'My Search for Madeleine', Jon Clarke. 2021
Some first impressions
It starts with more formal documentary account of events over a decade ago, and at times we have a recollection of having read parts before, a long time ago. Nothing wrong with copying and pasting one’s own words of course. It ensures that the meaning and details are not distorted by passage of time.
Then there are passages which are more gentle, even amusing and self deprecatory. He adopts a ‘matey’ style, with somewhat loose grammatical construction and syntax.
It is marred at times, as is so much of Clarke’s work, by viciousness and vituperation, and his pathological venom-spitting hatred of anyone who seeks to question either him or the “official narrative”, using all the well worn clichés, “evil, vitriolic minds behind this filth”, “his gang of trolls”, “and all the usual restricted vocabulary employed by those who will not, or cannot argue the case in a civilised manner. He adds the obligatory ad hominen attacks and repeats one or two well rehearsed lies, several of which have been discussed in other Chapters about Clarke and his progressive distancing of himself from the normal rules of veracity.
The first third is also a litany of all the suspects so far named and eliminated.
Murat, (of whom more later), Malinka, Walczuch, vonAesch, Hewlett, Ney, even Monteiro are all listed and examined but only in the sense that their alleged involvement is detailed.
Not, ‘and that’s an emphatic NOT’, in the sense that their eventual elimination from the enquiry is stressed or even grudgingly noted. It is as though Clarke is hedging his bets in case anyone in his book turns out to have been in any way involved in anything.
He quotes Paulo Rebelo, through ‘sources’ as saying he believed that ‘Russian child traffickers’ might be involved. And then adds “He might turn out to be correct”, and leaves hanging and unresolved the re-hashed story about the Angolan Bouncer and taking Madeleine to the USA.
Neat.
He grudgingly admits that Robert Murat, the man whom he personally helped to frame for a crime which may not even have been committed, “Looks as though [he] is innocent”.
You have to wait until p. 124 and the Netflix Nonsense before you find Clarke admitting his part, and “making an impromptu apology to him for effectively ruining his life.”
* And then we come to the Second part of the book.
Chapters 14 to 46, some 190 pages out of the 265 are devoted to the pursuit of a single person. A new suspect, but only in the minds of Clarke and H. Wolters, a German State Prosecutor.
He is, so far as I know, not a suspect in Portugal, nor probably in London, but Clarke seems totally convinced that this suspect is somehow better than all the previous ones.
This second two thirds of the book changes into a lengthy travelogue. The style changes again into the contemporary historical present with a suspiciously large amount of direct speech. Suspicious because with the possible exception of the interview with H. Wolters which may have been recorded with permission, it is unlikely that any of the direct quotes, in full quotation marks, are any such thing. Unless Clarke is wired for sound the whole time, of course.
But it is a style were are familiar with, and we must accept.
* In terms of Investigation it is a mixture.
Never once does Clarke question the abduction story. But also never once does he actually set out in print what the full story actually IS. What would have been involved, what the MO is thought to have been.
He appears to have swallowed the whole story that the shutters were forced, despite being on film watching the scenes-of-crime girl trying to find a single print on obviously intact shutters. He was there. He saw, but as Sherlock Holmes says to Watson in “A Scandal in Bohemia’ “You see, but you do not observe. The distinction is clear.”
Clarke saw, but he then seems to have assumed.
He styles himself as an Investigative journalist, but sometimes as merely a ‘stringer’ – one who “contributes reports, photos, or videos to a news organisation on an ongoing basis but is paid individually for each piece of published or broadcast work” WIKI.
Here in the first third of the book he has failed to investigate anything much.
And that which he did he got tragically and disgracefully wrong, identifying a man (Murat) as a suspect, having him interviewed, made “arguido”, hounded by the Tabloid press and universally vilified, and eventually awarded £600,000 in damages against the very tabloid papers for which Clarke had written, purely on the basis of an observable disability, and in Clarke’s own words “ruined his life”.
Clarke confesses that it was he, rather than Lori Campbell, who set it all in train.
They should both bow their heads in shame. People have resigned for less.
The second two thirds are a complete contrast. Here, although he is single-mindedly pursuing one man and filling in a mountain of background detail about him, he seems not to worry that the link between the reported disappearance of Madeleine and Christian Brückner is tenuous at least, even if, as Clarke apparently does, he believes there was an abduction in some vague unspecified way in some vague unspecified time frame.
It would be too easy to dismiss this as a witch hunt.
A child has died. Let’s lynch the local village idiot, and drown the old women with Alzheimers who talks to her cat and doesn’t wash.
But what is the difference between that and “A child has been reported missing. Let’s lynch the guy with the funny eye, and the bloke who steals diesel and goes to raves and smokes pot.”
