Madeleine McCann Books

What a fantastic response that was. Absolutely brilliant.

Scrants wrote:Here is a brilliant reply by Vten to a "5*" post by "Tim Buckley" on Amazon.  I wonder who Vten is? He can certainly write. (Sorry about the length but it is worth reading)


2 of 6 people found the following review helpful
See your doctor - not a quack., 16 Sep 2014
By Tim Buckley
Verified Purchase(What is this?)
This review is from: Looking For Madeleine (Kindle Edition)
Once upon a time - a long time ago - my brother went missing. He was 5 or so. My parents were more and more desperate every 5 minutes but after 2 hours he was found, safe and sound.
We hear about so many desperately tragic stories involving abductions. The ones about children are of course the most harrowing. They are supposed to be our future and futures are not supposed be cut short. If it is through "God's will" it's difficult enough...
The Madeleine McCann disappearance is the most highlighted one in our time. Plenty of other similar stories do not at all reach our attention, or at most to a small extend. The parent's heartbreak in all these unknown stories is obviously no less than that of the McCann's.
In today's world of mass media and super fast spread of information and opinion, it is inevitable that unchecked facts and moronic opinions find their way faster than light to those who are receptive to them. In communities similar things happen in the case of witch hunts (we all know about McCarthy-ism) - where ignorance and unchecked facts could lead to the demise of innocent people and the world of medicine - where 10 quacks have more treatments than one proper doctor can ever dream up. Quackery is a business still practised by many and making victims everywhere. The victims are receptive... some of them are even considered intelligent.
I choose not to be treated by a quack. I also choose not to listen to the quacks in the world of politics and crime. I choose to believe that Elvis is really dead and that the US Government was not secretly behind the attack on the Twin Towers. I have no time for attention seekers and mad conspiracy theorists. And I am grateful that our hospitals in general are filled with good, well-educated doctors and not with quacks.
If only the same standards applied to the world of publishing and its mirror world of reviews, where well-educated, serious and commended writers can be lambasted by the "Ignoranti" and journalistic quacks, because they dared write about "Maddie" and either dismiss or disagree - implicitly - with "quack-ist" opinions and theories.
I got this book because since I read "Official & Confidential: The Secret Life of J Edgar Hoover" and "The Eleventh Day", I am impressed with Summers and Swan.
They are the journalistic equivalent of proper doctors and not Quacks. That's why I got "Looking for Madeleine".
However, I don't do Idolatry either, so while I have great admiration for the team, I don't rate this a 5 star book automatically. I do however believe that anyone who is genuinely interested in how the whole workings of various authorities can hamper the efficient investigation a dramatic case, should buy this book.
Just don't expect the proper doctors to come up with a quack's solution to the disappearance.
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Initial post: 16 Sep 2014 17:18:42 BDT
Vten says:
Well, Tim Buckley, I almost felt like a proud father hearing 'Hallelujah' sung for the first time when I read your review.

It certainly was eye-opening and provokes some serious thought.

I was so impressed, in fact, that I went looking to see what else you've reviewed in order to find out what you think on other topics.

Funny thing though...

Not only did I notice that the only reviews in your collection were dated two days ago, including reviews for a number of books which are far older than this week's 'hot topic' titles, but I also noticed that they didn't say very much. In fact, they didn't mention any detail at all. None. Excise them from all connection to the titles they are associated with, and they're surprisingly generic... almost like the person writing them hadn't actually read them, certainly never connected with them, and was trying to make it sound to the rest of the English class and the teacher that he'd been doing his homework and had lots of good thoughts about what he'd read.

This was especially a nice touch, that instead of writing your own review for one title you, only two days ago, read through some other reviews for it, found one which was two years old, and then posted a comment which said in paraphrase 'I don't need to write my own review for this, because I agree with everything this reviewer said.'

I won't think too deeply about the interesting review for the outdated, underpowered and decidedly average computer that you paid over the odds for at the weekend after your own computer 'exploded' on your desk the weekend previous, but I'm glad that when you ordered it that weekend, it only took until Tuesday to arrive. I do appreciate Amazon's rapid delivery service almost as much as I appreciate their honest reviewers.

Thankfully I have strong faith in humanity, because certainly any lesser person than I might begin to think that you had arranged to write this most detailed 'glowing report' on this title by agenda, and that in order to not get trimmed by Amazon when the pruning of the trolls goes down, you had concocted some fake reviews in order to look like an active participant in the Amazon Review community.

Clearly that cannot be the case, and so I welcome your comments, because I too have a story...

I was present, much more recently than 'long ago', when a child in my holiday group went missing. They didn't go missing from an unattended apartment. They didn't go missing from childcare facilities. Their parents were very present when they vanished. They were included in all the family activities, watched like a hawk throughout, and their parents didn't go out eating, drinking and attending quiz night while they cried themselves to sleep every night, alone and in an unsecured apartment in a strange holiday resort. They actually didn't go missing in anything resembling avoidable circumstances, or as a result of anything resembling neglect. Instead, they darted the wrong direction in a crowded place, letting go of the hand they were holding on to, and became disorientated and wandered further and further, looking to objects and locations that piqued their interest. Thankfully they were found a few minutes later, safe and sound. Curiously, their mum and dad cannot stop telling people, months on, how guilty they felt for that moment of lapse, and how they would never again be lacking in vigilance. But then, their mum and dad also insist on having family meals, family activities, keeping babysitters to a minimum, and being present all the time on family holidays. The one thing that couple, my friends, do not do is look at the McCann's and say 'it's only sheer luck that we're not just like them today... oh there but for the grace of God...'

I'll tell you what else...

When that child disappeared, no one screamed... no one threw a tantrum... no one began immediately ringing the press in another country... no one rang the foreign office... no one even screamed for the police to come... no one shouted 'the f****** b******* have taken her', no one began pointing in random directions and claiming that some stranger must have spirited them away... Know why? Because in the moment of shock, disbelief kicks in. The brain, courtesy of the flow of adrenaline and other hormones, prompts the 'fight or flight' mode, which is universally acknowledged as utterly precluding calculations, elaborate reckonings, wild hypothesising, and theorising - all of which take time. Instead what is provoked is the most basic reaction of all... to look, personally, for YOUR child, as YOUR responsibility, in YOUR charge, as if YOU and YOU ALONE had the ONLY hope and duty of finding that child. It takes several moments of burning the adrenaline and diluting the other hormones and calming the heart rate before you're even capable of something more, something which does not come as a 'reaction' but as a 'realisation' (a process of rationality, not impulse) - that something is very wrong, cannot be solved imminently, has utterly escaped your control, and you need help.

