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The McCanns...


Chris
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Columbo would have sorted this, he’d have badgered that Gerry something crazy. Probably started with some stuff about mrs Columbo worrying about his heart and grinding him down until he caved. 

Trouble he might have had is getting through the PR people, legal experts and lawyers. Then them buggering off out of the country. 

 

There’s is been a load of tosh written about them, hopefully this clears up some of that. I can’t shake what I believe but that’s not evidence just gut feeling. 

 

 

 

 

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Always felt something stank in all this. 

Saw this yesterday, in the Mirror 

Dianne Webster - mother of Fiona Payne and grandmother of Lily and Scarlet

She told British police that she suspected the twins - Sean and Amelie McCann - had been drugged, as they were still asleep in their cot after Kate raised the alarm.

Speaking in a police interview in 2008, Dianne said Gerry was "absolutely distraught" when everyone arrived in the McCann's apartment.

"I've never heard a man make the noises he made, and Kate, Kate was just...you just can't put into words how they were," she said in transcripts of the interview.

"I remember I went through into the room where...Madeleine was sleeping and err and she said 'she’s been taken' because she said that the shutters and that had been open, the window open.

"The twins were still asleep in the cot and I, with all the noise going on I don’t know how they slept through it which makes me think there was, they must have been drugged with something."

 

Dianne said Madeleine's bed cover was "neatly turned back", adding that the position of her bed meant looking around the door of the bedroom to see it.

Dianne returned to her apartment to look after her grandchildren and said she recalled seeing Kate "screaming, banging, hitting things " and shouting "we've let her down".

The twins were later brought up to Dianne's apartment to be looked after - and once again, the grandmother said she was surprised that they were still fast asleep.

"They were taken from their cots when they were brought up to our apartment and they would have to come out into the cold and I would have...expected some sort of awakening," she told police.

Dianne added that she'd never seen the McCanns give their children any medication, and speculated that all three of the kids could have been drugged by the abductor.

Her feeling, she continued, was that the man carrying the child outside the hotel complex - known as the Tanner Sighting - was of a man carrying a drugged and limp Madeleine away.

1x1.pngBut the sighting was later discredited by the British holidaymaker who said he'd been collecting his sleepy daughter from creche.

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Watched the first 2 episodes. The impression you get from the first one is that it was almost an accepted practice to leave children unattended.

 

I can't get my head around that, a child waking up alone in strange surroundings would be terrified. Any parent doing that should have their kids taken from them ( by the authorities).

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7 hours ago, No2 said:

Watched the first 2 episodes. The impression you get from the first one is that it was almost an accepted practice to leave children unattended.

 

I can't get my head around that, a child waking up alone in strange surroundings would be terrified. Any parent doing that should have their kids taken from them ( by the authorities).

That’s what I can’t understand me and my friends discussed this at the time, not one of us had ever left our children alone.

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11 hours ago, Lee909 said:

Always felt something stank in all this. 

Saw this yesterday, in the Mirror 

Dianne Webster - mother of Fiona Payne and grandmother of Lily and Scarlet

She told British police that she suspected the twins - Sean and Amelie McCann - had been drugged, as they were still asleep in their cot after Kate raised the alarm.

Speaking in a police interview in 2008, Dianne said Gerry was "absolutely distraught" when everyone arrived in the McCann's apartment.

"I've never heard a man make the noises he made, and Kate, Kate was just...you just can't put into words how they were," she said in transcripts of the interview.

"I remember I went through into the room where...Madeleine was sleeping and err and she said 'she’s been taken' because she said that the shutters and that had been open, the window open.

"The twins were still asleep in the cot and I, with all the noise going on I don’t know how they slept through it which makes me think there was, they must have been drugged with something."

 

Dianne said Madeleine's bed cover was "neatly turned back", adding that the position of her bed meant looking around the door of the bedroom to see it.

Dianne returned to her apartment to look after her grandchildren and said she recalled seeing Kate "screaming, banging, hitting things " and shouting "we've let her down".

The twins were later brought up to Dianne's apartment to be looked after - and once again, the grandmother said she was surprised that they were still fast asleep.

"They were taken from their cots when they were brought up to our apartment and they would have to come out into the cold and I would have...expected some sort of awakening," she told police.

Dianne added that she'd never seen the McCanns give their children any medication, and speculated that all three of the kids could have been drugged by the abductor.

Her feeling, she continued, was that the man carrying the child outside the hotel complex - known as the Tanner Sighting - was of a man carrying a drugged and limp Madeleine away.

1x1.pngBut the sighting was later discredited by the British holidaymaker who said he'd been collecting his sleepy daughter from creche.

Children don’t respond to noise the same way adults do.  They even sleep through fire alarms - all the kids in the Philpot fire slept through the alarm.  

 

They shouldnt have left the kids, but they had fuck all else to do with it.  If you think they deserve to be punished again after losing their kid you are fucking weird. 

 

As as for the reaction, she’s been told she’s guilty because she was hysterical and told she was guilty because she was cold.  Poor cow can’t win, all because she didn’t react in the same way people perceive they’d have reacted.  

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15 hours ago, Rico1304 said:

Or no matter what they say there are ghoulish cunts who’d accuse them of killing their kid. 

And I haTe agreeing with cockchops of Stockport, but I think he’s right here, they have their other kids to consider as well.

i wouldn’t b able to offer Any advice on how to handle the situation, guilty or not and to what extent, there is no guidebook on how to handle such a situation.

maybe they could write one if there is a few quid in it.

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2 minutes ago, arthur friedenreich said:

And I haTe agreeing with cockchops of Stockport, but I think he’s right here, they have their other kids to consider as well.

i wouldn’t b able to offer Any advice on how to handle the situation, guilty or not and to what extent, there is no guidebook on how to handle such a situation.

maybe they could write one if there is a few quid in it.

Now I’ve finished with Hades you are my next target. Can I interest you in a podcast? 

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3 minutes ago, Rico1304 said:

Now I’ve finished with Hades you are my next target. Can I interest you in a podcast? 

SorryRico, I’ve spent a week in confined spaces with some very nic people of your persuasion, who I cannot really get into a blood and th7nder with. 

So you are my metaphorical punch bag as the forum tory.

it met tone down a bit when we get back to Melbourne, but if over the next month .org so I have a bit more vitriol for your good self, understand it is only to help ease the passage of a couple of pensioners from the Wirral whilst they stay with us.

should you have a month with some good socialist folk, feel free to return the same.

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4 minutes ago, arthur friedenreich said:

SorryRico, I’ve spent a week in confined spaces with some very nic people of your persuasion, who I cannot really get into a blood and th7nder with. 

So you are my metaphorical punch bag as the forum tory.

it met tone down a bit when we get back to Melbourne, but if over the next month .org so I have a bit more vitriol for your good self, understand it is only to help ease the passage of a couple of pensioners from the Wirral whilst they stay with us.

should you have a month with some good socialist folk, feel free to return the same.

Feel free, it’s water off a

ducks back. 

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1 hour ago, Rico1304 said:

Children don’t respond to noise the same way adults do.  They even sleep through fire alarms - all the kids in the Philpot fire slept through the alarm.  

 

They shouldnt have left the kids, but they had fuck all else to do with it.  If you think they deserve to be punished again after losing their kid you are fucking weird. 

 

As as for the reaction, she’s been told she’s guilty because she was hysterical and told she was guilty because she was cold.  Poor cow can’t win, all because she didn’t react in the same way people perceive they’d have reacted.  

 

You basically have one job as a parent, to ensure the well being of your children. Saying it's weird to 'want people that have lost a child punished', is stupid. Under Portuguese law they would have been punished for some form of neglect (abandonment), however because of all the dabbling by that prick Gordon Brown, that didn't happen. 

 

Did they accidentally kill their child and cover it up, I don't know. Did someone gain access to the villa while they were enjoying their tapas too far away to see, maybe. She would still be here if they had used the available child minding facilities or been there with their children. I get that you feel losing a child is sufficient punishment for being responsible for her not being safe but that just isn't how the law works and it's weird to think that way. 

 

I cannot even begin to understand bad how their lives must be, losing a child must be terrible and under these circumstances as well. But I can't shake from my mind the things that they did afterwards. Whether due to bad advice, guilt or fear of the Portuguese legal system their actions have caused the suspicions. That doesn't make them guilty but a lot of what they did is textbook guilty. If I thought I was being fitted up for something I may do the same so I'm not saying they're guilty because of their actions. 

 

I genuinely hope they get their daughter back, because they would also get their lives back. 

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It’s exactly how the law works. A prosecution would not be in the public interest.  Madeline wouldn’t be back, the other kid would lose a sister and parents - how’s that justice?  

 

Also, you make a precedent. Does it mean that every parent has to be in sight of their kids? What about playing out?  Was it worst because it was dark?

 

they made a mistake but thousands of parents do the same thing every day.  

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Just now, Rico1304 said:

It’s exactly how the law works. A prosecution would not be in the public interest.  Madeline wouldn’t be back, the other kid would lose a sister and parents - how’s that justice?  

 

Also, you make a precedent. Does it mean that every parent has to be in sight of their kids? What about playing out?  Was it worst because it was dark?

 

they made a mistake but thousands of parents do the same thing every day.  

You're just compounding the stupid now, dig up mate, dig up!

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Portuguese law chiefs also thought Brits had “peculiar customs” which allowed them to dine and drink without their children.

The revelations came from Rui Pereira, who was Portugal’s minister of internal affairs – the equivalent of the UK’s Home Secretary.

He told a Portuguese TV show it was an error not to make GP mum Kate, 48, and heart doctor dad Gerry, 47, suspects – or arguidos – for “abandonment”.

They left Madeleine, three, and her younger twin siblings in the apartment in the Algarve resort of Praia da Luz while they dined with pals in a nearby tapas bar on May 3, 2007.

Madeleine vanished that night and has not been seen since.

Mr Pereira told Portuguese channel CMTV: “The error was not constituting the parents as arguidos for the crime of abandonment.

"At the beginning there was an extraordinary and ridiculous theory that said the English have very peculiar cultural customs.

“And therefore it was natural for them to leave the two-year-old twin siblings and the other three-year-old child alone in a bedroom for the parents to go out a few hundred metres away to socialise with their friends.’’

Mr Pereira revealed a charge was given some thought at the time. But he claimed the Portuguese authorities had an inferiority complex regarding foreigners.

They believed the English “truly have very specific cultural customs and it was natural to dine and drink”. There was also “compassion” from the investigators towards the parents.

Former police inspector Moita Flores, below, previously told the same TV show he believed the couple would have been accused of abandonment if they had been Portuguese.

He said: “Have no doubts. If this had involved a Portuguese child our public ministry would have immediately set off measures which are in place to protect children.

“In our culture this kind of behaviour would have not been tolerated as reasonable. I am not even sure it is tolerated under Anglo-Saxon cultural values.’’

The McCanns, from Rothley, Leics, are aware they could have been jailed if found guilty of abandonment.


But spokesman Clarence Mitchell has said they vigorously denied neglecting Madeleine.

A close friend said: “They were well aware that they could be charged with child neglect.

“They’d have fought tooth and nail. In legal terms Kate and Gerry were doing everything well within the bounds of respectable parenting.

“A court would have to show they had wilfully neglected their daughter and they did not.’’

The Metropolitan Police believe Madeleine was abducted after disturbing a burglar.

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I watched the 1st episode yesterday. Looked like it was coming from the angle the McCan’s were responsible parents & the police were slow as shit.

 

I was hoping for a explosive dossier with new evidence that they hid the body. 

 

Does it get any better or is it sympathetic to the McCann’s all the way through?

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18 minutes ago, Scott_M said:

I watched the 1st episode yesterday. Looked like it was coming from the angle the McCan’s were responsible parents & the police were slow as shit.

 

I was hoping for a explosive dossier with new evidence that they hid the body. 

 

Does it get any better or is it sympathetic to the McCann’s all the way through?

 

There's no explosive new evidence and it would be fair to say IMHO that it is very sympathetic to the McCanns. They do however clear up some of the misreported stuff that had somehow been regarded as facts. I don't see anything there that will help them find her or solve this. 

 

I know legally the dog stuff isn't powerful, but they hammer down on that. At times I wasn't sure if I was watching a documentary or watching the defence making their case. Having worked with police sniffer dogs (although not blood dogs or cadaver dogs) I find it very interesting that both dogs found what they did, where they did. 

 

 

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Weird how, after suspecting her daughter had been kidnapped from her bed, she left her other two kids sleeping in the same room and ran 100 yards away to tell her husband. 

 

Now it’s hard to know how you’d react In such circumstances, but I bet that wouldn’t be common. 

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Rumours of difficulties with Netflix’s documentary about the Madeleine McCann case have abounded almost from the moment it was commissioned. The McCanns themselves refused to take part and asked everyone around them not to either. At one point, it was said that it was going to be cut from an eight-part series to an hour-long one-off. Then it was going to be pulled altogether. Certainly no previews were made available, and the makers did not do the usual round of pre-show publicity interviews in the press, which is never a sign of great confidence in the product.

 

But in the end, The Disappearance of Madeleine McCann landed as a full eight-part series. Was it worth the wait? Did it confound the rumours and the doubters? No and no, not by any conceivable metric.

It was a simple retelling – in what felt almost like real time, so leadenly was it done – of the story of the three-year-old’s disappearance from the holiday resort of Praia da Luz one terrible night in May 2007. It was a blatant cash-in on the vogue for the true-crime series that have become a staple of Netflix’s output since the success of Making a Murderer a few years ago, but without any of the justifications previous works in the genre have provided. It was not the disinterment of a forgotten case, it was not the re-examination of a suspected miscarriage of justice. It offered no new facts, no new insight. It didn’t even have a point of view.

 

Instead, it was purely a rehashing of everything anyone who was alive at the time, or who has been of an age to understand the periodic appeals on anniversaries, birthdays and other painful dates by the McCanns for more information in the 12 years that have elapsed since, already knew. The vanishing, the panic, the initial horror and the delayed police response take up most of the first episode, and we move on from there through the searches that yield nothing, the growing media attention, the breakdown of trust between Kate and Gerry and the Portuguese police, the tenuous identification of a suspect, the sniffer dogs that throw suspicion on the parents, the magazine article that suggested a pact of silence between the McCanns and the friends they were holidaying with over the “fact” that Madeleine died in an accident while they were eating at the resort’s tapas bar 100 yards away and that they disposed of the body, on through all possible sightings, connections with other cases, the books later written, the agendas served, the legal suits that followed, and so on. All cul-de-sacs, all pointless recapping of parts of a story that still has no end.

 

All of it was padded out with extraneous guff – the history of the Algarve as a holiday resort, accounts from journalists of how they rushed to get to the story and then their breathless accounts of waiting for and not getting any news … The talking heads were frequently drowned out by the sound of barrel-bottoms being scraped.

 

It’s a feat of sorts, I suppose, to create something so morally and creatively bankrupt that your viewers would gain more insight into your case if they were to sit alone in a darkened room for 10 minutes to try to fathom the depths of parental anguish then, now and for the more than a decade in between. When the urge came upon the makers to put this series together, they should have done the same. They should have spent their time wondering how the McCanns bear it, sent up a heartfelt and useless prayer that somehow, some time, answers for that suffering pair are found and that they are allowed to live out the rest of their days in either joy or, at the very least, the kind of terrible peace that comes with knowing the worst.

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Who the fuck leaves a 3 year and 2 babies alone. It's true if it was some council house couple the reaction would of been far different.

 

It's horrible regardless what's happened, imagine having no closure that would be the worst thing for me, the thought of my daughter calling for me and not being there, constantly having the worst thoughts playing over and over. I don't think I could get back to the day to day.

 

Of course that assumes they don't know what happened. I've heard the whole sleeping pills story but I've no idea if there's even a hint of evidence for that, plus if it was them to then do it and leave zero trace of evidence, knowing to get rid of a body in a foreign country and then when they are in the clear still push awareness and keep the case at the forefront. Seems far fetched. To me they where negligent and they have paid the ultimate price or Maddie has.

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