“My search for Madeleine’. Jon Clarke - 2021
“The love of money is the root of all evil.”
1 Timothy 6:10
More story changes, more errors, more nonsense, more mistakes, but most importantly
MORE MONEY
In this and the following chapter I shall list and explain a number of issues in the book,
for example
- Money
- Schoolboy Howlers
- Changes in the story
- Mistakes, errors, grossly negligent reporting, or downright lies
- Deliberate Confusions
- Nonsense - and libel
- Inconsistencies
We shall also examine what the book reveals about Clarke’s personality, about his code of conduct, about his view of the world and the rights of others, about Integrity, Objectivity, Professional competence, Confidentiality, and Professional behaviour.
***
First permit me to explain the most disgusting and reprehensible episode to which Clarke has so far confessed.
It involves Money. Lots of it
I say the
most disgusting and reprehensible, though it ranks alongside the Murat scandal as we shall see,
[see Chapter 43, The Framing of Robert Murat] and in both cases was clearly driven by Clarke’s naked greed without any regard to personal freedoms, dignity, privacy or respect for others.
We may take it as read that the facts did not come into it.
Are those strong words ? You decide.
In his book, at page 36/7 Clarke says
“The opportunity had arisen after an unexpected windfall while working on a feature about the movie, Cold Mountain, filmed in Romania and starring Jude Law and Nicole Kidman. I’d come across photographs of the leading actors ‘getting intimate’ at the wrap party. They dutifully made the front page of The Sun, paid for our trip to Spain and, by the time the story had been followed up by Hello! Magazine and the rest, had paid for a deposit on a stone farmhouse in Ronda.” I’d come across . . . in other words Clarke did not take the photos. He wasn’t there. He either bought them or ‘acquired’ them in some other fashion, legal or not.
He then sold them to the papers he mentions, and very possibly wrote the editorial copy which accompanied them, since he was ‘working on a feature’ about the film. His quip “
and the rest’ included his favourite Red Top – the Daily Mail, and indicates he was paid by others in the same journalistic swamp.
This all seems fairly normal gutter-press sensationalist and intrusive journalism until we follow up what then happened.
The story alleged a three month extramarital affair between the two, and further that Kidman had actively encouraged Law, who was at that time still married. The photos were included as “proof’.
It was of course, totally untrue, baseless and without foundation.
Kidman sued. She won. Substantial amounts in damages were awarded against the Sun and the Mail. The Sunday Telegraph which had been seduced into printing a version of the story made an unconditional apology.
The British director of the film, Anthony Minghella, was quoted as saying –
“it is all lies.” “the "poisonous" stories circulating about the pair are in danger of thwarting Kidman's chances of winning an Oscar.” “the party where the pair were reportedly pictured acting closer than friends was attended by some 30 of the cast.”
"Nobody seems to care about the facts getting in the way of the story.”
"There have been so many poisonous things written about Nicole recently."REFS AND COPIES IN APPENDIX
Clarke’s photo and story caused the Sun to pay out, the Mail to pay out and the Telegraph to apologise,
but he STILL got enough money to buy a farmhouse in which he is perfectly happy for his wife and children to live, despite its eternal grubby and tainted origins. And he seems both proud of it, and happy to tell the world that it was
he who inflicted such immense misery on Kidman and Law, and their respective families.
His wife is not unintelligent and
must know the origins of the unexpected windfall of funds used to buy the house she now lives in, and the enormous damage her husband’s lies caused to another woman – like her, a mother – and to her children, not to mention to Law, who also has three children, and was married at the time.
Clarke claims to be protective of his own family.
Other people’s families, it seems, can be destroyed so long as it makes money for him.
She may one day care to reflect on his willingness to sacrifice a mother and her family for personal gain.
Clarke’s children may one day find out for themselves the depths to which their father will sink in the pursuit of personal gain in his ‘profession’.
It is all in the public domain. Google and the internet work in mysterious ways, and children grow up quickly.
Kidman donated her substantial damages to FARA, a charity for abandoned children in Romania.
