So you think Kate and Gerry McCann searched for Madeleine?

May 3rd 2007, 10pm. News is breaking that 3 year old Madeleine McCann, has been snatched from the hotel apartment she was staying in. Before long the streets of Praia da Luz are awash with locals and tourists; people desperately trying to find any trace of Madeleine. The beams from torches cut through the night sky, tracking any movements down the dark side streets. Madeleine's name echoes through the air. Some of the people who've volunteered have children of their own safe at home; they can't begin to imagine what Madeleine's parents must be going through.

Police officers are searching too, some of them off duty; volunteering their time to find Madeleine. The hours pass by, it's getting cold now, no word, no sign. Still everyone searches, where could she be. People are getting tired, yet still they search, hoping that Madeleine will turn up, maybe around the next corner. What must the parents be going through?

So what were the parents going through? Well we know from the statements, that after a 40 minute delay in calling the police, they arrive within minutes to find Kate and Gerry on their knees, wailing and beating the floor with their palms. An act that immediately aroused the suspicions of GNR officer, José Maria Batista Roque.

Roque stated that he, "...found the parents to be nervous and anxious, he did not see any tears from either of them although they produced noises identical to crying. He did not feel that this was an abduction, although this was the line indicated by the father."

click here to read Jose Maria Batista Roque's statement

The police have a look around the apartment, brief statements are taken, then Kate and Gerry are left whilst the officers take to the streets to search with the volunteers.

At approximately 3am, and according to Kate McCann as written in her propaganda pamphlet entitled "madeleine" (all lower case), Kate describes the following scenario.

"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..."

Now I'm not suggesting Kate is lying in her book, despite it's many inconsistencies, but David Payne, the man she describes as searching with Gerry, has a different version of events. Payne doesn't mention shouting, he doesn't mention running, indeed he hardly mentions searching, in fact the crux of his recollection, is that he spent the time consoling Gerry on the beach. Taken from Payne's rogatory statement, dated 11th April 2008.

"We went down err through past the Ocean Club reception, we went down err to the beach and in between all this you know Kate and Gerry were just breaking down you know just their behaviour was, you know was never questioned or did I ever think there was anything strange about you know their behaviour and how they would, they would act, you know in such a set of circumstances and you know Gerry's a very stoical person and you know, I think you know its the way that he's conducted himself over the past few months you know, and he broke down with me on the front, you know. You know just very obviously a broken man, and you know we spent some time you know, not long, I was trying my best to console him, we went back then to the err the apartment..."

click here to read David Payne's full rogatory statement

Do you see a recurring theme? It's all about Kate and Gerry McCann, and how they were feeling. How about giving the would be father of the year a good talking to, and telling him straight, "get a grip you selfish man, your 3 year old daughter is missing, and you're sat on a beach doing nothing"

Oddly enough, David Payne makes no mention of any searching in his previous statement, dated 4th May 2007.

At 6am Kate and Gerry step out of the Payne's apartment where they spent the night with the twins. Conveniently, Kate states that nobody saw either her or Gerry. Are we seriously supposed to believe, that at 6am, there wasn't a single person out on the streets, no hotel workers, no delivery drivers, nobody whatsoever? Well according to Kate that's exactly what happened:

"As soon as it was light, Gerry and I returned to our search"

What search would that be then?

"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. 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 it all was that we were completely alone. Nobody else, it seemed was out looking for Madeleine. Just us, her parents."

If you believe the abduction fairy tale, wouldn't you agree, 6am was 8 hours too damn late?

Kate goes on to say,

"We must have been out for at least an hour before returning to David and Fiona's apartment..."

At least an hour? Oh you poor things.

Kate and Gerry were indeed spotted that morning. Paolo Jorge Fernandes Neto a serving officer with the GNR stated in his statement dated 27th May 2008, that:

"He remembers that he saw the McCann couple at about 07.00 alone in the street next to the site where they were stationed."

Despite many lying McCann supporters stating the contrary, nowhere in the above statement, does Paolo Jorge Fernandes Neto state that he witnessed Kate or Gerry McCann "searching".

Click here to read Paolo Jorge Fernandes Neto's statement

In fact there isn't a single independent witness that states they saw Kate or Gerry McCann out searching for Madeleine.

Kate even admits in a recorded interview with Jane Hill, that they didn't physically search.

click here to watch the video

A fact backed up by a former Ocean Club employee, who in the following video said,

"My colleagues were indignant, because they went (searching). One of them even had his feet all red, tired, and he was offended because he went to search, though he wasn't related to the girl, and the parents didn't. They stayed indoors, in the apartment."

click here to watch the video

John Hill, the Ocean Club manager also states he didn't see Kate or Gerry searching:

When questioned he stated that the search operations that he organised finished at about 04.30. Elements from the PJ and GNR reinforcements with sniffer dogs were still at the scene.

He wishes to add that he does not know of any motive that could have been the cause of the Madeleine's disappearance.

On the night of the disappearance he always saw the McCanns together in the apartment they were occupying at the time, with the exception of an episode when Gerry went to the main 24 hour reception, with the purpose of speaking to a GNR officer, he is not sure at what time this occurred, but it was certainly before 24.00.

In the months that followed Madeleine's disappearance, and in a classic case of do as we say, not as we do, Kate and Gerry McCann would go on to publicly slate the Portuguese Police force for not doing enough to search for Madeleine. Perhaps they both thought that phoning family and friends back in the UK was a far better way of bringing their 3 year old little girl back to them. Or maybe, as has been evident throughout the whole time Madeleine has been missing, they think it better that others search for their, as Gerry said, "almost perfect" little girl.

Gerry McCann was reported as saying, "Find the body, and prove we killed her"

I'm not going to state that quote is genuine, as it is hard to trace back to a primary source, however...

...if only Gerry and Kate had acted like normal devastated parents and searched with the strangers who looked throughout the night, who knows, they might have found her, and proved they weren't involved. Sadly both the evidence, and their behaviour, suggests they knew that was never going to be the case.

Interestingly, and in stark contrast, this was the immediate reaction of Sara Payne on hearing her daughter Sarah was missing:

"I didn't stop to ask what had happened , there was only one thing on my mind - I had to find Sarah now. Snapping into action , I reached for Charlotte and pulled her with me towards the lane that runs along beside the house. Shouting 'Sarah,Sarah at the tops of our voices, we frantically searched up and down Peake Lane, pulling aside brambles with our bare arms and looking under hedges. Meanwhile Mike grabbed the boys and headed into the corn field where they began beating back the crops , some of which were over four feet tall, to see if she was hidden there."

A more cynical man would say Kate took Sara Payne's book, and used her words...but surely that would be going too far...wouldn't it?

Sonia Poulton's diary; The Untold Story of Madeleine McCann.

As many people know, Sonia Poulton has been working on a documentary that will look at the case of Madeleine McCann, who was reported missing by her parents, Kate and Gerry, in May 2007. This evening Sonia has released a diary, that she has kept since October 2014. Having spoken at great length to Sonia about the documentary, I can fully vouch for the diary being a truthful and honest account of the progress, and the obstacles that both she, and the documentary have encountered.

In the diary, Sonia discusses some of her thoughts on the sad, and untimely death of Brenda Leyland; touches upon some of the more vocal and nasty people who have done all they can to attack her; discusses financial difficulties the documentary encountered; as well as the struggle to find the perfect people to make the documentary all it can be.

What is clear, and I have said it many times, is that Sonia is an honest and caring lady, and one I have complete trust in. A lady whom, despite countless attacks and smears from both sides of the fence, has never given up on this documentary being the best it can possibly be.

As we saw this weekend from Katie Hopkins' article, which despite not being 100% accurate, got a vast amount of people reading the files for themselves, there are still a huge amount of people unaware of the facts.

I personally believe that when Sonia's documentary is released, and is seen to be the first absolutely accurate production we have viewed, it will bring much needed attention to the case, the files, and in turn the truth.

Click here to read the diary.

So you think Kate and Gerry McCann were "cleared"?

I could make this blog entry nice and short, as the simple answer is; neither Kate or Gerry McCann have ever been cleared.

Once again, this is yet another topic that supporters of Kate and Gerry like to twist, and lie through their teeth about. So desperate are they to con the nation in the name of Kate and Gerry McCann, that these supporters resort to many perpetual lies. The more their lies are exposed, the more fantastical and ridiculous they become. Even Kate And Gerry must recoil with embarrassment.

Let's look at the pathetic ways the supporters attempt to push the lie that the McCanns were cleared.

1. Portuguese and British authorities "cleared" the McCanns.

The first question to ask in response to this lie is simple:

Cleared of what?

A question seemingly, no McCann supporter seems to want to answer.

The reason for that is simple. Nobody has been charged with the disappearance of Madeleine McCann. Nobody has been charged in connection with any crime against Madeleine. So with that in mind, nobody has been cleared, including the parents. The only authorities in Portugal and Great Britain that have the power to clear any suspect, are courts of law. A full judicial process, beginning with an investigation, followed by charges, progressing to a trial, and culminating in a verdict. In the absence of the latter three developments, it is impossible for anybody to have been cleared.

Despite this the lying supporters, press ahead with their ludicrous cries of "but, but, the McCanns were cleared" and, floundering, make an attempt to use the archiving report by Jose de Magalhaes e Menezes, who was, along with João Melchior Gomes the man responsible for producing a 58-page report - the concluding volume of the case files - which explained the reasons behind the decision to archive the process.

Despite reports on Wikipedia and some pro McCann forums this report did NOT clear the McCanns of any involvement in the loss of Madeleine, in fact by raising doubt over their stories, it did quite the opposite, below are some quotes from the report:

“The witnesses’ statements revealed important details which were not entirely understood and coherent”.

“The technique for this is a reconstruction, but despite every effort by the Public Prosecutor’s office and the JP [Policia Judiciara]…this was not possible”.

"We believe that the main damage (through the refusal of a reconstruction) was caused to the McCann arguidos, who lost the possibility to prove what they have protested since they were constituted arguidos: their innocence towards the fateful event; the investigation was also disturbed, because said facts remain unclarified."

“The work of these dogs can be appreciated much better on film...the dogs are trained in detecting dead persons".

“The fact that the parents were the last people known to have been with Madeleine, alive and in a known place, particularly with the possibility of a body having been in the apartment and in the vehicle used by the parents…meant they had to be placed under suspicion. The parents had no plausible explanation for these facts. Faced with the evidence produced by the dogs and the laboratories, they had to be named as suspects…”

"While it is an unavoidable fact that Madeleine disappeared from Apartment 5A of the 'Ocean Club', the manner and circumstances under which this happened are not - despite the numerous diligences made in that sense -, therefore the range of crimes that were indicated and referred to during the inquiry remains untouched."

"Within the factual context we could be facing an abduction situation, although all possibilities have always been open, as they continue to be."

"This abduction hypothesis was investigated exhaustively, all information leading to this and other possibilities having been examined fully. No ransom request was made, nor were there any sufficiently consistent indications to substantiate this supposed abduction."

......and if this following quote "clears" the McCanns, I'll get down on my hands and knees, and ask Tony Bennett to organise a petition requesting Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth give Gerry McCann a knighthood. The quote has been translated with slightly different wording, something that is perfectly normal. The context of both translations is, however, exactly the same.

First translation:

"Despite all of this, it was not possible to obtain any piece of evidence that would allow for a medium man, under the light of the criteria of logics, of normality and of the general rules of experience, to formulate any lucid, sensate, serious and honest conclusion about the circumstances under which the child was removed from the apartment (whether dead or alive, whether killed in a neglectful homicide or an intended homicide, whether the victim of a targeted abduction or an opportunistic abduction), nor even to produce a consistent prognosis about her destiny and inclusively - the most dramatic - to establish whether she is still alive or if she is dead, as seems more likely."

Second translation:

"No evidence was obtained which would enable the average person…to arrive at a clear and honest conclusion as to how the child was taken from the apartment (dead or alive, and if dead whether by negligent or wilful manslaughter)”

A translated copy of the archiving process can be read here:

So far from being cleared the McCann's it would seem STILL have questions to answer, plausible explanations to give.......remember Kate refusing to answer those 48 questions?

So that exhaustively rules out the McCanns being "cleared" by any court, and also any Portuguese authority. What about the British authorities? Once again supporters of Kate and Gerry will tell us that DCI Redwood, the officer who headed Operation Grange, cleared the McCanns. Someone, as we have already established was in no position, or have the authority to do so. However let's cut those pro McCann supporters some slack, and examine the exact quote they believe he used, that "clears" their heroes of any involvement.

