Chapter 54
First. A Response and an Apology:
And then a review of the (lack of) recent developments
In Chapter 53 I included a few photos captured from the video newsreel of events during the mid-morning of Friday 4/5/7 in PdL.
REF 1
I believed they showed Jon Clarke, Owner, Editor and Journalist of the Olive Press, in PdL that morning, with 5 other journalists in the car park close to the bottom of the stairwell leading to apartment 5G - the Payne’s apartment - where the McCanns had stayed overnight, variously staring at a candle or sleeping, whilst the rest of PdL was searching for their daughter, Madeleine.
REF 2
I believed it showed him turning from that group, walking over to the GNR officer, shaking his hand and then exiting the screen to the left, as the camera then panned right to focus on the McCanns coming out of the stairwell, making their way out onto the road, ushered along by a PJ officer in a brown leather jacket and men from the Tapas 7, and getting into vehicles.
As they do so the figure, whom I believed to be Clarke, emerges from between two marked police vehicles, to the right of shot, and walks towards the group with camera in hand, and takes up a position in the road, very close to Len Port, a Portuguese resident journalist who was on the footpath. The cars then leave with the windows wound down, and drive slowly towards and past the camera.
During the whole sequence it is clear that since only two journalists were present at that moment in that place, only Len Port and the other Mystery Man were in a position to speak to the McCanns, flanked and closely guarded as they are by the PJ officer and some of the Tapas 7. Port makes no such claim and in any event was further away. The other man is much closer to the vehicles
I reasonably believed the figure shown to be Jon Clarke. I further genuinely believed that this was the moment on which he relied when he said ”I said hello to them as they were leaving …”
The photos from the reference section to the Chapter appeared on a FaceBook page and Clarke responded quickly, reinforcing something he had said earlier
Clarke had previously said, “I genuinely didn’t see or meet Len, but I wouldn’t have been hanging around in the pack in front of the apartment anyway … I was looking for clues.”
REF 3
This time his response was “Yet it’s not me Plod ! One day you will be made to eat your words and suffer for your continual libels!”
REF 4
So in absence of admission or confession we must do what in this case had become almost unthinkable. Look at the EVIDENCE.
Mystery Man is a well proportioned man, about 6’2” (188 cm.), of strong muscular build, He appears to be in his mid 30s. (In 2007)
He has long, collar length darkish brown hair, parted loosely to either side.
He is dressed in casual, not to say borderline scruffy outdoor casual style with a loosely fitting olive-green coloured long sleeved top, pale blue faded denim jeans, and beige shoes similar to ‘desert boots’. He is wearing sunglasses.
He is seen stooping over the shoulder of a female reporter as they share information. He then strides towards the GNR officer, who looks at him as he approaches and then shakes him by the hand. Mystery Man then turns to resume walking in the same direction and the GNR officer turns back to his colleagues.
As he does so Mystery Man raises his right arm and touches the officer with his hand on the upper arm as a parting ‘touch’, ‘gesture of friendship’, (intimacy ? endearment ?) [I lack the vocabulary properly to describe this gesture between men.]
What then do we know about Jon Clarke’s physical appearance. For those who have never met him, we may rely on the many photos of him (and his family) on the internet and in his own Newspaper, and therefore available to the entire world on Google Images
REF 5
From those we see:
Jon Clarke is a well proportioned man, about 6’2” (188 cm.), of strong muscular build. He appears to be in his mid 40s (in 2015)
He has long, collar-length darkish brown hair, parted loosely to either side.
He is in the habit of dressing in casual, not to say borderline scruffy casual working style, with pale blue faded denim jeans, and of wearing sunglasses or carrying sunglasses either on his face or up on his forehead, including indoors, and even on formal occasions such as being granted an audience and formally interviewing the Staatsanwalt, (State Prosecutor) H. Wolters.
[All photos placed in the public domain on google images]
Mystery Man is also the only journalist present who would reasonably be able to claim, as Jon Clarke did to camera preserved for all time in the Netflix Nonsense, that
“I said hello to them as they were leaving and introduced myself to them as a reporter from the Mail, and they said “Hi”, and I think they may have also said “thanks for coming”.
