STOP PRESS
Jon Clarke may have told the truth
A public apology
YET ANOTHER VERSION of Clarke’s arrival in Praia da Luz has just emerged.
It is in a 49 minute down-the-line interview for Expat Radio channel, and can be heard by accessing
https://jillhavern.forumotion.net/t17177p25-new-blog-jon-clarke-olive-press#443226
at Page 2, and clicking on the embedded video.
It is dated Friday 3rd September 2021, and was clearly part of the publicity drive for the book
It has been viewed more than 20 times.
At 12:30 Clarke again mentions the 5 Ws of journalism. When, Where, Who, Why, and hoW
But again he neglects the first and most important one which we have discussed before . . .
WHAT ?
and then at 12:40, talking about his actions on arrival he says - (this is as near verbatim as I can get).
“. . . you go into automatic mode just going through the paces, the first thing I found the apartment,
straight up to the apartment, go, and walked up the steps and asked, yer know, could I speak to the parents, and they happened to be, they were heading off actually relatively quickly to be, err, to the police station to file the official reports . .
But they were very friendly and you know obviously very stressed out . .
And they, they just told me the name . .
And, yer know, I said who I was and from the Mail and I would do my best to help, and they were like “thanks” and that was that.
So I didn’t, I can’t say I really interviewed them . .
but, yer know I, I wanted, yer know, I wanted to sort of just try and monitor, and gather as much information on – locally as you possible could. . .”
Clarke’s new admission that he went up the steps and ASKED to speak to the McCanns, indicates this was not 5A, as he has been insisting for the last 14 years, but 5H, the Payne’s apartment, a first floor apartment accessible from the central stairwell. It then clearly indicates that the McCanns were being ‘guarded and protected’ and that they were getting ready to leave with various members of the Tapas group and some detectives from the PJ, as we know they did around 1000 hrs. That much is on film.
For students of these things, the almost total breakdown of verbal fluency and coherence, and the addition of fillers and repetitions to buy thinking time immediately after he has admitted he did not interview the McCanns at all is an interesting case history in itself, even allowing for his apparent lack of articulacy and fluency, and his general demotic tabloid style of speech.
The whole of Clarke’s previous elaborate fabrications may therefore be built on no more than two words
“Madeleine” “Thanks”
But it seems he may have asked a question, made a statement, and received a response, even if was done through a Tapas member or a minder and not directly. So possibly on two phrases “She is called Madeleine”. “They say Thanks”
In the light of this new evidence which has come after 14 years, and in the light of his full and frank admission that he never interviewed them or even spoke to them again,
I UNCONDITIONALLY withdraw my suggestion that Clarke may never have spoken to the McCanns, at least until further evidence is forthcoming.
*****
His statement fixes his arrival at around 0945 Portuguese and British time, as we deduced from the documentary evidence and have stated on several occasions, despite being roundly abused by Clarke for having done so. That in turn has implications for the time of the phone call, of which perhaps more later.
It also nails forever the untruth of his walking straight into Apartment 5A, and makes more credible his various alternative ‘versions of the truth” that he didn’t because it was taped off.
****
Clarke has clearly been stung by the exposure that his previous claims over the last 14 years that he was the First or the Only Journalist at the scene were ‘somewhat less than accurate’ to put it mildly.
Perhaps in the light of having read some suggestions made here and elsewhere, he has now revised this in the radio interview to –
“You know I was there first because the press from the UK none of the national newspapers could get journalists down there until mid-afternoon or late afternoon . . .
so you know I was hands, I was kind of holding hands, holding their hands right the way through the day, making sure that I did the basic checks err, yer know, all the main, [long pause] talking to the manager of the Ocean club… “
To paraphrase in more coherent English,
I was the first British Journalist under contract to a British Newspaper – – – on the scene.
This is what we suggested many years ago, but it does not appear in any of his newspaper articles, advertising pieces for the Netflix film, the Netflix programme, advertising pieces for the book, on the cover of the book, or in the book itself, which use five different variants of First, Only, first British, and more.
This is a criminal case, and details are important.
****
Clearly both these newly discovered statements conflict violently with all the previous ones.
But these may be the truth, or at least may allow us to understand the truth.
And that is a Revelation and a Breakthrough.
What can we say, except “Well done Jon. The truth will out; truth has the mastery.”
*****
CHAPTER 47
“My Search for Madeleine” – Jon Clarke, 2021
Summary of previous Chapters
and some more interesting anomalies
The three previous chapters were written in haste and focussed on individual issues which leapt out of the pages as being simply wrong, or in contradiction to other things the same author had said previously (see above)
What follows therefore is an attempt at simplification and a statement of some of those issues before I then identity and develop yet more.