Madeleine Macann dissapearedover four years ago. Her mother just published a book.
Four years and less hysteria on, do you think
Is Maddy alive?
Do you think the mothers critisisms of the Portuguese police were justified?
DO you think the accusations of neglect agaisnt the MaCann’s were justified and the claims made about involvement understanable?
Very late addition to the above. DO you think the book is an attempt to cash in? Only half the proceeds are to go to the Foundation they setup, according the the sticker on my copy.
I don’t quite remember the details of the case (and I’m too lazy to read the whole Wiki, though I’ll do that in a bit)), but didn’t the parents leave their three small children alone in a hotel room at a resort so they could go and eat dinner alone? That always stuck out as particularly odd to me, especially considering most major resorts like that have either kids centers or babysitters. If I am remember all that correctly, then yeah, that always seemed fishy to me. Plus, didn’t the intruder only take one kid, while others were in the room?
As to your specific questions, I suppose I don’t remember enough about the case to really speak to that. I will say that the little girl is likely dead and I can’t help but feel like her parents had something to do with it. Then again, that might just be a completely incorrect gut feeling based on misremembering the facts and circumstances ;).
Without clicking on any of the links, going just on my spotty memory, wasn’t the most prevalent theory that the parents (both MD’s?) had been giving their children some kiddie tranquilizers instead of getting a sitter for them (remind you of anyone?) and the little girl overdosed, and so the parents panicked and ditched her body, then told the Portuguese authorities that she must have been nabbed by strangers?
Bloody hell MPB in Salt Lake I’ve sort of half followed the story, but I never got that impression. It seemed a really odd thing to have had happen though - kids snatched from hotel rooms …
Unless I am thinking of a completely different family, that’s what I remember hearing…
Swarthy mystery man (of course they are ALWAYS swarthy; never tall, blonde and Nordic-looking) sneaking into a resort complex and snatching an angelic English childe to do unspeakable, Mediterranean things to her OR rich, party-loving Jet-Set parents wanting a night off from Mum and Dad duty, but not wanting to bother with a local sitter pawing thru their belongings, slipping their kids a Manchester Mickey (AKA Zannie the Nanny) only to have one of them never wake up, so in a panic induced frenzy of damage-control, they toss her body into the Fearsome Atlantic, then play victimized parents to the fawning Fleet Street vultures/suckers…
That’s pretty much what most people I know believe. Even if it’s not true, they should not have left three infants alone while they went out, and should not still have custody of the remaining children.
I have no special insight into the case so this is all just my speculation:
No (the alternative is too horrible to contemplate).
Perhaps - judging by the Wikipedia account the investigation doesn’t seem to have been world class.
I think the accusations of neglect are perfectly understandable and quite justified in my opinion. The McCanns left three children under 5 unattended while they went out for dinner. Having someone pop by from time to time and “see if he could hear any noise in the room” (from outside the window, or duck their head in and have a quick look isn’t acceptable. However I don’t think the accusations of involvement in the disappearance are justified (but are understandable - people do like to speculate).
My own theory (completely based on supposition and therefore a WAG) - Madelaine woke up, somehow managed to wander out of the apartment and fell into a drain or waterway. The city council check of the sewers etc somehow failed to spot her body. See the sad case of two-year old Aisling Symes for a similar scenario. She fell down a manhole while her mother was inside the house and despite a huge search her body was only found seven days later.
No. If she were alone, someone would have spotted her. She has a rare type of iris. So, if someone tired to sell her or keep her, they’d be caught.
No, the parents just want the heat off of them and their not so hot parenting skills.
She was neglected. She was left alone in a room with her young twin siblings in a foreign country. That’s abuse.
My theory is she was drugged by parents and accidently died. It seems very strange someone would take a 3 year old but not her younger siblings. I think blood was found in their rental car.
What exactly is the purpose of the book, aside from its stated purpose (which certainly is a partial purpose). I find it almost seems the McCanns have a media addiction despite their protestations; I mean they have a full time PR person.
I do find it diffuclt to believe that the parents being registered Medical Practitioners could have caused a OD espcially on OTC drugs like Benedryl.
No, and I never thought she was, I always viewed it as desperate hope on the part of the parents
Yes, they don’t appear to have covered themselves in glory
I think ‘neglect’ is a loaded word and an overblown description of what they did. I also thought claims about their involvement was rubbish.
