Discovered! The original December 16 Daily Mail article on the beheading of Patrick McGee

Last night reader Michelle R. sent this:

I haven’t been following the case closely, but I don’t recall you mentioning this fact, which I found here:

The maniac cut off his head and then picked it up and dumped it in a nearby wheelie bin before stepping back inside his house and calmly calling police.

When officers arrived he said: ‘I’ve just killed my neighbour—and I’ve chopped off his head.’

Maybe this was the first cut of the Mail article before they censored it …

PS—I didn’t find this via Google. I knew the NFHiB forum would likely have picked up the article and decided to check it directly.

Initially I did not notice Michelle’s speculation that this was the first cut of the Mail article. I went to the page she had linked, which was at a web forum with the colorful name Neighbors from Hell in Britain (NFHiB). Glancing over the article, which was dated December 16, I saw that it had several statements I had not seen before, among others, a quote from a police source saying that the neighbor had “lain in wait for the pensioner and ambushed him as he arrived home.” I saw that it came from the Mail. I clicked on the link in the NFHiB headline, and to my astonishment it took me to the same Dec 17 12:15 p.m. article at the Mail which has been the ONLY real mainstream news article on this murder from the start.

This was quite confusing. The NFHiB article was dated the 16th. I wondered, was the Mail’s original article totally different, with details about the killer lying in wait, jumping and beheading McGee, then calling the police, etc., and even including the statement that McGee was an Irish native who hoped to return to Ireland, and then the next day the Mail at the same link completely re-wrote the article to the one we’re familiar with, the one that all other mainstream sources have copied? The article at NFHiB was so different from the December 17 Mail article that I even had the fleeting thought that someone at NFHiB had re-written it on his own. But then I read the end of the NFHiB article where it says:

Tonight police were continuing to question the man, thought to be of Filipino origin.

Aha! That’s the sentence that several people said they saw in the original Mail article of the 16th, which in the version of the 17th was changed to “A 31-year-old man, understood to be suffering from mental illness, has been arrested on suspicion of murder.” So the article at NFHiB is indeed the original Mail article, copied on the 16th, before the Mail re-wrote the article, dropped several key facts, and posted the re-written article at the same link as the original.

I think it’s a terrible practice, very confusing to readers, for a paper to post a substantially revised article at the same link as the original. If a paper changes a story to this degree, it should post it as a new story with a new link, leaving the original version intact.

Here, in its entirety, is the original December 16 Mail article, as copied at NFHiB. I’ve bolded passages that were dropped from the December 17 version. In addition to important facts and quotations that were dropped in the December 17 version, note how much more vivid this version is than the version of the 17th, with phrases like, “residents spoke of their shock and disbelief at the horrific killing of their much loved friend.”

Pensioner beheaded ‘after dispute over noise’—neighbour held on suspicion of murder

www.dailymail.co.uk - Mail Online—16-Dec-08

Pensioner beheaded ‘after dispute over noise’ as neighbour is held on suspicion of murder

By Jaya Narain

A churchgoing pensioner was beheaded on his own doorstep after an alleged disagreement over noise levels with his neighbour.

Patrick McGee, 63, was ambushed in his own front garden as he returned home from a meeting.

The maniac cut off his head and then picked it up and dumped it in a nearby wheelie bin before stepping back inside his house and calmly calling police.

When officers arrived he said: ‘I’ve just killed my neighbour—and I’ve chopped off his head.’

Tonight it emerged the pensioner may have been killed after a petty row about noise.

A police source said: ‘The neighbour has a young family and we think Mr McGee may have complained about noise levels in the house and the pair got into a heated argument.

‘This neighbour has then lain in wait for the pensioner and ambushed him as he arrived home. By all accounts Mr McGee was a hardworking and friendly member of the community. It is a terrible, terrible crime and has left everyone stunned.’

Police were last questioning a 31-year-old man on suspicion of murder as residents spoke of their shock and disbelief at the horrific killing of their much loved friend.

Christine McDonough said: ‘Patrick was a real gentleman, a proper neighbour who was well-liked by everyone who came across him.

‘He was always very polite and friendly and took an active interest in the community, helping people wherever he could.

‘I just can’t believe that someone would do such a thing in a nice suburban street like this. It is like something out of a horror film.’

A regular church goer, Mr McGee was a former joiner at the North Manchester General Hospital and a representative with public service union UNISON.

He was single, lived on the same street in Crumpsall, Manchester, all his life, and had spent years looking after his late mother and father John and Iris McGee.

The alarm was raised at around 9.20pm on Monday after police got a call from the suspected killer.

