daniel robert chapman wrote:

Josef K wrote:

daniel robert chapman wrote:
So I find it interesting that the Portuguese Police seem to have been following the parental lead as closely as they have; I don't believe they are incompetent, and I think they must have some reason to be searching the McCann's hire cars, for example.

If there is no evidence pointing to an abductor, but some evidence pointing to the parents, well, it's a logical way to go, isn't it?

/ah, I wrote a load else but it amounted to nothing so fuck it/

I have not read that much about the case, I don't read the tabloids so I never bought into the whole frenzied approach and I don't want to get into analysing evidence but regarding the car, what's being implied here? that they disposed of the their child's body 20 odd days after she was killed. Is this a joke? That family have been under 24 hours-a-day surveilance since the story broke, do you think they would have had time to do that?

I can undertand people getting bored with the coverage but that's no reason to start fucking the family over.

No, I've not been on top of it either. And I find it difficult to work out how the McCanns could have moved the body too. But I don't understand why nothing else has come to light, or why the police have been actively pursuing this line, if there is nothing to it. Something must be driving the police in this direction; something that the media - and us - aren't privy to? That's why it seems plausible to me; because people who are much closer to this than you and I think it is. There was some reason to search a hire car used weeks after the toddler disappeared. What reason? I don't know, but some reason.

And let's be straight: media- and public-wise, the McCann's are still subject to enormous levels of popular support. Just look at those comments on the Daily Mail site - the 'silent majority' are convinced of their innocence and that clueless foreigners are to blame. The sympathy is still with them. In a way that makes the potential for them to be responsible all the more fascinating. I can't deny it; I am fascinated by the way this would play out if they are responsible. Well, the interaction between media and society has always interested me so there I am. That doesn't mean I'm hoping for that as an outcome, though.

It is all confusing and tough and overhyped and overdone. Do you know the McCann's are being advised by the law firm that successfully defended General Pincohet against extradition? Like, what am I supposed to make of that tidbit? I'm sure I don't know, but it's out there. And there's a lot of that kind of thing floating around.

So I reach for gallows humour and sick jokes because there is no way I can solve this case and if I'm not going to find the whole thing profoundly depressing - and I refuse to succumb to that - then I have to look lightly. It'll all happen around me anyway, whatever I do.

How could two people under constant media scrutiny possibly have carried out and hidden their daughter's body without being seen? If they really had concealed a corpse in their car, wouldn't the smell have been obvious? How could two people unfamiliar with the local landscape have found an eventual hiding place that would still, months later, remain undiscovered? Is it plausible to imagine that, in the moments after suffering the trauma of a dead child, two people could have constructed such an elaborate cover-up plan, executed it coolly and remained steady ever since? Could anybody maintain this front, a global lie, for so long without cracking?

Arguments like that are going on everywhere, in pubs or the train to work, as well as in newsrooms around the world. The McCanns must hate it but they cannot be surprised by it. For wholly understandable reasons, they chose to make the loss of their daughter public property, to recruit the media to their cause. So now we are like folk gathered in the village square, offering our two-pennyworth on the mysterious events that have befallen one benighted family.

daniel robert chapman wrote:I don't think we're really substantially disagreeing on this are we Josef K?

Josef K wrote:DRC, I don't want to paint myself into a corner by defending their every move, but I'm a father of two young children and when I put myself in the McCann's position, I honestly have sympathy with the helplessness that they must be feeling.

Cranius wrote:Thanks Space Junk, not only did my wife's car have the tyres let down, mirrors smashed off, and bonnet dented by our neighbour's children yesterday (the day before we donate it to Oxfam), I wake up and get called cunt.

Cheers.

gjhardwick wrote:first up, lets stop calling each other cunts please.

gjhardwick wrote:Josef K - i don't have any children myself, but if i was in the McCanns position and just had my child (allegedly) abducted, i wouldn't be able to appear on TV the very next day doing a press conference because i would be bawling my eyes out with stress/worry/grief/etc.

As mentioned earlier in the thread, there has always been a worrying level of 'detachment' (for want of a better word) from the McCanns (particularly Kate McCann) during all these press junkets that will add fuel to the fire that they are responsible for the missing child.

gjhardwick wrote:first up, lets stop calling each other cunts please.

i wouldn't be able to appear on TV the very next day doing a press conference because i would be bawling my eyes out with stress/worry/grief/etc.

gjhardwick wrote:

Josef K wrote:DRC, I don't want to paint myself into a corner by defending their every move, but I'm a father of two young children and when I put myself in the McCann's position, I honestly have sympathy with the helplessness that they must be feeling.

first up, lets stop calling each other cunts please.

Josef K - i don't have any children myself, but if i was in the McCanns position and just had my child (allegedly) abducted, i wouldn't be able to appear on TV the very next day doing a press conference because i would be bawling my eyes out with stress/worry/grief/etc.

As mentioned earlier in the thread, there has always been a worrying level of 'detachment' (for want of a better word) from the McCanns (particularly Kate McCann) during all these press junkets that will add fuel to the fire to any theory that they are responsible for the missing child.