Then, in August 2009, Edgar fronted a TV public relations exercise jointly with the McCanns’ chief reputation management consultant, ex-Labour government and ex-Conservative Party media manipulator, Clarence Mitchell. They called a press conference claiming that the McCann investigation team wanted to question an Australian-speaking Victoria Beckham-lookalike who had spoken to a British banker who over two years before had been talking to her after a drinking spree in downtown Barcelona. This was claimed by Mitchell and Edgar, in all apparent seriousness, to be ‘a strong lead’.

Controversially, he claimed at this press call, as it was expedient for him to do, that Jane Tanner, the McCanns’ friend, might have seen a woman, not a man, walking away from the McCanns’ apartment the night Madeleine was reported missing. Tackled by, for once, a penetrating question from a journalist, he stumbled: “Well, obviously, the Jane Tanner sighting, she's...her perception was it was a man and this...this is a woman. We obviously haven't...Jane Tanner could have been wrong - it could have been a woman, errm...so we've got an open mind on that”.

Dave Edgar stumbles to explain that Jane Tanner might have seen a woman, not a man, on 3 May 2007, while Clarence Mitchell holds up an artist’s sketch of a woman seen in downtown Barcelona on the night of 6 May 2007

Given that Tanner had already claimed that she was sure that the man was Robert Murat (though she later changed her mind), and had all along claimed she had seen a man about 5’ 8” high, this was a wholly ludicrous claim. But none of the mainstream press were interested in that very important point. (For more on how Tanner claimed to have identified Murat, please see Chapter F of The Madeleine Foundation’s article on Murat: “The Mystery of Robert Murat: From Arguido to Applause”.  

One observer wrote at the time: “As I understand it, Jane Tanner has always been resolute in her statement of who or what she saw on the night of 3 May 2007. What possible reason could there be for the lead detective David Edgar to sow the seeds of doubt about the veracity and content of Jane’s statement? Maybe Edgar is simply out of his depth on the public relations side, and made an honest, if inexplicable, slip up?”

In my previous article: “The McCanns’ Private Investigators: We Investigate”,  I quoted from an article by Mark Hollingsworth about this extraordinary press conference. He wrote: “Within days reporters discovered that the private detectives had failed to make the most basic enquiries before announcing their potential breakthrough. Members of Edgar’s team who visited Barcelona had failed to speak to anyone working at the restaurant near where the agitated woman was seen that night, neglected to ask if the mystery woman had been filmed on CCTV cameras, and knew nothing about the arrival of an Australian luxury yacht just after Madeleine vanished”. He described what he referred to as the ‘flaws’ in this whole exercise by Mitchell & Edgar.
Another article, by Jerry Lawton on 11 August 2009, explained:

Detectives hunting missing Madeleine McCann are to quiz the skipper and crew of a £6 million superyacht. The move came after its millionaire owner Rhonda Wyllie, 52, and daughter Melissa Karlson, 31, vowed to do all they could to help. The 105ft yacht was spotted in a Barcelona marina three days after Madeleine disappeared in 2007. The vessel – flying an Australian flag – was moored close to where an Aussie ‘Posh Spice lookalike’ approached a Brit stag-night reveller and muttered: “Are you here to deliver my daughter?’’

An article on 15 August 2009 by Tom Worden, Martin Delgado and Andrew Chapman in the Mail on Sunday echoed Hollingsworth’s  article: 

Private detectives leading the hunt for Madeleine McCann faced questions last night after a Mail on Sunday investigation revealed apparent shortcomings in chasing a 'strong lead'. The detectives failed to make even rudimentary inquiries before announcing a 'significant' development in the worldwide search for the six-year-old. At a press conference in London, lead investigator David Edgar appealed for help in finding a 'bit of a Victoria Beckham lookalike’ whom a British tourist saw looking agitated outside a dockside restaurant in Barcelona three days after Madeleine disappeared.

Retired Cheshire Detective Inspector Mr Edgar said it was possible that Madeleine had been smuggled into the Spanish port by yacht from the Portuguese resort of Praia da Luz, where she vanished on May 3, 2007.

The agitated woman, thought to be Australian, made a remark to the tourist which suggested she was waiting for the arrival of a child.

Mr Edgar, 52, told the 50 journalists from several countries: 'It's a strong lead. Madeleine could have been in Barcelona by this point. The fact the conversation took place near the marina could be significant.'

As a result of his appeal for information and the issuing of an e-fit image of the woman, the search switched to Australia, where a woman in Sydney made a statement to police claiming to know the identity of the mystery female seen in Barcelona, although this apparently came to nothing.

The Mail on Sunday, however, has established that members of Mr Edgar's team who had visited Barcelona:

Also, Spanish police could not confirm that they had been contacted by the British investigators. Last night Mr Edgar said: 'We are not above criticism and I take responsibility for any shortcomings. If somebody has not done what they should have done, that's my job to deal with that.' He was hired by Kate and Gerry McCann after Portuguese authorities shelved their investigation last year.

