To me, the accident-and-covered-up scenario just does not hold water. We are being expected to believe that in a time=frame of 4.5 hrs Madeleine had a fatal accident, and the McCanns grieved, cleaned up and disposed of her remains so well that they have never been found. Then went to dinner and behaved normally. We are being asked to believe that they did all this in 4.5 hours in a foreign country without access to a car.
I just don't believe it.
I don't buy this "behaved normally" line.
From another source:
There is primary source evidence that when required or considered to be necessary the parents, particularly Kate McCann, are extremely skilled at masking their real feelings very successfully even when under enormous emotional and other stress. (Footnote 1)
This ability to mask, or deaden, the emotional response to the loss of their daughter, on request,was the subject of widespread remark by commentators and observers of the case who had watched their performances on television.(2)
Had the parents been incapable of masking their emotions effectively then they would have been unable, by definition, to follow the advice they were given.So they have a proven and recorded ability to do so. (3)
And:
The previously unknown primary source evidence provided by Kate McCann in Madeleine regarding events on August 8 provides a second, quite separate, series of examples of the parents coolly misinforming the media and the public – lying – about their situation while giving no clues in their demeanour to the enormous stress the police had already placed them under and which, away from the public and the cameras, was resulting in despair and hysteria. (4).
Finally, the parents behaviour after the disappearance cannot be slotted into this defence, although poor Mr Menezes didn't notice. There is no normal template for behaviour in such circumstances that would distinguish it either from acting or from genuine emotional distress at events unknown to us.(5)
(1) The claims by the parents that they were advised to try and conceal their feelings in public are well attested. See Oprah transcript:
'Four days after Madeleine's disappearance, the McCanns held another press conference pleading for their daughter's safe return. Kate remained calm as she spoke, but the tabloids would use her appearance against her, saying her lack of emotion implied guilt. "I'd spent 72 hours crying, and you suddenly almost feel a little bit numb," Kate says. She'd also spoken with a behavioural expert who'd given specific advice on how to act at the press conference, Kate says. "They said, 'It's quite important that you don't show any emotion, because the abductor could get some kind of adverse kick out of it,'" she says. "When you get the feeling that if you do [something] it could be detrimental in some way to your daughter, there's a huge pressure on you to do well."
Though it may have done more harm than good, Kate says she doesn't regret taking the behavioural expert's advice. "It was advice given with the best intention," she says.'
And from Madeleine, page 112:
'In fact I would soon be advised by British police experts to try and stay as calm as possible and not to show any emotion in public, so it was probably no bad thing that my feelings seemed to be temporarily on holiday that day. The thinking behind this advice was that Madeleine's abductor might get some kind of perverted kick pout of my distress and perhaps change his behaviour in some way.'
She adds: 'Of course we were terrified by the implications of this theory. It meant that quite natural actions or expressions of emotion caught on camera could potentially jeopardise Madeleine's safety.'
(2) Googling the subject will produce numerous newspaper examples of how successful their dissimulation was. So successful, indeed, that she was accused of being "emotionless".
(3) Self-evidently they could only have been witnessed dissimulating after advice if they had the innate ability to do so. By (2) above they have it in spades. Clearly it was already there, not grown overnight – and present on May 3 2007.
(4) On pages 210 – 214 of Madeleine Kate McCann describes the events of August 8, which we have cited before. Two days previously their car had been seized by the police. During the interviews the police told Kate McCann outright that they didn't believe her and made serious accusations about her behaviour on May 3 which left her hysterical. To Gerry McCann it was made quite clear that further meetings with them would no longer be as parents of the child but as potential suspects.
Since M/S McCann maintains that until that time she had not seen warning signs of such accusations the shock must have been immense. Yet examination of the television interviews of the period shows the couple effortlessly dissimulating about their situation for a full week after August 8. Leaving aside the point that we now know that their comments that week, like those on the GM blog at the same time (see Gerry McCann's blogs website), are thoroughly dishonest and intentionally misleading without any Portuguese secrecy claims to justify them, they also betray few or no signs of the events in which they had been involved, behaviour startlingly akin to their conduct on and after May 3. In other words they are not just capable of concealing their feelings and acting normally after trauma but demonstrably expert at it.
(5) Self-evidently except to Mr Menezes, the behaviour of the couple after 10PM on May 3 is to be sharply distinguished in its implications. Rolling on the floor and screaming, punching walls, throwing themselves to the ground when the police appear etc. – leaving aside the "masking" effect which such loud and unusual conduct might possess, is not evidence of "normal" behaviour at the hands of an abductor nor does it say anything either way about a person's ability to deceive or dissimulate. And it could result from very different events. Drawing up timelines doesn't strike us as strictly normal under the circumstances either, but that's another story.
