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Month: March 2019 (Page 3 of 10)

“Rebellions are Built on [False] Hope” Netflix Doccie on Madeleine McCann – Episode 8 Review & Analysis [Part 1 of 3]

March 24, 2019 / / 3 Comments

The final episode of the series kicks off by boomeranging back to Robert Murat, the first suspect the series itself fixed in its crosshairs. But in the final episode, Murat is no longer sketched as a prime candidate for the pedophile or trafficker moniker, now it’s poor Robert Murat.

The series seems to have covered a kind of full circle. Murat’s no longer portrayed as a suspect, but as a victim. it’s brilliant mindfuck for what’s to follow. Because this sympathetic twist is also an analogy for the McCanns themselves [nudge nudge, wink wink] as wholly innocent victims, isn’t it?

 

The docuseries strikes a much more sympathetic tone as it winds down now, basically taking the view that one of the major villains of the story – besides Amaral – is the media. See, the media have condemned and falsely judged Murat, and coincidentally the McCanns as well. See, the media have perpetrated a terrible injustice on an innocent man, just as they have on a wonderful, loving, innocent couple.

Really?

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When the opening credits roll, Jim Gamble [we really need to talk about him at some point too, because he’s another Arch Apologist for the McCanns] does a handy voice-over about hope.

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I want to address the aspect of hope that is such a crucial element of the McCann mythos, and the key dynamic driving their PR narrative. Essentially it is a narrative of hope.

In the past I’ve cited the idea that rebellions are built on hope, but I suspect it’s fallen on deaf ears. It sounds nice. It sounds catchy. But what does it mean? It really requires explication. I’ll do that at the end of this post, so put that thought in your back pocket for now [and give it a little tap]. We’ll attend to it later.

The main theme of episode eight is explicitly built around the notion of hope, and incidentally, it’s the subtext to the entire series as well, even though it pretends to be neutral, investigative, emergentivistic as opposed to reductionist.

But it is reductionist.

Whether Madeleine was abducted by pedophiles, an orphanage, a travelling salesman, a gypsy, a gang of thieves or Santa Claus [don’t laugh, this was seriously presented as one of infinite suspects in the Ramsey case] any and every abduction scenario is a scenario that Madeleine is still alive, and thus this is “just” a missing person case. In other words, “there is still hope”.

As soon as the other narrative is acknowledged, then it’s not merely that Madeleine is dead, but almost automatic that her parents, and perhaps others are involved in some more or less nefarious plot. Are they? Could they be? Or is there some other explanation?

Did Madeleine fall into a construction site? Curiously it’s the contention of detective Amaral that Madeleine may have accidentally fallen to her death [for example falling on the floor behind the blue sofa] inside apartment 5A, so the “fallen” notion isn’t absurd.

But consider how contrary the atavistic “fallen” notion is to the more progessive and thus sophisticated “hope” plot. And so, for as long as the abduction narrative is popular, and acceptable, and while the narrative that “there is no evidence that Madeleine is dead” continues to hold, the parents  – and others – will remain above suspicion and implicitly beyond reproach. That’s not rocket science. We know this.

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Episode eight is titled “Somebody knows”, which is to say a) somebody out there knows what happened to Madeleine [who is alive] and b) that somebody is not Kate or Gerry McCann or any of the Tapas 7. It’s not Goncalo Amaral either but some anonymous other person. And then there is c) if Madeleine herself is alive, apparently she doesn’t know who she is either and someone [the someone who knows] needs to tell her, or tell someone.

See, it’s a very hopeful episode. It’s positive. But is it realistic? It feels more than a tad reductionist, doesn’t it?If  there’s no evidence that Madeleine is dead, does that mean she’s alive? If no one has seen her for twelve years, does that mean she’s alive? What about twenty years?

At what point does the passage of time actually enter the equation [besides the other crime scene related data]? After fifty years? How about sixty? And how are these time scales related to other missing person cases? Do we normally consider someone alive when they disappear for thirty, fourty, fifty years? If the law decides on this aspect [and it does] what sort of legal narrative are we actually taking about then, if we say there is “no evidence” to say she’s dead? Is there any evidence to say she’s alive?

To the casual observer, and even the not-so-casual observer, the hope narrative is both compelling and convincing. There is even an official inquiry condemning adverse media coverage of the McCanns [notably the the British media] as unethical and poor journalism. Since the media have been accused of this before, it’s easy to imagine they crossed this line with the McCanns, and clearly they did. The question is, how egregious was the inaccuracy? Was it completely baseless or was it somewhat baseless? Or…something else?

 

What this comes down to, ultimately, is what is truth? And what is the truth in this case? In one sense there is the objective truth [which is in a sense unknowable], and then there is the legal truth [which is what society’s “official” position is on truth]. A useful way to illustrate how potentially irreconcilable objective and legal truth can be, take religious belief. Is it objectively true? Some science, if not most, will say no. Is it legally true? Well, it depends on which country you are. In Saudi Arabia some “beliefs” are legally enforceable but not necessarily legal, and certainly not elsewhere.

The fact is, the legal position of the McCann case is that Madeleine isn’t dead, or rather, there is no evidence to prove that she’s dead. We’ll leave the argument for the moment that there is no evidence proving she’s alive either. In this respect, any publication claiming as fact or as potentially factual that Madeline is dead runs foul of legal fact, but not necessarily of objective fact. Does that make sense? So from a legal perspective, certainly the media are constricted in making certain claims, even if certain circumstantial and other evidence supports their claims.

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And publishing Kate’s diary, apparently without her permission, does look bad in the context of this inquiry. On the other hand, Kate wrote a book in meticulous detail which was serialized in the papers, and her diary formed part of that narrative. So the notion that Kate’s interior world was violated feels a little less fraught than the way Kate frames. It may not be, but if we’re talking about the contents of a diary being published as a violation, and then one elects to do the same, well, isn’t one violating oneself?

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It should also be noted that the diary was confiscated as evidence, and in many instances, diaries are used cynically by murder suspects to present a false narrative. Jodi Arias famously lied to her diary, which was discussed and analysed at length during her criminal trial. Amanda Knox kept a diary too which she quoted at length in her own self-justifying book.

Now if News of the World committed despicable act by “stealing” Kate’s diary, one could also argue that the same newspaper handed the McCanns a princely sum [£125,000] which went into the Find Madeleine Fund, which is to say, went by hook or by crook to the McCanns and the directors of the fund. The Sun serialised Kate’s book which was a major PR boost for the book, and deal probably worth millions. Let’s not forget it was the newspapers who also raised massive public awareness for the McCanns, including publicising the fundraising on their behalf [with their own readers], and making it known to the “abductor” that massive rewards were in the offing.

It seems impossible to imagine that if Madeleine was abducted, her abductor was not aware of the enormous reward offered for her safe return. Well, apparently it wasn’t enormous enough.

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What you won’t find in the British press is what happened to the reward money [since no one came forward to claim it]. News of the World gave the McCanns £1.5 million reward money to the Find Madeleine Fund. Apparently when Gerry McCann was asked about whether he or the Fund had received the money, he referred to the questioner to ask the publisher, and suggested that the reward money wasn’t actual money but pledges.

