Chapter 48. ‘My Search for Madeleine” Jon Clarke 2021
The final Version of the Truth - or Not ?
Just when we hoped Jon Clarke had finally run out of invented stories -
along comes ANOTHER ONE
Many thought that with the publication of Jon Clarke’s book, written, assembled, proof-read, edited, and then printed and published by Clarke himself under his own label OP BOOKS that would be the end.
We fondly imagined that the book would be the definitive version of the truth, and would lay to rest all the other totally differing versions Clarke has published in various places over the past 14 years.
How naïve we all were.
Within two weeks of the launch of the book Clarke was denying some of what he himself had written in his own book, and was getting angry with commentators on his Face Book page who quoted part of what he had published, saying it was NOT correct. When it was pointed out that the quote was from his own book he responded by ‘whooshing’ the entire sequence.
And only a week after that he drew attention to another self-serving piece in a Spanish newspaper ABC. Entitled – in English translation – “Jon Clarke, 14 years to solve the mystery of little Madeleine”, the sub-heading is “A Hunter of Monsters”. On his Facebook page Clarke makes it clear he is proud of that.
THE HUNTER OF MONSTERS.
THE JOURNALIST IN PURSUIT OF MADELEINE’S ASSASSIN
The British reporter started following the trail of the little girl the day after her disappearance.
The most famous Hunter of Monsters in Spain was Miguel de Cervantes’ “Don Quixote”. (1605). El Quixote’s exploits riding aimlessly across the plains of La Mancha on a quest never fully explained, attacking wine-skins and tilting at windmills insanely believing them to be monsters and giants, are familiar to all.
We speak loosely of a person being a ‘one-man crime-wave’. Don Clarke-ote clearly wishes to go down in history as the ‘one-man crime-solver’ of all outstanding crimes across Europe.
The picture heading the hard copy of the article shows Clarke at a coffee table, with a MacBook Pro, iPhone, and two copies of his book which he clearly didn’t use as reference for what follows.
But for the full horror of the newspaper piece we need to examine it in more detail. This was published under the name of reporter JJ Madueño, but as Clarke clearly provided all the details and appears at the beginning of the on-line article in a live video interview speaking in good Spanish, he must surely have read it and insisted that any errors were corrected. His unconditional praising of it and advertising of it on his own FB page says the rest.
The first five short paragraphs, in translation and tidied up run as follows –
Para 1. On that very day, May 3, 2007, a call to a telephone number in Ronda required his presence. Mobile phones were not so widespread and the big British newspapers tried to contact Jon Clarke (Cambridge, 1968) in this town in Malaga [province]. He answered, and they asked him if he could go to Portugal.
[NOTE on the translation. The original Spanish is “El mismo dia 3 de Mayo 2007 . . .”.
Mismo often translates as ‘same’, but the context here as the opening phrase indicates its use as emphasis.
“I was standing right here = exactly on this spot” would be translated as “estuvo aqui mismo…”.
“I did it myself” would be “Lo hice yo mismo”
So “El mismo dia…” is not “the same day” but must be rendered as “On that very day, on that exact day, on the day in question”, or, if we drift into paraphrase, “On that fateful day”, “On that important day.”
It is making the point that we are talking about 3rd May 2007, and NO OTHER DAY]
Here Clarke says he received the phone call on Thursday 3rd May. The implications are far reaching.
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Para 2. An English girl had disappeared there. "It didn't seem like a big case, but I went to Praia da Luz," Clarke recalls of his first contact with the disappearance of Madeleine McCann. That same night (or evening) he met the little girl's parents, Gerry and Kate McCann . "They were devastated and they felt that no one was helping them," describes the journalist, who is based on the Costa del Sol.
‘THAT SAME evening (or night)’ can only refer to Thursday 3rd May, and again the Spanish is very clear. “Esa misma noche”. “Misma” now clearly meaning “same”. And here it is being said the Clarke met the parents during the evening of Thursday 3rd May, and from the context spoke to them and recorded their emotional distress.
“It didn’t seem like a big case” is of course a direct contradiction with the books on the coffee table in front of him, where he states “But when an opportunity arose to cover a meaty case for a number of the tabloids it was too good a chance to miss.” p.16
***
Para 3. He has published a book on this case, 'My Search for Madeleine', available on Amazon, as a summary of his 14 years investigating the disappearance for media such as 'Daily Mail' or 'Sunday Mirror'. He recalls how at nine thirty the next morning he arrived at the place of the disappearance .
In para. 2 he met them “that same evening”. Now it is “at nine thirty the next morning.”
But note how “the next morning” reinforces that the phone call was on Thursday 3rd, and not the early hours of Friday 4th.
