Madeleine McCann #7

[Emsie]

I was watching good morning britain the other day when the search was announced and bloody ed and Susanna were talking about the "trend to leave your children alone". It was not a fucking trend!!! I can't stand how the media tries to gaslight us with this. Normal, working class people were not leaving their children in hotels whilst eating tapas. Unless it was a middle / upper class thing - which I'm certain it was not - no one was doing this.
Honestly this narrative has pissed me off for years.

 

[JarvisCockerSpaniel]

Absolutely appalling isn’t it. Kate really tried to brush it off in her book too, saying it basically felt no different to sitting in your garden having a meal in the evening with your children asleep upstairs.

That’s why I’m almost certain they gave them something to keep them asleep- medised which was still accessible at the time- because how on earth can you be so sure THREE small children would slumber right through and not wake up from a nightmare, or from a sudden noise, or just being thirsty/too cold/too warm. You can’t. Gerry purposely delayed any testing on the twins for this until it was far too late.

I mean let’s face it if she was taken from that apartment they made it bloody easy for someone to do it. They did half the bloody work for them! And it beggars belief they were never held properly accountable for that.

 

[Lady_H]

They felt guilty for a few days!

That first interview, before they had any media training, is really fascinating.

- Kate talking about how they felt guilty for “a couple of days”
- Gerry sniggering at “if we knew anything we wouldn’t tell you”
- Gerry talking about what a very relaxing holiday it had been - “as good a holiday as we’ve ever had with the children
- Gerry talking about how they “cannot grieve but did grieve”
- Gerry talking about “so much good” that’s come out of it (who knew that there’s a silver lining to your 4 year old’s abduction at the hands of a predator)
- Gerry comparing the emotional output to running out of money on a student grant
- Gerry’s insistence that they are both “looking to the future rather than dwelling in the past

People will read this in different ways of course, but I see two parents who have been through a terrible experience - but who fundamentally have closure. There is a huge difference between knowing where your child is, even if they’re dead - and not knowing where they are, if they’re frightened, in pain, calling for you, with terrible people, locked up, alone - and you cannot help them. The anguish of that must be indescribable.

I don’t think this interview portrays 2 people who are up all night with the awful twisting panic of “where is she?” They’ve suffered and I’m sure they are grieving, but I also believe that they know what happened. That’s why they can “look to the future” rather than going over and over every last detail of what happened, which apparently is by far the most typical emotional reaction of parents of missing children.

 

[Ablemabel]

Kate and Gerry were at the very least criminally negligent with their children. (I think she died accidentally in the flat). Maddie has sadly become the horrible warning and hopefully has prevented other parents from leaving their children alone in unlocked apartments on holiday. I don’t think it was common practice for parents, I think they and the other Tapas wankers convinced themselves it was fine. That video showing the long journey from apartment to restaurant convinced me they were terrible parents.

Definitely wasn't common practice for me! When our kids were similar ages, we'd have early dinner (with the kids) and then go back to wherever we were staying and either watch a film with the kids, or more likely they would go to bed and we would watch a film. Most European countries we have been bloody love children and welcome them there and don't do the 'it's past their bed time tut tut' nonsense anyway.


What we never did was fuck off to a restaurant and have dinner with our mates, leaving the kids alone sleeping. They can pretend all they like that the apartment was in view, they were checking, etc. but if nothing else it was a gift to an opportunist.

 

[Nelly's mum]

Surely everyone agrees that it is wrong and neglectful to leave small children on their own? Do we need to keep on saying that we don't do this?

 

[MeghanSnarkle]

This. Regardless of whether her parents or an intruder killed her, that poor girl was utterly, utterly failed by the two people who were supposed to care for her the most. Even if it turns out CB did take her I will struggle to feel much sympathy for the McCanns after how they've behaved.

Yeah same

All roads lead back to the McCanns

Gerry is so pompous, has he ever actually said as Maddie's parents we take full responsibility for not keeping her safe ?

It sort of starts and ends there for me whatever the truth is.

Predators will prey its how there minds work but there has to be the right set of circumstances in place for them to actually strike successfully.

Gerry is so high and mighty ....
'help us find her'

You're her father, you lost her mate one way or another that's on you now, use your own money and resources to sort out the mess created by you and your Mrs it's that simple.

 

[PineappleQueen19]

The wandering off theory does carry a lot of weight imo, because it explains a lot of the McCanns behaviour. Ie, there was a cover up but it was a cover up of neglect rather than covering up an accidental death. It would explain the changing story around the window, the traipsing through the apartment, the needing to get their timelines agreed, refusing to perform a re-enactment etc.