To further highlight just how true to profile this accounting of reactions actually is, it is common policy of most Western police departments to be wary of, and not panicked by the frantic finger pointing and theorising of parents and guardians, whether they are agonised in their fear or not, and to allow a due process to take place by which hysterical and knee-jerk reactions and overblown responses (call out the helicopters, close the borders, 'they' could be getting away) are avoided UNLESS there is evidence, physical or eyewitness, which highlights a scenario of abduction. Why? Because the vast majority of children which parents would report as 'missing' are either found not far away, unharmed and wandered, or are in the custody of someone close to them and known to the parents, as was the case earlier this year in Australia, and as, it seems, was the case of 'Daniel' in Portugal earlier this year in an instance which was heralded by the media as 'the New Maddie.'

Now... to the commentary on the book.

You make frequent reference to 'unchecked facts' and 'moronic opinions.' The material that you're referring to is also known as the 'Case File' belonging to the Portuguese Policia Judicia. It is a matter of public record and freely available. Frankly, if those 'facts' are not checked and valid, then there are actually NO facts for the authors of this book to write anything based on, since all that will be left is the opinions of the parents, their friends, and a whole lot of people who weren't there, but have vested interests in claiming to be authorities on what took place.

Herein lies the enigma. Without the detail of what was reported to Portuguese police, you have nothing. Nothing, that is, except for British parents with a child missing, who say that she went missing in Portugal in a resort, but you would have only their word and that of their friends that they were ever there... If you're going to accept SOME of the objective facts reported to the Portuguese police in their investigation, then you have to accept ALL of what is reported in that investigation. You can't take some, and not others, because to do so means that you have to have a standard of choosing which states 'I reject X because the people with the most to lose say I should reject it' and 'I accept Y because the people with the most to gain say I should accept it.' If those police files aren't the sum total of every material fact known about this case, then nothing is. There's nothing to work from.

The authors acknowledge this, but they don't like its implications. The parents acknowledge this, but they don't like its implications. Neither of them have contended that the material in the police files is false. Neither dispute that what Kate and Gerry and others reported to the police, or saw collected and taken from their property, or watched being removed from their rental home, is not real nor accurately recorded in the police files. They just have a reaction to the conclusions that the evidence leads objective, intelligent detectives to reach. In fact, the ONLY conclusion that CAN be reached considering all the available evidence.

So any counter argument against this book which stems from questions presented by the Policia Judicia Case Files is not 'unchecked facts and moronic opinions.' They're a matter of police record and the subject of extensive analytical consideration, arriving at a conclusion which is both predictable, high in likelihood and probability, and an oft-repeated, globally recognised 'principal profile' for the cause of such occurrences. It is, in short, love it or loathe it, the most statistically supportable likelihood in every modern nation on earth. Einstein said that insanity was defined as doing the same things repeatedly and expecting a different outcome. It would be insanity for any police force to actually expect the most likely scenario and the most evidentially supported scenario to be the least likely conclusion. Their experience tells them that.

That's not speculation, nor quackery.

Now... you talk about how you read this book - and believe it - because you hate conspiracy theorists and the 'quacks' who promote them, and you cite the good journalistic authorship of this book. You comment that you appreciate an author who affirms that the US Government was not secretly behind 9.11 (Summers) and you appreciated the Summers volume on J Edgar Hoover. Did you read Summers' most critically acclaimed book, the one that earned him his kudos? The one he wrote defying the official government story, and claiming that JFK died as the result of a massive conspiracy theory - a conspiracy theory which many claim is 'quackery?' A conspiracy theory that many would claim Summers is a quack for writing in support of?

Do you realise, for example, that 'conspiracy theorists' claimed that the Reichstag fire was staged, that the attack on Pearl Harbour was known to be imminent and not reacted against, that Hillsborough was covered up, that Jimmy Saville and a number of high-level establishment pedophiles including MP's were routinely and massively abusing children in the care home system, that there was never any WMD in Iraq and that the Watergate Affair was an inside job?

Do you feel more enlightened, academic and authoritative by rejecting and living in ignorance of anything that such 'conspiracy theorists' and 'quacks' say?

Personally, I'd rather not be spoonfed my information or my opinions by any 'sacred cows' of journalism in single 'definitive' volumes. I'd rather use my brain and decide for myself where the evidence leads and whether the people who make the details of the evidence, not the generalisms of the condensed and abridged summative the central topic of discussion, and I'd hope other readers do too.

Glad you enjoyed it, though. Most people would have read your comments and concluded that you'd barely read past the index, or that curiously you already knew what it was that the book said, as if by psychic impression. Obviously I wouldn't begin to imagine you were as underhand and deceitful as that.

I mean... that would be like telling people you'd written the definitive book, even though you left out most of the details and failed to mention that you weren't legally allowed to write any other, without fearing being sued.
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Thanks for posting Scrants, that was a great read! I like the way he/she pointed out how bizarre the McCanns behaved the moment they found Madeleine missing. It is the sticking point for most when they see that the McCanns and their friends did not search for Madeleine, but instead spent the night phoning all their contacts and writing out their own alibis.

Wonderful. I hope that review stays.

Over to 'Tim'.

Dee Coy wrote:Wonderful. I hope that review stays.

Over to 'Tim'.

I somewhat think that 'Tim but dim' will not be able to muster up a response to that.

http://my-mccann-thoughts.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/chapter-3.html

Wednesday, September 17, 2014

Chapter 3

Chapter 3
I'm starting to feel like Dr Who, jumping back and forward in time. This chapter starts with by taking us back in time from 07.30 to near dawn although the authors fail to tell us exactly what time that was. I checked a couple of websites which both said dawn was at 06.34 in nearby Faro that morning.
According to Kate's book they went out "as soon as it was light, to resume our search." Anyone who has seen the dawn will know that "as soon as it was light" is very imprecise.