According to the Find Madeleine Fund website, 'the majority of the fund money has been and continues to be spent on investigative work to help to find Madeleine'…The Mail on Sunday's inquiry by a Spanish-speaking reporter in Barcelona last week has exposed worrying gaps in the British detectives' strategy, including failure to question several people who might have vital information.

Appeal for help: Clarence Mitchell, left, and David Edgar with their e-fit of the 'Victoria Beckham lookalike'

Jose Luis Lopez, owner of the El Rey de la Gamba restaurant where the mystery woman was seen, said: “The private detectives did not make any enquiries at my restaurant. I am almost always here when the restaurant is open and my staff would have informed me if anyone had approached them about such an important matter. You are the first person to ask about this Australian woman”.

The manager of the bar next door, Kennedy's Irish Sailing Club, where the woman was later seen drinking, said: “You are the first person to ask about this Australian woman or the Madeleine case. If someone came into the bar asking questions about Madeleine, I would hear about it very quickly”.

Barcelona port director Joan Guitart said: “Nobody has been here asking questions about Madeleine or this Australian woman. This is the first I have heard about any possible link to the port. We would be happy to help the investigation in any way possible”.

Barcelona marina

A senior port authority worker added: “There are several security cameras monitoring the port but we have not been approached about footage from the night in question. The footage is not available, as it was over two years ago that this conversation is said to have taken place. But I would have expected anyone carrying out the investigation to at least have asked about it”.

A source at the British Embassy in Madrid said: “The detectives did not inform us or the consulate in Barcelona that they were coming to Spain, nor request any assistance in their investigation”.

Jewellery designer Hannah Tait, 35, from London, who lives on a 34ft yacht yards from El Rey de la Gamba, said: “This place is like a small village, so news travels very fast. Nobody has been here asking about Madeleine or the Australian woman. The first I heard was when I read about this on the internet. If someone had been investigating something so important here in the port, I would have heard about it”.

A Barcelona-based private detective with more than 20 years' experience of missing persons cases said: “I cannot understand why the Madeleine detectives would have released this story and e-fit to the public without first making their own investigation in the port. It beggars belief that they did not even speak to the owner of the restaurant or the port authorities”.

One of the most significant pieces of information about a possible Barcelona connection to Madeleine's disappearance was uncovered by British journalists.

Later, the Mail on Sunday gained access to port records for the key dates of May 6 and 7, 2007. They revealed that nine boats arrived in the marina in the 48-hour period, only one of which was unfamiliar to harbour authorities. It was the £6million Sunseeker powerboat Willpower, owned by the Australian multi-millionairess Rhonda Wyllie. When the then captain of the boat was eventually found, he said he had not been approached by any British detectives.

Although he has since been contacted by Mr Edgar's team, the investigators are in the embarrassing position of having to explain why it was left to reporters to discover the boat's presence in Barcelona and trace its former captain...

The Barcelona stage of the inquiry was led by Mr Edgar's assistant, former Merseyside Detective Sergeant Arthur Cowley, and an interpreter…He declined to discuss the details of his visit to Barcelona. Asked last night why Mr Cowley and his colleague had not spoken to the port authorities, Mr Edgar said: “My instructions were that they couldn't get through security at the marina at the time. I've got to take that at face value. We are a small team. We are dealing with finite resources and will have to manage with that”.

In the dark: Jose Luiz Lopez, the bar owner who was not spoken to by private detectives

Clarence Mitchell, on behalf of the McCanns, commented: “The news conference was then held for the simple reason that public assistance was needed once the e-fit had been drawn up from the witness account. The public appeal does not preclude further enquiries being conducted in Barcelona as appropriate”. He declined to say how much the private detectives were being paid, adding: “We will not discuss contractual matters concerning the investigation costs nor the investigator remuneration”.

The whole article was perhaps as near as the Mail on Sunday dare go to declaring Dave Edgar’s investigation team a sham.

