Quotes from Jon Clarke in the Netflix 'Disappearance of Madeleine McCann' film (episode 2) with replies by PeterMac in red;
Jon Clarke: Yeah, from the first day, I've got original high definition pictures. This is the police arriving for example, with sniffer dogs. [Jon is at his desk pointing at pictures on his laptop screen] at about four or five o'clock in the afternoon on the first day. By this point there were quite a lot of detectives in Lagos and none of them knew what to do or were doing anything. This is the Policia judiciaria, [chuckling] which is a funny looking headquarters. You can just about make out the police badge here. See all the detectives? Look at them, all plain clothes chaps, scruffy looking buggers. Look at them all wondering what to do next.
In what way does this advance your story ?
The Dogs were in Pdl long before you arrived, as you well know, and you were filmed in the vicinity of the dog vans and handlers.
Plain clothes detectives often dress as ‘scruffy looking buggers’ so as to blend in with, say, investigative journalists, who are perhaps doing the same to blend in with, for example, plain clothes detectives.
Jon Clarke speaking present day whilst footage of apartment 5a outside is being shown : “We had police confirmation that they were looking into well known paedophiles, British and German, who lived in the area that were on the sex offenders database that had come here and that were on an official Interpol list, which was really, straightaway, quite . . . sinister. “
Why is it sinister that the police were investigating the very thing the McCanns were insisting was the truth ?
Jon Clarke speaking over LC, present day: “Lori Campbell was the reporter on the ground for the Sunday Mirror and we went off to local villages, looking into known paedophiles in the area. I remember driving in and thinking, you know, it was a fairly pretty place…”
Did you have a list of “known paedophiles in the area” with their photographs, full descriptions, known haunts and habits, home addresses, ages and other and personal details?
If so, who gave it to you ?
If not, what the hell are you talking about ?
And if it was a matter of simply speaking to local people in the surrounding villages, do you or Ms Campbell speak fluent demotic Portuguese, particularly the southern and central dialect, or the variation heard in the Algarve ?
Or did you and Ms Campbell simply go on a jolly, on expenses. An assignment, or perhaps an assignation, since on your own admission you spent many weeks, even months, in the area.
Jon Clarke present day: The locals have suspicions and a lot of people had suspicions, but you didn't know. You couldn't know. It was very hard to know. So it was a horrible kind of climate of fear and paranoia here.
“but you didn’t know, You couldn’t know. It was very hard to know . . . “ Well Quite ! That is why people make enquiries.
Jon Clarke: The very first person I bumped into was a guy here outside who I later discovered was Robert Murat, who said he was helping the family, doing some translation, was filling people in on what was happening. He'd told me what time she'd gone missing, that . . . the age, her name. I think maybe it was him that used the name Maddie, rather than Madeleine, 'cause the parents called her Madeleine, and I don't know if they used the nickname Maddie.
Surely by now, 12 years down the line, even you know that this Madeleine / Maddie nonsense was exposed as another pointless McCann lie a very long time ago.
And just out of interest, you are on record as saying that the “very first persons you ‘bumped into’ “ were the McCanns, in Apartment 5A, or as they were leaving, and elsewhere you said that you spent your time grilling neighbours, – before you noticed the long deep trench in the road which no one else had, and the Police were using to park over.
How many ‘very first persons’ did you bump into ?
Jon Clarke: A fairly engaging, but slightly strange fellow. Slightly unusual shall we say. He was just...There, just standing around. It was almost like he'd decided, he was gonna be the liaison officer, you know, the public liaison officer, just to talk to press and to help out. I mean, he could have just been trying to help, like people are. They just wanted to do their best so, you know, he lived locally, he worked locally, so he probably just wanted to help.
“He was just there, just standing around.” As the immortal Eccles replied when asked by Seagoon: “What are you doing down here ?” – “Everybody’s got be somewhere.”
“He probably just wanted to help”. Just like you had offered to, in fact. But you didn’t live locally, or even in the same country. Nor, so far as I am aware, do you speak fluent Portuguese.
He does. Both.
Jon Clarke, present day: We were all camped out in a bar in Praia da Luz and I was unwinding after, you know, a fairly hard day.
