Something's Gotta Give The Status Quo of the McCann Case

Excellent article, though for my money, a tad too forgiving of the Metropolitan Police Service, and by default, the Home Office.

Something's Gotta Give
Cristobell Hutton
7 September 2015

The cost element is a good ruse to get the public on board in calls for the Madeleine investigation to be shelved. The £11/12million and 4 long years is wholly disproportionate to the original crime. No country or police force has ever committed so much money and manpower to finding one small child. Police filing cabinets the world over have sections filled with unsolvable and cold cases, crimes for which there is not enough evidence to bring a prosecution, even though the detectives have a good idea who the perpetrators are. The good guys don't always win.

The McCanns, like the parents of Jonbenet Ramsey, have money and connections, and like the Ramseys, they have been able to counter accusations against themselves with a slick, organised campaign of misinformation to protect themselves and point the finger of blame elsewhere. Like the McCanns, the Ramseys were even able to employ former 'respected' policemen and detectives to create scenarios and documentaries to support their claims that they were innocent victims and that a stranger murdered their daughter. So powerful and successful were the Ramseys that no charges were ever brought against them.

The Ramseys however, did not have to face the power of the internet or the full force of public opinion. Like the McCanns, they were able to maintain control of what was published in the mainstream media through litigation, but they didn't have to contend with the police releasing their original files into the public domain, and Jonbenet's Avenger, former lead detective Steve Thomas, did not have the worldwide support that Goncalo Amaral has, and his book was not shared by thousands online. For Team McCann, all their planted stories of known predators, egg men, spotty men and ugly men, are deconstructed and disassembled by armchair detectives within moments, Unfortunately for them, the audience they created when Madeleine disappeared has stuck, but they are a more enlightened and sophisticated audience than that of the Ramseys, and they know all the details.

If we step back from the propaganda and the spin that surrounds this case and look at similar cases of claimed child abduction, we can see that the case of missing Madeleine is not so unique. I doubt the McCanns will object to being compared to the parents of Jonbenet Ramsey, but the exact circumstances are probably more comparable to Lisa Irwin and Isabel Celis. These cases, it could be said, are going nowhere. The parents are not co-operating with the police, and the police are not looking for abductors, the present position is stalemate. The parents in these cases are also running 'get their daughters home campaigns' and Funds with huge clouds of suspicion over their heads.

In the case of missing Madeleine however, there are two live police investigations and there are no signs that the police, either here in the UK or in Portugal are looking for a live child, a paedophile gang or a lone abductor. There is not now, and never has been, any urgency in what they are doing - if they believed Madeleine was alive and other children were at risk, then catching the 'abductor' would be their top priority, and they wouldn't take 4+ years to do it. If another child were abducted or murdered in the meantime, then their laissez faire attitude would be unforgivable. More