Wednesday marks 10 years since the disappearance of Madeleine McCann. Back in 2007, the three-year-old disappeared from a Praia da Luz, Portugal apartment rented by her parents, Kate and Gerry. Madeleine vanished while her parents were eating at a nearby restaurant. Her twin siblings, Sean and Amelie, were still in the apartment when Kate and Gerry returned from their meal to find their oldest daughter missing.
With the May 3 anniversary of the disappearance looming, Kate and Gerry spoke with the BBC, asserting they will do “whatever it takes, for as long as it takes” to find Madeleine. Kate told British journalist Fiona Bruce that, although this anniversary is a “horrible marker of time, stolen time,” she remains optimistic, saying “There is progress and there are some very credible lines of inquiry that the police are working on and whilst there’s no evidence to give us any negative news, you know, that hope is still there.”
Even though the couple were cleared as suspects for the disappearance back in August of 2008, the The McCanns still are dealing with the court of social media. They avoid the negative comments, and what Kate refers to as “aspect of human nature that I hadn’t really encountered before,” by simply staying away from social networks, telling the BBC, “We don’t go there, to be honest. We are aware of things that get said because people alert us to them. I guess our worry is for our children.” Fortunately, not all who have an opinion on the case are negative. Gerry acknowledged “the goodness of people and the support that we have had over 10 years, which hasn’t wavered in all that time.”
The family is working with the police to find Madeline, there are still four officers from the Metropolitan Police on the case, over $14 million has been spent on the search. Gerry addressed critics of the expenditures and time spent by the police as “really quite unfair,” adding that Madeleine’s “stranger abduction” was “exceptionally rare,” which was why the case generated so much attention.
Although the family is adapting to life without Madeleine, Kate still buys presents for her daughter, admitting, “I obviously have to think about what age she is and something that, whenever we find her, will still be appropriate. So there’s a lot of thought goes into it. But I couldn’t not, you know; she’s still our daughter, she’ll always be our daughter.”
Losing a child under such mysterious circumstances has got to be tough, and to go for 10 years without any resolution has got to be even tougher. The other true crime cases I’ve covered here had endings – although tragic. I hope this story has a happy ending for the McCann family.
Photos: Getty Images, WENN.com
OK. So I just looked this up on Wikipedia to confirm. These parents left there 2 year old twins and 3 year old alone in an apartment in a strange city….? I’m sorry, but isn’t that insane?! Not only that, but they were at dinner. 180 ft is a long ways away from your kids. And this was for hours. Wow…..
Yes, it is crazy to leave kids that young in an apartment alone. So many things could have gone wrong.
One thing DID go wrong … very, very wrong.
I’d never heard of this story til now, and that’s what stood out for me too, you left them alone in a foreign city while you ate dinner?
Is that not negligence?
Genuinely curious how anyone has avoided this story?! It’s been shoved down my throat for years…
The only ‘hope’ I have is that the poor little gjrl passed away years ago. To think what she might have been through if she’d been kidnapped… doesn’t bear thinking about.
I live in Canada, so we don’t always get the same community interest stories, I’m thinking that may be the main reason. We’ve got our own local crazies to deal with.
And yeah… I mean there is no good outcome in this case. Sometimes, rarely, the abductor treats the child as their own, but she was already older when she was taken.
Ugh. It doesn’t bear thinking about, and these two twits are still talking as if they didn’t carry a heaping of blame.
I’m in canada too. That’s probably why I never heard of it. Maybe vaguely but not in detail. This is very much jon benet/casey Anthony territory.
I’m in Canada – ultimately I heard about it because my dad went on a rant about it on multiple occasions – I was raised by two safety obsessed parents.
@Lex I agree. The situation is tragic, but I would much rather the poor child have died from an accidental overdoes than be trafficked into a life of abuse and misery.
They have been sufficiently punished for their carelessness I would have thought. I feel very sorry for them, and admire the campaign they have fought.
Detritus, I also live in Canada and this was not just a “community interest” story – this was EVERY where for weeks – months even.
Another Canadian here. The McCanns story got coverage in Canada. I clearly remember it on the CBC evening news. I can’t decide if I’m incredulous or jealous that some of you have missed out on this story.
My 2 cents: I find it frustrating that the McCanns have never acknowledged they share some of the blame for the girl’s disappearance and blame for the haphazard,
restrained response by the police. C’mon — the story of two well funded parents too cheap to pay for a sitter looks like a slap dash cover-up for negligence.
It’s been thought that they might have drugged their children to make them sleep because how else could you leave three children with a combined age of seven alone in an apartment for hours? There was a full kitchen in that apartment, a TV set, windows – all sorts of ways for the kids to get into trouble…checking on them every 30-45 minutes would really only work if they were sedated.
Plus, they didn’t lock the door to the apartment.
Oh and their rental car was placed by the police in a parking garage and let loose cadivar dogs and they immediately pinged McCains trunk. They’ve been weirdly cleared by Scotland Yard but I believe the Portuguese police still have them as a suspect. They wanted to interview them a few days after the disappearance but they lawyered up.
they didn’t lock their door?
so they left three children, under the age of 8, unattended and possibly all hopped up on cough meds or something?
I think the meds theory makes a lot of sense. In addition to the cadaver dog, other very suspicious things–they deleted all their cell phone info, their friends refused to speak etc. She probably did die accidentally (ie sedated, woozily got up, fell and hit her head on something), but outright negligence for sure.
The Portuguese detective also thought that because even after alerting everyone the twins were still sound asleep in the bedroom when the police arrived and continued to sleep when friends took them out of the room so police could look in there
If it was my kid missing I doubt anyone could have slept as I tossed the room and would be screaming while calling her name.
The rental car was rented several weeks after the child disappeared. They were under police surveillance and followed by the media everywhere they went. The idea they somehow managed to time travel with that car to dispose of their child’s body is… well. And those cadaver dogs were retired after the Haut De Garenne case, when they dug up huge areas looking for bodies because of dog reaction – only to find the ‘bone fragments’ in the area the dogs first identified were shards of coconut shell.
They were grossly irresponsible to leave their children in the way that they did. I have kids, and while I’d never be scared of abduction from the house, a fire can and does happen in minutes, and children are not woken by smoke detectors – nobody knows why but they just aren’t. Even more likely is one of them waking and crying for comfort that wouldn’t come, which apparently did happen on more than one night, according to an upstairs neighbour. But none of that means they deserve to be thought of as murderers.
It would be pretty much impossible for them to have been involved, and furthermore the case is only as famous as it is and still being actively investigated because those parents campaigned and ran a media barrage to keep her name in the public eye. To believe two highly intelligent, highly educated adults would choose to focus millions of pounds of police resources from two countries on their child’s disappearance, over a decade, when they could easily have let it fade away, if they were involved at all… it just defies all common sense.
