I don't buy that the Portugese authorities would take the easy way out and blame the parents. Essentially they are concerned with their image as a tourist destination. "Stitching up" tourists for crimes they cannot solve does not help them achieve the tag of desirable tourist destination.
A lot of the questions they asked were based on evidence that British authorities found, and none were leading or an obvious ploy to accuse the parents as the culprits.
The Mcanns have used the media very well throughout this. I recall the time it was first suggested they were suspects the media in Britain went mad for the most part. It seems to be a more recent thing that people are beginning to question their involvement more.
Sadly it's a tactic that police forces use far too often. Keep in mind that it's not only the police but the judicial system that has an interest in obtaining a solved case/conviction.
As for their status as a tourist destination; missing/abducted/dead children don't help that too much either, especially when the authorities are unable to solve the case.
I think this case raises another question about how how profile do you want the case to be?
In most child abduction cases the more media coverage the better, but strangely in this one the opposite is almost assumed.
I completely agree. However with the media coverage they can't just stitch someone up.
If they were to formally charge the Mcanns they would need rock solid evidence otherwise they would be a global media backlash. All evidence is circumstantial so it's not worth their reputation to charge them.
But in these other cases how long is there media interest? How often do the grieving parents actively seek media limelight?
http://www.cwporter.com/mccann.htm
For example, some of the questions the link asks is why none of the Tapas 9 and their families helped look for Madeline?
How did Kate immediately know that Madeline had been abducted, and not that maybe she had wandered off?
Why are there so many inconsistencies in the accounts given by Jane Tanner - and why, after seeing someone outside/close to the McCann's apartment carrying a small child that evening, did she not think to pass on this bit of info to the McCann's until at least a day after Madeline had been found to be missing?
There are just a lot of inconsistencies in this case. That does not mean I consider the McCanns to be guilty, but it does mean that I think they should be suspects and investigated as such.
Is it not more believable that the parents were invilved anyway?? I don't understand the almost universal agreement that it couldn't have been them.
But in these other cases how long is there media interest? How often do the grieving parents actively seek media limelight?
So do we know if they contacted the media right away themselves?
But in these other cases how long is there media interest? How often do the grieving parents actively seek media limelight?
I work in a hospital with people who knew the McCanns. It seems that it's the culture amongst a lot of medics to socialise in the evenings whilst the children are in bed - if it hadn't been the McCanns, it could just as easily have been another family because they weren't the only ones who left their kids unattended. In hindsight, they're guilty of stupidity and of neglect, but I don't believe they killed the child - what logical reason would there be? And they were on holiday - how difficult would it have been to hide a body for this long? It's far more logical that she was taken. And I don't believe that guilty parents would have spent the past years raising the profile of the case and pushing for a more in depth investigation and the involvement of the Met.
I think that they have been able to do something other parents in the same situation would love to be able to do in holding the media spotlight. There's probably lots of reasons for this including but not limited to;
- The fact she was a pretty little blonde child
- The fact the parents were well off educated people made it more interesting for the media
- The fact they are well educated meant they could work the media more effectively and raise money
- The fact they are under some suspicion and scrutiny
- The fact that the entire case is shrouded in mystery.
I'm not suggesting I think this happened, but your post assumes that if they had a hand in her "death" they'd have to have done so deliberately, and therefore logic suggests they wouldn't have had a reason, but her "death" need not have been deliberate for her parents to be responsible. Having left the children alone for an extended period, there's every chance the child could have had a fatal accident, which would be hard to explain off with "well, we left the kids alone while we went out".I work in a hospital with people who knew the McCanns. It seems that it's the culture amongst a lot of medics to socialise in the evenings whilst the children are in bed - if it hadn't been the McCanns, it could just as easily have been another family because they weren't the only ones who left their kids unattended. In hindsight, they're guilty of stupidity and of neglect, but I don't believe they killed the child - what logical reason would there be? And they were on holiday - how difficult would it have been to hide a body for this long? It's far more logical that she was taken. And I don't believe that guilty parents would have spent the past years raising the profile of the case and pushing for a more in depth investigation and the involvement of the Met.
