The Guilt of the McCanns by Manuel Catarino

The Guilt of the McCanns
7 December 2007 | Posted by Joana Morais Leave a Comment
Preface by Francisco Moita Flores

All the steps of the investigation that passions the world

Maddie's case moved the world. The tragedy of her parents, Kate and Gerry McCann, sparked a wave of sympathy and solidarity truly unique. But Madeleine McCann is still missing and from the initial assumption of abduction, the evidence also requires the possibility of her death. Without stopping the poignant impact in the public one wonders what happened that night of May 3 at the Ocean Club.

What happened to Maddie?
Who’s to blame for her disappearance?
What investigation has been made to find her?

"This is not just a timely book. It is a story of great inspiration. An essential document for a day in the future, intended for the story of Madeleine's disappearance. "
- From the preface of Francisco Moita Flores

This book includes an updated and unique interview to the criminologist José Manuel Anes, that made an impartial review to the investigation conducted by the Judiciary Police.

Who is the Author?
Manuel Catarino is a Correio da Manhã head redactor. As a journalist his career is linked to major reports on crime. His journalistic intuition is very alike of a criminal investigator, which is due to his intense knowledge of the "modus operandi" of the police. He began working in 1986, in the newspaper "O Dia". He was founder of the "Diário Europeu". He worked also in the weekly newspaper Tal & Qual, where he played up as a reporter for seven years. He was editor and chief of the 24 Horas, where he published, for example, three major dossiers: "The coups that have shaken Salazar", "Major operations of the Colonial War" and "Crimes that shocked Portugal". He was editor of the magazine Focus and cooperated in the magazine Grande Reportagem. He also collaborates in the magazine "Sábado".

The title of this book, The Guilt of the McCann's, is not a point of arrival, but a point of departure. This book is essentially a journalistic work. Recalls facts widely reported and discussed in newspapers, on radio, on television. Does not point an accusing finger to the McCann’s. It helps the readers in the labyrinth of stories on the disappearance of Madeleine.

An excerpt from the book “A Culpa dos McCanns”

"THE MCCANN'S GUILT"

If the disappearance of Maddie was the plot of a novel by Agatha Christie, Hercule Poirot would have reunited the McCann’s couple and the seven British friends by the side of the pool of the Ocean Club, and in an exercise of reasoning would have solved the mystery.

The researchers from the Judicial Police did not. They acted since the beginning conditioned by a thesis inflated and exerted by the high spheres of influence in England, that was the thesis of the abduction.

However the instinct, powerful weapon of the criminal investigation, told them that the key for the Madeleine’s disappearance could be in what they called the “British milieu”: They had the conviction that the McCann's and their friends probably knew more than they told.

(...)

Every night, the employees of the Tapas restaurant prepared the oval table, by the pool side of the Ocean Club for the dinner of an enjoyable group of nine Brits that were spending their holidays there.

None of the couples took their children: the children were sleeping alone in the apartments. They began to arrive to the restaurant around half past eight. They liked to drink. Some asked for martinis and beer as an aperitif. Others, like Kate, preferred a daiquiri mixture prepared in the shaker with white rum, lemon juice and sugar syrup. They were crazy about wine.

The women ordered white wine very cold. The men selected red wine. Over dinner, which would usually last almost till midnight, they typically drank amongst them between 10 and 12 bottles, always in a good mood.

(...)

That night of May 3, Thursday, Gerry and Kate McCann, both of 39 years old, were the first to arrive at Tapas. It was around half past eight.

Thirty minutes later, as always happened since April 27 when they arrived to the Ocean Club, all friends were already sit down at the oval table near the illuminated pool: David and Fiona Payne, both doctors, parents of two small children; Russell O'Brien, doctor, and Jane Tanner, also with two babies; Mathew Oldfield and Rachel, doctors, which had a 18 month old baby, and Fiona's mother, Dianne Webster, 62 years old. That afternoon, around half pat five, Kate and Gerry walked with the three children near the beach, about 800 meters of the village. They were in the restaurant esplanade Paraiso.

