Chapter 46. “My Search for Madeleine” - Jon Clarke, 2021
Jon Clarke Through the Looking Glass
“Why sometimes I believe six impossible things before breakfast”.
Some impossible things to believe
Everyone understands that multiple witnesses to an event will produce slightly different multiple versions differing in small particulars, according to their detailed recollection and understanding of the event at the time.
In the McCann parallel universe we have become familiar with the phenomenon of single witnesses producing multiple and contradictory statements.
• we have curtains pulled wide open – AND drawn tight closed
• we have shutters smashed, forced and jemmied – AND totally unmarked
• we have a photo taken in hot bright sunshine – on a cold and overcast day
• we have a man in the apartment for 30 seconds – AND for 30 minutes
• we have a man using the locked front door – AND the unlocked patio door
• we have people without watches - remembering they stood up at 9:04 ‘by his watch’
In ‘Alice through the Looking Glass’, The Red Queen exclaims “Why sometimes I believe six impossible things before breakfast”.
For most people that is fantasy. For Clarke it is clearly a daily reality.
Jon Clarke. Press owner, Editor, self-proclaimed investigative journalist and Super-sleuth, is clearly in a league of his own. He has single-handedly produced no fewer than eight separate versions – so far discovered – of one event, every one of them either impossible or demonstrably false by application of the most basic logic and examination of contemporaneous video film and photographs.
There are five separate details of his initial involvement which Clarke changes ad libitum.
• Time of the initial phone call
• Time of his arrival in PdL
• Number of journalists present on his arrival
• Entry to Apartment 5A
• Speaking to the McCanns
And there are at least eight sources of ‘information’. Many are written by Clarke or were clearly under his editorial control. All are different.
• Article Olive Press 2017. (OP17)
• Article Olive Press 2019. (OP19)
• Interview with Sandra Felguerias within the Netflix transcript. (SFIG)
• Netflix publicity 2019. (NET19)
• Netflix Documentary - transcript 2019. (NET-TRANS)
• Article CLOSER Magazine 2020. (CLOSER)
• Article BELLA Magazine 2021. (BELLA)
• "My Search For Madeleine” - Jon Clarke 2021. (BOOK)
All are quoted in detail in the Appendix, with links and references, so there shall be absolutely NO DOUBT that what follows is an accurate record – of what we have been told.
Let us take each detail in order, and then rationalise and compare with the known facts in each case.
Time of the Phone call
OP17 – – – – 0715
OP19 – – – – 0700 - 0730
SFIG – – – – – 0700 - 0730
NET19
NET-TRANS – 0700 - 0730
CLOSER
BELLA
BOOK – – – – 15 minutes before he left, which was before 0700
Arrival in Praia da Luz
OP17 – – – – 1145. [if we assume that is Spanish time = 1045 Portuguese]
OP19
SFIG
NET19
NET-TRANS
CLOSER
BELLA
BOOK – – – – 0945 - 1015 local time (Portuguese)
Number of Journalists Present
OP17 – – – – Only reporter on the scene till late that evening, (apart from Kate/Kay Burley)
OP19 – – – – First Journalist on the scene
SFIG
NET19– – – – First UK Print journalist
NET-TRANS
CLOSER – – – One of the first journalists on the scene
BELLA
BOOK – – – – First British journalist on the scene
Entry to 5A
OP17– – – – – I was firstly able to walk into the apartment
OP19
SFIG
NET19
NET-TRANS – – – it [tape] went up and I looked in
CLOSER
BELLA
BOOK – – – – up the short flight of stairs to the apartment 5A . . .I walked inside the open front door
Speaking to the McCanns
OP17 – – – – in the apartment
OP19 – – – – as they were leaving
SFIG
NET19
NET-TRANS – – – as they were leaving; I think I tried to speak to them
CLOSER – – – – few hours after arriving met Gerry and Kate; later that day
BELLA – – – – – at a press conference that night
BOOK – – – – – in the apartment
It is important to examine some of these issues
ARRIVAL: We know that Clarke must have arrived in PdL around 0945 Portuguese time at the very latest to have been filmed watching the McCanns leaving in the police vehicles to go for their interviews, the departure timed roughly at 1000. So each one of his times is inaccurate.
PHONE CALL: On his own admission he stopped for a coffee and toast en route, and adding all the times together - (Ronda to coffee at Utrera, coffee etc, round the Seville ring road at peak time, then on to PdL) gives us about 4h 45m. Subtracting that and the half hour before that for the phone call gives 0430 UK time, 0530 Spanish time. Which means that then entire media circus, the Politicians and diplomatic must have been on full alert by 0330 BST, and that all his times are inaccurate.
NUMBER OF JOURNALISTS: Contemporaneous news film exists and is easily accessible, showing at least SIX journalists at the scene with Clarke clearly the most recent arrival. He is also seen speaking to, or in close proximity to, Len Port, a British ex-pat journalist who had been on the scene since 0830, and had been filmed walking the ground. Port has written a mature and measured account of the situation he found and as it developed through the morning.
