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The Madeleine McCann Disappearance

The McCanns are not conforming to the stereotype which we've come to expect from the parents of missing children. We expect them to be frantic, incoherent, baffled, pitiable and so on.

Which makes good pictures for the telly, but is soon too uncomfortable to look at, so that the media can soon drop the subject.

Instead, the McCanns are striving to appear strong and determined to find Madeleine. This less emotional approach is intended to keep their search in the public eye for longer. It seems to be working so far, so hats off to them.

Some people thought Joanne Lees' demeanour was suspicious because she too seemed to reject the victim image.
 
Petition over Madeleine's treatment

An online petition has been launched urging social workers in Madeleine McCann's home county to investigate the circumstances surrounding her disappearance.

By Monday night, more than 1,700 people had signed it, calling on Leicestershire social services to 'investigate the circumstances which led to three-year-old Madeleine McCann and her younger siblings being left unattended in an unlocked, ground floor hotel room'.

link
 
Police probe Madeleine 'dead' claim


Portuguese police have started investigating an area just nine miles from where Madeleine McCann was abducted after a tip off from a Dutch source.

An anonymous letter claiming the four-year-old lies buried under rocks in deserted scrubland was sent to newspaper De Telegraaf and passed on to the Portuguese Policia Judiciaria.

It was thought to pinpoint an area north of Odiaxere, north east of Praia da Luz from where the girl was snatched 41 days ago.

Chief Inspector Olegario Sousa said the information was being taken seriously and "everything necessary" was being done to validate the allegation.

"There have been exchanges between Dutch police and us," he said. "The information indicated an area 15km from the place of the disappearance of the little child.

"It is not far from Praia da Luz. We are checking the information like we check everything in this case for importance."

Asked if the search involved digging, he said: "If the information gives us a precise location where we can look, we will do it."

According to De Telegraaf, the letter said Madeleine was buried "north of the road under branches and rocks, around six to seven metres off the road" in a barren and deserted landscape.

A map came with the letter, with crosses marked on it.
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Police probing Madeleine letter

Police in Portugal are investigating an anonymous letter and a map claiming to show where missing four-year-old Madeleine McCann's body is buried.
The letter, sent to Dutch paper De Telegraaf, identifies an area 15km (9.3 miles) from where Madeleine vanished.

It strongly resembles another letter sent to the same newspaper last year, accurately pinpointing where two missing Belgian girls were buried.

Ch Insp Olegario de Sousa said officers were "checking the information".

Around eight plain-clothed police officers visited the village of Arao, which is 15km from Praia da Luz, on Wednesday evening.

It is understood that a formal request was made to a section of the police called the GNR to carry out searches in the area.

They spent an hour and 20 minutes looking at fields and the surrounding area ahead of possible searches on Thursday morning.

'Everything necessary'

The Madeleine letter pinpoints a dirt track north of Odiaxere in the Algarve, according to De Telegraaf.

The paper said that the letter claims Madeleine, of Rothley, Leicestershire, is buried "north of the road under branches and rocks, around six to seven metres off the road".

Beside a cross and two question marks, the sender has written "vermoedelijke vindplaats Madeleine" - the place where Madeleine can probably be found.

Portuguese police would not confirm whether they had begun searching the area.

But Mr Sousa confirmed Portuguese police were aware of the map and were doing "everything necessary".

He said: "There have been exchanges between Dutch police and us.

"The information indicated an area 15km from the place of the disappearance of the little child. It is not far from Praia da Luz. We are checking the information like we check everything in this case for importance."

Asked if a search would include digging, he replied: "If the information gives us a precise location where we can look, we will do it."

Tip-off letter

The BBC's Caroline Hawley said it was difficult to assess the reliability of the map, given that Portuguese detectives had received hundreds of tip-offs which have not proved useful in the course of the investigation.

Officers also reported that the map was vague, she added.

Dutch police are studying similarities between the new letter and one received by De Telegraaf pointing to the whereabouts of Belgian step-sisters Stacey Lemmens, seven, and Nathalie Mahy, 10.

