Thinking Sideways: Madeleine McCann

John Benet Ramsey. That's how you say that, right, John by John Believe John Bene Ramsey lately, and I think it's mostly because of that a m a that happened. Um. But we're not ready to tackle that one, if ever. I mean probably we will at some point, but it's huge, and we want to get some experts and do really do it right more more all lot Jeff Davis eight sort of situation. But instead I will bring you something equally tragic that is, honestly, I think a little more

interesting than the John bon A Ramsey mystery. It is a strange little tale. It's strange, it's really strange. We're going to talk about the disappearance of Madeline McCann and a few points of order before I start one is that this is one of those stories that Steve hates that deals with missing little kids. So if that's not your cup of tea, it's not in particularly gory or anything like that. It's just a missing kid. But if that's not your cup of tea, this is one to skip.

So I can skip this. No, you cannot. Come on, I don't want to help. You gotta this is part of the deal, Steve. We do the ones I don't want to do. Fine, I'll help, but I'm not gonna like it. Yeah, I know you won't. Okay, we've got to solve this one, guys. Also, this was a recommendation from Yohan right. Johan right, Yeah, I think last year. Late last year. I called DIBs on it. I'm sorry, it's taking me Okay, guys ready sure, Sadly Steve is not no cool. Sorry. Madeline McCann was born in May

of two thousand three to Kate and Jerry McCann. They were both physicians, uh and they also had a set of twins that were younger than Madeline. She was born in oh Lester. The good news is we've been getting a lot of feedback about mispronouncing stuff and sorry, it's got to happen a lot in this episode. But also, let's be fair, it's just the way we pronounce it in America. Sometimes some of this stuff is just the

way we say it here. Sorry. Anyways, So they lived in Oh my gosh, how did we say it, Lester? It looks like it's should be Leicester, but think it's pronounced last year, okay. And then in May and two thousand and seven, the McCanns went on holiday holiday to Portugal with a group of family friends and their children as well. The adults of this group eventually became became to be referred as the Top of seven. And I think they were the Top of seven. We're not didn't

include the Meccans, right did I thought? I thought there were nine people in the group, and then the Top of seven with the seven friends of the Meccans. You're right. I'm sorry, you're right. Okay. I'm the storyteller here and I can't remember who. Sorry. Point of order. So May three was the last day of the trip. We're just going to delve right into the story. It's a long one. I'm sorry. That's gonna be one of those ones you have to listen to me talk for a while. Damn

the way you drone off. I know. I'm sorry, It's just like want want, walt walt wa. So. May three was the last day of this trip and the group was staying at a resort called something that Joe is going to have to pronounce for me. Well, I'm probably gonna mangle it, but I think it's prior to lose. That sounds right. Yeah. There were eight kids that were part of the group, and they spent much of their

day at the kids club in this resort. That morning, while the top of seven took a walk, the kids played in the kids club, and then after lunch, the families headed to the pool, where the very last known picture of Madeleine was taken. After the pool, the kids went back to the kids club until about six pm. I'm guessing that was probably check out, come time, come get your kids. You know, I don't have that sense.

I have the sense that kids could stay as long as they wanted, just because of some stuff that happens a little bit later in But it's it resorts like that, typically you could drop your kids off if you're going to have dinner, say, which would be like a safe alternative to some of the things that happened in this story. Yeah, I kind of kind of wonder why they didn't use the little daycare center. Yeah, that's my sense. I could

be wrong. I know that when I worked on the cruise ship we had that, and I think a lot of resorts offer that sort of thing. It would make sense kind of almost seven care for kids, but almost if you want to party in that a way though, Yeah, yeah, you may as well drop your kids off. Anyways. Jerry, Gary Jerry. Jerry had a tennis lesson at six, So Kate picked up the kids and hung out with them for a little while and you know, fed them and

bathe them and all that stuff. And then at about seven she put she and Jerry both Gary Jerry Jerry. Oh my gosh, this is like Parks and wreck up and here I'm so sorry Jerry name sorry Jerry, and Kate. The mom put their three kids to bed in the room that the kids were sleeping in. It wasn't the room they were all sleeping in. It was the parents had the one room, and then there was an apartment. It was an apartment, yeah, and the kids had one room.

