Goncalo Amaral Part One

• Irrational
  
• Arrogant
  
• Ignorant
  
• Misogynistic
  
• Chauvinistic
  
• Manipulative
  
• Liar
  
• Fantasist
  
• Full of his own importance
  
• Delusional
  
• Paranoid
  
• Lazy
  
• Cold, unfeeling, unsympathetic
  
• No understanding of other people's feelings
  
• Unable to digest other people's opinions
  
• Refuses to listen to other people
  
• Does not take orders from superiors well
  
• Believes he is better than anyone else
  

• Feels grandiose and self-important (e.g., exaggerates achievements and talents to the point of lying, demands to be recognized as superior without commensurate achievements)
  

• Is obsessed with fantasies of unlimited success, fame, fearsome power or omnipotence, unequalled brilliance (the cerebral narcissist), bodily beauty or sexual performance (the somatic narcissist), or ideal, everlasting, all-conquering love or passion
  

• Firmly convinced that he or she is unique and, being special, can only be understood by, should only be treated by, or associate with, other special or unique, or high-status people (or institutions)
  

• Requires excessive admiration, adulation, attention and affirmation - or, failing that, wishes to be feared and to be notorious (narcissistic supply)
  

• Feels entitled. Expects unreasonable or special and favorable priority treatment. Demands automatic and full compliance with his or her expectations
  

• Is "interpersonally exploitative", i.e., uses others to achieve his or her own ends
  

• Devoid of empathy. Is unable or unwilling to identify with or acknowledge the feelings and needs of others
  

• Constantly envious of others or believes that they feel the same about him or her
  

http://www.toddlertime.com/narcissism/what-is-npd.htm

I think that Goncalo Amaral could have a severe personality disorder, he could be a narcissist. Is it any wonder that no matter what case this man was involved in, that they always seem to end in disarray, confusion, farce, chaos and controversy?

Without a doubt, Amaral seems to have no feelings what-so-ever for what the victims of any crime may be going through, he seems to get an idea in his head and then manifests events and tries to make them fit what he believes happened and has absolutely no regard for what 'did' actually happen. He appears to turn the victims of crime into the perpetrators of the crime he is investigating, and he does this, without so much as a bye or leave, he is simply uncaring and appears to have no compunction about the immeasurable pain, chaos and confusion he inflicts upon people who are often at their most lowest ebbs in their lives. Eg Gerry McCann was in pain and on his knees begging the GNR to look for his abducted daughter and Goncalo Amaral - who did NOT attend the scene, described Gerry on his knees as a "praying Arab!" Amaral appears to use people as commodities, Amaral seems to believe that all people he comes into contact with, are simply there to be used to further his own career, beliefs etc. People like this simply have no understanding of right and wrong, they do not care and nowhere has this been more evident and more clearly demonstrated than when we take a closer look at the personality of Goncalo Amaral and his actions.

I would guess that both his personal and working relationships have been heavily tainted by his "personality" and that at times, because of Amaral's total inability to take on board the feelings and ideas, wants and needs of others, it has caused him (and others) immeasurable difficulties. I would think that being a detective, needing to keep an open mind is of paramount importance, or solving cases will just not happen. We actually have the benefit of being able to look over some of the cases that Amaral has been involved in, and it is true to say that, the high profile cases he has conducted, have all seemed to end badly, leaving more than a shadow of doubt over the final outcome. Currently a woman and her brother are serving 16 years for the murder of the woman's daughter and Amaral has been convicted of lying to cover up her torture, a torture carried out to make her confess to murdering her own daughter and a torture carried out within the confines of a Portuguese police station! Amaral received an 18 month suspended prison sentence, however, since his conviction, he has also been accused and charged with the torture of this woman's partner and is due to stand trial, if convicted, Amaral will almost certainly go to prison. It should also be mentioned that Amaral is also the subject of an appeal to increase his 18 month suspended prison sentence and for it to be commuted to be served in prison. Not to mention that the the parents of Madeleine McCann are bringing an action against him for £1 million on behalf of themselves and their 3 children, the action is for defamation and slander, which they claim has seriously damaged the search for their daughter Madeleine McCann, who was abducted from her bed in Praia da Luz on 3rd May 2007.
I would hedge a bet that on more than one occasion, Amaral has made his work colleagues, and his family doubt their own sanity and ability to carry out their daily lives and their work commitments.
Amaral has also tried to discredit the lawyer of the woman's torture he lied to cover up, by making claims about his sanity, Amaral has tried to bring an action in the courts against him and has slandered the lawyer in many of the Portuguese papers.
Amaral is also due back in court for when the appeal of the tortured woman is heard in the Portuguese court of Supreme Justice.