Brückner may be involved in something. I have no evidence either way.
But until someone explains exactly what that something IS that he is supposed to be involved IN, we should all retain open minds and continue to ask the questions of those who are secure in their own pre-judgment.
The undoubted fact that he is not the sort of person with whom one would wish to have anything other than purely professional dealings, is undoubtedly a pervert, is probably severely psychologically damaged as Clarke catalogues, and has been convicted of a string of heinous crimes and misdemeanours, does not make him automatically guilty of every unsolved crime in Europe.
Clarke tries to suggest he is guilty of the unsolved disappearance of René Hassée, the little boy clearly washed out to sea at Aljezur, and even, almost incredibly, of the solved murder of Joanna Cipriano.
As one of the Tapas 7 said “I’m not making this up”.
Clarke’s description of Kate McCanns book as “excellent”, and of the Summers and Swann pathetic re-hash of existing statements as a “detailed benchmark tome” may give us an idea of the standards he applies.
There are several strange and jarring grammatical errors and malapropisms which an educated and experienced wordsmith or his editors and proofreaders should perhaps have found.
“. . . it was frustrating that despite Lori and I appearing to have almost cracked the case . . .”
“. . . sinister letter to my wife and I . . .”
“. . . they eyed Lawrence and I up suspiciously.”
are sub-O level, grammatically and structurally.
Of DCI Amaral’s book –
“which he wrote on retirement from the force and which must be viewed as extremely sceptical - “
is simple illiteracy. I think I know what he intends to convey but it takes some working out.
* And then there are the simply straightforward factual errors.Every one of these can be checked independently, and most people who have followed this case over the 14 years know the truth.
Clarke has exactly the same access to all the files and the reports as everyone else, and very probably much more. He is surely well aware that some of these are not true, and they therefore qualify as Lies.
“Amaral - who later wrote a lucrative book claiming the McCanns killed their daughter. . .”
He did NOT. His book suggests at worst accidental death and concealment of a body. Relatively minor offences. Nothing more.
“Amaral – who made enough money from his book to buy a new house”
He did not. Either make enough money, or buy a house
“It emerged that his [Murat’s] lazy eye was in fact a glass eye…”. [my emphasis]
It is not. Robert Murat has a detached retina and has no sight in the eye, like Gordon Brown and Admiral Lord Nelson. The eye is intact. It simply doesn’t work.
Murat explained this himself in detail at the Cambridge Union debate in 2008 and it was widely reported and is still on-line in the Guardian archive. [see Link, or google ‘Murat glass eye’ and read No 1]
Despite that the myth persists amongst the gutter press, and part of his speech was about how the Tabloids had ‘spoken to school friends’ which is Tabloid for totally invented stories, of his taking it out and rolling it round the playground.
But Clarke is clearly of that breed. He writes for and is paid by the red tops, Sun, Mirror and Mail, and has done for decades, so he doesn’t need to concern himself with facts or details too much. The truth washes over him without even cleaning off any of the dirt.
Although Clarke is happy to describe everyone else as Conspiracy Theorists, he is free with the most often used of their techniques. That of posing a question to which there is no immediate answer, and using that to form the foundation of the next part of the theory.
“Because we cannot yet fully understand the building of Stonehenge/Pyramids/Macchu Picchu (delete as appropriate) – – could it be that extra-terrestrials were at work. Only they surely had the advanced technology needed to move the stones/ flatten them/carry them to the top of the mountain.
And what did these beings look like, and where did they come from ? – note how it has now changed from a vague falsifiable suggestion into an accepted fact.
Consider these, a tiny sample of the whole
“Could it be that he discovered something he shouldn’t have, and got silenced ?
“Could he have been involved in some sort of child sex ring himself ?
“And could he be the same blond friend who . . .
“. . .could he be involved in Brückner’s crimes
“. . .could he have been working for a larger number of accomplices involved ?
“… may [sic] he have made considerable amounts of money from snatching her ?
“Regarding the gun, could this be the same one . . .
“Could this be the mystery business man ?
“Could this be the evidence that makes the German police so certain she is dead ?
“Could it be she found photos of Maddie ?
I don’t know Jon. You are the Investigative Journalist. Tell us. Or tell us you don’t know.
And then there is the list of TTBD. Things to be Done. Unfinished business.
For Clarke this involves digging up half of the Algarve and most of Niedersachsen.
This is just one paragraph.
”Why haven’t they excavated his infamous Yellow House in Praia da Luz? Why haven’t police dug up Villa Bianca in Foral where he spent considerable time? . . . Sabine Selllig has pleaded with police to dig up the grounds of the allotment home he lived in in Braunschweig . . And nothing.”
elsewhere -
“I haven’t seen any activity around here, no excavations, no police, no searches,”…
“ I expect the police will come and dig the place up at some stage . . .”
