Search for Madeleine

Day 100

http://www.findmadeleine.com/

Don't forget about Madeleine

it looks like police are now centering their investigation on Maddy's parents...according to U.S. news sources...

I ask myself how is it possible a mother behaviour like that!!!

I'm really disgusted, if it's true what the media report, now.

Although it is possible, we shouldn't jump to conclusions. The media delights in muck raking and what they report isnt always true. For example the Clark case.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Meadow

Can you imagine what the mother went through? She was tried and convicted of killing her children, only to have it proved they were cot deaths, and that the so called expert was wrong. I'll just wait for the facts from the police to come out.

I agree. But I wouldn't trust the police to get to the bottom of it, given their recent press releases - it seems they just want to convict someone and forget about it.

The release of the DNA evidence is what leads me to this conclusion. I have two daughters in this age range. They are healthy and very, very active, and have the scrapes and bruises to show for it. I'm sure there's DNA "evidence" all over my house, my cars, our clothes, etc.

Frankly, I'd find it suspicious if there weren't traces in the rental car. Further, I find it of questionable competence that the police waited so long to check the car. The offer of a two-year sentence for a confession - without so much as finding the body or means of death - is just confirmation that the police are engaged in a fishing expedition.

I'm not religious, but I'd like to think there's a special hell for people who deliberately harm children. If her parents are responsible, I'd like them to pay the price - but let's prove it first.

'Negligent Dad's Ridiculous Claims'

Madeleine McCann's father has been branded "negligent" over claims his daughter's abductor was hiding in their holiday apartment.
A senior Portuguese police officer also described Gerry McCann's theory "ridiculous".

Gerry believes someone was hiding in his daughter's bedroom when he checked on Madeleine and her siblings in Praia Da Luz on the night of May 3.

But the head of Portugal's police federation, Carlos Anjos, told Diaria de Noticas: "Since their daughter disappeared, Gerry and Kate have followed a strategy of almost daily announcements of new facts.

"Four months after his daughter's disappearance - a period in which he was interviewed various times by the Policia Judiciaria - he remembered that a man was hidden in his apartment where his three children were sleeping, at a time in which he went to check if the kids were OK.

"If he was suspicious that there was a man in the apartment, and then he calmly went to dinner, then words cannot describe how negligent he is as a father."

Clarence Mitchell, the family's spokesman, said Mr McCann's fears came to him only after Madeleine's abduction and Mr Anjos had "totally misunderstood" what he said.

He said: "This was in the original witness statement.

"There is nothing that has come out recently that should be of surprise to the officers."

Other reports today say Madeleine's grandmother repeated the abduction theory, saying she feared the youngster was drugged to stop her crying out for help.

Eileen McCann, 69, told the Daily Mirror: "I believe [whoever took her] gave her a drug. There is no way they carried her out of there without her waking.

"If she was taken when she was sleeping by somebody she did not know she would have screamed the place down."

http://news.sky.com/skynews/article/...286562,00.html

here in America they are reporting the case is being dropped after almost a year...any news back in Portugal,Melo?

News reports in London today state the Portuguese police are discontinuing the investigation of (and search for) missing Madeleine due to lack of evidence.

They added that they would, of course, restart the investigation should new evidence come to light.

My hopes for a happy, healthy, albeit abducted, Maddy still stands.

"Police have completed their final report into the disappearance of British child Madeleine McCann but officials have taken no decision yet on whether to proceed with the investigation or close the case, Portugal's attorney-general said Tuesday.

Three newspapers - Correio da Manha, Jornal de Noticias and Expresso - published comments on Tuesday from unidentified police sources saying the 14-month investigation had reached a dead end and is to be ended due to a lack of conclusive evidence.

However, Attorney-General Fernando Pinto Monteiro said in a statement that prosecutors will examine the police report before deciding whether to halt the investigation or undertake further inquiries.

Officials will "determine whether further inquiries are needed or whether the conditions are in place for the investigation to be closed," the statement e-mailed to The Associated Press said.

It said the case file amounted to "dozens of volumes" and noted that the judicial secrecy law covering ongoing investigations, which ensures evidence remains confidential, expires only in mid-August.

Madeleine McCann went missing in Portugal's southern Algarve region during a family vacation in May 2007, a few days before her fourth birthday. Detectives named her parents, Kate and Gerry, and local man Robert Murat as formal suspects in the case. All denied involvement in Madeleine's disappearance.

Closing the case would mean that the official suspects would no longer be under formal investigation.

The McCanns, who have waged an international campaign to find their daughter, returned home to central England with Madeleine's younger sister and brother last September, a few days after they were named as suspects.

Clarence Mitchell, the parents' spokesman, said that if the investigation were to be closed he expected the search for Madeleine to continue.

"The information in their files surely cannot sit on the shelf gathering dust. Kate and Gerry will never give up searching for their daughter," Mitchell said.

He said that if Portuguese police end their inquiry they should hand their files over to the McCanns' private investigators.

"The police themselves must continue looking for Madeleine. We are concerned that if they are to simply shelve the case then what will happen to all of the information in their files? They must be made available to our investigators, who are working extremely hard to find Madeleine," Mitchell said.

The case has drawn global interest. A few weeks after Madeleine vanished, Pope Benedict XVI blessed the McCanns and a photo of their daughter during his weekly general audience at the Vatican. Numerous reported sightings of the blonde-haired girl proved to be false.

British and Portuguese police have cooperated in the investigation. Sophisticated forensic tests on evidence gathered at the resort where the girl disappeared were carried out in Britain.

In April, British police in England, accompanied by Portuguese detectives, re-interviewed the McCanns' friends, who were having dinner with them when Madeleine vanished."

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/...r=HOME_4222136

I'm interested in what the local folks are thinking? Do they see the McCanns as the guilty parties, do they suspect someone else. What do they think about the police, and have the police done enough? From my times in Portugal I know that the Portugese people are very family minded. What's their thoughts on the matter?

You are right, most of the portuguese people think that McCanns are guilty because portuguese people have many concerns and caring with children. It's not very usual parents leave their children alone at home.

About the police, well I think they did what they could, I think they did more than usually do for other similar cases, the reason is obvious, this is a case with a foreign family. If they were competent or not, I don't know.

A former police said recently that there were strong suspicions that the McCann were involved, because the blood they found in the car and the mother's clothes was blood corpse. But this is not what portuguese people think, It will be a tremendous shock to portuguese parents if this is true!

In my own personal opinion, I think the parents had some kind of involvement. I hope am wrong, but stranger things have happened and life has shown us that anything is possible. I also have a problem with any parent leaving their child unattended and it was something that we as parents would never have done. Thanks for your thoughts Melo.