Where you were observed by another reporter, Paulo Reis, who recorded and then documented the way in which Press stories were ‘developed’ by the cabal of non-Lusophone British reporters.
Jon Clarke: Initially, I probably kept them to myself, but then Lori Campbell, a reporter from the Sunday Mirror, I think she also found the guy a little bit strange. She asked him various questions about what his involvement was and he'd been very vague with her.
Strange in what way ? Sightless in one eye ? Speaking fluent Portuguese ? Living and working locally ? Do you know what she had asked him, in order better to judge whether he had been vague in his answers, had given precise and accurate answers to vague questions, or had simply decided that he felt under no obligation to answer questions from a tabloid journalist ?
Jon Clarke. I think she'd felt there was something unusual about him from the Soham investigation in England, the Soham crime, the two young girls who'd gone missing.
Was Mr Murat involved in the Soham crime ? If not, do you care to re-phrase that sentence. Urgently. And on the record.
Jon Clarke: It was a bit odd. You get two journalists together with a feeling in their stomach that something's not quite right, that it needs to be acted on. I think you need to do something about it. So she went and reported this guy had been acting strangely.
If TWO journalists have a ‘feeling in their stomach’, that must surely be conclusive evidence and you need to do something about it . . . ? – or have I not understood this point?
Jon Clarke present day: Being an arguido in Portugal is an unusual word. It doesn't mean you're charged. It means that you're...You're more than just a suspect. You actually become officially a suspect. It's quite a serious thing for the police to do that.
Thank you for making that clear. The McCanns are equally clear, and said under oath at Leveson that Arguido did NOT mean suspect. In this case you are of course absolutely correct, and they were absolutely wrong. And lying. Repeatedly. Under oath.
“It doesn’t mean you’re charged.” But, if we go back to 2017, we find you wrote that the McCanns HAD BEEN charged by the Portuguese Police. Another small inconvenient fact.
“But this didn’t stop the Portuguese police from charging them… “ OP 2017
Jon Clarke present day: I think just because he was released didn't necessarily mean that he wasn't involved and didn't mean that any of the people around him weren't involved. It meant there wasn't enough evidence to charge him. For me, it almost, in some ways, justified my job that the initial suspicions I had about this man were being taken seriously and actually could lead to potentially a conviction. It was a very tangible, very interesting development in the case.
I take it you apply this test equally to the McCanns. As in “just because [they were] released didn't necessarily mean that [they weren’t] involved and didn't mean that any of the people around [them] weren't involved. It meant there wasn't enough evidence to charge [them]. For me, it almost, in some ways, justified my job that the initial suspicions I had about [the parents] were being taken seriously and actually could lead to potentially a conviction.”
I suspect this is not what you had in mind, though it would be consistent.
Jon Clarke: You have to put the whole Robert Murat case, you know, that he's a slightly unusual looking fella and he had an ex-wife back in England and a daughter the same age as Maddie, which was even more...Strange.
Some might say you were an “unusual looking fella’, in your faded and shabby-chic olive coloured sweat shirt, jeans and 1970’s long greasy hair, and you have told the world that you have a wife back in Spain, and a daughter about the same age as Maddie. Does this make you . . . ’strange’ ?
Jon Clarke present day: The fact that there's almost a line of sight from his house to the apartment, there was a feeling that maybe the family had been watched for a few days to see what their movements were.
Can you see anything along ‘Almost a line of sight’ ? The McCanns said there was a direct line of sight from the Tapas bar to the Apartment. The fact that this direct line of sight was obstructed by an opaque plastic screen, a pool, a wall and a high hedge, and that both the McCanns placed themselves on record as having their BACKS to any possible ‘line of sight’ should perhaps have caused even an incompetent journalist to ask at least one simple question.
Jon Clarke: The police had reasonably good suspicions that there was some . . . Something strange, some collusion happening at 11:30 or 11:40 the night that Maddie went missing.
Indeed they did. The deleted phone records of the McCanns from Monday 30th April onwards are also matter of continued interest to investigators
Jon Clarke: The fact that these phone calls were made late at night, to me was very suspicious.
You are not alone in that observation
Link to thread on CMOMM: https://jillhavern.forumotion.net/t16396-chapter-33-jon-clarke-entrenched-lies