[Closed] Another £154k for Maddie

Guilt money for leaving your ****in kids alone while you go out for a bloomin meal. What happened is terrible (I'm a parent myself) but man alive, who leaves their kids alone at that age and goes out for a meal?!

(Awaits flaming)

I agree - and if it had been 'Chardonnay' and her daughter she would have been locked up for child neglect.

who leaves their kids alone at that age and goes out for a meal?!

Anyway the human warmth from this thread will be its own reward

Complete waste of money in my opinion, when current crimes here can't be properly investigated due to lack of money/resources they are spending money on something that happened in another country a decade ago. It's bizarre.

We were were always getting left home alone whilst parents went to the pub in the 80's. The two rules were: don't answer the door. And don't use the chip pan 😀

Anyway the human warmth from this thread will be its own reward

While I have no comment on anyone's parenting skills, at £11,154,00 it's getting a bit much now.

[quote=dannybgoode ]Around £11m in total.

We'll be able to search for 32 missing kids a week when we leave the EU.

Given there were articles back in 2011 regarding the amount spent to date it is rather staggering. I suspect there are other poor families who's kids have gone missing and they haven't had anywhere near that amount spent.

Does make you question the real motivation for continuing the search and spending even more money.

We were were always getting left home alone whilst parents went to the pub in the 80's. The two rules were: don't answer the door. And don't use the chip pan

My parents used to leave me and the younger brother whilst they went to the pub. Treat was a packet of crisps at the bottom of the bed when we woke up!
Damn, I was spoilt.

When are the McCanns going to admit they did it?

Guilt money for leaving your **** kids alone while you go out for a bloomin meal. What happened is terrible (I'm a parent myself) but man alive, who leaves their kids alone at that age and goes out for a meal?!

I just assume the police like visiting Portugal, especially in the winter.

More money ?

Who is funding this?

It’s never ending, and to what end?

Is there a Parliament initiative or something like?

Who is funding this?

I'd love to know how much money has been spent in modern costings for the average missing UK child, compared to the £11M+ on Madeleine so far... And then watch the riots commence!

McScamm

Regardless of the history, it's a dead case getting resource while live cases don't get enough.

rob2 - Member
Guilt money for leaving your **** kids alone while you go out for a bloomin meal. What happened is terrible (I'm a parent myself) but man alive, who leaves their kids alone at that age and goes out for a meal?!

Most parents who went on Mark Warner/Sunsail holidays. We did for sure.

There but for the grace of God....

So what did happen to her?

Conspiracy theories welcome.

I like to believe that she sleepwalked off and joined the circus, and then lost her memory.

I've not been on a mark warner holiday, but I assume the children are supervised? Or would be the age of the McCanns (age 3 at the time?) .

Not fully - just a walk around service

At sunsail marmaris they gave us all baby monitors. At the end of the week parents commented on how odd that they had not been disturbed at all. Turned out monitors didn't work!!! Still everyone had a peaceful holiday

We'll be able to search for 32 missing kids a week when we leave the EU.

Sorry, but that is the best thing I've read all day. 😆

Sadly those kids that go missing, and invariably under suspicious circumstances, will loose out.

Who makes the decision that this money should be spent ? Is it a DailyFlail propaganda initiative?

but man alive, who leaves their kids alone at that age and goes out for a meal?!

Leave kids asleep upstairs whilst you watch tv and drink a pint downstairs...
Leave kids asleep when you are out in the garage tinkering on bikes...
Leave kids when you are in the shed 30 yds away ?
Leave kids asleep in a tent when you are still on the site?
Leave kids in room in small hotel when you have dinner in the bar?
Leave kids in a larger hotel to do the same?
Leave kids in a holiday cottage whilst you go to the pub literally next door (possibly closer than the shed or hotel examples!)
Leave kids for five mins to pop to shop to get something "essential" ?
Leave kids to go to restaurant where you still have eyeline with the house they are in?
Leave kids 100m away but round a corner?

Obviously all sorts of things like the area you are in, the age of the kids, their behaviour etc ... BUT when I am at home I don't check on the kids every 15 mins and theoretically someone could sneak in and get to their rooms. If I was "out" but checking regularly (and with four adults one only has to go every hour) you might actually be paying more attention to them!

At least there is some form of process then.

What happened to her?

The Richard D Hall interviews with Peter Hyatt, are an interesting watch. Peter Hyatt is a highly respected expert in statement analysis.

The cadaver dog results were quite interesting also.

As were the 48 questions Kate refused to answer.

Bottom line is I dont know what happened to her, but I suspect her parents do.

bikebouy - Member

Sadly those kids that go missing, and invariably under suspicious circumstances, will loose out.

