Matthew Steeples suggests it is time for the investigation into the disappearance of Madeleine McCann to stand down
Whilst the investigation into the disappearance of Madeleine McCann has had millions lavished on it, those trying to help locate other missing children have barely received any resources. Now, with a victory for Goncalo Amaral in his libel appeal against Gerry and Kate McCann, it is time for this to be put right and regretfully, it is also time for the Scotland Yard investigation into this peculiar matter to step down.
In his book, The Truth of the Lie, which remains banned in Britain, Amaral alleged Mr and Mrs McCann have some responsibility for the child’s disappearance and went as far to allege they potentially faked her abduction and were responsible for her death. In doing so, Amaral certainly caused Mr and Mrs McCann anguish but he also exercised his right to freedom of speech.
Since Madeleine McCann disappeared in 2007, over £12 million has been spent on the probe to attempt to find her. Nothing has been achieved in spite of this vast sum and nobody has discovered whether the child is alive or dead. Whatever anybody thinks about what happened that night, therefore, remains pure speculation but it is now the future that must be considered. Mr and Mrs McCann should be allowed to continue to allocate their own resources to their search, but it truly is time the public purse was finally closed.
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You are right. Everybody decent wants Madeleine McCann to be found but if it were going to happen, it would likely have happened by now. Yes, keep the file open but no, no more resources. So many other families of missing people are in despair and it is only because Kate McCann has her chums Lady Meyer and the Home Secretary Theresa May on speed dial that this case gets the attention it does. The gravy boat must stop pouring and the operation must stand down.
I could not agree more ……………. !!
You got it in one. Enough is enough.
Sensible editorial!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Gerald and Kate should have employed a baby-sitter that night!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Then none of this would ever have happened!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Totally agree with you Matthew. My sister lives near Pria da Luz – the first thing She and the majority of expats said was “look at the parents”.
Can’t wait for the appalling Gillian Trott to comment.
Who are you to call me appalling? It is Steeples Times that is appalling for not supporting dear Gerry and Kate McCann in their efforts to find their beloved daughter Madeleine. Featuring pretentious artists and fancy cars is not what a decent publication would do. They would instead join with the efforts of Find Madeleine and help a dear couple find their beloved child. Shame on you all. FIND MADELEINE, FIND HER NOW.
The McCanns are right not to give up but they also must accept that this investigation has gone on long enough. Money and more money will not find Madeleine. She is almost certainly dead anyhow.
You can throw billions at this case and two things will never happen: Madeleine will never be found and the perpetrators/the parents will never receive justice for their parts in this. Having studied the official investigation evidence, these are the only two conclusions that will ever happen. I think the majority of people have a good idea of what has become of Madeleine, just how remains to be proven. If only Gordon Brown hadn’t been on speed dial from day one and personally ruined the investigation, there would doubtless have been £12,000,000 in the pot that would have helped countless missing children. I believe the outcome would have sadly been the same for Madeleine back then as it is today and I also believe that the “find Madeleine” money pit is likely to be nothing other than a high profile distraction.
Quite right. No more public funding. Anyone with half a brain can work out what really happened in this case and I strongly suspect the truth will come out in the end anyway without any further public cost.
While I agree that those trying to help locate other missing children have barely received any resources, that does not mean that the police should stop looking for Madeleine, as it may be that she is still alive. You seem to be saying that this is only about money.
If so I could suggest other, less important areas where money is being wasted. The cost of trident, estimated at £100 billion, money that will not save any lives, as if it is ever used, the radiation would kill us all, very slowly.
Nobody has once implied that this is about money. It’s about the probabilities and the extremely low chance that Madeleine will be found after 9 years, millions of pounds and a total of zero sightings … of arguably one of the most famous children in the world.
Trident is not a waste of money, all the time we have it other nuke happy countries will be thinking twice about attacking us because they know very well that they’ll also be nuked within hours and their objective will have killed them all by return. That’s basic warfare fodder. North Korea has been in the news for a long time regarding their use of nuclear science and Russia has hundreds of nuclear warheads and that should worry you more than the cost of Trident. The cost of renewing it would be worth nothing if we took a hit.
‘Nine years’, that is a long time. However after spending the last six years looking for a boy who went missing, without trace, 36 years ago, I think I found him, and who was responsible. So the probabilities, after only nine years are extremely high, don’t you think ?
I feel sick and my stomach is upset so perhaps it due to an attack of the Trotts. I shall buy a copy of the English version of the Goncalo book “Truth of the Lie” once it is available in the UK as it surely will be. The McCanns riiculously say they will sue anyone in UK who sells it but quite how they will enforce that is not clear since it is perfectly legal to do so. As you know the book says the disappearance of Madeleine was not an abduction and the parents are responsible. The dogs Eddie and Keela indicated the body of Madeleine had been stuffed into the boot of the McCanns hire car and had resided in 5a for a time, while dead. We still don’t know why Kate’s clothes reeked of corpse. As soon as the public realise the truth I doubt they will have any sympathy or support for the so called “Find Madeleine Fund” and the cash cow will be dead. I hope Grange, once it is finalised, will be telling us more and that the Portuguese Police will be seeking an arrest warrant. Regardless of anything- I love watching the wheels fall off the circus wagon.
Those sniffer dogs were useless !!! They found a skull in jersey, that turned out to be a coconut shell.
Eddie the sniffer dog – the animal that had supposedly found the ‘scent of death’ in the Portuguese flat where Madeleine McCann disappeared – no longer had a licence for UK police forensic work when Harper started using him in Jersey.
Eddie, whose owner, Martin Grime, was paid £93,600 for less than five months’ work, triggered the first excavations by barking at a spot where Harper’s team then unearthed what was claimed to be part of a child’s skull. In fact, as a Kew Gardens expert has now confirmed, it was a piece of coconut shell.
That’s rubbish.Both dogs indicated. The dogs maybe not licensed in UK but did That apply to Jersey, America, or Portugal? “Mr Harper, now living in Ayrshire, told The Daily Telegraph: “I have been saying for some time that the most likely outcome was that it would be impossible to date the bones accurately and so there would not be enough evidence to launch a homicide investigation.
‘‘When we found bone fragments and teeth in a home where we were investigating alleged abuse, what did people expect us to do?
“Ignore it? You won’t find any police force in the country which would have kept that quiet.
“From a very early stage everything we did was examined by the Acpo (Association of Chief Police Officers) homicide review group, which kept a close eye on the investigation.” The suggestion that children could have been murdered at Haut de la Garenne, which closed in 1986, was first made by Mr Harper in February, when he announced that what appeared to be part of a child’s skull had been found underneath a floor at the home.
Forensic tests later established that the “skull” was more likely to be a piece of wood or coconut shell.” http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/3441862/Jersey-abuse-case-police-rule-out-murder-at-Haut-de-la-Garenne.html
This is fun too http://saff.nfshost.com/hautgarone.htm
Most sniffer dogs are good, those two dogs are the exceptions and seem to make mistakes all the time.
Do you understand what image consultants, PR agents and spin doctors are actually paid to do?
Do you always subscribe to conspiracy theories and myths? Sniffer dogs are the best tools police can have and are worth their weight in gold. Grime used a blood dog and a cadaver dog and they both indicated strongly to many areas, including corroborating each other’s findings many, many times, all within the apartment, on Kate’s clothing and in areas outside the apartment. They’ve completed hundreds of cases and their success rate is unsurpassed. Odd how they’re both considered ‘useless’ on just one case out of all the hundreds they’ve taken part in and helped bring about countless convictions, don’t you think? That would be a massive coincidence, both having such a serious fail on this one case at the same time. What would be the chances of that? Thousands to one, if not millions, considering they’re two of the highest trained and respected dogs in the world. Considering there are thousands of sniffer dogs worldwide, if they were so useless, why would anybody use them and still be using them now? Remember Tia Sharp from New Addington who was murdered? Her body was found by the same cadaver dog as was used in Madeleine’s case.
Are you really basing your opinion on a story about a random piece of coconut shell and soundbytes from professional liars? It wasn’t the dog who thought it was a piece of bone, it was a human being. The dog just dug in the ground by where the coconut shell was found. Dogs are really very clever but they don’t know what shape a skull is or that they even exist. Don’t look at the spin, look at the science.
Someone clearly bled a lot in the apartment for it to have spattered all up the wall and seeped under the ceramic floor tiles and someone had either died in the apartment or a body was taken into the apartment, stored in the flower bed and wardrobes whilst DNA evidence extends to the McCann’s hire car a number of weeks after Madeleine went missing. Read up about it, there’s professional and official files online, just don’t let yourself down with believing and repeating hearsay. A bloody footprint was also evidenced in one of the bedrooms as noted in the official files. All of this is in the files and most importantly, they’re unbiased and scientific and have stood up to the most intensive scrutiny by experts.
