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Previous Poll Results, April 2008 |
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Poll Result, 06 June 2008
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Poll Result
29 May 2008 (23:30pm) - 06 June 2008 (09:45am)
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Poll
result, 04 July 2008
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This poll will ran for one week and a day, from 22:30pm on 26 June 2008 to 22:20pm
on 04 July 2008.
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Poll result, 04 July 2008 |
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Poll ran online from 00:15am 12 August 2008 to 23:45pm 22 August 2008
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Gonçalo Amaral
- "They know that Madeleine is dead and that there
were no abductors."
Correio da Manhã, 16 April 2009
- "...they are drowning
in the lies that they have been saying."
SIC, 12 May 2009
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Lie detector tests and a change of heart, 15 June 2009 |
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Lie detector tests and a change of heart
By Nigel Moore
15 June 2009
Raymond Hewlett's willingness to
undertake a lie-detector test - to prove his innocence - is in sharp contrast to the McCanns' who have refused to submit themselves
to such a test.
On their return to the UK in September 2007, the McCanns initially stated that they would be willing to take
a Polygraph test to clear their names but two months later, when approached, they declined.
This left Don Cargill, chairman of the British and European Polygraph Association, "dumbfounded" and concluding
that "the whole thing was a PR exercise to get sympathy at a time when Kate was under increasing scrutiny."
Clarence Mitchell, meanwhile, concluded, with impeccable PR logic, that "Gerry and Kate don't need to do one
as they are telling the truth."
The following two articles were produced at the time, the first indicating willingness, the second a clear refusal:
Madeleine's parents: 'We will take lie detector test to clear our names' Daily Mail
Last updated at 10:04 21 September 2007
• Parents want to take lie detector test to clear names
• Friend says 'mystery man' was heading towards
Murat's home
• Second Portuguese lawyer appointed for 'extra firepower'
• Portuguese authorities admit
their case has stalled
Kate and Gerry McCann are prepared to take a lie detector test to clear their names.
The couple are so confident of their own innocence that would take the polygraph test in Portugal, a source close to
the couple said.
And new details have emerged about the sighting of the "mystery man" the McCanns believe was their daughter's abductor.
For the first time, a friend of the couple claimed the stranger seen walking away from the Praia da Luz holiday complex
on May 3, apparently with a child in his arms, was heading towards former chief suspect Robert Murat's home.
The McCanns' offer to submit to lie detector tests would only serve to help clear any public doubts about the McCanns'
guilt or innocence, as polygraphs are inadmissible in Portuguese courts and are never used by Portuguese police during the
course of investigations.
The source said last night: "If they were asked to take a lie detector test, of course they would agree.
"Kate and Gerry are happy to do anything that would help clear their names."
Lie detectors work by measuring physiological responses such as blood pressure levels, pulse rate and skin conductivity
when the subject is asked questions.
Any significant difference in these rates as the subject gives answers to different questions, may indicate that the
subject is lying.
The McCanns yesterday announced the appointment of a second Portuguese lawyer, bringing their legal team to four.
Rogerio Alves is president of the Portuguese Bar Association and has worked on some of country's most high profile cases.
He will work alongside the couple's current Portuguese lawyer, Carlos Pinto de Abreu, whom the couple appointed a month
ago when they were accused in the Portuguese media of being involved in Madeleine's disappearance.
It is thought that Mr Alves' fees will be paid out of the £100,000 that Sir Richard Branson has donated towards to the
McCanns' legal fund.
The new appointment means the McCanns have a fearsome legal team of lawyers working for them.
As well as the two Portuguese lawyers, they have also employed British solicitor Angus McBride and Michael Caplan QC,
both of whom have formidable reputations.
Mr Caplan, in particular, is considered one of the country's foremost solicitors.
With his expertise and track record, he can charge upwards of £700 an hour for his services.
Yesterday all four lawyers had discussions with the McCanns at Mr Caplan's London office. The meeting lasted around around
six hours.
Afterwards, the family spokesman Clarence Mitchell said: "It is effectively the doubling of defence skills. It helps
to have extra firepower."
Detectives start again
In Portugal the authorities admitted yesterday for the first time that their case had stalled - and that they are prepared
to re-explore the possibility that she was snatched by an abductor.
They made it clear that the McCanns are still prime suspects in the inquiry, but that the case had reached "an impasse"
after 141 days.
The news brought quiet relief to the couple, who saw it as a significant turning point in the campaign to switch the
focus back to finding their daughter.
From 1,000 miles away in the UK, they watched events unfold yesterday after Wednesday's dramatic announcement that there
was not enough evidence yet to warrant charges or reinterrogation.
The back-to-basics turnaround in the investigation was revealed by the national daily newspaper Diario de Noticias, quoting
sources close to Luis Bilro Verao, the senior public prosecutor brought in to lead the case last week.
It reported that Mr Verao said: "The investigation has now entered an impasse."
All possible theories - abduction, accident, murder or innocent disappearance - would be reinvestigated.
The newspaper further reported that the kidnap theory, virtually abandoned after detectives pinpointed the McCanns as
suspects, was "still on the table".
