Showing posts with label 'My Search for Madeleine'. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 'My Search for Madeleine'. Show all posts

Chapter 42: 'My Search for Madeleine' - Jon Clarke. Some first impressions


'My Search for Madeleine', Jon Clarke. 2021
Some first impressions

* Stylistically it is a strange mixture.
 
It starts with more formal documentary account of events over a decade ago, and at times we have a recollection of having read parts before, a long time ago. Nothing wrong with copying and pasting one’s own words of course. It ensures that the meaning and details are not distorted by passage of time.

Then there are passages which are more gentle, even amusing and self deprecatory. He adopts a ‘matey’ style, with somewhat loose grammatical construction and syntax.

It is marred at times, as is so much of Clarke’s work, by viciousness and vituperation, and his pathological venom-spitting hatred of anyone who seeks to question either him or the “official narrative”, using all the well worn clichés, “evil, vitriolic minds behind this filth”, “his gang of trolls”, “and all the usual restricted vocabulary employed by those who will not, or cannot argue the case in a civilised manner. He adds the obligatory ad hominen attacks and repeats one or two well rehearsed lies, several of which have been discussed in other Chapters about Clarke and his progressive distancing of himself from the normal rules of veracity.

The first third is also a litany of all the suspects so far named and eliminated.
Murat, (of whom more later), Malinka, Walczuch, vonAesch, Hewlett, Ney, even Monteiro are all listed and examined but only in the sense that their alleged involvement is detailed.
Not, ‘and that’s an emphatic NOT’, in the sense that their eventual elimination from the enquiry is stressed or even grudgingly noted. It is as though Clarke is hedging his bets in case anyone in his book turns out to have been in any way involved in anything.
He quotes Paulo Rebelo, through ‘sources’ as saying he believed that ‘Russian child traffickers’ might be involved. And then adds “He might turn out to be correct”, and leaves hanging and unresolved the re-hashed story about the Angolan Bouncer and taking Madeleine to the USA.
Neat.

He grudgingly admits that Robert Murat, the man whom he personally helped to frame for a crime which may not even have been committed, “Looks as though [he] is innocent”.
You have to wait until p. 124 and the Netflix Nonsense before you find Clarke admitting his part, and “making an impromptu apology to him for effectively ruining his life.”

* And then we come to the Second part of the book.

Chapters 14 to 46, some 190 pages out of the 265 are devoted to the pursuit of a single person. A new suspect, but only in the minds of Clarke and H. Wolters, a German State Prosecutor.

He is, so far as I know, not a suspect in Portugal, nor probably in London, but Clarke seems totally convinced that this suspect is somehow better than all the previous ones.

This second two thirds of the book changes into a lengthy travelogue. The style changes again into the contemporary historical present with a suspiciously large amount of direct speech. Suspicious because with the possible exception of the interview with H. Wolters which may have been recorded with permission, it is unlikely that any of the direct quotes, in full quotation marks, are any such thing. Unless Clarke is wired for sound the whole time, of course.
But it is a style were are familiar with, and we must accept.

* In terms of Investigation it is a mixture.

Never once does Clarke question the abduction story. But also never once does he actually set out in print what the full story actually IS. What would have been involved, what the MO is thought to have been.

He appears to have swallowed the whole story that the shutters were forced, despite being on film watching the scenes-of-crime girl trying to find a single print on obviously intact shutters. He was there. He saw, but as Sherlock Holmes says to Watson in “A Scandal in Bohemia’ “You see, but you do not observe. The distinction is clear.”
Clarke saw, but he then seems to have assumed.

He styles himself as an Investigative journalist, but sometimes as merely a ‘stringer’ – one who “contributes reports, photos, or videos to a news organisation on an ongoing basis but is paid individually for each piece of published or broadcast work” WIKI.

Here in the first third of the book he has failed to investigate anything much.
And that which he did he got tragically and disgracefully wrong, identifying a man (Murat) as a suspect, having him interviewed, made “arguido”, hounded by the Tabloid press and universally vilified, and eventually awarded £600,000 in damages against the very tabloid papers for which Clarke had written, purely on the basis of an observable disability, and in Clarke’s own words “ruined his life”.
Clarke confesses that it was he, rather than Lori Campbell, who set it all in train.
They should both bow their heads in shame. People have resigned for less.


The second two thirds are a complete contrast. Here, although he is single-mindedly pursuing one man and filling in a mountain of background detail about him, he seems not to worry that the link between the reported disappearance of Madeleine and Christian Brückner is tenuous at least, even if, as Clarke apparently does, he believes there was an abduction in some vague unspecified way in some vague unspecified time frame.

It would be too easy to dismiss this as a witch hunt.
A child has died. Let’s lynch the local village idiot, and drown the old women with Alzheimers who talks to her cat and doesn’t wash.

But what is the difference between that and “A child has been reported missing. Let’s lynch the guy with the funny eye, and the bloke who steals diesel and goes to raves and smokes pot.”

Brückner may be involved in something. I have no evidence either way.
But until someone explains exactly what that something IS that he is supposed to be involved IN, we should all retain open minds and continue to ask the questions of those who are secure in their own pre-judgment.

The undoubted fact that he is not the sort of person with whom one would wish to have anything other than purely professional dealings, is undoubtedly a pervert, is probably severely psychologically damaged as Clarke catalogues, and has been convicted of a string of heinous crimes and misdemeanours, does not make him automatically guilty of every unsolved crime in Europe.

Clarke tries to suggest he is guilty of the unsolved disappearance of René Hassée, the little boy clearly washed out to sea at Aljezur, and even, almost incredibly, of the solved murder of Joanna Cipriano.
As one of the Tapas 7 said “I’m not making this up”.

Clarke’s description of Kate McCanns book as “excellent”, and of the Summers and Swann pathetic re-hash of existing statements as a “detailed benchmark tome” may give us an idea of the standards he applies.

There are several strange and jarring grammatical errors and malapropisms which an educated and experienced wordsmith or his editors and proofreaders should perhaps have found.
“. . . it was frustrating that despite Lori and I appearing to have almost cracked the case . . .”
“. . . sinister letter to my wife and I . . .”
“. . . they eyed Lawrence and I up suspiciously.”
are sub-O level, grammatically and structurally.
Of DCI Amaral’s book –
“which he wrote on retirement from the force and which must be viewed as extremely sceptical - “
is simple illiteracy. I think I know what he intends to convey but it takes some working out.


* And then there are the simply straightforward factual errors. 
Every one of these can be checked independently, and most people who have followed this case over the 14 years know the truth.
Clarke has exactly the same access to all the files and the reports as everyone else, and very probably much more. He is surely well aware that some of these are not true, and they therefore qualify as Lies.

