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.
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.