The letters to the Prime Minister and Met Police Commissioner Cressida Dick were posted on Tuesday (12 June) and I am awaiting replies which I shall post here. I have also sent a copy to the Leader of the Opposition, Jeremy Corbyn.

The letters to the Prime Minister and Met Police Commissioner Cressida Dick were posted on Tuesday (12 June) and I am awaiting replies which I shall post here. I have also sent a copy to the Leader of the Opposition, Jeremy Corbyn.


From: Ms Jill Havern and members of ‘The Complete Mystery of Madeleine McCann’
[address withheld]

Rt. Hon. Mrs Theresa May
Prime Minister
10 Downing Street
LONDON
W1A 1AA

Commissioner Ms Cressida Dick
Metropolitan Police
8-10 Broadway,
LONDON
SW1H 0BG

Monday 12 June  2017

Dear Prime Minister and Commissioner Ms Cressida Dick

NEW DEVELOPMENTS SINCE September 2016: The conduct of the Operation Grange investigation into the reported disappearance of Madeleine McCann

As before, I write on behalf of the members of my forum ‘The Complete Mystery of Madeleine McCann’, whose membership has grown to 7,645 since my previous letter.

I now write to you again on your re-election as Prime Minister and as before wish you well in that capacity.

You and the new Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Ms Cressida Dick, will recall that nine months ago, I wrote to you in robust terms about the truth about what really happened to Madeleine McCann. I gave you, in particular, detailed evidence about the misconduct of the various private detectives and agencies used by the McCanns. They had used a series of discredited or bogus investigation agencies - and at least four of their detectives had been imprisoned for criminal offences after they had been engaged by the McCanns. Two of their investigators, Kevin Halligen and Antonio Giminez Raso, each served four years in jail. Yet Operation Grange has deemed that the material collected by these criminal or discredited investigators is somehow worthy of consideration.    

I suggested to you previously that the expensive farce that Operation Grange had become should be ended, and that you should set up a fresh inquiry team, with an unlimited remit, which could investigate whether the McCanns were directly involved in any way in the reported disappearance of their daughter.

There have been at least three major developments since I last wrote to you, which fully reinforce what I said back in September - and make it more urgent than ever that Operation Grange is ended and a new inquiry set up with an unlimited remit.

These are:

(1) The original Portuguese police investigation co-ordinator, Dr Goncalo Amaral, winning, in January this year, the libel case brought against him in June 2009 by the McCanns

(2) The clear declaration by the Portuguese Supreme Court, announced in February  this year, that the McCanns had been wrong to claim that they had been ‘cleared’ by the Portuguese police investigation. The Court ruled (a) that the McCanns had NOT been cleared, (b) that the alleged criminal offence of the McCanns, i.e. having hidden Madeleine’s body, was still being investigated, and (c) that proceedings  against the McCanns could still be taken if new and credible evidence of their involvement in Madeleine’s disappearance were to emerge, and

(3) The revelation in April this year by a former senior Metropolitan Police officer, Detective Chief Inspector Colin Sutton, that he had been advised by a very senior Metropolitan Police officer that he should not accept the recommendation of the former Head of the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Service, Jim Gamble, that he (Sutton) should head the proposed Operation Grange Review - because it would have a strictly limited remit and he would “not be able to go where he wanted”.  

Moreover, in later remarks discussing the advice the ‘very senior’ officer had given him, Sutton stated in a SKY News documentary, and in an interview with an Australian TV network, that he had reasons for believing that the McCanns might , after all, have been involved in Madeleine’s disappearance.
             
In my previous letter I respectfully reminded you as follows, quote:

“Whilst you were at the Home Office you personally approved and organised the setting-up of Operation Grange in 2011 and approved its remit, which was to investigate ‘the abduction. The innocence of the McCanns in the disappearance of the daughter was assumed to begin with and so, contrary to all normal rules of police investigation and conduct, any lines of enquiry which might suggest that the McCanns knew or were involved in the disappearance of Madeleine were excluded right from the start.

“As Home Secretary from 2010 to 2016 you would have had regular briefings on the case from your most senior advisers, civil servants, and security service and police officers and you would no doubt have been fully informed of the intensive involvement of government security services and other agencies in the case from the very first day, and their continuing extensive involvement for many years later.

“You must have personal knowledge that the McCanns have by no means been ruled out of involvement in Madeleine’s disappearance”.

At the end of January this year, after a legal process that lasted over 7½ years, the Portuguese Supreme Court refused the McCanns’ appeal against a ruling in the Portuguese Appeal Court in April 2016 that the original Portuguese investigation co-ordinator was not guilty of libeling the McCanns in his book on the case: ‘The Truth of the Lie’. His book, published back in 2008, had given clear evidential reasons for believing that Madeleine McCann had died in the McCanns’ apartment, and that they had covered up Madeleine’s death and arranged to hide her body.

The comments of former Detective Chief Inspector Colin Sutton

I now reproduce some of the statements made by former Detective Chief Inspector Colin Sutton. In a SKY TV documentary on the Madeleine McCann case, he said::

“I did receive a call from a very senior Met Police officer who knew me and said it wouldn't be a good idea for me to head the investigation on the basis that I wouldn't be happy conducting an investigation being told where I could go and where I couldn't go, the things I could investigate and the things I couldn't...”

In a longer interview with an Australian news source, he said:

"There were critical errors because of a high level agenda to not interrogate the child's parents...", and

"Operation Grange's narrow remit to focus only on the theory that the four-year-old was abducted from the family's holiday apartment in Portugal was unusual and a 'missed opportunity'..."

The Australian article continued: "In 2010...Sutton received a phone tip-off from 'a very senior Metropolitan police officer', warning him about the looming investigation and how it would be handled. The insider told Sutton, who served 30 years with London's Met before retiring in 2011, that the dozens of murder detectives assigned to Operation Grange would be instructed where they could and couldn't look. 'I immediately assumed that what was meant was that the [McCann] family and Tapas 7 [the group of seven friends on holiday with the McCanns] were a no-go area', Sutton said".

The article went on "...the detective's instincts were proven correct. The 'crucial phrase', as Sutton calls it, in the Operation Grange remit was a line stating the review would be carried out 'as if the abduction occurred in the UK'. That meant Kate and Gerry McCann, despite several concerning inconsistencies in their witness statements, were not to be looked at”, Sutton said. The rest of [the remit] is really of little consequence after that because that's sort of saying…we are only treating this as an abduction and we are not looking at any other scenario."

"Sutton also hit out at Scotland Yard claims that the McCanns...had been cleared...'The PJ have never cleared anyone', Sutton said. ‘Ceasing the investigation 'just meant they couldn't find enough evidence to proceed against them'."

Moreover, they quoted more statements from Sutton: “Sutton...said it was well-rehearsed, best police practice in cases such as Madeleine McCann to eliminate those closest to the child first. 'Also any kind of investigation of murder or akin to murder the other place you need to eliminate early on is those that last saw the victim alive. In this case you've got essentially the same group of people who are both close to the victim and the last to see her alive. I'd always want to start with that. I don't understand why that hasn't been done [by Operation Grange]...'."

Sutton said he disagreed with [Met Police] Asst Com Rowley's assessment. He said inconsistencies in some of Kate and Gerry's statements, Kate's 2011 book ‘madeleine’ and also some of the witness accounts of the Tapas 7 disturbed him.

"After police found no forensic evidence in the apartment to back up claims of a break in, Gerry's statements to police detailing what doors he and Kate had used while checking on their three sleeping children changed".

