Finding Madeleine

Part of a multi-part series. The full eBook is available at findingmadeleine.com for instant (improved) delivery, or now at iBooks and B&N.

By:

Centinel

www.findingmadeleine.com

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 full book.

Dedicated to all who are unjustly held and to those who set them free.

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The character Dorothy Gale from the Wizard of Oz

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Chapter 2: Hope and Failure

“When asked if on any occasion Madeleine was injured, he [Gerry Mccann] says that he has no comments.”

Press report, four months after Madeleine disappeared

“Somebody knows. We just hope they find the courage and compassion to let us know too.”

Kate and Gerry Mccann, Christmas 2016

By the end of the Summer Madeleine was still missing. The hopes that she would be found sank as the circumstances of her disappearance became more confused and confounding. By early September the Portuguese had concluded Madeleine had died in Apartment 5A at the hands of or due to the negligence of her parents, that her parents and their friends had covered up her death by creating an abduction story, and her parents had disposed of Madeleine’s body a few weeks later.

The strongest points going for the Portuguese theory were the conflicting and changing statements of the Mccann’s and their friends, and the positive sign from the sniffer dogs. It wasn’t a strong case. There was no body, there were no witnesses to what occurred in the apartment, the sightings were unreliable, and aside from what the dogs found there was no physical evidence in support of the Portuguese case. The British labs ripped the rug out from what the dogs found by impeaching their own DNA tests on the blood samples. And, conflicting and changing statements were not going to convict anyone of abduction, murder, negligent homicide or improper disposal of a non-existent corpse.

Nor had the Mccann’s efforts made any headway. All leads and efforts to find an abductor had come to naught. Thousands of leads and tips produced nothing. Making Madeleine a Ward of the Court had also proved to be a useless exercise. Madeleine had been missing for four months and no one knew anything more about what happened to her and where she might be than they did in the minutes after she had gone missing.

In early September 2007 the Portuguese named the Mccann’s as arguidos. A few days later Kate and Gerry received some good news. A wealthy Cheshire businessman and tycoon by the name of Brian Kennedy of the Latium Group parachuted in from out of the blue; he was on a self-appointed mission to rescue the Mccann’s and revitalize the search for Madeleine.

Hope had seemingly arrived.

Brian Kennedy (“BK” to his colleagues) owns home-improvements, window glazing and real estate enterprises, wind farms, and sporting teams with combined gross revenues of approximately £3.5 billion and a market cap of approximately £250 million.

From having no prior relationship with the Mccann’s, within “15 seconds” of meeting them, BK was so utterly convinced of their innocence he committed his personal efforts and corporate resources on their behalf. Brian Kennedy was certainly decisive. Based on not much more than a hunch, this busy entrepreneur and tycoon, who owned and managed a half dozen or so diverse enterprises, selflessly threw himself into the Mccann’s ordeal, whereupon he took up the reins of Madeleine’s Fund to personally spearhead the hunt for their missing child.

BK said he “felt compelled” to help the Mccann’s, for which Kennedy generously offered his financial support to Madeleine’s Fund. It seemed there was nothing BK wouldn’t do to help the Mccann’s to find Madeleine. [Relevant or not, a July 2006 Insider magazine profile piece quotes Brian “BK” Kennedy as saying he lived in Majorca. This could put Kennedy on Mallorca coincident with the Mccann’s and their friend’s visit in 2005. If so, it may only be a coincidence.]

BK’s top priorities at Madeleine’s Fund were to control the legal team and the messaging. Kennedy placed his corporate attorney, Ed Smethurst, in charge of the legal team.

“This will relieve the McCann’s of the daily pressure of co-ordinating the legal teams that will expedite the clearing of Gerry and Kate’s names, allowing all parties to refocus on finding Madeleine.” Brian Kennedy, Latium.

The legal team would be concerned with such matters as civil, family, corporate, governmental relations, international and criminal issues, investigations, and procedures in Portugal and the U.K.