They were all sharing the two little ones were in a crib set up next to a single bed that Madeline was staying in. Madeleine was wearing pink or pj's and cuddling with her pink blanket and pink cuddle cat. She liked pink what girl. By the way, Okay, you know, I spent so long since I've read Winnie the Pooh, I mean, I've forgotten about you are. How we're that's a different mystery, been a long time, Yeah, because nothing ever bad happens to upper middle class white folks that

are out of resort. The top of seven and the Meccans followed their typical evening routine, which was leaving their kids in an unlocked room and having dinner. Yeah, yeah, top Us, which is where seven comes from. Retrospect, it does seem like about maybe not a great idea. They were about a hundred and sixty feet as the crow flies away from the apartment the Meccans were staying in is five A, which apparently, according to Kate, was about

a thirty or forty five second walk. I'm having a really hard time figuring out how this place was set up. But yeah, that's one of the things that's surprised at is that for all the stuff that's been written on the internet about this, nobody, nobody anywhere has a layout of the resort. Yeah, I've never I did a lot of looking for that, and I couldn't find a one.

I've got a guess that it's in. It's one of those places where the restaurants and everything are centrally located and all the apartments are splayed around them in kind of an arc. Yeah, although everybody relatively straight access the description. The description that I heard was that they were on the other side of the pool, So I don't totally know how this whole thing was set up. But they had reserved this specific table that was close to their rooms for PM for the entire time that they were

on holiday. And the way that Kate reserved this table again because nothing bad ever happens to up her white middle people, was she wrote a note and just left it on the front desk where like anybody could have seen it. And this is this is indicative of a bunch of things that seem innocuous to anybody who's doing them until something like this happened that fair and you start all of these silly little things you think nothing

of start cross. He's wrote a little red flags that you know you kind of you can look back on and say, well, I was dumb. Why would you do that that you don't even think about in the moment. But she said in the note, she said, what I want this table so I can watch my kids in apartment five Sea. She said, we're part of a group that are all in this block of apartments. We've got

kids with us that will be in bed. Uh, so we want to reserve this table that's the closest one for eight thirty every night for the time that we're here. And I remember something about she had written some of this, or at least the request. I want to say it was in a guest book. Is this what? Yeah? So it wasn't just a posed it note. It was in the book that anybody walking by could have read, okay, just making sure yea. So probably another guest you signed

in right after them. Always possible. As mentioned, they did this every night. This was what they did every night. So it was a strong pattern, and had somebody been planning anything nefarious, it would have been a fairly easy thing to plan because they knew exactly what was going to happen at eight thirty every night. Oh and also as a fun side note, because the patio was closest to the restaurant. They yeah, they left the patio door

unlocked because it only locked from the inside. They left, they left it closed, but they left it unlocked instead of, you know, adding the extra whatever ten seconds to walk around to the front and use your key and at least kind of safely have your kids in a locked apartment seems like a better idea. It seems like a

better idea. Again, It's one of those little red flags, right that you would think I would think, as a not parent who doesn't have to deal with kids all the time, I would think I would absolutely lock them in that apartment too. But I can see this. I can see my parents doing something like this in the late seventies early eighties, when people didn't have bad things happen all the time that they knew about. Not to say that bad things didn't happen, but when everybody is

so security conscious, it shocks me. And the only thing that I can think that prompted this is a bit of what you were alluding to, which is they come from a very comfortable, safe place so those simple security steps just don't seem necessary. Well, I mean, it's the only way I can rationalize this. And you're you're in a fancy resort too, you have you know, people will typically expect things to be safer conditions there, right, Yeah,

but it's not. I the sense that I have is that the pattio opens out into a street at least an alleyway. It's not oh so that the patio. I thought the patio doors were visible from the topas restaurant. They weren't. They were, they were. But just because it's visible, it doesn't mean you're staring at it the whole time. No, not at all. But and it's a row of patio doors, so you know, the person that's in the apartment next to you maybe coming and going out of the patio doors,

and you don't you can't necessarily tell the difference. I suppose it's dark and all that. Yeah, how many times have you been out at a restaurant on a patio in the evening and had a conversation and dinner with people and never noticed the jillion people that walked by across the street. You're focused in front of you, not really far away, not to say that they're bad parents and they weren't watching. But you can't watch that continually.