“Amaral - who later wrote a lucrative book claiming the McCanns killed their daughter. . .”
He did NOT. His book suggests at worst accidental death and concealment of a body. Relatively minor offences. Nothing more.
“Amaral – who made enough money from his book to buy a new house”
He did not. Either make enough money, or buy a house

“It emerged that his [Murat’s] lazy eye was in fact a glass eye…”. [my emphasis]
It is not. Robert Murat has a detached retina and has no sight in the eye, like Gordon Brown and Admiral Lord Nelson. The eye is intact. It simply doesn’t work.
Murat explained this himself in detail at the Cambridge Union debate in 2008 and it was widely reported and is still on-line in the Guardian archive. [see Link, or google ‘Murat glass eye’ and read No 1]
Despite that the myth persists amongst the gutter press, and part of his speech was about how the Tabloids had ‘spoken to school friends’ which is Tabloid for totally invented stories, of his taking it out and rolling it round the playground.
But Clarke is clearly of that breed. He writes for and is paid by the red tops, Sun, Mirror and Mail, and has done for decades, so he doesn’t need to concern himself with facts or details too much. The truth washes over him without even cleaning off any of the dirt.

Although Clarke is happy to describe everyone else as Conspiracy Theorists, he is free with the most often used of their techniques. That of posing a question to which there is no immediate answer, and using that to form the foundation of the next part of the theory.
“Because we cannot yet fully understand the building of Stonehenge/Pyramids/Macchu Picchu (delete as appropriate) – – could it be that extra-terrestrials were at work. Only they surely had the advanced technology needed to move the stones/ flatten them/carry them to the top of the mountain.
And what did these beings look like, and where did they come from ? – note how it has now changed from a vague falsifiable suggestion into an accepted fact.

Consider these, a tiny sample of the whole

“Could it be that he discovered something he shouldn’t have, and got silenced ?
“Could he have been involved in some sort of child sex ring himself ?
“And could he be the same blond friend who . . .
“. . .could he be involved in Brückner’s crimes
“. . .could he have been working for a larger number of accomplices involved ?
“… may [sic] he have made considerable amounts of money from snatching her ?
“Regarding the gun, could this be the same one . . .
“Could this be the mystery business man ?
“Could this be the evidence that makes the German police so certain she is dead ?
“Could it be she found photos of Maddie ?
I don’t know Jon. You are the Investigative Journalist. Tell us. Or tell us you don’t know.

And then there is the list of TTBD. Things to be Done. Unfinished business.
For Clarke this involves digging up half of the Algarve and most of Niedersachsen.

This is just one paragraph.
”Why haven’t they excavated his infamous Yellow House in Praia da Luz? Why haven’t police dug up Villa Bianca in Foral where he spent considerable time? . . . Sabine Selllig has pleaded with police to dig up the grounds of the allotment home he lived in in Braunschweig . . And nothing.”
elsewhere -
“I haven’t seen any activity around here, no excavations, no police, no searches,”…
“ I expect the police will come and dig the place up at some stage . . .”
“Why hasn’t more been done on the grounds in Portugal, and Germany digging up Brueckner’s former properties and places of interest, looking for evidence ?”

There are lots of cellars and tunnels, and secret hiding places, real Indiana Jones and the Missing Child stuff, though sadly the Secret Hidden Secure Compound with the four largest and most dangerous dogs in the world with their world-record bite don’t merit a mention, even in passing.
Which is a shame. I was looking forward to them.

There is an entire chapter on the Casa Pia case. But after six pages it ends in the rather plaintive sentence
“But it didn’t solve the mystery of Maddie.”
Well, no. Nothing at all to do with it.

So it’s a bit messy, a bit mixed. Sometimes episodic, sometimes a chronological travelogue, other times thematic. For someone who has not followed the story so far it could be confusing.
But as someone once said “Confusion is good”.

And of the McCanns ?
“I never wavered in my belief that the parents were innocent.”
“Because I believed the McCanns were entirely innocent . .”
“Whilst the documentary didn’t have a knockout punch it did raise a number of key issues . . . .the family were almost certainly innocent . .”

And of H. Fülscher, defence lawyer for Brückner ?
“eccentric”

And of the unending innuendo ?
“he said some things. . . and about his private life – but he insisted I did not publish them. I have agreed not to.”
“why he left in 1999 is open to conjecture, and it would be unfair to print any of the gossip . . .”
“There was something very dark about W. . ., I wish I could ask W, who was gay and had a younger boyfriend, but he died in 2017”

Easy isn’t it Jon? Lucky that most of the rest of humanity finds it unacceptable.

But I shall follow it up in the next Chapter. Out soon. Free.


LINK

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2009/mar/06/tabloids-madeleine-mccann-robert-murat
Labels: , ,

Chapter 43: My Search for Madeleine McCann – Jon Clarke. The framing of Robert Murat

'My Search for Madeleine' – Jon Clarke
The Framing of Robert Murat by Jon Clarke

What follows is from Jon Clarke’s new book, much of it in his own words.

Readers must decide for themselves whether this is ‘well within the bounds of normal. . .’ journalism, or is something more egregious that should be exposed as the grubby money-grabbing gutter-press tactics it seems to be.

For the last 14 years those who have followed this dreadful case have been wrong in one significant particular. We had all believed that Lori Campbell of the Sunday Mirror was the origin of the case developed against Robert Murat, the ex-pat who lived in Praia da Luz and stepped forward to help the McCanns and the police by interpreting between English and Portuguese.

Murat lives a short distance away from the centre of activity, was well known in the area through his business as an estate agent, was divorced and had a daughter about the same age as Madeleine. He tried to help.

For his pains he was identified as ‘strange”, then identified as the person who had taken Madeleine, then had a campaign of investigation stirred up against him, resulting in his house being searched, his private life being exposed, his being interviewed and given ‘arguido’ (formal suspect) status, equivalent to being ‘Under Caution’ in the English system, being vilified and abused in the British Tabloid press, until eventually the PJ realised he was nothing to do with the case, released him from his status, and he subsequently won damages from the press who had hounded him for so long.

Initially Lori Campbell took apparent pride in having been the first to point him out.

With the publication of Clarke’s book we find he claims that extremely dubious “honour” for himself.
So in yet another part of this murky story the red arrow points back to Clarke.