Other sources confirmed that new searches would be carried out soon at specific locations, aimed at finding either Madeleine
or any clue to what happened.
While Mr Mitchell said the couple were relieved by the news that they would not face any immediate reinterrogation, he
added: "There is still a long way to go in the legal process. They remain official suspects."
He said he could not discuss the DNA evidence at the centre of the police case, extracted from blood found in their holiday
apartment and "bodily fluids" in the car they hired some 24 days after Madeleine disappeared.
But he added: "It's safe to say there are wholly innocent explanations for whatever the police may or may not have found
in the car."
The McCanns, who could still be called back to Portugal if new evidence emerges, have also been offered help by a lawyer
in Northern Ireland. Solicitor Paul Corrigan is defending an alleged Real IRA terrorist accused of murdering 29 people in
the 1998 Omagh bombing.
The case has given him experience in challenging 'Low Copy Number DNA' or LCN DNA, a method of magnifying minute traces
of body matter that are inadequate for more established DNA analysis.
Critics claims LCN DNA is not reliable enough to stand up in court - and it may be involved in the case against the McCanns.
And an intelligence expert has said photographs taken by spy satellites could hold the key to Madeleine's disappearance.
Professor Glees, who is director of Brunel University's Centre for Intelligence and Security Studies, said the little-known
Joint Air Reconnaissance Intelligence Centre, based at RAF Brampton, Cambridgeshire, is a world leader in analysing aerial
and satellite imagery.
It could collect and examine all the imagery that can be found of Praia da Luz, where the McCanns were on holiday, dating
back to May 2. "It is perfectly possible that the European Commission's satellites, which track fishing boats, may also be
able to shed light on Madeleine's fate. JARIC will quickly tell us," he said.
*
Now Kate McCann refuses to take a lie detector test to clear her name Daily Mail
By VANESSA ALLEN
Last updated at 16:58 19 November 2007
Kate McCann has refused to take a lie detector test about her daughter Madeleine's disappearance, it was revealed yesterday.
She and husband Gerry had offered to undergo a polygraph examination in September, after they were made official suspects
in the investigation.
But it has now emerged that they have refused an expert's offer to carry it out, because the results would not be admissible
as evidence to a Portuguese court.
Don Cargill, chairman of the British and European Polygraph Association, said the McCanns told him they would only take
the test if it was 100 per cent accurate and admissible in a Portuguese court.
He told the Sunday Express: "Kate said she'd take it to prove her innocence but in reality, she wasn't willing.
"I was dumbfounded, to tell the truth.
"I don't think it was the McCanns' fault. I was left with the impression the whole thing was a PR exercise to get sympathy
at a time when Kate was under increasing scrutiny."
Lie detectors work by measuring physiological responses such as blood pressure levels, pulse rate, breathing and sweat
gland activity in the skin during questioning.
Any significant difference in these rates may indicate the subject is lying.
The process has been criticised but the American Polygraph Association claims the current computerised technology is
98 per cent accurate.
They are not admissible in British or Portuguese courts.
McCann spokesman Clarence Mitchell said: "Of course they are not going to take the test. It's inadmissible in Portugal
and there are doubts about the accuracy.
"Gerry and Kate don't need to do one as they are telling the truth."
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Madeleine: 'Body thrown into the sea', 16 September 2007 |
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Madeleine: 'Body thrown into the sea' Sunday Express (no
online link)
16 September 2007
Police fear that the
body of Madeleine McCann will never be found and only a confession by her parents can convict them of killing her.
The startling revelations came as officers told of their worries that her body
was dumped far out to sea in a bag weighted down with stones. Detectives are convinced she is dead and believe her remains
are now gone for ever, a vital piece of missing evidence which seriously weakens their case against Kate and Gerry McCann.
For the first time, police chiefs in Portugal are admitting that the allegedly
damning DNA evidence they have gathered in the couple's apartment and hire car may not be enough to bring charges against
them. A senior source in the Policia Judiciaria, which has led the investigation into the disappearance of Madeleine on May
3, 135 days ago, said only a confession could now bring a conviction.
Investigators believe the body of the youngster, who would now be four years
old, was most probably thrown off a British-owned yacht out at sea after being moved from a hiding place. They are now working
on the theory that Kate and Gerry McCann, both 39-year-old doctors, received help from accomplices to move the body and cover
up the crime, despite intense scrutiny.
The seven friends on holiday with the McCanns at the Ocean Club complex in Praia
da Luz are expected to be questioned again by detectives investigating the accomplice theory. All the friends deny any wrongdoing.
The news came amid startling developments yesterday, including the apparent discovery
of blood in an apartment next door to that used by the McCanns. Detectives believe the apartment holds the key to where Madeleine's
body could have been stored in the hours after she went missing.
The discovery was revealed after reports claimed that Madeleine died following
an overdose of sedatives. Police are working on the theory that the youngster was repeatedly drugged by her parents –
an allegation Kate and Gerry McCann vehemently deny.
Detectives have asked British forensic experts to look for evidence the toddler
was given pills on the night she disappeared and earlier occasions.
