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The Madeleine McCann Disappearance

Coal said:
Welcome to parenthood...
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My youngest is now 26, my eldest 36 and two more between. For me it’s welcome to Grandparent hood and I’ve 4 of them now from 7years to 11 months. But you can give them back ha ha ha.
 
Tempest63 said:
My youngest is now 26, my eldest 36 and two more between. For me it’s welcome to Grandparent hood and I’ve 4 of them now from 7years to 11 months. But you can give them back ha ha ha.
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Mine are 23 and two at 21...anyone who thinks having twins is great, hasn't had any...
 
I've been listening to a series of podcasts by Mark Saunokonoko, an Australian journalist with 9news. I think they're very good, and you get a bit of a different angle from Rich Hall's videos. One focus is on the DNA from the car, and his efforts to get it reanalysed with different techniques. Also the interesting background to how it was analysed in the first place. Also he speaks directly to the Portuguese detective Mr Amaral. Also he speaks to English police who confirm that the latest efforts on the case (Project Grange) are only to reexamine the evidence using the assumption that an abduction took place - which is a very odd way to approach a cold case. The chap he speaks to (I have forgotten the name) was asked to take it on but refused because of that proviso. All very interesting, I recommend.
https://omny.fm/shows/maddie
 
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Eponastill said:
I've been listening to a series of podcasts by Mark Saunokonoko, an Australian journalist with 9news. I think they're very good, and you get a bit of a different angle from Rich Hall's videos. One focus is on the DNA from the car, and his efforts to get it reanalysed with different techniques. Also the interesting background to how it was analysed in the first place. Also he speaks directly to the Portuguese detective Mr Amaral. Also he speaks to English police who confirm that the latest efforts on the case (Project Grange) are only to reexamine the evidence using the assumption that an abduction took place - which is a very odd way to approach a cold case. The chap he speaks to (I have forgotten the name) was asked to take it on but refused because of that proviso. All very interesting, I recommend.
https://omny.fm/shows/maddie
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To be fair though, to date there is no truly bankable evidence to suggest that this was *not* an abduction. There were no obvious signs of murder or accidental death which would lead towards investigated that angle directly. That's not to say that Madeliene may not have been killed after abduction. This possible. But at the site of her disappearance there's never been anything concrete (to my knowledge) other than conflicting reports about sniffer dogs and the McCann's car.
 
Shady said:
But shouldn't they just attempt to look at other possibilities, seeing as all attempts at doing it this one way are failing?
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In a world of infinite resources and time, sure. But with nothing new to prompt such a line of inquiry that's just not going to happen. There would need to be some kind of new evidence or witness testimony which raised a need to investigate murder or accidental death.
 
CuriousIdent said:
In a world of infinite resources and time, sure.
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I have to say, it certainly looks like the case is being given both infinite resources and time.

Also, I would say that if you're dealing with a cold case, then surely all lines of enquiry have to be investigated- you start right from the beginning with fresh eyes. To assume you know what's the outcome before you've reinvestigated, isn't really a reinvestigation of the evidence. It's not like the McCanns weren't suspects of the Portuguese investigation at one time. It's not beyond the bounds of possibility that someone closely associated with Maddie had a hand in the matter. Most small children who are murdered are murdered by such a person - it wouldn't be unprecedented, and so it's a possibility isn't it. And so the reassessment of the evidence should take that into account.

(To take inspiration from the podcast) if she was abducted by a stranger, then from previous cases of child abduction, it is overwhelmingly likely that she was killed within hours of such an abduction. There is a sighting of Man Clutching Child from one of the 'Tapas Seven', who claims she saw Gerry talking to a friend virtually at the same time. Then there is a sighting of Man Clutching Child heading down the beach, at a different time, by the Smith family. But what more can you do about that - it's long gone.

The sniffer dog evidence is worth looking into - I'm taking it that you haven't looked at it as you say it's 'conflicting'. It's not conflicting, the dogs identified the same place in the flat, behind the sofa, and they identified the McCann's hire car when their handler didn't know which of the cars in the garage was the McCann's. They did their doggy job. How anyone wants to interpret that is another matter. But they are "professional" dogs, they've been trained to respond to dead bodies and human blood. Not bags of rubbish or rotting sandwiches. Dead bodies. And the cars were checked some time after the abduction, because it was only hired after the abduction - I don't know if you know that.

If you're interested (and it is interesting) the transcripts for the dog searches and Martin Grimes' reports are here:
https://mmknowthetruth.blogspot.com/2017/01/sniffer-dogs-in-mccann-apartment.html

Also, you say there's no evidence to say it wasn't an abduction. But there's a good amount of evidence to suggest there wasn't an abduction. For example, Kate said the shutters on the flat had been jemmied. They hadn't. There was no sign of a break-in. That doesn't suggest an abduction?
Also, despite a small child being removed from the flat by a stranger - this surely must have involved some level of kafuffle - neither Maddie or the baby twins did not scream the place down (they would have been heard from other flats, because witnesses describe some kid crying another night). Personally I wouldn't want to be around three screaming young children when I'm going about my nefarious sneaky abduction. But maybe there wasn't an abduction to scream about.

Anyway. For the police to spend squillions on investigating an abduction and nothing else smacks of an Agenda. It makes no sense when they've already spent squillions covering the same ground already, to no avail. Surely.

Anyway I mean all this in the spirit of discussion and am perfectly happy for us to disagree. Nobody really knows. Well someone knows. But whether the truth will ever come out will be interesting.
 
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Eponastill said:
Also, despite a small child being removed from the flat by a stranger - this surely must have involved some level of kafuffle - neither Maddie or the baby twins did not scream the place down (they would have been heard from other flats, because witnesses describe some kid crying another night). Personally I wouldn't want to be around three screaming young children when I'm going about my nefarious sneaky abduction.
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It does seem unlikely, but to play devil's advocate for a moment: there was a horrifying incident in which a British schoolgirl was raped and murdered in her bed in a shared dormitory in a youth hostel in France. The other children in the dormitory apparently slept throughout the attack, and only realised something was wrong in the morning. So it's not impossible: her attacker had apparently used a similar MO many times before.

And I apologise for seeming to reduce that poor girl's horrible demise to nothing more than a gambit in an online discussion.
 
Over 12 years now.....and while I know only the basics about this case, I have to ask why the police are still investigating this case. In most instances this would have become a cold case years ago and filed away. Kids go missing all the time ...why has this case been treated as a special instance? And being a father and grandfather I'm not dismissing the importance of missing children.....I simply don't understand the intense scrutiny on this one. I can't recall any case over here that's ever been ongoing in the public eye and police after that period of time.
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What I don't get is why Kate McCann didn't answer the police questions.

Her child is missing.

She knows she had nothing to do with it (let's assume this is true) Although she knows she's guilty of neglect so must be feeling absolutely awful.

The police want to ask her questions, it seems like they suspect her, but she knows she had nothing to do with her disappearance.

How does not complying with the police help find her daughter?

Is there a good legal reason for her not to?
 
Eponastill said:
The sniffer dog evidence is worth looking into - I'm taking it that you haven't looked at it as you say it's 'conflicting'. It's not conflicting, the dogs identified the same place in the flat, behind the sofa, and they identified the McCann's hire car when their handler didn't know which of the cars in the garage was the McCann's. They did their doggy job. How anyone wants to interpret that is another matter. But they are "professional" dogs, they've been trained to respond to dead bodies and human blood. Not bags of rubbish or rotting sandwiches. Dead bodies...
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This is not exactly true.

I believe that the dogs used were brought over from the UK. In the UK sniffer dogs are trained with pork - it's illegal to use actual human cadavers - which is precisely why things like bags of rubbish and rotting sandwiches can, and do, produce false positives.

Beyond the discovery of an actual body or body part (in the case of a cadaver dog), the real value of any evidence gained will be a product of the relationship between the dog and its handling and the further processing of any information which may have potentially been indicated.

The fact is that a reaction is by no means, in itself, a smoking gun.
 
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Why don't they train the dogs in a body farm, they have been donated surely the bodies wont mind, would they
 
Spookdaddy said:
I believe that the dogs used were brought over from the UK. In the UK sniffer dogs are trained with pork - it's illegal to use actual human cadavers - which is precisely why things like bags of rubbish and rotting sandwiches can, and do, produce false positives.
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I agree that we don't have a body farm in the UK. So we do use pigs for forensic research like that, leaving them out for flies and beetles to get stuck into.

But surely the dogs are trained with a bottle of cadaverine that comes from dead bodies. That would be absurd if not, if they were being trained to recognise dead pigs and not dead people, then they wouldn't indicate the right things at all. I (respectfully) don't think you're right there. I think they're trained with cadaverine.

(I'm not quite sure what you mean by your second paragraph?)
 
Amazing after all the years of 'new leads' that have come to nothing and with the cloud of the unanswered questions hanging over the parents that the UK police have never thought to tug again on that thread.

Given that Gordon Brown was personally on the phone to the parents the day after the child disappeared there is obviously some establishment connection, which would explain why they are continually receiving inordinate sums to fund their 'search'.

As we are seeing with the Epstein case, peculiar things can happen when you have money behind you or know things others would rather have kept secret.
 
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McAvennie said:
Given that Gordon Brown was personally on the phone to the parents the day after the child disappeared there is obviously some establishment connection, which would explain why they are continually receiving inordinate sums to fund their 'search'.
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I don't accept this as proof of an initial establishment connection. Politicians are opportunists and Brown needed the middle-class vote. Political advisors would have nudged him to make a few calls and grease a few wheels to appear sympathetic and in touch with the public mood.

As to why money continues to be granted, it could simply be that there are no plaudits to be won by turning off the tap, and although for any one of us the sums granted are enormous they are a rounding error in terms of governmental budgets. Plus, I suspect, the few politicians that have met the parents have established a rapport and (probably) given foolish assurances that they 'will do everything possible' etc.
 
Eponastill said:
...But surely the dogs are trained with a bottle of cadaverine that comes from dead bodies. That would be absurd if not, if they were being trained to recognise dead pigs and not dead people, then they wouldn't indicate the right things at all. I (respectfully) don't think you're right there. I think they're trained with cadaverine...
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It's illegal to use human remains for training in the UK (and, I think, the rest of the EU) - I'm not sure precisely why the law differentiates between the training of medical personnel using human bodies, and other forms of training, but it does.

I'm pretty sure that cadavarine based on human tissue falls under this ban, and I believe that to circumvent the inherent issues involved in using comparative tissue there are efforts being made to isolate the common signifiers between pig flesh, and other animal products, and human remains.

(I'm not quite sure what you mean by your second paragraph?)
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I mean - that a cadaver or blood dog appearing to signify the presence of evidence is not evidence in and of itself, but an indicator that further forensic examination may be productive.

I don't mean to undermine the value of blood or cadaver dogs - they clearly have a place, and can be very effective; but they are part of an array of investigative methods - not a magic wand. (And this is the case even when they have been trained with human tissue.)
 
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pandacracker said:
What I don't get is why Kate McCann didn't answer the police questions.

Her child is missing.

She knows she had nothing to do with it (let's assume this is true) Although she knows she's guilty of neglect so must be feeling absolutely awful.

The police want to ask her questions, it seems like they suspect her, but she knows she had nothing to do with her disappearance.

How does not complying with the police help find her daughter?

Is there a good legal reason for her not to?
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Surely one of many question marks in this case.
 
Here is an avenue the police could spend their money investigating...

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...-hosted-McCanns-weeks-Madeleine-vanished.html

Clement's son Matthew is listed in Jeffrey Epstein's little black book.

Gordon Brown himself praised Freud as a "national treasure" in a eulogy at his funeral.

That is before you even begin looking at Labour in relation to Dunblane and the 100-year gagging order.

So many coincidental connections in this web.
 
McAvennie said:
Here is an avenue the police could spend their money investigating...

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...-hosted-McCanns-weeks-Madeleine-vanished.html

Clement's son Matthew is listed in Jeffrey Epstein's little black book.

Gordon Brown himself praised Freud as a "national treasure" in a eulogy at his funeral.

That is before you even begin looking at Labour in relation to Dunblane and the 100-year gagging order.

So many coincidental connections in this web.
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I honestly don't know what to think any more. We are constantly bombarded with allegations, which never seem to get properly investigated.
 
They should stop piling money into this if they are not going to take other avenues of investigation into account, quit the sticking to kidnapping.
Question, has this ever happened with any other child disappearances, the stubbornness of not investigating other possibilities?
 
CuriousIdent said:
That's basically how I feel about it at this stage. We're forever being told there are new leads or lines of enquiry. Not once are we ever even hinted towards what those are or to what they refer.

Nothing concrete ever arises.

The only thing we know for certain is that Kate and Gerry McCann abandoned their daughter, and left her unguarded in an unlocked hotel room, while they went off to have an evening without children.

Whether Madeline was kidnapped, murdered or something worse happened we may never know. But had her parents respected and adhered to the duty of care which they had over her this would never have happened.

I find it increasingly difficult to sympathise with two people who have escaped prosecution for neglecting their child, whilst profiting from books and public appearances.
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Well, here's a rarity. I look back at my comments here (and elsewhere in this thread) and while I don't retract them I am given cause to somewhat reconsider things.

I recently watched the Netflix documentary on this. It doesn't offer up any real conclusions (and I didn't expect it to) but the one take-home I took from it was one of negligence on all fronts, simultaneously, regarding almost every aspect of the case.

Negligence from the local police, in their response time to the initial emergency services call, in their investigating other lines of inquiry beyond the McCanns or their party, in following up on local people reporting suspicious behaviour in the days leading up to the disappearance.

Negligence in the local authorities, in not informing holiday makers of any history of sex offenders in the local area or of child abductions in the region's recent history.

Negligence on the part of the Press from all areas of the world, by being to eager to jump on any theory, any comment, any tangent and run it is fact. To publish without fact checking, without due diligence , and flood the media with so many conflicting reports which contradict and confuse the matter on an unprecedented scale.

And, yes, there is negligence on the part of the McCanns. Not just in leaving their children unattended but also in allowing so many people to pass backwards and forwards in active crime scene over the course of an evening. It makes forensics infinitely more difficult.

However, the one thing which the documentary did shift my mind on was with regard to motivations and actions of the McCanns, slightly. There has been such a litany of conflicting press reports of the crime scene, the sequence of events, the proximity of the restaurant to the flat. On the cold and detached behavior of the McCanns. And I'll be honest, I have made some basic assumptions based on elements of those things, which I have read in the past. Seeing the overview provided by the documentary has clarified a few things, which I now feel that I had misjudged.

Firstly, I feel that the distance between the restaurant and the flat from which Madeleine disappeared has been significantly misrepresented. To hear the way it was reported in some press articles you would believe it was a restaurant a long street away from the apartment. In reality it was only a short distance. While the party sat eating the apartments were always in view directly across the club's swimming pool. There was always a direct sight-line. It was not a world away.

One cannot debate that leaving children unattended in an unlocked flat is irresponsible. I wouldn't do that. If these were my own children I would not let them out of my sight, and if a creche was on offer I would damn well have made use of it. However, I also know what it's like to be part of a party of friends on holiday, and to go with a majority decision. This was a group of families, who all chose to opt out of the night creche, and instead to collectively check in on their kids every 20 minutes. There was a system in place to check on them, operated by a group of trusted friends. More importantly there was no known reason to suspect that there was any level of threat in the area.

I cannot say without question that I would have gone against the rest of a peer group in that situation.

Yet, to read the way in which that has been represented in the press one would believe the McCanns were the only parents who abandoned their kids to go and have a night out, a far distance away, callously and without a second thought for their kids. That is a misrepresentation of the situation. While it was still a careless and misguided choice to make, I do feel it has been somewhat misrepresented as cruel .

Secondly, we are forever told that the McCanns' reactions, choice of phrase, lack of detail and even their physicality should be regarded as suspicious, and in some way evident of their guilt. It is an opinion I somewhat bought into myself in the past, I'll admit. What I hadn't been aware of, however, was the legal process in Portugal of declaring an individual "arguida" - an official suspect. While doing so from a legal point of view is intended to play a part in not tainting a case with misinformation, in practice this appears to actually become a gagging order.

Any person given arguida status is not allowed to discuss an ongoing case with the press or outside sources. Doing so could result in a conviction. Put yourself in the McCann's position for a moment. You are trying to encourage people to come forward with information, with things they may have seen on the night of your daughter's disappearance, to help push the case towards hopefully finding her alive.

But you can't talk about it. You have to choose your words very very carefully. Because mentioning anything specific to the case could land you in prison. Worse still you cannot comment on any line of speculation, or any false accusation made against you, because again that could land you in prison. You know that you want to direct people to thinking about anything they may have seen that night, or heard, but you can't. You're not allowed to talk directly about that, it could land you in prison.

I don't doubt for a second that the McCanns might be a little odd. I've spent enough time around medical professionals in my life to know that doctors and gps can be a little detached in social situation. Their entire career requires them to be. To be pragmatic and not to be emotional. It's what makes for a good Doctor, but it's impossible not to carry a similar set of traits out into your private life. Pairing that with this bizarre gagging order and I find there to be far far less to be suspicious about in the way the McCanns come across in interviews. Having to second guess what you can even talk about, 24 hours a day, must have been hell. It's huge pressure on top of an already traumatic experience.

And thirdly I absolutely bought into the cadaver and blood dogs. I thought there is no way that those could be wrong. Blood in the hallway, decomposition in the bedroom and in the rental car. How could that be wrong? But something doesn't add up here. That rental car was hired 23 days after the disappearance. I just cannot believe that amongst the hubbub of press and police, around the clock, for almost a month at that site that a body could have been stored and later removed without being spotted by somebody. That a group of friends could have conspired for so long without somebody fucking up by now.

No DNA evidence of any kind has ever managed to corroborate the theory offered by the dogs. If it was viable there would have had to be *something*. There is no way of knowing how long the scents they were reacting to had been there, or the circumstances of that. We don't even know if they relate to the case.

And all of this fixating on one line of inquiry has meant that so many others were not pursued.

The couple spotted running across the road with a small wrapped child in their arms, in another part of town, in the early hours of the morning after Madeleine went missing.

The mysterious spate of men going door to door, claiming to fundraising for an untraceable orphanage, but noted by one mother as having an unhealthy eyeline on her daughter as one of them spoke at the door to her. That she then reported later finding the same man standing next to her young daughter in their living room when she entered it, with him fleeing out the back when she spotted him.

The two men reported to have been hanging around in an the alleyway to another close by (but at the time shuttered up) apartment in the block, one of whom may have been seen trying to scale that apartment's balcony. Two separate guests mentioned one of those guys having a specifically pock-marked face.

All of those things should have been followed up on at the time.
 
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