“That was really unfortunately all I could get out of them at that point, so there really wasn’t much opportunity, sadly, to talk to the family about what had happened the night before.”
There was NO ONE ELSE there who could claim that.
So once again we have Clarke saying one thing on one occasion, that he DID speak to them as they left - which can only mean in the cars, since the video shows clearly that no one was allowed to approach the McCanns from the moment they left the stairwell to when they got into the cars, and on another occasion denying he was anywhere in the vicinity, but was “looking for clues”, somewhere unspecified-else entirely.
The question therefore is . .
Is Mystery Man one and the same as this man – 8 years later ?
And if NOT, who was it ?
And then we remember the curious [to me !] body language, the stroking or patting of the Police officer’s arm as Mystery Man walks away.
REF 7Does this signify anything ?
I don’t know, but a cursory glance at the photos of Clarke on the internet show several of him with his arm round other men’s waists or shoulders. Some of the men involved are plainly on first acquaintance, rather than work colleagues or old University rugby club friends for example, which may explain the very apparent discomfort of some of them.
It is however evidence of a highly ‘tactile’ trait not normally found between men who do not know each other well, and very rarely - if ever - applied to a Police Officer on duty in full uniform and armed with a .38 pistol.
As always, I say publicly that if I have made a mistake of identification; if Mystery Man, who bears an uncanny resemblance to Jon Clarke in many ways, and who was the only journalist in a position even to be able to claim to have “spoken to them as they left”, was NOT Jon Clarke, then I apologise unreservedly, and admit my error, and shall resume my research into who it was, as he might have valuable but so far unpublished information.
If it was, however, I would be entitled to the equivalent apology, but clearly do not expect it.
That would of course put us in the odd position where we now have no independent evidence that Clarke was present in PdL on 4/5/7, and simultaneously that Clarke failed to note SIX other journalists in the area, one of whom was a remarkable Doppelgänger, clone, impersonator, spitting image, dead-ringer or double of himself. And we may assume that BOTH remained in PdL for the next few days at least, working alongside, but never meeting or seeing each other, including at the formal press conferences and in the daily informal meetings and liquid lunches of journalists in the cafe bar of the Baptista Supermarket – described so vividly by Paulo Reis – and their many similarities in physical appearance, dress sense, and body language and personal idiosyncrasies strangely unremarked by the rest of the journalist pack.
REF 9
It is very strange, but then so much in the McCann case is.
LAST WEEK’S FRENZY
Last week has brought out the ‘best’ in the Myth Creation System.
We are now told that Brückner was a skilled lock-smith and could pick ANY type of lock anywhere in Portugal or Spain or even Europe. As evidence of this one of his disgraced criminal friends had stolen his lock picking kit, which consists of a collection of 14 lock picks, (and had then obsessively kept it safe and in good condition – without using it ? – for the past 14 years – against the day he needed to make money by showing it to a Journalist.)
The “Sun” rendered it thus
“ The 14 picks, seen by The Sun on Sunday, are black stainless steel. Each is designed for a specific door type. [sic, my emphasis]
They are made by “Dino”, which claims the curved design “ensures easier access into the most restrictive European keyways fast”.
REF 10
It is of course unlikely that any of the Sun Journalists were around 16 years ago, or that they have paid any attention to any of the facts of the case. The lock and key were discussed in detail very early on, in 2007.
The door lock on 5A is ‘cruciform’, sometimes referred to as a ‘Zeiss” lock. Instead of having one barrel with one rack of spring loaded pins like a normal ‘Yale” lock, it has Four racks, giving 16, 20 or more different pins needing to be set before it can be opened.
A simple lock pick kit simply cannot do this quickly for all sorts of technical reasons.
It requires a special tool, also supplied by DINO if any journalist had bothered to do basic research. The tool has Four ‘prongs,” which ‘rake’ the four sets of pins and set them correctly as the rotational pressure and low machining tolerances during manufacture hold them in place.
