The MCs and the Police (part 1) de Sonia Poulton - Avril 2018
Sonia Poulton : Madeleine McCann was just nine days away from her fourth birthday when she was reported missing during a Portuguese holiday in 2007. In the last decade Madeleine has become the world's most famous missing person with her case receiving unprecedented police time and public funds in two countries add to this accusations of police favoritism and leniency towards Madeleine's parents Kate and Gerry McCann and this story becomes a significant talking point for millions of people. I'm Sonya Poulton and journalist and broadcaster and I've been intrigued by the McCanns relationship with the police from the very beginning. In this film I look at the extraordinary steps some officers past and present have been prepared to take with this case and I ask why have British police insisted on focusing only on abduction from the beginning and is that likely to change.
The story of Madeleine McCann is an enduring one. Since the disappearance of the three-year-old British girl in 2007 during a Portuguese holiday the mystery has taken on a life of global interest and extraordinary significance. There are very few stories capable of capturing the public imagination in the way that Madeleine's disappearance has and certainly in over two decades of my work in the media I can only recall a handful of events that have struck a chord in such a phenomenal manner
Rosalinda Hutton : Suddenly the news of missing Madeleine was was global everybody knew about it and everybody was following the case. If I remember rightly Sky News actually devoted the channel to the McCanns where we were getting literally rolling news and updates constantly breaking news story
TV girl : this morning we're just hearing the de search is underway for the three-year-old British girl who's gone missing in the Algarve area of Portugal and she went missing last night. Hundreds of people have been searching for the girl and that search continuing this morning.
SP : Praia da Luz, a whitewashed village on the Portuguese Algarve known to some as little England for the amount of expats who settled here but in May 2007 little did the villagers know that their idyllic and peaceful existence would be changed beyond all recognition. It was here that the McCanns and their three young children arrived with a group of friends to enjoy their Spring Break the trip was organized by the McCanns friend dr. David Payne his wife Fiona had met Kate McCann seven years before in 2000 while working at a Leicester hospital the pains two young daughters played with the McCanns three small children the pains were the common thread between all the couples on that fateful holiday including dr. Russell O'Brien and his partner Jane Tanner and their two young daughters. Also on the trip was dr. Matthew Oldfield his wife Rachel and their toddler daughter a late addition to the holiday party was Fiona Payne's mother Diane Webster of the nine children Madeleine at the age of three was the oldest and of the nine adults six of them were doctors so it was on the morning of Saturday April the 28th the McCanns and their holiday and friends flew from England to Portugal and arrived atthe destination that would see their lives changed forever it was here the Ocean Club in Praia da Luz where Kate and Gerry McCann and their seven holidaying companions came nightly to dine at the tapas bar and it was from here that they had established their somewhat questionable babysitting routine in the ten years since Madeleine became the world's most famous missing person observers then and now objected to what they deemed as neglect at the hands of the holidaying adults for while the adults socialized during dinner their young children were left unattended in their holiday flats with we are told half hourly check-ins on the sleeping children. This they told police had been going on for four nights prior to Madeleine being reported missing by her mum Kate McCann family and friends were quick to deny any accusations and neglect describing their actions as well within the bounds of responsible parenting.
This was Gerry McCann sister just two days after Madeleine was reported missing.
Philomena MC : The child care facilities are leaving people with other thought that you don't know Jerry and Kate regularly went to check, maybe that kids have been disturbed of crying or anything to suggest in any possible way that Kate and Jerry are negligent parents is just abhorrent to all of us they loved the family they would never willingly knowingly or in any way neglect them.
SP : Others disagreed but perhaps this woman back in the McCanns Village in Leicester captured that mood best.
Leicester resident : I think the MC are hypocrites and the people of Rothley are hypocrites.
Q : Why so ,
Because at the end of the day, if it was epople of council estates, we'd get our children taken off of us. They're doctors, they should show an example, they went on holiday, they've got a big house, at the end of the day why didn't they the pay for babysitting facilities or take a nanny with them ? They wanted to go on holiday with the children, they shouldn't go out and leave them.
