Prime Minister, Theresa May, introduces Prime Suspect, Kate McCann,
to Royalty: The Duchess of Gloucester
The letters to the Prime Minister and Met Police
Commissioner Cressida Dick were posted on Tuesday (12 June) and I am
awaiting replies which I shall post here. I have also sent a copy to the
Leader of the Opposition, Jeremy Corbyn.
From: Ms Jill Havern and members of ‘The Complete Mystery of Madeleine McCann’
[address withheld]
Rt. Hon. Mrs Theresa May
Prime Minister
10 Downing Street
LONDON
W1A 1AA
Commissioner Ms Cressida Dick
Metropolitan Police
8-10 Broadway,
LONDON
SW1H 0BG
Monday 12 June 2017
Dear Prime Minister and Commissioner Ms Cressida Dick
NEW DEVELOPMENTS SINCE September 2016: The conduct of the
Operation Grange investigation into the reported disappearance of
Madeleine McCann
As before, I write on behalf of the members of my forum ‘The
Complete Mystery of Madeleine McCann’, whose membership has grown to
7,645 since my previous letter.
I now write to you again on your re-election as Prime Minister and as before wish you well in that capacity.
You and the new Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Ms Cressida Dick,
will recall that nine months ago, I wrote to you in robust terms about
the truth about what really happened to Madeleine McCann. I gave you, in
particular, detailed evidence about the misconduct of the various
private detectives and agencies used by the McCanns. They had used a
series of discredited or bogus investigation agencies - and at least
four of their detectives had been imprisoned for criminal offences after
they had been engaged by the McCanns. Two of their investigators, Kevin
Halligen and Antonio Giminez Raso, each served four years in jail. Yet
Operation Grange has deemed that the material collected by these
criminal or discredited investigators is somehow worthy of
consideration.
I suggested to you previously that the expensive farce that
Operation Grange had become should be ended, and that you should set up a
fresh inquiry team, with an unlimited remit, which could investigate
whether the McCanns were directly involved in any way in the reported
disappearance of their daughter.
There have been at least three major developments since I last
wrote to you, which fully reinforce what I said back in September - and
make it more urgent than ever that Operation Grange is ended and a new
inquiry set up with an unlimited remit.
These are:
(1) The original Portuguese police investigation co-ordinator, Dr
Goncalo Amaral, winning, in January this year, the libel case brought
against him in June 2009 by the McCanns
(2) The clear declaration by the Portuguese Supreme Court,
announced in February this year, that the McCanns had been wrong to
claim that they had been ‘cleared’ by the Portuguese police
investigation. The Court ruled (a) that the McCanns had NOT been
cleared, (b) that the alleged criminal offence of the McCanns, i.e.
having hidden Madeleine’s body, was still being investigated, and (c)
that proceedings against the McCanns could still be taken if new and
credible evidence of their involvement in Madeleine’s disappearance were
to emerge, and
(3) The revelation in April this year by a former senior
Metropolitan Police officer, Detective Chief Inspector Colin Sutton,
that he had been advised by a very senior Metropolitan Police officer
that he should not accept the recommendation of the former Head of the
Child Exploitation and Online Protection Service, Jim Gamble, that he
(Sutton) should head the proposed Operation Grange Review - because it
would have a strictly limited remit and he would “not be able to go
where he wanted”.
Moreover, in later remarks discussing the advice the ‘very senior’
officer had given him, Sutton stated in a SKY News documentary, and in
an interview with an Australian TV network, that he had reasons for
believing that the McCanns might , after all, have been involved in
Madeleine’s disappearance.
In my previous letter I respectfully reminded you as follows, quote:
“Whilst you were at the Home Office you personally approved and
organised the setting-up of Operation Grange in 2011 and approved its
remit, which was to investigate ‘the abduction. The innocence of the
McCanns in the disappearance of the daughter was assumed to begin with
and so, contrary to all normal rules of police investigation and
conduct, any lines of enquiry which might suggest that the McCanns knew
or were involved in the disappearance of Madeleine were excluded right
from the start.
“As Home Secretary from 2010 to 2016 you would have had regular
briefings on the case from your most senior advisers, civil servants,
and security service and police officers and you would no doubt have
been fully informed of the intensive involvement of government security
services and other agencies in the case from the very first day, and
their continuing extensive involvement for many years later.
“You must have personal knowledge that the McCanns have by no means
been ruled out of involvement in Madeleine’s disappearance”.
At the end of January this year, after a legal process that lasted
over 7½ years, the Portuguese Supreme Court refused the McCanns’ appeal
against a ruling in the Portuguese Appeal Court in April 2016 that the
original Portuguese investigation co-ordinator was not guilty of
libeling the McCanns in his book on the case: ‘The Truth of the Lie’.
His book, published back in 2008, had given clear evidential reasons for
believing that Madeleine McCann had died in the McCanns’ apartment, and
that they had covered up Madeleine’s death and arranged to hide her
body.
