror
Maddy 'was snatched to order' - Daily Express
No sure way to keep your loved ones safe - Daily Express
Sad Ronaldo please help little Maddy - Daily Star
Corrie axe kidnap plot - Daily Star
MMC's parents 'had left her alone before during their holiday' - Daily Mail
British paedophile links investigated in Madeleine hunt - Daily Mail
Shattered parents are given church keys to pray alone - Daily Mail
98 words that broke my heart - Daily Mail
What we do and don't know about the kidnapping case - Guardian
British experts fly to Portugal to help in hunt for Madeleine - Guardian
Madeleine police hit back after criticism - Guardian
CCTV clue in search for Madeleine - Guardian
Hunt For Madeleine: Police 'Blunders' - Guardian (Wrap)
What The Portuguese Police Must Do - Telegraph
The Portuguese Media's Response - Telegraph
Police in accordance with Portuguese laws - Telegraph
British experts join hunt for Madeleine - Telegraph
Parents still hope for Madeleine's safe return - Telegraph
Misplaced trust led to Madeleine's betrayal - Telegraph
Aunt says Madeleine may have been taken into Spain - Times
Algarve police target British paedophiles - Times
Angry Portuguese ask why couple left the children alone - Times
Would you leave your child alone? - Times
Experts on tracing paedophiles fly out to boost search for girl - Times
Corrie axes kidnap storyline - Times Online
Paedophile ring focus to Madeleine hunt - Times Online
British police join inquiry into Madeleine's disappearance - Independent
Singular horror, Media frenzy, disturbing facts about missing - Independent
There is a lack of clarity about salient facts such as whether the apartment that Madeleine and her siblings were in was locked, or whether the windows were open.
Ronaldo lance un appel à la TV. La PJ, critiquée, fait part de centaines de pistes suivies. Chaos et prières. Les médias se plaignent de l'absence de portrait-robot d'un suspect possible, de ne pas savoir comment était habillée MMC, si l'appartement était vraiment fermé à clef, si la fenêtre était ouverte, ils s'indignent du manque de checkpoint rapide à la frontière avec l'Espagne (Les Brits n'étant pas dans Schengen ont du mal à se représenter ce que sont les frontières internes). La police UK déclare que la scène du crime est inexploitable sans se demander pourquoi.
Street Rethinks Child Kidnap Plot - BBC
The Search For Madeleine Goes On - BBC
[Police criticised] NI devolution celebrated in press - BBC
Missing Maddy - The View From Luz - Sky
Footballers Plead For Return Of Madeleine - Sky
"It's Not An Option To Lose Madeleine' - Sky
Concerns Remain Over Madeleine Police Operation - Sky
Police reveal details of Maddy search - ITN
Paedophile link probed in Madeleine hunt - ITN
Corrie kidnap plot shelved - ITN
'Cracker' experts search for Maddie - Metro
'Left her alone before during their holiday - London Evening Standard
'Everything possible is being done' - Leicester Mercury
County link to Maddy kidnap? - Leicester Mercury
School's prayers for the family - Leicester Mercury
Hundreds offer support to madeleine and her family - Leicester Mercury
Help us to find Madeleine - Liverpool Daily Post
Formby vigil for missing Maddie - Liverpool Confidential
British Ambassador defends police in hunt for Madeleine - Yorkshire Post
My heart goes out to mum of abducted girl' - Sheffield Star
There is no holiday from parental responsibilities - Hexham Courant
I’m going to the place where little Madeleine went missing – Hereford Times
Police on standby in Madeleine case - Bournemouth Echo
Madeleine: 350 Possible Leads - The Scotsman
Missing girl's parents 'very grateful' to police for efforts - The Scotsman
Ronaldo's TV Plea Over Madeliene [sic] - Daily Record
Cracker pair in Madeleine search - Evening Times (Scotland)
'Cracker' experts join hunt for Madeleine - Aberdeen Evening Express
British police join inquiry into Madeleine's disappearance - Belfast Telegraph
[Cristiano Ronaldo Appeal] - Belfast Telegraph
Mass in Dungloe for Maddy - Donegal Democrat
Paedophile experts flown in to help hunt for Madeleine - Irish Independent
Star Ronaldo issues appeal for missing girl - Irish Independent
Madeleine suspect picture 'like an egg with hair' - breakingNEWS.ie
Toddler's family say criticism 'unhelpful' - RTÉ News
La colère monte dans les médias contre la prétendue inexpérience de la PJ (mais en 17 ans il n'y a pas eu un seul enlèvement en Algarve) et l'absence d'indice.
Police defend investigation into missing toddler - Euronews
Child crime experts join Madeleine hunt - Reuters
Portuguese police hit back over Madeleine - Reuters
CHRONOLOGY-The disappearance of Madeleine McCann - Reuters
Hunt for Madeleine stirs memories of Ben Needham - Reuters
Ronaldo appeals for Madeleine - Reuters
Tourists, PT Locals Share Anguish as Cops Hunt for Toddler - Fox News
Sex predator fear - Maddie - NSW (Australia) Telegraph
MADELEINE
10 : 85 Titres
Who are the McCanns? - Algarve Resident
Special Report: Timeline of the events - Algarve Resident
The Portuguese police force - Algarve Resident
Help from the UK - Algarve Resident
Resort helps family - Algarve Resident
Praia da Luz: sleepy town? - Algarve Resident
Shockwaves sent across the Algarve - Algarve Resident
Coronation Street drops baby kidnap storyline - Algarve Resident
Callers to UK Crimestoppers provide “useful info" - Algarve Resident
A community comes together - Algarve Resident
Tourism Board involved - Algarve Resident
Public vigil - Algarve Resident
Rewards offered - Algarve Resident
Celtic Armbands for Maddie - The Sun
Maddie's Parents Staying Positive - The Sun
Maddie cops hunt 130 Brit paedos: New twist on lost tot - The Sun
Algarve 'haven' for paedophiles - The Sun
How Will They Ever Catch Him With This? - Daily Mirror
Family Rally Round Maddy's Mum - Daily Mirror
Right not to berate, by Brian Reade - Daily Mirror
Maddy had been left alone before' - Daily Express
Maddy spotted with woman at garage? - Daily Express
Put justice before our right to know - Daily Express
17 years last abduction Algarve, and again the victim was British - Daily Mail
Is it EVER safe to leave a child? - Daily Mail
E-fit of abductor nothing more than an egg with a side parting' - Daily Mail
Search for Madeleine - police release pyjamas she was wearing - Daily Mail
The search for Madeleine: a week of hope and heartbreak - Daily Mail
Madeleine's parents didn't want to leave her with a stranger - Daily Mail
Praia da Luz prays for Madeleine - Guardian.co.uk
Police follow fresh leads in search for Madeleine - Guardian
Police 'winding down' Madeleine search - Guardian
MC family call for end to criticism of missing girl's parents - Guardian
Sun Stokes Fear of Travelling Paedophiles - guardian.co.uk (The Wrap)
Madeleine hunt 'will have to be cut back' - Telegraph
Madeleine police have three prime suspects - Telegraph
Madeleine 'snatched by two men and a woman' - Telegraph
'What about our missing children?' - Telegraph
We all hope for a miracle for Maddy - Telegraph
Four 'very useful' leads boost Madeleine hunt - Telegraph
Police Hunt Coming To An End - Telegraph
Madeleine 'abducted to order by an international child sex gang' - Times
Police image of suspect looks like an ‘egg with hair’ - Times
Madeleine police focus on trio of prime suspects - Times Online
David Hill: Speed is everything - and the police were too slow - Independent
[Search frustrations] Blair's departure dominates press - BBC
La presse uk qualifie la recherche de "pagaille et ratage". The Sun annonce qu'une liste de 130 pédophiles UK a été remise à la PJ qui, selon le Times, aurait été enlevée sur commande.
Police: "We Have A Suspect In Mind" - Sky
£100,000 Reward For Madeleine's Return - Sky
Uncle Calls For Missing Madeleine's Release - Sky
Latest News On Madeleine - Sky
Madeleine's parents 'remain positive' - ITN
Police wind down Madeleine case - ITN
Maddie hunt focuses on garage trio - Metro
Four fresh leads in hunt for Maddie - Metro
L'acrimonie pleut sur la PJ, sans expérience et sans écoute et sur le Portugal, dépourvu de fichier "prédateurs sexuels" qui en fait un aimant pour la pédophilie "from Britain and Europe" (remarquer qu'il n'est pas dit "from the rest of Europe"... et le Brexit n'est même pas dans l'air du temps)
£1m reward in hunt for Maddie - Metro
No stone unturned in the search for MMC - London Evening Standard
Family still have hope for Maddy - Leicester Mercury
Maddie's parents bring in Bulger tec - Liverpool Daily Post
We're still hoping and stay positive, say couple - Liverpool Daily Post
Statement For Madeleine - evertonfc.com
Parents still hope for girl's return - Yorkshire Post
Corrie plot axed as police look for Maddy - Bolton News
Mums' hearts go out to family - Herald Post (Stockton & Billingham)
Prayers for Maddy - Melton (Mowbray) Times
Is it ever right to leave your child alone? - Northampton Evening Telegraph
MP lashes out at Portuguese cops - Essex Evening Echo
Disappearance of M%C Web Appeal for Information - (Isle of Wight)
New Clues in Madeleine Case - The Scotsman
Madeleine Hunt Halts Tourism Drive - The Scotsman
Criticising Portuguese system will not help find Madeleine - The Scotsman
Gang of three 'could have taken Maddy' - Evening Times (Scotland)
Fresh tip-offs in hunt for Maddy - Aberdeen Evening Express
Doubt over conduct of local police - Belfast Telegraph
Eurovision Plea By Maddy's Ulster Aunt - Belfast Telegraph
We'll give the little darlings everything except our time - Irish Independent
Portuguese Police Wind Down Search For UK Girl - Reuters
Police maintain search for Madeleine - Euro Weekly News
MMC Spotted On Video With Woman At Petrol Station? - Post Chronical
Madeleine 'abducted to order', by David Brown - news.com.au
Missing Girl's Parents Try To Be Positive - IOL
MADELEINE
Peu de détails hormis ce qu'a dit le FO, qui insiste sur la disparition signalée immédiatement.
John Hill dit que l'enlèvement est discutable, mais Jill R que les parents en sont certains.
Holiday girl, 3, snatched from bed - Liverpool Daily Post La source ici est Jon C, volets pulvérisés appuyés par Jill R. John H's enlèvement douteux passe inaperçu.
Queniborough girl, 3, feared abducted in PT - MeltonTimes
Source Rachael, 9h45 et porte/fenêtre ouverts
Source Rachael, 9h45 et porte/fenêtre ouverts
Frantic hunt as British girl feared abducted - Yorkshire Post
La source est Trish. Mention du communiqué du 4 au soir.
La source est Trish. Mention du communiqué du 4 au soir.
The Algarve a popular choice for holidaying Britons - Yorkshire Post
La source est Trish, effraction donc et mention du communiqué
La source est Trish, effraction donc et mention du communiqué
Glasgow Doctor's Daughter Snatched - Evening Times (Scotland)
Effraction Trish, Jill et F0. Fausse info sur Gerald chirurgien. La remarque de John H sur les verrous sophistiqués tombe à plat (puisque effraction par fenêtre)
Staff searched for missing British girl until 4.30 - The IrishExaminer Effraction Trish, Jill et F0. Fausse info sur Gerald chirurgien. La remarque de John H sur les verrous sophistiqués tombe à plat (puisque effraction par fenêtre)
Oppose discours de John H (enlèvement discutable) et celui de Jill R
British girl, 3, missing on Algarve holiday - Press Association
FO et Jill R version
British girl missing in Portugal (update) - Press Association
John H, Ambassade et Trish version
Missing 's parents 'checked her every half hour' - Press Association
Effraction entre les rondes de 9h30 et 10h selon Trish. Pas de Tannerman legend donc.. Pas encore. Elle révèle le trait distinctif qu'est le colobome. Elle blâme l'inefficacité de la police, mais loue le personnel de MW et les touristes.
Frantic search for missing holiday girl, 3 - Press Association John H déclare que bien que les proches aient déclaré que le volet était cassé, il n'y avait aucun signe d'effraction. Toujours Jill R...
Hunt for missing holiday girl - Press Association
Les MC trouvent que la police ne fait pas ce qu'il faudrait
Britain's sixth most popular holiday destination - Press Association
Considérations touristiques sur l'Algarve et PDL
BBC Radio Scotland - Press Association (Scotland)
La disparition est un des titres d'info.
Parents' plea for missing daughter's return - Press Association
Trish version et communiqué
Holiday company has good childcare reputation - Press Association
Description de l'OC, des crèches, des nannies, etc.
Kidnapping concern for missing girl in Portugal - Reuters
En résumé :
Des membres de la famille MC et des médias britanniques critiquent la police portugaise pour ce qu'ils appellent une "réponse initiale lente", l'erreur de ne pas avoir pris d'emblée la disparition au sérieux, l'erreur de ne pas avoir informé les ports et les frontières à temps et l'erreur de ne pas avoir protégé la scène du crime, ce qui peut avoir entraîné la perte d'indices cruciaux.
Qu'est-ce qui prouve que l'appartement 5A était bien la scène du crime, puisqu'aucune trace d'effraction n'a été découverte ?
Qu'est-ce qui prouve que l'appartement 5A était bien la scène du crime, puisqu'aucune trace d'effraction n'a été découverte ?
MADELEINE
As soon as it was light Gerry and I resumed our search.
On ne peut pas se remettre à faire une chose qu'on n'a pas commencé à faire ! Kate admet qu'ils n'ont pas cherché physiquement dans une interview BBC ! Tout ce qui suit a été rajouté à cause des forums.
We went up and down roads we’d never seen before, having barely left the Ocean Club complex all week. We jumped over walls and raked through undergrowth. We looked in ditches and holes. Ils regardent... ils n'appellent pas...All was quiet apart from the sound of barking dogs, which added to the eeriness of the atmosphere. I remember opening a big dumpster-type bin and saying to myself, please God, don’t let her be in here. The most striking and horrific thing about all this was that we were completely alone. Nobody else, it seemed, was out looking for Madeleine. Just us, her parents. This is usually so ! Sometimes there's only one parent even... This is not fair because the police searched all night, then went to have some understandable rest !
We must have been out for at least an hour This unique search lasted 1 hour ! Probablement entre 5 et 6 (gap sans communications téléphoniques) before returning to David and Fiona’s apartment,... That morning I learned of the man Jane had seen in the street. So KMC didn't take part in the elaboration of the first timeline, elle n'a même pas vu, alors que c'était sous son nez ?. Although Gerry and our friends had been trying to protect me from further distress by not telling me about this sooner, when they did I was strangely relieved. Ambiguous remark Très soulagée que Jane ait eu la bonne idée de Tannerman, seul indice d'enlèvement pendant 6 ans ! Madeleine hadn’t just disappeared off the face of the earth. There was something to work on. This man was around thirty-five, forty years old, dark-haired and of southern European or Mediterranean appearance. His everyday clothes – beige or gold-coloured trousers and a dark jacket – gave Jane the impression he was not a tourist. He was carrying the sleeping child horizontally across his arms, the child’s legs dangling. JT didn't say the child was sleeping ! How could she know that ? The position is the one of a corpse ! Though she had no reason, at that point, to be at all suspicious of him, clearly there was something odd enough about what she saw for her to register the image. While he had been dressed for the cold evening, the child was barefoot and not covered by a blanket. Although Jane had never seen or known about Madeleine’s Eeyore pyjamas, her description of this child’s night clothes – light-coloured pink or white pyjamas with a ‘trailing’ or floral pattern and turn-ups on the bottoms – matched Madeleine’s almost exactly. From the style of these pyjamas, she had also assumed the child was a girl.
There was little doubt in my mind then, nor is there now, that what Jane saw was Madeleine’s abductor taking her away. But in spite of the fact that she’d reported this to both the GNR and PJ straight away, it would be 25 May before her description of the man and child was released to the press. There's an explanation : the man had no face and neither the carried child had !
I have never felt any anger or disappointment whatsoever towards Jane. On the contrary, I was grateful someone had seen something. I’m sure this experience has been a terrible burden for her to carry around with her every day since and I do feel for her. C'est peut-être encore pire d'avoir été par deux fois là et de n'avoir rien vu, rien entendu...
There have been many occasions when I have visualized myself walking up that road instead of Jane. Would I even have noticed the man and child? Seen that it was my daughter? Would it have dawned on me, out of the blue, what was happening? If not, after going into the apartment and finding Madeleine missing, would I instantly have made the connection and been able to chase after him? I’ve even pictured myself catching up with him and grabbing him by the shoulder. Saving Madeleine.
Around 8am, I started to receive text messages and calls from friends back in the UK who were seeing and hearing news bulletins – messages like: ‘Please tell me it’s not your Madeleine.’
At about nine o’clock we all went out on to Rua Dr Agostinho da Silva to find out what was going on and to look out for the PJ. The GNR patrol was still in evidence, although again, there didn’t seem to be much sense of urgency. So what had the police been doing? It was hard to tell. According to the PJ files, to which we did not have access until August 2008, two patrol dogs were brought to Praia da Luz at 2am on 4 May and four search-and-rescue dogs at 8am. I don’t remember seeing any police dogs until the morning, and if there were any specific police searches overnight, they were not apparent. Comment l'aurait-elle su, puisqu'ils étaient à l'intérieur ? Does she suggest these searches didn't exist ? The only searches I was aware of were those carried out by ourselves, fellow guests and the Mark Warner staff. Là elle accuse carrément la police de ne pas avoir cherché.
According to the files, the tracker dogs de Queluz did not go out until 11pm on 4 May. At some point in the first twenty-four hours (I could not say when exactly, but probably that morning) I recall one of the GNR patrol officers asking us for some of Madeleine’s clothing or belongings to enable these dogs to identify her scent. I fetched the pink princess blanket she took to bed with her every night, which they took, and some of her clothes, which they didn’t. Elle les a vus donc, puisqu'elle a donné la couverture et la serviette de bain, qu'elle ne mentionne pas, mais que les maîtres-chiens mentionnent. C'était vers 2h le matin du 4 mai, et non pas dans la matinée.
Several people I recognized as other Mark Warner guests were milling around and a few of the men offered to help. Steve Carpenter told us that he had approached John Hill, the resort manager, insisting that all the apartments, occupied or not (and as it was the low season, many were empty), should be opened up and searched. There had been no house-to-house inquiries at all and there wouldn’t be for some hours to come. To this day, I don’t know that this task has been completed. There's a report dans les files, elle les a mal lues.
A lady from an apartment across Rua Dr Gentil Martins, overlooking our little side gate, came over to speak to us. She said that the previous night she had seen a car going up the Rocha Negra – the black, volcanic cliff that dominates the village. There was a track leading to the Rocha Negra but nobody remembered ever having noticed any vehicle that far up in the daytime, let alone at night. This immediately conjured visions of Madeleine being disposed of somewhere on the overhanging cliff. I went to tell one of the police officers who was able to speak a little English. He was quite dismissive. It would have been one of the GNR men checking the area, he said. The texts and phone calls kept coming. By this time our friend Jon Corner, a creative director in media production in Liverpool, was circulating photographs and video footage of Madeleine to the police, Interpol and broadcasting and newspaper news desks. This was in accordance with the standard advice of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in the US, which advocates getting an image of a missing child into the public domain as soon as possible. But this was not in accordance with the Portuguese principles qui avait demandé "no médias" !
A forensic team also arrived from Lisbon that Friday. All we saw of them were TV images of a woman in her street clothes dusting the shutters outside the children’s room. Her shoulder-length hair was blowing free and I seem to recall that in some shots she wasn’t wearing any gloves, either.
As soon as it was light Gerry and I resumed our search.
On ne peut pas se remettre à faire une chose qu'on n'a pas commencé à faire ! Kate admet qu'ils n'ont pas cherché physiquement dans une interview BBC ! Tout ce qui suit a été rajouté à cause des forums.
We went up and down roads we’d never seen before, having barely left the Ocean Club complex all week. We jumped over walls and raked through undergrowth. We looked in ditches and holes. Ils regardent... ils n'appellent pas...All was quiet apart from the sound of barking dogs, which added to the eeriness of the atmosphere. I remember opening a big dumpster-type bin and saying to myself, please God, don’t let her be in here. The most striking and horrific thing about all this was that we were completely alone. Nobody else, it seemed, was out looking for Madeleine. Just us, her parents. This is usually so ! Sometimes there's only one parent even... This is not fair because the police searched all night, then went to have some understandable rest !