ENTRY TO 5A. Despite Clarke’s frequent insistence that he entered and spoke to the McCanns in apartment 5A the scene was in fact taped off, there were police officers around to enforce it, Scenes of crime operatives were working inside, and crucially – the McCanns were not in 5A. They were simply not there. They had been moved out at 2am, the apartment secured for photographs and then locked up overnight. The McCanns were firstly in the Payne’s first floor apartment 5H and then by that evening were moved into the first floor 4G. It is for that reason that the McCanns emerged from the stairwell to go to the cars before being taken away, just as Clarke was filmed walking in the opposite direction past the group of police officers, the dog vans and the Scenes of crime operative. Following that he doubled back, crossed the road, and is filmed emerging from between parked cars to stand helplessly in the middle of the road as the cars drive past him.
SPEAKING TO THE MCCANNS. There is no question of Clarke’s having spoken to the McCanns in 5A, because they weren’t there.
Film mentioned above shows Clarke not speaking to them “as they left” in the cars, but simply standing in the road as they pass.
“A few hours after arriving” can only mean after 2030, eleven hours after arriving, when they returned from Portimão. Kate McCann is very clear in her autobiography about what happened on their return, and it did not include being interviewed by any journalist, even if their minders and close friends had allowed it.
“at a press conference that night” must refer to the torchlight reading of the Press statement by Gerry McCann at 2200 to coincide with the News Bulletins in the UK and elsewhere. The news-reel shows the statement, and then Gerry and Kate moving swiftly back into the shadow of the stairwell and the safety of their friends, family and the minders who had arrived during the day. It also shows that they took no questions and did not speak to anyone,.
Not even Clarke.
It is therefore considered highly unlikely that Jon Clarke spoke to the McCanns that day, or at all.
He has failed to identify a credible ‘window of opportunity’ for him to have done so. He has also failed to provide a verbatim, or even approximated record of any conversation or interview.
INTERESTING NOTE:
Even Martin Brunt, the highly experienced and trusted Crime Correspondent for Sky News, who was there for ten days did not manage to speak to them. See Refs
14 years later the McCanns refused to speak to Clarke. Book
They clearly want nothing to do with him. Mitchell gave him the message “It is thanks, but no thanks,”
To sum up,
Are any of Clarke’s “versions of the truth” true or credible ?
Phone call – NO
Arrival – NO
Journalists present – NO
Entry into 5A – NO
Speaking – NO
If there is another definitive version – the objective Truth, which fits the known facts AND the video and photographic evidence, then the world is waiting to hear it.
But for the moment we wait.
***
Some of the pieces in the magazines are extraordinary.
Might it be that Clarke has got a taste of his own medicine, where the so-called journalist in question has embellished and filled in invented details ?
But Clarke is a seasoned hack and knows and uses these tricks himself. Whether he would permit the publication of his story and his words without insisting on editorial control is highly unlikely.
BELLA is written in the first person. It is dated 21 Sept 2021 - which is timed as part of the pre-publication publicity campaign
“I was living in Malaga, Spain” [actually a village outside Ronda, Malaga Province, Spain]
“Someone at the foreign desk asked me to pack a bag and get to the airport as soon as I could, so I could get across to Praia da Luz in the Algarve region of Portugal.”
[There is no direct flight from Malaga to Faro. Options include a 3 hr stop-over in Lisbon, or in Amsterdam. It is quicker to drive. As Clarke did.]
As a father of two daughters. [Clarke has a daughter and a son, to both of whom he allocates false names in his book. As he does to his wife.]
I remember meeting them shortly after I arrived at a press conference that night.
[See above. Clarke has always claimed to have been, and clearly was, on the scene very early. This sentence implies he arrived just before 10pm. 2200 hrs, which is plainly nonsense, even by his standards]
***
The BELLA article is odd in several other ways. Much later it states
I decided to open the boot, and underneath the spare tyre was a pair of surgical scissors sat [sic] in the middle. “How could police not have taken them as evidence?” I thought to myself in horror. I took a picture and placed the tyre back. [sic]
I later asked the chief prosecutor Wolters about the scissors, but he said, “No comment.’
In his book Clarke renders it thus :
“I ploughed on insisting that I had been to the factory the day before and found some remarkable things, including the surgical scissors hidden under the spare tyre in the Twingo.
I said it was clear they had not been found by the police and I was sure they had not been tested for DNA or potential evidence. I also told him that I had found what looked like a recently unearthed shallow grave, although I could not show him a photo as I was recording the interview and didn’t want to interrupt it.
He looked taken aback. ‘We can’t expect a pair of scissors to help us much further,’ he barked. ‘That there are other things with his DNA on them – we already assume this. Finding his DNA won’t help us further. And we don’t expect to find any DNA of kids or anything.’
Which with respect is a little more detailed than “No Comment”
Clarke also wrote his usual article for The SUN, advertising the publication of his book and including the scissors, though he neglects to mention to Sun readers that they are required by Law to be carried in every German vehicle.
