Kate McCann Officially A Suspect in Daughter's Disappearance

[Sarah]

Here are the blurbs off the Associate Press wire.


AP-Portugal-Missing Girl URGENT

VIANA DO CASTELO, Portugal (AP) - A family spokesman says the mother of missing British toddler Madeleine McCann will be declared a suspect in the case today.

Family spokesman David Hughes tells The Associated Press Kate McCann was questioned for almost 11 hours yesterday, and is due back at a police station in Portugal's Algarve region today.

When asked about reports that Kate McCann would be named a suspect in her daughter's disappearance, Hughes said: "They told her last night that it would happen today. That's definite."



And, a full story is available on the ABC news website:
http://abcnews.go.com/International/story?id=3571302&page=1


Frankly, if it's true, I think the whole thing is absolutely disgusting. Another story of a family member playing the press game to cover their tracks. If she really had something to do with the disappearance, how the hell can this woman sleep at night - knowing she lied to the Pope, for Christ's sake? :distress:

[camchristo]

^I just read the story on the web. Absolutely nauseating. People are donating time and money to helping find that little girl. And really, who the eff leaves their almost-three-old and two-year-old twins alone in a hotel room while they go out to eat? Frequent check-ins or not.

[amber]

The article I read said that the blood they found in the rental car shouldn't be evidence b/c they rented that car a full 25 days after the child's disappearance. :shrug: I highly doubt they were involved.

[bretonbanquet]

Yes.. let's hold on a second. This is all over the news here and the thing is, no-one knows anything about what's going on. The media aren't being told anything, and the newspapers are guessing some pretty groundless stuff as usual.

The Portuguese police have either gone a bit frantic cos they haven't got a clue what to do next, or they really have something. And by something I don't mean the blood in the hire car thing. That is seriously implausible.. for the parents to have had the child in the car at that time, i.e. three weeks after the disappearance... can't have happened. TV cameras and reporters were all over that couple at that time. They hardly had time to duck out and transport the kid somewhere in the meantime.

If they did have anything to do with it, and I still doubt it, it might have been an accident that they're covering up.. but the fact that the hick cops in Portugal are treating the mother as a suspect doesn't really prove anything.

[bretonbanquet]

And really, who the eff leaves their almost-three-old and two-year-old twins alone in a hotel room while they go out to eat? Frequent check-ins or not.

I agree with that though :nod:

[danax6]

^I just read the story on the web. Absolutely nauseating. People are donating time and money to helping find that little girl. And really, who the eff leaves their almost-three-old and two-year-old twins alone in a hotel room while they go out to eat? Frequent check-ins or not.Which is exactly why I wasn't surprised to hear the mother may have had something to do with it the first time that came up. But with all the other evidence at hand, I doubt her involvement.

[Sarah]

Yes.. let's hold on a second.

Hence my use of the phrase "if it's true".

[bretonbanquet]

Hence my use of the phrase "if it's true".

Sure, but the rest of your paragraph suggests you've already decided :shrug:

[camchristo]

^Yes, I meant nauseating if true. Who knows if she did it. The random dude who is a suspect seems more plausible to me, but you never know.

That being said, even if the parents had no involvement, they are whack for leaving those young children alone. For all they know, that child could have gotten up, left the room and wandered out. Crazy.

[bretonbanquet]

^Yes, I meant nauseating if true. Who knows if she did it. The random dude who is a suspect seems more plausible to me, but you never know.

That being said, even if the parents had no involvement, they are whack for leaving those young children alone. For all they know, that child could have gotten up, left the room and wandered out. Crazy.

I agree. The parents have received quite a bit of stick for that, and rightly so, I think. I don't understand why people take kids that young abroad anyway, they get nothing out of it, and sometimes it's risky. On holiday in a strange country you'd be hard pressed to keep an eye on kids 24/7. They'd have more fun staying at home with grandparents etc..