Kate and her husband were with two more English couples. The employees remember it very well. There were six adults and seven children. Only the small children ate the kids menu. Madeleine ate spaghetti bolognese. Adults asked for beer. Madeleine still ate an ice cream and played with her father in the swings.

It was the last time the child was seen publicly. They all left the restaurant Paraiso by 18, 15 and took the path to the Ocean Club. In a little more than two hours, after they put the children to sleep, the McCanns' were at Tapas for the routine dinner with their friends.

(...)

It was a pleasant Spring night. The customers of the oval table oval glowed with joy. Kate was the more reserved. They asked for the usual drinks and the dinner, grilled fish and meat kebabs with the usual wine. The employees did not notice anything different.

Nothing led them to be suspicious of anything. They barely knew that a mysterious crime would, in the evening, shake the tranquillity of the Ocean Club in Praia da Luz and throw the resort to the limelight of newspapers and televisions around the world. While the adults dined happily, eight children slept alone in four apartments: the three children of McCanns', two of Russell O'Brien and Jane Tanner, and two of David and Fiona Payne and the baby of Rachel and Mathew Oldfield .

Only David and Fiona used a system of communication to ensure that children did not cry.

The employees of the Tapas, that were working followed with particular attention any call from the oval table, in that evening they didn’t notice many people get out of the chairs in that night to go see their children.

They are sure that two men stood up, almost at the same time, only a few minutes after the dishes were served, shortly after nine o'clock. One of them was Russell O'Brien. The other was Gerry McCann. The rest of the group continued to eat and drink.

Russell, doctor, married to Jane Tanner, only returned to the table one hour later. He told his friends that he found the eldest child, same age as Maddie, unwell: the girl was vomiting and he changed the bed linen.

Gerry took about 25 minutes. To reach the apartment, Gerry had to circumvent the pool, leave the Ocean Club and go about 20 meters from the street poorly lighted till the small access gate of eight steps that ends in the door.

Back to the restaurant, he meets up in the street with a British television producer Jeremy Wilkins that he acquainted during the holidays. Jeremy was walking his baby to making him sleep. The two men, who usually played tennis at the Ocean Club, greet each other and exchange two fingers of conversation. The street was deserted.

When Gerry sits again at the dinner table, Russell O'Brien had not yet come back, he finally, returns almost at 22 hours, nearly half an hour after Gerry. Then, when Russell had barely explained that the eldest child was vomiting, Kate McCann put the glass of white wine and gets up to go see her children.

Employees had already taken 12 bottles of wine to the oval table in an hour. For the time being, everything is still calm. Five minutes later, the Ocean Club turns into a chaos.

Kate McCann appears in the rear balcony of the apartment, which faces the interior of the Ocean Club. She screams and calls by her husband, Gerry, at the table with his friends. Kate is about 50 meters in a straight line. All hear her, but not all can see her because of the palm trees between the pool and the apartment.

The friends sat up and rushed themselves in the direction of the house rented by the McCann’s. That night, they did not take the digestives. They loved small glasses of bitter almond. The dinner was interrupted. Only one person stayed at the table: Dianne Webster, Fiona’s mother.

All the others headed for Kate. They found her in a trance: They took our Madeleine, she repeats, without stopping, shouting. The friends go in the apartment, open and close doors, test the windows, open and close the blinds. Among the confusion, Dianne appears, the eldest of the group, which stayed at the table and walked slowly to McCann's apartment. Dianne went to Maddie's room and sees how the twins Sean and Amelie, despite the noise, slept like angels.

The Ocean Club, that was calm, becomes suddenly a confusion of screams and running. Alarmed guests appear at their windows.

The employees of the resort who were still on duty at that time also approach the McCann's apartment. The upstairs neighbour, Pamela Fenn, owner of the flat that has lived there for half a dozen of years also goes to the McCann's door. She recalls very well seeing Kate without a tear on her eyes. Pamela offers herself immediately to call for the GNR. Kate thanks her but tells her that it was not necessary because she had already called.

Maddie's mother did not tell the truth. The first call for the GNR was infact made by an employee of the Tapas restaurant around 22h40 more than half an hour after Kate discovered that her child was missing. The first patrol arrived at 23 hours. The military did not speak English and collected the first statements with the help of an employee of the resort which acted out as a translator.