No, I think it’s a very understandable attempt to keep her daughter’s story in the public conscious.
I really really don’t understand the distrust, even venom, that has at times been aimed at these poor people. The worst sort of gutter journalism and lazy police work.
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Well their story was suspicious at times. Not saying that they did it; but there were several questions which needed to be asked of them.
I doubt it.
I don’t know enough of the facts to comment, but I suspect there is a great deal of deflection going on.
Neglect is a strong word. I think they showed an amazing error of judgement, which they are now having to pay for for the rest of their lives. Would they have gone out leaving their cash, passports and credit cards lying in full view on the bed? No, I bet they were in a safe. So why go out and leave the most precious thing imaginable? The resort had a babysitting service, and these are not people who are short of money - why on earth didn’t they use it? If they’d been at home there is no way they would have left their kids in the house while they went to a party two doors down - what made them think this was in any way acceptable just because they were in a foreign country?
But I do think that’s the extent of their involvement. Although whether Madeleine was snatched or wandered off we’ll never know.
As for the accusations of publicity-craving, that is just them trying to keep the story in the public eye - pure and simple. And that’s the advice they got as to their only hope for ever getting Madeleine* back.
*Apparently, the kid was only ever known as Madeleine at home - “Maddy” is an invention of the tabloid press to be more cutesy.
No. She is dead and most lickly died that night, IMHO.
Yes. This investigation was bungled from the start and they worked hard to make even the Boulder Police look competent.
Yes. Their actions are, at best, bad parenting and inexcusable. There are enough holes in thier stories to make it understandable that there is speculation they were involved.
I remember, at the time, that there was justification in the media for thier actions that leaving little kids alone for a short time like they did was much more common in Europe and so it was not strange that the McCanns did it. Can any of our Euro-Dopers confirm or deny whether that is true?
I can say, as an American married to a German and living in Germany, that it is rather common to leave small children asleep in the room in a hotel or resort and join other adults somewhere close by or to have a drink in the bar, for example. Generally, the parents would have a baby monitor along to keep an ear on the kids, and check on them periodically.
It always gave me the willies and I generally either encouraged the group to gather right outside our room or begged off and went to bed early. My husband always rolled his eyes at my overprotectiveness, but I come from a different cultural background (or he does, depending on your perspective).
A kid asleep in the Waldorf or the Ritz while mum and dad go down for a drink is one thing. In the place the McCanns were in with its easy access to the outside is awful.
I’m not a parent but I also felt that it would have been slightly less dodgy if Madeleine hadn’t been of an age where she could have hurt either herself or her siblings. I don’t think if i were a parent I’d have done the same thing but especially not with a toddler. As AK84 points out, these were also places that strangers had relative ease of access to, unlike a hotel room in a quality hotel.
Is she alive? Probably not. Children who are abducted by strangers (as opposed to parents in a custody dispute) are usually killed pretty quickly.
Fair to blame the police? I didn’t follow the case too closely, but it doesn’t seem like the Portugese cops really put a lot of effort into looking for her.
Blame the parents? Leaving the children alone seems like a really, really bad decision to me, but speculation that they killed her is absurd. I wonder how much of that came from the Portugese authorities, looking to shift blame away from themselves.
With reference to Point 3… I don’t think they killed her. They have been relentless in seeking publicity for this, and I cannot understand why they would do that if they had killed her.
If they had genuinely killed her surely they’d have raised an initial alarm, gone through the initial weeks of investigation, and then tearfully annouced after a year or so that their daughter was gone and while they’d never give up hope they had decided to face reality and move on with their lives (for the sake of their other children).
Then it would have faded away into our collective memory and no-one would really push the investigation.
But by keeping the spotlight on this over several years they are at constant risk of having their “crime” uncovered. It just doesn’t seem rational.
Any parent would feel anguish if they left their child alone and she disappeared, but I guess if they had sedated her or something else improper that would compound the guilt, which might explain why they have kept up the pressure.
TLDR version: if they had killed her why would they generate all this publicity when they could just let it fade away and remain undetected?
Yes that was one of the popular theories bandied about at the time…
I believe it’s an attempt to put the parent’s side of the story out there, instead of the general hysteria of the media and the opinions of the public (see above quoted theory)
I have no idea what the heck happened to Madeleine, or if she’s still alive somewhere, I always thought there was something dodgy about parents going out for a meal with friends and leaving 3 small children alone in an apartment.