Interestingly, in 2018 the McCanns tried to revive the Leveson inquiry, but this time the inquiry had other fish to fry. The Netflix documentary is silent on this recent failure, however.

Clearly the Leveson Inquiry needs to be seen in proper context given the myriad ways the McCanns benefited from British media coverage and publicity, and some may be so bold to say profited [or that their Fund made a colossal fortune out of it, at least for as long as the coverage was positive…which incidentally includes up to the present moment.] The point is, from a distance, a pair of well-to-do doctors appealing to the media for better treatment appears well-to-do in general, and to the casual observer, and the not-so-casual observer, this step appears to confirm their overall credibility in terms of this case.

But there’s more.

The McCanns took their cause even further and demanded British government intervention – to investigate the disappearance of their daughter. Now I know what you’re thinking. It stretches the credibility of a cover-up to breaking point – doesn’t it – to have the suspects demand an investigation into their case. It may seem that way, and clearly the folks in this particular true crime case are smarter than the average, but the Ramseys made similar appeals to powerful political figures. Ramsey himself ran for election twice. We must remember that these appeals for further investigation were conducted with the express proviso that the investigation be steered in a particular direction [away from the Ramseys as suspects].

It’s also vastly under-reported that Ramsey himself was affiliated with Lockheed Martin, in fact he was a vice president, and thus the death of a little girl actually presented a case for a potential risk or undermining of national security. I know that sounds outlandish, but only until one looks at the size of the MegaMachine that is Lockheed Martin, and its strategic importance to the security of the State it serves.

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With the McCanns we see similar state-level interventions. 2007 was the year Britain joined the European Union. Guess where the political meeting took place that year? Lisbon. Guess when? October 2007. When was Amaral fired as a result of political pressure from Britain? The same month.

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If one considers a criminal case which has the potential to affect diplomatic relations between two countries, then there are at least two possible scenarios. One scenario is that the suspects are guilty and because there is no prosecution or perception of justice, this can lead to enmity not only towards the suspects, but between the two nations.

In the McCanns case Portugal resented the way it was being depicted in the media, and referred to the British media and the British police treating it like it might a colonial power. This was clearly neither good PR nor politically expedient at a time when Britain wanted to – sort of – and Portugal wanted them – sort of – to belong to the European Union. The solution to problem – certainly one solution – was to make the case go away. By giving the public what they wanted [which was Madeleine to be alive, and the McCanns to be innocent] one could theoretically diffuse a political sensitive time-bomb. And the man the British government appointed to make sure the McCann case went where it needed to go was a man with the appropriately titled surname Gamble.

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Gamble happens to be one of the primary narrators of the Netflix docuseries. He’s the man tasked by the British government with “sorting out” the McCann case. And Gamble has elected to sort out the case by publicly putting his weight behind. And he’s very public. He’s very much in the media and in documentaries.

Why top Maddie cop is convinced McCanns in the clear – MSN

Who is Jim Gamble and what claims does he make in Netflix doc the Disappearance of Madeleine McCann? – Heart

Another prominent narrator is Kelvin MacKenzie, an editor of The Sun who – in episode eight – reveals that “not for a single second” did he believe the McCanns “have ever had anything to do with” Madeleine McCann’s disappearance. He has no doubt the McCanns are innocent. Well why not say so right in the beginning, sir? And why is an editor of The Sun between 1981 and 1994, thirteen years before the publicity of the case started, being asked to share his opinion on how the media treated them?

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Well, so much for political expedience, and politically inexpedient court cases. Ten years later Brexit is happening anyway.

The best way to make a criminal case go away is to make sure it never goes to trial. But they didn’t count on the lead detective writing a book, or being sued, or him countersueing and appealing. That has been a long process and hasn’t helped the cause of the McCanns, the Metropolitan police, the British media or the British government. Or even the Portuguese government.

There is another half-hour of analysis to get through in the final episode of the series, but this blog is getting book chapter length and I see it’s 01:37. So let’s wrap up.

I mentioned early on in this post about the idea that rebellions are built with hope, and I said to put that idea in the back pocket. Let’s look at it now.

The idea of a rebellion built on hope is perfectly appropriate to the McCann case, at least in my view. The rebellion is arguably a rebellion against fear [fear of death] which is in some ways admirable, positive and constructive. But one might also argue that this rebellion isn’t just a touchy feely belief, but that in spite of claims of “no evidence” that Madeleine is dead, actually it looks like there might be some evidence. If it’s stronger than that, than the rebellion isn’t just against fear, it’s potentially against common sense, against reality, even perhaps against a legal system. We know the case is being debated and evaluated at the European Court of Human Rights. That court will decide whether the notion that Madeleine McCann is dead or alive – either way – is frivolous. It’s interesting because now Britain as a member of the European Union has sort of fallen out of favour with the EU, and not due to any fault of the EU.

What we can also say is that plenty of pageantry surrounds the McCann case. It’s not simply a case where we see investigations and police searches. We also see the couple meeting the Pope and releasing balloons, and suing people. A lot of people.

 

 

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We see book deals, book launches, color coded wrist bands, hundreds of exclusive interviews [invariably written by the same journalists], dozens of documentaries, innumerable anniversaries and celebrations [Madeleine’s birthday, commemorating her disappearance], and of course, the revolving door of PR personnel who plead the McCann’s case to a salivating press – who in turn regurgitate these statements almost verbatim. That kind of pageantry.

The pageantry isn’t a foreign concept to Britain. The notion of Royalty in the modern era, and the royal family is fairly idiosyncratic to Britain, and arguably the most British aspect of the nation. One could also say that the pageantry of the British Royal family is more public and more publicised than royalty in any other country bar none. So let’s not kid ourselves when we say pageantry can be a very popular, powerful and profitable tactic.

But how much of this pageantry is really just a rebellion against a more pragmatic and realistic approach. Pageantry is bright, colourful but above all hopeful.

A final word on misleading media coverage – or at least what I thought was misleading – published in The Sun. This graphic. Notice anything wrong with it?

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The graphic shows where the “last photo” of Madeleine McCann was taken. This photo is almost certainly fake, and appears to be doctored, its metadata altered so that the photo is dated May 3rd.

What to make of the “Last Photo” of Madeleine McCann?

Proof! The ‘Last Photo’ is Fake

The indicator for where the Tapas Bar is on the graphic [right below the McCanns’ apartment] is misleading and incorrect. The Tapas Bar is way to the left, closer to the centre of the image.

In the next frame, the dogs didn’t alert to the sofa, they alerted to blood and cadaver evidence on the floor and walls behind the sofa.

Kate and Gerry’s beds were two single beds pushed together, but the graphic doesn’t indicate that both beds were pushed a long way away from the wardrobe, far enough to fit in the cots of the twins.

The same image makes no mention of cadaver traces found in the McCanns cupboard, nor of those found outside in the garden below the balcony.

The graphic suggests the door to the parking lot is the door to the patio. This is simply incorrect. The patio is on the other side, where the sliding doors are.

The way the door opens in the middle graphic and the bottom graphic is wrong. In fact it opened the other way, so that when one peered inside the first thing one would see would be Madeleine’s bed. An innocent mistake by the animator/illustrator, or deliberately misleading?

