Citation

"Grâce à la liberté dans les communications, des groupes d’hommes de même nature pourront se réunir et fonder des communautés. Les nations seront dépassées" - Friedrich Nietzsche (Fragments posthumes XIII-883)

09 - MAI 7/12 - Amaral (Parisien/SIC, TVMais)




Affaire Maddie : un enquêteur accuse
Le Parisien - 07.05.2009
Faits divers

Le policier portugais, qui a été en charge de l'enquête sur la disparition de Maddie, reste persuadé de la responsabilité de ses parents. Il publie un livre à charge contre les époux McCann.
Gonçalo Amaral a dirigé l'enquête sur la disparition de Maddie, au Portugal, pendant plusieurs mois avant d'en être écarté pour avoir publiquement critiqué l'attitude de la police anglaise. Depuis, il a pris sa retraite anticipée. Dans un livre qui sort aujourd'hui en France *, il livre sa vérité. Selon lui, l'enquête est formelle : Maddie est morte accidentellement dans l'appartement où la famille passait ses vacances. Les parents auraient ensuite fait croire à un kidnapping. Sans apporter de preuves formelles, son livre, très à charge contre les parents, pose de vraies questions.


LP : Quelles sont les preuves dont vous disposez pour étayer votre version ?
GA : Il y en a plusieurs. Nous avons notamment constaté des contradictions dans les déclarations des McCann et de leurs amis. Un couple d'Irlandais affirme avoir aperçu Gerald McCann le soir des faits avec un enfant dans les bras. Au niveau des constatations, nous avons découvert l'empreinte de Kate McCann sur la fenêtre de la chambre de Madeleine. La forme de l'empreinte indique qu'elle a ouvert cette fenêtre. Or, elle, déclare que la fenêtre était ouverte quand elle est entrée dans la chambre. Il est donc clair qu'elle a voulu orienter l'enquête vers la thèse de l'enlèvement. (1) Enfin, il y a les preuves scientifiques. Les chiens ont détecté une odeur de cadavre dans le salon et découvert une trace de sang au même endroit. Des traces qui ont également été découvertes dans la voiture de location.


LP : Ce sont plutôt des indices et non des preuves irréfutables. Le sang, par exemple, n'a pas été identifié à 100 % comme étant celui de Maddie…

GA : Certes mais les résultats indiquent quand même que les échantillons prélevés ressemblent au profil ADN de Maddie. Ces indices-là s'ajoutent aux autres.



LP : Pourquoi les époux McCann auraient-ils menti ?
GA : Parce qu'ils avaient été négligents avec leurs enfants. Ils ont dîné en les laissant seuls. Un tel comportement était condamnable. Ils ont donc mis en scène l'histoire du kidnapping. (2)

LP : Votre livre montre que l'enquête de la police portugaise n'a pas été irréprochable. Notamment sur la scène du crime…
GA : C'est vrai. A l'époque, il n'existait pas de procédure spécifique en cas de disparition d'enfant. Le site n'a pas forcément été bien préservé. Depuis, ces lacunes ont été réparées.

LP : Quel est votre regret principal sur cette enquête ?
GA : Je pense qu'il aurait fallu très rapidement organiser une reconstitution. On aurait alors pu se rendre compte des contradictions dans les déclarations de Kate McCann et des autres témoins. Malheureusement, mon chef a considéré que c'était impossible à mettre en place. Ensuite, les parents ont refusé.

LP : Comment s'est passée la collaboration avec la police anglaise ?
GA : Avec les enquêteurs sur le terrain, tout s'est très bien passé. En revanche, c'était beaucoup plus compliqué avec l'état-major en Grande-Bretagne. Les informations que nous demandions avaient énormément de mal à remonter. Les McCann ont réussi à influencer l'opinion de la police britannique et à les gagner à leur thèse. En Grande-Bretagne, la vision du dossier est politique. Sur le terrain, elle est restée policière.

LP : Retrouvera-t-on Maddie un jour ?
GA : Aujourd'hui, le dossier est archivé. Les parents n'ont aucune envie qu'il soit rouvert. Ils n'ont pas envie que la vérité éclate. Pourtant, je suis persuadé qu'il y a encore des pistes à exploiter. Malheureusement, c'est un cadavre qu'il faut chercher.


* « Maddie : l'enquête interdite ». Bourin Editeur. 19 €.

