Are you guys following this?
I know it’s not celebrity news, but I can’t believe all of this!!
From CNN:
Police on Friday named Madeleine McCann’s mother Kate a suspect in her disappearance, and said the girl’s blood was found in a vehicle the family rented 25 days after reporting her disappearance, according to a family spokeswoman.
Madeleine McCann’s blood was found in a car her parents rented 25 days after they reported her disappearance, Justine McGuiness told CNN.
Kate McCann was seen going into the police headquarters in Portimao, a town in Portugal’s Algarve region, on Friday morning.
She was questioned for almost 11 hours the day before, and left looking visibly shaken and drained, according to CNN’s Paula Hancocks.
Gerry McCann has also now arrived at the police station for questioning.
Portuguese authorities made no public statement on the latest developments.
Philomena McCann, Madeleine’s aunt, said police were suggesting Kate McCann might have accidentally killed her daughter.
“They are suggesting that Kate has in some way accidentally killed Madeleine, then kept her body, then got rid of it,” Philomena McCann told Sky News.
“I have never heard anything so utterly ludicrous in my entire life.”
Madeleine’s father Gerry McCann is also expected to be questioned on Friday. Family friend Clarence Mitchell told The Associated Press that Gerry would also be named as an arguido or a formal suspect. The couple have maintained their innocence throughout.
The McCanns “continue to deny absolutely they had anything to do” with their daughter’s disappearance, Mitchell said.
As a formal suspect under Portuguese law Kate McCann will gain more legal protection than when she was questioned as a witness. She will be able to remain silent during questioning and to have legal representation.
Those involved in criminal investigations in Portugal can ask to be declared formal suspects to receive this protection although it is unclear whether Mrs. McCann asked to do this.
Madeleine was reported missing on May 3, days before her 4th birthday. Her parents told police she was abducted from the family’s holiday apartment in Praia da Luz, Portugal while they ate a meal at a nearby restaurant.
Madeleine’s parents, who are both doctors from Leicestershire in central England, have campaigned internationally to secure the safe return of their daughter, including having a meeting with Pope Benedict XVI and securing support from Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling and soccer star David Beckham.
Until now police have insisted Madeleine’s parents were not suspects and were being questioned as witnesses.
Only one person has previously been named as a formal suspect, British national Robert Murat, who has denied any involvement in the case.
September 7th, 2007 at 12:45 pm
I find this disturbing, you hope that it is not the parents and if they are going through the questioning and it is not them I feel for them as they are going through enough without this. But then if it is the parents it just makes you want to be sick. This is a little hard to swollow.
September 7th, 2007 at 1:08 pm
How awful I have been wondering if they would ever solve this case. It seems pretty damning they found Madeline’s blood in the car 25 days after she was missing. If it was the parents I hope they take the other kids from them quickly. I also feel bad for the resort they were staying at I can imagine they have a hard time booking guests after a little girl is stolen from a room and if it was the parents all this time….
September 7th, 2007 at 1:18 pm
I’m thinking the Portugese police are doing a good job of finding a way to not continue searching for the child, and covering up that they don’t have a clue.
September 7th, 2007 at 1:44 pm
Why hasn’t anyone brought them to task on having left TWO 2-year olds and a FOUR year old alone, whilst they went out to eat?? Child endangerment, etc.,??? Fire, abduction, choking, whatever, could happen when they were alone, and obviously it wasn’t a first time thing because they were not even in their own home or country, but in a foreign land, no less. I feel for the children most of all.
Poor innocent beings.
September 7th, 2007 at 4:28 pm
How could this be the Portuguese police’s doing, Duh? The blood evidence was found by British investigators, using British sniffer dogs, with all evidence processed by a lab in the UK.
September 7th, 2007 at 5:45 pm
Sue, I agree 100% with you! These parents haven’t been held accountable for their actions and should be. God knows if I left my children alone, I’d be up a creek without a paddle. Hire a damn babysitter!
I’ve thought the whole time that the whole thing was fishy and that the parents might be guilty. If this is true…I hope they get a just punishment.
September 7th, 2007 at 6:19 pm
Geez, for BOTH parents to be medical doctors, they certainly have NO CLUE as to being parents!! Leaving kids alone–unsupervised at those ages is just asking for trouble!!