Anyway regardless of the exact time S&S tell us Kate & Gerry went out,"wrapped up warm", so can we expect them to tell us what they did & where they went? Unfortunately the answer is no, so another of the big questions from that night remains unanswered. We still have no idea what Kate & Gerry McCann did that morning in spite of 7 years of interviews & books including this latest "definitive" account. In her own book Kate says:

"As soon as it was light Gerry and I resumed our search. We went up and down roads we had never seen before, having barely left the complex all week. We jumped over walls and raked through undergrowth. We looked in ditches and holes. All was quiet apart from the sound of barking dogs,which added to the eeriness of the atmosphere. I remember opening a big dumpster-type bin and saying to myself, please God, don't let her be in here. The most striking and horrific thing about all this was that we were completely alone. Nobody else, it seemed, was out looking for Madeleine. Just us her parents.
We must have been out for at least an hour before returning to David & Fiona's apartment"

If you read that carefully you will see that Kate reveals nothing about where they went. Not a mention of the direction they took even to start with. No comment about whether they tried to be systematic, returning to the last place either of them had looked the night before and moving out from there. Nothing. No detail at all except the very generic "undergrowth" "holes" "ditches"and "dumpster-type bin".

I had hoped that S&S would be able to fill-in this gap. That they would have been able to provide evidence that Kate & Gerry really did search for Madeleine at least for that hour around dawn, but sadly they do not. Nor do they make any challenge to the question of what Kate & Gerry might have done at that time. They accept that they went out searching even though there is only their word for it.

Instead S&S choose to focus on the fact that Kate & Gerry say the police were doing nothing at this time and highlighting ways in which the police effort was inadequate while conceding that individual officers did make great sacrifices to search for Madeleine.

The chapter continues to describe the searches on May 4th. It includes a lot that seems rather irrelevant for example describing residents thoughts about holes & roadworks. It's just filler which is odd considering the book is really quite short.

Next we come to what is for some another important episode in the case, the encounter that Yvonne Martin had with Kate, Gerry and David Payne. Curiously this is told from the viewpoint of a journalist Len Port who lived locally. I say curious because the encounter has been described by Yvonne Martin herself and by Kate and David Payne. The whole encounter is dealt with in four sentences and does not mention anything of note except saying that "David Payne, who like Kate apparently thought her(Yvonne Martin) intrusive, asked her to leave." There is no mention of Gerry being present. This is part (I'm sorry it's quite a large part, but is important) of what Yvonne Martin had to say in the statement she made to the police in May 2007:

"At the scene, she found a group of three people, two males and one female.
She went over to the group and identified herself.
Two members of that group, a male and a female, identified themselves as the parents of the missing child - the McCann couple.
The couple was visibly upset, and the mother was crying intensely.
The third person never identified himself, upon the witness's insistence the couple replied that he was a close friend of the family.
She adds that this third person appeared familiar to her.
Taking advantage of the information that she had heard on the news, she began questioning the couple about how often they had checked on the children, obtaining the reply that people would go to see them every hour.
As is normal and routine in her service, she asked whether Gerry was the biological father of the missing child, to which he replied yes.
She clarifies that she asked this question because during the course of her 25 years of service working with children at risk, it is very normal that when a couple has child and where the father or the mother is not a biological parent, the biological parent may have a tendency to come and "get" his child.
After having obtained the verbal response from Gerry, the mother, Kate, questioned what she was doing asking these questions which should be asked by the police, who were already on the scene in large numbers searching for her daughter, who had been taken by a couple.
At this moment, the witness notices that the couple began to have doubts about her capacity and she immediately showed them her official documents and credentials issued by the British government to calm them down.
Gerry took her documents and showed them to the third person and told him that they were authentic and were certified by the police.
At this moment, the witness wishes to clarify that, in England, anyone who works with children, whether a doctor, police officer or social worker, has to have a proper credential certified by the police and that this was one of the documents she showed to the McCanns.
Because she found it strange that Kate told her that her daughter had been taken by a couple, she tried to separate her from the other two individuals so that she could speak to her with more privacy, suggesting to Kate that they (Y and K) should enter the apartment, Kate aggressively rejected this idea and told her that they could speak on the street.
The witness then asked whether anyone from the Medical Centre had been with Kate as she was very agitated and needed some support, she was told they hadn't.
At this point, Kate told her that her daughter had disappeared 13 hours ago. It was about 10 in the morning.
Meanwhile a fourth individual came towards the group and identified himself as a journalist. The witness alerted the couple to the type of statements they should give and that it would be better for them to keep silent.
At this moment, the third person, who was always near to the couple and the witness, moved the couple away from her and the three of them talked in whispers for some time.
After this, and leaving the couple behind him, he approached the witness and told her that the couple did not want to speak any more with her, nor with anyone else.
The witness replied to him that if the McCann couple felt the need to talk to her later, she would be at their total disposal."

I do not draw any sinister conclusion from this account, but I am amazed by how different the account is to that given by the authors. Again I cannot help but think that the authors are being dishonest in the way they are describing some episodes in the story. It is too early to accuse them of bias, but I am already starting to have serious doubts about the accuracy of their reporting. I am imagining someone with little knowledge of the case or the police files reading this book and getting a completely false impression about the case.

The authors go on describe Kate's continued desire to see a priest which appears somewhat out of context, before a very brief section dealing with Kate & Gerry's first formal statements to the police. Here they again stress the tension between the McCann's and the police, something that is becoming a recurring theme in spite of the fact that the police have been on the scene for about 12 hours at this point. There is little comment about what is said in those first statements except to say that both Kate & Gerry mentioned the sighting by Jane Tanner.

Next there is a section about the press presence in Praia Da Luz when the McCann's returned from the police station in Portimao and how this was received by the police. The decision by Gerry McCann to make a statement to the press is mentioned, but there is no discussion about how this decision was reached or how it was decided what should be said to the press. Only part of Gerry's statement to the press is reproduced. A few paragraphs later the full 'Report of Disappearance' form logged by GNR officer Roque is reproduced even though it adds nothing to the readers knowledge of the case. More filler? I can think of many things more interesting and informative that could have been included in the three chapters I have read to date.

Now S&S focus on the fact that Goncalo Amaral, the senior PJ officer assigned to the case, had doubts about whether this was an abduction or not. We are told that one of his officers disagreed with him and that the McCann's later sued Amaral for libel and that the proceedings are continuing. We are not told that they lost the libel case on appeal, but are still seeking damages through the Portuguese courts.

The book continues with the theme of conflict between the McCann group and the police for a few more paragraphs, but at no point do the authors give any details about why the police were suspicious of the McCann's and their story. The whole thing appears to be very one sided. The chapter ends with the following comment attributed to Kate in a phone call to her friend Nicky Gill : 'judging from the actions of the local police, one would think that she had merely "lost a dog"'.


Summary
This chapter seems to be intent on establishing a conflict from day 1 between the McCann's and the Portuguese police. Once again the authors have been very selective in their presentation of facts surrounding important episodes in the case. The number of important episodes and facts that have been omitted from the story is very worrying. I still hope that the authors will return to deal with at least some of these, but I have decided that I will need to keep a list because the number of omissions is starting to grow at quite a rate.
Perhaps most disappointing of all is the complete absence of any new information or any attempt to interpret known facts in a novel, but fair & balanced way.