The comments of former Detective Chief Inspector Colin Sutton
I now reproduce some of the statements made by former Detective
Chief Inspector Colin Sutton. In a SKY TV documentary on the Madeleine
McCann case, he said::
“I did receive a call from a very senior Met Police officer who
knew me and said it wouldn't be a good idea for me to head the
investigation on the basis that I wouldn't be happy conducting an
investigation being told where I could go and where I couldn't go, the
things I could investigate and the things I couldn't...”
In a longer interview with an Australian news source, he said:
"There were critical errors because of a high level agenda to not interrogate the child's parents...", and
"Operation Grange's narrow remit to focus only on the theory that
the four-year-old was abducted from the family's holiday apartment in
Portugal was unusual and a 'missed opportunity'..."
The Australian article continued: "In 2010...Sutton received a
phone tip-off from 'a very senior Metropolitan police officer', warning
him about the looming investigation and how it would be handled. The
insider told Sutton, who served 30 years with London's Met before
retiring in 2011, that the dozens of murder detectives assigned to
Operation Grange would be instructed where they could and couldn't look.
'I immediately assumed that what was meant was that the [McCann] family
and Tapas 7 [the group of seven friends on holiday with the McCanns]
were a no-go area', Sutton said".
The article went on "...the detective's instincts were proven
correct. The 'crucial phrase', as Sutton calls it, in the Operation
Grange remit was a line stating the review would be carried out 'as if
the abduction occurred in the UK'. That meant Kate and Gerry McCann,
despite several concerning inconsistencies in their witness statements,
were not to be looked at”, Sutton said. The rest of [the remit] is
really of little consequence after that because that's sort of saying…we
are only treating this as an abduction and we are not looking at any
other scenario."
"Sutton also hit out at Scotland Yard claims that the McCanns...had
been cleared...'The PJ have never cleared anyone', Sutton said.
‘Ceasing the investigation 'just meant they couldn't find enough
evidence to proceed against them'."
Moreover, they quoted more statements from Sutton: “Sutton...said
it was well-rehearsed, best police practice in cases such as Madeleine
McCann to eliminate those closest to the child first. 'Also any kind of
investigation of murder or akin to murder the other place you need to
eliminate early on is those that last saw the victim alive. In this case
you've got essentially the same group of people who are both close to
the victim and the last to see her alive. I'd always want to start with
that. I don't understand why that hasn't been done [by Operation
Grange]...'."
Sutton said he disagreed with [Met Police] Asst Com Rowley's
assessment. He said inconsistencies in some of Kate and Gerry's
statements, Kate's 2011 book ‘madeleine’ and also some of the witness
accounts of the Tapas 7 disturbed him.
"After police found no forensic evidence in the apartment to back
up claims of a break in, Gerry's statements to police detailing what
doors he and Kate had used while checking on their three sleeping
children changed".
The article concluded: “Portugal's police also had some doubts over
the accuracy of timelines provided by Kate and Gerry, and the Tapas 7,
in the critical hours either side of Maddie being reported missing at
10pm. Specialist cadaver and blood dogs were brought to Praia da Luz
from the UK, and signalled hits inside apartment 5A and a hire car
rented by the McCanns 25 days after Madeleine disappeared. [Colin Sutton
said that] It was 'entirely possible' that some of Operation Grange's
remit was forced upon Scotland Yard by government officials who rubber
stamped the multi-million-[pound] funding of the investigation".
The comments of Assistant Commissioner Mark Rowley
I also wish to refer to the comments made by Assistant Commissioner
Mark Rowley about the case in an extended interview given to the media.
He told his interviewer: “What I’ve always said on this case, and
I’ve said it to Kate and Gerry as well, we will do everything reasonably
possible to try and find an answer for them”. He thus confirms DCI
Colin Sutton’s statements that the remit, devised originally by
Detective Superintendent Hamish Campbell, excluded the McCanns from the
investigation.
In rambling responses to the interviewer, AC Rowley said first of
all that: “There is still a lot unknown”, but later contradicted himself
by stating: ”We’ve achieved a complete understanding of it all”. Later
in the same interview he contradicted himself once again by saying: “Ten
years on, we still don’t have definitive evidence about exactly what’s
happened”, and further adding: “All the different hypotheses have to
remain open”. In the same vein, he continued: “This case is [one where]
the evidence is limited at the moment as to which one of the [various]
hypotheses we should follow. So we have to keep an open mind”.
He continued: “As I said earlier on we have no definitive evidence
as to whether Maddie is alive or dead” but then, bizarrely, claimed:
“The investigation has achieved an awful lot”.
He also referred to the initial Portuguese investigation, stating
that: “When we started, we started five or so years into this, and there
is already a lot of ground been covered, we don’t cover the same
ground, what we do is pull all the material we had at the start, all the
Portuguese material…” This material included multiple lines of evidence
that Madeleine died in the McCanns’ apartment.