We must have been out for at least an hour This unique search lasted 1 hour ! Probablement entre 5 et 6 (gap sans communications téléphoniques) before returning to David and Fiona’s apartment,... That morning I learned of the man Jane had seen in the street. So KMC didn't take part in the elaboration of the first timeline, elle n'a même pas vu, alors que c'était sous son nez ?. Although Gerry and our friends had been trying to protect me from further distress by not telling me about this sooner, when they did I was strangely relieved. Ambiguous remark Très soulagée que Jane ait eu la bonne idée de Tannerman, seul indice d'enlèvement pendant 6 ans ! Madeleine hadn’t just disappeared off the face of the earth. There was something to work on. This man was around thirty-five, forty years old, dark-haired and of southern European or Mediterranean appearance. His everyday clothes – beige or gold-coloured trousers and a dark jacket – gave Jane the impression he was not a tourist. He was carrying the sleeping child horizontally across his arms, the child’s legs dangling. JT didn't say the child was sleeping ! How could she know that ? The position is the one of a corpse ! Though she had no reason, at that point, to be at all suspicious of him, clearly there was something odd enough about what she saw for her to register the image. While he had been dressed for the cold evening, the child was barefoot and not covered by a blanket. Although Jane had never seen or known about Madeleine’s Eeyore pyjamas, her description of this child’s night clothes – light-coloured pink or white pyjamas with a ‘trailing’ or floral pattern and turn-ups on the bottoms – matched Madeleine’s almost exactly. From the style of these pyjamas, she had also assumed the child was a girl.
There was little doubt in my mind then, nor is there now, that what Jane saw was Madeleine’s abductor taking her away. But in spite of the fact that she’d reported this to both the GNR and PJ straight away, it would be 25 May before her description of the man and child was released to the press. There's an explanation : the man had no face and neither the carried child had !
I have never felt any anger or disappointment whatsoever towards Jane. On the contrary, I was grateful someone had seen something. I’m sure this experience has been a terrible burden for her to carry around with her every day since and I do feel for her. C'est peut-être encore pire d'avoir été par deux fois là et de n'avoir rien vu, rien entendu...
There have been many occasions when I have visualized myself walking up that road instead of Jane. Would I even have noticed the man and child? Seen that it was my daughter? Would it have dawned on me, out of the blue, what was happening? If not, after going into the apartment and finding Madeleine missing, would I instantly have made the connection and been able to chase after him? I’ve even pictured myself catching up with him and grabbing him by the shoulder. Saving Madeleine.
Around 8am, I started to receive text messages and calls from friends back in the UK who were seeing and hearing news bulletins – messages like: ‘Please tell me it’s not your Madeleine.’
At about nine o’clock we all went out on to Rua Dr Agostinho da Silva to find out what was going on and to look out for the PJ. The GNR patrol was still in evidence, although again, there didn’t seem to be much sense of urgency. So what had the police been doing? It was hard to tell. According to the PJ files, to which we did not have access until August 2008, two patrol dogs were brought to Praia da Luz at 2am on 4 May and four search-and-rescue dogs at 8am. I don’t remember seeing any police dogs until the morning, and if there were any specific police searches overnight, they were not apparent. Comment l'aurait-elle su, puisqu'ils étaient à l'intérieur ? Does she suggest these searches didn't exist ? The only searches I was aware of were those carried out by ourselves, fellow guests and the Mark Warner staff. Là elle accuse carrément la police de ne pas avoir cherché.
According to the files, the tracker dogs de Queluz did not go out until 11pm on 4 May. At some point in the first twenty-four hours (I could not say when exactly, but probably that morning) I recall one of the GNR patrol officers asking us for some of Madeleine’s clothing or belongings to enable these dogs to identify her scent. I fetched the pink princess blanket she took to bed with her every night, which they took, and some of her clothes, which they didn’t. Elle les a vus donc, puisqu'elle a donné la couverture et la serviette de bain, qu'elle ne mentionne pas, mais que les maîtres-chiens mentionnent. C'était vers 2h le matin du 4 mai, et non pas dans la matinée.
Several people I recognized as other Mark Warner guests were milling around and a few of the men offered to help. Steve Carpenter told us that he had approached John Hill, the resort manager, insisting that all the apartments, occupied or not (and as it was the low season, many were empty), should be opened up and searched. There had been no house-to-house inquiries at all and there wouldn’t be for some hours to come. To this day, I don’t know that this task has been completed. There's a report dans les files, elle les a mal lues.
A lady from an apartment across Rua Dr Gentil Martins, overlooking our little side gate, came over to speak to us. She said that the previous night she had seen a car going up the Rocha Negra – the black, volcanic cliff that dominates the village. There was a track leading to the Rocha Negra but nobody remembered ever having noticed any vehicle that far up in the daytime, let alone at night. This immediately conjured visions of Madeleine being disposed of somewhere on the overhanging cliff. I went to tell one of the police officers who was able to speak a little English. He was quite dismissive. It would have been one of the GNR men checking the area, he said. The texts and phone calls kept coming. By this time our friend Jon Corner, a creative director in media production in Liverpool, was circulating photographs and video footage of Madeleine to the police, Interpol and broadcasting and newspaper news desks. This was in accordance with the standard advice of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in the US, which advocates getting an image of a missing child into the public domain as soon as possible. But this was not in accordance with the Portuguese principles qui avait demandé "no médias" !
A forensic team also arrived from Lisbon that Friday. All we saw of them were TV images of a woman in her street clothes dusting the shutters outside the children’s room. Her shoulder-length hair was blowing free and I seem to recall that in some shots she wasn’t wearing any gloves, either.
A
middle-aged British lady suddenly materialized beside me and introduced
herself. She announced that she was, or had been, a social worker or
child protection officer and insisted on showing me her professional
papers, including, I think, her Criminal Records Bureau certificate. She
asked me to sit down on a low wall, plonked herself next to me and told
me she wanted me to go through everything that had happened the
previous night. She was quite pushy and her manner, her very presence,
were making me feel uncomfortable and adding to my distress. Busy body Yvonne X.
David was standing nearby. Concerned, he took me aside and pointed out that we didn’t know who this woman was or what she was doing there. He reassured me that I wasn’t obliged to speak to her if I didn’t want to. And I didn’t want to. Whoever she was, and whatever her credentials were, it was an inappropriate intrusion. And something about it, something about her, just didn’t feel right. I was glad I extricated myself. This woman would pop up several times in the days and months to come and I still don’t really know who she is or what she was trying to achieve.
David was standing nearby. Concerned, he took me aside and pointed out that we didn’t know who this woman was or what she was doing there. He reassured me that I wasn’t obliged to speak to her if I didn’t want to. And I didn’t want to. Whoever she was, and whatever her credentials were, it was an inappropriate intrusion. And something about it, something about her, just didn’t feel right. I was glad I extricated myself. This woman would pop up several times in the days and months to come and I still don’t really know who she is or what she was trying to achieve.
Steve
Carpenter returned with a man who had offered his assistance. He was,
he’d told Steve, bilingual in English and Portuguese and could maybe
assist with interpreting. I was grateful for any help we could get. This
man was in his thirties, wore glasses and there was something unusual
about one of his eyes – a squint, I thought at the time (I have since
been told he is blind in one eye). He seemed very personable and was
happy to be of service. When one of the GNR officers came over to
request more details about Madeleine and any distinguishing features she
had, this man stepped in to translate. Robert M.
I was holding a photograph of Madeleine, which he asked to see. As he studied it, he told me about his daughter back in England who was the same age, and who, he said, looked just like Madeleine. I was a little irked vexée by this. In the circumstances, it seemed rather tactless, Madeleine is “so special”, how did he dare ? even if he was simply trying to empathize. I didn’t think his daughter could possibly be as beautiful as Madeleine – though of course, as her mum, I didn’t think any other little girl could be as beautiful as Madeleine. Strange ideas in her head given a situation ! Madeleine looks like Philomena, who likely was a pretty little girl ! When he had finished translating, he turned and began to walk briskly away. Realizing I didn’t know his name, I caught up with him and asked. ‘Robert,’ he said. ‘Thank you, Robert,’ I said.
I was holding a photograph of Madeleine, which he asked to see. As he studied it, he told me about his daughter back in England who was the same age, and who, he said, looked just like Madeleine. I was a little irked vexée by this. In the circumstances, it seemed rather tactless, Madeleine is “so special”, how did he dare ? even if he was simply trying to empathize. I didn’t think his daughter could possibly be as beautiful as Madeleine – though of course, as her mum, I didn’t think any other little girl could be as beautiful as Madeleine. Strange ideas in her head given a situation ! Madeleine looks like Philomena, who likely was a pretty little girl ! When he had finished translating, he turned and began to walk briskly away. Realizing I didn’t know his name, I caught up with him and asked. ‘Robert,’ he said. ‘Thank you, Robert,’ I said.
It was about 10am by the time a couple of PJ officers turned up.
(One of them, in his thirties, tall and well built, I thought of for
ages simply as John. I’m not sure he ever gave us his name, but later –
much later – we found out that it was João Carlos). They told us they
had to take us and our friends to the police station in Portimão. ...
Our first impressions of the police station were not encouraging.. Basic and shabby, it didn’t seem conducive to efficiency and order We were shown to a small waiting area separated from the control room – where calls and faxes came in – only by windows and a glass door, which was left ajar. In the control room, officers in jeans and T-shirts smoked and engaged in what sounded more like light-hearted banter plaisanteries than serious discussion.
I know as well as anybody that one shouldn’t judge people – or perhaps places, either – on appearances, but it all made me immensely nervous. I was appalled by the treatment we received at the police station that day. Officers walked past us as if we weren’t there. Nobody asked how we were doing, whether we were OK or needed anything to eat or drink or to use the bathroom. Our child had been stolen and I felt as if I didn’t exist. I’ve tried to rationalize it since: maybe they just couldn’t imagine how it felt to be a parent in such circumstances, or maybe they couldn’t speak English and it seemed better or easier simply to avoid us. If they couldn't speak English and if the MC couldn't speak Portuguese, how could they ever communicate ? Whatever the case, it was a horribly isolating experience. Was it ? She wasn't alone and she had a phone ! The police picked her up and drove her to the police station...those policemen walking past her knew she was but were simply going about their business. Ils respectaient au contraire son chagrin plutôt que de se montrer obséquieux. Her sentence: “Our child has been stolen and I felt like I don’t exist” révèle qu'elle estime que sa situation de victime devrait l'élever à une certaine importance.
At some point that morning we’d become aware that friends and family were appearing on television expressing our concern about the lack of police activity overnight. I think I’d registered Trisha and a good friend in Glasgow Jill Renwick popping up on the TV in the apartment. Gerry has a memory of seeing some familiar faces on the set in the police control room. We were quite surprised that people were giving interviews but it was understandable. Ils n'ont donc pas pu ne pas entendre l'histoire du volet et de la fenêtre fracturés, leur propre histoire racontée et re-racontée ! After all, we’d been on the phone half the night to our friends and relatives, sobbing that nothing was being done and begging for their help. And we appreciated the swift response. We were just worried that any criticism of the police might not do us or, more to the point, Madeleine, any favours. That might explain why they weren't treated as very special persons ! They were worried not to have been unjust with the police, but that their accusations of the police doing nothing infuriated the police who would take a revenge ignoring Madeleine !
We were grateful for the support of the British consul for the Algarve, Bill Henderson, and the proconsul, Angela Morado, who met us at the police station. Big contrast : Very grateful with the British Consul ! Although there was little anyone could say or do to ease our pain, they were both warm and extremely sympathetic. I especially appreciated Angela’s reassuring presence – she was roughly the same age as me, a mother herself and, most importantly, strong, and I felt those common factors would help her to understand a little of what I was going through. At one point, the British ambassador, John Buck, came down from Lisbon to see us. He was pleasant and obviously concerned.
I recall Bill Henderson telling me there had been several recent cases of men getting into bed with children, but no known abductions. Et aucune plainte déposée auprès de la PJ... I’m not sure why this didn’t ring a million alarm bells or sicken me to the core. As it was, it remained locked away in the dungeons of my mind for many months. At the time my brain simply couldn’t connect such cases with Madeleine’s disappearance. These were abuse victims, and as awful as such crimes were, Madeleine’s situation was much worse. Our child had been stolen. We didn’t know where or how she was. ...
Gerry told us afterwards that when he’d asked about deploying helicopters and heat-detecting equipment in the search, the police officer interviewing him had replied, ‘This is not the UK.’ There were no helicopters and no infra-red cameras, he was told. Gerry was also insisting that they speak to Jes Wilkins, in case he had seen the man and child reported by Jane. Mais il avait envoyé Matthew questionner JW vers 1h du matin ! In fact, we found out later, an officer with a translator – Robert Murat, the man who had interpreted for me that morning – visited Jes and his partner, Bridget O’Donnell, in their apartment some time the same afternoon. Ils ne peuvent pas s'empêcher de vouloir tout contrôler, diriger, etc.
In a newspaper article by Bridget published several months down the line, she describes how the officer wrote down their answers to his questions on a loose piece of paper rather than in a notebook. Of greater concern was his reaction to a photocopied picture of a little girl he noticed lying on their table. He asked them if she was their daughter. Bridget explained that this was Madeleine, the little girl they were supposed to be looking for. ‘My heart sank for the McCanns,’ she remembered. Mais elle n'a pas cherché.
Back at the police station in Portimão, it was gone two o’clock before I was interviewed. As João Carlos led me up the stairs, I inquired whether he had any children. He told me he hadn’t. ‘But don’t worry. We will find your daughter.’ It was exactly what I was yearning to hear. I was taken into a large room containing several desks. Gerry had asked João Carlos if he could be allowed to stay with me while I was questioned because he was extremely worried about my psychological state. I was grateful to João Carlos for agreeing, with the proviso that Gerry remained seated behind me. I appreciate now that this would not be acceptable practice in most police investigations. Quand même.. João Carlos interviewed me, assisted by a young female interpreter. Il y avait un autre inspecteur, selon les PJ Files, Paulo Ferreira. He put his questions in Portuguese, the interpreter relayed them to me in English and then she translated my answers into Portuguese. The interview was neither videoed nor audio-taped. Instead João Carlos tapped my answers, as given to him in Portuguese by the interpreter, into his computer. As you can imagine, it was an incredibly laborious process. My eyes were still continually drawn towards the clock, or my watch, and as the minutes and then the hours ticked by my body became more and more tense.
The officer began with how we came to be in Portugal and then concentrated on the point at which I discovered Madeleine was missing. When he asked me if it was the first time I had been to Portugal I said, ‘Yes. Never again!’ The interpreter turned to me and said, ‘Mrs McCann, this could have happened anywhere.’ She was right, of course, and I was a bit ashamed of that remark, but in the circumstances it was hardly surprising I felt that way at that moment. As I recounted how I’d found Madeleine’s bedclothes neatly folded back my voice faltered. Every now and then Gerry would put a hand on my shoulder or give me a reassuring squeeze. The interview lasted four long hours. Afterwards, we met Guilhermino Encarnação, the director of the Algarve Polícia Judiciária, based in Faro, who was overseeing the investigation. He told us that somebody would be in touch with us later that night with an update and gave us a telephone number to call if we had any questions. I’m fairly certain this was the number of an officer at Portimão called Tavares de Almeida. In addition, he said, Portimão would be able to get hold of him via his mobile phone at any time if we needed to speak to him. ...
It was seven-thirty by the time one of the PJ officers drove us away from the police station. Angela Morado came with us. Ten or fifteen minutes into our journey, the police officer had a call from his station. He said something to Angela, who explained that he’d been ordered to return us to the police station straight away. He wasn’t allowed to tell us why. Already driving at quite a scary speed, he suddenly swung the car into a U-turn, floored the accelerator and drove us at a life-threatening 120mph plus back towards Portimão. I cannot overstate how terrifying this was. Had Madeleine been found? Please God. Was she alive? Was she dead? Gerry and I clung on to each other for dear life. I was crying hysterically and praying for all I was worth. Back at the police station we endured at least another ten minutes of torture in the waiting area before somebody showed us a photograph, clearly taken from CCTV, of a blonde child with a woman in a petrol-station shop. We weren’t told anything about this, just asked whether the little girl was Madeleine. She wasn’t. And that was that. Again we were sent on our way, utterly devastated.
We were completely unprepared for what we found when we drove back into Praia da Luz some time after 8.30pm. The road outside our apartment block was lined with what seemed like hundreds of press and TV crews, five or six deep all the way.
Although he didn’t say anything to me then, as soon as he saw all this Gerry knew it was likely to lead to a terrible invasion of our privacy at the most difficult time of our lives. We’d never been exposed to the glare of the media ourselves, but we were aware to some extent from what had happened to other people how intrusive the press, and in particular the tabloid newspapers, could be. No such implications registered with me at that stage. I was only able to think about anything for a second at a time.
We stepped out of the police car amid clicking, whirring cameras and dazzling lights. To suddenly become the focus of such attention – fiercely acute, and yet at the same time disconnected, impersonal, as if we were some rare species in a zoo – was bewildering, and it certainly increased my already rocketing stress levels. But in some ways this was just another bizarre scene in a bad dream from which I couldn’t seem to wake myself up. This was the shutters and abduction from bed effect ! Had it been said that a little girl wandered off because her parents left her alone without locking the door, would anyone have been interested ?
Upstairs our new apartment, 4G, was heaving with people. Among them were my mum, dad and Auntie Norah, who had arrived from the UK. Norah, on a visit from Canada, had been booked to return today but had immediately cancelled her flight home and had come with my parents to support us instead. As we embraced them one by one we found ourselves unable to let go. We were all sobbing. It was so hard seeing each other like this. It was all such a blur I can’t be absolutely certain who else was there that night, but I think I remember John Hill, Emma Knights and Craig Mayhew from Mark Warner, and Ambassador John Buck, British consul Bill Henderson and Angela Morado, who had accompanied us back from Portimão. There were some new faces, too: Liz Dow, the British consul for Lisbon, British Embassy press officer Andy Bowes and Alex Woolfall, a PR crisis-management specialist from Bell Pottinger in the UK, who had been drafted in by Mark Warner, as had a trauma psychologist from the Centre for Crisis Psychology (CCP) in north Yorkshire, who had now also arrived in Luz.
Mark Warner had arranged for the Ocean Club staff to bring food for us up to the apartment, but I still couldn’t manage anything. All I wanted at that moment was to see Sean and Amelie. Emma had been looking after them and had not long before put them into their cots, but I went in to see them anyway. My need to be with them outweighed any concerns about disrupting their sleep. The night before she SAID SHE didn't want to switch on and risk waking them up.
For the first time I noticed the ugly purple, blue and black bruises on the sides of my hands, wrists and forearms. I was shocked. Gerry reminded me of how I’d been banging my clenched fists on the veranda railing and the apartment walls the night before. I could only vaguely remember it.
In spite of his misgivings about the media, Gerry decided that he wanted to make a statement to them. He knew we had to try to reach anyone who might know something. Compétence de la police. Ce qu'ils avaient à faire savoir, c'était qu'on avait enlevé leur fille. My stomach knotted at the mere thought of it. I’ve never been one for speaking in front of an audience, and I certainly couldn’t imagine doing so now, when our daughter had just been abducted. Gerry told the people assembled in the apartment what he was intending to do. Nobody objected or advised him against it – but then, there was no one taking overall control of the situation, other than Alex Woolfall, whose primary role was to act for Mark Warner. So Gerry sat down and drafted a statement on a piece of scrap paper. It took him only a few minutes.
I accompanied him downstairs. As we left I grabbed Madeleine’s Cuddle Cat. Keeping her beloved toy close was the nearest I could be to her. I was very troubled that she didn’t have Cuddle Cat with her. C'est troublant, oui, si elle avait été enlevée, cette peluche aurait aidé à la calmer. Just being able to hold something familiar might have given her a crumb of comfort. It was 10pm, it was dark and I found the huge crowd and incessant flashbulbs incredibly intimidating. I was only grateful that at least Gerry was used to public speaking and I wouldn’t have to say anything, though it wasn’t easy for him, either. This was hardly the same as addressing a conference and he was completely traumatized. His voice cracked with emotion as he read out his statement by torchlight.
I’m not entirely sure how Gerry managed to deliver a statement on that first day, or exactly what made him feel that he must. Obviously he believed that begging the abductor to give Madeleine back, and urging anyone who might have seen or know anything to come forward, could only help. Pourquoi un ravisseur restituerait-il sa victime ? Qu'aurait-il à y gagner ? He was also aware that in the UK it would probably be expected of parents in our situation to make some kind of statement or appeal – though that was not, as we would learn, the case in Portugal.
By midnight we’d had no more word from the police about what, if anything, was happening. More than twenty-four hours had elapsed since Madeleine had been snatched. The pain, dread and sense of powerlessness were tearing me apart. I rang the telephone number given to me by Guilhermino Encarnação and got through to the PJ at Portimão, although it wasn’t at all clear to whom I was actually speaking. I tried to convey just how traumatic the lack of communication was for us, but I didn’t seem to be getting anywhere. I explained that Dr Encarnação had invited us to call at any time if we had any concerns and asked to be put through to him. I was told it wasn’t possible. All I was told was that ‘everything that can be done is being done’. It was a line we were to hear many more times in the next twenty-four hours. How hollow it seems now. Gerry took the phone to see if he would fare any better. He didn’t. Au moins on leur a répondu en anglais !
