An open letter to David Dinsmore

Dear David,

As editor of the Sun, you’re responsible for Ben Perrin’s ‘exclusive’,  TROLLS PAY MADDIE LIE COP’S COURT BILL. 

Ben wrote: <British trolls are helping pay legal bills of an ex-cop who said Madeleine McCann's parents were behind her disappearance.> 

Then, you’d know all about trolling, working for News Corporation. 

I see you’ve been there 24 years. It must be hard to have a real-world perspective, when you’ve spent so long inside what has been described as a corrupt and criminal corporation.

Your sister newspaper, the News of the World, was forced to close – it “died of shame” – after a culture of hacking was exposed, one that your company covered up and denied for years.

That same newspaper even trolled Kate McCann, printing extracts from her diary under the pretence it had permission, then bunging her £125k compensation when the McCanns called in the lawyers.

Your own newspaper, The Sun, published on its website ‘exclusive’ footage of a cadaver dog searching the McCanns’ rental car and apartment 5a, marking the ‘scent of death’. 

(The footage is still here on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8lrrMoUr3OA, with your paper’s logo attached) 

David, that’s evidence that may or may not be used in a future trial. And your predecessor published it on the internet. 

Sun journalists have admitted in court to paying policemen and public officials for tittle-tattle about Royals, politicians or celebs. Most of them claimed they didn’t know it was illegal. 

(What do they teach you NewsCorp guys about journalistic ethics?)

In your own tenure, in October 2013, you thought it fit to print a souvenir Maddie pullout, which was offered as ‘an exclusive e-book ONLY for Sun+ members. If you’re not already a member, join now.’

You trolled a missing kid, the same way the News of the World hacked a dead girl’s phone, to try to squeeze an extra few quid into Rupert Murdoch’s bank account. 

You hired and condone the writings of Katie Hopkins. You signed off her piece which described refugees, dying in the Mediterranean, as “feral humans” and “cockroaches”.

Every time you print a picture of a bare-breasted woman on page 3, for no other reason than to show off her tits, you troll other women.

(C’mon David, how old are you? Thirteen?)

And here we are, supporting a man who we believe has been unfairly traduced by the McCanns, with lawyers paid for by money from the Fund set up to find Madeleine.

And you call us trolls.

David, you know as well as I do, that, if at any time in the future, the Met give any indication that the McCanns have anything to do with the disappearance of their daughter, your paper will flip, without hesitation, into destroying the couple.

You will have absolutely no compunction in doing that, simply to sell another paper or drive another visit to your website.

When you do, we’ll be watching. And we’ll remind you all about trolling.

PS Thanks for the free advertising.

To contribute to Gonçalo Amaral's defence fund, go to http://www.gofundme.com/legal-defencepjga

Other people's money

Extract from Ocean Club check-in list showing extras accrued by guests. (Source: http://www.mccannpjfiles.co.uk/T/03_VOLUME%20_IIa_Page_621.jpg)

£10,000,000 – Taxpayers’ money spent to date on Operation Grange, the Met Police investigation into the disappearance of Madeleine McCann from Apartment 5a at Ocean Club, Praia da Luz on the night of May 3^rd 2007.

£4,290,112  - Total income to Madeleine’s Fund, the McCanns’ limited company, to 31 March 2014.

£3,511,375 - Total expenditure by Madeleine’s Fund to 31 March 2014.

£1,138,487 – Raised for Madeleine’s Fund by sales and serialization of Kate McCann’s book madeleine , billed by Mrs McCann as “an account of the truth”.

£765,363 – Cash at bank, Madeleine’s Fund, 31 March 2014          .

£750,000 – Amount of taxpayers’ money spent on Operation Task, the Leicestershire Police operation to support the Portuguese investigation in 2007/8.

£500,000 – Amount Lord Bell claimed the McCanns paid his PR firm, Bell Pottinger, to keep them on the front page of every single newspaper for a year.

€500,000 – Amount  Portuguese judge has ordered Gonçalo Amaral pay Kate and Gerry McCann for their devastation, desperation, anxiety and pain.

£288,503 – Costs claimed by libel firm Carter-Ruck to have been incurred by January 2013 in the libel action McCanns v Bennett.

£21,257 – Money donated by News of the World readers to a Reward Fund for information leading to the safe return of Madeleine, which, if unpaid, should have been donated to three children’s charities but instead was paid out secretly to Madeleine’s Fund in April 2011. The McCanns continue to refuse to acknowledge the payout.

£10,000 – Amount of money Kate McCann would like other people to donate to Missing People while she rides 500 miles on a bicycle.

€242 – Extras run up by McCann, Gerald Patrick at Ocean Club in the days before the disappearance of his daughter.

£10 – Cost per hour of a babysitter at Ocean Club in May 2007, which the McCanns preferred not to spend.

Please donate to the fund set up for Gonçalo Amaral's appeal costs here:

http://www.gofundme.com/legal-defencepjga

Key questions

Private detectives working for Kate and Gerry McCann reported that the front door of the holiday apartment where Madeleine disappeared was left unlocked and the key had been left in the apartment.

The claim was made in a report prepared in May 2007 by Ken Farrow, then Director of Investigation Services at security company Control Risks.

Farrow, along with Joint Director Michael Keenan, was sent to Praia da Luz on 13^th May 2007 to conduct comprehensive interviews with Mr and Mrs McCann and members of their holiday group.

The report describes the two entry points to holiday apartment G5a at the Ocean Club.

At the back, facing the pool, were double-glazed sliding windows, with one central locking point, an ‘Open’ or ‘Closed’ button on the handle.

According to the investigators, the McCanns had left this terrace door unlocked when they left for dinner at the tapas bar around 8.30pm in order to provide easy access when they periodically checked on their three children.

At the front of the apartment, Farrow states that there was a heavy wooden door fitted with a double-locking mortise lock.

He goes on to report that, on the night of May 3, the front door was not locked and the key was left on the shelf dividing the kitchen and living room of the apartment.

(The shelf is pictured above, centre-right in a photograph made by Portuguese police.)

The investigators admitted that they had no access to the crime scene or to any other information collected by the Portuguese authorities or by Leicestershire Police.

Farrow’s report was not included within the Portuguese police case files released to the public in August 2008.

The gift that keeps on giving

According to the newly-released accounts for Madeleine's Fund for year ending March 2014,  the Fund received another £400,000, 'donated' in connection with Kate McCann's book.

The accounts do not give any information regarding the source of this 'donation', but it is accounted for under Restricted Funds, in a similar manner to the £550,000 'donated' by News International in 2011 for newspaper serialisation rights of the book.

The 'donor' has placed restrictions on how the money may be spent.

Who knows, perhaps the book is destined for the silver screen.

But it's already proved worth its weight in gold.