Preface written by Gonçalo Amaral for Paulo Reis' eBook: "The McCann's War"

PREFACE

The mysterious disappearance of a blue-eyed, blonde British child in a southern European country has turned into a tremendous Media case, largely because of a marketing strategy centered on the immaculate image of the parents, their exoneration, and a fierce attack on all those who, in the use of their right to opinion and freedom of expression, dare to put the kidnapping thesis for pedophile purposes in cause, but mainly because the investigation did not followed its normal course, that is, to cover all hypotheses, which twelve years later remain open.

The strategy of the parents of the child mysteriously disappeared presents dogmatic traces of truths similar to a new religion based on that immaculate image and not subject to scrutiny. Someone has already said that the truth of those parents has more force than the truth revealed by the "Messiahs" of monotheistic religions, Christians, Jews or Muslims.
As parents, they claim that there is no evidence of their daughter's death, as defendants they say that there is no evidence to blame them for the mysterious disappearance, as she was abducted in a planned manner by an international pedophile network, as claimants in a claim for compensation in the value of 1.2 million Euros they argue that any opinion contrary to their opinion will put at risk the survival of Madeleine and make impossible to found her. With the decision to file the investigation, they were cleared of any liability, following a second investigation that had been carried out until October 2007.

From a very early stage, their war strategically used the Media and the potential of the Internet, in order to discredit all those who dare to have an opinion contrary to their own, even if based on facts which, despite the millions of Euros spent, have never been questioned and still have evidence and have probationary force. We do not discuss the evidence of the death of the unhappy child, this can not be the center of the investigation of her mysterious disappearance. This kind of investigation must have a beginning, a middle and an end, in a normal zigzagging of any and all criminal investigations. In the end, the facts will speak for themselves.

JON CLARKE – OLIVE PRESS LIES AND VIDEOTAPE

JON CLARKE – OLIVE PRESS

LIES AND VIDEOTAPE

By PeterMac

Foreword
Nota Bene: After reading the article under discussion I contacted “The Olive Press”, asking for a retraction and an apology. I received neither acknowledgment nor reply
A week later I sent a repeat email.
This time Jon Clarke, publisher and editor replied, denying that anything was ‘libel’.
I sent a suggested form of words for the retraction and apology.
He replied repeating that they did not consider that there was any libel.

In view of this I believe I am entitled to assume that there is no reasonable prospect of a retraction, a correction, nor an apology.

The attitude of “The Olive Press” towards defamation may also be clear, as it was expressed in an article of November 2011, trumpeting under a 44-point-bold banner headline –
          WHY LIBEL IS NO BIG DEAL IN SPAIN                                                                   [1]

In the previous Chapter “Fake News” I looked at an article by Jon Clarke, the owner and publisher of a free newspaper in southern Spain “The Olive Press”.
I showed how that article, published in 2017, was seriously divergent from, and often contrary to facts as reported by other people. Notably, and potentially seriously, it directly contradicted much of what Kate McCann herself had written in her autobiography “madeleine”. But there the matter rested. It was discussed on several Fora, but was largely dismissed as “the usual nonsense”.

In late March 2019 I went into a supermarket in southern Spain, purchased a bottle of wine and wrapped it in one of the free tabloid papers helpfully supplied at the check-out for this purpose.
On this occasion it was “The Olive Press”. Vol.13 Issue 314 to be precise.

On page 3 is an article on the recent Netflix documentary about missing Madeleine Beth McCann, saying “The Olive Press” played a “starring role” [sic] and entitled “Hoping for Answers”.
The article is not attributed and is written in the third person, but is clearly by Jon Clarke.
As the publisher and editor of the paper he is ultimately responsible for its content.

In it I am identified by name, occupation and location, and then subjected to the routine, gratuitous ad-hominen insults and abuse sadly so typical of what we have come to expect of those who uncritically support the ‘official’ story put out by Team McCann and their acolytes and apologists.

In that article, 7 column inches are devoted to Clarke and the Netflix documentary, whilst 3.5 column inches are devoted to maligning and defaming me. 293 words - v - 140 words
One third of the entire article is devoted to entirely gratuitous abuse.

Gratuitous in that it does not address the central point of the article, which is to emphasise the importance of Clarke and “The Olive Press” in the Netflix programmes.
Gratuitous in that yet again it sets up and then knocks down the straw-man argument about “proving that the McCanns did not kill Madeline’ which it is unlikely anyone actually believes.

I am a long since retired police officer as he accurately states, from a previous millennium and perhaps from a more robust generation. I am hardened to abuse of the sort we come to expect from drunks, drug users, criminals and tabloid journalists.

But there is more. He goes on to make four distinct statements about me.
It is in the public domain, published in 100,000 copies, with huge numbers of readers both on-line and via Facebook and Android apps - his figures, not mine - and so I give a quote

“The former Nottinghamshire copper has long trolled that the parents were guilty and even produced a libellous pamphlet on why they did it. . . .
. . [he] once tried to claim that Olive Press editor Clarke could not have been in Praia da Luz on the morning after Maddie’s disappearance.
In a disgusting blog post he also somehow suggested that Clarke may have been in some way involved.”

Strong stuff. So perhaps a measured and proportionate response is not altogether unexpected.

Let us pick it apart. Let us be clinically detached, ignore the sneering and abusive tone, forget the libel, and stick to the facts of what is being said. Keep our eye on the squirrel.

Australian journalist Mark Saunokonoko's 'Maddie McCann' podcasts

Mark Saunokonoko is a well respected Australian senior journalist based at Australia's 9NEWS.  Mr Saunokonoko is not a member of CMOMM or the MMRG, he has however called on the expertise of both CMOMM members retired Police Superintendent PeterMac (author of What really happened to Madeleine McCann?) and Portuguese journalist Paulo Reis (author of The McCann's War), in addition to basing much of his work on the research of CMOMM members and other commentators across social media.

Over a period of years, he has researched and worked on a series of podcasts concerning the case of missing Madeleine McCann. The podcasts have very recently been broadcast and can be heard here:

 

https://www.9news.com.au/maddie 

New book by Portuguese journalist Paulo Reis: The McCann's War

11 April 2019

A new factual McCann book is soon to be published, in both Portuguese and English, by a Portuguese journalist who was at the Ocean Club in Praia da Luz shortly after the disappearance of Madeleine McCann in 2007. He witnessed how events unfolded at the time, and has closely followed the McCann's 'war' throughout the years.

From Paulo Reis' new blog: https://themccannswar.blogspot.com/

The McCann's War

Book Index

- Lunch at the restaurant "Carvi"
- The "insult" to the McCanns
- Persistent attacks
- PJ: "Pigs", "clowns" and "incompetent"
- The former British police officers who destroyed PJ's reputation
- "Daily Mirror": from praise to fierce criticism in a few days
- The shuttered blinds
- Gerry and Kate alone looking for Maddie
- The thesis of the abduction by a pedophile network
- Portugal, a "paradise for pedophiles"
- Morocco, the ideal place to host Maddie's kidnappers
- The phenomenon of unreliable sightings and witnesses
- The "uselessness" of evidence obtained through DNA
- The private detectives
- The "locators" of bodies
- The "liquidation" of the best sniffer dog of the world
- An "army" of journalists in Huelva
- The false proposal of "plea bargain"
- "Thousands" of missing children in Portugal
- A brilliant misinformation manoeuvre
- The "Team McCann"
- “The Lost Battle”: A "Perfect Campaign" in traditional media, completely destroyed by the Internet

MADELEINE MCCANN – REMARKABLE COINCIDENCES? OR PEOPLE WORKING TO A SCRIPT?

4th April, 2019

 

A. 60-80% sure,
B. Not a tourist,
C. Clothes made of ‘cloth’ or cotton,
D. Cream/beige trousers,
E. Date & time stamp,
F. ‘By the way he was carrying/holding Sean’

by Frank McLintock for the Madeleine McCann Research Group,

March 2019

Amongst all the witness statements in the released Portuguese Police files, there are six sets of remarkable and very specific ‘coincidences’.

There were three people who said they were 60% to 80% sure about the identity of someone.

There were three people who said they saw someone and who all said the person they saw was ‘not a tourist’.

There were five people who referred specifically to the clothes of an abductor/kidnapper wearing 'cream'/'beige' trousers and clothes made of 'cloth' or cotton.

There were two people who wove a complex tale about a photograph and who explained to police, in terms: ‘Look, the date and time stamp proves when it was taken’.

There were two people who were prepared to say that they recognised Gerry McCann as a person they had seen with Madeleine (in one case on 3 May, in the other case on 5 May), based solely on seeing a film of him carrying his son Sean down the steps of an aeroplane.

The details are below. 

A short analysis follows at the end.

A. 60-80% sure

Martin Smith

Statement to Leicestershire Police, 20 September 2007:  “I would be 60%-80% sure that it was Gerard [Gerald] McCann that I met that night carrying a child”.

 

Martin Smith: After initially declaring that he would never recognise the man he said he saw, ever again, over 4 months later he claimed he was 60-80% sure it was Gerry McCann. But soon after that, he began working on behalf of the McCanns and their private detectives, helping to draw up efits for their use: efits that were never released for 5 years

Jane Tanner

Jane Tanner said that she was 80% sure that a new suspect, later known as 'Monsterman' or 'George Harrison man', drawn by Melissa Little [e-fits] was the same person she had seen on 3rd May. But she clearly admitted, originally, that she had never seen the face of the man she claimed she had seen. So how could she possibly be as much as 80% sure it was the same man? Moreover, on 13 May 2007, just 10 days after Madeleine was reported missing, she had told police that she was adamant that the man she had seen on 3 May 2007 was Robert Murat. Her credibility on anything top do with Madeleine McCann is zero. Melissa Little was not as well qualified as she claimed, and was paid by the McCanns' agent and head of their private investigation, stinking rich Cheshire businessman Brian Kennedy.



Jane Tanner: Saw a man carrying a child, but not the man's face. Ten days later she said she was 'certain' that the man was Robert Murat. Later she decided she was wrong about that. Then the head of the McCanns' private investigation, Brian Kennedy, got a forensic artist, Melissa Little, to draw up an image of another suspect, a scraggy-looking man with a big moustache. She said she was 80% certain that it was the same man as the bloke whose face she had been unable to see, back on 3 May 2007     

Read more here: https://jillhavern.forumotion.net/t16022-madeleine-mccann-remarkable-coincidences-or-people-working-to-a-script

Australian network 9news.com: Mark Saunokonoko's podcasts 'The Disappearance of Madeleine McCann'

1st April, 2019

Description

The Maddie podcast series explores what many believe is the well-known story of Madeleine McCann’s disappearance but this is an investigation of the evidence which could make you question everything you thought you knew about the case.

Podcast 1 Maddie https://omny.fm/shows/maddie/maddie?in_playlist=maddie!podcast

Podcast 2 They've taken her https://omny.fm/shows/maddie/theyve-taken-her?in_playlist=maddie!podcast

Podcast 3 Red flags https://omny.fm/shows/maddie/red-flags?in_playlist=maddie!podcast

Podcast 4 Man with no face https://omny.fm/shows/maddie/man-with-no-face?in_playlist=maddie!podcast

Podcast 5 Eddie and Keela https://omny.fm/shows/maddie/eddie-and-keela?in_playlist=maddie!podcast

A new podcast is broadcast every Monday morning on this link https://www.9news.com.au/maddie

Subscribe to podcast

Operation Grange and the three opposing theories

So we now have three opposing theories

By PeterMac

ONE:
Madeleine gets out of bed, neatly straightens out the sheets and duvet and plumps up the pillow, and arranges her cuddle cat and blanket on the bed

She then slides open the window, and pulls the strap opening the shutters, after which she makes sure to tuck the curtains back down behind the second bed and behind the wicker chair

She then leaves the bedroom, making sure to leave the door open by a few degrees more than her parents had left it.

After pulling back or ducking behind the full length curtains she opens the patio door, turns, closes the curtains again, then pulls the door shut behind her.

Then she opens the child security gate at the top of the stairs, goes through, and from one step down, closes it and locks it again behind her.

She descends and opens the gate out onto the pavement, which she dutifully closes behind her.

She then wanders off and steps out in front of a car which hits her with sufficient force and at sufficient speed either to kill or to seriously injure her rendering her immediately unconscious.

This is not observed or heard by anyone else.

The driver decides to conceal the event, scoops Madeleine up, places her in the car.

He then clears the road of the debris which falls from under wheel arches in a collision, and ensure there are no traces of blood or ‘scuff marks’, nor tyre skid marks, before driving off.

He disposes of the body, and probably the vehicle, at a later date in unknown locations.

This occurs in the time between any of the Tapas 7 passing or re-passing on their way to and from their checks on their own children.

Or
TWO:
a random burglar, intent on scooping up the vanishingly small amount of valuable items a family takes on holiday tries to enter unheard and unseen through the shuttered window, which cannot be opened fully from outside.

Discovering this he elects to go round to the side of the street lit by several sodium lamps, and enters through the small side gate, up the stairs, through the child safety gate and the unlocked patio doors.

He searched the apartment finding 5 British passports among other sundry items. He ignores these.

He then enters the second bedroom and finds the children.

He decides to kill one for reasons unknown.

He does so silently without disturbing either the child, or the twins, who are sleeping.

He places the body behind the sofa and then shaves, cutting himself, and amuses himself swatting mosquitos on the wall behind the sofa.

After 90 minutes he decides the coast is clear and he leaves by the patio doors, carefully closing the curtains and the door behind him, and carries the body down the stairs, and out onto the road.  He is careful to close all the gates behind him, and even more careful to leave no fingerprints or other forensic trace.

He dodges the members of the group who are passing and re-passing in all directions on a regular basis, only minutes apart on their way to and from checking their children, and is unobserved by anyone else.

He disappears into the night, taking the long way down towards the rock at the western end of the beach, and is seen by only one family.

He disposes of and conceals the body in a place and in a manner unknown, but undetectable to two police forces with International co-operation, and using the most modern scientific equipment.

Or
THREE:
a random paedophile, intent on taking one particular and very special child tries to enter unheard and unseen through the shuttered window, which cannot be opened fully from outside.

Discovering this he elects to go round to the side of the street lit by several sodium lamps, and enters through the small side gate, up the stairs, through the child safety gate and the unlocked patio doors.

He then enters the bedroom and finds the children.

Without putting on the light he identifies the target of his quest, and lifts her out of bed

He does so silently without disturbing either the child, or the twins, who are sleeping.

He then amuses himself swatting mosquitos on the wall behind the sofa.  He also uses 'Cadaverine spray' behind the sofa to confuse police dogs, as a ‘red herring’

Once he decides the coast is clear and he leaves by the patio doors, carefully closing the curtains and the door behind him, and carries the body down the stairs, and out onto the road.  He is careful to close all the gates behind him, and even more careful to leave no fingerprints or other forensic trace.

He dodges the members of the group who are passing and re-passing in all directions on a regular basis, only minutes apart, on their way to and from checking their own children, and is unobserved by anyone else.

He disappears into the night, taking the long way down towards the rock at the western end of the beach, and is seen by only one family.

During all this, the child does not wake.

He returns to his Hellish Lair in the lawless hinterland within 10 miles of the village, and remains there for the next 11 years, caring for the girl and bringing her up as his own.

His interest in 3 year olds fades with time, and he moves through the phases of paraphilias to adolescents and young adults.  In this he is unique.

Kate and Gerry McCann: Forget the Facts - Focus on the Fallacies

Forget the Facts - Focus on the Fallacies

By Retired Police Superintendent, PeterMac for his FREE e-book 'What really happened to Madeleine McCann?' https://whatreallyhappenedtomadeleinemccann.blogspot.com/2016/08/chapter-30-forget-facts-focus-on.html

Prime Suspect, Professor Gerry McCann, lies to the nation in his Radio 4 'Mental Health' broadcast

Observations sent to DCI Nicola Wall at Operation Grange by retired police superintendent.

https://jillhavern.forumotion.net/t15525p25-exclusive-gerry-mccann-to-open-up-about-his-mental-health-struggles-in-honest-personal-and-sometimes-painful-radio-4-interview#391418

Related links on the 'Complete Mystery of Madeleine McCann' forum:
Gerry McCann Radio 4 Interview - 29/09/2018
EXCLUSIVE: Gerry McCann to open up about his mental health struggles in 'honest, personal and sometimes painful' Radio 4 interview

New chapter from PeterMac's FREE e-book: Fake News

UNTRUTH

When a normal person does it, it is called a Lie

When a child does it, it is called a Fib

When a person does it in court, it is called Perjury

When a politician does it, it is called Spin

When a journalist does it, it is called Fake News

But is there a difference ?

And why do we not like a Lie, teach a child to forgo a Fib, punish Perjury, but suck up Spin, and just shrug our shoulders and give up on Fake News ?

WIKI gives a reasonable definition of Fake news. [1]

Fake news is a neologism often used to refer to fabricated news. This type of news, found in traditional news, or  fake news websites, has no basis in fact, but is presented as being factually accurate.

Claire Wardle of First Draft News identifies seven types of fake news

1. satire or parody ("no intention to cause harm but has potential to fool")
2. false connection ("when headlines, visuals or captions don't support the content")
3. misleading content ("misleading use of information to frame an issue or an individual")
4. false context ("when genuine content is shared with false contextual information")
5. imposter content ("when genuine sources are impersonated" with false, made-up sources)
6. manipulated content ("when genuine information or imagery is manipulated to deceive", as with a "doctored" photo)
7. fabricated content ("new content is 100% false, designed to deceive and do harm”)

Those who have followed the Madeleine McCann case quickly became hypersensitive to the stream of Fake news and indeed outright lies put out by Team McCann through the compliant media. It quickly became clear, for example, that anything said by the spokesman Clarence Mitchell was likely to be the reverse of the objective and verifiable truth. Lists of his falsehoods have circulated for years.

Read more here: PeterMac's FREE e-book: 'What really happened to Madeleine McCann?' http://whatreallyhappenedtomadeleinemccann.blogspot.com/2016/08/chapter-29-fake-news.html

How the angle of a pedophile ring was introduced in Maddie McCann's case and amplified by British Media

Monday, 11 June 2018

The pedophile angle was introduced by the McCann couple in the case of Maddie’s disappearance, in their first comments about what could have happened to Madeleine. Kate McCann mentioned it, again, in her book, published in 2011. She “wrote of her fear that her daughter was kidnapped by a pedophile (...) She accused Portuguese police of covering up a series of child abuse cases before Maddy vanished”, according to “The Mirror”. In the first hours after she found Madeleine was missing, she thought immediately about that possibility: “When she was first stolen, pedophiles were all we could think about, and it ate away at us”, she said, on a interview with the “Daily Mail”.

I will give a hint about something I will have, with more detail, on my book, “The McCann’s War”. During my several stays (“undercovered”) at Praia da Luz, I managed to found how “Team McCann”, a very small group of experts (brought to Praia da Luz by Alex Wollfall, from Bell Pottinger) and the Press advisers of the parents of Madeleine, “feed” information to British journalists. I had a Honda CB 500, at the time, so I had some mobility and I was able to track the movements of a few British journalists.

 

Some of them, usually, stay at the terrace of a coffee-shop near supermarket Batista, close to Ocean Cub, in the afternoon. At night, they entertained themselves, until quite late, as I witnessed, mainly at a seaside bar and a disco, so they slept part of the morning. In the afternoon, they spend their time at the terrace having a couple of beers, surfing the net with their laptops and talking on their mobile phones. At the end of the afternoon, most of them drove out. I followed a few, several times, at a safe distance, taking precautions not to be detected, in my motorcycle.

In my book, I will explain, I detail, how “McCann Team” made possible that British journalists, one week after they arrived at Praia da Luz, the first time they went to Portugal, for most of them, were able to wrote stories quoting “Portuguese police sources”, when they had none, at all.  It was through that “system” that the pedophile angle and other topics were amplified in stories published by almost all British newspapers.

Alex Wolfall reading a Press Statement to journalists, at Praia da Luz

Talking about British Press, in my 37 years of working as a journalist, I read thousands and thousands of stories from British newspapers and news magazines, but not only since Madeleine’s case. Before that, I already had the habit to buy with regularity, a couple of English language newspapers, British and American, following the advice of a old and experienced colleague, when I started to work as a journalist, in 1981. He even told me that, if I was short of money, to try to buy at least “The Economist”, which he considered the best news magazine in the world.

Before I started to read British Press with regularity, my idea about British Media came from a story my late father told me. When he was a young sergeant, drafted to the Portuguese Army (1943), in the middle of II World War, censorship was very strict and strong, in the Portuguese Media, due to the sympathy of Salazar’s dictatorship for Mussolini, Franco and Hitler regimes. Late at nigh, in the headquarter of Infantry Regiment Nº5, in Oporto city, my father and a few trusted friends went to a barrack, far from the main dormitory and turn on a small radio, listening to Portuguese language broadcast of BBC, on short wave. “When BBC ‘talks’, the world listens, because they tell the truth”, was a phrase my late father said, when he told me this story.

So, let’s say I still have some mixed feelings about British Media. I read many good stories, investigative stories, in British newspapers, along the years. I also read the most unbelievable, fabricated and manipulated stories, made only to sell newspapers.

Looking at Maddie’s case coverage through the lens of UK journalists, over the past eleven years is precisely the subject of my book, “The McCann’s War”. I have made a first selection of around 120 stories published on British Press, ranging from the comic to the absurd, from the most chocking to the clearest evidence of “strange forces” working behind the scenes and I chose a few dozen to be published.

John Redwood second version of the text about Madeleine McCann case. Unfortunately, I didn’t' make a "screenshot" of the first version...

This is a good example (and also a preview of a story that will be in my book) that I referred on a post in my blog, on September 18, 2017. John Redwood, a MP conservative, on September 10th, published a post in his blog, “John Redwood's Diary” (the link at my blog, in this post, goes to a blank page, Redwood’s blog has this news Internet address). Any search in the new blog about McCann, Maddie or Madeleine, has no results. 

The tittle of the post from September 18, 2017, was: "The McCanns - plenty of theories, little evidence”.  He asked a couple of questions, like these: “Can they (the McCann) clear away any doubt over whether entry was forced into the holiday home? Were there no screams or disturbances as the little girl was taken? Did no-one see her at any point as she was carried away? How did the abductor timed the removal, given the fact that parents and friends were returning to keep an eye or ear open for the children?”

I was surprised, because it was the first time I saw a British politician to ask these uncomfortable questions addressed to Maddie's parents, so I kept the blog open in a separate window of my browser, and checked it, almost every half-hour. I had a feeling something will happen, soon. And it did. After around five hours, the blog just vanished and, a couple of hours later, it appeared again. The initial text was deleted and replaced by another one. In the new text, John Redwood changed the initial paragraphs and replaced them with this words:

"It is not usually wise to venture into questions of individual guilt or innocence. These are properly matters for the courts, not for politicians. I do so briefly today because I have never seen so much speculation and so many press stories, created by the spin doctors of the parents and by mysterious sources for the Portuguese authorities, when there is so little fact behind it all."

(...)

“The Portuguese side, after four months, seem to have decided that the little girl is dead and the parents were involved in the death. To prove this it would be helpful to have a body, and an autopsy which shows how she died (...) It demonstrates little police competence that this most closely watched couple was able according to sources to keep the body from police attention immediately after the disappearance, and then to move the body many days later."

After, he reproduced part of the initial text, but with a different conclusion: “This is a heart rending story. The two sides seemed determined to damage each other. The truth remains a casualty. Maybe the McCann should employ a private detective rather than a spin doctor, to find evidence of the abduction they are sure happened and the trail to her present whereabouts. In the meantime with so few facts it is difficult to say what happened, apart from understanding the grief that the loss of Madeleine is causing.”

May be somebody phoned Mr. John Redwood and “explained” him that his initial “approach” to Maddie’s case was not the best one for the future of his political career…

Madeleine McCann case: Sniffer-dogs, the campaign against Eddie and Keela and “Vanity Fair” story about Maddie

With thanks to Paulo Reis


Thursday, 7 June 2018

"Daily Mail", 2005: "The police dog who earns more than the Chief Constable"

Judy Bachrach is a highly respected American journalist, a contributing-editor to “Vanity Fair”, a magazine of popular culture, fashion, and current affairs published by Condé Nast in the United States. I met her in Praia da Luz, in 2007. She found my blog, “googling” about the Madeleine McCann case, before going there, we got in touch and had dinner together.

It was a long dinner and Maddie’s case was almost the only subject. I told her everything I knew and had already published, gave her some “insights” and tips and called her attention to the way British Media was reporting the case. She wrote a long story, “Unanswered Prayers”, where she quotes me and has some flattering words, saying that I wrote a blog about Madeleine, and “with considerable authority”, as I seemed to have “excellent contacts in law enforcement”.

I read the story, few weeks after it was published. I saw it, a few days ago, during a net search, and read it again. I don’t how, but there is a detail that I missed completely, when I read it for the first time. Judy Bachrach wrote that “after Madeleine vanished, local residents actually used household pets under the guidance of police with drug-sniffing dogs” to try to find Madeleine. She quotes Robert Tucker, who runs a New York security firm, as saying that he knows a lot about detective work but could not imagine “why the police would want anyone bringing their pets to assist.”

This is amazing, for me. I never heard absolutely nothing about this detail. It is just a question of common sense, right? Does it make any sense, for anybody, for a common citizen with no police training, to ask for pet dogs to help track and follow the scent of a child that disappeared? Pet dogs are just not able to do that, at all. So, if this is a absolute nonsense for any common citizen, how could it be considered by a trained policeman?

She mentions that those pet dogs were used “under the guidance of police with drug-sniffing dogs”. So, there were already at Praia da Luz some K2 units. And that’s truth, they were called and were there around 2:00 am, coming from their headquarter at Portimão. Later, at 4:00 am, more K2 units were requested by the GNR post commander. How is it possible that policemen from a K2 unit, with specific training about using dogs to search for people and drugs, could ask locals to bring their pet dogs to help?

It does not surprise me that somebody gave this kind of information to Judy Bachrach, as so many absurd things have been said and written about the case. What surprises me a little bit is that a seasoned journalist like her didn’t asked to herself the same questions I asked in the previous paragraphs, when she got that information.

The dogs brought from Portimão were patrol dogs also trained to track people and drugs. But around 5:00 am, the territorial group commander of GNR forces, with authority over Algarve area, after being briefed about the situation, called a specialized unit of sniffer-dogs, based at Queluz, in the outskirts of Lisbon. Those were dogs specifically trained only to follow the scent of missing or disappeared persons. He asked them to send their teams to Praia da Luz. All of this information is available, in English, in the site “McCann: PJ Files”.

From Lisbon to Praia da Luz it’s more than 300 kilometers, so they arrived early in the morning – three policemen with four sniffer-dogs – and started the searches immediately. I think everybody remembers that Eddie and Keela looked like pet dogs. Eddie is a English springer spaniel, for example. Sniffer-dogs are not only German Shepherds or Belgian Malinois, the breeds commonly used as patrol dogs. But they can also be used as tracking dogs, if they are trained for that. They are both included in the list of the the 10 dog breeds with the best sense of smell, and they are well placed in the ranking (fourth and sixth place) of that website specialized in dogs.

 

GNR sniffer-dogs on the streets of Praia da Luz

 I don’t know what kind of dog breed the special unit from Queluz uses. But they may have other breed than the German Shepherds or Belgian Malinois. Just like Eddie and Keela, the “wonder dogs” that had their own page at the South Yorkshire Police website. It’s curious that, since long time ago, the link I posted to that page goes to a blank page (*), but the address still visible is the same that included a kind of “diary” about those famous dogs: https://www.southyorks.police.uk/kidzone/dogdiary/thisweek.php

Is it possible that the specialized K2 units, coming from Queluz, used the kind of breed that, like Eddie and Keela, are also common pet dogs? That someone saw those dogs with the police officers, made an absurd conclusion and gave that information to Judy Bachrach?

Anyway, “Unanswered Prayers” is a really good piece of journalism, very well-written, well  researched, with a lot of facts, interviews, comments and, as any good journalist must do, asks a lot of questions about the case. I wrote this post also as a friendly message to Judy Bachrach. Everybody is at risk of making mistakes in their job. We, journalists, may be in more “danger” of doing it, due to several characteristics of our work, like editors screaming and shouting, because we didn’t finished yet to write our story, putting a lot of pressure over us.

I, myself, made two mistakes, while reporting about this case, since 2007 – and one of those mistakes was really big, when I trusted (without checking it with other sources..) a information given to me by a colleague I knew for more than 20 years, older than me, with much more experience as a journalist and good contacts in UK, where he worked for a couple of years, also as a journalist.

(*) A search in the website of South Yorkshire Police about “dogs”, “sniffer-dogs”, “Eddie”, “Keela”, as no results. The page about the dogs was deleted, following the violent reaction of Gerry McCann, after Eddie and Keela gave incriminating indications against the couple, when they were brought to Praia da Luz. At the same time, some stories published in British newspapers said things like the reliability of those sniffer-dogs was similar to the flipping of a coin.

Before she was used in the McCann case, Keela was the “star” of a story published by “Daily Mail”, in 2005: “The police dog who earns more than the Chief Constable”, praising the outstanding capacity of the dog “sniff out the smallest samples of human blood - even after items have been cleaned or washed many times.” Martin Grime, the handler of Eddie, in a statement that is in the DVD files of the investigation of Madeleine’s disappearance, says that the dogs have been used in around 200 cases and never gave a “false alert”.

Chief Constable Meredydd Hughes with Keela

Martin Grime is also quoted on a story from BBC, that mentions a specific case, in Jersey, when “police suspected human remains were buried on the site of a former children's home (…) the springer spaniel was part of the specialist team brought in to investigate. Jersey Police said the seven-year-old dog located parts of a child's body even though they were buried under several inches of concrete.”

“The Sun”, on September 5^th 2007, started the campaign against Eddie and Keela, with a story that quoted a unnamed “expert” who told the newspaper that “the dogs can identify traces of blood, but it's crazy to draw major conclusions just from what they find. Any evidence they find should be used as a starting point. It's madness just to rely on the findings of the sniffer dogs”, the so-called and unidentified “expert” said. The headline of “The Sun” was crystal clear: “It’s crazy to rely on animals”. It’s curious, almost comic, that the same newspaper had a story, on December 2005, about Keela, with the headline: “UK's No1 Sherlock Bones” (not available online).

 

Two stories from "The Sun": the first, from 2005, the second from 2007

After that story, also on September 2007, “The Telegraph” (page not available online) had a different story. “Kate and Gerry McCann's legal team has contacted American lawyers over a case where key sniffer dog evidence was thrown out of court in the hope that it may help them fight any charges that they were involved in the killing of their daughter”. McCann lawyers Angus McBride and Michael Caplan “consulted the legal team of Eugene Zapata, 68, who is accused of murdering his estranged wife Jeanette in 1976. But a judge ruled last month that the evidence was no more reliable than ‘the flip of a coin’ and could not be put before a jury”, wrote the newspaper.

Gerry McCann, on the sole interview he gave to a Portuguese newspaper, the weekly “Expresso”, was also very aggressive towards the capacity of the “wonder dogs”. Answering a question about what the the fact the the dogs found “traces of blood in the apartment and in the car”, he claimed that “no blood was found” and said “the evidence is worthless without being corroborated by forensic information. And they were not”.

He mentioned also that “the fragility of these dogs has been proven in a study conducted in the USA, about a man accused of murder. They had ten rooms, and in each they placed four boxes with vegetables, bones, trash. Some had human remains. They stayed there ten hours. Eight hours after they took the boxes out came the dogs. And the dogs missed two-thirds of the attempts. Imagine reliability when these dogs test an apartment three months after a child disappears”, he concluded.

So, Eddie and Keela had, on September 2007, a really dog’s life: one day, they were the best sniffer-dogs in the world, next day, they were no more reliable as the flipping of a coin.

https://gazetadigitalmadeleinecase.blogspot.com/2018/06/sniffer-dogs-campaign-against-eddie-and.html