No one will be surprised to learn that it is completely different from the previous two.
“However, when I opened the boot I noted that the spare tyre was still in place and out of curiosity I prised it out of position to see if anything was underneath … and there standing out like a sore thumb was a pair of surgical scissors, that I later brought up with the prosecutor Hans Christian Wolters, with him scoffing ‘what would I be expecting to find on it?’ I might as well have replied, ‘DNA of Maddie’s’, and had there been gaffer tape and a mask, we could have been in the realms of a Sopranos episode.”
Again a bit different from “No Comment”, and significantly different from the book version.
In the book Clarke states he was recording the interview on his phone. We now have three versions, all different. Which one fits the recording best ? Which one is the “truth” ?
And even if Clarke tells us, why should we now believe him ?
Perhaps it is “None of the Above”.
And as another commentator said recently . .
“It’s Jon Clarke, and the Olive Press. Do we even CARE any more ?”
[As an aside : BELLA is published by the BAUER publishing empire, who also now own EMAP, the publishers of the short lived FIRST magazine, which published the totally untrue and invented story by Danielle Gusmaroli - See chapters 23 and 31, and probably facilitated the emigration of the author to work for the same Media empire in Australia. They also publish CLOSER – see above]
FELGUEIRAS INTERVIEW in NetFlix Transcript
Jon Clarke: "I got a phone call incredibly early. Normally if a job came in from the national papers in England, I'd get a call at 9:30 or half 8, perhaps, and it was 7 or 7:30 and it was the foreign desk at the Mail. They quickly told me that a girl had gone missing, potentially kidnapped, in the south of Portugal in the Algarve and could I get there as quickly as possible to investigate?
But later in the same interview he backtracks on all this and says:
Jon Clarke: I don't think they said whether it was a girl or boy. I don't even think I had the age. I didn't have any idea who the family were. I fully expected to arrive there and for this child to have turned up and for it to have dissolved into a non-story.
In the Book Clarke is quite clear, and puts this exchange in quotation marks
‘Can you get to the Algarve ASAP?’ he said (for it was more an order than a request). ‘Some girl’s gone missing. A doctor’s kid. The Foreign Office is already on it. Place called Ocean Club in Praia da Luz. Just get going, we’ll call you with more en route.’
And a little later
“It became harder to go away on long trips and I tried to cherrypick the more interesting, local ones, closer to home. It meant committing the cardinal rule of freelancing; turning down work. It meant less money but allowed me to cultivate relationships with the broadsheets, writing more about culture and history and, in particular, doing more travel writing. But when an opportunity arose to cover a meaty case for a number of the tabloids it was too good a chance to miss.”
He knew it was going to be Meaty. He has just told us.
Which do you believe ? And why would you believe that version against any other version ?
Which can you believe ? And Why ?
****
To sum up
Arrived 1145. – Untrue
Arrived 1045. – Untrue
Kay Burley there. – Untrue
Only reporter. – Untrue
First journalist. – Untrue
First British Journalist. – Untrue
Able to walk into the apartment – Untrue
Spoke to McCs in the apartment. – Untrue
Spoke to McCs as they were leaving – Untrue
Spoke to McCs a few hours after arriving – Untrue
Spoke to McCs at Press conference – Untrue
Deep roadworks outside the apartment – Untrue
No dogs till late afternoon. – Untrue
Didn’t know if it was boy or girl – Untrue
Didn’t know about the family. – Untrue
Thought M. might be found within hours. – Untrue
but
Knew it was going to be a MEATY Case – – – TRUE
OP19 – – – – First Journalist on the scene
SFIG
NET19– – – – First UK Print journalist
NET-TRANS
CLOSER – – – One of the first journalists on the scene
BELLA
BOOK – – – – First British journalist on the scene
Entry to 5A
OP17– – – – – I was firstly able to walk into the apartment
OP19
SFIG
NET19
NET-TRANS – – – it [tape] went up and I looked in
CLOSER
BELLA
BOOK – – – – up the short flight of stairs to the apartment 5A . . .I walked inside the open front door
Speaking to the McCanns
OP17 – – – – in the apartment
OP19 – – – – as they were leaving
SFIG
NET19
NET-TRANS – – – as they were leaving; I think I tried to speak to them
CLOSER – – – – few hours after arriving met Gerry and Kate; later that day
BELLA – – – – – at a press conference that night
BOOK – – – – – in the apartment
It is important to examine some of these issues
ARRIVAL: We know that Clarke must have arrived in PdL around 0945 Portuguese time at the very latest to have been filmed watching the McCanns leaving in the police vehicles to go for their interviews, the departure timed roughly at 1000. So each one of his times is inaccurate.
PHONE CALL: On his own admission he stopped for a coffee and toast en route, and adding all the times together - (Ronda to coffee at Utrera, coffee etc, round the Seville ring road at peak time, then on to PdL) gives us about 4h 45m. Subtracting that and the half hour before that for the phone call gives 0430 UK time, 0530 Spanish time. Which means that then entire media circus, the Politicians and diplomatic must have been on full alert by 0330 BST, and that all his times are inaccurate.
