What evidence would one expect to find in an ABDUCTION?

[Mr Gray]

What's the one piece of evidence you would 100% find following an abduction...

[Alfred R Jones]

It was not immediately apparent to Karla T’s ( mother's changed name, but I will call the child the same) parents that there was anything amiss in the immediate aftermath of her assault. Only later when a bruise in the shape of a handprint came out on her face was it discovered what had happened to her and that her abductor had first tried to gain entry via a window using a ladder.

Thankfully she had not been taken further afield nor was she killed … but one wonders what would have happened had she not been returned to her room.

Despite her testimony about the intruder and DNA on her top which eventually identified her abductor, Karla T’s father and brother came under suspicion.

Had she not been there to tell what happened and had there been no corroborating forensics what would we have had?  Most certainly accusation of a ‘simulated’ abduction … with either her father or brother being accused of staging the scene and disposing of Karla T’s body.

The only evidence of an intruder was the child's story and the foreign DNA on the child’s top. 

If she had been taken what weight would the her father’s ‘evidence’ have carried about being alerted by the open front door? and the ‘simulation’ of the ladder and attempt at entry via the window?



Porter girl abducted from bedroom, assaulted

Posted: Monday, March 28, 2011 12:33 am |  Updated: 10:29 am, Tue Mar 29, 2011.   

 By VANESA BRASHIER

>>snip<<

“When a child predator sets his sights on a victim, nothing will stand in his way. Not a locked door, a locked window or even an occupied house.”

Karla T., whose name has been changed to protect her family’s privacy, knows all about such monsters.
 
In July 2010, while she and her family were sleeping in their Porter, Texas home, a man broke in and stole her 6-year-old daughter’s innocence.

The child was sexually assaulted before being released. When he freed the girl outside her home, the kidnapper reportedly warned: “Tell your parents what I did and I will come back and hurt them.”

The crime wasn’t noticed until hours later. It might have been overlooked altogether had the kidnapper not left a tell-tale sign.

The morning after the assault, Karla’s husband was the first to see that things were not quite right. When he walked into the dining room to put on his boots to go to work, the front door was standing wide open.

Alarmed, he ran to his children’s rooms to see if they were OK. When he found them both asleep in their beds, he locked the front door and left for work, assuming the wind must have blown open the front door during the overnight hours.

>>snip<<

Home was no longer safe and based on the evidence found around the home, it appeared that the predator might have first attempted to gain access to the child through her bedroom window.

“We found that the pool ladder had been placed outside her bedroom. It appears he also tried to pry open a window with a butter knife,” said Karla.

When that failed, he took a more direct path to the child through the front door.

With an unknown predator now targeting her daughter, Karla took drastic steps and moved the two of them in with a relative.

>>snip<<
An unintentional victim of the crime against the 6-year-old girl was her brother, who in the past had always been her protector. After his sister’s attack and before a suspect was named, he was, by his own admission, the focus of the law enforcement investigation.

Looking back now, he knows why and even blames himself a little.

At around the time his 6-year-old sister was abducted, he had been wearing headphones and playing video games. He and his mother now speculate about whether or not the kidnapper could have walked right past him because he was so engrossed in the game.

“The police had perfectly good reasons for being suspicious of me. I was in the next room and I was the last one to see her before bedtime,” he said. “But after a while they seemed to throw out the evidence. I knew I was their target.”

Before this incident happened, “I had a lot of respect for law enforcement. I wanted to be a police officer. Now I can’t help but see a cop and think, ‘How is he going to mess up my life,’” he said.

His advice now for friends who are questioned by police: “Get a lawyer before talking to police. Being in that room for questioning, just with them, they can say and do anything they want. Now I know that basically they have a job and they need to get it done.

“And I know why defense attorneys exist,” he said.

Karla is more forgiving even though it took a few months to entirely clear her husband and son of any wrongdoing. She even praises the Montgomery County sheriff’s detectives who investigated her daughter’s case.

“The detective in the case, Ken Bivens, has been a godsend. If not for the work of Bivens, the other detectives and the forensic scientists, we would still not know who hurt my daughter," said Karla.

http://www.yourhoustonnews.com/cleveland/news/article_4187ed83-fed3-5276-b6c2-2166c8720c11.html

Very interesting article, thanks for posting.  It should provide food for thought for those who sneeringly and repeatedly demand evidence of abduction on this forum...