[Sarah]

Sure, but the rest of your paragraph suggests you've already decided :shrug:

Whatever dude. I said if it's true then and if she really had something to do with it. That's two - count 'em - hypotheticals. I never said, "the bitch did it".

You can put words in my mouth if you want. I really shouldn't have to justify my position to you, so I have no idea why I'm bothering right now.

[bretonbanquet]

Whatever dude. I said if it's true then and if she really had something to do with it. That's two - count 'em - hypotheticals. I never said, "the bitch did it".

You can put words in my mouth if you want. I really shouldn't have to justify my position to you, so I have no idea why I'm bothering right now.

Neither do I. I wasn't really addressing you in the first place.

[WizNicks]

The whole story has been really fishy right from the beginning on. The parents did too many things "you don't do". Trying to make awareness of your child's "loss" is okay, BUT THEY DID A F****G WORLD TOUR!!!! They toured all over Europe, met the pope and what's the purpose of meeting the German chancelor???? And who payed for all of it? Nice people who felt sorry for the parents. Even if they didn't do it, it was all a little bit too much of everything. Next week they are going to America on their world tour to talk with Jonbenet Ramsey's parents about their experiences when their daughter was so cruely taken away from them and from there they travel to LA to met with OJ Simpson, because after his wife's death, he was a broken man too. :angel:

[gldstwmn]

The article I read said that the blood they found in the rental car shouldn't be evidence b/c they rented that car a full 25 days after the child's disappearance. :shrug: I highly doubt they were involved.

I tend to doubt they were involved as well. I don't really know all the specifics of the case. I read the parents were actually a few yards away from their room when they had dinner so I think that may be giving the wrong impression as well.

[Sarah]

They really don't seem like the type of people who would do this. As far as I can tell anyway.

The forensic evidence just puzzles me a bit. They find blood from the area of disappearance, and then blood again in a car rented a month after the fact. It just doesn't make sense in any way other than a body being moved. :confused:

[bretonbanquet]

They really don't seem like the type of people who would do this. As far as I can tell anyway.

The forensic evidence just puzzles me a bit. They find blood from the area of disappearance, and then blood again in a car rented a month after the fact. It just doesn't make sense in any way other than a body being moved. :confused:

I agree. There's just too many gaps in what we're being told. None of it makes a lot of sense, but I don't know if that's because the police don't know anything, or just aren't telling us what they know.

[Sarah]

I agree. There's just too many gaps in what we're being told. None of it makes a lot of sense, but I don't know if that's because the police don't know anything, or just aren't telling us what they know.

It seems like the police don't know that much... but police always know more than what they'll tell you. At least, police in America do... I would assume it's the same way around the world. They have to have some secrets to their investigation, I guess.

Here, I'm just going to throw some hypothetical situations out again. And still, I, personally, don't have a judgement on this couple as to whether I think they did it or not.

Situation A: It very well could be a case of accidental death and, out of fear of getting charged with killing their own child, they go the missing child route. Hell, one parent could have lied to the other for a period of time about her being missing, so in that situation you'd have one who knows the truth and one who is worried sick over finding their daughter.

Situation B: I don't know how old the other McCann children are... I guess they're just little toddlers. But I will mention that in the Jon Benet Ramsey case, there are a lot of people who believe the Ramsey boy had something to do with it and the parents covered it up so the son wouldn't get in trouble... they had already lost one child and didn't want to lose their other one. Again, with the McCann kids being as little as they are, I really don't think that's plausible, but it would be another motivation for cover-up.


And another point: They've had a swarm of reporters around them almost this entire time... so it's hard to imagine that they would have time to move a body. (And it's even harder to imagine that they'd not try to have a proper burial for their daughter.) But, there's case after case on the record books of bodies being stashed and moved right under the cops' noses. It'd be difficult, but not truly impossible.