IF they went out at dawn to resume their search why did they not tell Jane Hill that in the bbc interview?

Worth watching again .Incredible.

travis macbickle wrote:IF they went out at dawn to resume their search why did they not tell Jane Hill that in the bbc interview?

The McCanns gave another interview stating that the reason they never searched was because it was too dark. Then they gave another interview, stating that they looked for Madeleine at around 6am. Kate McCann then stated in her book 'Madeleine' that they went out at around 3am to look for Madeleine and everyone had gone home.

Kate McCann didn't just insult the GNR, whose rest days and leave had been cancelled, so they could search for Madeleine, she insulted the staff from the Ocean Club and Tapas Bar, who had finished their shifts but instead of going home, they volunteered to look for Madeleine. Kate McCann also insulted the locals who were out looking for Madeleine, while she and her husband were busy doing everything they could to save their own skins. As Jane Hill rightly stated, some of these locals stayed off work for more than a week, to search for Madeleine.

Kate McCann also insulted the holidaymakers, who gave up their leisure time to search for Madeleine. The McCanns gave up nothing, Sean and Amelie were dumped in the crèche the following morning so the McCanns could go out and have a jog. The McCanns were photographed, jogging past those who were searching for Madeleine and they were also photographed dressed standing on top of a cliff dressed in their jogging gear, watching the GNR combing the beach below in their bid to find Madeleine.

Further proof the McCanns did nothing to find Madeleine, is in this link that contains information regarding phone calls the McCanns made and received. If you look at the times of these phone calls, there is no way the McCanns could have conducted a thorough search for Madeleine, whilst speaking on their mobiles.

http://www.mccannpjfiles.co.uk/PJ/TIME_LINE_INFORMATION.htm

travis macbickle wrote:Worth watching again .Incredible.

Hi Travis

The video below is also worth watching.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOidpDzY-Js

Just went onto the amazon site and the overall stars for the book as 3 as the 5 star reviews now equal the 1 star reviews.

None of the new 5 star reviews give any specific reasons for the top rating - just generic content - brilliantly researched etc.

Again I urge members who are reading the book to post a detailed review.

wlbts wrote:

Popcorn wrote:
I always find it amazing how some people can believe that an unknown abductor would be well organised enough to arrive with drugs to sedate the child they planned to steal (and possibly enough for her two siblings as well, according to Kate). Yet this abductor was also so dim that he then paraded through the streets of Praia da Luz with the child in his arms, rather than parking in the car park conveniently located by the apartment's front door, from where he could discreetly place his prey in the boot or back seat?

And having been a good boy scout, that abductor was so embarrassingly well prepared that he used sedatives that don't leave any noticeable odour.  Because the abductor wouldn't want anybody to notice later on that Madeleine had gone ... doh!

Those same paragraphs also mention Kate's musings that the abductor might have been in for a practice run on the Wednesday.

And the book says all this as if it makes perfect sense.

Good grief, what a pile of horse manure...S&S are going to look like a right pair of plonkers if/when the investigation reaches its natural conclusion. In fact has DCI Redwood not already ruled out the possibility of trial runs etc?

As I posted earlier on another forum: The book seems to be só wrong, that I'm starting to wonder WHY? To make a fast buck? To follow instructions? Or - maybe, just maybe - to provoke comments on a wider level ... ?

I just have this suspicion that at the one meeting with K&G the draft copy of the book was handed over.

wlbts wrote:One sentence in the book that I found interesting:

'Amateur anaesthesia can kill.'

Oh dear, another foot in mouth quote.

If a journalist knows that amateur anaesthesia can kill then a trained anaesthetist must also know, better than a journalist in fact.

The other question is: what would an amateur use to sedate a child? Heroin, alcohol or methodone would work and would be easily available to your average swarthy foreign ne'er-do-well. So we are expected to believe that a mother and doctor sees her children unconcious, suspects that they may have been sedated with something that could kill them or leave them with permanent damage and thinks to herself, "They're breathing, they'll be fine."

Are we absolutely certain that Kate didn't write this book?

KathyBelle wrote:

travis macbickle wrote:Worth watching again .Incredible.

Hi Travis

The video below is also worth watching.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOidpDzY-Js

Yeah, very worth watching indeed. Stumbled across that one a while back.

Some more of VTen's responses to someone called Whiterose on Amazon.

Bit of a legend this Vten person.

A long one but well worth reading. Fantastic stuff.


Initial post: 15 Sep 2014 01:00:54 BDT
Vten says:
I presume you're an apologist for the McCann Organisation, since I can't imagine any intelligent, objective person would ever fall into the logical fallacy of declaring a book to be the absolute truth which is based on nothing more than select opinions in complete disregard of material facts on the subject of an unsolved, unresolved ongoing police investigation, particularly when two police investigations are still active and both have arrived at conclusions which the book conveniently ignores or rejects.

If you're stating that Summers and Co have definitively solved the case, where is the child, who are the perpetrators and why is there precisely zero evidence of abduction, only a wealth of evidence of death, which this book conveniently manages to overlook?
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Posted on 15 Sep 2014 01:06:19 BDT

Vten says:
Incidentally... You "enjoyed every word"?

Really. You took enjoyment from a book attempting to whitewash the controversy over a missing child? Which bits did you enjoy? The descriptions of reckless child abandonment and endangerment? Or the laughter at people who think the parents are liars? Maybe the bits where police investigation were ridiculed? Or the giggles about how very ordinary it is to be unable to tell the same story in the same detail consistently over a period of a week?

Oh yes. So enjoyable.

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Posted on 15 Sep 2014 18:07:51 BDT

Sean O'Brien says:
'To the point and without fantasist imaginings . The real truth of the story of Maddy . I enjoyed every word'

You 'enjoyed every word' ? How does somebody 'enjoy' the disappearance of a 3 year old child' ?

How are you qualified to state 'The real truth of the story of Maddy' ? There is ongoing investigation unless you had not noticed .
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In reply to an earlier post on 16 Sep 2014 13:16:35 BDT
Chris Roberts says:
Why bother buying this load of bovine excrement when "The Truth if the Lie" is available to read for free?
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In reply to an earlier post on 16 Sep 2014 15:38:00 BDT
Last edited by the author on 16 Sep 2014 15:38:45 BDT

Whiterose says:
If you have read the Police Files you would have noticed it said there was no abandonment. That the McCann's although they left their children alone, there was no 'intent' that the McCann's did not go out to endanger their children, they thought they would be safe.

