i found this about madeleine

[loopylou6]

Intercepted telephone calls and emails between the McCanns and their friends have "confirmed the death of Madeleine" say police, according to one Portuguese newspaper today. The intercepts are said to have been made in a joint operation conducted by Portuguese and British police officers.
Diario de Noticias reports investigators have already concluded that the missing four-year-old was killed in the apartment where she slept in Praia da Luz.

It says that Maddy's parents, Kate and Gerry McCann (right), and their friends who were holidaying at the Ocean Club, will be brought in for further questioning. Police are awaiting new tests from the McCanns' Renault Scenic.

According to another paper, Jornal de Noticias, police want to examine inconsistencies in the statements of Kate and Gerry McCann, who were interviewed separately late into the night early on in the investigation. In particular, they want to focus on a three-hour period in which only the McCanns saw Madeleine.

Respected news agency Lusa quotes one police source saying that they think "there's light at the end of the tunnel" and that the authorities have "an idea of what could have happened" to the four-year-old.

Police have known "for a month" that Madeleine had died in the apartment, it is widely reported. The tabloid newspaper 24 Horas says that the police are looking for Madeleine's body in the sea, helped by English sniffer dogs. They have intensified searches around the nearby town of Lagos and along the Algarvian coast, it says.

Blood found in the apartment two days ago has arrived in Britain for DNA analysis: a result can be expected inside 48 hours.

Totally agree with Bellatrix. It is exactly the point I was trying (clumsily, unsuccessfully) to make earlier. You can always blame the parents for something.

Marvellous post, Bellatrix.

I do find it odd that people pay attention to what colour Kate Mccann's hair is. Do people really study people on the news in that much detail?

I do think the family should go home. I don't think they should have set up a fund, and I especially don't think they should have left those children alone.

I think one of the reasons why people have been so critical is because this case is so odd. There are a lot of things that don't make sense. The fact that someone could have been watching the children doesn't make sense to me. Why would someone single out one particular child and snatch that child from an apartment when they couldn't have been sure wheen someone might come back? couldn't have been sure that someone wouldn't walk past as they left the apartment? And why take Madeleine and not one of the younger twins, who would be less likely to remember, more likely to adapt? There must be thousands of children out there that would be far easier to snatch than to make the effort of going into a holiday complex. And when Kate mccann called out "they've taken her" who are they? how could anyone have known who "her" was? I think it was from this statement that the theory of it all being a hoax was formulated, although I don't conspire to that theory for one minute.

I think that there is a lot about this case that doesn't add up, and while I don't think the Mccanns were involved it wouldn't surprise me in the slighted if the possible perpitrator of this was someone they knew.

interesting perspective here on the view in portugal..

here

The McCanns made a terrible and possibly fatal mistake. I imagine that this mistake is their first waking thought and, whatever the outcome, will go with them to their graves.

I believe that they were caught up in the 'holiday spirit' and didn't rationally think out that children left alone, out of sight and earshot, in an unlocked apartment could be at risk. Add to that mix a swimming pool and a main road and, of course, their judgement was totally wrong.

However. They are going through hell. A living, waking hell. And to blame them any more than they doubtless blame themselves, helps nobody. Least of all their daughter.

I have noticed the changing distances between the tapas bar and the apartment, as reported by the McCanns during numerous interviews but have put this down to their wish to minimise in their own minds the part they obviously played in this tragedy.
Their sense of guilt must be crippling.

IMO, there can be no comparison between a parent eating outside a villa, a parent leaving their child in a car while paying for petrol or a parent eating in a garden.

But the McCanns know this....

Kate McCann in her interview said that you had to have been to that resort to understand how calm and innocuous the whole place was and why they felt it was fine. She agreed it was a terrible mistake (but I can't remember the exact words she used)

but rightly or wrongly, if you expose yourself to the media, if you seak publicity, then you have to take the rough with the smooth. Getting involved with the media is like drinking with the devil. Try to control them and they will tear you apart.

