And here I thought this was going to be a thread about Katherine Heigl.
Posted on 09/17/2007 9:42:46 AM PDT by UKrepublican
MADELEINE: POLICE TO SEARCH SHRINE FOR BODY
POLICE in Portugal believe Madeleine McCann may be buried at one of the holiest sites of the Catholic Church
Officers were last night planning to launch a search at Fatima in central Portugal.
Devout Kate and Gerry McCann made a pilgrimage there three weeks after their daughter vanished from their holiday apartment in the Algarve resort of Praia da Luz.
Just four days later they rented a car which police believe the couple used to return to the shrine and dispose of Madeleine’s body.
The search in Fatima is said to be one of a series to be carried out over the next few days. It comes as it was claimed yesterday that Kate could be charged with her daughter’s murder.
In just five weeks the McCanns clocked up 1,709 miles in the car and police want to question them about every journey they made. The couple claim they ran up the mileage making
frequent return trips from the resort to Faro Airport 55 miles away.
They were picking up and dropping off family and friends who stayed with them as they mounted their campaign to find Madeleine, who vanished on May 3.
But a police source told the Daily Express yesterday that officers were not satisfied with the explanation the McCanns gave them.
They now believe the couple made the 500-mile return trip to Fatima to dispose of their daughter’s body.
It is one of the few places in Portugal outside the Algarve that the McCanns are known to have visited in the days after Madeleine disappeared.
Officers want to examine a pasture called the Cova da Iria near the village of Aljustrel a mile from Fatima – where the Virgin Mary is said to have appeared to three children in 1917.
Police believe Madeleine died as a result of an accident and her body was hidden before being moved in the McCanns’ hire car.
They are convinced Gerry and Kate McCann’s devotion to their faith played a key role in how they supposedly disposed of the body.
The McCanns’ visit to Fatima on May 23 was the first of a series of organised trips to raise awareness for their campaign to find their missing daughter.
By the time they signed a rental agreement on a Renault with Budget Rentacar at Faro Airport on May 27, Fatima was one of the few places in Portugal they had been to. Detectives are said to be “very concerned” about the high mileage of the hire car and believe the couple may have travelled a long distance to dispose of Madeleine’s body.
A source close to the investigation said: “We are looking for a final resting place for the little girl.
“We now believe the movements of the car in the days after it was hired are the key to solving the mystery.
“Everywhere they have been will be thoroughly examined. They did not know Portugal well. The only familiar places will be the ones they visited.
“They have said the only places they drove to were around the resort and to and from the airport but that does not account for the mileage they did in the car.”
Body fluids with an 88 per cent DNA match to Madeleine were found in the spare tyre well under the carpet in the boot of the Renault along with clumps of the youngster’s hair.
During police interviews the McCanns were shown a video of a sniffer dog “going crazy’’ when it approached their hire car.
Police had previously been working on the theory that Madeleine’s body was dumped in the sea near the beach in Praia da Luz.
The British dogs brought in by South Yorkshire Police allegedly detected a trail of death from the family’s Ocean Club apartment down to the sea front.
Experts in tidal movements were called in to try to establish scientifically where a body may have been washed up. Another theory was that Madeleine’s body was placed in a sack and weighed down with rocks.
If they filled the tank, filled a gas can, and and brought food with them, they could have made it without stopping for meals or gas or lodging.
It is a four-five hour drive each way - quite doable.
The entire country of Portugal is smaller than Indiana.
There is a difference between believing the account Lucia Santos, Jacinta Marto and Francisco Marto gave of their encounter with Our Lady, and being unhealthily obsessed with that encounter and the various conspiracy theories people have hatched about it.
I think the theory that makes the most sense is that Portugal is worried about tourism and so wants to pin this on the parents no matter what the truth is, just so they can make the whole nasty thing go away.
They are available, but hatchbacks are quite common and you wouldn't want the sales staff remembering that you insisted on paying more if need be for a larger model with an enclosed trunk.
