As the second of the articles from the Guardian below confirm what was immediately being fed to the press in PDL at the time was contrived and controlled. We saw Gerry McCann immediately reading a prepared "script". How come he could not just talk spontaneously and his sadness at the loss of his daughter and appeal to the public for help? This control freakery he always displays has made the public, quite rightly, highly suspicious from the outset. Given all this control freakery from the outset.. how odd then, that here we have a report of Gerry McCann himself checking the children at 9.30, not Oldfield! Given that it clearly has been so contrived and controlled, why have we had so many conflicting stories about who checked the children and precisely when? These lies are quite rightly at the heart of the police case and their need to interview certain TAPAS members, yet again, prior to finally assembling the prosecution case which must surely see other TAPAS members, particularly OB and Tanner named as Arguidos. Oldfield appears to have agreed to have falsely stated he checked the children at 9.30 - I think it is highly likely that if he was prepared to admit that was a lie - which the police can prove anyway due to other witnesses, he may avoid prosecution himself by becoming a prosecution witness. This fits with Docmacs account that it is him who has gone to the police via his solicitor to change his story. Far better to do this than give up his fantastic lifestyle living in a £1M pad in Surrey. Surely, he would reason, he is not going to give that up and go to prison, for the sake of Kate and Gerry McCann once he realised the game was up. Who would!


~Viv x

Q&A: Madeleine McCann
Steven Morris in Praia da Luz, Portugal
guardian.co.uk,
Tuesday May 8 2007

This article was first published on guardian.co.uk on Tuesday May 08 2007. It was last updated at 16:41 on May 08 2007.When did Madeleine vanish?
Between 9.30pm and 10pm on Thursday. Her parents, Kate and Gerry McCann, were dining at a tapas bar in a Mark Warner resort around 100 metres from the apartment where Madeleine and her twin siblings were sleeping. The McCanns checked on the children at around half-hourly intervals. Mr McCann checked at 9.30pm, but when the couple returned at about 10pm, Madeleine had gone. A pool, hedge, wall and alleyway are between the bar and the apartment.
How could a kidnapper have got into the apartment?
There are three likely routes. The bedroom in which Madeleine was sleeping has a window with a plastic shutter and a door leading to a narrow car park and a quiet residential street. This side of the apartment cannot be seen from the tapas bar. At the back of the apartment, which can partially be seen from the bar, are French windows. These were the doors the parents were coming in through when they checked the children, and may have been left unlocked.
Were the doors or window forced?
Members of Madeleine's family said the shutter on the street window was forced, and police have fingerprinted it. However, the Mark Warner holiday company said there was no sign of a forced break-in. A kidnapper could have come through the street window and left via the street door. It is unlikely he or she would have entered or left via the French windows, because they face the tapas bar and the rest of the complex.
Do the police have any suspects?
At the weekend, they seemed to say they had a suspect in mind. However, it became clear earlier this week that this was not a named person but a man who witnesses had seen acting suspiciously. A sketch of the man has been made but not published - normal procedure for the police in Portugal - but it is not a clear image.
Why has so little information been published?
The Portuguese police claim their judicial system makes it impossible to release information for fear of prejudicing any future case. However, Madeleine's family are known to be frustrated at the way the investigation is being handled. It was their decision to make the direct appeal to any kidnapper and to release details of what Madeleine was wearing - the police had not done so.
Has the search been thorough?
Many people, including some family members, believe not. Criticism that the police did not even begin searching immediately, however, seems unfounded - officers and members of the public began a search as soon as Madeleine was reported missing.
However, there is scant evidence of an organised, exhaustive search. Neither border nor marine police were given descriptions of Madeleine for many hours after she vanished, and officers have not been seen making extensive door-to-door inquiries.
What about the police investigation?
Again, it appears unsatisfactory. The scene has not been secured as tightly as it would have been in the UK. Passers-by are allowed to go right up to the shutters of the window that Madeleine's parents say were forced. The lack of appeals for help and information has upset the family and surprised police experts.
There have been suggestions that the police are hiding behind the idea that they cannot release information because they might prejudice the case. Article 86 of the Portuguese processo penal says information must not be released, apart from in exceptional circumstances. Nevertheless, the lack of information has created a vaccuum that has been filled by speculation and theories ranging from the idea that a paedophile ring is behind the kidnapping to the claim that she may have been abducted to order.

