Missing - Every Year, Thousands of People Vanish Without Trace. Here are the True Stories Behind Some of These Mysteries. Rose Rouse
there as well.
The Portuguese police gave the parents an update on the investigation. There were reports about DNA tests and forensic results but no conclusive news. The UK police reported 1,000 sightings and 15,000 calls.
It seemed that Gerry and Kate accepted the hunt for Madeleine might be lengthy. They intended to appoint a long-term campaign manager to maintain awareness of Madeleine’s plight. They also spoke of Madeleine’s abduction as being like a ‘bereavement’, or like ‘being diagnosed with cancer’, and admitted they had been forced to face the fear that their daughter might be dead. ‘There are a lot of mixed emotions and anger is one of them,’ said Gerry. But if you give up hope, you are basically saying she is dead. No parent would do that.’
Gerry and Kate organised some quiet time for themselves and the twins away from the glare of the media. Now they had a balancing act to achieve – keeping the semblance of normal family life going for the twins, while maintaining a focus on Madeleine until she was found. They scaled down their activities, leaving them time to expend some energy on how to develop the campaign effectively in the future.
On 22 June, balloons were released in countries all over the world from Afghanistan to South Africa to mark the 50th day of Madeleine’s disappearance. Hope was always the focus, but the police investigation and media attention brought all sorts of different difficulties and pain over the next few weeks.
Police dug up the garden belonging to the mother of suspect Robert Murat but nothing was found to link the man who had been the subject of media speculation. British detectives had flown over to join the investigation and the most disturbing development for Gerry and Kate was their discovery of blood traces in the apartment. It was flown back to the UK to undergo DNA tests.
Unfortunately, the Portuguese press leapt to the wild conclusion that Madeleine was killed there rather than abducted. Gerry and Kate found themselves the subjects of a heartless and absurd smear campaign in Portugal where they and their holiday companions were accused of being involved in Madeleine’s death. This caused unnecessary extra anguish for the devastated parents.
Amid all the cruel innuendos and crazy speculation, Gerry and Kate turned again to their faith for strength. On 11 August, to mark the 100th day of Madeleine’s disappearance, they did a series of press interviews and there was an hour-long service at Nossa Senhora da Luz. Locals and holidaymakers wore the now familiar yellow and green of hope, and Kate stood up and spoke movingly about her missing daughter. ‘Every day feels so hard without Madeleine. I could talk all day about how wonderful, how precious Madeleine is, but suffice to say we all miss her so much and our lives aren’t complete without Madeleine.’
They left the church to depressing news from the police. For the first time, the Portuguese officer leading the hunt for Madeleine admitted she could be dead. He was referring to the specks of blood found in the apartment.
No-one could possibly have foreseen what would happen to the McCanns over the next month. As reports of DNA investigations were leaked to the press, the McCanns themselves became the subject of intense scrutiny and accusation. Not just in Portugal, but in the UK as well.
On 6 September, Kate was questioned for 11 hours in Portugal and then named as an arguido (which translates as somewhere between a crucial witness and a suspect). the next day, Gerry was questioned for eight hours then named an arguido himself. It was reported that the McCanns had been under 24-hour surveillance for the previous month. The newspapers in the UK and abroad were full of speculation that Kate was shortly to be charged for Madeleine’s murder and that it was suspected that she accidentally gave Madeleine an overdose of sedatives.
The world seemed to have gone insane. What parents would put themselves through this kind of media circus if they had made this kind of tragic mistake? There were endless media reports about Madeleine’s DNA having been found under a rug in the back of the McCann’s Renault Scenic hire car (which they had hired 25 days after Madeleine’s disappearance). The implication was that they had used this car to dispose of her body. There were also reports of sniffer dogs reacting to the car, which implied that it had contained a dead body. In fact, there was a feeding frenzy of hysterical headlines.
In the midst of this media madness, the McCanns flew home to Rothley. At last, they were home. Without Madeleine, but at least they could start to return to some kind of normality with the twins.
Within four months, the McCanns had been transformed from the tragic parents of a beautiful, abducted daughter to her supposed murderers and the unprecedented coverage of this case started to show its dark side. Like celebrities who walk that difficult tightrope between adoration and decimation, the McCanns attracted the baying hounds of destruction. Indeed, Gerry announced as they returned, ‘We’ve been stitched up.’
The McCanns have now hired an impressive legal team to clear their names, as well as private detectives to keep looking for Madeleine. Richard Branson has stuck his neck out and put £100,000 into their legal fighting fund. By 20 September, the tide was turning yet again, this time in favour of the McCanns. The Portuguese admitted there was no new evidence that warranted re-interviewing them.
A new spokesman, Clarence Mitchell – who initially provided consular support – has left his job to join the McCann team because he believes so passionately in their innocence. Meanwhile, the McCanns are trying to refocus their ‘Find Madeleine’ campaign. They refuse to give up hope even now when logic is against it. They are Madeleine’s parents and, as long as there is no proof of her death, they will go on believing she is alive.
No doubt the headlines will continue. In the meantime, little Madeleine’s disappearance has touched so many different people in so many different places.
Gerry and Kate are hoping the spotlight will stay on their daughter, but will also reach out to include other missing children. They are well aware that they are not the only ones whose loved one is missing.
Jo Gibson Clark has had more heartbreak in the last two and a half years than any mother should experience, ever. Her gorgeous, charming, adventurous 19-year-old son, Eddie, went missing on 24 October 2004, in Cambodia. It should never have happened. On that date, Eddie was supposed to be at lectures as part of his joint honours degree in International Management and Asian-Pacific Studies at Leeds University.
Jo lives in Hove with her second husband, Tony Clark, and had two other sons, Elliott, 28, and Max, 18, by her first husband, Mike Gibson. Mike was also Eddie’s father and, although the parents split up when Eddie was just 11, they remained on good terms and Mike would often pop over for Sunday lunch. Jo drove Eddie up to Leeds on 15 September 2004. ‘He seemed keen to get on with his degree,’ she says. ‘He’d done a gap year with friends and they’d travelled to Australia, Thailand, Burma, Laos and Cambodia, so Eddie seemed absolutely ready to study and said he valued his education. He appeared to be very keen to start his new course. I was really happy for him.’
Ever entrepreneurial, Eddie had managed at the last minute to talk his way into a university room right next to one of his old friends from Brighton, Josh. That really pleased him. And his mother. The room wasn’t great but it wasn’t too bad either. ‘It smelt like a hospital in there,’ says Jo. ‘And it had bars on the window, which I thought he’d find difficult to cope with, but we went out and bought rugs, throws, candles and lamps to give it a homely feel and he seemed fine. Josh, Eddie, Max and I all went out for a nice meal together and I kissed him goodbye, convinced that he was starting an exciting new phase of his life.’ That was to be Jo’s last face-to-face encounter with her lovely son.
Eddie had blond, spiky hair and was six feet tall. Not surprisingly, he was always a firm favourite with the girls and he was smart too, with A grades in his A-levels. Definitely a bit of a star. He seemed to have led a charmed existence and Jo fully expected him to continue in the