• We have updated the guidelines regarding posting political content: please see the stickied thread on Website Issues.

The Madeleine McCann Disappearance

Cochise said:
OK, without knowing detail that is a possible explanation. But presumably the police don't agree or else why have they spent multiple fortunes trying to trace an offender?

I can't help feeling that if this was a working class kid missing from Butlins everything would have gone quiet years ago.
Click to expand...
I guess though, until a body is found (or, looking on the brighter side, she's found alive), the police are bound to keep looking. They can't just shrug and say 'probably just wandered into the sea', even if it's what they suspect happened, because they'd be slated for 'taking the easy way out and not investigating.' And part of the huge costs are because it's overseas, so travel etc would have to be factored in to the budget.
 
maximus otter said:
The Madeleine McCann enquiry has had £12.5M spent on it over ten years. The Soham (Holly & Jessica) murder had almost £10M spent on it over a fraction of that time.

lt’s not a class issue.

maximus otter
Click to expand...
But in the Soham case wasn't there clear evidence of foul play from the outset? I can't recall (haven't really studied this case) what evidence there was that poor Madeleine hadn't just wandered off? As catseye points out, little kids do that.
 
Cochise said:
But in the Soham case wasn't there clear evidence of foul play from the outset? I can't recall (haven't really studied this case) what evidence there was that poor Madeleine hadn't just wandered off? As catseye points out, little kids do that.
Click to expand...

Option A: Kid missing, possibly abducted/molested/ murdered.
Option B: Kid missing, possibly abducted/molested/ murdered.

maximus otter
 
Ghost In The Machine said:
Close to the sea, though, so easy enough to disappear a body if whoever was responsible got lucky with the tides etc.
Click to expand...

Dont even need that - they think Corrie McKeague ended up in a dumpster and was carted off to landfill. A resort like that is going to have a lot of dumpsters dotted about. The weight of a child is not going to trigger any equipment warnings.
 
Min Bannister said:
Yes, I think sometimes people take it that just because something is extremely unlikely, that it is the same as being completely impossible. It isn't.
Click to expand...

Ghost In The Machine said:
True. But then if we're weighing up several possibilities, some may be more credible - or rather, have less long odds - than others.
Click to expand...

Stormkhan said:
Thing is, it's not just odds or chances.
In this 'game', your chance changes with your actions.
Someone kills someone. They do it and 'set' the beginning odds....

Playing the gamble, looking at odds, has nothing to do with evidence.
Click to expand...
It is a mistake to even think in terms of "odds" because we do not know how many times the dice were rolled.

One predator or several? Operating in one resort, or wandering from resort to resort? How many hotels? How many rooms? How many families? How many days, or weeks, or months, or years to "roll a 6"? How many failed attempts?

I had a motorcycle stolen from my office car park a few years ago. Arriving back from lunch in a hurry, I left it unlocked for 40 minutes. What were the odds that in that particular 40 minutes a motorcycle thief would happen to be passing?

If it was entirely random, the odds would be very low. However, I parked there every day, and there were other bikes and cars there too. If the same thief passed through that car park every day, just after lunch, on the look out for an unlocked motorcycle or car, then the odds on him passing in that particular 40 minutes were almost 100%.

Another way of looking at it might be to say that the odds of this child being abducted were, say, 1 in 10,000. However, it would be a simple matter of looking through hotel records for the town to find the names of the other 9,999 kids who were not abducted.

The fact that something is rare does not mean it is impossible. However, the fact that something has a probability of less than zero makes its eventual occurrence almost inevitable given sufficient time.
 
Mikefule said:
Another way of looking at it might be to say that the odds of this child being abducted were, say, 1 in 10,000. However, it would be a simple matter of looking through hotel records for the town to find the names of the other 9,999 kids who were not abducted.
Click to expand...

Most of the other 9,999 parents wouldn't abandon their children to go on the piss, lessening the odds a bit.
 
ramonmercado said:
Most of the other 9,999 parents wouldn't abandon their children to go on the piss, lessening the odds a bit.
Click to expand...
Literally had to be almost the only unattended kids (so young) in the whole of the EU, those kids. I've never forgotten one of the adults saying words to the effect "Everyobody does it" - no they fecking don't. I had kids, I had no babysitters, I never went out on the lash ever again til they'd grown up enough to be left at home safely. ie: were older teens. That's not freakish - that's normality.
 
Mikefule said:
It is a mistake to even think in terms of "odds" because we do not know how many times the dice were rolled.

One predator or several? Operating in one resort, or wandering from resort to resort? How many hotels? How many rooms? How many families? How many days, or weeks, or months, or years to "roll a 6"? How many failed attempts?

I had a motorcycle stolen from my office car park a few years ago. Arriving back from lunch in a hurry, I left it unlocked for 40 minutes. What were the odds that in that particular 40 minutes a motorcycle thief would happen to be passing?

If it was entirely random, the odds would be very low. However, I parked there every day, and there were other bikes and cars there too. If the same thief passed through that car park every day, just after lunch, on the look out for an unlocked motorcycle or car, then the odds on him passing in that particular 40 minutes were almost 100%.

Another way of looking at it might be to say that the odds of this child being abducted were, say, 1 in 10,000. However, it would be a simple matter of looking through hotel records for the town to find the names of the other 9,999 kids who were not abducted.

The fact that something is rare does not mean it is impossible. However, the fact that something has a probability of less than zero makes its eventual occurrence almost inevitable given sufficient time.
Click to expand...
But we should be able to track reports of failed attempts at abduction. If there truly is a roaming predator (or predators) then there should be reports of the times they tried to abduct a child (or children) but were interrupted in the act/prevented by a parent/scared off by child screaming etc etc.
 
catseye said:
But we should be able to track reports of failed attempts at abduction. If there truly is a roaming predator (or predators) then there should be reports of the times they tried to abduct a child (or children) but were interrupted in the act/prevented by a parent/scared off by child screaming etc etc.
Click to expand...
There may be very very few of those.

The 9,999 I was talking about are the kids who were simply not abducted. Maybe a potential abductor observed them and decided it was too risky. Maybe the child wandered alone and unattended but happened not to cross the path of the abductor. I'm not talking about the very few who were grabbed but escaped.

It's a sort of reverse lottery thing: we notice the person who wins the jackpot, but not the millions who buy a ticket and win nothing. Winning is remarkable in the sense that it is very rare. That someone somewhere wins is unremarkable in that, given enough tickets and draws, there will always be winner sooner or later.

The probability of any individual child being abducted is extremely low (far more children are killed by their carers than by strangers) but the probability of there being a few child abductions somewhere in the course of a year is 100%.

We then notice the one case of a child who is abducted and ask "What were the odds on that happening?" without considering the thousands who are not even nearly abducted — even though they are part of the odds we are asking about.

Last time I checked in detail, which was admittedly a few years ago, in the UK:
There were 9 people a day killed on the roads (around 3,285 a year)
There were 7 children a year abducted and killed by strangers.
There were around 2.5 children a week (125-ish a year) children a year killed by their parents or carers.

It is the apparently random element of road deaths and stranger abductions that makes us sit up and take notice, but then we often look for complex explanations when the simple explanation is that if it is going to happen to anyone then it has to happen to someone.
 
Ghost In The Machine said:
Literally had to be almost the only unattended kids (so young) in the whole of the EU, those kids. I've never forgotten one of the adults saying words to the effect "Everyobody does it" - no they fecking don't. I had kids, I had no babysitters, I never went out on the lash ever again til they'd grown up enough to be left at home safely. ie: were older teens. That's not freakish - that's normality.
Click to expand...
It does seem to have been common practice at that particular resort to leave kids in their room though. I was astonished when my friend said they used to do it with their 2 girls at that location and most parents did. So yes everybody does or did it. I bet there are some who still do it, unless the resort has made this impossible. No accounting for stupid.
 