They were neglectful and I don’t understand why or how they could leave tiny children alone at night. But that doesn’t mean they deserve to have fingers pointed at them over their child’s disappearance, either. My heart does go out to them because the suffering they must have gone through, and still go through, makes my stomach clench.
Yes, drugging kids even just with Benadryl is a common enough practice to keep them quiet or asleep. Since both parents were doctors, they might very well have used something stronger. The odds are pretty high that she was not kidnapped (who takes the verbal kid with a very distinctive eye rather than the nonverbal kids?) but rather simply died either from a bad reaction to whatever they gave her or just from an accident due to being groggy. It’s pretty clear that they weren’t checking as often as they claimed. They were doctors, they would know she was dead beyond recovery and so did not need to bring in medical help. The father most likely had the agonizing task of tossing his daughter’s body into the sea. But if they just reported it as an accidental death, then an autopsy would have revealed any drugs given and the parents would likely lose their medical licenses. They also must have feared losing their remaining children.
In other words, I strongly suspect all this has been a coverup for an unfortunate death that started with one lie and snowballed into many. The police investigating it initially seemed to have come to a similar conclusion but were compassionate. I think justice has been done many times over, actually.
They were at an all inclusive holiday hotel in Portugal they left them in the apartment while they went to eat on the property. Some of the hotel/apartments (Mark Warner) are very large and they said they could see the apartment from where they were eating my thing is most have babysitting services and why didn’t they get one as for the crazy prices they charge for a week £6k you’d think an additional £50 would be worth it. I live in the UK this was in the news FOREVER. I feel for them but never would I ha e done that and hope is a cruel emotion. They were on the news yesterday.
I agree that it’s insane for anyone to leave toddlers alone – Madeleine was days away from being 4, which is bad enough, but the younger ones were’t even two. Abduction wouldn’t be on my radar but a fire absolutely would, as would wandering, and most likely of all just nightmares, and needing a parent to console them.
It’s also a weird fact, though, that the place they stayed in offered a baby listening service, whereby staff would walk around and listen at the doors of children and go and fetch dining parents if the child was awake. They didn’t offer full babysitting. Most parents in that resort (and as you say, Mark Warner is a very, very expensive resort that sells itself as being perfect for families, offering daycare and all sorts of activities for all ages and generations) therefore did what the Mccann’s group did, and checked on sleeping children every half hour or so.
I can’t understand parents who would do that with toddlers, at all. But they were doing what that Mark Warner offered via their own staff, which I suppose also made it some sort of a suggestion.
I’m Portuguese so this story was really a big thing around here. And as it usually happens that area of Algarve became associated with it. I remember that because they were tourists there was an extra effort to figure out what happened through the investigation process. The couple tried several times to imply that the investigation was badly done but our investigation police is actually very good and respected internationally. The main investigator at the time is still convinced they had something to do with it and totally ruined his health and career by fighting for his belief. If he is right or not I don’t know, but it’s difficult to sympathize with this couple because they were in a position where they could’ve hv afforded the nanny service, but instead made the worst choice possible. There was even a lot of criticism at the time bc many felt social services should’ve intervened, bc if this was a Portuguese couple they would clearly get in trouble bc it was clear negligence.
The prosperity offered babysitting service during the night FOR FREE – which is not necessary if you sedated them – and yes they could see the apartment but not the main entrance.
AG- UK.. The hotel offered babysitting for free… Why not accepting it?
I’m sorry, but something really weird happened. Plus, they called the media first, then the Police…
Honestly, the parents were only 50m away, across the pool, from the room where the children were! I could be in my backyard and be that far away!
Its very tragic and I feel for them. As a mother of 3 young ones, I cant even bring myself to judge them and I wouldnt wish what happened to them on my worst enemy. I truly hope for the best for their daughter 🙁
The distance argument is disingenous because the parents couldn’t access the apartment by distance as the crow flies. They had to leave the resort and walk three sides of a circle. It was a few minutes away, and most importantly, they couldn’t hear what was happening. They weren’t able to keep tabs on the children more than every half hour. I don’t know if you have kids – I was more supportive of the McCanns over their choices before I did – but at 18 months and 3 you don’t leave them out of earshot. At all, let alone for hours on end with brief checks every half hour. They screwed up, plain and simple. If you are having a barbecue in your garden then you use a baby monitor (and people with gardens that size usually have nannies, too!)
That said, only an idiot could think they were involved in whatever happened to their child, and the hell they are in makes what they did unimportant. Nobody deserves to suffer as they have, and I don’t even want to think about what their child may have gone through.
I don’t understand why people try to excuse the parents by saying things like this.
So what if the parents could view of the apartment from where they were. What does that even mean? Could they see whether one of the toddlers stuck an object into an electrical outlet? Because I doubt it. Could they see if one of the toddlers drowned themselves in the toilet? Because I doubt it. Could they see if one of the toddlers hanged themselves in the curtains or blinds? Maybe . . . if they could see a silhouette of a body hanging in the window. Could they see if one of the toddlers climbed onto a table then fell and cracked open their skull? Because I doubt it. Could they see if someone broke into their unlocked room and grabbed a kid? Apparently not, because that’s what happened and they didn’t see it. That whole excuse is b.s.
I still have hope: Hope that they will be arrested and charged.
I don’t know if they are responsible for her death (such as accidental overdose of sedatives). But even accepting their entire story as true, they should be arrested and charged with child endangerment at a minimum. If a baby sitter had done exactly what these parents did and the child disappeared, presumably killed — that babysitter would face charges for sure. A parent has at least as much responsibility for their own children as a baby sitter. But they are white, educated, and sympathetic, and they hired a public relations firm, so . . . no charges. “The system” really can be bought and manipulated.
If either of the child’s parents did have something to do with her death/disappearance, I could see why they acted so strangely, discrediting the Portuguese police/investigators, refusing to answer questions or really cooperate (with their friends also refusing to speak to the police). They must have been frightened out of their minds. If you accidentally killed your child due to a sleep meds overdose, then it’s manslaughter in the U.S., you’d probably be at risk of losing your medical license, and who knows if you’d be allowed to continue parenting your two other babies! I could understand why there’d be a cover-up by the McCanns (not saying that’s what they did–just saying that it’s understandable if they were culpable exactly why they’d do it).
The McCanns’ behavior just strikes me as so odd. And someone lower down in this thread said that they used donations for Madeleine to pay their mortgage. That’s odd, to say the least.
Sorry, but I’ve never bought what this couple is selling.
Isn’t it strange? I never have, either. I read they gave the kids Benadryl to knock them out, then went to dinner. Their apartment was on the road, with open doors and windows. They sent a friend to check, and since everything was dark & quiet he never actually looked.. Meanwhile others saw a hotel worker running away with a child in pajamas. They must feel very guilty.
