Madeleine McCann

Rooney24 said:
From a legal perspective, what weight would the 'findings' of these dogs have in a court?
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Not sure, they could support the actual evidence but wouldn't have a chance of standing up as a sole or main evidence I think.
 
Rooney24 said:
From a legal perspective, what weight would the 'findings' of these dogs have in a court?
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I'm not in the lawyering business but on its own, my guess would be not much. As piece part of a wider theory with more evidence, probably quite a bit.

Given that's an uneducated opinion, it can be entirely disregarded.
 
That'sHernandez said:
What's the timescale of these scents dispersing anyway? It's an appartment they rented for the two weeks or so isn't it? The scent of blood in the apartment could have been there before they even arrived. The same goes for the scent of death.
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I think it holds up for around a month after the death has occured (the smell of death), as for the blood I think it's much longer than that.
 
Personally I think this thread went full retard the moment people started claiming leaving your three year old daughter alone with young twins too whilst the parents feck off out to dinner wasn't neglect.
 
Redlambs said:
Personally I think this thread went full retard the moment people started claiming leaving your three year old daughter alone with young twins too whilst the parents feck off out to dinner wasn't neglect.
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Oh wash the sand out of your fanny.
 
That'sHernandez said:
What's the timescale of these scents dispersing anyway? It's an appartment they rented for the two weeks or so isn't it? The scent of blood in the apartment could have been there before they even arrived. The same goes for the scent of death.
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I guess they could have, but as far as I've read, the only major incident to have occurred in their apartment was this case. There are no reports of anyone having died in that apartment previously.

Look, I'm not accusing anyone. I've no idea what happened, obviously, and I'm not even sure what I believe happened. I'd like to hope that the abduction thing is true, but the inconsistencies in the stories from the whole Tapas group are startling.
 
One thing I find strange is this Matthew Oldfield fella, being the last to check on the kids before Madeleine went missing. He said in his statement/interview that all week the group had been checking on their own kids, and also that he didn't really know the McCanns particularly well and hadn't seen them for years before this holiday. That Thursday night she went missing was the first time anyone other than her own parents had checked on her. Within half an hour of this man checking them for the first time all week she had gone. He also didn't check properly either, because he can't say whether she was there or not as he just glanced in and saw the twins "sort of breathing".

I don't know about the rest of you, but if I was in Gerry McCanns shoes this guy would be the first up against the wall by the throat, being asked "where the feck is my daughter?". The first time he's in the room all week, a relative stranger, and suddenly one of the kids is missing. Why wasn't more made of this?

I don't know, I think the Tapas group have told a pack of lies. Their stories contradict each other, they're full of holes and inconsistencies. I don't know if it points to guilt of any kind, but it certainly points, in my eyes anyway, to a group of people trying to cover up the fact that they weren't really checking the kids at all, and by doing so making themselves look even more guilty. They've lied throughout, in my opinion, which isn't the best course of action when a child has gone missing. They seem more concerned with excluding themselves from any blame than actually putting together a proper timeline of events that might help find out what happened.
 
They carried out a huge search a day after she disappeared involving sniffing dogs and thousands of officers, what I don't understand is how, if they were guilty, McCanns could have disposed of the body without it being found at any point during the search. They couldn't hide it in a room, they couldn't drive away with it, they couldn't conceal it anywhere within the hotel premises and obviously they couldn't just bury it on the beach.

It seems highly improbable that they would have been able to do it so well that in 6 years there's still no trace. This is something that people advocating theory about them being involved can hardly dispute or tackle with a logical explanation. I won't rule them out but they really don't look like number one suspects to me. The kid could have died in the apartment and they might have had nothing to do with it, as outlandish as it may sound.
 
Sarni said:
They carried out a huge search a day after she disappeared involving sniffing dogs and thousands of officers, what I don't understand is how, if they were guilty, McCanns could have disposed of the body without it being found at any point during the search. They couldn't hide it in a room, they couldn't drive away with it, they couldn't conceal it anywhere within the hotel premises and obviously they couldn't just bury it on the beach.