Q : So do you think if this was you, you'd be in jail by now
I probably would have, I've rung Social Services up and Peter McEntee from social services in Leicester said if it was my children, they'd be placed on the at risk register and taken away. Why not the MCs ?
SP : Working in mainstream media in England I discovered that many of my colleagues also left young children in hotel rooms and apartments while on holiday. For me it went some way to explain in some of the sympathetic tone that colonists adopted when describing the McCanns dilemma even Kate McCann noticed it she wrote about journalists in prior to lose in the early days having her there but for the grace of God though I attitude towards her, but there were many people who were horrified at leaving young children alone and over the last decade there have been several petitions calling for the McCanns to be prosecuted for neglect, none have amounted to further action. For many the question remains why weren't the McCanns and their friends prosecuted for leaving their children alone when one had clearly come to harm neglect.
Police Sergeant David Machin : Neglect is the most common form of child abuse and holds down quite simply to parent or caregiver failing to protect a child from the dangers of physical or emotional trauma. One of the qualifying factors in evidence and neglect is that supervision or more importantly the lack of supervision. In the case of the McCanns they admitted that they had left their children unsupervised on numerous occasions during the course of the week and it was during one of these periods where the children weren't supervised that madeleine and their siblings were placed in a position of danger and in fact Madeleine it would appear suffered some level of physical and/or emotional trauma almost certainly emotional trauma. I can understand that given the definition of neglect given the circumstances, there are many people that would want to ask the question why weren't the McCanns investigated and pursued for an allegation of neglect.
SP : Former Portuguese minister Rui Pereira later said the McCanns had not been charged because there was compassion towards the couple, he said the action of leaving children alone while on holiday was believed to be a British custom, millions of brits beg to differ. Online where Madeleine's case has been passionately debated for the last decade there exists a belief amongst some that the children were actually never left alone that the issue of neglect is an alibi for something far more sinister. As Gerry McCann himself had said he doesn't have a problem with people purporting a theory about his missing daughter and they are wrong all right. Madeleine's stayed in this ground-floor block with her parents Kate and Jerry and her younger twin siblings Shaun and Amelie the McCanns friends also had apartments in the same building. Her parents initially said she'd been abducted through this window and while they dined in front of this whitewashed block family and friends also conveyed that to the media.
Philomena MC : It's obvious that someone with malicious intent went through that window and took Madeleine from the safety and security of her family.
SP : But the Portuguese police and the manager at the holiday resort said there was no evidence of a break-in and the only fingerprints on the window which had been cleaned the day before belong Kate McCann and so the latter version of how an abductor may have accessed the apartment was through the patio door which it turned out was left unlocked by the McCanns for easy access. It's just at the top of this gate and slightly uphill from the tapas bar. Just hours after Madeleine's reported disappearance British ambassador to Portugal John Buck was on hand to assist the McCanns his presence as Portuguese police later noted was to create all manner of political issues between the UK and Portugal, but his involvement was merely the tip of the political iceberg. Within weeks of Madeleine's reported disappearance British Chancellor Gordon Brown who was little over a month away from becoming Prime Minister had personally reassured the McCanns of his support during a telephone conversation. To date four British prime ministers have supported the case above and beyond the help given to other missing person cases, more of which later. The McCanns relationship with police has been an interesting one to observe there's been accusations of British police favoritism towards the two middle class doctors. In fact just weeks after Madeleine's reported disappearance Gerry McCann attended a lavish police bravery awards dinner in London and was rewarded with a standing ovation. Considering he was surrounded by police men and women who had risked their lives in the line of duty it was an attendee later confided bizarre to see this response to a man who had yet to be ruled out of the involvement of his daughter's disappearance. But let's go back operation tasks the initial investigation into the disappearance of Madeleine would become the biggest manhunt in Portugal's history as officers cancelled their annual holidays to search for the British child. It was here that the McCanns would meet Gonzalo Amaral the police chief who had come to be their enemy. The Portuguese police was subject to immense criticism from British media police the McCanns and their friends and the first criticism came just within hours of Madeleine's reported disappearance. This was from the McCanns medic French your Rennick who called a British TV breakfast show after talking with Kate. During the TV conversation Rennick repeated the claim that an abductor had forced entry into the apartment by coming in through the McCanns window. Rennicks involvement in the story albeit brief set a foundation of how millions of people viewed the case and Rennick was equally as potent in denouncing the Portuguese police.
