Yes because the body was hidden behind a wall. Dogs will still pick up the scent if it has been removed e.g. Zapata case dogs detected the scent 30 years later. Any credible police force will be working on a theory that the missing child possibly died at the crime scene and was removed by the unidentified suspect. SY searches close to the sighting suggest it.
Detective Chief Inspector Andy Redwood, in charge of the hunt for Madeleine, accepted there were differences between these cases and that of Madeleine's disappearance but added that there was a possibility that Madeleine had not left her family's holiday apartment alive when she disappeared in May 2007.
Redwood said the assumption that Madeleine had been alive "may not follow with all our thinking" on the case.
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/mar/19/madeleine-mccann-police-intruder-girls-algarve
This article was amended on 21 March 2014. The earlier version stated that Detective Chief Inspector Andy Redwood had said the assumption that Madeleine had been alive when she left the apartment "may not follow with all our thinking" on the case. To clarify: those quoted words actually came after Redwood had referred to the assumption that Madeleine had been abducted. However, Redwood did say during the same press conference that police were considering the possibility that Madeleine was not alive when taken from the apartment as well as the possibility that she was.
The Guardian article shows that all options remain open in Madeleine McCann's case.
To think that Madeleine's case is being looked at in isolation is naive. As part of that investigation into the very serious offences which had occurred, Scotland Yard have seized the opportunity presented to investigate other crimes committed against Britons who were on holiday in the Algarve.
It is extraordinary that an investigation into a child who had disappeared from her bedroom did not take into consideration crimes being committed against children by an intruder to their bedrooms.
It is remarkable that there was a denial by some that such crimes had been committed at all.
Viewed against the spotlight of the many persons who remain of interest and the many persons already investigated by SY and eliminated from the inquiry ... when taken in conjunction with the separate PJ investigation ... it clearly shows that somewhere along the line, the Amaral investigation took a wrong turning.
Whether that was as a result of the flawed exercise involving the introduction of the dogs to the case and the total misinterpretation of their abilities and significance, despite the caveats of Martin Grime, remains to be seen.
I would suggest that the dogs had little to do with Mr Amaral taking his eye off the ball and more to do with grabbing any leverage to close the case with another parental conviction under his belt.
The article suggests that there may even be forensic evidence available from these assaults. I would have thought investigation of that would have taken priority over putting all the eggs into one basket of woof = guilty parent, preferably the mother.
**snip
Detectives said there had been an increase in criminality and burglary in Praia da Luz that peaked in April 2007, shortly before Madeleine's disappearance.
Scotland Yard also revealed it was looking at 38 "people of interest" in relation to her disappearance, having dismissed 22 others from that category. They were also trying to find out more about 530 known sex offenders – 59 regarded as of high interest – across Europe.
However Portugal's Polícia Judiciária (PJ) claimed that Wednesday's press conference simply confirmed a primary line of investigation which has been investigated by Portuguese police since last October. Suggestions that the information released by the Met had initially been discounted by Portuguese detectives were denied by a source at the PJ's headquarters in Lisbon.
He said that evidence of a string of crimes had been the driving force behind Portuguese officials re-opening the case. "It is all there in the police case files," said the source. "You will see when it is made public."Madeleine's parents, Kate and Gerry McCann, have been informed of the latest developments.
Clarence Mitchell, spokesman for the McCann family, told the BBC: "Kate and Gerry still believe that Madeleine is alive and out there to be found, and that is why they are so pleased that the British police are doing such a good job on this."
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/mar/19/madeleine-mccann-police-intruder-girls-algarve
