Chapter 18: Say SO, or Say NO

Was Madeleine “Abducted” ?

The PAID . . . . say "SO"

Not paid . . . . . say "NO"

In PAID we include those paid directly in money, but also those who received benefit from saying SO.
We include those who would never think of compromising a family member.
We include those who received other benefits, but more indirectly - from book sales, or TV appearances, newspaper sales, radio interviews . . .

So who are they ?

Gerry and Kate - obviously
Close family members
Clarence Mitchell
Paid shills on various web-site and social media outlets
Web site manager
Alan Pike. The crisis councillor who pretended to be a psychologist
PR firms, notably Bell Pottinger ( £ 0.5m), and Hannover (£ not known)
Summers and Swan,
Danny Collins and other authors who have wilfully avoided presenting or considering the evidence
Antonella Lazzeri
The SUN - generally
Olive Press - in the form of Jon Clarke - of Angolan basketball player fame
Other newspapers - possibly
Metodo 3 - Francisco Marco, Antonio Gimenez Raso, Julian Peribañez, Antonio Tamarit
ALPHAIG - Edgar and Cowley
Oakley - Kevin/Richard Halligen, Henri Exton,
Gary Hagland
Oprah Winfrey
MISSING PEOPLE - who have undoubtedly raised their profile, even though it has had the effect of causing people to investigate their internal waste of money.
Melissa (e-fits to fit) Little
Jim Gamble
and then

LAWYERS !

This is more tricky, since some species of lawyer have a duty to speak for their client, whether they believe them or not. That decision is not theirs to make.
English barristers are obliged to accept a brief if the fee is paid, and to argue it to the best of their professional ability. Often they deliberately do not speak to the parties concerned. Their client is the instructing solicitor.

Solicitors are slightly different. They have a role in advising the client on the best course of action - which may be to stop !
It is not clear for example whether Carter-Ruck ever investigated the McCanns’ account of events, and the performance of Mrs Martorell in the High Court tends to suggest they deliberately did NOT ask any pertinent or searching questions, perhaps in case they got answers which would have deprived them of a fee.


Carter-Ruck, in the persons of Adam Tudor and Mrs Martorell
Edward Smethurst
The 20 or so other lawyers paid - in money - by the McCanns
Isabel Duarte, who brought the ultimately failed case in the Portuguese courts

and several others.

So, from the above list of those who say SO, how many genuinely believe the story ?
It may be that some do, but of course it is not actually necessary for ANY of them to believe it. Money and family ties could provide the incentive to repeat the word “Abduction” as often as possible.

We may note that over the past few years their word of choice has become “Disappearance”. Even Mitchell now uses this form.

In NOT Paid, we include all those who although they are clearly in receipt of their salaries, are not paid directly or indirectly to do anything other than their professional duty, and to be impartial.

The Portuguese GNP
The PJ
The fingerprint expert
DCI Gonçalo Amaral,
DCI Paulo Rebelo
CI Tavares de Almeida - investigation co-ordinator - wrote final report
The public prosecutors - Magalhaes e Menezes, Gomes
The judges in the Court of Appeal - De Almeida, Manso, Branquinho,
Martin Grime (dog handler)
The British police officers sent to Portugal
The British Police advisor Mark Harrison
The British Police advisor Keith Farquharson
NPIA Criminal profiler Lee Rainbow
The British consular and Embassy staff

and so on, not forgetting many amateur researchers, and hundreds of people who have followed the evidence and the debate on the internet.

All those who had a duty to investigate and consider the evidence in any depth are of the same view. It is not believed that a single instance exists of someone with professional skills or training and taking a dispassionate and detached look at the scene, or the evidence, or the files released by the PJ, coming to the conclusion, even on balance, or even allowing a remote possibility, that there was an Abduction.

To this must now be added the name Peter Hyatt, a statement analyst, who works with, and trains law enforcement agencies in the US. He was recently invited to look at the film and the transcript of an interview with the McCanns done in Australia some years ago. It seems he had little, if any, knowledge of the research into the various issues he addressed.

His conclusion was that within the interview there is a series of ‘Embedded confessions’, as well as many outright lies. For example he identified the story about the open window and the whooshing curtains as a lie, even though he had no knowledge that this had already been so identified by consideration of the weather reports, and the lack of any such details in any other statement. He had no knowledge of the photos of the curtains trapped behind the bed and the chair, nor of the fact that Kate had previously stated that the curtains were wide open.