Summers and Swan are experienced Journalists they are able to tell the difference between actually lying and some difference in statements due to the passing of time. They no doubt ignored the tittle tattle that is on the internet, by armchair detectives who think they know more than Police detectives.

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In reply to an earlier post on 16 Sep 2014 15:41:57 BDT
Last edited by the author on 16 Sep 2014 15:42:42 BDT

Whiterose says:
The answer is simple, Amaral took the forensic reports, ignored the fact that he should wait for the actual ending results and went and made the results as he saw them suit his theory. The fact that they found NOTHING to incriminate the McCann's didn't even enter into it.

At least Summers and Swan have read the forensic reports and have made a conclusion based on understanding them.

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In reply to an earlier post on 17 Sep 2014 17:47:14 BDT

Vten says:
Whiterose.

Nowhere in the police files does it say 'there was no abandonment.'

Abandonment is not defined by whether it is the result of malicious intent, either. But by the act. Children left home alone, incapable of looking after themselves, unable to defend their own lives, unable to escape if need arises, while the parents are a quarter kilometre walk away eating and drinking with friends, regardless of whether they claim to send someone occasionally to listen at the door, becomes by definition 'abandonment.'

The police files note something very important. The only people claiming that the children were checked on are the McCann's and their friends. There's no independent verification of the claim. Indeed, the McCann's claimed a check every fifteen to twenty minutes. Witnesses indicate that this claim is preposterous. A neighbour gave sworn testimony that a child in apartment 5a, on the previous night, screamed and cried for over an hour before there was a sound indicating that an adult had returned home. Circumstantial evidence from the Tapas Bar, and from Chaplin's Bar on a previous night (a further distance away from Tapas) also fail to corroborate the actual or plausible existence of such a framework of inspection. Other parents on the trip stayed home variously, or made use of the paid-for services offered by the resort for checking in at holiday apartments. Many sound commentators and agencies have raised grave concerns not merely about the McCann's 'home alone' policy, but about the endorsement of the holiday resort of the idea of parents leaving children in locked apartments while paid attendants take it in turns to conduct a 'listen at the door' check to see whether the children are crying, choking, being molested or dying.

I think you're on really dangerous ground attempting to create an indefensible argument based on semantics and the nuances of interpretation for the idea of leaving your children alone in a locked or unlocked holiday apartment while you eat and drink elsewhere, and employing a haphazard or non-existent less-than-thorough policy for yourself, friends, friends of friends or complete strangers to carry out a fleeting check that there are no dramatic signs of disaster befalling your children. I think the disappearance of Madeleine, among the many other terrible stories of parents leaving children home alone to their detriment, is the proof of this very flimsy defence being almost criminally reckless.

I have not yet heard of the judge sitting on a case of neglect arising from leaving children home alone who asked 'when you left them home alone, did you intend for harm to befall them?' and when told 'No, of course not!' would then say 'Oh... well, that's all right then... You're free to go home.' As they say, the road to hell (or Huelva) is paved with good intentions.

Summers and Swan are journalists. Let's leave it at that. Them being 'experienced' is open to interpretation. Some of the oldest and most experienced people in the world are also the most foolish. News of the World journalists were 'experienced.' Would you trust them? Andy Coulson was experienced. Is he trustworthy? The examples are legion. They are not a bastion of authority or verity, because they are not held to account for being so. No one inspects them. No one tests them. No one reviews them and makes sure tell the truth. They give opinions. Unashamedly. They use that as their defence when they get it wrong, as they frequently do. They present evidence. Sometimes fully. Sometimes well. Sometimes partially. Sometimes badly. They also are known for fabricating witnesses, making logical leaps, drawing wrong conclusions. By standard, to be honest, there are journalists and writers as old and experienced as Summers who have produced a bigger and more creditable, credible and acknowledged body of work.

And all of that required no tittle tattle from the internet, no armchair detectives... just simple objective fact, the official police case files, and half a brain. The only thing more troubling than 'armchair detectives' who think they know more than police detectives is paid, profiteering journalists who think they know more than police detectives. They've put far more lives at risk, scandalised far more people, caused far more material harm than any person or group of people who are free to speak and discuss ideas in any way that they choose, in any communicative medium than they choose. The journalists who helped whitewash Jimmy Savile, Cyril Smith, Haut de la Garenne, Bryn Estyn, and Hillsborough are proof of that.
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In reply to an earlier post on 17 Sep 2014 17:49:44 BDT

Vten says:
Whiterose...

You cannot state that the forensic reports found nothing. Rather, they found a very strong match, albeit an unconclusive one. By all means, go get the samples tested by a second laboratory, but to do that you'll have to get round the outrageous and scandalous fact that the rather dubious lab that conducted the tests (which was known for falsifying its findings to suit political agendas) mysteriously 'accidentally' incinerated the samples, instead of returning them to the police. Curious, that one.
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In reply to an earlier post on 17 Sep 2014 19:35:42 BDT
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Whiterose says:
They did not find a very strong match at all. The samples from 5a were so poor they weren't able to find a DNA , the one from the car was from at least three people even as many as five.

What match are you talking about?

There were no blood spatter and the sample they were able to give a result for was from a male.

You ramble on and on with a load of rubbish that doesn't even have anything to do with the McCann case. What you need to do is read the files properly and the forensic reports plus what Grimes said about the dogs.
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In reply to an earlier post on 17 Sep 2014 22:40:36 BDT

Vten says:
Whiterose,

False. Misinformation. Clutching at straws.

The most incriminating samples of all, the most valuable ones, were the ones found in the car - blood and hair - with a more than 70% match to the child. Why? Because according to the McCann story the child had never been IN the car, never bled in it, never bled wet blood on anything that could be put in it. It was hired after she died. Sorry. Disappeared.

Additionally, there's no such thing as a DNA sample which is from 'at least three people'. You're talking about probability matching of DNA profiles. And you're right. The blood and hair taken together could have come from any number of young girls of blonde hair and with a genotype matching a close relation to Madeleine. So just how many young, blonde girls with Madeleine's genotype do you think died and got transported from 5a to the car? Is there a major problem in Portugal with young blonde girls dying in mysterious circumstances and being driven around in a decomposed state having been frozen and partially defrosted in the boot of a hire car? Is one hire car company more likely to have dead bodies in the boots than others?

Do you know what's the most disturbing...?

