Madeleine McCann #6

[InTheDollsHouse]

I was pregnant with my eldest in 2007, he’s just doing GCSEs now. She’s been missing for his entire lifetime. I can’t imagine it.

 

[PineappleQueen19]

Interesting case in Australia - three year old William Tyrell went missing in 2014 and it was treated as an abduction case. The police have today recommended his foster mother be charged with perverting the course of justice and interfering with a corpse.

William Tyrrell update: Detectives recommend charges against foster m…

archived 28 Jun 2023 10:04:21 UTC

archive.ph

 

[Liverbird2003]

So is it looking more likely that she was kidnapped after all

Plot to kidnap child hatched a week before Madeleine McCann disappeared

Expat Ken Ralphs said that Christian B, the German drifter suspected of abducting Madeleine, tried to recruit a mutual friend to help find a youngster to sell to a childless couple.

news.sky.com

I hope this is true. I hope she was taken to a childless couple and she grew up happily. As much as I wish this whole thing never happened, it's better than the alternative.

 

[Hally34]

What makes you so convinced?

What swings it for me that the kids were drugged:
- That the twins kept sleeping when Kate found Maddy gone and when the police arrives
- the confidence of the parents to leave their 3 young children alone whilst they went for dinner for hours. They were relaxed to leave them as they were knocked out. The twins were so so young it just seems insane to leave them when they could have so easily woken up and started crying / got out of bed. They were 2 years old and Maddy was 3.

- I don’t believe the McCanns when they said they and the rest of the tapas group were going around checking on all the kids so regularly. It sounded so ridiculous and I didn’t find the films where I’ve seen Kate and Gerry talk this bit through believable, I can’t give you exact evidence here, just the feeling that they were not telling the truth and why not use the babysitting service. Instead they had sedated their children. And probably not just the McCanns. They probably were all doing it and then leaving the kids all evening. They concocted the tale of all taking turns checking on the kids as it showed them all as neglectful and they could have all got in a lot of trouble for sedating and leaving their kids. The kids will have no recollection of ever having been sedated and the parents all kept this a secret to protect all of them.

 

[griftalo]

That's not the self righteous part I'm talking about. Everybody agrees on that point. Do you think those parents deserved to have their child murdered because of it though? I certainly don't.
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As others have pointed out they were presumably told by the police not to go marauding out on their own looking for her. I expect they would have trusted the police were going to arrange a proper professional search. Their mistake was presumably trusting the clearly incompetent Portuguese police initially.

No one said they deserved anything. It’s a bit of a leap to say that they deserved to have their child murdered. No one knows with any certainty she was murdered at all. They certainly seemed to believe that a pweirdo took her but hadn’t killed her and even forgave the person concerned, but not the police who tried to help. That’s not right, is it.

But they didn’t search, even before the police came. They did nothing. That’s damning imo.
Have you read the police files? I think the narrative that the police there were incompetent hasbeen heavily pushed by the Mccanns themselves.
I think anyone who has had a child disappear from sight even for a minute is likely to understand how their child being actually missing would react, or even a pet missing. It’s not normal to carry on going to tennis in matching earrings that changed from day to day. Writing about your child’s damaged genitalia isn’t normal either. wtf.

 

[cazellie]

If they were absolutely distraught at their missing child then surely poxy Tennis would have been the last thing on their minds?
Or am I just a nutter to think otherwise??

I think the same. They went running too so likely trying to get their story straight without being overheard

 

[Justhereforthedrama]

Im on a subreddit about another missing child, Andrew Gosden. There is a (supposedly) senior ex detective who regularly posts on those pages. Of course you cant verify his identity but he has been very on the mark about some developments with the case and seems professional.

Anywho, he said in that case, the Gosden one, the parents strongly do not welcome outside help (other agencies, private companies offering help etc) but that Gerry McCann not only wants as much help as possible (still) he also borderline harassed the police for action. Calling, badgering (as you would) and pressuring them for progress.

Just though this might be an interesting insight on how two families with missing children differ in accepting help.

 

[Loppylou89]

Me too and I think the priest is probably left absolutely distraught by it. Saying they deceived him makes me wonder if they used the church itself for something when they had the keys - secret meetings and conversations away from other ears maybe.

It’s the washing of cuddle cat that makes me believe they were involved or responsible. Why would any parent ever wash their missing child’s comfort toy? Unless it had traces of medicine on it or Maddy’s hair etc that they couldn’t risk being tested.

I can’t help but wonder what the twins think now they’re old enough to have read it all for themselves and form an opinion. And perhaps piece it together with snippets of memory.
It must be so hard for them.

Imagine knowing your parents left you alone for hours on end regardless of being checked every half hour because they wanted to enjoy their nights out child free and then the unimaginable happens to your sibling which could have been you

 

[emmer_moans]

I wonder when public funding into her disappearance will stop. I just don't believe she's still out there. I honestly feel sorry for the twins because what a cloud to live under for the rest of their lives...

 

[Justhereforthedrama]

I think the same. They went running too so likely trying to get their story straight without being overheard

I know people can behave in different ways but she went to sleep and then they both went for a run and a tennis lesson. so fucking weird.

 

[Twintwin]

I feel really sorry for the twins. Imagine growing up with absolutely everyone knowing what happened to your sister, and knowing that your own parents left you alone at under 2 years old.

When (if) they have their own children it might hit them more, too.

It definitely will. They will be so angry when they have their own children I wouldn’t be surprised if the relationship with their parents breaks down.

 

[wiganuser]

Whenever I've been on holiday abroad, and I've said this before, I always took my son with me. Portugal,Spain, Cyprus, Egypt and even Kenya, never left him on his own to be looked after by any foreign babysitting service who's employees I don't know from Adam and trust.
It's accepted abroad that whole families go out together to eat late, if the kids are too tired then you stop in with them, simple as that. All this checking on them/not checking on them/did they/didn't they and all that nonsense is a moot point to me.

My kids go to bed early when at home, but abroad its different. We spend the day at the beach or pool, then come back to the apartment around 4 and let the kids have a 2 hour nap so they will be fresh for going out for dinner and staying up later.

The mccanns were clearly of the kind that adults need their own time without them and it backfired appallingly. Nothing riles me more than parents who think their kids are a burden when they are away...don't fucking take them abroad in that case

 

[Vanelope]

In reality we will never know, so I’m free to believe that she died accidentally in that apartment: I’m more interested now in why, when there is apparently such a good suspect, we are still funding the police year after year to the tune of millions over the years to go to Portugal. It’s now a con by the officers to get their trip every year. other children go missing and don’t have this much spent on them.

 

[Shinealight]

I think that's fair enough
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Poor little kids. No doubt at nursery in England and then chucked into a crèche on holiday, when they could have spent all day with their parents smh

I recall someone that was staying at the Ocean Club at the time commenting on how the party were putting the kids in the crèche each day to play tennis and have child free walks on the beach, then in the evening leaving them asleep and going out to dine.
Looks like the kids weren’t much of a consideration on that holiday

 

[Hally34]

It just doesn’t add up …to disappear without a trace. Whether the truth ever comes out who knows….

Could you imagine after all this if it turned out that Maddie had wandered off and somehow died from dehydration / drowned or some other freak accident / natural cause and it wasn’t a kidnapping or her parents though of course these feeling the most likely. It’s like as much as we all think we know about the case it is also so much unknown and it feels like any evidence can’t be relied upon. The only thing we do know is if the parents didn’t kill her / cover up an accident then at the very least Maddie and her baby siblings were left completely alone not being cared for and protected by their parents which is a crime in itself. The parents are guilty of at least this crime yet they have always been treated as victims.

 

[The Yoko Ono of GY]

Sometimes I think it's unfair to keep discussing what might have happened, but there are so many unanswered questions. And for some reason that seems to be accepted? Personally, I've always felt sorry for Kate McCann, yes of course they shouldn't have left Madeleine and the twins alone, but I remember seeing her on I think Sky news a few days after it happened and she was literally being helped to walk by people holding her up on either side. Even the reporter said Oh dear let's not film her anymore. In contrast, Gerry was chipper, media savvy enough to give a smile and wave to the camera even when being taken as arguido. There's something Off about him, we all sense it?

What I don’t get, is: if you are well enough to go play Tennis afterwards, you somehow can’t be THAT out of your mind. If you aren’t THAT out of your mind, wouldn’t you recognize it makes you seem EXTREMELY cold blooded in the public eye, and avoid people talking about you like this? His behaviour doesn’t make any sense at all. Seems psychopathic somehow. Or sociapathic?

 

[geeforthetea]

Who leaves three kids alone in an apartment with unlocked doors to go out eating and drinking, never mind a wee girl that was crying the night before because she woke up and no one was there! I know this has been said a million times but as a parent I can't and will never get my head round this. They knew that wee girl could wake up again, alone, in a strange country, in an unlocked apartment and they still left her????

Also the fact that Kate's first though was that she was taken. I don't know how to word this but to me, if your first though is that she was taken, then it must have been something that has at least crossed your mind when leaving your children alone in an unlocked apartment, that this, no matter how unlikely, could be possibility. So no matter how fleeting the thought or how unlikely she thought it was, she still left those three kids there having at least acknowledged that this could possibly happen. Otherwise why would your first though not be that she wandered off, or could still be in the apartment somewhere. You would turn it upside down looking for her or run along the halls, look around the pool etc, not run straight back to restaurant and say 'they've taken her'. I guess what I'm trying to say is, she either left those kids there while she knew fine well they were vulnerable and accessible to any weirdo creeping about, but didn't give a damn because she'd rather go out or there is something more sinister to the story.

 

[griftalo]

Thanks for posting the article, I've read it before and found it interesting, I remember this paragraph;
“Dogs aren’t perfect like people aren’t perfect,” Warren says. “I’d be horrified if someone ended up in prison based only on the word of a dog and handler.”

I’d trust a dog over a human. They have no reason to lie. If a bomb detection dog said there was a bomb somewhere I think I’d trust their nose.
I’d be interested to see statistics of failing to detect a body vs rates of falsely claiming a body when none

 

[Hally34]

That logic applies to you and I but let’s say you are doctors and you left your children for hours (which we know they did for at least one hour on a previous evening) and one climbed on the sofa and fell and cracked their head. It is v feasible that a doctor would think in that moment that their entire lives are now on the line — they will be done for negligence so lose their job, their qualification, their status, have their other children taken away etc. Even worse if an autopsy showed the child had been given phenergen or something else.
In this case there is an extremely obvious motive for covering up an accident.

Gerry is so cold I think his logic would be ‘well she’s dead and nothing is going to change that now so if there’s a way out that does not involve me losing everything I actually care about, so be it’. No one could have known what a runaway freight train it would all turn into but once they were down that path there was no turning back.

If this was true, I simply can’t understand why the McCanns so aggressively pushed the case in the media. Surely you’d worry more eyes on the case mean more chance of someone finding out the truth. Were they really that confident of their attempts to cover up the accident and disposing of her body? Assuming that this would have been the first time they’d done anything like this. Also did any of the tapas group have to have known? If they had discovered Madeleine they would have had to dispose of the body and clean up any evidence and leave no evidence of a clean up all whilst their friends were none the wiser unless we really believe this friendship was so strong (by all accounts the McCanns weren’t that close to the rest of the group) that you’d help cover up the death of a child and fake a kidnapping.
I think Kate and Gerry genuinely don’t know what happened to Madeleine but that they left her and twins alone for hours that night and weren’t checking on them as often as they said. I also think they may well have been given some kind of sleep aide / sedative.
If you take all we know about the case the idea that the parents know what happened and covered it up, sounds too risky to me. They were not to know for sure they weren’t going to be found up. That the police wouldn’t secure the scene, that the dogs that indicated wouldn’t be believed. The risk of being found out to have faked it all is surely worse than having given your child sleeping tablets and they had an accident. Like yes they may well have gone to prison but the act of the cover up is even more serious.

 

[Emsie]

I see from the papers it is Maddie's 21st birthday today, I'd forgotten exactly when her birthday was

Bless her. She deserved so much better. Happy 21st Birthday Maddie.