True Crime Analysis, Breakthroughs, Insights & Discussions Hosted by Bestselling Author Nick van der Leek
Most of the focus of the crime scene at the Ocean Club fixates on the labyrinth of doors, windows, beehive balconies, apartments, stairwells and foliage surrounding Apartment 5A.
But what about the other end of the complex?
In Goncalo Amaral’s book he briefly mentions that access to leisure areas wasn’t controlled.
A case in point is the rear area behind the tennis courts, behind the Tapas Bar and kids creche.
The creche is easily identified as a square, white tented structure.
I also found the last two and especially the final episode very difficult to get through.
Scams, Cons, Frauds and Liars Netflix Doccie on Madeleine McCann – Episode 7 Review & Analysis
After leaving not one but two scathing one star reviews, one reader’s outlook shifts markedly in book 5, DRILLING THROUGH DISCOVERY.
The reviewer makes a good point that one book isn’t the final analysis on Chris Watts. The books need to be seen as a continuum. Each narrative exposes another facet of the case, and each narrative reflects the knowledge-base known at the time it was written.
In ANNIHILATION I’ll be dealing with Watts “Second Confession” and addressing how the information in that final interview changes things, and why and where it doesn’t. I’ll also be providing a final analysis for where, how and why the crimes took place [based on all the information we now have] and what the murder weapons were. ANNIHILATION will also be explicit about the exact time of death of the three victims.
Something else worth noting – although this series of books is designed not to be read at a snail’s pace, racing through the content and skipping links means you miss most of the really good stuff. Many subtle, intricate, carefully laid out and meticulously reasoned arguments are missed when the reader starts detaching from the narrative and scrolling on. Don’t do that.
Give the narrative time and opportunity to present its case. Explore some of the reinforcing material if you’re curious or unconvinced. Be curious! Believe me, all the building blocks and explanations are in place, just give yourself the space to absorb them and then decide for yourself how much they resonate.
Buy the 6-part TWO FACE series here for $40.
BOOK 7 COMING [RELATIVELY] SOON…
I appreciate that this licensed professional counselor of mental health, and also a licensed chemical dependency professional has taken the time to familiarize himself with the minutiae of this case.
Interestingly Dr. Grande said he formed and recorded an initial prognosis but felt, on second thoughts, that it didn’t sit well with him and so he went back, did additional research and reconsidered.
The Chris Watts case seems perfectly simple. It’s not.
Your thoughts?
Rua Dr Agostinho da Silva is the relatively short, quiet, J-shaped road running along the rear [the north end] of the Ocean Club apartments where Madeleine McCann was snatched.
The road running alongside the property to the west side, the road Gerry and Kate McCann used to do their respective checks, and the road Jane Tanner was standing on when she spied Tannerman, is Rua Dr Gentil Martins.
It’s a curious thing that the names o these roads are never really mentioned, but then, they’re mouthfuls to say let alone remember. For our purposes we’re refer to the one at the top as “Da Silva” and the one to the side [the east side] as “Gentil Martins”.
Happy with that?
Before we deal with the Pepper Trees on Gentil Martins, let’s first orient ourselves in terms of the scale of the hotel, also the distance from he hotel to the beach and finally the realistic avenues of flight a potential abuctor could have [or would have] taken.
In the image above the two red arrows refer to Da Silva at the top [behind the Ocean Club hotel] and Gentil Martins running in a northerly direction along the side of the hotel. Unfortunately the map doesn’t seem to be accurate in its description of Gentil Martins, the road running up to Da Silva.
The two black arrows refer to the Tapas bar relative to the hotel and street grid, as well as the scale. The scale at the bottom denotes “20 metres”, indicative of a relatively compact street grid. This is important, as is the relatively small size of the resort town as we’ll see in the next image.
It’ easy to get disoriented as one zooms out, even if you’re very familiar with the grid pattern.
The original grid [above] is reproduced, with the long red arrow directing the viewer to Gentil Martins [the red location balloon in both images refer to the same location]. The black arrow shows the Tapas Bar and the red oval circle the Ocean Club at a slightly reduced scale.
The most important aspect of the above map is the new scale [see blue oval bottom right] – 100 metres. The distance from the Ocean Club to the urban edge of Praia da Luz [or the coastline] is approximately 300 metres if travelling southeast [follow the black arrow down] in a straight line. Not far at all, is it?
It’s also important to remember it’s downhill all the way to the coast, in some places steep downhill, and conversely, uphill all the way back to the hotel, and in some places the uphills are inclined fairly steeply too.
