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| Letters From London |
| Humorous Views on London Culture, Royals, Gossip and Politics |
'The Dingo is Innocent' - 15 September 2007
How British. A mystery to solve… or not. Bumbling investigators, leaked rumours, lost forensic
evidence, conflicting witness statements, bereft parents, darling child missing… rich and famous
supporters, endless family members’ press conferences, PR teams, meticulous media
management, a breezy blog, phone calls to newspaper editors, high-powered lawyers, new
pristine outfits daily, journalists’ ‘You (the public) Are All Guilty’ accusations, newly released
childhood photographs of Kate at her first Communion and Gerry as captain of his local football
team. As it turns out, this is no Sherlock Holmes afternoon drama; this is an addictive celebrity
construct.
JK Rowlings, David Beckham, Richard Branson, an audience with the Pope, meetings with the
Prime Minister, interviews with Paris Match, press conferences in front of the White House.
If the actual circumstances weren’t so truly horrible, it would be a new BBC crime series.
This case has been a bit perplexing from day one. Even after the initial empathetic response,
there has always been a fairly subtle undercurrent of incredulity, doubt, of something untoward.
An utterly ambiguous, amorphous feeling that something was just not quite right. And it wasn’t
the obvious: Gerry’s alpha male, head of the family routine, in charge positioning, or Kate’s
fastidious presentation, or the fact that every single person supportive of the McCanns used the
word ‘ludicrous’ to describe the Portuguese police’s allegations, or the public’s projection of their
seeming lack of palpable panic and pain, or alerting the British press every time the hand-
attached twosome stepped outside, went to church, took the twins to the crèche. The logistics
fail to support the Portuguese claims that the parents did it. But the feeling doesn’t dissipate.
The McCanns have obviously never watched Rebus, Cracker, Prime Suspect, Silent Witness.
They would have immediately known to close off the crime scene, coordinate their friends’
accounts of that evening, bring in a British detective team, show a tear here and there….
Reading the conflicting details and accusations is useless. For every conjecture, there is the
certainty. For every question, there is an answer. The open shutters, the wall and the
bougainvilleas, the 3 -14 bottles of wine opened and unopened, the deeply sleeping twins, the
phantom man carrying a child, the death sniffing dog, the washable Cuddle Cat, sedatives,
frustrated Kate.
At this point, the scary thought is that the person who did abduct Madeleine surely would not
keep the child alive with the new massive media campaign Gerry has planned: new photos of
Madeleine on more billboards, TV commercials, adverts in newspapers - in case there is one
person on the planet who has been in a 20 year coma and has just woken up; “Find Maddie! Find
Maddie!”
It is hard to overestimate the global reach of the McCann story. The Associated Press, rivalling
Reuters, took reporters away from a meeting of European Union foreign ministers in northern
Portugal to cover the McCanns' sudden arguido status at Portimao police station. The AP story
was the most-read story on many US newspaper websites that day. Apparently the Japanese
and American press have increased coverage massively in the resort as of the weekend.
Desperate to fill the front pages, the press have dug up the 1980 Australian “A Dingo Took My
Baby” story and are anxious to draw parallels. Family on holiday with three children, baby in tent
while parents ate further away, mother checks on baby to find her missing, mother very religious,
mother reveals no emotion, investigators turn on mother, public turn on mother…. Then the public
collectively ridiculed the mother’s account that she had seen a dingo escaping into the darkness,
‘The Dingo is Innocent’ T-shirts became popular, she was sentenced to life, but released after
three years when forensic evidence proved inaccurate. Meryl Streep played the mother in A Cry
in the Dark.
The conclusion will never reach the ‘concludes tomorrow’ status. The Portuguese police have
admitted they will find it "very, very difficult" to prove their case against the McCanns because of
confusion and infighting during the early stages of the investigation, according to one of the
ubiquitous unnamed sources. Potentially crucial evidence was lost in the flat by the time local
police first arrived. The McCanns must feel vindicated; they were photographed smiling for the
first time in the four months poor Madeleine and 450 other British children went missing.
