Who the fuck writes these things?!
Says at the top: ED MALYON Deputy Sports Editor
and GERARD COUZENS.
Dear Gerard seems to be attached to various stories from Spain/Portugal/Mexico.
Whilst Ed is the Sports Ed (well, only Deputy).
I know nothing about journalism, but possibly Dear Gerard skims the foreign press, does a quick translate job, and bungs it in the Mirror. I presume The Mirror is probably not full of reporters with extensive foreign skills, so they perhaps just take it on trust that the reports from the portuguese newspaper are correct?
A quick search and auto-translate gave me the story in the actual portuguese newspaper:
www.jn.pt/PaginaInicial/Justica/interior.aspx?content_id=4914894
which describes her as 'a homicide victim'. Right at the top. I presume the translation of 'vÃtima de homicÃdio' is fairly sound...........
Auto-translate is always a bit dodgy, but suggests police thought it was possibly murder anyway, and arrested the ex-neighbour after autopsy (suffocation), and DNA tests. I assume because they needed to wait to know HOW she died (i.e. not just old age or a heart attack), and WHO exactly was there at the time.
The Mirror story isn't LIES, as such, just tweak the translation and miss a few bits out, and put the unique Mirror spin on it to get 'kinky old lady dies in tragic sex game', rather than ' old lady assaulted and killed by ex-neighbour'.
One of the significant bits missed out was the neighbour who found her who said:
'...to me, she died alone due to bleeding', says Ana Martins.
Of course, THAT fact (that there was enough blood for the first person on the scene to come to that conclusion) doesn't fit with the 'kinky sex-game suffocation' spin.
So I think now it is pretty clear exactly WHO found the story, and who approved the typical Mirror version acceptable to their sports fans.
But looks like the portuguese police are doing a proper job.
It really is the Mirror doing this on purpose (not that I had any doubt, but always nice to find the facts behind the actual case).