MADELEINE MCCANN – UM MISTÉRIO MUITO DIVULGADO E MUITO COMENTADO

Este tema continua a despertar interesse na Internet, sobretudo pelas dúvidas que suscita.
Usando a mesmo lógica que utilizámos para prever, acertadamente, o resultado laboratorial da pista da Bélgica, prevemos que o sangue analisado na Inglaterra seja mesmo de Madeleine McCann. É uma previsão sinistra, pelo que desejamos que nos enganemos.





« 100 days on, and the agony sharpens for the McCanns


Rumours and innuendo after the discovery of blood in their flat leave the couple feeling under siege

Esther Addley in Praia da Luz
Sunday August 12, 2007
The Observer


One hundred long and dreadful days on, Kate and Gerry McCann mustered their strength and their determined hopes yesterday, and attended a small church in Praia da Luz for a service for their missing daughter Madeleine.
They came out to receive a crushing blow from the police: for the first time the Portuguese officer heading the investigation said the little girl could be dead. Chief Inspector Olegario Sousa revealed that new evidence had given 'intensity' to the possibility she was killed.

In an apparent reference to the discovery of blood specks at the McCanns' flat, he said renewed searches using British sniffer dogs had revealed clues which could point to Madeleine's death.
However, Gerry McCann, like his wife, refuses to give up hope. Asked whether he could forgive the person who snatched Madeleine as she slept in her bed, he told BBC's Heaven and Earth programme: 'We don't know what's happened to Madeleine, so it's very difficult to forgive in advance. We've had incredible pain over the past three months, and we pray that Madeleine hasn't. Ultimately it will be God who judges.'

Speaking about her Catholic beliefs, Kate McCann added: 'There are times when I've felt I could not lean on my faith, but they're short-lived. It's in those darker moments, when the fear and the panic sets in and you find yourself asking why, why did this happen to Madeleine, why did you let this happen?'

The search for Madeleine was highlighted as the new Premiership football season kicked off yesterday. Everton - her favourite team - showed a video of Madeleine during the match against Wigan, and other Premiership clubs made gestures of support.

In Glasgow a rousing march to galvanise support for the McCann family was played at the World Pipe Band Championships. Members of the family stood with lone piper Alistair Gillies as he played the specially written tune, entitled 'Madeleine McCann'. Meanwhile in Liverpool city centre Kate McCann's parents, Susan and Brian Healy, distributed posters, stickers and balloons to members of the public.

But if the couple and their families insist that they remain hopeful that the little girl will be found alive, the waking nightmare in which they have found themselves since Madeleine disappeared became, if anything, more difficult last week.

The discovery by British police dogs of blood in the apartment from which Madeleine vanished has prompted a torrent of speculative reporting in local newspapers, much of it hostile to the couple and hinting darkly at police suspicions about the McCanns themselves and the seven friends with whom they were holidaying.

In a number of interviews last week they have been forced to deny that they were somehow involved in the death of their own daughter, or that they suspected their friends of involvement.

The surge in interest in the family, meanwhile, has meant they are increasingly under siege in the loaned apartment in the small Algarve town into which they moved a month ago, surrounded and followed by Portuguese journalists and film crews wherever they go, leaving them feeling 'trapped' and 'bullied', according to Kate McCann.

Then, on Wednesday they were told that their twins were no longer welcome at the creche in the holiday complex at which they were staying, while Francisco Pagarete, the lawyer representing Robert Murat, said he wished 'those bloody McCanns' would go home.

So dense is the fog of rumours, unsourced briefings, false trails and dead ends in this case that it is impossible to determine the true status of the police investigation, or the facts on which it is based. Portuguese officers have insisted that their strict laws mean they can disclose nothing about the case, but yesterday further details emerged in a local newspaper, purportedly based on leaked police statements, claiming to shed more light on what happened on the night of 3 May. These, too, are unconfirmed and unverifiable.

According to the newspaper Sol, the McCann children were put to bed at 7.30pm in their apartment, and an hour later their parents went to a tapas restaurant in the Ocean Club complex, which is next to the apartment block but separated by a wall and a narrow lane. They were joined in the next half hour by most of their friends, who left at different points over the next few hours to check on the children, though it is not clear whether each parent checked on all of the children or only their own.

At 9.05pm, the paper said, Gerry McCann left the table to check the children and on his way back ran into Jeremy Wilkins, a British man whom he had befriended on holiday, and the pair chatted for 10 minutes in the street outside the apartment, where they were seen by Jane Tanner, one of the group who had spent much of the evening with her own daughter, who was unwell. Tanner told police that around this time she also saw a man walking away from the apartment carrying a child, but that she did not draw any conclusions about this until later.

Gerry McCann, the newspaper report said, had noticed that the door to the children's room was more open than before and that there was more light than normal in the apartment. It claims that he assumed that Madeleine had moved into her parents' room because the twins' crying disturbed her, but that he didn't check.

At 10pm it was Kate McCann's turn to look in on the children; moments later she ran back to the table screaming that Madeleine had been taken.

The newspaper report also contained speculation that Madeleine may have died on the night she vanished, suggesting also that her body may have been moved in the months since 3 May.

It is understood that the British officers and police dogs that have been assisting the Portuguese investigation have now completed their work. In the past week a number of sites and vehicles have been re-examined by the British team. The DNA test results on the sample obtained in the bedroom may be available as early as this week.

There is no doubt that locals here have been struck by the couple's remarkable composure over the past 100 days, but there is no widespread sense of the hostility claimed by Francisco Pagarete. 'People in the town have a lot of sympathy for them,' one woman manning a stall on the beach told The Observer yesterday. 'We feel a lot of pity. For as long as nobody knows what happened, nobody knows anything, of course we support them, and of course they should stay.'

'I think people here have found them a little cold,' said another Portuguese woman who declined to be named. 'But then, I suppose English people are cold, compared with the Portuguese.'

The couple continue to say it is too soon for them to think of returning to Britain. Father Haynes Hubbard, the Anglican chaplain of the Algarve who led yesterday's service, said that those present did not agree 'for one second' that they should leave.

Certainly when the couple emerged into the dazzling noon heat yesterday, greeted by scores of locals and holidaymakers and more than three dozen TV cameras and photographers, they were greeted by a spontaneous burst of applause. Outside the Ocean Club, however, someone had scribbled with a finger in the dust of a car window. The message: 'Circus, go home.'

The tapas companions

Rachael and Matthew Oldfield

A recruitment consultant and doctor from London, they have a daughter aged around 21 months and have known the McCanns since Mr Oldfield and Mr McCann worked together at a Leicester hospital. Last week, Mrs Oldfield was the first of the friends to speak out about unsourced reports in Portuguese media of police suspicions about the group, calling them 'very hurtful and all rather ludicrous'.

David and Fiona Payne

A senior research fellow in cardiovascular sciences at Leicester University and a doctor, they have two children and were the only ones in the group, according to Sol, using a baby monitor the night Madeleine disappeared.

Russell O'Brien and Jane Tanner

A university friend of David Payne's, Russell O'Brien is also a doctor, who worked in Leicester. He and Ms Tanner have two children, the older one the same age as Madeleine. This daughter, the newspaper Sol reported yesterday, was vomiting on the night the toddler disappeared, so Ms Tanner spent much of the evening away from the dinner table. She is a key witness on the night of the disappearance, having told police that around 9.20pm she saw a man walking away from the McCanns' apartment carrying a child.

Dianne Webster

Fiona Payne's mother had until yesterday not been named. She is reported to have told police that on the night in question each couple was responsible for their own children. »