The Missing Lagniape; Lost and

Found

We did not set out to Find Madeleine. That was not our purpose. Nor did we have any preconception as to what may have happened to her. We barely recalled the circumstances of her disappearance when we began; only that it was terribly sad, tragic and unresolved.

We set out to find out why a reference to Madeleine occurred in the closing days of the 2016 U.S. Presidential election. In pursuing that question we had to understand who Smithman was.

Smithman is the man with two faces. His two faces seem to share an almost familial resemblance. Two distinct images of Smithman’s faces were released by Operation Grange in 2013 as a person of interest in Madeleine’s disappearance. Smithman did not generate any useful leads after the images were released. A few months later Smithman was forgotten. By 2016, the Met Police had long since ceased looking for Smithman.

It was as if he never existed.

After disappearing from the Met Police ‘s radar, Smithman emerged from hibernation in the Fall of 2016. When Smithman reappeared in the final week of the 2016 U.S. Presidential election he created quite a sensation.

The two Smithman images bore an uncanny resemblance to two brothers who are Washington DC insiders and power-brokers. One of the brothers, John Podesta, was the Chairman of Hillary Clinton’s Presidential campaign and previously served as the transition committee Chairman for newly elected President Obama and later as Counselor to President Obama.

Smithman became part of the bizarre PizzaGate story that developed after Wikileaks released John Podesta’s private emails.

PizzaGate was weird and unresolvable. As a story, it was trivialized, mocked and marginalized by the legacy media. After which it was consigned to the nether-reaches of the web.

In early December 2016 an internet cowboy from North Carolina drove with his guns to Washington DC to find the child sex slaves secretly being held captive in the tunnels underneath Comet Ping Pong. The would-be savior entered during business hours where he fired a bullet into the floor as he conducted his search and panicked patrons fled.

He did not find the sex slaves or the secret tunnels.

There are no tunnels below Comet Ping Pong. The tunnels the would-be savior reportedly saw on the internet are part of an abandoned trolley line in DuPont Circle two miles south of Comet.

Soon thereafter Pizzagate became the third rail of American journalism and politics. The shooting incident made Comet and its quirky owner who was closely associated with the PizzaGate story became the poster children to restrain Fake News  (i.e. censorship)

No one was hurt in the shooting incident at Comet. The shooters intentions seemed to be noble though utterly reckless and naive.

Unlike the sex slaves at Comet, Smithman isn’t a delusion. The two Smithman images were released by the British Metropolitan Police and Operation Grange in the course of their investigation of a real and heinous crime.

Smithman has a pedigree. Smithman is also evidence. But evidence of what?

We followed the path to Smithman. It turned out to be the path that led to Madeleine.

What happened is shocking.

Most will recall Madeleine Mccann as the little British girl who, a few days shy of her fourth birthday, vanished without a trace in 2007 while on vacation with her family in Praia da Luz, Portugal. Madeleine’s mysterious disappearance and her family’s fruitless efforts to Find Madeleine gripped Britain and much of the world for years thereafter.

For those who have yet to read Chapter One, what was not known at the time, and what most are even now unaware, is that a web of secrecy was imposed on virtually all significant matters concerning Madeleine about two weeks after she went missing. The web of secrecy was imposed when her parents petitioned to make Madeleine a Ward of the High Court.

Although Wardship can be a useful strategy when a child is taken or held in another country by one parent against the wishes of the other, its usefulness in abduction of a child by a stranger in another country is questionable. What advantage does Wardship provide when law enforcement and courts in the other country are already making every effort to locate and return the missing child? It’s not as if the High Court could to compel the Portuguese courts or the Judicial Police to try harder.

There isn’t even any suggestion the High Court tried to facilitate the Portuguese in their efforts. Quite the opposite; it was after the High Court became involved that relevant evidence and information in Britain began to be suppressed.

Here’s what happened after the High Court became involved:

• the Mccann’s ceded their parental and custodial rights to Madeleine to the Court,
• the Court’s secrecy rules went into effect,
• the Court’s ability to issue gag orders to the press went into effect,
• the Court issued orders that gave the Mccann’s carte blanche to rifle through confidential police investigatory files,
• two damning statements in possession of the Leicestershire police were suppressed,
• the Court would have appointed a legal representative and/or guardian for Madeleine who remains anonymous under the Court’s secrecy rules, or it kept one or both of those roles for itself.

Here’s something else we learned from Chapter One: in the first few days following Madeleine’s disappearance, and with but a few exceptions, IFLG (the Mccann’s attorneys) did not even bother to record or make any notes about what callers to a hotline they were answering had to say, or even who the callers were. They just referred the callers to the Leicestershire police without lifting a pencil. IFLG’s surprising lack of care in recording potential critical information in the days after Madeleine vanished is portrayed a year later by IFLG as completely unremarkable.

