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[Merged] Madeleine McCann


Aaronsmom

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Teaser tonight on Nancy Grace Mysteries announces next Friday evening's episode will feature the disappearance of Madeline McCann, a girl of almost three who disappeared while sleeping in a vacation house in Portugual in summer, 2005. Madeline was visiting Portugual with her parents, both doctors from the UK and a younger sister and brother. Her parents were enjoying dinner with two other couples with whom the McCann's were traveling, at a poolside table about 100 ft. from the resort cottage where the three little children were sleeping. The six parents took turns checking on all the children every 30 min. Nothing seemed amiss until the McCanns returned to the cottage to discover Madeline missing. Despite a massive, international investigation and millions of dollars in resources expended, and in which the McCann parents themselves fell under heavy suspicion by the Portugueese law enforcement, and thousands of leads followed, as well as a multitude of alleged "Madeline sightings", the girl has never been found and no better sense of where she is, or even if she's alive or dead than there was the day she went missing, the disappearance remains an unsolved mystery.

I'm sure all of you reading this post are well aware of this case, as it drew intense publicity around the world and topped tabloid headlines for many months. So I'm posting this info for anyone still interested in the story. The teaser for next week's episode claims Scotland Yard has new evidence that gives them hope Madeline is alive. I can't imagine, so I will probably want to watch.

Nancy Grace Mysteries airs on HLN, Friday nights, at 8pm EDT/7pm CDT (and repeats two hours later).

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I think there's already a thread about Maddie McCann somewhere.

I have never believed her parents were involved. I believe the same about JonBenet's parents and the murder of their daughter.

I think Maddie is long dead but I'd love to be proved wrong.

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Sorry! The name is Madelein, not Madeline. My bad. Also, I wrote the date of abduction wrong--Maddie was taken in May 2007, not in 2005.

I'm sure there are other threads about Madelein. I started this one to alert people to the upcoming program.

I don't believe for a second the McCanns did anything. From the start I thought it was a ludicrous accusation. I don't think anyone credible still suspects them.

The thing about the McCanns as compared to the Ramseys is how totally different the two crimes are. Madelein disappeared from the apartment where the family was staying and has never been found. No sign of foul play was found anywhere in the family's lodgings. The whereabouts of the parents at the time of the disappearance are accounted for irrefutably. A credible witness reported seeing the figure of a man walking quickly from near the family's apartment, carrying a still (sleeping) child in white or pink clothes (Maddie was wearing pale pink PJs) when she left the dinner gathering to check on her own children. Two witnesses in the neighborhood reported seeing the same thing on their block around that same time. The McCanns stayed nearby the abduction site for months to aid the investigation. There was no evidence the perpetrator spent more than enough time to remove the sleeping child in the apartment. There are no conflicting facts as to the motive of the abductor.

By contrast, Jon Benet Ramsey was taken from her bed, but found only hours later in the family home, murdered gruesomely, hidden in the basement. A ransom note, determined to have been written in the home, was found. The length of the ransom demand as well as the complex actions of the murder indicate the perpetrator spent considerable time in the victim's home--highly unusual in child abduction crimes. Finding both a ransom note and a gruesome pedophile murder scene in the house scream in each other's face of polar-opposite motives. The Ramseys fled out-of-state later in the day of the murder, stayed away for months, and cut off cooperation with investigators at the time they left for over a year.

The only similarities I see are the victims were both pretty little girls, and the parents of both victims fell under accusation by local police and tabloid publications. The McCanns were cleared completely by all investigators within a year of the crime. The Boulder police have never stopped believing the Ramseys are responsible for the crime, as is true of a lot of the public and other criminal investigators outside Boulder. Another commonality, I suppose, is first-responders failed to secure the crime scene and both botched the investigations. Aside from those few similarities, the two crimes could not be more unalike.

It's chilling and heart-breaking that Maddie might be dead. Even so, I think there is a credible possibility that she's alive somewhere. She was so young when she was taken, it would be easy to manipulate her into believing she is with the person/people to whom she belongs, and may have even forgotten the abduction, or her life before it. Also, she would be an easy victim to keep captive. The recovery of Jaycee Dugard and the three young women in Cleveland held captive for 10 years, gives me realistic hope that Maddie is still alive and may be recovered someday too.

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Thanks for the link. The article I read yesterday online explained how the supposed forensic evidence (leaked to the media by Portuguese investigators) was faulty and unreliable, and said that although the first results in the early investigation were conceded by Portuguese LE to be inconclusive and therefore highly unreliable, they weren't nearly so forthright with the public about the revised theories as they were about the original info leaked. So much of the public is unaware the evidence was retracted and see a dark cloud of suspicion over the parents. And that's sad.

No, there is rarely the sensationalized publicity in the McCann disappearance as in other child disappearances. I agree it's sad and unfair, but that's the media--and the appetite of popular culture--for you.

The idea that Maddie's parents are responsible for her death and the cover-up that followed is laughable to say the least. The "mechanics" of that scenario is ridiculously implausible to have occurred in the sliver-narrow window of opportunity that existed the night Madelein disappeared. That's for starters. The list from there goes on, seemingly without end. I sincerely hope that, whatever happened to Madelein, the answers are uncovered someday (sooner than later). I can't imagine the hell her family endures daily, as the mystery persists, unsolved.

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i think they were behind it, theres a strong suspicion here in the UK that they were involved

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I don't think so, and it seems the vast majority of the public does think it was a stranger abdication. All signs point to it. There's no evidence the parents are behind it, and the time line doesn't work at all.

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i think they were behind it, theres a strong suspicion here in the UK that they were involved

I don't think you have to look much further than the parents. If the parents had been a couple of unemployed individuals from an housing estate, the media would have cut them to pieces but because they are a couple of professional Dr's, respected individuals..blahh

I am also sick to death of this whole thing now, we have kids abducted on a daily basis.. why is this one so special, I get parents asking me to recover their kids, their children but can't afford the fee's and this case has had millions thrown at it, we can recover kids for just a few thousand.

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THIS , who in their right mind would leave 3 children under 5 years old, alone, in a flat in a foreign country whilst the parents wine - n -dined ???????

People do things. Most of the time, there are no bad effects. Every once in a while, though, some freak thing will happen and then all of a sudden, a relatively trivial choice or course of action looks like an incomprehensible lapse in judgment.

The children weren't exactly left all alone. The parents left them after they were asleep in bed and joined friends for dinner at an outside table about 90-100 ft. away. Another couple with children also dining with the McCanns did the same. The four parents took turns checking on the sleeping children about every half hour. This was a quiet, low-key, upscale neighborhood, where the last thing a patron would do is expect a low-life criminal to snatch an innocent sleeping child from her bed.

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One thing that I've seen happen in a lot in cases of a tragedy is how harsh people become on the outside looking in. The McCanns did something that, in hindsight, treated their parental responsibilities too lightly. There were plenty of times in my youth when my parents entertained friends in the back yard on a summer night after the little kids were in bed. No one thought anything of it. And the doors were open. Had a child abductor been about and knew there were young children asleep and unsupervised inside the house, with distracted parents hundreds of feet away, it would have been a perfect time to sneak in stealthily and snatch one of us out of our beds and make off with a helpless child. Had that happened, there would have been plenty of people who would have condemned my parents for doing something that, literally, millions of people probably did and never suffered ill consequences.

I recall talking to a friend about the Chamberlain case in Australia when a couple with a newborn and two young boys went camping for a holiday, at a campsite full of other people, and a wild dog in the area stole into the camp and made off with the baby. My friend shocked me by saying in a very self-righteous tone, it was really stupid and careless of them to leave the tent flap unzipped. Whenever I've been camping, I ALWAYS remember to zip the tent flap--I would never leave it unzipped!

Tragedies happen when things out of the norm are done, or sensible precautions are overlooked, AND extremely, unpredictably bad luck has the misfortune of occurring at the same time. We can't condemn people for making a mistake sometimes, or for failing to foresee a completely unlikely and freakish happenstance. If we can't forgive people for being human, and therefore fallible, then how can we forgive ourselves, or expect anyone else to either?

Just because the McCanns failed to exercise the most airtight, fool-proof arrangements for childcare while on vacation and dining with friends outdoors, 100 ft. away or so, they have been demonized, vilified. It doesn't make how ordinary or trivial details they overlooked make them worthy of contempt. and it doesn't make them criminals. I have never understood the rancor and condemnation of some of the public for the McCanns in this heart-wrenching tragedy which no doubt has ruined their lives considerably.

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People do things. Most of the time, there are no bad effects. Every once in a while, though, some freak thing will happen and then all of a sudden, a relatively trivial choice or course of action looks like an incomprehensible lapse in judgment.

