Page 9 of 15 FirstFirst ... 5678910111213 ... LastLast
Results 161 to 180 of 288

Thread: Madeleine

  1. #161
    Registered User
    Join Date
    Oct 2003
    Location
    Southampton
    Posts
    6,709
    Rep Power
    13

    Re: Madeline

    Quote Originally Posted by Dreadful Scathe View Post
    I remember the story in the US years ago of the woman who killed her children and drove her car into a swamp. She blamed a "black man" who drove off with her car with the kids still in it. She was on TV pleading for him to come forward for weeks until the police figured it out. Can't remember any names in the case though so cant find it. People are capable of anything.
    That sounds like one which they made into a true-life TV film with Farrah Fawcett. Woman worked for the US Mail and had a boyfriend who made it clear he was not likely to stay with her because of her three children. So she shot them in the car and then drove to hospital and claimed a car-jacker had done it. At least one of the kids survived and eventually told an astonished world that it was Mummy who killed his brother and sister and shot him in the back.

  2. #162
    Registered User
    Join Date
    Oct 2003
    Location
    Southampton
    Posts
    6,709
    Rep Power
    13

    Re: Madeline

    Quote Originally Posted by Double Trouble View Post
    So anyway, I think they should hang the evil bitch.
    Sorry...which evil bitch is that?

  3. #163
    Registered User
    Join Date
    Oct 2003
    Location
    Southampton
    Posts
    6,709
    Rep Power
    13

    Re: Madeline

    Quote Originally Posted by Dance Demon View Post
    I suppose the fact that they refused these services might make the police wonder why they refused them. Perhaps they had something to hide and didn't want anyone else in the apartment. I really hope that the McCanns are not guilty, however it is not beyond the realms of possibility that they are.
    Just after Madeleine went missing, there was a report on one of the news programmes, about the high incidence of children who go missing in Portugal, and the fact that the Portugese Police don't spend a a lot of time looking for them. One of the reasons mentioned was that there are a large number of Paedophile rings operating in Portugal, and there are some very high profile people involved in their operation. a fair amount of pressure is put on the Police by these people, not to find missing children. Because Madeleine Mccann was British, and her disappearance was so high profile, the portugese Police had to look like they were serious about their search operation. however, the parents of the large number of Portugese children who have gone missing in the past, would be justified in asking why the same effort was never put in to finding their children. Accusing the McCanns might just be the easy way out for the Portugese Police, and a way for them to bring to a close a case that is bringing a lot of unwanted publicity.
    Why is it that we always here about these foreign countries and their large-scale 'paedophile rings' involving 'powerful and important people' whenever something happens to an English child abroad? I guess since they aren't British they probably don't care as much about their children, and stuff...

  4. #164
    Registered User
    Join Date
    Oct 2003
    Location
    Southampton
    Posts
    6,709
    Rep Power
    13

    Re: Madeline

    Quote Originally Posted by ducasi View Post
    I would really like it if the McCanns were cleared of any wrong-doing – the questions I'm asking are because I can't believe it is possible for them to have done what has been implied.

    Here's the time line from the BBC News...

    Based on that, there's little time for them to conspire to do anything.

    I don't believe that it's possible to cause the death of your own daughter then behave as if everything's OK for the rest of the evening. How long was Mrs McCann away for at 2200? And how long does it take to hide the evidence of a crime like this?

    I'm sceptical, but then none of us really know all the facts.
    I certainly think it is possible for some people to do things like this; sociopaths, or people who have become hardened by death and killing, but it seems very difficult to fathom the modus operandi in this situation. The opportunity doesn't seem to be there. (means, motive and opportunity, don'tcha know.)

  5. #165
    Registered User Lynn's Avatar
    Join Date
    Nov 2003
    Location
    Belfast
    Posts
    8,925
    Rep Power
    15

    Re: Madeleine

    Quote Originally Posted by Isis View Post
    For me it was the whole religious thing. I have no problem with people who follow religion but alarm bells ring when I see people making such a big display of it and trying to draw attention to their religiosity. For example, from the beginning we heard a great deal about the McCann's Catholicism, had them filmed going to Church every day and then the meeting with the Pope thing. It's as if they're trying to say 'look at us, we're so devout, which must make us good people'. Why do they need to convince anyone of that?

