Jon Clarke Through the Looking Glass: “Why sometimes I believe six impossible things before breakfast”.

 “My Search for Madeleine” - Jon Clarke, 2021

Jon Clarke Through the Looking Glass

“Why sometimes I believe six impossible things before breakfast”.

Some impossible things to believe

Everyone understands that multiple witnesses to an event will produce slightly different multiple versions differing in small particulars, according to their detailed recollection and understanding of the event at the time.

In the McCann parallel universe we have become familiar with the phenomenon of single witnesses producing multiple and contradictory statements.

•   we have curtains pulled wide open – AND drawn tight closed
•   we have shutters smashed, forced and jemmied – AND totally unmarked
•   we have a photo taken in hot bright sunshine – on a cold and overcast day
•   we have a man in the apartment for 30 seconds – AND for 30 minutes
•   we have a man using the locked front door – AND the unlocked patio door
•   we have people without watches - remembering they stood up at 9:04 ‘by his watch’

In ‘Alice through the Looking Glass’, The Red Queen exclaims “Why sometimes I believe six impossible things before breakfast”.
For most people that is fantasy.     For Clarke it is clearly a daily reality.

Jon Clarke. Press owner, Editor, self-proclaimed investigative journalist and Super-sleuth, is clearly in a league of his own. He has single-handedly produced no fewer than eight separate versions – so far discovered – of one event, every one of them either impossible or demonstrably false by application of the most basic logic and examination of contemporaneous video film and photographs.

There are five separate details of his initial involvement which Clarke changes ad libitum.
•   Time of the initial phone call
•   Time of his arrival in PdL
•   Number of journalists present on his arrival
•   Entry to Apartment 5A
•   Speaking to the McCanns

And there are at least eight sources of ‘information’. Many are written by Clarke or were clearly under his editorial control. All are different.
•   Article Olive Press 2017. (OP17)
•   Article Olive Press 2019. (OP19)
•   Interview with Sandra Felguerias within the Netflix transcript. (SFIG)
•   Netflix publicity 2019. (NET19)
•   Netflix Documentary - transcript 2019. (NET-TRANS)
•   Article CLOSER Magazine 2020. (CLOSER)
•   Article BELLA Magazine 2021. (BELLA)
•   "My Search For Madeleine” - Jon Clarke 2021. (BOOK)

All are quoted in detail in the Appendix, with links and references, so there shall be absolutely NO DOUBT that what follows is an accurate record – of what we have been told.

Let us take each detail in order, and then rationalise and compare with the known facts in each case.

Time of the Phone call

OP17 – – – – 0715
OP19 – – – – 0700 - 0730
SFIG – – – – – 0700 - 0730
NET19
NET-TRANS – 0700 - 0730
CLOSER
BELLA
BOOK – – – – 15 minutes before he left, which was before 0700

Arrival in Praia da Luz

OP17 – – – – 1145. [if we assume that is Spanish time = 1045 Portuguese]
OP19
SFIG
NET19
NET-TRANS
CLOSER
BELLA
BOOK – – – – 0945 - 1015 local time (Portuguese)

Number of Journalists Present

OP17 – – – – Only reporter on the scene till late that evening, (apart from Kate/Kay Burley)
OP19 – – – – First Journalist on the scene
SFIG
NET19– – – – First UK Print journalist
NET-TRANS
CLOSER – – – One of the first journalists on the scene
BELLA
BOOK – – – – First British journalist on the scene

Entry to 5A

OP17– – – – – I was firstly able to walk into the apartment
OP19
SFIG
NET19
NET-TRANS – – – it [tape] went up and I looked in
CLOSER
BELLA
BOOK – – – – up the short flight of stairs to the apartment 5A . . .I walked inside the open front door

Speaking to the McCanns

OP17 – – – – in the apartment
OP19 – – – – as they were leaving
SFIG
NET19
NET-TRANS – – – as they were leaving; I think I tried to speak to them
CLOSER – – – – few hours after arriving met Gerry and Kate; later that day
BELLA – – – – – at a press conference that night
BOOK – – – – – in the apartment

It is important to examine some of these issues
ARRIVAL: We know that Clarke must have arrived in PdL around 0945 Portuguese time at the very latest to have been filmed watching the McCanns leaving in the police vehicles to go for their interviews, the departure timed roughly at 1000. So each one of his times is inaccurate.

PHONE CALL: On his own admission he stopped for a coffee and toast en route, and adding all the times together - (Ronda to coffee at Utrera, coffee etc, round the Seville ring road at peak time, then on to PdL) gives us about 4h 45m. Subtracting that and the half hour before that for the phone call gives 0430 UK time, 0530 Spanish time. Which means that then entire media circus, the Politicians and diplomatic must have been on full alert by 0330 BST, and that all his times are inaccurate.

NUMBER OF JOURNALISTS: Contemporaneous news film exists and is easily accessible, showing at least SIX journalists at the scene with Clarke clearly the most recent arrival. He is also seen speaking to, or in close proximity to, Len Port, a British ex-pat journalist who had been on the scene since 0830, and had been filmed walking the ground. Port has written a mature and measured account of the situation he found and as it developed through the morning.

ENTRY TO 5A. Despite Clarke’s frequent insistence that he entered and spoke to the McCanns in apartment 5A the scene was in fact taped off, there were police officers around to enforce it, Scenes of crime operatives were working inside, and crucially – the McCanns were not in 5A. They were simply not there. They had been moved out at 2am, the apartment secured for photographs and then locked up overnight. The McCanns were firstly in the Payne’s first floor apartment 5H and then by that evening were moved into the first floor 4G. It is for that reason that the McCanns emerged from the stairwell to go to the cars before being taken away, just as Clarke was filmed walking in the opposite direction past the group of police officers, the dog vans and the Scenes of crime operative. Following that he doubled back, crossed the road, and is filmed emerging from between parked cars to stand helplessly in the middle of the road as the cars drive past him.

