Can you help to find Madeleine?

[Nick]

As you may have heard, four-year-old Madeleine McCann was abducted from Praia Da Luz in Portugal on 3 May 2007. Since then, despite a massive police hunt and Europe-wide publicity, there has been no sign of her.

As this forum is visited by people from all over the world, I thought it might just help to mention Madeleine here and reproduce a copy of her photo (see below). If you have any idea of Madeleine's whereabouts, or even the slightest suspicion, please contact the local police as soon as possible.

The following websites have more information about Madeleine, a downloadable poster, and details of other ways you can help in the search for this little girl: http://www.solosite.net/madeleine.html and http://www.findmadeleine.com.

I'm sure all MWC members will join with me in expressing the hope that Madeleine is safely reunited with her parents soon.

Nick

[Bru]

Nick, thanks for posting this here.  I have a poster of Madeleine on my car's side window.  It isnt much but it feels like I am doing something and I have emailed the website to friends globally. 
Let us pray that Madeleine will be home safe and sound soon.
Bru

[Allie]

And we should all report anything suspicious all the time, as so many other children are missing whom we rarely hear about.

[nassj]

Trying to download the pic to put on my pages but couldn't. 

[nassj]

It's cool now, I did it. Got it up on my page.

[crystalwizard]

snopes has been discussing this on the snopes list and has it listed as a true fact on the snopes site.

There's an official page here;

http://www.bringmadeleinehome.com/

now...there are a few other cases that come to mind that I really hope this doesn't turn out to be one more of...where one of the parents turned out to be the criminal.

[Nick]

snopes has been discussing this on the snopes list and has it listed as a true fact on the snopes site.

There's an official page here;

http://www.bringmadeleinehome.com/

www.findmadeleine.com and www.bringmadeleinehome.com actually both take you to the same official site. The former is the main URL being quoted in the UK media, presumably as it is a little shorter.

Nick

[Lin]

Its all turned very sour hasnt it? Personally I dont think her parents are guilty.

Imagine this (you story writers)  the car was hired after the event.  Who is to say that someone in the car hire firm knows where Maddy is and deliberately planted some DNA in the boot of the car to throw people off the scent.  Its a small town and car hire firms are surely few.  The evidence is so weak surely.

Ok far fetched, but stranger things have happened.  My experience tells me that many of these point the finger on the parents trials have come to showing the parents as innocent, but on the other hand many crimes are committed by a close member of the family.

Remember the dingo trial in Australia?  No-one believed the parents and yet the mother went to prison claiming the dingos had taken her baby away.  She was later released with new evidence. The baby shaking cases have been yet another error with women going to prison for several years before they were released on the grounds of new evidence.

I dont feel that the McCanns would honestly go to such lengths.  Its all too bizarre and they were bound to trip up at some point if this was a charade.  They are too stressed out anyway and what motives?   If Maddy was given a sedative(as we heard) and the death was an accident, then surely it was just an accident, it could have been any child sedative you give your kids to help them sleep, we could all be guilty of that!! To take it this far is beyond bizarre, so bizarre, that its not realistic.  Meeting the Pope is just one of the bizarre things if they were guilty.  The whole family seems totally shocked that anyone could possibly have found evidence against the parents.  Its very unreal.

I dont think they are guilty, it must be terrible for them.  We must keep going for the sake of the child.

Lin

[Bru]

I absolutely agree, Lin.  It is outrageous.  IMO the McCanns are being set up.   I think it is more a case of the 'money' of the area losing trade with lack of tourists since little Madeleine went missing.  I think the Portugese police are being pressured to 'close' the case.   Remember just two weeks ago when the locals began to turn against the McCanns, shouting abuse at them in the street 'Go back to Britain' and 'We want our town back', etc.  Nice compassionate folk, the Portugese!
AS for the police - I fail to understand why they allowed the McCann apartment -from where Maddie went missing- to be re-let following the disappearance. This should have been a crime scene and sealed. As for the hired car.  My God, how many people have been in that hired car BEFORE the McCanns hired it? Have the police interviewed these other drivers?  And please do not forget that this police force allowed at least 12 hours to elapse before they even considered setting up road blocks. 12 crucial hours!  The child could be anywhere!
Perhaps they are so ashamed of their inefficency they are clutching at straws and tormenting the grieving parents.  Kate and Gerry, you have my support and so many like me.

I have a Madeleine poster in my car - and it will stay there until she is found.

[Mark H]

And just to add some balance. . .

It seems that the police found some potentially incriminating evidence and so then interviewed the couple under caution; later releasing them so that they could return to the UK.

If we are to use emotive language, then it would have been outrageous if the police had failed to follow up that new evidence.

As for the effectiveness or otherwise of the investigators; what do we have other than tabloid hyperbole on which to make a judgement?

Mark

[Bru]

Mark,
I am not looking to get into a debate - or argument. I have noted your comments.  Perhaps you know more than the rest of us?

[Lin]

Yes I agree we can only go on tabloid and TV news, but the whole thing is totally bizarre and the sooner its sorted the better, I feel sad for these people and yet there is a nagging side to my sadness which says - What if I am being taken for a ride in my empathy?   I want the McCanns to be innocent, because I dont feel that something is quite right about the Portuguese police, its not coming across as being handled properly.  On the other hand stranger things have happened.   If I was to provide my ratio of innocence versus guilt I would go for 10:0.  I hope it doesnt change.  They really do seem ordinary people with a family who went for a holiday and it all went horribly wrong.

I hope that we can learn something from this ourselves when we go abroad for holidays.

Lin

[rewh2oman]

The "facts" of this case have not been disclosed, so all most of us can do is speculate. Which to me (unless you're trained in the area of "missing & exploited children" and are actively working to find Madeleine) doesn't help much; except for keeping the issue current and people's awareness alive.

Personally, I believe the parents are guiltless. The Portuguese Police botched the investigation (including items mentioned in previous posts) from the outset and now are being pressured to "close" the case. 

I pray that Madeleine is only "missing" and will be found safe soon, and that her parents will be vindicated. For those of us who have experienced the horror & agony what Mr. and Mrs. McCanns are enduring (to any degree), my heart breaks for them.

[Bru]

If you are talking of yourself/selves who have been in such a nightmare, my thoughts and sympathies reach out to you. I hope your experience was resolved happily for all concerned, as I pray it will be for the McCanns,

[Allie]

This really is a case where we know very little, and what we think we know may have no foundation in the truth. There is just so much rubbish on the various tabloids and forums that it seems to me like a witch hunt. The parents really are suffering because of their perceived laxity in keeping an eye on their children, and I am sure that every screaming headline only reinforces their misery at their not having kept a closer watch. But I wouldn't dream of judging them. These things happen. Most of the time parents get away with it, and on the occasion they don't they have to live with the guilt for the rest of their lives. Even if Madeleine is found (which I hope and pray happens soon) they will still have to live with the memory of the days of misery she must have suffered while away from her family.

Everything that has been said here about the hired car is true. Why has the question not been raised in the tabloids as to where the car was between the abduction and the time the McCann's had it? We have been told by the more trustworthy newspapers that Robert Murat had to wait several hours for a hire-car around that time, because there are so few to be got. This suggests that a hire-car will be in constant use. And apart from the suggestion that this may be a set-up, there is also the chance of cross-contamination by a police force not as diligent as it could be. Even in a country like Britain where the police are careful about this, such occasions do occur.

On top of all this, it occurred to me yesterday, when I was trying to secrete my husband's birthday gift in a house with only three people in it, to wonder how on earth someone could hide the body of a four-year old child while being pursued by TV and other media journalists, interviewed by policemen and surrounded by well-wishing friends and relatives. To believe that the McCanns are guilty we must believe that many, if not all, of these friends and relatives are in on the crime. And with every person who knows about something, the chance of subterfuge lessens and the more likely it is that the secret will be outed.