You can equivocate about 'strength of sample' and 'strength of match' and 'number of people that the frozen, defrosted, cadaver-tainted, hair-matched blood samples from the boot of the car could be matched with' until the cows come home. You miss the simple, incriminating point... A girl was reported missing in unverifiable circumstances from an apartment which showed absolutely NO sign of intruder and which showed signs of having been extremely well cleaned within the past 24 hours, to the point of the DNA of the occupants of the flat being nearly impossible to find trace of... And in that very same apartment cadaver and blood dogs, and forensic experts found the liquid given off by dead bodies after 90 minutes of decomposition to be 'significant' in its presence in multiple locations, all places that cadaver should never, ever be found. In some of the same locations blood was found, which was tested and inconclusively found to bear a close match to the missing child, but was noted as having been cleaned up and damaged by cleaning products - recently. DNA samples that simply should NOT have been there. Cadaver that should not have been there. Blood that should not have been there. And then cadaver that should not have been present, blood that should not have been present and hair that should not have been present, the latter two bearing a 70% similarity to the missing child, were found in a car that they should not have been found in. And cadaver was found on the missing child's soft toy that it should not have been found on. And on the child's mother's favourite holiday clothes that it should not have been found on.

The issue isn't probability, or strength of match. It's presence. Those things should not have been where they were found. And having been found there, only contradictory, nonsensical, implausible excuses were given to account for the presence of what should not have been present.

When police investigate a missing person, they don't react well to finding the traces of DEAD person in the last place the missing person was reported as being seen, nor do they react well to the spurious excuses and internet-searched mitigations offered by the last people to be verified as seeing the missing person alive.

The point is this... the blood could have matched a number of people, that's agreed. But it matched Madeleine too, with the same certainty that the available genetic information matched anyone else. You can't simply divert attention on to the possibility of it being one of a thousand other people, when you also can't rule out that it didn't belong to exactly who the police suspect it belonged to.

By the way, the 'sample' which gave a result from 'a male', if I recall correctly, was not the blood spatter on the wall, but a trace on soft furnishings, believing to come from a male child, and suspected to be semen. That's either a very relevant point which demands a critical answer and broadens the scope of the investigation, or it is inconsequential to the case.

As I said... forget what 'other' samples might have been found. It is, firstly, PREPOSTEROUS, that a holiday apartment which has been used for several days by casual tourists has been so thoroughly cleaned and had so much laundry done pertaining to the soft furnishings, that barely a trace of the occupants can be found. Moreso considering that the very tiles appeared to have been bleached and scrubbed with a fine brush. These are the actions of a clean freak, not a mother who by her own admission could not give the police Madeleine's toothbrush because she didn't have her own, and instead shared a toothbrush with her siblings. I mean... a GP having children share toothbrushes? Or... someone with something to hide. Secondly, it isn't good that samples of body fluids that shouldn't be present in places they shouldn't be present closely matching a missing person should be found without too much difficulty and be exclusively indicated by cadaver and blood dogs, out of all the locations in the apartment.... and that no other blood and cadaver samples were discovered in the apartment belonging to any other people, even though cadaver and blood dogs can detect the stuff YEARS after it is spilled... That tells you that whoever was the source of the blood and cadaver spilled those fluids in extremely unusual, almost abstract circumstances. Such telling traces were not found in any of the other apartments tested in the complex... Why was that, if as you claim, it is so usual for visitors to drop blood and cadaver in spatters in these apartments?

I've read the files properly. Better than you, it seems, unless you have a McAgenda to misrepresent them and spread confusion. I've also read (and more importantly, understood) forensic reports and noted what they say, and also what they don't say. And I've read what Grime (you can't even get his name right, either) said about the dogs. And it isn't what you say it is. And I know that with absolute certainty, because Grime has gone on in the United States to be key in pushing cases to conclusion using no more than the same evidence found in PDL, with no caveats and no equivocations, and no apologies for the 'deficiencies' of dog detections.

I wonder why you have so much vested interest in casting doubt on recorded fact, and the work of EVRD and blood dogs, and forensic detection.

Very well expressed comments from Vten. Thanks for posting them, Andrew.

Wow! Vten can certainly write. Logical, systematic and passionate. What a star.

Wow.... He's the man

http://my-mccann-thoughts.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/chapter-4.html

Thursday, September 18, 2014

Chapter 4


Good news Chapter 4 opens with some praise for the police investigation and continues with a description of some of the actions taken by the police. This is necessarily incomplete, it would simply take to long to list everything that the PJ & GNR did, but the authors present a picture of police forces working hard with limited resources.

The first hint of criticism of the Portuguese police comes a few pages in when the authors refer to the finding that one of the fingerprints collected from the apartment (the one from the patio door) was identified as being that of a GNR officer. This is referred to as an embarrassment for the Portuguese police.

Then the tone becomes even more critical.

"Claims that the Portuguese police had run an efficient operation would draw scepticism, even derision, from some of the foreigners who took part in the searches."

We might hope then that this claim would be backed up, that some of these foreigners might even be named & quoted. There is only a feeble attempt to do this by quoting Peter Patterson.

' "I never saw any police involvement in the operations carried out by civilians" said Peter Patterson, a friend of the McCann's . "I felt dispirited because there appeared to be no coordination or leadership"'

Then the authors refer to Kate McCann herself doubting that the house to house searches were ever completed & being critical of the technician who took the fingerprints not wearing gloves.

Peter Patterson is a friend of the McCann's. He arrived in Portugal on the 8th of May. Several days after Madeleine had gone missing. Thus not only is this a biased point of view it comes from someone who did not start to get involved in searches until 4 days after Madeliene went missing by which time the town and immediate area had been thoroughly searched.
The only other point of view given is Kate McCann's own view about house to house inquiries and the forensic technician. Do the statements of these two people justify the comment "scepticism,even derision from some of the foreigners who took part in the searches"? I think not.

The criticism of the Portuguese police stops, perhaps surprisingly, when the authors relate that CCTV was difficult or impossible to obtain apparently through no fault of the police.

The authors then describe how UK agencies became involved in the case. I'm not in the best position to judge the accuracy of this as it is not something I have studied in great detail. I'm sure readers will point out any serious errors or omissions.

Oh dear, then another unnecessary dig at the Portuguese police. "Competent or not, the early Portuguese police search for any sign of Madeleine in or around Praia da Luz proved fruitless." Why put the first three words on that sentence? The fact that these three words are there at all suggests the authors have an agenda to paint the PJ as incompetent.

