This report, coupled with Gerry's visit to Portugal to see his criminal law team headed by the illustrious Mr Alves seems to have got Team McCann in such a spin, I thought I would just post it again. If you employ a gang of criminals one should never be surprised when the mud well and truly starts to stick and I will continue to fervently believe that Police on an international level, stick to this case, like really good glue:-))) Good ho Clarence, got your job back with BK, did he give you a bonus for being such a spinning little liar? Just the fact you are back in there confirms all is not well in ahem, Team McCann xxxxxxxx
JUSTICE FOR MADDIE, JOANA AND ALL ABUSED AND NEGLECTED CHILDREN
2009 WILL BE A GOOD YEAR ON THAT FRONT, IMO!
Friday, 25 July 2008
SOS Madeleine McCann: McCanns' private detectives are suspected of attempted murder.
http://sosmaddie.dhblogs.be/
25.07.2008
McCann detectives are suspected of attempted murder.
The private detectives hired by the McCanns, belonging to the Catalan detective agency Metodo 3, are suspected of extortion and attempted murder in the course of their work for the British couple. The case is under investigation by the Department of Criminal Investigation (DIC) of the Faro PJ (Algarve), which is also responsible for the investigation into Madeleine McCann's disappearance.
This is not the first time that Metodo 3's methods have been called into question: Antonio Jiminez, one of the private detectives working for the McCanns, was arrested for involvement in the theft of 400kg of cocaine in the port of Barcelona. The information, an SMM exclusive, was confirmed by the, "Tribunal de Première Instance de Martorell (Barcelone)" (I don't know what court that is!) which remanded Antonio Jiminez without bail, accused of corrupt practice, corruption, bribery and corruption of public officials and associating with criminals.
Working for Metodo 3 since 2005, the detective was responsible for, "special operations," in the context of the work carried out for Kate and Gerry McCann. According to a source from Moroccan Security, it was he who paid witnesses in Morocco and arranged the interviews of those witnesses with a few British journalists.
http://frommybigdesk.blogspot.com/2008/ ... ivate.html
Another example that it is best to leave it to the professionals and not interfere in a serious criminal investigation. Of course we know that is exactly what Kate and Gerry McCann wanted to do. As Gerry said in the early stages, they wanted to stay in PDL to "control the investigation". Clearly when he lost control they rushed off!
Thanks to Duarte Levy
google translation
19/01/2009
Metodo 3 is seeking to restore its image after Madeleine McCann
Detectives are seeking to take credit for the dismantling of a network to exchange images pedophiles
Metodo 3, the detective agency that Catalan McCann served during the months that followed the disappearance of Madeleine, now seeks to restore its image, tarnished by the lack of results in this case but also by recent allusions made by the Spokesman for the couple.
Francisco Marco, the director of Metodo 3 to convince the Spanish daily El Mundo of his detectives had helped the Spanish police to arrest members of a network of pedophiles on the Internet images, information contradicted by a source the National Police.
"This agency is not responsible for the operation. The network in question was already under supervision of our services for some time, but we await the right moment to catch up people and put an end to their activities, "said a spokesman for the Spanish National Police, contacted by SMM, stressing that" the intervention of the agency has only rush was a risk to wait knowing that private , especially those, had information and could jeopardize the work of our investigators. "
According to the newspaper, known for its relations with the agency in Barcelona, information collected by Metodo 3 detectives during their investigation into the disappearance of Maddie, have enabled the Computer Crimes Squad Barcelona National Police up to 23 users, of which 13 were arrested during the operation "Lolita P-mix" launched by the Spanish authorities.
Francisco Marco said the daily that the agency had established a call center to disclose the worldwide disappearance of Madeleine McCann and after that received an email saying that the small British video appeared on a pedophile, they arrived to locate a series of images exchanged on networks "Peer 2 Peer" Donkey Gnuteklla and 2000. Maddie was not on any photo or video Metodo 3 but was forced to convey information to the Computer Crimes Squad of the National Police in Barcelona, a legal obligation to which even the detectives can not escape.
Since the establishment of the Investigation Brigade of Science in 1995, several thousand people were arrested in Spain or abroad, for crimes related to pedophilia, particularly the exchange of photos or videos on the Internet. The Brigade also maintains an excellent collaboration with other police forces abroad, which enabled him to contribute directly to the dismantling of the larger networks.
Duarte Levy (Huelva)
-----------
Can we be in any doubt who sent the anon email referred to in this report?
Paedo ring snatched Maddie
By VERONICA LORRAINE
Published: 07 Aug 2008
MADELEINE McCann was stolen to order by a Belgian paedophile ring, Scotland Yard fears.
An email claims the gang “ordered” a young girl just three days before Maddie vanished.
A pervert saw her in Portugal, took her photo and sent it to the ring, who then approved her kidnap, an informant claimed.
Alert ... email from Scotland Yard says gang in Belgium may have taken Maddie
Alert ... email from Scotland Yard says gang in
Belgium may have taken Maddie
Enlarge
The email was sent by John Shord of the Met’s CO14 vice intelligence unit, to police in the McCanns’ home county of Leicestershire.