We also note that nine thirty is the earliest time Clarke has so far given for his arrival. [Book: ‘between 9.45am and 10.15am local time’]. The implications for the timing of his journey from home are obvious and have been rehearsed many times.
There may be some who suggest that leaving home at five thirty Spanish time is in fact more consistent with a phone call the previous day, 3rd May. [But see later]
It is incidentally totally different from the version he wrote and printed in his own newspaper in 2008,
“I had been in Praia da Luz since noon on the day after her disappearance . . . I remember Murat well from those first hours in the resort… “
Noon, and not a word about going into taped off apartments or speaking to the McCanns. And that was when his memory must have been relatively fresh, and the notes in his Journal still legible.
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Para 4. 'There were no policemen. Just a tape. I crossed, knocked on the door and Madeleine's parents came out, and told me what had happened ». He began to follow the little girl's trail through Portugal, Spain or Germany, until the arrest of Christian Brueckner.
Clarke’s interminably repeated untruth about the numbers of police officers at the scene has been exposed many times by reference to the police reports and by simply viewing the contemporaneous video newsreel taken during that morning. Quite why Clarke still feels the need to repeat it in the teeth of the clear evidence is not clear.
He now says he crossed the Police tape, knocked on the door and Madeleine’s parents came out.
Given that they were not in Apartment 5A, but were with the Paynes and various PJ detectives and minders in the Paynes’ apartment 5H, which is up a flight of stairs in the central stairwell, this can only mean he visited them in 5H.
But again this is contradicted directly by his book. “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 . . . 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, …”
Flight of stairs, open front door, walked straight in and ‘bumped into the McCanns’ ?
There is of course no flight of stairs to the front door of 5A
And it also contradicts what Clarke said in the radio interview publicising his book [my transcription]
“the first thing I found the apartment, straight up to the apartment, go, and walked up the steps and asked, yer know, could I speak to the parents, and they happened to be, they were heading off actually relatively quickly to be, err, to the police station to file the official reports
But they were very friendly and you know obviously very stressed out
And they, they just told me the name
And, yer know, I said who I was and from the Mail and I would do my best to help, and they were like “thanks” and that was that.
So I didn’t, I can’t say I really interviewed them but, yer know I, I wanted, yer know, I wanted to sort of just try and monitor, and gather as much information on – locally as you possibly could...”
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Para 5. Clarke recalls the complexity of the case , while harshly criticising the Portuguese police for their handling of it." “Madeleine was seen in more than 1,000 places. The family itself had its group of detectives. In Spain, between 2007 and 2013, we published reports on possible whereabouts in various parts of Andalusia, “ explains Clarke, who recalls that just in this country he has investigated a campsite in Mijas, in the Alpujarra of Granada or in Castellón, in a discotheque. Points where the elusive suspect could be seen with the little girl, because "he always drove, knew Spain, stayed in his van and did not usually take planes.”
Madeleine was not “seen” in 1,000 places. There were reports of small blond girls who looked vaguely similar. Not one was confirmed as genuine, and almost all were eliminated or debunked, several by Clarke himself and his organ the Olive Press. The excoriating FAPE Judgment against the Olive Press was for one such where Clarke decided to run the article and the photos despite explaining that the girl in question was definitively NOT Madeleine.
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[Just as an aside, in his book Clarke accuses the FAPE judgment of having led to the emigration of the journalist in question Wendy Williams. He neglects to detail a telephone conversation between the father and Wendy, reported in a letter to Clarke, which throw a completely different light on things. [Part]
“"In one of my telephone conversations with the journalist she told me
that she had tried to persuade you not to print the article but that you
had insisted and that she had felt incapable of resisting your decision,
you being her publisher and her patron [employer]. In that telephone
conversation I expressed my point of view that in such circumstances
she should resign."
Which of course she did, and by September 2012 was working for an Estate Agent on the Costa before emigrating.
**
We should perhaps gloss over the idea of a four year old in a discotheque as beyond sensible categorisation.
The whole piece is devoted to Clarke’s quest, as is his book and almost every article written by or about him. “He began to follow the little girl's trail through Portugal, Spain or Germany…“
Jon Quixote, the modern Knight-errant, secure in the belief that he alone has the truth, knows the way, and is determined to find and rescue his Emperatrix Doña Madeleine Dulcinea del Toboso y Rothley.
The sad fact is that there was no “little girl’s trail.” Not a single one of the more than 8,685 reports from 101 counties and territories across the globe has been confirmed as Madeleine. From Algeria Andorra and Argentina to Vanuatu Venezuela and Vietnam, not one has been confirmed even as likely. Not a single one.
And that needs to be repeated in the forlorn hope that people begin to understand.
There is no confirmed sighting. Not Tannerman, not Smithman, not one.
Jon Quixote de la Serrania will of course never accept that, and clings like a drowning man clutching at a punctured dinghy to reports long-since explained and dismissed.