Another example of the McCann Team capitalising on a news story came after the remarkable ‘finding’ of 25-year-old Jaycee Lee Dugard after being missing for 14 years. She had been abducted in the U.S.A. from near a bus stop on her way to school when she was 11. She had dramatically turned up alive at the age of 25, having been held prisoner and used for sexual purposes by her abductor for 14 years. Shortly after this remarkable news story, on 13 September 2009, the Belfast Telegraph carried the following story: “Ulster detective leading the hunt for Madeleine tells why he thinks she's being held captive just like Jaycee Dugard”. The same story, with a few details added, appeared in the Independent’s magazine, ‘Sunday Life’ on Sunday 14 September 2009.
The article featured Edgar’s apparently sincere belief that Madeleine was now being held captive in a prison lair within 10 miles of Praia da Luz, where the McCanns were holidaying in May 2009. The article repeatedly emphasised that he was ‘convinced’: “He warned that the sprawling wilderness where he believes Maddie is languishing is almost impossible to search completely. Belfast-born Dave revealed the grim theories when he opened his case files to us. We spent the day at the Cheshire office he uses to conduct the world's biggest missing person case”.
Significantly, and we shall come to this in a moment, the article went on: “‘Sunday Life’ can now lift the lid on how his Alpha Investigations Group private eye agency really operates…” In fact, neither ‘Sunday Life’ nor the Belfast Telegraph ‘lifted the lid’ for us on how Alpha Investigations Group operated, but instead continued: “Renowned for leaving no stone unturned in his UK murder investigations, Dave now spends his days with a four-strong team probing every lead that comes in to his office. His partner Arthur Cowley has more than 30 years' policing experience in north-west England - and the pair are backed up by a translator and an ex-police administrator. They have sifted through thousands of emails, answerphone messages and letters to get that one breakthrough lead”.
The ‘team’, then, consisted basically of Edgar, Cowley, a translator and a secretary. Asked about his plans for the future, Edgar answered: “I don't know. We could still be sitting here in 10 years”.

Just above, we noted how the Belfast Telegraph referred to an entity which they referred to as: ’Edgar’s Alpha Investigations Group private eye agency’. Let us now examine the history of this detective agency which Edgar and Cowley claim to run, or belong to.

A photo of Dave Edgar in the Knutsford house bought by Brian Kennedy as the base for his Madeleine investigation teams

The Independent article informed us: “Former detective inspector Dave, who grew up on Belfast’s Woodstock Road, was drafted in by Kate and Gerry McCann last November after Spanish investigators failed to find new leads”. This dates Edgar’s commencement with the McCann investigation team as November 2008, not long after fraudster Kevin Halligen, now languishing in Belmarsh top security prison awaiting extradition to the U.S.A., ceased to work for the McCanns (see my previous article).
But the company referred to as Edgar’s and Cowley’s, namely ‘ALPHAIG’, was only formed in June 2009, seven months after the Independent informs us he was first employed by the McCanns and Kennedy.

‘ALPHAIG’ looks as though it is short for ‘Alpha Investigations Group’, the name given for Edgar and Cowley’s detective agency by the Independent, and by all other press and media.

But is it? We shall soon see.

Pausing here for a moment, we need to look back at a statement made by Clarence Mitchell on behalf of the McCanns in December 2008. Just before Christmas 2008, he announced that the McCanns had ‘now broken with Oakley International’, the disreputable company headed by the disgraced fraudster Kevin Halligen (see my earlier article). Brian Kennedy, it was reported, was said to have found them to be ‘ineffective’, a serious understatement from what we now know.

Instead, announced Mitchell, the ‘Find Madeleine Fund’ and Brian Kennedy (nobody was quite sure which) were now said to be funding ‘a crack team of twelve senior British detectives’, stated by Mitchell to include ‘top ex-MI5 and MI6 intelligence operatives’. This was now the fifth team of ‘crack detectives’ employed by the McCanns. It sounded very impressive. But at no time were the British media ever given the names of any of these twelve top detectives. Nothing was ever heard about their activities.

But – now that we know about the appointment of Dave Edgar in November 2008 – could this have been a deliberate fabrication by Clarence Mitchell and the McCann Team? Did this alleged team of 12 ‘crack’, senior, top ex-MI5 and MI6 intelligence operatives’ ever really exist?  Did the McCann Team know that the British media would simply accept this bold claim and fail to ask questions about it. Was Mitchell actually merely referring to Edgar and Cowley, bigging them up into ‘a crack team of 12 top detectives’? If so, it would be just one in  along list of fakeries and exaggerations by the McCann Team. 
Let us now see what we can establish about ‘ALPHAIG’.
The records filed at Companies House yield this information:

a)  Company No. 06929397
b)  Incorporated on 10 June 2009
c)  Registered Office: ‘Treetops’, Pant-y-Gof, HALKYN, Flintshire, CH8  8DH
d)  Directors: (1) Arthur John Cowley                                                                      
                       (2)  Turner Little Company Nominees Ltd, Regency House,           
                              Westminster Place, York Business Park, North Yorkshire,  
                              YO26 6RW

e)   The second Director, Turner Little Company Nominees Ltd, resigned on 10 June 2009, making Arthur Cowley the sole director.  There is no mention of Dave Edgar being involved with this company at all.