Certainly it’s not going to help Madeleine if people are spreading misinformation given by companies who are paid professional liars as used by politicians, criminals, high profile people who have been caught having affairs, dodgy companies etc. If you’d lost your child, why would you even consider paying thousands to get a high profile PR agent/spin doctor/reputation management/professional liar involved when it looked very much like a death had taken place? It’s not exactly a natural first thought for parents.
Think about it. Irrefutable evidence was found and corroborated by the most accurate tools the world has to offer and you think paid professional liars are the last word in truthfulness? People can delude themselves in any way they wish but it won’t change facts.
And the time in the grounds of the Haut de la Garenne, when these sniffer dogs again came up with something. after a helicopter fly past they saw the outlines of graves. Very expensive digging equipment was brought in from the mainland. as they started digging and old lady came by to see what was going on, and told them there were a few graves there, but they were not real. They had been put in for an episode of Bergerac.
Good story. Well done. I’m not sure what you’re trying to prove but hearsay and anecdotes are useless for legal purposes.
It’s not ‘hearsay’ or an ‘anecdote’, it’s ‘fact’. The dogs are not good at sniffing
If you say so. You’re clearly more of an expert than Martin Grime who has made a successful career out of being a dog handler and solved possibly thousands of cases with his world renowned dogs with their 300,000,000 smell receptors as opposed to our 6,000,000. In fact, according to an online source, dogs’ noses are so sensitive that they are even capable of detecting bodies that are under running water.
Just one question for you in your capacity of sniffer dog expert, are you confirming all of the hundreds if not thousands of convictions these dogs have brought about are all flukes or mistakes and any resulting sentences should be overturned?
You are indulging in spouting rubbish again. (I suspect I know who you are and you specialise in that.) Almost daily, sniffer dogs serve our Armed Forces and the public in finding IEDs. Narcotics, and iilegally imported foodstuffs. They undoubtedly serve man well, save lives and do so selflessly, and unlike people they do not lie and lie and lie.
I’ve already read Snr Amaral’s book and it’s a very interesting read indeed. Well worth the time taken.
Superb reply Mel,couldn’t have put it better myself. I too have read Snr Amaral’s book online and I rage at the Mccanns treatment of him. I hope he takes them to the cleaners and this circus stops once and for all. Interesting how the dreadful McCann’s have made this entire sorry episode all about them while little Maddie has become almost an insignificance. All of the TRUE evidence,the OFFICIAL evidence is there online for all to see on The McCann Files website and I would implore anyone with any doubts to spend some time on there. I hope The Trott’s favourites ‘Dear Gerry and Kate’are quaking in their boots.
Thank you! I agree with you completely, their treatment of Snr Amaral has been nothing short of disgusting. They forced him to divorce his wife under Portuguese law and forced him to live from hand to mouth and on charity from others. The reason? They wanted his money. They’ve lost his health for him as well as his family. They’ve been spiteful, malicious and vindictive. I really hope that their karma is going to be an utter bitch.
It’s strange how so many people tend to lose their logical thinking and commonsense altogether when it comes to little Madeleine and the paid liars when in reality, if it was their child they’d genuinely lost, they wouldn’t behave anything like the McCann’s have done.
They seem to make mistakes all the time? If you knew anything at all you’d know Eddie the cadaver dog died years ago but your ignorance is suited to your agenda, isn’t it. We’ve all heard your stories before. None of it’s new. It’s typical of the script of hearsay, lies and slurs that have gone around a thousand times and been repeated ad nauseum for years in a desperate attempt to ‘prove’ the parents are blameless.
You do realise you seem more interested in repeating this rubbish than the fact cadaver, blood and DNA was found straight after Madeleine disappeared. If you gave a toss about the child you’d be interested in helping her by using your brain rather than grovelling to people who have ruined the lives of many who have tried to help Madeleine over the years. If you don’t want to help the child then keep it up.
So 27 people feel inclined to surrender any hope of finding a child? If anything were to befall my youngest, Hildegard, I’d want David Cameron to personally lead the search,funded by the taxpayer.
You’re all engaging in petty floccinaucinihilipilification of our beloved policing ability. They were perfectly pleasant and helpful when looking (and finding I may add) my cat in Hempstead three summers ago. This girl is no different. Consider the case closed.