Maddie McCann

[A Quinn Martin Production]

BREAKING NEWS!! Robert Murat and Gerry McCann both have 11 letters in their name.  An insider clsoe to the investigation reveals that when this was put to Gerry he arrogantly replied "But my full name is Gerard McCann and that has 12 letters"

[Uladh]

The prosecutor has made a number of requests of the judge, among them that he approve the seizure of Mrs McCann's personal diary, the sources told Portuguese journalists.

One Portuguese newspaper reported that the authorities took the diary last week, along with correspondence belonging to the McCanns.

The judge is being asked to approve the seizure of the couple's documents retrospectively to comply with laws prohibiting "abusive interference in their private lives", the Jornal de Noticias said.

The diary will help police "understand the couple's habits" and supply clues to the investigation, the paper reported.

Who many people take a diary on holiday?

Its not a diary. it's a notepad which the mother started writing her thoughts and feelings in in the days after her daughter was taken.

[Pietas]

why would she do that?

[Balboa]

why would she do that?

The book? The movie?

Correct 5Times. Book, movie, their own chat show. The heap.

[Uladh]

why would she do that?

The book? The movie?

Correct 5Times. Book, movie, their own chat show. The heap.

I don't know, i've never had a child taken. some sort of self therapy? its the first thing a therapist will ask you to do to deal with trauma.

it never ceases to amaze me the unsubstantiated crap and blatant assumptions that the dregs of this board will throw up to help incriminate these people in people's minds, despite never seeing a shred of evidence against them.

[A Quinn Martin Production]

Sounds like you get quite a bit of info from the tabloids yourself 5Times..."clumps" of hair...really??

[Wee Roddy]

If the police had found a "clump" of hair they would know wether the child was dead or alive when it was "left" or transfered there. If the hair, blood etc etc belonged to Maddie they would be charged long ago. To me the police have no concrete evidence and are just sending transcripts to the public prosecuter to take the heat of them. As Columbo would say, the evidence is circumstantial to date hence the clinging to straws looking for dairies and laptop.
This is my opinion AND mine only.

[Uladh]

Uladh you sound like someone who has needed a therapist in the past.

How can you say there is "not a shred of evidence against them"
The Childs DNA was found in a car hired 25 days after her "disappearance", that is quite hard to explain. Obviously you take your opinions and assumptions from the British gutter press, where rather than question the evidence at face value they decide to attack the Portugese and their methods. Strands, no clumps of the childs hair were found in the boot of the car, I suppose you and your ilk in the British media think the Portugese Police "planted" that to make the McCanns look bad.
I think the McCanns have looked bad from day 1. They left 3 little children on their own, while they wined and dined with their "friends", a fact that the media has either overlooked or swept under the carpet. The whole find Maddy campaign quickly became a media circus and the little girl was soon forgot about, her parents became celebrities and embarked on a "tour". Did they really expect to find her in the Vatican?
Of course I may be wrong, but I base my opinions on my own instincts, not on what I read in the British tabloids. But their child is still "missing" and its is their fault, no one elses.

actually, i buy virtually no papers any more. personally i am equally as disgusted with the rush to convict these parents as i am with the british press's maligning of the Portugese police methods. none of these rumours, leaks and assumptions about DNA, leads and evidence are fact. portugese law does not permit these aspects of the investigation to be made public. all of these pronouncements from the press, the family and "police sources" do not go beyond the realm of speculation. to convict or clear anyone on such a body of assumptions, hunches and beliefs is ridiculous. reverting back to denegrading the parents for their original massive error is hardly corroborative evidence of a desperate crime on their behalf.

5times, your final line is the ultimate nonsense.

"But their child is still "missing" and its is their fault, no one elses."

they obviously contributed to this end through negligence but to say that any potential abductor who went into the little girl's room and took her from her bed is not at fault is frankly idiotic.

[A Quinn Martin Production]

Some of my earlier post went missing but as Wee Roddy says, had the police found "clumps" of hair in the boot of the car the McCanns would be in custody facing some very serious charges.