Clarke kept his contaminated lucre and bought himself a farmhouse.
****
Now consider
Clarke’s story about Kidman was proved to be false
Clarke’s story about Murat was proved to be false
Clarke’s story about the little girl in Spain was proved to be false Do we see a pattern emerging ?
How can a journalist who gets things so consistently WRONG, and is so consistently cruel and malevolent, be trusted to tell the truth about ANYTHING ?
*****
While we are on the subject of Clarke and his love of money . . .
On p.171 he is talking about a visit to the villa in Foral where Brückner is alleged to have parked his Tiffin Allegro “Winnebago”. He had previously written two separate and conflicting stories about this villa, with different combinations of names, alleged boyfriends, number and breeds of dog and other extraneous detail. Each of those was sold to the red top Tabloid press, timed a year apart.
Now we get a third version. I won’t dissect the details here, but simply quote this to show how it works.
[See Chapter 40: The Anatomy of a Revelation]
Whilst Clarke is there a car approaches and slows down –
“We would find out later it was a team from The Sun newspaper, who had got a tip off about the village. They had no idea the house had any relevance to the case. It was now 5pm, and we knew we would have to move fast if we were to get the story into the next day’s Mail on Sunday. The paper was going big on Brueckner and a picture of Lia’s villa anchored a four-page Maddie special. Happy days.” Never mind the facts, or the truth, or the details.
“Happy days”, by which he means Loads of money.
Why he feels the need to crow about this is unclear. Everyone knows that journalists are paid for their work. But using this phrase he tells us he has been paid a very large amount, possibly for not very much effort, and given the wording of that phrase an amount perhaps even he thinks is slightly excessive. Why did we need to know that ? It undermines his moral authority. Yet again.
Rushing to hit a deadline in this way may explain the lack of attention to detail, but can never excuse simply making things up to fill in the column inches.
It is notable that a year later when he wrote what is supposed to be the same story, this time with photos, the details changed dramatically. In the first version Brückner was reluctantly tolerated as a visitor, but slept in the van, and took showers in other places in return for work. In the second he had become the live-in boyfriend of the tenant, and the other boyfriend who was actually named in the first has been air-brushed from history.
The photos of the place are marked
Photo: Olive Press, but on examination are nothing more than screen shots from Google Maps - Street View, heavily cropped to remove evidence of normal life going on around.
He was no doubt paid handsomely for these as well.
There follows a litany of his ‘success’ in scoops and exclusives.
“While this interview was a damp squib, Abul landed a great scoop with Nicole’s father, who had, by coincidence, also ‘bumped into’ Brueckner on a trip to Portugal in 2007.” “That same year, in September 2012, we reported how a businessman had seen a girl he thought was Maddie on a flight from Germany to Ibiza. And he sent a photo to justify it. Our exclusive got followed up in 12 countries, which showed how much interest there still was in the story, five years on.” Which is code for –
“I was paid a VAST amount of money for a nonsense story.” ***
Let us lighten the mood slightly SCHOOLBOY HOWLERS
1“I was proved right.”
“The next time we really took a look at the case was when I wrote the detailed first-person piece on the first anniversary of Maddie’s disappearance in May 2008, insisting the McCanns didn’t do it, but a paedophile did. Two months later, in July 2008, I was proved right when the police officially lifted the arguido status and Amaral was shortly sidelined.” It is difficult to know whether this is a howler or just sheer stupidity.
“I was proved right” !
Clarke surely MUST know, as everyone else in the intelligent world does, that the case was only ‘Shelved’ for lack of evidence sufficient to prosecute to conviction, and that the McCanns’ release from ‘arguido’ status was a formality which follows automatically.
It says nothing about their status as prime suspects, nor does it, as they have tried to argue and some blind and stupid newspapers have repeated, prove that they were exonerated, cleared or declared innocent.
Equally it says less than nothing about the insistence by the McCanns and Clarke that a Paedophile was involved.
The Supreme Court of Portugal were at pains to point that out some time later, ‘obiter’, which is so rare that no one seems able to recall another instance.
