The Metropolitan Police and the Polícia Judiciária have gone back to zero.

[Carana]

The Met and the PJ have apparently taken the whole case back to zero. I understand that to mean that nothing was taken for granted.

[AnneGuedes]

The Met and the PJ have apparently taken the whole case back to zero. I understand that to mean that nothing was taken for granted.

They have taken from zero the abduction lead since it is the only one that keeps Madeleine eventually alive (or do you believe in Beauty and the Beast ?).
If they had reinterviewed the group, McCanns included, and found evidence of their non involvement, they would have claimed it loudly and politically correctly.

[AnneGuedes]

All the ingredients of a collective belief were there, that's why it worked. It wasn't made up by the McCanns, they took advantage of the effect on the media of their fairy tales of the night to those who were so far they couldn't verify.
It took 6 months and especially an Irish program to send Mr Mitchell claim that there was no breaking-in ! The myth of the forced shutters/window, without which the story wouldn't have been believed, still existed in some papers after one year !
This phenomenon is the unique interest of that case.
And some people will ask what spin doctors are for !

[Redblossom]

This was NEVER going to be a local story as it was not a local that went missing.....international attention was bound to be huge as in other cases


As for a "potential misfit" not knowing...well yes, I guess they are all thick, but also clever enough go pull  off a supremely planned abduction and never get caught acter having the whole world and its wife on their tail for years

So we have

Misfits
Drug dealers
Thiefs
Burlgars
Disgruntled ex employees
Unchecked by crb nannies employed by Ocean Club
Past convicted rapists of teenage girls
Past convicted paedophiles of boys
Any opportunistic paedophile
Any charity collector
Gypsies stealing kids to beg
Gypsies stealing kids to sell
Gypsiea/Moroccan/drug barons taking a sex slave for a harem!
Targetted adoption abduction for a loving childless couple but we have Posh Spice drunk in Barcelona asking have you got my new daughter, as relayed by a concerned business man TWO years later

Some elite paedophile who has taken loads of other kids too in the region
Not forgetting the mad theories that Mr Amaral abducted her or people he knows did and is covering up

Any others? I forgot?

You can make your own recipe from all these ingredients, indeed some people have taken the liberty of combining several of these into one ridiculous caricature

Some have said the apartment was watched for weeks and months beforehand just waiting for a child! thats how stupid its all gotten!

But god forbid dont ever think none if these are possible and the truth lies closer to home

[AnneGuedes]

assumptions assumptions

This was NEVER going to be a local story as it was not a local that went missing.....international attention was bound to be huge as in other cases


As for a "potential misfit" not knowing...well yes, I guess they are all thick, but also clever enough go pull  off a supremely planned abduction and never get caught acter having the whole world and its wife on their tail for years

So we have

Misfits
Drug dealers
Thiefs
Burlgars
Disgruntled ex employees
Unchecked by crb nannies employed by Ocean Club
Past convicted rapists of teenage girls
Past convicted paedophiles of boys
Any opportunistic paedophile
Any charity collector
Gypsies stealing kids to beg
Gypsies stealing kids to sell
Gypsiea/Moroccan/drug barons taking a sex slave for a harem!
Targetted adoption abduction for a loving childless couple but we have Posh Spice drunk in Barcelona asking have you got my new daughter, as relayed by a concerned business man TWO years later

Some elite paedophile who has taken loads of other kids too in the region
Not forgetting the mad theories that Mr Amaral abducted her or people he knows did and is covering up

Any others? I forgot?

You can make your own recipe from all these ingredients, indeed some people have taken the liberty of combining several of these into one ridiculous caricature

Some have said the apartment was watched for weeks and months beforehand just waiting for a child! thats how stupid its all gotten!

But god forbid dont ever think none if these are possible and the truth lies closer to home

One year before a guest saw a shoe behind a dark bush !
Fifteen days before, a witness saw a man trying to take a push chair left outside without even looking if there was a child inside !

[John]

Not many posts but worth its own thread imo.

[Sherlock Holmes]

I was thinking about this phraseology of DCI Redwood's recently. IMO it was a very cleverly thought out phrase.