SPEAKING TO THE MCCANNS. There is no question of Clarke’s having spoken to the McCanns in 5A, because they weren’t there.
Film mentioned above shows Clarke not speaking to them “as they left” in the cars, but simply standing in the road as they pass.
“A few hours after arriving” can only mean after 2030, eleven hours after arriving, when they returned from Portimão. Kate McCann is very clear in her autobiography about what happened on their return, and it did not include being interviewed by any journalist, even if their minders and close friends had allowed it.
“at a press conference that night” must refer to the torchlight reading of the Press statement by Gerry McCann at 2200 to coincide with the News Bulletins in the UK and elsewhere. The news-reel shows the statement, and then Gerry and Kate moving swiftly back into the shadow of the stairwell and the safety of their friends, family and the minders who had arrived during the day. It also shows that they took no questions and did not speak to anyone,.
Not even Clarke.

It is therefore considered highly unlikely that Jon Clarke spoke to the McCanns that day, or at all.
He has failed to identify a credible ‘window of opportunity’ for him to have done so. He has also failed to provide a verbatim, or even approximated record of any conversation or interview.

INTERESTING NOTE:
Even Martin Brunt, the highly experienced and trusted Crime Correspondent for Sky News, who was there for ten days did not manage to speak to them.      See Refs

14 years later the McCanns refused to speak to Clarke.   Book
They clearly want nothing to do with him. Mitchell gave him the message “It is thanks, but no thanks,”

To sum up,
Are any of Clarke’s “versions of the truth” true or credible ?
Phone call – NO
Arrival – NO
Journalists present – NO
Entry into 5A – NO
Speaking – NO

If there is another definitive version – the objective Truth, which fits the known facts AND the video and photographic evidence, then the world is waiting to hear it.
But for the moment we wait.

PeterMac's analysis of Jon Clarke's book: 'My Search for Madeleine'

 

All chapters contained within this blog have been tirelessly researched and written by retired Police Superintendent PeterMac and copied over from his FREE e-book: 'What really happened to Madeleine McCann?'  which he has been working on for the past fourteen years.

https://whatreallyhappenedtomadeleinemccann.blogspot.com/

'My Search for Madeleine' - Jon Clarke. Mopping up the mess

 Some unconsidered trifles, the usual lies, stupid mistakes,

falsehoods and total nonsense.

Nothing to see here. Move along please !

Having read Jon Clarke’s articles on-line for many years, and now having read this book, one is forced to ask the question “Why does he do it ?”
Not “why does he write articles” ? That is easy. He is a journalist and the owner of a small free news and advert paper which he claims has a readership of over 500,000.
                 (It is notable that this figure is not Audited and verified by the PGD/OJD, which is the section for free publications of the OJD, the official Spanish media auditors, which verify circulation figures.
This is to protect advertisers, so they are not scammed by wholly invented circulation figures.
But Clarke says the figure is 500,000. “and surely he is an honourable man”. ). 1

Over the years we have been treated to a huge rock on a road which we were told was less dense than balsa wood, we have had a small Spanish fighting bull seriously described as weighing more than an elephant, and much more.
The question is rather “Why does he churn out such rubbish.?”

This book does not change that question
••••

JON CLARKE-KENT. SUPERSLEUTH

Clarke has successively described himself as a ‘stringer’, an editor, a journalist and an Investigative Journalist. In this case he is not content to report or to investigate before reporting.

In this case he has promoted himself to Detective. He becomes determined to Solve the Case Himself.
“From the very first moment I arrived in Praia da Luz that May morning in 2007, my overbearing [sic] drive was to solve the mystery and find young Maddie.”

“We went straight down to investigate and, not for the first time, I genuinely believed we might have been close to solving the mystery.”

“But it didn’t solve the mystery of Maddie.”

And then he imputes this motive to others. Writing of Robert Murat he says
“given he was a local expat, and would, understandably, want to try and solve the crime” [Try TO is better]
Murat was there trying to help the Police, the PJ, in their investigation, not to “solve the crime”.
Murat would, as almost everyone else would, want the ‘crime’ to be solved. But not to do it himself, singlehanded.
Might it be that Clarke’s eagerness to frame Murat was to remove him as a potential challenge to himself ? [See Chapter 42, The framing of Robert Murat]

Later he clearly gets worried and frustrated that his glory is about to be snatched away, first by Lori Campbell –
“By the time I woke up it was all over the national news networks and Sky reporter Ian Woods was reporting live from outside Murat’s home. It looked like a massive breakthrough so it was frustrating that despite Lori and I [sic] appearing to have almost cracked the case, I was in Spain. I could only flick from channel to channel as Lori appeared on Portuguese and British TV, explaining her theories.”

and later by the makers of the Netflix documentary –
“I wondered what the filmmakers might have found. Would there be anything groundbreaking? Would it solve the crime of the century?”

Clarke’s histrionic performances in that film may be another manifestation of his wish to feel ‘important’ in the scheme of things, so that when whatever happened is finally determined his name will be forever associated with that determination.

There is however an obvious trap inherent in that approach. If, or more likely when it is determined that there was no Abduction, as is obvious to many who have studied the case from the first detectives at the scene onwards, and/or if it becomes apparent that Christian Brückner was not in any way involved, Clarke’s name may indeed be forever associated with the case, towards the top of the list of those totally duped and deceived by the “official story” and who deliberately and wilfully ignored the clear evidence available to them because it conflicted with their own pre-judged ‘Belief’.

He will not be able to argue that he was independent and disinterested [in the correct use of that word],

and was merely reporting on events as they unfolded before him.

His plaintive whimper that he is merely one the crowd neither convinces nor excuses.
“There were lots of whispers and conjecture, but I can honestly say that not one reporter, at that stage, considered for a second that the family might in any way be involved.”

****

NONSENSE ON STILTS

We now come to one of the most astonishing, ludicrous, and seriously libellous claims we have read so far.

