I know how the McCanns feel

Some people say that they know how the McCanns must feel about their daughter being missing and many say how they would react in such a situation. Naturally, unless you have been in that situation yourself, your ideas about what you would do and how you would feel are purely theoretical. One person who has been in their shoes is John Tate whose daughter went missing 29 years ago and has never been found.

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THEY say time heals – but ask Kate and Gerry McCann if they feel better now their daughter Maddie has been missing for so many months.

And ask John Tate if the disappearance of his 13-year-old daughter Genette has become any easier to bear after 29 long years.

Madeleine’s mother Kate McCann told this week how she has cried every day since the four-year-old vanished during a family holiday in Portugal.

And according to Genette Tate’s father, it is a nightmare from which you never wake.

John, 65, says: “Our lives have never been the same since that day. As the years have gone on there has been a lot less attention paid to Genette. Other things happen in the world. Other kids have gone missing.

“But you never stop allowing your hopes to be raised no matter how many times they are dashed.”

Genette’s disappearance in August 1978 is one of Britain’s longest-running missing persons cases and still has cops baffled.

But her family hope serial child killer Robert Black could soon be charged with her murder.

Genette vanished during her newspaper round in her home village of Aylesbeare, near Exeter. Files have recently been sent to the Crown Prosecution Service, who will decide if Black should be charged with her murder.

A trial could bring some long-awaited answers for John and Genette’s mother Sheila – but they also dread it could dash their last hopes of ever finding out what happened to their little girl.

John knows the feeling of panic experienced by parents when a child goes missing. He knows how the horror grows as hopes fade.

And, like the McCanns, he also knows how it feels when you think things cannot get worse – then the police makeYOUa suspect.

John says: “The McCann’s story has brought back a lot of sad memories for us. I watched the search in Portugal on TV and felt disgusted. It was so pathetic.

“When stories came out claiming the police had got Maddie’s DNA from the hire car I just laughed.

“I know how hard it was to get Genette’s DNA from hair. We had her hairbrush, filled with hair, but it was a waste of time.

“Eventually bods from the DNA lab came down and saw her mum, who had all Genette’s belongings, and they found a skin flake on one of her roll-neck jumpers.

“Suddenly we had Genette’s DNA and my hopes rose again. But it was another dead end.”

John adds: “It wasn’t long before people pointed the finger at me. In the first few days the family are looked at because, if you look at the statistics, in most cases it is a family member who committed the crime. The police start at the centre then move out as they eliminate people. It’s not unusual but is hell at the time.

“It happened to us on a Wednesday, after Genette disappeared the previous Saturday. They took us in for questioning. It was very harrowing and we were not thinking straight.

“They keep going over the same questions and it takes a lot longer than you think it should.

“I had a damned good alibi – but now wish I didn’t because if I had not been away from Aylesbeare then maybe I would have been there with Genette and she would not have been taken.”

Genette spoke to two girl pals just five minutes before those same friends found her bike 300 yards away in a country lane – its wheels still spinning. Genette has never been seen since.

Within an hour, search parties arrived and a helicopter was scrambled. The village hall was turned into a temporary police HQ as an epic inquiry began.

Police and volunteers trawled 500 lakes, ponds, rivers and wells, and more than 9,000 people were interviewed, with 200 police on the case. Genette’s elfin face smiled out of posters nationwide.

But all to no avail.

Now dad John has revealed how it took him years to accept that his only child was dead.

But John – who had divorced Genette’s mum before 1978 and was living with his daughter and then wife Violet – still allows himself the occasional ‘What if?’

John, now with another Sheila, says: “I remember getting angry when one of the police talked about Genette as if she was dead.

“I demanded, ‘What proof have you got? No more proof than I have that she is alive.’

“As the years go by, though, you come to accept it. They gradually talked to me and encouraged me to accept it. But it didn’t happen in six months. Or a year. It was a number of years before I spoke of Genette as being dead.

“And momentarily I still wonder if she is out there but it does not last long. There is nothing to point toward her being alive but there is nothing concrete to say she is dead.”

John also fears for missing Maddie – confessing: “I personally feel . . . I don’t think they will find her alive. It would be so unusual, I can’t think of any similar case. But they will keep hoping.”

He is waiting, too, to see if child sex fiend Black faces trial.

In 2005, police arrested Black, 60, in top-security Wakefield Jail, West Yorks, on suspicion of Genette’s murder, and detectives interviewed him at length. He is serving life for the 1980s murders of Susan Maxwell, 11, five-year-old Caroline Hogg, and Sarah Harper, ten.

He has also been grilled, but never charged, over the 1981 murder of nine-year-old Jennifer Cardy as she cycled down a country lane near her home in Northern Ireland.

John says: “It is so frustrating not knowing how long they will take to make a decision. We don’t know if they have found any trace of Genette’s DNA on Black’s belongings.

“They were able to trace his movements in the other killings from petrol receipts but I think all the records for 1978 may now have been destroyed.

“Would it be in the public interest to take him to court? I think the answer is yes, if only for all the people who helped look for Genette and who have kept up the search for her ever since. For us, a trial would offer a bit of closure, but I am not sure it would change much.

“All I have ever wanted is to know where Genette is. Where is her body? Her mother and I want to know, if only so we can say a proper goodbye.

“Black has refused to meet me so I could ask him if he killed my daughter.

“I would really like him to confess. That would be wonderful. But if he went to trial and said nothing, even if he were convicted, he could be sent down and we would never know.”

John said: “It is awful thinking, ‘If he did do it, what did he do to her?’

“I have read some of the things that he did and, oh my God, it gave me nightmares for years.”

He adds: “Often I want to talk about Genette but there’s no one to talk to. I don’t want to load that on to anyone else, but you also don’t want to carry it all yourself.”

John is not healthy. He suffers from the muscle-wasting McArdle’s disease, arthritis and heart problems, which all confine him to a wheelchair. And last year he suffered a chest infection which he thought would kill him.

He recently had cataract operations on his eyes, which has given him better sight than he has had since he was four. He fears, however, that he may not live to see the day when he finds out what happened to Genette.

“I find it difficult when people ask me what I imagine Genette would look like today if she was alive,” John says.

“Obviously there is a part of me that wonders what she would be like.”

John adds: “I don’t know what to make of the Maddie case. There has been so much information coming out which is unreliable.”

But his thoughts are still with Genette – and he says: “Some dark nights, when Robert Black is thinking about life, surely Genette must go through his mind, too.

“It can’t be very peaceful for him. It’s certainly hell for us.”

John says: “I don’t want it to drag out. I am now 65 and it is hard. I am old and I don’t know who else would carry on campaigning to find out what happened to Genette should I die.

“I don’t know if a trial would end our agony. But if it’s going to happen, please, let’s get on with it.”

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/woman/real_life/article302830.ece