It seems highly improbable that they would have been able to do it so well that in 6 years there's still no trace. This is something that people advocating theory about them being involved can hardly dispute or tackle with a logical explanation. I won't rule them out but they really don't look like number one suspects to me. The kid could have died in the apartment and they might have had nothing to do with it, as outlandish as it may sound.
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I read a theory that she's buried in the back garden of that Robert Murat fellas house, which is only yards away from their apartment. Some guy reckons he has discovered a "body" buried in a shallow grave using Sonar technology, but he needs permission to dig it up, and so far Murat, the McCanns, and the respective police forces have refused to give permission, although the Murat fella says he'll allow it if he is given certain assurances.

It might be bollocks, in fact it almost certainly is, but if it was my kid I'd have dug that hole myself to make sure she isn't there.
 
The Neviller said:
I don't know, I think the Tapas group have told a pack of lies. Their stories contradict each other, they're full of holes and inconsistencies. I don't know if it points to guilt of any kind, but it certainly points, in my eyes anyway, to a group of people trying to cover up the fact that they weren't really checking the kids at all, and by doing so making themselves look even more guilty. They've lied throughout, in my opinion, which isn't the best course of action when a child has gone missing. They seem more concerned with excluding themselves from any blame than actually putting together a proper timeline of events that might help find out what happened.
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I think that's most likely, tbh. If you consider there are a large number of them, there is no way the could hide anything substantial for this long without someone getting a conscience and telling people. I suspect that, along with the fact they'd been drinking, they wanted to soften the edges of the story to avoid looking like awful people.
 
Brophs said:
I think that's most likely, tbh. If you consider there are a large number of them, there is no way the could hide anything substantial for this long without someone getting a conscience and telling people. I suspect that, along with the fact they'd been drinking, they wanted to soften the edges of the story to avoid looking like awful people.
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That course of action fecks up the investigation, though. I don't believe the Jane Tanner story for a second. It makes no sense that she'd be where she said she was, when she said she was, and have seen both Gerry McCann and the guy he was talking to, as well as the abductor, without Gerry and the other guy seeing her. She said initially they were on the other side of the road, something Gerry says isn't true, so if he is telling the truth about where he was, this woman walked right past them, on an empty road, without either of them seeing her.

I think they made some of the checking stories up, and perhaps gave each other more believable alibies for where they were and for how long. As I say, not necessarily a sign of guilt of having committed any offence, but at best a cover for their irresponsible actions, and to make them look less like thoughtless, self centred cnuts.
 
The Neviller said:
That course of action fecks up the investigation, though. I don't believe the Jane Tanner story for a second. It makes no sense that she'd be where she said she was, when she said she was, and have seen both Gerry McCann and the guy he was talking to, as well as the abductor, without Gerry and the other guy seeing her. She said initially they were on the other side of the road, something Gerry says isn't true, so if he is telling the truth about where he was, this woman walked right past them, on an empty road, without either of them seeing her.

I think they made some of the checking stories up, and perhaps gave each other more believable alibies for where they were and for how long. As I say, not necessarily a sign of guilt of having committed any offence, but at best a cover for their irresponsible actions, and to make them look less like thoughtless, self centred cnuts.
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I have to admit I've not read massively into this, so some of what you mentioned I'm a bit sketchy on.

But, and this might only be interesting to me, there are some fascinating studies on the reliability of witness evidence. So often people will get details wrong, whether minor or major and whole investigations/prosecutions are skewed by it. I'm not saying that's what's happening here, but even in reconstructed tests, under stressful situations, where every fact could be clarified and corroborated, people's perceptions of what they'd seen were incredibly flawed at times. You'd have people swearing blind, in absolute good faith and having passed polygraph tests, that X had happened when it could be shown that was not the case. One of the main ones is perception of space and time, so I can see how there can be inconsistencies in these things.
 
Saw an interesting show one time dealing with human perception, memory etc, specifically dealing with people as "eye witnesses" in court cases. One bit they showed took place in a University legal class. The female teacher came in the room put her purse on the leture table and began class. Suddenly a person burst in the room grabbed her purse and took off before anyone could do anything. She had made arrangements for someone else to block anyone from giving chase.

Then of course campus security was called, and eyewitness descriptions of the individual were taken. The descriptions included some who saw a women, others a man. Various race descriptions were given. Height and weight varied wildly. Some people even swore the person was armed. Others that he/she made threats to the class. A few even swore there was more than one person involved.

The students were quite shocked when they were given a video replay of the event. If I remember right out of a class of 40 people, 2 gave the correct description.

Another excercise involved taking statements from witnesses over the course of several days, coming back to get people to repeat their stories. It was quite shocking how much the stories were changed, embellished, etc in a short period of time.