As Kate and Gerry McCann left their £600,000 home in Rothley, Leics, for a meeting
with their solicitors in London, a senior Policia Judiciaria officer told of his misgivings about the case. The officer, who
declined to be named, revealed that the absence of a body meant detectives only had forensic evidence and information from
interrogations to build a case.
The admission comes only two days after the McCanns went on the offensive after
being named official suspects, issuing a challenge to detectives: "Find the body and prove we killed her."
The senior officer in the Policia Judiciaria admitted that the McCanns' stance
could destroy the case because detectives have "nothing concrete". He admitted officers were still struggling to piece together
events on the afternoon and evening of May 3. In particular, detectives have so far been unable to uncover the chain of events
from 2pm until 10.41pm when the police were eventually called after Kate McCann said her daughter was missing.
"There are a lot of clues, signs and indications, but without more elements it's
impossible for us to determine what happened in those vital hours," the officer said. "Even if the blood and traces gathered
in the car or the apartment were confirmed to correspond 100 per cent to the little girl's DNA, that wouldn't prove anything.
"Those elements could only confirm – and at the moment we don't even have
that – that the little girl was in the apartment, which is plainly obvious, and in the car. In either of the cases,
nothing would prove homicide, just that the body of the little girl had been transferred in the vehicle."
The officer admitted that a number of fundamental questions remained to be answered,
confirming the views of the McCanns' high-powered legal team that the Portuguese authorities are a long way from presenting
a strong case.
The officer went on: "We don't know if Madeleine is dead and, if she is, how
it all happened. Was she strangled? Could she have been beaten? They are all questions only the parents could clarify in an
eventual confession."
Kate and Gerry McCann strenuously reject claims of being involved in Madeleine's
death and disposing of her body, and challenged detectives on Wednesday to find their daughter and prove they killed her.
A close friend said: "The legitimate question to ask Portuguese police is: Where is the body? Where is the evidence that Madeleine
is dead?"
The case against the McCanns detailed in a dossier now before Judge Pedro Miguel
dos Anjos Frias appears to rest mainly on potentially damaging forensic test results. These are said to include Madeleine's
DNA in traces of bodily fluid, as well as a mass of hair, discovered in the McCanns' hire car which was rented 25 days after
she vanished.
Portugal's attorney general has indicated the investigation still has some way
to go and suggested stricter bail conditions could be imposed on the couple. On Tuesday public prosecutor Jose Cunha de Magalhaes
e Meneses ordered the 10 police files in the case to go before the judge.
In an effort to find a body, it is expected that fresh searches will be ordered
in Praia da Luz, focusing on areas where roadworks were taking place when Madeleine disappeared. Officers are also expected
to begin searching several sea-front locations, including caves and grottoes.
Police have already investigated a vessel owned by an English sailor in Lagos,
15 minutes' drive from Praia da Luz. A source close to the case said: "One of the most credible possibilities would involve
the body having been thrown in a sack of stones from a yacht."
The yacht which came under police scrutiny was investigated after a computer
owned by the only other suspect, expat Robert Murat, 33, was analysed and found to mention the sailor. Other theories suggest
Madeleine's body was disposed of at one of several waste incinerators.
The McCanns have already been advised by their British lawyers that the Portuguese
would have difficulty prosecuting them if they do not find their daughter's body. Portuguese police admit they fear no judge
will allow the case to go to court without that key piece of evidence.
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Madeleine: Foreign press shows no mercy to Kate and Gerry McCann, 26
October 2007
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Madeleine: Foreign press shows no mercy to Kate and Gerry McCann Daily Mail
By FIONA BARTON
Last updated at 22:03 26 October 2007
Since Madeleine McCann
vanished on May 3 the plight of her parents has rarely been off the front pages of Portugal's newspapers - and often reported
in the cruellest terms.
Staring out, day after day, are the now iconic images of four-year-old Madeleine,
smiling from under her sun hat, and her mother Kate's gaunt and strained face.
The McCanns wanted to keep their missing child in the public eye at all costs
but one wonders if they had any idea how high the price would be.
For the headlines accompanying these instantly recognisable photos have veered
dramatically from open sympathy to open warfare over the months.
Some, such as Publico, Portugal's "paper of record" (circulation 68,336), have
stood back from the baiting and smearing of the McCanns that has taken place, barely mentioning the case since the first frenetic
weeks.
But others have given blanket coverage to the alleged twists and turns of the
investigation, printing sensational and often anonymously sourced stories.
The downmarket tabloid 24 Horas, which sells 63,783, has "splashed" the story
every day while Portugal's best selling daily paper, Correio da Manha, a tabloid with a circulation of 157,882, has carried
the McCann story on its front page almost as often.
Even the respected middle market newspapers, Jornal de Noticias (125,458 copies)
and Diario de NotÌcias (58,959), have devoted an astonishing amount of space to the story.
The coverage is all the more remarkable because the Policia Judiciara, Portugal's
CID, has said little officially about the investigation.
There have been only five press conferences since Madeleine vanished and so the
media has turned instead to its anonymous sources for some sensational "revelations".