REF 11
Bear in mind also that lock picking is a skilled ‘craft’ best carried out under ideal conditions of light and with time and quiet to hear the individual pins click into place. To do it within seconds in a dark area under regular supervision by Tapas 7 patrols would be far from easy.
We have also to assume that Brückner really had ‘cased the joint’ beforehand, and had “taken notes”, as Kate insisted many years ago, had examined the lock closely and knew which set from his supposed collection of lock-picks he might need.
But IF he had done that with such meticulous attention to detail is it not likely that he would have noticed that the back gate was unlocked and that the patio doors were merely pushed to an almost closed position, and were insecure ? And had been left in that position every night of the week thus far ?
What the Sun does not seem to notice is that this story contradicts all the nonsense about Shutters, Windows and Whooshing curtains. Having gained access by the front door, the most logical thing then is to leave by the front door, even if it has closed. The front door can be opened silently from the Inside WITHOUT a key, as can most domestic front door locks for safety reasons.
Once again ‘over-egging’ the pudding, giving too much detail, has the effect of attacking the “official Story” ( or one of them).
PAINT THINNERS
As an encore the tabloids resurrected an old favourite, debunked over 15 years ago; that of sedation by volatile liquid or gas. This time, in place of the Victorian-era nonsense of Chloroform invented by Edgar and Cowley, (see several previous Chapters) shortly before their contract was abruptly terminated, we are reliably told it was “Paint Thinners”. There is of course no consideration given to the amount required, the mode of administration, the speed of action - if any - the likely side effects, - coughing, vomiting, stinging eyes, throat and nasal membranes, - NOR to the fact that paint thinners, however they are constituted are NOT ANAESTHETIC.
Kate McCann and Fiona Payne KNOW this having both been Junior Registrar Anaesthetists. But no one seems to think to contact them. And just as they did not smell Chloroform, they equally did not smell Paint Thinners, the smell of which lingers almost as long.
ERGO there wasn’t any.
The fact that no smell was detected by anyone and no residue was found by the Forensic scientists is of course no bar to Tabloids publishing rubbish of this nature for the intellectually challenged and poorly educated readership for whom they write.
REF 12
Even the apparently gullible Summers and Swan dismissed this nonsense in 2014 in their rambling way, at pp.78-80
REF 13
THE ARADE DAM
In the same fortnight we were told more definitively that the search of the small area of a short stretch of the bank at the Arade dam has produced nothing of interest.
The phrase most commonly used was that there was
“No Compelling Evidence that Madeleine was at the site”
For thinking people this would have come as no surprise. As most have realised by now
There was No Compelling Evidence that Madeleine was Abducted
REF 14
We were told by various news outlets that the search had been for Soil samples; for a Gun; for Tapes; for Pyjamas; for Fibres . . .
SOIL
More than 11 years elapsed between May (or more probably April) 2007 and 2018 when Brückner was arrested in Italy.
The newspaper articles require us to assume he was driving the same VW van, with or without the cartoon graffiti, (though I have not been able to confirm this point). The one we see in the photos from 2007.
Brückner’s VW van had a Portuguese registration, 34-91-XE for anyone remotely interested, with a sticker indicating date of registration 82/07, in smaller letters on the yellow stripe to the right.
REF 15
Date of Registration. July 1982
Arrest in Milan October 2018.
The Van was then 36 years old, and Brückner had owned it for some years before 2007. We are required to believe that it had never been washed during his ownership, particularly not immediately prior to the annual or biennial MoT/ ITV/ or IPO
(Inspecção Périodica Obrigatória).
https://www.lisbob.net/en/blog/car-technical-inspection-portugal-vehicle
QUOTE
2 - Compulsory technical inspection 4 years after the first registration of the vehicle ;
3 - Mandatory technical inspection every 2 years after the 4 years check ;
4 - Compulsory technical inspection every year from the 8th year.
Car documentation ;
- Id Card ;
- Insurance Certificate.
- The car must also be hygienically clean.
REF 16
It has therefore been tested some 30 times during its life; yearly during Brückner’s ownership, and yet we were told that mud or soil from the dam was adhering to it, and could be very precisely dated to early MAY 2007 and TO NO OTHER MONTH OR YEAR.