‘Treetops’ is a house in the small hamlet of just nine houses called Pant-y-Gof in the parish of Halkyn, which itself consists of only around 150 people.  It was bought by Arthur Cowley on 12 July 2002 for £175,000, and may be worth double that today. It was bought by the previous owner on 30 June 2000 for just £128,000, a 37% price hike in just two years.  It does not appear to be the hub of a thriving private investigation business. It is merely Arthur Cowley’s home. Cowley is said by locals to be a pigeon-fancier, and is frequently seen at the Halkyn Social Club.  The Mail on Sunday, on 15 August 2009 (see above), was fairly close to the truth, saying:  “Mr Cowley, 57, is sole director of Alpha Investigation Group, based in Flintshire, North Wales”.

Dave Edgar moved around a year ago to an address in Victoria Avenue, Crewe, just five miles from Brian Kennedy’s mansion at Swettenham Hall in the village of Swettenham.

In the very same article, Dave Edgar is asked to comment on why Arthur Cowley made such a poor, even non-existent, investigation in Barcelona. Edgar answered: “My instructions were that [my team] couldn't get through security at the marina at the time. I've got to take that at face value. We are a small team. We are dealing with finite resources and will have to manage with that. Mr Cowley's company had no connection with the Madeleine investigation. I am employed by the McCann family and I pick my staff”.
 
This was extraordinary. In these two sentences, he had blown apart the bogus claim by the McCann Team that they were employing the services of an established and reputable investigations group, Alpha Investigations Group. He referred to ‘Cowley’s company’ and explicitly denied any involvement with it. Indeed, he said he was directly employed ‘by the McCann family’ and even added that he had appointed Cowley. We might also note at this point that Edgar states on the record that he is employed ‘by the McCann family’. Not by the trustees of the Find Madeleine Fund. Not by Brian Kennedy. But ‘by the McCann family’. 

Equally astonishing, perhaps, was the failure of even one of Britain’s press and media to examine and report on the ‘Alpha Investigations Group’ deception.

The media, when first publicising Dave Edgar’s appointment, insisted that the McCanns had now appointed reputable, formidable, well-established private investigations agency. But by the McCann Team’s sleight of hand, Arthur Cowley’s one-man band company, ALPHAIG, came to be promoted by the press and media as the professional-sounding ‘Alpha Investigations Group’.

This led to confusion with other private investigations agencies with similar names. For example, there is a worldwide group called ‘Alpha Group Investigations’, whose website can be found at: http://www.alphagp.com .

It can easily be seen by visiting their site that this is indeed an international group, based in the U.S.A. and located in many countries all over the world, including the U.K. Another company with a similar-sounding name is  ‘Alpha Investigations’, based at 9 Broxbourne Road, Orpington, in Kent. When I contacted this group in 2009 to check if Edgar’s ‘Alpha Investigations Group’ was part of their company, their Director told me he was fed up with press enquiries on the subject and explained very firmly that Dave Edgar’s ‘Alpha Investigations Group’ had nothing to do with them

Interestingly, the domain name ‘alphaig.co.uk’ was registered by Andrew Dickman, who is inextricably associated with Brian Kennedy’s own company, the Latium Group, on 12 January 2009. Here is proof positive that it was Brian Kennedy who was ultimately behind the appointment of Edgar and Cowley, and proof that Kennedy’s baby ‘ALPHAIG’ was a gleam in his eye a full five months before ALPHAIG was actually registered as a company (see below). This information, incidentally, was researched by Nigel Moore of the ‘McCannFiles’ website, using a ‘WhoIs?’ enquiry, as recently as 18 April 2011, and we are grateful to him, as so many of we Madeleine McCann researchers are, for the comprehensive internet library he has maintained for over two years on the Madeleine McCann case - at www.mccannfiles.com .

Dickman’s very close business relationship with Brian Kennedy was covered in an article in the Manchester Evening News on 21 May 2007, which informed its readers as follows:

Kennedy property arm secures £60m boost
byKevin Feddy

A property business owned by Sale Sharksand Everest double glazing chain tycoon Brian Kennedy has secured a £60m funding boost for expansion.

Patrick Properties, established in 2002 by Mr Kennedy and managing director Andrew Dickman, is based in Wilmslow and specialises in developing and refurbishing office and industrial sites across the north.

It has built a portfolio worth around £80m, which includes warehousing on the Knowsley Industrial Park, a development in Glossop and sites on Broadway Business Park, Chadderton, Premier Park in Winsford, Cheshire, and Crewe Business Park…Its tenants include Rolls-Royce, Bentley, Honda and Cheshire Police. Mr Dickman said the company would now look to acquire further properties as a result of the funding package from the Royal Bank of Scotland…

      Mr Kennedy is best-known as the owner of Sale Sharks and the Everest double glazing business. Last year, he secured the £29.2m takeover of Clitheroe-based conservatory maker Ultraframe by his Latium Holdings business, which he co-owns with business partner Stuart Lees. Mr Kennedy is the majority shareholder of the £400m-turnover business whose interests span plastics, conservatory roof manufacture, glass processing and home improvement retailing.