(1) Les moyens pour divulguer la thèse sont évoqués comme un facteur de déséquilibre entre les positions. Il serait juste toutefois de prendre en considération le très spécial contexte du classement de l'affaire. Il y avait une nécessité légale, compte tenu du statut d'arguido de Robert M, qui ne pouvait être prolongé davantage. Par ailleurs, les MC s'étaient dérobés à la reconstitution demandée par le Ministère public.


(2) Cela n'a pas de sens. Il faut aller à PDL pour comprendre que les MC avaient raison de penser qu'ils pouvaient laisser seuls leurs enfants sans leur faire courir de risque majeur. Ce qui dérange, toutefois, c'est qu'ils n'aient pas imaginé comment se sentiraient leurs enfants si, par hasard, ils se réveillaient, constataient que personne ne répondait à leurs appels et se croyaient abandonnés. C'est principalement pour éviter cette angoisse, et non pour contrer quelque ravisseur entrant par la fenêtre pour voler un enfant, que se recrutent les baby sitters.



Débat G. Amaral/P.Sargento sur la recons-fiction MC
SIC - 12.05.2009 - transcrit par Astro

Merche Romero : Madeleine McCann disappeared two years ago. The intense investigation to discover the little girl's whereabouts ended without major results and the process was closed. Nevertheless, Maddie's parents reaffirm that their daughter was abducted and they say that they continue to search for the abductor. Today, the 12th of May, the day that marks Maddie's sixth birthday, SIC will broadcast, in the evening, a documentary that was made by a British television channel. We'll be showing you parts of that documentary, in an exclusive. Before that, I'd like to welcome, and also present our guests: Dr Paulo Sargento and Gonçalo Amaral. A very good morning to you. Paulo Sargento/Gonçalo Amaral: Good morning. And I start with the first question for Gonçalo Amaral: Should the police continue… ahm… what do you expect from this documentary?

GA : This documentary is a document. A document that is based on lies, which will be used, if some day the process is reopened, it will be used as evidence against those who go around saying those lies, trying to understand why.

MR : Dr Paulo Sargento… ahm… the… the truth is that this has been prompting a lot of talk, hasn't it? Ahh… the little girl's parents' attitude, namely during the interview with Oprah, did it surprise you?

PS : No, it didn't surprise me. Let's see, these things and definitely, that sometimes we, who comment on this case, we're 
criticised over some abuses concerning the evaluations and the diagnoses and etc… What I mean is, I never diagnosed anyone, because when I make a diagnosis it's in my office with the adequate methodology, and with the person in front of me. Nevertheless, an evaluation of people's behaviour can give us some… approaches, some theories about the manner in which they function. Now, in this case, there is something that is very interesting, it's that in this case everything had been very manipulated in terms of image communication techniques, by a gentleman who is in fact a mastermind in that aspect, which is mister Clarence Mitchell – to whom I take my hat off, under that point of view, not for the rest, because it's a gentleman who has lied shamelessly and defamed some people, saying he's going to sue people; it's him who should have some lawsuits upon him.
Oprah's interview, for me, is a very simple matter, it was a construction, the questions were previously arranged, where t
he couple was previously given access to the questions, for that they prepared and even trained to answer them, there were not even hesitations, there were no overlapping speeches, let's say, of words from both sides, as one would expect to happen in a natural interview – like us sometimes, when we are here and one of us has another opinion and suggests – and the questions had especially a grammatical style that we've come to recognise well, which is a style, a style that I have sometimes jokingly - although we shouldn't joke too much about this - called 'Mitchellian', because it uses a type of fallacious arguments, that are already well known both on blogs and on television, and when they are used by him or by the couple. Alas, the person who imitates him very well in that style, it's for example Gerry McCann. That matter, of confusing oneself many times, which is a well known fallacy, since the times of the tribunes in the ancient Rome of Caesar Augustus, of confusing the negation of the consequent with the affirmation of the antecedent, it's something very interesting, which they use systematically. From the point of view of image, I think that the only thing that we can take from that interview is that it was in fact something that was built to follow a different strategy, from the one that was foreseen at least two weeks earlier. Because if we recall two weeks earlier, the strategy was to focus on the location of the disappearance, with the face of the three-year-old child.

MR : And that is precisely what we are [interrupts Paulo Sargento's train of thought], we're moving on, we're going to focus on the documentary, ah, that is going to be broadcast by SIC this evening. The first excerpt, let's watch...