Like most other posters I don't know if the McCanns were involved in their daughter's disappearance.  My gut says they weren't, mainly because I haven't yet been able to work out how they managed to hide the body for at least three and a half weeks, then recover the body (presumably badly decomposed and smelling to high heaven, unless of course they managed to refrigerate it) and hide it again so that it hasn't been found almost 20 weeks since she disappeared, all in the glare of media and presumably under the watchful eye of the police.

[TirEoghaingodeo]

Who many people take a diary on holiday?

Its not a diary. it's a notepad which the mother started writing her thoughts and feelings in in the days after her daughter was taken.

why would she do that?

The reason given is this quote from todays daily mail

A summary of what the English papers are saying today.



DAILY MAIL
front page: “MADELEINE – McCanns tells police: Produce the body.”

Page 10 and 11: “Show us your diaries” – Portuguese police want to seize Kate’s diary and Gerry’s laptop.

Police might also confiscate Madeleine’s toys, including the Cuddle Cat (aka the ‘Maddy Catty’). Philomena McCann, Gerry’s sister, says this would be a “disgrace”.

Says Philomena: “That wee girl will be thinking ‘they’re not looking for me. My mummy and daddy and my aunties – they don’t love me because they can’t find me.”

The thinking being that if she turns up, the diary will show her how much they cared. If they did it though, i think they'd be intelligent enough to keep it unincriminating.
Personally think that they did it, but think that there won't be a successful conviction unless the body is found. Too much of the evidence will be circumstansial, and easily picked apart by clever lawyers.

On a final note, if the quotes in todays papers that the mc canns are saying you can't win a case without a body, think that's a bit unseemly.

[bcarrier]

The McCann case is all in our minds
Viv Groskop

Published 13 September 2007

10 comments Print version Listen RSS Now the idea that "the parents might have done it" has been officially introduced, the speculation has gone stratospheric

So the McCanns have returned home. And what a homecoming. It was never going to be a pleasant experience for them, nor even a barely tolerable one, but the global media mob surrounding them last weekend seemed excessive by any standards. At the time of writing, the public prosecutor in Portugal was deciding whether charges should be brought against them.

It would be foolish for anyone not in possession of the same documents as the public prosecutor to make any assumptions about this case. All anyone else can really say is that, as yet, there is no hard evidence in the public domain. But that's not very satisfying, is it? Crucially, it's not news, in a highly emotive case where news, any news, is all any one wants.

So instead, the case has become a story about a story, where known facts - of which there are few (or, rather, none, save the unexplained disappearance of a child) - are not being allowed to get in the way of the theories, of which there are thousands, voiced by any amateur detective you care to meet.

From the outset, and while this case simply remained "every parent's worst nightmare", widespread theorising was always inevitable. Now the idea that "the parents might have done it" has been officially introduced, the speculation has gone stratospheric.

One of the oddest things about it is the strength of opinion from onlookers in the face of next to no evidence. It is possible to meet many people at the moment who claim to "know" the truth about what happened (whether sympathetic to the McCanns or not) - and to have "known" it from the beginning. They stick to their story irrespective of anything reported in the media, only choosing to believe reports that confirm what their initial instincts already told them. There is almost a sense that any real conclusion might be disappointing: they may still hope for the best or fear the worst, but really they just don't want to know that they guessed wrong.

This is rather depressing - actually, it's very depressing - but the desire to construct a narrative is entirely natural and one of the strongest impulses of the human condition. Even more desperate than the desire for a story, we want a satisfying conclusion: we want to know the "truth" about what happened. When the truth is not forthcoming - or is heavily delayed - we can't stand it. We impose our own narrative, which once it is repeated often enough becomes the story in itself.

This is what has happened with the McCanns. And in the absence of any real truth, the situation that has emerged tells us more about ourselves than anything we think we know about the case. While no real evidence that Madeleine is alive or dead has been made public, we must make do with the unsatisfactory state of not knowing. The human mind, however, craves resolution. And so as time goes on, everyone sees in the story and its protagonists exactly what they want to see. Everyone draws their own conclusion and believes it.