The mccann's had a publicist, they should have been better informed, and kept a lower profile imo.

It's one thing distributing posters of a child, but needing to tell the world that you have been to see the pope/been to church/been to a shrine/written a blog, and that you now have a million pound in your fund is irelevant. It does not publicise madeleine's disappearance, it only publicises the lifestyle you are (according to some) leading while the world is expected to look for your child.

That is how some will see it.

Re this 'they've taken her' stuff - I have NEVER seen an interview with her where she said she said that. To me it sounds made up, and endlessly repeated so it assumes the status of fact, and is then used to attack and criticise the McCanns.
So, if you try to keep your beloved missing daughter in the public eye in the hope of one day seeing her again, you 'deserve' to be called murderers? that's what some people seem to be implying.

BYM

You may think my post was thoughtless but its a fact.

Nobody would wish what has happened to this family on ANYONE.Whatever they did or did not do they do not deserve this living hell.

But they were negelectful on that night and as other posters have said, they will live with that forever

I think the trip to see The Pope was for their own benefit. And why not? If it gave them some comfort.

My brother (an RAF pilot) was killed a few years ago in a plane crash and the first thing my mother did, on hearing the news, was to get out the ironing board and iron everything in sight.

Nobody reacts rationally to grief.

When my dad was killed in a car crash just before Christmas, I sat in my office and worked and worked and worked. Hey, I must have murdered him,eh? I even washed my hair every day.

Message withdrawn

sorry aloha

Sorry to hear that aloha

Yes, I did, and I bet Kate McCann cries half the day
A friend interviewed her lately and said she was 'frail, think, shaky and sad'.
You can't judge by what you see on TV. I can't beleive she can say her daughter's name without crying, but as everyone says, you just don't know unless it happens to you.
I think they were nuts to leave them, but find the casual cruelty with which they are being treated really upsetting.

Sorry - 'thin'

Big Hugs to you Aloha

Villifying the McCanns as bad parents makes us all feel better. "We would never have done such a thing, it couldn't happen to our child. It's happened to them because they've done something wrong."

Well, sorry, but it's happened to them because they were incredibly unlucky. They made a mistake, no doubt, but they & their family are paying a truly terrible price for it.

However unlikely, it could happen to any of our children. Anyone determined enough can abduct a child - there are many examples in the US of children being abducted from their beds as their parents slept nearby.

The person responsible for this is the person who abducted MM - nobody else.

Same here SueW

Me too SueW

I strongly disagree stramash. The parents were highly responsible as parents to make sure their children had a child minder. They were left alone and i dont care how often them people said they checked on the kids the kids were still left alone. The abductor is responsible for doing the awful thing of kidnapping the child. But the parents caused the situation by not being there for their children.

I disagree, stram. Stranger abduction is still very, very rare.

I agree the only one who is criminal is the perpetrator, but this wasn't just down to being unlucky, sadly.

I'll say this very gently and quietly, because I think they are suffering enough.

No. This would have not have happened to my children because I (and most other people) would not have left very young children alone in an unlocked apartment, out of sight and earshot, next to a main road and a swimming pool.

I fully subscribe to the anti McCann bashing stance, but I cannot subscribe to the 'it could have happened to any of us' view.

Looking at it rationally i do actually agree with what your saying bubble99. I think what has been making me angry in these threads were the people saying it could happen to anyone.

I agree, Bubble.

It could not have happened to me, either. It is one thing to weep for their pain, but the 'there but for the grace of God' attitude is not entirely persuasive for most of us.

The one thing I'd like to pick up on, from all these Madeleine posts over the months, is the constant reference to the McGann's intelligence. I've probably been guilty of that myself.

I've known scores of parents who aren't intelligent by any lifestyle or IQ criteria. Does being fetchingly dumb make it more likely that you would leave your kids alone in an apartment? That the McGanns are an anomaly to the rule?