Excerpt of the McCanns' documentary with Sean, Madeleine's younger brother, and Kate painting the three children's names.
S : That is a lovely picture you're making, mummy.
K : Thanks honey, do you know what it says?
S : No… (makes funny noises /onomatopoeias)
K : What names do you think that is, Sean?
S : Amelie…
K : Who's your other sister?
S :/A : Maddie.
K : There you go…
K : I honestly believe they're expecting her to come home, you know, one day soon. They very much… 'When Madeleine comes back, we'll share our toys', and you know, Amelie is wearing Madeleine's shoes, she'll say 'This won't fit Madeleine now, so we'll have to take her and get a bigger pair of shoes when she gets home', you know?

MR : Kate, the children's mother, talks about the hope that she and her other children, Maddie's siblings, foster concerning the little girl's return. (turns to Gonçalo Amaral) Dr Paulo Sargento, from these images, right, what's the picture that you draw of this family?

GA : I'm not Paulo Sargento…

MR : Ah, forgive me. Forgive me, Dr Gonçalo Amaral.

GA : No problem. I wouldn't want to comment on these images a lot, it's a mother in suffering, she's lost a daughter, and she has the right to say whatever she wants, so there's nothing here…

MR : But the fact that she's feeding – now, yes (turns towards Paulo Sargento) – the mother feeds the children's hope in the girl's return…

PS : Of course… I agree with Dr Gonçalo Amaral, in what he says, there is in fact a mother that suffers, there's a family that suffers, no matter what happened. Well, this is a solid fact, it's not possible, let's say to think - or it's very hard to think - that people aren't suffering. No matter what happened, this is necessary to have as a solid fact. Now, there's something that should be avoided as well. I understand that all the pacts among the adults, among the large groups, like the Tapas nine, among the couple, all pacts are possible. Now, what I've been saying and, I think, should stir these people's conscience, is to keep the twins out of the pacts. I mean, this issue of transmitting hope, that there is no certainty, quite to the contrary, if there is one it's the possibility that the girl will never appear again, and to make the twins live, in fact, this nightmare is a complete irresponsibility, not to say it's an exercise in bad parenting, a completely shameful one.

GA : Let me say just one thing.

MR : Say it, say it, say it.

GA : It's that at the time of the events, only a few days later, we tried to speak with the twins, and what this couple told us, was that they didn't express themselves well, despite being two years old; that they couldn't speak very well and so on. As a matter of fact it seems that, two years later, they're doing better; they're now four years old, so it's normal. But at the time, they would know something or they might know. And that's it, we didn't force it, because these were two children.
Paulo Sargento: Of course.
Mais Lee Rainbow avait recommandé de le faire.
GA : Today we see them using the children, at the time they didn't want to the police to speak with them, and now they allow them [the children] to be used in this way.

PS: By the way do you know…

MR : [Interrupts Paulo Sargento] Let us move to the second excerpt of this documentary.
Excerpt McCanns US Visite du NCMEC
V0 : The McCanns are organising a series of events aimed at prompting fresh evidence, including a difficult trip back to the holiday resort. A national TV appearance in the US, and maybe even more importantly a visit to the world's leading child recovery expert.
Ernie Allen : (NCMEC Chairman) We truly believe that this is what Madeleine McCann looks like today.
Cut to the morphing of Maddie's image into a 6-year-old
Gerald MC : She's either out there or she's not and there's nothing to say that she's not out there alive. So it's simple, she's out there until proven otherwise.
Emma Loach : (director of 'Maddie was Here') Who is actually out there looking for Madeleine?
Gerald MC : Hopefully lots of people, er… and the general population, but in terms of an investigative strategy, then there's no law enforcement agency that is proactively doing anything. It's pretty amazing really, ahm, when you think about it. It's a very serious crime… and ahm... we've, we've got to do it.

MR : In this fragment of the documentary, we see the visit of Maddie's parents to a specialist centre for the recuperation of missing children, and we saw a portrait which shows how Maddie looks like now, aged 6-years-old. But it has also raised my attention how Maddie's father shows indignation because the police are not carrying on the investigation into the disappearance. Gonçalo Amaral, the police should go on searching for Maddie?