These sources, quoted so slavishly in the Portuguese press, allege that Kate
and/or Gerry McCann killed Madeleine in their holiday apartment, accidentally overdosed her on sedatives, hid her body in
the apartment fridge for weeks, and transported her body in a car hired three weeks after her disappearance.
It has been further claimed that Kate was a mother who could not cope with her
children, the couple left the children crying for hours, they drank to excess on the night Madeleine vanished, they were "swingers"
who liked to indulge in wife-swapping with their friends, and that they discussed the killing with friends by email and phone.
All of these have been vehemently denied by the McCanns and strongly criticised
by Alipio Ribeiro, Portugal's most senior policeman.
Mr Ribeiro said officers on the case "who know nothing" had fed lies and speculation
to the Portuguese press that had resulted in further distress for Madeleine's parents.
But, apparently, nothing and nobody can stop the flow of lurid and scurrilous
articles.
Diario de Noticias, quoting unnamed sources, proclaimed: "Police have known for
a month that Madeleine McCann was killed that night at the apartment."
And Jornal de Noticias claimed traces of blood found in the apartment were Madeleine's,
adding with unexplained confidence: "This evidence locates Madeleine's death inside the apartment, but the investigators are
still not certain it was murder, despite the fact that forensic experts have revealed that somebody did try to erase the blood
traces.
"The theory most favoured by detectives to explain Maddie's death - now taken
as almost certain - is that it involved an accident."
The allegation that the McCanns doped their children before they went out for
dinner was repeated yet again in last week's television interview. This despite regular denials from the couple, who are both
doctors, and a lack of any evidence.
The claim stems from a remark made by one of the first two policemen on the scene,
who expressed his surprise that the twins, two-year-old Sean and Amelie, slept through the abduction and the ensuing uproar.
Another old chestnut is that Gerry McCann is not the biological father of Madeleine.
Dismissed in the early days of the investigation, it re-emerged in 24 Horas only last week and had to be denied all over again
with the highly personal explanation that the children were all born by IVF treatment.
The McCanns have tried in the past to be philosophical, claiming they had "no
illusions" that they could control the media. But they have resorted to sending in the lawyers in at least two cases.
The first was in response to the downmarket weekly paper Tal E Qual which quoted
"a source close to the investigation" and said police believed the couple had killed their daughter.
The McCanns instructed libel lawyers to file a complaint but before it could
go any further, Tal E Qual closed.
The couple are also considering action against 24 Horas over the latest accusation
about Madeleine's parentage.
Gerry McCann said in a recent interview: "The way that information has got out
has been handled incredibly badly, without a doubt. It's almost as though some people are thinking out loud.
"It's all very well to have a potential scenario but that shouldn't necessarily
be written up as if there is evidence to support it.
"I think this has been handled very irresponsibly by a number of people. We don't
believe there is any evidence to support any of the deluded headlines, and the police have made that clear.
"It's difficult because a lot of untruths, half truths and blatant lies have
been published."
His wife added: "There are times when you just want to shout out, 'That's wrong',
because I think we've been done injustice in a lot of ways."
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Doctor! Doctor!, 13 January 2009 |
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Doctor! Doctor!
"I cannot think about anything else at the moment other than finding Madeleine. I do not know if I would be safe to go
back and practise as a doctor at the moment." Gerry McCann, 11 June 2007
By 'TTW4'
13 January 2009
We all trust our doctors (well most of us) to tell us the truth.
'Do no harm' this is one on the tenets of the medical profession.
Someone is ill, the doctor establishes the cause of the illness, tells the patient, and then uses his or her best skill
and judgement to diagnose a remedy for the condition.
Doctors are trained to do this and we inherently rely upon their judgement.
They spend 7 long years honning their skills for just such an event. The GPs surgery is a daily battleground against
disease and illness of one sort or another. When in hospital we again rely on yet more skilled and trained physicans to carry
out even more tests and further diagnosis.
We are entirely reliant for our wellbeing upon the ability of such highly trained and professional staff. The decisions
they make in the course of their daily lives can concern real life or death situations. One wrong move, one careless prognosis
and it's all over. The doctors decision making process has to be of the highest calibre - that is why we as patients in the
NHS naturally demand such high standards. Our taxes have paid for their training and we have endowed our doctors with our
trust. That trust demands they employ all of their talents both, learnt and acquired to fulfil their professional obligations
under licence within society.
Should things go awry then there is a structure in place to question the competance of the professional involved. I make
no case either for or against such arbitration and or it's effectiveness, I only propose that society acknowledges that administering
lethal medication or process demands some sort of regulation. Someone could get hurt.
The Doctors McCann and Healy are both registered with the neccessary authorities to practice in accordance with the current
guidelines, therefore it can be said they have accepted society's bargain and seek in their professional lives to make the
very best of decisions concerning their patients care.
30 April 2008 Kate Healy says she sees Madeleine in 'visions', which, according to
her mother Susan Healy, keep her awake at night
For the time being Dr. Kate Healy is not practicing as a GP. This is a well thought out and carefully considered strategy
on the part of her and her family. The trauma she has suffered during the course of the last 2 years, with the loss of her
daughter - and under such tragic circumstances - demands nothing less. Healy's decision making process must be impaired,
and it is a well known fact, and understood amongst professionals and those in the social services community, that psychiatric
scarring can become apparent in subjects, if not immediately then sometimes years after such an horrific event.
