Okay, let’s work this part out logically. Let’s say you are looking to steal a kid for whatever reason. You know you have to work fast and try to not get noticed. You break into a room (I’m assuming the door was at least locked) and find three kids sleeping there. Do you attempt to scoop all three kids up in your arms without waking them, and struggle out the door? Do you know how hard it is to pick up even two kids at a time, much less three? And what would you do if one or more woke up and started wiggling? It’s not like they were three hundred dollar bills or three rings or three wallets. THEN I could understand the puzzlement with taking only one. But three kids? C’mon! It’s much more logical to just grab the one child. Can we agree on that?
And without going back and reading, I had the impression that the room was only a short distance away from where they were eating. In many houses in the US, children’s bedrooms are that far away from the family room of a house, or the backyard. I doubt you would suggest that parents, after putting their children in bed at night, should not dare to venture out into their yard or go down the basement without getting a sitter. I know many families in our neighborhood who will meet in a neighbor’s backyard for drinks or to play cards on a summer’s night, after getting the kids off to bed. While I would never do it myself, I can imagine how the Macanns may have felt that leaving their sleeping children in a locked room a few yards from where they were, when they weren’t planning to be gone all night, might have seemed like a good idea at the time…especially if they had missed the deadline for arranging for a hotel sitter. Again,not the best idea in the world, but not horrible abuse,either. And many’s the time I’ve listened outside a child’s door at night to make sure they were asleep, rather than risk turning the knob and possibly waking them.
The flat was unlocked. And facing the road. Access to strangers was very easy, which is not really the case in a house and definaty not the case on the 6th floor of a hotel.
I think the book is also to raise funds for more private investigators, legal costs to force the Portugese police to open their records, travel expenses to chase down every little lead, etc.
Wiki says it was 130 yards away, which is a football field and almost a half, getting on toward a tenth of a mile. Maybe I associate with the lower class of people, but I don’t know anybody with a house big enough that the bedrooms are that far from the living room, basement, or any other area under the same roof. I know only a few who could be that far away and still be on the property, and for all but one you’d be outside anything that could be termed the yard and out in the woods/field/pasture. In a small town, you’re talking about being a couple blocks away.
And they left the place unlocked.
So while I agree with you that I could kind of see how leaving kids in a locked room a few yards away might seem like a reasonable idea, I just can’t see how leaving kids that age in an unlocked apartment a couple blocks away sounds like anything but a disaster waiting to happen. Whatever truly happened to Madeleine, her parents were criminally stupid and irresponsible.
Maddie’s gone. The Portuguese police were hapless, but to be fair it’s not like the case was on a plate for them to solve.
Claims of the involvement of the parents always sounded outlandish - understandable though when you’re talking about mindless chatter on the internet - it’s just begging for the bottom-feeders to get involved with conspiracy theories. One such scumbag was even advertising a book on it in the UK.
If you want to play the blame game then clearly they’re culpable to a degree because Maddie would still be here if they had stayed in that night. But how do you reconcile a 1 in 1000000 chance of abduction with bad parenting? You can’t.
You can say there’s a much greater (relatively) risk of accident, Maddie wandering off etc by leaving her alone, so maybe the McCanns do deserve maybe 0.01% of the vitriol directed their way since the event - I’m sure it’s water off a ducks back in any case compared with what they’ve gone through.
It’s one of those cases that tends to reveal far more about the person commenting on it, than any particular insight into the case itself. I’m sure this post is no different in that regard.
I always remember seeing the mother arrive somewhere, train station airport ? unaware of the news cameras, but when she spotted them she smiled.
I got the impression that she was enjoying the attention.
As to leaving little toddlers alone in a room, it takes just moments for young children to harm themselves by pulling objects off of worksurfaces, turning the gas on etc.let alone being abducted.
A hell of a lot higher odds then a 1 in a million.
If they’re getting vitriol then they deserve every little bit of it.
There is such a thing as an ingratiating smile which is used by people who are being ‘judge’ (for want of a better expression) and are trying to make people like them. Because if you’re smiling you must be a nice person.
and also an episode of CSI:Vegas (which IIRC was repeated around about the same time as Maddie’s disappearance)