JR : They're just having to wait 'til people help them, they've been looking themselves, they walked down hedgerows and they've been out shouting but there's nothing else they can do unless they get support from from the police over there or the police here.
SP : JR, it turned out, had an interest in neighbor Andrew Brown brother of the soon-to-be Prime Minister Gordon and Rennick later record how she stopped Andrew in the street and asked if he could get his brother to help it's the curious synchronicities like this which have contributed to the intense and enduring interest in Madeleine's story. For those on the ground who had searched until the early hours including holiday centre staff tourists and police, JR's assessment was considered harsh but Rennick was only beginning of the criticism of the Portuguese police also known as the PJ. In the UK there has been no shortage of politicians journalists and former cops lining up to lay the boot into the Portuguese police.
John O'Connor : It was quite clear from the start that the Portuguese police took off on the wrong tack. They believed that this was a matter within the family and the the punishment that they put the the poor parents through is just unbelievable.
SP : But what was true is that operation task led by Gonzalo Amaral had made a number of unprecedented compromises for the McCanns including allowing Jerry to sit in on a police interview a gate and permitting the McCanns and their friends to keep the media informed or be it but grudgingly. This action was contrary to Portugal's judicial secrecy laws, which live investigations, in addition unprecedented numbers of police were drafted in from all over Portugal and within days hundreds were on the case. There are accusations of leaks to the press from both the McCanns and the Portuguese police. Certainly during a vital stage of the investigation and during the time Kate was being interviewed at portimão police station she had been texting updates to the outside world again contrary to Portuguese law and as her press spokeswoman later admitted a bit naughty. But there were other criticisms of the Portuguese police. They were accused of not adequately preserved in the crime scene and there was some truth in this as it took until the next morning to properly do so but here they had some challenges too. By the time the police arrived the McCanns and their friends had already been through the holiday apartment potentially destroying valuable forensic evidence. Certainly the Portuguese police made rookie errors but so it would appear did six doctors. Nonetheless by the end of summer 2007 and certainly by the time he'd made Kate and Gerry McCann official suspects or arguidos in Portuguese Amaral's relationship with the McCanns had completely deteriorated and on his birthday in October he was removed from the case. He was quoted in newspaper criticising his UK counterparts the police from the McCanns home back in England. He suggested that Leicester police were only interested in pursuing what the McCanns wanted pursued and they were failing to treat the couple of suspects. Dr. Amaral later claimed that Gordon Brown knew about his removal and demotion before he did. I contacted Gordon Brown's office to put this and other questions to him, he chose not to respond. Gordon Brown is a frequent name to emerge in the early days of Madeleine's reported disappearance areas in September 2007 with his Home Secretary Jackie Smith they're visiting Leicester police. This was just days after Kate and Gerry McCann had been made official suspects and had returned to England. Officially Brown and Smith had come to talk neighborhood watch schemes but did this visit also cement how Madeleine's case would be treated by the British police the then Labour government refused to confirm or deny if Brown had discussed the McCanns or Madeleine with Leceister police chiefs.
I've been too proud to lose a couple of times Madeleine's story is still discussed in the supermarkets and on the beach but most people refused to express their sentiments to camera except Pedro. We met him on the seafront son of a Portuguese policeman he was collecting change for a children's charity. He was prepared to say his piece to camera. ....
