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.
In a month, one could eat a small child. I am not suggesting that this is what happened, just saying...
It's location gives a pretty good indication.
Agreed. Another thing which is glaringly out of place: doctors are generally fairly smart people.
When my son was 3 he hid on me in a grocery store. First I tried to find him, then the workers tried to find him, before it was all said and done, customers left their carts and were going through the parking lots and adjacent stores. I’m not sure how much time went by but it wasn’t the instant that he went missing that we were calling the police. When the store manager started to panic and was dialing the police we found him. My thought was someone took him. How else would you explain a 3 yr. old vanishing?
Two questions -
1) How long did it take to find him?
2) How long before he was able to sit down again?
Since the Portugese police have repeatedly demonstrated incompetence, is it really wise to place any faith in their allged forensic evidience of hair and DNA match.
I’ve read elsewhere that it’s only an 88% match. What does that mean? What’s the margin of error in their testing procedures, how do we know it wasn’t contaminated samples, either negligently or intentionally?
If it was me, I might issue such a challenge as “Find the body and prove it”. It’s apparent that the police have quit looking and are now focused on trying the parents in the court of public opinion hoping to cause a break in the “conspiracy”. The parents have nothing left to motivate the police into doing their jobs except to challenge them in the media.
Madeliene is gone and only Deux ex machina will reveal the truth and it may not be in this temporal reality.
Very good points. The article doesn't say whether the parents confessed to sedating their children....though if that part is true, it shows a rather cavelier attitude toward their children's long term well being. That doesn't mean they murdered their child. Though they could have accidentally caused her death.
It sounds like they were involved in transporting and hiding her body after she went missing. Even though THAT in itself might be provable by the evidence the Portuguese police do have, as this article clearly states, that does not prove murder. (Is there a law against transporting a missing dead child??)
Adding the circumstantial stuff to this forensic evidence, though, it seems the McCanns left a crying, upset 4-year-old girl alone previous nights for their dining pleasure. When the neighbor complained, that might have given them reason to inject or dose the little girl with MORE sleep-inducing meds to give them more peace from the pesky little one who threatened to ruin their tapas and wine. I guess the dose was just right for the twin babies. But they may have overdosed the older girl and she died accidentally.
What kind of “friends” are those who help you move the body??
Anyway, it might not have gone down that way, but if it did, I do hate that these smug murderers know that they have forever gotten away with this. What a reason to die. Not an illness or an accident, but “Mummy and Daddy need their happy hour.” Sheesh.
He’s 15 now and a great kid. With three kids I have only had the pukey feeling twice. That was the first time. One of the customers found him in the produce department under a cart of cantalopes, it had a skirt stapled to it so you couldn’t see underneath it. Talk about bi-polar emotions, on one hand I wanted to spank him silly the other hand I was crying with relief because we found him. I think he was missing for almost 15 minutes. I remember watching a show on child abductions where they talked about a 15 minute window of time to get the police involved and it was approaching the 15 minute mark, cause I was freaking out.
There are just too many unanswered questions in the reporting of this sad story. For example, when was the last time the child was seen by anyone else besides the parents? How do we know that the child was safe and asleep in the room when the parents went to dinner? If the police emphasis is on sleeping pills as the cause of the child’s death, why the focus on blood and blood dna in the hotel room? If the little girl’s body was concealed, where was it concealed? After all, that is a resort and lots of people go just about everywhere all the time! If others helped to conceal the body, why would they have done so? Who would want to step out of ‘ordinary life’ to get involved in that kind of crime? If the body was moved to a secondary location, how was that done unobserved? Surely, the parents were under close watch throughout. No? Why not? If the car rented by the parents showed the girl’s dna in the trunk (boot), how long had it been there? If the parents rented that car 25 days after the girl’s disappearance, where was that car for the 24 days prior to the parents’ rental? And who were the renters of it? Wouldn’t responsible reporting have answered those questions by now?
They accidentally overdosed her when they sedated her. There was no intent to kill, but they covered up their actions afterwards for fear of the backash and possibly losing their medical practices and livelyhood.
2 MDs would be smart enough not to leave DNA evidence in a car trunk...I’m guessing the DNA traces were from a childs toy.
>>To my knowledge, DNA provides no indication of life/death status.<<
You are right (I just looked it up) - I just thought I had heard that either forensics or DNA could prove if the fluids came from a decomposing body, live person, or recently deceased person.
Now, I have two more questions that someone may have the answer to:
l. Won’t the hair folicle show if it was removed from a living person or deceased body? I think the hair comes out very easily, once decomposition sets in.
2. Wouldn’t forensic testing show if there was evidence of drugs (i.e. sedatives) in the bodily fluid samples?
Where is Gil Grissom (CSI) when you need him? ;-)
I would be real interested on who had the car on the date of disappearance.
Here is another thought. Maybe she didn’t die right away. Maybe she was non-responsive (brain dead) but still alive. The parents freaked and may still have had hopes she might recover. Maybe they used the abduction story because they still hoped she could recover. Then maybe wherever she was kept she died 25 days later and the car was hired to discard her body.
You raise an interesting point. By coincidence, might this be the vehicle that was used in the abduction of the child?
I'm thinking about the clump of hair that was found...she may have been alive, her hair was caught and when she perhaps stuggled to free herself, some hair was pulled out.
I would find it very difficult to believe that two doctors would not seek medical attention for their child under those circumstances. 25 days with a child in a coma in a holiday apartment...?
The assumption is not that she was murdered but accidentally overdosed by her parents. Then, they tried to cover-up the incident.
Good point about the blood. Why has the fact that overdosing normally does not involve BLOOD apparently escaped so many commentators? Something doesn’t add up here.
A plausible scenario is this: After their overmedicated child succumbed, the panicked parents decided they could not bear the cost of being held responsible (loss of jobs, criminal penalties, etc.) They decided their only reasonable option was to dispose of the body, but could not immediately because of all the attention paid to them. Some time later they rented the car and disposed of their child with as much dignity as could be afforded under the circumstances.
But all this still does not explain the apparent presence of blood.
Sounds like another Natalee Holloway that disappeared from Aruba.
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