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Mechanics of the McCann campaign
Professional media management may have generated coverage of Maddy's disappearance, but it hasn't helped with public sympathy for the family
Steve Hewlett
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January 31, 2008 2:30 PM Printable version
A Media Society/Polis debate last night saw Gerry and Kate McCann's current and former spokespeople - Clarence Mitchell and Justine McGuinness - discuss the media and the McCanns with Kelvin MacKenzie, Roy Greenslade and filmmakers Roger Graef and David Mills. I should say in the interests of transparency that I chaired the event in front of a packed house at the LSE in London.
The big question set out for debate by the organisers was how well (or badly) had the press and media done in their coverage of what must surely be the most reported story of the last nine months. Consensus among the speakers was pretty negative and Clarence Mitchell was utterly scathing, accusing some journalists of peddling information they knew to be wrong or unfounded - largely for the purpose of stoking up sales. MacKenzie, ex-editor of the Sun, cautioned the audience against being too censorious on the grounds that it was their fascination with the story that led newspapers - which are, after all, commercial entities - to deal with it so prominently and frequently.
MacKenzie then went on to say two things that in my view had rather greater resonance in the meeting than any of the relatively predictable press bashing - no matter how justified. He said that the public response to his Sun column, which he said was characteristic of Sun readers (ie somewhat downmarket in demographic terms), can be huge but was overwhelmingly negative towards Kate and Gerry McCann. Having left their children alone in the apartment while going out for a good time with friends has not gone down well - with the Sun's readership at least, not to mention quite a few folk in last evening's LSE audience.
This is not to suggest that most (or even many) readers think they're guilty in any sense; more that they've been complicit in their own misfortune by being less-than-attentive parents. This more starkly than anything else, it was suggested, reveals the class-based nature of public responses not so much to the calamity of Madeleine's disappearance as to her family's efforts since. And on that front MacKenzie went on to say - even more tellingly perhaps - that in the public mind PR and truth were rarely thought to sit comfortably together.
And there's the rub. Try as they might neither Clarence Mitchell nor Justine McGuinness could quite shake off the sense that the way they've managed this case might have contributed to some negative public sentiment towards the family. In place initially as what Mitchell described as "a buffer" between the shocked and distraught parents and the world's media, hungry for news about Madeleine, it's clear that what developed was a professional media management operation. With city PR firm Bell Pottinger on hand - primarily, we can assume, to defend the interests of their clients Mark Warner Holidays - as well as Justine and, latterly, Clarence with all their experience of Westminster spin, the McCanns could not have wanted for more professional advice. But as time went on media management itself - and once you've started feeding stories to the press to get control of the agenda, you really can't stop - began generating negative reaction from other parties.
Portuguese journalists found people close to the McCanns unwilling to speak for fear of breaking an agreement that Kate and Gerry would pre-authorise anything that was to be said in public. This is standard media management in Westminster or the City but it struck some in Portugal, who thought they were simply dealing with an utterly distraught family, as so strange as to be suspicious. The Portuguese police, however slow and incompetent they might have been, found themselves on the wrong end of a very high powered media onslaught - orchestrated and facilitated in no small measure by what became the McCann campaign. They may not have been ideally equipped or experienced to deal with the case of a disappeared child but they certainly weren't prepared to find themselves up against professional media managers.
In many ways, it's hard to see what else Kate and Gerry McCann could have done; offered the same kind of assistance, how many of us would have turned it down if we thought it might help to get our missing child back? Nevertheless, it's hard to avoid at least a nagging sense of unease about aspects of the "campaign" which would appear to be reflected in what some people think about Kate and Gerry McCann.