Madeleine McCann Missing-Praia Da Luz, Portugal 3/05/07 #1

[festa]

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article1782001.ece

May 13, 2007
New photofit of Madeleine abduction suspect

<snipped>

It was confirmed yesterday British police have compiled a detailed photofit of a suspect seen near the McCanns’ apartment in Praia da Luz on May 3, the day Madeleine was abducted. The man, wearing light trousers and a blue top, had a partly shaven head and was spotted a few hours before Madeleine disappeared.

<snipped>

Is this our baldy from the park?
And thank you very much for all the articles - some info I had forgotten about - like the fact that Murat and Malinka spoke that night (although they told police they didn't know each other) any explanation from them regarding this lapse of memory?
And the fact that the car was hired days after her disappearance - that is more likely a time frame to dispose of a body then 25 days later.
And if Murat was used by the Portugal police before, how come they say they didn't ask for any help from him this time?  how come this time he had to take it upon himself to "help" out?

[festa]

vms, thank you for posting the photo - so this is the Belgium composite? where is the composite from 2 days after her disappearance - the guy carrying the child?

[festa]

Oh wait, stupid me, must be too much coffee this morning, that composite is Rob's guy, the bald guy - i didn't check link to see if photo is there - sorry

[festa]

OK, I don't see a photo there - but this must be the one they mentioned that police drew up 2 days after she disappeared but didn't release until 5/25 -
It's not the one that I linked and vms posted, right? that's from Belgium

[festa]

Get that cat to forensics, armchair sleuths demand

“It’s 2.30 in the morning. I can’t sleep and didn’t get to sleep until midnight, obsessed and stressed over all the craziesness [sic] that’s hit the net about the abduction of Madeleine McCann,” Brenda Stardom, an American living in Portugal, blogs. “I belong to the FindMadeleine MySpace and I check it at least every 15 minutes when I’m awake because the comments fly faster than I can keep up with them.”

Like no mystery before, the disappearance of Madeleine McCann on May 3 has set the blogosphere alight. Armchair detectives, conspiracy theorists, psychics and gossips swap clues about what might have happened.

The website crimeblog.us, based near Atlanta, has known nothing like it. “As the blog owner I am able to see the Internet Protocol address info on comments left on this weblog. Visitors come from Germany, Denmark, from Russia, and of course, from Spain, Portugal, and all over the UK. I’ve always had readers from all over, but never this many, every day,” the creator writes. “Posts are left day and night.”

Some bloggers’ theories are mad. But the sharper commentators appear to have spotted routes the investigation should take long before detectives acted. Portuguese newspapers have reported that police now want to seize Madeleine’s “cuddle cat”, the pink toy which Kate McCann is forever seen clutching.

Yet as long ago as May 30, a poster on the functionpix.com website wrote: “ Get That B***** Cat To Forensics. Somebody take that cat into forensics before it’s cleaned.”

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article2449020.ece


Again, what were/are they waiting for?  Why didn't they check the cat before, even if they didn't suspect the McCanns then, this was her toy and it was placed on a shelf not where the McCanns said it was, next to Madeleine, So wouldn't you check it for evidence, thinking that whoever took her put it on the shelf?

[Rob]

Is this our baldy from the park?
And thank you very much for all the articles - some info I had forgotten about - like the fact that Murat and Malinka spoke that night (although they told police they didn't know each other) any explanation from them regarding this lapse of memory?
And the fact that the car was hired days after her disappearance - that is more likely a time frame to dispose of a body then 25 days later.
And if Murat was used by the Portugal police before, how come they say they didn't ask for any help from him this time?  how come this time he had to take it upon himself to "help" out?

Festa -  I have many more links, but it will get monotonous if I keep posting them. I am now more convinced that the McCanns are innocent. Maybe I am totally wrong and will be made to look like a jackass, but after looking at all that I think it is a pedophile and not the McCanns.

I do not know if that bald guy is the person mentioned in the article. Could just be a coincidence. Interesting however.

With the other missing girl, Joana, I believe the police are way off track....just my opinion.

I also wonder if the police have discovered something they do not want known and went after the McCanns as a diversion to keep the light off of something they truly fear.

[festa]

From Victims to Villains: A Familiar Role Reversal

From Sympathy to Cynicism
In the first few weeks, the McCanns' story attracted plenty of sympathy, with neighbors in Portugal putting up posters of Madeleine and Britons holding candlelight vigils praying for the girl's safe return.

But as the search turned up no trace of Madeleine and after her parents were named by police as suspects last week, prompting them to hire a high-profile lawyer, the mood quickly turned and the headlines became vicious.