It was not until 2 May 2009 that the British public eventually learnt about the appointment of Edgar and Cowley to lead the investigation into Madeleine’s disappearance. It came in an article in the Daily Telegraph about a forthcoming Channel 4 documentary, five days later, which included these paragraphs:

Mr McCann was back in Praia da Luz to take part in a reconstruction of the events of that fateful night in the hope of jogging somebody's memory and helping detectives find his daughter who would now be days away from her sixth birthday. The reconstruction was filmed for a Channel 4 documentary that will be broadcast on Thursday.

In the documentary, two former British police detectives investigating Madeleine's disappearance say they have found important new leads in the 30,000 case files released by Portuguese police last summer and now translated into English, at a cost of £100,000 to the Madeleine Fund. Dave Edgar, a retired detective inspector, and his colleague Arthur Cowley, a former detective sergeant, who have more than 60 years' experience between them, say they are interested in a series of important sightings in and around the Ocean Club in the days before Maddy was abducted…

Mr Edgar, who worked for Cheshire police and the RUC, says: “There's someone local, lives locally, has the answer to this, and not much wider than 10, 15 kilometres from Praia da Luz. So you don't start an investigation in Morocco or Spain or France, or even Lisbon. This offence happened in Praia da Luz, it's a very self-contained resort, and that's where we've started and that's where I think the answer is”. Mr Edgar adds: "We're not speculating on anything or theories, it's evidence that we've got from the file”.

The blurb for the Channel 4 documentary then informed us: 

With the search now shelved by the Portuguese police - and no officers in Portugal or the UK dedicated to the case – the [McCanns’] investigators (former police officers from the UK) speak about their interest in a series of important sightings in and around the Ocean Club complex, Praia da Luz, in the days leading up to May 3rd 2007.

These ‘important sightings’ turned out to be allegations that a man with a pock-marked, very spotty face, had been seen hanging around the McCanns’ apartment. He became known as ‘Spotty Man’ (see Daily Star report, below).  Although he was featured in the Channel 4 documentary, clad in a yellow T-shirt, jeans, and sometimes wearing a black leather jacket and sunglasses, and although he still appears as the main suspect if you click on the McCanns’ ‘Find Madeleine’ website, surprisingly the image below of ‘Spotty Man’ did  not appear once during the Channel 4 documentary, and neither does it feature on the McCanns’ website today. That’s not merely surprising. It’s extraordinary if they truly claim that he is the main person they are now looking for.

Two images of ‘Spotty Man’ in the Daily Mirror
The Daily Mirror published the above two images, adding: “This is the sinister pock-marked stranger who investigators believe may have snatched Madeleine McCann from her parents’ flat”. The Daily Telepraph, slightly less emotively, said: “A man with a distinctive pock-marked face has emerged as the prime suspect after apparently being seen outside the flat in the Ocean Club resort in Praia da Luz, Portugal, five times in the four days”. The Daily Star reproduced one image of ‘Spotty Man’ alongside Madeleine in her Everton T-shirt:

Madeleine McCann pictured with ‘Spotty Man’, Daily Star, 21 May 2009

‘Spotty Man’ is amongst this gallery of the McCann Team’s 18 Madeleine McCann ‘suspects’, ‘persons of interest’, and ‘persons we wish to eliminate from our enquiries’: bottom row, 7th and 9th along. Image No. 3 in the top row is Melissa Little’s sketch based, so it is said, on Jane Tanner’s description of the person she says she saw carrying a child way from the McCanns’ apartment on the evening of 3 May 2007. yet 10 days later she saw Robert Murat walking by a police car and said that it was him she had seen carrying away the child. Image 5 in the top row is of ‘Monster Man’, again drawn by Melissa Little. Image 4 in the top row is Melissa Little’s redrawing of her sketch based on Jane Tanner’s original description. It was redrawn to pretend that ‘Monster Man’ and Jane Tanner’s description of a man wearing mustard chinos might be one and the same. Brian Kennedy paid Melissa Little. The large number of suspects may be a new world record of the number of artists’ sketches produced in any one case. Similarly, Leicestershire Police’s decision to link the McCanns’ website to their own whilst the McCanns were still suspects was the first time in world history of a police force telling the public to give information about a crime to a suspect and, moreover, encouraging the public to subscribe to the fund of a suspect. Suspect No. 5 in the top row turned up again in a story about Madeleine having been spotted in Dubai (see below)             

Meanwhile, on 14 May 2009, the Daily Mirror was chosen by the McCann Team to be the first to mention the alleged private detective agency called ‘Alpha Investigations Group’ in connection with Edgar and Cowley. They wrote, in an article titled ‘I felt proud to be able to bring justice to family devastated by murder’:

TheUlster Maddy cop was praised for helping jail killers. The ex-RUC man leading the hunt for Maddy McCann was awarded a judge's commendation for his work solving a brutal murder, the Daily Mirror has learned. Dave Edgar led the investigation into the death of dad-of-four Garry Newlove…Edgar's work ensured Adam Swellings, 19, Stephen Sorton, 17, and 16-year-old Jordan Cunliffe were convicted of the murder.