The children weren't exactly left all alone. The parents left them after they were asleep in bed and joined friends for dinner at an outside table about 90-100 ft. away. Another couple with children also dining with the McCanns did the same. The four parents took turns checking on the sleeping children about every half hour. This was a quiet, low-key, upscale neighborhood, where the last thing a patron would do is expect a low-life criminal to snatch an innocent sleeping child from her bed.

They choose the complex because of the child care facilities and yet never used them?

Checking on your children every half hour is not acceptable . Why not just leave your kids at home and pop in to your local and drop by every half hour to see they are OK?

it is indeed a heart-wrenching tragedy, but they only have themselves to blame.

I would never leave any child alone... "NOT EVEN IN MY OWN HOME". never mind another country.

If the McCannes were drawing benefits and unemployed they would have been crucified by the press and probably behind bars now.

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it is indeed a heart-wrenching tragedy, but they only have themselves to blame.

I would never leave any child alone... "NOT EVEN IN MY OWN HOME". never mind another country.

If the McCannes were drawing benefits and unemployed they would have been crucified by the press and probably behind bars now.

That is what ticked a lot of people off.. Why on earth would they leave small children alone in an apartment? You would have to be bonkers to do that !!! If you did that at home you would face a lot of heat from the law... That is messed up... Something not right with what they did and how they went about this case...

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Well good for you, xsas! How lucky for your children they have a parent who would never have a lapse in judgment, never practice any parenting strategies or choices beyond reproach, never mistakenly underestimate the dangers of a seemingly safe situation, never do or not do anything that would put them at risk for ANYTHING bad happening. I sincerely hope for your sake that if, God forbid, any misfortune befalls one of your kids because you look the other way for a second, or forget to latch a door or gate, or mistakenly believe someone you let near your kids is decent and trustworthy when in fact he is a sadistic deviant, that you are treated by people who learn of your heartbreak with more compassion and understanding than you seem able to muster for the McCanns.

Despite your assessment that "the McCanns only have themselves to blame", I find it extremely unhelpful to use such hard-hearted judgments to rationalize not caring about a family's or a child's horrifying plight. You make it sound as though the the McCanns deserve what happened, and that little Maddie, wherever she is, whatever happened to her, deserved it too. Maybe you think she should have realized her parents were negligent and turned in a report against them to the UK Family Protection Services.

Whatever you think of the McCanns' lax parenting, doesn't equate them killing their own child, intentionally or accidentally, and ditching the body somewhere. That's what the majority of the McCann haters allege.

Edited by Aaronsmom
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Well good for you! How lucky for your children they have a parent who would never have a lapse in judgment, never practice any parenting strategies or choices beyond reproach (SNIP)

You say that likes its a bad thing, which is backward logic.. I have a 15 month baby boy ( Aaron ) and a 7 year old girl ( Becky ) .. There is no way in hell I would leave them home alone while my hubby and I went out to enjoy ourselves, even in a foreign country, a place that we don't know well, it is doing the unthinkable.... I cannot think of any reason why I would want to do something so careless? :hmm:

You would face a lot of trouble if anyone found out you were leaving your kids alone while you and your partner went out to enjoy yourselves.. It is messed up and inconsiderate.. This is common, no parent in their right minds would take such a stupid risk..

It is not something you can call a mistake either... You cannot claim - "Oh I was so caught up in getting ready for my night out I plum forgot about the children, D'OH" <-- That is crazy.. Before you head off anywhere, you arrange for a sitter, and if you are on holiday you put your kids first and not take the risk... They took the children on holiday for a reason, not so they can have time together out and about at night,, leaving the kids alone.. It was sheer madness what those two done...

I find it extremely unhelpful to use such hard-hearted judgments

You call people talking about using common sense and doing the right thing and never leaving their children ( the same kids we have a full responsibility for ) alone while they head out for the night, hard heated? I call anyone that does it self centred and inconsiderate... Hard hearted is only caring for yourself and no one else, that's how I describe hard hearted, you just threw in a new word that describes parents who would do such a careless act...

Edited by Beckys_Mom
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No Becky's Mom...I don't think a person would have to be "bonkers" to leave three young children in an apartment while having dinner 100 ft. away. I reserve calling a parent bonkers for things like believing the child is possessed by demons and must be murdered, or rejecting medical care for a child with cancer, instead holding prayer vigils over the child, speaking in tongues, believing The Lord will cure him, and believing, when the child isn't saved by The Lord, that if they keep praying, the dead child will be resurrected. That's what I call a parent being bonkers. Or leaving a 6-yr-old and 4-yr-old at home alone while the parents go to the Bahamas for a couple of weeks. Or pushing your car into a lake with two little boys strapped in the back, drowning them, then telling everyone the was jacked by a robber, so she can be with some boyfriend that doesn't want kids. That to me is a parent being bonkers.

What the McCanns did, IMO, was naive and too trusting--it wasn't taking into practical consideration how badly things can go wrong in a matter of seconds with very small children when a parent's back is turned for a minute, or isn't close enough to see or hear everything happening in the room where the child is. What they did was be human. Humans who make mistakes, overlook something, not exercise good judgment every single second of their lives, not know something the rest of the world assumes they know. Let's face it: all of use who are here, reading and posting in this forum, reached adulthood in part by incredibly good luck; we weren't run over by a car the time we darted across the street when we were six and our mother or father didn't stop us in time, but the car swerved or screeched to a halt in the nick of time; someone saw us in the swimming pool where we had ventured out too far and fished us out before we could drowned, when there just as easily might have been no one there; we made it to and from school every day without getting snatched by a predatory pedophile, like the pervert who got Etan Patz; or we were found by someone caring and kind when we got lost in a store with our mom who helped us find our parent instead of being the twisted creep who abducted Adam Walsh; or we didn't get Reyes' Syndrome when we were given aspirin when we had chicken pox as children which people didn't know back then was dangerous; or a hundred million other things that worked out in our favor that could just as easily gone disastrously, or tragically, and we wouldn't have survived childhood, that could have been the result of a lapse in judgment or vigilance by our parents.

I think it's an unwise game to castigate someone we see who has suffered some atrocity by rationale he or she did something, or didn't do something, that we are so sure we would never be guilty of because we are so much smarter or better a parent, or driver, or judge of things than the other dumb schmoe. I say unwise because I have found life is brimming with great ironies, and we never know when we ourselves may end up being that "other dumb schmoe."

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I don't think you have to look much further than the parents. If the parents had been a couple of unemployed individuals from an housing estate, the media would have cut them to pieces but because they are a couple of professional Dr's, respected individuals..blahh

I am also sick to death of this whole thing now, we have kids abducted on a daily basis.. why is this one so special, I get parents asking me to recover their kids, their children but can't afford the fee's and this case has had millions thrown at it, we can recover kids for just a few thousand.

I totally agree,another child Ben Needham I believe was his name vanished on a Greek Island 10-15 years ago it never got half the publicity or money that this case has.Madeline was seen crying and asking her parents not to leave her alone again a couple of days before,what kind of parent would continue doing so?

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No Becky's Mom...I don't think a person would have to be "bonkers" to leave three young children in an apartment while having dinner 100 ft. away.(SNIP)

I think anyone would be plain bonkers to leave small children home alone while they head out,for a night.. It was plain irresponsible of them, and look what happened the moment they do? Least anyone forget what happened because they were being irresponsible? Risks like that are not worth it, and I think they know that now, don't you? How can any responsible parent think its ok to leave small children alone whole they go out? I call it bonkers, and I use that word to be polite about it...I wouldn't chance it if I took my kids on holiday, not a mission, not even if It were only 50ft away, I wont put myself first over them..

When we think of ourselves, and we do not give any thought for our children while we go to enjoy ourselves out, then we are more than just bonkers, we would be selfish irresponsible and uncaring parents IF we did this..... It is plain outright irresponsible... If anything happens to our kids because we left them alone, we have ourselves to blame.. No decent parent would dream of such a thing, and I am serious, its a fact...

To lay the emphasis on this - This is not some John Huges movie, and the kid is not Macaulay Culkin, this is real life, and when people like that make selfish decisions, and leave their kids home alone, they could face the nightmares that awaits them when they return, and that is exactly what happened to the Mc Cans..Goes to show you, even if you are only a matter of feet away, you can face horrors afterwards, its a risk not worth taking..

I do not call what they did a mistake, I wont sit making up weak excuses for their actions, they knew it was risky to do what they did, any parent with common sense would know not to leave their kids alone, it's common knowledge, therefore it was not a mere mistake, I call what they did selfish...

Edited by Beckys_Mom
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I wonder if what's going on here is jealousy. Jealous because the McCanns are affluent professionals who could take their three children on a luxury vacation abroad and got worldwide attention for years when their daughter disappeared. Is that why some of you seem to despise them with such fervor?

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Who would want world wide attention like that? That's something to be jealous of?

Trippy place, this.

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People do things. Most of the time, there are no bad effects. Every once in a while, though, some freak thing will happen and then all of a sudden, a relatively trivial choice or course of action looks like an incomprehensible lapse in judgment.

The children weren't exactly left all alone. The parents left them after they were asleep in bed and joined friends for dinner at an outside table about 90-100 ft. away. Another couple with children also dining with the McCanns did the same. The four parents took turns checking on the sleeping children about every half hour. This was a quiet, low-key, upscale neighborhood, where the last thing a patron would do is expect a low-life criminal to snatch an innocent sleeping child from her bed.

She's right, you know.

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I don't think so, and it seems the vast majority of the public does think it was a stranger abdication. All signs point to it. There's no evidence the parents are behind it, and the time line doesn't work at all.

There is little to no evidence that an intruder got in. Originally they claimed the shutters had been jimmied open, that turned out to be false. There was no forensic evidence an intruder had got in, no point of entry or exit could be concretely proved. If you came back to your apartment and found your child missing surely you would look? They tore the back off the childs reading book and noted down what times they checked on the children.

Then you have the dog cadaver evidence.

Doesn't concretely say the parents had involvement but doesnt leave them cleared in my mind.

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Personally in my heart I don't think the parents were involved. I think they made a MASSIVE lapse in judgement, that as a parent I cannot understand at all. There is no way I would leave my kids in an apartment in a forgeign country while I went out for a meal. I take my children abroad a lot, they eat a meal with us. If we want to continue having a drink and they are tired we put them to bed and stay INSIDE the appartment with them.

In fact, once when we went to Bulgaria when my eldest was a child our apartment was on the ground floor with a sliding patio door (which locked fine) leading out to the pool area. But it made me uncomfortable to think of people even being able to walk past the door that close to my sleeping child when I was in the next room so I took my mattress and slept on the floor at the side of him!!

I feel sorry for them as their child was abducted and that must be the worst feeling in the whole wide world, not knowing what has happened to her must break their hearts every day. But as an outsider I have to say that the blame does lie with the parents for leaving their children alone. You just don't do that.

Here is a link that shows the lay out of the restaurant in relation to the apartment. You could not clearly see the apartment for where they were sitting. It may have only been 100ft away but it was in a completely separate building, with trees and little small outer buildings between them. In particular look at the photo titled "aerial photograph showing position of Apartment 5A" towards the bottom of the page. http://www.mccannfiles.com/id21.html

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I wonder if what's going on here is jealousy. Jealous because the McCanns are affluent professionals who could take their three children on a luxury vacation abroad and got worldwide attention for years when their daughter disappeared. Is that why some of you seem to despise them with such fervor?

It isn't jealousy at all. I don't think any sane parent would want to be in their shoes at all. This gained world wide attention because of who they are and the influence they have. Someone else mentioned Ben Needham who was abducted during a holiday to Kos. That wasn't in the headlines anywhere near as much, the family were an average working class family from Sheffield.

It shouldn't matter how much money you have, or what kind of job you have. How much help and publicity you get when your child is abducted should not be determined by class.

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It isn't jealousy at all. I don't think any sane parent would want to be in their shoes at all. This gained world wide attention because of who they are and the influence they have. Someone else mentioned Ben Needham who was abducted during a holiday to Kos. That wasn't in the headlines anywhere near as much, the family were an average working class family from Sheffield.

It shouldn't matter how much money you have, or what kind of job you have. How much help and publicity you get when your child is abducted should not be determined by class.

Hold on. You start off by saying there's no jealousy then you say that Maddy's abduction has publicity because of who the McCanns are and the influence they have. That's not logical.

And I'm not replying now specifically to you but there appears to be a lot of what can I say? putting down of the McCanns especially from the Brits. I don't know the McCanns and I doubt any of you do either. I have posted with someone on another board who lives not far from them and speaks of them in glowing terms.

Doesn't mean much, I know but again, this malignment (I just invented a word!!) of the McCanns is the same as what the Ramseys went through.

We all agree, they made a mistake but they are the ones who have lived through this, not you. I have no idea how much they have suffered and are still suffering but what they did what was apparently a common thing at the time. Unfortunately for them and Maddie, they were targeted.

And Becky's Mom, while you're getting all steamed up about parents leaving their kids alone, sometimes both my parents worked at night and my brother and I were left alone in the house. We didn't burn it down, we didn't hurt each other, we didn't wreck anything and we weren't concerned.

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