First of a multi-part series. The whole book is available for download at findingmadeleine.com. Enter coupon code oceanclub5a at checkout for TBP discount on whole book through March 14, 2017.
Finding Madeleine
By
Centinel
Copyright 2017, All Rights Reserved.
“There’s no place like home.”
The character Dorothy Gale from the Wizard of Oz
Visit our home:
where you can follow the continuing story.
Disclaimer
“Finding Madeleine” is a personal narrative. It is the opinion of the author and is based upon publicly available sources. In no event should the reader infer or conclude the author is making any accusations of wrongdoing, guilt or innocence with respect to any person, living, dead, or corporate.
Footnotes and images are available in the eBook at findingmadeleine.com.
Preface
“Finding Madeleine” resolves the baffling mystery of the disappearance of Madeleine Mccann, the 3-year old British girl who vanished from her family’s vacation apartment in Portugal in 2007.
Madeleine’s plight, and that of her family, came to dominate British and world headlines for much of the remainder of that decade. Although media coverage has diminished along with the public’s memory of her, Madeleine continues to generate the occasional headline.
Oddly, Madeleine re-appeared in the closing weeks of the 2016 U.S. Presidential election when two ghostly images of a man sought in her disappearance became part of the already bizarre PizzaGate story. The images were soon forgotten in the chaos of the election and the cacophony and shock of its aftermath.
The two images are a Rosetta Stone. They offer the first tangible clue to solve Madeleine’s disappearance.
We did not set out to Find Madeleine. Nor did we have any prior interest or preconceptions pertaining to Madeleine Mccann’s mysterious disappearance. We set out to discover why a reference to Madeleine occurred in the closing days of the 2016 U.S. Presidential campaign. In trying to discover the answer to that question we found a crumb-filled path. When we arrived at the end of that path we found out what happened to her.
For those looking for Madeleine, you will follow that same path to discover her likely fate.
For those who do not wish to know that monsters walk freely among us, you will want to burn this book.
For those in the U.K., much of what you are about to read is banned under one or more standing D-notices, confidentiality rules and orders from the High Court, and the Official Secrets Act. You are not supposed to know. Your media and all of your government officials have been muzzled.
Foreword
“Lady, I do not make up things. That is lies. Lies are not true. But the truth could be made up if you know how. And that’s the truth.”
Lily Tomlin
Gerry and Kate Mccann (nee’ Healy) took their three young children on holiday to Praia da Luz, Portugal in late April 2007. It did not end well. According to Kate, she went to check on her children around 10:00 pm or so on May 3, 2007 only to discover that Madeleine, her 3-year old daughter, had vanished from her bed. A desperate search ensued, but she was not to be found.
When the Mccann’s finally returned from Portugal they were absent their eldest child. By then, Madeleine had become the most publicized missing child in the 75 years since the Lindbergh’s baby Charles vanished from his crib, also at 10:00 pm. Writing of the Lindbergh kidnapping, H.L. Mencken described it as “the biggest story since the Resurrection”.
The media coverage of Madeleine’s disappearance would come to eclipse that of baby Charles. Unlike the Lindbergh baby, whose tiny body was found two months later with a massive skull fracture, Madeleine Mccann remains missing to this day.
Nearly ten years after Madeleine vanished, a reference to her occurred in the closing weeks of the brutal 2016 U.S. Presidential election in the form of two ghostly images. The images are of a man who was seen carrying a small sleeping girl in the vicinity of the Mccann’s vacation apartment around the time she vanished. The images briefly became part of the bizarre PizzaGate story until they were subsumed in the chaos of the election and vanished in its aftermath.
The ghostly images are a Rosetta Stone. They are the key to solving the near-decade long mystery of Madeleine’s disappearance.
It’s one of the strangest stories you might ever read.
Chapter 1: Losing Madeleine, Part 1
“Please, if you have Madeleine, let her come back to mummy, daddy and her brother and sister.”
Gerry McCann’s first public appeal for help, May 2007
“There’s absolutely no way Kate and I are involved in this abduction.”
Gerry Mccann, one month later
Portugal
Praia da Luz is a sleepy seaside village of approximately 3,500 souls located in the Algarve region of southern Portugal. It is a popular holiday destination among the British and Irish and is home to a large ex-pat community.
Gerry Mccann, Kate Healy, and their three young children arrived in Praia da Luz for a weeklong holiday on April 28, 2007. Both Gerry and Kate are physicians who, with their three young children, resided in England’s Rothley, Leicestershire. Just shy of her fourth birthday at the time of their trip to Portugal, Madeleine is the Mccann’s oldest child. Her two siblings, a boy and a girl, are fraternal twins almost two years younger.
[See Book for Image]
Ocean Club complex, Praia da Luz, Portugal.
Also vacationing with the Mccann’s were seven of their friends and their children. The friend’s trip to the Mark Warner Ocean Club resort was organized by one of their group, Dr. David Payne. The Mccann’s lodged in apartment 5A, a two-bedroom ground-floor corner (end) unit with a front and rear door. The rest of their group lodged in adjacent and nearby units.