In his book Clarke describes himself as starting as a “stringer’, a free-lance reporter. He then styles himself as a Journalist, and an Investigative journalist,
But from his arrival at PdL his clearly stated aim is not to report, or investigate the circumstances to find out what happened and who might have done it –
It is to FIND MADELEINE, to SOLVE the case.
“One Reporter’s 14-Year Hunt To Solve Europe’s Most Harrowing Crime”
and at page 24 – including the hilarious malapropism –
“From the very first moment I arrived in Praia da Luz that May morning in 2007, my overbearing [sic] drive was to solve the mystery and find young Maddie.”

(We must remember that in Clarke’s world the one to find Madeleine gets the prize. Not just a fat cheque for an article, but acclaim, TV shows, endless interviews, book reviews. . . It is worth a fortune – to anyone other than a Police officer. This is a man who freely admits and seems proud of having sold ‘stolen’ photos of an intensely private and intimate moment between two people and buying his family home with the proceeds. Some people’s moral compass apparently allows them to exist like that.)

Suddenly, without even changing clothes in a phone box, he has transformed from mild mannered reporter Jon Clarke-Kent into a latter day Supersleuth dedicated to “The never ending battle for truth, and justice. . .” The Righter of Wrongs and Solver of Crimes.
But perhaps Clarke-Kent should take heed of another Super-hero’s words. “With great power, there must also come great responsibility."
Clarke does have great power. He owns a newspaper, and has access to the Tabloid press of the UK, and the English speaking world. Even if his words are challenged the damage has been done, they remain in print and on-line forever. What he says stays said, and cannot be un-said. That is Power.

But he isn’t a detective. He has never done the job, has no experience of how it actually works. He may have seen it in operation, but clearly has no understanding of the mechanism, hence his endless criticism of the slow pace of the investigation.

There is nothing inherently wrong with Morse, or Miss Marple, or Lord Peter Wimsey, nor yet with Sherlock Holmes or Maigret. It is just that they are fiction. They include some cracking good stories, but they are just that. Cleverly constructed stories.

Real detective work is largely grindingly slow attention to detail, relevant or not, endless TTBD (things to be done), statements from people who clearly have nothing at all to do with the actual case but who must be eliminated so that ultimately you DO follow Sherlock Holmes and think – “When you have eliminated all which is impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” (Case Book of SH)

And that is what Clarke and others like him do not understand.
In the TV and Tabloid world the Ace Detective solves a major crime in 28 minutes, including the commercial break, and usually by going down one single track, and finding success at the end.

That can happen of course, but it is usually either coincidental, or the case was so obvious from the start that little background work was necessary.

*******


Anyone who starts from 10pm Thursday 3/5/7 and accepts uncritically that Madeleine McCann was abducted from her bed sometime during that evening is at a huge advantage.

The brilliance and ease of this approach is that you then do not have to concern yourself with the lack of evidence, or with the contradictions in the statements. You do not even have to consider the evidence which points away from that. Because you start AFTER the event.

You do not have to construct or explain a detailed scenario, and you can happily condemn as trolls or evil or incompetent anyone who does not follow what you KNOW, because you have been TOLD.
Like the GNR, the PJ, the MetPol, the State Prosecutor, The Appeal Court, the Supreme Court, the compilers of the “Gerry McCann’s blogs”, “Nigel’s McCann files”, and the host of discussion fora.
You can dismiss them. All evil vicious trolls pedalling filth.

Because you know better.
You know Madeleine was abducted, because someone said so, even though they have not provided you with sufficient evidence for you to think it through and to agree or disagree.
It becomes a matter not of mere Belief, but of Faith, and therefore anyone who says anything different is automatically a Heretic, an Apostate, and Infidel, and as in a well known Bronze Age religion can be condemned to death.
As was the late Brenda Leyland. RIP.

When someone produces concrete evidence which disturbs the original article of Faith, it challenges the very foundation of that Belief and you have no choice but to lash out and silence them. Never can you be seen to allow questions which attack the Belief, and never can you be put to the test of replying or offering counter-evidence.

You Know you are Right, and everyone else is Wrong. It is as simple as that.

And we have seen it many times. In newspapers and in this book, and in the courts, McCanns v. Bennett, and McCanns v. Amaral and others, where there was no attempt to argue the central issue. Both were clever legal manipulations and became about a procedural issue in the first case, and personal rights to reputation in the second. The question of the alleged abduction was not put, though on the record the judge in the first, Tugendhat J, took the point himself and as he passed judgment in the way the law forced him to, mused about the legal position if Madeleine had NOT been abducted.

(We can help him there. There will have been multiple cases of Perjury, conspiracy to commit Perjury, Malicious Prosecution, and Wrongful Imprisonment as a consequence. The punishment will be condign. The damages exemplary and punitive.)

****

But then there are a few Believers who also clearly recognise the difficulty of creating a credible scenario, and struggle to fill in the blanks to maintain the Belief whilst staying sane.
They stick with the bare outline of the Belief, but are then forced to invent or imagine other elements to make it in any way workable.

For this reason the very small window was officially abandoned quite early, as were the broken shutters.
For this reason the unlocked patio door became the focus.
For this reason the ‘note in reception’ which has never been made public, becomes important.
Then there must have been two people involved, or possibly more acting as lookouts
Then the children must have been drugged
Then someone must have been watching all week
And from there they must have been ‘taking notes’
There must have been someone in the Tapas Bar signalling, or communicating with the abductor/s
There must have been a minibus or camper wagon,
and so on
Every one of these has been seriously suggested, and printed in the Tabloid press. It becomes increasingly absurd, but to maintain the core Belief there is no option.

The parallels with religious faith are all too clear. Religions usually have a underlying core principle like the Christian one – “Be nice to people” – but then surround themselves with ‘fairy stories’ about flying horses, hyperspace travel, footprints in stone blocks, revelations, visits from angels, serial immaculate conceptions, resurrections, miracles and all the rest, designed to fill in the gaps when children start asking difficult questions.



****
Let us look at what Clarke-Kent, the alter ego of the fearless Supersleuth did in those early hours of his visit.
I make no apology for the length of the three separate excerpts, as they are important in understanding the extent of Clarke’s egregious involvement in the framing of Robert Murat.

“No names in the disappearance of Madeleine McCann are as distinctive – or as controversial and memorable – as Robert Murat’s. . . Now, I want you to picture the scene and how exactly this 34 year old emerged as suspicious on my radar. After being largely blocked at the Ocean Club reception, I had walked up to the junction of the block, close to the front door of Apartment 5A, when, bang, he was there. Slightly scruffy and dishevelled, and with what looked like a lazy eye, he was earnest, excited and definitely over-friendly; he immediately asserted himself as being an important source in the ongoing search.” . . .