He said: “I felt very proud to be able to bring justice to a family who were devastated by a brutal and mindless murder. "I was determined Garry's killers wouldn't get away with it and as a team we worked day and night to get a result…Now the Belfast man is leading the hunt for missing Maddy, six, and he is meticulously sifting through papers left behind by failed police and civilian investigating teams.

He says he is relying on years of training, experience and instinct to build a case in Portugal against an abductor he is convinced is local. Mr Edgar is used to tracking down people who do not want to be discovered…He had been a rising star among the officers of the RUC when he chose to accept demotion eight years ago in order to take a job in an English force. After policing in Portadown, South Armagh and Craigavon, he found himself at the heart of several successful murder investigations in Cheshire.

Mr Edgar left the RUC in 1986 as he was about to be promoted to inspector and joined the Cheshire police where he had to start in the lowest rank again and was constable for the second time in his career.

He explained: "There were no suitable ranks to apply for in Cheshire so I just started again but before too long I was made detective inspector”.

Mr Edgar now runs the Alpha Investigations Group with business partner Arthur Cowley. Speaking from his base in Cheshire, Mr Edgar told the Daily Mirror: “I feel deeply that Maddy is somewhere where she can be found. This won't be easy. But I'll do my best and I have a great investigations partner who was an excellent police officer”.

Quite a lot was wrong in this Mirror article.

Dave Edgar did not ‘run’ Alpha Investigations Group.

When the company ALPHAIG was formed, four weeks after the Mirror article was published, it was a one-man band company with Cowley as the sole director. So, on the date of the article. ‘Alpha Investigations Group’, or ALPHAIG as it really was, had not even been formed.

The base of ALPHAIG was not in Cheshire, it was Arthur Cowley’s home in the  Flintshire hills. The article was no doubt referring to the Knutsford house bought by Brian Kennedy in 2007 to be the H.Q. of his chosen investigators.

Neither the journalist nor editor of the Mirror nor any other press, TV or other media outlet challenged the claims of Edgar and Cowley to be running a successful, established private investigation business.

One would also like to check the generally hagiographic claims about the careers of Cowley and in particular Edgar. The claim, above, that they ‘had more than 60 years’ experience behind them’ could apply equally to the lowest, untalented constable who simply served his 30 years in the police force. In a 30-year career, Cowley only managed one promotion, from Constable to Sergeant.

From the details about Edgar’s career, it would seem that he spent 22 years working for the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), in his native Northern Ireland, followed by eight years working for Cheshire Police. It is claimed that, after 22 years in the RUC, he was ‘a rising star’ and ‘about to be promoted to Detective Inspector’. ‘Inspector’ is only one rank up from Sergeant. Can someone who after 22 years has only managed one promotion, to that of Sergeant, truly be regarded as a ‘rising star’, as the Mirror claimed? I ‘rising star’, after 22 years, would surely be of much higher rank than that.

Again, in reference to the murder of Gary Newlove, no doubt Edgar did good work as part of the team that brought his teenage killers to justice. But the Mirror article almost suggests that he solved the murder single-handed. He was not the Senior Investigating Officer in that case. Moreover, it was known that Gary Newlove had been set upon by a group of young thugs. The police task was merely to identify them.    

An article in the Daily Star on 21 May mentioned Edgar but did not mention Alpha Investigations. Headed: “Maddie Cop on trail of ‘Mr Spotty’”, it told us: “A Detective hired to find Madeleine McCann flew out of Britain yesterday on the trail of the spotty suspect he believes masterminded her abduction. Former RUC officer Dave Edgar is travelling across Europe tracking an ‘ugly’ man seen casing out the McCanns’ apartment in Portugal the four days before she vanished. He is convinced Maddie is still alive and was snatched by someone who ‘wanted a child to love’.” The Daily Star referred to “A photofit of a pock-marked man seen by four witnesses acting suspiciously outside the apartment before the abduction”. The article should of course have said ‘Ex-Cop’, but then most sections of the British media seem to want to convey the impression that Edgar and Cowley are still ‘detectives’ and ‘cops’ rather than privately-employed investigators.

The Daily Star report concluded: “Last night the McCann family’s spokesman Clarence Mitchell said Mr Edgar was following a ‘potentially vital’ new lead. He said: ‘For operational purposes I cannot say where Mr Edgar and his team are exactly, but they are following up a very encouraging lead. Mr Edgar, 52, believes Maddie could be hidden in peasant villages close to the Algarve resort of Praia da Luz where she was snatched’.”

The claim that Edgar was ‘travelling across Europe’ to track ‘Spotty Man’ was obvious hype. But the claim that ‘Spotty Man’ was ‘seen casing the McCanns’ apartment’ also went way beyond the actual evidence.

Two days later, and three weeks after the Daily Telegraph story, it was the Independent who on 23 May then gave us a much fuller account featuring Edgar and Cowley. In an article by Cahal Milmo, they wrote, in an article titled ‘Old habits: Retired police on the case’:
 

According to ABI estimates, there are about 10,000 private eyes in Britain with the £1.5bn industry growing at about five per cent a year. In the meantime, it seems customers such as Kate and Gerry McCann are reassured by the no-nonsense approach of the likes of Mr Edgar and Mr Cowley”.

Retired former Detective Inspector Dave Edgar - who has nothing to do with ALPAIG, let alone a non-existent company called  ‘Alpha Investigations Group’

The ‘hardlinemarxist’ blog observed drily: “That statement is quite interesting. The date of publication of that Independent Article by Cahal Milmo, their Chief Reporter, is Saturday, 23 May 2009. I suppose that there is a perfectly reasonable explanation as to why the company, called Alphaig Limited (Alpha Investigation Group) was founded officially after the date of the announcement – the announcement which included reference to the fact that the McCanns had been using the company since some time the previous year”.

The Independent referred to a company ‘headed by Cowley and Edgar’. The Independent was wrong on no fewer than four separate counts:

Other media followed suit. On 26 May, the ‘thisischeshire.co.uk’ news website, for example,  referred to: “Dave Edgar and Arthur Cowley, the duo who now run the Alpha Investigations Group…”

Similarly, sites like easy-DNA.com repeated this claim: “Dave Edgar, a former RUC and Cheshire Police officer, and Arthur Cowley, previously of Merseyside Police, who run Alpha Investigations Group…”

During May, another Madeleine McCann story erupted, hinting that British paedophile Raymond Hewlett might know what happened to Madeleine. Reports again referred to Edgar and Cowley, the Daily Telegraph on 25 May stating: “The search for Madeleine is now being headed by two retired policemen, Dave Edgar, a former RUC and Cheshire Police officer, and Arthur Cowley, previously of Merseyside Police, who run Alpha Investigations Group”.   

The articles in the Belfast Telegraph and the Independent in September 2009 added a further layer of confusion when they reported: “Speaking exclusively to ‘Sunday Life’ at the HQ of his Alpha Investigations Group in Cheshire, Dave Edgar, the ex-cop leading the search for Maddie…”

Not only had the ‘Sunday Life’ misrepresented the position by claiming that Alpha Investigations Group was ‘Edgar’s group’,  it also - wrongly - stated that ‘his’, or its, HQ was the premises in Cheshire, which we now know is the Knutsford house bought by Brian Kennedy in 2007, and not Cowley’s Flintshire home. The pictures which accompanied this ‘Sunday Life’ article showed a suite of rooms at this ‘Cheshire HQ’. That was Kennedy’s house in Knutsford, not ALPHAIG’s registered office in Flintshire.

Several independent Madeleine McCann researchers, like myself, looked for other evidence of an ‘Alpha Investigations Group’ in the Cheshire area. These researches revealed the existence of an ‘Alpha Investigations Group’ in the 2009 telephone directory at an address in The Courtyard, Cheadle.

A Madeleine Foundation supporter telephoned the number given in the ’phone book, only to discover that it was unobtainable. Another Madeleine Foundation supporter then visited, in July 2009, the address given in the ’phone book. The pictures below, however, showed that the premises in Cheadle from where ‘Alpha Investigations Group’ was supposed to be operating was unoccupied, deserted, with ‘To Let’ signs everywhere. There was absolutely no sign of any private investigation company there, still less one called Alpha Investigations Group. And there was no notice to say they might have moved to a different address. 

Was the ’phone book entry showing ‘Alpha Investigations Group’ in Cheadle  a deliberate hoax?

The Courtyard, Commercial Avenue, Cheadle, the address given in the ’phone book for ‘Alpha Investigations Group’ in 2009. The premises were unoccupied.
 

We can now trace the strange sequence of events from the information we have reviewed so far, as follows:

The abbreviated accounts for ALPHAIG Limited, for the period ending 30 June 2010, were signed off on 31 January 2011. They reveal, essentially, a virtually non-existent company. The accounts for this one man band, set up on 10 June 2009 only after the press had claimed they were already in existence -  and were a leading private investigations agency – became available at Companies House in January.

The accounts show:

Fixed assets of £630
A bank balance of £853
Creditors: £170
Liabilities: £1,644
Profit for the year: £8

They therefore have very little, if any, equipment - and next to no cash. Surely a firm of private investigators would have sophisticated equipment, cameras, listening devices, computers and cars? The McCanns therefore claim to be relying on a company which clearly does not have the resources to carry out the required operations, let alone make a profit and remunerate themselves.

