Madeleine McCann new evidence - BREAKING NEWS

[PrettyFlyforaMaiTai]

A Senior German detective has told a court that investigators had found emails on a Hotmail account used by Christian Brueckner that linked him directly to the Madeleine McCann case.

However, the detective was unable to share details of the evidence as it was 'related to the killing' of Madeleine. Brueckner, the prime suspect, is currently on trial in Germany for unrelated sex crimes.

@prh47bridge Thanks for your always useful input to the thread. It's oddly heartening to know that all the Portuguese children have been safely returned over a 13 year stretch (as long as home was a safe place to return to).

I heard that even before local police arrived, every man and woman and their dog had been in the apartment, I guess looking for her, comforting the parents/children and making hot sweet tea etc.

So any crime scene investigator would have had a very hard time gathering any intact physical evidence.

I have so much respect for the careful, painstaking work these teams do (have avidly watched Forensics the real CSI on BBC).

Their role in securing justice is phenomenal (as in the Cold Case series about tracing/convicting sex offenders from the 1980's partly via DNA profiling advances), but often there are disappointments where something isn't clear enough to be strong evidence, you do feel for them on a professional basis.

Real dedication to the science, and to getting answers about who/how/when, where this is possible.

And bloody hell that's a lot of missing (including long term missing) children and YP in England and Wales 😥I guess what makes the media is only a tiny tiny fraction. I know a lot of child migrants and other children who are in the care system go missing and are difficult to trace. Over a 1000 kids not safe in their beds.

They did try to get finger prints on the entrances but found nothing, which is one of te reasons why Amaral suspected parental involvement.
A big problem with forensics ,was the parents let dozens of people contaminate the crime scene before calling the police.

If the crime scene was contaminated why didn't they take all the finger prints anyway and eliminate them from the people they knew who had been in the room?

I think contaminated is more that so many people had touched the place, it would be impossible to get a clear print.

Thank you @MargaretThursday

@Alltheyearround
"I have so much respect for the careful, painstaking work these teams do (have avidly watched Forensics the real CSI on BBC)."
But this was Portugal, and not the same thing at all.
There is a language and culture barrier for a start.
I suspect the Portuguese police could not understand why anyone would leave their young children alone.
On the continent, it is much more common to take children with you everywhere.
I once went to a French wedding, and the children were there till gone 12 midnight. The parents just got some chairs together to make a bed for them.
British people would probably have left early.
In Spain, many of the restaurants do not even open until 9.00 pm. Something my DH and I found out when we were there. This would be too late for my DH, let alone children.

I used to feel as many do, that the McCanns made a mistake and paid a terrible price. After becoming a parent I thought differently about the whole case. I looked at my own children when they were that age and could not imagine leaving them alone. Children wake in the night. They can be sick. A three year old can get out of bed, wander, get themselves into trouble in the house. They are mobile and have no sense it’s the worse possible age to leave unattended. Had they been primary age children it would have been careless but at the age they were it was wilful neglect and the McCanns knew it. There was an interview when Gerry states they “did what any parent would have done” - that is categorically untrue and if any parents on this thread think leaving under fours alone while you go out for dinner is normal they need to seriously consider their parenting. When you realise by the publicly available facts the McCanns were neglectful you start to think differently about the case. I read some of the books and websites and looked at the video footage. Sadly I believe on the balance of probabilities her parents were likely responsible for her death and subsequent hiding of her body. Why the British establishment both political and media seemed so eager to assist them in the cover up is a mystery. The amount of tax payer money spent sickens me and I hope one day justice will be done.

Anyone else find it strange that the twins "slept through" all the commotion that was going on?

@Serrina I was concerned to see Madeline had a sleep chart in her home bedroom. She obviously wasn't a child who went down for the night easily.

@Deftandglory That is very strange. My eldest DD is autistic and has never been a great sleeper or gone down easily but the thought of using a "sleep chart" never entered my head. I never even knew such a thing existed.

I'm not sure that's true. I strongly suspect some parents deliberately misused Medised to get their young children to sleep for longer stretches, and that was a factor in its discontinuation.

Yes

Reportedly Kate McCann suggested that Madeleine "may have been given something too", implying that the alleged kidnapper may have drugged all three children

I'd have thought that for a stranger to wake and dose all three would have taken time they could ill afford to spend for fear of being caught, but who knows?

You can strongly suspect, but that's not proof.
I can't see why you would think that either.

I doubt parents needed to misuse it.

As I said with my non-sleeping one, I gave half the maximum dose and she slept 12 hours. I doubt there would be many parents wanting them to sleep longer than that, and those that did, would have other parenting issues.

Where would they have hidden her in the short time they went to check on her that she wouldn’t have been found by anyone in the aftermath?

Yes, this, and still be undiscovered how ever many years later. It's just not feasible.

They believe her body was initially hidden somewhere local then moved later. There is some evidence supporting this, sniffer dogs alerting at hire cars the McCann’s used in Portugal. The witness who saw a man matching Gerry description carrying a child they assumed was asleep. Later the parents were caught visiting a potential grave site. I don’t want to go into details - it’s all covered elsewhere. Have a read if you are interested. There is no cast iron 100% proof of their guilt but given the huge publicity and funding it’s not unreasonable to look at the publicly available facts and have an opinion.

I have no certain knowledge, but on the balance of probabilities believe the parents are guilty of knowingly concealing a likely accidental death. What is undoubtedly true is they are guilty of child neglect and should have at a minimum been prosecuted for that.

There was a witness who saw someone carrying a sleeping child, a British man. He later called the police and said it was Gerry.
It would be interesting to see what he thinks of this.

The man carrying the sleeping child was identified years ago. It was another parent taking their child home from the kids' club.

Reward charts were all the rage in parenting 17 years ago - Supernanny was extremely popular. They have gone out of fashion now but I don't think a bedtime chart is anything sinister.

Were they alone long enough after she went missing to risk moving a body? Doubt it. I’ve read the Portuguese detective’s book and found it didn’t add up and there were some daft conclusions. The sniffer dog was a cadaver dog, trained to pick up the scent of bodies, so maybe it did pick up the scent of a body in the hire care, but if it did, who is to say who’s body it was or when it had been there.

And perhaps they should have been prosecuted for neglect, but as said before, there are other cases of unattended children going missing with no prosecutions and no one repeatedly saying there should have been for them.

Agree with @BertieBotts - mine didn’t have a sleep chart but they had one for tooth brushing and one for something else … eating food nicely maybe? So I wouldn’t bat an eyelid at a sleep chart.

I'm not sure that's true. I strongly suspect some parents deliberately misused Medised to get their young children to sleep for longer stretches, and that was a factor in its discontinuation.

Yes, that is unfortunately true. A woman I knew when my older children were little admitted to me that she gave all of her children Medised to make them sleep when they were not ill. She did not seem to think it wrong.

Are you sure that wasn't the one Jane Tanner was supposed to have seen? The other man who a family thought was Gerry has never been identified has he?

People are very fond of claiming that any other parent in this situation would've been charged and prosecuted for neglect. None of them ever prove it.