TBH I tried to keep an even keel on the whole thing til one time I was in Glasgow and the missing persons screen (which'd usually have a load of local missing people, constantly rotating) just had Maddie on it 24/7. That was, I think, in 2009. Like, nobody else matters. That 19 year old with mental health issues, the grandad with alzheimers, **** em.

We left our kids with Mark Warner baby listening service, the only difference I can see is their “resort” was in the town whereas the places we stayed where seperate and had gated security. Ditto with Club Med.

Buzz Killington here.

You could just read up, follow updates, and make your own decisions and remain respectful that you don't know the answer.

Or you could just throw ignorant speculation for 'discussion' (read: mixture of largely shitty comments) about a child that might be, well, you know... 😐

Just read the 48 questions that remain unanswered, blimey, there's some holes in that story.

Theories aside, 11 million quid is ripping the piss a bit really, but then not everyone is a fine upstanding citizen like them. Pretty sure if there were tattoos and shell suits involved, 11 grand would have been the limit.

What's £11M - perhaps a couple of cruise missiles? I assume that the police have something to go at to keep on requesting this cash. Its small beer compared to the shite this government seems happy to fund - DUP votes anyone?

I assume that the police have something to go at to keep on requesting this cash

I disagree with those who condemn the McCann parents for what they did. I can imagine having done something similar way back when, and can only think that they really are just unfortunate victims.

That said, I think one of the reasons this case continues to reverberate is that it remains such a mystery. Every time a theory gets proposed, it either disappears into the ether, or fizzles out for lack evidence. There aren't too many unsolved mysteries like it.

Other missing kids that I have heard about have some sort of story associated with them - however tragic - which takes at least some of the mystery out of it.

All missing kids (and people, generally) should be a priority, but it is also natural that unsolved mysteries that present only the most puzzling of features will always resonate.

No responsible parent leaves a child in a building alone.

What and who are they going to blame when the money tap drops it’s last drop will they be decrying not enough was done?

You're only aware of this one as a "mystery" because it's always in the public eye. Plenty of other examples around that don't have professional PR folk behind them.

I can imagine having done something similar way back when,

No respoonsible parent leaves a child in a building alone.

Really? Never? All through the 1970s and 80s, my family and I travelled by car to the Southern U.S.A. at Christmas. I'm pretty sure there were occasions when, after a long day's drive, my parents would leave me and my brothers sleeping in the motel room while they snuck out of the room to the restaurant or lounge.

To say what you have just seems so easy in retrospect.

So what did happen to her?

My personal opinion is that her Parents know exactly what happened to her. Maybe there was an accident whilst they were off getting pissed up with their mates or something worse.

They’re a well connected family and they used those connections to create and huge amount of attention all pointing away from them and aren’t afraid to sue anyone to tries to point the finger at them, even to ask why they left 2, 2-year-olds and a 4 year old alone whilst they drank with friends, that would be unthinkable to me.

Their story stinks - when they’re selling the concept of the bogie man who came in the night they’ll say how the morning she disappeared she asked why it wasn’t them who came in when her brother woke up crying and how she had a strange stain on her pjs and yet despite that they still left their kids unattended.

Just googled the 48 questions. If true, those questions are pretty damning. Anybody know the timelines of when that questioning took place? EDIT - 3 months after the event.

If that DNA evidence exists why aren't they being charged? Unless dogs 'marking' where blood is doesn't necessarily mean that DNA was extractable?

Blood found in the apartment and then again in their hire car a month later? Surely if they were suspected they wouldn't have been left alone to go and recover a body in a hire car without being spotted?

I find the cadaverine scent marked more damning.

If you are so inclined that Mark Warner resort is an easy target for child abduction.

As for never leaving your child alone in a building when I was a kid people would go out and play all day long unsupervised. Off on your bike to the woods etc etc.

As I said we left our kids at Mark Warner, Club Med and Sunsail. As did pretty much all the other parents.

To say what you have just seems so easy in retrospect.

Easy to say because that’s the way we live our lives.

As I said we left our kids at Mark Warner, Club Med and Sunsail. As did pretty much all the other parents.

Doing something irresponsible doesn’t become responsible because your mistake hasn’t been punished.

Tens of thousands of parents did the same thing, maybe even hundreds of thousands. Mark Warner have (certainly had) a specific child listening service. The McCanns seemed not to use this for some reason but if they where checking every 10 mins thats as often as Mark Warner did it.

The whole leaving the kids thing is a red herring in this case. It’s just a stick to beat the parents and “justify” not spending money on the investigation. That plus the “social” angle, its only because they are NHS docfors that the money is being spent.

As for the “48 questions” if you have had legal advice to say nothing once being classified as a suspect, you say nothing to any question.

