Richard Feynman
The Nobel prize winning physicist Richard Feynman once introduced a new set of lectures with these words:
“What I’d like to talk about is a part of physics that is known, rather than a part that is unknown. People are always talking about the latest developments in the unification of this theory with that theory, and they don’t give us a chance to tell them anything about one of the theories that we know pretty well. They always want to know things that we don’t know. So, rather than confound you with a lot of half-cooked, partially analysed theories, I would like to tell you about a subject that has been very thoroughly analysed.”
These words apply strongly to the McCann case. There are those on both sides of the fence who don’t want to look close at the continuing affair of Madeleine McCann to see what has been established but are much happier concentrating on what might or might not have happened in PDL on May 3 2007.
This is perfectly understandable, whatever stance one takes about the disappearance, but there is no doubt which “side” gains most from the situation. As we said in Part One, the supporters of the parents who have studied the case are happiest when the concentration is on only two occasions, May 3 2007 and July 21 2008, the date of the parents’ exoneration at the soothing hands of a Portuguese law officer.
As for the former date we are back in the wonderland territory of the media harpies who grew rich on the case. The front pages of their newspapers carried the latest leaks from Portugal, most of them, in the strangled vowels of Clarence Mitchell, “unhelpful” to the pair, while the centre page feature writers in the very same issues churned out non-factual, gushingly sentimental defences of the same couple. What a good cop, bad cop game, what a great scam!
The simpletons who believed those centre-page features never understood the way they were being manipulated. Weirdly, they actually believed that the writers were sincere, rather than working a front page/centre page game at the request of their editors. But enough of that: the harpies’ mantra from the start was always the same: “Nobody knows what happened that night; the only certainty is that Madeleine McCann went missing from her bed at 10PM.”
Some certainty that’s turned out to be.
That time of temporary ignorance and rumour, where emotion was as important as fact, is still the chosen ground of the McCann supporters, despite their risible fibs that they “have all read the files” – yep, all those thousands of pages of text and charts in Portuguese – rather than a cherry-picked selection. Why?
Let’s keep it complicated and messy
Because debate confined to May 3 can always be guaranteed to go round in circles, without resolution,which is what they want. On Amazon at the moment there is a lengthy debating section between supporters and critics of the pair and reading it is like being teleported. Round and round and round it goes, the supporters seizing on the wilder theories, which they can easily rebut, or on some of the more noxious and aggressive critics of the parents, so that the debate can be nicely personalised, or on minor inaccuracies which they can peck away at until the point of the original contribution has been forgotten. Then again they can wait for the “neglect” question to come up – manna from heaven! They did/they didn’t/they did/they didn’t.
As we said previously, in the four years since May 3 literally nothing has emerged to offer any factual strengthening of the parents’ abduction claims, so the supporters are always – and we mean this in the most literal sense – in denial, denying the relevance, or the truth, or the validity, or the honesty of everything that comes out and fails to support their case, and that means virtually everything that comes out, period.
Anyone who doubts that this default position of denial and deliberate confusion is their only choice should have a look back to forums and social media from the past, showing their reactions to possible evidence supporting the pair as it occurred. It’s all there still, if you look.
Confronted with one of the Team’s latest gimmicks the responses of these supposedly hard-nosed “realists” are always the same: a new, devilish, drawing of a lurker in PDL four years ago, produced by Clarence out of a hat? Thank God, they write, for progress in this sad, sad case. The latest “sighting”, be it on the slopes of Kilimanjaro or the other side of the moon? Oh, God, they post, let it be true. Another paedophile monster, usually and conveniently dead or dying, flagged up by the McCanns’ deranged detectives? Ah, then all that stuff about “innocent until proven guilty” or “persecuting people” goes straight out of the window with hysterical screams of hatred – get that swine now! Remember how those defenders of the righteous suddenly became a lynch mob, urging on the despicable employees of the parents who pursued that poor emaciated sinner to his death from cancer in Germany?
No, the McCanns’ supporters aren’t deniers by nature, far from it: apart from the professional journalists, who are in it for the money and will write anything as long as the ackers keep coming in – wouldn’t you say, Brunty? – they are quite exceptionally gullible. But always, always, their early hopes are dashed, the sightings are fiction, the suspects are imaginary and the Portuguese courts, little by little, year by year, slowly assert the validity of the police team’s theories, leaving them, once again, with nothing. Then it’s back to the old methods – go on, have a look on Amazon.
But in that gap between May 3 and 2008 there is one subject that the parents themselves are not at all keen on but the supporters love – the dogs. They love them, because once again, any argument or discussion can be made to go round and round in circles, just like the “neglect” question. Since there is no crime of child neglect under Portuguese law, only of intentional or reckless abandonment, then all debate is and will always be a matter of mere opinion, ignorant or expert,incapable of factual resolution.
Since there is no forensic confirmation of the dogs’ findings their indicative evidence will never be presented in court and, once again, questions of fact can be buried in the McCann supporters’ favourite ground of unresolvable opinion, argument, insult and counter-insult. The sad and unpleasant fact is that, in the eternal absence of anything confirming the parents’ claims, their supporters have slipped into the position of wanting the fate of the child to remain a matter of opinion, not of fact.
Debate – McCann supporters’ style
They need this stain removed from their characters as soon as possible – Clarence Mitchell.
And so to those famous words announcing:
“The archiving of the Process concerning Arguidos Gerald Patrick McCann and Kate Marie Healy, because there are no indications of the practise of any crime under the dispositions of article 277 number 1 of the Penal Process Code.”
