Madeleine McCann: Scotland Yard Opens "Formal Investigation"

Originally posted by Knobby
TBH I think it's sad that people will use a missing girl to line their pockets.

If a whole lot of money was paid to Metodo 3 and very little work was done, the money obviously went into something else.

People familiar with how contracts are obtained in various industries will be able to hypothesize possible pathways followed by money raised to find Madeleine. Things are not always as straightforward as they seem.

The Spanish police might have some interesting observations to make concerning movements of money to and from the bank accounts of Metodo 3.

If this was a black kid from a poor family the police would have given up years ago.

reply to post by DrHammondStoat


Is it true are just rumour that they hired a boat and went out to sea with friends just a few days after the disappearance? More to this than meets the eye the Police and media are applying pressure and waiting for a crack to appear

Originally posted by crazyewok
If this was a black kid from a poor family the police would have given up years ago.

Not so true............

Through the years, age-progression images on the website for the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children have depicted an older Alexis, and investigators have pursued hundreds of leads.


Police have always been careful to stress that Alexis' disappearance was a missing person case and not a criminal investigation.

Detectives with the department's cold-case unit, to which it is assigned, were not available for comment. But Anne E. Schwartz, speaking for the department, said Milwaukee police continue to investigate every credible lead in the case.

The sheriff's office is still offering a $10,000 reward for information that leads to Alexis, and Milwaukee County Sheriff David A. Clarke Jr. still holds out hope that someone who has such information will come forward.

"Maybe someone on their deathbed who wants a clear conscience before they die," Clarke says.

"People hang onto information until they need it," he says. "Information is currency."

After 10 years, Alexis Patterson's mother still holds out hope

Not only that, its getting press.

reply to post by specta


I think it was a theory that police reportedly considered,

www.telegraph.co.uk...

I have thought from the start that the Mccann's have been covering something up. If you follow the facts and not the rumours perpetuated by UK media it points to the child being dead. Trying to figure out what may have been done with a body in such a situation is the part of the mystery I haven't dwelled on too long, maybe because that bit would be too awful and final.

reply to post by DrHammondStoat

Detective Chief Inspector Andy Redwood said he believed her disappearance was a stranger abduction, as he said there were 195 "investigative opportunities". He said "evidence that she is alive stems from the forensic view of the timeline" that there was the opportunity for her to be taken. Investigations show "there do appear to be gaps", he added.

This is an interesting statement from your linked article.

DCI Redwood refers to gaps in the "forensic timeline". By that I assume he means that the checks on the children were irregular enough that there was time for an interloper to enter Ocean Club 5A and snatch Madeleine.

Does it also mean that there were intervals in which it might have been possible for her to have been removed from the apartment by someone who was not a stranger?

The police would appear to have discarded the sniffer dog testimony entirely. I discuss possible reasons for this in my thread Madeleine McCann: Vector Addition. There is no need to go into it here, but it is clear that dog related information does not figure in current police thinking on this case.

Johanna, the blogger from the Unterdenteppichgekehrt (Sweptunderthecarpet) blog has the most thorough analysis of the movements of the Tapas 9 that I have read.

Read it here:

unterdenteppichgekehrt.blogspot.ca...

She believes that Madeleine died the day before it was announced and that the McCanns carried on a subterfuge, with some cooperation from others in the party (except for one person), with the aim of concealing the death until Madeleine's body could be removed from the scene.

I assume the police have looked at this blog. If not, they should. They are the only ones with the ability to give Johanna's theory the careful vetting it deserves.

Then there is the very inconvenient fact that a story appeared on the telegraph.co.uk website at one minute after midnight on the night Madeleine's disappearance was announced by Kate McCann.

www.telegraph.co.uk...

Three year-old feared abducted in Portugal

By staff and agencies

12:01AM BST 04 May 2007

. . .

A three-year-old British girl has gone missing while on a family holiday in Portugal, the Foreign Office said today.

Portuguese police are investigating the disappearance from a holiday complex in Praia da Luz in the western Algarve.

A Foreign Office spokesman said that he understood the girl's parents had gone to have dinner once their children were asleep last night, but returned to check on them only to find the girl had gone missing.