Would you would think they'd be like kind of keeping an eye on it, though, you would you think that I would think that, wouldn't you. To their credit, the parents did take shifts on checking on the kids, you know, because all of the parents wasn't just Maddie's Madeline's parents. I'm gonna call her Maddie. Um, I've seen it a couple of times. It's not always there, but I am going to call her Maddie, just so you SAME's the same thing. I'm not adding a new character. Don't worry.

Maddie's parents weren't the only ones who left a kid unattended. As I said, They were eight kids in total, and they were all left in their rooms and I think they all, as far as I can understand, had unlocked patio doors and they were all doing this. They were all kind of doing this. Well, there's five other children besides the McCanns, because they had the twins and then mat Yeah, Jerry carried out the first check at nine oh five pm, which was, you know, about a half

hour after they left him alone. He said that he thought that he had left the door to the kid's room only slightly open, at maybe a five or ten degrees openness angle. Yeah, but when he checked on them, the door was wide open. He pulled it back to be almost entirely shut after, you know, glancing in on them, and then returned to dinner. And then at nine fifteen, another one of the top of seven, Jane Tanner, went

to check on her kids. She said that she passed Jerry on the way back to check on her kids, you know, like I said, it was that alleyway street way they would have both had to have walked on to get to their apartments. And he said that he had stopped to chat with another vacationer on his way back. And the oddity here is that neither Jerry nor the other man saw Jane Tanner. And the street was apparently pretty narrow. It sounds more like it's an alley than

a street to me. Yeah, that's kind of my sense. It's like an alley way. It's not. Yeah, it's an alleyway basically, but it's a fair you know, it's it's a street that people take to walk and things like that. It's not like a weird dead end alleyway, right, it's not full of dumpsters and rats and all of that. It's just more of a walkway than it is at anyway.

So that's that's a little odd that they would have not seen her, and so yeah, it's unlikely that she could have just passed them without them noticing or anything like that. Anyways, Tanner said that she saw a man with the child and his arms crossed the street just

ahead of her. Will get more on that later, But she checked in with her kids and then returned to dinner at Kate had intended to check on her kids, but one of the other or one of the top of seven, not other top of seven, said that he was going to go check on his kids, so he'd look on in on there's two because hey, the door's unlocked,

so he can just peek in, no problem. It's important to note that these these checks weren't necessarily to make sure that they were the kind of checks you do when you've got kids who maybe wake up in the middle of the night and start playing when they're not supposed to, not the kind of checks that you do when you've left your apartment un locked in a weird

place and you're paranoid about your kids getting stolen. Yeah. Well, and I I've I got to say initially, that's what I took from when Jerry said, well, I swear I shut that door and then it was open. That was my initial reaction, is that Madeline must have gotten up to use the bathroom. Yeah, I mean, not to not to pull us off track, but no, know, I mean I think that's that's a very easy thing, and we

should definitely keep that in mind. That you've got a kid who's probably pretty potty trained at that point, you know, may wake up in the middle of the night, have to go to the bathrooms and not going to close the door all the way, you know, all of that sort of stuff. It's unlikely that she would have woken up half an hour after just half an hour after they had put her down, but I guess she had been asleep for about an hour and a half at that point, so she may have. You know, it's it's

we do need to keep that in absolutely. But as I said this, it's important to note that this is the kind of check you do to make sure your kid isn't like up and playing. Matthew Oldfield was the one who he was one of the top of seven. He was the one who did this check of Yeah, and he said that he didn't hear any noises coming from the room, but the door was once again wide open, so he pulled it shut without looking in the room, right, because he didn't hear a kid playing or you know,

making noises or anything in distress. So he just thought another find they're sleeping. I'm not going to bother to him. Actually look, well, Jerry, Jerry went earlier and pulled the door shut. Did he actually look to see if he said that he saw the kids. Yeah, he said that he looked in that Maddie was in her bed at that time, but that's what he said. Yeah, in fairness.

