The McCann Abduction: Sixteen Reasons For Doubt

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Updated to twenty one. 29/12/07

The following "Sixteen Reasons" were posted on an internet forum board by Tony Bennett.

Bennett (bio) the compiler of this list is a UK solicitor (lawyer) and plans to update and increase the number of "reasons" as and when they are catalogued.

Update: Tony Bennett is also a creationist

There is little doubt that these first sixteen shall be added to quite considerably, to mention but one more glaring example which will no doubt be added in due course.

I shall, when the list is updated, be posting the results.

I shall refrain from posting accompanying graphics with this post.

On a personal note I will just say that I find the behaviour of the parents, from start to finish, a complete obscenity.

SIXTEEN REASONS

Here are 16 reasons why the McCanns may be guilty of something more than ’serial neglect’. Remember this Forum is not a court of law.

The McCanns have made a very public claim about what happened to their daughter Madeleine.

In a free society, we are fully free to question what they say, so long as we do not break the libel rules:

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16 REASONS FOR DOUBTING THAT MADELEINE WAS ‘ABDUCTED’
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1. Because the statistics on alleged ’stranger’ abductions from a person’s home show that a member of the ‘abducted’ child’s family is usually the perpetrator, and the child is usually dead. Something like 99% of all claimed ‘abductions’ from a house turn out to be intra-family murder. There have been two high profile cases just in the last few weeks - ‘Baby Grace’ found battered and decomposing in a plastic box on sand dunes near Galveston, and the ‘dead baby in the attic’. Both were claimed abductions - hoaxes

2. The McCanns didn’t answer the PJ’s questions – those are the not actions of innocent parents, who would bend over backwards to assist the police in every way they could

3. The McCanns expressing anxiety about their ’phone calls and e-mails being intercepted. What innocent parent would worry about that?

4. Their refusal to supply their mobile phone bills to the PJ

5. Their ignoring the clearest possible PJ advice not to highlight Madeleine’s eye defect - the coloboma (iris defect) - if Madeleine were still alive, it would have put Madeleine at much greater risk of death. Their conduct suggests they knew she was already dead. They deliberately ignored the advice not to make Madeleine so recognisable that the abductors (if she was abducted) would kill her. All the posters emphasising the coloboma, and then the announcement of all the sightings and claims of being right on the kidnappers’ trail…all made Madeleine more at risk

6. The sheer impossibility of the abduction – so many questions, e.g. why did the abductor wait for 35 minutes after the McCanns sauntered down to the Tapas bar, was he hiding behind the door as Gerry McCann checked the children (that’s what he claims), did he really walk in through patio doors, then climb out through the window and shutters with Madeleine? And so on

7. Jane Tanner’s changed story of what the abductor looked like. Initially ‘his head was egg-shaped, he had some short hair, and was carrying a bundle, maybe a blanket’, then, a full 3 weeks later - to make sure that the PJ issued a description - ‘I definitely saw him carrying a girl in pink pyjamas’. Then after *six* months we get an artist’s impression of the abductor and are now told: ‘Head not egg-shaped, hair long, sleek, black and shiny, abductor not white but ’swarthy and Mediterranean’ etc.

8. The parents’ immediate and insistent cry of abduction - excluding all other possibilities

9. Gerry McCann proceeding, after 3 weeks, to issue a description of the abductor based *solely* on Jane Tanner’s dubious sighting - against PJ advice and only after Gordon Brown ’phoned PJ

10. The ‘Pact of Silence’ or ‘Circle’ of the ‘Tapas 9′ - the notorious agreement between them all to keep silent about the events of that night

11. Changes of story. Example – Day 1: “Shutters jemmied open, windows open, patio doors locked, abductor must have forced his way in”. Days 2 and
3: PJ and Mark Warners say: “No way shutters and window were forced from outside”. Several days later, McCanns: “Oh, we left the patio doors open, so abductor must have walked in through the patio doors and then climbed out of the window and opened the shutters and climbed out of the window with Madeleine”

12. Hiring dubious Britsh private investigation agency and dubious Spanish ‘detective agency’ Metodo 3 at cost of several hundred thousand pounds - no obvious benefit or results

13. Rushing to hire U.K.’s top extradition lawyer – Michael Caplan Q.C. (who represented General Pinochet) - the moment they became formal suspects