He went on to show how the McCanns provide all the details, about a fall, death, cuddling the dead body, and the concealment and disposal THEMSELVES. They volunteer the information, whilst believing they are denying it.

So again we have an independent person - an accredited expert - who for good reasons, which he spells out so that everyone can understand them, comes to the same conclusion as others who have come from a different angle.

Refs to the YouTube films are given below

THIRD Category

There is then a third category - lest I be accused of false dichotomy.

These include the British police officers, in Leicester and the Metropolitan forces, who seem to have failed to investigate, or to properly and impartially consider the evidence, and in some cases have presented themselves as openly supportive of the McCanns.

They include

Det Supt Stuart (call me Stu) Prior, Leicestershire Police
Det Ch Supt Hamish ( remit - as if the ABDUCTION had been in Britain) Campbell
DCI (Madeleine alive is not in accordance with all of our thinking, we have found crecheman) Redwood
DCI Nicola (haven’t yet done very much except cut the team from 38 to 4) Wall
Det Ch Supt Mike (still believe Madeleine could be found alive) Duthie

and sundry others who have had years to revise their views in light of the evidence they have collected, and that which has been sent to them, but still appear to be doing nothing substantive

The Met officers who were given a strangely restricted remit - to investigate an Abduction - seem powerless to act. One has to consider whether going outside the remit, and actually investigating, or considering the logic behind the absence of evidence, has been and is still being officially prohibited.

If so, this could amount to something else entirely.

Whether any of the members of this category actually believe there was an abduction, is an entirely different matter which cannot at present be ascertained.

* * * * *

So how has this story been perpetuated for so long ?

On Proof and Truth

[This is copied from the previous chapter, but is included here, so that the reader does not have to refer back]

We talk of Proof. Simply stating something does NOT make it so. Even if it is stated several times, the position does not alter. Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) used the device humorously in the epic nonsense poem The Hunting of the Snark,


"Just the place for a Snark!" the Bellman cried,

As he landed his crew with care;

Supporting each man on the top of the tide

By a finger entwined in his hair.



"Just the place for a Snark! I have said it twice:

That alone should encourage the crew.

Just the place for a Snark! I have said it thrice:

What I tell you three times is true."

This is instantly recognisable as ridiculous nonsense, and yet it was exactly the technique used by the propaganda minister of the Third Reich.

". . in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily,"

often misquoted or paraphrased as:

"The bigger the lie, the more it will be believed."

(It is actually from Mein Kampf (1925), A.H. vol 1, ch 6 “If you repeat a lie often enough, people will believe it, and you will even come to believe it yourself.”)

Variants include

If you repeat a lie often enough, it becomes the truth.
If you repeat a lie often enough, people will believe it.
If you repeat a lie many times, people are bound to start believing it.

* * * *

So the long term strategy of having the word “Abduction”, associated with the name Madeleine McCann, and endlessly repeated in newspapers, TV, radio, and books, for the past ten years, has probably led to a significant part of the population subliminally thinking it has been established as some sort of fact.
If so, the strategy of paying vast amounts to Bell Pottinger, Hannover and Clarence Mitchell was well worth the expense.

The use of frankly mendacious, not to say “ludicrous” stories to fill out this farrago has reinforced this.

The story of Madeleine whizzing down the water slide is a perfect example. In the next sentence she is said to be wearing a pink top and a blue skirt, and a sun hat. The obvious contradiction does not register in the script writer’s mind. She is then said to have played football for an HOUR. Still in the skirt and sun hat. Kate was said to be sunbathing whilst this was going on.

All this might be dismissed as journalistic hyperbole, but the FACT that there is no water slide, and that on the day in question it was dull, cloudy, cold and windy, and the FACT that Kate makes no mention of any such incident in her autobiography, giving a totally different account of events on the day in question - is also inconvenient factual detail which would otherwise spoil the story.

The damage to the truth has been done. Readers may not remember the article, nor where they read it, but the totally false impression is left.

I leave it for you, the reader, to make up your own mind

The McCanns benefit

Truth and justice suffer

Madeleine Beth McCann has no memorial.



REFS - Richard D. Hall interviews Peter Hyatt: "McCanns Embedded Confessions"

Film 1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slziMpXYjJo&t=30s
Film 2
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qyB29g6nbDo
Film 3
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VWWjkL-joS4&t=2428s