Gentil Martins for example in a road tilting upward from the bottom closer to the coast, to the top, whereas Da Silva – running laterally behind the apartment complex] – is mostly flat. However as the road tilts into a “J” with the tail of the “J” swooping up on the west end, the road necessarily also starts to go uphill.
It’s useful to know the road beneath the black arrow is a major traffic artery running down to the city centre of Praia da Luz, and this road is known as Rua 1º de Maio. The road to the east of this road which sort of connects to Da Silva and loops in a weird dog’s leg alongside the hotel to the east [in-line with the tennis courts and Tapas Bar] is the relatively quiet Rua da Escola Primária. We won’t be paying attention to either of these roads in this post.
The satellite screengrab ought to make the entire mosaic clearer still. Now we’re on a 50 metre scale with the coastline area missing and some of the distracting urban fabric smudged out. Not at the top right how Gentil Martins curves upward [black arrow at right top]. We also see a slight kink in Gentil Martins [see yellow circle] inline with the Tapas Bar and close to the southeast boundary of the Ocean Club.
Although the kink is visible in the street grid view, it’s less obvious. The two red arrows do not run in a straight line. The black arrows on the left are Rua 1º de Maio [the main road running down to the left of the hotel, the west, towards the town centre] and Rua da Escola Primária [running further left in a kind of squiggle].
Now we want to take a closer look at the road indicated by the red arrow pointing diagonally down from the top of the map to Da Silva.
Specifically note how the long avenue of Pepper Trees runs alongside Da Silva for the entire breadth of the Ocean Club hotel. The small black arrow on the right denotes the entrance to Apart 5A where Madeleine McCann was supposedly abducted. The yellow circle indicates the location of “Tannerman” and the clear “line-of”sight” up Gentil Martins to the T-Junction with Da Silva.
If someone was walking along Da Silva there would be similar line of sight, however if they worked closer to the tree line, or even under the tree line along the hotel parking lot [or along the hotel itself] line-of-sight diminishes and in some cases disappears entirely.
For an abductor carrying a child on foot, it would be important to stay out of line of sight as a matter of urgency. Which route afforded the abductor more cover? To the east [to the right or anywhere on Gentil Martins], or to the west [along Da Silva]…?
“If Madeleine McCann died on May 3rd, where was her body hidden?” [MAP]
Pepper Trees in Portugal – Portugal News
The mindfuckery reaches a dizzying crescendo in the final episode in the Netflix documentary, especially in the last 30 minutes. One moment a brand new suspect is identified, then another, then another, THEN ANOTHER, THEN ANOTHER…
Madeleine McCann: Did this man snatch Maddy? – The Mirror [2012]
Madeleine McCann ‘snatched by wobbly fat woman and is still alive’ – Daily Star
It’s almost with gleeful celebration that these names and numbers are touted. Why all of this information is “saved” for last is odd. Why not have an episode that deals exclusively with the long list of suspects [all of whom turned into dead ends], rather than throwing darts at a board and going, could it be this guy, how about this one? Could Madeleine be in Morocco? How about Australia? What about this Marina here, at 06:00 on May 4th?
There is a cultish triumphalism about “keeping the faith” in episode eight that reminds me of Apocalyptic Doctrine in the bible. The longer the Apocalypse doesn’t happen, the more certain it is to happen. If Armageddon hasn’t happened after 2000 years of prediction, oh boy, are we close to it happening now!
Also, the longer the Apocalypse doesn’t happen, the more evidence there is that it’s about to. It’s the End of Days. Something is about to happen.
It seems the same counter-intuitive gospel is being used here. The longer Madeleine remains missing the more certain she is to be found. The longer she remains missing, the more certain there is to be evidence that shes out there.
If we applied this gospel to our everyday lives, whether applying for a job, or asking someone out on a date, most would agree that the longer the period without confirmation, the more certain the reply is likely to be negative.
Of course it’s of no use to be broadly dismissive [of anything] in true crime. And, like we see in The Matrix, one can’t be told what something is, one must experience it in order to know it. Saying something is bullshit is one thing, smelling it is another.
With that in mind, let’s take three specific examples of mindfuckery in the final episode, to see what we’re dealing with.
1. It’s The Ocean Club’s Fault
Kate McCann found out that a booking they’d made at the Tapas Restaurant had been visible to others. In other words, it’s written explicitly in the registration/bookings book that the families would spend a week dining in the Tapas Bar at a particular time because their children were somewhere else. Now it’s the Ocean Club’s responsibility for allowing this sensitive information to fall into the hands of a shadowy, lurking pedophile abductor who happened to be floating around the Club there and then.
