I left the in-depth discussion about whether or not the magnitude of the failure to check on the twins was the biggest mistake made by the Policia Judiciaria ... when it became patently obvious that it most certainly was not.
I find it truly surprising however that posters, some of whom may have spent the last nine years asking questions about Madeleine's case have no curiosity regarding Von Aesch or the circumstances in which his body was found and later Ylenia's body was found.
The direct connection to Madeleine's case is that the Swiss police thought it relevant enough to share the information and from that starting point other avenues of investigation might have been suggested.
See ... http://miscarriageofjustice.co/index.php?topic=3143.0 for more information. Post #3 from an article written in 2007 indicates a police statement to the effect he had been in the Algarve at the time of Madeleine's disappearance.
So my reading skills are fine, thank you for your concern, as is my comprehension. I am certainly curious about the circumstances of Von Aesch's demise in the forest and the Swiss contact with the Portuguese as a result.
If I were a poster justifying my eagerness to question all things McCann ... this would appear to be near virgin territory of unasked questions and by definition unanswered questions.
That it doesn't point in the preferred direction is just one of those things which happens when investigators have an open mind and follow evidence ... pity there was such a marked prejudice against checking it out at the time.
Apart from one non-attributed line in a Wiki article, I can see no real reference that places him in or around Luz at the time the McCanns were here.
There's a 'holiday in the Algarve' reference, but bear in mind the Algarve is not pocket handkerchief size.
If he was in the Algarve, or even in Luz, the next challenge would be how he managed to discover Madeleine and track her to apartment 5A. The idea that he parked a distinctive white car with Spanish number plates (which seem to have become German plates a few months later in Switzerland) outside 5A for days on end strikes me as very hard to swallow. Since he didn't have a key to 5A, he would then have to observe the McCanns leaving the children alone in the evening and the McCanns using the patio door, unless he was hoping they would also leave a window open AND he had tested the shutters.
I realise you are not actually discussing the case, merely raising it as an unexplored avenue. But unless I have missed something, we don't know whether it was explored or not. Any investigation of someone believed to have kidnapped, raped and murdered a young girl should have gone in the sex offenders section of the PJ Files, and these were not released to the general public.
Operation Grange has access to those files, but even IF the PJ ruled him out in the first investigation, surely this line of enquiry should be rechecked? It appears this has been done. It appears the man has been ruled out of the Madeleine case. Since I'm not privy to how this was achieved, I don't wish to speculate. I can see actions being required in Portugal if OG thought him anywhere near Luz, such as checking his DNA against the samples that remain unidentified. I therefore tend to the opinion they have something that actually places him elsewhere at the time, but as I say, the evidence to support this is little.
If everything is boiled down, what is left is another 'sex offender in Luz' story that appears to have been investigated and discounted by OG.