Clarke’s claim that Madeleine’s DNA was “PLANTED” in the hire car.

“We will also look at credible claims that Maddie’s DNA might have been planted in a hire car the McCanns had hired three weeks AFTER she had vanished,…”. p. 17
The fact that he doesn’t return to the issue, neither ‘looks at the … claims’ nor references them points to this being another malicious invention on his part.
[Dr Amaral and his legal team have been made aware of this gross Libel.]

“So desperate was Amaral to get a win, I now wonder if it was possible that the police even planted Maddie’s DNA in the rental car the family had hired from Europcar a month after she went missing.” p.83

Just chew that over for a moment.

Journalists' Association, FAPE, handed down a Judgment against 'The Olive Press' and Jon Clarke for 'Maddie' article

In 2013 FAPE, the Federación de Asociaciones de Periodistas de España - the Spanish Journalists’ Association, handed down a judgment against “The Olive Press” and Jon Clarke for having published a long article entitled “Maddie? Yes, but not the one we were looking for...” and found it infringed Articles 4 and 13 of the FAPE Ethical Code for not having respected the right to personal and family privacy of M.A., a minor, and of her parents, Mr. L. A. and Mrs. R. E., and also did not bother to check the sources of the information.

FAPE Judgment against Olive Press 2013/82  

RESOLUCIÓN 2013/82  

http://www.comisiondequejas.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/82.pdf  

 

The judgment continues [my translation]. “In the reasoning of this resolution it states that the journalist has acted with remarkable flippancy and published a scandalous story based on very flimsy material. The information published in "The Olive Press" is an example of irresponsible sensationalism to attract the attention of the prospective reader. Its content is pure charlatanry, "gossip" in the language in which it has been written and in journalistic language “amarillismo", [sensationalist journalism] always reprehensible but much more when an innocent subject of the information can be endangered”  

 

amarillismo  translates as Yellow Journalism  

FAPE Resolucion 2013/82

La información publicada en “The Olive Press” es un ejemplo de sensacionalismo

irresponsable para atraer la atención del eventual lector. Su contenido es

charlatanería en estado puro, “gossip” en el idioma en el cual se ha escrito y en el

lenguaje periodístico “amarillismo “, siempre reprochable pero mucho más cuando se

puede poner en peligro al sujeto pasivo de la información que irrumpe

inesperadamente en el ámbito de la intimidad de la menor, una niña de ocho años,

sacándola a la luz pública con perjuicio de su estabilidad emocional e incluso con

riesgo para su integridad personal. 

[my translation]. “In the reasoning of this resolution it states that the journalist has acted with remarkable flippancy and published a scandalous story based on very flimsy material. The information published in "The Olive Press" is an example of irresponsible sensationalism to attract the attention of the prospective reader.   Its content is pure charlatanry, "gossip" in the language in which it has been written and in journalistic language “amarillismo", [sensationalist journalism]  always reprehensible but much more when an innocent subject of the information can be endangered”

VII.- RESOLUCIÓN

Teniendo en consideración los anteriores razonamientos de la ponencia, esta

Comisión de Arbitraje, Quejas y Deontología del periodismo ACUERDA que don Jon

Clarke, editor de “The Olive Press” y doña Wendy Williams, autora del reportaje

“Maddie? Yes … but not the right one” han infringido los arts. 4º y 13 del Código

Deontológico FAPE por no haber respetado el derecho a la intimidad personal y

familiar de Madeleine A., menor de edad, y de sus padres, el señor L. A. y la señora

R. E., ni haber cuidado de contrastar las fuentes de la información, no dándoles

además la oportunidad de ofrecer su propia versión sobre los hechos.

Madrid, 6 de noviembre de 2013

[my translation].   In 2013 FAPE, the Federación de Associationes de Periodistas de España - the Spanish Journalists’ Association, – “is agreed that Mr Jon Clarke, editor of “The Olive Press” and Wendy Williams, the author of the report, “Maddie? Yes, but not the one we were looking for . . .”  infringed Articles 4 and 13 of the FAPE Ethical Code for not having respected the right to personal and family privacy of M.A., a minor, and of her parents, Mr. L. A. and Mrs. R. E., and also neither bothered to check the sources of the information, nor gave them the opportunity to offer their own version of events.”

Madrid, 6 November 2013

“My search for Madeleine’. Jon Clarke - 2021 “The love of money is the root of all evil.” 1 Timothy 6:10

More story changes, more errors, more nonsense, more mistakes, but most importantly

MORE MONEY

In this and the following chapter I shall list and explain a number of issues in the book,

for example 

• Money
• Schoolboy Howlers
• Changes in the story
• Mistakes, errors, grossly negligent reporting, or downright lies
• Deliberate Confusions
• Nonsense - and libel
• Inconsistencies

We shall also examine what the book reveals about Clarke’s personality, about his code of conduct, about his view of the world and the rights of others, about Integrity, Objectivity, Professional competence, Confidentiality, and Professional behaviour.

***
First permit me to explain the most disgusting and reprehensible episode to which Clarke has so far confessed.
It involves Money. Lots of it
I say the most disgusting and reprehensible, though it ranks alongside the Murat scandal as we shall see,
[see Chapter 43, The Framing of Robert Murat] and in both cases was clearly driven by Clarke’s naked greed without any regard to personal freedoms, dignity, privacy or respect for others.
We may take it as read that the facts did not come into it.
Are those strong words ? You decide.

In his book, at page 36/7 Clarke says
“The opportunity had arisen after an unexpected windfall while working on a feature about the movie, Cold Mountain, filmed in Romania and starring Jude Law and Nicole Kidman. I’d come across photographs of the leading actors ‘getting intimate’ at the wrap party. They dutifully made the front page of The Sun, paid for our trip to Spain and, by the time the story had been followed up by Hello! Magazine and the rest, had paid for a deposit on a stone farmhouse in Ronda.”