The graphic highlights the window and shutters as “the main source of the investigation” whatever that means. In fact Kate McCann’s fingerprint was found on the shutter, and Amaral didn’t believe an abductor would break in through an open, unlocked door, only to leave through an exposed window exit that would rattle loudly when opened. Why not simply leave the way he had entered?

In bold text The Sun emphasises:

KATE ENTERED THE BEDROOM TO DISCOVER THE WINDOW OPEN AND MADELEINE MISSING.

The perspective of both illustrations at the bottom emphasises the window.  The bottom-most graphic actually views the apartment from the perspective of the wide open window, not the perspective of the door.

It’s this sort of chronically misinformed coverage that is either spineless, pandering journalism or ignorant to the extreme. One thing it clearly is is the same thing that all tabloid newspapers are – pageantry.

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A final point to make is this photo that appears in the final episode. Why has it been artificially enhanced?

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Perhaps because the unedited photo is so grim and gloomy. The child looks completely isolated in the original photo.

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Which is why the photo is edited to make her seem less on her own, and her surroundings brighter, and sunnier.

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As with so many things in the McCanns case, this simple image – when one looks closer – appears to be fake. Is it pageantry or isn’t it, and if it is, what more than this?

Madeleine McCann Tennis Ball Photo, is it Fake?

https://youtu.be/eye7IVL4iqQ

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Scams, Cons, Frauds and Liars Netflix Doccie on Madeleine McCann – Episode 7 Review & Analysis

March 23, 2019 / / 5 Comments

In the penultimate episode of the Netflix docuseries, the pedophile theory goes into high gear. We’re told that human trafficking is a $150 billion-a-year industry, and about pedophiles lurking in the dark web.

The pedophile theory is a handy one when you need a revolving door of potential suspects. It’s served the Ramseys well over the past 20 years or more, and it’s the gift that keeps giving in terms of new suspects, in the endless search for Madeleine McCann.

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At the end of episode seven, the McCann’s PR dude holds up the latest pedophile of the moment, an Australian woman and the mainstream media go nuts.  Maybe Madeleine is in Australia?

Search for Madeleine McCann focuses on Australia [August 2009] – Belfast Telegraph

Instantly the previous suspect [whether the bucktooth creeper or Tannerman] is forgotten as the narrative hops from one handy pedophile to the next. While a distracted audience not paying attention to the McCann case might be jarred back into it intermittently with a sense of “oh they’ve found another suspect, the investigation hasn’t been fruitless” a more consistent approach exposes the investigation into Madeleine’s Disappearance as an ongoing circus act.

If Madeleine’s not dead, the public need to reminded periodically that she’s out there, and to do that the show must go on. More and more circus acts are needed, and with them, circus ringmasters.

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If the McCann’s and the Tapas Seven have been very effective over the years at PR, at prosecuting and at suing and silencing their critics, they’ve been staggeringly ineffective at investigating their daughter’s case.

In the apology published below, which coincided with another massive payout from the Sunday Times, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out the McCanns appeared to be a little on the slow side in making information available. The Smithman efits came out sometime in 2008 but were only handed over to the cops in late 2009. The Metropolitan Police only received them two years after that. Not exactly a picture of urgency or efficiency, is it?

Gerry McCann attacks ‘disgraceful’ Sunday Times after £55k libel payout [October 2014] – The Guardian

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Neither, as it turned out, were more than one of the investigators the McCanns seemed to handpick for the job. Remember, money was not a limiting factor, the public had handed over millions to be spent on the search, and yet which investigators did these clever doctors choose to spend this easy money on?

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Who Was Kevin Halligen And How Did He Scam Madeleine McCann’s Family? – Oxygen

Madeleine McCann investigator’s mysterious, sudden death – the Bulletin

The blood-soaked corpse of a private detective who investigated Madeleine McCann’s disappearance has been found at his mansion. Kevin Halligen, 56, dubbed a “cloak-and-dagger, James Bond-style spy”, took the high-profile case in March 2008.

And while Halligen was hired by the McCanns he was involved in a dispute and accused of conning the fund to find their daughter by living a lavish lifestyle during his probe, but producing no results.

Revealed: More bizarre twists in McCann saga – Portuguese American Journal

It turns out that Kate and Gerry McCann suppressed for five years ‘critical evidence’ that became the centerpiece of the recent BBC Crimewatch program on the disappearance of their daughter Madeleine. Findings by ex-MI5 agents long kept under wraps by the McCanns included the two e-fit images described in the Crimewatch program by Scotland Yard’s Detective Chief Inspector Andy Redwood as of “vital importance.”

The images are of a suspected kidnapper seen by an Irish family in Praia da Luz the night Madeleine went missing. They were given to the McCanns by a handpicked team of investigators from Oakley International hired by the McCanns’ “Find Madeleine Fund” in 2008. Henri Exton, an MI5’s former undercover operations chief who led the team, told the Sunday Times he was “utterly stunned” when he watched the Crimewatch program and saw the evidence he had passed to the McCanns presented as a new breakthrough. For some reason the images were not published even in Kate McCann’s 2011 book Madeleine, though it devoted a whole section to eight “key sightings” and carried e-fits on all of them except the Smiths’.

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After the investigation went on its adventure to Australia one year, the next she was back in the Algarve, walking around “in plain sight”.

Former Madeleine McCann Investigator Shares Latest Theory On Where She Is Now [2017] – Huffpost.com.au

Former Det Insp Dave Edgar said he believes Maddie is still alive, possibly hidden in plain sight on Portugal’s Algarve with no memory of her real identity.

Speaking to the Sunday Express, Edgar said: “There is every possibility that Madeleine is still alive and could be being hidden somewhere. “Although Dave Edgar has no evidence to back his theory, he believes Madeleine is being held captive in a basement or cellar 10 miles from where she disappeared in Praia da Luz and will give a conference when he has something more substantial to report.”

The investigator that narrates the Netflix docuseries points out, without a hint of irony, how “surprisingly unlucky” the McCanns were in “choosing” one bumbling Inspector Clouseau to investigate their daughter after another.

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In virtually none of their many, many press conferences, do the McCanns express regret over their own investigators, nor do they appeal for other investigators or detectives to come forward to lend their expertise. Instead, they appear content to “hope for the best”.

Metodo 3 under investigation in a case of Embezzlement and Money Laundering

Metodo 3, in Spain, has already been linked to other scandals connected to the political and the financial world, and, recently, was equally put in question by their work in investigating the disappearance of Madeleine McCann, where one of the close associates of Francisco Marco, Antonio Jimenez, who was accused of having driven several British journalists to meet previously paid witnesses, who would then declare to have seen the small British girl [Maddie] in Morocco. The Metodo 3 coadjutant, responsible for investigating Maddie was, thereafter, arrested in a case of theft and cocaine trafficking.

According to sources connected to Metodo 3, several detectives working for the agency, have questioned the capacity of Francisco Marco in the Madeleine McCann investigation, accusing him of destroying the credibility of the agency, especially after he put to practice a disastrous mass communication strategy.

According to the Attorney General’s Office, the misappropriation of funds and money laundering can concern “colossal” sums of public money. 

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At the same time the docuseries announces a new suspect resembling Victoria Beckham  identified as a sort of cliffhanger to lead into the finale, the series “remembers” an incidental but possibly gamechanging piece of evidence.