The PJ investigated it at the time, and provided photos of the vehicle in various states with and without cartoon graffiti. The photos are in the files for any Investigative Journalist who cares to look. But they did not have it impounded, nor crush it, from which we may assume that in 2007/8 it was taxed, MoT’d and insured.
Even if not, there is a border control system on entering and leaving Switzerland, from where Brückner entered Italy before his arrest in Milan in 2018. The Swiss operate a system where one is required to purchase a ‘CH 40 vignette’ to display on the windscreen proving one has paid to use the motorway system. As many readers will remember, you buy this at Swiss Border Control.
REF 17
If the car were not Tested it would not have had current registration, nor insurance, following the Continental ‘joined up’ system of doing these things. The Swiss Border Police would have picked this up as a matter of routine.
FIBRES
We were told that they were looking for fibres from Madeleine’s M&S Eeyore Pyjamas.
M&S currently have a range of over 100 children’s pyjamas.
It seems the Eeyore range has been discontinued but there are substitutes.
Peppa Pig, long trousers, green, 7 sizes. £10.50
Peppa Pig, short trousers, purple 6 sizes. Also £10.50
Dinosaur, 7 sizes
And so on
M&S still have over 1000 shops. Assume they hold only 2 or 3 of each size, and only 25 of the 100 pyjama range in each shop, 1000 x 3 x 25 x 7 = Half a million pyjamas
All made of the substantially the same cloth, all shedding the same fibres, and available in Malaga, Marbella, Gibraltar, or on-line in Portugal, as well as in European counties, and therefore available to visitors who travel with their children to Portugal for their holidays.
REF 18
We were also told a long time ago that items of clothing had been found in his van, or perhaps in the other van, the press are notoriously vague when it comes to detail. But they cannot have found a fibre in the van, or they would not have had to dig up the bank of the reservoir. The presence of a fibre from Madeleine’s Pyjamas in the van would have been much more ‘proximate’ as evidence, much closer, much more damning, more “Probative” than anything found under a bush 30 miles away, 16 years after the alleged event.
Put simply so that the hard of understanding can follow .. .”If they found anything of Madeleine’s in the van, that in itself would link Brückner with Madeleine with enough probative value to consider interviewing him strongly and in depth under caution.”
And since they haven’t, they didn’t.
The BKA don’t HAVE Madeleine’s Pyjamas, so with what were they going to compare one fibre anyway?
This is sadly symptomatic of the level of logical thought involved once a journalist has decided that a person is Guilty and is desperate to find ‘something’.
It is “clutching at fibres.”
It is of course not difficult to trace this particular nonsense back to the usual suspect apparently a year before, in 2022
“By Jon Clarke (Publisher & Editor) -
3 May, 2022 @ 11:12
GERMAN police investigating the disappearance of Madeleine McCann have found traces of her in a vehicle driven by the prime suspect Christian Brueckner.”
REF 19
There followed a TV Programme in Portugal, following which Public Prosecutor H. Wolters only three days later for very obvious reasons (vide supra) emphatically denied it – on 6 May 2022
“However, he said recent reports that threads from Madeleine’s pyjamas had been discovered in the van were “absolute rubbish”. “Those fibres we’re supposed to have found in the van: there weren’t any,” Wolters said.
REF 20
The Olive Press did not apparently find column space to report those comments, and year later in June 2023 Clarke was back to his original, now long since officially debunked, story :
”…various other items, some of which it is understood directly implicate Brueckner [sic] in the abduction of Maddie”. [my emphasis. SOME = More than one]. OP 2/6/23
REF 21
THE COLLECTORS FOR THE ORPHANAGE
In his book Clarke first repeats what he apparently gleaned from another book which employed third or fourth hand sources.
“two mystery blond men hanging around outside and the strange group collecting for an orphanage that did not exist.”
(Clarke, Jon. MY SEARCH FOR MADELEINE: One Reporter’s 14-Year Hunt To Solve Europe’s Most Harrowing Crime (p. 126). OP Books. Kindle Edition. PUBLISHED 2021.)