Working for Amaral may have been an absolute nightmare. Imagine being a detective on the team of Amaral and you are investigating the disappearance of a child, during your investigations you turn up some really important facts, facts that actually cast doubt over the conclusion of another case where a child has disappeared, a case that your boss (Amaral) also conducted the investigation, a case that also courted controversy and had a far from satisfactory conclusion and you realise that you have to inform your boss, how would you go about it? If you tell him, you are likely to be ridiculed and further development in your career stifled, but more seriously, you tell him and he simply disregards the new facts and refuses to take on board their importance, knowing that if he does, then his methods and the way he conducted the previous case would become the centre of another scandal, with him placed firmly in the middle of it.

Would that detective actually go through with telling Amaral or Amaral's superiors?
Even if he did tell his boss, would Amaral have done anything further with the information? Or would this also be filed under B for bin? There are currently approximately five outstanding court cases filed against disgraced former detective, Goncalo Amaral.

Without being disrespectful, I would say that (hypothetically) this detective would keep quiet and not risk the wrath of his boss, he probably realises that even if everyone knew he was right, it would all be swept under the carpet and his political masters would take note of the person causing the problem. This in essence, is why I think that having Amaral in charge of the abduction of Madeleine McCann, was never a good idea and it should never ever have happened, it was an error of monumental proportions and I firmly believe, it was because of this fatal error, that the whereabouts of Madeleine is still unknown.
I also believe that powers that be, once very very early on the obvious "errors" in Amaral's investigation began to surface, he should have been removed from this case immediately, hence forth another grave error beset this case.

If you take a brief snapshot of Amaral's personal life, you will see it has particular traits and patterns. In fact run it along a narcissist's life and you will see the clear indications and similarities. Since narcissism does not just develop latterly, he would have probably always been a problem within his family and very difficult to get along with.
He has had well documented marital difficulties, there has been official reports of his drinking and driving and his own wife has reported him to the police for driving a police vehicle while under the influence of alcohol. His own wife reported him for kidnapping their daughter and not handing her over at a pre arranged designated place and time and when she tried to get her daughter, she (Sofia Amaral) was threatened with violence and her life. Mrs Amaral reported this and this is a matter of legal record.

Now it appears because it suits Amaral, his wife and children appear to have become commodities, to be used as trophy proof that everything in the Amaral garden is rosy.
The words 'fly, on, wall, love, to, be' spring to mind!
There is a well documented 'open letter' that we are led to believe that Sofia Amaral wrote to Kate McCann, the mother of a child who was abducted from Praia da Luz, Portugal. Of which Goncalo Amaral conducted the investigation into her disappearance, for the first five months, before he (Amaral) was sacked from the investigation, demoted from his position as police chief in Portimao, Portugal and stuck behind a desk pushing pieces of paper around, before he decided to take early retirement.

In this now infamous open letter, Mrs Amaral sung the virtues of her husband, to the point where the reader may have been forgiven for believing that Goncalo Amaral had been Canonised! It was totally unbelievable, yet Amaral, apparently saw nothing in that letter that would make any rational, logical thinking person stop and take a very close look at what had been written, why it had been written and who actually wrote it! Probably a narcissist, would never see anything wrong in those words on that piece of paper, which was "said" to have been written by Sofia Amaral. To a narcissist, those words would have been manner from heaven and no more than he deserved! The swooning adoration, the play to Amaral's "virtues" (as he sees them) is exactly what he would want to see written, that letter appears not to have caused him a moments cringing embarrassment, as it would to most people who do not suffer from a narcissistic personality, after all it was Amaral that let the letter be published and for all we know, he may have written it himself, who really knows what goes on there in that relationship?
In the days that followed Madeleine's disappearance, we saw Kate and Gerry holding hands, everywhere they went, this was to gain strength and support and reassurance from each other I would imagine. Interestingly, we then began to see the newly reunited Amaral's, stepping out and putting on a display of unity, which was totally absent the day that Mrs Amaral went into a police station in Portugal, and reported her husband for threatening her with violence and death and putting her (Sofia) in fear for the welfare of her daughter, just a few months previously. You see pictured below, that the Amaral's even started emulating the McCanns by going everywhere hand in hand and allowing themselves to be photographed as such, which is really odd behaviour! .You may well ask yourself how Sofia was able to get from one extreme to another in such a short space of time!

Look at the body language and the way that Goncalo has hold of his wife's hand, by the fingers as if she is trying to pull away, but is reluctantly allowing herself to be lead.



Here again, we have Goncalo Amaral holding his wife and her body language looks like she would rather be anywhere else than there! Again she looks like she is pulling away from him.



Here we have two pictures, one of Kate and Gerry McCann holding hands and the other of the Amaral's. Note that Kate and Gerry's hands are entwined, as one, portraying unity and togetherness, then note how Sofia and Goncalo's hands are worlds away from the McCanns, this speaks volumes!


Left Kate and Gerry McCann...and..Right Sofia and Goncalo Amaral

Dear Madam,
Excuse my audacity, but after learning about your comment in your interview with the newspaper, Expresso, on the subject of Gonçalo
Amaral, my husband and father of my daughters, I have to send you these
words of thanks. For many years I have been trying to make myself
understood with this feeling that unites you and I "....and his
behaviour is a disgrace professionally and as a person"...Consider this:

a) Professionally
--
As coordinator of criminal investigation for the PJ, my husband has
always refused to sit comfortably behind his desk, from 9 to 5, which
is usual for his rank.

Instead
of that, he spent the day (and sometimes the night) on the ground with
the investigators, coordinating "on the spot" searches, surveillance,
seizures and other duties. What a disgrace! But if this was just about
being exposed to the elements, things wouldn't be serious, because as
madam Kate knows, the weather here is not bad. The problem is his
commitment to the cause which has cost him promotion in his career. I
will explain, because this case is contemporary to the search for your
daughter. My husband was involved as senior coordinator, and between
seizures of drugs, kidnappings and murders, he succeeded in producing a
theory about drug trafficking by sea, which he defended before a jury
in Lisbon, who congratulated him.

Full of hope, Gonçalo
Amaral returned to the Algarve to await the result. It was with
astonishment that he learned that he had been passed over by other
colleagues (coordinators as it happens, to tell the truth), because he
had not managed to get himself into "professonal training" settings.
And yes, madam Kate, my husband spent his life working, in the midst of
complex investigations. He was the man in Portugal who seized most
drugs, but as he didn't have the time to parade himself in the
corridors of the PJ's institution, he was not promoted. A disgrace,
madam, a disgrace!


As you must know, because you seem very well informed to me, my
husband's salary was barely 1.5 times the minimum wage of your country.
However, as a wife, mother and Portuguese, I cannot complain, given
that Gonçalo Amaral's salary was the equivalent of
4.5 times the minimum wage in Portugal. Pay attention to this, which
serves as an example of what I am going to explain: at one time, an
individual shot an officer of the PSP and fled into neighbouring Spain.
Between the comings and goings of a PJ team, of which my husband was a
part, they were there for more than 15 days.
At
that time, international expenses were 100€. As madam Kate can imagine,
it is not possible on that amount to eat and to lodge in Spain, still
less when it is Christmas Eve, and this amount would only be available
(with a bit of luck) by Easter. Even with that, Gonçalo
Amaral never refused, not even for a day, to search for the evasive
murderer, thus increasing our family budget. And this is only one
example amongst many. I once suggested to him the creation of a fund,
or something else for dealing with these extraordinary expenses, but he
never listened to me. While we too had our mortgage to pay...A
disgrace, Madam Kate, a disgrace!

b)
Also as an individual, his behaviour is a disgrace, because it was
never possible to distinguish or to have a private life with the way of
working he chose. However, and if my dear friend Madam Kate will allow
me, I can give some examples:
Five years ago, a child called Joana "disappeared." The
mother, just like Madam Kate, tried to project the case into the media,
but this was as far as she got...After 8 days, came the confessions and
the evidence: During an incestuous act between the mother and the
uncle, the child was beaten, later cut into pieces and her body
disposed of, no one knows where. The mother and the uncle were
imprisoned, with the trial coordinated by Gonçalo Amaral, and bringing each of them nearly 20 years in prison. But going back a bit.

The
child died on September 12th. On Christmas Eve, our family were
together to begin our prayers, when my husband asked me to prepare a
bag with food and warm clothes, because he had not yet carried out his
Christmas act of contrition and penitence. Try to imagine, Madam Kate,
where Gonçalo Amaral took himself that Christmas night when there was torrential rain and roaring thunder? To the Olhao prison establishment, where João
Cipriano, Joana's uncle, was a prisoner; confessed murderer and
clinically declared a psychopath. For my husband, giving alms to a
beggar did not represent any sacrifice.

On the other hand, joining and sharing his Christmas meal with João
Cipriano was the sacrifice he offered to God in memory of Joana. And
isn't that a disgrace? Know this, Madam Kate, every year, on September
12th, my husband requests a mass for Joana Isabel Cipriano
Guerreiro. He says that no one else will remember the poor child. But
people remember to accuse him unjustly of acts and crimes which he has
never committed. Isn't that a disgrace, Madam Kate?


I will relate one last story, which still costs me to talk about.
This year, in May, we started the process of moving our family to
Portimao. My husband's holiday was supposed to start the day after your
daughter disappeared. "For obvious reasons," that didn't happen. I
started a new job, I looked at houses, I made the move and I tried to
settle our daughters into new schools with new routines.

All
that alone, without any support from my husband, who, for obvious
reasons, was looking for your daughter, Madam Kate. In October, on the
day of his birthday, a week after our daughters had started the new
school year, Gonçalo Amaral was dismissed and
returned to Faro. It was supposed to be a time of the family getting
together, but in fact it was even more of a separation. Isn't that a
disgrace? Our daughters have never understood, and we have never
succeeded in explaining to them what the obvious reasons were
that justified a father leaving his daughters to look for a child he
didn't know and whom the parents neglected. A disgrace that my dear
friend Kate was not there at that time. Perhaps you could have helped
us explain the "obvious reasons" to our children for their father's
being sent back.

To finish, on the intimate subject of Gonçalo
Amaral, I can only tell you that he is exactly as the Latinos have a
reputation for: a wild one, and my modesty does not allow me to say any
more.

I ask my dear friend to forgive these
thoughts of a wife and mother, but I am sure you will understand. I
will finish this missive by asking you to pass on to your mother my
sincere compliments. She seemed very sincere to me when, during an
interview, she said she had the urge to slap those who had left her
grandchildren alone. She spoke as openly as a true Portuguese
grandmother would have done.

My dear friend
Madam Kate, without wishing to bother you any further, I would like you
to do me a last favour: now that you are starting to let the truth come
out, don't stop, go on, and tell the truth the world is waiting to hear.


With my best regards,

Sofia Leal

(Wife and mother of Gonçalo Amaral's children.)