“Watson! In here!”
How British. A mystery to solve… or not. Bumbling investigators, leaked rumours, lost forensic
evidence, conflicting witness statements, bereft parents, darling child missing… rich and famous
supporters, endless family members’ press conferences, PR teams, meticulous media
management, a breezy blog, phone calls to newspaper editors, high-powered lawyers, new
pristine outfits daily, journalists’ ‘You (the public) Are All Guilty’ accusations, newly released
childhood photographs of Kate at her first Communion and Gerry as captain of his local football
team. As it turns out, this is no Sherlock Holmes afternoon drama; this is an addictive celebrity
construct.
JK Rowlings, David Beckham, Richard Branson, an audience with the Pope, meetings with the
Prime Minister, interviews with Paris Match, press conferences in front of the White House.
If the actual circumstances weren’t so truly horrible, it would be a new BBC crime series.
This case has been a bit perplexing from day one. Even after the initial empathetic response,
there has always been a fairly subtle undercurrent of incredulity, doubt, of something untoward.
An utterly ambiguous, amorphous feeling that something was just not quite right. And it wasn’t
the obvious: Gerry’s alpha male, head of the family routine, in charge positioning, or Kate’s
fastidious presentation, or the fact that every single person supportive of the McCanns used the
word ‘ludicrous’ to describe the Portuguese police’s allegations, or the public’s projection of their
seeming lack of palpable panic and pain, or alerting the British press every time the hand-
attached twosome stepped outside, went to church, took the twins to the crèche. The logistics
fail to support the Portuguese claims that the parents did it. But the feeling doesn’t dissipate.
The McCanns have obviously never watched Rebus, Cracker, Prime Suspect, Silent Witness.
They would have immediately known to close off the crime scene, coordinate their friends’
accounts of that evening, bring in a British detective team, show a tear here and there….
Reading the conflicting details and accusations is useless. For every conjecture, there is the
certainty. For every question, there is an answer. The open shutters, the wall and the
bougainvilleas, the 3 -14 bottles of wine opened and unopened, the deeply sleeping twins, the
phantom man carrying a child, the death sniffing dog, the washable Cuddle Cat, sedatives,
frustrated Kate.
At this point, the scary thought is that the person who did abduct Madeleine surely would not
keep the child alive with the new massive media campaign Gerry has planned: new photos of
Madeleine on more billboards, TV commercials, adverts in newspapers - in case there is one
person on the planet who has been in a 20 year coma and has just woken up; “Find Maddie! Find
Maddie!”
It is hard to overestimate the global reach of the McCann story. The Associated Press, rivalling
Reuters, took reporters away from a meeting of European Union foreign ministers in northern
Portugal to cover the McCanns' sudden arguido status at Portimao police station. The AP story
was the most-read story on many US newspaper websites that day. Apparently the Japanese
and American press have increased coverage massively in the resort as of the weekend.
Desperate to fill the front pages, the press have dug up the 1980 Australian “A Dingo Took My
Baby” story and are anxious to draw parallels. Family on holiday with three children, baby in tent
while parents ate further away, mother checks on baby to find her missing, mother very religious,
mother reveals no emotion, investigators turn on mother, public turn on mother…. Then the public
collectively ridiculed the mother’s account that she had seen a dingo escaping into the darkness,
‘The Dingo is Innocent’ T-shirts became popular, she was sentenced to life, but released after
three years when forensic evidence proved inaccurate. Meryl Streep played the mother in A Cry
in the Dark.
The conclusion will never reach the ‘concludes tomorrow’ status. The Portuguese police have
admitted they will find it "very, very difficult" to prove their case against the McCanns because of
confusion and infighting during the early stages of the investigation, according to one of the
ubiquitous unnamed sources. Potentially crucial evidence was lost in the flat by the time local
police first arrived. The McCanns must feel vindicated; they were photographed smiling for the
first time in the four months poor Madeleine and 450 other British children went missing.
“Watson! In here!”