NUMBER OF JOURNALISTS: Contemporaneous news film exists and is easily accessible, showing at least SIX journalists at the scene with Clarke clearly the most recent arrival. He is also seen speaking to, or in close proximity to, Len Port, a British ex-pat journalist who had been on the scene since 0830, and had been filmed walking the ground. Port has written a mature and measured account of the situation he found and as it developed through the morning.
ENTRY TO 5A. Despite Clarke’s frequent insistence that he entered and spoke to the McCanns in apartment 5A the scene was in fact taped off, there were police officers around to enforce it, Scenes of crime operatives were working inside, and crucially – the McCanns were not in 5A. They were simply not there. They had been moved out at 2am, the apartment secured for photographs and then locked up overnight. The McCanns were firstly in the Payne’s first floor apartment 5H and then by that evening were moved into the first floor 4G. It is for that reason that the McCanns emerged from the stairwell to go to the cars before being taken away, just as Clarke was filmed walking in the opposite direction past the group of police officers, the dog vans and the Scenes of crime operative. Following that he doubled back, crossed the road, and is filmed emerging from between parked cars to stand helplessly in the middle of the road as the cars drive past him.
SPEAKING TO THE MCCANNS. There is no question of Clarke’s having spoken to the McCanns in 5A, because they weren’t there.
Film mentioned above shows Clarke not speaking to them “as they left” in the cars, but simply standing in the road as they pass.
“A few hours after arriving” can only mean after 2030, eleven hours after arriving, when they returned from Portimão. Kate McCann is very clear in her autobiography about what happened on their return, and it did not include being interviewed by any journalist, even if their minders and close friends had allowed it.
“at a press conference that night” must refer to the torchlight reading of the Press statement by Gerry McCann at 2200 to coincide with the News Bulletins in the UK and elsewhere. The news-reel shows the statement, and then Gerry and Kate moving swiftly back into the shadow of the stairwell and the safety of their friends, family and the minders who had arrived during the day. It also shows that they took no questions and did not speak to anyone,.
Not even Clarke.
It is therefore considered highly unlikely that Jon Clarke spoke to the McCanns that day, or at all.
He has failed to identify a credible ‘window of opportunity’ for him to have done so. He has also failed to provide a verbatim, or even approximated record of any conversation or interview.
INTERESTING NOTE:
Even Martin Brunt, the highly experienced and trusted Crime Correspondent for Sky News, who was there for ten days did not manage to speak to them. See Refs
14 years later the McCanns refused to speak to Clarke. Book
They clearly want nothing to do with him. Mitchell gave him the message “It is thanks, but no thanks,”
To sum up,
Are any of Clarke’s “versions of the truth” true or credible ?
Phone call – NO
Arrival – NO
Journalists present – NO
Entry into 5A – NO
Speaking – NO
If there is another definitive version – the objective Truth, which fits the known facts AND the video and photographic evidence, then the world is waiting to hear it.
But for the moment we wait.
***
Some of the pieces in the magazines are extraordinary.
Might it be that Clarke has got a taste of his own medicine, where the so-called journalist in question has embellished and filled in invented details ?
But Clarke is a seasoned hack and knows and uses these tricks himself. Whether he would permit the publication of his story and his words without insisting on editorial control is highly unlikely.
BELLA is written in the first person. It is dated 21 Sept 2021 - which is timed as part of the pre-publication publicity campaign
“I was living in Malaga, Spain” [actually a village outside Ronda, Malaga Province, Spain]
“Someone at the foreign desk asked me to pack a bag and get to the airport as soon as I could, so I could get across to Praia da Luz in the Algarve region of Portugal.”
[There is no direct flight from Malaga to Faro. Options include a 3 hr stop-over in Lisbon, or in Amsterdam. It is quicker to drive. As Clarke did.]
As a father of two daughters. [Clarke has a daughter and a son, to both of whom he allocates false names in his book. As he does to his wife.]
I remember meeting them shortly after I arrived at a press conference that night.
[See above. Clarke has always claimed to have been, and clearly was, on the scene very early. This sentence implies he arrived just before 10pm. 2200 hrs, which is plainly nonsense, even by his standards]
***
The BELLA article is odd in several other ways. Much later it states
I decided to open the boot, and underneath the spare tyre was a pair of surgical scissors sat [sic] in the middle. “How could police not have taken them as evidence?” I thought to myself in horror. I took a picture and placed the tyre back. [sic]
I later asked the chief prosecutor Wolters about the scissors, but he said, “No comment.’
In his book Clarke renders it thus :
“I ploughed on insisting that I had been to the factory the day before and found some remarkable things, including the surgical scissors hidden under the spare tyre in the Twingo.
I said it was clear they had not been found by the police and I was sure they had not been tested for DNA or potential evidence. I also told him that I had found what looked like a recently unearthed shallow grave, although I could not show him a photo as I was recording the interview and didn’t want to interrupt it.
He looked taken aback. ‘We can’t expect a pair of scissors to help us much further,’ he barked. ‘That there are other things with his DNA on them – we already assume this. Finding his DNA won’t help us further. And we don’t expect to find any DNA of kids or anything.’
Which with respect is a little more detailed than “No Comment”
Clarke also wrote his usual article for The SUN, advertising the publication of his book and including the scissors, though he neglects to mention to Sun readers that they are required by Law to be carried in every German vehicle.
No one will be surprised to learn that it is completely different from the previous two.
“However, when I opened the boot I noted that the spare tyre was still in place and out of curiosity I prised it out of position to see if anything was underneath … and there standing out like a sore thumb was a pair of surgical scissors, that I later brought up with the prosecutor Hans Christian Wolters, with him scoffing ‘what would I be expecting to find on it?’ I might as well have replied, ‘DNA of Maddie’s’, and had there been gaffer tape and a mask, we could have been in the realms of a Sopranos episode.”
Again a bit different from “No Comment”, and significantly different from the book version.
In the book Clarke states he was recording the interview on his phone. We now have three versions, all different. Which one fits the recording best ? Which one is the “truth” ?
And even if Clarke tells us, why should we now believe him ?
Perhaps it is “None of the Above”.
And as another commentator said recently . .
“It’s Jon Clarke, and the Olive Press. Do we even CARE any more ?”
[As an aside : BELLA is published by the BAUER publishing empire, who also now own EMAP, the publishers of the short lived FIRST magazine, which published the totally untrue and invented story by Danielle Gusmaroli - See chapters 23 and 31, and probably facilitated the emigration of the author to work for the same Media empire in Australia. They also publish CLOSER – see above]
FELGUEIRAS INTERVIEW in NetFlix Transcript
Jon Clarke: "I got a phone call incredibly early. Normally if a job came in from the national papers in England, I'd get a call at 9:30 or half 8, perhaps, and it was 7 or 7:30 and it was the foreign desk at the Mail. They quickly told me that a girl had gone missing, potentially kidnapped, in the south of Portugal in the Algarve and could I get there as quickly as possible to investigate?
But later in the same interview he backtracks on all this and says:
Jon Clarke: I don't think they said whether it was a girl or boy. I don't even think I had the age. I didn't have any idea who the family were. I fully expected to arrive there and for this child to have turned up and for it to have dissolved into a non-story.
In the Book Clarke is quite clear, and puts this exchange in quotation marks
‘Can you get to the Algarve ASAP?’ he said (for it was more an order than a request). ‘Some girl’s gone missing. A doctor’s kid. The Foreign Office is already on it. Place called Ocean Club in Praia da Luz. Just get going, we’ll call you with more en route.’
And a little later
“It became harder to go away on long trips and I tried to cherrypick the more interesting, local ones, closer to home. It meant committing the cardinal rule of freelancing; turning down work. It meant less money but allowed me to cultivate relationships with the broadsheets, writing more about culture and history and, in particular, doing more travel writing. But when an opportunity arose to cover a meaty case for a number of the tabloids it was too good a chance to miss.”
He knew it was going to be Meaty. He has just told us.
Which do you believe ? And why would you believe that version against any other version ?
Which can you believe ? And Why ?
****
To sum up
Arrived 1145. – Untrue
Arrived 1045. – Untrue
Kay Burley there. – Untrue
Only reporter. – Untrue
First journalist. – Untrue
First British Journalist. – Untrue
Able to walk into the apartment – Untrue
Spoke to McCs in the apartment. – Untrue
Spoke to McCs as they were leaving – Untrue
Spoke to McCs a few hours after arriving – Untrue
Spoke to McCs at Press conference – Untrue
Deep roadworks outside the apartment – Untrue
No dogs till late afternoon. – Untrue
Didn’t know if it was boy or girl – Untrue
Didn’t know about the family. – Untrue
Thought M. might be found within hours. – Untrue
but
Knew it was going to be a MEATY Case – – – TRUE
APPENDIX
OP17
A PAEDOPHILE TOOK MADELEINE MCCANN, NOT HER PARENTS
Jon Clarke analyses why her parents were not involved and recalls the shocking way he ended up accused of being involved
By Jon Clarke (Publisher & Editor) -
11 May, 2017 @ 15:00
I RECEIVED the call at 7.15am from the Daily Mail foreign desk. It was a Friday morning as we approached deadline for one of the first editions of the Olive Press, then in its early fledgling stage.
The daughter of a pair of British doctors had gone missing on the Algarve the night before. Could I get over and investigate?
I was on the road half an hour later from Ronda, where we had our office, based out of a cowshed next to my home…
The only reporter on the scene till late that evening – apart from Sky News reporter Kay Burley, who happened to be on holiday there – I spent time grilling neighbours, before noticing that a road crew was still digging up the street to lay sewage pipes literally right outside the apartment. The trench was nearly two metres deep and three men continued to shuffle around inside it.