One of the co-authors narrating the story provides reinforcement for this same mind-job. This time it’s the fault of the authorities for not informing tourists that Praia da Luz was swarming with pedophiles, and if they’d only known this, they would never have left their children alone.
This is a wonderful jab firstly at the irresponsible Ocean Club staff, and secondly at the bungling Portuguese cops. Had they done their jobs, the parents could have dined in peace without their child being abducted while they were away.
There seems to be absolutely no question that leaving young children alone for an extended time actually invited some sort of incident in the first place.
We did not get nanny service for Madeleine, says Kate McCann – Telegraph
One aspect of the McCann narrative that is also missed is that the McCanns didn’t just leave three-year-old Madeleine so that they could dine somewhere else, they left three children, including two one-and-a-half-year-olds. In addition to this, when the McCanns were dining out, Kate herself didn’t do her check when she was supposed to, but gave up her check to someone else. On the night of May 3rd, the night Madeleien disappeared, by the time Kate did her one check Madeleine was already gone.
It’s also strange what Kate doesn’t seem to say – not in the documentary nor in so many of the interviews she’s given over the years. It would be the most natural [and understandable] thing in the world for her to say, and if she said it one would probably feel a lot more sympathy for her. “I feel guilty. I feel bad. It’s my fault…”
But you don’t hear those words. Instead it’s everyone else’s fault but the McCanns, and everyone else is a suspect, or made serious mistakes, or errors in judgement, but the McCanns.
Instead when Kate has spoken about feeling guilty, as she did in April 2017, it’s about money.
Ten years after she vanished, Kate said: “You do feel guilty. Other families haven’t had the publicity and money.” Former GP Kate, 49, admits she used to feel “really embarrassed” about the £11 million spent on the investigation.
I wonder – do they feel guilty about £20 million spent on a documentary that’s really about implicating a host of obvious suspects, while clearly making an effort to exonerate them in the court of public opinion?
One should also note that after years of adverse publicity, the Ocean Club resort where Madeleine died or disappeared went bankrupt. A lot of people lost their jobs. All the money Kate felt embarrassed about could theoretically have gone to saving some of those jobs lost as a result of unrelenting bad press surrounding the luckless resort.
The property, which the new owner is partially shielding from public view, was axed from tour operators’ recommended accommodation after stunned holidaymakers learned it was “the Maddie flat.” A British expat living in the resort told The Sun Online said today: “The place is no longer being used as a holiday option. I’m surprised it lasted so long as a viable let with its grim history.”
What happened to Praia da Luz holiday apartment where Madeleine McCann went missing? – The Mirror [May 2017]
The McCann’s had rented the flat from Mark Warner Holidays for around £1,500 for a one-week holiday when three-year-old Maddie vanished from her bed on May 3, 2007.
The two-bedroom apartment lay empty for a month but was then used by two families for a one-week and fortnight-long holiday before it was finally sealed off as a permanent crime scene. Once the world’s media had departed the front of the Ocean Club complex and Portuguese police closed their investigation in 2008, the property was put up for sale for around £250,000. The price was repeatedly slashed until it was eventually sold earlier this year for around £113,000 by British widow Kathleen Macguire-Cotton.
Holiday firm leaves resort where Madeleine McCann disappeared – The Express
Madeleine McCann case: Resort firm Mark Warner sues insurers for losses – The Guardian
• Company blames adverse publicity for parents staying away
• Claim centres on losses for ‘interrupted business’
‘We’ve just had enough of it’: Ten years on, Praia da Luz remembers the night Madeleine McCann disappeared – Telegraph [May 2017]
…for two years after her disappearance, the number of tourists “noticeably decreased”. “People lost their jobs because of this. A lot of shops and restaurants closed down. It had a huge influence on the real estate market.”
‘OUR FRESH HOPE’ Madeleine McCann parents’ delight as cops ask for more funding to keep search for missing child alive – The Sun [March, 2019]
If it was the Ocean’s Clubs fault, they and much of Praia da Luz have paid a price and done their penance many times over.
2. “New Technology will help us find Madeleine…”
This is a decent point raised in the final episode. Advances in technology are improving the forensic side of true crime investigations. The application of these technological breakthroughs in the McCann case could be applied in two areas above all, DNA testing and facial recognition software.
The Netflix narrative doesn’t highlight either of these very practical areas in any detail, but instead goes to the fuzzier area of time-lapsing Madeleine’s appearance. What would she look like now?