Even is his book he exposes himself by refusing to accept he may be wrong. The case of the report from Alcossebre being perhaps the most notorious of these.
To recap :
Man, girl and VW van seen at resort. Registration noted. Police informed
Man, girl and VW van traced and eliminated. THE END
The van had a Berlin registration, B-MS 1049 to be precise. Brückner’s VW van had a Portuguese registration, 34-91-XE for anyone remotely interested, with the suffix indicating date of registration 82/07, in smaller letters on the yellow stripe to the right.
A photo exists on the net of Brückner with this vehicle clearly showing this vertical yellow stripe. Anyone, including Clarke can find it. German plates have no such yellow stripe. There can be no possible confusion.
“Having worked here as a journalist for nearly 20 years, I know the Spanish police well. I also know that in any case involving a foreigner they can be laid back, at best, and I am simply not convinced they went out of their way to locate and eliminate this ‘German man’ from their enquiries. Maybe they actually did locate Brueckner and, as in 2013, he managed to easily brush it off and evade them.”
Or as his predecessor said
““moreover I think, and it is the truth, that that same sage Friston who carried off my study
and books, has turned these giants into mills in order to rob me of the glory of vanquishing them,
such is the enmity he bears me;”
Whether this refusal to accept facts is, like El Quixote’s before him, becoming a clinical or borderline pathological condition is something only his family and close friends will know. His driving thousands of kilometres around Europe over 14 months following up leads which had already been investigated by professionals a decade before sounds suspiciously like an irrational and obsessive compulsion.
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that the whole circus WAS put into motion before the fateful events were reported;
that he, and other journalists and the press were alerted long before they could have been by a single phone call from PdL;
that the significant 'Missing Persons' web-page had already been created and just remained to be uploaded with its date of creation inadvertently not corrected;
that the ‘official story’ of Abduction by Paedophile had been rehearsed and was therefore published and repeated without a single journalist bothering to ask even the must rudimentary questions or perform the most simple of investigative tasks;
and that many other things were already in train.
It was previously merely a suspicion based on a mass of disparate coincidences and circumstantial details
But now it is here, in the article Jon Clarke is trumpeting on his own FaceBook page
On that very day 3rd May 2007 a call to a telephone . . required his presence .
That same night he met the little girl’s parents . . .
As have those who worked back from his known arrival time in PdL, calculated his probable driving time, allowed for his admitted stop for coffee en route, the time taken on the narrow tracks and winding roads from his home in the campo outside Ronda, the time he claimed between the phone call (the previously reported phone call of 4/5/7 of course, not this one !) arising from his bed, ablutions, dressing, breakfast and leaving the house, and found that even the earliest time he had given thus far was clearly not sustainable. From that it became clear that the entire Machine must already have been in motion in the very early hours of Thursday 4th May, and possibly very much earlier.
Clarke has always denied this, and the suggestion that he might be under “instructions” not to reveal the truth has been attacked with the typical ferocity of an animal which realises it has been trapped. In this case in a snare he both set and triggered himself – “él mismo” – and from which there is no escape.
But now he appears to have confirmed either that this suggestion was correct, or that he has not bothered to check the article, and thus that the article in question is nothing more than a load of the usual nonsense and not worth another minute of anyone’s time.
How reliable is this article ? Is it just one Tabloid journalist attempting to sell a book and getting another one to write about it ?
We placed a question on Clarke’s Face Book page. The first question was ’Whooshed’, so we replaced it.
So far there has been no reply.
REFS:
1. https://sevilla.abc.es/andalucia/malaga/sevi-periodista-britanico-madeleine-enf-202110212008_noticia.html
2. Original article in Spanish.
Jon Clarke, 14 años para resolver el misterio de la pequeña Madeleine
El reportero Jon Clarke, editor de una publicación inglesa editada en la Costa del Sol, comenzó a seguir el rastro de la pequeña el día después de su desaparición
Advierte del peligro del presunto asesino, Christian Brueckner, un alemán que vivió en poblados 'hippies' de Granada y podría haber cometido más delitos
J.J. Madueño
MARBELLA Actualizado: 22/10/2021 18:49h
El mismo 3 de mayo de 2007 una llamada a un teléfono de Ronda requirió su presencia. Los móviles no estaban tan extendidos y los grandes periódicos británicos buscaban contactar a Jon Clarke (Cambridge, 1968) en esta ciudad de Málaga. Acudió y le preguntaron si podía ir a Portugal.
Allí había desaparecido una niña inglesa. «No parecía un caso importante, pero fui a Praia da Luz», recuerda Clarke sobre su primer contacto con la desaparición de Madeleine McCann. Esa misma noche conoció a los padres de la pequeña, Gerry y Kate McCann. «Estaban destrozados y sentían que nadie les ayudaba», describe el periodista, que está afincado en la Costa del Sol.