    I was also surprised at their level of control. I think I would be a useless wreck, unable to drag myself out of bed if anything happened to Isis Junior but Kate McCann was still going out for her daily jog just after Madeline's disappearance.

    Their ability to launch a slick media campaign was surprising and did I hear Gerry McCann was giving lectures about the media at the Edinburgh Festival?

    Are they behaving like this because they are just more strong minded and controlled than the average person or are they acting inconsistently with people who have had thir daughter kidnapped?
    To me those behaviours seem to be consistent with people who are struggling to hold onto normality and anything that they can draw strength from to try to convince themselves that their daughter was OK and if they held on, stayed strong and kept the focus on the case, that their daughter would be found.

    I'm not saying they weren't involved, as its not impossible, awful as it might be to think - sadly it happens. But I would have thought then they would maybe have tried harder to seem upset. To me, their behaviour seems to be people who desperately want to hold on to the hope that their daughter would be found alive, like they didn't want to give up on her.

  6. #166
    Registered User Jhutch's Avatar
    Join Date
    Oct 2006
    Location
    Balham, S. London
    Posts
    855
    Rep Power
    9

    Re: Madeline

    Father now an official suspect too

    BBC NEWS | UK | Police 'suspect McCann parents'

  7. #167
    Registered User
    Join Date
    Oct 2003
    Location
    Southampton
    Posts
    6,709
    Rep Power
    13

    Re: Madeline

    I was just trawling through Today's online reports. It seems one of the questions that the police asked Mrs McCann is "Who is 'they'?"

    It seems that on the occasion when Mrs McCann made the 50-second trip to the apartment and came back and raised the alarm, what she shouted was "They've taken her! They've taken her!"

    I don't want to make too much of this, but after several minutes I can't convince myself of any good reason why she would say that rather than "Omigod! Maddy's gone!" I have been in situations where toddlers have gone missing from places where everyone had no doubt that they would be, and what everyone says is "Now where's she gone?" No-one in my personal experience has gone straight to "Jesus, someone's taken her".

    The explanation is that the child's cuddly toy was on a high shelf whereas it had been given to her to go to sleep with.

    Well that poses another question - how the hell was she abducted quietly without the cuddly toy, given that the front door of the apartment apparently opens onto a busy car park and the windows at the back open above a main footpath between the apartment block and elsewhere?

    The waiter at the tapas bar says no-one but one guy left the table all evening until Mrs McCann left; the 9 friends all claim that people left at half hour intervals to do a round robin check on everyone.

    It's also reported that there was no forensic evidence of an intruder in the apartment. Well hell, it's a holiday apartment - the problem ought to be that there's forensic evidence from dozens of people - at the absolute minimum the McCanns and any resort staff and any of the McCann's friends and their friends' children, not to mention any one else who'd been in the apartment before them...

    No wonder the police are struggling to find their way to the truth - not like Morse, is it, where at least a dozen people have the motive and the opportunity and the evidence lies down in a long chain pointing right at the guilty person.

  8. #168
    Registered User
    Join Date
    Oct 2003
    Location
    Southampton
    Posts
    6,709
    Rep Power
    13

    Re: Madeline

    More reading: one of the friends said that after her police questioning 'Kate' wanted to get home to hug her children; "Kate's world revolves around her children and her husband". I recognise that it's an easy criticism for me to make, but perhaps if that had been true on the night in question the three toddlers wouldn't have been alone in an empty apartment. One way or another the little girl would still be alive. I'm not saying that the McCann's did something terrible, but *** I wish everyone would let up on the "Kate and Gerry are the best of all possible parents' schtick.

    Another thought: the idea that a corpse was moved after about 25 days. In Portugal's summer, a 25 day old corpse would have been very messy. More than a few minutes in the car and would it have needed a dog to detect what had happened - wouldn't even a human nose have been enough?

    Hah! Next thing I read was an article containing a quote from a professor of forensic medecine: "A body is not in very good condition 25 days after death, especially in a Portuguese climate. The decomposition smell would be obnoxious, lingering and very difficult to get rid of."

  9. #169
    purplehyacinth
    Guest

    Re: Madeline

    Quote Originally Posted by Barry Shnikov View Post
    Forensically, evidence in a car which was on hire to a number of people means that all of the others must be eliminated as possible perpetrators otherwise there must, by definition, be reasonable doubt.

    You see that, don't you?

    ...


    Let's get something clear on the subject of DNA evidence (assuming of course there is any - what we have on this, is I think mostly press speculation, given the limitations on information which can properly be given out by the Portugese police).

    People seem to think that DNA evidence is some sort of magic bullet to solve cases (sorry for the mixed metaphor). It is not.

    DNA evidence is really only a form of circumstantial evidence.

    The process of obtaining "DNA evidence" is that generally a swab is taken from e.g. a crime scene, crime victim, or weapon thought to have been used in a crime. This swab is then analysed by forensic scientists. An exercise of comparison is then taken out with a swab or swabs taken from either suspects, or persons who have volunteered to provide such swabs for "eliminatory" purposes. The forensic scientists are looking for certain "matches" between the DNA sample taken from the scene/victim/weapon and the other swabs. Sometimes a scene sample has too little to give information. Other times, there is so little that only partial information can be given. Sometimes they can get one complete profile. Some other times, there is a "mixed result" (ie they find that there is the DNA of more than one person in the sample - which then has to be sorted and separated out).

    The question then really becomes one of statistics. The "matches" are related to the comparative samples on a probabilistic basis. E.g. the scientist will say that there were matches with "A"'s DNA; that the probability of the sample not being from A is, say 1 in a million or 1 in a billion; or - if it is an issue - that the probability of the sample being from a person related to A (say a cousin, or other family member), is 1 in a thousand, or ten thousand or whatever.

    So, with DNA, what you actually get is an expression of probability, based on statistics that the sample found at the scene (or wherever) is or is not from "A".

    Turning to the circumstantial issue. All that the presence of DNA at a scene/on an item/on a person indicates is that the possessor of the DNA was AT that scene, or had contact with that person or item. It does not, of itself, prove that that person, did anything criminal at that scene, or to that person.

    However, when taken with OTHER evidence, whether direct (e.g. eyewitness evidence) or other circumstantial evidence, DNA may assist in either being corroborative of the direct evidence

    - e.g. X says "A bit me on the neck", X's eyewitness evidence is the direct evidence, and if X has bitemarks on his neck with a tooth profile matching A, and saliva with a DNA profile which is - on a very high probability- A's, then that would be corroborative of X's account

    or assist in building up a chain of circumstantial evidence.

    e.g. A gunshot is heard. X is found dead with a bullet wound. A gun is found nearby. Ballistics evidence indicates that the bullet which killed X came from that gun. The gun has fingerprints on it and a DNA profile, both of which belong to B no other prints or profile are found. B was seen nearby moments after the gunshot, running away from the scene. B is found to have gunpowder residue on his clothing and blood spatter whose DNA profile matches X.
    While no one in this case has seen B shoot X, there is a chain of circumstantial evidence, which would be enough to take a case to a jury. (note I am not saying that that chain necessarily proves e.g. murder, as B could have exculpatory explanations to tender e.g. self defence - but there would be enough in a criminal case on that chain of circumstantial evidence to take the case to court, and ultimately make any issue e.g. of self defence a jury question)

    I hope this has explained somewhat the significance of DNA evidence. As Barry said, particularly in places where a lot of people had access, you can get - and would expect to get - lots of DNA profiles. So in a hire car hired by a number of people over a period of days, unless the car had been very well cleaned, you would probably get residual traces of DNA of the various hirers.

  10. #170
    purplehyacinth
    Guest

    Re: Madeline

    Sorry, you lovely moderators, I know I'm being a pest. I decided I wanted to amend the last post, but I don't seem to be able to.

    Could a moderator make the following amendment, please: delete the whole paragraph

    "While no one in this case has seen B shoot X, there is a chain of circumstantial evidence, which would be enough to take a case to a jury. (note I am not saying that that chain necessarily proves e.g. murder, as B could have exculpatory explanations to tender e.g. self defence - but there would be enough in a criminal case on that chain of circumstantial evidence to take the case to court, and ultimately make any issue e.g. of self defence a jury question)"

    and put in its place:

    "While no one in this case has seen B shoot X, there is a chain of circumstantial evidence against B"

  11. #171
    Registered User Jhutch's Avatar
    Join Date
    Oct 2006
    Location
    Balham, S. London
    Posts
    855
    Rep Power
    9

    Re: Madeline

    Quote Originally Posted by Barry Shnikov View Post
    More reading: one of the friends said that after her police questioning 'Kate' wanted to get home to hug her children; "Kate's world revolves around her children and her husband". I recognise that it's an easy criticism for me to make, but perhaps if that had been true on the night in question the three toddlers wouldn't have been alone in an empty apartment. One way or another the little girl would still be alive. I'm not saying that the McCann's did something terrible, but *** I wish everyone would let up on the "Kate and Gerry are the best of all possible parents' schtick.
    I agree with your end comment. However, if you weren't a very attentive parent and then one of your children went missing then i bet your behaviour would change so that you were more attentive

    Quote Originally Posted by Barry Shnikov View Post
    Another thought: the idea that a corpse was moved after about 25 days. In Portugal's summer, a 25 day old corpse would have been very messy. More than a few minutes in the car and would it have needed a dog to detect what had happened - wouldn't even a human nose have been enough?

    Hah! Next thing I read was an article containing a quote from a professor of forensic medecine: "A body is not in very good condition 25 days after death, especially in a Portuguese climate. The decomposition smell would be obnoxious, lingering and very difficult to get rid of."
    Yes, this has occurred to me. I suppose one way to get round this would be if the girl hadn't been dead for that long, or maybe isn't dead at all? This could occur if maybe someone else had hold of her and the McCann's just popped by to visit. Maybe they would have to put her in a boot in case she got recognised on a car trip? If someone was holding her against the parent's will then it would be unlikely that they would allow the parents to just take her out for a drive. If they were holding her with the parent's will then i have no idea why this could be? Is it possible that the DNA in the boot could have come off something else that had been in contact with the child either at that time or before she disappeared? It all seems quite strange to me that they would do something after 25 days anyway. The media presence might have dropped off a bit but they still could not depend on their not being watched. They may have requested to be left alone but i wouldnt trust the media to not try and find a way of spying. Likewise, if the police were in any way suspicious then they might be interested in seeing what happened when the parents thought that eyes were off them. Does anyone know how significant the fact that the car was investigated is? In other words, would this be a normal line of enquiry or does it suggest that the police were suspicious in some way?

  12. #172
    Registered User Jhutch's Avatar
    Join Date
    Oct 2006
    Location
    Balham, S. London
    Posts
    855
    Rep Power
    9

    Re: Madeline

    Quote Originally Posted by Barry Shnikov View Post
    I was just trawling through Today's online reports. It seems one of the questions that the police asked Mrs McCann is "Who is 'they'?"

    It seems that on the occasion when Mrs McCann made the 50-second trip to the apartment and came back and raised the alarm, what she shouted was "They've taken her! They've taken her!"

    I don't want to make too much of this, but after several minutes I can't convince myself of any good reason why she would say that rather than "Omigod! Maddy's gone!" I have been in situations where toddlers have gone missing from places where everyone had no doubt that they would be, and what everyone says is "Now where's she gone?" No-one in my personal experience has gone straight to "Jesus, someone's taken her".

    The explanation is that the child's cuddly toy was on a high shelf whereas it had been given to her to go to sleep with.
    Where online did you see the 'they've taken her' comment? I saw this quite soon after the disappearance but it was on an unreliable website where people were saying how the child wasn't hers, his, neither of theirs... However, there was no support for the comment other than someone apparently heard her say it - therefore i didn't pay it much attention.

    If it is true then it sounds odd - if you assumed that 'they' had taken her then that assumes that you would have had some idea that 'they' were some sort of a threat. In such a circumstance most people wouldn't leave their child in a vulnerable position.

  13. #173
    Registered User Jhutch's Avatar
    Join Date
    Oct 2006
    Location
    Balham, S. London
    Posts
    855
    Rep Power
    9

    Re: Madeline

    Quote Originally Posted by Jhutch View Post
    Is it possible that the DNA in the boot could have come off something else that had been in contact with the child either at that time or before she disappeared?
    Sorry for quoting myself but i found this page

    Madeleine: 'Fatal flaw' over test that found DNA in parents' hire car | the Mail on Sunday

    saying


    'They also warn that there is a danger that the DNA can be moved from one individual to another and then on to an object.
    Experiments showed this transfer could take place weeks or months and, in the case of one item tested, a glove, two years later. For the McCanns, this leaves open the possibility that Madeleine's DNA was transferred by them or by an item impregnated with her cells, like an item of clothing or her cuddly toy bunny, which Kate McCann has carried constantly since her daughter's disappearance.'


    I don't know how reliable these comments are, whether they were taken out of context, etc.

  14. #174
    Registered User Jhutch's Avatar
    Join Date
    Oct 2006
    Location
    Balham, S. London
    Posts
    855
    Rep Power
    9

    Re: Madeline

    I don't know if i have missed this but apparently the car was hired 25 days into the case but was only tested after 100 days. In this time other people drove it, etc. Makes linking anything in it directly to the parents a lot harder i would have thought?

    If the McCanns' hire car is vital evidence why are they still driving it? | the Mail on Sunday


    'The friend said: "The car was hired 25 days after Madeleine disappeared and a variety of people, family included, used the car. "Then police took the car in around 100 days after Madeleine disappeared before giving it back to Kate and Gerry." '

  15. #175
    Registered User
    Join Date
    Oct 2003
    Location
    Southampton
    Posts
    6,709
    Rep Power
    13

    Re: Madeline

    Quote Originally Posted by Jhutch View Post
    Where online did you see the 'they've taken her' comment? I saw this quite soon after the disappearance but it was on an unreliable website where people were saying how the child wasn't hers, his, neither of theirs... However, there was no support for the comment other than someone apparently heard her say it - therefore i didn't pay it much attention.

    If it is true then it sounds odd - if you assumed that 'they' had taken her then that assumes that you would have had some idea that 'they' were some sort of a threat. In such a circumstance most people wouldn't leave their child in a vulnerable position.
    Sorry; I looked through all of yesterday's online media reports, don't remember which one I saw this on. It was headed 'The questions the police asked Mrs McCann' or something similar.

    It's thin, I freely admit. But if I had been on that table, I'd've been asking - "They? who is they? What did you see? Who did you see?" on the basis that the additional information would help us while we fanned out across the resort and tried to find these people; and when it came out that nobody had been seen and what was at issue was only the fact that the girl was missing, I'd be wondering 'Well why on earth did she jump a) to the conclusion that this is an abduction, rather than something else, and b) to the conclusion that there was more than one person involved?'

    If it was a smokescreen, it sure as hell worked - from the get-go everyone's been thinking in terms of an abduction rather than a death.

  16. #176
    Registered User
    Join Date
    Oct 2003
    Location
    Southampton
    Posts
    6,709
    Rep Power
    13

    Re: Madeline

    Quote Originally Posted by Jhutch View Post
    I don't know if i have missed this but apparently the car was hired 25 days into the case but was only tested after 100 days. In this time other people drove it, etc. Makes linking anything in it directly to the parents a lot harder i would have thought?

    If the McCanns' hire car is vital evidence why are they still driving it? | the Mail on Sunday


    'The friend said: "The car was hired 25 days after Madeleine disappeared and a variety of people, family included, used the car. "Then police took the car in around 100 days after Madeleine disappeared before giving it back to Kate and Gerry." '
    As I said above, while the evidence in the car might be very helpful to the police in deciding in what direction the investigation should go, as forensic evidence at trial it will be useless. The evidence could have been in the car before the McCann's even hired the car, and there is almost no way that it could be proved otherwise. (Unless, of course, the car had been in a different part of Portugal, or something.)

    Then there is the additional problem of proving that it didn't get there from 'cross-contamination' from any one of four other family members all of whom would have had Madeleine's DNA on their clothes from day one.

  17. #177
    Registered User
    Join Date
    Mar 2006
    Location
    Waltham abbey
    Posts
    4,610
    Blog Entries
    4
    Rep Power
    12

    Re: Madeline

    i beleive they have flown back to England this morning. I dont blame them to be honest. If they are innocent then it must be absolute hell on earth being in that country with the loss of a child being bad enough but they are now being booed and treated with absolute awful behaviour. I just hope they dont get the same treatment here. They are after all innocent at the moment.

  18. #178
    Senior Member rubyred's Avatar
    Join Date
    Oct 2006
    Location
    United Kingdom
    Posts
    3,588
    Rep Power
    9

    Re: Madeline

    Quote Originally Posted by Trouble View Post
    They are after all innocent at the moment.

    They haven't been charged with anything. However on the matter of child protection they left their small children unattended and in doing so neglected their welfare. One of the children suffered significant harm and the other two were likely to suffer significant harm as a result. I don't know why there hasn't been [or maybe I have missed this] a Child Protection case conference under the catagory of neglect to consider the welfare of the other two children?

    For the legal people out there has it got something to do with things happening in another country? Surely there should be a stratergy meeting when they come back with the police,health, local authority etc to look at safeguarding issues around the other children.
    Last edited by rubyred; 9th-September-2007 at 06:28 PM.
    if you love the life you live then you'll get a lot more done

  19. #179
    Registered User
    Join Date
    Apr 2006
    Location
    Waltham Abbey
    Posts
    5,534
    Rep Power
    12

    Re: Madeline

    Quote Originally Posted by rubyred View Post
    THowever on the matter of child protection they left their small children unattended and in doing so neglected their welfare.
    Well...I dunno about that. They said the children were sleeping when they left and that they checked up on them every half an hour. If that is the case I don't think they have been guilty of neglect.

    I have on occasion popped across the road to my neighbors for a chat when my kids are asleep...probably for about half an hour.

    I have also, while on holiday, had drinks with friends around the pool while my kids slept in the apartment above. Do you think the child protection agency should pay me a visit?

  20. #180
    Senior Member rubyred's Avatar
    Join Date
    Oct 2006
    Location
    United Kingdom
    Posts
    3,588
    Rep Power
    9

    Re: Madeline

    Quote Originally Posted by Double Trouble View Post
    Well...I dunno about that. They said the children were sleeping when they left and that they checked up on them every half an hour. If that is the case I don't think they have been guilty of neglect.

    I have on occasion popped across the road to my neighbors for a chat when my kids are asleep...probably for about half an hour.

    I have also, while on holiday, had drinks with friends around the pool while my kids slept in the apartment above. Do you think the child protection agency should pay me a visit?

    There is no set age for leaving children on their own but there are guidlines and factors to consider. The NSPCC have produced a leaflet which I think can be downloaded. Generally it is not recommended to leave young children below the age of 12 alone. These children were left sleeping and if they were to awake and find no one in the house then that is scary for a youngster plus they can't protect themselves if something happens like a fire etc. If they were checked up on every half hour then it just goes to show what can happen to young children in half an hour. It is a judgement call for parents to make but if something happens to a child's safety whilst they are left unattended e.g badly injure themselves, get burned or wander off then once informed of the incident the Local Authority have a duty to investigate the safeguarding issues.
    Last edited by rubyred; 9th-September-2007 at 08:18 PM.
    if you love the life you live then you'll get a lot more done

Thread Information

Users Browsing this Thread

There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)

Tags for this Thread

Bookmarks

Bookmarks

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •