Pat Brown
American Criminal Profiler probes McCann mystery
She arrived in Lisbon from Washington, D.C wheeling a travel-worn suitcase and carrying a metal detector. Inside her suitcase, she’d packed a soil probe and a spade.
Pat Brown - Criminal Profiler, TV commentator and author - was on a mission. As social networking sites buzzed with the news – split between those that wished her well, and those that vociferously didn’t – Brown was undeterred. “This has nothing to do with self-publicity. I am simply trying to get to the truth”. We caught up with her when Brown arrived in the Algarve after meetings in the capital with Gonçalo Amaral and others who have put their reputations on the line in an attempt to solve the millennium’s greatest mystery.
One of the first questions we asked was why an American criminal profiler and TV personality felt the need cross the Atlantic to Portugal to investigate a missing person’s case that was almost five years old?
“Two reasons,” she told us. “One is that I have always been passionately involved in a search for the truth. It’s not something that makes me popular, but it’s something I care about above my own reputation as this case threatens to prejudice the way missing person’s cases are handled.
“We have a situation here where there are two parents who have refused to cooperate fully with a police investigation – who have refused to answer questions, who have changed their stories and fled from jurisdiction – but who have then taken their story - in the way they want us to believe it - to the media, asking people to donate money to fund a search for a child who, statistically-speaking, is almost certainly dead!
“I can understand bereaved parents doing some crazy things, but never have I seen parents like this before! Their actions have opened the door to speculation.
“My other reason is to show support for Gonçalo Amaral and freedom of speech”. Amaral faces trial for defamation of the McCanns over the publication of his book, “The Truth of the Lie” in which he maintains that three-year-old Madeleine McCann died in apartment 5a on the night of May 3rd 2007. His trial was originally set for February 9th -10th, but postponed. Brown decided to take advantage of her booked flight to see if she could learn anything new by visiting the crime scene.
And did she?....read more