The consequence of this is, and Kate Healy knows I am sure, that it is extremely unlikely that she will ever sit inside
a GP's surgery again as a practicing doctor. In making this decision she has no doubt consulted with professional counsellors
and psychologists who will have offered the very best and most considered of opinions as to whether or not Kate Healy's state
of mind is truely fit to practice medicine again. On balance Kate Healy is to be applauded for her consideration of her patients
well being.
On the other hand Dr. Gerald Mccann sees his decision making process as unimpaired. I say this because despite having
suffered the exact same trauma and psychological upset as his wife he retuned to work some 6 months after the loss of his
daughter, apparently suffering no ill after effects.
Having been made a suspect in the disappearence of his daughter did not appear to present any kind of psychological upset
to him in the slightest. A remarkable feat by anyones reckoning, if you can really call that sort of mental remoteness and
isolation remarkable at all for a normal human being.
As a consultant in his field (Cardiovascular Medicine) I understand his patient contact is limited, and that surely comes
as some relief, but he is still making decisions concerning patients who are referred to him. He still has to determine and
interperate data, scans and propose a course or assess a course of treatment. This requires an unimpaired decision making
process, something Dr. Gerald Mccann claims to have, and has seemingly demonstrated in spades.
01.11.07 The ability to walk through the door to your place of work and receive a
pat on the back from a colleague, does not of it's own accord, I am sorry to say, automatically mean that you are a fit and
proper person to practice medicine.
Was Gerald Mccann totally unaffected? Psychologically Dr.Gerald Mccann was affected and he admitted some of his darkest
thoughts here, when talking of being made suspects:
"You're in the middle of a horror movie really, a nightmare. Pressure such as I've never felt before. You're under attack
in one way or another. The speculation takes you to the worst places and the worst place would have been being charged, potentially
being put in jail, certainly being detained to face charges that could have taken years to materialise, being separated from
Sean and Amelie."
It seems he was affected and in much the same way as his wife.
It should also be remembered that those charges, which he so feared, could have come at any time up to being relieved
of his arguido status.
Leaving Portugal Dr. Gerald McCann considers his future in the UK, and how his actions
so shortly before, on the 30 of July 2007 belied his confused and irrational thinking.
Amongst other things it was noted that:
'Gerald McCann insisted on constantly delivering to Ricardo Paiva (a PJ inspector), letters and e-mails that he received
and selected. Most of them from psychics and mediums, and that in general held no credible information about the whereabouts
of Madeleine and of her alleged abductor'.
To put selected communications from psychics and internet mediums in front of the Portuguese investigating authorities
is plainly neither empirical, deductive, or rational thinking. Just 90 days later and Dr. Gerald McCann would start employing
his 'logic' with real people in real situations.
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New Clint Eastwood film likened to 'the McCann case', 07 November
2008
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A mother leaves her child while she goes out - and returns to an empty house. No, not the McCann case but
the true story behind a gripping new film Daily Mail
By GLENYS ROBERTS
Last updated at 11:14 PM on 07th November 2008
She was a devoted mother, hard-working, determined and tough. Then, one spring morning, Christine Collins kissed her
little child goodbye (leaving him under the eye of neighbours), before returning in the evening to an empty house. Her beloved
son had vanished without a trace.
A continent-wide hunt was launched and a shocked nation was kept agog by a string of leads - only for their hopes to
be cruelly dashed as each clue led to a dead end.
The child was never seen again, the mother was heartbroken and the community was left divided by suspicion and mistrust.
It could be the tragic story of Kate and Gerry McCann and their three-year-old daughter, Madeleine, who was abducted
last year while on holiday in Portugal, and who remains missing to this day. But, in fact, it is the plot of Clint Eastwood's
latest film, Changeling, which opens in Britain later this month.
Starring Angelina Jolie as the distraught mother, it is a chilling portrait of how bungling authorities persecuted a
grieving mother and treated her with cynical contempt.
It is all the more powerful because it is based on a horrific true story.
The so-called 'Wineville chicken coop murders' took place on the outskirts of Los Angeles in 1928.
And while they happened 80 years before Maddie McCann disappeared, there are startling parallels between the two.
The McCanns' grim experience in Praia de Luz - and how they were made suspects by bungling local police - was widely
reported.
But Christine Collins suffered even worse treatment at the hands of the LA Police Department. As the investigation into
her missing child failed to yield results, she was even locked up in a mental asylum.
Her story begins during the Prohibition era, in the stretch of land south of LA, where the desert slowly turns into farming
country.
There, in the small town of Wineville, the single mother was raising her nine-year-old son, Walter. At the time, her
husband was in prison for running a speakeasy.
Despite the hard times, Christine was lucky enough to have a job as a supervisor with the local phone company. But it
meant that she was often away from home and had to rely on the neighbours to look out for young Walter.