At about ten, Kate did actually do another check. She entered through the patio doors and noticed that the door to the kid's room was once again wide open, and when she attempted to close it, uh, it slams shot on her, like there was a draft in the room. Maybe A note again to mention that it seems unlikely had the door not slammed, Kate would have actually looked in the room. Look in the room. Well, I don't think she was planning on it. I think it was kind of like when Jerry did his, or I guess

it was when Matthew did his. She just went to close the door. She didn't seem to actually look in the room. That's kind of an explicable Okay, why why in the hell are you going to look at in your apartment at your kids? If all you're doing is to go in and stand and go and listen here anything, wouldn't you just peek in see if they're there, you know, and then wander back, Because isn't that why you're going

to check on them? You want to make sure they're not getting into trouble, not to make sure that they're there. Because I don't kids dnapped, I haven't ever dealt with young children, But to me, it would seem logical. If I'm going to go make sure they're up, I'm just going to look in and make sure that somebody's not just sitting there fidgeting and is actually asleep. So yes, I agree. Every time I've ever taken care of kids overnight or otherwise, if they're supposed to be sleeping, I

will actually put eyes on them. Yeah, but also doors slamming on their own like that um doesn't that race suspicions right there? Well, but that's why, right, That's what I'm saying is that I'm just making the note that she saw the doors open and she thought, oh, I will close that door, and she went to close it and it slammed, so she opened it up and realized that Maddie wasn't there anymore. Ok. Yeah, after it slammed

shut on her. I was just mentioning that it seems that her intention was simply to close the door and had not slammed. I don't know that she would have opened it not to you know, be liabel ng anybody, but it doesn't seem like she would have. No It seems like her intention was to make sure there was no noise and then get back to dinner. On the bed was Maddie's cuddle cat and blanket, but not not Maddie and Kate ran back to the restaurants screaming and

the window was open. Correct, the window was open. I don't know if it was a security shutter, but it was a shutter. The pictures I've seen, because I've seen pictures of the shutters, they look like they're just shutters. They don't look like they're security measure of any kind. Okay, So Kate ran back to the restaurants, screaming they've taken her.

Of note right, she's screaming they've taken her. Whoever they are. Yeah, and then at ten ten, Old Field Matthew, the guy who did the check right before Maddie was taken or maybe she was taken, who knows, was sent to reception to have the resort called the police, and at ten thirty the resort activated it's quote missing child search protocol.

The staff above of about sixty people looked for Maddie until about four thirty am, and apparently at first everybody kind of thought that Maddie had just woken up and wandered off. That's understand A good reason I lock your kids in the apartment. Yeah, it is understandable. However it created some problems. Yeah, to National Guard officers showed up at eleven ten pm. They searched briefly, but soon decided, oh, hey, actually we need the criminal police here. So the criminal

police were alerted and they arrived at about midnight. This is the National Guard. These guys are Portugal Portuguese National Guards. And then at about two am, two patrol dogs showed up, and then not until eight am did four search and rescue dogs show up. These are the actual sensitive Yes, the patrol dogs, I think are are just kind of to smell. I don't have a good sense on what they're good. They're just canine units. Yeah, But then the

search and rescue dogs. The search and rescue dogs would have been meant to smell, but you know, not until eight am. And this is where we encounter the biggest problem of this case really is that everyone other than the top of seven and the Meccans seemed to have thought that Maddie just woke up, woke up, and wandered off, so the area wasn't treated like a crime scene at all.

In fact, about twenty people accessed the room that Maddie had been taken from before it was closed off, thus probably ruining almost all of the evidence that would have existed. The room was never actually secured, and though it laid empty for about a month after the abduction, the resort rented the room out before forensic evidence was taken. In August, this room was rented out before forensic evidence was taken. Let me let me ask a question that I think

you might have answered. But how long was it before the cops decided this was something other than a wandered off kid. I think it was at two a m. When the dogs arrived, and it took them over a month to it there forensic guys in there. Yeah, they actually had some fingerprints taken the day after. But you can see the picture of you should look it up online. Yeah, there's stomps. People were trooping through there like oh no, the guy who was taking fingerprints wasn't wearing gloves. He

was dusting for prints without gloves on. This is okay. That wasn't a phrase that was gonna use. It's it's a crap show, is what it is. Yeah, oh wait, oh wait, okay, so it gets better. Sure, the exterior of the building wasn't cordoned off at all. Right, so there was a crowd that showed up that was walking all over the area that the abductor, if there was an abductor, would have taken, like from the window. Yeah, so they all stomped all over that. Also, it wasn't

until ten am that police put up roadblocks. And let's be fair, right, if you've taken a child and you're about to beat feed out of town. It's not going to take a twelve hours. You're gonna do it immediately, So putting roadblocks up twelve hours after a kid has gone missing not so helpful. Furthermore, it took Interpoll five days to issue a global missing person's alert. Well that's awesome.