The frustration and anger were reaching boiling point. I felt like a caged, demented animal. This was, without doubt, torture of the cruellest kind. Finally, I erupted. I began to scream, swear and lash out. I kicked an extra bed that had been brought into the apartment and smashed the end right off it. Then came the inevitable tears. Prostrate on the floor, sobbing like a baby, I felt utterly defeated and broken.
After making several calls seeking help from Liz Dow, around two in the morning we both went to lie down for a while. ...Gerry and I prayed together and eventually drifted into a brief and fitful sleep.
At the police station that first afternoon, Guilhermino Encarnação had briefly mentioned three potential explanations for Madeleine’s disappearance: a burglary that had ‘changed direction’, abduction and the possibility that she had wandered off by herself.
In the coming months we would learn that burglaries were rife on that stretch of the Algarve coast and although it is difficult to imagine how a burglary could escalate into an abduction, we now know that this is not unheard of. Et vlan !
However, I have always found the third suggestion insulting to our intelligence, frankly. Obviously, the police are obliged to consider all possible scenarios but there was no doubt in our minds that Madeleine had not left that apartment of her own accord. Why ? Wasn't the door unlocked so that she could go out and find her parents ? For a start there was Jane’s sighting of what was, in all likelihood, Madeleine being carried off. She could have been found lost by a passer-by ! Even if you set that aside, there was no way a three-year-old would have been able to raise the shutters and open the window in the children’s room. Sortir par la porte laissée ouverte, oui, par la fenêtre, non. Et de fait ! This is the big deal. Malgré les manoeuvres immédiates de GMC, le volet, impossible à enrouler de l'extérieur, ne pouvait que retomber avec fracas après avoir été soulevé. Quant à la fenêtre elle avait probablement été verrouillée par le personnel de nettoyage pour des raisons de sécurité. To give any credence whatsoever to the idea that Madeleine could have walked out on her own you would have to accept that she had gone out the back way, pourquoi pas par devant puisque la porte n'était pas fermée à clef ? pulling aside the sitting-room curtains and drawing them again, then opening the patio door, the child-safety gate at the top of the stairs on the veranda and the little gate to the road – and carefully closing all three behind her. What three-year-old do you know who would do that? And we knew our Madeleine. She simply would not wander off like this. 3 ans, d'accord, 4 la semaine suivante, enfin... Kids of that age manage very well and Madeleine was smart ! As they used this way out continuously she knew very well how to close and open the child-safety gate and if they managed to enter with the curtains drawn, if MO did it in the darkness, why not Madeleine ? Isn't it why they said they had left the French window open ? To turn this possible to Madeleine ? But probably she went out through the main door, it was easier and moreover it wasn't dark. MO said nothing about the child-safety gate... He didn't describe the exact state of the open French-window... nor the state of the curtains...
This theory was not only insulting, it was, much more importantly, frighteningly damaging to the chances of finding Madeleine quickly. Every time something is suggested that is not in the doxa, the threat comes right away that chances to find Madeleine are jeopardized. If the police were wasting precious time pursuing it they were not going to be looking in the right places, or taking the appropriate type of action. Comme si la police n'avait pas perdu des jours et des jours à poursuivre des signalements fantaisistes suscités par les campagnes des MC ! In the first few days we gained the impression that this was exactly what was happening. Et vlan pour les recherches nuit et jour de la police et des villégiateurs ! Voilà une bonne explication au fait que les MC n'ont pas cherché du tout ! Certainly their initial searches were all geared to looking for a stray child who had become lost in or around Luz. Absolument et sans indice d'effraction toutes les polices du monde en auraient fait autant. We would later hear from the British police that it took until 10am on Friday, almost twelve hours after the alarm was raised, for roadblocks and checks to be put in place. Cancans, qu'est-ce que les PO en savaient ? Ils n'étaient pas encore arrivés ! This is not true as shown in the PJ files. Anyhow the carrier seen by JT was walking at a speed of 0,53 km/h. Logic implies that this speed wouldn't have improved with time. After 12 hours, if he managed with the weight of the child, he would have walked in the best case 6 km. No real need to block highways, stop flights and control frontiers, the spanish one being at more than 135 km. And it would be five more days before Interpol circulated a ‘yellow notice’ (global alert) to each of its member countries. Check this
We subsequently QUAND ? learned that less than fifty minutes after Jane’s sighting – when I had still to discover that Madeleine was missing – a family of nine from Ireland had also seen a man carrying a child, this time on Rua da Escola Primária, a few minutes’ walk from apartment 5A, heading towards Rua 25 de Abril. Their description was remarkably similar to Jane’s. The man was in his mid thirties, 1.75 to 1.8 metres tall and of slim to normal build. These witnesses, too, said this person didn’t look like a tourist. They couldn’t quite put their finger on why, but again they felt it might have been because of what he was wearing. L'un (MS ?) a plus exactement dit qu'il n'était pas habillé comme un touriste = shorts et sandales. They also mentioned cream or beige trousers. The child, a little girl of about four with medium-blonde hair, was lying with her head towards the man’s left shoulder. She was wearing light-coloured pyjamas, long sleeves ! Ils n'étaient pas sûr que ce soit un pyjama had nothing on her feet and there was no blanket over her. Although, like Jane, this family had taken this man and child for father and daughter, they commented that the man did not look comfortable carrying the child, as if he wasn’t used to it. "As if he wasn't used to it", nobody said and only MS remarked some clumsiness ! Personne n'a douté que l'homme put être autre chose qu'un père.
Our first impressions of the police station were not encouraging.. Basic and shabby, it didn’t seem conducive to efficiency and order We were shown to a small waiting area separated from the control room – where calls and faxes came in – only by windows and a glass door, which was left ajar. In the control room, officers in jeans and T-shirts smoked and engaged in what sounded more like light-hearted banter plaisanteries than serious discussion.
I know as well as anybody that one shouldn’t judge people – or perhaps places, either – on appearances, but it all made me immensely nervous. I was appalled by the treatment we received at the police station that day. Officers walked past us as if we weren’t there. Nobody asked how we were doing, whether we were OK or needed anything to eat or drink or to use the bathroom. Our child had been stolen and I felt as if I didn’t exist. I’ve tried to rationalize it since: maybe they just couldn’t imagine how it felt to be a parent in such circumstances, or maybe they couldn’t speak English and it seemed better or easier simply to avoid us. If they couldn't speak English and if the MC couldn't speak Portuguese, how could they ever communicate ? Whatever the case, it was a horribly isolating experience. Was it ? She wasn't alone and she had a phone ! The police picked her up and drove her to the police station...those policemen walking past her knew she was but were simply going about their business. Ils respectaient au contraire son chagrin plutôt que de se montrer obséquieux. Her sentence: “Our child has been stolen and I felt like I don’t exist” révèle qu'elle estime que sa situation de victime devrait l'élever à une certaine importance.
At some point that morning we’d become aware that friends and family were appearing on television expressing our concern about the lack of police activity overnight. I think I’d registered Trisha and a good friend in Glasgow Jill Renwick popping up on the TV in the apartment. Gerry has a memory of seeing some familiar faces on the set in the police control room. We were quite surprised that people were giving interviews but it was understandable. Ils n'ont donc pas pu ne pas entendre l'histoire du volet et de la fenêtre fracturés, leur propre histoire racontée et re-racontée ! After all, we’d been on the phone half the night to our friends and relatives, sobbing that nothing was being done and begging for their help. And we appreciated the swift response. We were just worried that any criticism of the police might not do us or, more to the point, Madeleine, any favours. That might explain why they weren't treated as very special persons ! They were worried not to have been unjust with the police, but that their accusations of the police doing nothing infuriated the police who would take a revenge ignoring Madeleine !
We were grateful for the support of the British consul for the Algarve, Bill Henderson, and the proconsul, Angela Morado, who met us at the police station. Big contrast : Very grateful with the British Consul ! Although there was little anyone could say or do to ease our pain, they were both warm and extremely sympathetic. I especially appreciated Angela’s reassuring presence – she was roughly the same age as me, a mother herself and, most importantly, strong, and I felt those common factors would help her to understand a little of what I was going through. At one point, the British ambassador, John Buck, came down from Lisbon to see us. He was pleasant and obviously concerned.
I recall Bill Henderson telling me there had been several recent cases of men getting into bed with children, but no known abductions. Et aucune plainte déposée auprès de la PJ... I’m not sure why this didn’t ring a million alarm bells or sicken me to the core. As it was, it remained locked away in the dungeons of my mind for many months. At the time my brain simply couldn’t connect such cases with Madeleine’s disappearance. These were abuse victims, and as awful as such crimes were, Madeleine’s situation was much worse. Our child had been stolen. We didn’t know where or how she was. ...
Gerry told us afterwards that when he’d asked about deploying helicopters and heat-detecting equipment in the search, the police officer interviewing him had replied, ‘This is not the UK.’ There were no helicopters and no infra-red cameras, he was told. Gerry was also insisting that they speak to Jes Wilkins, in case he had seen the man and child reported by Jane. Mais il avait envoyé Matthew questionner JW vers 1h du matin ! In fact, we found out later, an officer with a translator – Robert Murat, the man who had interpreted for me that morning – visited Jes and his partner, Bridget O’Donnell, in their apartment some time the same afternoon. Ils ne peuvent pas s'empêcher de vouloir tout contrôler, diriger, etc.
In a newspaper article by Bridget published several months down the line, she describes how the officer wrote down their answers to his questions on a loose piece of paper rather than in a notebook. Of greater concern was his reaction to a photocopied picture of a little girl he noticed lying on their table. He asked them if she was their daughter. Bridget explained that this was Madeleine, the little girl they were supposed to be looking for. ‘My heart sank for the McCanns,’ she remembered. Mais elle n'a pas cherché.
Back at the police station in Portimão, it was gone two o’clock before I was interviewed. As João Carlos led me up the stairs, I inquired whether he had any children. He told me he hadn’t. ‘But don’t worry. We will find your daughter.’ It was exactly what I was yearning to hear. I was taken into a large room containing several desks. Gerry had asked João Carlos if he could be allowed to stay with me while I was questioned because he was extremely worried about my psychological state. I was grateful to João Carlos for agreeing, with the proviso that Gerry remained seated behind me. I appreciate now that this would not be acceptable practice in most police investigations. Quand même.. João Carlos interviewed me, assisted by a young female interpreter. Il y avait un autre inspecteur, selon les PJ Files, Paulo Ferreira. He put his questions in Portuguese, the interpreter relayed them to me in English and then she translated my answers into Portuguese. The interview was neither videoed nor audio-taped. Instead João Carlos tapped my answers, as given to him in Portuguese by the interpreter, into his computer. As you can imagine, it was an incredibly laborious process. My eyes were still continually drawn towards the clock, or my watch, and as the minutes and then the hours ticked by my body became more and more tense.
The officer began with how we came to be in Portugal and then concentrated on the point at which I discovered Madeleine was missing. When he asked me if it was the first time I had been to Portugal I said, ‘Yes. Never again!’ The interpreter turned to me and said, ‘Mrs McCann, this could have happened anywhere.’ She was right, of course, and I was a bit ashamed of that remark, but in the circumstances it was hardly surprising I felt that way at that moment. As I recounted how I’d found Madeleine’s bedclothes neatly folded back my voice faltered. Every now and then Gerry would put a hand on my shoulder or give me a reassuring squeeze. The interview lasted four long hours. Afterwards, we met Guilhermino Encarnação, the director of the Algarve Polícia Judiciária, based in Faro, who was overseeing the investigation. He told us that somebody would be in touch with us later that night with an update and gave us a telephone number to call if we had any questions. I’m fairly certain this was the number of an officer at Portimão called Tavares de Almeida. In addition, he said, Portimão would be able to get hold of him via his mobile phone at any time if we needed to speak to him. ...
It was seven-thirty by the time one of the PJ officers drove us away from the police station. Angela Morado came with us. Ten or fifteen minutes into our journey, the police officer had a call from his station. He said something to Angela, who explained that he’d been ordered to return us to the police station straight away. He wasn’t allowed to tell us why. Already driving at quite a scary speed, he suddenly swung the car into a U-turn, floored the accelerator and drove us at a life-threatening 120mph plus back towards Portimão. I cannot overstate how terrifying this was. Had Madeleine been found? Please God. Was she alive? Was she dead? Gerry and I clung on to each other for dear life. I was crying hysterically and praying for all I was worth. Back at the police station we endured at least another ten minutes of torture in the waiting area before somebody showed us a photograph, clearly taken from CCTV, of a blonde child with a woman in a petrol-station shop. We weren’t told anything about this, just asked whether the little girl was Madeleine. She wasn’t. And that was that. Again we were sent on our way, utterly devastated.
We were completely unprepared for what we found when we drove back into Praia da Luz some time after 8.30pm. The road outside our apartment block was lined with what seemed like hundreds of press and TV crews, five or six deep all the way.
Although he didn’t say anything to me then, as soon as he saw all this Gerry knew it was likely to lead to a terrible invasion of our privacy at the most difficult time of our lives. We’d never been exposed to the glare of the media ourselves, but we were aware to some extent from what had happened to other people how intrusive the press, and in particular the tabloid newspapers, could be. No such implications registered with me at that stage. I was only able to think about anything for a second at a time.
We stepped out of the police car amid clicking, whirring cameras and dazzling lights. To suddenly become the focus of such attention – fiercely acute, and yet at the same time disconnected, impersonal, as if we were some rare species in a zoo – was bewildering, and it certainly increased my already rocketing stress levels. But in some ways this was just another bizarre scene in a bad dream from which I couldn’t seem to wake myself up. This was the shutters and abduction from bed effect ! Had it been said that a little girl wandered off because her parents left her alone without locking the door, would anyone have been interested ?
Upstairs our new apartment, 4G, was heaving with people. Among them were my mum, dad and Auntie Norah, who had arrived from the UK. Norah, on a visit from Canada, had been booked to return today but had immediately cancelled her flight home and had come with my parents to support us instead. As we embraced them one by one we found ourselves unable to let go. We were all sobbing. It was so hard seeing each other like this. It was all such a blur I can’t be absolutely certain who else was there that night, but I think I remember John Hill, Emma Knights and Craig Mayhew from Mark Warner, and Ambassador John Buck, British consul Bill Henderson and Angela Morado, who had accompanied us back from Portimão. There were some new faces, too: Liz Dow, the British consul for Lisbon, British Embassy press officer Andy Bowes and Alex Woolfall, a PR crisis-management specialist from Bell Pottinger in the UK, who had been drafted in by Mark Warner, as had a trauma psychologist from the Centre for Crisis Psychology (CCP) in north Yorkshire, who had now also arrived in Luz.
Mark Warner had arranged for the Ocean Club staff to bring food for us up to the apartment, but I still couldn’t manage anything. All I wanted at that moment was to see Sean and Amelie. Emma had been looking after them and had not long before put them into their cots, but I went in to see them anyway. My need to be with them outweighed any concerns about disrupting their sleep. The night before she SAID SHE didn't want to switch on and risk waking them up.
For the first time I noticed the ugly purple, blue and black bruises on the sides of my hands, wrists and forearms. I was shocked. Gerry reminded me of how I’d been banging my clenched fists on the veranda railing and the apartment walls the night before. I could only vaguely remember it.
In spite of his misgivings about the media, Gerry decided that he wanted to make a statement to them. He knew we had to try to reach anyone who might know something. Compétence de la police. Ce qu'ils avaient à faire savoir, c'était qu'on avait enlevé leur fille. My stomach knotted at the mere thought of it. I’ve never been one for speaking in front of an audience, and I certainly couldn’t imagine doing so now, when our daughter had just been abducted. Gerry told the people assembled in the apartment what he was intending to do. Nobody objected or advised him against it – but then, there was no one taking overall control of the situation, other than Alex Woolfall, whose primary role was to act for Mark Warner. So Gerry sat down and drafted a statement on a piece of scrap paper. It took him only a few minutes.
I accompanied him downstairs. As we left I grabbed Madeleine’s Cuddle Cat. Keeping her beloved toy close was the nearest I could be to her. I was very troubled that she didn’t have Cuddle Cat with her. C'est troublant, oui, si elle avait été enlevée, cette peluche aurait aidé à la calmer. Just being able to hold something familiar might have given her a crumb of comfort. It was 10pm, it was dark and I found the huge crowd and incessant flashbulbs incredibly intimidating. I was only grateful that at least Gerry was used to public speaking and I wouldn’t have to say anything, though it wasn’t easy for him, either. This was hardly the same as addressing a conference and he was completely traumatized. His voice cracked with emotion as he read out his statement by torchlight.
I’m not entirely sure how Gerry managed to deliver a statement on that first day, or exactly what made him feel that he must. Obviously he believed that begging the abductor to give Madeleine back, and urging anyone who might have seen or know anything to come forward, could only help. Pourquoi un ravisseur restituerait-il sa victime ? Qu'aurait-il à y gagner ? He was also aware that in the UK it would probably be expected of parents in our situation to make some kind of statement or appeal – though that was not, as we would learn, the case in Portugal.
By midnight we’d had no more word from the police about what, if anything, was happening. More than twenty-four hours had elapsed since Madeleine had been snatched. The pain, dread and sense of powerlessness were tearing me apart. I rang the telephone number given to me by Guilhermino Encarnação and got through to the PJ at Portimão, although it wasn’t at all clear to whom I was actually speaking. I tried to convey just how traumatic the lack of communication was for us, but I didn’t seem to be getting anywhere. I explained that Dr Encarnação had invited us to call at any time if we had any concerns and asked to be put through to him. I was told it wasn’t possible. All I was told was that ‘everything that can be done is being done’. It was a line we were to hear many more times in the next twenty-four hours. How hollow it seems now. Gerry took the phone to see if he would fare any better. He didn’t. Au moins on leur a répondu en anglais !
The frustration and anger were reaching boiling point. I felt like a caged, demented animal. This was, without doubt, torture of the cruellest kind. Finally, I erupted. I began to scream, swear and lash out. I kicked an extra bed that had been brought into the apartment and smashed the end right off it. Then came the inevitable tears. Prostrate on the floor, sobbing like a baby, I felt utterly defeated and broken.
After making several calls seeking help from Liz Dow, around two in the morning we both went to lie down for a while. ...Gerry and I prayed together and eventually drifted into a brief and fitful sleep.
At the police station that first afternoon, Guilhermino Encarnação had briefly mentioned three potential explanations for Madeleine’s disappearance: a burglary that had ‘changed direction’, abduction and the possibility that she had wandered off by herself.
In the coming months we would learn that burglaries were rife on that stretch of the Algarve coast and although it is difficult to imagine how a burglary could escalate into an abduction, we now know that this is not unheard of. Et vlan !
However, I have always found the third suggestion insulting to our intelligence, frankly. Obviously, the police are obliged to consider all possible scenarios but there was no doubt in our minds that Madeleine had not left that apartment of her own accord. Why ? Wasn't the door unlocked so that she could go out and find her parents ? For a start there was Jane’s sighting of what was, in all likelihood, Madeleine being carried off. She could have been found lost by a passer-by ! Even if you set that aside, there was no way a three-year-old would have been able to raise the shutters and open the window in the children’s room. Sortir par la porte laissée ouverte, oui, par la fenêtre, non. Et de fait ! This is the big deal. Malgré les manoeuvres immédiates de GMC, le volet, impossible à enrouler de l'extérieur, ne pouvait que retomber avec fracas après avoir été soulevé. Quant à la fenêtre elle avait probablement été verrouillée par le personnel de nettoyage pour des raisons de sécurité. To give any credence whatsoever to the idea that Madeleine could have walked out on her own you would have to accept that she had gone out the back way, pourquoi pas par devant puisque la porte n'était pas fermée à clef ? pulling aside the sitting-room curtains and drawing them again, then opening the patio door, the child-safety gate at the top of the stairs on the veranda and the little gate to the road – and carefully closing all three behind her. What three-year-old do you know who would do that? And we knew our Madeleine. She simply would not wander off like this. 3 ans, d'accord, 4 la semaine suivante, enfin... Kids of that age manage very well and Madeleine was smart ! As they used this way out continuously she knew very well how to close and open the child-safety gate and if they managed to enter with the curtains drawn, if MO did it in the darkness, why not Madeleine ? Isn't it why they said they had left the French window open ? To turn this possible to Madeleine ? But probably she went out through the main door, it was easier and moreover it wasn't dark. MO said nothing about the child-safety gate... He didn't describe the exact state of the open French-window... nor the state of the curtains...