"Nonetheless, even in the archiving dispatch serious reservations are made about the truth of the allegation that Madeleine had been abducted.” And later
As to the presumption of innocence invoked by the parents, they (Judges) consider that one should not say "that the claimants were acquitted through the order of archiving the criminal proceedings (investigation). The archiving was determined because it was not possible to obtain sufficient evidence of the practice of crimes. It does not seem reasonable to consider that said archiving dispatch, based on insufficient evidence, should be equated as substantiation (proof) of exoneration". Clarke was NOT “proved right”. The exact opposite in fact.
2
The strange case of the Umlaut This is a bit more difficult. It is clear that Clarke has no German, nor any understanding of the structure of the language or its orthography. He read Geography, not Modern Languages.
Deep into the part of the book dealing with his latest victim, Clarke says
“In the economic report, he spells his name incorrectly as ‘Bruckner’ and …”
A moment’s thought tells us two things
Firstly - he didn’t. That is how his name is spelled, with the exception of an Umlaut over the ‘u’
Secondly - since Clarke uses the acceptable anglicisation - “Brueckner” - throughout it is clear that he, Clarke, probably doesn’t understand the Umlaut, and possibly may not know how to access accents on his keyboard, hence his failure to use the cedilla in Gonçalo, which alters the pronunciation from
GonKarlo to
GonSarrlo. [incidentally – the Umlaut is alt-u,’u’, the cedilla alt-c]
The man in question is called
Brückner. BRÜCKNER.
The Umlaut is the two little dots over the ‘u’ which alters the sound of the vowel, and in fact makes it into another vowel altogether. German therefore has eight vowels. a, ä, e, i, o, ö, u, and ü, and alphabetical lists adhere to this, so the Austrian composer
Bruckner would come before Clarke’s prime suspect
Brückner The Umlaut, although it is a diacritical mark, is not the same as the
diaeresis found in some imported words in English, used to break up an apparent diphthong., Thus the correct spellings are
naïf and
naïve, pronounced
Nigh-eef, and
Nigh-eve, and not
nayf or
nave. The names
Chloë,
Zoë, and
Noël are perhaps more familiar.
The Umlaut is in fact a form of the ‘e’ and is derived from the Sütterlin script lower-case ‘e’ which is two
vertical bars close together with a small angled crossbar, like a tiny broken rugby post.
Sütterlin was used in Germany up to 1941, and can still occasionally be seen on signs and signposts.
in handwriting the mark often becomes two vertical dashes, or often a small horizontal bar, and in print has become the familiar (to some) two dots.
German keyboards have separate letter keys for the vowels in question
Clarke writes for the Tabloids
Tabloids tend not to confuse their readers with accents or diacritics, nor bother them too much with grammar and syntax or a rich and extended vocabulary. Or facts.
Clarke’s readership in the Sun wouldn’t know an
Umlaut from an
Omelette, and so they and he cannot be blamed for using the form
‘ue’, in place of
‘ü’.
‘Ue‘ is an acceptable
anglicisation, but Brückner is German, and Germans do not use the
‘ue’ form.
Brückner’s letter headed
“Press Release of Herrn Christian Brückner” makes that absolutely clear.
It took me about 20 seconds on
google to find it. The Umlaut over the ‘ü’ is very clear, even at this poor resolution.
After years of ‘tireless research’ Clarke still doesn’t know, and even if he did, clearly doesn’t understand.
He could of course just have asked someone with better knowledge, as a half decent detective would.
As Clarke says -
“In the economic report, he spells his name incorrectly as ‘Bruckner’ and lists his job as ‘a car salesman in Germany’. More lies.” Lies certainly. But whose ?
WHO KNEW ?
Some have long suspected that Clarke’s evasiveness, his changing of important details and the general prevarication about the time of the phone call and the details of his trip to, and arrival in PdL is part of a deliberate strategy to conceal something else. One commentator suggested an alternative scenario which Clarke forcefully denied, insisting that his version was the only truth.