REF 22
And then two pages later he cannot resist reverting to type, the sneering scornful put-down, demonstrating his superior knowledge as a self-styled ‘Investigative Journalist’ . . .
“What is particularly intriguing is that he was part of a group of so-called charity collectors (up to four or five in total) which had been reported to police on no less than six separate occasions in the weeks running up to May 3. Going door to door, either alone or in pairs, they had been supposedly collecting for a ‘nearby orphanage’, although to this day nobody has been able to name the institution … and there is no orphanage in the nearby area.”
(Clarke, Jon. MY SEARCH FOR MADELEINE: One Reporter’s 14-Year Hunt To Solve Europe’s Most Harrowing Crime (p. 128). OP Books. Kindle Edition. PUBLISHED 2021)
REF 23
This was of course largely copied from Summers and Swan’s book, published SEVEN YEARS before, in 2014, where they say “Speaking English, but with an accent that did not sound Portuguese’, the man told Mrs Cooper that he was ‘collecting for a local orphanage in a nearby village . . . He flashed a leaflet and Photo ID, but not so that she could read it, and said the orphanage was allowed to solicit contributions once each year.. . . . “
REF 24
Robyn Swan repeated this to camera in the Netflix Nonsense Programme screened another 5 years later, in 2019, in which Clarke played a leading role.
In Summers and Swans’ book at p.58ff. they write in their interminably long-winded fashion, always trying to conceal the fact that they interviewed almost nobody directly and most of the book is a poor rehash of a selection from the police statements or recollections of hearsay conversations by third parties recorded seven years after the alleged events :-
QUOTE “The institution, they said, was ‘at a place called something similar to “Baro St Hoa..” END
And they go on
QUOTE. “Tiny Barão de São João . . . must be the place Iris Morgan remembered as “Baro St Hoa’ ….. What makes the charity-collector incidents significant to this story is that there was no orphanage or similar institution in Espiche, Barão de São João or anywhere in the area” END. [MY emphases]
REF 25
I do not pretend to be an Investigative Journalist. I have never attended a Journalist School.
I was once a professional detective and received extensive training for the role, attending courses at the CID Training School, Hutton Hall, Preston and later at the BKA HQ and Training School in Wiesbaden, Hesse, and in more senior rank a course and later still an International Conference at the Polizei Führungsakademie [Police Command College] in Münster, NRW.
In German.
I do however have a new-fangled device called a Computer on which is a programme called ‘Google’ which can search the ‘web’
So I typed in “Orphanage near Praia da Luz’ and it came up with several in the immediate area, including detailed maps and links to websites and histories and appeals for funds and lots of other exciting stuff. One is less than 150 metres from Apartment 5A.
REF 26
Quite why none of Summers, Swan, Netflix researchers and editors, nor indeed ‘Investigative Journalists” – or even one of Clarke's minions or employees – could not do the same is not clear. But they clearly didn’t, and for some reason do not seem embarrassed by their failure or negligence.
One who did, who posts on Twitter as @McCannCaseTweet did her own ‘investigation’, by picking up a “telephone”. She simply rang one of the orphanages and recorded the conversation in which they confirm they do indeed send out teams of people into the surrounding villages and towns once a year to collect donations. All armed with ID cards and Brochures . . .
Simply access https://twitter.com/i/status/1608557829698514944
REF 27
We remember that the witnesses in the original articles all said they were presented with ID cards and Brochures. It is repeated several times in the S&S book
Is it not at least possible that in the third hand account of a recollection from 7 years before of the name given and then rendered fourth hand as a vague and unrecorded recollection of someone who does not speak Portuguese fluently or at all,
“Baro St Hoa” might not have been
“Bom Samaritano”. Or to give it its full title “Lar de Crianças Bom Samaritano”
But the absolute conviction from Summers and Swan’s book that there was no such place got churned by the British gutter press in its inimitable way.
