Author Topic: 'It is time to discard the myths and half truths, Madeleine McCann was taken’  (Read 4819 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Offline Venturi Swirl

Thanks to G-Unit for reminding us of David Canter and his professional opinion about what happened to Madeleine McCann.  In light of the latest developments I think it’s interesting to read what he had to say about the case, writing in the Times in 2007.  I agreed with him almost to word then, and nothing has changed my opinion since:


“Five months after her disappearance, we are no further towards knowing exactly what happened to Madeleine McCann and we may never know the truth. However, after spending many days in Praia da Luz while making a Dispatches documentary about the case, I have come to the conclusion that the greatest likelihood is that she was abducted, and probably by a local person.

There are a number of indicators that have led me to this conclusion.

The days that I spent in Praia da Luz speaking to those who were there soon after that dreadful night in May, and with experienced police officers and a forensic scientist, have helped to clear away many of the myths and half-truths that have driven the accounts of Madeleine’s disappearance.

If you stand outside the apparently unremarkable apartment from which Madeleine vanished, the reality of unexpected horror hits home. The tidy walls and hedges that divide the apartments from the swimming pool, on the far side of which the family were eating tapas on May 3, take on a much more sinister form when you realise that they hide any clear view of the room in which the McCann children were sleeping.

An abductor who knew the complex would have had to be quick to remove the child from her apartment without being seen, but he could have done it. After passing through the alleyway that ran beside the apartment, he would then have found it simple to dash across the deserted road behind the resort and through a small car park to a network of alleyways sheltered by high walls.

These alleyways, decorated with lush bougainvillea, provide an ideal rat-run that would be well known to local criminals. Late in the evening it would have been a simple thing to pass through these alleyways to a safe house or a car parked near by.

Possible escape routes aside, one of the most convincing arguments I have heard for an abduction by a local came from my colleague at Liverpool University, Professor Kevin Browne, who advises many international agencies including the WHO and Unicef on child protection. He made clear that this quiet village could harbour a number of child abusers who had been released into the community rather than convicted.

The situation in Portugal was, he pointed out, very different from that in Britain today, being more the way it used to be here a decade or more ago.

Compared with other countries in Western Europe, Portugal convicts a much smaller proportion of child abusers. Children are more likely to be removed from their families, ending up in institutions while their abusers walk free. As a consequence, there are not only potentially more abusers within society unmarked and unmonitored, but a of whole new generation of people with an increased likelihood of becoming abusers because of their own experiences.


There are limited possibilities for what happened to Madeleine. I think of these along a continuum from those, at one end, in which she played a significant role, to the other extreme at which would lie an organised network of traffickers who come to Praia de Luz specifically to find a victim.

The family or close associates distance us from the possibilites involving the girl herself. Those who know the family but are not really known to the family themselves, such as service staff, lead us a step closer to the possibilities of a distant criminal network.

However, there is a crucial prospect of a person who had no direct contact with the family, observing them from afar, although not part of any criminal organisation.

Each possible explanation for the disappearance is driven by different assumptions.

If she had woken up in distress would she have sat and cried or wandered off into the town? If she had wandered off it would have been to try to find her parents – along a probably familiar route to where they were eating. It would have been a terrible coincidence if she had been abducted on such an unlikely journey.

The prospect of family or friends’ involvement beggars belief. For a start, if the child had been killed in some accident, possibly as a result of an overdose, then her medically trained parents would have had to be exceptionally incompetent, for which there is no evidence. Furthermore, the friends who were with them would all have had to be willing to risk their professional careers to keep such a appalling secret for such a long time.

Organised networks of people traffickers, sadly, have much more obvious opportunities for finding vulnerable children who would not be missed on the streets of many developing countries, or even in the orphanages, and sometimes the streets of Eastern Europe. Why risk being caught in a quite middle-class holiday resort?

Against this backdrop, it became clear to me that the police in the Al-garve simply do not have the resources to deal with crimes of this magnitude. Their expertise lies in dealing with the drug smuggling that occurs frequently between North Africa and here. But resources that the English police can bring to bear quickly are unlikely to be available to the Portuguese police in any serious inquiry.

Detective Chief Superintendent Chris Stevenson, who headed the Soham investigation into the murders of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman in 2002, made clear in his contribution to the documentary that the British police would have followed the detailed procedure laid down in an inch-thick “murder manual” – a painstakingly systematic approach that can send the cost of the average murder inquiry to £1 million.

Without these resources, the Portuguese police have had to proceed very differently. They have to find ways of taking the short cuts that detectives in fact and fiction have always had to take in the past. This consists of forming a view of what the likely cause of the crime is and using that in the search for clues.

For me the most obvious possibility is the local offender quickly escaping down the rat-run of dark alleys. One witness is reported as seeing a man rushing away from the complex with a child wrapped in a blanket shortly after the last reported sighting of Madeleine.

The days spent discussing the disappearance of Madeleine in the actual location where the McCanns had been on holiday provided a rather different perspective from the one heralded in the British media. The little girl may just have been in the wrong place at the wrong time”.


"Surely the fact that their accounts were different reinforces their veracity rather than diminishes it? If they had colluded in protecting ........ surely all of their accounts would be the same?" - Faithlilly

Offline G-Unit

Is the Professor distinguishing child abusers from paedophiles I wonder?

"four years old is an odd age for any child victim to be abducted - too young to be of interest to most paedophiles, too old to be trafficked or stolen as a baby-substitute."
Read and abide by the forum rules.
Result = happy posting.
Ignore and break the rules
Result = edits, deletions and unhappiness
http://miscarriageofjustice.co/index.php?board=2.0

Offline Venturi Swirl

Is the Professor distinguishing child abusers from paedophiles I wonder?

"four years old is an odd age for any child victim to be abducted - too young to be of interest to most paedophiles, too old to be trafficked or stolen as a baby-substitute."
As children can be abused as young as new born babies I’m not sure why he states 4 year olds are too young to be of interest to paedophiles but that’s by the by.  I’m pretty sure other four year olds have been victims of paedophiles and/or abducted by them.  Still, in this article Canter seems quite convinced Madeleine was taken by a local, and cites the possible of a local sex abuser as being responsible. 
"Surely the fact that their accounts were different reinforces their veracity rather than diminishes it? If they had colluded in protecting ........ surely all of their accounts would be the same?" - Faithlilly

Offline Wonderfulspam


And he excludes parental involvement because the McCanns are doctors & doctors never murder anyone.
Plus all their friends would have to be involved in a cover up, which is of course total nonsense.
I stand with Putin. Glory to Mother Putin.

Offline Brietta

Is the Professor distinguishing child abusers from paedophiles I wonder?

"four years old is an odd age for any child victim to be abducted - too young to be of interest to most paedophiles, too old to be trafficked or stolen as a baby-substitute."

I don't know what distinguishes one sort of abuse involving children from another. 

Whatever name is given to one as opposed to the other don't you think it will come under the blanket of breaking the law. 

I don't think the name matters when dealing with offences against children and I don't think semantics solves anything when it comes to considering the nature of offence committed by either an abuser or a paedophile.
"All I'm going to say is that we've conducted a very serious investigation and there's no indication that Madeleine McCann's parents are connected to her disappearance. On the other hand, we have a lot of evidence pointing out that Christian killed her," Wolter told the "Friday at 9"....

Offline Venturi Swirl

And he excludes parental involvement because the McCanns are doctors & doctors never murder anyone.
Plus all their friends would have to be involved in a cover up, which is of course total nonsense.
your first sentence is false - he doesn't say that, your second sentence is nonsense because obviously most or all of their friends would have to be involved in a cover up. 
"Surely the fact that their accounts were different reinforces their veracity rather than diminishes it? If they had colluded in protecting ........ surely all of their accounts would be the same?" - Faithlilly

Offline Brietta

I have never read the article by David Canter before now.  There isn't much if anything in it with which I would take issue and of interest was his description of the restrictions placed on the 'Gene Hunt squad' which botched so much of the investigation into Madeleine's disappearance.

In the documentary we are told by an expert that British police would have followed “a painstakingly systematic approach” using detailed procedure as laid down in a “murder manual” which is a horrendously expensive thing to do.  Using the British approach can mean a single murder inquiry can cost up to to £1 million.

The Portuguese didn't enjoy that ability.  Lack of resources entailed ‘short cuts’ being employed by Portuguese detectives who it seems have to use gut instinct to decide what happened and then have to search for clues to fit the thesis.  Which in my non expert opinion is the route to disaster.  Evidence first before anything else would be my immediate response and although I knew the Portuguese police lacked the resources ours enjoy I didn't follow why the cops 'solved' the case then looked for the supporting evidence.

OK - I've got that now - although the thought about putting the horse before the cart still springs to mind. I think I intended to put that the other way round - "cart before" rings a bell 👀

What I do find incomprehensible and inexplicable is that despite the police getting it so horribly wrong to start with and even when it became crystal clear they did even to their colleagues sent to mop up the mess - that there are still those who "question" that Madeleine was abducted.
« Last Edit: July 27, 2021, 05:28:02 PM by Brietta »
"All I'm going to say is that we've conducted a very serious investigation and there's no indication that Madeleine McCann's parents are connected to her disappearance. On the other hand, we have a lot of evidence pointing out that Christian killed her," Wolter told the "Friday at 9"....

Offline Wonderfulspam

your first sentence is false - he doesn't say that, your second sentence is nonsense because obviously most or all of their friends would have to be involved in a cover up.

No they wouldn't.
I stand with Putin. Glory to Mother Putin.

Offline Venturi Swirl

No they wouldn't.
Yes they would.  They would all be covering up for the absence of Gerry McCann on his alleged traipse through town with a corpse, because they all claimed he was sat at the table at the time of the Smithman sighting.
"Surely the fact that their accounts were different reinforces their veracity rather than diminishes it? If they had colluded in protecting ........ surely all of their accounts would be the same?" - Faithlilly

Offline Wonderfulspam

Yes they would.  They would all be covering up for the absence of Gerry McCann on his alleged traipse through town with a corpse, because they all claimed he was sat at the table at the time of the Smithman sighting.

Wrong, Matt said Kate raised the alarm before 10pm.
I stand with Putin. Glory to Mother Putin.

Offline Venturi Swirl

Wrong, Matt said Kate raised the alarm before 10pm.
Oh right.  So talk us through the timeline then.
"Surely the fact that their accounts were different reinforces their veracity rather than diminishes it? If they had colluded in protecting ........ surely all of their accounts would be the same?" - Faithlilly

Offline Wonderfulspam

Oh right.  So talk us through the timeline then.

Done it before.

Where did Gerry search when they split up to search?
I stand with Putin. Glory to Mother Putin.

Offline Venturi Swirl

Done it before.

Where did Gerry search when they split up to search?
Do it again.   What time was the alarm raised?  Said who?  Who agreed?  What hapoened next?  Where was the body at the time?  How did Gerry retrieve it?  Where did he take it?  How long was he gone?  When did he change clothes on his return (given that the clothes he was said to have been wearing were not the same as Smithman’s)?  Why did no one notice this?  Why hide a body AFTER raising the alarm?  Before would be much safe no?  How could you guarantee that one of your mates might not follow you or come after you?
« Last Edit: July 27, 2021, 06:29:12 PM by Vertigo Swirl »
"Surely the fact that their accounts were different reinforces their veracity rather than diminishes it? If they had colluded in protecting ........ surely all of their accounts would be the same?" - Faithlilly

Offline Wonderfulspam

I stand with Putin. Glory to Mother Putin.

Offline Venturi Swirl

There's an entire thread on the subject.

http://miscarriageofjustice.co/index.php?topic=3629.345
Not interested,  I’m only interested in hearing your answers to the following

Do it again.   What time was the alarm raised?  Said who?  Who agreed?  What hapoened next?  Where was the body at the time?  How did Gerry retrieve it?  Where did he take it?  How long was he gone?  When did he change clothes on his return (given that the clothes he was said to have been wearing were not the same as Smithman’s)?  Why did no one notice this?  Why hide a body AFTER raising the alarm?  Before would be much safer no?  How could you guarantee that one of your mates might not follow you or come after you?
« Last Edit: July 27, 2021, 06:32:35 PM by Vertigo Swirl »
"Surely the fact that their accounts were different reinforces their veracity rather than diminishes it? If they had colluded in protecting ........ surely all of their accounts would be the same?" - Faithlilly