Given that there are now at least four versions, all different and all physically impossible, this does not, with respect, settle this. It may be important, it may not. Without the truth we shall not be able to judge.
On several occasions Clarke has written words similar to those which appear in the book
“but I figured it would be over by the time I got there . . “ and this time he goes into more detail.
It all sounds perfectly sensible, and explains why he stopped en route for a coffee and toast instead of pressing on, despite knowing that the extra half hour would put him onto the always congested Sevilla ring road deeper into the morning ‘rush hour’ than if he had not stopped. The difference between getting to the junction at 0800 and at 0830 on his timings, (which as we know make no sense).
But then a little later, talking about money and crowing about the ‘stolen photo’ he sold to buy his farmhouse, he keeps up the enthusiasm and says.
“But when an opportunity arose to cover a meaty case for a number of the tabloids it was too good a chance to miss.” Driving for 400 km, reporting the girl had been found safe and well next door, and then driving back home is not, surely a
MEATY case. It might be a ‘
bloody’ case, but only in the sense of being a bloody nuisance having to drive all that way for nothing more than expenses.
A body lying on a road or in a Deep Trench
(©JonClarke) having been hit by a car might last 24 hours and two editions; found under a bush or in a ditch a day later perhaps three.
But
MEATY ?
There may be some who think that this is clear evidence from Clarke’s own keyboard that he already knew this story would run and run, and that the phone call had told him of this. What else it told him we will never know.
But now it gets serious again.
This admission, perhaps inadvertent or negligent, now allows readers to fill in some of the gaps in the scenario which has developed over the years.
- The phone call is moved forward by at least another hour, possibly more.
- The case is described as Meaty, right from the start.
- Huge political and diplomatic resources from the UK are mobilised within hours.
- A web page is immediately released which in some iterations bears a date stamp suggesting it, or its skeleton outline, had been prepared at an earlier date than the alleged events. Although this has been strenuously denied there is now, in the hands of researchers, documentary evidence which would stand up in court that this was so.
- The date on the infamous Last or Pool Photo is proven to be a forgery making it clear that this does not prove that Madeleine was alive and well at lunchtime on Thursday 3/5/7, which is a key part of the “official story”.
- Sky and other TV news channels have full reports in place for the early morning new bulletins. 0745 or earlier (BST) in the case of Sky.
But Clarke says he was the first journalist, (or only, or first British journalist, depending on the version you are reading) and that he arrived at 1045. In fact he must have arrived at 0945 local time (BST) to make any of the observed news reports make any sense at all. And although the McCanns spent some time during the night alerting the British Media, before they retired to sleep or gaze at a candle flame, it is unlikely that they would have been able to impart all the background detail seen in the first bulletins.
And so it is not unreasonable for some to suspect that someone, or more likely some-few, knew, knew that this story was going to be Meaty, was going to keep a lot of people in work for a long time, and was going to be a cash cow for journalists and writers.
This has always been denied. How could it not be?
But perhaps Clarke’s book has blown that denial out of the water.
****
And while we are on this subject, consider also this :
“The story had first appeared as a news flash on Sky News at around 7.45am in the UK, but I figured it would be over by the time I got there: she would be found, like the vast majority of other kids that wander off during their holidays, either dead or alive, in a swimming pool or a ditch somewhere.”
Anyone notice anything unusual there ?
Clarke says he left home around 0700 Spanish time. 0600 UK and Portugal
He stopped for 30 minutes en route about 0815 Spanish. 0715 UK and Port.
He then drove the remaining 3 hrs (300km.) to PdL
Which means he claims to have arrived at the earliest around 1145 Spanish 1045 UK and Port
IN FACT there is film of him in PdL around 0945 UK and Port. which is 1045 Spanish
But despite all that he tells us
“The story had first appeared as a news flash on Sky News at around 7.45am in the UK, but I figured it would be over by the time I got there:” He does not say,
“I found out LATER that it had been news flash on Sky News whilst I was driving and thinking x y z, but of course I didn’t know that at the time.” His use of the Past Perfect tense
“had … appeared” indicates very clearly and precisely that this event occurred before the next event
“I figured out . . .” for example:
- I had saved my document before the computer crashed
- When they arrived we had already finished dinner
But he was driving at the time. So who told him there
was going to be – NOT had been – the news flash on Sky ?
