Tag: Abduction

Was Madeleine McCann last seen in her bed by her father, Gerry McCann, at approximately 21:15 on May 3rd? That’s the popular default narrative. That’s where Kate says Madeleine was taken from in her book, isn’t it?  And it’s what the media mainstream believe, isn’t it?

It’s also the contention of the Netflix documentary THE DISAPPEARANCE OF MADELEINE MCCANN that Madeleine was abducted from her bed and then through the bedroom window. Presumably this is also the main thrust of the theory of British investigators.

In the DOUBT trilogy I put forward a different theory.

There are a few reasons to believe 1) Madeleine never went to sleep on May 3rd, 2) if she died in the apartment, she didn’t die in bed and 3) after she died [assuming she did die] she wasn’t carried from where she fell or lay to her bed.

This is a slippery line of reasoning so try to follow me. We start by looking at the crime scene photos of Madeleine’s bedroom. Interestingly, the Netflix docuseries hardly ever refers to the original police photos.

It’s not terribly clear, but one can just make out a light pink object on Madeleine’s pillow. There’s also a darker pink object, a child’s blanket, in the foreground below the pillow.  The light pink object is clearly sitting on Madeleine’s pillow and slightly obstructed from view by the darker pink blanket below it.

Madeleine’s soft, pink Cuddle Cat toy is more evident in the image below.

In dramatised versions of the scene, Cuddle Cat on the pillow and the pink blanket under it are more evident.

Now in theory, this picture is precisely what we’d expect to see. If Madeleine was sleeping or in bed when she was abducted, and she was always with her toy, then the toy would have been left behind precisely where it is left behind.

The problem is, cadaver odor was found on the toy – the pink Cuddle Cat – when it was searched in a separate area, the villa on Rua das Flores where the McCanns moved to a few weeks after the incident.

Goncalo Amaral describes in his book The Truth of Lie how Eddie, the cadaver dog, approached the wicker chair and alerted to the toy on it.

This is not the moment Amaral refers to [at 1:34]in the video below:

At first the toy isn’t on the wicket chair but seems to be inside a basket and under something. It’s not easy for the dog to get to because it’s sort of behind a jutting wall. The dog is nevertheless interested in the area, sniffing the curtains and the floor. Then Eddie hops up, grabs the toy, drops it, scurries off before snatching it again and dropping the Cuddle Cat in the middle of the lounge floor.

The videographer is obviously stunned by this, and fixates for a few seconds on the little girl’s toy lying – cadaver-like – on the gleaming slab of floor.

But the moment Amaral sketches in his book appears to refer to an alert in the kitchenette area at about 5:33. Here the dog also hops up to sniff papers before alerting loudly. Grimes clearly seizes the Cuddle Cat from behind the cupboard, in this instance, and holds it up to the camera.

There’s also a moment at 3:24 when Eddie enters the closet area of the parents’ main bedroom, and spends a long time inside it on the ground level [presumably where the shoes are]. When Eddie finally emerges Grimes bends down and briefly lifts from the floor and examines what appears to be a darker pink blanket, similar in color and texture to the one seen in crime scene photos on Madeleine’s bed.

Now we know that Kate washed Cuddle Cat and contaminated the toy every time she went out in public, which was a lot.

So the fact that the cadaver dog alerted to Madeleine’s toy after three months of washing, contamination [including by Amelie] and airing is pretty incredible in itself.

Another redacted article.https://t.co/qKOOW9VO08

It has to do with #McCann washing Cuddle Cat twice before Madeleine's toy was tested by detectives.

But another version of the article can be read here: https://t.co/4VFYBVIGjL pic.twitter.com/1iZy5BeMg9

— Nick van der Leek – True Crime Rocket Science (@CrimeRocket) March 20, 2019

As soon as we regard the cadaver alert on the Cuddle Cat as genuine, we’re faced with a conundrum. It suggests Madeleine was clutching the Cuddle Cat when she died, or conversely, the Cuddle Cat was in contact with a dead person for an extended period of time. In this scenario, the deceased person was the likeliest to be Madeleine, not so?

So in this scenario, did Madeleine die in her bed, with Cuddle Cat beside her? It’s certainly a possibility except for the alerts – blood alerts – behind the living room couch in apartment 5A.

The mere suggestion of blood invokes the possibility of injury. And if blood was discovered outside the bedroom then there is an inference that Madeleine wasn’t in bed when she died.

The cadaver alert below the balcony in the flower bed invokes the likelihood of a fall. Did she fall with Cuddle Cat? If so, if she didn’t die in her bed, then how did Cuddle Cat end up in Madeleine’s bed? 

There’s also another serious issue. If the dogs alerted to cadaver odor on Cuddle Cat three months after the incident, why didn’t they alert to the bed where we know Cuddle Cat was found? For that matter, why wasn’t any blood visible on Madeleine’s pillow or blankets?

Well, we know from Amaral’s book that the linen on the bed was stripped and washed soon after.

Amaral also raises another pickle, in the strange configuration of beds in the McCann’s bedroom. The single beds are mooshed together, but then both beds are pushed across the room leaving a great deal of space open on the wardrobe side. Enough space for the twins cots.

Amaral’s makes the astute observation that it appears the twins were kept in one room with the parents, while the third child was left on her own in another room. Perhaps because Madeleine had trouble sleeping, and would rouse the others when she was in distress.

Besides the possibility of Cuddle Cat developing Chucky-like self-locomotion skills and crawling back to Madeleine’s bed, there’s the question of whether the cots were trafficked back to Madeleine’s room. Why? To reinforce an impression that all the children were sound sleepers. When one slept, they all slept and they all slept together.

https://youtu.be/4YSAlGpGo34

There’s also the strange set-up of the other bed in Madeleine’s bedroom. It looks more slept in than Madeleine’s bed does.

The notion that the shutter was raised and the abductor fled through the open window of the children’s bedroom has a serious flaw as well. If all three children were asleep in the same room, then opening the metal shutter would have caused it to rattle loudly as it was lifted, a risk an intruder wouldn’t have wanted to take. It would have alerted passersby in the street, other folks in the apartment complex not to mention the two children in their cots the abductor needed to carry Madeleine past on his way out the window.

Kate McCann also claimed she looked under the bed for Madeleine. Not under the cots, under a bed where there was no place for a child to hide.

So let’s ask the question again, and this is a yes or no answer:

Was Madeleine McCann last seen in her bed by her father, Gerry McCann?