Leceister's just over a hundred miles north of London and within days of Madeleine's reported disappearance, family liaison officers from the McCanns home had arrived in praia de Luz. The police officers followed and they had come according to Gonzalo Amaral to exonerate the McCanns from any wrongdoing interestingly it seems this is not how the McCanns saw their local police force. I've seen a restricted document that was prepared for the British Home Office revealingly it outlines much of how Kate and Gerry felt about their police relations. It said they believed the Portuguese investigation was flawed from the beginning that there were problems between Portuguese and British police and that Kate and Gerry distrusted Leicester police. It paints a picture of a great deal of dissatisfaction on behalf of the McCanns and comes over at times as if the report is speaking on behalf of the two doctors, rather than remaining more neutral as perhaps an official document for government should do. Despite being pushed out from the investigation Gonzalo Amaral released a book a year later in 2008 in which he outlined his belief that Madeleine had accidentally died an apartment 5A and her parents had faked an abduction. A documentary based on the book was released in Portuguese began a protracted libel case between the McCanns and their daughters former police investigator. Amaral's assets were frozen his marriage fell apart and he became a shadow of his former sociable self. The case dragged on for seven years the McCanns initially won then lost on appeal. Kate McCann had never hidden her loathing of the detective and had written in her book that he deserves to be miserable and feel fear. Throughout the trial the McCanns maintain that Amaral had harmed the search for Madeleine.
Kate MC : Mr. Amaral is trying to stop her that human rights have been locked for and found.
SP : So was dr. Amaral a malicious monster as he's been portrayed by British media not according to his fans police and public alike. I've talked to Metropolitan Police officers who,nexpress solidarity were Gonzalo Amaral a number of them even contributed to a fundraiser for his legal fees defending the McCanns case against him. Interestingly in Leigh Kate McCann also had a fundraiser running at the same time but was some 20 thousands behind her nemesis. British media dubbed Amaral contributors as trolls. I've talked to some donators and they are proud to contribute to what they see as an injustice against the ex police chief. This woman is one of them.
@FIORIFAN : I've read all of the PJ files and I'm not firing the muck fable.
SP : The Portuguese police case was archived in 2008 as a consequence of lack of evidence. Wiith it went Kate and Gerry McCanns' arguido status although they were never formally cleared by the original investigation. During the summing up of the McCanns libel trial with Gonzalo Amaral the Supreme Court judges clarified this position. In keeping with Portuguese law the witness statements and case documents were put online. I talked with Pat Brown, a profiler from America who has written a book about Madeleine's disappearance.
Pat Brown : And then of course the police files came out and that's what rocked my world when it came down to what I thought happened in this case because there was no way to deny - once one read the police files - that there was no evidence of an abduction and these statements that were given by the MCs and their friends put a lot of question marks out there, and so immediately when I read them I said this is exactly why detective Amaral began to believe that the parents might have had some involvement in the disappearance of their daughter and this is why the police started focusing in on the McCanns. So I think that anybody who has read the police files and many many people have now can come to a conclusion that there is good reason that the McCanns should be suspects and that is the conclusion I came to that they should be suspects.
SP : For a time the publicly-funded find madeleine fund employed a series of private detectives some of them highly questionable but it came to nothing. One month before the pj files were released online leicester police agreed to disclose 80 pieces of investigation information to the McCanns who had taken their demand to the High Court and said they needed this information for their own private investigators. This was extraordinary capitulation as the McCanns were still suspects and could have been handed vital information that would help their defense. Mrs Justice Hogg presiding said she had not asked for the MCs to attend because they have suffered enough and I wish to ease their burden. Justice Hogg would later become notorious as the judge who returned British schoolgirl Ellie Butler to her father despite pleas from social services and Ellis grandparents not to. Ben Butler later murdered six-year-old Ellie.
The McCanns have denied accusations that they failed to cooperate with Portuguese police. However it was clear there was a discrepancy between what the Portuguese police said and what the McCanns said. It was here at the police station in Portimao where Kate McCann refused to answer 48 police questions she did however answer the final one.
Over the years the McCanns have been accused of having friends in high places and it's easy to see why, certainly there's been no shortage of influential people who have been prepared to go the extra mile for the two doctors and the chief executive of Rupert Murdoch's British media arm was one of them. in 2011 Rebecca Brooks negotiated serialized Kate McCann's book Madeleine and Brooks Maas was later revealed during a government inquiry into press ethics was highly instrumental in the launch of Operation Grange, the British police review of the much-maligned Portuguese police investigation. Brooks at the request of Kate and Gerry McCann had managed to persuade her a good friend and Prime Minister David Cameron to agree to government funding for it. Within a day of running an open letter from the McCanns on the front page of the Sun Britain's number one selling daily newspaper operation Grange was given the go-ahead.
