Madeleine McCann

There are many good and noble things that we could plough time and resources into problem is both time and resources are finite and have to be managed accordingly. Allowing heart to rule head however distasteful it is isn't the way to run things and never should be allowed. Personally i hope there is public "we will do all we can" and in private carrying on as before.

Originally Posted by Product 13

If there's enough money to provide drug addicts with methadone, then there should NOT be a shortage of money and resources to help find missing children.

All the available evidence points to her not being found ,obviously that's not 100% but it is much more likely she is dead or at best being raised by a different family so why waste time and money looking for someone that is most likely never going to be found ,how long will the met keep looking tieing up recourses that would be better used saving a life that can be saved? .Eventually the perpetrator/s will make a mistake and get caught then hopefully we will know the truth

[Hom3r]

It's hard to believe that when I first started this thread 4 years ago she is still missing.

I believe one of the following scenarios has happened. (in no particular order)

1. She was stolen to order by a family who are rasing her as their own.

2. She woke up and tried to find her parents and was taken by a paedo in the area

3. A Paedo entered the house and took her for their person use.

4. She was taken by a sex gang to sell her.

5. The parent accidently killed her and disposed of the body somewhere. (I doubt this one but it has been voiced)

6. Kidnapped for a ransom, but something went wrong.

If she is alive (which I doubt) she may turn up in her twenties.

(1) or (4) are most likely. (5) is laughable and several British newspapers have made eye-watering out-of-court payments for saying less. Please be careful.

Well legal issues aside 5 cannot be completely ruled out by virtue that no one knows what happened to her nothing libellous there just a simple fact. I don't think she is going to be found by conventional methods police work is not going to do it. If and it is in my mind a big if she's still alive she will only reappear due to a screw up on the part of those who took her not very likely or she grows up finds out who she really is and comes forward.

Whatever your personal theory on all this one thing is for certain this incident was a tradegy for maddie but it is a tradegy that has happened to many others and i don't belileve the mc'canns have the right to emotionally blackmail anyone.

As i said hard as it is they have to move on and let this go constantly pressuring people to do ths and that isn't going to help and certainly after all this time isn't going to magically make her appear. By all means run a full page spread each year i bet a few papers would probably waive their normal fee maybe even make the odd tele appeal but thats it.

[Waldo Pepper]

What I find sad is that:

1) She is a Brit citizen.
2) She is a child.
3) She certainly didn't have parents like poor Shannon Matthews had.

And apart from the parents nobody in authority seems to want it on their shift.

Disgraceful!!!!

Well maybe you'll answer Waldo if we should continue with this what exactly should we be doing that has not already been done exactly and how much time and resources should be allocated to this and for how long till it's ok to let it drop. Just so you know answers along the lines of "whatever it takes for as long as it takes" are not very practical so something realistic is what i am after given the finite resources this country has ?.

[Waldo Pepper]

Originally Posted by RizzyKing

Well maybe you'll answer Waldo if we should continue with this what exactly should we be doing that has not already been done exactly and how much time and resources should be allocated to this and for how long till it's ok to let it drop. Just so you know answers along the lines of "whatever it takes for as long as it takes" are not very practical so something realistic is what i am after given the finite resources this country has ?.

Well Rizz that maybe so. But we do have cold case units within the Police and I can't believe this can be shoved under the carpet as it is still so recent.

Many believe the McCanns may have done it themselves, but that's just another conspiracy until proven otherwise. If this was the case I think they would let sleeping dogs lie. However they haven't. They are still appealing for information which could muddy the waters and bring up something they wanted to avoid if this was the case..

I do believe they were negligent in leaving the kids alone, but boy they are now paying the price and no one seems to care. It's a missing child.

The same accusations were never levelled against the victims of Fred & Rose West for allowing them to be picked up by this evil couple.

Nor against the parents of the victims of the Moors Murderers for letting their child go to a shop on their own.