From the other theories floated here, it sounds like the hotel worker may have been running away with a child in pajamas because of the Benadryl. As in, Madeleine overdosed on whatever her parents gave her to make her sleep, and maybe they paid a hotel worker to help them cover it up?
The person carrying the child was found and identified as a British tourist carrying their own child home after a meal out. There has never been any evidence at all for the drugging suggestion, and given that could easily be ruled out via hair testing of the twins, don’t you think it will have been? And given the upstairs neighbour gave a statement that Madeleine cried for her parents every night – one of the things I DO judge them for – how can you reconcile that with the claim she was drugged?
The problem with the internet is obvious in cases such as this and Meredith Kercher. People keep repeating something they’ve heard as factual and then spin it into a theory. The parents screwed up horribly in leaving their child alone, no question, but the way people spin fantasies over a child’s disappearance is truly unsettling.
Sorry I have no sympathy for them at all. They left their 3 very young children in an apartment by themselves night after night to go drink. In a foreign city. It wasn’t like they were in the hotel eating. THey were several minutes away. What did they think would happen? Never mind the fact that they hired a PR person right after as well.
Something was never right with this case.
I always found it odd that someone would abduct one child but not the others. Presumably if you were going to sell them, why not take 3 for the price of one?
I agree something about this story always stank. Then I read that cadaver dogs found the smell of a body in the room and in their rental car (months after the fact to be fair)
This is what makes no sense to me as well. Why on earth would you take one child and leave the others? Something is just so strange.
It’s a lot harder to move three than it is one.
A poster downthread suggested they gave their kids something to get them to sleep & Madeleine overdosed. That seems like the more plausible scenario than an abduction.
If they accidentally gave her an overdose and then got rid of the body – which would explain the smell of a body in the room and the car – the timeline would be interesting. How long would getting rid of the body take? If he/she was gone for let’s say half an hour, wouldn’t someone have noticed? If this was the case, I guess someone else was involved who helped them. Hmmm…
I don’t have kids myself but I have often taken care of my nephew and nieces ever since they were born (they are now 12 year olds). Up until today I get nervous and start looking around if they are out of sight for more than 5 min. I can’t imagine giving them sleeping pills and leave them alone for hours! I’m judging the hell out of this couple for doing this, especially if they could have afforded a babysitter.
Yes, I have always thought there was something very off about this story.
One person would not be able to take off with a 3 y.o. and 2 infants. Also, you can tell a 3 y.o. to shut up by scaring her. Infants make a lot of noise, they don’t care you’re trying to scare them.
I can see why a single person would not be able to handle three. Duct tape would work fine to stifle cries of any baby or small child, or an injection of a strong sedative. But a baby would be much better for selling and would be nonverbal. If they knew the girl, they would also know how distinctive her eye was (a pigment defect, very easy to see and remember from a picture) and how easily identifiable she would be.
But then I don’t believe the abduction theory. The fact that neighbors heard the girl crying every night means that she did routinely wake up, which supports my theory that she most likely got out of bed and fatally injured herself, possibly because she was groggy from the drug but also could be because she was just half-asleep. She wasn’t home but in a strange place, which would further disorient her. The parents claimed to be frequently checking, but I don’t believe that either. Staff at the bar said otherwise. so she could have been definitely dead with no hope of resuscitation by the time she was found, and her parents would have known it because they were physicians. Her father was an emergency room physician also. The coverup then began out of panic about what they would potentially lose (including their other children as well as their careers). Once starting something like that, you have to keep it up forever.
That also explains their lack of cooperation with the police. They knew she was already dead. Otherwise, they would do anything to help find her. Since she was dead and most likely her body was carried away by the currents, there was little risk from the continued campaign to find the child. The only risk was in the beginning, if the police had been able to find the body and get witnesses to disposal of the body. So stallingvat that stage would be essential.
It will sound cold and cruel but I don’t have sympathy for them either. I have sympathy for the child, and that’s it. They leave their three very young children alone while they socialize away from the apartment, it’s outrageous and revolting. And then there is lack of clarity about what has actually happened that night, also due to them refusing to cooperate. Shady.
I feel very sorry for the twins. Growing up with this hanging over your family cannot be easy. Plus, they may experience survivor guilt. One of my mom’s sisters experienced survivor guilt over the loss of a brother when she was 8 years old. Her entire life was such a struggle.
Survivor Guilt with the added twist that your parents, who you depend on for your safety and your life, did something either incredibly stupid or criminal. And if Madeleine were found alive – what do you say to your child in a scenario like that? We drugged you so we could go have a tipple and someone took you?
LOL, I don’t believe this. Look up this couple’s connections to Clement Freud (who was a notorious pedophile).
I just read some of Lady Macbeth’s – er, Mrs. McCann’s – accounts of their visits/meals with Freud after Madeleine “went missing.”
The woman is a straight up sociopath. O_O
What? HE reached out to them, AFTER the girl went missing. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/06/15/police-were-told-two-years-ago-about-clement-freuds-madeleine-mc/
Notorious pedophile is a bit much since the allegations were just made now and there can b no trial since he is dead.
Also, the McCanns, while they are “off” to me, too, might not have known.
don’t be so naive. plenty of allegations were made public before he died but “libel” laws meant they were never published. His wife apologized straight away ffs. Google “elm house”.
@ellieohara
Okay, but were there allegations during Madeline’s lifetime or did they come to loght after, taht is my point.
Just because his wife was aware doesn’t mean the McCanns did, too.
Nothing about this situation is “lol”.
I can’t imagine what these people are going through, but I never warmed up to them even after all these years in the public eye. Maybe it had to do with the fact that they left their children alone, despite having the resources and the funds to get a babysitter. And the fact that the Met Police is still spending so much money on a crime that didn’t even take place in Britain is ridiculous.
I hope for them that she’s still alive, but the chances are slim.
This matches my sentiments. Something always seemed off about this story.
In Italy it is prohibited by law to leave the children under the age of 14 unsupervised for even a minute. Like really what were they thinking?
is prohibited in britain as well.
There is no specified age in English law. The offence is leave children at risk.
Unsupervised where, in what sense? Do 13 year olds need babysitters in Italy? Are they allowed to use the bathroom in private, or must they have an escort?
at home alone, that’s what it means. until around 12, i think.
Home alone. In the US the rule of thumb was always 12 where I grew up
Interesting. In NC the legal age is 11, but I know many people who leave children slightly younger than that alone for brief periods. I was babysitting other people’s children by age 12. So far I have left my middle schooler alone for an hour here or there, but I’ve never let her watch a sibling or babysit for anyone else.
Wow.
In my neighborhood growing up, most kids were “latch key kids” (meaning parents were gone when they got home from school). Around 10 years old, most were on their own between 3-5pm-ish.