Go back to the Chapter One Part Two post and read the quoted transcript again and see if it doesn’t seem odd. If it were your child who had presumably been abducted by pedophiles, and it was your attorney receiving potentially vital if not life-saving tips, leads and calls, wouldn’t you want them to at least jot a few notes?

And why were there a few exceptions? More importantly, what were the few exceptions? Was IFLG vacuuming up those calls with incriminating information and passing the trash to the Leicestershire police?

These are not unreasonable questions. IFLG had a professional obligation to their clients, the Mccann’s. Yet they failed to record potentially vital if not life-saving information from callers. Two damning statements given to the Leicestershire police in those early days were suppressed almost immediately after IFLG rushed to the High Court to obtain certain orders and directives. IFLG also obtained a Court order that allowed them to rifle through confidential police files at will. At about the same time the curtain of secrecy was imposed when IFLG filed a petition on behalf of the Mccann’s to make Madeleine a Ward of the High Court.

Here’s something else we learned after “Finding Madeleine” had gone to layout: when the Portuguese investigators asked their British counterparts for the Mccann’s financial records they received a single-page response. For an upper-middle class family these records would have number in the dozens if not hundreds of pages.

Yet many in Britain and among the British press disparaged the Portuguese efforts. Perhaps the Portuguese investigation might have gone differently if the Britis had been more forthcoming with the two damning statements from the Mccann’s friends and the Mccann’s financial records.

To summarize:

• Within days of their daughter’s disappearance the Mccann’s had CRG (an intelligence cut-out similar to Blackwater) “secretly” working on the case courtesy of an “anonymous” benefactor.
• The Mccann’s established Madeleine’s Fund as a private limited corporation.
• The Mccann’s attorneys screened and vacuumed up selected tips and leads.
• Damning evidence against Gerry Mccann and one of his holiday friends in the hands of the Leicestershire police was suppressed.
• The Mccann’s petitioned to cede custody and all parental rights to Madeleine by making their daughter a Ward of the High Court.
• Other unspecified orders and directives were imposed by the High Court.
• Secrecy of all substantive matters concerning Madeleine was imposed
• The Mccann’s financial records were withheld from the Portuguese.

Why were the Mccann’s being protected? And if so, from what? Responsibility for the death of their child? Negligence that led to her being abducted, drowning in the ocean and consumed by sharks, or snatched by gypsies?

If one follows the British press coverage, public opinion polls, or the many blogs that have sprung up over the matter, there does not seem to be room for another explanation. Yet neither explanation accounts for the purposeful suppression of damning evidence, withholding of potentially relevant financial records, giving carte blanche access to confidential police files to Madeleine’s parents, or what compelled the Mccann’s to forfeit their parental and custodial rights to their missing daughter to a stranger.

Public opinion was formed without any knowledge of these issues and quickly became polarized into two opposing camps:

• pro-Mccann (she was abducted but it wasn’t their fault), and
• anti-Mccann (they killed her on purpose or through their negligence).

The two camps only hardened as the circumstances surrounding Madeleine’s disappearance became more clouded, contentious and confused.

But might it have been something else entirely?

Was it a coincidence that the Mccann’s attorneys sought the High Court’s intervention shortly after two damning sworn statements by long-time friends of the Mccann’s (also M.D.’s) were given to the local Leicestershire police?

Was it just an oversight that these two statements were withheld from the Portuguese Judicial Police for nearly six months?

Was it yet another coincidence that the two damning statements were independently corroborated by a third sworn eyewitness statement given to the Portuguese by a woman certified by British authorities to investigate cases of child abuse and abduction?

Doubtful.

Why was this investigatory path thwarted and suppressed? We’ll come to that, but before doing so we’ll look a bit more into Madeleine’s Fund in the forthcoming Chapter 2.

Or you can skip ahead by clicking here to buy “Finding Madeleine”.

“Finding Madeleine” is also now available on as an Ibook at the Apple iTunes store here.

Those who have followed Madeleine’s plight know it has engendered a number of lawsuits and high-dollar judgments. Libel and slander suits have flown, sizable settlements have been paid and press coverage has been suppressed.

Shortly after the turn of the year, and after a long legal battle, Inspector Goncalo Amaral, the Portuguese Inspector who was sacked from the case after he named the Mccann’s “arguidos” (suspects), prevailed in a libel case filed against him by the Mccann’s.

The Mccann’s were suing to block publication of Amaral’s book “The Truth of the Lie” and to win damages from him.

And Amaral only got it part right. Which is understandable. Amaral was handicapped by the Brits and the images of Smithman two faces had yet to be created when he was dismissed.

Thanks to Sir Clement’s victims, “Smithman”, two intrepid British reporters and the Portuguese who released their case files, Madeleine’s story can now be told.

Click here to obtain the eBook version of “Finding Madeleine”

Also now available on as an Ibook at the Apple iTunes store by clicking here.

Author: Centinel

Just a guy from the neighborhood. View all posts by Centinel