“Neither her parents or any of the members of the group that were with her are either persons of interest or suspects”

I'm not hiding from the fact that DCI Redwood said what he did, but let's think about this realistically. The above archiving report left many possibilities open, in fact it left all possibilities open, including one that pointed toward Madeleine McCann meeting her fate through negligent homicide, and that furthermore, her possible death was then covered up by her parents. It was made clear by the PJ at the start of Operation Grange, that they would be running the show, and not Scotland Yard. So that said, how could DCI Redwood honestly say that the McCanns were not persons of interest if the PJ hadn't said the same?

I know some supporters of the McCanns won't admit I'm right, so let me put another angle out there, and on this front, the McCann's foot soldiers cannot disagree.

Police investigations use many methods; one of which involves a spot of hoodwinking. The investigating force will tell the public one thing, whilst doing the exact opposite. There are a number of reasons for this; for instance, the press will have been continually asking if Kate or Gerry McCann were persons of interest, or suspects. Redwood will have known, given it's complexity, and size, that this investigation could be an extensive game of cat and mouse. Had he not answered those questions from the press, they would have seized it with both hands. The resulting headlines would have ruined the investigation.

"NEW TWIST IN MADDIE CASE: SCOTLAND YARD REFUSE TO COMMENT UPON POSSIBILITY OF PARENTAL INVOLVEMENT"

Not even Clarence Mitchell could slither his slippery spinning ways around that headline.

Aside from the inevitable headlines, and a huge public outcry, that in all honesty would potentially see the McCanns put into perilous danger. There is another reason police declare people "not persons of interest", and that is to put the perpetrators at ease. As I type this I can hear those pros rocking their 'QWERTYs' and scoffing, "pffft, that doesn't happen"

So, I have some examples for them to digest:

The Philpott case:

This truly terrible, and harrowing crime took place in the early hours of May 11th 2012, and saw 6 children lose their lives in a house fire. Police described the fire, to the public at least, as an accident. They weren't fooled by the histrionics of the father, Mick Philpott, or his wife Mairead Philpott. Many people even commented at how the pair seemed to enjoy the attention from the media, sound familiar?

The Philpotts checked into a hotel, blisfully unaware that the police were onto them, and had already bugged the room.

During one of the recorded conversations, Mick Philpott can be heard saying to his wife, "You notice they’re saying accident ? Not saying it’s a murder enquiry eh?"

To which his wife replies: "Fatal accident, they just said."

It was this intelligence that nailed the couple, and a friend Paul Mosly; all three were charged with murder, later to be downgraded to manslaughter and jailed, despite police indicating that they weren't persons of interest.

Read more here

Another example that is relevant to my point, is the case of Shannon Matthews:

Shannon disappeared aged 9, from Dewsbury, West Yorkshire. on the 19th February 2008. Comparisons were immediately drawn to the McCann case; whilst certain areas of the media drew conclusions of parental involvement, others defended Shannon's mother, Karen Matthews, and her boyfriend Craig Meehan. The Independent even said that the case had developed a cruel overtone and that such questions went far beyond necessity and lifted the lid on an uncomfortable hypocrisy in British society.

Again, sound familiar?

Thankfully, Shannon was found alive by police, at a property not far from where she disappeared, on the 14 March 2008, some 24 days later. Her uncle, Michael Donovan was arrested at the scene, and five days later, charged with kidnapping, false imprisonment and committing acts tended to pervert the course of justice.

Now though to my point; police dismissed the theory that Karen Matthews had been involved in the kidnap, and also stated that the crime hadn't been committed for financial gain. Investigating officers said that Shannon had been placed into social care in order that she could readjust after her ordeal. Karen Matthews thought she was in the clear, even gong as far as to update the media on Shannon's progress.

Read more here

The police though, had played a blinder, and on 6th April 2008, Karen Matthews was arrested, two days later she was charged with child neglect and perverting the course of justice. Those charges were later increased to include kidnapping and false imprisonment.

It transpired in court, that the plan had been to release Shannon Matthews and for Michael Donovan to 'find' her, then claim the £50,000 reward. Both defendants were found guilty of kidnapping, false imprisonment and perverting the course of justice, and both given 8 year sentences.

Should I digress a tad? Why not, we're almost done.

In court, Julian Goose QC, stated that Matthews had given police five different versions of her story, and accused her of "telling lie after lie, after lie".

It was also discovered that Shannon had been administered temazepam, a sedative prior to, and during her kidnap.

#JustSayin'

We'll not go down those roads today, but for those who are adamant that Kate and Gerry McCann were "cleared"....

I think we've well and truly "cleared" that one up.