Meet the Other Phone. Protection built in.

Meet the Other Phone.
Protection built in.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

See all MNHQ comments on this thread

Netflix Madeleine McCann

999 replies

mumineedawee · 16/03/2019 17:57

AIBU to think that any coverage of her disappearance is a good thing. I watched two episodes of the Netflix programme and think that if it were to bring her back into the spotlight, then surely it’s worthwhile? I’m on my own in that opinion here in our house.

OP posts:
Puzzledandpissedoff · 17/03/2019 22:49

Sorry, ghosty, I obviously read it wrong about the car

But a PP said that the dogs are trained to pick up only human scent, and if that's right I'm still not sure what roadkill has to do with it?

Barbie222 · 17/03/2019 22:50

Roadkill would not have anything to do with it. It is an alert to human remains, but more than that no one can say so it has no evidential value in court.

VanillaSugarr · 17/03/2019 22:53

Going back to Kitty’s post about the Coloboma in Madeleine’s eye - I have a very similar thing and no one, not even opticians, know what it is. So you can excuse KM for downplaying it. I think it’s just a bit of extra pigment and it doesn’t affect vision at all.

NameChanger22 · 17/03/2019 22:57

I wonder why they even bothered with the dogs if the evidence they gave wasn't going to be used. What was the point?

Rumbletum2 · 17/03/2019 22:59

Watched them all now. My heart aches for the McCanns. The PJ were clearly woefully incompetent and as for the Amaral bloke..... rarely do I find someone so repellent. A deeply unpleasant character.

Colourpencils · 17/03/2019 23:00

Any criticism of the parents' reaction does always make me think of that awful Karen Matthews woman weeping and sobbing on the news when Shannon Matthews went 'missing'. She reacted how people are allegedly supposed to react when something terrible like this happens but it was all, in fact, a hideous plot devised with her uncle (?) on the back of the MM case to garner sympathy and money from the general public. We mustn't presume anything.

makemineapinacolada · 17/03/2019 23:03

Sorry what am I not getting about the relevance of madeleines eye and kate not mentioning it - what's the supposed significance of that?

Barbie222 · 17/03/2019 23:05

The dogs findings aren’t evidence, though - they give an indication of where or whom to look more closely at. The police sent samples from the apartment and the car away. I think they were linked to MM but not strongly enough to stand up to Portuguese requirements for trial which are very high. They test for a certain number of markers, and they had some matches to MM but at other points the DNA was too degraded to say. If the trial had been held somewhere else, the police could have submitted their findings as evidence for a court to try though as other judicial systems have different standards of proof.

BejamNostalgia · 17/03/2019 23:09

I wonder why they even bothered with the dogs if the evidence they gave wasn't going to be used. What was the point?

Apparently in many cases when they bring the dogs in then it gives them a picture of what happened so it gives them an idea where they need to look for further evidence. Obviously it didn’t do that in this case.

RunAndBeeHappy · 17/03/2019 23:21

the dogs which alerted to blood....i didn't see the police use luminal to see if it was splatters or pooling etc

Weedsnseeds1 · 17/03/2019 23:27

My twin sister and I escaped from a villa in Portugal via the shuttered windows in the early 70s because we wanted to go down to the beach to see the man with the donkeys - about 6am, frantic parents discovered us missing about an hour later.
We weren't crying or panicking, we were happy as Larry.
Would have been about 3 or 4 at the time.
Apparently the resort was under construction at the time and parents were terrified we'd fallen into an unfilled pool or something.
They didn't find us, we strolled back for breakfast...

nanananightfevernightfeeever · 17/03/2019 23:27

My sister has a brown streak in her eye the same as Madeline. Colobama? no- end of.

I just abhor the armchair detectives who claim how they would react in this situation should be viewed as the McCann's are guilty

It's disgusting how some posters act with such proven misinformation - vile - I just hope you never experience a child being snatched and your reaction being scrutinised - utterly vile.

BejamNostalgia · 17/03/2019 23:34

the dogs which alerted to blood....i didn't see the police use luminal to see if it was splatters or pooling etc

Apparently a team were sent out with luminol at the same time as the dogs but they couldn’t do anything useful with it because the apartment had been cleaned and let out to another family already. The dogs can sense traces which are too small to react to luminol apparently.

KittyLane1 · 17/03/2019 23:45

There are 20 markers of blood in the apartment. Available to see on the PJ files website.
As far as I am aware there is no indication it is MM's blood.

As for the Coloboma my point is it was not downplayed initially, all the press, the photographs, the look into my eye posters, the Bryan Adams song, all of it was aimed at people recognising the mark. The mark that the parents then claimed was nothing more than a speck.

Previously, I thought the parents were guilty. I know no longer think that, but to me the denial that anything was previously made of the eye is odd IMO.

Tinkerbell456 · 18/03/2019 02:26

I would love to think Maddie was alive somewhere. Sadly, my feeling is that she isn’t. I feel so sad for her parents who only did what many parents do I imagine. Was the front door unlocked? Yes. In case the kids woke and needed anything. It was in full view thee whole time though.

MythicalBiologicalFennel · 18/03/2019 06:11

a dog barking is not identifying the body of MM - just a smell which could be related to anything dead

There were 2 dogs. One looked for human blood and the other for human cadaverine which is a substance produced around the time of death and that only transmits via direct contact with a corpse.

That's all the dogs can do. They cannot tell you what happened. I hope the police have found whoever died and was in direct contact with:
The apartment
The car
The car keys
MM's toy
MM's clothes
KM's clothes

KM said it could be to do with her work as a part-time GP where she would have to certify deaths. Or the dogs were wrong or they were handled unethically.

Barbie222 · 18/03/2019 06:53

There were 20 markers of blood found in the apartments.

There were 19 markers defining MM's DNA. 15 of these were found in the apartment, but in Portugal you need a full 19/19 match for a court to accept that this is actually DNA from MM. The other 4 markers were there but too damaged to read. In our country I believe you need 10 markers in court. So the jury's out on that one.

Onceuponacheesecake · 18/03/2019 07:16

I'm not particularly interested in the dogs findings in apartment 5a. Hundreds and hundreds of people will have stayed in that apartment over many years. I could be talking crap but surely it would be even more unusual for the dogs to find nothing. You'd think at some point over the years someone would have shed blood in there or unfortunately passed away. Doesn't mean it was MM. What I find more disturbing though was when they took the cadaver dog to the McCanns new accommodation, they first thing it indicated to in there was MM cuddle cat. Made my blood run cold.

HarveySchlumpfenburger · 18/03/2019 07:16

The jury isn’t out. It wouldn’t be admissible in any court at all. You’ve misunderstood it.

The sample in the car was a low copy number and was from at least 3 different people. Given that the car was being used by both Madeleine’s biological parents and 2 full siblings it’s not at all surprising that Madeleine’s alleles were present at those loci. She inherited them from her parents, as did the twins.

FriendOrFaux · 18/03/2019 07:17

I watched the episode with the dogs and went cold when I saw the cadaver dog in the apartment.
barbie that's interesting re the markers and the difference between the Portuguese and UK legal parameters.

I had a look on twitter and apparently a lot of people were going on about GM's large tennis holdall going missing. I have no idea of the veracity of this though.

BejamNostalgia · 18/03/2019 07:18

Really Barbie222? I never knew that, as she was with her siblings though, would the 10 have been able to confirm that it was hers rather than her siblings I wonder?

LizzieSiddal · 18/03/2019 07:20

So blood was found in a car and a car key, hired weeks after Maddie disappeared. And the theory is they hid a body somewhere for weeks whilst at the same time encouraging the world’s press, to help in publishing their child was missing?

When and how did they hid a child’s body then move it when no one was looking at them. Dispute the worlds press being around the town?

I have always thought that someone working in the hotel knew the dc were being left alone every single night and either took Maddie themselves or informed someone else about what was happening. They watched the apartment for several nights and then took her.
I haven’t watched the Netflix documentary but am pleased to read here that they conclude what I’ve thought for years.

I don’t understand why the press haven’t publicised this scenario. Thought I expect it’s because it’s too “boring” for the press.

BejamNostalgia · 18/03/2019 07:20

You'd think at some point over the years someone would have shed blood in there or unfortunately passed away.

The traces don’t last for that long, they’re cleaned up and dispersed.

squishee · 18/03/2019 07:21

This reply has been deleted

Message deleted by MNHQ. Here's a link to our Talk Guidelines.

LadyRochfordsDeletedGusset · 18/03/2019 07:22

Yes FriendorFaux, a hold-all in Gerry's possession went missing. It features on other documentaries outside of the U.K.