This theory was not only insulting, it was, much more importantly, frighteningly damaging to the chances of finding Madeleine quickly. Every time something is suggested that is not in the doxa, the threat comes right away that chances to find Madeleine are jeopardized. If the police were wasting precious time pursuing it they were not going to be looking in the right places, or taking the appropriate type of action. Comme si la police n'avait pas perdu des jours et des jours à poursuivre des signalements fantaisistes suscités par les campagnes des MC ! In the first few days we gained the impression that this was exactly what was happening. Et vlan pour les recherches nuit et jour de la police et des villégiateurs ! Voilà une bonne explication au fait que les MC n'ont pas cherché du tout ! Certainly their initial searches were all geared to looking for a stray child who had become lost in or around Luz. Absolument et sans indice d'effraction toutes les polices du monde en auraient fait autant. We would later hear from the British police that it took until 10am on Friday, almost twelve hours after the alarm was raised, for roadblocks and checks to be put in place. Cancans, qu'est-ce que les PO en savaient ? Ils n'étaient pas encore arrivés ! This is not true as shown in the PJ files. Anyhow the carrier seen by JT was walking at a speed of 0,53 km/h. Logic implies that this speed wouldn't have improved with time. After 12 hours, if he managed with the weight of the child, he would have walked in the best case 6 km. No real need to block highways, stop flights and control frontiers, the spanish one being at more than 135 km. And it would be five more days before Interpol circulated a ‘yellow notice’ (global alert) to each of its member countries. Check this
We subsequently QUAND ? learned that less than fifty minutes after Jane’s sighting – when I had still to discover that Madeleine was missing – a family of nine from Ireland had also seen a man carrying a child, this time on Rua da Escola Primária, a few minutes’ walk from apartment 5A, heading towards Rua 25 de Abril. Their description was remarkably similar to Jane’s. The man was in his mid thirties, 1.75 to 1.8 metres tall and of slim to normal build. These witnesses, too, said this person didn’t look like a tourist. They couldn’t quite put their finger on why, but again they felt it might have been because of what he was wearing. L'un (MS ?) a plus exactement dit qu'il n'était pas habillé comme un touriste = shorts et sandales. They also mentioned cream or beige trousers. The child, a little girl of about four with medium-blonde hair, was lying with her head towards the man’s left shoulder. She was wearing light-coloured pyjamas, long sleeves ! Ils n'étaient pas sûr que ce soit un pyjama had nothing on her feet and there was no blanket over her. Although, like Jane, this family had taken this man and child for father and daughter, they commented that the man did not look comfortable carrying the child, as if he wasn’t used to it. "As if he wasn't used to it", nobody said and only MS remarked some clumsiness ! Personne n'a douté que l'homme put être autre chose qu'un père.
05 : 68 Titres dont 1 PT
"This is a very badly told story" - Diário de Notícias
A personal appeal from the Gerry and Kate MC - Algarve Resident
"This is a very badly told story" - Diário de Notícias
A personal appeal from the Gerry and Kate MC - Algarve Resident
Devant
les caméras, le père lit. Il demande des informations et de laisser sa
jolie petite fille revenir chez elle, la mère a les yeux baissés, elle a
l'air d'avoir peur. Le consul a prévenu les journalistes qu'il n'y
aurait pas de question.
All is being done - Algarve Resident
The search continues - Algarve Resident
Portuguese police speak up - Algarve Resident
Editorial: Pray for Maddie - The Sun
Sun Offers £10k Poster Reward - The Sun
The search continues - Algarve Resident
Portuguese police speak up - Algarve Resident
Editorial: Pray for Maddie - The Sun
Sun Offers £10k Poster Reward - The Sun
The
Sun distribue au Portugal des centaines d'affiches (imprimées en
anglais et en portugais en GB et expédiées par avion) offrant une
récompense de 10 000 £ pour infos menant à la découverte de l'enfant.
Nothing describes anguish for our Maddie - The Sun
Hols firm boasted of safety - The Sun
Maddy, 3 Goes Missing - Daily Mirror
Who Took Our Maddy? - Daily Mirror
Mum Went to Check on Kids...and Ran Out Screaming - Daily Mirror
Hols firm boasted of safety - The Sun
Maddy, 3 Goes Missing - Daily Mirror
Who Took Our Maddy? - Daily Mirror
Mum Went to Check on Kids...and Ran Out Screaming - Daily Mirror
Les proches sont les premiers à avoir appris l'enlèvement, l'effraction par la fenêtre et le volet : Trish Cameron, Jon Corner, Jill Renwick. Mais le gérant assure qu'il n'y a pas de trace d'effraction.
Exclusive: For Ben's sake just hold on - Daily Mirror
Exclusive: For Ben's sake just hold on - Daily Mirror
We pray for Madeleine... - Irish Daily Mirror
Hotspot popular with Irish - Irish Daily Mirror
Holiday girl, 3 taken as she slept - Daily Express
Left alone, but parents could put her in resort creche - Daily Express
Every parent's worst nightmare - Daily Express
Please let Maddy come home to her family now - Daily Star
Taken while she slept - Daily Mail
Police: We know who took Maddy - Daily Mail
'Maddy was abducted and we have a suspect in mind' - Daily Mail
Tapas for two.. then parents' nightmare began- Guardian
Hotspot popular with Irish - Irish Daily Mirror
Holiday girl, 3 taken as she slept - Daily Express
Left alone, but parents could put her in resort creche - Daily Express
Every parent's worst nightmare - Daily Express
Please let Maddy come home to her family now - Daily Star
Taken while she slept - Daily Mail
Police: We know who took Maddy - Daily Mail
'Maddy was abducted and we have a suspect in mind' - Daily Mail
Tapas for two.. then parents' nightmare began- Guardian
Le téléphone a sonné vers 23 heures au domicile de Trish Cameron près de Glasgow. En décrochant elle entendit la voix de son jeune frère. "Il était bouleversé, il répétait en pleurant 'Madeleine a été enlevée, elle a été enlevée."
Grandfather: evidence that three-year-old was snatched - Guardian
Grandfather: evidence that three-year-old was snatched - Guardian
Gerry m'a dit quand ils sont rentrés
que les volets de la chambre étaient cassés, qu'ils avaient été forcés, la porte était ouverte et M était partie. Du restaurant ils voyaient l'appartement.
GMC est décrit comme un chirurgien du coeur.
16 years on, family nurtures hope - Guardian
16 years on, family nurtures hope - Guardian
Rappel de Ben Needham
Mais Encarnaçao refuse de communiquer un signalement, de peur de mettre l'enfant en danger. Le séjour aurait coûté 1500 livres. Une voisine de Rothley décrit les MC comme "extrêmement protecteurs de leurs enfants et qui ne les laisseraient jamais seuls", comme quoi on se trompe souvent sur le compte d'autrui, à moins qu'ils ne pensent "jamais seuls dans un lieu non fermé à clef", bien que le détail de la porte-fenêtre ouverte n'ait pas encore été révélé.
Déclare que Madeleine est connue comme "Maddy".
Resorts are popular because of childcare facilities - Times
Portuguese police: Madeleine was kidnapped - Times Online
Parents' anguish toddler 'abducted' from resort in PT -Independent
Resorts are popular because of childcare facilities - Times
Portuguese police: Madeleine was kidnapped - Times Online
Parents' anguish toddler 'abducted' from resort in PT -Independent
MMC was wearing white pyjamas when she disappeared.
A spokesman for Mark Warner said there had been no evidence of a forced entry. However, the shutters had been slid up and the bedroom window opened after the McCanns had left. The McCanns scoured the lanes above the resort, shouting for her in the dark. C'est du moins ce que racontent les MC
Holiday girl abducted, police say - BBC
Guilhermino Encarnação, director of the judicial police in the Faro region, said officers are working on the assumption she is being held between 3km and 5km (1.8 and 3.1 miles) from the resort. Responding to criticism that the police had been slow to respond, Mr Encarnação said officers arrived at the scene 10 minutes after being alerted to the disappearance. 25 minutes.
Guilhermino Encarnação, director of the judicial police in the Faro region, said officers are working on the assumption she is being held between 3km and 5km (1.8 and 3.1 miles) from the resort. Responding to criticism that the police had been slow to respond, Mr Encarnação said officers arrived at the scene 10 minutes after being alerted to the disappearance. 25 minutes.
Madeleine, who turns four next Friday, was last seen by her father at about 21h00 local time. When Mrs McCann went to check on her about an hour later, she found the bedroom's outside shutter and window had been opened and her daughter missing. Resort staff and guests helped the McCanns search the complex grounds into Friday morning and police were notified. Les MC n'ont pas cherché, ils étaient au DIC de Portimao.
Mr McCann's sister Philomena, criticised the Portuguese police for initially "playing down" their response to the disappearance. She has been in phone contact with her brother. C'est donc lui la source de ces opinions négatives. Speaking from her home in Glasgow, she said: "He thinks it's just too little, too late. "It was hours before the local police turned up Honteusement faux and we're talking two bobbies that totally downplayed the incident and said that Maddie had maybe just wandered off." Les Tweedle ones.
The Mayor of Lagos, Julio Barraso, defended the police from accusations that they had been too slow to act.
Mr McCann's sister Philomena, criticised the Portuguese police for initially "playing down" their response to the disappearance. She has been in phone contact with her brother. C'est donc lui la source de ces opinions négatives. Speaking from her home in Glasgow, she said: "He thinks it's just too little, too late. "It was hours before the local police turned up Honteusement faux and we're talking two bobbies that totally downplayed the incident and said that Maddie had maybe just wandered off." Les Tweedle ones.
The Mayor of Lagos, Julio Barraso, defended the police from accusations that they had been too slow to act.
Volunteers join Madeleine search - BBC
approximately 800 of them have helped comb an area between 3-5km from the resort alongside teams of police officers and firefighters, as well as members of the Red Cross.
We have been looking in the bins, we've been looking on the pathways, says Dave Shelton 38 Manchester-born : "I came here first on Friday morning, I speak a little bit of Portuguese and was helping police knock on the doors of all the apartments.
We have been looking in the bins, we've been looking on the pathways, says Dave Shelton 38 Manchester-born : "I came here first on Friday morning, I speak a little bit of Portuguese and was helping police knock on the doors of all the apartments.
Algarve Village Reels After Abduction - BBC
The family is said to have chosen the resort because of its childcare facilities. But with the restaurant they were dining in within the same complex and within sight of their apartment, faux they chose not take advantage of these (facilities) on Thursday night, instead deciding to check in on their children periodically, resort manager John Hill confirmed.
Papers ponder 'holiday abduction' - BBC
The Daily Mail highlights the unlikelihood of such an incident at the retreat for the professional classes. The Express and the Sun both wonder why Madeleine's parents chose not to use the creche and babysitting facilities.
Police Search For Missing Toddler - CBBC (Children's BBC)
British tot was abducted, police say - ITN
Madeleine’s father in plea for help - Metro
Suspect is sought in search for girl - Leicester Mercury
Guilhermino Encarnação said detectives have a suspect in mind, but they refused to reveal any details for fear of endangering Madeleine's life. He said police were hopeful she was still alive and believe she is still in Portugal.
Guilhermino en dit trop et un peu n'importe quoi.
Village in shock over disappearance - Leicester Mercury
Our prayers for little Madeleine; We're distraught, - Liverpool Echo
The family is said to have chosen the resort because of its childcare facilities. But with the restaurant they were dining in within the same complex and within sight of their apartment, faux they chose not take advantage of these (facilities) on Thursday night, instead deciding to check in on their children periodically, resort manager John Hill confirmed.
Papers ponder 'holiday abduction' - BBC
The Daily Mail highlights the unlikelihood of such an incident at the retreat for the professional classes. The Express and the Sun both wonder why Madeleine's parents chose not to use the creche and babysitting facilities.
Police Search For Missing Toddler - CBBC (Children's BBC)
British tot was abducted, police say - ITN
Madeleine’s father in plea for help - Metro
Suspect is sought in search for girl - Leicester Mercury
Guilhermino Encarnação said detectives have a suspect in mind, but they refused to reveal any details for fear of endangering Madeleine's life. He said police were hopeful she was still alive and believe she is still in Portugal.
Guilhermino en dit trop et un peu n'importe quoi.
Village in shock over disappearance - Leicester Mercury
Our prayers for little Madeleine; We're distraught, - Liverpool Echo
Mr Healy's sister, Nora, said They don't feel they are getting much help from the Portuguese authorities. It's a terrible time. Ce genre de propos n'a guère de chance d'encourager les enquêteurs.
The McCanns made sure the toddler, who turns four next week, and her two-year-old twin brother and sister, Sean and Amelie, were sound asleep, and that their apartment was locked up. faux But between their checks at 9.30pm and 10pm the apartment was broken into through a window and Madeleine was taken, according to the young girl's aunt, Trish Cameron.
The McCanns made sure the toddler, who turns four next week, and her two-year-old twin brother and sister, Sean and Amelie, were sound asleep, and that their apartment was locked up. faux But between their checks at 9.30pm and 10pm the apartment was broken into through a window and Madeleine was taken, according to the young girl's aunt, Trish Cameron.
Resort offered nanny service - Liverpool Daily Post
Frantic hunt as British girl feared abducted - Yorkshire Post
La dernière personne à l'avoir vue dormir profondément est son père, vers 21h, jeudi 3 mai dans le complexe OC du village de Praia da Luz (environ 1000 habitants) au sud-ouest de l'Algarve. Mais à 22h sa mère est venue voir ses enfants, a trouvé le volet levé, la fenêtre ouverte et sa fille, décrite comme "happy-go-lucky", disparue.
Lost girl hunt has chilling echoes of Ben - Yorkshire Post
Tracker dogs join hunt for Madeleine - Yorkshire Evening Post
Fears For Holiday Girl Abducted From Her Bed - The Scotsman
Police seal off resort in hunt for missing Madeleine - The Scotsman
Please Let Maddie Come Home to Us - Daily Record
late-night search for Madeleine - breakingnews.ie
Les Moyses disent que, parmi les chercheurs, il y avait des policiers en civil, appelés en renfort. Ils disent que PDL est un paradis.
Le gouverneur civil de l'Algarve Antonio Pina décrit les recherches de quelque 150 policiers pour retrouver l'enfant disparue, tandis que Guilhermino Encarnação déclare détenir des preuves d'enlèvement.
Police Fear British Girl Was Abducted - Irish Examiner
Missing Madeleine's Father Makes Plea For Help - Irish Examiner
Missing UK Girl Kidnapped in Portugal: Police - Reuters
British girl, 3, ‘snatched in Portugal - Gulf Times
'Missing UK girl kidnapped in Portugal' - IOL
Papers ponder 'holiday abduction'. BBC
Volunteers join Madeleine search. BBC
Madeleine’s father in plea for help. Metro
Holidaymakers tell of late-night search for Madel...breakingNEWS.ie
Mum Went to Check on Kids...and Ran Out Screaming. The Mirror
Holiday Girl 3 Taken As She Slept Daily Express & Daily Star
British girl, 3, ‘snatched in Portugal. Gulf Times
Holiday Apartment was Easy to Attack. DdN
Where is Maddie? Jornal de Notícias
Les vacanciers cherchent. L'idée d'enlèvement s'installe pour durer.
MADELEINE
It
was the day we should have been going home, as many other Mark Warner
guests were doing. The police would just allow all these people to leave
the country without delaying any departures to interview potential
witnesses – or even, perhaps, potential suspects. Our own friends remained at the Ocean Club.
Gerry and I awoke at four o’clock that morning, having slept for barely a couple of hours, still feeling wretched and utterly abandoned by the PJ in Portimão, Just before 5am Gerry rang Craig Mayhew, the Mark Warner overseas manager, and asked if Alan (Pike, arrivé la veille) would be able to come and see us. He was at the door of our apartment by 6am.
He told us we seemed like model parents. Voilà comment il les a conquis ! This was the cure for sure. I cannot overstate how much such kind reassurance meant to us at that moment. We were both feeling so desperately guilty. Sans doute, finalement est-ce une si bonne chose d'effacer ce sentiment-là ? Whatever we had or had not done right, we were Madeleine’s parents and in our own eyes we had failed to keep her safe. We struggled to bear that sense of guilt and we always will. Alan got us talking, encouraging us to try to think rationally about what we were saying, and we talked a lot, for several hours. We faced our biggest fear: that Madeleine had been taken by a paedophile and killed. This was the only scenario occupying our minds just then. Alan pointed out to us that these thoughts could be no more than speculation. We didn’t know what had happened. We needed to avoid focusing on the negative and channel everything into looking forwards. ‘Madeleine might walk through that door at any minute,’ he said. Qu'est cela sinon de la pure spéculation ? ‘You need to be ready for that.’ He discussed with us the importance of taking control of things, little by little, starting with tiny actions as simple as making ourselves a cup of tea. The effect our conversation with Alan had on us that morning was truly amazing. To say it helped would be a gross understatement. Any scepticism we might have had before about how a psychologist could possibly benefit us personally has long gone. Alan was, and remains, a saviour. Il n'est pas un psychologue..
My mum, dad and Auntie Norah were all staying in our apartment with us. Once they were awake and on the go, following Alan’s advice about making tea for ourselves was easier said than done as Auntie Norah had the kettle on endlessly. The Mark Warner staff opened up the Toddler Club – it was usually closed on a Saturday, ‘changeover day’ – so that Sean and Amelie and our friends’ children could be looked after and entertained. I think it was the next day before Sean first asked me, ‘Where’s Madeleine, Mummy?’ Et ils ont dit que les jumeaux ne savaient pas encore parler !!! ... Now there was a visible police presence in and around Praia da Luz, even if it seemed to consist largely of GNR officers marshalling the media. Later we were aware of searches being undertaken – I have a memory of television images of police on horseback riding across the rugged Portuguese countryside.
Gerry and I awoke at four o’clock that morning, having slept for barely a couple of hours, still feeling wretched and utterly abandoned by the PJ in Portimão, Just before 5am Gerry rang Craig Mayhew, the Mark Warner overseas manager, and asked if Alan (Pike, arrivé la veille) would be able to come and see us. He was at the door of our apartment by 6am.
He told us we seemed like model parents. Voilà comment il les a conquis ! This was the cure for sure. I cannot overstate how much such kind reassurance meant to us at that moment. We were both feeling so desperately guilty. Sans doute, finalement est-ce une si bonne chose d'effacer ce sentiment-là ? Whatever we had or had not done right, we were Madeleine’s parents and in our own eyes we had failed to keep her safe. We struggled to bear that sense of guilt and we always will. Alan got us talking, encouraging us to try to think rationally about what we were saying, and we talked a lot, for several hours. We faced our biggest fear: that Madeleine had been taken by a paedophile and killed. This was the only scenario occupying our minds just then. Alan pointed out to us that these thoughts could be no more than speculation. We didn’t know what had happened. We needed to avoid focusing on the negative and channel everything into looking forwards. ‘Madeleine might walk through that door at any minute,’ he said. Qu'est cela sinon de la pure spéculation ? ‘You need to be ready for that.’ He discussed with us the importance of taking control of things, little by little, starting with tiny actions as simple as making ourselves a cup of tea. The effect our conversation with Alan had on us that morning was truly amazing. To say it helped would be a gross understatement. Any scepticism we might have had before about how a psychologist could possibly benefit us personally has long gone. Alan was, and remains, a saviour. Il n'est pas un psychologue..
My mum, dad and Auntie Norah were all staying in our apartment with us. Once they were awake and on the go, following Alan’s advice about making tea for ourselves was easier said than done as Auntie Norah had the kettle on endlessly. The Mark Warner staff opened up the Toddler Club – it was usually closed on a Saturday, ‘changeover day’ – so that Sean and Amelie and our friends’ children could be looked after and entertained. I think it was the next day before Sean first asked me, ‘Where’s Madeleine, Mummy?’ Et ils ont dit que les jumeaux ne savaient pas encore parler !!! ... Now there was a visible police presence in and around Praia da Luz, even if it seemed to consist largely of GNR officers marshalling the media. Later we were aware of searches being undertaken – I have a memory of television images of police on horseback riding across the rugged Portuguese countryside.
All the same, we were reassured to see some UK police that day in the shape of three family liaison officers (FLOs) from the Leicestershire force,
which had also officially logged Madeleine as missing. They came to
introduce themselves and to outline their dual role: supporting us and
our family and acting as a conduit for the flow of information between
us and the PJ. En fait observation des victimes pour informer les PO.
After the trouble we’d had getting anyone in the PJ to talk to us, that
was a relief, although the FLOs would soon find themselves almost as
frustrated as we were in this regard.
