It is widely accepted that the Policia Judiciaria made many mistakes throughout the initial phases of the investigation of Madeleine McCann's disappearance.
Some posters appear to be reluctant to accept that one of which may have been the failure to check the twins.
That the twins were monitored by doctors till the morning is fortunate; that they suffered no ill effects whether or not exposed to some inhalant or not, is fortunate; that nothing was learned about the reason for their deep sleep apart from normal tiredness is imo just another omission.
All posters seem to be of the opinion that at least a reasonable search was conducted ... we've seen the pictures.
We weren't there at the time, but a former commander at Scotland Yard was and he was none too impressed by the quality of the searches he observed.
John O'Connor on RTE 190513
on SoundCloud.
**Snip
I was there with GMTV at the time and the press were being briefed covertly by Portuguese journalists and police officers that they believed that the offenders were within the family or the family group ...
and they would't move from that and they were so wrong ...
and it got them off to a dreadful start and they missed golden opportunities in the early stages of the investigation ...
because they were just intent on trying to to prove some culpability within the family and they could't have been further from the actual truth of it and of course what SY been trying to do is to catch up with what should have been done at the time.
There's a lot of things that weren't done.
I mean I saw the searches that were carried out on open ground and so on and they were cursory, to say the least.
I mean if they came across a locked shed or whatever they wouldn't force the door, now this it really was ...
A lot of the stuff that was seen to be done seemed to be window dressing for the world's media and I didn't get the impression that they were really going about this ...
https://madeleinemccannthetruth.wordpress.com/2013/05/22/john-oconnor-speaking-to-marian-finucane/
Amazing that at this early stage in the investigation the Portuguese journalists were singing from the same hymn sheet as the police to drip venom into the ears of foreign journalists and pundits.
If I were looking for a missing pet cat I would want to see inside locked sheds and lock ups. From what John Conner saw ~ Madeleine was not given that consideration:
Golden hours ... what on earth are golden hours??
I would rate the obvious attempt to implicate her parents as a bigger mistake than the failure to test the twins.
Not bothering to force or have locked premises opened for inspection yet another.
In how many searches in his time did John Connor go around breaking into locked premises illegally?
The law in Portugal does not allow the police to break and enter. That happens to be a crime here, just as it is in the UK. You get permission from the owner to search. Or you get a court order, which would not be issued without some evidence more solid than the premises are locked. Empty premises are normally locked.
Does Mr Connor have ANY idea of how many locked premises there are in a 15km radius of Luz? (I believe that was the search radius please correct me if I'm inaccurate on that.) Does Mr Connor have ANY idea of the number of officers required to search the area to the standards he is suggesting?
Does Mr Connor have ANY idea of how many plots of land within Luz were earmarked for development but not built upon both then and now. OG spent what, certainly over week with a total deployment of around 50 officers (OG, GNR and PJ), ground penetrating radar, sniffer dogs, and achieved WHAT? They learned it's hard to dig a hole in Luz.
So that is one patch of land down. I'm fairly sure I could get another couple of dozen plots, all of similar size, and ALL strictly WITHIN Luz.
Then there's the 15km radius to consider.
I'm afraid I am filing Mr Connor's opinion along with a number of other so called experts who find talking is easy and criticism is cheap, but simply have not considered what in practical terms it would cost to implement.
There was the failure to seal off Luz, something that would take literally hundreds of officers. There was not rounding up all the tourists, and forcing them to remain in Luz until a formal statement had been obtained. There was not diving in every abandoned well in the search area. There was not sealing the borders by closing every crossing point, shutting airports, and manning marinas.
Now to this, the PJ failed to add the crime of multiple illegal entries.
Does Mr Conner have a clue about how Luz worked? From memory, the OC had an occupancy rate of about 50%, which means that half the properties were empty and locked. Luz was stuffed with villas and apartments that mirror this.
Has Mr Connor built into his calculation that people over here drive cars, vans and motorbikes on a routine basis? That by the time of the very first call to the GNR Madeleine could have been in a boat and leaving the country? That by the time the PJ arrived Madeleine could have been driven to Spain or to Lisbon?
These "massive initial response" scenarios all have 2 key elements. First, that the word of the parent's should have simply have been accepted as true, despite there being no sign whatsoever of a break-in, and despite the stats about those most likely to be involved in a child's disappearance. Second, that truly gigantic amounts of time and resources should have been thrown at this.
I do not believe Mr Connor has done the most basic of cost-benefit analyses on this. This idea never gets near to getting off the ground.
There definitely are things that could have been done better. This is not one.
By the way, I should have added magic forensics and DNA that was supposedly about to crack the case. And when did phone triangulation first emerge, also supposedly about to crack the case in 2007? Pity there was no DNA database at the time, and there's no triangulation in the phone files, but why let facts get in the way of a good story?