GA : Yes, they should, and they are not doing it only because the couple demanded the archival and they won't permit that there's any investigation in Portugal or in England, overlapping all the actions that have been added there [to the process]. And now they perform as victims, when, in fact, it is them who do not want a police investigation. They prefer to have private investigators, under contract, who are paid their 'weight in gold', to find the 'abductor'.
So, they don't trust in the Portuguese Police or in the English Police. We cannot forget that the little girl is English, and that there is a competency of the British authorities to investigate. Now they come, yet again, playing the victims, I mean, thisshameless situation is long overdue and it's time to stop. I would give them some advice, to really stop for a while, to think; given that they are drowning in the lies that they have been saying.

MR : Dr. Paulo Sargento, there's a moment when we see Maddie's dad arriving at the Ocean Club, in the Algarve, and we hear people jeering and telling him 'Go Home!'; how is this reaction explained?

PS : I believe that was very well picked up under the scope of imagery, in the documentary. It was worked on, giving the impression that it was a tough trip; hard to come back. If we are really attentive, what in reality exists in the documentary it's a jeer or two, it's not exactly a monumental jeer, as they wished it to be perceived, it's one or two, made by one single person who most probably, and was legitimately angered. Probably, one of the workers, (video jumps) (…) now, it's not because of this that one has - like the English media has being doing with absolutely shameful and indecorous behaviour - to present the people of Praia da Luz as a series of vandals and evildoers who do not wish the McCann's return, and who are, so to say, despising and mistreating them, etc…
What we hear there, factually, is two jeers, probably by a citizen more desperate in his anguish of being unemployed, and which attributes, objectively or not, but legitimately I believe, to the McCann's actions causing his unemployment, which was in fact true, since their actions created an extreme negative publicity for that region, and a vandalised billboard, which if we walk in the streets, we see two, three per day, and no one will, for that, go on about [whine]. Now it was exaggerated, one has to say it was exaggerated. There is a campaign of counter-marketing taking advantage of small insinuations to spread the idea that the people of Praia da Luz are against the McCann which is not true.

MR : Let's move on to the thirdexcerpt. Let's watch it and in a while we comment on it.
Excerpt of Dave Edgar - one of the retired cops working as a private detective for the MC - and Kate MC.
DE : We're here to discuss the pending reconstruction that we're running.
KMC :  So, basically it looks like we have five sightings really. Two of a man with a child, and three… just a suspicious individual really.
DE : Yeah.
KMC :  And three, the three, with the suspic… suspicis… of the suspicious, they kind'a tie in together.
DE : They all tie in together, yeah.
Unknown woman's voice: Similar times, similar places…
DE : Yeah. These three in exactly the same location. I don't know what the, the Portuguese authorities have done to actually have this people removed from the inquiry… So, we've got to presume they haven't done it. And, and go with that. So, it's just important we actually, we're accurate, hum, what we actually, what we know and make sure that's what we're going with. No speculation or… it's just got be the facts that we know and not… try to fill in the gaps of what we don't know.
KMC : I mean, I'd like to go back but… not for this, to be honest, it's kind of just below the surface, and I, just you know… I'd be scared, I think, you know, to sort of open up again , really, yeah…

KMC :  in Rothley I think it's actually going through… the scenario of that night, as well, you know?... ahm.. I mean, you know, even what I can remember of the night, you know, seeing Gerry… ahm... that distraught, really... sobbin' and on the floor… I mean, I, I, I suppose I'm concerned that will surface again.
MR : In these images we saw two private investigators hired by the McCanns to search for Maddie. They are paid from the Find Madeleine fund. These two men criticise the lack of the investigation of some evidence by the Portuguese authorities. Gonçalo Amaral, was there evidence left to be investigated?

GA : No, there was no evidence left to investigate. We investigated wrongly, in that case, yes, wrongly - there the FBI was right – we should have immediately considered the parents as suspects, and started there, however we went to the limit relative to the kidnap; up to the moment where we saw that the abduction was materially impossible. And then we went back to Praia da Luz and we focused on the apartment, where the traces and indicia of the death of the child were detected. What these gentlemen say - let's not forget that they are paid by the fund, there's a contract and it's a contract to find a child alive, for the kidnap, only the kidnap and nothing else but the kidnap. It would be good that people knew that those gentlemen, after I left [the coordination to the investigation], they tried to collaborate with the Police, they tried to meddle in the investigation – which was denied by some colleagues who were in the investigation at the time, since the Portuguese Police and the English Police have competence to investigate alone, they do not need that kind of support. Thus, there is this situation, of people who are paid for this, they are paid to say this, and they are paid to say this lie.