As for never leaving your child alone in a building when I was a kid people would go out and play all day long unsupervised. Off on your bike to the woods etc etc.

Of course but not aged 2 and 3.

I'd never leave my kids alone and can't think of any parents of very young children who would.

Not judging them, but I would never leave my three year old alone. The furthest I'll go is the kitchen when he's in the living room. Open plan house, so I can still see him. Have some of you seriously left kids that young by themselves and gone out for a bit?

I'm with both SaxonRider and Jamba on this.

So many poisonous and uninformed comments - and so many years after the event; what were your view immediately after her disappearance?

'Respectable, middle class' parents who now know how to keep the investigation alive and where to turn for PR/media coverage.
Comparisons with parents from different background are unavoidable and the assumptions about whether or not police interest would have been maintained after so many years are probably correct.
At what point does the Home Office say....this is now a 'cold case' and we will not spend any more money investigating? If/when they do, pitchforks all round.

From a cynical perspective, this allows the Express to continue pushing sensationalist 'Maddy' headlines and, in the process, further enriching dirty des.

To put this in extremely simple terms - she is, almost certainly, dead; the likelihood of finding out what happened is reducing every year; the authorities are scared to say 'our investigation is over' because the McCanns' PR team will spin that across the media and god help anyone in their way; the parents, understandably, want to maintain some hope but their expectations must be managed realistically.

The whole leaving the kids thing is a red herring in this case. It’s just a stick to beat the parents and “justify” not spending money on the investigation.

They left their kids alone in an apartment while they had fun with their mates quite a distance away. Their irresponsibility was punished. Your irresponsibility wasn’t. I can understand the need to justify what you did though.

While on our first “resort” holiday with child a few years ago, I took a stroll while mrs DD was asleep in our little chalet type thing with dd. As you do, I stopped to have a beer at the pizza/bar nearest to our accommodation. And as you do, I compared my distance to our accommodation to the distance between the McCann’s accommodation and the Tapas bar. It was around the same. It felt way too far - and we were in a fairly enclosed area, not with accommodation bordering a public road. My opinion on the McCanns and their mates kinda went south that night.

Having said all that, my gut feeling (because none of us knows the truth) is that they did something stupid, were unlucky enough to be punished for it and have to live with that decision for the rest of their lives. If they’d killed her either by accident or by intention, surely they’d have said a few years ago, “I think we’ve got away with it now...let’s just let it go...” (Again, pure speculation, I don’t know how it feels to be a murderer yet. Just how long would you keep up the pretence?)

Kate McCann was perfectly entitled to remain silent when asked those questions. Some of them sound a bit “leading” to me.

what were your view immediately after her disappearance?

'Respectable, middle class' parents who now know how to keep the investigation alive and where to turn for PR/media coverage.

Leading to you? We have a new suspect!

So what did happen to her?

Conspiracy theories welcome.

[img] [/img]

km79 - yeah, right.
BTW - s/b 'that they did it'; not 'done it'.
What were they at from day one?
Any evidence for your view? No? didn't think so.
So much speculative bollocks from some contributors.

But this story is 11 years old and we’ve heard [i]every[/i] opinion on [i]every[/i] eventual posibility outcome.

I think the point is there is [b]another[/b] £154k being thrown at a case that’s been concluded plenty of times when the money could be better spent looking for teenagers that went missing last week.

T’is all.

@bikebouy - can't disagree with that.

I think that the tax payer has spent enough on this fruitless search. She's dead and I think that the McCaans know it for sure.

He who rides the tiger can never get off.

BTW - s/b 'that they did it'; not 'done it'.

the parenting of skills on show are irrelevant to the amount spent.

If it costs 11 m to find her then its worth it. But they wont. And its 11 m that could have been spent improving or saving the lives of many other children in the uk.

This country seems to throw endless reserves of cash at certain high profile cases (not just missing kids) but seems to have no cash to pay for treatments and services that would transform the lives of the masses. Thats what gets me.

If it costs 11 m to find her then its worth it.

Not trying to start an arguement, but I honestly don’t think it is.

KM - yawn.

Grown-ups stick to the facts and use fact-based arguments, You should try it sometime - dependant, of course, on your intellectual capability.

Aye, and arseholes point out bad grammar on internet forums.

TO be fair to those who said they left their kids, they did that before this happened, many of those who think they were wrong were informed by this event.

The parenting of Maddie that night was neglect pure and simple, they should have been charged with neglect and put in court. If this had been a council estate in Middlesbrough and the parents were down the Park smoking crack (rather than sipping proseco) they would probably still be locked up for manslaughter. It's obvious there is something the Mcganns are not saying, any human being with nothing to hide would not have fought their innocence with such venom , their focus has not been on finding out what happened but on protecting their position. The Police have continued to investigate as they don't believe the Mcganns

Having avoided this story for years I have no idea if her parents where negligent or worse or not at all but I have always thought the subject is so emotive that the facts get lost.