14. Publicly agreeing to take a lie detector test and then refusing

15. The extraordinary excuses offered by the McCanns in response to the forensic findings of blood, DNA, cadaverine (smell of death) etc., including these six examples:
(a) I took Cuddle Cat to work - that’s why the smell of death is on Cuddle Cat
(b) I dealt with 6 corpses in the last fortnight at work, that’s why the smell of death is on my clothes
(c) we’ll get on to lawyers in Ireland/America who say these cadaver dogs’ evidence is useless
(d) the DNA was the children’s dirty nappies in the boot
(e) the DNA was rotting meat that Gerry was taking to the dump
(f) the blood in the flat (found underneath the tiles in the children’s bedroom) might have been from Madeleine grazing her leg when she boarded the plane, or maybe a nosebleed.

16. Leaving the twins at the crèche within days of Madeleine disappearing - and spending as much time as possible visiting the Pope, the White House etc. and campaigning - no parents whose child had truly been ‘abducted by a stranger’ would let those twins out of their sight, they would cling to the precious two they had left.

Tony Bennett also reflects on the "Find Madeleine" fund, again in my opinion something that was set up with obscene haste.

1. New purpose of Fund to help the McCanns ‘family’ with their expenses was stated only *after* people had donated hundreds of thousands of pounds to ‘find Madeleine’

2. Fund used to pay over £4,000 mortgage payments on 5 The Crescent, Rothley

3. Continued refusals to say how much has been donated so far

4. Refusal to say what has been spent on private investigators and Metodo 3

5. Contradictory information on how much is being spent on Metodo 3

6. Refusal to explain exactly what they (private investigators and Metodo 3) are being paid for

7. Refusal to account to the public for how the funds have been spent to date

8. Refusal to say how much has been spent on expenses and payments to Trustees and members of the McCann family

9. Appealing for more money without giving any account of how much they have got and how much has been spent and on what

10. Continued secrecy = shadiness about the operation of the Fund

17. REFUSING A URINE TEST ON THE TWINS

The McCanns, both doctors, refused urine tests for their 2-year-old twins, though later admitting that they ‘could have been drugged by the abductor. They then waited 5 months before going to an agency to carry out ‘independent’ tests. The results of those tests have never been publicly disclosed and it is not known what drugs the agency test for

18. ONLY ANSWERING PRESS QUESTIONS GIVEN TO THEM AT LEAST 2
HOURS INADVANCE

The McCanns stipulating that for all interviews, the press had to present all questions to them at least two 2 hours in advance of the interview, and that they would only answer these questions and no others

19. THE MCCANNS ATTEMPT TO CLAIM THAT THE ABDUCTOR DRUGGED THE CHILDREN

The McCanns explaining away the fact that the twins didn’t wake up - amidst all the shouting when the alarm was raised about Madeleine - by hinting that they must have been drugged by the abductor. They came up with this theory when being filmed by close family friend Jon Corner in August - after leaks from the Portuguese police suggesting that the children had been sedated

20. THE MCCANNS’ FRIENDS FAILURE TO SEARCH FOR MADELEINE THE NIGHT SHE DISAPPEARED

According to a number of reports which have never been contradicted ,whilst hundreds of people, including staff of Mark Warners and many local people, searched the area around the Ocean Club apartments for hours after Madeleine went missing, not one of the McCanns’ friends, known as the ‘Tapas 9’, bothered to do so. They all went to bed. That is as clear an indication as you could get that they knew it would be pointless searching for Madeleine. It is entirely consistent with them knowing that Madeleine was already dead

21. THE MCCANNS’ FAILURE TO TALK TO JANE TANNER FOR TWO DAYS ABOUT HER ‘SIGHTING’ OF THE ALLEGED ABDUCTOR

According to many reports, and confirmed in an article by David Smith in ‘The Times’ in late December 2007, the McCanns did not bother to talk to Jane Tanner for two whole days about what she claimed to have seen at 9.15pm that night - namely a person walking off with a child looking like Madeleine. This is despite the McCanns’ absolute insistence that an abduction had taken place. According to David Smith’s article - which included an exclusive and extended interview with Gerry McCann - he and Jane Tanner did not speak to each other because they were ‘too busy’. If there really had been an abduction, the McCanns and Jane Tanner would have spoken to each other about what she saw without a moment’s delay