Nobody had stopped them.
Incredibly, we had to wait till late afternoon before a couple of sniffer dogs had arrived, which was amateur to say the least, given that Maddie had been reported missing a full 18 hours earlier.
I am not going to be able to solve the mystery, but I am convinced she was snatched by a local paedophile, who had been watching the family’s movements.
When I arrived at about 11.45am I was firstly able to walk into the apartment, where I introduced myself to the McCanns and told them I would do everything I could to help.
OP19
The Olive Press editor, 50, was the first journalist on the scene in Praia da Luz the day after the police began their disastrous attempt to find the toddler.
Vanished
In the hard-hitting series he takes the crew around the resort and reveals his shock at how laid back the police operation was and how he met the McCanns in those early hours.
“Initially there was just a small bit of tape in front of the apartment, and then a bit at the side where the patio doors were,” he revealed in the film. It wouldn’t have been difficult to walk in and have a look around. It wasn’t Fort Knox, he added.
SFIG
Interview with Felgueiras within the Netflix documentary
Jon Clarke: "I got a phone call incredibly early. Normally if a job came in from the national papers in England, I'd get a call at 9:30 or half 8, perhaps, and it was 7 or 7:30 and it was the foreign desk at the Mail. They quickly told me that a girl had gone missing, potentially kidnapped, in the south of Portugal in the Algarve and could I get there as quickly as possible to investigate?
Later in the interview
Jon Clarke: I don't think they said whether it was a girl or boy. I don't even think I had the age. I didn't have any idea who the family were. I fully expected to arrive there and for this child to have turned up and for it to have dissolved into a non-story.
NET19
Crews interviewed the publisher of Spain’s biggest expat paper Jon Clarke, who was the first UK print journalist in the resort when the news broke of Maddie’s disappearance some 12 years ago.
In the new documentary, Clarke travels to Portugal and retraces his steps in 2007 with the film crew.
Directed by Chris Smith, the man behind Fyre: The Greatest Party that Never Happened, and executive produced by Emma Cooper and produced by UK-based Pulse Films in association with Paramount Television, the series has access to never-before-heard testimonies from those at the heart of the story including friends of the McCann family, investigators working the case and from those who became the subjects of media speculation and rumour.
NETTRANS
NETFLIX TRANSCRIPT.
PART ONE:
Reporter 1: Police in Portugal are searching for a three-year old British girl who is thought to have been abducted from her bed. Madeleine McCann was on holiday with her family in a resort on the Algarve. Her parents were having dinner a short distance away and they discovered she was missing when they checked on the room.
Jill Renwick speaking over the phone: “The shutters had been broken open and they've gone into the room and taken Madeleine.“
****
Jon Clarke: I think this is it, this is it, yeah, this is it. This is now what was the Mark Warner complex, the Ocean club. This one here. 5...5A.
Footage gets played from 2007 - 4th May - Video of Gerry and Kate: Gerry McCann asks someone off camera: ''Where are we going please?.'' [Indistinctive chatter]
Jon Clarke: I said hello to them. I introduced myself as a reporter from the Mail. And they said ''Hi.'' I think they may have said ''Thanks for coming.'' That was really, unfortunately, all I could get out of them at that point. So there wasn't much opportunity, sadly to talk to them about what had happened, the night before. Initially, there was maybe just a small bit of tape here in front of the apartment, the front and then a bit at the sides, where the patio doors were.
Jon Clarke: And then there was a note on the steps leading up, saying ''Don't go past this point.'' It went up, and I looked in, the door was open, and I think I tried to speak. I didn't want to push my way through the door into the apartment, which would have been a crime scene, so it wouldn't have been appropriate to do that, but I got the impression it wouldn't have been difficult at all to have sort of have walked in and had a look around. You know, I don't think it was...It certainly wasn't Fort Knox.
CLOSER
As a prime suspect in the Madeleine McCann case is announced, Closer speaks to Jon Clarke who has followed the story since the three-year-old went missing...
Journalist Jon Clarke was one of the first on the scene in Praia da Luz, Portugal, when Maddie went missing from a holiday resort in May 2007, while her parents ate in a nearby restaurant. He has been reporting on the case ever since.
Jon recalls the call he received from a British newspaper on the morning of 4 May 2007, asking him to report on a missing child.
He says, “I remember thinking that by the time I got there, she’d have turned up. Praia da Luz was a sleepy little village and hardly anyone was around when I arrived later that morning. But I was shocked when I saw the McCanns’ apartment – there was no security and just a flimsy piece of police tape covering the side gate.”
A few hours after arriving, Jon met Kate and Gerry. He says, “They were polite, and even thanked me for reporting on the case. They were clearly devastated. The press conference outside their apartment later that day only confirmed my feelings. I think almost every person there shed a tear. As a journalist, you try not to get too emotional about a story, but my own daughter had just turned two, so it was hard not to get upset.