Had he been told that such was the importance of the case, there
would be one whilst he was en route ?
****
And now let us work the times backwards from what we KNOW, because it is on film.
We will use Portuguese time, BST for the moment, and these are rough timings
The McCanns left PdL to go to Portimão police station around 1000. They are filmed so doing.
Clarke was in the group of six journalists outside the stairwell shortly before.
He therefore must have arrived at the latest by 0945.
Pdl to Utrera coffee stop is 300km, 3 hrs. So he left there at 0645
Pull in, park, order, drink hot coffee, eat toast, relief, pay, back into car, start up, rejoin the main road and get going is 30 minutes on any test.
So he arrived at the Utrera coffee stop at 0615
The coffee stop is 100km from his home, along a mixture of roads. The speed limit is 90 kph even on the fast stretches.
Therefore he left home about 0500, or before.
He says the phone call was 30 minutes before his leaving, or 15 minutes depending on the version.
The phone call is therefore around 0430 British and Portuguese time at the absolute LATEST. (BST, WEST)
which is 0530 Spanish time (CEST)
So someone knew by 0400 British and Portuguese time that this was a major story which would run.
A
Meaty story in fact.
Meaty food for thought ?
STATEMENT As always I know I may have made mistakes factual or of interpretation. I am always ready to listen to comments and to make any corrections, and apologies if appropriate.
To conclude this Chapter.
Clarke has targeted wholly innocent people throughout his ‘professional’ career, and does so again now in his Superhero quest to be the
First to Find Madeleine and Solve the Crime of the Century.
In this First Edition, Clarke bets all on his belief that the perpetrator of whatever happened to Madeleine was one man.
Christian Brückner
I will wait for the Second edition.
A paperback sized box, which on opening is found to contain a £10 note refund and a slip with the words
“Sorry. It wasn’t.” ****
The next chapter will continue the analysis of the book, and highlight mistakes, more prevarications, negligent reporting, downright lies, utter nonsense, probable libels, deliberate confusions, and much more.
See you again soon.
Chapter 44 APPENDIX
Oscar winner Nicole Kidman has accepted a public apology and "substantial" damages from a major British newspaper which claimed she had an adulterous affair with fellow film star Jude Law.
The High Court in London ruled in favour of Kidman after the
Daily Mail alleged she had led Law, who is married with three children, to cheat on his actress wife Sadie Frost.
The
Daily Mail, which is Britain's second best-selling newspaper after the
Sun, also suggested in its March 6 article that Kidman's repeated denials of the affair were dishonest.
"The publication of this article has caused grave damage to the claimant's personal and professional reputation and she has suffered considerable embarrassment and distress," Kidman's lawyer, Gideon Benaim, told the court.
Associated Newspapers, which owns the
Daily Mail, its group editor Paul Dacre and journalist Nicole Lampert
all freely accepted that the allegations were untrue and without foundation.
Kidman also issued proceedings against the Sun and the Sunday Telegraph over allegations she had an affair with Law, her co-star on the film Cold Mountain.
The Sunday Telegraph has already issued an apology but the Sun case has not yet been resolved.
The Sun has apologised to
Nicole Kidman and agreed to pay her libel damages and legal costs over false allegations that she had an adulterous affair with Jude Law.
The allegations, which appeared in the Sun on March 5, caused the Hollywood actress "considerable embarrassment and distress", her solicitor, Keith Schilling, told Mr Justice Eady at the high court today.
Mr Schilling said the Sun's story implied the Oscar-winning actress "had an adulterous affair with
Jude Law, who was at the time married with young children".
"The article implied that the claimant had led Jude Law to cheat on his wife Sadie Frost, and by her behaviour caused the breakdown of their marriage," he added.
The Sun's solicitor, Daniel Taylor, said that the newspaper, editor Rebekah Wade and journalist Victoria Newton - who were
all named in the action -
accepted the allegations were untrue and apologised "for the distress and embarrassment this article has caused".
The article was illustrated by a photograph taken in a bar while the stars were filming in Transylvania. The newspaper has agreed to pay Kidman an undisclosed sum in damages as well as her legal costs.
In July Kidman won "substantial" libel damages from the Daily Mail after it published similar allegations that she had had an affair with Law, her co-star on the film Cold Mountain.
The Mail article appeared on March 6, the day after the Sun story.
The Sunday Telegraph also repeated the allegations, but issued an apology to the star.
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2003/oct/14/pressandpublishing.filmnews
***
Who’s afraid of Virginia Woolf? British newspapers are, at least when Woolf is played by Nicole Kidman. On Tuesday, Kidman won her second libel victory this year against a British newspaper for printing allegations that she’d had an affair with Jude Law, her costar in December’s ”Cold Mountain,” and was responsible for breaking up his marriage to actress Sadie Frost. Kidman won a five-figure sum and an apology from tabloid The Sun, Reuters reports. ”The defendants apologise to the claimant for the distress and embarrassment this article has caused,” the Sun’s lawyer told London’s High Court.
Two months ago, Kidman won a similar settlement from the Daily Mail, which had printed similar rumours. The stories in the Daily Mail and the Sun ran in March, at the height of Kidman’s ultimately successful campaign for a Best Actress Oscar for playing author Woolf in ”The Hours.” Some Oscar watchers thought the rumours would tarnish her campaign and hurt her Academy Award chances, and Kidman’s lawyer claimed during the Daily Mail trial that the stories had inflicted ”grave damage to the claimant’s personal and professional reputation, and she has suffered considerable embarrassment and distress.”
Kidman wasn’t present in court, but she released a statement saying, ”I am glad that this has finally been resolved.” She said she would donate the proceeds of her court victories (minus legal fees) to Fara, a charity that helps abandoned children in Romania, where ”Cold Mountain” was shot.
https://ew.com/article/2003/10/14/nicole-kidman-wins-second-libel-suit/
****
Director:
Kidman affair all lies by ANDRÉ PAINE, Evening Standard
They have been accused of having a three month affair while filming in the wilds of Romania together.
But the man who directed Nicole Kidman and Jude Law on the set of their new movie Cold Mountain has broken his silence to insist:
it is all lies.
And, says Anthony Minghella, the "poisonous" stories circulating about the pair are in danger of thwarting Kidman's chances of winning an Oscar.
The British director, who himself won an Academy Award for The English Patient, spent months on location with the film's stars, who also included Renée Zellwegger.
He rubbished reports suggesting that pictures of Kidman and Law together at a crew party proved they had a fling, adding: "
Nobody seems to care about the facts getting in the way of the story.
"There have been
so many poisonous things written about Nicole recently.
"We were there five months. It was a long shoot in austere conditions but there was a great atmosphere on set. All the actors just showed up, put up with terrible weather and privations without complaint.
Kidman, 35, is understood to be anxious that reports of an alleged romance with Law - strenuously denied by both - could affect her chances of picking up the best actress Oscar for her role as Virginia Woolf in The Hours.
Minghella said: "She deserves an Oscar. I think at this moment there is nobody better than her. She has made some incredible choices for roles and she is a wonderful actor."
Minghella added that the party where the pair were reportedly pictured acting closer than friends was attended by some 30 of the cast.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-171557/Director-Kidman-affair-lies.html
****
Kidman accepts damages over adultery claim
Nicole Kidman has accepted undisclosed libel damages in the British High Court over a newspaper article alleging she had an adulterous affair with actor Jude Law.
https://www.irishexaminer.com/lifestyle/arid-30117257.html reported everywhere, including
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2003/jul/31/dailymail.pressandpublishing1
https://www.thelist.com/591647/the-truth-about-nicole-kidmans-relationship-with-jude-law/
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2003-08-01/kidman-wins-lawsuit-over-affair-accusation/1457658