Or as The Times reported the next day, having discussed the matter with Clarence Mitchell:
“A statement released by his office confirmed that it had decided to ‘close the file’ on the investigation concerning the disappearance of the minor Madeleine McCann due to lack of evidence that any crime was committed by the persons placed under formal investigation”.
Or as the Guardian, which doesn’t appear to have discussed the matter with Mr Mitchell, reported on the same day:
“Portugal's attorney general, Fernando José Pinto Monteiro, said there was insufficient evidence to continue the police case.”
And there you have it. Within 24 hours the action of the Attorney-General, the head of the Portuguese prosecution service, releasing the couple from arguido status “because there are no indications of the practise of any crime” (by the parents) has become, surprise, surprise, wait for it, a matter of opinion.
And not just a matter of opinion but a matter of factual misstatement. Close the file, eh? Not shelved then.
Insufficient evidence, according to the Guardian. The statement doesn’t say that, does it? But the Guardian, perfectly aware of the way the Team spin after a year of experiencing it, has spotted the ambiguity at the heart of the statement: “no indications of the practise of any crime” followed by shelving means that the evidence against the pair may be incomplete, whereas the same statement followed by closure would mean something very different. So they put their spin on it to suggest what they thought was the real meaning of the report.
And as it started so it continues – another circular battle of opinion. And who was responsible for that? The wretched McCanns and their spokesman, unable to let the simple action of the Attorney-General speak for itself but lined up on July 21 determined to brief and spin the media and the public world-wide the moment the news was official.
The only fact, as the harpies might say, is that the McCanns were no longer arguidos; around it, however, we can continue having a battle of words about what it really means, because the parents and their team are incapable of ever letting an event occur unspun. A moment’s thought, of course, will demonstrate that an action surrounded by such ambiguity and vulnerability to spin can’t be equated to a judicial verdict, which is what the parents, the supporters and Messrs Carter Ruck wanted and still want to suggest: imagine the media in such disagreement when reporting the end of a trial of the parents – the Guardian reporting conviction, the Times reporting acquittal and the Independent, no doubt, reporting a mistrial. But perhaps that’s just our opinion.
A subject that has been very thoroughly analysed
Lastly back to the real world, the one that moves on rather than being stuck in time, and back to Richard Feynman: “they always want to know things that we don’t know. So, rather than confound you with a lot of half-cooked, partially analysed theories, I would like to tell you about a subject that has been very thoroughly analysed.”
- The veracity or reliability of the McCanns as the witnesses testifying to an abduction of their child. We know, from unchallenged court evidence by the prosecutor in Lisbon, that the McCanns did not tell the truth in their accounts of May 3.
- The reliability of the tapas group’s statements offering support to the McCanns’ claims, such as those of Mathew Oldfield and Jane Tanner. We know, from the request to the UK for rogatory assistance in 2007 when the prosecutors stated: “There is some inconsistency in the statements of the entire group in what concerns some details, which should be better clarified, with a view to determine rigorously the activity of the people that evening.” And from the prosecutors’ final report: “Taking into account that there were certain points in the arguidos’ and witnesses’ statements that revealed, apparently at least, contradiction or that lacked physical confirmation…”
- The question of Amaral’s role. Isolated rogue policeman out to get the McCanns, as claimed by the parents, or authentic voice of the whole investigation? We know the answer: Inspector Ricardo Paiva, Chief Inspector Tavares de Almeida, Luis Neves, the national director of the DCCB – the Portuguese equivalent of the British Serious Organised Crime Agency,Guilhermino Encarnacao, head of the Faro Policia Judiciaria, Inspector Paulo Ferreira and Inspector Joao Carlos – the absolute cream of the senior ranks of the PJ – were all in agreement with the focus of the investigation being on the McCanns as prime suspects. (Source, Lisbon court hearings, Kate McCann’s own book).
- The question of “the deal”. The pair claimed in a media campaign that they were offered a deal involving a reduced sentence if Kate McCann admitted accidentally killing the child. If she did not confess to this untrue accusation a “homicide” or murder charge would result. We know that in Spring 2011 Kate McCann in the book “Madeleine” completely withdrew this claim, replacing it with a new form of words which made no mention of the above deal. According to her all she was told, via her lawyer, was the factual statement that if the child had died accidentally and she had hidden the body she would receive a lesser sentence than if she had killed the child. (Read it and see, page 243)
- A new police team supposedly took over from Amaral, ending his line of enquiry and following a new line which excluded the McCanns as suspects and was reflected in the final report. We know that, on the contrary, Rebelo was in England in late 2007 (accompanied by an ex-member of Amaral’s team) conferring with the FRS on the interpretation of the dog evidence (public record); that he and his team provided the questions in the rogatory interviews, via the prosecution department, following up the first team’s line of enquiry focused on the McCanns; and that as late as April 2008 he was still attempting to get the Tapas 7 back for a reconstruction to test their evidence. (Rebelo’s correspondence).
No, not a matter of opinion
These examples don’t give us a grand unified theory of exactly what happened on May 3 2007. They do tell us a great deal about the facts, and the gradual destruction of the parents’ claims in the face of revealed evidence and judicial process, a process that is still going on both publicly and privately. And when you take the disproved examples away, just how much exactly is left of the entire McCann narrative – you know, the one that led to their “exoneration”?