"Did you kill her by accident" blasted the Daily Mail. "Madeleine: We Can Prove Parents Did It," blared the Daily Express. Even the Help Find Madeleine McCann Web site was flooded with spiteful comments from "I never believed your pain" to "You have shown nothing but cold emotion ever since 3rd May." Another Web site, organized by the McCanns' local newspaper, had to be shut down after it was bombarded with vicious comments.

http://abcnews.go.com/International/story?id=3587167&page=1


 :shock:Wow, how the tide has turned - people are fickle, huh -

Rob, if you're a jackass, so am I - I'm not convinced, yet - too many unanswered questions and problems with them being the suspects - not saying they didn't, I just really need to hear more before I join in the public lynching.

[festa]

Portuguese police 'don't have enough evidence to charge Madeleine's parents'
 

• Police admit there's 'nothing concrete' for prosecution

• 'Madeleine died from an overdose of sedatives'

• Kate's diary says 'she struggled with hyperactive children'

• Holiday friends to be interrogated by detectives again


Portuguese police do not have enough evidence yet to charge Kate and Gerry McCann over the disappearance of their daughter Madeleine.

Senior sources admitted there was "nothing concrete" to bring a prosecution. funny I just said that

A source at the Policia Judiciara said today: "There are lots of indications but without more elements it is impossible to determine what has happened in the almost four hours vital to the case from 6pm [on 3 May, when Madeleine vanished].

"Even if we confirm the blood and other remains taken from the car or the apartment correspond 100 per cent to the girl's DNA that does not prove anything.

"These elements would only just about confirm that the girl was in the apartment, which is obvious, and in the car.

"In either of these two cases that would not prove homicide, just that the body of the girl had been transported in the car.

We don't know if Maddy is dead and if she is how it happened. We have nothing concrete."


http://tinyurl.com/2tnxnh


I know, I'm biased, but this is starting to sound like they are readying for a backslide - now they say even what they supposedly have isn't enough - so...

[Rob]

Festa - It's getting quite ridiculous. If they had the evidence the MCanns would have been charged. As I said the other day, I expect them to be charged regardless of the evidence. I'm kinda shocked it has not happened already.

Fox just had an update and that update quoted a French newspaper that said that Madeleine died of an overdose of sleeping pills and they have the evidence.

...::Shrugs Shoulders::...

[festa]

Sources close to the investigation expressed caution about the claim that forensic tests "proved" Madeleine died from an overdose.

Preliminary tests carried out at the Forensic Science Service laboratory in Birmingham, sent to Portugal last week, are understood to give "indications" that Madeleine had ingested drugs. so now we are down to "drugs" no indication (yet) of any kind of sleeping pill - wonder where the French press got that?


---------------

Senior police sources say officers want to question further at least some of the seven friends who were holidaying with the McCanns when Madeleine vanished from the family's apartment on 3 May.

It is thought Russell O'Brien and his partner Jane Tanner are among those who will be quizzed.

Ms Tanner has already told police she saw a man carry a child from the apartment wrapped in a blanket.

Mr O'Brien said he left the dining table at one point to look after his young daughter, who was ill. I assume this is requestioning, they must have already been asked these questions

---------------------

Today they accused detectives of failing to investigate fully the only other formal suspect in the case, Robert Murat.

Close friends of the McCanns remain convinced Mr Murat is still the most likely suspect, although he denies any involvement and the police investigation into him appears to have drawn a blank.

Like the McCanns, Mr Murat has been named an arguido - a formal suspect. Sources close to the couple insist he lied about his whereabouts on 3 May.

Mr O'Brien, Fiona Payne and Rachael Oldfield - all friends of the McCanns - and a Portuguese local have testified they saw Mr Murat helping the search for Madeleine on 3 May.

Mr Murat, who was born in Britain but grew up in Portugal, lives with his mother in a villa in Praia da Luz near the McCanns' apartment.

He is said to have introduced himself to the three friends on the night of the search, saying: "I'm Robert. Can I help?"

But he has denied this and insisted he spent the evening with his mother and girlfriend.


-------------------------


So because Murat's mother and girlfriend said he was with them, the McCann's friends are lying?  

[festa]

Wow - that's surprising the French press has the evidence, but the PLE says they don't - how can that be?  Still like to know, where did the French press get their info? hmmm....

[festa]

Does anyone know, the article klassend posted regarding the other missing girl in Portugal - is that the one who's mother was alledgedly beaten into confessing false statements?  if so, how many unresolved missing girls, children, people are there in this area?

[Rob]

Festa- Murat's mother as his alibi is not an alibi in my opinion. Also, Murat was involved in a love triangle with a married woman.

A love triangle does not mean anything. But it does not bode well for the woman as a witness. She could tell a differing story to keep her affair hush hush.

[Rob]

Does anyone know, the article klassend posted regarding the other missing girl in Portugal - is that the one who's mother was alledgedly beaten into confessing false statements?  if so, how many unresolved missing girls, children, people are there in this area?