The girls were murdered in June 2006 after they disappeared from a late-night fair in the town of Liege.

On the day that the letter was received, police found their bodies at the spot indicated on an enclosed map.

A convicted paedophile, Abdullah Ait Oud, is now on remand awaiting trial for murder.

The Telegraaf believes the letter comes from the same sender because the phrase "vermoedelijke vindplaats" was also used in the tip-off letter last year about Stacey and Nathalie, BBC correspondent Alix Kroeger added.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6749131.stm
 
It's a tipoff from a psychic. :roll:

Oh, but wait, this one's reliable. So that's OK then.
 
Well the tip-off is rather precise. As opposed to the usual "somewhere near water and a church" kind of stuff.
 
No, it's not precise, it indicates a rather large area to the north of a road, where it seems likely that a body might be dumped after a murder in that village anyway.

The police trust this one because it uses the same phrase as one which apparently helped another gravesite to be found.

If the police are getting accurate anonymous tips, they should be tracking down the source, as accepting that the information has come from The Beyond is really not good enough.
 
Well I haven´t paid that much attention to it, I´m rather tired of the hysteria about this girl. But the phrase they mentioned being similar means "presumable finding location" in english, and it doesn´t sound at all like an unusual phrase to use.
 
Xanatico said:
But the phrase they mentioned being similar means "presumable finding location" in english, and it doesn´t sound at all like an unusual phrase to use.
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Sounds bloody unnatural in English. Can a Dutch-speaker help us here?
 
I meant that in dutch I doubt it would be an unnatural phrase. I lived in the Netherlands for a year, so I have some knowledge of the language.
 
McCanns lash out at 'cruel' media coverage


The father of the missing 4-year-old Madeleine McCann today criticised 'insensitive' media coverage of an anonymous tip-off apparently giving details of where her body might be buried.

Portuguese police were deciding today whether to follow up on the letter to a Dutch newspaper - which included a rough map - and mount a large-scale search of scrubland north of the Algarve resort where she disappeared six weeks ago.

Before any search could start, however, Gerry McCann complained that the letter was reported even before police could establish its credibility. 'We feel strongly that this was an irresponsible piece of journalism and even if it were true is insensitive and cruel,' Gerry McCann wrote on the findmadeleine.com website. 'One can imagine how upsetting it is for Kate and I to hear of such claims through the media and if every piece of information was published like this there would be nothing else in the newspapers.' The investigation into Madeleine's disappearance from her family's holiday apartment in Praia da Luz is being led by Portugal's Policia Judiciaria, which was sent the tip-off letter, originally sent to the Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf, by Dutch police.

With the handwritten letter was a map, pinpointing an area of scrubland near Odiaxere, nine miles northeast of Praia da Luz. Police officers visited the village last night, looking at the ground ahead of potential searches later today - but any search would be a major exercise because of the nature of the terrain.

According to De Telegraaf, the letter said that Madeleine was buried 'north of the road under branches and rocks, around six to seven metres off the road' in a barren and deserted landscape.

David Brown, a reporter for The Times in Praia da Luz, said today: 'I have driven up and down that road and it's horrendous - just wasteland, half-built villas, some of it dug up for crops. It would have to be a major search, not just half a dozen officers.' The letter is being taken seriously because it is similar to one sent to the same newspaper last year, giving details of the rough location of the bodies of two missing Belgian girls, Stacy Lemmens, 7, and her step-sister, Nathalie Mahy, 10.

It is understood that the PJ made a formal request to the GNR - a separate section of the police - to work together on the investigation, but whether that includes a request for a search team is not yet clear.

Yesterday, Chief Inspector Olegario Sousa, of the Policia Judiciaria, said that the claims were being taken seriously and 'everything necessary' was being done to validate the allegation.

Asked if any search would involve digging, he said: 'If the information gives us a precise location where we can look, we will do it.'

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/w ... 931853.ece
 
Apparently they found nothing :



Madeleine searches find nothing

Madeleine McCann has now been missing for more than a month
Portuguese police say they have not found anything in a search of scrubland nine miles (14.5km) from where Madeleine McCann went missing.
The search was carried out after a Dutch newspaper published details of an anonymous letter it received alleging Madeleine's body was under rocks.

Officers said the line of inquiry had been "discarded".

Madeleine vanished from an apartment in Praia da Luz Algarve on 3 May while her parents were at a restaurant.

Remote tracks

The village of Arao lies just north of the main road from Praia da Luz to Faro.

A road which police cordoned off leads up to remote hillside tracks which span across farmland and wooded areas.

Officers from a section of the police called GNR led sniffer dogs to the area they searched early on Friday.

The search was called off hours later and police said no more were planned.

Ch Insp Olegario Sousa, of Portuguese police, told the BBC: "The line of enquiry has now been discarded."

Details of the anonymous letter were published in De Telegraaf on Wednesday.



The Dutch newspaper received the letter and a map on Monday and passed it on to police, delaying publication of the information.

Madeleine's parents Gerry and Kate, of Rothley, Leicestershire, condemned the decision to publish the letter.

On his internet blog, Mr McCann said the letter and accompanying map should have been properly examined first.

He called the publication "irresponsible" and "cruel" journalism.

"We were extremely disappointed in the publication of the anonymous letter in De Telegraaf claiming to know where Madeleine is buried," he said.

"Although all information will be taken seriously, we were very upset that the credibility of this letter had not been examined and, more importantly, [it was] published before the Portuguese police had an opportunity to investigate the claim, and search the area if appropriate without massive media attention."

Dutch police were studying similarities between the new letter and one received last year by De Telegraaf pointing to the whereabouts of Belgian step-sisters Stacey Lemmens, seven, and Nathalie Mahy, 10.

The Belgian girls were murdered in June 2006 after they disappearing from Liege.

On the day the letter was received, police found their bodies at the spot indicated on an enclosed map.
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http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6755587.stm
 
ted_bloody_maul said:
McCanns lash out at 'cruel' media coverage


The father of the missing 4-year-old Madeleine McCann today criticised 'insensitive' media coverage of an anonymous tip-off apparently giving details of where her body might be buried...
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It is, no doubt, a terrible time for the family but in this they are truly asking to have their cake and eat it. The have vowed to keep the story in the public eye - indeed the public are getting a little over-subjected to it - but can't expect the media not to jump on new developments that justify their coverage.
 
The story has gone quiet here, if not in the mainstream press.

But I'm reminded of it by a novel I'm reading, Finding Davey, by Jonathon Gash (2005).

The story is about a elderly Englishman's attempt to find his grandson, abducted in America.

The child has been abducted, not by paedophiles or perverts, but by a clinic which specialises in selling kidnapped children to rich wannabe parents who cannot have children themselves, and, for various reasons, cannot adopt.

The clinic effectively brainwashes the children, so they have no memory of their earlier life....

Now of course this is just fiction, but it does remind us of various cases where kidnapped children do survive and eventually escape their captivity.

Let's hope that some such positive outcome awaits Maddie and her family.
 
Isn´t that supposed to be what causes most of the baby snatching in the US?

Apparently eight independent witnesses have claimed to have seen Madeline on Malta, along with a middle eastern looking fellow. And another report said they are chasing some Italian on a boat in Malta.
 
DNA tests to check 'sighting' of Madeleine
Last Updated: 2:30am BST 04/08/2007

Authorities in Belgium are conducting DNA tests on a bottle and a straw after a possible sighting last weekend of Madeleine McCann, the missing British four-year-old.

A woman called police in the town of Tongeren, near the Dutch border, on Saturday after seeing a couple with a small girl at a roadside cafe.

"She has considerable dealings with children and she was convinced the girl was Madeleine," a prosecution spokesman said. "There is a bottle and straw that the girl probably drank from and we are testing them."

The couple were described as a Dutch-speaking man of about 40 and an English-speaking woman of around 25. Photo-fits of the pair have been drawn up in Tongeren.

The results of the DNA test should be known next week.

Madeleine went missing on a family holiday to Portugal on May 3. There have been dozens of possible sightings since then.

http://tinyurl.com/2pwveu
 
This seems to have become the Express' new Diana, every bloody day we get the same headline and the same picture and the claim that "Police are hours away from naming a new suspect..." or "results from DNA tests on blood found in the flat is imminent..."

The whole thing has seemed a bit fishy to me and the latest speculation from Portugal seems to imply that an overdose of sleeping tablets killed her. Now either we are getting a very blinkered version of the news over here or the media in Portugal are taking a very xenophobic stance - I think a little of column A and a little of column B.

There are certainly cases of parents harming their children and blaming someone else, I remember vaguely an alleged carjacking in the US that ended with two kids in a car at the bottom of a lake. But an accidental death from overdose leading to the dumping/burial of a body and then OTT campaign of lies alleging a kidnapping just seems far too far-fetched, hard to believe from genuine parents and impossible to pull off and keep under wraps. Yet there is something that doesn't add up for me in this whole story.
 
What doesn't add up is why two highly educated professional people would leave three small children unattended in a foreign country. Everything else makes perfect sense.
 
FWIW I think some of the McCanns' behaviour - eg going to the gym and having a new hairdo within a few days of their daughter's disappearance - completely incomprehensible. I do not, however, believe they are responsible for whatever has happened to Madeleine.

Equally though, I doubt her disappearance was the result of a random break in.

What doesn't add up is why two highly educated professional people would leave three small children unattended in a foreign country.
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The original reports suggested that the tapas bar was right outside of the apartment, making it rather like having dinner in the garden at home when the children are in bed. I doubt even Escargot would object to someone sitting in their garden after their kids had gone to sleep.

What now seems clear is that the tapas bar was actually some way away from the apartment and I understand from a report last week that the front door may not even have been locked, which I find very odd.

I also suspect that the parents were not, as they first claimed, checking on the kids every 20 minutes and that they may have been left for an extended period.

Even then the chances of some random nutter wandering in off the street and abducting a child are vanishingly small. It's a puzzling and disturbing case.
 
There is no resemblance between eating and drinking in the garden while the children are asleep upstairs and eating and drinking in a tapas bar while the children are asleep in an unlocked apartment in the next street.
There was public space in between the parents and the children, not a lawn and a back door.

There was nothing odd about the McCanns' attempts to carry on a normal life after Madeleine's disappearance. Many people try to do this after a terrible calamity such as a bereavement, partly to reassure other, younger family members and partly to stop themselves going mad with grief. Giving oneself a purpose, day by day, even one as minor as keeping one's hair tidy, helps a lot.

And there didn't have to be a random nutter at large for an unttended child to come to harm - a child of Madeleine's age could easily have woken up and wandered off to look for Mummy, decided to cook a nice meal, run a deep hot bath, tried Daddy's special sweeties that the doctor gives him, or whatever. These possibilities are worrying enough to prevent most parents leaving kids home alone.

The tendency for people on holiday to let down their guard is well-known to criminologists. Normally cautious individuals may leave valuables around, visit unfamiliar places without telling others where they're going, trust dodgy strangers and so on, in ways they wouldn't consider at home. It's as if they think, I'm on holiday, I'm not going to worry about anything.
This behaviour makes them vulnerable to crime.

(I heard on Sky News recently that 6,000 Brits lost their passports in Spain last year. That in itself seems to support the 'careless holidaymaker' idea!)

Would the McCanns have left their kids in those same circumstances on a visit to, say, Bristol or Durham? I doubt it.
If Madeleine's family had consisted of herself, her single mother and a couple of siblings by a different father, would there have been as much sympathy? Again, probably not.

One day we might know what's happened to the child, or perhaps we won't. Everyone has their own ideas. Most likely, the McCanns will gradually slip from our minds. :(
 
"The media coverage is so heavy because it's an ideal story." said escargot a few pages back. She wasn't entirely wrong. The story pushed a lot of emotive buttons but the main reason media coverage has been so heavy is because a very expensive PR company has been involved. You can't always buy such coverage but this one had headline appeal, which has been played to the max.

Still, you might think that PR company can't be much good. After all, the McCanns might be on a platform awaiting the drop with hoods on, if the court of public opinion was properly consulted. Properly, in the sense of a general feeling that no-goodery was afoot plus the salaries of two Doctors weighed against two hours of the time of a Portuguese babysitter, whose services had been declined.

The babysitter question was in the public domain from early on and it has dominated debate ever since. Bell-Pottinger, I should point out, the media company concerned, are employed not by the McCanns - even their salaries don't run to that - but by Mark Warner, who owns the resort.

The media exposure of the parents is double-edged but they are not masterminding the operation. The human-interest stories have dominated the media, though it tends to be only the Express which obediently chases every Bell-Pottinger feed these days.

Crisis-Management is the name of the game but it isn't really the McCanns' crisis which counts. The media has played ball with Mr Warner, after all, he and they know the rules. The McCanns are pretty much in the position of the ball and I've no idea whether they deserve the kicking or not.

You have to go back to the tales of Old Hollywood to find analogous situations, where the fates of all those involved are weighed against the commercial interests of a business putting on a profitable show. :(
 
There is no resemblance between eating and drinking in the garden while the children are asleep upstairs and eating and drinking in a tapas bar while the children are asleep in an unlocked apartment in the next street.
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I agree, given what we now know about the lay out of the complex. But things are not always as black and white as you make out. For example, two friends of mine share a flat in a rather upmarket semi-gated community in London. There is no garden, but there is a restaurant with outside seating in the complex - about 10 metres from their front door. Had the Portugese holiday village been a similar layout to my friends' block, I think leaving the kids would have been equivalent to sitting in the garden.


There was nothing odd about the McCanns' attempts to carry on a normal life after Madeleine's disappearance. Many people try to do this after a terrible calamity such as a bereavement, partly to reassure other, younger family members and partly to stop themselves going mad with grief. Giving oneself a purpose, day by day, even one as minor as keeping one's hair tidy, helps a lot.
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I really don't agree. I think their behaviour has been bizarre.
 
Quake42: "I think their behaviour has been bizarre."

It has probably been dictated by the PR company. Fresh footage of them was required every day to keep the story live. The full impact of those images may not always have been fully considered by the PR company but then they are not necessarily on their side.

:?:
 
Quake42 said:
The original reports suggested that the tapas bar was right outside of the apartment, making it rather like having dinner in the garden at home when the children are in bed. I doubt even Escargot would object to someone sitting in their garden after their kids had gone to sleep.

What now seems clear is that the tapas bar was actually some way away from the apartment and I understand from a report last week that the front door may not even have been locked, which I find very odd.
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This piqued my interest fairly early on. The initial reports did make out that the bar was very close to the apartment but when you see aerial photos of the complex, it's not as straight forward as it appears

I also suspect that the parents were not, as they first claimed, checking on the kids every 20 minutes and that they may have been left for an extended period.
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Now, after 100+ days of hearing this story I can't remember where I came across everything that I've read or heard but a few other snippets caught my interest too. I'm sure I heard fairly early on that one of the tapas bar staff was certain that none of the party connected to the McCanns left the area at all and couldn't have checked the kids. Also, something along the lines of when the discovery was made that Madeleine had gone, there was some problem waking the other children.

I'll be honest and at the risk of sounding like a heartless bastard, I'll put my cards on the table. Escargot mentioned "Daddy's special sweeties" above - I honestly wonder whether this is akin to stories about 'chav' parents giving their kids drugs or booze to put them to sleep or keep them quiet.
 
This piqued my interest fairly early on. The initial reports did make out that the bar was very close to the apartment but when you see aerial photos of the complex, it's not as straight forward as it appears
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Yeah - my initial reaction was that the parents were being blamed unfairly for leaving the kids, but that was on the basis that the situation was similar to the apartment complex my friends live in. It now seems that the tapas bar was a street away from the apartment, which puts a rather different light on things :?

As to your other theory - I really hope you're wrong on that, but there was some reports in the Portugese press last week which mentioned sleeping tablets.

All very grim.
 
I am rather baffled by all the reports that the Portuguese police are saying it was a "tragic accident" but that there is absolutely no suspicion on the parents. How can a child tragically accidentally kill herself then hide her own body away so that no-one can find her?

Having said that, apparently odd behaviour isn't all that odd. When someone close to you dies for example, you end up doing some very odd things. Though I must admit I was pretty surprised to discover at one point that they "normally" have been leaving their other kids at a creche during the day, I'd probably tie them to me or something.
 
Quake42 said:
As to your other theory - I really hope you're wrong on that, but there was some reports in the Portugese press last week which mentioned sleeping tablets.
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It's mentioned in this report on news.com.au -

Madeleine McCann overdose claim angers McCanns

From correspondents in Praia da Luz, Portugal

August 26, 2007 05:28pm
Article from: NEWS.com.au

THE family of missing English girl Madeleine McCann are furious after a Portuguese newspaper report which said police believed she was killed by her parents.

The four-year-old's father Gerry was accused, along with his wife Kate, of accidentally killing Madeleine with an overdose of sedatives.

It is 114 days since Madeleine vanished from her bed in the McCanns' holiday apartment in Praia da Luz, while her parents were at a nearby restaurant.

The McCanns, both 39, have remained in the Algarve with their two-year-old twins Sean and Amelie, clinging to the hope that Madeleine would be found alive.

Portuguese newspaper Tal & Qual ran a front-page picture of Mr and Mrs McCann and the headline: "Police believe parents killed Maddie".

Inside, the paper alleged Madeleine died as a result of an overdose of sedatives given to help her sleep, the British Press Association reported.

The McCanns denied giving her such medication.

Tal & Qual claimed Portuguese detectives "are almost absolutely certain that Madeleine was killed by accident by her parents".

The paper attributed its story to an anonymous source close to the investigation and even speculated about the prison sentence someone might get for the crimes of homicide by negligence and hiding a body.

"It's incredibly hurtful and incredibly untrue. Even if somebody could think that, there is just absolutely no evidence pointing in that direction," Mr McCann said.

"Without anything else, what that implies is that we somehow did it, we did it together, managed to dispose of Madeleine without a car, without anything, that the whole group was involved, that there must have been other people involved.

"It is just so absurd, it is just not credible. But we will come through it. We will not stop and it will move on. My opinion of what happened has not changed in 16 weeks."

Mr McCann attacked anonymous police sources who have been feeding allegations to the Portuguese press, apparently in breach of the country's laws preventing details of investigations being made public.

"I am disappointed that so much information is in the public domain in a country that supposedly has judicial secrecy," he said.

The journalist who wrote the story, Catarina Vaz Guerreiro, said: "I can't reveal my source, but I have complete trust in them.

"I strongly believe the person who told us this information is telling us the truth."

The story was dismissed by Portuguese police.

Source


Also found this report - Father believes Madeleine McCann is in Spain - which is puzzling because firstly they say that they are assuming that she was killed in the apartment and that

"The apartment is the key – all the answers lie there, they say – but they are far from resolving what exactly happened and why the body disappeared."
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But...

Police had released the apartment as a crime scene on June 11. It was cleaned and rented out to another family.

But in mid July they returned and then later called in expert help from British sniffer dogs, who detected new samples, which are still being tested. The apartment now lies empty again and has been locked by police.
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But all the evidence will have been cleaned away. It just doesn't seem to be a logical investigation, and one wonders if police have been leaned on in some way.
 
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