'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.)
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.
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.
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 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.
****
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.
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.
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:”
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.”
“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”.
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,”
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”.
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.
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.