The article concluded: “Portugal's police also had some doubts over the accuracy of timelines provided by Kate and Gerry, and the Tapas 7, in the critical hours either side of Maddie being reported missing at 10pm.  Specialist cadaver and blood dogs were brought to Praia da Luz from the UK, and signalled hits inside apartment 5A and a hire car rented by the McCanns 25 days after Madeleine disappeared. [Colin Sutton said that] It was 'entirely possible' that some of Operation Grange's remit was forced upon Scotland Yard by government officials who rubber stamped the multi-million-[pound] funding of the investigation".

The comments of Assistant Commissioner Mark Rowley

I also wish to refer to the comments made by Assistant Commissioner Mark Rowley about the case in an extended interview given to the media.

He told his interviewer: “What I’ve always said on this case, and I’ve said it to Kate and Gerry as well, we will do everything reasonably possible to try and find an answer for them”. He thus confirms DCI Colin Sutton’s statements that the remit, devised originally by Detective Superintendent Hamish Campbell, excluded the McCanns from the investigation.    

In rambling responses to the interviewer, AC Rowley said first of all that: “There is still a lot unknown”, but later contradicted himself by stating: ”We’ve achieved a complete understanding of it all”. Later in the same interview he contradicted himself once again by saying: “Ten years on, we still don’t have definitive evidence about exactly what’s happened”, and further adding: “All the different hypotheses have to remain open”.  In the same vein, he continued: “This case is [one where] the evidence is limited at the moment as to which one of the [various] hypotheses we should follow. So we have to keep an open mind”.

He continued:  “As I said earlier on we have no definitive evidence as to whether Maddie is alive or dead” but then, bizarrely, claimed: “The investigation has achieved an awful lot”.

He also referred to the initial Portuguese investigation, stating that: “When we started, we started five or so years into this, and there is already a lot of ground been covered, we don’t cover the same ground, what we do is pull all the material we had at the start, all the Portuguese material…” This material included multiple lines of evidence that Madeleine died in the McCanns’ apartment.

He then said: “It would be no different if there were a cold case in London, a missing person from 1990, we would go back to square one look at all the material and if the material was convincing, it ruled out that line of enquiry, we would look somewhere else…You don’t restart an investigation pretending it doesn’t exist and do all the same enquiries again, that is not constructive… What hypotheses does it open, what does it close down…?”

So, despite all the material in the Portuguese police files pointing to Madeleine’s death in  the McCanns’ apartment, AC Rowley admitted that Operation Grange ignored these lines of enquiry. To make it crystal clear, Rowley confirmed that “We did not interview the McCanns as potential suspects”.              

AC Rowley then developed one of Operation Grange’s favourite hypotheses over the past few years for Madeleine’s disappearance, namely a ‘burglary gone wrong’. He said:  “One of the lines of enquiry, one of the hypotheses was: could this be a burglary gone wrong? Someone is doing a burglary, panicked maybe by a waking child, which leads to Madeleine going missing”. The interviewer retorted, very sensibly: “Most burglars would just run out”. AC Rowley, aware that nothing had been stolen from the McCanns’ apartment even if this was a ’burglary gone wrong’, replied with yet another rambling, 200-word answer, and admitted that, three years after identifying three Praia da Luz residents as the possible burglars, “we have pretty much closed off that group of people”.

The arrest and questioning of these three alleged ‘burglars’ was based on records of one mobile telephone call made between two of them lasting 58 seconds at 9.51pm on Thursday 3 May, the night Madeleine was reported missing. This was the one and only piece of evidence against them, and it was achieved after Operation Grange sifted some 11,000 mobile ‘phone records obtained from some 31 countries of people known or thought to have lived in or visited Praia da Luz at the time Madeleine was reported missing. To achieve this, letters had to be sent by Operation Grange to 31 countries to obtain these records, and thousands of man-hours would have been needed to examine them all. The only result of this vast amount of expensive activity was the wrongful arrest of three local Praia da Luz residents.                      

In my previous letter, I called on you both to, quote:

1. Appoint independent assessors of proven integrity and independence to evaluate the work of Operation Grange, and make its findings public. In this respect, may I remind you of this part of the review’s remit, as determined by DCS Hamish Campbell: “The ‘investigative review’ will be conducted with transparency, openness and thoroughness…” Any such report must include a full investigation into the huge involvement in this case of MI5, Special Branch and other government  or government-backed security agencies;

2. Appoint, via the new Home Secretary, a different police force, which has the highest possible reputation for integrity and independence, to investigate the reported disappearance of Madeleine McCann;

3. Ensure that any new police investigation has an unlimited remit and can therefore go to wherever the evidence leads them;

4. Order the relevant government department to investigate all aspects of the operation of the Find Madeleine Fund, including:-
investigating the actions of all of its Directors,
the funding of the private investigations,
whether or not funds have been used to pay the McCanns’ legal fees and expenses,
why it was necessary for a separate account to be set up last year, to be controlled by the McCanns and not the Directors, and
accounting for all monies paid into and from the Find Madeleine Fund since it was set up in May 2007..  

I shall again send this same letter to the new Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Cressida Dick. Again I urge you to seek an urgent meeting with her to discuss the contents of my letter.

In the three years and eight months since a BBC Crimewatch ‘McCann Special’ on Madeleine McCann on 14 October 2013, one of my members, Richard Hall, has produced five documentary films on the case lasting a total of 17 hours. These films have had over 5 million views on YouTube alone. The films developed the evidence that Madeleine did indeed die in the McCanns’ apartment and that Gerry and Kate McCann, with the help of others, hid her body. There are in addition literally hundreds of other YouTube uploads by other Google members which also develop this evidence, many of them having a large number of views.

Another member of mine, a retired police superintendent, has published an e-book documenting in detail the evidence that Madeleine died in the McCanns’ apartment. It has been re-published all over the internet and has been read by hundreds of thousands at least. In these ways, ever more people are realising, in line with what Colin Sutton was told in May 2010, that Operation Grange is a sham investigation which was deliberately designed to cover up what really happened to Madeleine.

It would surely be in your interests to admit that Operation Grange was seriously flawed from the start and must be urgently replaced with a new investigation with an unlimited remit.            

Please give this matter your most careful consideration and I shall look forward to your response in the near future.

Yours sincerely


_______________________

Jill Havern

For and on behalf of the members of ‘The Complete Mystery of Madeleine McCann’

https://jillhavern.forumotion.net/t14299-the-letters-to-the-prime-minister-and-met-police-commissioner-cressida-dick-were-posted-on-tuesday-12-june-and-i-am-awaiting-replies-which-i-shall-post-here-i-have-also-sent-a-copy-to-the-leader-of-the-opposition-jeremy-corbyn

A complaint to the Academic Ethics Committee of Huddersfield University (and others) about a research paper by Dr John Synnott on ‘Anti-McCann Trolls’

 

Dr John Synott, Investigative Psychology, University of Huddersfield

I have sent a detailed letter, on behalf of members of CMOMM, to the Huddersfield University Ethics Committee about the flawed research project of Dr John Synnott, discussed on this thread:

https://jillhavern.forumotion.net/t13598p150-three-university-forensic-psychologists-say-anti-mccann-trolls-cannot-be-cured#360653

I have also sent it to the following publishers of the research: Nature, and Elsevier B.V. (publishers of ‘Computers in Human Behaviour’, where the full research article was published).

The letter has also been sent to the Chairman of the Ethics Committee of the British Psychological Society and the International Academy of Investigative Professionals, to whom Dr Synnott belongs.

