McCann Case Still Unsolved?

I agree, Jay, and I also agree with what Moab said about the news media wanting to be first rather than accurate. It's all about ratings and revenue instead of actual journalism. In fact, I've posted that very thing before.

As I've said on another thread in the JBR forum, the media can skew and/or slant any story any which way they want. If they are not willing to be responsible in their reporting, then they need oversight and a law that will MAKE them be responsible. I also understand the need not to invoke censorship and squash news that needs to be heard. We do need to know about corruption in high places and other things that affect our lives, but the reporting of erroneous conjecture as FACTS does need to be controlled, especially when it hurts innocent people and/or the private citizen.

 

I think that is a scary part. They have the power to make and break and it's peoples' lives they are playing with. For the main part in the Mccann case, the British press weren't actually blatantly publishing false stories, but they were reporting on what the Portuguese tabloids were reporting and we now know that most of that was totally false.

I think this inquiry could have far-reaching consequences for the British press. Until now they've been self-governing to a large extent but it's all about money these days and things are getting out of hand.

 

My point is that I am against censorship, however, I am for people taking personal responsibility for their words and actions. When any gvt. steps in by taking a stance on a situation other than upholding existing laws then just be careful what you wish for.

In a perfect world everyone would be happy, safe, honest & fair. Until that happens I would rather leave it up to individuals to decide what they choose to read and leave it to the courts to settle the disputes.

So, is the UK going to begin deciding what the Portuguese paper can publish? That's pure McCann and IMO the Portuguese papers can't be faulted for their displeasure over the entire McCann affair. IMO no one knows to any degree of certainty what happened to Madeleine.

Speculation? Without proven facts that's what we are all left. Is that the job of the newspapers? Only on the editorial page IMO, but just because we may not like the topic doesn't mean that they are not entitled to their opinion.

I think that it's a mighty slippery slope.

Little

 

Those high profile criminal cases will always produce media hype.

It is the evidence alone which tells the truth in criminal cases, which why what the sniffer dogs found out interests me far more.
Or the alleged tuft of hair, Kate's fingerprints on the shutters, etc.
The problem is: how can any alleged case info be verified by reliable sources?

Is there any evidence pointing to an intruder?
Is there any evidence pointing to the McCanns?

This is where one has to start.

 

The UK has no jurisdiction over Portuguese papers so this inquiry only applies to British papers.

I have enormous respect for you Little and have said so many times, publicly and privately. However, we are going to have to disagree on McCann. I think it is speculation which leads to misinformation and in my book, that is entirely at odds with truth and therefore justice.

 

What exactly led you to believe the McCanns possibly did delete their most recent mobile phone messages?

 

It was claimed on one of these McCann case blogs. It was presented as an "aha" moment - as though it was a suspicious thing - that they were destroying evidence but mobile phone inboxes display the most recent messages at the top so they WILL be the first ones to get deleted when you are clearing out the inbox. The blogger made much of the "fact" that the McCanns had kept very old messages but the most recent ones were deleted. Well, that goes for myself and everyone I have mentioned this too. When you receive a text message, you have the option to reply to it or delete it. If you reply to it, you have to then actually go back into your inbox to retrieve it and delete it and I for one wouldn't bother doing that. I might delete it straight away if it didn't require a reply but mostly they do. So the inbox inevitably fills up and then you get a message saying "No space for new messages" so you know someone has tried to send you one and that your inbox is full - so you open up the inbox and delete the ones at the top to make way for a new one. Thus you easily and innocently end up with a situation whereby you have very old messages and missing recent ones.

My phone stored 100 messages and it's a basic model. I'd imagine the McCanns would have better phones than me.

BTW - I asked you a question further up about the testing of the hairs. It's about 10 posts further up.

 

Did the blogger give a link to an official source suporting his/her claim that the McCanns deleted their recent messages?

I'll get to it ASAP, and see if I can find an official source. With so much happening in the JBR case, it has been a while since I read up on the Madeleine case.

Kate McCann's Father in: The Guardian, May 5 2007

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2007/may/05/world.topstories31

"Gerry told me when they went back the shutters to the room were broken, they were jemmied up and she was gone," said Mr Healy. "She'd been taken from the chalet. The door was open."

The Guardian is a respected paper, so one can assume they quoted Kate's father correctly.

But it doesn't look like the shutters were broken:

http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y234/colomom/Shutter1.jpg

http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y234/colomom/Shutter2.png

http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y234/colomom/TheWindow-1.jpg

Close-up of Kate McCann's fingerprint on the shutter:

http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y234/colomom/KMFingerprint.png

http://www.websleuths.com/forums/showthread.php?t=77764

Kate's fingerprint there could of course be harmless. Has she been asked whether she touched the shutter?

 

Of course not Very few "official" sources have been given in this case.

 

Ths is one of the stumbling blocks, no question. Still it would interest me where the info about the deleted phone records has its source. For it has been mentioned so much on the forums that one can assume an official source to support the claim does exist somewhere.