The chapter quickly turns to sightings, ranging from a bag of what turned out to be rubbish to sightings of a live child accompanied by adults in various towns and cities. The authors list several examples and stress that as time went by the number of sightings grew, but they fast forward through a year claiming 1000's of sightings & creating the impression that all these sightings happened within a few days of Madeleine going missing. They fairly comment that only a small fraction "deserved to be-or could be- followed up."

The very next paragraph opens with two of the most incredible sentences I have ever read about this case. Here they are:

"There seemed to be virtually no leads to go on. No clues of any substance at the scene of the crime-if there had been a crime."

I find these sentences incredible for two reasons:

1. To say there were "no leads to go on" is simply untrue. There were lots of leads. Not least the numerous sightings including the Tanner sighting, but also leads suggesting that the McCann's and/or their friends might be involved in some way. The police had many leads to follow up.

2. "if there had been a crime." How on earth could there not have been a crime? A three year old girl was missing. She clearly had not just wandered off and had she done so & been injured or killed someone must have concealed this fact because she had not been found after extensive searches. The crime scene itself, apartment 5a, had many clues and the open window and shutters clearly indicate that Madeleine didn't just wander off. There is no doubt a crime had been committed.

The rest of the paragraph says that the problem, or the perceived problem would be "Virtually no leads from the public, seemingly nothing to follow up." This comes straight after the authors list some of the thousands of sightings from members of the public. Far from there being nothing to follow up as the authors suggest there was in fact too much to follow up thanks, at least in part, to the massive media interest.

Bizarrely after saying "if there had been a crime." The authors go on to discuss all the possible causes for Madeleine's disappearance i.e. crimes. There is some discussion of the possibility she wandered off, but this really isn't possible as discussed earlier.

The focus of the chapter then switches to paedophiles and in particular the police efforts to trace known local offenders and question them. A few examples are given of people who were quickly eliminated from the investigation. I have to question why these examples are included in the book. They contribute nothing except to show that the PJ were doing their job and, perhaps this is the reason they are included, their inclusion creates an impression that paedophiles and child abuse & abductions were commonplace in the Algarve. Yes, there are paedophiles in the Algarve, just as there are everywhere. Child abductions do occur rarely in the Algarve as the do everywhere. As far as I know there is no reason to think that the Algarve is any worse than anywhere else in the world.

Then more padding, relating stories of people who were investigated for one reason or another but turned out to have nothing to do with the case. Why bother recounting these parts of the investigation? They were shown to be nothing to do with the case.

The final paragraph hints at what is to come in chapter 5 (I had a sneeky peek ;-)) by referring to accounts by reputable witnesses involving bogus charity collectors.

Today, however, now that there has been time for analysis, some of the information that flowed in early on seems relevant and potentially valuable. Take the accounts by reputable witnesses of visits they received from a charity collector-or collectors- for a charity that apparently did not exist. "

All things considered this chapter is the best effort yet by the authors to give a balanced factual account. It portrays the Portuguese police in a more favorable light, although there are a couple of unnecessary digs, and does a better job of presenting facts accurately. Having said that I am saying that it only gets a C- while the previous Chapters got an E or even F.

Chapter 5 next....

Tweets from S&S today. They must be desperate for positive reviews.

Summers & Swan ‏@summersandswan 28m
Welcome praise. #madeleinemccann Madeleine - Exposing the Myths: Looking for Madeleine,new book .... http://exposingthemyths.blogspot.com/2014/09/looking-for-madeleine-new-book-about.html?spref=tw …
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Summers & Swan ‏@summersandswan 31m
"Madeleine Exposing the Myths" blog calls bk "Looking for Madeleine" "an excellent piece of work...definitive." #Madeleinemccann

OMG
They must be desperate indeed ...

From their Facebook page.

LOOKING FOR MADELEINE,
our book on the disappearance of three-year-old Madeleine McCann, has caused a furor since it was published late last week. We have read and noted all the comments posted on our Facebook page and a large number of people have voiced suspicions of the little girl's parents, and unbridled antipathy towards them. Such people, it seems evident, won't allow facts to disabuse them of their views. Those whose work undermines their beliefs must "be part of the conspiracy."

We'll continue to post items of interest, and hope reasonable people will read our book and our work, and continue to comment on it. This page, however, is not a forum in which we shall permit others to defame or libel, spread malicious gossip, or incite others to do so.

Civil discussion or exchange of views will be welcomed, but those with no respect for that principle must expect their posts to be deleted. Repete offenders will be banned. There are plenty of other places on the Net that will allow them to shout distortions of the facts and spread black propaganda.

For our part, we'd urge anyone interested to read 'Looking for Madeleine'. When time permits, we'll happily answer questions. Thank you for your interest.

Long read, I haven't read it yet.................

Thursday, September 18, 2014

"Looking for Madeleine" by Summers and Swan: A Book Review - Part One

I have finally received my copy of Looking for Madeleine by Anthony Summers and Robbyn Swan and I promised that, in spite of my moratorium on commenting on the Madeleine McCann case, I would review this book because my name shows up in it and I predicted months ago that this book was going to be pro-McCann and written cleverly enough to convince anyone unfamiliar with the police files to believe what is contained within this supposedly first "independent and objective" account of the case.

Today I will address the author's claim to be objective and to have done extremely thorough research. I will start with the bit in the book about me because....well, naturally, that was the bit I just had to read. You will find the part about me on pages 196-197.

First of all, it is hard to exactly know where they got their information from because these supposedly professional journalists failed to include any footnotes in their book nor did they have a bibliography at the end. I surely included footnotes when I wrote The Murder of Cleopatra...how else would people verify what I researched and be able to learn more about what others had written on her history? When I read people complaining online, I saw Summers and Swann's reply that these folks need only to read the source notes. Well, I have the book in front of me and they meant this literally. There is a chapter called "Source Notes" within which is explained the they had read from the police files and Gonçalo Amaral's book and they also noted a number of media sources. THIS is NOT a bibliography. Although Summers claimed in his email to me that he had read my blogs and book, he doesn't mention these in his "source notes".....oh, yeah, well, he probably actually didn't read them at all. He mentions my blog, The Daily Profiler, in one of the chapters on haters, but he doesn't directly quote me (because I refused him permission) so he instead paraphrases what I said and does not footnote where he got this information from. I actually had to Google some of the key words to find out exactly which of the 72 blogs I have written on the McCann case it came from and, interestingly, what I cam up with was the Stop the Myths site.