The police and judiciary in the country where a crime has been committed have primacy in any investigation. Cela va sans dire. If interviews need to be conducted or lines of inquiry followed in another country, they request such help under mutual legal assistance treaties and protocols, and results are sent back to them. The Portuguese police were apparently reluctant early on to accept any help beyond this from their counterparts in the UK. What is "this" ? On sait que le Gold Group a fait du forcing sur les Portugais. However, in addition to the Leicestershire FLOs, they did permit forensic psychologists from CEOP, the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre, and an analyst from the National Policing Improvements Agency to come to Praia da Luz the following week. Quel analyste ? Kee Rainbow ? Even that may have been unprecedented: we understood this was the first time the Portuguese authorities had ever allowed any foreign force into the country to assist in an investigation. In such a situation, an element of pride is bound to come into play, and the relationship always seemed quite tricky. It never amounted to an effective pooling of information, ideas or intelligence. Existe-t-il un cas réciproque de coopération entre la police britannique et portugaise dans une affaire survenue au RU ?
The police and judiciary in the country where a crime has been committed have primacy in any investigation. Cela va sans dire. If interviews need to be conducted or lines of inquiry followed in another country, they request such help under mutual legal assistance treaties and protocols, and results are sent back to them. The Portuguese police were apparently reluctant early on to accept any help beyond this from their counterparts in the UK. What is "this" ? On sait que le Gold Group a fait du forcing sur les Portugais. However, in addition to the Leicestershire FLOs, they did permit forensic psychologists from CEOP, the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre, and an analyst from the National Policing Improvements Agency to come to Praia da Luz the following week. Quel analyste ? Kee Rainbow ? Even that may have been unprecedented: we understood this was the first time the Portuguese authorities had ever allowed any foreign force into the country to assist in an investigation. In such a situation, an element of pride is bound to come into play, and the relationship always seemed quite tricky. It never amounted to an effective pooling of information, ideas or intelligence. Existe-t-il un cas réciproque de coopération entre la police britannique et portugaise dans une affaire survenue au RU ?
It
appeared that the British officers were told very little about what was
going on and that their role was essentially confined to making
suggestions or volunteering resources. Bien
sûr!
Ils n'auraient pas procédé autrement dans leur pays. The local police, not used to
disclosing the details of an investigation, were clearly wary of
answering all the questions they were being asked. According to what we
would hear a few weeks down the line, the Leicestershire officers were
told in no uncertain terms that if the PJ declined any ideas they
proposed or refused offers of additional expertise they must accept
this. If they didn’t, they would be excluded from the investigation
completely. Pourquoi
faire courir une rumeur vouée à affecter les relations de deux forces
de police ayant vocation de collaborer pour retrouver l'enfant de la
personne qui se permet de tsi désagréables insinuations ? On se demande
comment aurait réagi SY si des Portugais avaient publié des propos
similaires le concernant.
Still, we were very grateful for their involvement, Quelle condescendance ! which would substantially improve communications. In the coming weeks we would meet DCS Bob Small, who we found straight-talking and honest. A lot of hard work went on at home as well, where DS Stuart Prior, the senior investigating officer, was kind enough to show our relatives round the incident room – and Gerry, too, later on. As more TV and press turned up in Luz, Alex Woolfall gave us helpful pointers on handling the media. We came to rely on Alex as our de facto media liaison officer. It was he who guided us early on, giving us simple advice that has stood us in good stead since. He told us to ask ourselves the following two questions before giving anything to anyone in the press: what was our objective, and how was it going to help? We’ve always tried to remember those basic principles in all our interactions with the media. Alex explained the rather Pavlovian responses of the media pack. If we began to give daily statements, for example, they would expect one at the same time every day. Sometimes, he said, all they needed was to be fed something to keep them happy, and if that was the case, this might be our only objective in speaking to them. They were instructed about the way to manipulate the media then ! We learned very quickly that we had to take the utmost care with anything we said in public. Not only was it likely that the abductor would be listening, Si l'enlèvement n'était mu ni par une rançon ni par une vengeance, pourquoi le ravisseur serait-il à l'écoute ? but we had to make sure there was no suggestion of criticism of the PJ, while at the same time, as the days passed, maintaining the pressure on them to keep investigating. The way to manipulate the police forces too ! On se demande comment ils ont eu le courage de publier de tels propos, qui seraient évidemment rapportés tôt ou tard aux autorités portugaises. Il fallait vraiment que l'impunité soit sûre. We had so many meetings that day, and in the days to follow, with people who were trying to help us that it is hard to remember what was suggested, advised or discussed when. Neither Gerry nor I was functioning remotely properly. We were just surviving somehow, swept along by all this activity. At lunchtime, over by the Tapas area, Gerry saw a crowd of departing guests waiting with their suitcases for the coach to take them to the airport. Among them was a guy with whom he had played tennis several times that week, accompanied by his wife and child. They still had another week of their holiday to go but had decided to return home because, as he explained to Gerry, it was just ‘too painful’ for them to stay any longer. Gerry felt sick. It was at this moment that it dawned on him just how many people would be leaving the resort that day without being interviewed. It would run into the hundreds. How much potentially valuable information was going to be lost for ever as a result? Gerald est malade de penser que la PJ n'a pas fait son boulot.
With the new batch of incoming holidaymakers more of our relatives appeared: Gerry’s mum, Eileen, his brother John and sister Trisha, with her husband Sandy, plus Michael, my cousin Anne-Marie’s husband. Gerry had asked his youngest sister, Phil, to stay in Glasgow to be the focus in the UK for the family and inquiries from the media, who were already approaching friends, relations and more or less anyone to whom we’d ever said hello in the street for information and opinions.
Mark Warner had put two more apartments at our disposal to accommodate everyone who wanted to be there, and it felt good to be wrapped in this familiar blanket of support, although inevitably, the arrival of more family members unleashed a fresh wave of tears. Tout ce beau monde aux frais de MW. It was particularly hard to bear the distress of our parents. Witnessing our mums being torn apart was absolutely heartbreaking, as was the sight of my dad, who suffers from Parkinson’s disease, sobbing profusely, shaking violently, his condition exacerbated by his state of mind, and virtually collapsing on to the couch beside me. ‘I’m so sorry. I’ve let you down. I’m so sorry, so sorry,’ he kept repeating. Of course he hadn’t let me down. Ne pensait-il pas à MMC ?
Still, we were very grateful for their involvement, Quelle condescendance ! which would substantially improve communications. In the coming weeks we would meet DCS Bob Small, who we found straight-talking and honest. A lot of hard work went on at home as well, where DS Stuart Prior, the senior investigating officer, was kind enough to show our relatives round the incident room – and Gerry, too, later on. As more TV and press turned up in Luz, Alex Woolfall gave us helpful pointers on handling the media. We came to rely on Alex as our de facto media liaison officer. It was he who guided us early on, giving us simple advice that has stood us in good stead since. He told us to ask ourselves the following two questions before giving anything to anyone in the press: what was our objective, and how was it going to help? We’ve always tried to remember those basic principles in all our interactions with the media. Alex explained the rather Pavlovian responses of the media pack. If we began to give daily statements, for example, they would expect one at the same time every day. Sometimes, he said, all they needed was to be fed something to keep them happy, and if that was the case, this might be our only objective in speaking to them. They were instructed about the way to manipulate the media then ! We learned very quickly that we had to take the utmost care with anything we said in public. Not only was it likely that the abductor would be listening, Si l'enlèvement n'était mu ni par une rançon ni par une vengeance, pourquoi le ravisseur serait-il à l'écoute ? but we had to make sure there was no suggestion of criticism of the PJ, while at the same time, as the days passed, maintaining the pressure on them to keep investigating. The way to manipulate the police forces too ! On se demande comment ils ont eu le courage de publier de tels propos, qui seraient évidemment rapportés tôt ou tard aux autorités portugaises. Il fallait vraiment que l'impunité soit sûre. We had so many meetings that day, and in the days to follow, with people who were trying to help us that it is hard to remember what was suggested, advised or discussed when. Neither Gerry nor I was functioning remotely properly. We were just surviving somehow, swept along by all this activity. At lunchtime, over by the Tapas area, Gerry saw a crowd of departing guests waiting with their suitcases for the coach to take them to the airport. Among them was a guy with whom he had played tennis several times that week, accompanied by his wife and child. They still had another week of their holiday to go but had decided to return home because, as he explained to Gerry, it was just ‘too painful’ for them to stay any longer. Gerry felt sick. It was at this moment that it dawned on him just how many people would be leaving the resort that day without being interviewed. It would run into the hundreds. How much potentially valuable information was going to be lost for ever as a result? Gerald est malade de penser que la PJ n'a pas fait son boulot.
With the new batch of incoming holidaymakers more of our relatives appeared: Gerry’s mum, Eileen, his brother John and sister Trisha, with her husband Sandy, plus Michael, my cousin Anne-Marie’s husband. Gerry had asked his youngest sister, Phil, to stay in Glasgow to be the focus in the UK for the family and inquiries from the media, who were already approaching friends, relations and more or less anyone to whom we’d ever said hello in the street for information and opinions.
Mark Warner had put two more apartments at our disposal to accommodate everyone who wanted to be there, and it felt good to be wrapped in this familiar blanket of support, although inevitably, the arrival of more family members unleashed a fresh wave of tears. Tout ce beau monde aux frais de MW. It was particularly hard to bear the distress of our parents. Witnessing our mums being torn apart was absolutely heartbreaking, as was the sight of my dad, who suffers from Parkinson’s disease, sobbing profusely, shaking violently, his condition exacerbated by his state of mind, and virtually collapsing on to the couch beside me. ‘I’m so sorry. I’ve let you down. I’m so sorry, so sorry,’ he kept repeating. Of course he hadn’t let me down. Ne pensait-il pas à MMC ?
As
the sun set on another day and still there was no news, Gerry gave a
further statement to the waiting press. Again I went outside and stood
with him, my arm linked through his, but left him to read out our
message.
That evening the local Catholic priest, Father José Manuel Pacheco, who had returned to Luz, came across to our apartment to introduce himself and offer his support. My first impression was of a very cheery chap. Nothing wrong with that, but at the time his smiling face seemed out of place in the grief-laden atmosphere of our apartment.
That evening the local Catholic priest, Father José Manuel Pacheco, who had returned to Luz, came across to our apartment to introduce himself and offer his support. My first impression was of a very cheery chap. Nothing wrong with that, but at the time his smiling face seemed out of place in the grief-laden atmosphere of our apartment.
06 : 59 Titres dont 2 PT
A Missing Girl is the Parents’ Responsibility - Diário de Notícias
étonnant que des médecins laissent sans surveillance (accidents) leurs très petits enfants. Le DN remarque que, selon la presse UK, il y a des doutes sur les compétences nationales en fait d'enquête.
On cherche le repaire du prédateur.
The search widens - Algarve Resident
100,000 reward offered for Madeleine - Algarve Resident
When adventure turns to tragedy - Algarve Resident
Emotions are running high - Algarve Resident
Arrival of Leicester Liaison Officers - Algarve Resident
Prayers were said - Algarve Resident
The PJ give details of suspect - Algarve Resident
Hunt at Black Rock - News of the World
Maddie suspect - News of the World
Find Prime Suspect - The People
New Lead in Hunt for Snatched Holiday Tot - The People
The search widens - Algarve Resident
100,000 reward offered for Madeleine - Algarve Resident
When adventure turns to tragedy - Algarve Resident
Emotions are running high - Algarve Resident
Arrival of Leicester Liaison Officers - Algarve Resident
Prayers were said - Algarve Resident
The PJ give details of suspect - Algarve Resident
Hunt at Black Rock - News of the World
Maddie suspect - News of the World
Find Prime Suspect - The People
New Lead in Hunt for Snatched Holiday Tot - The People
Chasse aux pédophiles.
Knock Broke Quiet Night: New Lead in Hunt for Snatched Tot - The People
Parents' anguish for Maddie - The Sun
Who did this planned it.. to last detail, by John Stalker - Sunday Mirror
Selon cet officier supérieur de la police de Manchester, le meilleur indice est que l'effraction ait eu lieu dans l'obscurité. L'opération n'a pas eu lieu sur un coup de tête, comme lorsqu'un enfant est enlevé dans la rue. Il y a donc eu un certain degré de planification ... avec Maddy comme cible. L'agencement du complexe était certainement connu des ravisseurs, comme la façon la plus facile d'entrer par effraction (si JS lit la presse, il ne doit donner aucun crédit à ce qui dérange sa propre représentation des choses).
Il pense que le profil du délinquant est similaire à celui de l'homme qui a violé et tué Caroline Dickinson, comme s'il avait été responsable de cette enquête criminelle. Il imagine quelqu'un qui vit très près du complexe, probablement à moins d'un demi-mile, et peut même y travaille. Enfin il liste les must des enquêteurs !!!
The Net's Closing In, by Lori Campbell - Sunday Mirror
We are all praying for Maddy - Irish Sunday Mirror
We know Maddy monster - Sunday Express
Kidnapped Maddy captive by paedophile in his lair - Sunday Express
Parents' anguish for Maddie - The Sun
Who did this planned it.. to last detail, by John Stalker - Sunday Mirror
Selon cet officier supérieur de la police de Manchester, le meilleur indice est que l'effraction ait eu lieu dans l'obscurité. L'opération n'a pas eu lieu sur un coup de tête, comme lorsqu'un enfant est enlevé dans la rue. Il y a donc eu un certain degré de planification ... avec Maddy comme cible. L'agencement du complexe était certainement connu des ravisseurs, comme la façon la plus facile d'entrer par effraction (si JS lit la presse, il ne doit donner aucun crédit à ce qui dérange sa propre représentation des choses).
Il pense que le profil du délinquant est similaire à celui de l'homme qui a violé et tué Caroline Dickinson, comme s'il avait été responsable de cette enquête criminelle. Il imagine quelqu'un qui vit très près du complexe, probablement à moins d'un demi-mile, et peut même y travaille. Enfin il liste les must des enquêteurs !!!
The Net's Closing In, by Lori Campbell - Sunday Mirror
We are all praying for Maddy - Irish Sunday Mirror
We know Maddy monster - Sunday Express
Kidnapped Maddy captive by paedophile in his lair - Sunday Express
Traquer le monstre dans sa tannière.
Family prays for lost tot - Daily Star Sunday
The net's tightening - Daily Star Sunday
Wasted days in hunt for Maddy - Mail on Sunday
Sniffer dogs tracked Maddy to supermarket - Mail on Sunday
Mother's tears for missing daughter - Mail on Sunday
Mother prays for girl's safe return - Mail on Sunday
Community 'not the same' after girl's disappearance - Mail on Sunday
Birthday on Sat and making her a Dr Who cake - Mail on Sunday
Police reveal suspect as hunt for Madeleine widens - Observer
Children lie awake in fear as rumours swirl - Observer
Today parents staying in the holiday village of Praia da Luz in Portugal are not letting their children out of their sight.
For parents, the best is not always enough - Observer
Paedophile abducted Madeleine, police say - Sunday Telegraph
Church service for Madeleine - Sunday Telegraph
Philomena MC profère toutes sortes d'accusations contre la PJ.
John Hill denied reports that the windows to the apartment had been forced open. Robin Crossland, l'administrateur du complexe présent lorsque les McCann ont été interrogés par la police peu après la disparition de Maddy, a a déclaré que "les MC ont clairement indiqué qu'ils avaient laissé la porte-fenêtre ouverte car ils l'utilisaient pour accéder à l'appartement afin de surveiller les enfants tout au long du repas.
Maddy: police 'know who took her' - Sunday Times
Britons join search for lost toddler - Sunday Times
Roy Ramm, a former Scotland Yard commander, said: “This is somebody who has planned this abduction quite carefully. He has probably looked and observed this child during the day.”
Hotel sources said the apartment’s french doors – which faced the restaurant where the McCanns were eating – were unlocked by the couple.
Every mother’s nightmare - Sunday Times
Mother prays for Maddy's safe return - Times Online
MMC abducted as PJ target prime suspect - Independent on Sunday
Resorts reputation for safety - until now - Independent on Sunday
Prayer Service For Missing Girl - BBC
Fresh Appeal Over Missing Girl - BBC
The 'family-friendly' holiday firm - BBC
Fresh Appeal Over Missing Girl - CBBC (Children's BBC)
Fresh appeal for missing girl - ITN
Mother's tears for missing daughter - Metro
Mother prays for girl's safe return - Metro
Emotional appeal by parents of missing M - Liverpool Daily Post
KMC: Please pray for her return - Liverpool Daily Post
Couple search for missing Madeleine - Warrington Guardian
Cops hunt 'suspect' - The Sunday Sun (Newcastle)
Abducted Girl's Family pray For Her Safe Return - The Scotsman
Police 'Know Who Abducted Madeleine' - The Scotsman
Abducted girl's relatives now 'fear the worst' - The Scotsman
We have evidence indicating a kidnap - police chief - Sunday Mail
Little Maddy stolen from her bedroom - Sunday Mail
Tourist tells of horror at parents' ordeal - Sunday Mail
Portugal police focus on kidnap suspect - Irish Times
PT Police Make Suspect Sketch in Kidnapping - Fox News
MCs Call for Prayers at Church - Christian Today
Family prays for lost tot - Daily Star Sunday
The net's tightening - Daily Star Sunday
Wasted days in hunt for Maddy - Mail on Sunday
Sniffer dogs tracked Maddy to supermarket - Mail on Sunday
Mother's tears for missing daughter - Mail on Sunday
Mother prays for girl's safe return - Mail on Sunday
Community 'not the same' after girl's disappearance - Mail on Sunday
Birthday on Sat and making her a Dr Who cake - Mail on Sunday
Police reveal suspect as hunt for Madeleine widens - Observer
Children lie awake in fear as rumours swirl - Observer
Today parents staying in the holiday village of Praia da Luz in Portugal are not letting their children out of their sight.
For parents, the best is not always enough - Observer
Paedophile abducted Madeleine, police say - Sunday Telegraph
Church service for Madeleine - Sunday Telegraph
Philomena MC profère toutes sortes d'accusations contre la PJ.
John Hill denied reports that the windows to the apartment had been forced open. Robin Crossland, l'administrateur du complexe présent lorsque les McCann ont été interrogés par la police peu après la disparition de Maddy, a a déclaré que "les MC ont clairement indiqué qu'ils avaient laissé la porte-fenêtre ouverte car ils l'utilisaient pour accéder à l'appartement afin de surveiller les enfants tout au long du repas.
Maddy: police 'know who took her' - Sunday Times
Britons join search for lost toddler - Sunday Times
Roy Ramm, a former Scotland Yard commander, said: “This is somebody who has planned this abduction quite carefully. He has probably looked and observed this child during the day.”
Hotel sources said the apartment’s french doors – which faced the restaurant where the McCanns were eating – were unlocked by the couple.
Every mother’s nightmare - Sunday Times
Mother prays for Maddy's safe return - Times Online
MMC abducted as PJ target prime suspect - Independent on Sunday
Resorts reputation for safety - until now - Independent on Sunday
Prayer Service For Missing Girl - BBC
Fresh Appeal Over Missing Girl - BBC
The 'family-friendly' holiday firm - BBC
Fresh Appeal Over Missing Girl - CBBC (Children's BBC)
Fresh appeal for missing girl - ITN
Mother's tears for missing daughter - Metro
Mother prays for girl's safe return - Metro
Emotional appeal by parents of missing M - Liverpool Daily Post
KMC: Please pray for her return - Liverpool Daily Post
Couple search for missing Madeleine - Warrington Guardian
Cops hunt 'suspect' - The Sunday Sun (Newcastle)
Abducted Girl's Family pray For Her Safe Return - The Scotsman
Police 'Know Who Abducted Madeleine' - The Scotsman
Abducted girl's relatives now 'fear the worst' - The Scotsman
We have evidence indicating a kidnap - police chief - Sunday Mail
Little Maddy stolen from her bedroom - Sunday Mail
Tourist tells of horror at parents' ordeal - Sunday Mail
Portugal police focus on kidnap suspect - Irish Times
PT Police Make Suspect Sketch in Kidnapping - Fox News
MCs Call for Prayers at Church - Christian Today
MADELEINE:
It was Sunday, and despite my fragility I was determined to go to Mass. The discovery that it was also Mothers’ Day in Portugal made it even more relevant and important. From the moment Madeleine had gone, I’d turned instinctively to God and to Mary, feeling a deep need to pray, and to get as many other people as possible to pray, too. I believed it would make a difference. Although in the early days I struggled to comprehend what had happened to Madeleine, and to us, I’ve never believed it was God’s fault, or that He ‘allowed’ it to happen. I was just confused that He had apparently not heeded the prayer I’d offered every night for my family: ‘Thank you God for bringing Gerry, Madeleine, Sean and Amelie into my life. Please keep them all safe, healthy and happy. Amen.’ Please keep them all safe. It must be said that when I’d prayed for their safety I’d been thinking: please don’t let them fall off something and bang their heads, or please don’t let them be involved in a car accident. I’d never considered anything as horrific as my child being stolen. that's where she failed, she didn't pray God to keep her children safe from abduction ! But I had kind of assumed my prayer would cover every eventuality. Now, in spite of not knowing where Madeleine was or who she was with, I tried to reassure myself that God was still keeping her safe.