Sobre este caso ha publicado un libro, 'My Search for Madeleine', disponible en Amazon, como resumen de sus 14 años investigando la desaparición para medios como 'Daily Mail' o 'Sunday Mirror'. Rememora cómo a las nueve y media de la mañana siguiente llegó al lugar de la desaparición.
«No había ningún policía. Solo una cinta. Crucé, llamé a la puerta y salieron los padres de Madeleine, que me contaron lo que había pasado». Comenzó a seguir el rastro de la pequeña por Portugal, España o Alemania, hasta la detención de Christian Brueckner.
Clarke recuerda la complejidad del caso, mientras critica duramente a la policía portuguesa por su forma de llevarlo. «A Madeleine se le vio en más de 1.000 sitios. La propia familia tuvo su grupo de detectives. En España, entre 2007 y 2013, publicamos reportajes sobre posibles paraderos en varios puntos de Andalucía», explica Clarke, que recuerda que solo en este país ha investigado en un camping de Mijas, en la Alpujarra de Granada o en Castellón, en una discoteca. Puntos en los que se pudo ver al escurridizo sospechoso con la pequeña, porque «siempre conducía, conocía España, se alojaba en su furgoneta y no solía tomar aviones».
Las autoridades alemanas han puesto el foco sobre Christian Brueckner. «La última novedad es que el fiscal está casi seguro al cien por cien que secuestró y mató a Madeleine», afirma este periodista, que desvela con inquietud la conexión española de este caso, contado también en 'The Olive Press', el periódico en inglés que dirige desde hace años y que llega desde la Costa del Sol a Gibraltar o el Levante.
Chapter 48 – Part 2
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AND NOW - THE STUNNING ADMISSION
1. https://sevilla.abc.es/andalucia/malaga/sevi-periodista-britanico-madeleine-enf-202110212008_noticia.html
2. Original article in Spanish.
Jon Clarke, 14 años para resolver el misterio de la pequeña Madeleine
El reportero Jon Clarke, editor de una publicación inglesa editada en la Costa del Sol, comenzó a seguir el rastro de la pequeña el día después de su desaparición
Advierte del peligro del presunto asesino, Christian Brueckner, un alemán que vivió en poblados 'hippies' de Granada y podría haber cometido más delitos
J.J. Madueño
MARBELLA Actualizado: 22/10/2021 18:49h
El mismo 3 de mayo de 2007 una llamada a un teléfono de Ronda requirió su presencia. Los móviles no estaban tan extendidos y los grandes periódicos británicos buscaban contactar a Jon Clarke (Cambridge, 1968) en esta ciudad de Málaga. Acudió y le preguntaron si podía ir a Portugal.
Allí había desaparecido una niña inglesa. «No parecía un caso importante, pero fui a Praia da Luz», recuerda Clarke sobre su primer contacto con la desaparición de Madeleine McCann. Esa misma noche conoció a los padres de la pequeña, Gerry y Kate McCann. «Estaban destrozados y sentían que nadie les ayudaba», describe el periodista, que está afincado en la Costa del Sol.
Sobre este caso ha publicado un libro, 'My Search for Madeleine', disponible en Amazon, como resumen de sus 14 años investigando la desaparición para medios como 'Daily Mail' o 'Sunday Mirror'. Rememora cómo a las nueve y media de la mañana siguiente llegó al lugar de la desaparición.
«No había ningún policía. Solo una cinta. Crucé, llamé a la puerta y salieron los padres de Madeleine, que me contaron lo que había pasado». Comenzó a seguir el rastro de la pequeña por Portugal, España o Alemania, hasta la detención de Christian Brueckner.
Clarke recuerda la complejidad del caso, mientras critica duramente a la policía portuguesa por su forma de llevarlo. «A Madeleine se le vio en más de 1.000 sitios. La propia familia tuvo su grupo de detectives. En España, entre 2007 y 2013, publicamos reportajes sobre posibles paraderos en varios puntos de Andalucía», explica Clarke, que recuerda que solo en este país ha investigado en un camping de Mijas, en la Alpujarra de Granada o en Castellón, en una discoteca. Puntos en los que se pudo ver al escurridizo sospechoso con la pequeña, porque «siempre conducía, conocía España, se alojaba en su furgoneta y no solía tomar aviones».
Las autoridades alemanas han puesto el foco sobre Christian Brueckner. «La última novedad es que el fiscal está casi seguro al cien por cien que secuestró y mató a Madeleine», afirma este periodista, que desvela con inquietud la conexión española de este caso, contado también en 'The Olive Press', el periódico en inglés que dirige desde hace años y que llega desde la Costa del Sol a Gibraltar o el Levante.