Five days. You can fly anywhere in the world in five days, easily, in a day, in a day, in twelve hours, not really in twelve hours, but you know that gives you ample time to cover your tracks, and cover your tracks and cover your tracks. You know. You get on a plane, you get on another plane, you take a car or whatever. We're as simple as you drive out of town, you drive to another town, you hang out for a day, you go to another town. When the time they come through this, this trail is

ice cold. Yeah, I doubt that this guy actually got

on a plane with his kids. I suspect I suspect you probably lived in Portugal and just drove on home where he had a basement, you know, with that with chains and the walls and all kinds of As you can imagine, the media crabbed onto this one pretty quick, obviously, and as you you kind of want that to happen with missing person's reports like this, because the more that that missing child's faces out there in the world, the more likely it is that somebody's going to see you know,

if the kid is out in the world, the more likely it is that somebody's going to see that kid and think, oh, hey, I know I've seen that kid before. I'll call the police and a report that I saw that kid. It's the same reason that you send out amber alerts in America. It's a good thing, right you. You know, we get amber alerts sometimes for you know, abducted or missing children three states away, because who knows they might be there, who knows that might have made

it here. Super effective. They're really they're highly annoying because yeah, it's from several states away, or you know, they say it was a white Subaru, and every guy in a white Subaru is getting pulled over by the cops. So they're angering a lot of people, but they have good results. I hate people that drive white super so I think that's a good well, no, I mean I think that that Steve brings up a good point is that because the media did grab onto this so quickly, there were

a lot of sightings reported. You can look at pictures of Maddie and with the one exception of a very outstanding feature, she kind of just looks like a very cute little white girl. Well there is one remarkable thing. Yeah, and I think that we'll talk about that in a second instead of talking about it now. Actually, no, let's talk about it now. This is the posters that circulated in Portugal. I was hoping to find a good picture of to use as the photo for this mystery, but

there aren't any really good pictures of it. But the slogan was luck because Maddie in her right I right eye, Steve's making a little thinking face and the right eye has a tear in her iris that makes it look like she just has it's well, yeah, it's a discoloration. It looks like a black stripe through her eye iris, not know full eye, but through her iris, and that's very distinctive. That's not something you can hide. But that's not something that you can fake. Oh no, not at all.

It's not something that a witness is going to really notice from one of a couple of feet away. That's true. But I think that was the that was the campaign was look and it actually the ohs were looked like her eyes because it you know, if she was out in public, all you have to do is look on her eyes and you see that and you're like, oh, hey, I know what that kid is. So that's that's fair. But it is true that, you know, as long as you keep even her eyes hidden or you know whatever,

it's pretty easy to conceal. It's not like, you know, half of her body was a birthmark or something. She was the tattooed three year old. How it didn't happen. So here's another thing, aside from the weird handling of the crime scene. In Portugal, they have anything that's a criminal investigation is constrained but by what's known as a secrecy clause, which means that there are no official updates or press conferences or suspects or witness names or anything,

which is a problem. One journalist was quoted as saying it created a leak system instead of a watertight system, which I think is probably true. Yeah, it's if the if the media is scrambling for any details, they're going to offer money to get those details, and of course a cop who's got you know, an okay wage, we'll just make a couple of bucks on the side. Here's a detail for sure. Maybe that's uh, maybe that's why.

Maybe maybe the police actually like supported the passage of this thing just so you can make a little money made. The whole thing is a freaking media circus, though, was the problem? Well so? And actually it's interesting to me the mccans, you may or may not know. If you know the story, you know the McCanns were like suspects. They still are suspects in a lot of people's minds. They've officially been cleared, but again we're not there yet.