(...)

When the first investigators of the Judicial Police arrived to the Ocean Club, only a few minutes after midnight, in the early hours of 3rd to May 4th, they spoke with Gerry and Kate.

The conversation took place in the apartment 5A – the scene of the crime. The two twins, Sean and Amelie, slept deeply. The policemen, trained to look in for the minimum details, observe curiously how the house is flawlessly tidy. It does not seem a place of holidays where three children run around and jump the whole day.

The sofa has not one single crease and chairs are positioned meticulously. There aren’t any clothes forgotten or out of the place, not even toys in sight. Only the cuddle cat, which was always with Maddie, is now tight in Kate's hands. The kitchen is clean, without the smallest vestige of remains of milk or children food.

The inspectors searched the house. They did not find the smallest signal of break in neither in the door or the windows. They noticed that the couple had not at home any medicine awkwardly to the normal for a family in holidays. On that night, the McCann’s left the apartment and were accommodated in another flat of the Ocean Club. The crime scene is free for the team of experts of the Laboratory of Scientific Police that left from Lisbon.

The twins are taken by the parents. Kate carries the girl in her arms and Gerry the boy. Amelie and Sean continue to sleep and not even noticing the change. The couple is only authorized to carry the indispensable things to spend the night in another apartment.

The Judicial Police gives the next day, to the family the rest of their belongings. The vestiges collected in the apartment where the crime happened were useless: they were contaminated by the crowd of curious that entered that house after the alarm.

(...)

Katherine Marie Healy and Gerald Patrick McCann "Kate and Gerry", for the most intimate, grew separated by thousands of kilometres. It was difficult that one day they met in an island of 50 million inhabitants.

She is English from Liverpool; he grew in a working neighbourhood of Glasgow, in Scotland. Most Scots are catholic and the English are mostly Anglicans. Kate's family is part of the English minority faithful to the Church of Rome. The religion and the faith will be determinant to the union of Kate and Gerry.

The Catholic girl from Liverpool, when she decided to study Medicine, went to the University of Dundee in Scotland where she met the future husband, also student of the medical school.

Kate and Gerry belonged to the same group. She is snob, he is more sociable. But Kate according to what a colleague told the British newspaper The Mail on Sunday begun to loose the irritating superior air and turned into a bohemian. She went to bars, drinked beer and amused herself until early morning. She graduated without problems. The book of the end of the course, in 1992, recalls her as one of the most popular of the medical school of the University of Dundee. It was known by the suggestive nickname of Hot Lips.

(..)

The complicity between the four couples fuelled the rumours that they engaged themselves in an exchanging sexual game known as swing.

The insinuation emerged for the first time in an English blog and ran world. The Criminal Police also became interested, though with prudence in the sexual secrets of the McCann’s. The issue would only have interest to the investigation if the exchanges of partners surpassed the group of friends.

If the swing was open to other men and women, the author of the abduction could just as well be one of presumable sexual partners of Kate or in a far fetched theory, his wife, who for various reasons could feel despised.

Another fact interested the detectives concerning the sexual habits of the McCann’s and friends: Madeleine, like the twins, was born by artificial insemination. Would Gerry be the real biological father? Or was the girl not born by in vitro fertilization, and the father could be one of the swingers? The entire hypotheses were open as the manuals of criminal investigation instruct.

The Criminal Police nevertheless was just pursuing a possibility, the abduction. The crime could be justified by one of five reasons: Madeleine was taken by a paedophilia network; stolen by a family to be sold to adoption; abducted for the payment of a ransom, taken by real biological father or abducted by circumstances related to the swing.

(...)

Maddie's eyes are not equal. The left has shades of blue and green. The right is green and displays a sign of malformation in the iris, which in medicine is called coloboma, commonly known as cat's eyes. Gonçalo Amaral did everything to persuade them.

Kate and Gerry, obsessed with the advertising of photos of their missing daughter did not listen to him. He asked them to at least not show a frontal photo of Madeleine .Without success. The McCanns' were inflexible.