The dogs "hit rate" of 200 cases, without ever being wrong, suggests there is a bit more to what they do than simply barking in a room.Obviously you can pretty much rule out any possibility of them hurting their daughter deliberately in order to benefit from it in any way. If anything happened to her which had anything to do with them, it would have had to be an accident IMO. It's not really unthinkable although you can't just jump into conclusions just because they didn't answer some questions or because the dogs barked in the room. It can point towards them and raise suspicion but ultimately it doesn't provide you with enough evidence.
Death and blood were also detected on the car they hired weeks after she went missing.A specialist sniffer dog trained to detect the scent of human corpses was led around the McCann's apartment where it positively identified the scent of death, giving a strong indication that rather than being abducted alive the child died in the apartment. The dog in particular identified they child's favourite teddy 'Cuddle Cat' as a strong source of the scent of death. Kate McCann had previously, thoroughly and inexplicably washed the toy days after the child's disappearance, but the dog was nevertheless trained to detect the scent of human death in an object or garment after multiple washes.
The dogs "hit rate" of 200 cases, without ever being wrong, suggests there is a bit more to what they do than simply barking in a room.
Given they are highly trained dogs, they were specifically brought over from the UK to do the job they are trained for, and that they've never, ever been wrong before (in 200 odd cases), I'd say there is a fair chance the scent of death was in the room, on the car, the toy and also both the child and her mothers clothing.Yeh, but you can't use the whole 'the dog sniffed out something' story in a court room.
The reality is that sadly the media(and sometimes even police) accept missing children in certain 'difficult' communities. Madeleine's kidnapping was particularly rare as a result of the fact it happened to a white, middle-class family on an incredibly middle-class holiday.
We need to do a lot more in this country to get to grips with the number of children that go missing on a yearly basis. I think sometimes the authorities just find it too difficult to enter into some areas of society to get a real understanding of why some things happen(e.g child abuse cases in Rochdale).
Given they are highly trained dogs, they were specifically brought over from the UK to do the job they are trained for, and that they've never, ever been wrong before (in 200 odd cases), I'd say there is a fair chance the scent of death was in the room, on the car, the toy and also both the child and her mothers clothing.
Also, the two dogs are trained for different things. One to detect blood, the other to detect death. They, separately, detected the scents they're trained to detect in the same part of the room.
I don't think it's anything to do with it being a white, middle-class child. It's to do with parents who have never let it be forgotten, and who have raised money towards keeping the investigation going. You can say it's the least they can do in view of the fact they were negligent in the first place, but the fact is, you don't have to be rich to get the kind of backing the McCanns have. It might help, but there's always organisations and individuals who would support families in the same situation. The McCanns have never given up, whereas some parents have.
And the McCanns did say that there should be a central fund for the purpose of searching for missing children. I don't know if such a charity has been set up yet?
Which kind of parents are most likely to keep things in the public eye successfully though?
The McCanns are intelligent, articulate and reasoned. A lot of parents essentially don't have their education and their level of resourcefulness. The majority of kids that go missing come from very vulnerable backgrounds, where it is more likely that the parents will have less ability to sway the public mood.
Like I said, Alastair, there are always organisations and individuals who will help out.
Sara Payne wasn't middle-class - look how much she did to raise awareness, although in different circumstances because her child was found dead quite early on in the search. Sara did wonders.
I don't think it's anything to do with it being a white, middle-class child. It's to do with parents who have never let it be forgotten, and who have raised money towards keeping the investigation going. You can say it's the least they can do in view of the fact they were negligent in the first place, but the fact is, you don't have to be rich to get the kind of backing the McCanns have. It might help, but there's always organisations and individuals who would support families in the same situation. The McCanns have never given up, whereas some parents have.
And the McCanns did say that there should be a central fund for the purpose of searching for missing children. I don't know if such a charity has been set up yet?
200 successful detections with zero unsuccessful detections seems fairly accurate to me, but then I'm no scientist.Dogs cannot categorically detect death. It's not something that can be scientifically proven.
Detecting blood is also incredibly vague. A cut on the finger is different to a slash across the arm. I dare say a dog would always find blood on me somewhere because I bite my nails.
The mother is a doctor. Any lingering sense of 'death' can be apportioned to that.
Dogs cannot categorically detect death. It's not something that can be scientifically proven.