The question asked was

The Caylee Anthony case is where I landed as well. (see my #253 post)
I know very little about DNA - in the hypothetical scenario of a lab getting a hair on which they can do only mitochondrial DNA testing - what can they say in terms of this hair belonging/not belonging to a Jane Doe whose DNA profile they have available?

 

Yes the Guardian is a respected paper and it would seem that the origin of the jemmied shutter is Gerry McCann.

However, jemmied doesn't necessarily mean visibly damaged. Our patio door was jemmied in our last house during a burglary and all the burglar did was lift it up off the runner so that the catch popped out of place. The police said it could be done with a garden spade. There wasn't a scratch on the door but there had been a spate of burglaries in our area that afternoon and they'd gained access to all the houses in the same way. I'd never have belileved it possible.

I've also broken into my car using a piece of packing tape. My cousin, a policeman, showed me how to do it (I'd left the keys inside). My car wasn't at all damaged by my "break-in".

As you say, the McCanns were staying in the appartment so it's not at all suspicious that any of their fingerprints would be found on a window shutter.

I've read so many different accounts about this shutter - "It was open", "It was shut", "It was broken", "It was broken before", "It wasn't broken at all".... Frankly, it does my head in!

Finally, I know the shutter has been described as a "security shutter" but the traditional purpose of shutters in these hot countries isn't security but light and temperature control - they help keep the rooms cool. Shops use them for security but I question that they were primarily for security in the Portuguese hotel (apart from anything - what sort of message would it send if the hotel windows all had security shutters on them?). So whilst a security shutter (i.e. for a shop) SHOULD be hard to force open, I seriously doubt a ventilation shutter would be any harder to force than a roll front office cabinet and that forcing one open would cause any significant damage.

 

PS - you cannot tell from these photos whether the catch is broken or whether there are any scratches on the shutter so I don't know how you can say there is no sign of it having been forced. It's not smashed, but that doesn't mean it isn't broken nevertheless.

 

That's why I phrased it like that: "But it doesn't look like the shutters were broken".
That is, the pictures don't show visible damage to the shutter.

The next question to ask is: does there exist any report about the shutters having been tampered with it in any way? Also, I've read somewhere that the fine moss on the sill would have been disturbed if anyone climbed through the window, but that is was not disturbed.

Could the theory of an intruder climbing through the window stand up to scrutiny at all?

 

You mean as opposed to just having slipped in the patio doors which we know were unlocked?

In answer to your question about evidence about the window, I don't know, as far as I'm aware, the official police evidence/files have not been published.

There has just been so much garbage written about the case that I simply don't see the point in speculating about anything that doesn't come from a reliable and official source. Few things upset me more than being lied to.

I do hope the truth comes out some day about this case. The speculation is so cruel and damaging.

ETA, I googled to see if I could find a source for this moss on the window sill and only found a post of your at WS asking about it. I did find a blog which claimed there was lichen on the window sill wheich was apparently undisturbed. Lichen and moss aren't the same thing. Moss is softer and grows in damp places. Lichen is a sort of fungus you sometimes get on stone. There are different types of lichen and some of it isn't easy to dislodge. As a child I used to sit on a rock outside my aunts house and I'd often pick away at the lichen on the rock. Sometimes I'd brak my nails doing so. So it depends on the type of lichen whether it would be easily disturbed or not. Also, when lichen grows, it tends to be patchy - not universal. So like with the snow in the Ramsey case, it would depend on where an intruder stepped!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lichen

I doubt any lichen covering would be substantial as it is pretty unsightly and these are supposed to be fairly upmarket apartments.

 

Yes, that's what I meant. Why take the trouble to tamper with shutters when there is an open door where he could slip in quickly?
If there was an intruder, he must have been a risk-taker anyway, daring to abduct a child in a resort milling with people at a time of day where it was not yet pitch-dark in May.

Sorry about the mistake - I actually meant lichen, but used the wrong word (moss).
I found this on Websleuths: http://www.websleuths.com/forums/showthread.php?p=2717370&highlight=lichen#post2717370 (# 326)

There may exist varieties on window sills which are finer than the patchy ones on stones. I read somewhere that it was like a fine film, but can remember where I read it. I hardly archive anything, so I always have to look again.

Being lied to is always upsetting of course. A lie is when a person states something while KNOWING the statement to be false. That is, a lie is a conscious attempt to deceive, to HIDE the truth.

When it comes to possible misinformation about a criminal case, this will qualify as lie only when the person giving the info KNOWs it to be false.
(like e.g. guilty suspects who give deliberate misinformation because they want the truth hidden).

So the elements present in a lie are:
Persons who lie know a truth which they want to hide. This leads them to deceive others by presenting wrong info as fact.

We all hope it, but the chance are slim to none imo.

Speculation is an a element always present in true crime case discussions.
Even in solved cases (e.g. the Manson murders and the MacDonald case) posters still speculate about crime scene details and time lines.

And anyone who has read true crime books will know how often homicide detectives have to speculate when outlining possible scenarios. And it is often speculation which opens the door to a path which finally leads them them to the truth.

 

The window was concealed and would therefore be an attractive entry point for an intruder.

I agree this would be a risk taker.

There are many varieties of lichen but there is one very common one which grows on stone windowsills. It's got to be scraped off.

I think that's too much of a cop out Rash. That's like me saying that you are a murderess - I don't know that it's true but hey I'm not technically lying because I don't know for sure that it's false either. That's just isn't good enough in my book! I think newspapers have a responsibility to print the truth

Speculating about the meaning or significance of known facts is one thing but that isn't what we've been dealing with in the McCann case. Speculating about the evidence is what Homicide detectives have to do when they are solving cases. However, they do so with the benefit of the facts - something we are not privy to.

I'm fine about speculating how a hair of Madeline's could have ended up in the boot of a car hired thre weeks after her disappearance if it is a fact that such a hair was found. What I'm not fine about is discussing how the hair ended up there if we don't even know that this is a fact. Too often in this case I've seen many, many discussions which ran along the lines of "Kate McCann did such and such" and the response was "Why did she do that?" instead of "Did she do that (for certain)?" People just accepted the lies - over and over and over. Even after the early lies were discredited, they accepted more lies from the same sources and I'm afraid I've come to the conclusion that this proves that people believe what they want to believe. I think some people want the McCanns to be guilty of child murder and so they accepted every damning accusation which was fired at them regardless of its source or likelihood of credibility and then they got defensive when others accuse them of just that and claimed that they only wanted justice for Madeleine. Well I think it isn't justice for Madeleine if people are saying she's dead when there isn't one scrap of evidence which proves she's dead. If people believe she's dead they'll stop looking for her and that certainly isn't getting justice for Madeleine. IMO.

 

Moab, I appreciate what you are saying here, and could not agree more on the issue of life and death creating the absolute need for the laws you mentioned, however, when you are talking about "responsible" reporting on open cases, or land owners, or celebrities, who is the judge? Who is going to say what is and is not worthy of reporting when it comes to a case be it the McCanns or the Ramseys or the Anthonys or Anna Nichole Smith or politicians etc. etc. etc. That's the slippery slope that I fear.

I honestly believe that people are smart enough to sort through what they feel is reputable and what is not. The media, when reporting fairly, indeed has a powerful impact. I don't believe for one minute that they don't know that and many times abuse that power to advance their own agenda, promote their favorite candidate, but often times are the only legal record of a person's own words. We know that from the Ramsey case. We also know from the Ramsey case that manipulation of the media can pave the road for a bad person getting a pass.

Most everyone here quotes from news sources, so again I ask, who are we willing to turn the power of the on/off switch over to?

There's something the newspaper business relies upon called the sunshine law. Its intent is clear and although its focus is on municipal meetings, IMO, it's more than that. When you can't be 100% certain that there is light shed upon every corner of an issue then you can also not trust what is hiding in the shadows.

With everything there is good and bad, that's just the cost of doing business and living in a free society. I'll take the free anytime. Anyone who is a victim of libel has an absolute right to confront whomever is responsible be that an individual or corporation.

I believe we live by our words and are responsible for our actions.

Little

 

But it was not so concealed that no one could see it, was it.

I suppose closing/opening the shutters had to be done from the inside, also they look pretty heavy. An intruder trying to get in from the outside with the metal shutters closed could make quite a noise.

It is certainly no cop out on my part. But I'm a stickler for precise defintion, the purpose being to find a common code and frame of reference for the discussion partners, to avoid mutual misunderstandings.

No indeed, you would not be technically lying if you don't know the statement to be false.
For a lie is always a conscious attempt at hiding a truth by presenting wrong info as fact.

What one considers as good/ not good in one's book is always a personal choice. In terms of what is good in my book,
preciseness of definition is my personal choice here.

They certainly do have this responsibility, but we all know better, don't we. Just look at the Ramsey case, where for example the 'garrote' myth is presented as fact despite evidence proving the contrary. Guilty people have used the media to present themselves as innocent victims, innocent people have been presented as guilty, etc.
In high profile criminal cases, the media circus is always gigantic. Especially the rag mags are infamous for their sensatonalist headines created to make their issues sell like hot cakes.
What complicates matters is that even the trashiest tabloid can be right on certain facts.

The case files have been released and we can read both the Portuguese and the UK reports. Identical info present in both rerports has a high probability of being correct.

Do you have an idea how we can find out more about the hair? Scrutinizing both the PJ reports and the UK reports may help us to get a clearer idea.

Like you have pointed out, unless we have access to the facts, it is very difficult to assess what is wrong info and what is correct info.
Going through both the Portuguese reports and the UK reports with a fine toothed comb would be a good starting point imo.

Emotions are no tools of cognition, no question about it.
People who "want" the McCanns to be guilty of murder are lead by emotions as much as as those who "want" them to be innocent.
Which is why both groups will land in an evidentiary blind alley if they fail to bring up evidence in the discussion to back up their claims.

I asked you a question in # 270:

TIA for your reply.

 

Great post, Little!