On what would have been the final night of their stay, the Mccann’s and their friends put their children to bed in their respective apartments and met up at the nearby tapas restaurant to dine and enjoy the evening. The various children were left alone in the apartments. The Mccann’s and the other members of their group had done much the same on previous evenings without incident.
Upon leaving their apartment for the evening the Mccann’s left one or both of the entry doors unlocked.
[See Book for Image]
Layout of Mccann’s Ocean Club Apartment 5A.
The tapas restaurant was about 60 meters from the Mccann’s apartment as the crow flies and about 100 meters as one would walk. Even in daylight the view from the restaurant to the apartment was obstructed. One of the entry doors to the Mccann’s apartment was on the opposite side of the apartment block and could not be seen at all from the restaurant; the other door was only partially visible, less so at night. Crucially, one or both doors to the Mccann’s apartment were left un-locked, as was a window in the bedroom where the three Mccann children were sleeping.
The Mccann’s did not hire a sitter, nor did they use a baby monitor. Kate and Gerry had no way of knowing if there was a distrubance in their apartment while they were enjoying their evening.
The Mccann’s and their friends began to gather at the tapas restaurant at about 8:30 pm and the evening proceeded much as previous evenings had. Occasionally, one of the dining parents would look in on their and the other parents’ sleeping children. On this evening, however, something went horribly wrong.
According to Kate and others in her group, she went to check on the children at about 10 pm. Statements by staff and others at the restaurant say they became aware of a serious problem or a missing child among the Mccann’s group as much as 30 to 40 minutes earlier. This is the first of many problems with the timeline by and among various witness accounts.
In a statement she gave the Portuguese Judicial Police, Kate said that upon entering her apartment she noticed the interior door to the children’s bedroom was wide open, the window in the room was open, the exterior window shutters were raised, and the window curtains were opened. She was certain they had all been closed as she and Gerry had done on previous evenings when they had dined at the tapas restaurant.
Kate checked on the twins and found them to be sleeping. Madeleine’s bed, however, was empty. Kate thoroughly searched the apartment, but Madeleine was not to be found. Leaving the twins, Kate rushed to the restaurant to raise the alarm, announcing, “someone took her”; she also is reported to have exclaimed, “they took her”, and “we let her down”. A frantic search of the grounds and the neighborhood ensued to no avail. Resort staff contacted the local police who searched some more.
[See Book for Image]
Madeleine’s bed in apartment 5A.
During the search, a woman staying in a nearby apartment was roused, upon which she observed,
“The McCann’s were in bits, he was crying on the shoulder of a friend. She was screaming: ‘The f*****g bastards have taken her’.”
By dawn there was still nothing. Madeleine had vanished without a trace.
Thinking it might help to find her, some in the Mccann’s party and/or family back home contacted the British press just hours after Madeleine disappeared. Irrespective of who notified the press, Madeleine and her family were featured on news reports the next morning and soon became the center of a media storm that grew into a Force 5 hurricane. It continued to blow for years.
Other than Madeleine, nothing else was missing from the Mccann’s apartment or out of place. Madeleine vanished without a trace. At times it seemed as if there were more theories than suspects. Most of the theories involve one or more of the following:
- Robert Murat, a local British ex-pat, abducted her; Murat was belatedly placed at the scene by a number of the Mccann’s friends, which is the basis for the Portuguese having made him their first “arguido” (suspect).
- A man dubbed “Tannerman” abducted her.
- A man dubbed “Smithman” abducted her.
- A man dubbed “Monsterman” abducted her.
- One or another known British pedophiles living in the area had something to do with her disappearance;
- A Swiss national living in Madrid who was implicated in the murder of a young boy was involved.
- A local Russian national working with Murat to build a website was involved.
- A former Ocean Club employee from Cape Verde who died in 2009 took her.
- One or more “blonde-haired” men staying at the Ocean Club apartments were involved.
- One or more current or former employees of the Ocean Club, or persons unknown, abducted her in the course of a botched robbery; four locals were questioned on this premise in 2014.
- A Belgian or another European pedophile ring placed an order for a child and Madeleine filled it.
- Some other local pedophile abducted her.
- Some phony charity collectors who had been knocking on doors in the area had abducted her.
- Madeleine’s parents negligently or intentionally killed her, staged an abduction, and disposed of her body later; this became the Portuguese theory of the case under which they named the Mccann’s as arguidos.
- She wandered off and drowned in the ocean.
- She wandered off and was taken by gypsies.
None of the theories put forward are fully satisfactory despite the efforts of three separate investigations. There are a number of problems with each of the various theories for Madeleine’s disappearance. However, they all share a common shortcoming: none recognize all of the relevant factors. Which means they’re all wrong, although some are more wrong than others.
We are going to find out what likely happened to Madeleine and discover where she is. Before we do, we’ve got to unwind a lot of misinformation and misdirection, so bear with us as we lead you down the crumb-filled path.
Madeleine vanished in Portugal making the Portuguese the lead investigators. Nevertheless, the Mccann’s were potentially subject to charges in Britain if they were involved in their daughter’s disappearance, or were negligent. Over the course of their investigation the Portuguese were assisted by various British law enforcement agencies, including Scotland Yard and the local police in Leicestershire where the Mccann’s reside. For several months British investigators worked alongside their Portuguese counterparts in Portimao, Portugal.