PeteS said:
It does seem to have been common practice at that particular resort to leave kids in their room though. I was astonished when my friend said they used to do it with their 2 girls at that location and most parents did. So yes everybody does or did it. I bet there are some who still do it, unless the resort has made this impossible. No accounting for stupid.
Click to expand...
Ghost In The Machine said:
Literally had to be almost the only unattended kids (so young) in the whole of the EU, those kids. I've never forgotten one of the adults saying words to the effect "Everyobody does it" - no they fecking don't. I had kids, I had no babysitters, I never went out on the lash ever again til they'd grown up enough to be left at home safely. ie: were older teens. That's not freakish - that's normality.
Click to expand...
Yup, I agree wholeheartedly. When my children were small their father and I stayed home and he watched the soaps and I did my sewing.
If we needed a babysitter we roped in my old dear.
 
That's the thing.
If you couldn't get a babysitter then you either a) took them with you (to appropriate events) or b) didn't go out.
Part of being a parent is accepting that you have a responsibility to change your behavior to suit your child's needs. All those who say "oh, everyone does it" are really saying "my desires come before my children's needs ... and this is normal."
And it isn't.
Frankly, it's a pathetic excuse for bad parenting. Others may do such things ... but that has no influence on my parenting choices.
 
PeteS said:
It does seem to have been common practice at that particular resort to leave kids in their room though. I was astonished when my friend said they used to do it with their 2 girls at that location and most parents did. So yes everybody does or did it. I bet there are some who still do it, unless the resort has made this impossible. No accounting for stupid.
Click to expand...
Reason I disbelieved that was I knew someone on an online forum, who had been there only a fortnight or so before (and had posted about it on the forum before this happened so we knew she had just been there) and she said the exact opposite - that it made no sense to her because nobody would have left their kids alone there, they took them out with them or used the babysitting service - which was not "strangers" but the same nursery workers who looked after the kids in the resort all day...
 
Ghost In The Machine said:
Reason I disbelieved that was I knew someone on an online forum, who had been there only a fortnight or so before (and had posted about it on the forum before this happened so we knew she had just been there) and she said the exact opposite - that it made no sense to her because nobody would have left their kids alone there, they took them out with them or used the babysitting service - which was not "strangers" but the same nursery workers who looked after the kids in the resort all day...
Click to expand...
i’m sure it has been said elsewhere on this thread, but it does seem odd to me that the parents going out and leaving the child in the apartment was just glossed over to concentrate on the abduction ‘fact’ whereas surely what they did was illegal? i think the narrative of the tragic, noble parents that has been constructed has bypassed some of the facts that don’t fit into that.
 
JaneD said:
i’m sure it has been said elsewhere on this thread, but it does seem odd to me that the parents going out and leaving the child in the apartment was just glossed over to concentrate on the abduction ‘fact’ whereas surely what they did was illegal? i think the narrative of the tragic, noble parents that has been constructed has bypassed some of the facts that don’t fit into that.
Click to expand...
Not just Madeline but her twin, younger siblings also.
 
JaneD said:
i’m sure it has been said elsewhere on this thread, but it does seem odd to me that the parents going out and leaving the child in the apartment was just glossed over to concentrate on the abduction ‘fact’ whereas surely what they did was illegal? i think the narrative of the tragic, noble parents that has been constructed has bypassed some of the facts that don’t fit into that.
Click to expand...
I think it is because, whatever anyone may think of the parents, a little girl was still missing and the priority should be finding her rather than judging the parents.
 
Min Bannister said:
I think it is because, whatever anyone may think of the parents, a little girl was still missing and the priority should be finding her rather than judging the parents.
Click to expand...
True. But people with children empathise with the child, not the parents, because that's what parents do.

As @Stormkhan says, you make all the sacrifices because this is how the deal works; you give things up like your freedom to come and go with your friends in order to keep your children safe.

Hearing of kids who don't get this basic consideration is literally incomprehensible to most parents.
 
Last edited:
escargot said:
True. But people with children empathise with the child, not the parents, because that's what parents do.

As @Stormkhan says, you make all the sacrifices because this is how the deal works; you give things up like your freedom to come and go with your friends in order to keep your children safe.