Milly Dowler's Parents for allowing her to walk home alone from school.

It's a fine line re- allowing any child out of your sight.

Not sure the Tabloids and the McCanns need to tell everyone that Kate went off sex. I thought this would be pretty obvious under the circumstances.

[Osem]

My feeling on this is that, whilst it's unfair for all this effort to be expended on one missing child and not all the others out there (whose parents possibly aren't quite so educated and articulate), it's always been the case that those who make the most noise get heard and the McCanns have certainly done that. I'd do the same if I were them but, equally, I wouldn't blame other people for feeling a degree of resentment about it.

[Waldo Pepper]

Originally Posted by Osem

My feeling on this is that, whilst it's unfair for all this effort to be expended on one missing child and not all the others out there (whose parents possibly aren't quite so educated and articulate), it's always been the case that those who make the most noise get heard and the McCanns have certainly done that. I'd do the same if I were them but, equally, I wouldn't blame other people for feeling a degree of resentment about it.

So in your eyes, stupid people don't deserve/get help but the educated do?

I don't remember the Police taking a light heart re Shannon Mathews. She was a missing kid born of evil parents who exploited her,

This abduction\murder\accident occurred in another country straight away our right to investgate gets a lot more complicated and thats forgetting that no police force in the UK has jurisdiction. Add in the time that has passed and the effect of that on evidence\witnesses most of which wasn't good when this was all fresh.

Yet were supposed to continue to plough in resources and time for something that didn't even happen in our country they may be british citizens and all that but they chose to go aborad they chose to leave their kids alone and now everyone else has to sort out the mess.

Were in a mess in this country right now services that you and i rely on everyday are either being cut or are at risk of being cut and money should be spent on this seriously. You didn't answer my part about what to do what is there left to do that hasn't been done.

They have already spent all the money from the maddie fund which was no small amount and got nothing numerous individuals have spent a lot of time and effort and got nothing. I would dearly love for her to turn up tomorrow and be ok i would dearly love all the kiddies that have gone missing abroad to turn up safe and sound but we have to be realistic.

Another year on and British detectives are conducting a review of the case, claiming to have all the evidence in the same place, at the same time, for the first time. Five years after Madeleine McCann's disappearance, I'm a tad surprised if this really is the *first* time the evidence has been sifted so thoroughly.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-17828015

[Osem]

I'd like to think that the Police expend the same amount of time and effort on all missing children but somehow doubt they do. I wonder how many parents who've been in similar circumstances have received this sort of attention. Whilst I'm sure they don't begrudge the McCanns anything, they must feel like second class citizens.

Originally Posted by Osem

I'd like to think that the Police expend the same amount of time and effort on all missing children but somehow doubt they do. I wonder how many parents who've been in similar circumstances have received this sort of attention. Whilst I'm sure they don't begrudge the McCanns anything, they must feel like second class citizens.

At the time I was annoyed. Canterbury town center had posters everywhere. In McDonalds, massive ones in the Superdrug window and, well, everywhere else. Given where she went missing it's highly unlikely anyone in Canterbury would have seen her and would have missed the wall-to-wall coverage in the press. You kind of think that if they had done the same for a local missing person the posters would stand a far greater chance of being effective.

You can't begrudge the McCann family for being so effective in keeping the search going, good luck to them, everyone hopes this tale has a happy ending. However it is probably evidence of the emotive storms that envelop the country from time to time. The annual Poppy crusades where newspapers start becoming judge and jury on who in the public eye hasn't displayed the required level of respect is another example.

[Osem]

Very true. So who's responsible for this decision and why was it made after all the previous goings on? As a genuine attempt to solve a crime? Has powerful (even political) pressure been brought to bear behind the scenes? Or is this just a way of demonstrating how thorough they've been and covering their backs in a high profile case? If this sort of thing isn't being routinely practised in similar, albeit less well known, unsolved cases, it seems to me the upper echelons of the Police may be behaving like politicians.