Amaral and the dogs

[Mr Gray]

How long did Amaral get to understand the dogs and their findings?

How long has this forum had?

Is there any agreement after 4,000 posts and now 8.5 years into the case?

It was clear early on by grime and Harrison that the alerts had no evidential value
Yet amaral saw them as proof.....  Can't you see anything wrong there
The fact that after 8 hrs the sceptics on the forum do not understand the truth is neither here nor there

[slartibartfast]

It makes me feel quite sad that Amaral based his theory solely on the alerts of the dogs.   The one behind the sofa was probably a speck of blood [not Madeleine's]   there was nothing on the curtains nothing on the wall.   Eddie alerted to the bedroom, to what is unknown and to the garden again unknown and neither alert was investigated enough to get to the bottom of them.   Then Eddie alerted to the car to what who knows again as the sample from the car showed DNA from three people maybe as many as five.   The idea that the McCann's put a frozen Madeleine in the car is ludicrous to the extreme,   but still all these alerts are being used as evidence against the McCann's and Madeleine is still missing   

What else is there to base a theory on?

[Carana]

Are we any nearer to a conclusion on this thread with nearly four thousand posts?

Were the dogs a waste of time and money?

Did Gonçalo Amaral understand the findings?

Yes and no to the first point, IMO. The dogs may have been more useful back in mid-May 2007, and without this "anecdotal evidence" of where a body may perhaps, potentially, have eventually once been as that seems to have been over-rated.

Re the second point: have we ever established any findings that Amaral & co understood?

[pegasus]

One or two anomalies.  It's always struck me as anomalous that Mrs Fenn (as the person closest to the scene of the crime at the time it was committed) was never interviewed by Rogatory.

Perhaps she was asked but declined.

Perhaps others were asked but also declined.

But she was a resident of Portugal, therefore no international rogatory letter would have been required.

[Carana]

Can someone explain to me why if the McCann's innocence was all in Amaral's imagination why the continued to bear guides for over ten months after Rebelo took over the investigation ?

LOL

I'm not quite sure what "bear guides" might be.

If you meant why the McCanns continued to be arguidos (as did Murat, whom you forgot), it's because in the Portuguese system arguido status remains in place until the end of the investigative phase. If charges are brought at the end of that time, those charged retain arguido status for the next phases. It becomes extinct for those not charged or if the case is shelved.

[ferryman]

But she was a resident of Portugal, therefore no international rogatory letter would have been required.

OK

But she was never interviewed a second time.

[ferryman]

How long did Amaral get to understand the dogs and their findings?

How long has this forum had?

Is there any agreement after 4,000 posts and now 8.5 years into the case?

A further point, there, Shining, is that Amaral, apparently, felt he understood forensics well enough to contradict and correct Stuart Prior on interpretation of the forensics.

Of course, we can't judge that because we don't see Stuart Prior's report.

But Amaral was certainly surrounded by people who did understand the forensics and who would willingly have explained them to him if he'd asked.  But (again, according to his book) he had British personnel put under secret surveillance, because he didn't trust them ....

[faithlilly]

Murat and associates were in Portugal.  No need for Rogatory Letters.

So was he questioned again by Rebelo ?

[Carana]

Was Murat or anyone connected to him questioned under the letters rogatory ?

If Rebelo had wanted to question Murat or his mother again, why would that have required a rogatory letter to the UK, when they were both resident in Portugal?

[Carew]

Who knows, it's a mystery isn't it?  We KNOW Eddie alerts to dried human blood (see sex tissue alert and Martin Grime's own acknowledgement of that fact) and yet apparently he didn't alert anywhere else except to the McCanns property and possessions.  Obviously if Eddie did not alert to dried blood there would be no need to send Keela in after him in order to 'explain' some of his alerts.
Do you not find it all even a teensy bit inexplicable?

What I find rather more than a teensy bit inexplicable is posters, whilst believing and maintaining that Eddie cannot be "unlearned," .........(so the work or play mode can`t apply, ).........from alerting to an almost unlimited number of contaminants tracked about and deposited just about everywhere;   never-the-less manage to reconcile it with the fact that he didn`t do so.

They still bang on about how many substances Eddie would alert to.

As to your point about Keela`s role...........Wasn`t she sent in following an alert by Eddie in order to pinpoint any actual forensic sample which could lead to the identification of the person to whom it belongs?

..........with those results turning out to be inconclusive.

[faithlilly]

One or two anomalies.  It's always struck me as anomalous that Mrs Fenn (as the person closest to the scene of the crime at the time it was committed) was never interviewed by Rogatory.

Perhaps she was asked but declined.

Perhaps others were asked but also declined.

Then the correspondence around the request would be in the files as it was with the reconstitution.

[Eleanor]

So was he questioned again by Rebelo ?

Were Kate and Gerry?

Actually, not much point.  They didn't have to answer questions, any of them.

[Carana]

One or two anomalies.  It's always struck me as anomalous that Mrs Fenn (as the person closest to the scene of the crime at the time it was committed) was never interviewed by Rogatory.

Perhaps she was asked but declined.

Perhaps others were asked but also declined.

Mrs Fenn was resident in Portugal, wasn't she?

[Carana]

OK

But she was never interviewed a second time.

It wasn't until after the press had brought her up in the press that she was interviewed at all (unless an early interview is missing from the files).

[Brietta]

How long did Amaral get to understand the dogs and their findings?

How long has this forum had?

Is there any agreement after 4,000 posts and now 8.5 years into the case?

The obfuscation eight years down the line is entirely due to Mr Amaral's interpretation or misinterpretation ... understanding of misunderstanding.