All went well until one Saturday morning, when she decided to work an extra shift. She gave Walter some money to see
the latest cinema release, and set off for work.
Christine Collins never saw her son again. When she returned home that night, Walter was missing - and she reacted just
like Madeleine McCann's mother.
She knew instinctively her son had been kidnapped and reported his absence to the police.
Just as in Portugal, officers refused to begin an immediate search, wasting valuable time as they waited 24 hours before
acting on the distraught mother's suspicions.
Meanwhile, Christine looked everywhere. She quizzed neighbours and learned that her son had been last seen on the afternoon
of his disappearance, at a crossroads near his house.
She issued pictures of Walter with a detailed description: 5ft 5in, weighing 70lb with brown hair, blue eyes and a fair
complexion. He was wearing a plaid lumber jacket, brown corduroy trousers, a grey cap and black shoes.
When the police finally jerked into action, they drained a local lake in full glare of the photographers and manipulated
the story with false leads and bizarre theories.
But from the start, it seems, the mother was their prime suspect.
She had claimed the youngster had been kidnapped, and yet she couldn't come up with a motive. Nor had she received any
demands for money - although she said she had received a note which read cryptically: 'Boy bad sick, afraid to call doctor.'
The hunt was further complicated by the fact that her husband, an inmate of the notorious Folsom prison, near San Francisco
- where Johnny Cash would later famously sing - was a 'straw boss' (a convict in charge of other prisoners), sparking one
police theory that Walter had been kidnapped by an ex-con who held a grudge against his father.
Meanwhile, newspapers speculated that Christine was secretly negotiating to get the boy back.
As in the McCann case, rumour followed rumour.
Neighbours suddenly remembered that for several days before Walter disappeared, a middle-aged, slouchily dressed man,
about 5ft 9in, had been seen hanging around the neighbourhood.
He had, they recalled, been accompanied by a small, foreign-looking woman, who had stayed in the car while the man knocked
on doors asking for the Collins' house.
A month later, hopes were raised when a local petrol station owner reported that a strange Italian-looking man had refuelled
at his garage. And in the back seat of the car, lying lifeless under a bundle of newspapers, he claimed, was the missing boy.
The news sparked yet another statewide search - but to no avail.
Christine Collins was distraught. And yet somehow she, like Kate McCann, refused to fear the worst.
Then, six months after Walter's disappearance, Christine was told the crime had been solved.
From small-town Illinois, 2,000 miles to the north-east, came the incredible news that her son had been found.
Imagine her anticipation as she waited at the railway station for her son's arrival, surrounded by a mob of Press photographers
organised by the police, who were as keen as ever to take full credit for the discovery.
But Christine's nightmare was far from over. As soon as she saw the boy, she realised she had been cruelly duped. For
even though the boy insisted he was her missing son, she knew he was not.
The boy claimed he had been kidnapped, but Christine saw right through his story, realising he had pieced it together
from the newspaper reports.
Yet no one took her protests seriously - and in the days before DNA testing, it was impossible for her to prove beyond
doubt the boy wasn't hers.
The scheming police chief, an infamous figure named J. J. Jones, made matters even worse. He was determined to be proved
right and insisted she take the boy home.
He claimed Christine's memory was affected by grief and said that if the boy was a little shaky on the details, it was
because he had suffered a blow to the head during the kidnapping.
Jones cruelly branded Christine an unfit mother and accused her of trying to get the state to take responsibility for
her son.
Christine finally took the child home - only for Jones to note triumphantly that Walter's pet spaniel took to him immediately.
But she did not give up her fight. She continued to protest that this 'Walter' was three inches shorter than her real
son and, unlike him, circumcised.
Crucially, she also found a champion in local radio preacher, Rev Gustav Briegleb (played by John Malkovich in the new
film).
Briegleb, who had a huge public following thanks to his crusade against the sordid sex lives of Hollywood stars, convinced
Christine to fight the police department and uncover the truth.
And so, three weeks later, armed with her real son's dental records and statements from his teacher, she returned her
'imposter son' to the authorities.
From now on, just as with Kate McCann, it would be war between her and the police. Police boss Jones's next act was to
invoke legislation that he had introduced, called Code 12, which authorised him to incarcerate troublesome women in a lunatic
asylum and submit them to treatment, including electric shock therapy.
As Christine testified later, Jones told her: 'You're insane and ought to be in a madhouse. You're under arrest and I
am going to send you to the psychopathic ward.'
And with that, he threw her into the grim LA County General Hospital. Christine was incarcerated for a week until, in
another bizarre twist, the boy revealed what she knew all along - that he was not her son.
Instead, the child admitted he was Arthur Hutchins Jr from Iowa. The son of divorced parents, he ran away after his mother
died and got as far as Illinois, when someone spotted his uncanny likeness to Walter Collins.
Arthur had gone along with the deception because he wanted to get to California - to meet his cowboy star hero, Tom Mix.
Christine Collins was vindicated, but there was far worse to come. For behind the scenes, the real story about her son's
disappearance was slowly, and horrifically, beginning to unfold.
The facts came to light when Sanford Clark, a 15-year-old illegal immigrant from Canada, was detained by police in LA
and told them that his uncle was a serial killer.