It is pointless and naive to blame people for being interested. It's even more wrong-headed to pretend, as many have protested, that people have lost interest. They haven't. (If you're one of the few who has, then why have you read this far?) The fact is, even if and when the mystery is solved, people will always be fascinated. Whether there are any real developments or real evidence is increasingly irrelevant: the story now has its own momentum in people's minds, independent of factual events.

The international scale of the case is a sign that this is not a British problem. As the possible imaginary scenarios multiply and the likelihood of new evidence shrinks, the case is taking on the qualities of an elaborately plotted novel. For the McCanns the secondary plot - the campaign, the accusations, the trial by media - threatens to overshadow the real story - Madeleine's disappearance. Or maybe it's too late and this has already happened.

This month's opening of the film version of Ian McEwan's novel Atonement should serve as a timely warning. This is another story about a story. It's about what happens when evidence takes second place to instinct and assumption. Two small children go missing - an event which clouds everyone's judgement. A girl imagines she has witnessed a crime and constructs the facts she needs. The innocent are convicted, the guilty walk free, lives are ruined.

Atonement is a mesmerising morality tale about the all-too-human desire to impose a narrative before all the facts are known. It succeeds as a fiction because it has the ring of truth. In real life, however, we need to look beyond the story and wait patiently for the facts. In the case of Madeleine McCann - unless she can suddenly be found, dead or alive - this may take a very long time indeed.

[SidelineKick]

if the mccanns were lower class slobs who left their daughter in a hotel room by herself while they ate out wud the public and the media have been as helpful? the fact that theyre doctors people seem to overlook that this is primarily their fault, no parent wud leave a small child of that age alone for such a period of time if they were in another room in the house let alone a different building. terrible tragedy yes but they have lived in portugal off peoples donations for weeks, now they want to use the money to pay for their £500 an hr legal team. if i had donated id be wanting it back.

[Puckoon]

Uladh you sound like someone who has needed a therapist in the past.

How can you say there is "not a shred of evidence against them"
The Childs DNA was found in a car hired 25 days after her "disappearance", that is quite hard to explain. Obviously you take your opinions and assumptions from the British gutter press, where rather than question the evidence at face value they decide to attack the Portugese and their methods. Strands, no clumps of the childs hair were found in the boot of the car, I suppose you and your ilk in the British media think the Portugese Police "planted" that to make the McCanns look bad.
I think the McCanns have looked bad from day 1. They left 3 little children on their own, while they wined and dined with their "friends", a fact that the media has either overlooked or swept under the carpet. The whole find Maddy campaign quickly became a media circus and the little girl was soon forgot about, her parents became celebrities and embarked on a "tour". Did they really expect to find her in the Vatican?
Of course I may be wrong, but I base my opinions on my own instincts, not on what I read in the British tabloids. But their child is still "missing" and its is their fault, no one elses.

Correct - but this makes no one automatically guilty of whats being suggested.

The truth of the second sentence remains to be seen

[Uladh]

5times, your final line is the ultimate nonsense.

"But their child is still "missing" and its is their fault, no one elses."

they obviously contributed to this end through negligence but to say that any potential abductor who went into the little girl's room and took her from her bed is not at fault is frankly idiotic.

Sorry Uladh, but if they hadnt gone out and left their children unattended, none of this would have happened. We would never have heard of them and the accusations would never have surfaced. They are guilty of at least gross neglect and I dont believe the media should have painted them out to be such a perfect couple as they clearly arent. The media have taken the McCanns side in this, when I believe they should have asked them some difficult questions a long time ago.

how many times are you going to make that same post. noone denies they were hghly negligent. if you don't see the lunacy in absolving any potential child abductor of blame then we'll leave it at that. "icouldn't help kidnapping the child m'lud. when i checked all of the apartment, that one unbelievably unlocked, then how could i resist going in? and how could i not take that child from her bed when she was there in front of me..."

[Balboa]

Has a "child abductor" been identified Uladh? The police seem to be following a definite line of inquiry (accidental death) & it does not seem to include a "child abductor".