Kennedy and Smethurst brought aboard the high-powered law firm Kingsley Napley who assigned one of their top attorneys, Michael Caplan, QC, to advise and assist with extradition and mutual aid issues (mutual aid concerns cooperation between foreign and domestic law enforcement agencies). Caplan represented Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet about ten years earlier in his fight against extradition to Spain. Angus McBride, another top Kingsley attorney with reputation management experience, was also reportedly assigned to the Madeleine Fund account.

Avoiding the Mccann’s extradition to Portugal and maintenance of their reputation were obvious priorities for Kennedy.

Under Kennedy’s guidance Clarence Mitchell was also hired on. Clarence had been serving as the Mccann’s spokesman on assignment from the British government’s Media Monitoring Unit.

The Board of Directors of Madeleine’s Fund consists primarily of family, friends and acquaintances of the Mccann’s. Brian Kennedy and his attorney are currently shown as being on the Board as are Kate and Gerry Mccann.

Under Kennedy’s guidance, the Fund went about hiring and retaining consultants, contractors and investigators. They brought Control Risk Group (CRG), a private security firm, on board. CRG reportedly began working the case from nearly the outset paid, reportedly, by an anonymous benefactor.

An article in the Times dated September 24, 2007 noted of CRG,

“A private security firm has been secretly investigating the disappearance of Madeleine McCann for four months because her parents feared that Portuguese police were failing properly to search for their daughter. Control Risks Group (CRG) is believed to have been checking reported sightings of Madeleine from around the world and building up profiles of likely abductors.”

Which places CRG “secretly” on the case around mid- to late May, 2007.

CRG is a private security and intelligence firm. Such firms have been re-branded as global risk and strategic consultancy firms. Similar firms include TripleCanopy, Kroll and Blackwater. CRG employs former members of the British Army, Special Forces and intelligence services and had or still has security service contracts in Iraq.

Kennedy did not just sit back in the corporate suite and work the phones; he was a hands-on guy who didn’t mind if his hands got smudged. According to a Sunday Times article,

“Brian Kennedy… admitted yesterday that he flew to Portugal last November [2007] and spent an evening with Robert Murat… A source close to Kennedy said he was ‘gathering information’. Kennedy’s lawyer, Ed Smethurst, approached Murat through a mutual friend and said that Kennedy wanted to offer him a job. But the job offer never transpired. Kennedy spent the evening with Murat and his lawyers at his aunt’s house in Praia da Luz, discussing Madeleine’s disappearance.” Steve Swinford, The Sunday Times, May 4, 2008.

Murat was named an arguido due largely to some of the Mccann’s vacationing friends who claimed to have observed him in the vicinity of the Mccann’s apartment around the time Madeleine vanished. The meeting with Murat was unusual, as was its pretext of a job offer. The Mccann’s and Murat’s interests were not aligned when this meeting occurred.

According to an article in the Daily Mail, Murat’s attorney stated Kennedy acknowledged Murat was not involved in Madeleine’s disappearance.

“The meeting took place at Mr. Murat’s aunt’s house in the Algarve last year. Mr. Murat’s lawyer, Francisco Pagarete, said: ‘We had a very pleasant dinner with Mr. Kennedy. He came here to give his support to Robert and to say he doesn’t believe Robert was involved in this story in any way. And he asked if Robert could help the investigation for the finding of Madeleine.’

It is understood the meeting in November was also attended by Mr. Kennedy’s lawyer, Edward Smethurst, who is co-ordinating the McCanns’ legal affairs.”

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How did Kennedy and Smethurst know Murat was not involved? It was based largely upon statements by the Mccann’s vacationing friends that he had been named as an arguido in the first place.

Money and contracts flowed through Madeleine’s Fund under Kennedy and Smethurst’s guidance, but results failed to follow. The work of a Spanish investigatory firm, Metodo 3, was particularly questioned; some of their people were reportedly charged for unrelated offenses in Spain. And, despite its connections with British intelligence, CRG’s work also proved fruitless.