Sanford said he had grown up in Sasketchewan and two years previously had been kidnapped by his uncle, 21-year-old Gordon
Northcott.
He had been transported several thousand miles south to the ranch of Gordon's parents, Cyrus and Louise Northcott, in
Wineville, California, where he had become his uncle's sex slave - and had been forced to watch the torture and killing of
four young boys, including Walter Collins, whom he identified from a photograph.
Sanford claimed his deranged uncle had tied Walter to a bed and tortured him for a week - before Louise Northcott had
finally killed the boy. And the macabre story did not end there.
Sanford then described how his uncle had imprisoned two local brothers, Lewis and Nelson Winslow, aged 12 and ten, and
how he had been forced to kill Nelson himself.
The authorities were sceptical until they were told that Gordon's killing spree had begun with a young Mexican, who had
been beheaded with an axe. At this point, bells began to ring.
A few months previously, the headless body of a Mexican had been found near the roadside wrapped in a bag, with no clues
as to how it had got there.
The police rushed to the ranch to find considerable evidence that corroborated Sanford's story. In one room, there was
a whistle, Boy Scout badges and a library book belonging to the Winslow brothers.
They also found a blood-stained bed and, in one of the chicken coops, a bloody axe covered with human hair. And 50 yards
from the ranch's chicken house, there were also empty graves, where Sanford said the missing boys had been buried.
No bodies were found, but there were enough traces of bone and hair - not to mention the head of the Mexican boy - to
point the finger squarely at the rancher.
The remains had been buried in quick lime in an attempt to destroy the evidence. And when it was discovered that a consignment
of lime had, quite unusually, only recently been delivered to the ranch, the case against Gordon seemed watertight.
Having apparently anticipated the police raid, Gordon slipped through the net and fled to Canada dressed as a woman with
his mother.
His freedom, however, was short-lived. Less than a week later, in September 1928, Gordon was arrested and taken back
to LA with his mother, who confessed to all the killings in an attempt to save her son.
Gordon then started changing his story to suit his mood. He admitted to murdering the Mexican boy, and then denied everything.
At one point, he even took the police into the desert to search for the remains of as many as 20 victims.
Gordon's trial began in January 1929, and he was found guilty of murdering the two brothers and the Mexican. Meanwhile,
his mother was sentenced to life imprisonment in San Quentin for her part in the crimes. While she claimed that she had killed
Walter, his body was never found.
Throughout the trial, Christine Collins begged Gordon Northcott to tell her the facts, however grim. But her pleas fell
on deaf ears.
Just before he was due to hang, in October 1930, he sent Christine a telegram saying he was ready to reveal all. The
night before the execution, she hurried to his cell - but Gordon simply protested his innocence and blamed the crimes on his
mother and nephew, who had been sent back to Canada.
The next day, he was dragged screaming to the gallows, where it took him ten minutes to die at the end of the hangman's
noose.
His death was no comfort for the grieving Christine, who never gave up the search for her son.
She sued the incompetent local police department, won damages of $10,000 and vowed to spend every last cent on uncovering
the truth.
But Walter had vanished without a trace and his fate looks set to remain a mystery for ever.
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The McCanns views on leaving their 3 children alone, to fend for themselves, in a dark
and strange apartment
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Gerry McCann
"It's difficult because if you are [at home] cutting grass in the back with the mower, and that takes me about half an
hour, and the children are upstairs in a bedroom, you'd never bat an eyelid. That's similar to how we felt."
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"If I put the children in the car the chances of having an accident would be greater than somebody coming in, breaking
into your apartment and lifting a child out of her bed. But you never think, I shouldn't put the children in the car."
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The question of Kate returning to work |
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Sarah Montague: Could you consider going back to work, Kate?
Kate McCann: Errr... not at the moment, it just doesn't... doesn't feel right,
to be honest.
BBC Radio 4 Today interview, 01 May 2008 (see below)
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"She has no intention of going back to work."
LSE conference, 30 January 2008
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The McCanns: Staunch Catholics? |
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31 January 2009
'Their family says the couple's ordeal has left their staunch Catholic faith undimmed.'
Susan Healy (Kate's mother)
22 October 2007
"...as soon as Kate realised what had happened, it was as if she started to ask God right away to give her Madeleine.
Because Kate and Gerry were not the most devout family."
Gerry McCann
25 May 2007
"I'm not the most religious person in the world..."
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Gerry McCann: Madeleine's 'little trip' |
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Gerry McCann's blog
01 October 2007
'I am still amazed at the irresponsible reporting going on in the press with unsubstantiated reports from unreliable
sources being repeated in the UK and Portuguese press unquestioningly. It is simply untrue that the twins think that Madeleine
has gone on a 'little trip'.'
19 September 2007
"There is no attempt to shield them from Madeleine. Questions as and when they arise are dealt with. When we were in
Portugal we told them she was on a little trip."
Madeleine's parents speak of their 'guilt' ITN
25 May 2007
Mr McCann said: "We have said she's gone on a little trip just now and Amelie came out with one really cutting line that
went right to the core, she said 'Madeleine's on trip, back soon'.
