I know we don’t have great confidence in the authorities there, but:
“Police believe Madeleine died as a result of an accident and her body was hidden before being moved in the McCanns’ hire car.”
IOW, maybe not deliberate murder, but hiding the fact she died.
As to the dogs - I may be mistaken, but dogs are trained to track particular people. Could not this apply to cadaver dogs, too?
I’ve never heard of a cadaver dog searching for a particular person. You’d probably have to have a scent from the person’s already dead body to provide to the dog. They’re normally trained to detect any human cadaver, and used mainly for disaster situations where searchers aren’t looking for any particular individual, and for crime investigations where it’s assumed that other information will be used to identify any bodies after they’re found.
I’d really like to hear the Portuguese police speculate as to where the body might have been hidden for that length of time. It couldn’t have been very close to the McCanns since they were under such constant watch by media and subject to frequent visits by authorities. And if it was some distance from them, yet close enough to still be retrievable by them, it must have been well within the area in which a massive search was underway during that entire period, under the direction of the Portuguese police. The public was under non-stop media bombardment, so practically everybody was keeping an eye out for anything suspicious that could be related to the disappearance of a little girl in the area. If the McCanns could have hidden, moved, and disposed of the body during this period, so could anyone else — like the real perp.
The only thing I know for sure is that I won’t be visiting Portugal anytime soon.