Like this
https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/510625/Police-told-conman-tried-to-take-girl-weeks-before-Maddie
EXCLUSIVE:Mum in Portugal says conman tried to snatch child weeks before Maddie
SCOTLAND Yard detectives have interviewed a British woman whose three-year-old daughter narrowly escaped being taken by a paedophile suspect just weeks before Madeleine McCann disappeared.
By JAMES MURRAY
00:01, Sun, Sep 14, 2014
Today we can reveal that the worrying incident happened early in spring 2007 at a rented villa which overlooks a large expanse of wasteland in Praia da Luz on the Algarve which was searched this summer by Met search specialists and sniffer dogs.
The woman was surprised by a knock at the door from a lone conman who said he was collecting money for a nearby orphanage, which doesn’t exist.
…
The incident happened in the weeks before Madeleine was taken and has only just come to light in a book published last week, Looking For Madeleine, by investigative journalists Anthony Summers and his wife Robbyn Swan. [NB: 2014 , Seven YEARS after whatever took place]
The authors did not speak directly to the British woman, [Sic. and Nota Bene ! ] who has since returned to live in the UK. However, they spoke to a friend of hers who told them the story.
The book states: “A British citizen long resident in the Algarve has described the chilling episode when a man claiming to represent an orphanage came to the door of her friend, also English.
“There was a knock at the door, “ she recalled, “and the man standing there said he was collecting for some orphanage.
Robbyn added: “This is the single most important new piece of information in our book.”
The week before Madeleine vanished a man had gone to apartment 5a, where she later stayed, and sought a donation for an orphanage.
Paul Gordon, a British man renting the property with his family, gave the man ten euros. He, too, has been interviewed by police.
On April 20, 2007, British tourist Gail Cooper answered the door to a caller at her rented villa who sought money for an orphanage.
Checks by the authors and this newspaper suggests the charity collectors, who showed leaflets and identity cards, were bogus as there are no nearby orphanages. END QUOTE. [My emphases]
REF 28
There is of course an orphanage in Lagos and another in Portimão, and well as centres for children with special social needs elsewhere, including the one in PdL itself less than 150 metres from apartment 5A, about three minutes as the flip flops.
That might also loosely be described in Portuguese as an Orphanage.
I am indebted to a fluent Portuguese speaking ex-pat permanent resident of Portugal who has taken an interest in the case from the start for the following (edited by me)
“Many words in Portuguese don't really translate into what sounds like the same word in English... orfanato is one of these.
We have DOZENS of orfanatos in Portugal but not, in fact, many 'orphans', or 'orphanages'...
Children are admitted to most of these institutions because their parents are 'drug addicts or alcoholics'... the State takes over in other words.
Orfanato here really means 'long term care institution for underprivileged children'... definitely not an orphanage in the English sense of the word.
Also, there are almost NEVER orphans in Portugal because families are generally large ... there are always uncles/ aunts/ grandmothers ... but because of poverty, sometimes these family members simply cannot step in to help.
By the same token, if there is a horrible accident involving a family, and the father dies... press reports often say that the children were rendered 'ORPHANS', which of course they weren't because their mother survived... it's very strange how different cultures use the same expression/ word in such different ways....
I remember XX one day talking about someone 'orphaned of his father' (mother still alive) and just put it down to the whole wonderful mystery of translation…” END
REF 29
This has been independently confirmed from another source who have personal knowledge and experience of adoption of a genuine “orphan”. Very few of the children in ‘orfanatos’ and Childrens’ homes are actually available for adoption or fostering.
REF 29a
This may have a bearing on how various “investigative journalists’’ from the US and Spain who do not speak demotic Portuguese worded their question about ‘Orphanages’, if they ever did.
There is no evidence that Summers and Swan ever visited PdL. They seem to have relied on third or fourth hand hearsay evidence throughout. Clarke only started mentioning Orphanages after 2014 – the year their book was published, and in his book mentions them only twice alleging that they do not exist.
REF 30
The following may help to clarify the issue.