“Why hasn’t more been done on the grounds in Portugal, and Germany digging up Brueckner’s former properties and places of interest, looking for evidence ?”
There are lots of cellars and tunnels, and secret hiding places, real Indiana Jones and the Missing Child stuff, though sadly the Secret Hidden Secure Compound with the four largest and most dangerous dogs in the world with their world-record bite don’t merit a mention, even in passing.
Which is a shame. I was looking forward to them.
There is an entire chapter on the Casa Pia case. But after six pages it ends in the rather plaintive sentence
“But it didn’t solve the mystery of Maddie.”
Well, no. Nothing at all to do with it.
So it’s a bit messy, a bit mixed. Sometimes episodic, sometimes a chronological travelogue, other times thematic. For someone who has not followed the story so far it could be confusing.
But as someone once said “Confusion is good”.
And of the McCanns ?
“I never wavered in my belief that the parents were innocent.”
“Because I believed the McCanns were entirely innocent . .”
“Whilst the documentary didn’t have a knockout punch it did raise a number of key issues . . . .the family were almost certainly innocent . .”
And of H. Fülscher, defence lawyer for Brückner ?
“eccentric”
And of the unending innuendo ?
“he said some things. . . and about his private life – but he insisted I did not publish them. I have agreed not to.”
“why he left in 1999 is open to conjecture, and it would be unfair to print any of the gossip . . .”
“There was something very dark about W. . ., I wish I could ask W, who was gay and had a younger boyfriend, but he died in 2017”
Easy isn’t it Jon? Lucky that most of the rest of humanity finds it unacceptable.
But I shall follow it up in the next Chapter. Out soon. Free.
LINK
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2009/mar/06/tabloids-madeleine-mccann-robert-murat
“Could he have been involved in some sort of child sex ring himself ?
“And could he be the same blond friend who . . .
“. . .could he be involved in Brückner’s crimes
“. . .could he have been working for a larger number of accomplices involved ?
“… may [sic] he have made considerable amounts of money from snatching her ?
“Regarding the gun, could this be the same one . . .
“Could this be the mystery business man ?
“Could this be the evidence that makes the German police so certain she is dead ?
“Could it be she found photos of Maddie ?
I don’t know Jon. You are the Investigative Journalist. Tell us. Or tell us you don’t know.
And then there is the list of TTBD. Things to be Done. Unfinished business.
For Clarke this involves digging up half of the Algarve and most of Niedersachsen.
This is just one paragraph.
”Why haven’t they excavated his infamous Yellow House in Praia da Luz? Why haven’t police dug up Villa Bianca in Foral where he spent considerable time? . . . Sabine Selllig has pleaded with police to dig up the grounds of the allotment home he lived in in Braunschweig . . And nothing.”
elsewhere -
“I haven’t seen any activity around here, no excavations, no police, no searches,”…
“ I expect the police will come and dig the place up at some stage . . .”
“Why hasn’t more been done on the grounds in Portugal, and Germany digging up Brueckner’s former properties and places of interest, looking for evidence ?”
There are lots of cellars and tunnels, and secret hiding places, real Indiana Jones and the Missing Child stuff, though sadly the Secret Hidden Secure Compound with the four largest and most dangerous dogs in the world with their world-record bite don’t merit a mention, even in passing.
Which is a shame. I was looking forward to them.
There is an entire chapter on the Casa Pia case. But after six pages it ends in the rather plaintive sentence
“But it didn’t solve the mystery of Maddie.”
Well, no. Nothing at all to do with it.
So it’s a bit messy, a bit mixed. Sometimes episodic, sometimes a chronological travelogue, other times thematic. For someone who has not followed the story so far it could be confusing.
But as someone once said “Confusion is good”.
And of the McCanns ?
“I never wavered in my belief that the parents were innocent.”
“Because I believed the McCanns were entirely innocent . .”
“Whilst the documentary didn’t have a knockout punch it did raise a number of key issues . . . .the family were almost certainly innocent . .”
And of H. Fülscher, defence lawyer for Brückner ?
“eccentric”
And of the unending innuendo ?
“he said some things. . . and about his private life – but he insisted I did not publish them. I have agreed not to.”
“why he left in 1999 is open to conjecture, and it would be unfair to print any of the gossip . . .”
“There was something very dark about W. . ., I wish I could ask W, who was gay and had a younger boyfriend, but he died in 2017”
Easy isn’t it Jon? Lucky that most of the rest of humanity finds it unacceptable.
But I shall follow it up in the next Chapter. Out soon. Free.
LINK
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2009/mar/06/tabloids-madeleine-mccann-robert-murat