Either way, if the police do have forensic evidence that can prove Maddie's body was in that car... that's just damning. Forensics don't lie. Even if the blood was transfer blood, hair, whatever... what would the odds be that whoever kidnapped/killed her would have her body in that car, then a month later the parents just so happen to get the same rental vehicle? And what made the police want to swab that rental vehicle in the first place? :distress: I don't know much about the evidence they have or about the quality of police investigations in Portugal as a whole, so I'm just saying.

I hope that the parents are cleared of all this, and either way I do feel for them because they've lost a child... but if it turns out that one or both of them were involved, I will be very, very disappointed in human-kind yet again. It's always disturbing to hear about a kidnapping and to know that there really are predators on the loose, but cases of parental involvement are even more sickening. :distress:

[KristinG]

I haven't really followed this case at all. I'm just curious about one thing. If the parents decided to leave those children alone sleeping in a room so they could have dinner it would make the most sense that the children would have been locked in. It's not bright to leave children that age alone in the first place since they easily could have woken up and gotten hurt (toddlers have drowned in toilets without supervision), so it would at least make sense that they would lock the door so the children didn't wander out looking for them in case they woke up. If that were the case - how was an intruder able to break in and steal Maddie without the other children waking up? And if there were blood in the room then clearly there was at least a struggle of sorts if not a murder right there... Was it ever reported that there were signs of an intruder breaking in?

[kathy1]

i hope they didn't do it. but they always suspect the parents when something like that happens.

[Sarah]

I just heard that police in Portugal are preparing to file manslaughter charges against Kate.

I'll look for a story about it when I get to work. :distress:

[bretonbanquet]

I think the situation is that the police will be asking a judge if he thinks there's enough evidence to make a case against the parents. It's up to the judge then to decide whether or not there'll be a trial. The parents are back in the UK at the moment.

It's being reported here that the forensic evidence needs to be better than what's being talked about so far. Also that the blood in the boot / trunk of the hire car is apparently blood spots, i.e. blood that has come from a living, or recently living person, not the dried blood that may have been left if a body had been moved weeks after death. So there's some doubt as to what exactly they think the blood in the hire car proves. It seems quite possible to have mixed up DNA, possibly even spots of blood, from items belonging to the McCanns' other children - items which could easily have been stowed in the car. I still think it's implausible that these people could have ferried dead bodies around in their hire car with half the world's press following them everywhere.

Some people seem to think that they could have killed the girl by accident, maybe by sedating her to help her sleep while they went out, and overdosing her. They are both doctors, so while it's possible they would think sedation would be a fairly normal thing, you'd also expect them, as doctors, to get the dosage right. They maintain they didn't sedate any of their children.

Some people also think that the Portuguese police just want this to go away, to hide the fact that they have no clue of what happened, or who did what. It can't be particularly damning evidence that they have against them anyway, otherwise they wouldn't have been allowed to return to the UK, I would think.

[Sarah]

In a way, it appears to be a stunt of some sort to get them back into and keep them in Portugal.

I'm kind of wondering if the police have botched the investigation and now just feel like they need to charge someone - anyone - to make up for it. :shrug:

[skcin]

^ That's the way it seems, doesn't it? I don't think they're involved either. Just my gut feeling.

[jannieC]

I usually have a strong feeling about cases like this in that I normally think the parents had something to do with it. For some reason, I don't feel these parents were involved. I'm not saying I'm 100% certain- just that it feels off to me. I hope it does get resolved tough- nothing is worse than a unsolved child murder.

[irishgrl]

Im not sure what I think about this case, but I remember the Ramsey case and how those parents were hounded, particularly Patsy. I never thought she was responsible, but Sarah, do you really think there's any wind behind the theory that the brother did it? I find that hard to believe, I mean, there would have been warning signs of some sort, like problems in school etc....IDK, that just seems farfetched to me. (I still think the dad did it).

[skcin]

I heard that the McCann's are talking with lawyers & are looking into just how accurate blood sniffing dogs are in cases like this.

Anyone know how much blood was found/detected in the rental car? I mean, if it was a tiny bit, that doesn't really prove anything - she could have sustained a minor injury during their vacation, right?