Detecting blood is also incredibly vague. A cut on the finger is different to a slash across the arm. I dare say a dog would always find blood on me somewhere because I bite my nails.
The mother is a doctor. Any lingering sense of 'death' can be apportioned to that.
Dogs cannot categorically detect death. It's not something that can be scientifically proven.
Detecting blood is also incredibly vague. A cut on the finger is different to a slash across the arm. I dare say a dog would always find blood on me somewhere because I bite my nails.
The mother is a doctor. Any lingering sense of 'death' can be apportioned to that.
The dogs "hit rate" of 200 cases, without ever being wrong, suggests there is a bit more to what they do than simply barking in a room.
As for the possibility that they possibly played a part in her death - if indeed she is dead - I don't think anyone is suggesting they randomly decided to stab her that night, or planned to kill her in any way. They left their kids unattended for five nights, with prolonged crying being reported on a couple of those nights. The Portuguese police wanted to perform drug tests on the twins almost immediately, with the intent most likely to be tracing a sedative. Despite the McCann's going on record to say they think the abductor might have drugged the twins to keep them asleep while he took Madeline, they didn't allow the tests to go ahead until five months after the incident. They've since gone on record to say that the lack of drugs found in those tests proves that the twins hadn't been drugged, despite the fact that any traces would have been long gone by that stage. Whilst there doesn't appear to be any sort of motive for murder, there is a possibility that they sedated their children so they could go out in peace and Madeline was given too much or had a fatal reaction to it, or that she simply died in a tragic accident while they were out.
It still doesn't make sense for them to report her missing straightaway and draw all the attention to them immediately. They'd have had to dispose of the body and they'd have had virtually no time to do so, it's all a bit dim. The timeline of all events makes it a bit difficult for them to cover up any crime they might have commited unless they were really clever about it.
The cadaver dog in question has a 100% record, apparently. Also, I found this, taken from an article about another case entirelyI wasn't aware that their accuracy was that high, sources I've checked had it at around 80-90 per cent which albeit highly credible doesn't quite give you the absolute certainty you'd need in a case like this to make any conclusion.
What's even weirder here is that it's difficult to put it all together if the scent of a cadaver was genuinely there. Apparently the scent we're talking about here doesn't appear until 90 minutes after the death so for it to be there she'd have to be lying there dead for at least that long. They left the door to their room slightly ajar and one of their friends checked on the kids before the mother noticed Madeleine missing which was followed by police coming to the scene at which point they'd have found it impossible to conceal the body. They'd have had to sort it out before and there was hardly any time for them to do it.
In a study published last year, the forensic pathologist Lars Oesterhelweg, then at the University of Bern in Switzerland, and colleagues tested the ability of three Hamburg State Police cadaver dogs to pick out – of a line-up of six new carpet squares – the one that had been exposed for no more than 10 minutes to a recently deceased person.
Several squares had been placed beneath a clothed corpse within three hours of death, when some organs and many cells of the human body are still functioning. Over the next month, the dogs did hundreds of trials in which they signalled the contaminated square with 98 per cent accuracy, falling to 94 per cent when the square had been in contact with the corpse for only two minutes. The research concluded that cadaver dogs were an "outstanding tool" for crime-scene investigation.
Yep. If the theory is that they drugged their kids so they fell asleep earlier than normally and ended up killing Madeleine and getting rid of her body by hiding it in the trunk of their car and dropping it somewhere then I genuinely don't get where they could have found the time to do it all.Exactly. They could easily have bought themselves more time by pretending to search for her on their own, there'd have been nothing too suspicious in acting like they thought she might have just wandered off to look for them or something.
The cadaver dog in question has a 100% record, apparently. Also, I found this, taken from an article about another case entirely
The cadaver dog in question has a 100% record, apparently. Also, I found this, taken from an article about another case entirely
As for your second part, the friend who supposedly checked on the children has said he did so from outside, and didn't actually go in. If she had died, under whatever circumstances that may have happened, checking from outside wouldn't have uncovered her. The timelines reported also differ somewhat.
I don't know what I believe, it all seems strange with so many inconsistencies and contradictions in the stories told. I do find the "scent of death" stuff creepy, though.