It was then passed on to Portuguese cops.
It states: “Intelligence suggests that a paedophile ring in Belgium made an order for a young girl three days before Madeleine McCann was taken.
“Somebody connected to this group saw Maddie, took a photograph of her, and sent it to Belgium.
Target ... pervert was feared to have snapped her around time of photo
Target ... pervert was feared to have snapped her around time of photo
Enlarge
“The purchaser agreed that the girl was suitable, and Maddie was taken.”
Belgium is just 90 miles from Amsterdam, where there have been TWO possible sightings of Maddie.
Files released this week show the Met were tipped off by an anonymous source. The email was first sent on March 5.
John Hughes of Leicestershire Police then apparently sent it to Portugal on April 21.
Files do not reveal a reason for the six-week delay.
Insp Ricardo Paiva sent it to Lisbon Interpol on April 28, asking them to check it out urgently.
Interpol replied on May 23, sending information received from across Europe.
A scrawled note dismisses some information as not being credible.
On May 27, Lisbon Interpol sent another urgent message asking for more information — but an undated fax said there was nothing else to add.
In January, private detectives working for Maddie’s parents Kate and Gerry had travelled to Spain’s Costa Blanca to investigate paedophile networks.
Gangs there were said to have links with others in Belgium and Morocco.
Belgium has been rocked by a string of paedophile cases.
Advertisement
Seven beasts from one town were jailed in 2002 — then in 2004 Marc Dutroux was caged for life for a series of rapes and murders.
A friend of the McCanns said last night: “Trafficking into Belgium forms a very strong part of their investigations.
“There is hard evidence that this is happening, and someone may well have been stealing children to order.”
Responding to the Metropolitan Police intelligence, a spokesman for Belgium’s Federal Police said: “At this point we do not have any information such as that quoted in press reports.
“Our police, our missing person team, paedophile unit, are not aware of this information. We are checking with the British police.
“We find it all a bit strange. We are not aware and we have never found a paedophile network in Belgium that could order, sell or buy children like this.”
Portuguese police refused to comment.
259 comments:
«Oldest ‹Older 201 – 259 of 259Claudia
No I dont belive she did...
Thank god Shannon was seen as the victim from day one and not her bloody discusting Mother...
xxx
Whoops sorry Claudia I got your spot :o) xxx
Hope, I forgive you. :-) I'm still happy today! ;-)
Pleased you are still happy xxx
Hi all -
Viv -
Yes, why did Kate scream out "they've taken her" - why 'her' - why not "they've taken Madeleine or Maddie" - after all those listening could have thought she mean't Amelie!
Maybe they knew who she meant, because they knew Madeleine had gone before she called out those misleading words.
And to say "we were so sorry we weren't there when she was taken", as Hope says, it just doesn't make any sense at all - almost as though they'd arranged for her to be taken some time but it happened earlier than they expected.
I'm probably letting my imagination run away with me, but so much of this case is beyond belief!
Hi Nancy,
You say: - “Yes, why did Kate scream out "they've taken her" - why 'her' - why not "they've taken Madeleine or Maddie" - after all those listening could have thought she mean't Amelie!”.
I think Kate fluffed her lines not surprising really as her degree didn’t come from the Royal College of Dramatic Arts and she had a big part to play in this staging.
Nancy
If this was a film we would leave the pictures saying it was too far fetched...
From the first few minutes it was strange and now it gets worse...
xxx
Wizard
I think she said it wrong as well they've taken her...
Madeleines gone would have been nearer the mark and if she really was missing there is no way they would have known she had been taken they had to put that idea in everyones head...
And so the spin continues...
xxx
Wizard -
You are right. Kate has never been believable when on stage and in the spotlight! Too many whoosh clunks!! She certainly won't be any good as the leading lady whenever the film of Madeleine's disappearance hits the screens, which I've no doubt it will do one of these days!
Hope -
Nothing about this case was straightforward from the word go. They may have been clever though in making it a world wide event and therefore letting the public think they are the victims instead of Madeleine! With the whole world talking about it, if they were put in the dock they could always swear they had been 'got at' by the media and say it was an unfair trial.
Another day and another dollar, as they say, for them now and don't they love it!
Viv -
You are certainly right in saying that all perspectives should be looked at in Maddie's disappearance - the more opinions the better of course.
Nancy
There are worse places than Jail...
I just wish the wide world of adults that have heard of Madeleine would remeber she is the victim and also ask themselves why Kate refused to answer a single question...
This has to end one day and their anti children supporters have backed a Mother who Murdered her own child as a hero a solicitor who was a star in their eyes has been discreditied I wonder what else will break???
xxx
Quote of the day from Joana Morais Blog:
'Q. Are you aware that in not answering the questions you are jeopardising the investigation, which seeks to discover what happened to your daughter?
A. 'Yes, if that’s what the investigation thinks.'
Kate McCann, answering under interrogation at the PJ in Portimão, on 07.09.2007'
Given the discussion in the most recent posts I thought it was appropriate to post it here today. That quote beggars belief especially as she expects us all just to believe her claim that her child has been abducted just because they say so! The 21/07/08 was a long time ago K and yet still not a peep from you how you knew just knew and if you could say you would say but the Secrecy Law was prohibiting from you tell all and if you could tell all then we would all know just know it was an abduction! Load what carp a of bull! K you rearrange the words in the last sentence they make up what I think you talk.
'prohibiting from you tell'
should be
'prohibiting you from telling'
Zodiac
Yes if thats what the investigaion thinks.
=
I dont want to get into any trouble and really dont give a damn about my daughter.
Can you imagine what the media would have made of that heartless comment if it had come out of the mouth of Karen Mathews...
xxx
Afternoon all
I have not had a chance to read back fully.
We were sorry we weren't there when she was taken. Sadly, I have always leaned towards the theory that this was when she died, and they were sorry not to be there at the time. Sorry is an understatement which ever theory you use.
Madaleine is missing would have probably been what I would have shouted, certainly not they've taken her. That statements seems to indicate they knew who had taken her.
Clarence stated
If she is dead she is dead but not by their hands. I personally think Clarence is admitting he knows she is dead, not by their hands, an accident maybe.
I would love to be proved wrong and Madeleine is found safe. This case has never been straight forward so anything could happen. However my personal opinion is she is no longer alive.
I believe another mystic Meg has come forward, although male, and says she will be found by the Spring and that she is safe and well living with a couple who were desperate to have a child. The pros believe this to be the case, I wish I could.
'Can you imagine what the media would have made of that heartless comment if it had come out of the mouth of Karen Mathews...'
Hope,
Exactly!
Hi Zodiac
When the news of Kate refusing to answer the questions was realsed, I said at the time and still maintain Gerry and/or her lawyer planned in advance that Kate would not answer any questions. Gerry would do the talking so that there were no discrepancies in their stories.
released
Hi Di,
You would expect any mother with a child genuinely missing not to have any discrepancies in her account of what happened in the hours/day before she discovered her child missing. Even the Press/Media cow towed to them by not asking the questions that should have been asked of them. Hopefully these questions will now be asked of them if they still continue to court Press/media coverage. It should not be on their terms they should be treated like anyone else in the position they are in. Press/Media coverage should be balanced or not covered at all, imo.
PS. Is anyone having problems when posting their posts.
Hi Zodiac
Exactly.
I have so far not had a problem posting.
Hi everybody!
I've just read back and seen some great posts. Nancy, I thought this comment of yours was very observant:
'Yes, why did Kate scream out "they've taken her" - why 'her' - why not "they've taken Madeleine or Maddie" - after all those listening could have thought she mean't Amelie!'
I have always found that statement particularly odd but couldn't quite put my finger on as to why it is odd. Now I can! Also, I think it sounds as though the taken bit was expected but was earlier than Kate thought.
I'm feeling a bit down tonight. I've just picked kitten up from the vets after an op to remove his "boyhood"! Poor little thing. It did have to be done as he was seeing everything woollen as a potential mate and I'm sure he would have been spraying soon too, but I just had a look and, bless! there's nothing left! As the vetenary nurse said: the purse is still there, but there are no coins in it!! I've just fed him which made him a bit happier, but he's going nuts ('scuse the pun!) trying to get out and staring and licking at what was once his pride and joy!! :-(
I'm sure it will all turn out ok in the end. I just feel so guilty!
xx
Zodiac
If my child were missing there may be discrepancies in our statements as we would remeber things slightly diffrently but it would not matter if our daughter was missing every bit of information the police got would be vital.
If these two Neglecting liars are not brought to justice one day I will be amazed more and more people see through them as this goes and the support will go to the little girl who deserves all the support in the world Madeleine...
Blogger has jamed a couple of times???
xxx
Dylan, don't blame yourself. Your cat is now protected from several diseases and chances are he/she will live longer. He will be fine in a blink of an eye and very happy! :-)
Thank you Claudia, I am sure you are right and he will soon be back to his old self!
It doesn't help much that now he has stopped scratching at the cat flap to run away, he is lying on the kitchen mat giving me filthy looks!!! I don't care what anybody says, cats are really clever creatures and when they decide that they hate you, they make it known to you ;-) I'm sure his little furry brain is telling him that mummy left him in a nasty place all day and when he woke up, he was missing a couple of things!! I don't think that I'm flavour of the day! xx
Di, LOL
Guys what great posts, thanks!
I am just bouncing around on my seat to the most fantastic old song
When the going get's tough, the tough get going!
Hi Viv,
When the going gets tough.....indeed!
Just about to mail you, Claudia and Hope a pic of poor little Chilli, who was named "Chilli nuts" when I got him but is now, sadly, "Chilli no nuts"! Bless him. What a little darling. Off after emailing to give him a cuddle. xx
Blogger has jamed a couple of times???
Hope, don't worry darling, it is just Rosie trying to hack in and have her say, I think she is foaming at the mouth again:-))))
Whoa, who would defend Kate and Gerry McCann! Greedy lawyers and raving loopies!
Oh poor Chilli, it reminds me of when we have taken Nanday to the vets to have his claws and beak clipped. He fights like a demon, it takes two vets to hold him, who he still manages to bite.
But last time we took him he was so sad and forlorn we have never been able to take him again. He just has long beak and claws which I have to try and file a bit here and there.
Sometimes we act in their best interests but they do not seem to think so.
I was very worried about Nanday and how he would feel about me taking him to such a terrible place but the next day he was back to his usual chirpy self, I am sure he will get over it!
xx
Claudia, Hope and Viv; you have mail!
xx
Cheers Viv! I think they know deep down that we still love them!
The picture I sent you is of him looking forlorn in front of the catflap but he's not allowed out for 48 hrs!
Off now to watch telly and cuddle my poor little boy. Back later. xx
Di said When the news of Kate refusing to answer the questions was realsed, I said at the time and still maintain Gerry and/or her lawyer planned in advance that Kate would not answer any questions. Gerry would do the talking so that there were no discrepancies in their stories.
What a brilliant thought Di, that was very much the emphasis in the earlier stage, she is just not safe to be allowed to say anything but I think it would be more Gerry insisting Kate has to keep quiet and not spoil things at the police station. I am sure he knew all about suspect's rights!
If the medium is right and Madeleine is alive then her parents behaviour is more evil than I could ever have believed...
If they had told the truth and helped by answering questions she may have been home a long time ago...
xxx
“Kate is fragile.” What exactly does that mean? KM before she had the children was in a full time and responsible job even after the children she worked a few days a week. Now she just sits at home –it’s not surprising really with a combination of all that has happened over the past couple of years and the time on her hands she has become “fragile” – could climbing up the walls, losing the plot, or perhaps more importantly forgetting the story line be a more appropriate description?
Hi Viv
And don't forget Gerry had a police manual so was able to follow procedures.
Hi Wizard
My interpretation of Fragile- breaks easily!
Hi Di,
God forbid Kate breaks down and tells the truth.
Does anyone know, is it true that Kate did actually deal with 6 corpses prior to her holiday. I seem to think I read it somewhere but now don't know where, or even if the statement was true.
Hi Wizard
Wasn't it GA who said Kate was about to break during questioning, or something similar, but the person from the British Embassy stopped the proceedings. I could be mistaken but I am sure I remember something.
Di
If she did I would be amazed a part time GP with that many dead bodies would have to be very unlucky and those horible black and white trousers are hardly the sort of thing you wear to work they are think holiday trousers...
xxx
Di
God knows what happend but Kate cant think she can live a happy life with this hanging over her...
I wonder what will happen when she is alone in Portugal???
xxx
Di, how’s Kate going to get on when she returns to Portugal. As we have already discussed there’s more to this proposed visit than meets the eye. Imo she will be flanked on both sides by her legal team to ward off any crack-ups let alone cock ups!
Hi Hope
I totally agree who would wear trousers like that to work, especially being a GP.
However I have definitely read somewhere, most probably on 3A's, that it had been proven that Kate attended 6 deaths prior to going to PDL. Probably a WUM.
whoops thin holiday trousers not think holiday trousers...
6 dead patients in a week? There are apparently no records in the PJ files that have been released that confirm whether this was something that was checked out. I would have thought the Leicestershire police would have been allocated this job but nothing in the public arena to confirm this. Wow if true she must be known locally as the Grim Reaper. I’ve heard of ambulance chasers but it would be a wise funeral director who followed her movements.
Hi Hope/Wizard
Have we any idea when Kate will to return to Portugal?
I did wonder if this was just a ploy to let us think she is now strong enough to go back but actually has no intentions to.
I know I am being very cynical and forgive me if I am wrong. I obviously I have no understanding of the law in these situations.
In my opinion there is no way Kate would return to PDL without being forced to and with absolute assurance she can not be approached by the PJ.
Off to watch tv
Will try and look back in.
“I’ve heard of ambulance chasers but it would be a wise funeral director who followed her movements.” A bit of a Freudian slip on my part there I meant followed her in her role as a GP. I think I’m digging a hole for my self as that explanation doesn’t sound much better. Ops..I've done it again another FS. I think I better shut up as I’m now taking my lines from Ms Spears.
Di
You could be right with all the spin I am falling for it now!!!!
xxx
Blimey Wiz, no wonder Gez was trying to shut her up, it all comes out in the wash:-))) Heroin does make you thin!
Wizard said...
6 dead patients in a week? There are apparently no records in the PJ files that have been released that confirm whether this was something that was checked out. I would have thought the Leicestershire police would have been allocated this job but nothing in the public arena to confirm this. Wow if true she must be known locally as the Grim Reaper. I’ve heard of ambulance chasers but it would be a wise funeral director who followed her movements.
Hi Viv,
Talk about Kate losing the plot, I think I must be too – where does heroin chic come in?
Ah.....I’m a bit slow tonight I’ve just got what you mean Viv. Lol
Ah sorry Wiz that one was more subtle than usual!
Poor Dr Shipman originally got hooked on pethadine a heroin/morphine derivative I understand, what with the pressures of having a family and being a med student. Enough to turn anyone towards the path of darkness.
His mummy died and she had to keep having pain killing injections, he was just a poor sad victim really!
xx
Wizard - lol! You've really given me a giggle tonight :-))) And I thought it was just me!
Viv & Hope, you both have mail xx
What an eerie prophesy back in 2002 and a genuine look at victim impact other than through the eyes of a pyschopathic criminal, who hates the police and blames everyone but himself..
Why Some Doctors Kill
Broadcast Monday 29 July 2002
with Norman Swan
Summary:
An attempt to get inside the mind of one of the most horrific serial killers ever, Dr Harold Frederick Shipman.
Transcript:
Norman Swan: Welcome to the program.
This morning on The Health Report, the virus that lasts forever: herpes; new vaccines, new drugs and, from this pesky germ, amazingly, tentative new hope for people with brain cancer.
Also, getting inside the mind of one of the most horrific serial murderers ever: Dr Harold Frederick Shipman.
Angela Woodruff: Sadly, looking at what’s happened here, nor what can happen in the future, can’t bring back my mum and all the other victims. We hope we can now have the space and the time to remember my mum as she was, a happy, active, caring, energetic, loving person.
Norman Swan: Angela Woodruff, the daughter of the last of Harold Shipman’s murder victims.
A few days ago, Dame Janet Smith handed down the findings of the Shipman Inquiry, which found that this sole-practising General Practitioner near Manchester had murdered at least 215 of his patients between 1975 and 1998.
Today on the program, what is it about doctors who kill? Because there have been a few of them.
Here’s Shipman himself in a police interview explaining away the death of Angela Woodruff’s mother, Kathleen Grundy, whose will he had forged around the time he killed her with an overdose of heroin.
Harold Shipman: I had my suspicions that she was actually using a narcotic of some sort, but the scenario was there and she did have – it was available, she may well have given herself accidentally an overdose.
Norman Swan: No accident, as the world now knows. But what’s going on in the mind of a serial killer like Shipman, especially one who’s a doctor?
Someone who’s made a study of his story is New South Wales based forensic psychiatrist, Dr Robert Kaplan.
Robert Kaplan: Shipman basically murdered patients. What he did was under the pretext of giving them an injection to relieve their symptoms, or taking blood; he would give them something like 30 milligrams of heroin, he would stay with them for the five minutes or so that it took them to die, and then he would continue on his rounds or return to his rooms. And there is some suggestion that if they looked all the way back to his internship, the estimated figure is probably going to be over 400.
Norman Swan: Was there anything about the patients which made him select them as victims?
Robert Kaplan: No, not particularly. It turns out that the solo practice he was in in Hyde, Manchester, had a large proportion of elderly people, but in fact at the trial, if you look at the 15 cases he was accused of, they were aged between 49 and 82.
Norman Swan: What do we know about his background?
Robert Kaplan: He came from fairly humble origins in the Midlands; he was the second of four children, his parents were devout Methodists. There’s nothing to suggest there was any problems or trauma or difficulties.
Norman Swan: He wasn’t abused as a baby, or a child?
Robert Kaplan: Not at all. Quite the opposite. He was doted on and regarded as the bright child of the family. There is one thing in his early years that may have had an effect on him, and that is when he was 17 his mother died very painfully from cancer of the lung. And for several months she was in such acute discomfort, she just sat looking out the window, and was given morphine injections for her discomfort. His response to her death was quite unusual. When he was told she was dead, he just set off and ran through the streets of the town all night, unable to deal with it in any other way.
Norman Swan: And you in your writings have compared that to the action of Hitler to his mother’s death.
Robert Kaplan: Well Hitler’s doctor, who was incidentally Jewish, Dr Eduard Bloch, said that when Hitler’s mother died of cancer, and I think he was 19 at the time, in all of Bloch’s years of looking after his patients, he had never seen anyone that was so distraught at a funeral.
Norman Swan: And what significance do you lay by that?
Robert Kaplan: It just seems to be that the experience of death at a vulnerable age must have played some part in his subsequent murderous career, although of course it’s difficult to speculate any further than that.
Norman Swan: What’s typical, if anything, about serial murderers and their early childhood?
Robert Kaplan: Very little. They can come from almost any kind of background, and the characteristic picture of having traumatic or abusive backgrounds is not found. If you look at people like Ted Bundy, he came from a perfectly normal middle-class background.
Norman Swan: Remind us who Ted Bundy is.
Robert Kaplan: Ted Bundy was the law student in America who would go around to university dorms with a fake plaster cast on his arm to attract women, and then engage the most ghastly sex murders, and was eventually executed some years ago.
Norman Swan: How did Shipman go at university?
Robert Kaplan: Shipman was a reasonable student, although not the brightest in his class. He was quiet, he didn’t attract much attention. He got into Medical School because he was very bright, and won a scholarship.
Norman Swan: Did he have many of friends?
Robert Kaplan: No, because his personal style was particularly arrogant, tyrannical, and very few people found they could cope with him, and he almost invariably fell out with everybody that he worked with. The only psychiatrist who’s examined him called him the ultimate control freak. He had to have everything done the way he wanted it.
Norman Swan: We’ll come back to that in a moment. Tell me about his wife.
Robert Kaplan: Well his wife Primrose was a surprising choice for such an avowed elitist.
Norman Swan: Sorry, an avowed elitist; tell me more about that.
Robert Kaplan: Well this was again Shipman’s arrogance. He thought he was better than everybody else, and he was always telling people how good he was. Now he met his wife Primrose on the upper floor of a double-decker bus going home from Medical School to his digs. She came from a very humble background, she was poorly educated, and the general opinion was she was a fairly dowdy kind of person. And he got her pregnant very quickly and married her and then immediately antagonised her parents to such an extent that the family never had anything more to do with him.
Norman Swan: Clearly she was devoted to him and still is.
Robert Kaplan: She was absolutely devoted to him, went on to have four children, and to this day still gives him unequivocal support.
Norman Swan: And yet that psychiatrist who examined him talks about the tyranny to the extent that he would keep the family waiting at the dinner table till 10 o’clock till he came home.
Robert Kaplan: Yes, there seemed to be this characteristic that he was absolutely in control, and everybody around him had to do what he told them. The strange part was, like so many obsessives, that when the police came to interview him at their home, there was penicillin growing on the dishes in the sink, and the grime on the carpets stuck to their shoes.
Norman Swan: So the place was a pigsty.
Robert Kaplan: Absolutely.
Norman Swan: What’s the explanation for that?
Robert Kaplan: It was the issue of control, and image, what the outside world saw, perhaps contrasting with –
Norman Swan: Not really caring what it was like when you actually got there.
Robert Kaplan: Yes.
Norman Swan: And does that have any relevance to his murderous behaviour?
Robert Kaplan: It’s difficult to be sure, but clearly the one issue that comes up was Shipman’s need for control, and the other issue was his sense of being better than everybody else. And it looks as if this is the way he treated his patients. As long as they behaved, as long as they worshipped and appreciated him, he seemed to like them, but at some point he must have decided that they became a bother, and a pest, or they were just inconvenient, and then he took the obvious steps from there.
Norman Swan: So you think, and people think that’s what the motive was: he murdered the patients he got fed up with?
Robert Kaplan: That’s very much part of the motive, but clearly murdering patients because they annoy you or they’re inconvenient is not something most people do. Nobody can really say why did he get turned on by killing.
Norman Swan: Because other serial murderers traditionally it’s been sex, and things like that.
Robert Kaplan: The two things that are usually held as motives for serial killing are sex and money, or both together. But neither of that seems to apply in Shipman’s case, except for the last case where he forged a will.
Norman Swan: In a very clumsy way.
Robert Kaplan: Well somebody suggested that this was just a public announcement that his career of killing was coming to an end.
Norman Swan: Oh really?
Robert Kaplan: And this does sometimes happen, that serial killers get to a point where at some level, it’s escalated beyond even their control, and they allow themselves to be caught.
Norman Swan: But he’s never admitted that, presumably.
Robert Kaplan: Well one thing Shipman has never done is admitted any culpability. He still continues to maintain that he provided great medicine, and he’s completely innocent.
Norman Swan: Do you think he believes that?
Robert Kaplan: Quite possibly.
Norman Swan: What about doctors who’ve been serial murderers, what do we know about them?
Robert Kaplan: Doctors as serial murderers are very interesting. Firstly, it’s probably quite reasonable to say that as serial killers as an occupation, doctors beat any other career field. Certainly dentists and accountants don’t even come near, and you might be interested that there’s no record of a veterinarian ever becoming a serial killer.
Norman Swan: Is this just access to the implements and the victims? What’s the story?
Robert Kaplan: Well there’s two theories. The one is that medicine attracts people who’ve got a pathological interest in life and death; and the other theory is that doctors and nurses become serial killers because yes, they have access to the means to do it more so than other people.
Norman Swan: How many have there been documented?
Robert Kaplan: They’re relatively rare, which I suppose is fortunate. They go back several hundred years. In the 1850s there was an English doctor who killed a lot of patients to pay off his gambling debts; and there was a well-known case in the 1950s in Brighton, in the UK, of a doctor who killed off patients, and changed their wills in his favour. And a few more after that.
Norman Swan: And you claim, or you hypothesise that Harry Bailey, the infamous Sydney psychiatrist who had the deep sleep clinic, of whom there was a Royal Commission, that he might well have been a serial killer.
Robert Kaplan: Well if you look at what Harry Bailey was doing, he started off something that he regarded as a legitimate and important form of treatment, and when it began, he may well have rationalised that this was an accident, these were side effects. But as the bodies piled up in their tens, it’s difficult to see any other way that he could have perceived this, and whether he was not getting some kind of vicarious sense out of it.
Norman Swan: And of course the one medical person who some people think was a killer, is Karadzic who was a psychiatrist wasn’t he, the Balkan –
Robert Kaplan: Radovan Karadzic became the President of the Republic of Bosnia in Serbia in 1992. He’s interesting, because he had practiced psychiatry literally until he became the President, and set out on his genocidal course. And Karadzic quite clearly used psychiatric rhetoric to both stigmatise the enemy, the Muslims that he regarded as the invaders, and also it’s thought he used psychiatric group therapy techniques to terrorise people for ethnic cleansing.
Norman Swan: Such as?
Robert Kaplan: Well he’d trained in group therapy, and he used to use group therapy terms to say how we will scare them, and how we will get them to leave their lands and their territories.
Norman Swan: In other words, if you know how to manage a group, you know the group dynamic and you can introduce ideas into the group, and manipulate them in your own way?
Robert Kaplan: Well this is what Karadzic did, and this seems to be a theme in doctors involved in State repression since World War II. In Eastern Europe, in South Africa and in a number of other States, it’s been psychologists and psychiatrists that have been involved in torture and State repression.
Norman Swan: So give me more tangible examples of what Karadzic did, and how he used his psychiatric skills?
Robert Kaplan: Well Karadzic used a theory of neurosis. For example, he said that the Muslim enemies were anal retentive, the Croatians who were enemies to a lesser extent, had all castration complexes.
Norman Swan: Sounds like all the Freudian things were coming in.
Robert Kaplan: Well it was pop Freudianism, and he built up on that as a way of explaining how they should go ahead with what they did.
Norman Swan: And so what do you ascribe to those doctors who go wrong in terms of repressive regimes?
Robert Kaplan: I think it’s an example of people who put their own ideologies and nationalism above their ethics. If you look at the doctor who ran the Armenian genocide for the Turks in 1915, he was later interviewed and he described the Armenian people as a bug or an abscess, that needs to be sterilised. He’s fully aware that this goes against medical ethics, but he would put his nationalism above this any time.
Norman Swan: But you don’t call someone like Mengele a serial killer.
Robert Kaplan: Yes, I do. But it’s in a political context, and I think if you look at serial killers, there’s different ways in which they operate. They can kill people close to them, like friends or family, they can kill people they don’t know, or they can operate on a mass scale like the political killers.
Norman Swan: But the underlying personality defect, or psychological problem, is different?
Robert Kaplan: Oh it varies from one to the other. In fact if you look at doctors who’ve committed genocide, there’s absolutely no consistency, they come from every religious group, different countries, different specialities. For example amongst the Turkish doctors who did the Armenian genocide, there was one Professor of Medical Ethics.
Norman Swan: Really?
Robert Kaplan: Yes.
Adamsky: The only thing I can think of is of an evil, evil man. He’s just evil, he’s bad through and through.
Norman Swan: Coming back to Shipman, are we just talking, I mean this is the nature of the dilemma, but are we talking just about somebody who is frankly evil?
Robert Kaplan: That’s the most tricky question in forensic psychiatry: what is the nature of evil? It’s like saying what makes a psychopath? Are they born, or are they made? It’s very difficult to know if Shipman was as much evil as so utterly self obsessed and convinced of his own rectitude, that he could do anything he wanted.
Norman Swan: Which is almost a definition of a psychopath.
Robert Kaplan: Yes. But the terrifying thing about Shipman was if you think that whenever a patient became a bother, whenever he was too busy, or whatever other motive he had, he simply chose the most clinically effective and cold means of dispatching them. It was almost the absolute lack of concern about what he did that is so chilling.
Norman Swan: Is there anything about the doctor-patient relationship that gives you any signals here, or causes for concern?
Robert Kaplan: Well looking at the Shipman case, and for that matter other cases of doctors who murder, you focus on the issue of anger in the treatment relationship. And of course anger is something that doctors, or for that matter all health care professionals are not supposed to experience. In fact they’re not supposed to experience any emotions. Now in recent decades, possibly the last century, there’s been more attention paid to this. But the fact is, any doctor working with patients in clinical care will say there are times when patients can infuriate you, can drive you to absolute distraction, and you can just think about the distinction. Most doctors stop there; Shipman didn’t. But it’s still important to see what do doctors do about their anger and their emotions with their patients? Do we understand this? Do we have excessive expectations, and how do we help doctors like that?
Norman Swan: Well it’s part of a psychiatrist’s training, supposedly, to be able to deal with your own reactions to the person in front of you.
Robert Kaplan: That’s very much part of a psychiatrist’s training, but you’ve got to look at the whole practice of medicine.
Norman Swan: But psychiatrists aren’t sometimes very good at handling that line, either.
Robert Kaplan: They’re no different to any other doctors, I’m quite happy to say that. And I think that’s the real issue, is we need to tailor down our expectations of doctors.
Norman Swan: What do you mean, that it’s OK to have a serial murderer from time to time?
Robert Kaplan: I’d rather put it the other way round: I think we just need to see doctors as a lot more human in their practice, than perhaps we currently do.
Norman Swan: So are there messages then from the Shipman case for the medical profession for health care?
Robert Kaplan: It’s difficult to be sure. For someone like Shipman to come along is a very rare event, but I say this –
Norman Swan: Do you we know that it’s such a rare event? How would you know?
Robert Kaplan: Well we can’t be sure, and I say this at the same time as I’m preparing something on a guy called Michael Swango, a doctor who poisoned 60 patients in America, more or less at the same time as Shipman. You only have to compare Shipman to Michael Swango, the American poisoner. Swango was quite clearly crazy, and he was quite clearly psychopathic. His colleagues at Medical School, in his second year, gave him the nickname ‘007 – Licence to Kill’ because they couldn’t understand whenever he went into a patient’s room, somehow the patient would die shortly afterwards. Swango looked and sounded like a psychopath; Shipman was the much loved doctor of the small town.
Norman Swan: So it’s just inevitable that the occasional case will slip through?
Robert Kaplan: I would think so. I think the issue is it’s very difficult to predict someone like that and what they will do. I don’t know how anybody can look ahead, and say We will stop a serial killer from becoming a doctor. What the General Medical Council have done in the UK has been a huge review of their procedures.
Norman Swan: Because he slipped through; there were warning signs that he wasn’t quite right: he was a pethidine addict at one point, not quite struck off; a local doctor noticed there was a problem with his practice and nobody really did anything about it.
Robert Kaplan: Several years after he went into general practice, he was found forging scripts to feed a pethidine addiction. So he escaped a criminal conviction, took himself off the register, and went to a retreat. He was then examined by two leading British psychiatrists to get back into practice. And strictly speaking, they were right. There’s no record of Shipman going back to abusing drugs himself.
Norman Swan: They just missed that tiny little personality defect on the way through.
By the way, there’s a coincidence in today’s Sydney Morning Herald in Column 8. A reader writes in saying that Shipman’s first practice was in Todmorden, on the West Yorkshire border. And in German, ‘Tod’ means ‘death’, and ‘mordern’ means ‘murder’. And as the paper said, ‘Spooky’.
Dr Robert Kaplan is a forensic psychiatrist in Wollongong.
REFERENCES:
Horton R. The real lessons from Harold Frederick Shipman. Lancet 2001 Jan 13;357(9250):82-3
Samuels A. Doctor Harold Shipman. Med Leg J. 2000;68 (Pt. 2): 37-8.
Kaplan R. Murder by medical malice – the love-hate relationship between Dr Harold Shipman and his patients. South African Medical Journal 2000 Jun;90 (6):598-601.
Dyer O. Shipman murdered more than 200 patients, inquiry finds. British Medical Journal 2002; 325:181 (News)
Guests:
Dr Robert Kaplan
Consultant Psychiatrist,
Wollongong
New South Wales
Story Index
Wow – fragile – heroin chic – I hope RP’s not viewing this conversation she would certainly get the needle. Ops ………I’ve done it again.
Your last post makes really chilling reading Viv.
Wizard
I agree.
I have posted on the new thread, sorry I thought we had moved there.
Lol Wizard!
It is an interesting read, I think, you could almost pu the name Gez there in places!
It is OK to stay on this thread, because there has been such a good discussion going on, I just wanted to record that we have seen justice for little Shannon. I think it is pertinent it flags up what I have been suggesting may have happened here and what a serious offence that is, particularly for two clever schemers! Totally incomparable on the facts given the vast scale of the cover up and incredible deception from Team McCann which I believe will certainly make criminal history, just like Dr Shipman did but for different reasons,
xx
Whilst we are on the topic of strange doctors who become dependant on various substances or need them and self medicate or where they may get them from, interesting post from Photon on 3 As
Salomon ES wrote:
...
Now... on a slightly different topic, when the camera in the video is actually filming the bedroom, and starts focusing on medication documents, I realised that the name in the documentation was Brian Healey (Kate's father?). But have you realised the name of pharmacy the medication was purchased from? The Pharmacy is called JF McCann... Is this another coincidence?
J F McCann
xxx
Liverpool
xxx
tel: 0151-xxx
fax: 0151-xxx
previously discussed here:
viewtopic.php?f=35&t=23246&p=635221&hilit=+lark+lane#p635221
viewtopic.php?f=35&t=23941&p=663724&hilit=+lark+lane#p663724
Just an observation, there are chemists closer to where the Healys live than this one. However, this one may have been the only one with the required drugs in stock.....
There is also a McCanns Pharmacy on Aigburth Road, L17
Goodnight folks.
I will try to be back on topic tomorrow ;-) xx
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