The research was seriously flawed, yet was written up in one of the world’s premier scientific journals, Nature, and in several newspapers including one of the world’s leading newspapers, the Washington Post. For these and other reasons, a strong protest needs to be registered and heard.

Thank you Tony for raising this issue in the first place, and many thanks to every other member who has helped to compile what is a long letter.

I won’t reproduce all of it, just the Executive Summary and the bit about ‘Our Interest’ i.e. why we’re making a big fuss about this research. I’ll just give the headings for the rest of the letter.

I’ll keep you all posted with any replies

Jill

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

From: Jill Havern and members of ‘The Complete Mystery of Madeleine McCann’

Monday, 20 March 2017

Dear Professor Philllps, Dr Synnott and all other recipients,

The conduct of Dr John Synnott and his co-researchers in their research project on ‘Anti-McCann Trolls’ – Multiple Breaches of Academic Standards and Ethics

I write on behalf of my forum and my members to express serious concern about the conduct of two of your researchers, Dr John Synott and Dr Maria Ioannou, and a student researcher at Portsmouth University, Andrea Coulais, in the way they carried out a research project titled: “Online trolling: The case of Madeleine McCann”.

Executive Summary

This letter has been composed by and is sent by several members of ‘The Complete Mystery of Madeleine McCann’, the leading Madeleine McCann discussion forum on the internet, currently with over 7,100 members. Some of the contributors to this letter have substantial academic experience. The forum as a whole doubts the McCanns’ version of events, along with dozens of other Madeleine discussion forum, blogs and websites, for very good reasons. At the same time, any abuse or hate towards the McCanns is not tolerated on our site, and on the rare occasions where such abuse has crept in, members were promptly expelled. Forum members include professionals such as police officers and experts in statement analysis and other forensic disciplines such as DNA and photography.


Dr J Synnott’s research project is seriously flawed for the following reasons, which are explained in more detail below.

1 The entire project is founded on the false claim that the McCanns have been declared, or may assumed to be, ‘innocent’. That was never the case. When the Portuguese police shelved the case in July 2008 they specifically declared that no-one was being prosecuted because there was insufficient evidence of either (a) abduction or (b) hiding Madeleine’s body. More recently, in January this year, the Portuguese Supreme Court, in deciding that the McCanns had lost their long-running libel case against the original investigation co-ordinator, Dr Gonçalo Amaral, declared that the McCanns were incorrect in claiming that the police had ‘cleared’ them.

2 The researchers wrongly assumed that there were no valid reasons for doubting the McCanns’ account of how Madeleine disappeared.

3 The value of the research project was thus fatally undermined by a theme running throughout the research project, viz.: The McCann-doubters (‘anti-McCanns’) are wrong, and therefore not motivated by seeking the truth, and are bad people, while the McCann-supporters (‘pro-McCanns’) are right, have pure motives and are good people.

4 One of the researchers, Andrea Coulias, who became a member of the #McCann hashtag on Twitter for six weeks to interact with the ‘anti-McCanns’, grossly misled the entire hashtag by falsely representing that one particular research project (Lasseter) showed that cadaver and blood dogs were ’unreliable’. She had absolutely no basis for saying that.

5 Moreover, the cadaver dog evidence in the Madeleine McCann case consisted of 17 separate alerts to either corpse scent or blood in the following locations associated with the McCanns; their apartment (lounge, master bedroom, veranda and garden); their hired car; three of their clothes, and personal items. These were carried out by a top British dog handler, Martin Grime, who was recommended by the top agency for British policing, the National Crime Agency, whose cadaver dogs did have a 100% track record of success in trials, contrary to Ms Coulias’ misinformation, and who was headhunted by the FBI in the U.S. and now works for them.

6 For these and other reasons set out below, the three researchers (and those who peer-reviewed this work) have brought the University of Huddersfield and the science of forensic psychology into disrepute.

7 In addition, on several occasions, Andrea Coulias was guilty of the very conduct she was supposed to be investigating e.g. mocking, belittling and goading the anti-McCanns.

8 Andria Coulais’ conduct undermined many of the assertions she made about the anti-McCanns’ conduct, which she grossly misrepresented.

9 Several examples of clear researcher bias are noted.

10 The researchers did not use or even mention dictionary definitions of trolls, and in any event didn’t define anywhere what they meant by a ‘troll’, once again undermining the entire research project.

11 Numerous assertions were made without any substantiation for them.

12 The entire research report is littered with tendentious subjective assessments.

13 The report is so bad that it must be withdrawn as soon as practicable.

14 The University will need to contact any and all media who published details of this seriously flawed research project and seek an appropriate correction

15 A formal apology should be made via the #McCann hashtag in respect of the misinformation she introduced on that hashtag, namely falsely accusing McCann-doubters of ‘rejecting science’.


Our interest

By way of background, let me explain our interest in that research project. I am the owner of an internet forum, the Complete Mystery of Madeleine McCann. I founded it in November 2009 and it has had steady growth since then. We now have over 7,100 members. I can say without fear of contradiction that it is the most popular and most-read internet forum covering the Madeleine McCann case.

Its main purpose is to search for the truth about what really happened to Madeleine McCann, by bringing together researchers who pool their information and analyses of the evidence. Our forum takes a sceptical view of the McCanns’ and the British police’s view of the case. None of my members can fairly be described, by any stretch of the precise meaning of the word, as ‘trolls’. Indeed, were I to become aware that any of my members have indulged in what might be termed ’trolling‘ behaviour, I would ban them and, on occasions, have done so. Whilst members may have robust views on certain matters and may be critical of the McCanns and their advisers and backers, it does not indulge in anything that could be described as ’hate’ or ‘abuse’. Bad language of any kind is not tolerated.

I will also add that some of my most active members are those with professional or academic qualifications who use their expertise to analyse the case in depth. They include forensics experts, photographic experts, former police officers and solicitors.

We are also part of an international effort to seek the truth about Madeleine McCann, which is concentrated in Britain and Portugal but extends to forums and internet sites in many other countries, including the U.S., Germany and the Netherlands.

Another of our concerns is what has amounted to a form of hysteria generated on occasions by constant references to ‘anti-McCann trolls’. This reached its zenith in August and September 2014, just before your researchers carried out their work in 2015. References were made at the time to a ‘dossier’ of nasty tweets and internet messages by ‘anti-McCann trolls’. The media referred to the dossier as having been compiled by a ‘McCann supporter’. The dossier was handed to the Metropolitan Police, who made public pronouncements on the dossier (I should add that, later, the police publicly acknowledged that the dossier did not contain any messages that could be drafted as constituting a criminal offence).

The media at the time (August 2014) quoted Madeleine’s father, Gerry McCann - who had been active in the ‘Hacked Off’ campaign which aimed to suppress freedom of the press - as saying that such internet trolls must be severely punished. He publicly called for prosecutions of trolls who ‘should be made an example of’.

What followed shortly after his remarks, and the news about the above ‘dossier’, was the door-stepping - by SKY News Crime Correspondent, Martin Brunt - of a 60-year-old Leicestershire divorcee, Brenda Leyland, who had been active on the #McCann hashtag on Twitter, the very area of the internet chosen by your researchers to examine, just months later. This door-stepping took place on Tuesday 30 September.

It would be right to say that some of Brenda Leyland’s tweets were abusive about the McCanns, and a few contained bad language. However, so far as I am aware, she did not contact the McCanns via Twitter or otherwise, nor make any threats against them. She was also very knowledgeable about the details of the case. She was on the #McCann hashtag exchanging views robustly with those like her who did not believe the McCanns’ account of events, and with many others who were fervent supporters of the McCanns and would brook no criticism of them. There was a degree of abuse and bad language on both sides and it would be difficult to say that either ‘side’ was worse than the other. McCann-doubters who engage on Twitter are a tiny minority of the thousands on the internet who post doubts about the McCanns’ account of events and are not representative of them

On that day (30 September 2014), Brunt having door-stepped Brenda Leyland and later interviewed her in her own home, she confided in him that she felt suicidal at being exposed as a ‘troll’. Despite this, and knowing that Brenda Leyland was a vulnerable divorcee living alone, Martin Brunt and the editors of SKY News transmitted the doorstepping episode of her every 15 minutes throughout the following day. She fled from her home the day after, staying at the Marriott Hotel, Enderby, Leicestershire, just next to Leicestershire Constabulary headquarters where, on Saturday 4 October - just two days later - she was found dead, having - according to the subsequent Inquest - killed herself with an overdose of helium gas.

So we have already had one death as a result of a hysteria about ’anti-McCann trolls’. Your research project has been featured in the scientific journal Nature and published in many newspapers in Britain and in the U.S. We do not want one more ‘Brenda Leyland’. That is one of the reasons why we on our forum require you to carry out an immediate and rigorous examination of the conduct and contents of this research. .

My other concern is that the publicity generated by your research project feeds the myth that anyone who doubts the abduction narrative promoted by the McCanns, the British police and the media, must be some kind of nasty, abusive troll. Please look at my forum and you will discover a huge volume of high quality information, research and analysis that would force any neutral individual to consider the possibility that Madeleine McCann died in her parents’ holiday apartment and that her body was hidden.

Many professionals believe that Madeleine McCann died in her holiday apartment.

I would first of all draw your attention to a lengthy article by one of the most eminent forensic psychologists in Germany, Dr Christian Ludke. In a forensic science journal, he suggested there were ‘numerous indications’ that the McCanns were guilty of covering up the death of Madeleine. Likewise, Daniela Prousa, German psychiatrist and author, wrote: Analyse des Vermisstenfalles Madeleine McCann (An analysis of the case of missing Madeleine McCann). Using what she described as ‘Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis’, she also concluded from her analysis that Madeleine McCann died in her parents’ apartment.

Another Forensic Psychologist who states that Madeleine died in her parents’ holiday apartment is Dr Paulo Sargento, a University Professor, Forensic Psychologist and author in Portugal. He has published numerous articles suggesting that the McCanns are not telling the truth about what happened to Madeleine.

You will also be aware that the original co-ordinator of the Portuguese criminal investigation into Madeleine’s disappearance, Dr Gonçalo Amaral, wrote a book, ‘The Truth about a Lie’, setting out in detail the conclusions of himself and his colleagues that Madeleine died in her holiday apartment.

A noted Criminal Profiler in the U.S., Pat Brown, has published a book in the U.S. setting out the same conclusion. Another U.S. book, ‘Faked Abduction’, by Brian Johnson, sets out in 400 pages why the evidence points to Madeleine McCann having died in the McCanns’ apartment.

Many other prominent figures have also suggested that the McCanns have not told the truth about what happened to Madeleine. Here are a few examples:

John Redwood MP: “The McCanns’ theory that the girl was abducted needs evidence to support it…”

John Stalker, well-known, retired, police detective: “The McCanns are hiding a big secret”.

Wendy Murphy, former U.S. prosecutor and child protection expert: “I’m not buying it. You hire the nation’s biggest defence attorneys, PR firms, yet refuse to answer police questions?”
Christopher Friend, well-known U.S. commentator and writer: “The McCanns need to come clean now”. [ http://freindlyfirezone.com/home/item/19-mccanns-needs-to-come-clean-now ] .


Key criticisms of Dr Synnott’s research

C1 The genesis of the article and the peer review process

C2 Was Madeleine McCann abducted? – the central assumption that undermines the entirely validity of this research project

C3 The researchers’ basis for saying that Madeleine was abducted

C4 Our response to the researchers’ basis for saying that Madeleine was abducted

C5 The Lasseter Report

C6 Challenges to the research paper’s claims about the unreliability of cadaver dogs
C6a. Evidence of the reliability of cadaver dogs:
C6b. Academic links and general references:
C6c. “Incredibly Unreliable”
C6d. Author’s observations (PeterMac’)

C7 What was Lasseter’s study all about, and how should it be interpreted?

C8 What definition of the word ‘troll’ was used by the researchers?

C9 Is ‘trolling’ illegal?

C10 The ‘anti-McCann trolls’ reactions to the researcher

C11 Bias

C12 ‘Doing harm’ – Breach of the researchers’ Code of Ethics

C13 Sampling of tweets to be studied

C14 ‘Disassociation from group’: Part 3.5.1.2. & Social Indicators: Part 3.6

C15 The definition of ‘good parenting’

C16 ‘Unfounded allegations that the McCanns themselves formed part of a paedophile ring’

C17 The researchers’ interpretations

C18 ‘Unsubtantiated’ news reports implicating the McCanns in Madeleine’s disappearance

C19 Were the McCanns too controlled in their response to Madeleine’s disappearance?

C20 Uncanny echoes about ‘trolls causing damage’ of Gerry McCann’s attacks on internet trolls in 2014

C21 Pro-McCann Trolls – why were they not investigated?
 
C22 How the University of Huddersfield research paper has been reported in the media
C22a The Nature article, 15 February 2017
C22b. The article in Phys.org, 15 February 2017
C22c. The article on the Science Direct website
C22d Newspaper and internet reports of the research: Appendices 4 to 9

C23. Was there an agenda?


Attached: Appendices 1 to 11

Appendix 1: The article in Nature:
Appendix 2: The article in Phys.org
Appendix 3: The article in Science Direct
Appendix 4: The article at
http://www.fudzilla.com/news/42890-internet-trolls-cannot-be-cured
Appendix 5: Washington Post, 2 Mar 2017
Appendix 6: Daily Mirror, 3 March, 2017
Appendix 7: Sun, 4 March 2017
Appendix 8: University of Huddersfield
Appendix 9: Huddersfield Daily Examiner, 6 March, 2017
Appendix 10: The full article in Computers in Human Behaviour
Appendix 11: Tweets on a Forum of 

Letter sent today to the Prime Minister and Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe suggesting Met Police enquiry into Maddie McCann mystery is not genuine

I have today sent off my letters to the Prime Minister and the Metropolitan Police Commissioner.

I set up my forum with serious intent. I wanted my forum to put together evidence about what really happened to Madeleine. Over the years, together, we have done just that.

When Operation Grange was set up in May 2011, many of us had high hopes for it. I think it’s fair to say that most of us now feel that those hopes have been dashed.

I’d like to thank first of all those who helped me compile this letter, and all of you who in recent weeks have made suggestions about the content, even those who noticed a minor typo or a failure to close some inverted commas. I hope I’ve done justice to all your suggestions. I’m especially pleased to be able to say that my letter has been examined by some of those who have put the most work into unravelling this mystery and they have pronounced it accurate in its details and very much to the point. And that point is that Operation Grange does not seem to have been a genuine search for the truth.

I also want to pay tribute to many others whose work has contributed to this letter. By that I mean people like Nigel Moore and ‘pamalam’ who have for nearly 10 years run the mccannfiles and mccannpjfiles sites. I also mean Joana Morais and the many Portuguese helpers who voluntarily translated the Portuguese police files on the case, and many other documents. And I also mean every single individual anywhere who has helped to get us nearer to the truth.

