The drip-drip of soundbites coming out of Germany since last year has now moved on to a German clairvoyant who has apparently “given police the exact coordinates of where he thinks” the body of Madeleine McCann is buried.
German police are adamant that they have their man (click here) – even though they have not interviewed him; nor appear to have found any evidence strong enough to bring a formal accusation.
This has not stopped all manner of accusatory stories being disseminated over the last few months.
This latest being every bit as dramatic as many of the others (click here).
Michael Schneider is presented as a clairvoyant who has “successfully located the remains of several missing people”.
According to the Sun, Mirror and Mail, he contacted the BKA – Germany’s equivalent of the FBI – three weeks ago with “the details”.
This is a little ‘bizarre’ in that Mr Schneider gave an interview to German newspaper Express eight years ago, saying very much the same things as he is saying today.
At the time, his information was described as having been forwarded to police in London.
None of the British papers refer to this however. They all describe Mr Schneider’s technique as looking at photographs of a missing person, and then asking God “whether this person is alive or dead”.
He then turns to atlases and Google Maps, until his fingers and eyes “stop on a spot and mark it”.
He told the Mirror: “I do not give out such information lightly and without constantly questioning myself because I am very well aware of the responsibility of what I do”.
The BKA is reported to have mailed Mr Schneider back with the message: “Your information will be appropriately incorporated into our work.”
Says the Mirror, “senior German prosecutor Hans Christian Wolters confirmed to the Sunday People his officers have previously used clairvoyants and in some cases received specific information”.
In other words, it doesn’t look as if Mr Wolters has directly addressed the issue of Mr Schneider’s ‘exact coordinates’ nor confirmed that German police will be investigating them.
The coordinates are described as “six miles (or nine kms) northeast of Praia da Luz”.
From a map reproduced by the British papers, the area looks to be slightly west of the westernmost tributary of the Alvor estuary, close to Mexilhoeira Grande/ Odiáxere.
Says the Mirror, using his technique Mr Schneider helped police last month locate a missing woman who was found hanging from a tree, within 36 hours.
“Schneider was also able to pinpoint exactly where murdered couple Peter Neumair, 63, and Laura Perselli, 68, would be found after they vanished from their home in Bolzano, Italy, in January”.
The 50-year-old is not the first clairvoyant to have furnished detectives with information in this case.
Says the Mail: “Nine years ago, detectives studied 100 logs from psychics that were previously ignored and termed ‘a waste of resources’.
“And in 2017, the family were hit by a cruel hoax after Susan Kelly demanded payment from the family as she claimed to know ‘the truth’ about Madeleine’s whereabouts”.
Mr Schneider however has stressed that he never takes money.
Thus now it is simply a matter of waiting to hear the ‘next installment’ in this extraordinary story that has so far involved three European police forces since three-year-old Madeleine McCann vanished from her family’s holiday apartment in Praia da Luz in May 2007.