The girl has yet another sign, brownish in the twin muscle of the left leg a particularity that was not disclosed. If Madeleine was kidnapped to be sold to a paedophilia network or to a family for adoption, as was being investigated and the parents suspected, the exposure of the eyes, that made her recognizable throughout the world, could led to her death - this was a strong belief in the Criminal Police.

The girl was easily recognizable. Her life would not be worth a dime. The kidnapper would hardly be able to sell her. Nobody would want her, neither the paedophiles, nor the adoption family. No buyer would accept taking such high risks. Maddie was marked. Only one solution was left to the abductor: get rid of her.

Kate and Gerry, despite the prudent advice of the Judicial Police, still published the pictures of their daughter’s eyes. They did so aware of the likelihood of the outcome. One day after the disappearance, the angel face of Maddie was already going around world.

There are quite a few mistakes in that, but a good read.

fred wrote:There are quite a few mistakes in that, but a good read.

Yes fred, the Paraiso restaurant , timelines, but as you say , a good read and evidence that the McCanns took no notice of the Police with regard to showing photographs of Madeleine .

AND the McCanns NEVER sued HIM although this was published 8 months BEFORE GA's book!

Manuel Catarino has written a book. In The Guilt of the McCanns, he writes: “Kate, exhausted, keeps repeating the same. She played with the children in the living room, she put them to bed – and by 7.30pm they were already asleep. The police don’t believe her. They think Madeleine DIED accidentally in the living room and the parents, in a panic, fearful of the consequences, interested only in defending their reputation, hid her body and STAGED her abduction"

Says Clarence Mitchell, It’s “another shameful attempt to make money out of the situation”. Clarence Mitchell is paid to represent he McCanns, how much is not said.

UNLIKE Mitchell who DID make money out of the situation! at least £250,000 to date, for himself!

jeanmonroe wrote:AND the McCanns NEVER sued HIM although this was published 8 months BEFORE GA's book!

Manuel Catarino has written a book. In The Guilt of the McCanns, he writes: “Kate, exhausted, keeps repeating the same. She played with the children in the living room, she put them to bed – and by 7.30pm they were already asleep. The police don’t believe her. They think Madeleine DIED accidentally in the living room and the parents, in a panic, fearful of the consequences, interested only in defending their reputation, hid her body and STAGED her abduction"

Says Clarence Mitchell, It’s “another shameful attempt to make money out of the situation”. Clarence Mitchell is paid to represent he McCanns, how much is not said.

UNLIKE Mitchell who DID make money out of the situation! at least £250,000 to date, for himself!

Hi jeanmonroe, I think my post is an excerpt from the book., a couple of the things he got wrong, Madeleine did not go the the Paraiso , but I would like to know how he learned of Kate's nickname in Uni...Hot Lips Healey " LOL

WHY didn't the McCanns SUE him?

He wrote the same as GA.

He must, by definition, of their libel 'claim' against GA, have surely 'hampered' the search for a live Madeleine.

By stating that she 'died'

And no one is going to search for a dead child are they?

The McCanns never came close to SUING him, did they?

WHY, WHY, WHY...........NOT?

the UK police continued to look for April Jonmes body even though they knew she was dead, ill bet the Portuguese did too. If there was a child missing in my area, id go out and look, but would I look for 6 years, no I wouldn't. just being honest.

jeanmonroe wrote:WHY didn't the McCanns SUE him?

He wrote the same as GA.

He must, by definition, of their libel 'claim' against GA, have surely 'hampered' the search for a live Madeleine.

By stating that she 'died'

And no one is going to search for a dead child are they?

The McCanns never came close to SUING him, did they?

WHY, WHY, WHY...........NOT?

Because Amaral knows the whole story. He cannot prove it in a court of law perhaps and does not have a body, but he knows. He also knows whats in the retained files.

They want him gagged so that he never again opens his mouth about the case.

Oh what a tangled web they weaved....even to using Control Risks to do a forensic test , rather than the Portugese Forensics dept. The first time Kate asked for the test when they were in PDL , Gerry can cancelled. as an Anaesthatist , Kate would have known whether any drugs would have worn off, so why did Gerry cancel.?????