I take this to be the most questionable passage from Dr Amaral's book
After a week of intense work, Harrison presents the results of his study to my coordinating group. Even if we were expecting it, his conclusions confirm our worst fears. The most plausible scenario is the following: there is no doubt that Madeleine is dead, and her body is hidden somewhere in the area around Praia da Luz. He praises the quality of the work carried out by the Portuguese authorities in trying to find the little girl alive. According to him, the time has come to redirect the searches in order to find, this time, a body hidden in the surrounding area.
AMAZING STATISTICS
Great Britain has at its disposal the world's biggest data bank on homicide of children under five years old. Since 1960, the count is 1528. Harrison is well acquainted with its contents. He often draws information from there which helps him to resolve similar cases. Valuable information can be found there on on various criminal modus operandi, places where bodies are hidden, techniques used to get rid of a body. He relates that on one occasion, thanks to the data, he was able to deduce the maximum distance a body might be found in relation to where the crime had been committed.
The figures quoted in the report he hands over give us the shivers. The crimes, including those of a sexual nature, are committed by the parents in 84% of cases; 96% are perpetrated by friends and relatives. In only 4% of them is the murderer or abductor a total stranger to the victim. In this roundabout way, Mark Harrison points out that the guilty party may be a person close to Madeleine, and even her own parents. From now on, we have to explore this track, especially as the others have proved fruitless.
Here, from his report, is what Harrison actually said:
Sub Surface Burial on P D Luz Beach
For Body Disposal Purposes The Beach Can Be Separated And
Discussed Into 6 Areas.
Figure 2.The boulders in the rock falls are too large
to man handle. Vegetative growth suggests rock
falls have been in situ for some time. The low energy
wave action would not move any of the boulders. It
is possible a small child could be secreted amongst
the rocks in natural voids.
Figure 3.The cliff edge at the base of the beach is at
an angle that inhibits soil removal. The shale re fills
any hole dug and is unsuitable to achieve a burial.
Figure4.At the base of the cliff are wave cuts where
the bedrock has been eroded by wave action. Here
sand can be easily dug but after a few centimetres
the digger reaches the bed rock, preventing a
successful burial.
Figure 5.The beach cusps or berms are mounds of
sand made by wind action. These cusps form at the
limit of the tides reach and would only be recovered
in storm conditions. Digging on the cusps is easy but to achieve as
more than a few centimetres depth is very difficult to
the fine sand granules refill the hole
Figure 6.The dark sand in this image shows the
intertidal area. Here digging and burial could
possibly be achieved although it would be through a
mixture of grave1 and water. However any burial
would be quickly exposed by wave action and
ultimately taken into the sea.
Harrison explicitly ruled out burial.
The reference Harrison made to statistics is this:
I am currently of the opinion on the available information and statistical datasets that if death has occurred, that it is possible that Madeleine McCann’s body has been disposed into the sea at Praia da Luz. (See my second report entitled “NPIA OP TASK Search Doc Beach and Marine”).
And note the provisor:
if death has occurred ...
So, Amaral has misrepresented Harrison as saying that Madeleine is definitely dead, that the statistics point to Madeleine being definitely dead, that her remains are buried somewhere in close proximity to PdL (when Harrison
ruled out burial) and that her parents might well be responsible (when Harrison reached no, definitive, conclusion about what might have happened to Madeleine.)
Do Amaral's comments not verge on the libellous?
[Title and Post edited by Admin]
36
