So what actual searching was there?

[pegasus]

Elvis and Lord L could have been hidden in that apartment at 1 AM and the 2 PJ officers wouldn't have found them, they did not search the apartment IMO.

[mercury]

Elvis and Lord L could have been hidden in that apartment at 1 AM and the 2 PJ officers wouldn't have found them, they did not search the apartment IMO.

You keep saying this as a possibility but dont offer a single possibility for after, so how can we move on from the scenario that a child dead or alive was missed in the search of the flat by oarents friends and police?catch up tomorrow

[pegasus]

You keep saying this as a possibility but dont offer a single possibility for after, so how can we move on from the scenario that a child dead or alive was missed in the search of the flat by oarents friends and police?catch up tomorrow

IMO following probable behaviours tiny step by tiny step may lead eventually to a solution, no matter how ridiculously impossible it seems in advance Merc.

[John]

Elvis and Lord L could have been hidden in that apartment at 1 AM and the 2 PJ officers wouldn't have found them, they did not search the apartment IMO.

These apartments are tiny with only so many hiding places, I would think 5a could have been searched thoroughly in a matter of minutes by two police officers.

[Brietta]

Soon after the alarm, the moon rose, and it was a full moon - ideal for searching.
 
"the moon was out later on" (source: MO Rog)

If the full moon was sufficient light to search by ... why didn't the PJ organise official search teams to conduct searches?

[jassi]

What would you class as an official search team? How many should have been deployed?

[Brietta]

What would you class as an official search team? How many should have been deployed?

Is it usual for official search teams to be deployed during the hours of darkness?

[jassi]

Is it usual for official search teams to be deployed during the hours of darkness?

You haven't defined 'official', yet.

[Brietta]

You haven't defined 'official', yet.

In answer to my own question ... it appears they do search throughout the night.

April Jones update: Search teams work through the night

http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/april-jones-update-search-teams-2019756

Mikaeel Kular: Overnight search for missing three-year-old boy

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-25787104


Definition of OFFICIAL ... relating to an authority or public body and its activities and responsibilities.

[Lace]

1. Thank you
2. Torches
3. Because they had been up all night to the dawn
4. Never mind ey?

Can I ask why you are just berating the McCann's for not searching all night for their daughter?    They searched everywhere they thought Madeleine may have wandered,   then they were with the police.   All the families whose children have been abducted here in the UK have searched then left it to the police and rightly so,  the police are the ones who take over the search.   They organise searches properly so that any evidence is not lost and  the parents are not the ones to   find their child dead.   What grievance do you have with that?   By the way there wouldn't be a search party by the police for a missing cat.

[John]

Is it usual for official search teams to be deployed during the hours of darkness?

In a missing child case yes unless doing so could endanger searchers.  Eg. severe weather, no lighting etc

In Madeleine's case there just wasn't the manpower available in those early hours.  Two cops responding to various alerts around the general area and a supervisor back at base, not exactly a hive of activity.  Even the detectives didn't arrive until more than two hours after she was found to be gone. 

Thinking out of the box for a moment, by that time she could have been in another country or outside Portuguese territorial waters. She could also have been on a light aircraft operating out of any number of deserted airfields and going just about anywhere.

Personally, I agree with Kate, she never left the Algarve.

[G-Unit]

If the full moon was sufficient light to search by ... why didn't the PJ organise official search teams to conduct searches?

On 4th May, after having evaluated the situation surrounding the disappearance, the Lagos Post Commander ordered searches for the child to take place and contacted officers who were at home, forming a force of nine officers who searched during the night and early morning.

2. At 02.00 they arrived at P da L and began searching with the Portimao sniffer dog teams, the terrain searches were extended until the morning with the dogs and officers on the scene, as well as the night guard and local people who volunteered to help in the searches that took place throughout the night.
http://www.mccannpjfiles.co.uk/PJ/GNR_SNIFFER.htm

[Interesting snippet from Kate's book re; 4th May interviews;

Gerry told us afterwards that when he’d asked about deploying helicopters and heat-detecting equipment in the search, the police officer interviewing him had replied, ‘This is not the UK.’There were no helicopters and no infra-red cameras, he was told.]

