Thursday, September 13, 2007

I'm not a detective

I am so full of surprises aren't I?

No, I am definitely not a detective, but yesterday an educated respectable middle class man came to see me and my supervisor at the office and lied to us. I can fully understand, in view of what he was lying about, that he wouldn't have wanted us to know the truth. But anyway, he lied and we both knew within the first two minutes that he was lying. He kept contradicting himself. He said he had no memory of something really major that had happened to him less than two years ago. He was sweating. His body language alone screamed out how uncomfortable he was. And much as I would love to relate the whole story which is so ridiculous, if it hadn't caused hurt to an Innocent person it would be funny, I can't because of reasons related to why my first blog ended. The only reason I mention it at all is because it was blindingly obvious he was lying.

You probably all know where this is leading, and it is of course the point where I finally fail in my determination not to mention the Madeleine McCann story here...even though like much of the rest of the population I am transfixed by the story which is without doubt the most astonishing and compelling real life drama I can ever remember. I saw yesterday that some reporters covering the story are refusing to speak to other reporters who hold a different view to them about the innocence or otherwise of Kate and Gerry McCann. I can identify with that having come close to throwing my eldest out the house due to his declaration from Day 1 that it was 'the parents what done it.'

As tales of more and more DNA 'evidence' is splashed across the news every day this is probably not the wisest moment to declare that I am simply unable to conceive that Kate or Gerry McCann could have had anything to do with the disappearance of their daughter beyond the undisputed fact that they had left their children alone. They have to live with that for the rest of their lives.

My reasons for this are by no means original and have undoubtedly been expressed by thousands of others who like me can not believe we have all been taken in for so long by what would amount to the most large scale callous confidence trick played on the entire public in recent history.

Not of course that now I have started I am going to refrain from giving my reasons for my belief that Madeleine's parents did not kill her and then conceal her body.

We are asked to believe that 1) They killed their beautiful daughter, conceived by IVF which suggests that they were not forced reluctantly into parenthood, but instead struggled to achieve that status.
2) Having killed her, presumably even their most virulent critics would accept probably accidentally, instead of responding with total and utter hysteria, they made a joint agreement to hide her, and concoct a story about her being snatched in her sleep. One assumes such a decision would not have been a quick five minutes chat, but nevertheless they then
3) Manage to take her out of the flat without anyone seeing them and somehow, in a country they have never visited before, find such a good hiding place that finger tip searches of the locality do not reveal her whereabouts.Then they went for a meal with friends...as you would.
4)They then lauch a massive campaign to keep their daughter in the public consciousness. Was there anyone in the UK, not to mention many other places, who did not see the McCann's on our TV screens? So huge is the campaign that they are followed every moment by the entire world's media. If they wanted to be low key and hope people wouldn't recognise them I would suggest visiting the pope alongside TV cameras was somewhat ill advised.
5)Then in spite of being watched everywhere they went and being probably about as unrecognisable as Princess Di was in her day, they manage to remove her body from Hiding Place A, and dispose of it in Hiding Place B without any one noticing, incluidng the police who were it seems at that stage monitoring their every telephone call.

Well if they did pull the above of they will have to rewrite the book on Master Criminals.

Going back to the beginning, lies are detectable. We watch, we listen, and we weigh up the available facts as they are known to us. I just can not accept that two individuals could lie for so long and so consistently about something of the unimaginable scale of killing your three year old daughter, to everyone watching on their televisions, anxious as we were to hear news of the missing child.

There. Now I have said that I expect we can expect the two of them to make a full confession sometime later today.

So convinced am I of their innocence it is only THEN I would think they were lying.



Just to add to what I said earlier, I saw this news report, and just to highlight this bit -

Mrs McCann was frequently seen writing her diary in private moments after Madeleine went missing from the family's holiday apartment more than four months ago.


SHE WAS FREQUENTLY SEEN WRITING HER DIARY IN PRIVATE MOMENTS.

But no one noticed a thing when she popped out to move her daughter's body?

Oh come on!!!!

14 comments:

Reidski said...

"the most large scale callous confidence trick played on the entire public in recent history" - I think that may have been Iraq's so-called weapons of mass destruction. Oh, wait, most of us weren't duped by that one!

Martin said...

I don't believe they did it either but can I just suggest 1) is irrelevant if it was an accident
and 5)which i'm guessing is a reference to the DNA sample taken from the hire car, assumes Maddy's body was actually in the car rather than the sample being transferred there off her parents clothing etc.
Having been away for a week I've missed a lot of the finer details of last weeks development mind you and only have CNN headlines to go by.

Martin said...

Having said that, if it was an accident or negligence it's still asks a lot to believe that they were cool enough to cover their tracks like you say.

Anonymous said...