He then said: “It would be no different if there were a cold case
in London, a missing person from 1990, we would go back to square one
look at all the material and if the material was convincing, it ruled
out that line of enquiry, we would look somewhere else…You don’t restart
an investigation pretending it doesn’t exist and do all the same
enquiries again, that is not constructive… What hypotheses does it open,
what does it close down…?”
So, despite all the material in the Portuguese police files
pointing to Madeleine’s death in the McCanns’ apartment, AC Rowley
admitted that Operation Grange ignored these lines of enquiry. To make
it crystal clear, Rowley confirmed that “We did not interview the
McCanns as potential suspects”.
AC Rowley then developed one of Operation Grange’s favourite
hypotheses over the past few years for Madeleine’s disappearance, namely
a ‘burglary gone wrong’. He said: “One of the lines of enquiry, one of
the hypotheses was: could this be a burglary gone wrong? Someone is
doing a burglary, panicked maybe by a waking child, which leads to
Madeleine going missing”. The interviewer retorted, very sensibly: “Most
burglars would just run out”. AC Rowley, aware that nothing had been
stolen from the McCanns’ apartment even if this was a ’burglary gone
wrong’, replied with yet another rambling, 200-word answer, and admitted
that, three years after identifying three Praia da Luz residents as the
possible burglars, “we have pretty much closed off that group of
people”.
The arrest and questioning of these three alleged ‘burglars’ was
based on records of one mobile telephone call made between two of them
lasting 58 seconds at 9.51pm on Thursday 3 May, the night Madeleine was
reported missing. This was the one and only piece of evidence against
them, and it was achieved after Operation Grange sifted some 11,000
mobile ‘phone records obtained from some 31 countries of people known or
thought to have lived in or visited Praia da Luz at the time Madeleine
was reported missing. To achieve this, letters had to be sent by
Operation Grange to 31 countries to obtain these records, and thousands
of man-hours would have been needed to examine them all. The only result
of this vast amount of expensive activity was the wrongful arrest of
three local Praia da Luz residents.
In my previous letter, I called on you both to, quote:
1. Appoint independent assessors of proven integrity and
independence to evaluate the work of Operation Grange, and make its
findings public. In this respect, may I remind you of this part of the
review’s remit, as determined by DCS Hamish Campbell: “The
‘investigative review’ will be conducted with transparency, openness and
thoroughness…” Any such report must include a full investigation into
the huge involvement in this case of MI5, Special Branch and other
government or government-backed security agencies;
2. Appoint, via the new Home Secretary, a different police force,
which has the highest possible reputation for integrity and
independence, to investigate the reported disappearance of Madeleine
McCann;
3. Ensure that any new police investigation has an unlimited remit and can therefore go to wherever the evidence leads them;
4. Order the relevant government department to investigate all aspects of the operation of the Find Madeleine Fund, including:-
investigating the actions of all of its Directors,
the funding of the private investigations,
whether or not funds have been used to pay the McCanns’ legal fees and expenses,
why it was necessary for a separate account to be set up last year, to be controlled by the McCanns and not the Directors, and
accounting for all monies paid into and from the Find Madeleine Fund since it was set up in May 2007..
I shall again send this same letter to the new Metropolitan Police
Commissioner, Cressida Dick. Again I urge you to seek an urgent meeting
with her to discuss the contents of my letter.
In the three years and eight months since a BBC Crimewatch ‘McCann
Special’ on Madeleine McCann on 14 October 2013, one of my members,
Richard Hall, has produced five documentary films on the case lasting a
total of 17 hours. These films have had over 5 million views on YouTube
alone. The films developed the evidence that Madeleine did indeed die in
the McCanns’ apartment and that Gerry and Kate McCann, with the help of
others, hid her body. There are in addition literally hundreds of other
YouTube uploads by other Google members which also develop this
evidence, many of them having a large number of views.
Another member of mine, a retired police superintendent, has
published an e-book documenting in detail the evidence that Madeleine
died in the McCanns’ apartment. It has been re-published all over the
internet and has been read by hundreds of thousands at least. In these
ways, ever more people are realising, in line with what Colin Sutton was
told in May 2010, that Operation Grange is a sham investigation which
was deliberately designed to cover up what really happened to Madeleine.
It would surely be in your interests to admit that Operation Grange
was seriously flawed from the start and must be urgently replaced with a
new investigation with an unlimited remit.
Please give this matter your most careful consideration and I shall look forward to your response in the near future.
Yours sincerely
_______________________
Jill Havern
For and on behalf of the members of ‘The Complete Mystery of Madeleine McCann’
Posted on CMOMM forum: https://jillhavern.forumotion.net/t14299-the-letters-to-the-prime-minister-and-met-police-commissioner-cressida-dick-were-posted-on-tuesday-12-june-and-i-am-awaiting-replies-which-i-shall-post-here-i-have-also-sent-a-copy-to-the-leader-of-the-opposition-jeremy-corbyn#369753
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