Ernie Allen [pictured above] is the ex-President & CEO of the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children in America. He narrates chunks of virtually every episode in the series [with apparent impartiality].
In the final minutes of episode eight we see Allen working side-by-side with the McCanns for the first time. Allen is touting cutting edge technology to the McCanns, and doing so on camera. It has nothing to do with DNA [and there is much in dispute and much uncertainty regarding the DNA evidence surrounding this case] or facial recognition software. It’s simply a kind of digital “aging”.
Although the value of “aging” Madeleine’s face has dubious application in my opinion [especially if Madeleine is no longer with us], the interaction between Allen and Kate is worth noting.
Observe how both Allen and Kate emphasise how Madeleine’s features resemble her mother’s. Gerry is not mentioned and remains uncharacteristically silent throughout this aspect of the discussion.
Why would it be “upsetting” to see her three-year-old recast as a little girl, apparently alive and well? If Madeleine is dead, then clearly all of this is a reminder of what Madeleine herself has missed, isn’t it?
3. “There are many, many, many similar cases of abductions where years went by and the people were found, and they’re JUST LIKE Madeleine..”
The Intertextual aspect in the McCann case is very important, and provides potentially a lot of insight to understanding this case. Although the documentary does hint at the relative rarity of a child as young as Madeleine being abducted [as part of the official statistics], they gloss over the truly Intertextual aspect.
In the final flourish of episode eight cases are noted where children are abducted only to return “safe and sound” years later, and in a solitary instance decades later.
The trouble is, all of these reference cases involve children around ten or eleven years old, or even older, and in two of the three instances cited, the children are abducted from public outdoor areas such as waiting for a bus or outside riding a bike.
In Elizabeth Smart’s case the fourteen-year-old was abducted from home. Yeah, she was fourteen, not three going on four.
In the single instance cited where a child was much younger, it was a baby snatched at a hospital, and in that case the baby [not identified by name in the series] grew up and self-identified herself to her parents. The baby wasn’t snatched or abused by pedophiles.
The unidentified woman highlighted by the series is Carlina White, the case with the longest-known gap in a non-parental abduction in history where the victim was reunited with her parents [23 years].
Clearly all of these cases are miles apart from from a three-year-old girl supposedly abducted, because if one thing is clear, a three-year-old child is way harder to look after or even engage sexually with for an extended period [as uncomfortable as that is to hear] than an older child.
When very young children are abducted for sexual purposes they are typically murdered very soon after. The idea that a survivor of a pedophile ring might be allowed to grow up and one day wander off, back into society and then blow the lid off this massive enterprise is idiotic in the extreme. It simply doesn’t happen.
Now for a few final observations.
In the final episode we see Julian Peribañez, the detective hired by the McCanns finally appearing to deliver on his mandate. Some pedophiles are arrested.
Then we see Peribañez driving in what appears to be a Porche, performing the role in front of the cameras of a successful, stylish, smart detective.
Uhhhh…did I miss something? Where is Peribañez’s name even mentioned in the article about the arrest? Francisco Marco, the director general of the beleaguered Metodo 3 agency is mentioned.
On December 17, 2007, Marco claimed “Madeleine will be home for Christmas”. During this period Metodo 3 were receiving £50,000 a month to “find Madeleine”.
Metodo 3 under investigation in a case of Embezzlement and Money Laundering
Spain: four arrests in Catalonia spying case
MADRID, 19 FEB – Four people from the ‘Metodo 3’ agency, including the owner, Francisco Marco, the director and two employees were arrested Monday night as an investigation into the Catalonia bugging scandal picks up pace. Two of the arrested have admitted illegally taping conversations…
Of course we don’t see Amaral in the final episode, at all. During the entire series we never see Amaral driving around or looking cool. Instead whenever we see him he’s stuck in an undisclosed space between rooms. It’s oppressive and boring, and the lighting and divided space behind him is faintly distracting. The filmography is subtly trying to express the sentiment that Amaral is neither here nor there.
Peribañez by contrast is represented as a young, powerful predator of criminals, driving effectively through the streets, a force for good.
But hello…what sort of record did Goncalo Amaral have, in terms of arrests and achievements? It’s simply not mentioned anywhere in the series. Isn’t it important?
The suggestion they’re playing with through this glamorous and flattering depiction of Peribañez seems to be if you worked in law enforcement and managed to get someone arrested at some point, and you drive a Porche, it means you’re one of the good guys. Well done! Nice work for solving those cases… [It’s left to the audience to connect the dots between that and the Hope Narrative that’s been hammered into place over the final few minutes].