We all, family and friends, went to Mass at the local church, Nossa Senhora da Luz, in the centre of the village. Given the state we were in, and with the waiting press primed to follow our every move, on this occasion we were taken down by car. Alex Woolfall, well aware that we were not going to be able to go anywhere without a huge media entourage, had decided he had better accompany us, too. ...green, the colour of hope in Portugal,...yellow, the colour that has come to symbolize hope for the safe return of a loved one in the US and latterly in Britain, too.
That first Sunday saw two further arrivals in Luz: my childhood friends Michelle and Nicky both wanted to be with me, and both were naturally very upset, for Madeleine and for me.
... So grateful were we to have our nearest and dearest around us, we failed to notice that our ballooning party of supporters was becoming unwieldy. It took Alan Pike, who was keeping a watchful eye on us and our family and friends, to gently draw our attention to this situation. ... the presence of so many loved ones, some of them in almost as bad a state as we were, was proving counter-productive. Alan pointed out that all our family and friends had their own needs but that ours, Gerry’s and mine, had to be paramount...He felt, too, that we would function better ourselves within a more streamlined, focused team of helpers. Listening to Alan, it all seemed so obvious. But of course, it left us with the problem of deciding who should go and who should remain, not to mention telling them.When it came to talking about it, however, we discovered that Alan, who had spent time with our friends and family as well as with us, had already broached this subject with them, which made it all much easier. Having said that, we ended up getting down to the nitty-gritty rather earlier than anticipated – that Sunday evening, in fact – and not in the way we had planned, either. Gerry had gone round to one of the other apartments our party was occupying, where apparently something was said that annoyed him, precipitating the discussion we’d intended to hold in a rather calmer atmosphere. We can laugh about it now, but at the time, Gerry and I couldn’t laugh at anything. After the bombshell had been dropped, Gerry’s mum had turned to my mum and said, ‘Well, Sue – it looks as if we’re on the “Granny Express” home!’ We also heard that after Gerry left, there had been a few cracks about ‘Big Brother evictions’. However bleak the situation, whenever a roomful of Glaswegians and Liverpudlians is gathered together, you can guarantee some gallows humour will break through. Still, a decision had to be made and, as it turned out, it was the right one for everybody.
As some of our family and friends prepared to return to the UK in a day or so, we were beginning to become aware of the help being offered locally. We had that Sunday morning experienced the warmth and sympathy of the Portuguese community and soon we would find supporters among the British expatriates living permanently in Praia da Luz, who organized a search of the area around Luz the next morning, Monday 7 May. The volunteers were joined by most of our family and friends, keen to do something practical to help while Gerry and I were tied up with Andy Bowes attaché de presse de l'ambassade and Alex Woolfall. Once we were left with our leaner support group, we allocated general roles: Trisha and Nicky took over the childcare, while Sandy and Michael dealt with mail, admin and finances. Trish and Sandy ended up staying with us for three solid months. I don’t know what we’d have done without them.
In fact I would soon be advised by British police experts to try to stay as calm as possible and not to show any emotion in public, so it was probably no bad thing that my feelings seemed to be temporarily on holiday that day. The thinking behind this advice was that Madeleine’s abductor might get some kind of perverted kick out of my distress and perhaps change his behaviour in some way. De quelle manière ? Very much criticized by Pat Brown. Of course we were terrified by the implications of this theory. It meant that quite natural actions or expressions of emotion caught on camera could potentially jeopardize Madeleine’s safety.
Alex and Andy had arranged for the appeal to be handled on a ‘pooled’ basis, which meant that one company, in this instance the BBC, would be chosen to record it and they would then distribute the film to all the other media outlets. This was a system we would use often, because as well as significantly reducing the time we would otherwise have spent recording separate statements and interviews, or facing a barrage of cameras and microphones, it involved dealing with only one reporter and one cameraman, which made the whole experience less intimidating. ..
British consul Bill Henderson and Ambassador John Buck were visiting us on a fairly regular basis and we were seeing the Leicestershire FLOs every day. The flow of information, however, was slow and limited. The Portuguese police were divulging very little to the British police and vetoing many of their suggestions – bringing out specialist dogs, for example, or staging a reconstruction. Tiens, on croyait que les chiens étaient incredibly unreliable... Une reconstruction n'est pas une reconstitution. What was forthcoming, particularly in terms of the quality and depth of the investigation, would become increasingly concerning to us. Grounds for elimination, for instance, often seemed very flimsy. I remember Gerry and me exchanging quizzical looks after the FLOs tried to explain how one couple had been ruled out of the inquiry. When we asked them if they were comfortable with this decision, there was an awkward pause before they replied, ‘No, not really. These guys didn't speak Portuguese.
07 : 58 Titres dont 1 PT
Barra da Costa believes that Maddie’s abductor is English - Lusa (in Publico)
Barra da Costa believes that Maddie’s abductor is English - Lusa (in Publico)
La sécurité de l'appartement est mise en cause. La mère est en prière. Barra da Costa parle d'enlèvement prémédité, MMC pouvant connaître le ravisseur (Brit).
Child expert offers his views - Algarve Resident
RTA exclusive interview - Algarve Resident
Chief Inspector of PJ says Interpol now involved - Algarve Resident
Monday Update on Madeleine - Algarve Resident
British man offers generous reward - Algarve Resident
Don Holmes, of Holmes & Smith Sociedade Lda, a construction company near Albufeira in the Algarve, has decided to offer a 10.000 euros reward as he is personally shocked by the disappearance of little Maddy.
Kidnapper's Perfect Hotel View - The Sun
'Please give our little girl back' - The Sun
RTA exclusive interview - Algarve Resident
Chief Inspector of PJ says Interpol now involved - Algarve Resident
Monday Update on Madeleine - Algarve Resident
British man offers generous reward - Algarve Resident
Don Holmes, of Holmes & Smith Sociedade Lda, a construction company near Albufeira in the Algarve, has decided to offer a 10.000 euros reward as he is personally shocked by the disappearance of little Maddy.
Kidnapper's Perfect Hotel View - The Sun
'Please give our little girl back' - The Sun
The McCann family also disclosed that
on the night of her disappearance Madeleine was wearing white pyjama
bottoms with a small floral design and a short-sleeved pink top with
a picture of Eeyore with the word Eeyore written in capital letters.
The clothes were bought at Marks and
Spencer last year.
Maddie Suspect may be 'British' - The Sun Maddy Mum's New Appeal - Daily Mirror
Courage, Courage, Courage - Daily Mirror
'Corrupt cops do not want to know' - Daily Mirror
I saw suspects with a girl like her - Daily Express
Did kidnapper slip out of the country?- Daily Express
Please. . . don't stop praying for my Maddy - Daily Star
Police admit: 'We don't know if Maddy is alive' - Daily Mail
Wasted days in hunt for Maddy - Daily Mail
The nightmare of the MCs: There but for the grace of God go us - Daily Mail
Full text of the McCanns' appeal to Maddy's kidnapper - Daily Mail
Mother appeals to Madeleine's abductor - Guardian
Sketch of suspect held back in case panics·3 PO fly to PT to help - Guardian
Clues That Point To A History Of Criminal Actions - Telegraph
Leaving through the front door, after forcing entry through the window, indicates that he or she was most likely carrying the sleeping child and was fairly confident of not encountering one of the parents.
Losing A Child IsThe Worse Thing Ever - Telegraph
Mother's Day tears for Madeleine's family - Telegraph
Mother's appeal: 'Please do not hurt her' - Telegraph
Holiday firm tries to calm guests' growing fears - Telegraph
Village faithful join fraught parents to pray for girl’s safety - Times
Balding man seen dragging blonde girl towards marina - Times
Nothing can stop a determined abductor, child alive ?[Ray Wyre] - TOL
Mother pleads, please don't hurt Madeleine - Times Online
PT prays for missing child as police investigation comes under attack - Independent
Madeleine police under spotlight - BBC
Mother in Plea Over Missing Girl - BBC
Search For Missing Girl Continues - CBBC (Children's BBC)
'Please let our Madeleine go' - Metro
Maddy search taking toll on family - Leicester Mercury
Peaceful resort shaken by kidnap - Leicester Mercury
Portuguese community feels shock over abduction - Liverpool Daily Post
We got out of that 'unsafe' apartment - Liverpool Daily Post
Mother's Day tears for Madeleine's family - Telegraph
Mother's appeal: 'Please do not hurt her' - Telegraph
Holiday firm tries to calm guests' growing fears - Telegraph
Village faithful join fraught parents to pray for girl’s safety - Times
Balding man seen dragging blonde girl towards marina - Times
Nothing can stop a determined abductor, child alive ?[Ray Wyre] - TOL
Mother pleads, please don't hurt Madeleine - Times Online
PT prays for missing child as police investigation comes under attack - Independent
Madeleine police under spotlight - BBC
Mother in Plea Over Missing Girl - BBC
Search For Missing Girl Continues - CBBC (Children's BBC)
'Please let our Madeleine go' - Metro
Maddy search taking toll on family - Leicester Mercury
Peaceful resort shaken by kidnap - Leicester Mercury
Portuguese community feels shock over abduction - Liverpool Daily Post
We got out of that 'unsafe' apartment - Liverpool Daily Post
On
trouve toujours quelqu'un qui a refusé d'habiter un appartement
"exposé" et quelqu'un qui ne se voit pas en vacances entouré de
murailles de protection.
We can't assure you Madeleine is alive - Yorkshire Post
Mother prays for missing girl's return - Yorkshire Post
Confusion over Madeleine 'suspect' - Bucks Herald
We can't assure you Madeleine is alive - Yorkshire Post
Mother prays for missing girl's return - Yorkshire Post
Confusion over Madeleine 'suspect' - Bucks Herald
Le
journal se réfère à 24 Horas qui a rapporté que l'homme aperçu avec un
enfant n'avait été vu que de dos (cheveux vus, pas traits du visage).
Mothers' Day in Portugal, family pleads: Pray - The Scotsman
Police Think Madeleine's Abductor May Be From UK - The Scotsman
Police believe she is still alive - Daily Record
Pray for My Madeleine, Begs Mum - Daily Record
Mother makes fresh appeal for missing Madeleine - Herald Scotland
Man seen dragging girl towards marina - Evening Times (Scotland)
Search for Madeleine continues - Aberdeen Evening Express
Abduction: hunt on for balding man - Irish Independent
Toddler's mother prays for her return - Irish Independent
Madeleine's Kidnapper 'May Have Been British' - Irish Examiner
Appeal From Mother Of Missing UK Toddler - RTE
Lovely Maddy spent Easter in Donegal - Donegal Democrat
Mother prays for girl's safe return - Press Association
World briefs: Brit girl, 3, kidnapped - NY Daily News
Pedophile seized British toddler, say Portuguese police - Brisbane Times 7
Stalker snatched little Madeleine while she slept - Adelaide Now
Mothers' Day in Portugal, family pleads: Pray - The Scotsman
Police Think Madeleine's Abductor May Be From UK - The Scotsman
Police believe she is still alive - Daily Record
Pray for My Madeleine, Begs Mum - Daily Record
Mother makes fresh appeal for missing Madeleine - Herald Scotland
Man seen dragging girl towards marina - Evening Times (Scotland)
Search for Madeleine continues - Aberdeen Evening Express
Abduction: hunt on for balding man - Irish Independent
Toddler's mother prays for her return - Irish Independent
Madeleine's Kidnapper 'May Have Been British' - Irish Examiner
Appeal From Mother Of Missing UK Toddler - RTE
Lovely Maddy spent Easter in Donegal - Donegal Democrat
Mother prays for girl's safe return - Press Association
World briefs: Brit girl, 3, kidnapped - NY Daily News
Pedophile seized British toddler, say Portuguese police - Brisbane Times 7
Stalker snatched little Madeleine while she slept - Adelaide Now
MADELEINE:
The
7 mai evening, completely exasperated, we lost it with the liaison
officers. Within a few seconds of arriving they were telling us, ‘We’ve
had a very frustrating day today.’ It transpired that they’d had to spend the whole day without an interpreter.
In other words, it had been a complete waste of time. We were raging.
‘Why did you have to spend the whole day without an interpreter? If you
haven’t got one, then get one! This is our daughter’s life, for Christ’s
sake. We don’t have days to waste and she certainly doesn’t. And if you
can’t get one, then let us know and we will.’ I couldn’t believe it.
A couple of days later, the FLOs’ efforts were bolstered soutenus by the arrival from the UK of the specialists from the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP). The director of the forensic psychology unit, who was a detective superintendent, and a social worker came to see us to outline their current lines of inquiry. In the weeks ahead the input of the UK experts would encourage us to feel more optimistic that the investigation was gaining momentum. This initial discussion, though, was unsettling, focused as it was on the typical profile of a paedophile. All I could think was, not Madeleine. Please, not Madeleine! The prayer isn't against the paedophile reality, but to keep Madeleine away from that reality.
We were existing in an information vacuum. A big part of the problem was the fact that in Portugal all criminal cases are governed by the law of judicial secrecy, which means that once an investigation is under way, neither the police nor anyone else is allowed to reveal anything about it, including details of potential suspects, on the basis that this could jeopardize a trial. Pas l'action en justice, l'enquête criminelle ! Even the statements and appeals we made, quite usual in the UK, were not something the PJ advocated. Donc la cause de leur frénésie médiatiqu est le vide d'information suscité par le secret de l'instruction.
Of course, this was torture for us. Une torture de plus ! The British media were not accustomed to it, either. For those familiar with police and court reporting in the UK, the Portuguese system is a ‘hall of mirrors’, as one reporter described it. Le palais des glaces est une attraction sous forme de labyrinthe cloisonné par des vitres ou des murs recouverts de miroirs éventuellement déformants, concaves ou converxes, faisant perdre l’orientation et tout repère spatial. Because nothing can be confirmed on the record, and the police often don’t bother to contradict false reports, rumours proliferate. Parfois contredire une rumeur est contreproductif. Les MC n'ont jamais tenté de réfuter la rumeur du volet et de la fenêtre forcés.
Although it wasn’t apparent to us at the time, because the PJ were not guiding the press, particularly the international press, no agenda was being set. This left the media with a free rein and would soon lead to speculation on a massive scale and the broadcasting and printing of erroneous ‘facts’ in the interests of filling column inches and airtime. It is incredible, looking back, how so much could be said with so little hard information available. Absolument vrai ! Mais le volume de ce qui se disait n'est qu'un volume, le contenu est autre chose. Comment savoir que l'orientation des médias par la police aurait évité les spéculations ?
In the first few days after Madeleine’s abduction, the media in general were very respectful and their coverage was largely sympathetic. Aside from when we were delivering a pre-arranged statement, we were pretty much left alone. Yet although there didn’t seem to be very much happening in terms of the investigation, the media presence grew. This was very surprising to us and we’ve always been at a loss to understand why our ‘story’ attracted quite such unprecedented attention. Obviously the circumstances were extremely rare: a British child being abducted on holiday. On holiday n'est pas le plus extra-ordinaire, ce qui n'arrive jamais en Europe est from bed avec shutters and window jemmied ! Car à cette date les journaux étaient encore pleins de jemmied window and shutters The only other such case we knew of was that of Ben Needham, who had been snatched sixteen years earlier from a Greek island at the age of twenty-one months, and who still hasn’t been found. Suivant le ministère des affaires étrangères britanniques rien n'indique qu'il ait été enlevé. Comme pour MMC. The world had changed dramatically since then, particularly in terms of communications. In 1991 the internet and mobile phones had been in their infancy, and there were no twenty-four-hour news channels to be fuelled. Cell phones accelerated the spreading of the news, but didn't “fuel”. The fact that Gerry and I were both doctors seemed to make the story more newsworthy, as, no doubt, did the fact that Madeleine is such a beautiful little girl. Usually doctors are believed, it's part of the cure.
We came in for some criticism, of course, for leaving the children in the apartment while we had dinner. Some initial reports were very misleading, suggesting that we had been sitting several hundred metres away. Ce qui était "misleading", c'est le volet et la fenêtre fracturés. Journalists who were actually in Praia da Luz and saw the proximity of the Tapas restaurant to the apartment (as the crow flies, just under fifty metres; a little further le double ! walking round ‘the road way’) were clearly shocked that Madeleine had been grabbed at such close quarters, Aucun journaliste n'a écrit ça dans un journal ! and we were given the definite impression that they wanted to help. People who say like them “want to help” ! This also went for their bosses, the TV executives and newspaper editors. There was unquestionably a sense of ‘There but for the grace of God go I.’ A recognition that others' misfortune could be one's own, if it weren't for the blessing of the Divine, or for one's luck.I looked on them as allies in the search for Madeleine. r"aq And although I don’t doubt that many of them did genuinely want to help, it was a while before I realized that finding our child came some way down their list of priorities and learned the hard lesson that the media are not about spreading news but selling products. They have to be read don't they ? Le livre “Madeleine” où pullulent les inexactitudes pour être modéré et conçu afin de renflouer le fonds est-il à l'abri d'un tel reproche ? Their overriding concern was not us or, sadly, Madeleine, it was someone shouting down the phone that the editor needed eight hundred words by ten o’clock.
For the first few days after Madeleine was taken, with the apartment full of people, the English-language news from Sky or the BBC was on pretty consistently in the background. We saw quite a bit of the coverage ourselves but once the speculation mushroomed it crucified us. Gerry said to me, ‘We have to stop watching this.’ We also began to avoid the English newspapers, readily available from Baptista on the same day as they were published at home.
In the village, drivers had to find alternative routes and parking places because of the roadblock outside our apartments and the satellite trucks stationed permanently nearby. Reporters hung out in Baptista and the Hugo Beaty bar, or trawled the beaches, assailing locals and holidaymakers alike for quotes and soundbites.
On the plus side, it became apparent very quickly that Madeleine’s plight had struck a chord with huge numbers of the British public. Messages of support, sympathy and empathy came flooding in. Mark Warner’s email was bombarded soon after the news broke and hundreds of letters were arriving on a daily basis.
That first gruelling week was so hectic and seemed so long. The unrelenting agony made every minute feel like an hour, but for us the days literally were long, as we slept so little. By midweek we were starting to manage, through sheer exhaustion, a few hours’ sleep every night, though if I happened to wake up, that would be it until morning. The moment I opened my eyes, Madeleine was the first thing on my mind and I would be instantly aware of a painful heaviness in my chest and an unsettling dread. I was always awake by 6am and usually I would get up, go out on to the veranda and make a few phone calls – nobody at home was sleeping well, either. I had begun to eat a little, too, though nowhere near enough. (Reports of my weight loss were greatly exaggerated: in the first week I did lose about 4½lbs, which I could ill afford, and which it took me months to regain, but nowhere near the stone removed from me by some of the press. I have always been thin. It’s the way I’m made.) There were days when I would say to myself, ‘How can I sit here and eat breakfast when Madeleine is missing?’ or ‘How can I possibly take a shower?’, but somehow I did. As Gerry kept telling me, ‘Crumbling into a heap and doing nothing will not bring Madeleine back.’ He was right, of course, but there would be many crumbles along the way.
We spent so much time closeted with various advisers that we didn’t see much of our holiday friends, except for Fiona. She knew us and our children so well: she understood, as far as anyone else could understand, and that made her support very important to me. I bumped into the others at the Tapas area one day. They were standing there helplessly and Jane and Russ were crying. Soon we were all crying and hugging each other. It was just so awful.
A couple of days later, the FLOs’ efforts were bolstered soutenus by the arrival from the UK of the specialists from the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP). The director of the forensic psychology unit, who was a detective superintendent, and a social worker came to see us to outline their current lines of inquiry. In the weeks ahead the input of the UK experts would encourage us to feel more optimistic that the investigation was gaining momentum. This initial discussion, though, was unsettling, focused as it was on the typical profile of a paedophile. All I could think was, not Madeleine. Please, not Madeleine! The prayer isn't against the paedophile reality, but to keep Madeleine away from that reality.
We were existing in an information vacuum. A big part of the problem was the fact that in Portugal all criminal cases are governed by the law of judicial secrecy, which means that once an investigation is under way, neither the police nor anyone else is allowed to reveal anything about it, including details of potential suspects, on the basis that this could jeopardize a trial. Pas l'action en justice, l'enquête criminelle ! Even the statements and appeals we made, quite usual in the UK, were not something the PJ advocated. Donc la cause de leur frénésie médiatiqu est le vide d'information suscité par le secret de l'instruction.
Of course, this was torture for us. Une torture de plus ! The British media were not accustomed to it, either. For those familiar with police and court reporting in the UK, the Portuguese system is a ‘hall of mirrors’, as one reporter described it. Le palais des glaces est une attraction sous forme de labyrinthe cloisonné par des vitres ou des murs recouverts de miroirs éventuellement déformants, concaves ou converxes, faisant perdre l’orientation et tout repère spatial. Because nothing can be confirmed on the record, and the police often don’t bother to contradict false reports, rumours proliferate. Parfois contredire une rumeur est contreproductif. Les MC n'ont jamais tenté de réfuter la rumeur du volet et de la fenêtre forcés.
