McCann Questions

Kate McCann has been named a suspect in the case of the disappearance of her daughter on 3 May 2007. This news has been splashed across the British press this afternoon. The BBC website shows the following as a timeline box. The BBC words are in italics and my questioning is in usual typeface.

THE NIGHT MADELEINE VANISHED

• Kate McCann tucks Madeleine into bed in their ground floor apartment.


• Mrs McCann and husband Gerry then go to a nearby tapas bar, which has a clear view to their apartment, to eat dinner.

The above picture was also published on the BBC News website but on 17 May 2007. I am not an expert but there do seem to be obstacles between the restaurant and the apartment. There is a swimming pool, loungers, what appears to be a fence. They may just about been able to have seen the apartment but what good would that have done? It would clearly take several minutes to reach the apartment from the restaurant.

• The McCanns said in an interview they checked on their children every half an hour. At about 2200 local time Mrs McCann returns to the apartment to find Madeleine missing from her bed.

It has also been stated that Gerry McCann checked on his children at approximately 21.05 and that at 21.30 one of the males in the party offered to check on the McCann children when he checked on his own child/children, one of whom had been vomiting. It is alleged that this male only listened at the door rather than actually entering the room. It then seems that Kate McCann checked on the children at approximately 2200 and found that Madeleine was missing. That, to my mind, is not the same as actually checking on the children every half an hour. It also raises concerns in my mind that one of their party was happy to leave a child unsupervised that was or had recently been vomiting.

• She goes back to her husband at the restaurant to raise the alarm and police are called.

This too is something that disturbs me. Allegedly there were three children there in the room that evening. We can be fairly certain that the twins were not taken and would have been in the room when Kate McCann entered and realised Madeleine was missing. Were they still asleep? Did she take them with her when she returned to the restaurant or did she leave them in the apartment? And if so, why did she leave them there when her eldest daughter seemed to have disappeared.

This story seems more and more odd. The parents state that they are drawing away from a media circus, yet they were happy to be interviewed by the Times this week. Each time they state their point of view there seem to be discrepancies. There are questions which no-one in the press seems to be asking. The parents seem convinced they did nothing wrong and repeatedly make the situation about them, not Madeleine. I hope that this new line of questionning provides some much needed answers, an end to speculation and a break through in finding Madeleine or her whereabouts.

McCann facts?

Penny Wark writes in today’s Times that there is only one fact in Madeleine McCann’s case of disappearance – that she was taken from her bed. The rest, she says, is mere speculation. The article is well written, but I have to disagree. There are three facts of which we are sure: that Madeleine, aged almost 4 and her twin siblings, aged 2, were left on their own in the apartment whilst her parents ate supper, that this was not the first time that week which they had been left alone and that Madeleine disappeared from the apartment at some point between 8.40pm and 10pm.

I have hestitated to write about this fiasco; I would have liked, as I am sure everyone would, not least of all Madeleine and her family, for the situation to have been resolved quickly. But here we are, 124 days later with no more information and the same three facts. I’m not sure that it is worth debating the situation without any more factual information but given the interview that the parents conducted with the Times, despite saying last week that they wished to move away from the media circus, there are a few things which annoy me.

Gerry McCann states this:

“we know what we did and we are very responsible. It’s bad enough for us to have to deal with the fact that someone saw an opportunity – to then have elements sneering at your behaviour and making it look much worse than it was”.

I find it odd that a doctor can stand there and say that leaving three children unaccompanied in a foreign country in a rented apartment falls under the umbrella of responsible.

Kate McCann has been quoted saying that at worse they were naïve. Sadly, I think at best they were naïve.

She has also said:

"If I'd had to think for one second about it, it wouldn't have happened. I never even had to think like that, to make the decision. It felt so safe that I didn't even have to - I mean, I don't think we took a risk."

"If I put the children in the car the chances of having an accident would be greater than somebody coming in, breaking into your apartment and lifting a child out of your bed. But you never think I shouldn't put the children in the car."

Anyone leaving children unaccompanied is taking a risk. I find it odd that she can still be stating that she doesn’t think that she took a risk. I really don’t think that anyone is suggesting that she could or should have foreseen the danger of abduction. What she perhaps should have been thinking about are surely the other risks and dangers to a child, of which as a GP she must have been well aware, from awakening distressed and finding themselves alone to choking on vomit, to trying to get a drink and shutting hands in drawers or doors, or falling off something, or hurting themselves in someway or simply crying for almost half an hour before Mummy or Daddy returns to check.

There has to be more to this story.

UPDATE - I have just re-read Penny Wark's article and I notice that at one point she says this:

"As everyone is acutely aware, the reason we know so little about Madeleine’s disappearance is because she was abducted in Portugal" (my emphasis)

As she says at the start of the article, one of the few facts that we know is that she disappeared. I fail to see therefore how she can state as a fact that Madeleine was abducted and that the reason we know so little about the circumstances was because it happened in Portugal.

UPDATE 2 - The link in the comments box does not appear to work but can be read if you click here.