I have the article.. it is the same woman. I'll get it.

[Rob]

Festa- I am looking for that article you referenced... but found this one. Also, in that article, it mentions that the same dirty cop is working the Maddy case. He was later relieved of duty I believe.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/crime/article1769019.ece
May 9th 2007

LISBON, Portugal — Portuguese police are now working on the assumption that Madeleine McCann was abducted "to order" by an international pedophile network, after narrowing the focus of their six-day investigation.

Detectives have now discarded a range of other possibilities, including the theory that the British toddler could have walked out of her Algarve hotel room by herself or was kidnapped for adoption, Portuguese newspapers have reported.

“Everything points to a kidnapping,” a person close to the investigation told Correio da Manhã, adding that police were now exclusively investigating the possibility that she had been captured by a child abuse network. Police sources quoted anonymously by several other local newspapers said the same thing.

Citing local laws, Portuguese police have refused to speak publicly about the state of their investigation. But recent moves have pointed to a renewed focus on international pedophile networks.

British officers specializing in child abduction cases have flown out to the Algarve. One of them, Detective Superintendent Graham Hill, is a veteran of missing child investigations and was one of the senior detectives in the hunt for 13-year-old Milly Dowler, who vanished in March 2002. Her body was found in September that year, left in countryside in Hampshire. No one has ever been charged with the murder. Hill, who has been working for the Britain’s Child Exploitation and Online Protection Center, was also a senior investigator in the hunt for Antoni Imiela, the serial rapist jailed in 2004 for attacks including five in Surrey. British detectives have also handed their Portuguese counterparts a list of people on the UK’s sex offenders register who have travelled recently to the country.

[Rob]

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article1813842.ece

May 20, 2007
Algarve police face mounting criticism

John Follain and Steven Swinford, Praia da Luz

LAST SUNDAY, a solitary figured stood outside the home of Robert Murat, the Englishman questioned in the Madeleine McCann case, as police forensic experts searched the villa.

A week on, searching questions are being asked about why Guilhermino da Encarnacao, the chief investigating officer, switched the focus of his inquiries on to one man. Even the police admit there is, to date, no credible evidence against Murat.

Described as a “desk strategist”, Encarnacao, a methodical 59-year-old officer, now heads one of the most intensively scrutinised police investigations in recent history.

There are questions over the resources and time spent investigating Murat. It has also emerged that Encarnacao was involved in a previous investigation of a missing child, which was hit by criticism.

“As police we can’t make miracles happen,” he has said in one his few interviews. “Let’s hope God will allow us to solve the case.”

There were no miracles last week and after 17 days, Madeleine is still missing. The trauma consultants with the McCann family have gently helped them to at least consider the possibility that their daughter is now dead, although the couple are convinced she is still alive.

Police are widening their inquiry, with new searches in other European countries and northern Africa.

A report of a small child matching Madeleine’s description in Marrakesh on May 9 was yesterday reported to have been discounted.

The profile of the case remains as high as ever. A two-minute appeal was shown on the big screen at Wembley ahead of the Manchester United-Chelsea FA Cup Final. The website appealing for help has had more than 60m hits.

The results of forensic tests on Murat’s property are still awaited, but the questions are being asked: what was the evidence that initially made him a suspect? Were searches of properties connected to him conducted effectively? And why was he still allowed to attend witness interviews as a police translator while under suspicion?

Last week it emerged that Encarnacao was also involved in another high-profile missing child case when Joana Cipriano disappeared from her home in the village of Figueira on September 12, 2004, only seven miles from the coastal resort of Praia da Luz where Madeleine went missing on May 3.

In echoes of the McCann case, the hunt for Cipriano got off to a false start when the Republican National Guard, another police body, failed to seal off the house where Joana was last seen. It was only five days later – after hundreds of police officers, journalists and friends of the family had trampled over the scene, and after relatives had cleaned the house with bleach – that the Judicial Police took over.

Joana’s body was never found, but the case was solved. Leonor and Joao Cipriano, her mother and uncle, were convicted of killing Joana and sentenced to 16 years and eight months, but they never confessed.

The inquiry into Murat, 33, has appeared haphazard at times. The search of Murat’s villa last week was carried out in the presence of Murat himself, his mother and the latter’s dogs. “You’d think the police would clear the villa while conducting a forensic search. Instead members of the family were allowed to come and go as they liked,” one source who witnessed the search said.

The home of Sergey Malinka, 22, a Russian who helped Murat set up a website for his estate agency, was searched a day after Murat’s villa. “If there was anything on Malinka’s computer, he would have had plenty of time to erase it,” a source close to the investigation said.

Not even credible circumstantial evidence has been made public against Murat. It has been reported that he phoned Malinka on the night of the abduction, despite the Russian previously claiming to reporters that they were not friends and had not seen each other for months.