But one of the biggest weirdest reasons to me that the Portuguese police deemed the mccans to be suspects is because they refused to honor this silence code and did talk to the media. And because of that, the Portuguese police said, oh, well, clearly your suspects, because you're trying to hide something. They accused them of turning the investigation into what Steve said, a media circus, And that's just a different cultural approach to the whole situation, is what

it is. It's a different cultural approach. But it's also you know, of the things that the mccans did. This is one of the ones I understand the most because if your kid goes missing, you want her face freaking everywhere everywhere, and how do you do that the media? And turns out, actually, this media circus was so large that photos of Maddie were literally the most reproduced image of the decade. That is not a lie, that is an actual statistic. Photos of Madeline mccan were the most

reproduced image of the decade was number two. I don't know, I've seen something to do with like nine eleven or something. I don't know, Yeah, something we have to having to do with nudity celebrities. But now in July of two thousand seven, and as a side note, this case moves so slow. Yeah, it's still, it's still they're still investigating this May in May of two thousand seven, early May

May third, two thousand seven is when she disappeared. So in July of two thousand and seven, somebody thought, oh, hey, you know what we should do is get some sniffer dogs from Britain. Let's bring them over. Maybe they'll be able to find something, which is a good idea. Should have happened earlier. I don't know, that sniffer dogs are so good that they could do anything a few months later,

but sure, yeah, why not. It's like, I mean, some many, some of the other cents and people have trampled over the crimes and everything else, so possibly do anything. One of them, named Kila, was a train was to alert to traces of human blood, and the other one, Eddie, was what's called an enhanced victim recovery dog, which basically alerts to human cadavers. And it should be noted they can't alert to specific cadavers and specific blood, just the

presence of human blood or decaying human bodies. The dogs the dogs, and there are some dog you know, bloodhounds can trace the scent of a human being living, you know, within a couple hours and things like that. These are not that, they're they're identification dogs. They can alert to the presence of blood and ostensibly at that point somebody can take a sample of that area and test it and then find what they can find from that, hopefully.

The dogs were taken to two beaches that were close to the resort, the house of one of the suspects and many of the apartments in the resort. The only place that the dogs gave alerts was in the McCanns apartment five A. Both dogs gave alerts. Soum if the cadaver dog, say, let's say, if there had been a dead body and then an apartment, then then it had been gone for two or three months. It's my understanding that the dog would have been able to identify that. Yeah,

because it's a it's a search. He's a victim recovery dog, so he ostensibly, I get, I don't know, I keep saying a sensibly, I'm sorry, I'm given to understand that, and I could be wrong, but I think that he would have been able to smell any presence of cadaver. But the thing, the thing that's weird about that is that you know, I don't want to stop all over

your story. You know, some people are like the like for example, the Portuguese police, for example, accused of mechands of sedating metal and an accidentally overdosing her and killing her. Another theory that they have a sci died at accidentally in an accident, tried to cover that up. Think about it is and of course when you die, you're a cadaver right away, but you don't start smelling like a

cadaver for quite a while. It takes a while for you to become actually smell like a cadaver, which is why this is a little problem with this the dog. I mean, I I just can't figure out why this dog would have gone on high alert. I agree in

this situation. I agree. I think the thought of bringing him along was that, you know, they took them to the beaches and things like that and thought, looking, yeah, yeah, the I don't think the intention was for him to alert in the apartment, but he did, which is a little weird. You don't necessarily want there to be a cadaver dog saying, hey, there's the smell of a cadaver in your apartment behind the sofa, a dead rat in the wall. Maybe it's human cadavers only, yeah, stopping all

over your theory now. Yeah. Anyways, the dogs did both alert behind the sofa. That is an interesting point. Again, I don't know what that means, but it means something to some people. In August, again, this thing moves real slow. It seems like time would be of the since to

find a missing little girl, but find whatever. In August, the police took several items from the mccans, both from when Maddie had been alive and after she disappeared, clothes, the cuddle cat, um Kate had borrowed a bible from one of her friends after the disappearance. Things like that, Eddie and Kilo were put in a room with these items, and at least one of the dogs, possibly both of them alerted to all of the items. It's not published

which one did. It's possible both of them did. It's interesting, right, because it's items from pre disappearance and post disappearance. The McCanns lawyers argue, I think, maybe vadly, although also maybe not validly, that because the mccans were both physicians, they would have encountered dead bodies and blood in their line of work and therefore could have transferred it to those items. Yeah, that's a very valid point. I think it's a valid point,

though I don't know why. Necessarily, when you encounter blood in your workplace, you don't wash it off. Instead, you take it and put it, you know, on your kid's cuddle cat, you know, or a kid, Yeah, sure, a kid like bleeds on it or something. I think that it's fair. I wish I knew which one alerted. Also, I don't really want to go see a position who's like dealing with dead bodies all the time. Well, and the thing about it is when you're dealing with the

