# Disclaimer on „Rumors“

In every open criminal case one will have to deal with rumors about possible events, circumstances and connections, with unconfirmed suspicions or suspected backgrounds. Rumors are always somewhere in between the extremas of a fact and a lie. Thus rumors are not useless but, if of presumable importance to the given case, have to be investigated further on and eventually been substantiated or falsified either.

Definition: A →RUMOR is often viewed as “an unverified account or explanation of events circulating from person to person and pertaining to an object, event, or issue in public concern”. However, a review of the research on rumor conducted by Pendleton in 1998 found that research across sociology, psychology, and communication studies had widely varying definitions of rumor. Thus, rumor is a concept that lacks a particular definition in the social sciences. But most theories agree that rumor involves some kind of a statement whose veracity is not quickly or ever confirmed. In addition, some scholars have identified rumor as a subset of propaganda, the latter another notoriously difficult concept to define. A pioneer of propaganda studies, Harold Lasswell defined propaganda in 1927 as referring “solely to the control of opinion by significant symbols, or, to speak more concretely and less accurately, by stories, rumors, reports, pictures, and other forms of social communication”. Rumors are also often discussed with regard to “misinformation” and “disinformation” (the former often seen as simply false and the latter seen as deliberately false, though usually from a government source given to the media or a foreign government). Rumors thus have often been viewed as particular forms of other communication concepts.

Definition:A →FACT is something that has really occurred or is actually the case. The usual test for a statement of fact is verifiability, that is whether it can be proven to correspond to experience. Standard reference works are often used to check facts. Scientific facts are verified by repeatable experiments.

Definition: A →LIE is a false statement to a person or group made by another person or group who knows it is not the whole truth, intentionally. A barefaced (or bald-faced) lie is one that is obviously a lie to those hearing it. A Big Lie is a lie which attempts to trick the victim into believing something major which will likely be contradicted by some information the victim already possesses, or by their common sense. Perjury is the act of lying or making verifiably false statements on a material matter under oath or affirmation in a court of law, or in any of various sworn statements in writing.

So a Detektive will always been faced with rumors, which is especially the case within the Maddie Case regarding so far all leads to version 2: indeed until today one had to deal with rumors alone and not one of those rumors regarding the abduction theory could be substantiated in any way.

For version 1 we but have another dilemma: Although there is big bunch of substantiated facts documented in the PJ-Files there was still no court to set up a trial. Not the federal prosecutor of Portugal nor the British federal prosecutor showed much cooperativeness regarding the upset on a trial against the McCann’s. This is dubious for itself, as the found evidence is at least enough to open a trial on evidence alone in any European Country. But it gets much more dubious as when one compares the enormous support the McCann’s became from the very beginning of the events by high Politicians from the UK and also other Countries. And also in terms of big money, which paid from start on for extremely expensive top people from the best lawyers in UK and Portugal and to the best press relation support one can imagine. An unbelievable support which is still ongoing and consumed millions of pounds since. A support that could never have been paid for by the McCann's as they had around the day of the event nothing but very high outstanding debts. This must be seen especially in comparison to the bulk of other similar cases in UK, where there was never any such attention and far less to simply null support from Politics or from broad money.

Any private citizen of course may decide on his own if he gives support to anybody or not. It is not a crime to give two doctors in severe trouble supports thousands and millions pound worth, and to give other parents in the same situation nothing at all. It is shady but legal of course. But it is much another thing for any officials like politicians or police or any government employee which have not to decide on there own but only on overriding public interests. That indeed three consecutive Prime Minsters of the UK got heavily involved in support for the McCann’s is a riddle which is not so easy to explain. The extraordinarily unusual support for the McCann's by the establishment and the political system is to provide definitely in question, because if it is true according to the documents that the McCann's should be guilty, then this fact would damage the rule of law significantly.

From this we may conclude, that rumors in both cases Version 1 and Version 2 are of some importance and cannot be plainly overheard. Firstly any rumor thus must namely be doubted but also must be investigated serious if it is of presumable importance to the case. This regards to burglars in Praia da Luz or Gypsies at the Ocean Club as well as to dubious connections of British establishment in the case.