PDA

View Full Version : Maddie blood evidence not certain: Portuguese police



Not_much_cop
11-09-2007, 09:43 AM
PORTIMAO, Portugal (AFP) - It is not certain that traces of blood found in a car rented by Kate and Gerry McCann match that of their missing daughter Madeleine, the director of the Portuguese judicial police said as they prepared to report to prosecutors on Tuesday.
(Advertisement)

"None of the results of the analyses allows one to say with certainty that the blood comes from X or Y," Alipio Ribeiro said on Portuguese public television station RTP.

"Not with mathematical precision," he said, in reference to claims by some British media outlets that the results were a perfect match with Madeleine's DNA.

The blood traces were found in a car rented by Kate and Gerry McCann 25 days after their daughter, then three years old, disappeared from the family's holiday apartment in the Algarve resort of Praia da Luz on May 3.

Citing experts from the government-owned Forensic Science Services (FSS) lab in Birmingham, The Sun tabloid reported that blood found in the car was an exact DNA match to Madeleine.

Sky News television also reported that, citing unidentified sources.

Portugal police expect to convey a report on Madeleine to prosecutors by Tuesday so that they can decide if her parents, named as suspects last week, should be charged over her disappearance.

"The papers are being finished and should be sent today (Monday) or tomorrow to the prosecutor handling the case," police spokesman Olegario Sousa told AFP earlier.

According to the Daily Mirror tabloid, the police have called for Kate McCann to be charged with accidental murder, citing an anonymous source.

"The feeling is that the forensics support the theory that Madeleine died accidentally inside the apartment on the night she vanished, and she was then moved," the source said.

"There has been talk of 70 percent or 80 percent matches. The FSS doesn't do that. It's either a match or its not, it's either significant or it's not. In this case, it's significant."

For the last four months the McCanns have led a high-profile international campaign to find her, focusing on suspicions that she was abducted while they and friends were eating in a tapas bar in the same complex.

Last week Portuguese police received the results of tests of blood samples from the bedroom Madeleine had been sleeping in before her disappearance from a British laboratory.

Kate and Gerry McCann, both 39-year-old doctors, were named as formal suspects on Friday after two days of intense questioning by Portuguese police.

They returned to their home in the village of Rothley with their two-year-old twins over the weekend for the first time as a family since Madeleine's disappearance.

"They're OK, they've had a decent night's sleep. They're holding up extremely well," said Kate McCann's uncle Brian Kennedy, adding that the twins were "fine."

Police have said, however, that the family can be summoned back to Portugal at any time.

Ribeiro added that "detention during the investigation is not envisaged," telling the broadcaster that, at this point, authorities "don't see a need to change conditions on their movement."

Villagers in Rothley have also supported the couple. "Madeleine is still missing. That should be the focus. That's completely ignored," said local vicar Rev. Rob Gladstone.

Members of their families said police suggested the McCanns hid the body and later disposed of it in a hire car.

In an interview with the Sunday Mirror newspaper this week, Kate McCann said that Portuguese police had tried to persuade her to confess to accidentally killing her daughter.

y2krog2000
11-09-2007, 07:45 PM
I watched a thing on tv before I went to work this morning (think it was gmtv @6:20) and they had a forensic expert on and he was saying that a lot of the stuff that has been in the newspapers here in the U.K. is not true as they cannot do some of the stuff that the newspapers are saying has been done, didnt get all of what he was talking about so if anyone knows please do tell me what cant be done, and he also said even if it was the little girls blood in the boot of the car it probably wouldnt be enough evidence to convict anyone of murder as it is such a small amount of blood and there are various ways it could have got their, there could have been blood on one of her toys or other belongings and this could have been placed in the boot of the hire car and it is possible that this is how there is blood in the boot.

stickywicket
12-09-2007, 12:29 AM
Q&A: The DNA evidence - Telegraph (To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 1 or greater. You currently have 0 posts. Large amount of Madeleine's hair 'found in tyre well in boot of parents' hire car' | the Daily Mail (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/worldnews.html?in_article_id=481028&in_page_id=1811&ct=5)

Lainie
12-09-2007, 08:38 PM
i still cant get my head round all this and cannot believe the parents could do such a thing

Kirsty
12-09-2007, 09:00 PM
i still cant get my head round all this and cannot believe the parents could do such a thing
I cant believe it either however its not for defo that they have done it. However it doesnt look good for them... TBH the main thing at the moment is to find that wee girl as thats whats the most important.

I think its sick if it has been the parents.

Diablo13
13-09-2007, 02:18 AM
I caught this on gmtv this morning as well. On the face of it the dna evidence looks bad for the Mc Cann's because they did not have the hire car at the time of Madeleine's disappearance, so how did the dna get there? The forensic scientist explained that it is possible to have "secondary transfer" of dna from toys or clothes of the victim, which had been put in the car subsequent to Madeleine's disappearance.
This is a very high profile case and many interviews have been given by both parents. In all these interviews the Mc Cann's have been very credible to me. It has been said that "you can't fool all of the people all of the time", but if they did it they certainly fooled everyone.
The first suspect (s) in such cases are usually the parents, or close family or boyfriends etc, and this often proves to be the case. However I do just have to wonder if after all the publicity given to this case and the arrests of people later cleared, if the Portugese police are not grasping at straws, in an effort to vindicate themselves after apparently failing to make any real progress in the case?
I admit I would be very surprised if the parents had harmed their child, but it would not be the first time and anything is possible. We can only hope Madeleine is found safe and well, but after all this time such an optimistic outcome seems very unlikely to me?