The Renault Scenic does have a built-in partition that you can snap in place over the trunk space - to prevent smash-and-grabbers from seeing what you have in your trunk.
Oh this such crap! Fatima? They screwed the goose with this theroy...
Agreed. Didn't the jury agree that that the 1 in 4 billion chance that blood found at the nichole simpson murder site was not OJ's wasn't convincing enough to convict OJ?
My guess is that it’s just more wild speculation that will ultimately be damning for the Portuguese authorities and the Portuguese tourism industry. The BEST possible outcome of all this for the Portuguese police is that they prove they’re right about the McCanns killing their daughter and disposing of her body nearly a month after the fact. Then they have to admit that during what they advertised to the public as an intensive investigative operation to find Madeleine dead or alive, the McCanns were able to conceal the body for nearly a month, retrieve it, put it in their rental car, drive it off somewhere, and bury it, all without being detected by the Portuguese “investigators”.
Indeed, I think there’s reason to suspect the Portuguese police of not only incompetence, but also corruption. The guy in charge of the investigation is currently facing charges for the beating of the mother of another missing child while she was in police custody. Whose bright idea was it to put him in charge of this case? I wouldn’t be entirely surprised if the police know exactly who did it, are in touch with that person or persons, and are covering for them by framing the McCann’s. That would explain the source of all the forensic evidence that suddenly started popping up all over the place, months after Madeleine’s disappearance. The real perp(s) has/have access to the body, and are in a position to give the police access too.
The Portuguese authorities cannot be blamed in retrospect for having believed the McCanns and for having kept the McCanns closely informed of their movements.
If the investigators are telling you where they are looking for the body, then you have a much better chance of concealing it from them.
The most unprofessional thing the police have done in this case has been to trust the McCanns and given them access to the investigation. If it were the FBI, the McCanns would have immediately been considered persons of interest and they would have been grilled relentlessly from the beginning.
Aruba Police are assisting in the investigation./sc Tourism will take a hit.I still can not imagine responsible parents going to dinner and leaving their children unattended.Do their children really sleep that sound?The parents must have been extremely confident that they would not awaken.I have eight grandchildren and when they stay at our house,at least one is up at any given time to use the bathroom,get a drink of water,or need assurances that the boogeyman will not get them.I just have a bad feeling about this and I hope with all my heart that she is safe somewhere.I pray they keep looking.
And here I thought this was going to be a thread about Katherine Heigl.
Aruba Redux.
I agree.
The dogs don’t know who was carrying the dead body, though. Nothing against the parents there. All we know is that someone removed the body, and we already knew that.
The dogs should hit strongly on the car if a body was in it for a few hundred miles.
How do they know the hair belongs to the missing girl? Hair comparison is not that exact.
An 88% DNA match, isn’t.
Keep in mind that these dogs will “hit” on the scent of ANY dead body, not just the one that’s the subject of the case. There’s not a police department on the planet that isn’t capable of placing dead body scent anywhere they want to.
Clumps of hair would probably have hair follicles.
Those can be accurately identified, I believe.
Why would Mrs. Ramsey have wanted her daughter dead? And the method of murder is just too bizarre, IMO.
The mother is a doctor - not a huge step to believe that she could have had the scent of death on her clothes.
Gads. Has anyone here been to Fatima?
At the time I was there (many years ago) it had at least 100 small stalls selling junk in name of saints, etc. I am not trying to be mean, but it was the most vulgar display I had ever seen and never since in the name of religion.
I was totally shocked.
So what is my point?
Fatima is so full of tourist wandering around, it would have been like getting rid of the body in Time Square.
Before I get flamed for maybe giving the “appearance” of being anti Catholic, I was baptized as an RC as was all of my family. As I matured, a lot of my friends were Episcopalians and eventually was confirmed there. But, we all know the rest of the story; and therefore, we all know the Episcopalian tragedy. I haven’t been to church in years.
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