The process has seventeen volumes, look at them and find what is missing relatively to this; these sightings, these tales of the new abductors, the people who were seen, who were seen a month or two before… I remember that I was in Amsterdam, last week, when I was contacted with the information that a 'new abductor' was going to appear. I said 'look, it has to be an individual with a Mediterranean type of look, very ugly, very dark...' - the fact is that we start to know the couple, the type of witness that they have, and it's always like that.

The shame is, that in the sightings that they say that are there, the McCanns and their detectives don't say that the man who was in the garden, at 8am - who was seen by a student whose grandmother lived in that apartment - is a match to David Payne, in terms of physical appearance and as to what he was wearing - and it's a shame they don't say that. Because, as to the others; the gardener that was there; the man who lived in the car, all of that was investigated - and they were British as well - as a matter of fact they were poorly dressed, but some were British. There was a singer, on the beach, who played the guitar... So, saying that we didn't do anything is a complete lie.
And I hope that, for Alípio Ribeiro not to be named as the only one who did not defended us, that this new direction of the Judiciary Police, when this documentary comes out has the courage to defend those who worked, those who served the Judiciary Police, because if they don't do it, they will be seen in a very harsh way by those who work for that institution and give everything to it.

MR : Dr, Paulo Sargento, Maddie's parents bet everything in the investigations, ehh, which are paid in 'gold' [Portuguese Expression as in ‘weight in gold’], right? So, to go on investigating and to invest so much in these searches; those that mean that they feed the feeling that their daughter is alive? To themselves?

PS : No, let us consider... I should say here, something, so that the idea is not left in the 'air', that there's something against the couple, or something similar, there is not, in fact...

MR : There is a mystery.

PS : Yes, there is a mystery. And when I said before that issue regarding the bad parenting in the sense of the twins being put in, let's say, in the middle of the affair, it wasn't done with the objective of hurting them or calling them names, just to call them names - that it's in fact only excusable if, by any reason, these people are really suffering a lot, this of putting the twins in the middle, it's an act, not excusable but understandable, amidst this suffering. That is exactly why I'm not more critical. Relative to this, I'm convinced, actually, I completely prefer Gonçalo Amaral's theory, that something indeed happened there, the girl died there, the body was... was hidden... was moved to another place... But that, whatever has happened, certainly has the parents knowledge. There is a story here, many times told by the defenders of the abduction, who say: 'how would it be possible - if the parents had something to do with this - that they continued to insist on this search and in this media attention?' I would say this is like a FAQ – Frequently Asked Questions. It is possible. It is possible because for a long time, the parents were very quiet, and Clarence Mitchell as well – trying to extinguish the phenomena. 
If it weren't for the effort of some people saying 'this cannot be left in this way...' I recall that Gerry McCann didn't write for three months in his blog, and once I published an article – I'm not going to say that he answered my article because I published the text, no, I don't have that vanity – but something indeed took place, I wrote an article asking 'what is happening, is the notoriety of a big brand named 'Maddie' extinguishing?' – three months without an entry in Gerry's blog, and two days later, the father 'answers'; he doesn't answer, I mean, he writes in his blog: 'Well, we haven't written in a long time, but this does not mean that we are not developing hard work in the search for Madeleine - but now more discreetly and away from the media which has only disturbed, etc... etc... etc... So, this type of issue, this variation between the process of search in situ for the girl, then it moves on to a globalised search; which makes one think that, in reality, what matters is to keep something that was started. I'm convinced, honestly and fully convinced, that they started with an intent, which then took on an uncontrollable magnitude, and then - I'm not saying this just for the parents but, as well, for Mr. Gordon Brown - and then, people intrude in affairs from which they don't know how to get out.


Analyse de la recons-fiction

by forensic psychologist Paulo Sargento - 13.05.2009- TVMais

From the pretence of the reconstruction of the facts, of the 3rd of May 2007, when Maddie disappeared, there's no more than a few minutes. Then, one can see a happy family.

Hernâni Carvalho - 13.05.2009
traduit par Astro

Kate McCann saw the open window. Thus starts the McCanns' documentary. Il est possible qu'elle ait ouvert la fenêtre elle-même, puisque seules ses empreintes y ont été trouvées.