Moreover, ALPHAIG has no website and no obvious means of being contacted. There is no reference anywhere else that I can find to the existence of actions of this company except with reference to the McCann private investigation.

I have no hesitation in pronouncing this a bogus company, a sham.

A great deal of fakery has been involved in presenting claims that the McCanns were using the services of an established and successful private investigations agency - fakery for which the McCanns, their reputation manager Clarence Mitchell, Brian Kennedy (the man behind the entire shambolic set of failed private investigations) - and Edgar and Cowley are all responsible. Fakery which our free and well-resourced mainstream media could not be bothered to expose.

The McCanns and their team are wholly responsible for the creation in the media of this bogus company.

On Sunday 10 October, journalist Tracey Kandohla, who has often been associated with Madeleine McCann stories and who is close to the McCanns and Clarence Mitchell, reported that: “A crack team of British ex-police officers have joined the search for Madeleine McCann”. This was said to have given the Drs McCann ‘fresh hope’.

Rather dramatically, Kandohla told us that ‘the three crack detectives are now in Lisbon’. The article said that these three new detectives were being paid by the Find Madeleine Fund. At the same time. Dr Kate McCann was said to have paid another visit to Praia da Luz.

The three new detectives were named: “Chief investigator David Edgar has boosted his team with three former policemen: Nigel Brown, who was named ‘Investigator Of The Year’ after securing the rescue of a kidnapped oil company executive, Dave Carter, who worked in Northern Ireland, and Ray Cooper, who investigated war crimes in Bosnia”.

A ‘McCann source’ was quoted in the article as saying: “They are in Portugal on a semi- permanent basis. When new leads come in they are there to chase them up. They are an ideal addition to the team and, in Gerry’s words, have vowed to leave no stone unturned”. The McCanns were said to be “upbeat because they are convinced they will have new ideas and methods of working; it gives them new hope.”

Nothing has been heard about the activities of these three since Kandohla’s article.

In the meantime, Edgar’s name has been associated with a series of improbable claims about Madeleine’s whereabouts.
The wholly incredible claim that dying paedophile Raymond Hewlett wrote a deathbed letter naming the gypsy gang leader whose gang allegedly abducted Madeleine has been thoroughly exposed already in two other Madeleine Foundation articles: No. 12.0: “Did Raymond Hewlett (now dead) have anything to do with the disappearance of Madeleine McCann?” and Article No. 12.1: “Did paedophile Raymond Hewlett really know what happened to Madeleine McCann? - An analysis of another farcical article in the Sun”.
The more recent claims by an Angolan-born bouncer that Madeleine ‘may be in the U.S.’ were also robustly exposed as fraudulent in another Madeleine Foundation article (No. 30.0): “Does an Angolan bouncer in a Spanish basketball team know that Madeleine McCann is alive and in the United States?”
On 20 January several newspapers and media broke news of another ‘sighting’ of Madeleine McCann, this time in Dubai. As one newspaper, the Sun , once again tagging their Madeleine story ‘exclusive’, put it: “An unnamed 35-year-old businessman told police he saw the girl with the man and two women outside a shopping mall in Dubai in November last year. He said: ‘The guy looked very like the suspect because he had a scary face, a moustache, and was very skinny. The woman with him was also very thin. Behind them I saw a little girl, about seven or eight years old, with a black woman in a veil. The girl looked so similar to the younger Madeleine. She had light brown hair. But it was her nose and eyes that made me think it was the missing girl’. Interpol and private investigators hired by Maddie’s parents Kate and Gerry are probing the sighting”.
Quite apart from the fact that such newspaper reports may suit the publicity agenda of the McCann Team, but might lead to any suspect going to ground and hiding, the ‘unnamed businessman’ says: “The guy looks very much like the suspect…”. 
But which suspect are we talking about here? As we’ve already seen, go to the McCanns’ website, and they are still looking for ‘Spotty Man’, the man with a pock-marked face who in the Channel 4 documentary is seen sporting a yellow T-shirt and jeans, and certainly doesn’t have a spotty, pock-marked face. Yet in this article, the Sun and other newspapers accompany their articles with a wholly different suspect, namely, ‘Monster Man’. Once again, no investigative journalist, no independent-thinking editor, was able to point out this very obvious contradiction.
As recently as 24 April this year, the Daily Telegraph’s Olga Craig referred to: “David Edgar, the Ulster-born ex-police officer whose Alpha Group Investigations has taken over the search”.

Two years after the ‘Alpha Investigations Group’ hoax was perperated by the McCann Team, the British media are still recycling this hoax.

What a sad reflection on the way the British media have failed to investigate all aspects of the mysterious disappearance of a three-year-old British girl, Madeleine Beth McCann.