I’d come across . . . in other words Clarke did not take the photos. He wasn’t there. He either bought them or ‘acquired’ them in some other fashion, legal or not.
He then sold them to the papers he mentions, and very possibly wrote the editorial copy which accompanied them, since he was ‘working on a feature’ about the film. His quip “and the rest’ included his favourite Red Top – the Daily Mail, and indicates he was paid by others in the same journalistic swamp.

This all seems fairly normal gutter-press sensationalist and intrusive journalism until we follow up what then happened.

The story alleged a three month extramarital affair between the two, and further that Kidman had actively encouraged Law, who was at that time still married. The photos were included as “proof’.
It was of course, totally untrue, baseless and without foundation.
Kidman sued. She won. Substantial amounts in damages were awarded against the Sun and the Mail. The Sunday Telegraph which had been seduced into printing a version of the story made an unconditional apology.

The British director of the film, Anthony Minghella, was quoted as saying –
“it is all lies.”
“the "poisonous" stories circulating about the pair are in danger of thwarting Kidman's chances of winning an Oscar.”
“the party where the pair were reportedly pictured acting closer than friends was attended by some 30 of the cast.”
"Nobody seems to care about the facts getting in the way of the story.”
"There have been so many poisonous things written about Nicole recently."

REFS AND COPIES IN APPENDIX

Clarke’s photo and story caused the Sun to pay out, the Mail to pay out and the Telegraph to apologise,
but he STILL got enough money to buy a farmhouse in which he is perfectly happy for his wife and children to live, despite its eternal grubby and tainted origins. And he seems both proud of it, and happy to tell the world that it was he who inflicted such immense misery on Kidman and Law, and their respective families.

His wife is not unintelligent and must know the origins of the unexpected windfall of funds used to buy the house she now lives in, and the enormous damage her husband’s lies caused to another woman – like her, a mother – and to her children, not to mention to Law, who also has three children, and was married at the time.
Clarke claims to be protective of his own family.
Other people’s families, it seems, can be destroyed so long as it makes money for him.
She may one day care to reflect on his willingness to sacrifice a mother and her family for personal gain.
Clarke’s children may one day find out for themselves the depths to which their father will sink in the pursuit of personal gain in his ‘profession’.
It is all in the public domain. Google and the internet work in mysterious ways, and children grow up quickly.

Kidman donated her substantial damages to FARA, a charity for abandoned children in Romania.

Clarke kept his contaminated lucre and bought himself a farmhouse.

My Search for Madeleine McCann – Jon Clarke. The framing of Robert Murat

What follows is from Jon Clarke’s new book, much of it in his own words.

Readers must decide for themselves whether this is ‘well within the bounds of normal. . .’ journalism, or is something more egregious that should be exposed as the grubby money-grabbing gutter-press tactics it seems to be.

For the last 14 years those who have followed this dreadful case have been wrong in one significant particular. We had all believed that Lori Campbell of the Sunday Mirror was the origin of the case developed against Robert Murat, the ex-pat who lived in Praia da Luz and stepped forward to help the McCanns and the police by interpreting between English and Portuguese.

Murat lives a short distance away from the centre of activity, was well known in the area through his business as an estate agent, was divorced and had a daughter about the same age as Madeleine. He tried to help.

For his pains he was identified as ‘strange”, then identified as the person who had taken Madeleine, then had a campaign of investigation stirred up against him, resulting in his house being searched, his private life being exposed, his being interviewed and given ‘arguido’ (formal suspect) status, equivalent to being ‘Under Caution’ in the English system, being vilified and abused in the British Tabloid press, until eventually the PJ realised he was nothing to do with the case, released him from his status, and he subsequently won damages from the press who had hounded him for so long.

Initially Lori Campbell took apparent pride in having been the first to point him out.

With the publication of Clarke’s book we find he claims that extremely dubious “honour” for himself.
So in yet another part of this murky story the red arrow points back to Clarke.

In his book Clarke describes himself as starting as a “stringer’, a free-lance reporter. He then styles himself as a Journalist, and an Investigative journalist,
But from his arrival at PdL his clearly stated aim is not to report, or investigate the circumstances to find out what happened and who might have done it –
It is to FIND MADELEINE, to SOLVE the case.
“One Reporter’s 14-Year Hunt To Solve Europe’s Most Harrowing Crime”
and at page 24 – including the hilarious malapropism –
“From the very first moment I arrived in Praia da Luz that May morning in 2007, my overbearing [sic] drive was to solve the mystery and find young Maddie.”

(We must remember that in Clarke’s world the one to find Madeleine gets the prize. Not just a fat cheque for an article, but acclaim, TV shows, endless interviews, book reviews. . . It is worth a fortune – to anyone other than a Police officer. This is a man who freely admits and seems proud of having sold ‘stolen’ photos of an intensely private and intimate moment between two people and buying his family home with the proceeds. Some people’s moral compass apparently allows them to exist like that.)

Suddenly, without even changing clothes in a phone box, he has transformed from mild mannered reporter Jon Clarke-Kent into a latter day Supersleuth dedicated to “The never ending battle for truth, and justice. . .” The Righter of Wrongs and Solver of Crimes.

But perhaps Clarke-Kent should take heed of another Super-hero’s words. “With great power, there must also come great responsibility."
Clarke does have great power. He owns a newspaper, and has access to the Tabloid press of the UK, and the English speaking world. Even if his words are challenged the damage has been done, they remain in print and on-line forever. What he says stays said, and cannot be un-said. That is Power.

But he isn’t a detective. He has never done the job, has no experience of how it actually works. He may have seen it in operation, but clearly has no understanding of the mechanism, hence his endless criticism of the slow pace of the investigation.

There is nothing inherently wrong with Morse, or Miss Marple, or Lord Peter Wimsey, nor yet with Sherlock Holmes or Maigret. It is just that they are fiction. They include some cracking good stories, but they are just that. Cleverly constructed stories.

