Madeleine McCann

First of all how the McCanns could ever have thought that leaving three children under four on their own in an unlocked hotel room in a foreign country was safe is unbelievable. The second thing is there’s no way what happened to Madeleine can be compared to an accidental drowning of a child. Madeleine’s parents didn’t lose sight of their daughter for one minute or even two. They willingly put their three children in great danger every night when they went out and left them alone. They did this over and over again on numerous nights even though they knew Madeleine had been crying looking for them on at least one of those nights. That to me is unbelievable and unforgivable.

Not whataboutery to point out that parenting was looser in the 80s, with relevant examples, and conclude that, no, it very likely wouldn't have been considered socially unacceptable to have dinner across the pool from a holiday apartment where your kids where and perform regular checks on them.

But hey, attitudes change. Who knew?

The problem is that there is no murder charge without a body. To date they have no body and I am sure the police searched long and hard. Suppose Brueckner kept pictures from Madeleine somewhere on a USB stick? Some evasive answer of having gotten them from some shady long dead character, no way to prove otherwise....

Police need to either tie something of Madeleine's ( such as a piece of clothing ) to Brueckner to either convict him of something like abduction, or find a body to prove murder and connect the body of Madeleine to Brueckner.

So far nothing like this has happened.

And then, suppose they find a piece of Madeleine's clothing with Brueckner's DNA on it, and Brueckner argues in a court in his defense, yes, I've met Madeleine, - the McCanns will most likely contradict, one word against the other, 16 years ago, hard to prove what was said and done back then..

It'll be interesting if the police ever come up with something which is strong enough to convict beyond reasonable doubt whomever did this in a court of law.

To date Brueckner is just a suspect, but as far as we know Madeleine could have been abducted by probably anybody in the area.

Don't know. Apparently DNA can last 30 or 40 years outside. However I am no expert. Even after 16 years they should be able to identify Madeleine based on DNA, if they find a skeleton, so there would be at least certainty that it was murder.

The fact they were doctors means nothing to me. So what if they were doctors. Anyone absolutely anyone who did what they did night after night are 100% wrong. When you have children their welfare should come before everyone and everything else. In this case that bit of common sense was absent. I don’t feel sorry for the McCanns I feel sorry for their little daughter who they so very badly let down.

Maybe it was a form of groupthink, since the other couples had the same system.

If the McCann's were on their own, maybe they wouldn't have done it.

It's difficult to understand their behaviour.

Although to be fair my mother would often leave me on my own when I was of a similar age. But I bet everyone who was a kid in the 80s has similar stories.

My fear when minding kids isn't that they'll be abducted but that they'll hurt themselves like choking on something or strangle themselves on a cord from a blind.

If I was babysitting someone's kids, there's not a hope I'd pop out to pub or restaurant 50m away and leave them alone. I'd commit to the responsibility.

I don't think Christian Bruckner was stalking them and waiting for his opportunity.

I think it was a burglar who just happened to be a child abductor/paedophile.

Ground floor flats are often broken in to.

I've noticed people are often more complacent with their own kids that they would be with others.

The McCanns have paid the ultimate price for complacency, which is punishment enough I feel.

If a child dies in a road traffic accident it’s because there’s been an accident. Madeleine did not die or vanish because of an accident. She is dead or has vanished because her parents left her alone in an unlocked hotel room in a foreign country. They did this on numerous nights even when they knew Madeleine had been upset and crying on one particular night. I don’t think it was a small risk to take to do this. There’s no way those three children should have been exposed to what happened to Madeleine and we would not be having this conversation if the children had been properly looked after. Why would they ever have thought it was ok to do it in the first place is a mystery.

I have never said “speaking as a parent” what I have said is if the children had been looked after properly Madeleine would not be missing today. If the risk was so small Madeleine would be at home today but unfortunately she is not. When a person has children it should be their priority to protect them. This wasn’t done and we all know the result.

If you are addressing me I’m just answering posts addressing me. I’m as entitled to my opinion as anyone else.

It was definitely the easiest apartment to access . It had direct access from the road , straight in from the path and up a few steps and through the unlocked patio doors. It could be done in seconds .The bins were out that night so anyone could have stood behind one watching the pattern of checking . They would see a gap of 30 minutes and be in and out of that apartment in 5 minutes . Straight into a parked van turn left and within minutes out of the village and into the countryside

Any conclusions you want to make other than finding certain facts unusual?

Would a child the age of Madeleine have remembered and recognized all the friends of the McCanns? Probably not? To Madeleine this would have been just another smiling and nice talking adult, like all the visits and check ups before.

Since there was no forensic evidence, no DNA in the room, it must have been a smooth abduction. Brueckner ( if it was him) maybe wearing gloves, maybe he chloroformed her while she was already sleeping and carried her out?

There was an article in the Daily Telegraph today about it and the comments were absolutely merciless to the McCanns. Not only blaming them for leaving the kids but many suggesting there was no abduction and that the McCanns have been economical with the truth to put it mildly.

Ah hear.. less of the virtue singling "I'm a spotless parent" finger pointing stuff. My kids surf offshore, we travel around Europe in a camper, sometimes they're left alone, the older ones take part in extreme sports and we ski in the winter. We've had broken bones, sprains and strains.

The blame stops at the pervert, the murderer, the pedophile. Don't try & confuse the situation, don't blame rape on a short skirt, don't blame the chancer perv on the drunk boy or girl, don't finger point the careless teenager on being drunk... There's good people and there's bad people, don't try and take the blame off the bad people only to accuse the parents that suffer the loss & stop trying to normalise child abduction & predation like it's to be expected if kids aren't watched 24/7.

You need to recalibrate your posting style, adjust your moral compass and concentrate on the perpetrators. Not the victims.

“Telegraph readers”. Lazy cliche. It’s a brilliant newspaper and not that it’s relevant, but I also read the Guardian. I find “Guardian readers” just as boring a cliche but funnily enough it’s usually smug “Guardian readers” who like to describe themselves as such.