Kennedy’s efforts and those of Madeleine’s Fund came to naught.

The lack of success did not prevent a worldwide media storm from enveloping the Mccann’s, their friends, the residents of Praia da Luz, the British and Portuguese governments, and their investigators. The Blair government and that of his Labour party successor, Gordon Brown, took an active interest in Madeleine’s disappearance and assisted the Mccann’s as they might.

The Mccann’s got the royal treatment. British officials, liaisons, embassy staff and others were tasked to work with the Mccann’s and monitor the Portuguese investigation. The British government also assigned Clarence Mitchell. For a time a British government official accompanied the Mccann’s to their meetings with the Portuguese investigators.

About six weeks after Madeleine vanished, PM Blair left office and was succeeded by Gordon Brown. The British government’s interest didn’t wane when PM Brown assumed the reigns from Blair, if anything its efforts increased.

Scotland Yard assisted the Portuguese with their investigation before it was shelved in July 2008. The British opened their own investigative review, “Operation Grange”, in 2011, after which Madeleine’s Fund appears to have throttled back its investigatory efforts.

By the Summer of 2016, the Grange investigation was winding down and their funding was about to be shut off. The Portuguese were faulted for their efforts, but Operation Grange had foundered as well, as did the efforts of Madeleine’s Fund.

Kate and Portuguese Investigator Goncalo Amaral wrote books accusing each other. Lawsuits and countersuits flew between and among investigators, the press, Murat, the Mccann’s and some of their holiday friends. The Mccann’s sued to have Amaral’s book suppressed. At times it seemed more effort was being expended on lawsuits than Finding Madeleine. It was a mess and a public spectacle. The media reported every twist, turn, accusation and innuendo.

The Mccann’s sought and encouraged media coverage shortly after Madeleine vanished, and thereafter, thinking it would help in the search for Madeleine. The media happily publicized every detail. There were special bulletins and daily updates. At one time Kate’s private diary was published.

The Mccann’s and their spokesperson, Clarence Mitchell, were not shy of feeding the media. But the coverage cut both ways. By late Summer 2007, just before he and Kate were named as arguidos, Gerry was reportedly complaining of the intense media coverage and wild speculation. At the Edinburgh International Television Festival he lamented that the coverage of his and Kate’s efforts to Find Madeleine had become akin to the “Kate and Gerry” show.

Gerry was right. His family’s ordeal had become a soap opera.

In 2008 the Mccann’s were awarded a £550,000 libel judgment against the Express newspapers that had accused them in over 100 articles of being involved in the death of their daughter and of covering it up.

It has been said that a front-page news article pertaining to Madeleine would sell 30,000 extra copies in Britain. The media storm was on par with the coverage of the death of Princess Diana. One British writer went so far as to liken the coverage of all things Madeleine to that of World War II.

At the time, the coverage of Madeleine was described “as an unbearable nothingness”, which also captures the essence of the three investigations into her disappearance.

“Blair’s former press chief, Alistair Campbell was more bullish, accusing ‘most of the media’ of ‘getting close to hysteria’: ‘It has been the worst example of recent times, on a par with coverage of Princess Diana, of some newspapers thinking the word Madeleine sells and finding literally any old nonsense to keep her name in that selling position on the front.’

Last night, during a curiously fraught debate organised by think-tank Polis, The McCanns and the Media: Information or Entertainment, the panelists were less judgmental. Kelvin MacKenzie, former editor and current columnist for the Sun, called it the ‘greatest story of my life’; Steve Hewlett, a Guardian columnist, noted it was the story of last year, ‘if not the biggest, [then] certainly the most reported’; and David Mills, producer of a recent BBC Panorama documentary on the McCanns, which he later disowned, called it ‘one of the best [stories] I’ve ever encountered in my career… it has everything.’ Their professional enthusiasm is understandable; it’s a story that has continued to hold the public’s attention, or as MacKenzie would put it, ‘sell papers’. If it didn’t exist you suspect the media would have to invent it.

Which, in a sense, they have. For as a number of the panellists made clear, very little is actually known about the case. Whereas the British police tend to hold off-the-record press briefings to stymy endless press hypothesis, their Portuguese counterparts are conducting their investigation largely without media contact. What there is instead, to paraphrase criminologist Roger Graeff, producer of Dispatches: Searching for Madeleine, is an ‘unbearable nothingness’, a story that refuses to yield anything like a plot, let alone a resolution”.

Media critics and members of the media could not help but notice the initial coverage was heavily focused on building sympathy for the Mccann’s. Channel 4 News presenter Alex Thomson was quoted in the Sun on July 9, 2007 as saying:

“’I’ve been sickened by the way the media have allowed themselves to be taken for a full-scale ride by the McCanns’, adding of the Mccann’s, they were, ‘a contributory factor in the abduction, [and were] largely downplayed or ignored altogether by sycophantic, gullible blanket coverage.'”

Thomson was pilloried for his comments and reportedly reprimanded by his employer. At about the same time, Raymond Snoody also criticized the obvious “media manipulation” and hyperventilating press coverage:

“While everyone hopes that, against the odds, Madeleine will be found alive and well, it is time for a few bold questions about this media circus. The first is the extent to which the end justifies the means. Is any degree of media manipulation justified as long as the cause is just? Pretending there is news when there really isn’t can be counter-productive and lead to public boredom and apathy.

The biggest questions are the most obvious. To what extent has all this coverage been kept afloat for so long because the child is white and photogenic, and has articulate, resourceful parents? Of course, the news value of the story was also enhanced by context – everyone’s worst nightmare, a child snatched from an apparently secure apartment in an upmarket holiday resort. But the sad truth is that if a black child had been snatched from a sink estate in Liverpool or Glasgow, the chances are you would not know their name.

In fact, since Madeleine’s disappearance on 3 May, there have been 1200 reports of missing young people – happily not many so dramatic as the events in Portugal.“

The out-sized role of the media in Madeleine’s disappearance had itself become a story. In retrospect, the overwhelming media attention produced nothing helpful insofar as Finding Madeleine and only served to distract the Portuguese investigators from their work.

The media attention was fanned by the participation of various celebrities who flocked to support efforts to Find Madeleine. Madeleine’s Fund and related efforts reportedly received support (financially or otherwise) from not only Brian Kennedy and the public, but also from: the Beckhams, the Pope, Archbishop Mario Conti, Sir Richard Branson, J.K. Rowling, Sir Philip Green, Bill Kenwright, Simon Cowell, Wayne Rooney, the English cricket team, Sir Tom Hunter, Jacqueline Gold, Cristiano Ronaldo, Stephen Winyard, Sir Stelios Haji Iannou, and John Hargreaves.

Finding Madeleine had become a cause célèbre among the top echelons of British socialites, entertainers, and sporting society.

Finding Madeleine also became a cause for some who became suspicious of the British investigation or skeptical of the Mccann’s innocence. One such individual, Mr. Tony Bennett, a retired British attorney, had written letters alleging the Mccann’s were involved in their daughter’s disappearance. He sent some of his letters to the British Home Secretary and the Prime Mininster and posted them on the internet, for which he received a three month suspended prison sentence from the High Court.

By the Summer of 2016, attention and memories of Madeleine had faded and all efforts to find her had failed. Other than the obligatory anniversary and Christmas-time article, and an occasional sighting. the British press had long-since moved on. The missing posters had been taken down from the shop windows in Praia da Luz where one shop-owner commented:

“Everything has gone, it’s as if Madeleine has vanished for the second time. People don’t want to be reminded any more.”

Just a few months later Madeleine again drew the attention of the media, if only briefly. Madeleine would have been 13 years old when two ghostly images of a person of interest in her disappearance materialized in the final weeks of the brutal 2016 U.S. Presidential election.

The two images are the first tangible clue to solve Madeleine’s disappearance.

to be continued….

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