One of the problems with the case is that there was strict judicial secrecy surrounding the case in the early days and the tabloids published a lot of very damaging misinformation. Unfortunately, this spawned a hate campaign led by former (ie failed) solictor Tony Bennett who was also a failed politician (he was ejected from no fewer than three political parties). Bennett and his small group of followers continue to spread their bizarre theories on the social networking sites and are proud to claim 710 signatures of support on a petition which has been running for almost a year now (the McCann's petition has almost 70,000 signatures now). I should mention that Bennett's petition has approximately 50 signatories who obviously think they are signing the McCann petition.
I have been involved in creating a wiki rebutting 50 claims about the McCann case which Bennett claims are "facts" which the British media aren't telling us about the McCann case. I can say, hand on bible that I didn't come across a single quote in this leaflet which had been given correctly. He paraphrases forum posts and claims them as quotes by the McCanns. He even invented an entire telephone conversation between Gerry McCann and Clarence Mitchell and uploaded it onto the internet. Case followers will know it's a fabrication - an attempt at "humour" but nowhere does Bennett offer a disclaimer to the effect and casual readers might be duped into thinking it is authentic. He also wrote a sick parody of a Christmas carol about Madeleine and has made lewd suggestions about a photo of her.
Here is the rebuttal
http://madeleinemythsexposed.pbworks.com/w/page/39076140/Main-Page
Sadly, Bennett's latest disciple is non other than (self-educated) US profiler Pat Brown. She has written an ebook about the case outlining what she describes as an "imagined scenario". Her ebook is introduced with a disclaimer warning the reader not to misinterpret her opinion as fact. She also emphasises the fact that she has not worked on the case and has not interviewed anyone involved in the case. With the exception of Kate McCann's book and the police files (which she clearly has not read in any depth) her list of references are purely anti-McCann.
If you read her ebook, please also read my rebuttal of it:-
http://madeleinemythsexposed.pbworks.com/w/page/41486990/Pat%20Brown
Her theory quite simply is a very far-fetched conspiracy theory which requires the reader to disregard over 20 witness statements.
If you want a quick reference Ramsey case comparison - think E2 and her Santa did it and all those "clues" which she saw in everything Santa and Janet ever did.
The first time I Pat brown came to my attention, was when I read a blog post she had written in October 2007. IN it, she slammed Kate McCann for never having directly appealed to Madeleine's abductor. At the time of this blog post, the McCanns (including Kate on her own) had appealed directly to the abductor on no fewer than three occasions. The first was the day after Madeleine disappeared and was captured by TV cameras to become an iconic clip about the case. The second smilarly so, when Kate McCann made her appeal in English and then in Portuguese "Please don't hurt her..."
http://madeleinemythsexposed.pbwork...buttal-of-Pat-Brown's-blogs-about-the-McCanns
Brown was selling her ebook on Amaxon for £2.12 a pop. Too late, I put a tracker on her sales and I missed her peak sales period. However, over the past three weeks she was making about £100 per week of it. A few days ago, Amazon pulled it worldwide because the McCanns took legal action against it for defamation. Brown wants to convince the world that Madeleine is dead and that we shouldn't be looking for her. The McCanns are desperate that people believe she is alive and findable because whilst they accept it is possible, there is no proof that she is dead. The anti-McCanns remain convinced that she is dead because of the dog "evidence". This is depsite the dog trainer himself warning that the dogs are just a tool. The "cadaver" dog actually alerts to cadaver odour AND blood from a living person. Neither dog is capable of distinguishing between individual human beings. Only the discovery of a corpse can verify the accuracy of the dogs. IN a recent case of a missing person in the UK (Shannon Matthews), the cadaver dogs alerted in the apartment of a relative. It later transpired that the cadaver odour had come from the furniture which was second hand and whose previous owner had died. Fortunately, Shannon was found alive and it could be determined that this had been a false alert.
Pat brown is desperate to sell her ebook. For several weeks she has been trying desperately but unsuccessfully to get an interview with the media about it. When her book was pulled by Amazon, she was urged to make it a free download. Instead, she has uploaded onto some other ebook sites and she is still charging for it. I have a fundamental issue with people who sell misinformation as she is doing.
For starters, she suggests that Gerry McCann found Madeleine dead when he did the first check at 9.05pm (this was half an hour after they left the children asleep in the apartment). Brown's theory has Gerry not returning to the restaurant, but rather sitting in the apartment for twenty minutes whilst he tried to decide what to do about the Madeleine "situation" (Brown's words). She then suggests he ran through the streets of Paraia da Luz with his daughter's corpse before dumping it on a beach more than half a mile away. She suggests he was seen by an Irish family called Smith at 10pm. We know he ordered his meal before her went to do his check. Brown does not address this uneaten meal or why no-one was worried about his non-return to the table.