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The question of 'abduction' |
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Alex Woolfall (McCanns' first spokesman)
'Mr Woolfall says that he heard no suggestion in the early days that the girl had been snatched. "Certainly I did not
hear any discussion that this could be a paedophile or an aggravated robbery. All the time I was around it was whether she
could have wandered off and had an accident or somebody had actually taken her in, perhaps not with ill-intent.
"During the first 48 hours the word being used was 'missing' rather than 'abducted' or any link with a paedophile or
any sort of crime. Towards the end of the second week I detected a shift towards there being a consciousness that she had
probably been taken rather than wandered off, just on the assumption that anybody would have found her by now."'
Times interview, 06 October 2007
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June Wright (Luz resident)
"I arrived at the Ocean Club reception at around about 10 to
11 and at the time that we arrived a police car arrived - and as the police officer got out a man approached him, who I now
know is Gerry McCann, and said that his daughter had been abducted. That there was no way that she could have opened the shutters
herself, she'd definitely been taken."
Channel 4 Dispatches documentary, 18 October 2007
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Susan Moyes (staying 2 floors directly above McCanns'
apartment)
"We were woken up at half past eleven at night by one of the friends
of the McCanns to say 'a little girl' had 'been abducted'; those... those were the words used."
BBC - Stoke and Staffordshire, 14 August 2007
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Trish Cameron (Sister of Gerry McCann)
- Receives phone call at 23:40pm on May 3rd
'Heart specialist Gerry McCann rang his sister Trish in
Scotland after Maddy vanished from her cot placed between two-year-old twins Sean and Amelie.
Trish revealed yesterday: "He was breaking his heart,
saying 'Madeleine's been abducted, she's been abducted'."'
Daily Mirror, 05 May 2007
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Bridget O'Donnell (staying in adjacent block)
'At 1am there was a frantic banging on our door. Jes got up to answer.
I stayed listening in the dark. I knew it was bad; it could only be bad. I heard male mumbling, then Jes's voice. "You're
joking?" he said. It wasn't the words, it was the tone that made me flinch. He came back in to the room. "Gerry's daughter's
been abducted," he said.'
Guardian, 14 December 2007
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Male witness (On holiday, staying at the Ocean
Club)
'I was
looking in the little gardens on the poolside of that block, I was in the end garden when I heard a male voice; he sounded
distraught, his voice cracking with emotion. I looked to see, who I now know to be, Gerry McCann stood above me on the balcony/patio
about 3 metres away, speaking on a mobile phone. I cannot recall his exact words but I got the impression that he was speaking
to perhaps a family member or someone he was very close to due to the nature of his conversation.
He said something along the lines of there being paedophile gangs
in Portugal and that they had abducted Madeleine. I was so shocked by this, having originally thought that she had just wandered
off.
I had looked up by now and we actually made eye contact, his conversation
did not change at all when he realised that I was there. I felt as if I were intruding on a private moment and so I left the
garden at that point.
Statement from PJ case files, 06 December 2007
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Jon Corner (Family friend/on board of Madeleine's
Fund)
- Receives phone call at 03:00am on May 4th
'Jon Corner, a close friend of Mrs McCann and godparent of the twins,
said Kate telephoned him in the middle of the night distraught.
He said: "She just blurted out that Madeleine had been abducted.
She told me, 'They have broken the shutter on the window and taken my little girl.''
Telegraph, 07 May 2007
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Sylvia Batista (Head of
administration at the Ocean Club complex)
'She recalled
that the twins were still asleep in their two cots and there was the small, bright pink wool blanket that Madeleine likes
to hold when she sleeps. "We walked out quickly so as not to wake up the twins. The parents immediately said, 'She's been
kidnapped'," said Batisa.'
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| Jon Corner |
Jon Corner talking about Madeleine (Vanity Fair)
"So beautiful, astonishingly bright, and I’d have to say very charismatic. She would shine out of a crowd. So—God
forgive me—maybe that’s part of the problem. That special quality. Some ******* picked up on that."
Jon Corner - Cuddle Cat (Timesonline)
'Gerry paused over Madeleine, who – a typical doctor’s observation, this – was lying almost in "the
recovery position" with Cuddle Cat, the toy her godfather, John Corner, had bought her, and her comfort blanket up near her
head, and Gerry thought how gorgeous, how lovely-looking she was and how lucky he was.'
Jon Corner (Panorama)
CORNER: Well this is the bizarre thing Richard because the police said to Kate and Gerry: "Yeah, we're going to be coming
along, we want to do some forensics." And Kate and Gerry were massively optimistic about this. You've got to remember if your
daughter is missing and the police phone you and say: "We want to do some forensics, that's a straw that you hang onto. That's
a moment for optimism.
- Just earlier Corner had said this:
CORNER: They took most of their clothing, they were taking even the wet clothes out of the washing machine. I was aware
that the cuddlecat was boxed up and we were asked to leave the villa.
- So, the police phoned the McCanns to say they were coming over to do some forensics and the McCanns, it would
appear, immediately filled up the washing machine with clothes.
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