Diablo13
13-09-2007, 03:42 AM
Q&A: The DNA evidence - Telegraph (To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 1 or greater. You currently have 0 posts. Large amount of Madeleine's hair 'found in tyre well in boot of parents' hire car' | the Daily Mail (To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 1 or greater. You currently have 0 posts. I have just read a great many of the 121 comments posted on this story, from stickywickets link. I even felt compelled to reply in the Daily Mail.
The reason is this; There are a great many people from all over the world following this story and in general sending their best wishes, along with much speculation. The one thing they all have in common is that they take it as read that Madeleine must now be dead. Granted I have thought along those lines as well given the time she has been missing. There is an alternative to this though as, THERE IS NO BODY? Everyone is looking for a body now, but what if there isn't one? It would have been very difficult for anyone to move and hide a body, especially given the timescale of the disappearance and the subsequent police and media attention. It must be more than possible that the child was abducted, perhaps by a wealthy childless couple to bring up as their own? In which case Madeleine could be in another part of the world getting used to a new family by now. There certainly seems to have been enough time to get her out of the country before the general alarm was raised, in fact it would probably take much less time to do that than to so perfectly hide the body, where not even trained sniffer dogs can find a clue?
It has often been said that Madeleine is a very cute and pretty little girl, so why not? Of course this is also pure speculation on my part, but it would seem to answer a lot of questions?
Given that there are no Dingo's in Portugal and that a similar case happened in Greece some 10 or 12 years ago when a little boy vanished and has never been seen or heard from again, I put it to you M'lud that such a scenario must be at least possible, if not even probable?

y2krog2000
13-09-2007, 08:41 AM
I would also like to think she has been abducted for some wealthy family but the British police dogs picked up the scent of a dead body in the apartment, also a wealthy family would more than likely be able to adopt a baby no problems so why pay someone to steal one. We believe the partents of Madeline when they tell us when she went missing but what if they did accidently kill her then it could have happened early in the day and they could have got rid of the body then, im very surprised there isnt any cctv footage of any suspects either from the apartments or somewhere close by.

Diablo13
14-09-2007, 12:32 AM
The fact that it is a rented apartment could mean that someone else had died there. I do not know how long the smell of a body would linger, but to a dog trained to sniff out such things I should think it would be quite a while after we were no longer aware of it. Was such a question ever asked? There were several intelligent questions posed by the general public in the Daily Mail letters, such as in a small place just how many cars were available to hire and was it possible that a previous renter had come in contact with Madeleine before she disappeared? These questions and others may have been asked by Police, but despite the extensive media coverage, we are not given this information.
Maybe I am being unusually optimistic for me, but the fact remains that with all the resources there is still no sign of a body? It does not always follow that a wealthy or desperate couple would naturally be deemed fit parents for adoption. In England despite the amount of children in care homes you may still be deemed unfit to adopt for reasons of age or obesity to name just two.

stickywicket
14-09-2007, 04:17 AM
without getting involved in the whole debate about this poor girl, the reason they brought those dogs in is due to the fact they are two of the best in the world. they are both highly specialised in their field (blood and body detection) and are able to detect minute traces and samples undetectable by other methods, now due to the laws in portugal people are only speculating as to what they found but it must have been significant enough for the police to turn their attention onto the childs mother, considering the media storm surrounding the case. from reading it suggests that the dogs can detect a body that has been in situ for more than two hours and can detect traces of blood up to seven years old.


one of the dogs was used in a very high profile case here where a pensioner was murdered and her body dumped. police used the dog to find traces of the victims blood in a car that had been burned out and dumped and also used the dog to locate the body.

what i dont understand is what took them so long to follow this course of action, im sure time will tell what happened but looking at the evidence its not looking hopeful.

y2krog2000
14-09-2007, 10:31 AM
The fact that it is a rented apartment could mean that someone else had died there. I do not know how long the smell of a body would linger, but to a dog trained to sniff out such things I should think it would be quite a while after we were no longer aware of it.
I read yesterday that the smell of a dead body was picked up on the litle girls toy and after they picked up the smell the 1st thing the mother did was wash the toy!!! Also the police tapped their phone and were intercepting their emails and they got some useful evidence but they have to go to court to see if they can use this as evidence, aparently early on when they were supposed to be looking for her alive the parents were talking to their freinds (the ones who were having dinner with them that night)as if they already knew that she was dead. If it was the U.K. I don't think they would allow this kind of evidence in court but not to sure about in Portugal.

Diablo13
15-09-2007, 01:11 AM
If the scent of a body was indeed picked up on the toy, that does appear to be quite damming. This raises though the question of when the dogs found this scent and why was the toy not immediately taken away for forensic examination, before the mother had a chance to wash it? She was seen to carry that toy with her everywhere for quite sometime and it was only later taken away? Sounds a bit like leaving a suspected terrorist with his bombs, just in case he wasn't the one to use them in a particular outrage. I find this very baffling and for any police force to have behaved in this way smacks of gross incompetence?
Despite the fact that the best dogs in the world found a suspicious scent on the toy, they were unable to track it to a body? If the dogs could find traces of blood in a burned out car surely it should have been easy for them to track a scent from the flat or in the car, if not to the actual body?
The case becomes more baffling by the minute and with all the various twists and turns you must begin to wonder if we will ever know what happened to Madeleine?