What to do now?

I’ve done my bit. Now can you all help me please?

Can you please contact your local M.P., enclosing a copy of my letter, and add something like: “Dear MP, Please have a look at the enclosed letter and Appendix. It suggests that the Metropolitan Police have not been conducting a genuine enquiry into what happened to Madeleine McCann. Please forward this letter to the Prime Minister, Home Secretary and Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe and ask them for a detailed response to the serious allegations in the letter. Thank you. Yours sincerely…”

There is information and advice about how to contact your M.P. on the ‘Write To Them’ site:   https://www.writetothem.com/

Please use social media to promote this letter. If using Twitter, please use hashtags. I suggest something like:

#CMOMM letter to #PrimeMinister suggesting #MetPolice enquiry into Maddie #McCann mystery is not genuine

Add a link to this thread, of course!

I’ll be arranging to send copies of this to various people over the next few weeks. Please share what you’ve done, or post further suggestions, on this thread.

And thank you all again

Jill   
----------------------

From: Ms Jill Havern and members of ‘The Complete Mystery of Madeleine McCann’


Rt. Hon. Mrs Theresa May
Prime Minister
10 Downing Street
LONDON
W1A 1AA

Commissioner Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe
Metropolitan Police
8-10 Broadway,
LONDON
SW1H 0BG

Monday, 26 September 2016 

Dear Prime Minister and Commissioner Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe

The conduct of the Operation Grange investigation into the reported disappearance of Madeleine McCann

First of all, Prime Minister, we congratulate you on your appointment as Prime Minister and wish you every success in your new position. The serious matters raised in this letter will of course be very familiar to you, as you had meetings with the McCanns and their advisers when you were Home Secretary, and asked Sir Paul Stephenson to set up Operation Grange.

You may also be aware of three petitions that were placed  on the Prime Minister’s website by members of my forum, in 2010, 2014 and one in 2015, which addressed issues about the investigations into Madeleine McCann’s reported disappearance. The first two called for a public enquiry into the investigations. The most recent called on the Home Office to publish a full report on the work of Operation Grange.

According to statements made in the press on 3 April this year, you – as the then Home Secretary – sanctioned further expenditure on Operation Grange of £95,000, which was said to be for a further six months to ‘conclude’ this review and investigation. That meant that Operation Grange was scheduled to be completed on 3 October, in a week’s time. Since then we have learnt that the funding is to be extended by a further six months, with the team being granted a further £100,000.

The forum: ‘Complete Mystery of Madeleine McCann’ 

I write in my capacity as the owner of the internet forum, ‘The Complete Mystery of Madeleine McCann’, set up in November 2009. The letter is sent on behalf of my admin team, our members and our regular guests and visitors, who number tens of thousands every day. We currently have over 6,350 members, many of whom read us every day for updates, and hundreds of whom contribute by way of research, comment, and analysis every month.

Long-term forum members include many with professional backgrounds, including the police, the law and the medical professions, and others with technical skills in such fields as forensics, photography and statement analysis.

The forum is far and away the best-read Madeleine McCann discussion forum on the internet, and has been referred to regularly in the press and in books such as ‘Looking for Madeleine’, by Anthony Summers and Robbyn Swan.

It is with this background that we urge you to consider most carefully the following issues relating to Operation Grange.

The remit of Operation Grange

The very first consideration must be the remit allocated to Operation Grange from the outset. The relevant parts of it read as follows:

“The activity, in the first instance, will be that of an ‘investigative review’. This will entail a review of the whole of the investigation(s) which have been conducted in to the circumstances of Madeleine McCann’s disappearance. The focus of the review will be of the material held by three main stakeholders (and in the following order of primacy);

The Portuguese Law Enforcement agencies.
UK Law Enforcement agencies,
Other private investigative agencies/staff and organisations.

“The investigative review is intended to collate, record and analyse what has gone before. It is to examine the case and seek to determine, (as if the abduction occurred in the UK) what additional, new investigative approaches we would take and which can assist the Portuguese authorities in progressing the matter…

“The ‘investigative review’ will be conducted with transparency, openness and thoroughness…” .

It was clear from the outset that the initial investigative review had a strictly limited remit. That is highly unusual for any review which purports to be a genuine, comprehensive  review. Most ‘cold case’ reviews start with a ‘clean sheet’, so to speak. 

Crucially, however, the review insisted that it would only investigate ‘the abduction’. That meant that, from the very first, Operation Grange had ruled out any consideration of whether or not the McCanns could have been directly involved in the disappearance of Madeleine. 

The purpose of this letter is not to make any accusation against the McCanns. It is simply to point out that, despite a number of indications that they may have been involved, the Operation Grange team were told from the start not to investigate them.

During his investigative review, the Investigating Officer, Detective Chief Inspector Andy Redwood stated that “Primarily, what we sought to do from the beginning, is trying to draw everything back to, to zero, if you like ..”. Plainly this was not the case, as any potential involvement of the McCanns was ruled out from the beginning.

In addition, on the day that your predecessor David Cameron signalled that he had ordered the Home Office to set up a review, his spokesman declared that the purpose of the review was to ‘help the family’. It was plain, then, that the officers leading the Operation Grange team were simply not allowed to consider any involvement of the McCanns in Madeleine’s disappearance. 

The interim report of the Portuguese Police, 10 September 2007

I will not in this letter set out the many indications that the McCanns may have been directly involved in the disappearance of their daughter. That is something that any genuine re-investigation, with a remit not limited to declaring in advance that Madeleine had been abducted, should examine. I will however refer to the interim report of the Portuguese Police, dated 10 September 2007, a document made public in July 2008. It was compiled by Chief Inspector Tavares de Almeida. In a lengthy document, the contents of which have never been convincingly refuted, he set out the following indications that the McCanns may have been involved. These are all direct quotations from a translation of his report:

1 No abduction  “As time went by, the abduction scenario was not confirmed. The abduction hypothesis did not stand up”. 

2 The McCanns worked on their version of events  “The information that was initially collected from family and friends was uncertain. In addition, the McCanns and their friends worked on their account of events in order to strengthen and defend their version of what had happened Madeleine” 

3 ‘Distorted’ information  “The information from the immediate family and their group of friends which is fundamental in investigating this type of crime was always distorted…The group’s initial informal statements given during the initial stages of the investigation immediately introduced the abduction hypothesis. But even simple things were the subject of misinformation:

was the window open or closed?
was the shutter up or down?
was the balcony door open or closed?
was the front door merely shut or locked with a key? 

4 Changes of story  “The media attention that has been given to the case and the search for information by the said media has led to an evolution in Madeleine’s parents’ statements. All the information that has been made public has contributed to the McCanns rebuilding and adapting their story to fit the eventual police questions”. 

5 Excuses for corpse scent and blood  “When the media first informed the public that blood had been detected ‘in the car and in the apartment’, Dr Kate McCann and members of her family made statements to the public with the simple excuse that it had been someone who had access to the apartment that had deliberately placed this evidence there. Now they even say that it was the criminal investigation team that placed this ‘false’ evidence (i.e. blood and cadaver odour in the apartment and in the car). In an attempt to justify the finding of [Madeleine’s] blood in the apartment, Dr Kate McCann went even further, stating on that occasion that Madeleine sometimes suffered nosebleeds”.

6 Altering the crime scene  “There is strong evidence that the crime scene was altered, and some furniture was moved around: an intentional alteration of things in that apartment took place, in order to create a false scenario that doesn’t match reality, in an attempt to develop opportunities to create a bogus abduction scenario. Those changes are indications that the abduction was a stage-managed simulation. 