”Over a ten-minute chat, Murat told me more about the family, and the friends the McCanns were with. He explained that Gerry and Kate were doctors – he a cardiologist and she a GP – from Leicestershire and were on holiday with three other families, including eight children. He explained that they had been having dinner at the tapas restaurant in the grounds just below their apartments, checking on the kids every so often.”. . .

“Why did the police, resort and family allow him to traipse around Apartment 5A leaving his fingerprints and DNA all over a potential crime scene? Was he appointed by the now-disgraced police officer Goncalo [sic] Amaral? It didn’t make sense.”

Let us start from the third paragraph.
Is there any evidence that Murat was “allowed to traipse round the apartment” ?
It was sealed off around 2am, after the McCanns and all the Tapas group had been thrown out, and even Clarke himself admits in one of his three different Versions of the Truth, that he did not gain entry because of the Police tape.
So we may file this with Clarke’s normal sneering innuendo and nonsense.

The second paragraph is more revealing. Here Clarke admits that the information he had about the abduction came from Murat, and not from any formal briefing or personal contact with the police or a Tapas member. Yet he assumed it was factually correct and evidentially credible. Why ?

But it is the wording in the first paragraph which is revealing.
“Slightly scruffy and dishevelled, and with what looked like a lazy eye . . he was earnest, excited and definitely over-friendly:”

Clarke’s normal mode of dress and standard of personal grooming might be excusable if, as an Investigative Journalist, he believes he might blend in. But for him to describe anyone else as scruffy and dishevelled as a pejorative statement is something the reader may judge against his well documented standards of personal grooming and sartorial elegance.


And then there is the “lazy eye”

A short Digression on disability and facial deformity

The Copper’s Nose, or the Ability to Sniff out a Wrong ’un is not innate. It is acquired from long and regular contact with criminals and liars. The art or skill has been studied academically at various times, and relates to facial expressions, body language, gross and minor bodily movements during speech, identifying mismatches between what is being said and what the other signs are indicating, and much more.
Even the most obvious and frequent signs of scratching the nose, pulling the ear or touching the face are now better understood at a physiological level caused by Adrenaline rush leading to localised dilation of capillaries resulting in a feeling of heat in those areas, and the involuntary need to touch to ensure there is nothing ‘wrong’.

If a person has a physical deformity, facial injury or a disability, it is important not to misinterpret these signs.

On TV and film deformity and facial scarring have long been a ‘trope’ for criminality or evil. Think of the Orcs v. Elves in ‘Lord of the Rings’.

60% of American film villains have facial injury, the majority of Bond villains do, and this trope got so hackneyed that in 2018 the BFI – British Film Institute – announced it would no longer fund films including villains with facial scars. (In the first books Bond himself had a long scar down his right cheek, though never on screen). It is a lazy stereotype, and has no place in a world which embraces difference and diversity, and seeks to be more understanding of disability.

There is a suggestion that the duelling scars on the left cheeks of many German Generals in both World Wars from their student days may have helped perpetuate this trope. The clubs exist to this day – ‘Burschenschaften”.

**
Robert Murat lost the sight on one eye in an accident as a youth. The retina became detached, and he lost the sight of the eye. He did not lose the eye. It remains in place and “healthy”.
Exactly as did Gordon Brown, and Admiral Lord Nelson. None of them used an eye patch.

However, over the years, because it is not being used actively, only passively in tandem with the working one, the six orbital muscles lose their tone, and the eye becomes ‘lazy’ in common parlance. It follows, but not as accurately as the other, and will not ‘focus’ on the same spot.

Humans with good vision are acutely aware of where another person is looking. Children often play games talking to a friend but looking at their ear. It can be acutely disturbing, as is looking directly at a person but focusing on a point in the far distance – looking right through them. The vacant expression.

A person with no sight at all may appear to have a ‘blank’ expression, staring vacantly forwards, or more usually with the eyes flicking around apparently searching for stimulus.

A person with ‘amblyopia’, sight in only one eye, monocular vision, will behave differently. The lack of stereoscopic vision affects depth perception, causing the person to be more careful at kerbs or on the last of a flight of stairs, and possible moving of the head to obtain a visual scan.

They may move their head or realign their whole body when speaking to someone, to ensure that the person speaking is within the field of view, and as some have observed, the brain ’thinks’ the centre of the body is slightly to the sighted side, and the person may lean sideways very slightly.

All of this is freely available on the RNIB and other web sites, and there is no excuse for professionals who deal in personal contact with people not to be aware of it.

**
A person with only one working eye can therefore give out a different and ‘non-standard’ subliminal message, can appear ‘shifty’, and it appears here that Clarke, and in turn Lori Campbell, lacked sufficient experience of life to understand what they were seeing, or were so overwhelmed by the thought of making money out of ‘cracking the case’ that they ignored it and fitted him up.

Later in the book Clarke commits another of his classic errors, failing to do even the most basic research, when he says “It emerged that his lazy eye was in fact a glass eye,”

No. It didn’t, and it isn’t. That is yet another to add to the long catalogue of Clarke’s negligent mistakes or deliberate inventions and untruths.

As is Clarke’s endless repetition that Murat was arrested. He was not. He was interviewed ‘under caution’, as an “arguido”. There is a vast difference, which he either knows and ignores, or should look up and learn. Is that too much to ask after 14 years ?
Even Clarke’s own favourite source of funds for rubbish stories, The Sun, accepts that.

“Even though he was never arrested, Murat became the subject of intense scrutiny from the media and in 2009 he claimed the pressure came close to destroying his life.” [Link below]

Though in their defence The Sun does point the finger directly at Clarke as the source of his year of misery.
“But suspicion turned on him when a journalist told police that Murat had been asking lots of questions about the case.”

And so Clarke and Campbell picked on a man with a disability, and arranged for him to be pursued, hounded, abused and vilified for more than a year. They so arranged it that the PJ raided and searched his home, made him the first official suspect, ‘arguido’, in this case, and did not release him from this for over a year.

Kate crowed about it in her autobiography and Clarke gives us a full chapter on Murat, and then one each on his close friends Walczuch and Malinka.

So determined is Clarke that he has single-handedly SOLVED the case, that he shows evident distress in being away when Campbell “goes live’ and threatens to take the glory for herself.

Again I make no apology for the length of the extract. It is necessary to understand the full extent of their egregious iniquity.

“Lori had been making headway. She told me she had also met Robert Murat, whom she found ‘odd’ and obtuse. She said he had told her about his failed marriage and how his daughter had moved back to the UK with her mother. She said she had grown suspicious when she heard him make what she thought was a deliberately loud phone call to his daughter back in the UK.”