QUOTE. The Lucinda Anino dos Santos Social Assistance Center is a non-profit association, of social solidarity and private initiative, whose mission is to contribute to the inclusion and social promotion of younger, disabled and elderly population groups and populations in situations of fragility, or social exclusion in the municipality and region where it operates. UNQUOTE
REF 31
Fund raising is of course high on the agenda for any Charitable organisation, and another 15 milliseconds on google finds this :-
Entertainment evening raises money for Lagos orphanage
Portugal Resident
https://www.portugalresident.com › Archive
Apr 6, 2005 — The first prize of 100 euros was won by Mark Ellis, and the second prize, a bottle of Moet & Chandon kindly donated by the Hotel Algarve Casino, …
REF 32
And this :-
ALGARVE 41 CLUB MAKE A DONATION TO LAGOS ORPHANAGE
The Algarve 41 Club made a charity donation in December, to the Lagos Orphanage (Centro de Assistencia Social Lucinda Anino dos Santos) to benefit the children at Christmas.
The photograph shows Algarve 41 Club Chairman, Mike Trice handing the donation to the President, Jose Antonio Carreiro and his wife.
Orphans need your help ... The Bom Samaritano is a charitable home for abandoned children and those who have been removed from their parents as a result of abuse.
REF 33
And this :-
(referred to above, but here are the contact details for any investigative journalist who is minded to to accuse me of making this up, and even perhaps, perish the thought, wants to make their OWN investigations. . .)
https://www.larcbomsamaritano.org/
Lar de Crianças Bom Samaritano
Rua do Bom Samaritano, Urbanização Mar e Serra, Alvor 8500-783 Portimão
bomsamaritano@sapo.pt direcao@larcbomsamaritano.org
REF 34
And much more.
But of course I do not hold myself out to be an Investigative Journalist, so I know nothing. Clarke will no doubt craft an elegantly sneering and abusive put-down in due course, just he has several times towards Len Port, saying he is not a “real journalist“ Port has in fact been an acclaimed and accredited journalist since before Clarke was born.
He is thus of my generation, brought up to absorb insults. We have thicker skins than the young, and are able to rise above pathetic and juvenile insults and impotent threats
REF 35
But let me get in first. If as Robbyn Swan says “This [was] the single most important new piece of information in our book.” and it is comprehensively refuted by a 10 second google search, it is hardly surprising that the rest of the book contained so little of substance that it was withdrawn shortly after being offered for sale. A second edition is now back on the Amazon bookshelves, and is currently at 339,432 on the bestsellers’ list
To conclude
There were and there are Orphanages - so called - in the area of PdL and Lagos and Portimão
There were and there are volunteers who make cold-call visits to houses to solicit small donations.
They carry proper Identification and reference materials for any who are interested.
They are restricted in their activities to one visit per year or 6 months in any area.
Block 5 of the OceanClub within 3 minutes walk of one such ‘orfanato’ or children’s home, and with its ever-changing population of well-off holiday makers in ‘carefree holiday spending mode’ must surely have been a prime and regular target.
Is that difficult to understand ?
Or to find out by Investigation ?
What is interesting to note is that several of the ‘witnesses’ say they reported it to the police “Who did nothing”. That is code for :”They didn’t come back before the end of my holiday two days later and tell me they had TIEd them”
TIE = Trace, Interview and ELIMINATE. In a normal Serious Crime investigation the CID office manager would have done this on the phone minutes after being handed the TTBD sheet. [Things To Be Done]
But that doesn’t fill the pages of the papers left blank between the adverts which pay for it all.
Please See APPENDIX A for a fuller illustrated discussion, and see if you can find any possible reason why Summers and Swan, and then Clarke would wish to libel totally innocent, authorised volunteer Charity collectors as ”Conmen, Paedophiles and abductors of children”.
APP A
********
Whilst we are on the subject of the Olive Press and its Owner, Editor and journalist Jon Clarke . . .
(Again I am prepared to be proved wrong and once I see the references, I shall immediately apologise)
The Olive Press has to my knowledge never mentioned nor ever published articles about
* The Portuguese Supreme Court ruling, nor yet the ECHR ruling, and has printed neither the details nor the text of the final judgment in either case. It goes without saying that there has been no detailed discussion of the implications of those judgments.