I agree with Martin on the irrelevance of (1): all infanticide is 'unbelievable' (especially to somebody as kind-hearted as you, JJ!) and the mode of conception is beside the point. In relation to (2), consider what the McCanns have to lose by an admission of responsibility: their reputations; their family's reputation; their careers; their remaining children. (3) is a good point, as is (5). As for (4), I think the campaign was launched by friends and family rather than the McCanns themselves. If they are responsible for their daughter's death, the media coverage has helped them to slip into a self-preserving denial of the truth. You assume that the couple are lying consistently, but it may be inconsistencies in their accounts that have led to the police closing in. It is all very interesting in a ghastly kind of way, and I am sure we will never know the whole story.

J.J said...

No Reidski - I don't know many people who fell for that one.

Welcome home Martin! Fair points well made, but yes, who on earth could maintain such a charade over something as heinous as having killed their own child? One person maybe with a enormous stretch of the imagination - but two of them????

Messalina, interesting what you say about how much they would have to lose, but to come up with such a plan and dispose of a body in such a short space of time even if they did agree very speedily to cover up what they had done suggests extreme mental illness to me, which you would think someone from their past would have picked up on. I have n't seen the headline 'Kate McCann tortured her pet rabbit!' - or should I say I haven't seen it yet.

JoeinVegas said...

Oh Jane, to start your own story and then very obviously try to throw us off the scent by branching to something else is quite reprehensible.

Monozygote said...

it's still asks a lot to believe that they were cool enough to cover their tracks like you say

martin - only if we assume that neither of them have any kind of personality disorder or similar - let's face it, the incidence of such things is probably somewhat elevated amongst people who kill children, or cover up an accidental death relative the general population. So maybe it's not that far-fetched.

And actually, I've got to add, it's actually a myth that lying is that easy to detect, however much we'd like to believe it...

J.J said...

*Hangs head in shame.* Sorry Joe!

Dandelion, I guess as a stretch I could accept one of them had the capacity to lie so convincingly - but two of them? It really does seem too far fetched to me.

Martin said...

Good point JJ. Although one of them could be in the thrall of the other. And who is to say that accidents don't happen to psychopaths too.

Going back to the initial story, if people can tell by looking at someone that they're lying then why don't they get the Big Brother experts in, or even Derren Brown. I know you said your bloke was contradicting himself (a sure sign) but people can be anxious and sweating for other reasons.In the prescence of beauty for example.;)

badgerdaddy said...

I read one fascinating theory recently, that the thing I was reading said was gaining credence in Portugal - that the parents sedated the children before going out, and the oldest one died as a result. Unlikely, sure, but not impossible. That could mean both lose the other kids and are struck off, which would mean covering one crime to lose everything. Not unheard of.

It's a stretch though. But you never know, only time might tell.

Speaking of huge fabrications in recent times... Nah, there's been bigger ones than this, assuming this is one. Remember that complete mentalist who claimed her boyfriend was stabbed to death in a road rage incident, but it turned out she'd stabbed the shit out of him? She went on national TV crying her eyes out so his killer, who she had described to police, could be caught. That one really stuck in my mind, because the crime was very violent.

Awful WV: fkwoeeqb

Arthur Clewley said...

I don't know what happened of course but I would be less surprised if it turned out they did it than you JJ. It wouldn't be the first time that someone who made an emotional appeal at a police press conference for information about a missing family member ended up convicted of the murder, they do have a lot to lose if they even accidentally killed the girl, the worst serial killer in our history was a doctor and that profession must have at least the same proportion of psychopaths as the general population, some people are completely unable to lie like your friend in this story but some people do it with ease and proficiency. At the end of the day, they haven't been convicted of anything and all the spectulation is rather sordid, but I'm afraid I have less condidence in saying that it was impossible that the parents did the deed than some. Whatever happened, the poor littlelass has has something very awful happen to her and it's never going to have a happy ending, this affair.

Nat said...

I blame soap operas.

Why can't we believe the good in people any more?

I also think that the McCann family are innocent.

...which means that they probably aren't. I'm terrible at detecting lies.

Reidski said...

You know my feelings on this one, JJ - i.e. they are guilty as fuck - but all I want to say is that Gerry and Kate McCann are extremely weird. And I'm not saying that by being weird should necessarily mean that people are guilty of infanticide, I'm merely saying that they are weird!

J.J said...

Martin, inspired idea about the Big Brother 'expert'! And yes, thinking about what you said, my supervisor is very beautiful - but he was still lying. It wouldn't have been quite so obvious though if he hadn't told me the opposite story 24 months before.

Badger daddy - yes, that 'road rage' story was a tall one wasn't it?

Arthur, I guess we all knew after the first 48 hours there would be no happy ending for the child, but it bothers me that on top of the suffering the McCanns are undergoing with a missing child, they are now subject to this modern day witch hunt. Guess that is just because I am so certain of their innocence.

Nat, I think you are quite right. Everything is reduced to a soap opera and we forget all this is about a missing child who endured god only knows what before she, in all probability, was killed.

Reidski - I keep telling you - it's the tranquillisers they must be taking that makes you think they are weird.