Real detective work is largely grindingly slow attention to detail, relevant or not, endless TTBD (things to be done), statements from people who clearly have nothing at all to do with the actual case but who must be eliminated so that ultimately you DO follow Sherlock Holmes and think – “When you have eliminated all which is impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” (Case Book of SH)

And that is what Clarke and others like him do not understand.
In the TV and Tabloid world the Ace Detective solves a major crime in 28 minutes, including the commercial break, and usually by going down one single track, and finding success at the end.

That can happen of course, but it is usually either coincidental, or the case was so obvious from the start that little background work was necessary.

*******

Anyone who starts from 10pm Thursday 3/5/7 and accepts uncritically that Madeleine McCann was abducted from her bed sometime during that evening is at a huge advantage.

The brilliance and ease of this approach is that you then do not have to concern yourself with the lack of evidence, or with the contradictions in the statements. You do not even have to consider the evidence which points away from that. Because you start AFTER the event.

You do not have to construct or explain a detailed scenario, and you can happily condemn as trolls or evil or incompetent anyone who does not follow what you KNOW, because you have been TOLD.
Like the GNR, the PJ, the MetPol, the State Prosecutor, The Appeal Court, the Supreme Court, the compilers of the “Gerry McCann’s blogs”, “Nigel’s McCann files”, and the host of discussion fora.
You can dismiss them. All evil vicious trolls pedalling filth.

Because you know better.
You know Madeleine was abducted, because someone said so, even though they have not provided you with sufficient evidence for you to think it through and to agree or disagree.
It becomes a matter not of mere Belief, but of Faith, and therefore anyone who says anything different is automatically a Heretic, an Apostate, and Infidel, and as in a well known Bronze Age religion can be condemned to death.
As was the late Brenda Leyland. RIP.

When someone produces concrete evidence which disturbs the original article of Faith, it challenges the very foundation of that Belief and you have no choice but to lash out and silence them. Never can you be seen to allow questions which attack the Belief, and never can you be put to the test of replying or offering counter-evidence.

You Know you are Right, and everyone else is Wrong. It is as simple as that.

And we have seen it many times. In newspapers and in this book, and in the courts, McCanns v. Bennett, and McCanns v. Amaral and others, where there was no attempt to argue the central issue. Both were clever legal manipulations and became about a procedural issue in the first case, and personal rights to reputation in the second. The question of the alleged abduction was not put, though on the record the judge in the first, Tugendhat J, took the point himself and as he passed judgment in the way the law forced him to, mused about the legal position if Madeleine had NOT been abducted.

(We can help him there. There will have been multiple cases of Perjury, conspiracy to commit Perjury, Malicious Prosecution, and Wrongful Imprisonment as a consequence. The punishment will be condign. The damages exemplary and punitive.)

'My Search for Madeleine' - Jon Clarke. Some first impressions

'My Search for Madeleine', Jon Clarke. 2021

Some first impressions

* Stylistically it is a strange mixture.

 
It starts with more formal documentary account of events over a decade ago, and at times we have a recollection of having read parts before, a long time ago. Nothing wrong with copying and pasting one’s own words of course. It ensures that the meaning and details are not distorted by passage of time.

Then there are passages which are more gentle, even amusing and self deprecatory. He adopts a ‘matey’ style, with somewhat loose grammatical construction and syntax.

It is marred at times, as is so much of Clarke’s work, by viciousness and vituperation, and his pathological venom-spitting hatred of anyone who seeks to question either him or the “official narrative”, using all the well worn clichés, “evil, vitriolic minds behind this filth”, “his gang of trolls”, “and all the usual restricted vocabulary employed by those who will not, or cannot argue the case in a civilised manner. He adds the obligatory ad hominen attacks and repeats one or two well rehearsed lies, several of which have been discussed in other Chapters about Clarke and his progressive distancing of himself from the normal rules of veracity.

The first third is also a litany of all the suspects so far named and eliminated.
Murat, (of whom more later), Malinka, Walczuch, vonAesch, Hewlett, Ney, even Monteiro are all listed and examined but only in the sense that their alleged involvement is detailed.
Not, ‘and that’s an emphatic NOT’, in the sense that their eventual elimination from the enquiry is stressed or even grudgingly noted. It is as though Clarke is hedging his bets in case anyone in his book turns out to have been in any way involved in anything.
He quotes Paulo Rebelo, through ‘sources’ as saying he believed that ‘Russian child traffickers’ might be involved. And then adds “He might turn out to be correct”, and leaves hanging and unresolved the re-hashed story about the Angolan Bouncer and taking Madeleine to the USA.
Neat.

He grudgingly admits that Robert Murat, the man whom he personally helped to frame for a crime which may not even have been committed, “Looks as though [he] is innocent”.
You have to wait until p. 124 and the Netflix Nonsense before you find Clarke admitting his part, and “making an impromptu apology to him for effectively ruining his life.”

* And then we come to the Second part of the book.

Chapters 14 to 46, some 190 pages out of the 265 are devoted to the pursuit of a single person. A new suspect, but only in the minds of Clarke and H. Wolters, a German State Prosecutor.

He is, so far as I know, not a suspect in Portugal, nor probably in London, but Clarke seems totally convinced that this suspect is somehow better than all the previous ones.

This second two thirds of the book changes into a lengthy travelogue. The style changes again into the contemporary historical present with a suspiciously large amount of direct speech. Suspicious because with the possible exception of the interview with H. Wolters which may have been recorded with permission, it is unlikely that any of the direct quotes, in full quotation marks, are any such thing. Unless Clarke is wired for sound the whole time, of course.
But it is a style were are familiar with, and we must accept.

* In terms of Investigation it is a mixture.

Never once does Clarke question the abduction story. But also never once does he actually set out in print what the full story actually IS. What would have been involved, what the MO is thought to have been.