It was not that people were necessarily intentionally lying, though some might have been, it was that the mind starts to fill in the blanks and expand on teh story. Also, some people will start giving more details even if they are unaware that their brain is filling in the blanks, just because under repeated questioning they think they need to say something more.

Contrary to what we all like to think, eyewitness testimony can be very unreliable and even people sitting in the same room can swear that they saw something totally different from what the other person says they saw.
 
One question on the changing stories. Is it their statements to law enforcement that are changing or what they are saying in press interviews or just that the press is saying the stories are changing? I am trying to remember the case but a big deal was made about witness stories changing, the problem is that when the case was done and access was given to original statements vs. what was said in later interviews by the cops and lawyers and testimony in court, the stories actually had not changed. But the press went with what their "sources" were telling them.


So which is it in this case? Are people actually changing the testimony they have given to law enforcement officials?

I guess one of the problems with these High Profile cases is that so much is written and said and analyzed and once something is out there, true or not, it stays out there. You end up with this muddled version of events in the public eye where it becomes almost impossible to figure out just what the truth really is.
 
The only case I was involved with, the police massively fecked up my witness statement and the defence lawyer twisted my words like a corkscrew. Add to the fact that the court case happened over a year later and the incident happened after I hadn't slept in 24 hours... It didn't go well.

The only bit of that that is relevant to this thread (well none of it is really) is the witness statement, and you presume the portugese police did a better job on the tapas 6 than the English police did with me, but my result was horrendous. My statement took hours; as I hadn't slept I had a lot to say on what had happened, then half way throughit the other witnesses were allowed into the same room as me (after they had finished their statements). Later when the police read it back he'd got basically everything I said wrong.

He asked me if that was okay, I said 'is that only the first draft' and he said 'yeah' and so I said thats fine then.

The next day I rang the police saying I would need to change my statement as it was all wrong (order of events) and they said I wouldn't be able too, or if I did change it, it wouldnt be able to be used in court

Needles to say the lawyer destroyed me, and the person got away with it
 
rcoobc said:
The only case I was involved with, the police massively fecked up my witness statement and the defence lawyer twisted my words like a corkscrew. Add to the fact that the court case happened over a year later and the incident happened after I hadn't slept in 24 hours... It didn't go well.

The only bit of that that is relevant to this thread (well none of it is really) is the witness statement, and you presume the portugese police did a better job on the tapas 6 than the English police did with me, but my result was horrendous. My statement took hours; as I hadn't slept I had a lot to say on what had happened, then half way throughit the other witnesses were allowed into the same room as me (after they had finished their statements). Later when the police read it back he'd got basically everything I said wrong.

He asked me if that was okay, I said 'is that only the first draft' and he said 'yeah' and so I said thats fine then.

The next day I rang the police saying I would need to change my statement as it was all wrong (order of events) and they said I wouldn't be able too, or if I did change it, it wouldnt be able to be used in court

Needles to say the lawyer destroyed me, and the person got away with it
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Well that tale certainly fills me with confidence in the justice system.
 
It was a huge joke. I don't know if the police weren't taking it seriously, but looking back it seems like they weren't. I've never been able to look the victim in the eye. I should have told the police they had fecked up and changed everything I had said at the time, but you do just go along with what the police say in that situation.

Also, I was allowed to look at my statement 30 minutes before going on to the stand, and the prosecution lawyer seemed to be very gentle, whereas the defence was ruthless.

Mostly it was fecked up because it was 18 months after the incident, and most of those involved had moved hundreds of miles away.

When I was making my statement, the other witnesses were saying things like 'oh I had forgotten about that' as I went through everything in detail. Yet because the police keep asking questions back and fourth in time, he completely got everything I said wrong.
 
People largely don't pay attention to most of the things happening around them, it's not really that strange for them not to. We all pass by thousands of people each week and we don't remember their respective faces or the way they were behaving after a few seconds, we won't bring them back from the bottom of our memory even if we try very hard either. We only remember the basic stuff, if you asked me how many people I've met on my way to the bakery today and what did they look like I won't have an answer - likewise these people might have not remembered certain details of the evening or remembered them incorrectly.

It's also pretty difficult to remain consistent in intentionally telling a false story over an extended period of time unless you begin to actually believe it. It's not unusual for people who are caught up in their lies to find it difficult to tell the truth apart from the fiction because they often interfere.
 