“These concerns about Murat had been enough for Lori to make a Monday morning phone call to the British consul and police in Leicestershire, the force that was now liaising with the Portuguese police on the ground in Praia da Luz. By Tuesday afternoon she’d had no response, so . . .”

“By Saturday May 12 – print day – we didn’t have enough to pin anything concrete to Robert Murat. It was frustrating, but we could understand the newsdesk’s requirement for caution, legally, and so we didn’t hamper the police investigation. With the story at something of a dead end, I went home, agreeing to return the following week, if needed.
I was back in Ronda with my family when Murat got arrested. [sic] In a coordinated operation, police raided his home, Casa Liliana, before 6am on Monday, May 14, and by 7am they’d entered his girlfriend Michaela’s house and three other properties that were linked to him.
By the time I woke up it was all over the national news networks and Sky reporter Ian Woods was reporting live from outside Murat’s home. It looked like a massive breakthrough so it was frustrating that despite Lori and I appearing to have almost cracked the case, I was in Spain. I could only flick from channel to channel as Lori appeared on Portuguese and British TV, explaining her theories.”

Just read that bit in bold again, (ignoring the hideous grammar and syntax). Clarke wanted to bask in the glory of having cracked the case.

But then Clarke has to pull his horns in.
“Looking through the PJ files (the nearly complete Portuguese investigative file) today, it is clear that detectives agreed that our theory was strong … but the truth is, they never really had any firm evidence.”

Well quite. There wasn’t any. 
The PJ were bounced into taking action by international pressure based on something invented by Clarke and Campbell.

and then 18 pages later
“Looking at the PJ files from the days around Murat’s arrest on May 14, 2007, it is apparent the police had scant physical evidence that he might be involved.”
and not until p. 75 does Clarke admit “So, in hindsight, it looks as though Murat is innocent.”
But look at the hedging. “never had firm evidence, scant physical evidence, looks as though Murat is innocent”. Clarke will not give up. He believed, and admitting error is difficult for someone like Clarke.

Think of the Superhero :“With great power, there must also come great responsibility’, and despair.

It became obvious to DCI Gonçalo Amaral that this sort of deliberate interference in his meticulous sifting of the available evidence was being organised to divert his and his officer’s’ attention from their main task.

If Clarke and Campbell were not, as Clarke has often somewhat defensively claimed, part of that coordinated campaign then from reading the above we can perhaps at least understand why Amaral might have thought it, and why his forthcoming book addresses the issue.

Footnote 1
There is a somewhat battered and tarnished silver lining to this disgraceful attack on an innocent man and his friends.
Robert Murat was awarded £600,000 in damages, probably ten times what Clarke will ever make from his grubby attempt to cash in on the death of a little girl, however ‘dressed up’ it is as an account of a Search.
Murat was also invited to speak in a debate at the Cambridge University Union Society, a singular honour unlikely ever to be extended to Clarke or Campbell, where “He told a student audience at Cambridge University that he had "felt like a fox being pursued by a pack of hounds ... [caught] between a Kafka novel and the Will Smith movie Enemy of the State".
It was all lies,”

Footnote 2
Even if it turns out there was an abduction between 2120 and 2125, and even if it turns out Brückner ‘did it’, and even if there is sufficient evidence to prosecute and convict him, the case will be presented based on evidence collected by the PJ and the BKA, and not on a self-published flimsily bound paper back written by a free-lance journalist.
Sorry, but that is how the legal system works.
The very best Clarke will be able to say is “I told you so”.

Footnote 3
Because of the haphazard way this book is set out, further research brings up things apparently ‘hidden’ deeper into the text, and away from the original discussion.

“And what I have also recently discovered is that he [Murat] apparently did have clearance to work as a translator in Portugal, having worked as one in the UK before, earning £150 a time for Norfolk Police. While this was never confirmed to the press at the time – nor even the McCanns – it appears that behind the scenes he was actually sanctioned by the British Embassy in Lisbon.”

And this after getting people to say that Robert Murat. ”tried to mislead journalists by pretending to be acting in an official capacity for the police.”
So all that nonsense from Clarke and Campbell was written and done in total, complete, and profound ignorance of the facts.
No wonder Clarke claims to have muttered “an impromptu apology to him for effectively ruining his life.”

And as for Lori Campbell, perhaps the least said the better., Except that her co-starring role in this disgusting horror story should never be glossed over. Campbell and Clarke acted together. In concert, to hound an innocent disabled man.

“The story, headlined "Journalist reported man to the police", and accompanying video, titled "It reminded me of Soham", went up on the Sky News website within days of McCann's abduction in May 2007. The video featured an interview with Lori Campbell, the Sunday Mirror journalist who reported Murat to the police,”

“This settlement represents the final stage of Mr Murat's claims against those sections of the British media which defamed him so terribly," he added.

"He has been entirely successful and vindicated. It was particularly important to him to nail this particular lie – that he acted in some way reminiscent to the Soham murderer Ian Huntley when, in fact, he was working flat out to help try to find Madeleine."                                Guardian LINK

And what did Campbell have to say about her part in these LIES ?

“My decision to report Murat had nothing to do with being a journalist. It was based on gut instinct and a natural sense of duty that I should share my suspicions. Given the unimaginable horrors which Madeleine's parents were enduring, it seemed the very least I should do.”

No. It was nothing at all to do with a sense of duty. It was everything about being a journalist and ultimately about MONEY, as Clarke has inadvertently revealed.
Labels: , , , ,

Chapter 45: 'My Search for Madeleine' - Jon Clarke. Mopping up the mess

CHAPTER 45. My Search for Madeleine - Jon Clarke - 2021
Mopping up the mess.

Some unconsidered trifles, the usual lies, stupid mistakes,
falsehoods and total nonsense.

Nothing to see here. Move along please !

Having read Jon Clarke’s articles on-line for many years, and now having read this book, one is forced to ask the question “Why does he do it ?”
Not “why does he write articles” ? That is easy. He is a journalist and the owner of a small free news and advert paper which he claims has a readership of over 500,000.
                 (It is notable that this figure its not Audited and verified by the PGD/OJD, which is the section for free publications of the OJD, the official Spanish media auditors, which verify circulation figures.
This is to protect advertisers, so they are not scammed by wholly invented circulation figures.
But Clarke says the figure is 500,000. “and surely he is an honourable man”. ). 1

Over the years we have been treated to a huge rock on a road which we were told was less dense than balsa wood, we have had a small Spanish fighting bull seriously described as weighing more than an elephant, and much more.
The question is rather “Why does he churn out such rubbish.?”

This book does not change that question
••••

JON CLARKE-KENT. SUPERSLEUTH

Clarke has successively described himself as a ‘stringer’, an editor, a journalist and an Investigative Journalist. In this case he is not content to report or to investigate before reporting.

In this case he has promoted himself to Detective. He becomes determined to Solve the Case Himself.
“From the very first moment I arrived in Praia da Luz that May morning in 2007, my overbearing [sic] drive was to solve the mystery and find young Maddie.”

“We went straight down to investigate and, not for the first time, I genuinely believed we might have been close to solving the mystery.”

“But it didn’t solve the mystery of Maddie.”

And then he imputes this motive to others. Writing of Robert Murat he says
“given he was a local expat, and would, understandably, want to try and solve the crime” [Try TO is better]
Murat was there trying to help the Police, the PJ, in their investigation, not to “solve the crime”.
Murat would, as almost everyone else would, want the ‘crime’ to be solved. But not to do it himself, singlehanded.
Might it be that Clarke’s eagerness to frame Murat was to remove him as a potential challenge to himself ? [See Chapter 42, The framing of Robert Murat]

Later he clearly gets worried and frustrated that his glory is about to be snatched away, first by Lori Campbell –
“By the time I woke up it was all over the national news networks and Sky reporter Ian Woods was reporting live from outside Murat’s home. It looked like a massive breakthrough so it was frustrating that despite Lori and I [sic] appearing to have almost cracked the case, I was in Spain. I could only flick from channel to channel as Lori appeared on Portuguese and British TV, explaining her theories.”

and later by the makers of the Netflix documentary –
“I wondered what the filmmakers might have found. Would there be anything groundbreaking? Would it solve the crime of the century?”

Clarke’s histrionic performances in that film may be another manifestation of his wish to feel ‘important’ in the scheme of things, so that when whatever happened is finally determined his name will be forever associated with that determination.

There is however an obvious trap inherent in that approach. If, or more likely when it is determined that there was no Abduction, as is obvious to many who have studied the case from the first detectives at the scene onwards, and/or if it becomes apparent that Christian Brückner was not in any way involved, Clarke’s name may indeed be forever associated with the case, towards the top of the list of those totally duped and deceived by the “official story” and who deliberately and wilfully ignored the clear evidence available to them because it conflicted with their own pre-judged ‘Belief’.

He will not be able to argue that he was independent and disinterested [in the correct use of that word],

and was merely reporting on events as they unfolded before him.

His plaintive whimper that he is merely one the crowd neither convinces nor excuses.
“There were lots of whispers and conjecture, but I can honestly say that not one reporter, at that stage, considered for a second that the family might in any way be involved.”

****

NONSENSE ON STILTS
We now come to one of the most astonishing, ludicrous, and seriously libellous claims we have read so far.

Clarke’s claim that Madeleine’s DNA was “PLANTED” in the hire car.

“We will also look at credible claims that Maddie’s DNA might have been planted in a hire car the McCanns had hired three weeks AFTER she had vanished,…”. p. 17
The fact that he doesn’t return to the issue, neither ‘looks at the … claims’ nor references them points to this being another malicious invention on his part.
[Dr Amaral and his legal team have been made aware of this gross Libel.]

“So desperate was Amaral to get a win, I now wonder if it was possible that the police even planted Maddie’s DNA in the rental car the family had hired from Europcar a month after she went missing.” p.83

Just chew that over for a moment.
Clarke is alleging, albeit trying to keep out of serious trouble by using the words “might” and “wonder”, that DCI Amaral conspired with others to plant evidence in the form of Madeleine’s DNA in the hire car, in order to obtain a wrongful conviction and false imprisonment of one or both of the parents.

Even the most superficial knowledge of this case will tell you that there was no uncontaminated comparison DNA of Madeleine found in the apartment, and that GM had to return to Rothley to bring a pillowcase, which is said to have had sufficient cellular material for her DNA profile to be established.
“It was widely reported that the father returned home to Rothley in mid-May 2007 to obtain a pillowcase from her bed. For some reason there was no toothbrush, no hairbrush, no clothing nor any other object exclusive to the child while on holiday from which a profile could be obtained.
It would also seem that there was no toothbrush nor hairbrush available in Rothley, either.”     REF 2

This is in fact the trip which coincided with the release of the forged Pool Photo, GM departed 20th May, returned with Mitchell 22nd May, sister PM also arrived on 22/5, photo was sent to APF on 23/5 and released into the public domain on 24/5 with the exhortion to ”look at the time”, clearly an instruction to look at the date.

It was that total absence of any forensic evidence of any kind including Madeleine’s DNA which raised one of the very many early Red Flags in the investigation, leading to the suggestion that the whole apartment had been deep-cleaned during the week to remove all traces of blood and bodily fluids and any cellular material.

There is therefore a vanishingly small amount of Madeleine’s DNA available, and it would be confined to the items sent for screening.

The suggestion that the PJ, under the command of DCI Amaral would wait until the McCanns hired a car 28 days later just before they went to Rome, and then ‘plant’ Madeline’s DNA in it, specifically in the wheel well, in the boot and on the key fob is, with respect, so utterly ludicrous as to render worthless almost everything else Clarke may have to say about this case.

The dogs did not alert to DNA. Dogs cannot detect DNA. That is an elementary and fundamental lack of understanding of one of the most important issues in this case.

They alerted to Human cadaverine, a chemical formed by putrefaction with the formula NH2(CH2)5NH2 which does not contain DNA, and to Human blood, which contains very little. [Only white blood cells – leucocytes – contain DNA. Red corpuscles have no nucleus and therefore no DNA – which is why they are not called ‘cells’]

The Scenes of Crime officers collect specimens, their colleagues in Forensic Science laboratories search for, isolate and identify DNA within the nuclei of the leucocytes or within, for example, cells from a hair follicle. The mouth swab we are familiar with from modern Police dramas collects cells from the mucosa of the cheek. Cells, each with a nucleus containing DNA.
DNA is not something you can carry round in a convenient spray, or on a swab in a jiffy bag ready to smear on the vehicle of anyone you want to ‘set up’.

But Clarke is determined that he is right, and pours scorn on any evidence which does not fit his preconception.
“… and nothing has come close to changing my view. Not even the so-called evidence from sniffer dogs – who allegedly scented her body and blood in the apartment in two places, particularly behind the sofa, as well as in the McCanns’ rental car. Some of their explosive findings might well have some critical relevance today, as we shall see.”

“So-called evidence”, “allegedly scented her body and blood”
It is difficult to know where to begin with sneering nonsense of that sort, or whether even to try.

I will observe that yet again Clarke falls into the very trap the McCanns are determined he should avoid as he incriminates them even more than do the actual facts.

The dogs alerted to Human Blood and Human Cadaverine. The McCanns specifically deny it was Madeleine’s, and came up with a list of possibilities of varying absurdity – from a previous tenant’s having cut himself badly whilst shaving and then wandering round the apartment including behind the sofa all the time dripping blood onto the floor tiles, to the now legendary and unforgettable Kamikaze mosquitos which having drunk from a human flew so fast and so erratically they smashed themselves into the wall behind the sofa leaving drops of blood as they burst on impact. [This is not a phenomenon known to reputable conventional science]
As Jane Tanner once notoriously said “I am not making this up”.

But Clarke says the dogs allegedly scented HER body and blood. And as a Geography graduate he will clearly know better than dog handlers, seasoned detectives, Scenes of Crime operatives and forensic scientists.

****
MORE NONSENSE

Clarke went to Neuwegensleben, a small village and visited an empty factory once owned by Brückner. There he found the remains of a blue Renault Twingo, also owned by Brückner.
“However, when I opened the boot I noted that the spare tyre was still in place and out of curiosity I lifted 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.”

Clarke took photos of the boot and the scissors which accompanied the puff-piece to advertise his book - especially to readers of The SUN. (Which may explain a lot.)

Clarke has no German and is therefore unable to ask about what the scissors might represent, and may therefore be totally and blissfully secure in his own ignorance of German Traffic Law which makes compulsory the carrying of a First Aid kit in a motor vehicle. With Teutonic efficiency it further specifies exactly what must be in it. It must include by law, ”Scissors DIN 58279 - B 190”. These are blunt ended ‘Lister’ scissors, with angled blades to allow them to push the lower blade with the flattened end under restrictive clothing, a tight seat belt or a dressing to cut it open.

Like this. These are modern and have the Plastic handle


This is the Kit provided in a BMW Roadster









And this one of the cheaper versions on sale.
Neatly packed into a small black plastic box, designed to
fit in the wheel well ‘inside’ the spare wheel.





There is a small black plastic box visible on the ground under the boot of the Twingo. It is highly likely this is the First Aid box, out of which the children who did exactly what Clarke did – opened the boot and removed the spare wheel – before throwing stones at the car to break its windows, and using their BB and airguns to make the small visible dents in the bodywork, and then removing and playing with the bandages and other contents.
Clarke does not report having bothered to investigate it.

And yet Clarke, fount of all knowledge on things German, sneers at the State Prosecutor for not taking seriously a pair of scissors.
“…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.”

****

DOGS , POLICE, – AND MORE SNEERING

Before starting this short section readers are urged to watch the News-reel videos of the scene on Clarke’s arrived in PdL. It is available at https://www.gettyimages.co.uk/detail/video/exterior-shots-around-the-ocean-club-apartments-in-pria-news-footage/487715446 amongst many other places      REF 4

You will notice the dog vans, the dog handlers, the dogs, the reporters milling around close to the stairwell, the groups of Police officers, and general bustle of activity clearly apparent before the McCanns are ushered out and taken away by car. If you scroll back in one of the videos you will see Clarke staring at the dog van and toward the unmarked and intact shutters after shaking hands with the GNR officer.

Despite knowing full well that this is in the public domain and can be viewed free by the entire world, Clarke insists there were very few Police around, no journalists and for reasons entirely of his own – no dogs,
“I was shocked to see some sniffer dogs making an appearance later on that afternoon, some 18 hours after the child had gone missing.”
“Among the information I filed was the arrival of the sniffer dogs at around 4pm.”
This is again in direct contradiction to what Kate McCann recorded in her autobiography, and therefore Clarke has no choice but to attempt to negate what she said.

“At the time, I didn’t know if they had been there the night before (in Kate McCann’s book Madeleine: Our Daughter’s Disappearance and the Continuing Search for Her, she insists they had two dogs brought in to track the surrounding area at around 2am the night Maddie went missing), but it struck me as tardy to bring them into the actual apartment.”

Look at the wording of that.
He does not say “At the time, I didn’t know THAT they had been there the night before..” which would amount to an admission that he had been wrong and a correction of an important detail.

He says “At the time, I didn’t know IF they had been there the night before . . “ and then goes on to sneer at Kate McCann’s clear recollection implying that he is right and Kate is wrong. “she insists” being code for “She is lying”.

We see the use of the term elsewhere.
Gamble “insists” that the Madeleine webpage was not set up on 30th April.
Tanner “insists” that she is not lying about her sighting “I’m not making this up, you know”
Clarke “insists” there were no dogs until 4pm. Kate “insists” they were there from 2am.

Clarke’ seems incapable of stopping or of moderating his language and continues with this abject nonsense.

“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. . .
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.”
p.24

The facts, such as they are can be determined from Kate McCann’s autobiography –
“Having moved out of apartment 5A . . . It was about 10am by the time a couple of PJ officers turned up. (One of them, in his thirties, tall and well built, I thought of for ages simply as John. I’m not sure he ever gave us his name, but later – much later – we found out that it was João Carlos.) They told us they had to take us and our friends to the police station in Portimão. We couldn’t all go at once as somebody needed to look after the children. After some discussion, it was agreed that Gerry and I, Jane, David and Matt would be interviewed first and the PJ would come back for the others later in the day.”

Readers will note the clear statement that the McCanns were NOT EVEN IN apartment 5A, the absence of any reference to Clarke, the fact the PJ were doing the organising, and that very obviously the McCanns were NOT trying to get a local police force to “give a damn”.

Clarke’s version is so ridiculous, so far removed from objective reality, and so divorced from any normal concept of decency and truth that it must be listed as yet another LIE.

****

STILL MORE NONSENSE AND MISINFORMATION

Despite the 14 years of discussion on the many legal aspects of this case which have been aired in newspapers, TV interviews and on-line, Clarke still insists that Arrests were made.

“… exposés that have begun to finally turn the Portuguese public away from the belief that the McCanns killed their own daughter. Saying that, Sandra herself was convinced of it, at one point, and even directly accused them in a famous live TV broadcast soon after their arrests.” p.28

“I was back in Ronda with my family when Murat got arrested.” p.49

“Sergey Malinka was arrested two days later” p.60
For the record, and so that everyone shall understand NO PERSON WAS ARRESTED IN THIS CASE.
Several were questioned, some of them ‘Under Caution’, known as “arguido” status which gives the person certain legal rights. But no one was Arrested and subsequently detained in a cell, or bailed.
That is simply wrong. Profoundly wrong. Many of Clarke’s Sun readers will know the difference between Arrest and being interviewed under caution at a Police station.
Why he persists in this untruth is unknown. Having done 14 years of “tireless research” he surely cannot genuinely believe it, and if he does not it must qualify as a LIE.

****

A VERY ODD USE OF WORDS

Consider this
“She even provided the police with the phone number that her ‘friend’ Christian had called her on during the drive. A pay-as-you-go number (915 078 040), not entirely dissimilar to the one used outside the Ocean Club the night that Maddie disappeared in May that year. In further questioning, however, she insisted Christian was in Germany at the time of the call and was still there ten days later.”

This must rank as one of Clarke’s more bizarre sentences. Is he using Not entirely dissimilar to mean Exactly the same ?
If so it is a strangely and singularly inappropriate use of the figure of speech – Litotes – “An ironic understatement in which an affirmative is expressed by the negative of its contrary”
Or does the number in fact differ, perhaps by only one or two digits. If so, it is emphatically NOT the same number and this entire paragraph is redundant. It’s only purpose can be to attempt to fill in the enormous gaps in the actual evidence by inventing or twisting other things to fit.

****

DELIBERATE FALSEHOODS IN THE PRESS

Here we have to compare the content of the book with previous statements made by Clarke in his paper.
In the same article in The SUN, dated 27 August 2021 Clarke states           REF 2
“I believe the cash Christian B used to buy the motorhome found in the box factory came from a burglary in Portugal.
His former girlfriend used inside knowledge to help Christian B steal €100,000 from a family where she worked as a babysitter.
She has been interviewed three times about her relationship with Christian B and prosecutor Wolters confirmed he has not ruled out charging her in connection with the 100,000-euro theft.”

The burglary was in November 2007
Brückner owned the vehicle in March 2007 (Dieter Fehlinger p.111) , and was seen with it at the Orgiva festival in May/June 2007 by Michael “Micha” Tatschl. (p.146)

Has Clarke just made an innocent silly mistake during his tireless research ?
Well no. This was quite deliberate.
In the book, which was published the next month and must have gone for printing and binding a long time before the article, Clarke says of an interview with H. Wolters on 21 June 2021

“When I later returned to the subject of Nicole and asked him about the claims that she and Brueckner were involved in the robbery of the two Portuguese women of 100,000 euros, in Praia da Gale, he confirmed he knew about the case and added, ‘Maybe that’s where the money came from for the Winnebago.’ I didn’t say that it was most likely bought around six months earlier, but maybe he was right. After all, he was the prosecutor working on the case for three years. Maybe Christian had bought the ‘Winnebago’, or Tiffin Allegro, a few months later. Pushing him on the subject of the robbery, he said the German police ‘certainly have their eyes on this theft of 100,000 euros.’ Note, he said ‘have’ not ‘had’.”

Elsewhere in the book he says giving evidence from another character –
“Yet a year later he told me that he ‘mostly slept in the Winnebago’, which Bischof actually helped him purchase from a computer at his house in the Spring of 2007. He couldn’t recall the exact date.” p.223

The conclusion is clear.
Clarke wrote the article in his own paper then sold it to the Sun, and other Tabloids KNOWING it contained false information.
In common parlance, he LIED

****

PROTECTIVE OF HIS OWN FAMILY ?

In the previous chapter about the appalling and disgusting libellous attack on Nicole Kidman and Jude Law I made reference to Clarke’s attempt to portray himself as a staunch defender of the privacy of his own family, and at one point even praised him for it.

The reality is slightly different. Readers must draw their own conclusions about what this says about his character.

In this book Clarke makes a rather pathetic attempt to protect the family by giving them false names, but makes them very similar to the real ones, in one case by adding only one letter.
And then in a piece he clearly wrote at a different time and which appears in a different place in the book, he uses the real familial pet-name for his wife, which gives the game away.

It was not always so. He has previously included them all in a self-congratulatory piece in the Telegraph about his rebuilding of the farmhouse bought with the dirty money from the Kidman libel scandal.

The full correct names are still there, as they are on several Facebook and trip advisor pages, and can still be found if anyone is even remotely interested.

But in this book he then goes on to confess to having abandoned them all. He uses the normal euphemisms men like him do on such occasion “we had briefly separated for a few months”, but it amounts to the same thing. He walked out and left them.

The strange thing is that there was absolutely no need to do so. The context is someone calling at the house, and finding neither parent there, just the children being perfectly properly looked after by a friend,
so “I wasn’t at home” or “we weren’t at home” would have been quite sufficient.
We did not need to know; did not want to know about their marital problems and his abandonment.
Is he proud of it ? If not, why tell the world ?

And whilst we are on the subject of photos supporting libellous allegations to make money . . .
What did Clarke DO during those “few months” he was free of his wife and children ?
He has a good car, money, speaks Spanish, is – I am reliably informed – well built and not altogether ‘repellent in aspect’, and would probably scrub-up well. He has a fund of stories about disasters, crimes and criminals to relate, and I have little doubt is a good raconteur.

Did he live as a Trappist Monk ? Or did he return to what he describes as “the fleshpots and bling of the Costa del Sol,” trip the light fantastic and do what most married men do who abandon their wives and families when they get Seven-year-itch.

In case anyone is offended by this train of thought the book itself contains two photos of Clarke with his arm round the waists of two different MEN.

****
There is more, much more. But not for today.

REFS

1  

2 from “Madeleine Beth McCann. A Mystery Story”, by Albert Moisiu
https://www.gerrymccannsblogs.co.uk/AlbyM_Books.htm

3 https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/15986828/madeleine-mccann-prime-suspect-lair-shallow-grave/

Videos of the scene long before and when Clarke arrived, showing dogs, dozens of Police officers, police vehicles, at least six journalists including another British one, unbroken and not-smashed shutters, the taped off Apartment and much more, may be found at

https://www.gettyimages.co.uk/detail/video/exterior-shots-around-the-ocean-club-apartments-in-pria-news-footage/487715446

https://www.gettyimages.co.uk/detail/video/exterior-shots-of-tourists-outside-the-ocean-club-news-footage/649708440

https://www.gettyimages.co.uk/detail/video/exterior-shots-of-the-beach-and-ocean-at-praia-da-luz-news-footage/649700450

https://www.gettyimages.co.uk/detail/video/exterior-shots-of-police-searching-the-exterior-of-the-news-footage/649707852

https://www.gettyimages.co.uk/detail/video/exterior-shots-of-police-and-members-of-the-public-news-footage/649708278

https://www.gettyimages.co.uk/detail/video/exterior-shots-of-police-searching-the-grounds-of-the-news-footage/649701232

To access the Netfllix documentary
netflix disappearance of madeleine mccann - Google Search

Labels: , ,
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)