Madeleine: Our daughter's disappearance and the continuing search for her

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EXCLUSIVE: Madeleine McCann’s parents will finally find out on Tuesday if they have won 14-YEAR libel battle against cop who suggested they were to blame for the girl’s disappearance Assigning a "special status" (arguidos) to Kate and Gerry, in spite of an elementary judicial principle of treating anyone innocent unless and until proven guilty;

Having been brought up a Roman Catholic, all references to that faith also jar as it’s clear it appears to mean very little to them. They do not appear to go to Sunday Mass until after Madeleine disappears. Praying does not appear to be part of the children's bedtime routine. And I have never known a Roman Catholic call Our Lady ‘Mary’. So that in turn lead me to buying Kate’s book. A small attempt at trying to be fair to her and them. Kate blames almost everyone for Madeleine’s disappearance, but barely a word of self-reproach about their parental negligence. A good few chapters in there is mention of it but once again in answer to the rebukes rather than any guilt over their parenting skills. Bob Mortimer wins 2023 Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction with The Satsuma Complex

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I've had this on my Kindle for ages, but only got round to reading it after watching the recent Netflix documentary. Dr Kate raises with police inspector Luis Neves the significance of her friends Fiona, Rachael and Russell all saying they reported seeing Robert Murat hanging around the Ocean Club on the night Madeleine was reported missing. Luis Neves reacts and gets agitatated, snapping: ‘No, Kate!’ While the subject matter is difficult, the story is important to read. For one thing, it accomplishes its objective, which is to keep Madeleine's name, face, and the event of her abduction, in the public memory, with the hope that someone, somewhere, sometime, will see her, recognize her, and aid in returning her to her family. Police Whistleblower Maggie Oliver: I witnessed police failing victims during the Rochdale grooming gangs scandal. How can we STILL allow this to happen? Commenced by then-home secretary Theresa May, the Metropolitan Police’s Operation Grange would be led by commander Simon Foy and comprise a team of three detective inspectors, five detective sergeants, 19 detective constables and six civilian staff.

What is admirable is that Kate McCann appears to talk candidly and honestly about some of the negative and potentially scathing treatment that both she and her husband received at the hands of the Portuguese police during a series of interviews where they were near-enough framed as murderers and perpetrators of the crime. Let it be said, many people just would not be able to deal with this in any public or private way whatsoever. At the end of the day, if any of the other friends in that group, the so called tapas 9, if any of them knew of anything Kate or Gerry had done to Maddie there is no way they would have stayed quiet, someone would have talked. Dr Kate was ‘terrified’ flying in a small ‘pre-war propeller plane’ because the jet for Morocco had broken down. The part in the book where Kate tells of coming home to England and walking in their house is heartbreaking, and you would have to experience that heartbreak to able to write it as she did.

All we have ever wanted is to find her, uncover the truth and bring those responsible to justice. We will never give up hope of finding Madeleine alive but whatever the outcome may be, we need to know as we need to find peace. Meanwhile, even an unobservant reader would have noticed the almost immediate and subsequently consistent involvement of the British Government. That still bothers me greatly, even now. Anyone would think this couple had done something heroic, not leave three very small children unattended, out of sight and out of hearing, for several nights on the trot! In an extract from her 2011 book, Madeleine, Kate said: "There have been many times when I've felt God has deserted me or that He has let Madeleine down. I've occasionally doubted His existence altogether. And yes, I've been angry with Him... For now, though, at least, my anger towards God seems to have subsided. I believe in Him and I still feel His presence." On 22 June Justine McGuiness arrived. Dr Kate recounts the story of the Dutch newspaper publishing a report of how Madeleine might be buried at Odiaxere, which turned out to be false.

Earlier this year, German investigators searched a large section of the Barragem do Arade reservoir, about 30 miles from Praia da Luz. German prosecutors at the time said the items discovered in the three-day operation might be linked to her disappearance but have not yet been confirmed as evidence. So did it sway me? Yes and no. As one of the PJ commented, she is either a great actress or innocent. Yet protesting too much also springs to mind.I have never been a fan of Kate McCann, although equally I've never hated her. I tend to lean towards the indifferent if I'm completely honest. That said, I chose to read this book out of a combination of morbid human interest and wanting to form my own opinion of Kate without just relying on the press.

Yet, the tone did distinctly change and I realised I didn’t actually believe her any more. Not that I think murder was involved then or now. But desire to believe her seemed to evaporate. There is no mention whatsoever of any attempt by wither the McCanns or by the Find Madeleine Fund to sue Halligen for his obviously fraudulent conduct. The Portuguese police appear no different to our own. The basis of their intended fit-up appears to have been supposed DNA evidence found in the boot of a car rented three weeks after Madeleine disappeared, and dogs' reactions in the much-tramped-through flat months later. The suggestion is that in the full glare of publicity the McCanns, undetected, had moved her body weeks later in their rental car. It emerges that the DNA evidence was evidence only that Madeleine or members of her family had been in the car. The dogs that supposedly smelt a corpse in the apartment, meanwhile, have been found in other cases to be less accurate than flipping a coin. I sincerely hope that one day we do lean of what happened to Maddie, if only for her parents to get closure. The only hope is that she is being kept somewhere and treated well, being kept out of the public eye such as those three girls in America that were found after 10 years last month. If she is, I think the answers lie very close to where she was taken from - very likely in Praia De Luz itself. We took action for one and only one reason: Mr Amaral’s unfounded claims were having a detrimental impact on the search for Madeleine,” they said.I would have had the twins tested for drugs, given what Kate said about the night Maddie went missing and how the twins slept through all the commotion. It is my opinion that, if Maddie was targeted and taken from the apartment, then the creche where all the children went will hold the answers. I think someone who worked there or who had access to it could have drugged all three children with the intention of taking one of them later in the evening, knowing their parents would be out. It fits because Kate said how that night the children were too tired to do the usual play in the park after creche and had fallen asleep before their normal bed time. After reading this book, I gave more credibility to the notion that my case may well have affected theirs, and not just the other way around, such is the detail in the time-line. Later that day the McCanns met a ‘crowd of children’ who were waving placards with Madeleine on them; this had been organised by the government. The McCanns met with some Muslim leaders and asked them to pray for Madeleine which they agreed to do. Telling a slight white lie, they said they ‘lived in Leicester’, where there are a lot of Muslims. (There aren’t many Muslims in Rothley). Kate saying she felt "fleetingly disappointed" that she had not been invited to the beach with her friends, but Fiona Payne saying in her rogatory interview that the McCanns HAD been invited, but had tennis lessons.