The Neviller said:
I don't know about the rest of you, but if I was in Gerry McCanns shoes this guy would be the first up against the wall by the throat, being asked "where the feck is my daughter?". The first time he's in the room all week, a relative stranger, and suddenly one of the kids is missing. Why wasn't more made of this?
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Your kid is kidnapped and your first assumption would be that your friend did it?

The friend who looked in on your kid briefly but was otherwise with you the whole night?
 
JustAFan said:
Saw an interesting show one time dealing with human perception, memory etc, specifically dealing with people as "eye witnesses" in court cases. One bit they showed took place in a University legal class. The female teacher came in the room put her purse on the leture table and began class. Suddenly a person burst in the room grabbed her purse and took off before anyone could do anything. She had made arrangements for someone else to block anyone from giving chase.

Then of course campus security was called, and eyewitness descriptions of the individual were taken. The descriptions included some who saw a women, others a man. Various race descriptions were given. Height and weight varied wildly. Some people even swore the person was armed. Others that he/she made threats to the class. A few even swore there was more than one person involved.

The students were quite shocked when they were given a video replay of the event. If I remember right out of a class of 40 people, 2 gave the correct description.

Another excercise involved taking statements from witnesses over the course of several days, coming back to get people to repeat their stories. It was quite shocking how much the stories were changed, embellished, etc in a short period of time.

It was not that people were necessarily intentionally lying, though some might have been, it was that the mind starts to fill in the blanks and expand on teh story. Also, some people will start giving more details even if they are unaware that their brain is filling in the blanks, just because under repeated questioning they think they need to say something more.

Contrary to what we all like to think, eyewitness testimony can be very unreliable and even people sitting in the same room can swear that they saw something totally different from what the other person says they saw.
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I remember at school when we were learning about the JFK assassination. At one point during the lesson, a teacher outside the room (who we didn't know was there) made a series of loud bangs with one of those clapperboards that they used to start races with. The teacher in the room then, (once people had caught their breath again!) asked us how many bangs we had heard. There were three bangs, but the answers in the room ranged from 2 to 5. He used this as an example of eye witness testimony in the JFK case, and why people reported hearing a different number of shots etc.
 
Wibble said:
Your kid is kidnapped and your first assumption would be that your friend did it?

The friend who looked in on your kid briefly but was otherwise with you the whole night?
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My friend, who I'd met once at a wedding four years previously and hadn't seen since. My friend who had never, throughout the rest of that week, been in my apartment or checked on my kids (because we didn't know each other well) until half an hour before my kid vanished.

Yeah, I'd probably question that friend a bit.
 
The Neviller said:
My friend, who I'd met once at a wedding four years previously and hadn't seen since. My friend who had never, throughout the rest of that week, been in my apartment or checked on my kids (because we didn't know each other well) until half an hour before my kid vanished.

Yeah, I'd probably question that friend a bit.
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Yeah me too. I'd definitely be wanting some answers.
 
Wibble said:
Kinell.
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So some guy you barely know, who you'd met at a wedding four years previously and hadn't seen since goes into your hotel room/apartment where you kids are sleeping and half an hour later your wife finds your kid missing. This is the first time he's volunteered to check on them all week. He's someone you don't really know or socialise with. He says he checked, but can't be sure if Madeleine was there, even though he offered to check on her.

You have no questions to ask him?

Kinell.
 
Oldfield's check was before Gerry's and Gerry I think said that he'd seen Madeline sleeping in her bed so with the assumption that both are telling the truth Oldfield couldn't have done anything to the kid.
 
Sarni said:
Oldfield's check was before Gerry's and Gerry I think said that he'd seen Madeline sleeping in her bed so with the assumption that both are telling the truth Oldfield couldn't have done anything to the kid.
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Yeah, I find it's always best to assume people are telling the truth during criminal investigations. Afterall, if we cannot rely on human decency and honesty then just what's the point in carrying on at all, eh?
 
Ciderman90210 said:
Yeah, I find it's always best to assume people are telling the truth during criminal investigations. Afterall, if we cannot rely on human decency and honesty then just what's the point in carrying on at all, eh?
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You do realise he's talking about Gerry McCann possibly inquiring the other fella about the events? Gerry will have known if they are telling the truth or not, if he can be sure that Oldfield was in the room only before he went there, he has no reason to question him.
 