He appears to have swallowed the whole story that the shutters were forced, despite being on film watching the scenes-of-crime girl trying to find a single print on obviously intact shutters. He was there. He saw, but as Sherlock Holmes says to Watson in “A Scandal in Bohemia’ “You see, but you do not observe. The distinction is clear.”
Clarke saw, but he then seems to have assumed.

He styles himself as an Investigative journalist, but sometimes as merely a ‘stringer’ – one who “contributes reports, photos, or videos to a news organisation on an ongoing basis but is paid individually for each piece of published or broadcast work” WIKI.

Here in the first third of the book he has failed to investigate anything much.
And that which he did he got tragically and disgracefully wrong, identifying a man (Murat) as a suspect, having him interviewed, made “arguido”, hounded by the Tabloid press and universally vilified, and eventually awarded £600,000 in damages against the very tabloid papers for which Clarke had written, purely on the basis of an observable disability, and in Clarke’s own words “ruined his life”.
Clarke confesses that it was he, rather than Lori Campbell, who set it all in train.
They should both bow their heads in shame. People have resigned for less.


The second two thirds are a complete contrast. Here, although he is single-mindedly pursuing one man and filling in a mountain of background detail about him, he seems not to worry that the link between the reported disappearance of Madeleine and Christian Brückner is tenuous at least, even if, as Clarke apparently does, he believes there was an abduction in some vague unspecified way in some vague unspecified time frame.

It would be too easy to dismiss this as a witch hunt.
A child has died. Let’s lynch the local village idiot, and drown the old women with Alzheimers who talks to her cat and doesn’t wash.

But what is the difference between that and “A child has been reported missing. Let’s lynch the guy with the funny eye, and the bloke who steals diesel and goes to raves and smokes pot.”

Brückner may be involved in something. I have no evidence either way.
But until someone explains exactly what that something IS that he is supposed to be involved IN, we should all retain open minds and continue to ask the questions of those who are secure in their own pre-judgment.

The undoubted fact that he is not the sort of person with whom one would wish to have anything other than purely professional dealings, is undoubtedly a pervert, is probably severely psychologically damaged as Clarke catalogues, and has been convicted of a string of heinous crimes and misdemeanours, does not make him automatically guilty of every unsolved crime in Europe.

Clarke tries to suggest he is guilty of the unsolved disappearance of René Hassée, the little boy clearly washed out to sea at Aljezur, and even, almost incredibly, of the solved murder of Joanna Cipriano.
As one of the Tapas 7 said “I’m not making this up”.

Clarke’s description of Kate McCanns book as “excellent”, and of the Summers and Swann pathetic re-hash of existing statements as a “detailed benchmark tome” may give us an idea of the standards he applies.

There are several strange and jarring grammatical errors and malapropisms which an educated and experienced wordsmith or his editors and proofreaders should perhaps have found.
“. . . it was frustrating that despite Lori and I appearing to have almost cracked the case . . .”
“. . . sinister letter to my wife and I . . .”
“. . . they eyed Lawrence and I up suspiciously.”
are sub-O level, grammatically and structurally.
Of DCI Amaral’s book –
“which he wrote on retirement from the force and which must be viewed as extremely sceptical - “
is simple illiteracy. I think I know what he intends to convey but it takes some working out.

* And then there are the simply straightforward factual errors. 

Every one of these can be checked independently, and most people who have followed this case over the 14 years know the truth.
Clarke has exactly the same access to all the files and the reports as everyone else, and very probably much more. He is surely well aware that some of these are not true, and they therefore qualify as Lies.

“Amaral - who later wrote a lucrative book claiming the McCanns killed their daughter. . .”
He did NOT. His book suggests at worst accidental death and concealment of a body. Relatively minor offences. Nothing more.
“Amaral – who made enough money from his book to buy a new house”
He did not. Either make enough money, or buy a house

“It emerged that his [Murat’s] lazy eye was in fact a glass eye…”. [my emphasis]
It is not. Robert Murat has a detached retina and has no sight in the eye, like Gordon Brown and Admiral Lord Nelson. The eye is intact. It simply doesn’t work.
Murat explained this himself in detail at the Cambridge Union debate in 2008 and it was widely reported and is still on-line in the Guardian archive. [see Link, or google ‘Murat glass eye’ and read No 1]
Despite that the myth persists amongst the gutter press, and part of his speech was about how the Tabloids had ‘spoken to school friends’ which is Tabloid for totally invented stories, of his taking it out and rolling it round the playground.
But Clarke is clearly of that breed. He writes for and is paid by the red tops, Sun, Mirror and Mail, and has done for decades, so he doesn’t need to concern himself with facts or details too much. The truth washes over him without even cleaning off any of the dirt.

Although Clarke is happy to describe everyone else as Conspiracy Theorists, he is free with the most often used of their techniques. That of posing a question to which there is no immediate answer, and using that to form the foundation of the next part of the theory.
“Because we cannot yet fully understand the building of Stonehenge/Pyramids/Macchu Picchu (delete as appropriate) – – could it be that extra-terrestrials were at work. Only they surely had the advanced technology needed to move the stones/ flatten them/carry them to the top of the mountain.
And what did these beings look like, and where did they come from ? – note how it has now changed from a vague falsifiable suggestion into an accepted fact.

Consider these, a tiny sample of the whole

“Could it be that he discovered something he shouldn’t have, and got silenced ?
“Could he have been involved in some sort of child sex ring himself ?
“And could he be the same blond friend who . . .
“. . .could he be involved in Brückner’s crimes
“. . .could he have been working for a larger number of accomplices involved ?
“… may [sic] he have made considerable amounts of money from snatching her ?
“Regarding the gun, could this be the same one . . .
“Could this be the mystery business man ?
“Could this be the evidence that makes the German police so certain she is dead ?
“Could it be she found photos of Maddie ?
I don’t know Jon. You are the Investigative Journalist. Tell us. Or tell us you don’t know.