Although it wasn’t apparent to us at the time, because the PJ were not guiding the press, particularly the international press, no agenda was being set. This left the media with a free rein and would soon lead to speculation on a massive scale and the broadcasting and printing of erroneous ‘facts’ in the interests of filling column inches and airtime. It is incredible, looking back, how so much could be said with so little hard information available. Absolument vrai ! Mais le volume de ce qui se disait n'est qu'un volume, le contenu est autre chose. Comment savoir que l'orientation des médias par la police aurait évité les spéculations ?
In the first few days after Madeleine’s abduction, the media in general were very respectful and their coverage was largely sympathetic. Aside from when we were delivering a pre-arranged statement, we were pretty much left alone. Yet although there didn’t seem to be very much happening in terms of the investigation, the media presence grew. This was very surprising to us and we’ve always been at a loss to understand why our ‘story’ attracted quite such unprecedented attention. Obviously the circumstances were extremely rare: a British child being abducted on holiday. On holiday n'est pas le plus extra-ordinaire, ce qui n'arrive jamais en Europe est from bed avec shutters and window jemmied ! Car à cette date les journaux étaient encore pleins de jemmied window and shutters The only other such case we knew of was that of Ben Needham, who had been snatched sixteen years earlier from a Greek island at the age of twenty-one months, and who still hasn’t been found. Suivant le ministère des affaires étrangères britanniques rien n'indique qu'il ait été enlevé. Comme pour MMC. The world had changed dramatically since then, particularly in terms of communications. In 1991 the internet and mobile phones had been in their infancy, and there were no twenty-four-hour news channels to be fuelled. Cell phones accelerated the spreading of the news, but didn't “fuel”. The fact that Gerry and I were both doctors seemed to make the story more newsworthy, as, no doubt, did the fact that Madeleine is such a beautiful little girl. Usually doctors are believed, it's part of the cure.
We came in for some criticism, of course, for leaving the children in the apartment while we had dinner. Some initial reports were very misleading, suggesting that we had been sitting several hundred metres away. Ce qui était "misleading", c'est le volet et la fenêtre fracturés. Journalists who were actually in Praia da Luz and saw the proximity of the Tapas restaurant to the apartment (as the crow flies, just under fifty metres; a little further le double ! walking round ‘the road way’) were clearly shocked that Madeleine had been grabbed at such close quarters, Aucun journaliste n'a écrit ça dans un journal ! and we were given the definite impression that they wanted to help. People who say like them “want to help” ! This also went for their bosses, the TV executives and newspaper editors. There was unquestionably a sense of ‘There but for the grace of God go I.’ A recognition that others' misfortune could be one's own, if it weren't for the blessing of the Divine, or for one's luck.I looked on them as allies in the search for Madeleine. r"aq And although I don’t doubt that many of them did genuinely want to help, it was a while before I realized that finding our child came some way down their list of priorities and learned the hard lesson that the media are not about spreading news but selling products. They have to be read don't they ? Le livre “Madeleine” où pullulent les inexactitudes pour être modéré et conçu afin de renflouer le fonds est-il à l'abri d'un tel reproche ? Their overriding concern was not us or, sadly, Madeleine, it was someone shouting down the phone that the editor needed eight hundred words by ten o’clock.
For the first few days after Madeleine was taken, with the apartment full of people, the English-language news from Sky or the BBC was on pretty consistently in the background. We saw quite a bit of the coverage ourselves but once the speculation mushroomed it crucified us. Gerry said to me, ‘We have to stop watching this.’ We also began to avoid the English newspapers, readily available from Baptista on the same day as they were published at home.
In the village, drivers had to find alternative routes and parking places because of the roadblock outside our apartments and the satellite trucks stationed permanently nearby. Reporters hung out in Baptista and the Hugo Beaty bar, or trawled the beaches, assailing locals and holidaymakers alike for quotes and soundbites.
On the plus side, it became apparent very quickly that Madeleine’s plight had struck a chord with huge numbers of the British public. Messages of support, sympathy and empathy came flooding in. Mark Warner’s email was bombarded soon after the news broke and hundreds of letters were arriving on a daily basis.
That first gruelling week was so hectic and seemed so long. The unrelenting agony made every minute feel like an hour, but for us the days literally were long, as we slept so little. By midweek we were starting to manage, through sheer exhaustion, a few hours’ sleep every night, though if I happened to wake up, that would be it until morning. The moment I opened my eyes, Madeleine was the first thing on my mind and I would be instantly aware of a painful heaviness in my chest and an unsettling dread. I was always awake by 6am and usually I would get up, go out on to the veranda and make a few phone calls – nobody at home was sleeping well, either. I had begun to eat a little, too, though nowhere near enough. (Reports of my weight loss were greatly exaggerated: in the first week I did lose about 4½lbs, which I could ill afford, and which it took me months to regain, but nowhere near the stone removed from me by some of the press. I have always been thin. It’s the way I’m made.) There were days when I would say to myself, ‘How can I sit here and eat breakfast when Madeleine is missing?’ or ‘How can I possibly take a shower?’, but somehow I did. As Gerry kept telling me, ‘Crumbling into a heap and doing nothing will not bring Madeleine back.’ He was right, of course, but there would be many crumbles along the way.
We spent so much time closeted with various advisers that we didn’t see much of our holiday friends, except for Fiona. She knew us and our children so well: she understood, as far as anyone else could understand, and that made her support very important to me. I bumped into the others at the Tapas area one day. They were standing there helplessly and Jane and Russ were crying. Soon we were all crying and hugging each other. It was just so awful.
08 : 68 Titres dont 2 PT
PJ marca conferência para o final da tarde - TSF Rádio Notícias
PJ já recebeu perto de 350 informações no caso Madeleine - Publico
Innocence in Danger - Algarve Resident
Madeleine’s pyjamas - Algarve Resident
La photo publiée a été envoyée par M&S au journal qui l'a demandée. On voit un pyjama identique à celui que portait MMC. Pas de bouton dans le dos.
La photo est très floue.
Police chaos over search - The Sun
PJ marca conferência para o final da tarde - TSF Rádio Notícias
PJ já recebeu perto de 350 informações no caso Madeleine - Publico
Innocence in Danger - Algarve Resident
Madeleine’s pyjamas - Algarve Resident
La photo publiée a été envoyée par M&S au journal qui l'a demandée. On voit un pyjama identique à celui que portait MMC. Pas de bouton dans le dos.
La photo est très floue.
Police chaos over search - The Sun
Les Red Tops attaquent l'enquête portugaise. Les habitants de Rothley organisent une cérémonies avec rubans et bougies.
'Weird' man reported at hotel - The Sun
Was it a brit?: Torment in Portugal: Day 5 - The Sun
Ronaldo appeals for Maddie - The Sun
Parents' agony - The Sun
Maddie's Irish holiday - The Sun (Eire)
Parents Pray For Missing Maddy - Daily Mirror
I Know Where Madeleine Is - Daily Mirror
Police Give Maddy Search Details - mirror.co.uk
Maddy cops: We can't be sure she is alive - Irish Daily Mirror
Please, please do not hurt her. Please do not scare her - Daily Express
Missing Madeleine brings back memories of Ben - Daily Mail
No definite leads on Madeleine, police admit - Guardian
Portuguese police unsure Madeleine is alive - Guardian
MC direct appeal to abductor· impatience over police response - Guardian
The Search For Madeleine - Guardian (Wrap)
'No Evidence' That Madeleine Is Still Alive - Telegraph
'Weird' man reported at hotel - The Sun
Was it a brit?: Torment in Portugal: Day 5 - The Sun
Ronaldo appeals for Maddie - The Sun
Parents' agony - The Sun
Maddie's Irish holiday - The Sun (Eire)
Parents Pray For Missing Maddy - Daily Mirror
I Know Where Madeleine Is - Daily Mirror
Police Give Maddy Search Details - mirror.co.uk
Maddy cops: We can't be sure she is alive - Irish Daily Mirror
Please, please do not hurt her. Please do not scare her - Daily Express
Missing Madeleine brings back memories of Ben - Daily Mail
No definite leads on Madeleine, police admit - Guardian
Portuguese police unsure Madeleine is alive - Guardian
MC direct appeal to abductor· impatience over police response - Guardian
The Search For Madeleine - Guardian (Wrap)
'No Evidence' That Madeleine Is Still Alive - Telegraph
It was left to the couple to initiate the television appeal yesterday,
with the help of the Foreign Office, after Portuguese police failed to
guide them.
Mr Sousa was not "100 per cent certain" that Madeleine was abducted. "This is being treated as the disappearance of a little girl but obviously we have not ruled out the possibility she was abducted,
Mr Sousa was not "100 per cent certain" that Madeleine was abducted. "This is being treated as the disappearance of a little girl but obviously we have not ruled out the possibility she was abducted,
Ten questions that will need answering - Telegraph
Ronaldo issues appeal for Madeleine - Telegraph
Anger grows at vital lost hours - Telegraph
'Please do not hurt Maddy' - Telegraph
Children will be even more protected - Telegraph
'Scruffy man' seen near Madeleine resort - Telegraph
Speed is crucial, say British police - Telegraph
Pray that the police can give this man a way out, by David Canter - Times
‘We beg you, let Madeleine come home’ - Times
Hopes dashed after 'sighting' in Madeleine hunt - Times Online
PT police unable to shed light on mystery of disappearance - Independent
Police 'Step Up Madeleine Search' - BBC
On voit une photo d'un pyjama identique à celui que portait MMC. Pas de bouton dans le dos.
Q&A: Portuguese Police System - BBC
Police 'Unsure' Madeleine Alive - BBC
Village holds vigil for McCanns - BBC
Portugal defends Madeleine police - BBC
Mother relives fear 16 years on - BBC
Papers attack Madeleine inquiry - BBC
Ronaldo Makes Missing Girl Appeal - CBBC (Children's BBC)
Maddie Police Defend Investigation - Sky
Law That Keeps Investigation Secret - Sky
Maddie Mum: 'Please Don't Hurt My Child' - Sky
Missing Madeleine: A Tonight Special - ITN
Madeleine's mum makes plea - ITN
False alarm in frantic search for Maddie - Metro
Paedophile links probed in Maddie hunt - Metro
We beg you to let her come home - Leicester Mercury
Colleagues set to pray for little girl - Leicester Mercury
Send your messages of support to Maddy - Leicester Mercury
Please let M come back safe to us: Mother's Plea - Liverpool Daily Post
Abduction nightmare is still haunting me three years on - Yorkshire Post
Mum recalls snatch ordeal - Teesside Evening Gazette
False sense of child security - Hexham Courant
Where were the parents? - Gloucestershire Gazette
We hope and pray - Bournemouth Echo
Mother's Plea For Missing Madeleine - The Scotsman
Madeleine police say 'no firm assurance' she is alive - Herald Scotland
Police 'not sure' if Maddy is still alive - Evening Times (Scotland)
Police admit girl 'may not be alive' - Aberdeen Evening Express
Toddler abducted in Portugal - Derry Journal
Girl's family were regular visitors to Donegal village - Irish Independent
Police 'doing all they can' to find Madeleine - Irish Examiner
Mother begs for return of Madeleine - Reuters
Portuguese Hunt Goes On As Ronaldo Appeals For Girl - Reuters
Two Soccer Stars Make Plea for Missing British Toddler - Fox News
Parents Of Missing British Girl Plead For Her Return - CBC News
Police look to paedophile ring for clues - IOL
Mother Pleas For Little Madeleine Return - news.com.au
MADELEINE
On Tuesday 8 May, we said an emotional goodbye to the family and friends who were leaving us, including my parents and Gerry’s mum... at about 5pm, I had a call from Cherie Blair, in her final days as wife of the prime minister (her husband Tony would announce his resignation two days later and leave office the following month). She was kind and helpful. She told me it was amazing but encouraging that Madeleine was still the first topic on the news every night. ... Cherie also warned me, ‘Whatever happens, your life will never be the same again.’ She mentioned that a friend of hers, Catherine Meyer, was the founder of PACT – Parents and Abducted Children Together – and said she would get in touch with her on my behalf. Doubtless I asked Cherie if there was anything the British government could offer the Portuguese in the way of resources to assist or expedite the search for Madeleine. It wasn’t my intention to make her feel uncomfortable by asking this, and I’m sure I didn’t. We were just so desperate I couldn’t let the opportunity go by. Elle omet complètement l'épisode médiumique du port de Lagos, un exemple étonnant d'aide apportée par les Britanniques !
We had been given a key to the church so that we could go there and pray whenever we wished. Elle a l'air de trouver ça normal ! We cherished these little oases of relative peace and solitude. One night early in the week – I think it was that Tuesday evening – while we were praying privately at Nossa Senhora da Luz, Gerry had an extraordinary spiritual experience. He suddenly became aware of a long tunnel with light at the far end of it. He felt himself enter the tunnel and, as he went deeper and deeper inside, it became wider and wider and brighter and brighter. He had never known anything like this before and he immediately interpreted it as a sign urging us to do absolutely everything within our power to find Madeleine ourselves. La vision imaginaire ("spirituelle" selon St Augustin) est associée à la faculté de représentation de l'imagination. L'appréhension est immédiate, une lumière surnaturelle, interprétée comme une lumière venue de Dieu ou d'un ange, mène le "visionnaire" à une révélation ressentie comme irrésistible et irréfragable. From that moment he was convinced that we did not have to sit back passively, issuing statements and waiting for others to bring her home. We needed to take the initiative. Straight away he shared this revelation with me and tried to explain what it meant to him. We had to start right now to mobilize all the resources available to us.
His ‘vision’ – I don’t know what else to call it – in that beautiful little church had a huge impact on Gerry. It was this experience that laid the foundations of our organized campaign to find our daughter.
From the minute he got up the next morning, Gerry was on a mission. Among the first people he spoke to was the ambassador, John Buck. The foreign secretary, Margaret Beckett, also happened to call him. En 2006, elle est classée comme la vingt-neuvième femme la plus puissante au monde par le magazine Forbes. He pleaded with them both to try to improve the way the investigation and the search were being handled. We needed it to be far better than this, he told them. They knew that, too, I’m sure. Many friends and colleagues also heard from Gerry that day, asking them to think hard. What could help us to find Madeleine? Who could help? ‘Think about your contacts, then think about the contacts of your contacts. Can they help?’
Gerry’s mobile phone appeared to be permanently attached to his ear the whole day long. I can remember even feeling slightly irritated that he was able to function in this way and to be so busy. Why was his pain for Madeleine not crippling him, as mine was me? He was simply responding to the challenge he’d set himself the evening before to leave no stone unturned – a phrase that became a rallying cry after he used it in a statement to the press at the end of that week. I will for ever be immensely proud of him and thankful for his determination, effort and sheer hard work so early on, when we were both still raw and reeling. Although the ultimate goal of all this work hasn’t so far been achieved, there is no doubt that we (and Madeleine) would have been in a much worse place without it, and who knows what it might yet yield? ?
Ronaldo issues appeal for Madeleine - Telegraph
Anger grows at vital lost hours - Telegraph
'Please do not hurt Maddy' - Telegraph
Children will be even more protected - Telegraph
'Scruffy man' seen near Madeleine resort - Telegraph
Speed is crucial, say British police - Telegraph
Pray that the police can give this man a way out, by David Canter - Times
‘We beg you, let Madeleine come home’ - Times
Hopes dashed after 'sighting' in Madeleine hunt - Times Online
PT police unable to shed light on mystery of disappearance - Independent
Police 'Step Up Madeleine Search' - BBC
On voit une photo d'un pyjama identique à celui que portait MMC. Pas de bouton dans le dos.
Q&A: Portuguese Police System - BBC
Police 'Unsure' Madeleine Alive - BBC
Village holds vigil for McCanns - BBC
Portugal defends Madeleine police - BBC
Mother relives fear 16 years on - BBC
Papers attack Madeleine inquiry - BBC
Ronaldo Makes Missing Girl Appeal - CBBC (Children's BBC)
Maddie Police Defend Investigation - Sky
Law That Keeps Investigation Secret - Sky
Maddie Mum: 'Please Don't Hurt My Child' - Sky
Missing Madeleine: A Tonight Special - ITN
Madeleine's mum makes plea - ITN
False alarm in frantic search for Maddie - Metro
Paedophile links probed in Maddie hunt - Metro
We beg you to let her come home - Leicester Mercury
Colleagues set to pray for little girl - Leicester Mercury
Send your messages of support to Maddy - Leicester Mercury
Please let M come back safe to us: Mother's Plea - Liverpool Daily Post
Abduction nightmare is still haunting me three years on - Yorkshire Post
Mum recalls snatch ordeal - Teesside Evening Gazette
False sense of child security - Hexham Courant
Where were the parents? - Gloucestershire Gazette
We hope and pray - Bournemouth Echo
Mother's Plea For Missing Madeleine - The Scotsman
Madeleine police say 'no firm assurance' she is alive - Herald Scotland
Police 'not sure' if Maddy is still alive - Evening Times (Scotland)
Police admit girl 'may not be alive' - Aberdeen Evening Express
Toddler abducted in Portugal - Derry Journal
Girl's family were regular visitors to Donegal village - Irish Independent
Police 'doing all they can' to find Madeleine - Irish Examiner
Mother begs for return of Madeleine - Reuters
Portuguese Hunt Goes On As Ronaldo Appeals For Girl - Reuters
Two Soccer Stars Make Plea for Missing British Toddler - Fox News
Parents Of Missing British Girl Plead For Her Return - CBC News
Police look to paedophile ring for clues - IOL
Mother Pleas For Little Madeleine Return - news.com.au
MADELEINE
On Tuesday 8 May, we said an emotional goodbye to the family and friends who were leaving us, including my parents and Gerry’s mum... at about 5pm, I had a call from Cherie Blair, in her final days as wife of the prime minister (her husband Tony would announce his resignation two days later and leave office the following month). She was kind and helpful. She told me it was amazing but encouraging that Madeleine was still the first topic on the news every night. ... Cherie also warned me, ‘Whatever happens, your life will never be the same again.’ She mentioned that a friend of hers, Catherine Meyer, was the founder of PACT – Parents and Abducted Children Together – and said she would get in touch with her on my behalf. Doubtless I asked Cherie if there was anything the British government could offer the Portuguese in the way of resources to assist or expedite the search for Madeleine. It wasn’t my intention to make her feel uncomfortable by asking this, and I’m sure I didn’t. We were just so desperate I couldn’t let the opportunity go by. Elle omet complètement l'épisode médiumique du port de Lagos, un exemple étonnant d'aide apportée par les Britanniques !
We had been given a key to the church so that we could go there and pray whenever we wished. Elle a l'air de trouver ça normal ! We cherished these little oases of relative peace and solitude. One night early in the week – I think it was that Tuesday evening – while we were praying privately at Nossa Senhora da Luz, Gerry had an extraordinary spiritual experience. He suddenly became aware of a long tunnel with light at the far end of it. He felt himself enter the tunnel and, as he went deeper and deeper inside, it became wider and wider and brighter and brighter. He had never known anything like this before and he immediately interpreted it as a sign urging us to do absolutely everything within our power to find Madeleine ourselves. La vision imaginaire ("spirituelle" selon St Augustin) est associée à la faculté de représentation de l'imagination. L'appréhension est immédiate, une lumière surnaturelle, interprétée comme une lumière venue de Dieu ou d'un ange, mène le "visionnaire" à une révélation ressentie comme irrésistible et irréfragable. From that moment he was convinced that we did not have to sit back passively, issuing statements and waiting for others to bring her home. We needed to take the initiative. Straight away he shared this revelation with me and tried to explain what it meant to him. We had to start right now to mobilize all the resources available to us.
His ‘vision’ – I don’t know what else to call it – in that beautiful little church had a huge impact on Gerry. It was this experience that laid the foundations of our organized campaign to find our daughter.
From the minute he got up the next morning, Gerry was on a mission. Among the first people he spoke to was the ambassador, John Buck. The foreign secretary, Margaret Beckett, also happened to call him. En 2006, elle est classée comme la vingt-neuvième femme la plus puissante au monde par le magazine Forbes. He pleaded with them both to try to improve the way the investigation and the search were being handled. We needed it to be far better than this, he told them. They knew that, too, I’m sure. Many friends and colleagues also heard from Gerry that day, asking them to think hard. What could help us to find Madeleine? Who could help? ‘Think about your contacts, then think about the contacts of your contacts. Can they help?’
Gerry’s mobile phone appeared to be permanently attached to his ear the whole day long. I can remember even feeling slightly irritated that he was able to function in this way and to be so busy. Why was his pain for Madeleine not crippling him, as mine was me? He was simply responding to the challenge he’d set himself the evening before to leave no stone unturned – a phrase that became a rallying cry after he used it in a statement to the press at the end of that week. I will for ever be immensely proud of him and thankful for his determination, effort and sheer hard work so early on, when we were both still raw and reeling. Although the ultimate goal of all this work hasn’t so far been achieved, there is no doubt that we (and Madeleine) would have been in a much worse place without it, and who knows what it might yet yield? ?
[No title] - Diocese do Algarve
Madeleine search hits web - The Sun
'Cuddle Cat' eases mum's pain - The Sun
Prowler spotted before ;Scruffy weirdo hunted over brit tot - The Sun
Prowler fiddled with window - The Sun
Maddie cops have e-fit - The Sun
Voice of the Daily Mirror: Wait and pray - Daily Mirror
A Day In The Grief Of The McCanns - Daily Mirror
Optimism amid the torment of 'if onlys' - Daily Mirror
Soccer Stars In TV Please For Tot - Daily Mirror
Clueless - Daily Mirror
Maddy 'was snatched to order' - Daily Express
No sure way to keep your loved ones safe - Daily Express
Sad Ronaldo please help little Maddy - Daily Star
Corrie axe kidnap plot - Daily Star
MMC's parents 'had left her alone before during their holiday' - Daily Mail
British paedophile links investigated in Madeleine hunt - Daily Mail
Shattered parents are given church keys to pray alone - Daily Mail
98 words that broke my heart - Daily Mail
What we do and don't know about the kidnapping case - Guardian
British experts fly to Portugal to help in hunt for Madeleine - Guardian
Madeleine police hit back after criticism - Guardian
CCTV clue in search for Madeleine - Guardian
Hunt For Madeleine: Police 'Blunders' - Guardian (Wrap)
What The Portuguese Police Must Do - Telegraph
The Portuguese Media's Response - Telegraph
Police in accordance with Portuguese laws - Telegraph
British experts join hunt for Madeleine - Telegraph
Parents still hope for Madeleine's safe return - Telegraph
Misplaced trust led to Madeleine's betrayal - Telegraph
Aunt says Madeleine may have been taken into Spain - Times
Algarve police target British paedophiles - Times
Angry Portuguese ask why couple left the children alone - Times
Would you leave your child alone? - Times
Experts on tracing paedophiles fly out to boost search for girl - Times
Corrie axes kidnap storyline - Times Online
Paedophile ring focus to Madeleine hunt - Times Online
British police join inquiry into Madeleine's disappearance - Independent
Is
the family under suspicion? Internet bloggers have
passed judgement on Madeleine's parents for leaving their children
asleep while they had dinner 50 yards away. Now, unconfirmed reports
say that police inquiries are including extended family.
Chaos and prayers in the desperate search for little girl - Independent Singular horror, Media frenzy, disturbing facts about missing - Independent
There is a lack of clarity about salient facts such as whether the apartment that Madeleine and her siblings were in was locked, or whether the windows were open.
Ronaldo lance un appel à la TV. La PJ, critiquée, fait part de centaines de pistes suivies. Chaos et prières. Les médias se plaignent de l'absence de portrait-robot d'un suspect possible, de ne pas savoir comment était habillée MMC, si l'appartement était vraiment fermé à clef, si la fenêtre était ouverte, ils s'indignent du manque de checkpoint rapide à la frontière avec l'Espagne (Les Brits n'étant pas dans Schengen ont du mal à se représenter ce que sont les frontières internes). La police UK déclare que la scène du crime est inexploitable sans se demander pourquoi.
Street Rethinks Child Kidnap Plot - BBC
The Search For Madeleine Goes On - BBC
[Police criticised] NI devolution celebrated in press - BBC
Missing Maddy - The View From Luz - Sky
Footballers Plead For Return Of Madeleine - Sky
"It's Not An Option To Lose Madeleine' - Sky
Concerns Remain Over Madeleine Police Operation - Sky
Police reveal details of Maddy search - ITN
Paedophile link probed in Madeleine hunt - ITN
Corrie kidnap plot shelved - ITN
'Cracker' experts search for Maddie - Metro
'Left her alone before during their holiday - London Evening Standard
'Everything possible is being done' - Leicester Mercury
County link to Maddy kidnap? - Leicester Mercury
School's prayers for the family - Leicester Mercury
Hundreds offer support to madeleine and her family - Leicester Mercury
Help us to find Madeleine - Liverpool Daily Post
Formby vigil for missing Maddie - Liverpool Confidential
British Ambassador defends police in hunt for Madeleine - Yorkshire Post
My heart goes out to mum of abducted girl' - Sheffield Star
There is no holiday from parental responsibilities - Hexham Courant
I’m going to the place where little Madeleine went missing – Hereford Times
Police on standby in Madeleine case - Bournemouth Echo
Madeleine: 350 Possible Leads - The Scotsman
Missing girl's parents 'very grateful' to police for efforts - The Scotsman
Ronaldo's TV Plea Over Madeliene [sic] - Daily Record
Cracker pair in Madeleine search - Evening Times (Scotland)
'Cracker' experts join hunt for Madeleine - Aberdeen Evening Express
British police join inquiry into Madeleine's disappearance - Belfast Telegraph
[Cristiano Ronaldo Appeal] - Belfast Telegraph
Mass in Dungloe for Maddy - Donegal Democrat
Paedophile experts flown in to help hunt for Madeleine - Irish Independent
Star Ronaldo issues appeal for missing girl - Irish Independent
Madeleine suspect picture 'like an egg with hair' - breakingNEWS.ie
Toddler's family say criticism 'unhelpful' - RTÉ News
La colère monte dans les médias contre la prétendue inexpérience de la PJ (mais en 17 ans il n'y a pas eu un seul enlèvement en Algarve) et l'absence d'indice.
Police defend investigation into missing toddler - Euronews
Child crime experts join Madeleine hunt - Reuters
Portuguese police hit back over Madeleine - Reuters
CHRONOLOGY-The disappearance of Madeleine McCann - Reuters
Hunt for Madeleine stirs memories of Ben Needham - Reuters
Ronaldo appeals for Madeleine - Reuters
Tourists, PT Locals Share Anguish as Cops Hunt for Toddler - Fox News
Sex predator fear - Maddie - NSW (Australia) Telegraph
MADELEINE
Gerry’s
sister Phil sent a chain email round the world asking every recipient
to help find our little girl. It came with a downloadable poster
featuring a photograph of Madeleine, the one of her holding the tennis
balls, taken two days before she vanished.
10 : 85 Titres
Who are the McCanns? - Algarve Resident
Special Report: Timeline of the events - Algarve Resident
The Portuguese police force - Algarve Resident
Help from the UK - Algarve Resident
Resort helps family - Algarve Resident
Praia da Luz: sleepy town? - Algarve Resident
Shockwaves sent across the Algarve - Algarve Resident
Coronation Street drops baby kidnap storyline - Algarve Resident
Callers to UK Crimestoppers provide “useful info" - Algarve Resident
A community comes together - Algarve Resident
Tourism Board involved - Algarve Resident
Public vigil - Algarve Resident
Rewards offered - Algarve Resident
Celtic Armbands for Maddie - The Sun
Maddie's Parents Staying Positive - The Sun
Maddie cops hunt 130 Brit paedos: New twist on lost tot - The Sun
Algarve 'haven' for paedophiles - The Sun
How Will They Ever Catch Him With This? - Daily Mirror
Family Rally Round Maddy's Mum - Daily Mirror
Right not to berate, by Brian Reade - Daily Mirror
Maddy had been left alone before' - Daily Express
Maddy spotted with woman at garage? - Daily Express
Put justice before our right to know - Daily Express
17 years last abduction Algarve, and again the victim was British - Daily Mail
Is it EVER safe to leave a child? - Daily Mail
E-fit of abductor nothing more than an egg with a side parting' - Daily Mail
Search for Madeleine - police release pyjamas she was wearing - Daily Mail
The search for Madeleine: a week of hope and heartbreak - Daily Mail
Madeleine's parents didn't want to leave her with a stranger - Daily Mail
Praia da Luz prays for Madeleine - Guardian.co.uk
Police follow fresh leads in search for Madeleine - Guardian
Police 'winding down' Madeleine search - Guardian
MC family call for end to criticism of missing girl's parents - Guardian
Sun Stokes Fear of Travelling Paedophiles - guardian.co.uk (The Wrap)
Madeleine hunt 'will have to be cut back' - Telegraph
Madeleine police have three prime suspects - Telegraph
Madeleine 'snatched by two men and a woman' - Telegraph
'What about our missing children?' - Telegraph
We all hope for a miracle for Maddy - Telegraph
Four 'very useful' leads boost Madeleine hunt - Telegraph
Police Hunt Coming To An End - Telegraph
Madeleine 'abducted to order by an international child sex gang' - Times
Police image of suspect looks like an ‘egg with hair’ - Times
Madeleine police focus on trio of prime suspects - Times Online
David Hill: Speed is everything - and the police were too slow - Independent
Promesse de récompense d'1 million de livres. MMC avait été laissée seule avant. Le slogan "Remuer terre et ciel" est lancé.
Parents cling to hope of safe return for their missing toddler - Independent
CCTV Checked In Madeleine Search - BBC
[Susan Healy] - Madeleine police 'inexperienced' - BBC
'New leads' in Madeleine search - BBC
Madeleine Parents 'Stay Positive' - BBC
Madeleine uncle speaks of ordeal - BBC
Stephen Winyard, propriétaire d'un spa écossais, Stobo Castle, offre un million à travers The Times. Tout le monde espère et prie. Parents cling to hope of safe return for their missing toddler - Independent
CCTV Checked In Madeleine Search - BBC
[Susan Healy] - Madeleine police 'inexperienced' - BBC
'New leads' in Madeleine search - BBC
Madeleine Parents 'Stay Positive' - BBC
Madeleine uncle speaks of ordeal - BBC
[Search frustrations] Blair's departure dominates press - BBC
La presse uk qualifie la recherche de "pagaille et ratage". The Sun annonce qu'une liste de 130 pédophiles UK a été remise à la PJ qui, selon le Times, aurait été enlevée sur commande.
Police: "We Have A Suspect In Mind" - Sky
£100,000 Reward For Madeleine's Return - Sky
Uncle Calls For Missing Madeleine's Release - Sky
Latest News On Madeleine - Sky
Madeleine's parents 'remain positive' - ITN
Police wind down Madeleine case - ITN
Maddie hunt focuses on garage trio - Metro
Four fresh leads in hunt for Maddie - Metro
L'acrimonie pleut sur la PJ, sans expérience et sans écoute et sur le Portugal, dépourvu de fichier "prédateurs sexuels" qui en fait un aimant pour la pédophilie "from Britain and Europe" (remarquer qu'il n'est pas dit "from the rest of Europe"... et le Brexit n'est même pas dans l'air du temps)
£1m reward in hunt for Maddie - Metro
No stone unturned in the search for MMC - London Evening Standard
Family still have hope for Maddy - Leicester Mercury
Maddie's parents bring in Bulger tec - Liverpool Daily Post
We're still hoping and stay positive, say couple - Liverpool Daily Post
Statement For Madeleine - evertonfc.com
Parents still hope for girl's return - Yorkshire Post
Corrie plot axed as police look for Maddy - Bolton News
Mums' hearts go out to family - Herald Post (Stockton & Billingham)
Prayers for Maddy - Melton (Mowbray) Times
Is it ever right to leave your child alone? - Northampton Evening Telegraph
MP lashes out at Portuguese cops - Essex Evening Echo
Disappearance of M%C Web Appeal for Information - (Isle of Wight)
New Clues in Madeleine Case - The Scotsman
Madeleine Hunt Halts Tourism Drive - The Scotsman
Criticising Portuguese system will not help find Madeleine - The Scotsman
Les
piques médiatiques contre l'enquête portugaise mettent un journaliste
du Scotsman mal à l'aise. Il explique ce phénomène par la saturation
: exigence de nouvelles 24/24 et quasi-absence de développement. Ayant
refusé de pourvoir les journalistes en suspects, indices, etc. les
enquêteurs sont devenus des ennemis naturels.
On s'attendrait à ce que
les rédactions prennent en considération le système judiciaire
portugais, en particulier le secret de l'instruction selon lequel,
une fois qu'une enquête criminelle en cours, aucun détail
"sensible" n'est révélé à la presse afin de protéger
l'intégrité d'un éventuel jugement futur.
En Grande-Bretagne, pays
de Common Law, la police informe officiellement les médias par des
communiqués et lors de conférences de presse. Mais, moyennant
finance, certains journalistes obtiennent officieusement des
informations grâce à leurs contacts. Dans la plupart des cas il
s'agit d'informations auxquelles le public ne devrait pas avoir
accès. Si un individu est arrêté par la police, seul un nombre
limité de personnes le sauront et il est peu probable que le suspect
cherchera à ébruiter l'affaire. Le plus souvent le journaliste a
été informé par quelqu'un oeuvrant au sein de la police.
Qui peut dire que le
système judiciaire le plus courant en Europe, et qui est celui du Portugal, est moins
bon que la Common Law ? Il est peut-être incompatible avec le
quatrième pouvoir, mais cela le prive-t-il pour autant de
pertinence ? Les enquêteurs ne sont-ils pas par définition ceux qui
doivent mener l'enquête ? Si les médias les épient, cherchent à
obtenir des informations en questionnant les témoins ou en se
rendant clandestinement sur la scène de crime, n'enfreignent-ils pas
la loi ? Il y a une marge de manoeuvre et il est possible d'informer
sans mettre des bâtons dans les roues de l'enquête, c'est une
question de doigté.
Très bon article, pour une fois. Gang of three 'could have taken Maddy' - Evening Times (Scotland)
Fresh tip-offs in hunt for Maddy - Aberdeen Evening Express
Doubt over conduct of local police - Belfast Telegraph
Eurovision Plea By Maddy's Ulster Aunt - Belfast Telegraph
We'll give the little darlings everything except our time - Irish Independent
Portuguese Police Wind Down Search For UK Girl - Reuters
Police maintain search for Madeleine - Euro Weekly News
MMC Spotted On Video With Woman At Petrol Station? - Post Chronical
Madeleine 'abducted to order', by David Brown - news.com.au
Missing Girl's Parents Try To Be Positive - IOL
MADELEINE
First conversation, between Phil, a teacher, and Calum Macrae, a former pupil of hers and an IT whizzkid, about establishing a website for Madeleine. Jon Corner had opened up the file transfer protocol he’d set up on 4 May to circulate Madeleine’s image aux médias surtout to
family, friends and other supporters. No, I didn’t know what one of
those was, either: basically, it provided access via a password to a
repository for photographs and other material, allowing people to share
their resources. Helpers could post their material on a dedicated server
via the FTP and use that supplied by others to create flyers, posters
and so on. The press already had the password,
which gave them access to pictures and video footage. Already there
were people and organizations coming forward with offers of a reward for
information leading to Madeleine’s safe return. We heard that a
colleague of mine in general practice had, amazingly, pledged £100,000. A
good friend in Liverpool, a police officer, warned us that we would
need a great deal more than this to tempt anybody connected with the
crime to give Madeleine up. It seemed a huge sum of money to us but,
being a policeman, he was more used to dealing with criminals than we
were.
Alex Woolfall told us that the News of the World, spearheading a group of other benefactors – including Bill Kenwright, the theatre impresario and chairman of Everton FC, businessmen Sir Richard Branson and Sir Philip Green and Harry Potter author J. K. Rowling – was prepared to put up a reward ‘package’ totalling £1.5 million. It would involve companies such as British Airways and Vodafone helping with publicity and awareness initiatives. They needed to know by the following day whether we would like them to proceed. This may sound like a no-brainer, but we had to be careful. We hadn’t a clue how such rewards worked. Would the police be involved? Who would coordinate any ransom negotiations? How would we actually get hold of all this money if necessary? And, most importantly, what were the potential pitfalls? Surely it could lead to fraudulent claims that might waste valuable time and resources. We had no idea, either, what implications this might have for Madeleine’s safety.
Under pressure to make a decision, we solicited advice from various quarters, which confirmed that this kind of thing could indeed be a bit of a double-edged sword. We felt that, on balance, the pros outweighed the cons, thanked all the participants and accepted the offer, as much because we did not want to turn down any corporate help as anything else. With the £100,000 from my GP colleague and a staggering £1 million added by Stephen Winyard – the owner of Stobo Castle spa in the Scottish Highlands and a man who had so far never even met us – the rewards promised now totalled £2.6 million.
Alex Woolfall told us that the News of the World, spearheading a group of other benefactors – including Bill Kenwright, the theatre impresario and chairman of Everton FC, businessmen Sir Richard Branson and Sir Philip Green and Harry Potter author J. K. Rowling – was prepared to put up a reward ‘package’ totalling £1.5 million. It would involve companies such as British Airways and Vodafone helping with publicity and awareness initiatives. They needed to know by the following day whether we would like them to proceed. This may sound like a no-brainer, but we had to be careful. We hadn’t a clue how such rewards worked. Would the police be involved? Who would coordinate any ransom negotiations? How would we actually get hold of all this money if necessary? And, most importantly, what were the potential pitfalls? Surely it could lead to fraudulent claims that might waste valuable time and resources. We had no idea, either, what implications this might have for Madeleine’s safety.
Under pressure to make a decision, we solicited advice from various quarters, which confirmed that this kind of thing could indeed be a bit of a double-edged sword. We felt that, on balance, the pros outweighed the cons, thanked all the participants and accepted the offer, as much because we did not want to turn down any corporate help as anything else. With the £100,000 from my GP colleague and a staggering £1 million added by Stephen Winyard – the owner of Stobo Castle spa in the Scottish Highlands and a man who had so far never even met us – the rewards promised now totalled £2.6 million.
... I was also terrified to show my emotions after the warnings I’d been given that this might influence Madeleine’s abductor. Soit disant la voir pleurer réjouirait le ravisseur So if I seemed ‘poker-faced’, is it any wonder?
Later that day, the Portuguese police held a press conference, at which they released a photograph of a pair of the same Marks and Spencer pyjamas Madeleine had been wearing and confirmed that they were winding down the ground search. Meanwhile, Gerry and I, along with a couple of our friends, were called back to the police station in Portimão.
The police were much friendlier on this occasion and the junior
officers, at least, gave the impression that by this time they were
working very hard. Gerry was taken in to be interviewed while I remained
downstairs. I made use of the long wait I anticipated by sitting down
with a notebook, pen and my camera, containing dated photographs of the
holiday, and trying to write a detailed account of everything that had
happened the week before. The
interview system we’d encountered on our previous visit – questions
asked in Portuguese and verbally translated into English; answers given
in English, translated into Portuguese and typed up by the interviewing
officer – was exhausting for everyone. At the end of the interview the
statement prepared by the officer would be printed out in Portuguese,
verbally translated, on the spot, into English, and then signed by the
interviewee. It was obvious that at every stage of the process the scope
for mistakes in translation and misunderstandings was considerable. Only if the interviewee wasn't attentive au moment d'écouter ce qui avait été dit en anglais revenir en anglais !
I sat in the waiting area for eight hours before I was told that it was now too late for me to be interviewed and I should go home and come back the next day. Gerry was there for thirteen hours. When he finally returned to the apartment he related how Matt had been almost hysterical during his interview. Gerry had heard him shouting and crying. Apparently, it had been put to Matt that he’d handed Madeleine out through the window to a third party. It was like something out of Life on Mars. La vie sur Mars, oui, entrer dans un appartement pour vérifier que des enfants dorment paisiblement, ne pas regarder l'un d'entre eux sans s'en inquiéter parce que tout était calme !
Alan Pike was concerned about my wellbeing and asked for my rescheduled interview to be postponed for a few days. The PJ couldn’t have considered it all that important: it was 6 September before I was interviewed again. GA a donné une autre explication. En fait Alan Pike a fait pression pour que Kate ne soit pas ré-interrogée en raison de sa fragilité.
I sat in the waiting area for eight hours before I was told that it was now too late for me to be interviewed and I should go home and come back the next day. Gerry was there for thirteen hours. When he finally returned to the apartment he related how Matt had been almost hysterical during his interview. Gerry had heard him shouting and crying. Apparently, it had been put to Matt that he’d handed Madeleine out through the window to a third party. It was like something out of Life on Mars. La vie sur Mars, oui, entrer dans un appartement pour vérifier que des enfants dorment paisiblement, ne pas regarder l'un d'entre eux sans s'en inquiéter parce que tout était calme !
Alan Pike was concerned about my wellbeing and asked for my rescheduled interview to be postponed for a few days. The PJ couldn’t have considered it all that important: it was 6 September before I was interviewed again. GA a donné une autre explication. En fait Alan Pike a fait pression pour que Kate ne soit pas ré-interrogée en raison de sa fragilité.