Hearing of kids who don't do get this basic consideration is literally incomprehensible to most parents.
Click to expand...
That was kind of my point. That she should be the priority.
 
Did the parents ever say exactly *why* they left the children alone? I mean, money can't have been the object, and it would have been far easier to have a babysitter in the room than to have to keep interrupting your meal for one or other of you to pop back and check on the children.

I feel terrible for everyone involved, the poor little girl, her siblings growing up in her shadow and the parents (who I don't believe were responsible, except in the obvious way).
 
Min Bannister said:
That was kind of my point. That she should be the priority.
Click to expand...
She is, for whoever is still searching. Other kids' parents and the internet clucking in judgment doesn't alter that.

Madeleine is most likely long dead. It's too late for her and many don't feel sorry for her parents. All that's left is opinion.

The investigation is interesting though.
 
catseye said:
Did the parents ever say exactly *why* they left the children alone? I mean, money can't have been the object, and it would have been far easier to have a babysitter in the room than to have to keep interrupting your meal for one or other of you to pop back and check on the children.
Click to expand...
They and the other parents in the group always did it on holidays. I believe this was usually the case in hotels though rather than on open sites where they weren't in the same building.
 
maximus otter said:
The Madeleine McCann enquiry has had £12.5M spent on it over ten years. The Soham (Holly & Jessica) murder had almost £10M spent on it over a fraction of that time.

lt’s not a class issue.

maximus otter
Click to expand...

Also cf. the case of Shannon Matthews in 2008 which was cleared up in just over 3 weeks - the search for her up until that point cost £3.2 million notwithstanding the costs of prison and probation for the offenders, and care proceedings.

Wee girl was as about far away from Madeleine McCann on the social scale as she could be.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2008/nov/12/shannonmatthews-biggest-search
 
escargot said:
They and the other parents in the group always did it on holidays. I believe this was usually the case in hotels though rather than on open sites where they weren't in the same building.
Click to expand...
What I don't understand is that there was an available baby sitting / watch service. My family couldn't afford no Mediterranean holiday or not even proper Butlins but they absolutely used the watch/baby sitting service at the Nissan hut based holiday camp we used to go to. What sort of idiot wouldn't?

I myself simply don't believe in the phantom predator. Tell me a precedent. By which I mean specifically a predator patrolling a holiday camp and absconding with a 4 year old.

The poor kid just wandered off or was an accident victim.
 
Cochise said:
What I don't understand is that there was an available baby sitting / watch service. My family couldn't afford no Mediterranean holiday or not even proper Butlins but they absolutely used the watch/baby sitting service at the Nissan hut based holiday camp we used to go to. What sort of idiot wouldn't?

I myself simply don't believe in the phantom predator. Tell me a precedent. By which I mean specifically a predator patrolling a holiday camp and absconding with a 4 year old.

The poor kid just wandered off or was an accident victim.
Click to expand...
Yup, but the place isn't a holiday camp. It is a 'complex' only in the sense that some of the buildings are rented out to visitors among the ones that are privately owned or let to permanent residents.

There is no boundary or fence. Once someone stepped out of their apartment they were in a public street.

So anyone could walk around the area as close as they liked to the apartments.
 
escargot said:
Yup, but the place isn't a holiday camp. It is a 'complex' only in the sense that some of the buildings are rented out to visitors among the ones that are privately owned or let to permanent residents.

There is no boundary or fence. Once someone stepped out of their apartment they were in a public street.

So anyone could walk around the area as close as they liked to the apartments.
Click to expand...
Yes, understood. But nevertheless. Madelaine is far too young for the typical paedophile predator. And there were two even younger children in the room, who would have mattered more to the sort of demon that abuses infants.

Are we honestly expected to believe in the (AFAIK) unprecedented situation of a sexual predator seizing a 4 year old in these circumstances? Age is wrong. Situation is wrong. Again, give me precedent, not the fears of parents. Stranger abduction of 4 year olds is almost unknown, that is in reality as opposed to apprehension.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top