And then there is the list of TTBD. Things to be Done. Unfinished business.
For Clarke this involves digging up half of the Algarve and most of Niedersachsen.

This is just one paragraph.
”Why haven’t they excavated his infamous Yellow House in Praia da Luz? Why haven’t police dug up Villa Bianca in Foral where he spent considerable time? . . . Sabine Selllig has pleaded with police to dig up the grounds of the allotment home he lived in in Braunschweig . . And nothing.”
elsewhere -
“I haven’t seen any activity around here, no excavations, no police, no searches,”…
“ I expect the police will come and dig the place up at some stage . . .”
“Why hasn’t more been done on the grounds in Portugal, and Germany digging up Brueckner’s former properties and places of interest, looking for evidence ?”

There are lots of cellars and tunnels, and secret hiding places, real Indiana Jones and the Missing Child stuff, though sadly the Secret Hidden Secure Compound with the four largest and most dangerous dogs in the world with their world-record bite don’t merit a mention, even in passing.
Which is a shame. I was looking forward to them.

There is an entire chapter on the Casa Pia case. But after six pages it ends in the rather plaintive sentence
“But it didn’t solve the mystery of Maddie.”
Well, no. Nothing at all to do with it.

So it’s a bit messy, a bit mixed. Sometimes episodic, sometimes a chronological travelogue, other times thematic. For someone who has not followed the story so far it could be confusing.
But as someone once said “Confusion is good”.

And of the McCanns ?
“I never wavered in my belief that the parents were innocent.”
“Because I believed the McCanns were entirely innocent . .”
“Whilst the documentary didn’t have a knockout punch it did raise a number of key issues . . . .the family were almost certainly innocent . .”

And of H. Fülscher, defence lawyer for Brückner ?
“eccentric”

And of the unending innuendo ?
“he said some things. . . and about his private life – but he insisted I did not publish them. I have agreed not to.”
“why he left in 1999 is open to conjecture, and it would be unfair to print any of the gossip . . .”
“There was something very dark about W. . ., I wish I could ask W, who was gay and had a younger boyfriend, but he died in 2017”

Easy isn’t it Jon? Lucky that most of the rest of humanity finds it unacceptable.

But I shall follow it up in the next Chapter. Out soon. Free.


LINK

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2009/mar/06/tabloids-madeleine-mccann-robert-murat

Who is The Fat Controller ?

One of the issues which lurks in the background of this saga and bothers researchers is the question of who it is organising and coordinating the “Official Story’; the timing of the releases of information and ‘revelations’, and the blatant invention of sightings and stories designed to give weight to the “Official Story” at each stage of its long metamorphosis.
Those who have devoted 14 years of their spare time to this Complete Mystery may be forgiven for suspecting that there is a single malign entity at the helm.

We can investigate this through the technique of Information Flow Analysis, and create some rudimentary charts similar to those generated by the ANACAPA system

We focus on the WHO ? questions
Who HAS the information? Who HAD the information?
And if someone now has it who is not a first-hand witness, what is the possible link, what is the route by which the information travelled?

It is irrelevant whether the information is true or even accurate.
Paradoxically it is more easy to track false and invented information, since there is no chance of a third party innocently having discovered or invented it for themselves.

The techniques of the “Canary trap”, and the “Barium Meal Test” are well known and documented in the world of counter-espionage and counter-intelligence, and can be used even in everyday situations.
Marking notes, numbering copies, and typing onto photosensitive paper are well known techniques.

Let us give a simple example from the workplace :–
An employee is suspected of leaking information to the press, and we know the Press are are now in possession of a copy of a document.
I prepare another document.
The original in my possession reads     “This document is not to be copied”
The copy for Employee A reads             “This document is not to be photocopied.”
The copy for Employee B reads.            “This document is not to be photo-copied”
When a copy is found I can then tell whether my secretary has copied it, or whether employee A or B is responsible. Trapped by a hyphen or a full stop.

Let us go back to the beginning

Consider the first [false] story about the forced, broken, smashed and jemmied shutters and the open window. We can be certain that this information got to the press from relatives and friends who in turn got it directly from the McCanns. Because they told us so. On the record. All of them

But even if they had not told us, the McCanns were the only ones in possession of that [false] information, and so it cannot have some from any other source.

This is what they would like us to think. All very direct and straightforward, even though, strangely, McCann supporters deny this is what happened, and insist that no claim about the shutters was ever made. 

In fact what we have discovered was this.

Anatomy of a Revelation

Revelation; n. A surprising and previously unknown fact that has been disclosed to others. [Oxford Lexico]

The story:

Madeleine McCann suspect and ex had secret Portugal compound guarded by fierce dogs

In July 2021 the press of the world ran a story about a “secret compound” in Portugal, which they linked to the alleged suspect Christian Brückner through a tenuous contact between him and a one-time tenant of the property.

As is the way with the Tabloid press, at each iteration the story became more lurid. Household pets became a pack of savage dogs, of a type which inevitably have the most powerful bite in the world; the perfectly average and unremarkable villa became a secret hidden compound, and all the usual nonsense took over.

The story was syndicated or churned round the English speaking world, and possibly further.

A brief screen shot makes the point.

Using the old Counter Intelligence service technique of red arrows to track leaks of information we find, to no one’s surprise, that they all point back to the usual suspects. . . –> Jon Clarke and the Olive Press.

Fair enough, we might argue. Clarke has followed the story almost from the beginning, and still seems to be active and keen to push the McCann version of events, so what is extraordinary about that ?

Well this.

We track back and find that Clarke had published this exact story in his own newspaper, the Olive Press, more than a YEAR earlier, 8th June 2020 to be precise, and that he posted a short YouTube video of a visit to the property in question, also dated 8th June 2020.        2, 3

The Portuguese Journalist Sandra Felgueras through her Sexta às 9 TV show presents the whole thing, of which the YouTube Video is a clip. Clarke seems now to be a regular on her show.