Police officers arrived to be met by the suspect saying he had cut off his victim’s head and he showed them to the wheelie bin where Mr McGee’s decapitated head was found. He was arrested at the scene.

[Note: the 12-17 version says: “The alarm was raised at around 9.20pm on Monday night after police were called and officers found the victim’s decapitated head in a wheelie bin. A man was arrested at the scene.”]

Tonight it emerged Mr McGee may have been involved in a scuffle in the street just days earlier as he had been found lying on the pavement with minor cuts and abrasions.

Jack Higgins, 65, a neighbour said: ‘Paddy came to a meeting of the residents’ association at Crumpsall Methodist Church between 7pm and 8pm and I spoke to him there.

‘I noticed cuts and bruises on his hands and he had nasty scratch marks down his cheek but he wouldn’t say how he had come by them. Apparently he had been found in the street earlier with blood on him.

‘He left the meeting in his car and it seems he never managed to get through his front door. It is just awful to think about and everyone round here is in shock.’

Pauline Cribbin, 66, a retired hospital worker, who had known Mr McGee for 36 years, said: ‘He was a very nice, quiet gentleman and he worked at the hospital all his life,

Paddy would never harm anyone, and I can’t think of anyone who would do this to him.’

Sue Breadman, 64, who lived opposite Mr McGee, said: ‘I knew him for 36 years and he didn’t upset anyone and he didn’t have any enemies that I could think of.

‘We knew his mum and dad and he had lived on the street all his life and my daughter even used to call his mum and dad Grandma and Granddad.

‘I hope that they get whoever is responsible for this, it’s devastating and why did it have to happen to our Paddy? He had done nothing wrong. One of Paddy’s dreams has been that he always wanted to move back to Ireland.’

Karen Rutter said: ‘He was a very pleasant man who kept himself to himself.

‘But he was always very polite and always had time to stop and talk to you. He was well liked in the community.’

A Greater Manchester Police spokesman confirmed a 31-year-old man had been arrested on suspicion of murder.

Tonight police were continuing to question the man, thought to be of Filipino origin.

[end of article]

Other differences. The 12-17 Mail article says that McGee “was single, had lived on the same street all his life and had spent years looking after his late mother and father John and Iris McGee.” “All his life” indicates he had been born on that street. That led me to describe him in an earlier post as an Englishman, despite his Irish name. But the NFHiB version quotes his neighbor, Sue Breadman:

‘We knew his mum and dad and he had lived on the street all his life and my daughter even used to call his mum and dad Grandma and Granddad.

‘I hope that they get whoever is responsible for this, it’s devastating and why did it have to happen to our Paddy? He had done nothing wrong. One of Paddy’s dreams has been that he always wanted to move back to Ireland.’

Confusing. Either he didn’t live on the street all his life, or, by “move back to Ireland,” Breadman meant, “move to his ancestral Ireland.”

Also, the story about the earlier fight in which McGee was cut and scratched has never made sense. The story says that the scuffle, after which McGee was found lying on the pavement, was “days earlier.” But then Jack Higgins, who is the only source for the cuts and scratches, indicates that he saw McGee at church with the scratches and cuts on the same night that he was killed. Higgins says, “Apparently he had been found in the street earlier with blood on him.” “Found in the street earlier” suggests earlier the same day, not days earlier. So when did this scuffle take place? And who is the source for the statement that McGee had been found lying hurt on the street? Who found him? It’s not said. To repeat myself ad nauseam, no reporter has returned to the neighborhood to check any of this out. To this moment, 8 a.m. Eastern time, December 21, five and half days after the murder, there has been no further on-scene reporting by the Mail or by any other news source. There has not even been a human interest story about the “much-loved man” who was beheaded while entering the home where he had lived all his life. Total black out.

Why? The only reasonable answer I can think of is that the suspect is indeed a Muslim, and that the authorities and the media fear that this shocking crime will so alarm the British public that they will demand that the government finally take serious steps to defend them from the dangers posed by Britain’s growing Muslim population, including putting Muslims under increased scrutiny, stopping further Muslim immigration, deporting Muslims with jihadist or terrorist connections, closing pro-jihad mosques and so on. Therefore the police and media have suppressed all further news on this murder.

* * *

Another possibility that occurs to me is that the suspect is a non-Muslim Filipino (only five percent of Filipinos are Muslim, 90 percent are Catholic), and that the authorities want to suppress the news of such a crime by a non-European immigrant. Even though the suspect is not himself Muslim, they fear that there would still be a reaction against immigrants in general and Muslims in particular, as they are the group associated with beheadings.