The final minutes of the series really does ratchet up the “Hope Narrative”. Fittingly, a priest is used to bolster this idea of “keeping the faith” as a moral imperative.
I agree with Ernie Allen and the premise of the final episode: Somebody knows. Somebody does know exactly what happened to Madeleine. Is it more likely to be Madeleine’s parents or some faceless shadow?
This one?
How about that one?
Or maybe…that one over there?
Indeed.
The McCanns swear they haven’t watched the 8-part series featuring 40 experts discussing the case of their daughter’s disappearance. And even though their arch-nemesis Goncalo Amaral appears in six of the eight episodes of the documentary, a man they have actively sued over the past eight years, and whom they currently owe £750,000 in compensatory damages, the McCanns claim they haven’t watched it.
They wouldn’t want to hinder the investigation, see.
So despite a small stadium of experts, commentators, cops, detectives, reports – everyone really who was involved, they haven’t condescended to participate in the production, although the McCanns-over-the-years appear in every episode without exception, but the McCanns-as-they-are-now simply don’t appear in it. This is unlike senhor Amaral who does. We see Amaral as he was, and we seem him now, expressing his views in-the-now.
But it seems senhor Amaral may be in some legal trouble. Because the documentary was made in the United Kingdom, it seems if Amaral has made more “false allegations” [in a similar vein to those that led to the £750,000 in compensatory damages claim mentioned above] then the McCanns lawyers will apparently have the road paved with gold to go after the former detective again.
On March 14th, 2019 the Express highlighted this possibility as well:
Madeleine McCann latest: Kate and Gerry ‘could sue policeman’ over TV documentary
A day earlier the Mirror was crowing about the same possibility.
Madeleine McCann Netflix documentary could trigger fresh legal action by parents
EXCLUSIVE Lawyers for Kate and Gerry McCann are said to be ‘closely watching’ what Goncalo Amaral will say on the upcoming show
On the same day the Guardian addressed speculation that the show had been “inexplicably” delayed because of “opposition from the missing child’s family”. I’m guessing what that means is the missing child in this semantic labyrinth is Madeleine McCann. Is that fair or is it excessively speculative? And then I’m guessing the missing child’s family [Madeleine’s family] are the McCanns, or is it other relatives who have been opposed?
I’m a true crime writer, full-time, and so it’s my job to figure out things like mindfuckery, word chess and smoke and mirrors. It’s my job to try to get a sense of clarity about what’s actually going on. I must admit to being a little muddled by this.
Is the Netflix documentary good for the McCanns or bad?
Is it good for Amaral, or not?
Since I’ve written a trilogy of books about this case, it’s probably worth making sure either way, isn’t it? So why don’t we? Let’s use something solid and tangible to address and try to answer this slippery question.
What we’ll do is look at the 40 experts interviewed by the makers of the documentary, and then try to get a sense if there is any bias, and where the bias falls.
We know that in a similar documentary series that has been associated with this one, that the Making A Murderer seasons while appearing investigative, neutral, factual and unbiased, actually deliberately seems to lead viewers to question the prosecution of Steven Avery [convicted of the murder of Teresa Halbach].
So one can say with some confidence that the Making A Murderer seasons are somewhat sympathetic to Avery. Some may say obviously and some may say subtly.
So what is the case with this documentary? Is there explicit or tacit support for one particular camp? Yes or no?
Below is a list of cast members appearing in the documentary, taken from the authoritative Internet Movie Database [IMDb].
Absent:
– US Criminal Profiler Pat Brown
– Journalists/authors with an expressly contrary view such as
Of this list of 40 who all appear in the Netflix documentary, only two are explicitly anti-McCann – Amaral and Almeido. Both testified against the McCanns’ version of events in court. Grime, via the cadaver alerts, is implicitly a problem for the abduction narrative; and thus the documentary tries to debunk the efficacy of the blood evidence as insufficient/not evidence at all.
Three out of 40 represents 7.5% of the total cast making any kind of counter narrative to the PRO McCann narrative. This means more than 90% of those on this list, featured in the £20 million documentary, are PRO McCann including around 20 individuals employed directly by them as PR consultants, lawyers or investigators.
Former Merseyside detective Arthur Cowley and Dave Edgar who were also employed by them are not mentioned in the list, however they appear briefly at the end of episode 7 and were both PRO McCann. Jon Corner, who was also employed by the McCanns, is also not mentioned on the list and he was also PRO McCann. Lee Marlow, a PRO McCann reporter and one-time “Feature writer of the year” award winner, employed by the PRO McCann Leicester Mercury is also not included in the list. PRO McCann investigator Kevin Halligen, employed by the McCanns who featured in the documentary is also not included on the list above.