Leveson Inquiry : Your intervention was successful in securing a review of the case, do you understand that ?
Rebekah Brooks : you asked if it was successful, and it was, yes.
SP : Kate and Gerry McCann's requests to review the Portuguese investigation had been an understandable one. The PJ had been unable to reach a definitive conclusion and the McCanns had not been cleared of any involvement in their daughter's disappearance. Their supporters said this also hampered the search for Madeleine it was apparent that both Kate and Gerry were intent on moving forward and British police needed to clear any lingering doubts about them once and for all. The McCanns were already making headway in public life and within months of Madeleine's disappearance they had entered the European Parliament corps for cross-border cooperation for a child alert system. Kate and Gerry McCann and the fear that their story generated in parents had become useful tools for the Labour government who sought to extend data gathering throughout Europe. In the following years the McCanns would become even more involved with public life, as Gerry took to the role of speaking out against the press with the pressure group hacked off and Kate became ambassador for the charity missing people. Having Kate McCann as a charity ambassador missing people was always going to be a controversial choice. And so the McCanns got what they wanted. An operation Grange began as a review of the Portuguese police work in 201, few foresaw that Madeleine's hunt would become a live murder investigation in 2013.
It's inside this building Belgravia police station in central London where operation Grange is housed. Just months after the review began this man was approved to the role of overseeing operation Grange in his position of commissioner of the metropolis the most powerful policeman in England and Wales. Bernhard Hogan Howe was no stranger to the McCanns or Madeleine's fundraisers. Just a month after Madeleine's reported disappearance, Hogan Howe then Chief Constable of Merseyside Police sold helium balloons with the money going to the Find Madeleine campaign, a limited company not a charity which has collected millions in public donations since the beginning and can be spent how Kate and Jerry deem appropriate. Flog in balloons on a hillside was an unusual act from a police chief but Kate McCann had local ties with the area and had grown up in Liverpool. Four years later in 2011 Bernhard hogan Howe would play a much larger role in madeleine story where he oversaw Operation Grange almost from the beginning. In 2016 he told a radio host that Operation Grange was on one final line of inquiry and he intended to see it through. That didn't happen, a year later having been knighted he retired.
Distinguished retired Metropolitan Police Detective Colin Sutton has been responsible for bringing a number of high-profile perpetrators to justice including Levi Bellfield who murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler. A newspaper reported that Colin was in the running to lead Operation Grange but he'd retired by the time it was given the final go-ahead.
Colin Sutton : I got a phone call from a friend of mine who was a very senior Metro police officer and I was told 'don't do it' you know if the newspaper report was true and you are going to be asked to investigate this 'don't do it' and the reason I was given was that I would not be happy mounting an investigation leading investigator where I was told where I could and where I couldn't go and what I could look at what I couldn't look at and my friend knew that I would find that frustrating our property against their and I'd want to essentially I'd want to do it properly I'd want to do a properly investigation looking across the piece to all the possibilities and it seemed that he knew that I wouldn't be able to do that.
SP : How do you interpret that ?
CS : I certainly interpreted that at the time as being that there was no question of looking any question of guilt on the part of the MCs.
SP : As if echoing what Colin Sutton had already been told DCI Andy Redwood, who was eventually chosen to lead Operation Grange, made an announcement at the start of the investigation. Andy Redwood : Neither her parents or any of the member of the group that were with her are either persons of interest nor suspects.
Pat Brown : To start an investigation saying 'we're not looking at the parents' means that you aren't actually doing a proper investigation, because you start at Ground Zero when you do a proper investigation or a proper review. You start with the evidence, you go back to the crime scene, you go back to day one and you review everything, including the family because that's what you do and if nothing else more than to properly eliminate them, but you don't start by saying we've already eliminated these people as suspects before we even do any work. That's to me reeks of a plan of action before the investigation even starts.