7 Findings of a top sniffer dog handler   In addition, Tavares de Almeida listed the findings of top British dog handler, Martin Grime, who now works for the F.B.I. in the U.S. In early August 2007, he took with him to Portugal two springer spaniels, Eddie, a ‘cadaver dog’ who was trained to alert to the past presence of a corpse, and Keela, a ‘blood dog’ trained to detect blood. According to Mr Grime, the two dogs between them alerted on 17 occasions either to the scent of the past presence of a corpse or to blood in locations connected to the McCanns: their apartment, their clothes and in their hired car. They alerted to no other items or locations in Praia da Luz.

8 The unreliable evidence of Jane Tanner   “Continuing with our analysis of information offered to us, one of the group’s members, Jane Tanner…became an important witness…She said she saw someone crossing the street at dinner time from the location of the McCanns’ apartment towards Robert Murat’s house…This information directed and occupied our work for a long time. This may be an example of how information that is not correct may not only delay the investigation but could even have led to losing the little girl.  Jane Tanner insisted on the truthfulness of her account. This led to certain scenarios being developed. But these scenarios were not sustained in reality..”

9 “The precise moment when Jane Tanner chose to make her statement about what she had ‘seen’ and the explanation for choosing that moment, is unreal. That is to say: it is not easy to accept that any witness (from the group), on seeing someone with a child in their arms walking away from the McCanns’ apartment, didn’t act and speak immediately. Then there is her description of the abductor being altered, or ‘perfected’. These reasons mean there is little credibility in what she says”

10 “There was a discrepancy [about the moment Jane Tanner allegedly saw an abductor] between the statements of Dr Gerald McCann and Jane Tanner. They claimed to have passed each other at only two or three metres’ distance [7 to 10 feet], yet failed to see each other. How could they position themselves as both being together in quite a confined space, yet both fail to see each other walking by; or, more correctly, one sees the other but the other doesn’t see her? Even the exact location where they supposedly crossed each other’s paths is not very well defined by both”. 

The following are direct quotations from Tavares de Almeida’s report, on the subject of the alerts by Martin Grime’s cadaver dogs: 

“Apartment 5A, Ocean Club resort, the McCanns’ apartment from where the child disappeared:  The cadaver dog alerted to the scent of a corpse in the master bedroom, in a corner, by the wardrobe; in living room, behind the sofa, and by the side window, while the bloodhound alerted to blood in the living room behind the sofa, and by the side window (in exactly the same spot that had been signalled by the cadaver dog)”. 

“Front garden of Apartment 5A:  The cadaver dog alerted to the scent of a corpse on one of the flower beds (the dog handler however commented on the ‘lightness’ of the odour in this location)”. 

“The McCann family’s clothes and belongings: The cadaver dog alerted to the scent of a corpse on two pieces of clothing belonging to Dr Kate McCann, one piece of clothing belonging to Madeleine (a red T-shirt) and on Madeleine’s soft toy [Cuddle Cat]. The cadaver odour was detected when the toy was still inside the McCanns’ residence in July 2007; the scent was later confirmed outside the house as well”.

“The vehicle that was used by the McCann family: The cadaver dog alerted to the scent of a corpse on the car key and on the inside of the car boot, while the bloodhound also marked the car key and the inside of the car boot”.

“In a total of 10 cars examined [in an underground car park) the cadaver dog and the blood dog marked only the car of the McCann family, first rented on 27 May”.

Tavares de Almeida concluded his report as follows:

“From everything that was established, the facts point in the direction of the death of Madeleine McCann occurring on the night of 3 May 2007, inside apartment 5A, at the Ocean Club resort in Praia da Luz, which was occupied by the McCann couple and by their three children. There is a coincidence between the markings of cadaver odour and blood [by the two dogs], according to the (partial) Laboratory Report that has been annexed to the files.

“The said marking occurred behind the living room sofa (cadaver odour/blood/DNA), which unarguably proves that said piece of furniture was pushed back by someone, after the death of Madeleine McCann was confirmed. Because of the few traces that were recovered on location and subject to examination, it has to be admitted as a strong hypothesis that it [the room] was subject to a clean-up operation at some time  following the occurrence of death”.

“From everything that we have discovered, our files result in the following conclusions:

A the minor Madeleine McCann died in Apartment 5A at the Ocean Club resort in Praia da Luz, on the night of 3 May 2007

B a simulation - a staged hoax - of an abduction took place

C in order to render the child’s death impossible before 10.00pm, a situation of checking of the McCann couple’s children while they slept was concocted

D Dr Gerald McCann and Dr Kate McCann are involved in the concealment of the corpse of their daughter, Madeleine McCann

E at this moment, there seems to be no strong indications that the child’s death was other than the result of a tragic accident…

F from what has been established up to now, everything indicates that the McCann couple, in self-defence, did not want to deliver up Madeleine’s corpse immediately and voluntarily, and there is a strong possibility therefore that it was moved from the initial place where she died. This situation may raise questions concerning the circumstances in which the death of the child took place.

I should at this point add the explanations that the McCanns have given for the alerts of the two dogs.

Dr Gerry McCann is on record as stating, to a Portuguese interviewer: “I can tell you that we have also looked at evidence about cadaver dogs and they are incredibly unreliable”.  This statement contradicts the evidence from many disciplines, not only searching for corpse scent and blood, but also explosives, drugs (even being able to distinguish between different types of explosive material and different drugs) and even medical conditions. Sniffer dogs are used increasingly and to strikingly good effect in many fields in countries all over the world.

By contrast, the settled view of Dr Kate McCann, as set out on pages 249-50 of her book ‘madeleine’, is that the dogs made ‘false’ alerts because of “the conscious or unconscious signals of the handler”. This amounts to an attack on the professional integrity and judgment of Mr Grime and implies that the dogs were ‘mistaken’ in all of their 17 alerts to corpse scent and blood.

In addition, In the days immediately following leaks about the dogs’ findings, the McCanns and members of their family came up with a series of bizarre and increasingly desperate explanations for them. These included that any blood was from Madeleine having nosebleeds, or having scratched herself when climbing the steps to the aircraft, or from mosquitoes flying into the walls, or that any cadaver odour was due to carrying dirty nappies or rotting meat in their hired car, or to Kate McCann’s clothes and the soft toy, Cuddle cat, having been contaminated by her having visited six people who had died in the fortnight before they left for their holiday.

There is no evidence that Operation Grange has addressed these issues, though it has been supplied to them with full references.

New research: A photograph, evidence of collusion, and other matters

During the nine years since Madeleine was reported missing, members of my forum, and many others elsewhere, have added to the concerns about the possible involvement of the McCanns in Madeleine’s disappearance. It would be impossible in a short letter to even list all these concerns. They are all available for the police to see on my forum and on many other places on the internet.

I will however mention just two significant matters.

The photographic evidence of Madeleine’s presence in Praia da Luz on the McCanns’ holiday is confined to just five photographs. Three of those five are genuine photographs taken on the first day of their holiday, Saturday 28 April. A fourth, allegedly showing Madeleine holding tennis balls on a tennis court in Praia da Luz, has been claimed to have been taken by two different people and on two different days. There are other aspects of that photograph that also cast doubt as to its true provenance.