Clearly not all 40 names here are experts of any kind, some are actors or mere players, others are writers, members of the clergy or onlookers of some sort, to the McCann narrative. A substantial number appearing in the series are unquestionably supportive family members and supportive friends of the McCanns.
Statistically it may be interesting to calculate which cast members got proportionately the most airtime and which received the least. By contextualising in which episode [themed a particular way] more insights into the motives of the documentary will likely be revealed.
One doesn’t see Amaral’s lawyer, friends or family interviewed, and virtually none of the staff employed at the Ocean Club were interviewed either. This seems a strange and slippery oversight for a £20 million documentary that seemingly spared no expense to pay for experts in order to produce a credible and honest investigative effort.
The words “I miss you” appear a total of four times in the 1960 pages of discovery. Three instances are from Shan’ann Watts. None are from Chris Watts.
The first instance is at 19:42 on July 10th, almost two weeks into Shan’ann’s trip away from home.
“I miss you and I feel like you just want to work out and run.” [Discovery Documents, page 2085].
Watts’ response was that running helped him “clear his head”. It’s an interesting turn of phrase, as if he was saying indirectly to Shan’ann running helped him clear his thoughts and feelings about her. In a certain sense this was exactly what he was doing, though not in terms of jogging but “running to another woman” and allowing his thoughts and feelings to “run away”…
Even then Shan’ann didn’t buy his excuse, and told him so.
“I wish my husband wanted to talk to me.”
Early the next morning, at 05:02 Shan’ann called Watts and spoke to him for seven minutes. She called him again at 16:20 on the same day [July 11th] and they spoke for thirteen minutes. The next morning at 04:46 [in other before he went to work] Shan’ann made two unanswered calls to Watts. Half an hour later, presumably when he was ready to leave Watts called his wife back and they spoke for ten minutes [05:16-05:26]. Whatever they discussed, and whatever Watts said to her, unfortunately Shan’ann allowed the situation to slide. What could she really do or say from North Carolina, especially while he was at work [where Kessinger was]?
The second instance is on July 24th, approximately the 4th week of Shan’ann’s six week stint in North Carolina. At 18:02 she tells Watts:
“It’s not hard texting love you and miss you“.
In other words, she’s telling him – remind him – that he’s not missing her or not letting her know he’s missing her. Shan’ann’s actually onto something here, but unfortunately she’s tempted to believe he’s not saying these words because of Watts’ introversion, his “crushed-in” emotional world and his poor communication skills. We know in hindsight that this wasn’t the case as much as the fact that Watts wasn’t missing Shan’ann, in fact quite the opposite – he was enjoying his time away from her and [perhaps surprisingly for him] the kids too.
And so when Shan’ann told Watts on the 24th, hey, why aren’t you telling me you miss me, it’s not clear whether Watts told Shan’ann what she wanted to hear. Maybe he did and he removed these message. Maybe he didn’t tell her. Maybe he told her even though he didn’t want to. And maybe Shan’ann bringing it up as an issue [probably during their many phone calls] Watts started to realize:
I don’t miss you. I say I do but I don’t.I say one thing but feel very strongly another way. I say one thing and then I act another way with someone else…
And each deceit started to build up a cowardly but murderous resolve.
The third instance, at least in the chronology of the discovery timeline, is from Kessinger, leaving a voicemail with Watts on July 25th at 16:35:
“I miss your face.”
At the time Watts was on the phone to Shan’ann. Immediately after ending his call with Shan’ann, Watts called Kessinger. After his conversation Watts Googled “sand dunes weather”, showing where his heart and mind was at [camping in the Sand Dunes National Park which they did on July 28th and 29th].
The final “miss you” in the discovery [Page 2114], and the third and final time Shan’ann is recorded saying these words was on the morning of August 12th, the day before her murder, and in the view of TCRS, the same day both children were murdered.
“Miss you guys! Give them kisses for me.”
Watts said he would.
There’s something fundamentally wrong with this search map of the east side of Praia da Luz, from 9News. Can you tell what it is?
On March 18, 2019, Mark Saunokonoko touched on the mostly unexplored country that is the search for Madeleine McCann’s remains – assuming she died and there is a body.
In If Madeleine McCann was killed or died, where might her body have been hidden? Saunokonoko cites Britain’s leading expert in locating missing persons, whether abducted or murdered.