SP : But there's also division within British police ranks about this case. I've seen firsthand how divided some British officers are. I was given access to a secret police group on Facebook, it was a chatty group we're serving officers past and present came together to share their opinions in ways that they couldn't publicly. There were a number of posts about Madeleine's case in the time that I was watching there were several explosive discussions but one in particular stood out. A serving officer wrote a critical post about Operation Grange within seconds of posting people were responding thick and fast many agreeing with him an angry at the apparent favoritism shown towards Kate and Gerry McCann. On that thread was an example of what many now know to be a certain censorship around this case another policeman wrote that he was so disgusted with what police officers were writing about the force and about the grieving parents and he would be reporting all such comments to the police complaints the following day. So let me get this straight a secret group designed to allow police officers to share experiences and vent was subject to threats about the private opinions they posted about Kate and Gerry McCann and the police investigation, it was chilling to observe. When Operation Grange moved from review to investigation it crucially ruled out the efits of the man who had been prime suspect since Madeleine had been reported missing back in 2007. Despite this it still featured on the official fine Madeleine website five years later even though the man had been eliminated and replaced with another man's e-fit. This one scene by an Irish family holidaying in PdL at the time of Madeleine's reported disappearance. This e-fit it emerged was not new at all in fact it had been drawn up five years before by private investigators employed by the fine Madeleine fund. Now that sighting has been dogged by controversy ever since. Members of the Smith family were holidaying at their Portuguese holiday home that May they enjoyed a drink at Kelly's bar roughly six minutes walk from the McCanns apartment and left just before 10p.m. they proceeded up the steps that would lead them to the sighting of an adult man carrying a young girl Smith family gave their first police statements in May, just weeks after Madeleine was reported missing. They record seeing a man running down this street with a small girl in his arms it was around the time that Kate McCann had raised the alarm that Madeleine was missing. Four months later after watching Kate and Gerry McCann return to the UK Martin Smith contacted police again. The image of Gerry descending down the plain steps had triggered something in him. He said that he was now 60 to 80 percent certain that the man he saw on May the 3 rd was Gerry McCann in the intervening years there's been much said about this claim indeed during the BBC's10th year anniversary documentary into Madeleine's disappearance the report has said that mr. Smith had since denied the description. Investigative journalist Gemma O'Doherty he recently talked with Martin Smith and during which he denied the BBC story mr. Smith said he'd stood by his belief that the man he saw on that fateful night carrying a child could indeed be Gerry McCann. During the seven-year involvement of British police officers from Operation Grange of return to the Algarve for a number of times and have been subject to criticism for doing so, international press mocked its theater and British media questioned how much such a jolly as they framed it was costing hard-pressed taxpayers and at a time of austerity. In 2017 to mark the tenth anniversary since Madeleine was reported missing assistant commissioner Mark Rowley the second most senior cop overseeing the British police investigation reiterated that McCann's had not been investigated by Operation Grange.
Mark Rowley : parents involvement that was over the time why there is an investigation by the Portuguese that all the material we're happy that's completely dealt with.
Colin S : I don't understand the logic of what's been said about this elimination question. The Portuguese authorities are quite clear they're saying 'we have not eliminated Kate and Gerry McCann as suspects', that's their finding.
SP : In October 2013 and citing new lines of inquiry the Portuguese police reopen their investigation and plan to work with the British police while the PJ retained lead on the case. But is it possible that both Portuguese and British police inquiries have been too narrow since the departure of Gonzalo Amaral. So when did British police start saying that Madeleine was abducted the a word it appears was called just days after her disappearance and it would appear that British police never diverted from this way of thinking.
CS : I can't I can't tell you why abduction was the only thing that was pursued but that said you could certainly say that from what I've seen and what I know that appears to be the case, because not only did I get the kind of warning off but I've subsequently looked at the terms of reference for operation Grange was talk about abduction. But perhaps even more tellingly in in the CEOP report which really was the basis for setting up Operation Grange it goes through the chronology of what's gone on in terms of British support for the Portuguese and a British sort of law enforcement response. And we can see that when the first gold steering group was formed which was on the 8 th of May so it's you know five days after Madeleine went missing, they are already at that point using the word abduction, talking about supporting the Portuguese investigation into the abduction. So it seems to me that there was a mindset that was taken on at a very early stage in this investigation and which is you know persisted all the way through up to the current time with operational areas.