A fifth photograph, of Gerry McCann sitting by a pool with his daughters Madeleine and Amelie, is claimed by the McCanns to have been taken at 2.29pm on the day Madeleine was reported missing. They have called it ‘The Last Photo’. However, evidence discussed on my forum suggests that this key photograph may have been taken earlier in the week, probably on the Sunday. There is no indication that Operation Grange has addressed this evidence.

Second, there is the strange and striking correlation of two reports, made respectively by Jane Tanner and Martin Smith, alleging they had seen a man carrying a young child on the night of 3 May 2007, with a third report by a Spanish ex-pat living in Germany Nuno Lourenco, in which he alleged that a Portuguese holidaymaker, Wojchiech Krokowski, had tried to kidnap his own daughter on Sunday 29 April. Nuno Lourenco’s statement can be shown to be demonstrably false, yet his description of Krokowski is matched in almost every detail by the descriptions of Jane Tanner and Martin Smith. In particular, each of the three uses this meaningless phrase to describe the man: “He didn’t look like a tourist”. These facts, prima facie, suggest collusion to promote Krokowski as the likely abductor. This alleged collusion is clearly a matter which should have been addressed by Operation Grange, but there is no evidence that it has been.

These issues have been further complicated by the former Investigation Officer of Operation Grange, Detective Chief Inspector Andy Redwood, having claimed to a 7 million audience on BBC Crimewatch on 14 October 2013 that the person seen by Jane Tanner had ‘come forward’, six years later. We were told that he had been carrying his young child home from the night creche, with no mention made of where the child’s mother was. He was said to have been carrying his child in exactly the same way as described by Jane Tanner, with no buggy, no blanket and only dressed in pyjamas. It was dark and cold (13 deg C) at the time. The identity of this person who had suddenly emerged after six years was not disclosed. In addition, if he had been taking the route from the creche described by DCI Redwood, he could not have been taking the shortest route to his apartment. For these reasons and others, many people have real cause to doubt whether DCI Redwood was being truthful.       

Members of my forum and others have on many occasions submitted detailed evidence to Operation Grange on these and other issues, but there is no evidence that these lines of enquiry have been followed up.

The appointment of Detective Chief Superintendent Hamish Campbell as the Senior Investigating Officer for Operation Grange

There is one other issue about the remit that has caused widespread concern, and that is why former Detective Chief Superintendent Hamish Campbell was chosen to head Operation Grange and allowed to set the remit. The action for which Hamish Campbell is best known is having been the Investigating Officer into the as-yet-unsolved murder of Jill Dando. His work on the case resulted in an innocent man, Barry George/Bulsara, being wrongly jailed for eight years.

There were credible suggestions, though never proved, that the conviction of Barry George was secured by a member of the Metropolitan Police placing an amount of firearms residue, matching the known weapon used to kill Jill Dando, in his coat pocket. Hamish Campbell’s role in that utterly botched police investigation surely made him an unsuitable choice to head up one of the most controversial and expensive reviews and investigations undertaken by the Metropolitan Police.

The employment by the McCanns of wholly inappropriate private detection agencies and individuals

I turn now to this aspect of Operation Grange’s remit:

“The focus of the review will be of the material held by three main stakeholders (and in the following order of primacy);

The Portuguese Law Enforcement agencies.
UK Law Enforcement agencies,
Other private investigative agencies/staff and organisations”.

I and my fellow members seriously question the designation of ‘other private investigation agencies/staff’ as ‘stakeholders’. Clearly, what is mainly being referred to here is the McCanns’ own private investigations. DCI Redwood made it clear on a number of occasions that he regarded the McCanns’ own investigations as being of real merit and interest. Pictures were seen in the British press of his men collecting boxes of documentary material from the offices, in Barcelona, of Metodo 3, one of the detective agencies used by the McCanns.  Two e-fits of a man carrying a child said to have been seen by Mr Martin Smith and his family were drawn up by Henri Exton, one of the investigators employed by the McCanns, in the spring of 2008. These e-fits lay gathering dust until suddenly, on 14 October 2013, DCI Redwood produced them, saying that they were now “the centre of Operation Grange’s focus”. These two examples demonstrate without question that Operation Grange have relied to a considerable extent on the material supplied by the various ‘other private investigation agencies/staff’.

However, we would seriously question whether they were right to do so, based on all that is now known about the agencies and people involved in the McCanns’ private investigations, for which, as we know, they received very generous donations, amounting to millions of pounds, from a generous British public.  

In an Appendix, I have provided a list of the main agencies and individuals that the McCanns have employed as part of their private investigations, and what is known about each. In summary, the two main private investigation agencies employed by the McCanns during the first year, namely Metodo 3 and Oakley International, were run by crooks.

A third private investigation team employed by the McCanns was hailed in the press as ‘Alpha Investigations Group’ and portrayed as a long-established private detective agency. It was also promoted as consisting of a team of ‘top detectives’. But as set out in my Appendix, the ‘team’ turned out to be two retired, low-ranking detectives. It was a deliberate deception, and a bogus company. ‘ALPHAIG Ltd’, was even formed to try to hide the deception.

None of the individuals or agencies used seem to have had any experience whatsoever of finding missing children or adults.

All have very dubious backgrounds and histories. I suggest that the Metropolitan Police must have known this from the beginning, since at least some of the facts I set out in the Appendix have been published in Britain’s mainstream media, and in places on the internet (including my own). How, therefore, in the light of the extraordinary conduct of these agencies and individuals,  could the Metropolitan Police possibly claim that such material could assist in their investigations?

Given the appalling track record of these agencies and individuals, may I respectfully suggest that much more light will be shed on what really happened to Madeleine McCann if you begin with a fresh police force and a fresh remit. Any new police force should then interview under caution any U.K. individuals who have worked for the McCanns (see the Appendix for a list of names).

It would also be useful for any new police force to interview former Metodo 3 employee, Julian Peribanez, who worked on the Madeleine McCann case. Two years ago, he published a book which contained a damning indictment of the corruption and criminality within Metodo 3.

His claims amount to an accusation that Metodo 3 was, in effect, never employed to search for Madeleine at all. This matches an account written by Christie Twomey for The Times in early 2008, in which she also made strong criticisms of Metodo 3 and two of its staff.

The major involvement of the government and the security services in supporting the McCanns

As Prime Minister and the nation’s Home Secretary from May 2010 to July 2016, you will know better than almost anyone else about the extensive involvement of the government and the security services ever since Madeleine McCann was reported missing. This has seemed to a great many people to have been wholly disproportionate. Moreover, it has not led to Madeleine being found nor to the arrest of anyone responsible for her disappearance. I can only summarise here some of this high-level government support:

1 Appointing, within days of Madeleine’s reported disappearance, the Head of the government’s Media Monitoring Unit, Clarence Mitchell, to be the McCanns’ public relations spokesman, a post he held for nine years

2 The reported, successful efforts of former Prime Minister, Gordon Brown to persuade the Portuguese police to release the description of a possible abductor, based on the claims of the McCanns’ friend Jane Tanner

3 The direct involvement of MI5, as disclosed by Portuguese investigation co-ordinator Goncalo Amaral, in his book ‘The Truth of the Lie’

4 The role of the British Ambassador in Portugal, interfering with the Portuguese police who were trying to seize items for forensic testing from the McCanns in the early days

5 Delays by the then Home Secretary in 2007 and 2008 in processing requests by the Portuguese authorities for rogatory interviews    

6 The reported involvement of Special Branch officers, who met with the McCanns at East Midlands Airport and drove them to their home the day they returned from Portugal

7 Setting up a top secret national co-ordinating committee on the Madeleine McCann case on 8 May 2007, under the chairmanship of the Head of Leicestershire Constabulary, Matt Baggott

8 The active involvement of the government-backed Control Risks Group in the case from the very first days after Madeleine was reported missing

9 Leicestershire Police officers deliberately delaying sending relevant evidence to the Portuguese Police, advising Jane Tanner ahead of an identity parade in which she purported to identify Robert Murat as the person she had seen carrying a child the night Madeleine was reported missing (leading to his arrest)

10 British criminal profilers identifying Robert Murat as fitting the likely profile of the abductor to the extent of 90% of likely characteristics

11 The former Prime Minister acceding to a request made by his friend Rebekah Brooks, CEO of Rupert Murdoch’s News International empire, to set up Operation Grange, reportedly after threatening him with ‘a week of bad headlines about Theresa May’.