Lies – Damned Lies – And Jon Clarke

Over the 13 years and 3 months we have been following and analysing this dreadful case we have been variously disappointed, astonished, appalled and disgusted at the way the Media in general and the press in particular have failed to adopt their constitutional role as disinterested reporters of the known facts.

 

We learned to expect that Kandohla, a some-time gym friend of Kate McCann, would write drivel which simply churned out the ‘official story; that Lazzeri would publish nonsense; and that The Sun and other gutter-press tabloid red-tops would maintain a decade-plus long campaign of disinformation.

 

This is normal, and to an extent we have to accept it. A free press is free to publish what it chooses, and the alternative of having the press shackled by law, by ministerial edict or by libel lawyers is the first sign of tyranny.

 

In the internet age some of the press maintain ‘Comments’ columns where their editorial stance or the statements they make may be challenged or corrected.

 

The hope of all decent people is that one day the press will themselves start to behave decently, will report known facts and make clear what is no more than speculation and hearsay, and identify what is clearly fantasy.

The laws of Libel and in some cases the internal monitoring of the press by their own Professional body should act to prevent excess.

 

The position of Jon Clarke, editor and publisher and, it is believed, part owner of The Olive Press is altogether more worrying.  He operates in Spain, is not answerable to English legal system nor to the Press Association, and cares nothing for the law of Libel, as he clearly set out in banner headlines in his own paper.

[1]

Let us first explore what we do ‘know’

In previous chapters I showed, giving full and detailed references, how Clarke has changed his story over time. He has claimed –

• to have been phoned at 7:15am CEST (Spanish time) = 6:15am BST (Britain and Portugal)

• to have arrived, after a 4 hour car drive, in PdL at 10.45am (unclear which time zone applies here, since  neither fits the known facts. Spanish time allows him to have seen the McCanns leaving, – which is recorded on video –  but even that does not allow sufficient time for the journey). see Ch 32

• to have been the FIRST journalist at the scene – or alternatively

• to have been the ONLY journalist at the scene until late afternoon

• to have walked straight into Apartment 5A and to have spoken to the McCanns there – or alternatively

•  to have found the apartment taped off and therefore NOT to have walked straight in, but to have spoken to the McCanns as they were leaving [to go Portimão for interview]•   to have spoken to the McCanns in those early hours and so on. 

[2][3][4]

 

Many of these versions with some minor variations have been repeated in the years leading up to and then including the Netflix production.  Mercifully for seekers of the objective truth that same Netflix production included several pieces of contemporaneous video footage from the day in question recorded by the many News crews who were already at the scene with their many reporters and journalists and presenters, not to mention the many police, dog-handlers, dogs, forensic teams and a throng of others - when Clarke arrived. 

Those videos have been and remain available in the public domain, notably on You Tube, and can be double and cross checked by anyone with the will to do so, [including Libel lawyers]

I appended some still shots in Chapter 31 and 33 where I expose yet more of Clarke’s more egregious mendacity, [or in plain English disgraceful lies]  and provide the full references and the YouTube links

The clips and the fuller videos show conclusively that much of what Clarke said was simply untrue

[3]

For non-native speakers of English, let us conjugate the verb

                  Infinitive                                 To lie

                  Present indicative                 Clarke lies

                  Present continuous              Clarke is lying

                  Simple Past                            Clarke lied

                  Past Perfect                           Clarke has lied

                  Perfect continuous               Clarke was lying

                  Pluperfect                              Clarke had lied

                  Past imperfect                       Clarke used to lie

                  Future                                     Clarke will lie

                  Future perfect                       Clarke will have lied . . .

                                    and so on

 

But now yet another of Clarke’s “versions of the truth” has been exposed.

It comes from the magazine CLOSER, published by the Bauer Media Groupin Peterborough, who produce

at least 40 magazines, and have 51 radio channels.

This is from the on-line version at https://closeronline.co.uk/ and is BY KRISTINA BEANLAND | POSTED ON 11/06/2020

A short recap: A brief restatement of some of what we know

 A short re-cap.

A brief restatement of some of what we know.

An easy entry point for people new to the research and analysis. 

And above all a reminder to us all of why we are still here after 13 years.

First the known facts:

On Thursday 3rd May 2007 the world was told that a three-year-old British girl, Madeleine Beth McCann, had been abducted that evening from her bed in an unlocked apartment in Praia da Luz, a small seaside resort on the Algarve, Portugal.

Over the next 24 hours details were released for publication. Many of these were proven within a very short time to be false; others were so extraordinary as to be incapable either of proof or refutation.

Over the following weeks more stories and details were added, and eagerly seized on by the world’s media. Many of these have been shown to be false, and several are clearly deliberate fabrications.

This was spotted in the very early stages of the investigation by the GNP – The Portuguese National Police – and then by the PJ – the Polícia Judiciária, the Portuguese Criminal Investigation service.

British police were sent to assist the PJ with nationally accredited search experts and others. All came to the same conclusion: the story was not coherent; the “abduction” hypothesis was not credible.

In plain English – it did not hang together.

Bluntly – the more they looked, the less they found.

Several of the initial stories are characterised by their inaccuracy or impossibility

The shutters	were not	broken, forced, smashed or jemmied
The curtains	did not	“whoosh”
The apartment	could not	be watched from the tapas bar
The pool photo	could not	have been taken on Thursday 3rd May 2007
The tennis balls photo	was not	taken by Kate after mini-tennis
The waterslide	did not	even exist
The deep trench	was not	immediately outside the apartment
Jane Tanner	did not	see an abductor
Jon Clarke	did not	go into the apartment and speak to the parents

And so on for dozens more examples.

Every one of these lies has been exposed and picked over. In some cases we have the facts behind the falsehood; in others it is more difficult to see why the lies were told.

But every lie has a motive. Lies are told for a reason, often a very specific one: