Posted on 09/15/2007 2:40:29 PM PDT by UKrepublican
MADELEINE: 'BODY THROWN INTO THE SEA'
Police fear that the body of Madeleine McCann will never be found and only a confession by her parents can convict them of killing her.
The startling revelations came as officers told of their worries that her body was dumped far out to sea in a bag weighted down with stones. Detectives are convinced she is dead and believe her remains are now gone for ever, a vital piece of missing evidence which seriously weakens their case against Kate and Gerry McCann.
For the first time, police chiefs in Portugal are admitting that the allegedly damning DNA evidence they have gathered in the couple’s apartment and hire car may not be enough to bring charges against them. A senior source in the Policia Judiciaria, which has led the investigation into the disappearance of Madeleine on May 3, 135 days ago, said only a confession could now bring a conviction.
Investigators believe the body of the youngster, who would now be four years old, was most probably thrown off a British-owned yacht out at sea after being moved from a hiding place. They are now working on the theory that Kate and Gerry McCann, both 39-year-old doctors, received help from accomplices to move the body and cover up the crime, despite intense scrutiny.
The seven friends on holiday with the McCanns at the Ocean Club complex in Praia da Luz are expected to be questioned again by detectives investigating the accomplice theory. All the friends deny any wrongdoing.
The news came amid startling developments yesterday, including the apparent discovery of blood in an apartment next door to that used by the McCanns. Detectives believe the apartment holds the key to where Madeleine’s body could have been stored in the hours after she went missing.
The discovery was revealed after reports claimed that Madeleine died following an overdose of sedatives. Police are working on the theory that the youngster was repeatedly drugged by her parents – an allegation Kate and Gerry McCann vehemently deny.
Detectives have asked British forensic experts to look for evidence the toddler was given pills on the night she disappeared and earlier occasions.
As Kate and Gerry McCann left their £600,000 home in Rothley, Leics, for a meeting with their solicitors in London, a senior Policia Judiciaria officer told of his misgivings about the case. The officer, who declined to be named, revealed that the absence of a body meant detectives only had forensic evidence and information from interrogations to build a case.
The admission comes only two days after the McCanns went on the offensive after being named official suspects, issuing a challenge to detectives: “Find the body and prove we killed her.”
The senior officer in the Policia Judiciaria admitted that the McCanns’ stance could destroy the case because detectives have “nothing concrete”. He admitted officers were still struggling to piece together events on the afternoon and evening of May 3. In particular, detectives have so far been unable to uncover the chain of events from 2pm until 10.41pm when the police were eventually called after Kate McCann said her daughter was missing.
“There are a lot of clues, signs and indications, but without more elements it’s impossible for us to determine what happened in those vital hours,” the officer said. “Even if the blood and traces gathered in the car or the apartment were confirmed to correspond 100 per cent to the little girl’s DNA, that wouldn’t prove anything.
“Those elements could only confirm – and at the moment we don’t even have that – that the little girl was in the apartment, which is plainly obvious, and in the car. In either of the cases, nothing would prove homicide, just that the body of the little girl had been transferred in the vehicle.”
The officer admitted that a number of fundamental questions remained to be answered, confirming the views of the McCanns’ high-powered legal team that the Portuguese authorities are a long way from presenting a strong case.
The officer went on: “We don’t know if Madeleine is dead and, if she is, how it all happened. Was she strangled? Could she have been beaten? They are all questions only the parents could clarify in an eventual confession.”
Kate and Gerry McCann strenuously reject claims of being involved in Madeleine’s death and disposing of her body, and challenged detectives on Wednesday to find their daughter and prove they killed her. A close friend said: “The legitimate question to ask Portuguese police is: Where is the body? Where is the evidence that Madeleine is dead?”
The case against the McCanns detailed in a dossier now before Judge Pedro Miguel dos Anjos Frias appears to rest mainly on potentially damaging forensic test results. These are said to include Madeleine’s DNA in traces of bodily fluid, as well as a mass of hair, discovered in the McCanns’ hire car which was rented 25 days after she vanished.
Portugal’s attorney general has indicated the investigation still has some way to go and suggested stricter bail conditions could be imposed on the couple. On Tuesday public prosecutor Jose Cunha de Magalhaes e Meneses ordered the 10 police files in the case to go before the judge.
In an effort to find a body, it is expected that fresh searches will be ordered in Praia da Luz, focusing on areas where roadworks were taking place when Madeleine disappeared. Officers are also expected to begin searching several sea-front locations, including caves and grottoes.
Police have already investigated a vessel owned by an English sailor in Lagos, 15 minutes’ drive from Praia da Luz. A source close to the case said: “One of the most credible possibilities would involve the body having been thrown in a sack of stones from a yacht.”
The yacht which came under police scrutiny was investigated after a computer owned by the only other suspect, expat Robert Murat, 33, was analysed and found to mention the sailor. Other theories suggest Madeleine’s body was disposed of at one of several waste incinerators.
The McCanns have already been advised by their British lawyers that the Portuguese would have difficulty prosecuting them if they do not find their daughter’s body. Portuguese police admit they fear no judge will allow the case to go to court without that key piece of evidence.
Of course, nancy grace (who ever that is) is the definitive source. If true, I stand corrected, but until I see scientific proof, I stand by my statement.
When would the McCann’s have had time to transport a dead body in a foreign land to some hideaway place? What vehicle would they have driven to take the kid away to hide her? Did they use a rent-a-car the day of the child’s disappearance? Or did they use their own vehicle and did it have any DNA or blood in it? Doesn’t sound like any other car with blood in it the day of the disappearance has been tested or spoken of by anyone.
Where would the McCann’s have taken the body? They are in a foreign land. Why would they kill their own kid? There are 3 of them. So they just arbitrarily decided to bump off their oldest girl? If they allegedly sedated their kids, were any sedatives found by anyone? Was it checked for? Did either of the other two children show any signs of sedation? Did they wake up right away when the McCann’s discovered Madeleine was gone, or were they groggy and hung over from being sedated also? And who would ever be over-sedating their 3 kids anyway? Is there any track record of them ever doing anything like this before? As doctors, do you really think they would be over-sedating their own children? How much mileage was on the speedometer of the car rental? Why did they rent it and where did they say they went? Do they have witnesses as to where they went in the rental car? Where are the police answers to all of these questions? And by the way, if the children were sedated, and Madeleine allegedly was over-sedated, why would there be any blood on the walls. Over-sedation does not cause bleeding.
I believe the Portuguese police wanted the McCann family out of Portugal. It was bad PR for them, and bad for the tourist trade which had already taken a dive because of this incident. The McCann’s were being adamant about not wanting to leave Portugal without Madeleine. This is the trumped up charge by the police to get the onus off of themselves for their lousy investigation, and to get the McCann’s out of Portugal. It worked, didn’t it. Now, just like Beth Holloway, they lose the ability to ever find out the truth as to what happened to their daughter. Beth Holloway had the same rotten treatment by a foreign gov’t that just wanted her out of their hair the same as in this case. Must not affect the tourist trade.
Now the McCanns are back in Britain, far away from the scene of the crime, and have no ability to keep the investigation alive. The Portuguese got rid of them back to their own country, and the reason they let them go back was because that’s what they wanted all the time, to get them out of Portugal. You watch, the case will now miraculously just fade away, leaving the suspicions now on the McCann’s heads, and the police can now just forget about having to do anything more, because they didn’t want to do anything more. The McCann’s lose.
Dr. Baden, whose the coroner guy who is always on Fox News, thinks this is all trumped up. He says a car would stink to high heaven if a decomposed body had been in it, and that there would be no blood after 25 days, just liquid goo. And that the parents both being doctors, they would never have put a decomposed body, even if wrapped in plastic, into the boot of a car where it might leak. And that even if the McCann’s had sedated their kids w/medicine, it wouldn’t be enough to cause one of them to die. Plus he says the parents transported all of Madelaine’s clothes in the boot of the car when transferring them from where they had been staying to another villa, which could leave some traces of DNA and hair in the boot. Also, he says it is easily ascertained whether hair is from a dead person as versus one who was still alive, under the microscope. Therefore, any hair found in the boot, if it came from transferring clothes, would be found to have been from Madelaine before she died, rather than afterwards. I trust Dr. Baden. He knows this is a setup.
I’m with you except for that bit about friends helping.
Wow. I know the joke is that a real friend helps you get rid of the body but sheesh....helping parents dispose of a child’s body...I just don’t see people doing that. Sure, people do all sorts of thing but this is below the likely odds, I’d argue.
So you have to convince me, using your scenario, the same thing but without benefit of any help from friends.
The admission comes only two days after the McCanns went on the offensive after being named official suspects, issuing a challenge to detectives: “Find the body and prove we killed her.”
I’m sorry, but reading that just screams guilt. Too bad they’re going to get away with murder.
At one press appearance the “mother” kept looking to the father for emotional confirmation. He never gave it to her. Just looked down or away from her. It was hostile body-speak.. Maybe the father’s feeling bad about what happened - and the mother — not so much.
The theory is they may have accidently overdosed her with sleeping pills.
There was a childminding services - which they never used.
There’s plenty of reason to suspect them.
I have a feeling they had something to do with it, but I have a feeling it was an accident that they/or one of them has covered up.
***
This gives some logic to what happen, boy what a stupid selfish thing to do one child to drug them for their hedonist pleasues, and to compound their stupity they rid of her body!
They should have confessed I think their situation would have been far less than the boiling water they are in now!
I totally agree with you and after reading this, I really really am giving it up...
I am excerpting part of an article written by another woman in Australia who had been falsely accused of murdering her child.
“Regarding Madeleine McCann, the ‘Dingo baby’ mother recognises police hostility, ‘forensic’ discoveries and a hysterical public as very similar to what happened to her:
This for me, bringing is a difficult time of year the kind of anniversary that any parent would dread.
It is just over 27 years since my baby daughter, Azaria, was snatched by a dingo - a wild dog - and carried away into the darkness of the Australian outback forever.
The unusual circumstances, and the frenzied speculation that followed, made it one of the most notorious cases of a missing child the world has known, and it ended in the greatest miscarriage of justice Australia has ever seen.
Damned by police hostility, “forensic” discoveries and an increasingly hysterical public, I was jailed for murdering my own daughter, despite a mountain of evidence to the contrary.
It is a state of affairs that Kate and Gerry McCann will recognise only too well.
And, as they reluctantly refocus their lives from the search for Madeleine to the case for their defence, I can say with some confidence that they have good reason to be worried.
For the parallels with my own case, while not exact, are inescapable.
Once again we have newspapers and TV stations obsessed by a single story. I can see the same public-longing for a neat solution to a tragedy. There are detectives under huge pressure.
And at the heart of it, there is a woman who has failed to play the emotive, feminine role scripted for her in this terrible soap opera.
The rush to judgment seems irresistible; but if I have learned anything it is this: that, from our position in front of the TV screens or outspread newspapers, we ordinary members of the public do not - and cannot - know the truth of what occurred that May night in Praia da Luz.
It was August 1980 when I took that fateful August camping holiday at Ayers Rock in the Northern Territory with my then husband Michael, our two boys, Aidan, six, Reagan, four, and, the latest addition to our family, Azaria, aged just nine-and-a-half weeks. We were staying at the public campsite, in the shadow of the mountain.
The simple, crucial facts are as follows. Azaria and Reagan were inside the tent asleep and I was outside, preparing food for Aidan. Three people heard Azaria cry. When I went to check, I saw a dingo emerge from the tent and disappear. I saw that Azaria was gone.
“How did it feel?” It is a question I have faced repeatedly, as you might imagine, and now, with the McCanns taking up airtime even here in Australia, I am being asked it once again.
Anyone who has actually been through the loss of a child would know that it is a question not worth asking - because there is no answer that others could understand. There are no words I could use. It is indescribable.
Like the McCanns, I was accused of behaving irresponsibly. How could I leave my children - even momentarily - in a tent that was not zipped up? This, after all, was the outback.
Yet we had been told it was safe at Ayers Rock, even though we later learned that there had been attacks around that time.
The result was the worst judgment call of my life.
I have little doubt that the McCanns feel the same way, even though the distance between their restaurant table and Madeleine’s bed was shorter than the length of my back yard at home.
What happened subsequently to destroy my life was nothing to do with a “judgment call”, however, and everything to do with the circumstances that now threaten to drag down Kate and Gerry.
I understand the spectre of forensic evidence looms large for them. It was key to putting me behind bars in October 1982, and it is this aspect of my case that must be particularly alarming for the McCanns.
They have been told there is “body fluid” and “DNA” in their rented car. I was told there was a lot of my child’s blood in our car.
But in my case, at least, these findings were far from forensic. The “tests” had been incompetent. Rigorous analyses conducted later showed the “blood” to be no more than copper dust, spilt milkshake and a sound-deadening chemical that was over-sprayed from the wheelarch of the car.
The most they found was a small patch of “nose excreta” with some blood attached. In other words, somebody had picked their nose and wiped it on the car seat.
In another strange echo, the McCanns’ fate appears to be in the hands of scientists from England - just as mine was.
When they flew to Darwin, to give evidence, their contribution proved both incompetent and fatal.
One man claimed there was a small female handprint in blood on my baby’s growsuit. That was just the dust and not even a handprint. The other man was the so-called dingo expert from London who, it emerged, had never ever set eyes on a dingo.
Even when forensics are abused, people have a tendency to go along with it.
And by the time they find out that you were innocent all along, your reputation is ruined. I was spat at and abused in the street. I was continually followed by the media. For years, I was the most reviled woman in Australia.
Looking back, perhaps the clearest comparison of all with the plight of the McCanns is the atmosphere of speculation and the terrible appetite for quick answers.
There comes a point where the public is so worked up, it wants solutions even though there aren’t any; the next installment, when there isn’t one.
There is only one truly solid fact out in the open, and that is that Madeleine has gone missing. ...”
Yes, I can see an upset and indignant parent saying such a thing, and not as proof pf guilt either.
Taken out of context it would seem far more damning than it is.
Doping your kids so you can have dinner out seems pretty shaky to me, but it does not make them murderers.
Ultimately, if fitting, they will answer to a higher judge who already knows the answers.
It was reported that the twins slept soundly during the whole ordeal. They did not stir throughout the entire commotion. It appears that the police did not check for sedatives at the time because it was being treated as a kidnapping. On reflection, the use of sedatives is a theory right now with the behavior of the twins being circumstantial evidence.
Who would be over sedating 3- kids anyway? Parents who were in a big hurry to get on down to the bar on the other side of the hotel, leaving 3 babies in an unlocked room unsupervised and unprotected.
How do you get frrom a child killed by sleeping pills to blood left at the scene? to blood/fluid left in a rental car when moving the body weeks later....These are highly educated Doctors who surely know about DNA. So they drug their daughter then what? cut up her body leaving blood around? then later move the body in a calculated but crudely sloppy manner?
Where is the common sense?
“I wouldn’t be able to bring myself to tell someone, “Find the body.””
I strongly suspect this a paraphrasing. Probably from a biased source.
“results that do not allow a 100% correspondence with Maddie’s genetic profile”
DNA evidence has the most punch these days. If the DNA isn’t hers, and there’s frankly no way it can be, then associated evidence is also brought into question. There may be a cadaver odor in the car, but if the DNA doesn’t match the missing child’s then all that odor becomes is an unanswered question.
I’m assuming that humans release a different “cadaver odor” than other animals, and they’re sure it’s a human the dogs were smelling?
thanks for posting and thanks for the ping. I remember that time vividly. As one of the very few in my own circle who never thought Lindy to be guilty, I eventually refused to discuss the case at all. Almost everyone I knew behaved as prosecutor, jury and judge. The Press showed no mercy. A fair trial was out of the question.
The ‘expert’ who provided the forensic evidence was later totally discredited due to the uncovering of other faulty analysis. I admire Lindy tremendously. IIRC her husband was a lay-preacher, there was an air of almost religious persecution behind the public hatred...fantastic stories circulated that the name of her child had been chosen from biblical sources - Azaria was translated to mean ‘sacrifice in the desert’ - I was utterly ashamed of the Australian public.
How Lindy survived this dreadful ordeal, four years in jail, the breakup of her family, the loss of her little baby, I cannot imagine.
Who would be over sedating 3- kids anyway? Parents who were in a big hurry to get on down to the bar on the other side of the hotel, leaving 3 babies in an unlocked room unsupervised and unprotected.
Sedating, possibly. Over-sedating, highly unlikely, and as Dr. Baden, forensic scientist on Fox News said, and also others, you would have to give a kid 30 to 40 teaspoonsful of medicine to be enough to kill them. Figure it out.
This article presents a likely scenario. Good ideas here for fans of the “perfect crime”
The chances are slim.
Thanks.
I am sorry to hear about your daughter.
I’m not one to defend them, but our newspapers have a very bad habit of really twisting what people say, even in direct quotation marks.
I don’t believe they have said this, they are being advised by a media team who would certainly not be sending out those sort of messages, so I’d probably assume they didn’t say anything like this.
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