Yes to latchkeyism. Our single mother left me and my brother alone all the time. He and I were walking to school alone, at 6 and 7, holding hands on the busy NY streets. We took subways and trains and busses young. We were left alone while mom went out with her BF, at 8 and 9, and then over weekends starting at 11. We were self-reliant, but I now am neurotically over-protective. Our kids always come out with us to restaurants, and over nights away. Don’t leave home without ’em!
This McMann story continues to be sad and weird.
I’m Portuguese and don’t really know if there’s a law like that but at the time many were convinced they needed to be evaluated by social services because it was pure negligence. If it was a portuguese couple that’s what would’ve happened.
while i’m sympathetic to their pain, losing a child must be terrible, i wish the same amount of resources and media exposure was given to other missing children who are not lucky enough to be born in white, rich families. britain’s class system is one of the things that frustrates me the most about being british.
It’s like that in the US, too. When a white child goes missing, call the cavalry, but when a non-white child goes missing… who?
Yep just look at the missing D.C. Girls. Twitter had more info than the news stations. But they were minorities
The money spent by police looking for this child is orders of magnitude over the budget of any other missing child in the UK, ever. Missingkids.co.uk currently has more than 200 children listed. I honestly think it’s outrageous that we are still expending disproportionate resources on looking for this one child and that the case is still given so much air time.
Originally due to social class and race absolutely and for sure, but these days, I fear, as much due to clickbait for the pro- and anti- conspiracy theories as so many of these notorious cases are.
Kinda like when the American media launch a veritable orgy of programming whenever the Jonbenet Ramsey case hits a milestone anniversary. It’s sick.
Exactly like that, Desi.
It’s also down to her age. A child under 8 goes missing, and the media care. Make it a girl, and they suddenly care more. Make it a white girl, and they are obsessed. Make it a rich white preschooler girl and she’ll be front page news for weeks.
Make it a 13 year old black boy from a housing estate and it may make the local rag. If it’s a slow news day.
It’s sick, really. The age part makes sense – tiny kids are so wholly vulnerable – though teenagers are vulnerable in a whole different way, and actually more so, in terms of sexual abuse. And the rest is just twisted.
This is so true. And when a black child dies (in Chicago it was the toddler who was found under the couch) the racists come out of the woodwork in the comments section of the local news sites like it’s open season, ready to blame their parents, along with the entire black race and the child protective system, at every turn. The hate they spew is sickening.
@Sixer, yes the conspiracy theories keep the all thing going. i know everyone loves a good mystery, i just wish the people who want to talk about it would discuss on like reddit, and leave it at that. this case shouldn’t be front and centre 10 years on, when more could be done to find other children.
Yes. Front and centre in depth interview on the BBC this week. Main item in the prime time national news. Not helpful, sad as that is for the McCanns.
@Sixer: ITA, esp with stories like the gay men being murdered in Chechnya, why British women are considering abortions because of Tory benefit caps and Tony Blair coming back into British politics (god help us). And of course lets not forget the very wobbly Brexit bus that’s loosing more wheels than I thought any bus could have.
Do you remember about 2-3 years ago, there was a little blonde girl that was “found” living in a Roma family in Spain or Portugal and the press (DM and that type of garbage) started to go nuts saying it was little Madeline? Because she was “too pretty” (ie too blonde and white) to be Roma and that it’s known that they steal little kids anyway. The shock some people had when it was confirm that the adoptive parents were telling the truth and that they were asked to take care of her by another family of their acquaintance. It made me want to puke. Class and whiteness definitely seem to be at play here.
We’re not better in Canada, mind you. The moment a white kid goes missing in BC, I get an Amber Alert in Qc. However, if it’s a Native girl from the Prairies, the cops will just assume she ran away to get high or something and will barely pretend to investigate when we find her body tossed in a garbage bag weeks later
I do remember that. That was f*cked up.
Also from Canada and 100% agree with the second part of your comment.
the missing and murdered first nations women and girls are heart breaking.
the lackadaisical attitude toward it is also heart breaking.
highway of tears, for the love of all that is holy! HIGHWAY OF TEARS, and then some of my fellow canadians are all: uh, first nations are spoiled, uh, first nations abuse the government system, uh, lazy and drunk blah blah ignorant horseshite…and on and on and on.
Yes I do. It was vile.
True, I don’t really understand what would compel people to leave small children alone at all, but they were seated in direct view of the apartment, just across the pool. 50 meters.
Still a bizarre choice to make.
They may have been seated in direct view, but they weren’t watching the entire time.
I agree that I’m dumfounded that they would leave three toddlers by themselves. Even if you’re in eyeshot of your apartment, and no adults broke in, three very small kids can get into all sorts of very dangerous trouble in no time!
This. They were asleep, but my kids go through phases of waking from bad dreams…. I just can’t see leaving them alone in a hotel room like that.
Exactly! I would have been paralyzed by the thought of them drowning in the toilet or putting a finger in a socket… or any myriad things that toddlers do even while you’re watching them! I’ve literally never ever heard of “average” people (meaning non drug addicts) leaving such small children alone. And neither of them thought better of the idea!? Bizarre.
My four year-old woke up from a bad dream about 2 hours after I put her to bed last night and tearfully stumbled into the hallway looking for me. I can’t imagine the fear and terror she would have felt if her father and I were nowhere to be found. Things like that happen, and like others have said, little children can get into all kinds of trouble unsupervised. It would never occur to me to leave babies that age alone so I could have dinner with friends. It’s unfathomable. The McCanns are at least partially responsible for this tragedy, even if their account is true (which I doubt.)
This is why people are theorizing that the children were drugged – so they would not wake up while the parents were away. I guess they figured a package of Benadryl is cheaper than a babysitter.
I don’t think it was direct view, all the press reports said the restaurant was a few minutes walk away.
Thats one of the many things that has bugged me – the McCann assertion that they could see the doorway from the bar. The police and investigators proved that was false as wasn’t there a tree, wall or something blocking direct view? The bar was close but they didn’t have a direct viewpoint of the appartment front door.
They were checking on the kids every half hour. Anyone read “the couple next door”? There are a lot of stories out there about drugging the kids, but we don’t know if it’s really true. I don’t know what to make of this story, but it must be hell for the McCanns.
One of the doors was supposedly in view but that was not the door which was left unlocked. The door left unlocked was the opposite side right next to the car park and road. The route to get back to the apartment was about a 5 min walk away because you had to go all the way around the other apartments to get there.
I don’t get a good feeling from these people.
Also, what happens when they do find her, if they do? Do they think this 13-year-old who doesn’t know them at all is just going to melt right back into their family? She probably has no memories of them. And who knows what else she’s been through.
Something just feels wrong about all of it.
I have never bought what these 2 have been selling but in the UK, they have a rep for suing people who dare to question their version of the story which changed several times. Then there are the 50 questions that Kate has refused to answer, such as why did you leave the twins alone to go back to the tapas bar to raise the alarm? I have always felt that they know more than they are telling. The mother has admitted drugging Madeleine so that she would sleep through the night – Kate struggled with 3 kids under 5 and i don’t think her husband gave her any support.
There was a recent story where they thought that they had found her and apparently a private plane was on standby to go ‘get her’. I guess they have no problem taking a child from what she knows/her family as long as they have what they want.
We will never know what happened to that little girl as the Portuguese police royal screwed up the crime scene.
I read about this some time ago: the group of friends they had dinner with that night refused to answer police questions and they even might have made a pact to that extent. I remember this because I couldn’t believe what I was reading. Refusing to cooperate with the police is a crime.
Say what? She left the twins in the same room her daughter disappeared from to go make a call? Wild horses wouldn’t have parted me from their side, especially with their sister just having gone missing from the same room. I didn’t know that, or that they had been fed Benadryl.
A little boy named Micheal Dunahee vanished from the side lines of a soccer game his parents were playing, here in BC. That was around 1990 and he hasn’t been seen or heard of since. Every once in a while his name gets mentioned, or you see his parents on TV, but not a single sign of Micheal.
Michael Dunahee was actually playing at a playground across a large field from where his mother was playing football. He wasn’t on the sidelines or even within earshot
Sorry Digital Unicorn, but the Portuguese police did what they had to do, they actually did more because it was a british family. That version abt the police incompetence was spinned by the couple. The main investigator at the time still believes they are guilty of something and wrote a book about it. I don’t know how right he is, but he was sued by the couple and in the process wrecked his career and his health:/
eh, aside from who did it or not, the way these two were treated was a prime example of white privilege and their social class coming into play. Imagine a working class POC couple in that situation and the media would have dragged them through the mud for ages and been much less sympathetic and no one would have invested that much time and resources, especially with the shady stuff that’s been going on.
That has happened but cases of missing POC rarely make the national new media let alone the international media. The case of Diamond ( 3 years old) and Tionda (10 years old) Bradley who went missing in 2001 while staying home alone in Chicago. They have never been found. In that case being home alone was a part of poverty. Poor parents often face the choice of either going to work and leaving the kids unsupervised or not going to work. The mom in that case also made the mistake of not calling the police right away because she was afraid of what would happen to her. So she had people in the neighborhood looking for the girls for the first several hours after she found out they were missing. Although based on a voicemail the older daughter left her mom, I suspect that the mom’s boyfriend took them and likely killed them.
Well, let’s see – they refused to cooperate with the Portuguese police investigation, had no concerns about leaving the twins behind when they we’re granted an audience with the Pope, gave interviews about feeling a presence in the villa when the Dad went to check the kids (but went back to the tapas bar anyway!) and used public donations to pay their mortgage.
Ten years later and I’m no less convinced that they Casey Anthonyed their kids so Mummy & Daddy could have a night out without wasting money on a babysitter and their daughter accidentally overdosed.
So you think they gave the kids something to make them sleep and it killed Madeline?
Thats the most common theory – that it was accidental and they covered it up. The mother admitted to giving Madeleine something to help her sleep – she was having problems with her. I guess the little girl was struggling to adjust to have 2 younger siblings, its quite a common thing.
I aleays thought there was something stranger about their story…
i think you’re on to something.
These two left their children unattended in a foreign country. Who in their right mind would do something that stupid? You had to money to go to Portugal and rent an apartment but not for a babysitter? SMFH
The DM recently interviewed the nanny they hired to watch the kids during the day. So they had someone to babysit in the daytime but in the evening, they used Benadryl instead of a babysitter (aka the Casey Anthony method of parenting). They are both doctors, so they could certainly hire a babysitter to watch the kids while they went out to dinner. It wouldn’t surprise me if someone was watching their movements and knew they left the kids alone every night.
They used the babysitting service during the day, why not at night? To hide the fact that they were drugging the children.
Whether Maddie was abducted or not, they created the situation where their children were in a very very vulnerable position, its neglect. Am still a bit outraged that they were never prosecuted for child neglect – if this was a single working class mother she would have had her other kids taken off her in a heart beat and thrown in jail.
My theory is that the parents drugged the children so they could leave them alone when they went to the restaurant – if the kids were knocked out, they wouldn’t wake up and wander off somewhere or get into mischief, the way toddlers often do unless they’re closely supervised.
While I don’t buy into the inevitable conspiracy theories about the McCanns, the truth is that they did an irresponsible thing as parents and paid an awful price for it. Their daughter is almost certainly dead and even if she isn’t, no amount of ongoing police work will ever return her to them now.
Her case has used up resources that could have been deployed with a much better chance of success elsewhere. I know that’s a hard and horrible thing to say, but it is true nonetheless.
I’m sad for the McCanns but British media should really stop giving them disproportionate air time because while they still do so, it ensures we’ll continue to have at least four police officers who aren’t looking for children they might actually find.
I agree about the disproportionate access to resources they got but I guess its our class system in motion. If it had been a working class single mother, she would have been crucified in the press and would never have gotten half the help or press the McCanns have.
I agree that Maddie is very likely dead and that public resources/money should be used elsewhere. Harsh but its been 10 years and am sure they can start to pay for investigations themselves.
Definitely class. As ell above and you say.
It’s a shame that Charlene Downes did not get this amount of resources spent in her.
This is very sad, I do believe the theory that they may have killed her by accident. It’s alleged that they sometimes left their 3 young children alone and drugged them with sleeping meds (both are Doctors). This isn’t proven but it’s a credible theory. I think they simply gave her too much on this occasion, then covered it up. Of all the scenarios, this seems to fit the evidence the most (the local police messed up the crime scene unfortunately). It makes me wonder if the other two children (who must be nearly grown up now) will ever remember anything.
They won’t remember anything. I think they were only 18mths at the time and slept through everything; even the commotion of their parents finding their sister gone. Kate McCann was weirdly quiet for someone who discovered their child gone. Plus instead of calling from the balcony which was supposedly within sight of her husband and friends, walked/ran all the way back around to the bar where they were leaving her twins asleep still (and alone again) in the unlocked apartment
The amount of attention these upper middle class people get is so wrong. Even before we found out what really happened with Shannon Matthews the lack of coverage an she had compared to madeline McCann was infuriating!!
In Jacksonville, FL., a newborn baby was abducted from her mother right out of the hospital. A friend of mine went to school with the mother. Fast forward to approximately 18 years later and the now grown woman has been found and reunited with her birth parents. All drama aside, there’s still hope for young Madeline’s return home. Praying for her safety.
I read about that! It’s crazy – I’m so impressed that she was found.
I think you should watch Gonçalo Amaral’s documentary on Youtube. He was the leading investigator in the case and believes the McCans tried to hide Maddie’s body after an accident while they were absent. His theory is pretty sound: how it happened, why it happened, motives, why they weren’t able to prosecute, etc.
At the moment I’d say he’s a national hero for speaking up against them and winning in court. They have been trying to silence him for years. I’m always surprised the international community hasn’t heard about this.
I haven’t seen the documentary, but the McCanns’ full blown media takedown of Mr. Amaral was a bizarre thing to behold. I always wondered what muckety-muck they knew in the British press/government to get the blatantly manipulated coverage they got.
Thank you for this information. I was little when it happened and I remember feeling very sad about that girl. At least now, I think it’s clear the girl is dead, and not being abused or exploited like the parents want people to believe.
The McCanns’s are horrible, I hope they rot in hell.
I’m Portuguese and didn’t know about the doc! It’s really sad how this case messed up his life. His career is over and he had/has health issues while dealing with the court. I also didn’t know he won in court.
I kind of tuned off when they talked about it on tv, it just made me angry.
The police did an extra effort because they were British and still had to deal with accusations of incompetence, that area of Algarve became forever connected to that crime and they were never evaluated by social services and accused of negligence like it would’ve have happened if they were nationals.
I was on holiday in my country, Portugal, at the time and everyone was horrified with the prospect of a little girl having been kidnapped in a place most of us go to to spend our holidays. Then, progressively, we all were befuddled by the things we learned about the case. It was negligence for sure. A police DI published a book with all the evidence mentioned above because 1) they discredited the Portuguese police 2) he found proof they were guilty of at least concealing her body somewhere.
Since then, there are despised by everyone there as arrogant, xenophobic and most likely negligent and criminal.
This just to give you the local perspective.
I guess everyone grieves differently and we don’t have to be likeable when we loose someone. However, they were incredibly negligent and obstructive to the police investigation.
I googled Portuguese police and they have 3 departments, PSP, GNR, and PJ. What does DI stand for, Slowsnow?
I live in the U.K. si I am using the Detective Inspector (DI).
See @M.’s post above. His name is Gonçalo Amaral and he has been campaigning against the McCann’s ever sice he investigated the case. They sued him and tried to have his book off the shelves. I had no idea there was a youtube video.
My take is that he had no obligation to go after them the way he did, and nothing to gain from it other than the truth. If Portugal was the USA then I guess it could be a way to gain money from the book deal but I would be very surprised if he became a millionaire out of it in Portugal.
I just checked and Gonçalo Amaralo, as per The Sun, made £344,000 in book royalties apparently.
It’s always good to have facts!
And you think “The Sun” is giving you the facts? Pull the other one!
@yep
Yes, I thought that too but it was the only source I could find… You’re right, probably not a “fact”. What I meant is that it’s always a bit hard in these kinds of sensitive topics to just go by instinct as it is someone else’s life – and potential murder at stake. So, yes, definitely not going for the sun for facts.
If he made money out of it he is isn’t using it well. The last time I heard about him, being financial comfortable wasn’t really part of his reality. He left the police (retired I think) and is sick. He seemed to have aged a lot. This was almost teb biggest case of his career. And money motivations should always be on the table but it always seemed that he couldn’t let that case go because of the unfairness of it all.
He was responsible for another one when the mother killed her daughter but never said where she his the body. She was initially a missing case too because her mother lied for a long time.
Portuguese here and yes, that’s a pretty good description:(
Anyone who’s interested in this should watch Richard D Hall’s 2 docs which examine in great and unsparing detail all aspects of this case. And also his ’embedded confessions’ interview with Peter Hyatt. So many many many unanswered questions.
I don’t know if the McCanns were involved in their daughter’s disappearance or not. Leaving the kids alone was irresponsible and neglectful.
But for everyone commenting that something seems off about their story, that is true for a lot of these cases. Remember, Jaycee Dugard’s stepfather was under suspicion regarding her disappearance until the day she was found.
Yeah, “hope is still there” that these people will ‘fess up and tell the truth about what really happened to their daughter that night.
Yes, hopefully. Hiding the truth must be a huge burden on them.
They’ve always appeared to me to revel a bit in the attention.
Oh they scream guilty to me. I also think they keep the investigation going because they can’t give up and maintain their “innocence”. This is of course my opinion.
Honest question, why weren’t they accused of child neglect? In Portugal. As far as I know they weren’t accused of anything.
I just checked and, unfortunately and embarrassingly, there are no laws in my country, Portugal, regarding the age at which it is legal to leave a child on his or her own alone in a a house.
Therefore that were no grounds to convict them for that. As someone said above, if it had happened in the UK they would have been convicted because I think the legal age is 12.
Thanks for sharing slowsnow. I must admit this is an explanation I never expected.
I have no knowledge about law but I hear stories until my parent’s generation of children being on their own out of necessity. Portugal was very poor until and after the 1974 revolution (that we celebrated in the past 25th of April – 43 years!) that threw the authoritarian regime in place.
Since then, things have substantially changed. But I guess this one aspect is certainly flawed.
@Slowsnow – please stop being so hard on your beautiful country. The McCann PR machine borderline bullied the PJ into believing/having to accept that their utterly disgraceful child negligence was ‘standard practice’ and ‘well within the bounds of good parenting’. And I’m quoting their own words.
The important thing to remember here is that the PJ expressed, from the very start, their utter astonishment and disbelief that any parent could think it was reasonable to leave a tiny 3yr old and a pair of even tinier 2yr olds (3 babies!!) alone in an unlocked villa, night after night, while their parents went out to dinner.
The defense of what most would consider negligence is what always floored me. These were financially well-off people who could have paid a sitter that evening.
But it wasn’t just that evening!
They left their 3 small babies alone and the doors unlocked EVERY SINGLE EVENING of their holiday!!
I really wish Corey’s post had included a link to the PJ files.
http://mccannpjfiles.co.uk/
Once again, there is no legal age in the UK. The statute refers to leaving children at risk.
slowsnow, there are laws in Portugal against leaving children alone. I know, because I’m a teacher and if we notice one of our students is being left alone at home, we must contact CPCJ ( Comission for the Protection of Children and Adolescents)… They do the enqury and in some cases, children are taken away from their parents for negligence… So, there are laws… The problem here is that the McCann were British with powerful friends, inclunding friends with the British Prime Minister at thetime… That’s why, Pure and simple.. Unfortunately…
As far as I’m concerned, one or both of the McCanns either personally caused the death and/or disappearance of their daughter, or their actions created an environment of such breathtaking negligence and stupidity that allowed someone else to cause the death and/or disappearance of their daughter.
So either way, they’re 100% responsible in my book.
Very eloquently put.
A heinous pair of negligent liars who’ve turned their daughter’s disappearance into a business model. The only thing the Portuguese police found on the bedroom window shutters: Kate McCann’s fingerprints. There are hundreds of YouTube videos and articles online pointing directly to their guilt. The sniffer dogs who had never been wrong found the cadaverine scent/blood/bodily fluids in several different incriminating places. She died in the apartment and her body probably contained evidence of having been sedated: illegal and you can lose your license to practise medicine. They’re both horrible human beings to no end.
For me, the youtube videos that slowed down their interviews to catch the ‘micro-expressions’ on their faces was really telling. Mrs. McCann was caught multiple times with what is referred to as “Duper’s Delight”. This type of micro-expression is a smile or smirk that someone makes really quickly after telling a lie they think they’ve gotten away with. She showed this Duper’s Delight micro-expression after questions like “did you have anything to do with your daughter’s disappearance”.
Thank god for the armchair psychologists over analysing every micro second of footage.
Bobafelty, I love this type of stuff!
It’s interesting, and I’m really liking the theories of an OD and cover up, which would explain how she feels she got away with it.
I’m going to watch this tonight and see if I can notice the micro expressions.
Gerry displays duper’s delight often, and his body language is very telling as well. I’ve worked in mental health. He’s lying through his teeth. Kate just talks around the questions; they don’t really truly ANSWER any of the questions.
Kaylee Anthony, Jonbenet Ramsey, Madeleine McCaan… all three dead because of their parents’ negligence, and all covered up in the same fashion. Same story, different day. Casey Anthony was trying to make it look like a kid napping too…
Why do people even have kids if they don’t want to care for them?
There has been something fishy about this story from the beginning. The conspiracy theories online are endless and I have no wish to add to them. However I just can’t warm to the McCanns at all even after 10 years.
How do they still have hope.. 10 years is a long time!
Reading thru comments the consensus seems to be the parents did it (accidentally)
I’m having a hard time disseminating actual facts from rumor. No shade being thrown, I’m being serious. I remember when this crime happened and it’s so sad. (Of course it’s very sad to realize the racial bias given to white blonde girl). Back to fact or rumor…cadaver dogs brought in and went crazy on trunk. True? I didn’t remember that.
Exactly. What ever happened to innocent until proven guilty? With no body, nothing can be proven.
The part about cadaver dogs is true but some people insist it was a car they didn’t rent until after she vanished – seems to be hard to get the facts on that one. The dogs did not have a perfect record.
So much repeating of rumours, suppositions, allegations, and feelings that something is shady. They made a mistake. Most parents make them. They have been punished in a way that most parents thankfully are not. I will regard them as murderers if and when they are convicted in a court of law.
Yeah, I tend to think the same. They made a horrible mistake and they were punished for it in the worst way. I’m inclined to think something else happened that we don’t even know. The parents will forever blame themselves and you can see it etched on their faces.
I don’t agree. If they blame themselves, exploiting her name to raise £££££££££££££ for themselves, enjoying a celeb lifestyle off her back, doing everything in their power to prevent a proper investigation, and suing at the drop of the hat is not exactly a sign of it.
agreed
Man these comments are disgusting. I put my kids to sleep and sit in my backyard. I’m 50 meters away. So if something happened to them “I deserve it”?? Yes they shouldn’t have left the kids in a hotel room. But kids sleep like rocks sometimes. It was a mistake and they’ve paid dearly for it. Stop with your judgment.
I agree. On the maps online it looks far, but on video you can see that where they were sitting you could see the front of the apartment. I don’t think they did it. I think someone noticed that the kids were being left alone because they did it several nights in a row (as did their vacation companions with their children). This sick individual used it as an opportunity to do the unthinkable. That poor baby girl and her poor family 😭
People online can be so heartless.
Which brings us to the fact that there are dangerous predators out there looking to do crimes of opportunity, which this may have been. You go out every night in the complex, people who work there know you have kids and you leave them in your apartment with no supervision. You might as well put a sign up that says, “come and take ’em! They’re all yours!”
There is a difference between sitting in your back yard to where the apartment was to the pool area. Their apartment was not even in the Mark Warner complex but in a neighboring street.
Yes it is 50m as the crow flies but to walk to their apartment they have to leave the resort walk down the street through an unlockable gate and access the apartment from the rear. The apartment door which was unlocked and used by the McCanns was next to the road and on the opposite side of where they can see. There is a big difference to that and you sitting in your garden.
@babadoosh The apartment was unlocked! Maddy was taken because of their blatant negligence. They could have hired a baby sitter, the resort offered one. It is absolutely unacceptable to leave three young kids alone in a foreign country never mind at home. Also it’s been proven they’ve used the donations to the fund for her to pay off their mortgage. I feel no sympathy for them. So yes I think people have the right to judge them for being so stupid.
“It was a mistake and they’ve paid dearly for it” — no, their daughter paid dearly for it. What YOU did — 50 yards away in the privacy of your own yard, and in a house that you probably did your best to “baby-proof” — is not the same as what THEY did: leaving three toddlers alone at night in an unlocked hotel room in a foreign country while going out for drinks. Some “mistakes” are so bad, they amount to crimes. Other posters like myself think the McCanns’ negligence rises to the level of a crime. Yet instead of cooperating with police to get their daughter back, they hired public relations people, set up a fund to receive monetary donations, and brought reporters with them as they traveled Europe to meet with the Pope and visit religious sites. They have yet to adequately pay (i.e., criminal charges) for their part in her disappearance and probably death.
Mrs.krabapple – THIS!!! absolutely THIS!!!
Long time lurker, 1st time responding. I absolutely agree with your comment.
Such a relief you all think this way too. I thought I was a lone porcupine there. That these grifters have been able to get away with this me me me victim victim victim hustle for 10 years (!) astonishes me; meanwhile, while they’re busy off raking in the dough, who’s been raising their other 2 kids? I shudder to think what their lives are like. Despicable people. Unfit parents. Unfit to hold a physician’s licence. Creatures of the crap Brit press’ endless Brexiteering.
This poor girl. This stinks to the high heavens.
There was botched so that short of some confession, I’m doubtful this will be solved
It’s very hard to believe the parents covered up something – will they even have the time to do it? On the other hand, why would they leave 3 kids alone, without a single baby monitor and with an unlocked door ? Seems extremely reckless though I’m reluctant to blame the parents for something so horrid. I was wondering if Maddie woke up, wondered out of the apartment into the street (apparently, the only way to get to the restaurant was through a public road and the unlocked door was on that side) and was either kidnapped or hit by a car, then disposed of somewhere far away from the site.
If that was the case would you hire a PR guru before calling the police? Would you refuse to do a reconstitution of the event with the police?
I think that upon finding Maddie gone, and the door unlocked and window wide open, the mother’s first words were “somebody took her!” (i.e, this is all the fault of a third party) — and not the first thought that most people would have, “she got out, we’ve got to find her!” (the fault of the parents for allowing that situation). It was very calculated to have people view THEM (the parents) as “victims.” And this was from the very first second. That’s some kind of impressive self-preservation behavior right there, given the shock of finding your daughter gone.
Yes that was supremely bizarre. Her first words “someone’s taken her!”… WHY would that ever be someone’s first thought, especially if they could ‘see the apartment from the restaurant’ (lies…)
It’d be ‘oh crap! Maddy wandered off!’, let’s get out and find her
In 1993 my aunt left her 6 year old daughter at the front door of her house to go inside and make her a sandwich because she refused to go inside to eat. It was 12 am and there were a lot of people around It was all 10 meters of distance from the kitchen. The house was surrounded by 5 store palaces and there were people in the balconies etc etc. A car entered that area, a blond young woman descended from the car, took the girl in broad daylight, climbed back and the car was never to be seen again. No screaming, no noise, calmly going away. The police was alerted almost immediately as a neighbor become suspicious and there were several witnesses that day who could identify the car, the woman, the driver and a partial plate license but to no avail. Some time later a blond woman and a man were arrested but released soon after and the prosecutor of the case disappeared. Those were dark years for my family and country as we woke up to a terrible realization: The days of safety were over for real. During communism we had a lot of problems but the abduction of children from private citizens was not one of them. ( the state was terrific ant enough).
My aunt has looked everywhere, Has written to different presidents and prime ministers. Has been in shows that look for missing persons and made a case even in neighboring countries to no avail. It’s been 25 years and my cousin is missing and we have no clue whatsoever. You really can’t tell her to stop looking and she says that she want’s at least a grave to cry on. She want to know. A lot can be said about but in the end a parent will always look for their child no mater what. If It happened to me 14 millions or 140 millions would not matter. I would want to find my child.
Also we live in another city and at the time of the kidnap my parents were at work and the police came to our house the next day to ask questions and tried to blame my father for wanting to have a daughter as maybe he couldn’t have one and probably that’s why he took his sisters instead as she was poor. He called the three of us (one boy and two girls) form the other room and showed us to them and told them to fuck of the house and he didn’t want to talk to them again. You have no idea what they will tell you and how you will react to it
Lots of armchair psychologists and perfect parents on here today I see.
Forget leaving the children alone or giving them medicatication to sleep: would you hire a PR guru before the police? Would you refuse to do a reconstruction of that night? Would you prefer not to answer police questions – namely to understand how could Kate’s clothes and their car have blood and dead body smell (identified by trained dogs)? Please, fishy to say the least.
Please show me the evidence they hired a PR person before calling the cops. I call BS. Stop peddling this nonsense.
Yes Zeddy. And lots of people who know what “appropriate” behaviour is for parents whose child has been kidnapped. There doesn’t seem to be a realisation that the same prejudice is, for example, applied to rape victims who don’t behave in the way that some unwritten rule book says they should.
Well.. really, at BEST they negligently were the cause of their daughter’s disappearance/death, at WORST they were active participants.
There isn’t much silver lining there. You don’t need to be a ‘perfect parent’ but some bloody perspective is a good thing. Don’t leave your three babies alone for hours with zero supervision in a foreign country – does that sound unreasonable? It’s like the parents who ‘just pop into the shops for a minute’ and leave their kid to die in a hot car. Like, really.
You have pretty low standards if your definition of “perfect parent” is someone who’s never drugged their toddlers and left them alone in an unlocked apartment in a foreign country while they went off for a night on the town.
The documentary I mentioned: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_ZdDTsFC2g
This tragedy has so many layers and is heartbreaking, but the bottom line is: these parents let their children alone to go out, they gave them medication to sleep, the dogs smelled dead body odor both at the house, on Kate’s clothes and on the car they rented, neither them or the friends agreed with the police to do a reconstruction of that night’s events, they immediately hired a huge PR guru and there is no history of crime in that area. A must watch: https://youtu.be/x_ZdDTsFC2g
I’ve never believed the parents were anything other than incredibly negligent. I remember thinking they didn’t acquit themselves well after the fact. And Kate’s mother – what an idiot. She screeched about her daughter being treated unfairly because she was so beautiful. Yeah that’s it – the only problem is bigotry against the beautiful, not their utter failure as parents.
It is a tragic story. One question is how the McCann’s have been able to keep this in the public eye for so long and get so much public money spent on the case. Many people have said that if they were working class and not doctors they would have never got so much sympathy. I really feel sorry for so many other people in the UK whose kids have gone missing, the McCann’s have really managed to get a disproportionate amount of attention. I also wonder how all of this is affecting the twins. I heard the mother no longer works as a doctor. I also have never warmed to the McCann’s, understandably something inside of them must have died, but I have never detected any warmth or vulnerability from them. I believe this case will forever be in the public eye.
Reading these comments makes me understand why trump was elected president. Low information, gossip hungry, conspiracy driven voters who hear something and repeat it as fact. Sad.
Or gullible fools like you who just want to give these ‘hard done-by’ negligent parents a break. There is loads of gossip but there are also many facts that very clearly expose those parents as somewhat responsible for this tragedy.
What? Most of what people are saying here is fact.
The tapas bar was 160m away from the apartment (50m as the crow flies) and not in the Mark Warner complex. The unlocked door was on the opposite side to where they could possibly see and next to the public road and car park – indisputable fact.
The children were left alone every night of their holiday (fact according to even the McCanns). Kate McCann had previously given drugs to Maddie to get her to sleep (Fact – according to what she told police).
The twins were not woken all night and were taken from the room still asleep when the police arrived (Fact – According to the lead investigator). The investigators did ask the McCanns for hair samples from the twins; permission was denied (according to lead investigator.
Sniffer dogs identified dead body both on the boot of the McCann hire car and in the apartment behind the sofa (the only thing that is incorrect is that they hired the car after the disappearance).
2 people were seen carrying a child wearing similar pyjamas in the evening (one discovered months later to be a tourist one still unidentified seen by friends of the McCanns which was deemed suspicious by the lead investigator due to her story changing). They refused to take part in a reconstruction- fact according to investigators and media.
They hired a PR person (not before calling police but within the first 12 hours) – fact according to lead investigator. Political pressure was also put on the investigators over what the investigators were and were not allowed to do. There are an awful lot more facts I can list if you want.
As this was enormous news all over Europe for a decade, most of what has been said is widely known. Gossip and theories over what people think happened in mysteries is natural and not some Trump mentality.
It might help to remember that this is a gossip site, AnneC, and that people are discussing the actual disappearance of a child.
In contrast to the right wing’s insane nonsense about Hillary abducting a child, or whatever that story was that they were circulating. Which I did not read, because, seriously…
reading all these Nancy Grace style comments all I can think about is Lindy Chamberlain, who was wrongly convicted of her daughter’s murder all because the media and public decided that she wasn’t acting like a proper grieving mother and therefore must be guilty. Nothing ever changes.
To quote South Park, it was definitely Some Puerto Rican Guy. You know, the same who killed JonBenet Ramsey and Nicole Brown Simpson.