Sarni said:
Oldfield's check was before Gerry's and Gerry I think said that he'd seen Madeline sleeping in her bed so with the assumption that both are telling the truth Oldfield couldn't have done anything to the kid.
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Oldfield did two checks, one outside by listening at 9.05pm (before Gerry, and of his own accord) and one inside, at 9.30, when it was supposed to be Kate McCanns turn. He was going to check his own kids and offered to check the McCann kids at the same time. The McCann kids weren't checked again until Kate checked at 10pm, and found Madeleine missing. From their own statements.

I'd be asking questions.
 
The Neviller said:
Oldfield did two checks, one outside by listening at 9.05pm (before Gerry, and of his own accord) and one inside, at 9.30, when it was supposed to be Kate McCanns turn. He was going to check his own kids and offered to check the McCann kids at the same time. The McCann kids weren't checked again until Kate checked at 10pm, and found Madeleine missing. From their own statements.

I'd be asking questions.
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Ah, I didn't remember the second check, only read about the first check at 9.00 pm and I reckoned it was the only one.

In this case yes, I'd get suspicious. He'd not be able to kidnap her himself or do anything to her in an amount of time that short but he certainly might have arranged an abduction with someone else. It's a long shot and I believe they might have already considered that possibility (they probably have).
 
Sarni said:
You do realise he's talking about Gerry McCann possibly inquiring the other fella about the events? Gerry will have known if they are telling the truth or not, if he can be sure that Oldfield was in the room only before he went there, he has no reason to question him.
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You're saying that, from Gerry McCann's PoV, upon finding his daughter missing there would be no possible reason to question the relative stranger who last checked on her?
 
Ciderman90210 said:
You're saying that, from Gerry McCann's PoV, upon finding his daughter missing there would be no possible reason to question the relative stranger who last checked on her?
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I was talking under the assumption that it was Gerry who did the final check after Oldfield had gone in there at 9.00 pm, if you knew it weren't true you should have corrected me on the spot rather than be smart about it.
 
Sarni said:
I was talking under the assumption that it was Gerry who did the final check after Oldfield had gone in there at 9.00 pm, if you knew it weren't true you should have corrected me on the spot rather than be smart about it.
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It's not my responsibility to keep track your misconceptions. How was I supposed to know what incorrect assumption you were making?
 
Ciderman90210 said:
It's not my responsibility to keep track your misconceptions. How was I supposed to know what incorrect assumption you were making?
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It's not your responsibility to be an utter cnut all the time either.

You were supposed to know it from the post that you've quoted, if you don't bother reading what you're replying to because you put yourself in your argumentative mode straightaway it's not my problem.
 
Sarni said:
It's not your responsibility to be an utter cnut all the time either.

You were supposed to know it from the post that you've quoted, if you don't bother reading what you're replying to because you put yourself in your argumentative mode straightaway it's not my problem.
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No, that's not your problem, your problem is that you assumed wrong and then blamed somebody else, calling them a cnut for not reading your mind and correcting you.
 
Ciderman90210 said:
No, that's not your problem, your problem is that you assumed wrong and then blamed somebody else, calling them a cnut for not reading your mind and correcting you.
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You don't have to be able to read my mind, just to properly read what I actually wrote and correct the wrong part instead of jumping into an argument being all smart. It's beyond your routine when the opportunity to slag someone off arises though. I don't want to derail this thread anymore so I'll stop there.
 
Sarni said:
You don't have to be able to read my mind, just to properly read what I actually wrote and correct the wrong part instead of jumping into an argument being all smart. It's beyond your routine when the opportunity to slag someone off arises though. I don't want to derail this thread anymore so I'll stop there.
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I'll just slip the final word in then:
 
Sarni said:
Ah, I didn't remember the second check, only read about the first check at 9.00 pm and I reckoned it was the only one.

In this case yes, I'd get suspicious. He'd not be able to kidnap her himself or do anything to her in an amount of time that short but he certainly might have arranged an abduction with someone else. It's a long shot and I believe they might have already considered that possibility (they probably have).
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My suggestion isn't even that I think Oldfield did anything, more that if what they've said about the checks is true, in Gerry McCanns shoes, Oldfield would be first against the wall.

But I don't think what they've said about the checks is true. I don't think they were checking them at all.
 
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