A witness in the apartment above saw someone leaving the area below [outside 5A]. Carole Tanmer saw a man acting rather strangely as he closed the gate at 5A. See, this is why an exhaustive timeline – set out in the beginning – makes sense. Fullscreen capture 20190322 133946Fullscreen capture 20190322 135034Fullscreen capture 20190322 135057Fullscreen capture 20190322 135100

Although many on social media are crowing about how thorough and professional the docuseries is, what it does is it manages to provide an endless series of twists and turns, and intrigue, much as the McCanns themselves seem to have done. There’s always something else lurking around the corner and when we get to it, it’s a false alarm, but oh look, there’s something else over there…

One thing we should see but never do in the docuseries is a clear grid for where all the characters in the Ocean Club were staying relative to the McCanns, including and especially the Tapas 7.

We’re also not provided with a conceivable, clear route an “abductor” might have taken if he headed from the Ocean Club to the Smithman sighting. It’s simply not depicted. No timeline is provided for how long it might take to carry a child from 5A to the location of the Smithman sighting either. There’s also no attempt to interrogate the time of the Smithman sighting in any detail. Since the Smith family ate at a nearby restaurant that night, and received a timestamped receipt, this detail shouldn’t have been too difficult.

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Specific information such as the apartment number the McCanns moved to INSIDE the Ocean Club after the incident for the first two months is also left out. It was G5A, the apartment in the same block very close to Dr. Julian Totman [aka Tannerman] former apartment and in fact right beside G4M.
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The phone records of the McCanns and the Tapas Seven are also not scrutinised in the series.

And the phone pings for the months following, and July 26th, 2007 in particular, are also not provided.

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Shan’ann’s 39-year-old cousin Jyssica Onorati Committed Suicide on August 12th, 2016

March 23, 2019 / / 15 Comments

Looking at Jyssica Onorati’s Facebook page, 90% of her posts are aphorisms and affirmations. There is a tragic absence of personal color and people in her social media.

Shan’ann Watts was friends with Jyssica on Facebook and “liked” several of her posts.

Sandi Onorati was friends with Jyssica’s mother Audrey. It seems the unusual spelling of names comes from the Onorati side of the family.

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Is there anyone out there worse than Chris Watts? Actually…

March 22, 2019 / / 10 Comments

How do we measure criminal culpability? Do we do so by body count, lack of remorse, age of the victims, murder weapon, malicious intent, the brutality of the actual crimes, scale and scope of the cover-up or is motive the key determining factor?

As shocking as the Watts case is, in many respects, if we’re serious about comparing apples with apples [annihilators with annihilators], then Watts isn’t nearly as distinctive or unique as we may think. Adam Lanza is probably one of the worst family annihilators in history. We don’t think of him that way because he murdered dozens of schoolchildren at Sandy Hook Elementary, but the fact is his first victim was his mother. And Lanza ended the slaughter by taking his own life.

Two fairly recently examples in South Africa of annihilators who wiped out their families but not themselves are triple axe murderer Henri van Breda [20-years-old at the time] and Don Steenkamp [15-years-old at the time]. Van Breda’s body count was almost as high as Watts’. He would have matched it, except his sister Marli miraculously survived the axe bludgeoning and the severing of one of her jugular one side. Interestingly in both cases, the younger sons stood to inherit millions of Rands if found innocent. At the time of the murders there appeared to be serious, escalating estrangement within the family.

Three family annihilations in Australia are worthy of note:

1. Father of murdered Margaret River family reveals suicide note – SBS

The father of the four children killed in a suspected family murder-suicide has opened up on what led his father-in-law to pull the trigger, and revealed the suicide note that he left behind.

Aaron Cockman, who was estranged from the family, told Seven Network’s Sunday Night program he believes Peter Miles killed his family as he had wanted to kill himself but did not want them to suffer.

Mr Miles, 61, his 58-year-old wife Cynda, their daughter Katrina, 35, and her four children – daughter Taye, 13, and sons Rylan, 12, Arye, 10, and Kadyn, eight – were found dead at Forever Dreaming Farm in Osmington, near Margaret River, on May 11.

Three guns licensed to Mr Miles were found at the hobby farm and the family all suffered gunshot wounds. Mr Cockman said the deaths came after a two-year custody dispute over the kids, which resulted in court orders, including over where the kids should live. The father told Sunday Night he believed the costly and lengthy custody dispute helped push Mr Miles over the edge.

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2. Bedford mass murder: Man charged with killing five members of family including three children – ABCNews

A 24-year-old father has appeared in Perth Magistrates Court charged with murdering his three daughters, aged under four, as well as his wife, before killing the children’s grandmother the following day. He is accused of murdering Ms Harvey’s mother, the children’s grandmother, 73-year-old Beverley Ann Quinn, in the same house the next day.

WA Police Commissioner Chris Dawson said police would allege a blunt instrument and knives were used in the crimes, but no firearms were involved. He said the bodies of Ms Harvey and Ms Quinn were found in the kitchen of the house, with the children’s bodies found in other rooms. Barefoot, bearded and wearing a dark grey t-shirt and jeans, he showed little emotion during the hearing and as the charges and names of his wife and children were read out to the court.

Ms Harvey is believed to have worked in the Pilbara some years ago, and land title records show she bought the brick-and-tile home on Coode Street back in 2008. Neighbours said an older woman visited regularly to help with the children.

A neighbour, who asked for just his first name “Alfie” to be used, said he didn’t know the family well, but never heard any conflict at the home. “I always waved at them and the two twins were always dressed the same, beautiful little kids,” he said. “You could hear them all day there in the back, running around. “There were never fights, arguments there, never ever.” He said Ms Quinn was always at the house helping her daughter. Alfie witnessed police jump the fence of the property on Sunday and said he thought there had been a robbery. “They were hammering on that back door, then others went in by the front,” he said. He said police took footage from his CCTV cameras, which were only activated at night.

A separate article in the Daily Mail refers to financial problems:

Another neighbour, Alfie Cambos said they were ‘just a normal family’ and were always playing in the backyard. ‘There were never fights or arguments,’ he told Perth Now.

‘They were just beautiful little kids. We used to hear them playing in the backyard.’ Professor of criminology, Guy Hall of Murdoch University, said that the recent incidents occurred in a pattern such as a ‘copycat phenomenon’ and the two main motives behind these atrocities is revenge and depression.

‘Family killings are very strongly related with depression, unable to cope, can’t see a future, a sense of hopelessness,’ Mr Hall told WA Today. ‘They then act out their frustration and anger…men will kill their own children just to teach their partner a lesson, while it’s very rare for women to kill their own children as revenge on their partners.

The children’s father, Mr Harvey, who ran a Jim’s Mowing franchise with his wife Mara, told a neighbour he was struggling financially and felt under pressure to work even when sick to keep the business afloat. The couple ran the business in Morley, north-east Perth, after previously working for a Sino Steel Pilbara mine.

3. Brenda Lin, the only surviving Lin family member, breaks her silence – news.com.au

In the early hours of 18 July 2009 in North Epping, New South Wales, newsagent proprietor Min Lin, age 45; his wife, Yun Lin, 43; their sons, Henry (12) and Terry (9); and Yun Lin’s sister, Irene Lin, 39, were bludgeoned to death.Police investigators noted the blood spatter from floor to ceiling, and the faces of the victims were so disfigured that forensics had to be used to identify them.  Forensics also determined that the killings had been started with a hammer-like object, alleged at trial to have been bought from a $2 store, and four of the five victims had signs of asphyxia.