As a matter of fact, from what I could Google, most of Summers and Swan's questions to me came directly from the Stop the Myths, a, vicious pro-McCann site, which is why I got warning bells that I was about to be put in a conspiracy theorist or hater section of the book. It would seem to me that when the authors did research, they only did their research on the pro-McCann sites. I got no feeling through our email conversation that the authors had studied my profile of the case and they never asked for an interview early on (they only called me for quote permission right before publication) so that they might really pick my brain for my professional analysis of the case. After refusing to allow Summers and Swan to quote my blog, I suggested that they ask me questions about my take on the case and my profile and they could quote from my answers. They did ask me a few vague questions and these were my answers:

1) When a child goes missing from home, the police are faced with four possibilities: the child ran away, the child wandered away and met with an accident, the child was abducted, or someone in the home removed a live or dead child and is not telling the truth to the police. As Madeleine was not yet four years old at the time of her disappearance, it is obvious she was not a runaway. Although it is possible she could have wandered out of the vacation flat, her body was never found nearby nor was there any evidence she opened either door and walked into the street to then be abducted. The third possibility is that of a predator breaking in and abducting the child which there has never been any evidence to support. The fourth possible cause of Madeleine's disappearance is that something happened to her inside the vacation flat and the parents removed her body and are covering up a crime. 

In spite of the lack of evidence supporting an abduction, the Portuguese police immediately focused on the child being taken by a local predator; this is not uncommon as well-healed distraught parents rarely become suspects in the early days as detectives tend to feel sympathetic toward parents who appear to be a noncriminal type. Because Robert Murat lived only a block away from the flat and exhibited some concerning behaviors, he became an Arguido, a suspect, which is not unreasonable at that point in the investigation. However, it would have been best if the parents had also been considered suspects from the early days of the investigation and then both avenues could have been investigated until evidence narrowed the focus down to one theory. Later on, statements and behaviors from the McCanns and their friends raised the detectives' suspicions that they might have had something to do with what happened to Madeleine, and when no evidence of abduction was able to be found and cadaver and blood dogs hit in the vacation flat and in the McCanns' hire car, the police had no choice but to declare the McCanns Arguidos. To this day, Gonçalo Amaral believes the evidence points to the McCanns' involvement with the death and disappearance of their daughter, as do I. The three-year-long Scotland Yard review has not provided one shred of evidence that any abductor removed Madeleine from the flat and it is concerning that they have never gone back to the beginning of the case and reinterviewed that parents and their friends nor done a crime reconstruction of the night in question.

2) After seven years of analyzing this case and traveling to Portugal and Praia da Luz to study the crime location, it is my conclusion that there is no evidence of stranger abduction and the physical and behavioral evidence continues to support my theory that the McCanns were involved with the death and disappearance of their daughter. It is clear after visiting the location of the vacation flat, the the statement of Jane Tanner that she saw both Gerry McCann chatting with a friend on the street at the very time a man carrying a small child away from the flat is unlikely to be truthful. On a street as narrow as that one is between the McCanns' flat and the Tapas dining area, there is no possible way Gerry and his friend did not see either Jane or the possible kidnapper. Scotland Yard's claim on CrimeWatch that Jane really did see a man carrying a child, that this man was a vacationer carrying his child back to his apartment after an evening of childcare provided by the hotel, is not credible  - as the man would have been walking in the wrong direction. Furthermore, this man never came forward for seven years and Scotland Yard has not given out the name of this supposed tourist.

After examining the crime scene and statements and behaviors of the parents and their friends and taking into account the evidence of the cadaver and blood dogs, the evidence points to Madeleine being overmedicated by her parents and having an accident while they were not in the apartment. The sighting by the Smith family of a man carrying a child toward the beach from the direction of the vacation flat has a high likelihood of being Gerry McCann. It is my theory that he temporarily housed Madeleine's body near the beach and in the early morning hours, moved her body to a gravel and rock filled crevice on the Rocha Negra, the large rock that soars above Praia da Luz. Such a burial spot is easily accessible from the beach and a excellent location to hide a body without the necessity of a shovel. Later, when Kate McCann told a Portuguese detective of a dream she had in which she saw Madeleine dead on a slab of rock and the cadaver dogs were going to be brought in, I theorize that Gerry McCann then moved Madeleine's body to a more remote location, possibly a desolate area just west of Praia da Luz near where Gerry's phone pinged over a couple of days, a hilly, shrub area known as Monte do Jose Mestre. Unless Scotland Yard or the Portuguese police search this area in the manner in which they searched three locations (based on the residences and work locations of local criminal suspects) fruitlessly near Praia da Luz, then it is clear Madeleine's body will never be discovered except by accident.

It is the totality of the evidence that leads me to believe the McCanns should be reinstated as suspects. With no evidence of abduction, there is no reason to spend millions of pounds chasing bogeymen all over the world and digging up acres of ground in Portugal when there is not a shred of evidence to warrant such actions.

Summers responded with this:

  I've now read and digested. There will be a problem with length, but I promise you what will emerge will be faithful to what you've written

Lying. Dog. As I suspected, nothing of what I wrote in answer to his questions was included in his book. Instead, he pulls stuff out of context that he found on the Stop the Myths site and then
 ignores my statements that I permitted him to quote. Finally, he libels me by stating "The adventure (my trip to Praia da Luz) produced only substantial self-publicity." (Summers,A, Swann, R., Looking for Madeleine, page 197 - this is a footnote). I learned a good deal in Praia da Luz which could forward the case if investigators took my findings into account.

It seems obvious to me Summers and Swan's only goal in including me in their book was to prove my profiling of the case had no merit and that I was one of the haters. Although they mention my blog on the case, I am quite certain it is to present me something less than a professional profiler and more of a blogger. After tearing apart Nancy Grace, it is then mentioned I was a regular on her show. No where is my book, Profile of the Disappearance of Madeleine McCann mentioned or the fact that the McCanns Carter-Rucked it. And since there are no footnotes, no one can double-check the veracity of the authors version of my commentary nor see in what context such commentary was made.

One of the advantages of being included in the book is that I know more than the innocent reader that not all is as it seems. Any reader unfamiliar with the police files or Gonçalo's book, The Truth of the Lie, or my book, or Tony Bennett's What Really Happened to Madeleine McCann: 60 reasons which suggest that she was not abducted, will likely believe that these two investigative journalists are presenting factual information and not a very slanted, subjective, and possibly commissioned version of the Madeleine McCann case.

Criminal Profiler Pat Brown

September 18, 2104

http://patbrownprofiling.blogspot.co.uk/