Obviously getting expert information is just good investigative journalism, but let’s face it, 40 experts were interviewed in the £20 million Netflix documentary series. Do those 40 experts, individually or collectively, solve the case or even advance it towards where it needs to go?
Experts can give a narrative credibility whether in court, in a documentary or in a news story. One expert or 40 doesn’t, however, suddenly recast reality. Credibility isn’t reality. Reality is what it is.
Saunokonoko’s expert, Mark Harrison, was tasked to build a report based on the theory that Madeleine was dead and her remains were somewhere. It’s important to contextualize how Harrison came onto the scene. Who employed him? When did he come onto the scene? How did he investigate that was different and useful, and what ultimately did he find out?
Well he wasn’t employed by the McCanns. It wasn’t Harrison who first suggested using cadaver dogs and Harrison wasn’t the first to suggest Madeleine had died on May 3rd, either. He was brought in to investigate that possibility, rather than that he came in and introduced everyone to that possibility.
Kate McCann herself had hinted as much through a dream she said she’d had in late July 2007. This is very important, that the shift in this direction came from the McCanns although South African boyyhunter Danie Krugel seemed to be the first to a) recommend the use of cadaver dogs and b) suggest Madeleine was no longer alive.
Krugel’s visit and Kate McCann’s dream – that Madeleine was no longer alive – seemed to sort of coincide, didn’t they?
Kate had dream of where to dig – The Sun [April 6, 2016]
TURNING POINT Kate McCann’s dream about Maddie’s buried body led to her wrongly becoming the police’s prime suspect – The Sun [March 27, 2019]
Understandably the Polícia Judiciária didn’t take Krugel’s advice to heart immediately, but when Kate tearfully called them up giving the impression for the first time that she thought Madeleine was dead, clearly they started to consider it. And the change in the McCanns attitude to the case in late July caused the cops to shift the focus of their investigation.
It seems when Harrison made the same recommendations as Krugel, he was able to provide guidance. He made specific recommendations – use cadaver dogs, and use specific dogs from the South Yorkshire Police Department with a track record in international cases. And so, that’s what the Polícia Judiciária did.
In Gonçalo Amaral’s book [published in August 2009], he emphasises this damaging claim from Harrison which contradicts the spirit of the Netflix documentary ten years later:
After a week of intense work, Harrison presents the results of his study to my coordinating group. Even if we were expecting it, his conclusions confirm our worst fears. The most plausible scenario is the following: there is no doubt that Madeleine is dead, and her body is hidden somewhere in the area around Praia da Luz. He praises the quality of the work carried out by the Portuguese authorities in trying to find the little girl alive. According to him, the time has come to redirect the searches in order to find, this time, a body hidden in the surrounding area.
Harrison also produces a map which, based on his research [of the witness statements, and of the McCanns themselves] suggests Madeleine’s body may be in one of these five areas.
But Harrison’s map is fundamentally flawed. Can you see why? Here’s a hint. At the time Harrison made his recommendations, the Tannerman sighting was considered both credible and “the most credible” sighting. We know the Tannerman sight suggested the abductor was heading east, away from the apartment, but we also know the Tannerman sighting has since been debunked.
And here’s another. This is the view from the Rocha Nechra [red circle on the far right] towards Praia da Luz…
In Kate McCann’s book, chapter 6th dealing with the morning after Madeleine’s disappearance [May 4th], a neighbor is mentioned across the road on the east side of the apartment [across the Rua Dr Gentil Martins]. This unidentified, anonymous neighbor tells the McCanns she saw a car going up the Rocha Negra at night. Kate notes there is a track going up the Rocha Negra but it’s not meant for vehicles. So what was a vehicle doing up there? There are several photos showing the McCanns running this same track.
It’s important to note that in the photo on the right, we can see a long way back to houses and apartments behind the McCanns. This also means folks in those houses and apartments have line of sight – over several miles to them.
Writing about the morning of May 4th, Kate – referring to strange lights late at night on the Rocha Negra – conjures “visions of Madeleine being disposed of somewhere on the overhanging cliff…” Kate actually uses the word “conjures” as well. Conjures visions. When Kate tells a police officer about it, he’s dismissive.
He has good reason to be dismissive. If someone as far away as the apartment block could see suspicions goings-on on the Rocha Negra, even at night, was it really the ideal place to surreptitiously “dispose of” someone?
And those words don’t particularly suggest Kate thinks her daughter is alive, does it?
If Harrison’s map was based on the testimonies of the Tapas 7 [including Jane Tanner] and the McCanns, and the map focused on the east side of Praia da Luz, what was the fundamental flaw?