September 7th, 2007 at 8:32 pm
Check the eyes and body motion of Mrs M..Its pretty conclusive by that alone. Could the child have possibly been sedated (GPs) when the parents went out so they would not be bothered by the girl and it all went wrong (possible oversode). I know it sounds like the stuff of fiction but hey! bad events happen. Just a theory and my opinion but then they are doctors as well. The other children,i agree with Erin should not be allowed to be with them. The publicity could just be an elaborate smokescreen which tends to be undertaken by guilty individuals. Having said all of this i do hope that i am wrong and they find that poor little girl.
September 7th, 2007 at 9:02 pm
NO! I will not believe that the parents had anything to do with this vile act until they ADMIT it. Because if they did that their crimes are multiplied: death of a child, ruining a man’s life and terrifying his family for their crime, convincing the POPE, the people, the groups of strangers searching for this precious little girl, fooling the police, the media, the list goes on. My prayers are with this family.
September 7th, 2007 at 10:39 pm
Logically, a set of parents who would leave their 3 young toddlers alone in a hotel room (unlocked?????….or not) to go stuff their faces with food and booze and party on, have to be suspect! WHO does that???? Especially if they DID leave the doors unlocked! What kind of parent is so ignorant and careless of their most precious children? If they had a $100 bill sitting on the bed, they would have locked the door guaranteed! Ok, so aside from their story…..logically, they are negligent and irresponsible as parents. So……why not? Perhaps they did kill her! Or one of them did and they’re covering. Poor child.
September 8th, 2007 at 10:32 am
I believe in the portuguese police! It’s one of the best in the world, did you know that?
Besides it’s pretty strange that her mother has the smell of a dead body in the clothes she was wearing on that day, their apartment and their car had Maddie’s blood. NO ONE leaves 3 kids with the age of 2 and 3 alone in an apartment and gives them tranquilizings so they can go out…. I believe there’s to much to tell on this story!
September 8th, 2007 at 1:27 pm
humm i hope its not the parents. if blood was found in the rented car 25 days after her disappearence,then they should check who rented that car prior to madelines parents.
September 8th, 2007 at 3:37 pm
My theory is that Maddy got out of bed whilst her parents were out and had some sort of accident. Her parents came home and found she wasn’t in her bed and panicked, raising the alarm that she’d been kidnapped. Only later did they find her, possibly not alive, and by then the media coverage was spiralling. And so they backed themselves into a corner, not wanting to be revealed as grossly negligent parents who left their young children unattended, which resulted in one of them dying and so hid her death and continued to let the search go on.
I don’t for a second believe they would have killed her on purpose. An (avoidable) accident which began a series of lies and panic and cover up is what I would place my bets on. Though how they would have managed to keep her body/disposal of it so secret when they are under such intense scrutiny is the only thing I can’t figure out.
September 8th, 2007 at 5:40 pm
The Portuguese police is doing a fine job, they know what they are doing. They haven’t stopped searching for the kid, looking into every possible clue they found. I believe they knew from the beginning the child was dead but didn’t have the evidences to prove it, and it all came from the parents’ testimony…too many incoherences. Didn’t you get and odd feeling when you first saw her parents on tv, after her dissapearance?. They have a constant scared expression.
September 9th, 2007 at 9:59 am
This endorses a lot to Joana’s case. A 8 y.o. girl killed back on 2004 by her mother and uncle on Algarve, Portugal. Believed to be killed due to find mother and uncle practicing incest.
Back them the mother also set up the circus around here to look for Joana, going on TV, newspapers… many people crawled the entire country looking for her. It didn’t get as popular as Maddie but if turns out to be true about their parents the case is scarily similar.
September 9th, 2007 at 10:24 am
The Portuguese authorities desperately want the McCann family out of the country so that the government is no longer under such intense scrutiny. They knew the parents would high tail it out of there and the subsequent media firestorm would re-adjust its focus.
September 9th, 2007 at 12:57 pm
There’s something that puzzles me. There are comments here and there that the parents sedated the children and perhaps gave Maddie an overdose that killed her. But if Maddie died from an overdose, why would there be blood anywhere? She would have just gone to sleep and never awakened.