The massacre was one of the most brutal in Australian history. Ms Lin, the eldest child of Min and Lily Lin, told the NSW Supreme Court trial Xie sexually assaulted her on a number of occasions when she moved in with his family after the murders. She also gave evidence of instances of inappropriate touching before the killings. One of the motives advanced by the Crown was that Xie would be able to continue to offend against Ms Lin with her family gone and with her living under his roof.

“He was someone that I trusted…As a person who isn’t a murderer. And also know what he has done,” Ms Lin said in a Sunday Night promotion. “I’d give anything to have my family back.”

Ms Lin spoke of her harrowing ordeal in her victim impact statement read to her uncle’s sentencing hearing. She was on a trip to New Caledonia when the murders occurred. “I do not even know how to begin to express how the murder of my immediate family have impacted my life — there are not enough words to describe the pain and suffering caused me and those around me.” The second motive was Xie’s perception that he did not have equal status within the family — and his jealousy of how highly regarded Min Lin was.

Xie’s sentencing heard about the bloody mess found inside the tidy, two-storey family home. The amount of blood in the bedrooms was not only an “immediate and graphic” illustration of the “murderous assault” which killed them, it also revealed they were killed in the rooms — and in the case of the adults — in their “blood soaked” beds.

Blood was smeared up the walls and across the floor. Of all five victims, young Terry Lin was the only one not killed instantly, such was the severity of the injuries each family member received to their heads and faces. A distinct pattern was visible on their battered faces, with a forensic pathologist later determining a hammer-like object was used as the murder weapon. Justice Fullerton said the murders were “heinous in the extreme” and were “a single episode of brutal and calculated murderous violence”.

She was satisfied Xie killed the family with a hammer like object with a rope attached “most likely so he didn’t lose control” of it and also to maximise “the degree of force to ensure he killed with speed and efficiency”.

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She believed Xie used a key that was cut for his wife Kathy — Min Lin’s sister — and used his knowledge of the home he gained as a “trusted family member” to carry out the murders. Xie showed no emotion when the sentence was passed and he learned he would spend the rest of his life in jail.

More: Lin Family Murders

Court Releases CCTV Footage Used as Evidence in Robert Xie Murder Trial May 07 – WeeklyTimesNow

Robert Xie guilty of Lin family murders -Herald Sun

Just how “Intertextual” is the Joana Cipriano Case to Madeleine McCann? A Focused Interrogation of a Key Aspect Highlighted in Episode 6 of the Netflix Doccie

March 21, 2019 / / 9 Comments

For those new to TCRS and perhaps those who have not read a Rocket Science book, “Intertextuality” [with a capital “T”] is a TCRS-ism that refers to the relationship between crimes, criminals and potentially the fate of the victims. In some circumstances it can also refer to the possibility that one crime leads to, inspires, or informs another crime either further down the line or contemporaneously.

If that sounds confusing, don’t worry, it’s easier to understand Intertextuality by feeling our way through practical real-life examples than pontificating with definitions and semantics. So let’s get started.

The Joana Cipriano case predates the Madeleine McCann case by less than three years. The geographic distance between the two crimes is just eleven kilometres [seven miles].

The circumstances of 8-year-old Joana’s “disappearance” are as follows, according to the generic version on Wikipedia:

Joana Cipriano, eight years old at the time, was last seen at around 8 pm on the evening she disappeared, after being sent to buy milk and a tin of tuna from a local store. A neighbour saw her around 200 yards from her house, walking back from the store. Her mother, Leonor Cipriano, launched a local campaign to find her daughter, distributing posters around the neighbourhood. 

The prosecution argued that Joana was killed because she had seen her mother and João Cipriano, her mother’s brother, having [incestuous]  sex. Leonor confessed to killing her daughter after nearly 48 hours of continuous interrogation. Her brother confessed to having assaulted Joana, and said he had cut her body into small pieces and placed her inside a refrigerator, which was put inside an old car that was taken to Spain to be crushed and burned. When he was asked if he had sexually abused Joana, he said, “I did not harm her – I only killed her.”

Tower of London Raven

There’s a lot to take out of these two brief paragraphs. In sum:

  1. Joana was eight-years-old [twice as old as Madeleine].
  2. Last seen in the evening at around 20:00 [this corresponds roughly to the time Madeleine was last seen, in the relatively early evening].
  3. A neighbour was an important eyewitness [ditto Mrs Fenn and her niece Carol Tranmer  in the McCann case].
  4. Joanna was last seen walking back to her home, not away [Tannerman was alleged to have been walking towards Murat’s home carrying a child, but in fact Dr. Julian Totman was walking in the other direction, towards Block 4.]
  5. One of the main suspects launched a campaign for her child, but was later charged with her murder and contriving to make it appear as if her daughter had disappeared without her mother’s knowledge.
  6. One of the main features of the misinformation campaign was putting up posters all over the neighborhood. One might scoff at the trickery involved, but each poster proclaiming the child as missing was essentially an advertisement proclaiming the myth that a) she was still alive and b) that the mother wasn’t implicated. Since the child was dead, and the remains taken care of, there was no need to be concerned that someone might actually come forward with information.
  7. The prosecution didn’t argue for an accidental death, or an abduction, or a disappearance, but murder.
  8. The mother ultimately confessed to killing her child, but did so under duress.
  9. The girl’s uncle admitted to assaulting the child and dismembering her body. In the concealing, covering up and destruction of the child’s body, both parties appeared to have an equal or substantial “stake”.
  10. A refrigerator is noted as a temporary storage device for human remains. [Joana was killed in mid-September, when it’s still relatively warm in the Algarve].
  11. After a limited period, the body was transferred from the refrigerator to an old vehicle.
  12. The remains were then removed from the area entirely.
  13. The prime suspect made an ironic remark that he “only killed her” but didn’t harm her.

It’s tempting to want to sticky-tape many if not all of the idiosyncrasies of the Cipriano case onto the McCann case, particularly the vivid scenarios involving the refrigerator and the secret movement of the little girl’s remains to Spain.  But we need to be careful how we apply what we know in one case to another. Certainly, some areas have Intertextual Criminal overlaps, and some aspects of the whole crime feel generally very Intertextual, don’t they?

But it requires specialized True Crime Rocket Science to know what to apply and what not to. Netflix provides some useful information but it shouldn’t be treated as gospel, nor dismissed entirely as bunkum. Reality lives somewhere in-between.

Let’s start our analysis with Goncalo Amaral.

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I like Amaral. He’s a solid dude [despite the aspersions cast in the documentary, Amaral wasn’t present at the time of the alleged beating]. And he has some snazzy insights into the McCann case.

He’s entitled to his opinion, of course, that the Cipriano case and McCann case aren’t similar. It’s possible that he sees a distinction in the fact that Joana was murdered, and because there was an incestuous spiel playing out he believes these shouldn’t be conflated with the McCann case. Point taken senhor Amaral.

The Rocket Science position is different. Yes, agreed, Madeleine wasn’t murdered – not by either of the parents. There was no direct intent or Dolus as the legal term is applied. As for some kind of sexual spiel, there does seem to be the possibility at least of a paternity issue. I don’t want to say sexual issues are irrelevant, though I can understand why Amaral excludes them. I don’t want to conflate this sexual miasma with anything as overt as pedophile gangs or traffickers, however.

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Rocket Science is content to aver that the sexual dimension in the McCann case is somewhat unknown, and if we invoke merely the IVF scenario, we can see there is some idiosyncrasy hiding in plain sight. What more than that? Well, there is more to say but this post is about Intertextuality, so let’s stick to our brief.

The area that Amaral is missing – to my mind – isn’t even highlighted in the bullets above. And this area is a key Psychological Intertextuality – an overlap – between the two cases. I don’t want to be too on-the-chin about it, but the motive in the Cipriano case is the covering up of a taboo. We know from an eyewitness that the child was seen walking home relatively late in the evening, and perhaps arrived home either unexpectedly or earlier than expected.

It’s also possible the uncle was abusing the little girl if he was having sexual relations with her mother, and the bloody dismemberment of her corpse suggests a kind of rough familiarity with body parts. I’ll expand on what I mean by that in a moment.

It may seem a giant leap, and perhaps it is a giant leap, but it’s possible a similar taboo exists in the McCann dynamic. Now, the circumstances are clearly different in a scenario of accidental or negligent death. In that case [if that is the case] the child’s death is a triggering factor, leading to a reaction. In the Cipriano case, the incestual act isn’t the triggering factor, but rather the child witnessing it. 

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So the question of Intertexuality then is in a situation where Madeleine was found to have died, was the taboo triggered by a sense of being imperiled by who might witness what they did [effectively] to their child?

We see in the Cipriano siblings and the McCann parents a shared sense of symbolic and biological connection to the victim. They are both directly responsible for the care and safety and guardianship of the child, and yet their own status in some way interferes with this guardianship.

I also want to come back to the issue of the sexual miasma. Clearly in a scenario where the siblings were involved in a taboo act, both adults don’t have an identical blood relationship to the child. One adult is the biological mother, it is true, but the other is less-the-parent to the child. This mismatch in affiliation appears to be psychologically significant, and plays into the criminal psychology of both parties – apparently. The question then arises – to what extent can these mismatches be applied to the McCanns in this hypothesis, if at all? Is one adult more biologically connected to the child than the other? What actually happened, what lengths did the parents go to, during their efforts to produce a viable IVF result?

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We can also potentially extend the taboo aspect to others in the group of seven, four on whom were doctors: Dr. Gerald Payne. Dr. Fiona Payne. Dr. Matthew Oldfield. Dr. Russell ‘O Brien. Of the remaining three Jane Tanner [O’Brien’s partner] was a marketing manager, and Oldfield’s wife Rachael was a lawyer.  If we add the McCann couple to the Tapas Seven there are six doctors in the group, in total.

There’s plenty more to say on the subject, but I want to stick to the brief and move on to another possible Intertextual aspect, the refrigerator.

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The docuseries seems focused in episode six on maligning Amaral. He’s portrayed as a corrupt cop at best, and a brutish thug at worst. They hold up the absurdity of the refrigerator scenario as the reason Amaral’s investigative nous is off.

The Rocket Science position is that it’s not as simple or straightforward as the Netflix folks would like us to believe. On the one hand, yes, certainly, the eight-year-old’s body was probably not going to fit into the confined space of a small refrigerator very easily. If the Chris Watts case is worth invoking here, for just a single Intertextual aspect, it was found that two children [three-years-old and four respectively] were stuffed through an orifice eight inches wide.

Although the experts “predicted” the hole was too small to fit the bodies of the poor little girls, they were wrong. Somehow they did fit.

That’s not to say Amaral is right, or wrong, just that when it comes to fitting human bodies into small spaces, there’s no “expert” truth.

In the Courtney Pieters case, the three-year-old victim was sexually assaulted and stored in the perpetrator’s refrigerator, in his room.

The Refrigerator Theory has led to an unfortunate conspiracy theory, which is that Madeleine actually died a week earlier and was kept in a neighbor’s refrigerator during this time, and disposed of at leisure [not necessarily when the alarm was raised on the night of May 3rd]. I won’t attempt to address those concerns here, except to note it’s not the position of TCRS.

Some of those who subscribe to the Refrigerator Theory in the McCann case also conflate this conspiracy with a pedophile theory, feeling that a group cover-up would have made it possible to pull of moving the girl’s remains to a refrigerator in some other location.

What I will say is there’s reason to suspect Madeleine’s remains were in Praia da Luz for some weeks before they were transferred somewhere else. So some arrangement had to have been made to “manage her remains” if that makes sense. The foremost concern [assuming this contention is true] would have been odor. A refrigerator would address that problem, but I nevertheless don’t consider it a viable theory.

In the Casey Anthony case Caylee’s skeletonised remains were discovered after being gone for six months, and when they were found, they weren’t recovered by smell but by sight.

So what did happen to poor eight-year-old Joana?

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As mentioned above, episode six of the documentary appeared to be focused on character- assassinating Amaral. Whether Amaral threw a suspect down stairs or not, whether he did naked cartwheels on a beach, whether he caught a marlin once upon a time in Tahiti, none of these anecdotes should distract us from the facts of the case.

Amaral certainly didn’t kill or abduct Madeleine, so we shouldn’t make an investigation into Madeleine McCann an investigation into the lead detective. The fact is, Amaral’s scenario in the McCann case is basically cogent, except for the refrigerator business.

Probably, unfortunately, poor Joana’s remains never made it to Spain. Her killers were poor, and simple-minded. Their methods, similarly, were simple, even trashy.

The little girl’s remains were probably eaten by pigs. Unfortunately there is Intertextuality for this too, and in the same Intertextual reference case there is also a mismatch between the biology of the parents of the seven-year-old child, Adrian Jones.

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We may ask why Joana’s killers “confessed” they put her body into a car and transported it to Spain if it wasn’t true? Why confess to a lie when you’ve been found guilty anyway? Well, even murderers have pride, and honor. Admitting to moving remains somewhere by car minimises the more monstrous alternative – feeding the flesh of one’s one child to hungry pigs in a farmyard pigsty.

In the Jones Case there’s also an extensive pattern and prolonged period of neglect and abuse to take note of, from the boy child’s own stepmother, including anecdotes of torture posted onto Facebook. In other words, the neglect isn’t incidental or accidental, it’s systematic and it builds up to murder. In this respect the death of the child isn’t random or unexpected but an entirely predictable psychological spiral into ultimately the complete destruction not only of a living child, but even of their remains.

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On March 21st, 2019, Two Weeks After Chris Watts’ “Second Confession”, Guess Who Entered the 2020 Presidential Race?

March 21, 2019 / / 7 Comments

What does former Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper have to do with the Chris Watts case? Nothing? How about everything?

I’ve been covering the Chris Watts case since the news broke in mid-August 2018. I’ve been blogging about the case daily, often multiple times daily. I’ve also written six books over the last six months. Right now, since the case itself is finally taking something of a breather, so am I.

In the last two weeks it’s fair to say the tap of coverage relating to the Watts case went from running, to dripping to no longer dripping at all. And it was within this window of the Watts case finally “drying up” that Hickenlooper leaped and announced his candidacy. Coincidence?

On January 22nd, Howard Schultz, an former CEO of Starbucks announced he was running for the 2020 elections as an independent candidate. During this period the media speculated on the selling of Chris Watts’ home, only for the sale to be postponed to April.

On February 9th, a few days shy of the doorbell footage showing Shan’ann arriving home [which scorched the internet], Elizabeth Warren announced her candidacy. Hickenlooper meanwhile, bided his time.

A few days later, on February 13th, Chris Watts announced he wasn’t going to contest the civil suit filed by Shan’ann’s lawyers. Five days later, on February 19th, around the same time a trio of investigators were quizzing Watts in a Wisconsin prison, Bernie Sanders announced his candidacy. Hickenlooper meanwhile, bided his time.

What does former Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper have to do with the Chris Watts case? Nothing? What does the timing around a criminal case that’s been mothballed have to do with a Colorado governor, whose term expired on January 8th, 2019, running for president? Maybe nothing, or maybe more than nothing.

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John Hickenlooper to fracking critics in Colorado: I hear you – Denver Post

 

Aug 30, 2016 

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‘That’s How You Spell Recession’: Hickenlooper To Explore Options If Prop 112 Passes – CBS [November, 2018]

“You want to minimize the unintended collateral damage…This [fracking] is a big part of state’s economy. You’re talking 15 percent, some people say as much as 20 percent, of the state’s economy. And suddenly it goes to half? That is how you spell recession. And I think everybody needs to take a long, slow look and say ‘Alright, how do we go forward?’ — if it passes — ‘How do we get to what was intended?’”

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Pro-Fracking Dem John Hickenlooper Hires Firm That Rebranded BP

2020 candidate who said ‘fracking is good’ hires firm that moved oil giant ‘beyond petroleum’

GOVERNOR HICKENLOOPER AGREES, FRACKING IS GOOD FOR COLORADO

“Based on experience and science, I recognized that fracking was one of our very best and safest extraction techniques. Fracking is good for the country’s energy supply, our national security, our economy, and our environment.”

Colorado Governor’s Memoir Extols Fracking as “Very Best and Safest Extraction Technique”

“It seemed to me at the time that the way some media and activists were going after fracking was reminiscent of the early twentieth century, when the media skewered the oil and gas industry, personified by John D. Rockefeller. Only in our era, it was often bloggers wedded to a particular agenda who led the charge, cherry-picking some shreds of truth, or untruths, to make popular but inaccurate stories.” (Pg. 279; emphasis added)

“The number of people in Colorado who want to ban hydrocarbons is probably a small minority,” he said…

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Via Wikipedia:

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THE FOSSIL FUEL INDUSTRY SPENT $100 MILLION TO KILL GREEN BALLOT MEASURES IN THREE STATES — AND WON – The intercept

...when she moved her family from Louisiana back home to Weld County, Colorado, in 2016. Soon after, Nelson’s friend encouraged her to come out to a meeting where Lisa McKenzie, an environmental chemist and epidemiologist at the Colorado School of Public Health, was presenting her research on the health impacts of oil and natural gas drilling.

Weld County has one of the highest concentrations of oil and gas wells in the country — 23,000 within county limits. Its air quality carries an “F” rating from the American Lung Association, with infant mortality rates twice as high as those in surrounding counties. With around 50,000 active wells overall, Colorado just surpassed California to become America’s third-largest oil and gas producer after Texas and North Dakota.

“It was a crash course in fracking,” Nelson told me by phone. Colorado law, she learned, states that drilling operations have to be 1,000 feet away from school buildings, but that ordinance — known as a setback — doesn’t include surrounding school properties, like playgrounds or soccer fields. There, as McKenzie would explain, kids playing and running around breathe harder and heavier, increasing the amount of poisoned air that enters their lungs and bloodstream.

All of this hit too close to home: As she also learned, oil companies had just been approved to open 24 new drill sites near her then-4-year-old son Diego’s school, the kindergarten through third grade campus of Bella Romero Academy; the drilling would take place just behind the fourth through eighth grade campus, where her niece and nephew were students. The decision to drill near Bella Romero at all — where 87 percent of attendees are students of color, and 90 percent fall below the poverty line — was made after parents at an overwhelmingly white school refused to have the same rigs in their kids’ backyards.

Shocked by what she discovered, Nelson joined a coalition that would later become known as Colorado Rising and traveled around the state, telling people about the stakes at her son’s school. Colorado Rising’s work included a push for Proposition 112, a ballot measure to mandate a 2,500-foot setback zone between drill sites and homes, schools, and other vulnerable areas. That measure was defeated 57 to 43 on Tuesday night, in large part thanks to a full-fledged freakout by the fossil fuel industry, which, with $40 million, outspent Prop 112 proponents by at least 40 to 1.

…one clear takeaway from the midterms ballot initiatives is that fossil fuel money can buy elections. Apparently, $100 million can buy four of them. “They’re putting up big numbers,” said Edgar Franks, a Bellingham-based labor organizer who helped draft and campaign for I-1631 with the environmental justice group Front and Centered. “You can tell that where this is actually a threat to the way that they do business, because they know it’s going to work.”

The bar for improving Hickenlooper’s record on extraction has been set pretty low. The outgoing governor had threatened to call a special lame duck session of the state legislature in the event of Prop 112’s passage.“ It’s incredibly undemocratic,” said Parkin in advance of the vote. “The very idea that he would think it’s OK to turn around and ignore the will of the people, when thousands of his own constituents have worked so hard.”

The statement wasn’t unprecedented for Hickenlooper. In 2013, he openly threatened to sue any city that banned fracking within its borders and in fact, did sue Longmont and Fort Collins after they implemented restrictions on fracking. The state’s suit also undermined the legal standing of three other bans and moratoria. “Topics like these,” Nelson told me, “are the ones that enable the true colors of our representatives to come out. It just shows that he’s never been on the side of the people, he’s been on the side of industry.”

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Daft Places: Netflix Doccie on Madeleine McCann – Episode 6 Review & Analysis

March 21, 2019 / / 2 Comments

An authentic true crime investigation narrows down suspects. Think of the evidence as a sort of tornado of dirt, debris, disorientating plumes and strong winds that tug one one way or the other. But there is a centre to all this confusion, and a clear path that the tornado is taking us on.

Bogus true crime, or Apologia [the TCRS term for a “Sympathy Narrative” that serves the suspects] does the opposite of funneling towards a concrete result. In episode 6 we begin to see that reverse muddying process. Now that Madeleine has been resurrected, it’s back to square one. Who took her?

There’s some focus on Robert Murat, the first suspect and arguably the prime suspect. Many “good reasons” are put forward for Murat being the right profile for a pedophile abductor. The investigation builds him up as a suspect. Some millionaire dude interrogates him and bugs their conversation. But then when all is said and done, it’s not Murat. But could it be Murat’s friend Sergey Malinka. And so gradually the vortex of the “investigation” widens until it dissipates completely, becoming an enormous garden. The private detective now enters the scene as a vivid butterfly hopping from one flower to the next. Each flower is introduced as a very credible suspect, only to be abandoned in lieu of the next flower. It’s compelling stuff. Could it be this guy! How about that one!

As a sure sign that the filmmakers are not only drunk on their own Kool-Aid, but are trying to serve it to an unsuspecting public, the narrative twirls back to the Tanner sighting and attempts to recast the sighting as something [someone] else. Remember, Murat and Malinka have now been thrown to the curb as suspects so it’s time for a new character to rise as the next suspect. And the more flowery the better.

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I’m not going to indulge in the backstory of the creepy, bucktooth fella who was knocking on doors trying to raise dosh for his dodgy orphanage scheme. Suffice it to say, it forms a creepy if unacknowledged parallel to the idea of sinister doctors knocking on television sets trying to raise dosh on the dodgy premise of a disappearing daughter. For more information on Gail Cooper and how the Creeper Narrative came into being, click on the story below.

‘Creepy’ bucktooth man spotted lurking near Madeleine McCann flat before she vanished was seen weeks later with kid matching Maddie’s description – The Sun

Now that a new character has been conjured into existence, he needs to be connected somehow to Madeleine McCann. He LOOKS suspicious, he WALKS suspiciously, he has DUBIOUS intent with his little door-to-door deception, but for him to walk into the McCann mythos he needs some sort of conveyor. Enter Jane Tanner!

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A sketch artist’s drawings of the bucktoothed creeper are presented to Jane Tanner. Tanner is asked if the drawings look anything like Tannerman. [Hold your breath!]

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Admittedly, the new sketch was an 80% likeness, wasn’t it? Both men wore a brown coat or jacket and both wore lighter-colored trousers. The original sketch showed a man with long hair, and the creeper had longish black hair.  Well, no, because the reality is Tanner claimed she never saw the man’s face, so the 80% has to be the whole outfit, the hair and everything else BUT the face.

On the other hand, by leaving Tannerman’s face blank, one could put any man’s face in there and it could an 80% fit, couldn’t it? All of the above is just logical conjecture of course. In order to prove how much punch is in this particular concoction of Kool-Aid, we need only refer to Tannerman himself. Oddly, the docuseries neglects or conveniently forgets the part where Tannerman actually comes forward, identifies himself and even hands over the clothing he wore to the media. He not only admits it was him, he admits he was there, carrying his child from the Ocean Club creche home that night.

Tannerman turns out not to be nearly the murky, shadowy, titillating mystery sighting it’s been pretending to be [for years]. It’s this guy.

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His name is Dr. Julian Totman. Totman was holidaying with his wife [identified by the initial “R”] and two small children, William [4] and a three-year-old girl whose name starts with “L”. The Totmans were staying in apartment 4GM, which was part of the same Ocean Club complex as the McCanns, but in a separate block situated to the east. In the image below the Totman’s apartment would be approximately where the word “Road” appears midway in the image on the right.

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In the image below it’s clearer how the Ocean Club apartments are spread out into two separate blocks. In a separate post I’ll show how the apartments are identified according to a grid, and where some of the most important “players” stayed in these apartments. 5A was the McCanns’ apartment, the five designating “block 5” and the “A” the ground floor on the far-right. The Totman’s apartment, 4GM, refers to “block 4″ [the block on the left in the image below” and the “G” to a second-floor apartment, which would have been on floor above the McCanns’ flat but in the neighboring block.

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The BBC’s graphic [below] while accurate isn’t very clear in juxtaposing the McCanns’ apartment to the Totman Apartment [in yellow] and the creche.

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Naturally episode six contrives to conjure a creeper into the blank face of Tannerman, even though Totman himself came forward and said, “Hey, it’s me!” In spite of this, and this is a huge indictment of the scam surrounding the “abduction” and the bogusness of both the media “coverage” and the “official” police investigation, Tannerman continued to remain a credible sighting for years on end. It’s important to bear in mind that this expensive, tedious and bogus wild goose chase came from one of the Tapas 7, and despite being told by Portuguese police not to comment publicly on what they saw.

Jane Tanner, in her wisdom, defied these orders. At the time she said:

“I think it’s important that people know what I saw because I believe Madeleine was abducted.’’

From The Sun article [May 2018] Why did cops investigating Madeleine McCann’s disappearance waste four years on ‘Tannerman’ lead – despite GP saying it was probably him?

And with Portuguese laws prohibiting the release of photofits of suspects, the McCanns put out an artist’s sketch of “Tannerman” in October 2007. But efforts by the Totmans, who live in the South West, to point out the importance of Julian’s movements fell on deaf ears. They were never contacted by Leicestershire police, whose officers were responsible at the time for collating all UK inquiries.

Also of import is that the color of the child’s clothing in the Tanner sighting didn’t match the color of Madeleine’s Totman’s daughter’s clothing, as described by Kate and Gerry during their numerous roadshows.

Totman’s daughter’s clothes were bright, especially the shirt, with long sleeves and long leggings with especially bright orange ankle-ends. These were facing Tanner and yet Jan Tanner noticed the frilly edges of Madeleine’s pants instead. Madeleine’s outfit was all short sleeves and shorter leggings.

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In any event, it seems unlikely that the McCann doctors [and the doctors within the Tapas 7] would not know about another guest who was also a doctor, and who was using the same creche they were using. It’s probably a good point now to indicate where the creche was vis-a-vis the Tapas Bar.

In the image below the yellow arrow shows the Tapas Bar oriented from the perspective of the McCanns’ apartment. The small square tent right behind it [circle] is the creche. This shows how patently ridiculous it was not to have their kids looked after in the facilities that were right there [and facilities used by Dr. Totman, as it happened].

The circled area to the right [the East] of the Tapas restaurant was also a play area for kids, and an area where some of the very few photos of Madeleine were taken.

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The image below highlights that play area up close. Note the square tented area behind the Tapas Bar at the top left of the image. Also note the location of the tennis courts to the car, the creche and kid’s play area.

 

It turns out Gerry McCann knew Dr. Totman fairly well. Well enough to play tennis with him in fact.

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Well enough to dine at a table alongside Dr. Totman in the Tapas Bar.

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Well enough that the Totman tots went to the shame creche as Madeleine.Fullscreen capture 20190321 181253

And yet with all this going on, when Jane Tanner saw Totman, she didn’t recognise him. Another aspect that seems more than a little iffy in Tanner’s sighting was that she Totman walking in the direction of Murat’s house – away from his apartment. Was this human error, or a deliberate re-adaptation of what she said?

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The docuseries appears to make this creepy fellow the new Tannerman, when in reality Jane Tanner’s “Dr Totman” Tannerman remained the crux of the investigation for several years, despite the British cops knowing it was a bullshit lead. It seems the PR processes around the investigation have tried to conflate the botching of the investigation [going after Tannerman] with an error on the Portuguese side. But the Portuguese cops maintained all along that they didn’t take the Tannerman sighting seriously. So who is playing who for the fool here?Fullscreen capture 20190321 002213Fullscreen capture 20190321 002439Fullscreen capture 20190321 002607Fullscreen capture 20190321 002716Fullscreen capture 20190321 001700

In a follow-up post I’ll be interrogating the intertextual aspect of the very compelling and interesting Joana Cipriano case, which was also brought up in episode 6.

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