* * *

Here are VFR’s posts on this story:

Englishman beheaded in his front yard

An Englishman is beheaded in his front yard. The world is silent.

Oh little house in Manchester / How still we see thee lie

Nothing on McGee murder

Other news organs reported McGee murder, but repeated the same information

All (un)quiet on the Patrick McGee front

Discovered! The original December 16 Daily Mail article on the beheading of Patrick McGee

—end of initial entry—

I wrote to Michelle R.:

Many thanks for digging this up. You found the only online version of the original Mail article. A couple of blogs have bits of it, with that line about the suspect’s “Filipino” origin, but no site other than NFHiB has the entire original article. It’s invaluable in figuring out what happened here in this amazing story of a beheading that has been completely blacked-out.

Mike Berman has sent this e-mail to The Mail, at news@dailymail.co.uk:

Dear Sirs:

Your newspaper is the only one which ran the story on December 16th of poor Patrick McGee’s beheading murder. For that, I am grateful. Still, it is a mystery to me why there has been no follow-up of this story since then. One would think, given the unusual form of cruelty involved in this crime and it’s association with Muslim atrocities, that your editors would have a reporter investigate further. Specifically, I’m confident that your readers are as anxious to know the religious background of the Filipino man who was arrested for this murder as I am.

Sincerely,
Mike Berman

LA writes:

A reader from Britain wrote that it sounded as though the murderer is a mental case, adding that most Filipinos are Catholics. I replied:

I understand. But if he’s a mental case, then why has there been a total news blackout on this sensational murder, which normally would get a lot of coverage? There has been not a single followup in the press about the murder, the suspect, the victim, nothing. ONE mainstream news article in six days. Why? To cover up a mental case? Can you think of any instance in which a shocking, unprecedented murder occurs, a man beheaded while walking into his house, and the British press ignores it and we never even hear the name of the suspect?

Philip M. writes from England:

I see Patrick McGee was a trade union rep for Unison, one of the most politically-correct, Marxist trade unions in the country. Looking at their website, I see that they had been trialling the “challenging racism” project in Mr McGee’s North West region. This is a section taken off the Unison website about the scheme:

“The union’s response is founded on using the Race Relations Amendment Act as a negotiating tool. The aims of Challenging racism in the workplace are to:

- move away from dealing with racism on an individual basis and challenge patterns of discrimination by negotiating collective workplace agreements;

- train branch negotiators to identify key issues and ensure that challenging racism becomes a core part of union business for all activists and officers;

- ensure that UNISON and employers actively promote and deliver race equality.

The course, which has been developed in two phases in the three pilot regions, is designed to raise awareness of the opportunities presented by the Act, build confidence in negotiating with employers, and guide the development of branch action plans. Topics will include a study of the Act, workforce monitoring, interpreting statistics and presenting arguments.

Mr Akhtar said that the work with the three regions had been invaluable in making the training course “as robust, practical and accessible as possible” and in fine-tuning the tool kit.

And he added: “We want to stress that this training is not just for black members, but all members. The majority of negotiators are white, so it’s important that they are part of the branch project teams that attend the courses.”

When the course is available nationally, individual branches will be urged to set up a project team, including a lead negotiator, that will work with the regions for a period of one year—attending the two-day training course and follow-up sessions, and overseeing the progress that is made between the branch and the employer.

The tool kit provides numerous tips, guidelines and checklists geared to ensuring that employers deliver on equality. Among them are key questions to ask during negotiations, issues that affect black members in the workplace (and that need to be addressed by collective bargaining) and steps that a branch could take if management fails to comply with its legal duties.

North West region equalities officer Dion Baugh said that Challenging racism in the workplace was, perhaps for the first time, bringing racism into the “mainstream” of branches’ daily work.

“Usually, branches will have a black members” officer who deals with race discrimination cases as and when they come up. This project is trying to involve all activists in the branch.”

His was a terrible way to die, so maybe this will sound uncharitable: if foreigners are going to commit depraved and barbaric crimes against British people, let it happen to those who have campaigned for them to be here and helped lead witch-hunts against the “racists,” before the likes of me and my family.

Saying that “you only joined to protect your rights at work” isn’t really good enough. Many joined the Nazi party for the same reason. You must still bear some responsibility for the organisations you support and finance, paticularly when you take up roles within them. If Mr McGee had been a more pragmatic trade unionist and moved somewhere a bit whiter, (and I notice he was planning to move back to Ireland) maybe he could have ended up having to tell one of his work colleagues that his views on an alleged Muslim beheading in the city were racist and unacceptable.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at December 21, 2008 08:17 AM | Send