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Thinking the unthinkable: Did Madeleine McCann's parents kill her?
Results so far:
| No | 21% | 185 votes | Total: 885 votes | |
| Yes | 79% | 700 votes |
No
by Jane Allyson
Created on: September 21, 2007 Last Updated: July 29, 2011
The controversy surrounding the McCanns is immense and their high profile search for their missing daughter has exited a lot of interest and compassion for this negligent pair.
The notion that they may have killed their daughter and then disposed of her body at a secret location has also been wondered about, and with the intense media presence and the inadequacies in Portuguese police procedure, this question developed into a real threat for the McCann's.
Although there is no evidence to show that their child has been killed, it can be argued that the McCanns can still be held morally responsible for Madeleine's abduction and presumed demise. The one fact that no one is arguing about is that they left their three vulnerable children alone at their apartment late at night, with no supervision whilst the both of them had dinner nearby.
Whether Madeleine wandered outside on her own or whether she was taken from her own bed, the fact of the matter is that if her parents had been watching her and keeping an eye on her then their daughter would still be with them. They should count themselves lucky that the twins were not taken as well.
Have they killed Madeleine and hidden her body? Any inconsistencies in witness statements or events have been merely muddied with the intention of playing down the McCann's gross negligence. However there is no hard evidence that points to them being killers.
The DNA evidence taken from the car, could quite easily have been put there very innocently from other sources that had been either used or touched by Madeleine previous to her disappearance.
There is other evidence such as the sniffer dog picking up the smell of death from her mother's clothing. This could also be open to question. These dogs are not infallible.
Their refusal to answer certain questions put to them by the Police has been their right to do so and they have probably been advised to say as little as possible by their legal representative.
Madeleine is not the first child to go missing in Portugal, never to be found. Would it have not been more feasible for the McCanns to have merely reported their daughter as missing and quietly left the country if they had really killed her? The huge media hype and worldwide search that has been generated by this couple and their family, instead, indicates parents whose resourcefulness will stop at nothing to get back the daughter who they love.
They have willingly stepped into the spotlight of the media circus. They have undergone a grueling barrage of questions from the Portuguese Police. They endure an appalling lack of privacy that has made them paranoid to the extreme that they are questioning whether their telephone calls and emails are being intercepted and they must live with the fact that their lives will never be the same again.
They took comfort and words of solace during a personal meeting with the Pope. We could argue that it would take a hard hearted couple to stand there in front of his eminence and lie through their teeth. The pope himself could almost be seen to be endorsing their innocence by his very presence with them.
He probably helped them to gain the strength that will carry them through this nightmare until they find out what has really happened to their daughter.
Learn more about this author, Jane Allyson.
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Yes
by Catsy Jones
Created on: October 17, 2007
Back in May a little blond girl went missing. She has not been seen since, and the world has waited with breathless anticipation for an answer, some sort of close to the case.
At first we watched with hearts pounding as her mother jumped onto our television screen, making a much too calm plea to the persons responsible for her daughter's disappearance. We clutched our own children as she told of how her daughter was special, and begged an unknown abductor not to hurt her.
But what of the oddness of this entire case? Did we think it was okay for this mother and doctor to leave three very small children all alone in a hotel room, in a foreign country? Did we really think about what it would mean if someone went into their room and took only the oldest of the three children? How strange was it that neither of the babies, (who were on either side of little Madeleine by the way) were disturbed in any sense of the word?
We were told neither of the little twins awoke. We were told that she was the only one taken, even though she had been laying in between her sleeping siblings.
We watched in horrified fascination as the media told us the McCanns were suspects, and we listened with wide eyes and hands clutched to our throats when they told us that the rental car had DNA from a dead body, which they believed was Madeleine's DNA. Her hair, was also in the car. The McCanns tried to claim that it must have been rub off from a blanket or clothing, but the hair had changed chemically and it was from a body, not from a live child. We were told how the cadaver dogs reacted to Madeleine's mother, how they could smell death on her. And we laughed when some lady called into Nancy Grace and said, "Um my question is couldn't that car have been used by someone else to transport the daughter's body before the McCanns rented it?". We all knew the odds of that were to slim to even contemplate.
But somewhere deep down none of us wants to believe that little Maddie was murdered by her parents. So we sit here and say, "There has to be some other explanation. How could a parent do such a thing, and launch a campaign like that?"
I agree it is hard to comprehend. But you have to realize the McCanns may have done this by accident, or they may have lost their temper for a short time. They still love their child, and they certainly don't want to be caught, and to never again see their twins. So they had to do it to play it out, to make them not be suspects. The problem is that with lying, you have to make another lie, and another and another. And soon it isn't believable any longer. Soon everyone can see something is fishy.
I also believe that they needed to do something to make the world remember their little girl. They loved her so much, and now she is gone, and they want the entire world to mourn her loss, not just them. So this campaign has two purposes, the first to try and keep them in the clear, and the second to ensure that the entire world remembers their baby girl.
They killed her either by accident or on purpose, either way they are the ones who are at fault. I won't change my stance unless the child is found alive, and I am quite positive it will never happen.
Learn more about this author, Catsy Jones.
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