Malinka would not comment on the calls yesterday, but it was perhaps not surprising if he did play down his links to Murat to avoid unwelcome attention. He is said to be considering legal action over reports that he had criminal convictions for sex offences.

He said this weekend: “If you were called a paedophile in the papers, what would you do? The disappearance of the child is horrible, but when you become the centre of the world’s attention like this it is very unpleasant. I am innocent. I have a clean conscience. It is a terrible tragedy and I hope they find her.”

Questions were also raised last week why Murat hired a rental car at short notice two days before he was taken in for questioning. Sally Everleigh, Murat’s cousin, said: “There’s nothing suspicious about it at all. He hired the car so that he could go to Portimao to help police to translate. It wasn’t a getaway car or anything like that. He was just trying to be helpful.”

The estranged wife of Murat also spoke out this weekend in his defence. Dawn Murat, who lives in Hockering, near Dereham in Norfolk, said: “There is no doubt in my mind he is innocent. He loves children and is the most kind and generous person I have ever met.

“I feel for him deeply. I am disgusted at what people are saying. It is just total shock and disbelief. I feel he has been made a scapegoat. He is not capable of hurting anybody.”

Murat hopes his phone records will help to prove his alibi on the evening of the abduction. It is understood he twice phoned England and spoke to his daughter.

It emerged last week that Murat was involved in the hunt for Madeleine from the first day. A resident close to the McCanns’ flat, who knows Murat and his mother, said he had helped the police to search her property. “Murat took part in the search of my flat. He went into my spare bedroom and looked under the bed,” she said.

A senior officer said: “He offered himself as a translator to the police and in the beginning there were no suspicions of him. Last Saturday he was used as a translator in Portimao when police interviewed a witness. At that time we already had suspicions so we didn’t use him to do important interviews. But we thought if we said that we didn’t need him it would be worse because it could alert him.”

One source said: “The senior officers in this case have been sleeping just an hour or two every night. They were all fired up when they started the search at Murat’s villa, but they’re not any more. What they’re looking for is someone or something to link Murat to Madeleine.” Other leads are thin on the ground.

<snipped>

Article continues with Tax questions pertaining to fund.

[festa]

If you were these parents, how much confidence would you have in the PLE?  

-----
It would not be the first time that a child taken from Portugal has ended up in the grip of a paedophile ring. In 1998, an 11-year-old boy called Rui Pedro Mendonça vanished while walking home from school in the northern Portuguese town Lousada. A month later, hopes were raised when he was sighted with a middle-aged man in Disneyland in Paris. Then three years later, his mother’s worst fears were realised.

Horrific images of Rui Pedro being sexually abused were reportedly uncovered during an international police operation that cracked a global paedophile network. More than 200 paedophiles in 13 countries had exchanged more than 750,000 images of children through a private internet club called Wonderland.

Analysis showed that 1,236 children had been subjected to abuse that officers described as “unimaginable”. Some were babies, raped by their abusers. Others were sexually abused live, to order, online. Officers described weeping as they catalogued the pictures and being haunted for years afterwards.

The Portuguese boy’s mother, Filomena Teixera, flew to Switzerland to view the pictures and was apparently able to identify her son. But he has never been found. The trail has gone cold and investigators fear that may have been murdered to cover up the abuse. Now the disappearance of Madeleine has brought those agonising memories flooding back.

--------
Six other children are listed as having disappeared in Portugal. Not all are suspected of having been snatched by paedophiles, but one case in particular has drawn attention for its startling similarities. Rui Pereira was 13 years old when he vanished in 1999 -- just a few months after Rui Pedro -- from the northern town of Famalicão. There was later a reported sighting of the boy in Switzerland, in the company of two Italians.

--------------

Child protection campaigners have alleged that a culture of corruption and complacency in Portugal is allowing such kidnappings to continue unabated. The founder of the Switzerland-based group Innocence in Danger has said she had tried to set up an office in Portugal but it gave up because of the reluctance of the authorities.
-------

I thought I remember seeing/reading about a "problem" in Portugal regarding sex offences - Again, with the reluctance of the authorities -  I wish I could read some of the Swedish press.


Thank you very much Rob for this info -

[Rob]

I had the video of Malinka professing his innocence and it is not gone because one of the brain damaged from the dark side filed a complaint against Carpe and that bucket was shut down.

[Rob]

I had the video of Malinka professing his innocence and it is now gone because one of the brain damaged from the dark side filed a complaint against Carpe and that bucket was shut down.

Self Edited - for typo.

[Rob]

Festa - in the above article, it is also interesting what the PLE considerssolved.

People who do not confess??? sounds like they have a specific standard they follow and it involves shoddy investigations and then baffling theories and then a conviction based on mystery evidence.