“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