However, this still means the McCanns prioritised themselves at every stage. Particularly in the crucial minutes, hours and days after Madeleine went missing, the McCanns deliberately created confusion to protect themselves, their careers, their income etc. That poor child

 

[anniemouse]

It’s a 3D artist hired by the police that created it.

No wonder they can’t find her if they think that’s what she looks like

 

[Emsie]

I was like 17/18 when this happened and used to babysit some kids a few doors down from me. One time I left my coursework in my house literally 4 doors away and I wouldnt go back and get it because I knew you don't bloody leave kids alone. I've never known a single person do this. It didn't happen to me or any of my friends.

 

[MeghanSnarkle]

Agree! It's appalling how many mental hoops are jumped through to justify the fact they left their teeny kids in an apartment that you had to effectively go out of the complex, up a road and then back in, to access. 50m or whatever it was as the crow flies, but v much different in reality.

My eldest was 2 at the time. I simply cannot fathom the choices they made.

Absolutely this, I think almost every interview the McCanns have done they say it was the culture or the norm at that particular resort to go out and leave your children alone in the apartments but brilliantly the hotel spoke up and said no, actually they offered an excellent child minding service, seven days a week until 10pm and that was the usual choice for parents wanting to go out in the evenings.

G+K never take any responsibility for their part in her disappearance.

 

[Prince fan 1999]

I'm not trying to be combative here but:
My kids teddies don't smell of anything. Im stood at the foot of my son's bed right now and just smelt one. It doesn't smell of him. My son smells of coconut and soap. This teddy does not.
Once my brother got run over at the top of our road. My mum left my baby brother in his pushchair on the street and just ran. She's an excellent mother but she panicked.
People react to things differently and I don't think it's enough to use body language etc. before you interpret someone's actions you need to know their baseline. How they react in other situations etc.

But it's not just the smell,it's knowing it was one of the last things they touched. I still haven't washed a little cushion my pug laid her chin on the night before she was put to sleep

 

[moldwarp]

@moldwarp
Sedating children correctly is extremely hard even for skilled anaesthetists because children metabolise faster than adults and also there is a greater variance of metabolic rate among children than there is among adults. Furthermore, sedation is cumulative, so if you're sedating a child regularly as I believe Kate did Maddie (and would be happy to back up why I think she did this if anyone interested), there's already a cumulation of stuff in their system and, as anyone who has ever been drug dependent will know, in that situation it really doesn't take much to push the patient over the line. Even just being a teeny bit dehydrated will do it. The twins were so heavily sedated that night that Kate admits IN HER OWN BOOK that she had to keep checking their vital signs.

Ok I'll bite - what do you have to back any of this up?
There were badly degraded minute blood samples that didn't match MM, there were 2x dogs that indicated with no evidence to back this up. No drugs or paraphernalia found.
Anything else?

I don't dispute that the McCanns are grifters and were arrogant, selfish and neglectful parents - but that doesn't mean they drugged their child/children and covered up MM's death.

OK well firstly I would just like to say that I felt quite upset and offended when you added a laughing emoji to that other poster on the other thread talking about my having a tin foil hat. I have a long past history of mental health issues (broadly well now) and I'm on the autistic spectrum - tin foil hat is an ableist slur because it mocks clinical paranoia. There's nothing funny about mental illnesses and clinical paranoia in particular is not to be mocked - it can and does destroy lives.

On topic. Here's why I think Kate was in the habit of sedating Maddie:

1. It is known that Maddie had sleep issues. This is in Kate's book. Specifically she had a habit of getting up in the night and going into her parents' bedroom and waking them for comfort, or going downstairs to look for them. The fridge in Kate & Gerry's house had a 'sleep chart' stuck to it in which Maddie was given a star for the nights she didn't wake and get out of bed. There weren't many.
2. We know that Kate found Maddie difficult to cope with, behaviourally. Kate herself in interviews has described her as a 'screamer' and has said (this is almost an exact quote from my memory) "Well she was a gorgeous little girl...but then she would open her mouth and the whole world knew where she was". Leaving aside for the moment the habit that criminals have of subtly denigrating their victims (this is especially seen in abusive parents), there are many other available examples on YouTube of Kate speaking about Maddie being loud, needy, wanting to be the centre of attention, and she does not make these comments with a fond smile.
3. In addition, we know that Kate found Maddie difficult to cope with because the McCann side of the family told investigators so. Gerry's parents and his sister all travelled regularly to the McCann house to help Kate out, because she struggled to cope. Maddie spent not inconsiderable amounts of time living with her grandparents - the last known time was less than a month before the holiday and she was there for a couple of months.
4. Sedation is suggested because of the twins' sleeping throughout the night that Maddie's 'abduction' was discovered, a night of great chaos and noise. Kate had to keep checking their vital signs.
5. The Portuguese police wanted to do a hair test for sedation on the twins. Kate and Gerry refused this until 3 months had passed (the safe titration period for most of the benzo family, in fact all opiates and opioids) and then had the test carried out privately by a provider of their choosing.
6. The McCanns have said a number of things about sedation. Firstly they angrily denied sedating their children (the police were asking about this from Day 1 as they observed the twins' semi-comatose state). Then they (the McCanns) suggested that Maddie's 'abductor' had sedated the twins. However this would not be possible in the McCanns' posited timeline because, in the timeline they posited (ie the one where Gerry lingers outside the apartment after penultimate check, and Jane Tanner sees 'Tannerman' - any abductor would have less than 120 seconds to enter the apartment, sedate the twins, select Maddie and leave - not possible given the configuration of the apartment complex (unless the abductor was Spiderman)).

My theory is Maddie was sedated, woke up in the night and went looking for her parents as she very regularly did, climbed on the back of the sofa to look out the window, overbalanced, fell headfirst between wall and sofa and died of positional asphyxia.

You mention blood samples, this is not as suggestive as cadaverine which was signed for behind the sofa and in the hired car. The presence of cadaverine was so widely accepted that Kate had to go so far as to attempt to explain it by saying that she had been in contact with 6 dead bodies in the week before the holiday, and touched all six bodies with her cardigan and then had taken that cardigan, unwashed, to Portugal with her. Unless she's Harold Shipman, this tale stretches credulity. I'd be happy to go into this in a separate post if you'd like me to, but later because I have to work now.

Also you mentioned no drug paraphernalia being found in the apartment. This is a logical fallacy: an argumentum ab absentia, like the abduction theory itself as it happens. Kate was very busy on the night of 3 May - not busy looking for Maddie but busy washing Cuddle Cat and all of Maddie's clothes. I'm sure she could also have taken that opportunity to throw a few things away. Portugal has flushing toilets after all.

 

[Hally34]

Taking the piss!!

I don’t understand how this isn’t a misuse of public funds. Countless children go missing yet this one child is given endless attention and budget despite there being no chance of finding her alive and no evidence to prove who did it. These hints for new leads are a wild goose chase.

 

[moldwarp]

The twins are going into a new world of uni and/or work, I hope that their peers don’t really know much about Madeleine and they aren’t faced with stares or questions.

Wonder if they’ll ever allow their parents to babysit if they have children.
---
Blimey, it’s lucrative having a missing child.

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Have they ever done this?

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Gerry has been quite open about the real purpose of the Maddie organisation, I'm not sure he meant to be so open tbh. In an interview with a British channel in the mid 2010s (can't recall what one, Scottish female interviewer. NOT Lorraine lol!) he explicitly said that the main income to the organisation is from litigation ie suing people that question whether he and Kate were involved in Maddie's disappearance. He also said that the fund needed more income, and sure enough they are bringing libel suits and winning them to this day.

There are several very excellent private investigative firms, especially in the States and in Africa, that specialise in finding high value kidnap victims. Princesses, the children of African mining magnates, that sort of thing. They are REALLY GOOD, with security clearances and amazing networks - so you would have thought the McCanns would use the money from their fund to hire one of these firms. If Maddie is truly out there, only one of these elite firms could find her. But no, the instead hired a NEWLY CREATED search agency manned by just two investigators, one of whom embezzled the fund.

Imo the fund is not intended to find Maddie because her parents know she is not alive to be found. Instead, it was used to pay off their mortgage, provide them with a steady income (as neither of them were able to take up their old jobs) and to use the libel courts to silence anyone who tries to seriously invesitgate the theory that Maddie died of negligence. And, tbf, they have been extremely successful.

I'd also just like to touch on the issue of sedation. I believe Maddie died after a fall, having been over-sedated by Kate. Many people respond that Kate was a trained anaesthetist, implying that because of that, she would 'know not to overdose Maddie'. But that is not how anaesthetics works. Anaesthetists don't just dose the patient and go, they stay in the theatre throughout the operation monitoring and observing the constant flow and titration of drugs to the patient. And they are constantly adjusting the dose. It is NOTHING like dosing a person with a single dose with the view to keeping them sedated for a few hours. Anaesthetists observe and adjust a synchronous flow of drugs in real time.

(The difficulty and dangers of anaesthetics on children is well known in the medical field which is why kids don't get general anaesthetic unless it's truly truly necessary.)

Sedating children correctly is extremely hard even for skilled anaesthetists because children metabolise faster than adults and also there is a greater variance of metabolic rate among children than there is among adults. Furthermore, sedation is cumulative, so if you're sedating a child regularly as I believe Kate did Maddie (and would be happy to back up why I think she did this if anyone interested), there's already a cumulation of stuff in their system and, as anyone who has ever been drug dependent will know, in that situation it really doesn't take much to push the patient over the line. Even just being a teeny bit dehydrated will do it. The twins were so heavily sedated that night that Kate admits IN HER OWN BOOK that she had to keep checking their vital signs.

TLDR: Kate's training in anaesthesia does not mean that she couldn't have over-sedated Maddie, in fact Kate's training is irrelevant to the situation I am theorising.

 

[50sGirl]

The fact they refused to have the twins tested is not evidence they were drugged, just that they weren't tested .
Something you feel is suspicion is not evidence.

Presumably the parents were offended by the idea the twins may have been drugged (and the implication they may have drugged them) and they refused to have them tested.
I can understand that to a degree - if I knew I hadn't drugged my child then why would I have them tested to appease police who thought I was involved in my child's disappearance, an abductor is not going to drug two children then leave them behind are they?

But also the alleged abductor may have drugged them. Surely you’d want to ensure they hadn’t been?
I get you’re a staunch supporter of them but there is no evidence because they were NOT tested. Had they been tested and they were clear then yes, you could then say 100% that there is no evidence.
Tbh, if it were my child, I’d have done ANYTHING to help the police and that would include testing if they deemed it necessary (even it was only to prove to the police they had not been sedated).

 

[PineappleQueen19]

They must have been decent sleepers for K & G to have the confidence to leave them in the first place. I honestly don't put much weight on it.

We know there was no such confidence, as the night before Madeleine’s disappearance the upstairs neighbour Pamela Fenn went on the record to say she heard crying from their apartment for over an hour.

“She also refers to the day of the 1st May 2007, when she was at home alone, at approximately 22.30 she heard a child cry, and that due the tone of the crying seemed to be a young child and not a baby of two years of age or younger. Apart from the crying that continued for approximately one hour and fifteen minutes, and which got louder and more expressive, the child shouted Daddy, Daddy, the witness had no doubt that the noise came from the floor below. At about 23.45, an hour and fifteen minutes after the crying began, she heard the parents arrive, she did not see them, but she heard the patio doors open, she was quite worried as the crying had gone on for more than an hour and had gradually got worse.”

This also means checks were not being done every 20 minutes as the McCanns claimed.

And Kate admitted Madeleine said to her at their last breakfast “Mummy why didn't you come when we were crying last night”

 

[helcob1977]

Didn’t the police say they lied their arses off! Disgusting that their first instinct was to cover their own backsides! The 15 min checked always seemed like bollocks to me. Were there no security cameras anywhere to dispute this?

In Goncoro Amaral's book he said they recovered notes of hashed out timelines in the apartment as though they'd sat around working out how to cover their arses before they spoke to authorities. And then Kate's focus on the bloody "jemmied" shutters was probably to detract from the fact they'd left the patio doors unlocked which I don't think came to light for a while, I could be wrong though. I think they lost precious time covering their arses, firstly in getting the police there and also in creating the suspicious scene and timeline that ended up with them being Arguidos. I think their main crime is being arrogrant, entitled fools. You'd think they'd be humbled but the fact that they've helped no other families, used gofundme cash for their mortgage and have hogged public resources for so long speaks volumes about their character.

 

[PineappleQueen19]

This is the walk from the apartment to the bar for anyone unaware. It’s unfathomable what those parents did.

 

[flower1959]

In My Opinion - If you believe in the dogs then there was a dead body in their apt and hire car. I believe in the dogs.

Whilst I know dogs don't talk its obvious that Mr McCann thinks they can as when the journalist asked 'Why the dogs indicated?' he replied 'Ask the Dogs Sandra' such an arrogant piece of work.

 

[50sGirl]

But it's not just the smell,it's knowing it was one of the last things they touched. I still haven't washed a little cushion my pug laid her chin on the night before she was put to sleep

Exactly.
Today I was sorting through a box of my Dad’s. Inside was a carrier bag containing his hat, scarf and gloves - the last items he was wearing when he was admitted to hospital. I opened the bag and it still smelt of my Dad. It’s been 4 and a half years but it was wonderful to smell him again. I wrapped it up tightly again in the hope that it preserves it.
It beggars belief that a mother would wash her missing child’s cuddly toy.