Madeleine McCann

whowould have left this marker. Unlikely to be an abductor.

Because the dogs appearing to react to something is not evidence and provides no proof of anything. When forensic specialists looked for evidence the dogs suggested was there they found absolutely nothing - same as when they were later used on the island of Jersey at Haut de la Garenne, former childrens home, where those same dogs BS lead to a waste of £20 million.

Drug detection dogs are used by police forces worldwide too. Their false positive rate is so bad they shouldn't be used at all. 60-80% false positive rate, and yet people think that doggies are infalible and always right.

Same dogs said 'Shannon Mathews is dead, lock them up, no further proof needed, we never fail... who's that imposter? That's not the real Shannon, arrest the brat, we already told you she was dead - lock them up, case closed.'

I'm sure that if I dug around I could definitely find some headlines from around the time of the McCanns flying back to the UK that would go something like, "Kate and Gerry Flee the Algarve" etc., so, no, it almost certainly wasn't a good look in the eyes of the public who were getting so much of their information, such as it was, from the tabloids. However, there's public opinion and then there's serious police business. If the police have reason to find that type of behaviour suspicious and use it as a basis to put further scrutiny on the McCanns, they could have done that, and the inquiry as to whether the McCanns were involved was conducted, but it was followed by an announcement that the police could find no link between the McCanns and Madeleine's disappearance. Why? Because the McCanns wouldn't play ball? To be honest, if you're conducting a criminal investigation, you have to be prepared for the idea that suspects/persons of interest will not cooperate, for whatever reason they may have, and be able to work around that using the powers bestowed upon police authorities like arrest, interrogate, raid & requisition and so on.

Lawyering up when being questioned/investigated for a possible crime isn't exactly uncommon. I would go so far as to say it's highly advisable and should be done by anyone in that position with the means to do so. It has happened before the McCann case and after it that there have been high profile crimes with a strong public pressure to find the perpetrator and convict, and there have been many a person wrongly convicted, so there's good reason to conclude why even an innocent person would fly out and lawyer up in that situation.

Still, after all that, it is the prerogative of an individual to find the McCanns behaviour after being named arguidos suspicious, but it's just - a suspicion. From a cold legal standpoint, these suspicions need to be developed into a hard case, which never happened and the McCanns were dropped as persons of interest.

2 and you?

You were very lucky then

My 20 month old is not so predictable, 6 year old yes would be good to sleep now, not so much before

You don't need to own a car to know if someone was knocked down on the road. Talk about a totally daft question.

According to the Wikipedia article, the McCanns were both advised by their lawyer not to answer the questions posed to them when interviewed by Portuguese police and were also given legal advice to return to the UK once the arguido status had been declared. It wasn't a simple case of the McCanns panicking, clamming up and jetting out, and Gerry did answer questions in the interview while Kate declined almost all of them, in accordance with the advice given.

According to Kate, it was proposed to her by the Portuguese police that if she were prepared to admit that Madeleine had died accidentally in the apartment and she had tried to cover it up, she would only receive a two-year sentence, while Gerry would go free. If that's true, I can as easily say that her decision not to answer questions wasn't that suspicious at all, if she thinks she's innocent, because she's not going to say another word to a police force who were strongly leaning toward the possibility that it was Gerry and/or Kate at fault and give them any more potential ammunition.

In the same sense, if they were innocent, and the cadaver dogs raised an alert, I could very well see them questioning this. Guilty or innocent, you're likely going to question any piece of evidence or suspicion raised in a case against you.

People are free to suspect the McCanns as much as they want, but what do you do with that, if it's not carried forward into a serious investigation? Give them nasty stares in Tesco? Send them poison pen letters?

It remains that since 2011 and Operation Grange, the theory of pre-planned abduction by a stranger is the one authorities have been working off of to solve the case and the theory of Kate and Gerry's involvement was dropped, despite Portuguese police's preliminary conclusions.

When I was training is PC Repair, many many years ago, it was drummed into us not to make the mistake of assuming a particular cause and then wasting time looking for evidence that supports your theory. Instead, have a checklist of things to check. Check everything and then see where your findings point.

I think maybe the PJ did the former. Even to the point of trying to make a plea bargain with kate. As you said, since Operation Grange was setup no such suggestion has been made.

Lucky you. The McCanns on the other hand had toddlers that didn`t sleep all night. We know this because an elderly neighbour had heard one of the children crying continuously on a previous night and Kate reported that Madeleine had also told her that she had woken up and her parents weren`t there, which implies that she had been up out of her bed. And yet they left those children visually unchecked for an hour in an unlocked apartment that accessed the street. When two seemingly intelligent and responsible people say this is what happened my response is "Yeah right. Pull the other one. Why are you telling me this nonsense?"

As previously stated, they went to the UK a full month and a bit after the sniffer dogs were brought in. It is at this point that they return to the UK after being legally advised to do so in the wake of arguido status. I can see how the public would read it as a guilty look, not that the tabloids would need much provocation in feeding that, but all I can say is that if I were in that position and it is my contention that I'm innocent but there are pieces of evidence which would seem to make a case against me, you can bet I'm getting legal counsel to examine what the strength of that evidence actually is. And with respect to the McCanns, did it make a case for prosecution? Evidently not. So, how strong was it, really?

An abductor remains the most likely set of events in the opinion of police, given that this is what they have been basing investigations on since 2011 at least. The idea that Kate and Gerry killed Madeleine accidentally or even deliberately and then tried to cover it up requires far more assumptions than the theory that she was abducted from the unlocked apartment, even leaving aside that the evidence for the former hasn't added up to a prosecution. The time frame is nuts, possibly as little as 2 1/2 hours, if the picking up Madeleine from the creche at 6PM report is true, from her dying, to hiding her, to getting composed, getting ready for dinner, getting stories straight, putting the other two kids to bed, and then having to keep the body concealed after the manhunt begins, and then even getting lucky through police incompetence. I'll go with Occam's Razor in lieu of evidence.