I can't come up with a credible reason why acquaintances would lie to cover a serious crime, but neither can I come up with a credible reason for their being no evidence of an abduction. In fact the only evidence seems to point to staging. Misinformation about jemmied shutters and broken doors. Kate's fingerprints on the window, everybodies willingness to point the finger at Murat..
And the door!
That mysteriously moving door!
On a different thread Red came up with a credible reason for Smithman. Someone taking a child to a medical emergency wouldn't stop to chat, would hurry, wouldn't worry about shoes or coats, especially if their child had a temperature.
But even if Smithman is debunked, where does that leave everything else?
IMO while there is no credible reason why the friends would agree to lie - there is a credible reason to explain why apart from the open shutter/window and missing child, no definite evidence was found - and that is because it was either destroyed by the traffic through the apartment, or it was simply missed by the forensic people. But that doesn't mean it didn't ever exist. Amaral himself admitted there were shortcomings in that area.
As for 'staging' I always come back to the fact that 2 intelligent people would never have embarked on such a complicated plan - where so many things could go wrong, and depended hugely on the lifelong collusion and co-operation of 7 other people - when all they had to do was:-
Say nothing to anyone,
Wait until the middle of the night and dispose of the body at their leisure,
Ring the police the next morning and say she must have been abducted during the night while they were asleep.
They would even have time to force the front door open from the outside - to provide evidence of how the abductor got in. Or they could simply say someone must have had a key.
With the best will in the world I cannot get past that very large elephant in the room.