These are only examples of the government’s heavy involvement in this case.        

The McCanns’ public appeal for funds

There are several issues regarding the McCanns’ fund-raising efforts which do not appear to have been addressed by Operation Grange at all. Some of these are set out in lengthy papers written by qualified accountant, Enid O’Dowd, and can be read on the internet.

One issue is that the McCanns’ ‘Find Madeleine Fund’ is a private trust and company and not a charity. Moreover, it is quite clearly controlled by the McCanns and close members of their family and friends, although to the public it appears to be a charity.

Several contradictory statements have been made by the McCanns and those backing them about the use to which the funds have been put. Statements were made that funds would ‘only be used for the search’. However, contrary statements have been made suggesting that significant monies from the fund have been used to pay the McCanns’ legal fees and costs.

A further concern was a reference in a recent book to a statement made by Lord Bell of  public relations firm Bell Pottinger - the company brought in to the case by Mark Warner, the holiday firm through whom the McCanns booked their holiday in Praia da Luz. He told a friend: “The McCanns paid me £500,000 in fees to keep them on the front page of every single newspaper for a year, which we did”. This raises the question of whether part or all of this huge sum of money came from the donations from members of the British public, who expected to see the money spent on a search for Madeleine, not a public relations exercise. 

Apart from that, why has the public’s money apparently been squandered on the ill-chosen agencies and individuals employed by the McCanns, a responsibility also shared of course with each one of the Directors of the Fund? How could it be, for example, that the McCanns paid Kevin Halligen, said in newspaper articles to be a serial fraudster, £500,000 plus expenses for four months’ work, during which he was for most of the time living a 5-star life of luxury in hotels in Britain and the U.S, with his girlfriend, Shirin Trachiotis? Does the public not need Operation Grange, or others, to provide answers to these questions?   

Several analyses of the accounts of the ‘Find Madeleine Fund’ have been carried out by qualified Irish accountant Enid O’Dowd. Her analyses are available at several places on the internet. These analyses have uncovered many anomalies. On page 128 of her book, ‘madeleine’, Kate McCann wrote of the Find Madeleine Fund: “It was set up with great care and due diligence by experts in the field. From the outset everyone agreed that, despite the costs involved, it must be run to the highest standards of transparency”. However, the accounts, every year, convey only the bare minimum to comply with the Companies Acts. The public cannot gain from them anything like a clear picture of where all their money has gone.

More recently, on 2 September 2015, the McCanns’ spokesman, Clarence Mitchell, said:: “They [the McCanns] realise that [Operation Grange]  cannot go on forever. A newspaper report informed the public that Mitchell had explained “how former GP Kate and heart doctor Gerry, both 37, of Rothley, Leics., had moved money from the publicly-backed Find-Madeleine-Fund into a special account in anticipation of having to finance the hunt for their daughter themselves".  The public, when they gave money to the Find Madeleine Fund, would not expect the Directors to then create a separate fund, which was reported as being controlled just by the McCanns.  

An analysis of the case by 'PeterMac', a retired Police Superintendent, and other evidence submitted by members of my forum

'PeterMac', a retired Police Superintendent, has studied the Madeleine McCann case for nine years, and conducted original research on key evidential issues in the case. I am aware that he has submitted a great deal of evidence to the respective Senior Investigating Officers, always obtaining a receipt for the information he has sent them.   His analysis, which by implication is highly critical of Operation Grange, has been presented in a free e-book which can now be read at this link:

http://whatreallyhappenedtomadeleinemccann.blogspot.co.uk/   

It has also been reproduced on my websites, here:
https://jillhavern.forumotion.net/t13115-petermac-free-e-book-what-really-happened-to-madeleine-mccann 
…and here:
http://gerrymccan-abuseofpower-humanrights.blogspot.co.uk/2016/08/retired-police-superintendent-peter.html

Other members of my forum have also submitted evidence and have been assured verbally and in writing that all the evidence they have submitted is being kept on computer and has been taken into consideration. It will therefore be available for any fresh police force, not bound by a restricted remit, to investigate.

What should happen now

I have set out the case that Operation Grange has not succeeded in its search for the truth because of its inappropriately limited remit. I have also referred to justified criticisms about the operation of the Find Madeleine Fund. 

Despite impressive statistics released from time to time of the numbers of documents studied, lines of enquiry pursued, rogatory requests submitted, numbers of suspects or persons of interest questioned, etc., it seems plain that after well over six years, Operation Grange is nowhere nearer to solving this case. Despite promises of ‘openness’ and ‘transparency’, there is no evidence made available to the public which demonstrates that any of the above issues I have listed has been fully investigated (if at all) and what (if any) the findings were.     

You will be aware that thousands of people, among them professionals such as police officers, criminal profilers, criminologists, doctors, psychiatrists and statement analysts, have questioned the McCanns’ account of events.

You may recall that at the recent Police Federation Conference, you addressed the issue of widespread corruption in British police forces and the need to tackle it. It cannot simply be assumed that Operation Grange is free from corrupt influences.

At the same time, we have seen in the press over recent years many accounts of senior-level police corruption in the Metropolitan Police force.    

On behalf of the members of my forum, therefore, I call on you to:

1 Appoint independent assessors of proven integrity and independence to evaluate the work of Operation Grange, and make its findings public. In this respect, may I remind you of this part of the review’s remit, as determined by DCS Hamish Campbell: “The ‘investigative review’ will be conducted with transparency, openness and thoroughness…” Any such report must include a full investigation into the huge involvement in this case of MI5, Special Branch and other government  or government-backed security agencies;

2 Appoint, via the new Home Secretary, a different police force, which has the highest possible reputation for integrity and independence, to investigate the reported disappearance of Madeleine McCann;

3 Ensure that any new police investigation has an unlimited remit and can therefore go to wherever the evidence leads them;

4 Order the relevant government department to investigate all aspects of the operation of the Find Madeleine Fund, including:
- investigating the actions of all of its Directors,
- the funding of the private investigations,
- whether or not funds have been used to pay the McCanns’ legal fees and expenses,
- why it was necessary for a separate account to be set up last year, to be controlled by the McCanns and not the Directors, and
- accounting for all monies paid into and from the Find Madeleine Fund since it was set up in May 2007.

I shall send the same letter to Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe but I urge you to seek an urgent meeting with him to discuss the contents of my letter. Please give this matter your most careful consideration and I shall look forward to your response in the near future.

Yours sincerely

_______________________

Jill Havern
For and on behalf of the members of ‘The Complete Mystery of Madeleine McCann’

Reply and Appendix on this thread: https://jillhavern.forumotion.net/t13163-letter-sent-today-to-the-prime-minister-and-sir-bernard-hogan-howe-suggesting-met-police-enquiry-into-maddie-mccann-mystery-is-not-genuine