[lordpookles]

This is why i can't help but think it hurt the McCanns by not staying in Portugal and satisfying the demands of the investigation... they clearly needed to be eliminated so it could progress...

[Mr Gray]

This is why i can't help but think it hurt the McCanns by not staying in Portugal and satisfying the demands of the investigation... they clearly needed to be eliminated so it could progress...

the investigation has progressed

[lordpookles]

but previously stalled for a long time...

[Mr Gray]

but previously stalled for a long time...

due to the fault of the PJ IMO....and now only opened due to pressure from the mccanns

[Eleanor]

 http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2825665/Dad-confronts-kidnapper-saves-5-year-old-daughter.html#ixzz3IQoVXBDD

[Brietta]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2825665/Dad-confronts-kidnapper-saves-5-year-old-daughter.html#ixzz3IQoVXBDD

If Karla T had not been returned the only clue to abduction would have been her father’s statement about seeing the open front door.  Not good enough for some who think the last person to be believed is a parent.

Due diligence was carried out as her father and brother seem to have been subjected to rigorous questioning and I think the outlook could have been very bleak without the forensic evidence on the child herself.
http://www.yourhoustonnews.com/cleveland/news/article_4187ed83-fed3-5276-b6c2-2166c8720c11.html

If Troy Morley hadn’t been seen and apprehended by the child’s father outside their home … apart from the trauma of their child being missing … the parents would have been subjected to the closest scrutiny possible to determine if they had played a role in her disappearance.

I doubt if in either case there would have been enough evidence to determine exactly what had happened
(a)   if one child had not been returned by the abductor ... imo the child was the target of this home invasion.
(b)   if the abduction had not been prevented by the intervention of the child’s father ... imo this was an attempted burglary in which the child was taken.

I think every case is different and the MO of the perpetrator will be tailored to suit the circumstances; I think that in cases where it is highly unlikely that the person vanished of his\her own volition, abduction has to be considered as the most logical option.

[Alice Purjorick]

What evidence would one expect to find in an ABDUCTION?

The primary piece of evidence would be a missing person I suppose.
All abductions result in a missing person but not all missing persons have been abducted.
So what other evidence is required to satisfy the abduction thesis in this particular case?
All the others a very interesting but a bit off piste as one might say.

[Eleanor]

I shudder to think of what The Media and Public Opinion would have done to this family if the child had vanished without trace.
And I doubt that The Police would have helped them much.

[John]

This is why i can't help but think it hurt the McCanns by not staying in Portugal and satisfying the demands of the investigation... they clearly needed to be eliminated so it could progress...

I totally agree, at least one of them should have maintained a presence and encouraged the Portuguese in a renewed search.

Evidence of an abduction can include the following:

* A missing person.
* Stolen property.
* A break-in or forced entry.
* Unusual footprints including soiling on sills/floors/carpets.
* Persons acting suspiciously nearby.
* A ransom demand.
* Sightings of the missing person.

Only one of the above was apparent in Madeleine's disappearance but a missing child can mean many things including walked off by herself, accidental death followed by removal of the remains or even family or stranger abduction.

No evidence except for a missing child presents a challenge for investigators.  They have to look at all scenarios including parental participation and that is exactly what the English and Portuguese police did.  Madeleine's parents should not have viewed this in the negative way they did, they should have cooperated fully with the PJ instead of thwarting them.

"They lost the opportunity to prove their own innocence" AG Archiving Report

[Carana]

I totally agree, at least one of them should have maintained a presence and encouraged the Portuguese in a renewed search.

Evidence of an abduction can include the following:

* A missing person.
* Stolen property.
* A break-in or forced entry.
* Unusual footprints including soiling on sills/floors/carpets.
* Persons acting suspiciously nearby.
* A ransom demand.
* Sightings of the missing person.

Only one of the above was apparent in Madeleine's disappearance but a missing child can mean many things including walked off by herself, accidental death followed by removal of the remains or even family or stranger abduction.

No evidence except for a missing child presents a challenge for investigators.  They have to look at all scenarios including parental participation and that is exactly what the English and Portuguese police did.  Madeleine's parents should not have viewed this in the negative way they did, they should have cooperated fully with the PJ instead of thwarting them.

"They lost the opportunity to prove their own innocence" AG Archiving Report

There are more indicators than you've mentioned, John.

The McCanns didn't "thwart" the investigation: the McCanns never refused to go back, in fact they were legally obliged to do so if requested. The friends decided not to go back in the end - and Jez didn't want to go back, either.

We already have a long thread on here on the issue of whether a reenactment would have proven their innocence or not. I don't see how it could have done.

For example, if the precise angle of the door, the wind direction and extent of gust at that moment, curtains whooshing and the door slamming couldn't be reproduced, or was difficult to reproduce, then the assumption would have been that Kate was lying. If the door did slam, then it would have been "Ok, maybe" - but it still wouldn't have proven that that is what happened on the night.

It is known that Jez, Gerry and Jane don't agree on exactly where everyone was standing. Getting Jane to flipflop past two men in a fake and tense situation to see if they could hear / see her or not is silly as they'd know what to expect and would unconsciously be concentrating. In any case, it's irrelevant now as someone believed to be Tannerman and child have been identified. If the PJ had checked the creche records, they might have found that out themselves.

Even in the best case scenario of "Ok, maybe", the PJ would not have then gone back to the drawing board to look for new suspects - there was no time left. Rebelo was tying up loose ends to see whether there were grounds for charging them or not. The clock was ticking very fast as the investigation had to be wound up one way or another due to legal time limits. And the time limit had already been exceptionally extended in order to process the results of the rogatory interviews.

Rebelo didn't answer Kate's letter begging for news, so what would staying on in Portugal have achieved? At that point, they weren't aware of the child sexual assaults, and it's not clear that the PJ did either back then as the GNR had apparently handled them (or rather hadn't).

[lordpookles]

^ but this is just an Internet forum making judgements on whether a reenactment would have helped. If the Portuguese police force believed it would have done then I choose to take the position of the professionals. And remember Kate had already refused to answer her questions when interviewed as an arguido under the advice of her lawyer. Would she have agreed at a later date? Who knows imo...

[Carana]

^ but this is just an Internet forum making judgements on whether a reenactment would have helped. If the Portuguese police force believed it would have done then I choose to take the position of the professionals. And remember Kate had already refused to answer her questions when interviewed as an arguido under the advice of her lawyer. Would she have agreed at a later date? Who knows imo...

There were a few issues that they thought needed clarification, fair enough. My point, though, is that it would not have proven the McCanns' innocence, nor would it have sent the PJ back to the drawing board in hunting for a stranger abductor.

The door slamming issue and the JT/Gerry/Jez issue seem to have been the main ones. However, if they had checked the creche records, they would have found the answer to that question. The door slamming didn't really require Kate to stand there willing for the right gust of wind to blow on an arbitrary evening.

On the whole, I find Rebelo to have done a reasonable job in the circumstances and was quite methodical, but he inherited a chaotic investigation. João Carlos seems to have been an OK cop as well, even though there were a few mistakes.

By the time of the proposed reconstruction, everyone had lost faith and apparently the proposed date had been leaked to the press. I doubt that Rebelo did that, but someone seemingly did, according to Russell.

To me, Rebelo comes across as a box-ticker in the sense of tying up loose ends. The team spent ages, for example, checking out where the ink for the photos could have come from, when it would have been far simpler to just ask.

IMO, Rebelo's main job was to pick up the pieces and verify whether there were any grounds to charge the McCanns or Murat, or shelve the case, as they had already been made arguidos, poor old Murat had been stuck in limbo for ages, and time was running out.

There was no time to go back to square one. The only thing that would have prolonged the investigation even further is if Madeleine had suddenly turned up somewhere, or someone had made a spontaneous confession, which didn't happen.

[Mr Gray]

^ but this is just an Internet forum making judgements on whether a reenactment would have helped. If the Portuguese police force believed it would have done then I choose to take the position of the professionals. And remember Kate had already refused to answer her questions when interviewed as an arguido under the advice of her lawyer. Would she have agreed at a later date? Who knows imo...

We now know that these professionals had misunderstood the evidence of the dogs and actually thought the mccanns were guilty...I fully support the decision to leave Portugal...staying would not have helped to find maddie