It  was given in the context of an interview in which Redwood was giving a very general sketch of the investigation so far and its aims, without giving away anything about what specifically he and his team were actually doing.

The phrase 'draw everything back to zero', upon analysis, is astonishingly ambiguous and vague. What is being drawn back to zero? What is 'everything'? What is zero?  On what frame of reference, and where on that frame of reference does 'zero' appear? And who decides what and where? There really is no such thing as 'zero'.

Given that SY have given no undertakings that they will actually be able to solve this case, it would appear sensible to use a very broad brush in depicting the investigation. 'Back to zero' is just an umbrella term that implies a lot of work is being done without actually going in to what.No-one can question, analyse, or attempt to refute, because it's not clear what the parameters are.

[Redblossom]

Why has the post by Sherlock been removed? From the orginal discussion which my post number 3 here was in answer to.?Now it doesnt make sense. Oh well.

[VIXTE]

Maybe their point of start was 'has it ever happened before'?

And according to Kate's book the very beginning of Madeleine's files contained this ( I've already posted it today):

One of the most concerning and upsetting piece of information to emerge quite early ( when they started reading the files) was the record of sexual crimes against the children in  the Algarve. This discovery made me feel phisically sick. I read about five cases of British children on holiday being sexually abused in their beds while their parents slept another room. In three further incidents, children encountered an intruder in their bedrooms, who was presumably disturbed before he had the chance to carry out assault. I guess these were the reports that Bill Henderson, the British consul at the time of Madeleine's abduction, had told me about.
These incidents had occurred within an hour drive of PDL and over the three years prior to Madeleine's disappearance. The PJ never mentioned any of them to us. In fact, I gather from the files, some of them hadn't even been recorded by the authorities at the time they were reported..

[Estuarine]

Where is zero? In this context it is reasonable to assume it starts with the first police pocket book notes (or the Portuguese equivalent) and the first witness statements. We know that the MPS have been visiting Portugal for three years. We know that the MPS have no authority to do anything in Portugal; it is not unreasonable to conclude, therefore, they have been visiting Portugal to read the files. I believe the MPS are very careful with what they say after all by now they will have read 75% of all the PJ files; I suspect they are leading someone up the garden path and will eventually drop them in the pond. The question is whom.

[Sherlock Holmes]

Why has the post by Sherlock been removed? From the orginal discussion which my post number 3 here was in answer to.?Now it doesnt make sense. Oh well.

The thread from which this one came was very long and was very difficult to disentangle - partly my fault.

I think you are referring to the post in which I stated that someone abducting Madeleine could never have anticipated how the McCanns would react to the situation and the furor that would arise?  Its that the one? I think I also mentioned that I felt an abductor might assume the case would be dealt with by a local force of limited means.

[Silkywhiskers]

The Met and the PJ have apparently taken the whole case back to zero. I understand that to mean that nothing was taken for granted.

Is there an official source for this claim?

AFAIK SY has a "rapidly progressing" case and the PJ have said zero about anything.

[Redblossom]

The thread from which this one came was very long and was very difficult to disentangle - partly my fault.

I think you are referring to the post in which I stated that someone abducting Madeleine could never have anticipated how the McCanns would react to the situation and the furor that would arise?  Its that the one? I think I also mentioned that I felt an abductor might assume the case would be dealt with by a local force of limited means.

Yeah  something like that, I dont see the point if it being removed and my response staying, and with an edit  as well, there was nothing to disentangle here, it was a straight reaponse o the point you were making, think I ve had enough for one night here in so many fronts!!!

See ya

[Sherlock Holmes]

Yeah  something like that, I dont see the point if it being removed and my response staying, and with an edit  as well, there was nothing to disentangle here, it was a straight reaponse o the point you were making, think I ve had enough for one night here in so many fronts!!!

See ya

Yes, just an oversight, Red. Was a very long thread containing several topics and took time to disentangle all the different topics in general, that's what I mean.

Anyhow thanks for noting it - this thread now makes more sense regarding that point.

[pegasus]

Distance from Mr Amarals operations centre (May 2007) to flat 5A = about 70 metres
Distance from SY operations centre to flat 5A = about 2400000 metres
Back to zero?