“In the days that followed, it was clear this was a story like no other – hundreds of journalists descended on the town and Maddie’s face was everywhere. Everyone was looking for her – I must have walked the length of the beach ten times, combing through the wasteland and looking in abandoned houses.”
Jon stayed in Portugal for two weeks while the case unfolded – until it became clear that Maddie was no longer in Praia da Luz. He says he has since returned countless times to report on the story, and even appeared in a Netflix documentary that aired last year about her disappearance.
BELLA
[Written in the first person - Timed as part of the pre-publication publicity campaign]
“I was living in Malaga, Spain, with my wife and daughter and worked as a reporter, covering stories for the newspapers back home in the UK. Someone on the foreign desk asked me to pack a bag and get to the airport as soon as I could, so I could get across to Praia da Luz in the Algarve region of Portugal. I was given minimal details, but I remember thinking it would all blow over and the three-year-old tot would be located. At that time, I truly had not idea just how big this case was gong to be and the worldwide attention it was abut to receive.
…
As a father of two daughters myself, I wanted to find answers for Maddie’s devastated parents, Kate and Gerry McCann. They were completely broken – you could see it all over their faces. I remember meeting them shortly after I arrived at a press conference that night. Kate was clutching onto Maddie’s cuddle toy cat and trying to hold it together. I told them I’d do anything to help them find their missing daughter, and they were so grateful for the support.
BOOK
It was an extraordinarily early start. Up and out of the house before 7am was rare for my new life in Spain. It was May 2007 and I was living in the stunning Serrania de Ronda mountains, near Malaga, having relocated from London, and Fleet Street, to set up as a stringer in southern Spain. As I had just set up a regional newspaper, The Olive Press, I was used to taking trips around the country and its islands – usually involving celebrities on holiday, tourists falling out of windows or something connected to the costa del crime ... so to be sent off by the Daily Mail on a missing child story in Portugal wasn’t too out of the ordinary.
What was different though, was the family involved. The professional, middle-class doctor couple Kate and Gerry McCann were not your typical Brits abroad-type victims – the least likely of British tourists to want to get involved with the press, particularly on holiday. But they were clearly in desperate need for help. Conjuring up a legion of journalists to help in their hunt for their missing daughter (the prettiest, most striking of little girls) seemed to be the best way forward.
I didn’t know the poor minion who had called me from the Daily Mail’s London HQ half an hour earlier. I think he was new to the job, and, as is the way with the Mail, there were few pleasantries (when I worked there in the 1990s, its computer password for casual staff was ‘Yes Sir’). ‘Can you get to the Algarve ASAP?’ he said (for it was more an order than a request). ‘Some girl’s gone missing. A doctor’s kid. The Foreign Office is already on it. Place called Ocean Club in Praia da Luz. Just get going, we’ll call you with more en route.’
**
It was now between 9.45am and 10.15am local time (an hour earlier than Spain and sensibly in the same time zone as the UK) and I was the first British journalist on the scene. A small group of expats and tourists were already getting mobilised after a night of drama and anxiety. The McCanns’ apartment was on the corner of the block at the junction of Rua da Escola Primaria and Dr Agostinho da Silva. Easily spotted, it had a flimsy bit of police tape run up the side of it by a rickety gate, and another bit of tape around the front where the car park was. After establishing the name of the missing toddler as Maddie or ‘Maddy’ from one of the expats hovering outside, I walked up the short flight of stairs to the apartment, number 5A, – completely unimpeded by police – to speak to the parents, as any decent journalist is programmed to do on arrival at a job like this. I walked inside the open front door and bumped straight into the McCanns, who were heading off to the police station in nearby Lagos to make an official missing persons statement. They looked fraught and stressed, but were somehow still functioning, despite presumably not sleeping a wink. I smiled and said ‘hello’, introducing myself as a local hack, working for the Mail, just arrived from Malaga. I promised I’d help as best I could to find their daughter.
They seemed grateful and smiled ... well grimaced to be fair – saying ‘thank you’ and mumbling a few other pleasantries, before telling me their daughter’s name and the rough time she had disappeared, which was between 9pm and 9.45pm. I don’t remember much but I do remember them describing it as ‘a nightmare’ and saying they were ‘sure’ she had been snatched. I scribbled it down in my notepad.
It was clear they couldn’t hang around and needed to go and get the local police force to actually give a damn, for it was apparent right from the start that they really didn’t care very much. This was obvious from the shortage of officers on hand. There were two local bobbies on duty, but the side of the house was unguarded and life in the resort was going on as normal.
MARTIN BRUNT
Brunt accepts that the way that the story was handled by his and other media organisations was imperfect. "It's the view of a few of us that when we look back over the first two or three weeks of the coverage we were in some ways over-sympathetic. We kind of adopted the tone and the language that the family did. I think we perhaps lost our objectivity a bit, we became a bit too subjective about the story."