Eureka!

At 16.00 searches using the helicopter were initiated, the helicopter was used for 90 minutes, covering the entire area from the coast line to the EN 125, between the limits of Atalaia and Ponta da Cama da Vaca, this being the limit of the area considered probable for the child to be found, according to the hypothesis that she had left the apartment where she was staying on foot.
http://www.mccannpjfiles.co.uk/PJ/GNR_SNIFFER.htm

After a short rest I returned to work at 08.00. I did not see Kate or Gerry during the whole morning, but went to the new apartment at about lunchtime. Kate and Gerry were not there but there were other members of the group taking care of the twins.

I remember there were helicopters flying overhead and showing them to the twins.
http://www.mccannpjfiles.co.uk/PJ/EMMA-LOUISE.htm  [re; 4th May]

[Miss Taken Identity]

Can I ask why you are just berating the McCann's for not searching all night for their daughter?    They searched everywhere they thought Madeleine may have wandered,   then they were with the police.   All the families whose children have been abducted here in the UK have searched then left it to the police and rightly so,  the police are the ones who take over the search.   They organise searches properly so that any evidence is not lost and  the parents are not the ones to   find their child dead.   What grievance do you have with that?   By the way there wouldn't be a search party by the police for a missing cat.

Wandered? I thought Kate said she knew right away that Maddie was abducted- jemmied shutters -open window whooosh...
On  that note; we do not know what time Maddie was last seen by anyone, so the time scale could have  been just after parents left, which would mean a couple of hours Maddie was 'dissapeared' so searching the immediate area would have been fruitless, also, If she were abducted would the abductor hang about waiting to be caught? 
Hmmm not making any sense is it really.

[G-Unit]

Wandered? I thought Kate said she knew right away that Maddie was abducted- jemmied shutters -open window whooosh...
On  that note; we do not know what time Maddie was last seen by anyone, so the time scale could have  been just after parents left, which would mean a couple of hours Maddie was 'dissapeared' so searching the immediate area would have been fruitless, also, If she were abducted would the abductor hang about waiting to be caught? 
Hmmm not making any sense is it really.

Were there different stories for different people or was Mr Woolfall so busy talking to the media that he didn't have time to read the papers or watch TV?

October 2007;

Mr Woolfall says that he heard no suggestion in the early days that the girl had been snatched. "Certainly I did not hear any discussion that this could be a paedophile or an aggravated robbery. All the time I was around it was whether she could have wandered off and had an accident or somebody had actually taken her in, perhaps not with ill-intent.
 
"During the first 48 hours the word being used was 'missing' rather than 'abducted' or any link with a paedophile or any sort of crime. Towards the end of the second week I detected a shift towards there being a consciousness that she had probably been taken rather than wandered off, just on the assumption that anybody would have found her by now.".......

June Wright, Luz resident, speaking on the Channel 4 dispatches documentary 'Searching for Madeleine':
"I arrived at the Ocean Club reception at around about 10 to 11 and at the time that we arrived a police car arrived - and as the police officer got out a man approached him, who I now know is Gerry McCann and said that his daughter had been abducted. That there was no way that she could have opened the shutters herself, she'd definitely been taken."
http://www.mccannfiles.com/id65.html

[mercury]

Can I ask why you are just berating the McCann's for not searching all night for their daughter?    They searched everywhere they thought Madeleine may have wandered,   then they were with the police.   All the families whose children have been abducted here in the UK have searched then left it to the police and rightly so,  the police are the ones who take over the search.   They organise searches properly so that any evidence is not lost and  the parents are not the ones to   find their child dead.   What grievance do you have with that?   By the way there wouldn't be a search party by the police for a missing cat.

-You have put words into my mouth
- I was not berating just giving comment n the "it was so cold and dark" reason suggested for why KM did not search
-I already gave one reason to Brietta how/why KM or anyone else could have looked "in the dark" there is no evidence she personally did, she never said she did n her statements to police, she never she did in years of repeated detailed interviews and documentaries worldwide, but when Madelene the book came out, she told how she sprinted up and down the road and looked in the car park
-A response is not required