From the pretence of the reconstruction, we saw, all in all, less than five minutes. But we saw a happy family. A perfect one. Kate paints with the twins, she takes them to watch the chicken, the ducks and the horses. She peels potatoes and greets Gerry when he arrives after a day of medical consults. To be certain, we even saw Maddie's father's patients. Kate was also a doctor, part time, but now all she does is to care for the children. Life as it is for perfect, complying parents.

Now, the McCanns protect the twins. When half of the world was searching for Maddie, the twins' faces could be seen. Even on the day that they landed in England, after leaving Faro with State honours, without having been subject to any inspection at the airport, like it happens to everyone else. The McCann documentary is a television making work of art. Concerning the coherence of the facts that were broadcast, that's another issue.

'Tvmais' watched the McCann documentary in the company of forensic psychologist Paulo Sargento. And we registered his comments.
As was expected, the announced reconstruction by the McCanns resulted in an image laundering attempt, that in my opinion is disastrous. In truth, they didn’t dare to call this production a "reconstruction"...

PS : Yes, but they suggested that this was a documentary that would provide new clues.

And did they do that?

PS :  No. Right away because neither the actors served the purpose nor the reconstruction of the night when Maddie disappeared is even complete. They only used one actress to play the inconsistent role of Jane Tanner.
Mais pas du tout, c'est la vraie JT ! L'actrice, c'est pour jouer Kate MC.

Maybe there's another documentary in waiting…

PS :  That could be it... Notice that Matthew Oldfield played himself, very briefly, and Gerry McCann was counselling and little more. It's bizarre that the documentary occupies itself with the reconstruction for less than one tenth of its total length (50 minutes).

What do you say about Jane Tanner's testimony?

PS :  Hardly credible. The alleged abductor walks slowly, in an excessively lit area (under the street lamp), for Jane not to be able to remember any trace of his face. And yet, she remembers difficult details like the colour of the trousers, the jacket and the type of shoes.

And the statements from five persons who saw the "ugly" man?

PS :  It's interesting that the man was only seen by English people, and almost exclusively during the day.


The Smiths saw him at 9.50 p.m. Grande confusion ! Il veut probablement maintenant parler de Smithman, rien à voir avec the ugly man. Cet ugly man a été aperçu, uniquement de jour, près du G5. Tannerman avait un pantalon de couleur "ugly". Rien d'ugly n'a été mentionné par la famille S à propos de Smithman.

PS :  Yes. But on a location and walking into a direction that were opposed to those that were mentioned by Jane Tanner. What's even more curious is the fact that the witness mentions that "he doesn't look like a tourist", carrying "a little girl with long blonde hair". This is impressive. A little English-looking girl, being carried away by a person who didn't look like a tourist. The so-called 'ugly man'. Adding to the fact that he was only seen by English people, during the day, wearing a black jacket (not a brown one, like Jane mentions), he appears too early in the story. The first testimony dates from the 29th of April and one of the detectives speaks a lapidary sentence: "Someone watched the apartment for a week or more". Well, if Maddie disappeared on the 3rd of May and the McCanns arrived on the 28th of April..., this is called a fraud !
In the documentary, there is a new piece of data. Gerry, Kate and Matthew admit that they didn't even enter the children's bedroom and they say it was too dark to see clearly whether Maddie was there or not. Mais non, seule Kate dit cela. Gerald et Matthew ne disent pas qu'il faisait sombre dans la chambre.

PS :  That's where Gerry betrays himself. He states that when he looked into the room, he remembers thinking how beautiful Madeleine was and how much he loved her and how proud he was to be the father of three beautiful children. Gerry says that he felt that when he "looked into the bedroom". Just watch the documentary again.
Nevertheless, the detectives say that they are hopeful…

PS :  Detectives don't operate on hope. Detectives work with hypothetical-deductive methods, based on evidence and indications.

At least, we now know the McCanns' everyday life?

PS :  Not even that. It's daily life that is too normal for someone who has suffered one of the most devastating blows that a human being can suffer: the loss of a daughter. Everything smells artificial and plastic. The relationship with the twins, the phone call with Jane Tanner, Gerry's professional routines, Kate waiting for him... All in all, an old, well-known strategy of promoting the image of a happy family, which in this case, becomes grotesque. Just notice Gerry McCann's sentence: "We're a family, a happy family, but incomplete..." As much as we want to, not everything is what it seems to be!