The message of hope that was broadcast contradicted what Brunt's police sources had told him from the outset. "Ever since day one, when I spoke to cop contacts and others who had been involved in this kind of story, they said 'Just look at the statistics'. Most children who disappear in these circumstances are victims of paedophiles who plan everything and then panic. The easy option for them is to destroy the only witness to their crime. It was clear to me from very early on that this was going to be the most likely outcome. I think journalists in general tended to shy away from making that point."
Nonetheless, he remains sore that he was pulled off the story before he was ready to come home. "I spent 10 days in Portugal," he says. " I thought there were still angles to the story to explore. But I came back because it was deemed we were spending a lot of money on it when there were other stories to cover." So he'd have liked to stay longer? "Yeah. I hadn't at that stage interviewed the parents. I came back at that point where we were beginning to think we should be a bit more honest about the likely outcome of this story.
REFS AND LINKS:
OP17
https://www.theolivepress.es/spain-news/2017/05/11/madeleine-mccann-olive-press-editor-talks-first-journalist-scene-10th-anniversary-disappearance/
OP19
https://www.theolivepress.es/print-edition/#fb0=3
SFIG
From transcript of Netflix film
NET19
https://www.theolivepress.es/spain-news/2019/03/14/netflix-announces-madeleine-mccann-documentary-featuring-the-olive-press-and-never-before-heard-testimonies/
CLOSER
https://closeronline.co.uk/real-life/news/madeleine-mccann-german-suspect-jon-clarke/11/06/2020
BELLA
“Bella. MADDIE EXCLUSIVE. 21 SEPTEMBER 2021. ISSUE 38 £1.30, SPAIN €3.25. CANARY ISLANDS €3.25”
BOOK
“My Search for Madeleine”. Jon Clarke - 2021. Print and Kindle versions on Amazon
MARTIN BRUNT
http://news.independent.co.uk/media/article2725892.ece
https://web.archive.org/web/20070706231113/http://news.independent.co.uk/media/article2725892.ece
SUN
“However, when I opened the boot I noted that the spare tyre was still in place and out of curiosity I prised it out of position to see if anything was underneath … and there standing out like a sore thumb was a pair of surgical scissors, that I later brought up with the prosecutor Hans Christian Wolters, with him scoffing ‘what would I be expecting to find on it?’ I might as well have replied, ‘DNA of Maddie’s’, and had there been gaffer tape and a mask, we could have been in the realms of a Sopranos episode.”
NETTRANS
(NB. This is not official. It has been prepared by several people who have listened on multiple occasions, refining it each time. It may not therefore be absolutely word perfect, and may not include the normal grammatical mistakes we find in spontaneous speech.)
Jon Clarke: Freelance journalist: [In Spanish] Good Morning Hector, how are you? Good Morning, how's everyone doing? [In English] Hi, guys. How are we getting on? All good? Funnily enough, I've kept the hotel bill from the first couple of days on the story. Hotel Belavista, there you go. From the beginning, right from the first day, from the 4th to the 5th. I got a phone call incredibly early. Normally if a job came in from the national papers in England, I'd get a call at 9:30 or half 8, perhaps, and it was 7 or 7:30 and it was the foreign desk at the Mail. They quickly told me that a girl had gone missing, potentially kidnapped, in the south of Portugal in the Algarve and could I get there as quickly as possible to investigate?
[Male news reporter clip] More on that breaking news this hour. A three-year-old British girl has gone missing in Portugal. It's thought that she may have been abducted. She and her family were staying in a Mark Warner resort. Obviously something wrong has gone on there and we'll bring you more on that story as we find out…
Sandra Felgueiras Reporter: In May 2007, the news came, a three-years-old girl disappeared from Praia da Luz and I was standing at my computer, astonished with the news. ''It's impossible, not in our country, not in Algarve. Algarve is the safest place in Portugal.'' And my editor-in-chief told me, ''Go immediately to Algarve.''
[UK Female reporter voice]...Praia da Luz in the Algarve. We'll bring you more details on that as we…
Jon Clarke: While on the road, interestingly, I got phone calls from both the Mirror And The Sun also asking if I could cover this case, which is quite rare to have, you know, all the papers asking for you to cover it and so I agreed. I said of course I would file for them as well and keep an eye on the story for them. For me, these stories are often, you know, kind of mysterious, you know? Your job is to go and try and unravel what it is.
Sandra Felgueiras: What motivates me being a journalist is to find the beneath truth that explains everything. I have this feeling inside that I need to run for the news. I need to be there and understand because that's my mission. I just had to go home, pick some clothes, and I was on my way to the Algarve.
Jon Clarke: I don't think they said whether it was a girl or boy. I don't even think I had the age. I didn't have any idea who the family were. I fully expected to arrive there and for this child to have turned up and for it to have dissolved into a non-story.
Sandra Felgueiras: I was thinking that we go there for two days, she was going to be found in the next hours.
Jon Clarke: I remember driving in and thinking it was, you know, a fairly pretty place with nice sort of stone walls. I'd never been here before, I didn't know anything about the village at all. I'm pretty sure it's not famous for anything, really. I don't think there's anything that any previous news stories or anything of particular note that's ever happened in Praia da Luz.