It was to be a difficult investigation.
The Mccann’s and others trampled the apartment and may have destroyed or contaminated evidence and the scene was altered before the local police arrived. The investigators took photos of the scene in the immediate aftermath, but not of the people present. Sheets and blankets from the twins’ cribs were removed. The Mccann’s made conflicting and inconsistent statements, as did some of their friends. The exterior shutters covering the window in the children’s bedroom were claimed to have been forced open, yet there was no sign of a forced entry and the shutters could only be opened from the interior. Cell phone histories of the Mccann’s and some of their friends were apparently deleted.
The Portuguese were curious why Kate, thinking someone had just taken her elder daughter from the apartment, would leave her two younger children unattended to alert Gerry and her friends. Why didn’t she call out from the apartment?
It was also unfortunate that one of the CCTV cameras near the Mccann’s apartment was apparently inoperable that night.
Sniffer dogs were brought in from Britain in July 2007 upon the recommendation of the national search advisor for all U.K. police forces. The dogs signed for blood in the apartment and blood and a cadaver in a rental car the Mccann’s hired a few weeks after Madeleine vanished. Upon analysis, the lab reported 15 of 19 DNA matches to Madeleine, but concluded the results were “too complex” for meaningful interpretation. Nevertheless, the Portuguese police abandoned the abduction theory in favor of Madeleine having died in apartment 5A after which her one or both of parents faked her abduction and disposed of her body a couple weeks later.
After the dogs finished their work Inspector Goncalo Amaral, the head of the Department of Criminal Investigation for the Judicial Police, took his British counterpart to the airport where the Express reports him to have described the following scene:
”He’s at the airport waiting for a plane to return to England and he receives a phone call. Then he explains to our colleague that a member of MI5 was at the airport, waiting to talk with him about the result of the investigation.”
Madeleine’s disappearance was being followed closely by MI5, Britain’s domestic intelligence service, and they were especially interested in what the dogs may have found. Which seems odd. Why would the disappearance of a 3-year old girl be of concern to MI5? And, if there was a reason for Madeleine’s disappearance to be of concern to Britain’s State security agencies, why wasn’t it of concern to MI6, Britain’s foreign intelligence agency? Madeleine vanished in Portugal, not England.
Robert Murat resided with his mother about 100 meters from the Ocean Club resort where the Mccann’s were staying. Murat was hired as a translator in the immediate aftermath of Madeleine’s disappearance. A few weeks later the Portuguese named Murat as an “arguido” (suspect) based largely upon claims by three members of the Mccann’s party to have observed him at the scene around the time Madeleine vanished. After a thorough investigation, the Portuguese found no basis to charge Murat and dropped his arguido status in the Spring of 2008.
Madeleine’s parents also came under suspicion of the Portuguese investigators early on. The Portuguese were troubled that Kate and Gerry left their young children alone in an unlocked apartment as they dined and drank at the tapas restaurant. It seemed inexcusable, or at least neglectful, that they should do so while out of sight and hearing range of their unlocked apartment.
The Mccann’s sworn statements were inconsistent with some of the physical evidence in the children’s bedroom. The Portuguese were also puzzled by a report that Kate called out “They’ve taken her”. How did Kate know there was more than one person? How did she know Madeleine was taken at all? Similarly, an Ocean Club guest who joined in the initial search (identified as “G. McK”) overhead Gerry speaking on his cell phone saying that Madeleine had been taken by a pedophile gang. Since the Mccann’s had left one or both doors to their apartment unlocked how did they know Madeleine hadn’t gotten out of the apartment on her own, as she was reported to have done a couple days earlier?
The Portuguese investigators named the Mccann’s as arguidos in early September 2007. Although the Portuguese dropped the Mccann’s arguido status in July 2008, suspicions persist. By the time the Portuguese shelved their inconclusive investigation the Mccann’s were well into their own private investigation.
To Be Continued…
Two Doctors and they were not smart enough to hire a sitter for 3 kids 3 years old and younger. And it is OK with all the other adult friends in their group. Common sense also thrown out the window?
What happened – women didn’t act like this before (or did they); yes, the media now assaults us on every sick or titillating event.
I, for one, enjoyed this piece, and would like to see more.
Well, enjoy is not quite the right word. I started following Pedogate when it broke out on 4chan. Nobody has yet found that undeniable piece of evidence that shows a video of ‘x’ doing ‘y’ but I think there’s enough smoke to speculate there’s a fire in there, somewhere.
I’d like to know what happened to the little girl, and if you know, I think you should share with the world.
…ditto to Tim’s comment.
kakoda,
I can not imagine drinks and tapas while my babies
were on their own…sleeping or otherwise.
No exceptions.
Betcha the Podesta brothers (John and Tony) know where little Madeleine is. Reports say they were both in Portugal at the same time of this incident. There was probably collusion with the parents as well. Who the fuck leaves unattended children at night with doors unlocked unless it is to facilitate the abductor(s)?