"They reported it straight away," he said, adding that consular assistance was being offered.

This story is very, very suspicious.

Let's leave aside the fact that the story must have been given to the Telegraph by a Foreign Office spokesperson less than two hours after Madeleine was announced as having gone missing.

Let's leave aside the (to me at least) odd fact that the Foreign Office issued a statement at all in this case. Surely the Portugese Policia Judiciaria or Interpol ought to have been issuing statements.

The really odd thing about the statement issued by the Foreign Office is that there is no description of the missing child!!!

In this story the Foreign Office, no less, tells the British public that a child had disappeared, that the parents had checked and found the child missing and had reported it "straight away".

The timeline in which the child disappeared and was searched for, in which the parents then called for the police, waited for the police to arrive, told their story to the police and ultimately became frustrated by the police and started to appeal for help on the telephone, even in the UK, in a desperate attempt to locate their child, doesn't seem to be sufficient to allow for securing a press release from the Foreign Office, even if the press release in question omits the description of the missing child.

The time line is unbelievable. It is impossible.

We know when the story was filed by the Telegraph. It is still there, online at the link.

It is one of the few certain points on the "forensic timeline". Everything that happened that night has to be placed on a timeline which allows for the uploading of that story at the time indicated.

People in this forum are not stupid. They know that not just anybody can call up the Foreign Office and have them rush out a press release. This had to have been done by someone very high in the political establishment in Britain.

But that, significant as it is, is not the point.

The point is that the release of the story, when it was released, indicates that with a very high degree of certainty, someone knew of Madeleine's situation long before it was announced at roughly 10:00 PM on the night of May 3, 2007.

Perhaps hours before it was announced, or even a day before it was announced.

There is no way around this.

The ball is in DCI Redwood's court. He has the power, if allowed to do his job, to trace the forensic timeline from The Telegraph newspaper back through whomever persons were involved in placing that story, in the UK, to the person who originally called from Portugal and thus determine when that original call was made.

To my knowledge the police in the UK have never addressed this issue.

reply to post by ipsedixit


I think Madeline is still alive. It might sound strange but I saw a film, it was one made in Argentina about a man who abducts a little girl, and trains here up to be his wife ,so he has complete control over the relationship. It was more of a clip in a film. And considering that just about every Argentinian has dual Spanish citizenship, and many returned to Spain when the Argentine economy went belly up. This could be something that sparked the guy to abduct her. It strikes me that she was to young, barely out of nappies to interest a Pedo..... Just sayin.

There are numerous "theories" based on things that have no evidential connection to the events we are discussing.

I'm pretty confident that your theory has already been considered by the police but so far they haven't mentioned it in their statements to the press. It's pretty vague.

When the Policia Judiciaria were conducting the original investigation into Madeleine's disappearance, they requested detailed information on her state of health. This was refused, as I understand it.

After having sent DNA samples to the UK for testing, and after the samples were tested, the Policia Judiciaria requested the return of the samples. This was refused and the samples were destroyed.

It therefore comes as no surprise that the Policia Judiciaria have refused to hand over material from the McCann's rental flat in Praia da Luz, according to a story in The Mirror.

www.mirror.co.uk...

British police investigating Madeleine McCann’s disappearance are being denied access to vital evidence by Portuguese authorities.

Scotland Yard officers believe samples from clothing, windows, bed linen and furniture at her family’s holiday apartment could still hold DNA traces.

But Portuguese officials refuse to hand over the evidence gathered after three-year-old Madeleine vanished in the Algarve in 2007.

The PJ's attitude to their British colleagues, it appears, can be summed up in the injunction voiced to the authorities by American hippy cartoonist, Robert Crumb, "Let's just keep it formal, shall we."

I should have thought it was high time they took that attitude.

A source said: “The lawyers were sent to begin negotiations to get access to evidence that police believe is very important and is in storage over there.

"The Metropolitan Police force have now asked the Crown Prosecution Service to apply for international letters of request.

“The fear is the Portuguese were so inept in the early stages that much of the DNA may be lost. But we hope that there will still be traces on some of the items.”

In case you didn't get it the first time around, the investigation was ruined by the wogs, you see.

People who followed this case closely and who have come to some understanding of it might disagree with that assessment, but it cannot be stressed too much that it was the wogs, the wogs, the wogs, the wogs who ruined this investigation.

It was not Kate and Gerry and it was not British political interference and it was not the squadrons of British lawyers working for the Madeleine fund and it was not the Madeleine Fund itself (that hired the lawyers) and it was not the refusal of the Tapas 9 to do a reconstruction of the night of May 3 and it was not the "barmy" British press and it was not a bunch of morons in British politics trying to cover their "#e" smeared asses.

It's all the wogs' fault and always will be.

Anyway, it looks like Scotland Yard is going to take us on another ride down that long lonely wog littered road to the point where we all throw up our hands and ask ourselves an overwhelming question,

"Shall I eat a peach?"

Let the fun begin. It should be interesting to watch as Scotland Yard wrestles the corpse of killer Urs Hans von Aesche out of the ground and throws the manacles on him.

Yard detectives have also flown to Switzerland to probe the movements of killer Urs Hans von Aesch, who committed suicide after abusing five-year-old Ylenia Lenhard shortly after Madeleine disappeared. She bore a striking resemblance to blonde Madeleine.

Von Aesche, who had been living in Spain, was initially ignored by police in the Algarve who were working on the false theory that Madeleine’s parents Kate and Gerry played a part in her disappearance.

edit on 8-7-2013 by ipsedixit because: (no reason given)

Von Aesche, who had been living in Spain, was initially ignored by police in the Algarve who were working on the false theory that Madeleine’s parents Kate and Gerry played a part in her disappearance.

It is the inclusion of the slipped-in word FALSE that leads us to believe they are innocent. Why not just leave it out and then it would not lead us to believe anything...

I have not been following this, but there seems to be much which is fishy about all this. Too many strange things happening and unusual activities. Things which dont add up. Blocked access to information and legal restraints on mentioning some things in the papers. OK, so doctors must be fairly wealthy, but this seems that they were spending a lot of money to restrict the information flow.

In spite of all this I believe the police will find the secrets of this case and there are some grisly ones I am sure.

reply to post by qmantoo

I think that if Scotland Yard goes to the people who ran the Telegraph newspaper website in 2007 and traces the origin of the story that appeared on the website at 12:01AM BST 04 May 2007, person by person, moment by moment, to the Foreign Office, to the political people who contacted the Foreign Office, to the people who contacted the political people, right back to Praia da Luz, they will solve this case.

I can't think of why they have not done so already. Maybe they don't know the significance of this story.

They should be prepared to devote considerable resources to that project because I don't believe the people in that chain of connections can be depended upon to tell the truth. Everyone's answer will have to be verified. There is a lot at stake. There are reputations of important people at stake, but the issue is not exposing who was on that network of connections. The issue is establishing when the first call was made.

It all has to have happened within two hours, starting at roughly 10:00 PM on the night of May 3, 2007. Even reaching people by phone at that hour can be dicey, if they are working next morning. They may have message machines turned on or have phones disconnected for the night. They might be out for a late evening, or fast asleep at an early hour for an early commute the next morning.

One would run a very tight schedule to start from a phone call from Praia da Luz at 10:00 PM to a press release by the Foreign Office two hours later. I don't think Her Majesty the Queen could do it. A press release from the Queen would probably take hours or even days to prepare.

Making connections to the people who could do this, from Praia da Luz, must have taken longer than two hours.

It is very hard to come up with a realistic scenario explaining how the Foreign Office could or would release an announcement to the news media about a missing child, only two hours after the child went missing.

I really wish Scotland Yard would clarify this matter. Only they can do it.

And no description of the missing child in the story.

Originally posted by ipsedixit
reply to post by qmantoo

 

I think that if Scotland Yard goes to the people who ran the Telegraph newspaper website in 2007 and traces the origin of the story that appeared on the website at 12:01AM BST 04 May 2007, person by person, moment by moment, to the Foreign Office, to the political people who contacted the Foreign Office, to the people who contacted the political people, right back to Praia da Luz, they will solve this case...........

I find this very pertinent to the case too. However I am a bit confused.

Was there actually an official Foreign Office press release or are we talking about a leaked story to the press?

After reading the very short Telegraph piece maybe I have failed to see something but it doesn't actually say there was an official press release. It quotes an unnamed Foreign office spokesman.

That all said the tight timeline here still suggests someone with 'connections' has been deeply involved in all of this. Other than the Portuguese police few legal and media outlets have dared point an accusing finger at the McCanns for actions that many ordinary people see as questionable at best.

Who leaves children (of barely 4 and just over 1 year old) alone, totally unsupervised and out of sight to go dining and drinking with friends? Going to your next door neighbours and leaving children of these ages alone is unacceptable in my view. The McCanns and their clan were a lot further away than the house next door would be.

Why did two professional people deem it acceptable to abandon their children like this?

Originally posted by mirageman
I find this very pertinent to the case too. However I am a bit confused.

Was there actually an official Foreign Office press release or are we talking about a leaked story to the press?

After reading the very short Telegraph piece maybe I have failed to see something but it doesn't actually say there was an official press release. It quotes an unnamed Foreign office spokesman.

Here's the first sentence in the story:

A three-year-old British girl has gone missing while on a family holiday in Portugal, the Foreign Office said today.

I think that there is no doubt that this story was not "leaked". It was a statement from the Foreign Office, attributed to them. It was not attributed to "anonymous sources" although the elaboration was by an "unnamed" spokesman.

There was a report in the Spanish press that within the first hour after 10:00 PM, Gerry McCann was in touch with the British ambassador to Portugal, possibly through a personal friend of his, a political science professor with connections to the Labour Government of the day, who also happened to be in the Algarve at the time.

The precise timing of this and of all the subsequent connections leading to the release of the story are pertinent to understanding exactly what was going on.

Assuming that the British ambassador was able, through contacts, to get the Foreign Office to release the story, it is really difficult to understand why this was done. Forget for a moment that there was no description of Madeleine in the story. (Fog of war being the most benign explanation for this lack.) Why would the ambassador be wasting time getting a story released by the Foreign Office? To what practical end? Surely there would be plenty for him to do on the ground in Portugal, if the McCanns were really that well connected and could really extract an optimal performance from him.

I should think getting things squared with the PJ would be job one, particularly with regard to getting a competent translator into position to assist the McCanns.

For me the shortest line between the Foreign Office and the McCanns is this ambassador. If it were someone else who knew them personally, but who was in the UK, reaching that person might be more complicated and more time consuming.

The most important thing of all is that this story gives a definite point on the clock when we know for certain that something happened. It will also give other points, tracing backward, when other things happened.

Will this sequence be plausible? Will it be suspicious? Will it stretch credulity?

I think it would be worth while for Scotland Yard to try to find out the answers to these questions.

Although I cannot access this (due to it having 'blog' in the url!), maybe you guys can...

Telegraph article naming the British Ambassador


Who was due to be posted elsewhere in May of 2007...???
(This seems a good resource)

Wikipedia list of ambassadors to Portugal

Most people stay working for the British Government for their whole life. Is it odd that he left, although maybe he is older and retired?
John Buck - Download the PDF about this company

John Buck was British Ambassador to Portugal from 2004-07. Other past positions include Head of Public Diplomacy in the Foreign
Office (responsible for coordinating the public promotion of the UK overseas) and then Head of the Government Communications
and Information Centre during the Iraq conflict of 2003. After leaving the Foreign Service he worked in the oil and gas industry for a
number of years, managing a global network of government relations specialists for a multinational energy company.

If you want to buy pictures of him :-)


Sorry I keep finding other bits of info. This on the freedom of Informtion release relating to that time

Both parents should be arrested for murder.
They both admitted in police interviews to giving their 2 children drugs to knock them out while they were out enjoying time with friends.
Both of them had access to many types of medical drugs as they are/were both GPs.

reply to post by qmantoo

I've been looking at your links. They are quite interesting, especially the blog.

I also found this story at another blog site. If you scroll down to the section under "Related", there is a daily Express story quoted which refers to leaked items from the British Diplomatic Mission in Brussels that found their way to a Belgian magazine. The article is from December 3, 2007, six months exactly after the announcement of Madeleine's disappearance.

The details in the article make it appear that there was some disagreement between an unnamed British official in Portugal and the Foreign Office in London as to how to handle the Madeleine case, with the official not actually advising the Foreign Office to back away from the case, but requesting "confirmation" of orders to continue to support the McCanns.

gerrymccan-abuseofpower-humanrights.blogspot.ca...

The unnamed diplomat voices his concern about the “confused declarations” as to the whereabouts of Kate and Gerry McCann and their friends in the final hours before Madeleine’s disappearance. He also mentions the couple’s “lack of co-operation” with the Portuguese police in the light of instructions from London suggesting consular staff “overstretch their authority and put pressure on the Portuguese authorities”. The document also asks for confirmation of orders sent by the Foreign Office in London the day before, commanding embassy staff to give “all possible assistance to the McCann couple”.

London seems to have sent several representatives to Portugal to accompany the McCanns in their dealings with police, according to the story, but one is struck by the lack of an English/Portugese translator. It is really odd that they took so much trouble to send people down there and yet left that one vitally important area of communication in a translation fog. Was this done purposefully?

The Belgian report says it is highly significant that almost all of the diplomats involved at the outset have now been taken off the case.

Special envoy Sheree Dodd has since resigned from the Foreign Office, the British consul in the Algarve Bill Henderson has retired and the British ambassador to Portugal John Buck is no longer in Portugal. Last night the Foreign Office refused to comment on the report.

She was obviously eaten by pigs on that farm the police visited way back after she was abducted. The owner was described as being shifty and was holding a gun when the cops rolled up.

Originally posted by rhynouk
Something doean't sit right with the whole thing with me,i don't want to point fingers & blame certain people but the investigation form start to finish was a complete shambles,evidence was probably lost with all the people running around the flat,no comunication between english & portugese police..a shambles.

i really hope she's found someday but i don't think she will sadly

Woah...you mean the McCanns and their friends that were running around the flat right? I hope you are because the unjust slandering of the Portuguese police force is just totally uncalled for and unfounded.

Maybe if Kate McCann had answered any of the 48 questions she was asked in her official police interview, there may well have been more evidence for the PJ to proceed.

I've actually just commented on another, totally unrelated thread on here regarding Madeleine McCann, and what I cannot understand is that so many people, even if they think the McCanns are lying are still treating it as an abduction..why would it be if the parents are lying? And still trying to blame the Portuguese police, which is just totally wrong

reply to post by Gordi The Drummer


The Portuguese shelved the case in 2008 when the McCanns and Robert Murat were released from their Arguido status. The McCanns could have requested that the case remained opened, however, that would mean that they would have to fully co-operate with the police, i.e. answer all of the questions and do a reconstruction of the night's events..they can't though, because their timeline is nonsense and just wouldn't work.

The Portuguese have said they will re-open the case if new, and credible evidence is presented, not some drunk tourist saying "oh I saw maddie on a plane to Ibiza" or other such rubbish.

People really need to stop criticising Portugal about this and look to the parents, Doctors no less, who decided to go out on the lash leaving very young children unattended in an unlocked apartment in a foreign country..It would have been a different story had the place burned down and all 3 kids had died...the parents would only just be finishing their sentences for neglect right now...and rightly so.

Originally posted by anonentity
reply to post by ipsedixit

 

I think Madeline is still alive. It might sound strange but I saw a film, it was one made in Argentina about a man who abducts a little girl, and trains here up to be his wife ,so he has complete control over the relationship. It was more of a clip in a film. And considering that just about every Argentinian has dual Spanish citizenship, and many returned to Spain when the Argentine economy went belly up. This could be something that sparked the guy to abduct her. It strikes me that she was to young, barely out of nappies to interest a Pedo..... Just sayin.

Sorry, not really getting your drift...what the heck has Spain and Argentina got to do with it...Madeleine went missing in Portugal

And I'm sorry, but I believe the evidence of the cadaver dogs..dogs don't lie, they have no need to