* Nor, – again so far as I am aware – has the OP [yet] given details of the abject failure of the hugely expensive search of the small area of bank round the Arade Dam, (vide supra) despite Clarke’s long and lavishly illustrated article as it all started. [See chapter 55 Refs for the full article]
REF 36
It does increase the suspicion that the Tabloid and Gutter press, and even to a large extent the Main Steam Media are publishing to a very specific agenda, dictated to them by their paymasters, and are deliberately and wilfully ignoring any news or evidence which contradicts it.
The suspicion focusses on the leaders of the campaign in which are included Jon Clarke, his Olive Press, and a few others who may be “useful idiots”.
Clarke is NOT thought to be among their number. He is an intelligent, educated man. He may have a total blind-spot in this case, but that is also unlikely given the evidence from his other writings and researches.
I regret therefore that we must fear the worst.
But through all the nonsense we should never lose sight of the original issue.
A little girl is missing, and is presumed dead.
Those with responsibility for her safety have refused to speak truthfully about what happened, and have spend hundreds of thousands of pounds donated by the public to ensure the full story is never told.
The evidence from the original investigation and research over the past 15 years into a whole raft of side issues points squarely to Madeleine’s having died during the night of Sunday 30th to Monday 31st April 2007. The exact cause, and the reason for the cover up is still unclear.
On the back of that many writers, fraudulent detectives and journalists have made small fortunes inventing stories and sightings, and putting into the public domain ideas which are simply untrue.
As I said in a previous chapter (Ch.51)
“Indeed the whole of the past 14 years has, for Clarke and several others, been a question of imagining – but without detail – what happened, deciding who did it, and then looking for, or inventing, scraps of evidence and ‘sightings’ which can be interpreted or manipulated to support that pre-conception.“
And so I repeat:
Not only untrue and clearly invented, but with the clear aim over the past 16 years of finding someone who could be “fitted up” for an offence which in all probability was never committed in the first place.
In this way a string of stooges has been put forwards and SOLD to a gullible or complicit Tabloid press to be fed to their even more gullible readership, the whole thing led to a significant extent by Jon Clarke either through his own paper The Olive Press, or more directly into the Murdoch empire through the Sun and Sky News.
Tannerman, Smithman, Robert Murat, Russians, Moroccan Princes, Hewlett, Montiero, un-named family with a blond daughter called Madeleine, German guy with a VW camper and a blond daughter, unsuspecting bloke on a flight to Ibiza with his daughter [story syndicated in the UK and to 12 other countries and worth a FORTUNE ] and many more. Reid, Ney . . . You may take your pick.
And now the latest winner of the Olive Press TV Show
“SUSPECT OF THE MONTH”
CHRISTIAN BRÜCKNER
Quite apart from the very obvious covetous, avaricious and pleonetic nature of these crude inventions, we are in danger of getting close to Henry VIIIs ‘Reign of Terror’.
Under the Six Articles of 1539, formulated by Cromwell – “anyone who publishes, preaches, teaches, says, affirms, declares, disputes, argues or holds any opinion against transubstantiation would be deemed a heretic and would be burned.”
Or to bring it up to date, adapted from the fuller original text
And be it further enacted…
That if any person or persons, contemptuously refuse, deny, or abstain from the only Truth, that The Blessed St. Madeleine Beth of Rothley was Abducted and Murdered, {or alternatively Abducted but Not Murdered and living in sinful luxury in a Heathen Palace !} then every such offender shall suffer such imprisonment and make such fine and ransom to the McCanns, our Sovereign Lords and their heirs as by their Council shall be ordered and adjudged in that behalf;
And if any such offender do eftsoons refuse to be confessed or to be communicate, then every such offence shall be deemed and adjudged felony, and the offender shall suffer pains of death and shall lose and forfeit all his goods, lands, and tenements, as in cases of felony.
The terrible fates of the damnéd Heretics Brenda, Antony, and Gonçalo shall in all eternity be rememberéd !
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If there genuinely IS a dark secret which has still to be concealed from the public, I suggest this was and is not the way to go about it.
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