Ultimately the police force is the leaking sieve in leaking sieve land so if there was some suggestion of complicity by the parents I suspect it would be out there by now.

any human being with nothing to hide would not have fought their innocence with such venom

Thats not entirely fair. If I had my child abducted but was repeatedly accused of murdering her I think I'd be protesting my innocence pretty hard.

TO be fair to those who said they left their kids, they did that before this happened, many of those who think they were wrong were informed by this event.

I've never once thought "better not leave my three year old by himself, he might get abducted like that McCann kid" it's more the fact that he's three years old. To leave him alone would just be plain wrong.

I genuinely can't believe that people would leave kids of that age alone. 😯

A good friend of mine was the DCI who led the most recent investigation. He was a murder detective (he retired from the service after that investigation) with over 25 years experience of solving murder cases.

He, and no one in his team, for one moment thinks the parents did it.

They are all convinced that the second sighting of a man carrying a young girl around 10pm and several miles away at another resort is the instance of abduction.

Case closed then, eh.?

That’ll be £154k fanks..

bikebouy - Member
But this story is 11 years old and we’ve heard every opinion...

A ****ing men

Maybe there's some people who weren't born at the time who think we still need to hear the "Child left alone??!" ...

There isn't any evidence that Madeleine Mccann was abducted.

The door was unlocked. Seems far more likely to me that she just wandered out alone fell down a hole in one the many nearby building site and got covered up.

Much like Ben Needham.

The 48 questions is a total red herring. From memory the question were answered by her husband so the Police knew what they needed to know. She would have been mental to answer questions as a suspect - we all make verbal slip ups all the time. You answer 48 questions and make a mistake and that will be used as evidence you did it. I never understood this concept until I watched this:

The Cadaver Dogs is also a red herring. From memory they identified the scent on a hire car the Mcans hired after the dissapearance. The idea that in the glare of the worlds media they could have driven a corpse around is a bit far fetched.

Guilty of leaving the girl unattended, no doubt, but there's no evidence they harmed her and no evidence anyone harmed her. Occams razor says she just wandered out alone.

It’s ok, geetee’s plod mates solved it.

Now, let’s examine the evidence that the Express is a “news” paper... 😉

=There isn't any evidence that Madeleine Mccann was abducted.

Other than the fact that she went missing.

Why spend another £154K when you have STWers on the case?

After many years of investigation by multiple police forces it is very unlikely that any new information will be found and, while the case will never be closed, it is time to stop actively investigating it. We are never going to find out the truth, time to move on.

Another thought passed my mind, whilst I am in no way a Judge or Sentancing Officer on behalf of the UKs Justice system, 11 years for guilt of murder means with current application of good behaviour means the murderer/abductee would be out of prison now eh?

There isn't any evidence that Madeleine Mccann was abducted.

Other than the fact that she went missing.

Think about that for a second!

[quote=DezB ]Why spend another £154K when you have STWers on the case?

We don't come cheap you know.

If it costs 11 m to find her then its worth it. But they wont. And its 11 m that could have been spent improving or saving the lives of many other children in the uk.

The parents made a massive mistake, they've paid for it dearly. If it was my child I would hope the police would continue to throw millions of pounds in finding him. I wouldn't say 'just leave it, there are more deserving causes.'

There's some very very heartless people on here.

If it was my child ... I wouldn't say 'just leave it, there are more deserving causes.'

If you had a ginger one you might.

Heartless or are we pragmatic ?

Whilst I understand your point (my sister went missing for 19mths when she turned 18, took us a very long time to a)understand why and b)convince her that the family wasn’t so bad she had to run away from, she didn’t sleep rough she went straight to a convent and worked there helping out with the nuns looking after and feeding the homeless and trying to rehouse “missing children” (over the age of 18))

Missing Kids UK states that an estimated 306,000 reports of missing people are made to British police every year – the majority of which are children and young people under the age of 18. Some children will go missing more than once, and this is a sign that serious harm is being done to the child.

Read more: http://metro.co.uk/2017/05/25/international-missing-children-day-how-many-children-go-missing-each-year-in-the-uk-6660067/?ito=cbshare
Twitter: https://twitter.com/MetroUK | Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MetroUK/

[url= http://www.missingpeople.org.uk/missingkids ]Missing Children website[/url]

Heartless or are we pragmatic ?

Guess you wouldn't be so pragmatic if it was your child?

Seems far more likely to me that she just wandered out alone fell down a hole in one the many nearby building site and got covered up.

Or fell in the unfenced swimming pool and drowned...........