Episode eight – the latter half of it at least – saves the best of the McCann twelve-year investigation for last. In the final episode we’re appraised of a giant leap forward in the lengthy and expensive search for Madeleine McCann. The Tannerman sighting was a mistake. Oh dear. But hold on. Making the mistake in the first place made complete sense!
Yes it was a case of mistaken identity. Dr. Julian Totman closely resembled Gerry McCann and in fact played tennis with him on the day Madeleine disappeared. His daughter went to the same creche as Madeleine as well.
Despite this enormous epiphany, another rather glaring aspect was that Dr. Totman couldn’t have been walking away from the McCanns’ apartment after 21:00 while carrying his sleeping daughter [as Jane Tanner claimed], because he had to walk across the road – east – to the creche to collect her, and his own apartment was in the other direction, to the left or to the west of the McCann apartment [which is on the eaternmost side of the Ocean Club]. He had to have been walking the other way.
So why is he sketched walking across the street while carrying his daughter to the right?
Curiously in a follow-up sketch, another Tannermannish character is brought into being and this one is walking the other way [in one’s imagination, not witnessed anywhere in particular], but alas he’s not carrying anyone. Shucks, I guess one can’t get everything right in these investigations, but one can sort of waggle it at the media anyway, right?
Is it mentioned anywhere in the documentary where Dr. Totman was staying in the hotel, and what his room number was relative to the McCanns. Nah. Pfft. Why would anyone want to start contextualising the crime scene, and re-enact where people were hypothetically? Why…well, it may have solved the Dr. Totman debacle in the first hours of the investigation, rather than after several years, that’s why.
Instead of heading into this area however, the docuseries dwells for a moment on the news that the artist’s sketch was actually accurate [just irrelevant] . This irrelevant accuracy is is oohed and aahed over, in effect justifying the cops and media and everyone else for wasting a fuckload of money and shitloads of time.
And because it was a British father carrying a British child whose clothing came from Marks & Sparks, no wonder the cops on both sides of the channel concentrated on him for years, until the cows came home.
This puts into perspective the whinge that the cops arrived an hour or more late to the scene of the crime. Maybe the original investigative team wasted time. The follow-up investigation that was supposedly on the right track [not investigating the McCanns] wasted years on a bogus lead. But that’s not a big deal, the sketch at least was accurate.
We should also compare apples with apples. The man who the cops were looking for [the imputed abductor] turned out to be a father “abducting” his own child, and for years no one saw that. So why would it be so egregious to merely suppose one of the McCanns may have done the same thing?
Another aspect – which we’ll deal with in more detail in a moment – is why would you use an expert artist for the Tannerman and subsequent sketches, and then when you progressed to another suspect, supposedly the key sighting, why wouldn’t you use the same artist? Melissa Little, an FBI-accredited police artist specially hired by the McCanns had proved her worth in the past. Her first sketch had been accurate, so why choose another way of rendering your second, more crucial sighting? Worse still, why would you provide two different sketches of the same face?
But it gets even shakier.
Even after Dr. Totman himself came forward and said HEY IT WAS ME, the cops dutifully continued to investigate him [the Tanner Sighting] regardless. When the Metropolitan police took over though, they immediately made great strides. Their great stride [and arguably only stride] was to conclude that Tannerman wasn’t credible. Instead of being a lead is was a MISLEAD, and the investigation had been misled.
By mistake of course, right? The enormous search, largest missing persons search hin history had been misled accidentally, not on purpose, right?
The Met cop said, you know this guy who said he was Tannerman was Tannerman. Maybe we need to exclude this sighting. And so they did. Incredible police work!
Ya think?
In episode eight we see that by excluding Tannerman, everything changes. Now the timeline shifts forward and we’re faced with a different and rather Irish kettle of fish.
I mentioned in the review of episode one that the timeline is covered in the docuseries in a voiceover that lasts about as long as it would take to read this paragraph. Now, with a few minutes remaining in the final episode, it’s time to “examine” the timeline again. In detail you understand.
When one looks at Operation Grange, or indeed the entire investigation into Madeleine’s abduction/disappearance, it’s difficult not to see the whole sad spiel as something other than a tragic comedy starring the Pink Panther as the recast Portuguese police [minus senhor Amaral] and Johnny English confidently leading operation Grange Bungle. As millions upon millions are spent in the fruitless search for Madeleine [using public money], an incredible amount of nothing happens. Could it be this suspect? How about that one? Oh wait, maybe it’s the Podesta brothers?
And the soundtrack to this shitshow? There is always hope.
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