Mark R : She wasn't old enough to make a decision to set off and start her own life, however she left that apartment. She's been abducted,
CS : now what I take that to mean is because we know that at the time we are told Madeleine McCann went missing from flat 5A, we know her parents and their friends weren't in that flat with them at home, therefore they could not have taken her or they're not suspects. That doesn't follow up does it ? I mean that's that's that's not logical that's not a kind of forensic way of looking at it, because it is based on some pretty huge assumptions.
SP : So what more potentially could the McCanns and their friends have done to help the search for Madeleine . Certainly an intense source of criticism has been the lack of a police reconstruction of that fateful holiday in Portugal, a decision influenced by the McCanns friends who refused to take part, as with so much of this case these actions appear unprecedented. How were potential suspects statistically speaking by their sheer proximity to missing Madeleine able to guide aspects of the investigation.
David Machin : Reconstructions can assist in the investigation of major crime. There are investigating officers - to see a timeline they allow investigating officers - to compare witness testimonies to the events as they unfolded it, allows them to identify anomalies discrepancies anomalies and discrepancies that I have to say are not necessarily untruths they're just a consequence of people's perception when they witness something, people very frequently are unsure of times they they misjudge distances they have difficulty describing accurately, people that they haven't seen before have only ship seen for a short period of time. And additionally it allows people that may have seen a percentage a small percentage of the overall activity, now they may believe that their evidence and what they saw is is inconsequential, but when placed together with the evidence of multiple other people it does help put a jigsaw together and an aid in the investigation. SP : I've been in touch with the people close to the original Portuguese investigation, they gave me drawings and information of what a reconstruction timeline might look like according to the statements of the McCanns and their seven friends. Ten years on there remains clear disparities as to the individual movements on that fateful night, disparities that a reconstruction could have ironed out. The only reconstruction the McCanns and their friends agreed to was for a TV documentary, it was guided by private detectives employed by the McCanns from Madeleine's fund, the TV reconstruction did indeed reveal significant inconsistencies, they focused on this area just outside the McCanns holiday apartment and when Gerry McCann met Jeremy Jez Wilkins, a TV producer from London who was Holiday Inn in Portugal at the same time as the McCanns and had played tennis with Gerry, it was here during one of Jerry's checks on the children at about 9:15 p.m. that he bumped into Jeremy Wilkins.
Jane Tanner : so I think you were by here and I think you were standing like that and Jez it just was there with his pram pointing down that way because I think if you'd have been looking at me because I would have said some things I would have said about because Kate had been moaning that you'd been gone a long time watching the football.
Gerald MC : I'm almost certain that when I came out I came over and he was here and I was like that, that's my memory, it's like Jez e is - or something and looking up and then turning and when I finish
SP : In the event Jez Wilkin statement didn't support Jerry McCann's recollection of that much analyzed moment neither Jez Wilkins or Gerry McCann saw Jane Tanner despite the road being fairly narrow and if Gerry McCann had been facing the way that Jane Tanner had claimed surely he would have also seen the alleged abductor but he didn't. Nonetheless Jane Tanner's e-fit of a man became the primary fit for five years until operation Grange eliminated it, but many people including the Portuguese police dismissed of Tanner's sighting and given the environment how much detail would you really see ? And surprisingly these disparities and others are why the police have sought reconstructions from the McCanns and their friends but in ten years that has not happened.
Colin S : You have to understand them will be inconsistencies, but there was some pretty major inconsistencies of fact in the witness statements that we've got them that we see. In this case is unusual because there's so much information in the public domain that's been put online by the Portuguese authorities that you know a million amateur sleuths can read it and come up with their ideas and in some ways that adds fuel to the fire of the speculation from both ends of the spectrum. But you know, from what I know of the information it's about, there are inconsistencies which I'd like to try and one way to do that would actually be the cooperation of the witnesses to come to a reconstruction to and allow it to be maybe filmed and to see, you know and you can you can stop that as you're going on so hang on a bit now because you're saying that so that can't be right can it let's think about that again and you kind of get a composite story that's closer to the truth.