Brown believes that Kate McCann was oblivious to her daughter's demise until she did her check at 10pm (no explanation re Kate's concern about her husband's non return/uneaten meal or why she did her own check at 10pm when Gerry had not returned from his!). Brown then has Gerry McCann miraculously back at the apartment (at the same time as she has the Irish family seeing him half a mile away STILL with Madeleine). Now Gerry is telling Kate and their seven friends that poor Madeleine is dead and that he has disposed of her body. Without hesitation, Brown has all of the friends instantly agreeing to cover up Madeleine's death and the police are called immediately. She offers as a motive for this callous conspiracy that they were concerned that they would get into trouble for leaving their children unattended. She does NOT explain why all nine of them immediately told the police that they had done just that.
It's an absurd theory which has the McCanns moving their daughter's decomposing body three times - the last being to take her to either Spain or England. Brown believes it's quite feasible that they put Madeleine's (by now putrifying) body into a rucksack and took it home in the plane to bury it in another happy-to-cover-up-a-child's-death relative in England.
Cause of death? Brown suggests an overdose of Calpol sedative tablets for toddlers. That Calpol is not a sedative was one of the earliest myths to be debunked seems to be of no concern to her. It has been pointed out to her on the forums and she is dismissive of this fundemental blooper saying "Well there is Calpol Night"... Yes, there was Calpol Night and it came on the market in September 2007 - Madeleine went missing in May 2007. To this she reponds - well some other sedative then.... THAT pretty much sums up her concern with doing the research and getting her facts right. If anyone points out her misinformation (and there is plenty of it) she calls us "haters". Well I am a hater of misinformation that's for sure. If you are going to accuse someone of covering up a heinous crime, please base it on facts. Please don't try to make a buck or a thousand from "imagined scenarios" about people who are trying to find a missing child.
What really floored me about Pat Brown though is that several weeks after publishing her ebook accusing Gerry McCann of callously dumping his daughter's body rather than seeking medical help, is that she posted a totally different theory on facebook saying that THIS was her theory. Instead of Gerry working alone whilst his wife dined obliviously nearby, she had Kate raising the alarm that madeleine was missing and then all of the friends returning to the apartment and finding Madeleine's body. Stunning!
The fact is that there are more than a dozen witnesses who are not connected to the McCanns who verify that Gerry McCann was raising the alarm and running about the apartment complex looking for Madeleine in the minutes after 10pm. Apart from the obvious contradiction Brown makes where she has Gerry being spotted by the Irish family at 10pm half a mile away from the apartment and still carrying Madeleine, it would take him some time to reach the beach from the witness point, dispose of a body and then get back to the apartments.
She also asks ther eader to completely disregard the eyewitness sighting of Jane tanner - Why? Because Tanner was a friend - every reason to lie. She misleads the readers when she says that tanner did not tell the McCanns about her sighting in the days following the abduction. This is grossly misleading. Tanner did not DISCUSS her sighting of a man carrying what could be Madeleine McCann away from the apartments. She DID inform police of it immediately and the police told Gerry McCann fairly quickly (I don't have precise times but he knew about it the same night). Tanner says she didn't discuss it because she didn't want to add to their torment re the implications of this. The way that Brown portrays it, it's as though hasn't informed anyone of her sighting.
Basically, her theory does not add up. The McCann group were not all close friends of the couple. Despite the obvious unlikelihood of these people IMMEDIATELY agreeing to cover up a child's death and kicking into action IMMEDIATELY to make it seem as though they were looking for her, they have no motive for risking a potential jail sentence for people who weren't close friends.
Brown allows no time for shock, disbelief, arguments, anger at gerry for dumping her body on the beach... This is not a Ramsey situation where they had all night to form a plan. Brown has them doing it instantly. She says herself that from a profiler's perspective, there is no way the McCanns could have gone to dinner and behaved normally if they knew their daughter was dead. There are several independent witnesses who say the McCanns appeared quite normal that night - laughing and joking with their friends.
I am stunned this evening to learn that Brown is to be interviewed on Websleuths radio. I sincerely hope that Tricia will ask her to address the infeasibility of the "imagined scenario" she wants to sell to the American public.
Edit to add link to blog about her posting contradicting theory:-
http://exposingthemyths.blogspot.com/2011/07/contradictions-and-tangled-webs.html