SP : So back to that political involvement I touched upon earlier. From 2007 to present day the McCanns have enjoyed unprecedented support from for British Prime Minister's Tony Blair Gordon Brown David Cameron to the current prime minister Theresa May who continued the multimillion-pound spend of Operation Grange. These actions of such high-level political intervention and support has left professionals baffled.
Pat B. : One of the most peculiar things about this case is the government involvement to the level it has been involved. Now there are many cases which occur around the world when a person from one country goes missing in another where there is some government involvement. I don't think that just because the government stepped in in some ways that this is necessarily something we should question. However the level of support that the McCanns have got is is shocking, I can't even come up with a decent explanation for it, except for something is amiss. I have never seen that much money be thrown at a case, which to me a case that really doesn't deserve that kind of money. The case was well investigated.
SP : In 2016 I had a series of email exchanges with then British Prime Minister David Cameron's office I questioned the multimillion-pound spend he had approved on the case, I offered to share all my research with his office, it was not taken up. David Cameron's following Britain's vote to leave the EU in June 2016 left office one week after my final exchange with his spin doctor. As of March 2018 Operation Grange has been granted a further undisclosed sum from the British government. The Home Office refused to confirm to me how much this was or how long it was intended to last for what we do know is the amount hovers around the 12 million pound mark despite this and at a time of national austerity government ministers in Theresa May cabinet refused to be drawn on this. Operation Grange do you believe she was abducted I leave that to the professionals I do not speak with issues that I'm not really qualified to talk upon does the country for one childhood when child goes missing every five he's lost this actually as a result of my question MP's police from the houses of parliament were sent out to question me many the MP Z? asks questions inside the box and I believe that they are accountable to the people and as long as I approach them to correct what I always do then then I have my constant questions no that's sort of my bottom line...
On the day that further funding for Operation Grange was announced, I was invited to discuss it on a national radio breakfast show based on the public announcements of Operation Grange. I told the presenter that the McCanns and their friends had not been part of the investigation, he refused to believe me. After the broadcast I contacted Operation Grange to double-check the position and was informed that yes what I had said was accurate until further notice or until this changes. The reality is who knows what's going on in a police investigation other than the officers involved since when have the police thrown investigation details open to the public to dissect and this case is no different is it ? Could it yet be that the investigation will surprise many or will operation Grange criticized by police and public alike and without a conclusion or without having gone back to the start. Retired detective Collins Sutton is in no doubt about what needs to happen with the remaining money.
CS : The starting point has got to be back at Ground Zero. Because, you know, this is when the report was made, these were the last people to see her, this is what they say, these are the people close to her, let's eliminate those, let's get their mouths away. And that would serve everybody, you know, that would be in the interests of both the general public, but also Kate and Gerry McCann, because there's an awful lot of you know cattle to sell on the internet and rumours. And you know this is a case where there are so many opinions and quite strong opinions in some cases. If you comprehensively conclusively forensicaly eliminate Gerry and Kate McCann and their friends from any involvement, then that squash is almost all of that rumour mill that takes it all away.
SP : As a journalist it is my responsibility to present pertinent questions particularly a public interest and so in the years since Madeleine's disappearance I have sought to interview the McCanns both directly and via their press spokesman Clarence Mitchell. But it wasn't to be and it wasn't to be because in my experience interviews are not granted if the abduction theory is subject to question as for the Portuguese police Madeleine's disappearance remains a unique and random event. hello do you speak English Oh a live bet it's better than my Portuguese do you. I'm a journalist from England I'm looking for some statistics and facts I'm looking where I might be able to acquire some information of how many foreign national children have gone missing in the last ten years and I tell you I ask this I'm making a documentary called the untold story.
I'm going to give you one statistics. In Praia da Luz ?
Yes
None. The first and the last.