dead body, you put on gloves and all kinds of stuff. Yeah, you're not necessarily going to go touch a bible or like your disappeared kids blanket. And also the trac or two of blood is not a big People cut themselves all the time. I mean, so the existence of blood is not necessarily sinister, which is why I wish I knew which dogg alert. Yeah, just because if it's a cadaver dog, that that makes it even stranger. Yeah, because I agree the dog that's gonna smell blood. Yeah, we

can see very mundane reasons. But the cadaver dog being a dog, or if you have to occasionally go to the morgue, doesn't mean that you're covered in dead people staying and then roll around all of your possessions should carrying that. Well, let's continue because it gets a little more interesting. I do have more information about some other stuff.

Eddie and Kila were then taken to uh underground parking garage that had the McCanns car and another one of the suspects car, and then a lot of cars that weren't, you know, kind of control cars. Did the suspect car Did they police actually put that there? Yes, it wasn't just randomly park No, no no, no, they did like a

lineup of cars basically for the dogs. And the Eddie, the cadaver dog alerted outside of the McCanns car and into the trunk of their car, and I didn't even I couldn't even find if the mccans had driven to their holiday or not. But the fact that a human cadaver dog would be alerting to anything around a car is suspicious and weird. There are I do want to just go ahead and say, I have not seen these videos.

I'm just taking on faith that this stuff happened. And there are some reports from some skeptics that say that the handlers can be seen directing the dogs to alert in these areas, but it's not widespread. It's those are not widespread beliefs, but there are some. I just I want to make sure that that makes it into this episode, that there's some speculation that the handlers are saying, oh, this is the McCann's car. Although I don't think that

the handlers knew whose car was who's. It seems like it would be poor police work if you were going to do a lineup of cars and say, handlers, just so you know, these are the cars where the suspect car. So these folks are British, so they would have had a car with a British license plate on it. Was the suspect most likely. Don't you think they flew there and rented a car, not necessarily because it's it's actually I know, Spain is not that far away, and they

could have can like a ferry. Yeah, it probably would be cheaper to rent a car than than take your car over on a ferry. Really, but let's just say, let's just say they took their car. They have a car that had has a British license plate. Now this is again saying it's their personal car. Suspect was it a local? Yeah, he was, so he would have had a car with local license on it. Yeah. And again I don't know. I didn't I couldn't find out where this lineup was done because it was the British police

that did the lineup. But I don't know if it was done in Portugal or where this is. Again, this is one of those frustrations where I wish there was more information but I can't find it. I'm sure than the original police reports, but I can't requisition those because this is still an open case. It's still secret. But it sounds like that, I mean, Eddie and Kia that were flowing to Portugal for this, for their investigations. Probably, yeah, so I don't but I don't know if it was

a rental car or their car. But again I would say that a cadaver dog alerting outside of your car is not a great thing. That would be bad, even if it's just a rental Right, well, yeah, if it's a rental then probably the previous renter probably murdered somebody and you know, stuffed the body in the trunk because to do with you. Okay, fine, so whatever. Fine. In August, The Times reported that forensic evidence said that the blood found in the bedroom that Maddie had disappeared from was

that of a man. I don't think we had mentioned that there had been blood found there. Oh yeah, sorry, there was blood found there. It was a man. It was a man's It was Kiley had or Kila had alerted to that blood as well, and that was a man's blood. Obviously there was a fight. There was a struggle. It was a struggle. Yeah, she fought tooth and nail. Yeah, she grabbed your k bar knife and slash. But yeah

there yeah. Um, there was some DNA testing done, but I'm not really going to get into it because I'm I've deemed it very unreliable. If you really you should look at it if you want. Um, they did a really controversial DNA test that's highly highlight sensitive, and the forensic scientists that was found in the car of the trunk of the car. Yeah, and the forensic scientists that did the testing said it was super on conclusive, and

the media said it was it was Maddie's DNA. So I'm not even gonna go there because I trust those scientists way more than I trust the media. But there's nothing unusual about our DNA being in the trunk anyway, because I mean, when when we were all kids, if we were bad, then we were in a car trips and parents at all. Just story. Don't feel like I need to know about your childhood show. Okay, that didn't have that actual not at all. Holy crap. Okay, can

we talk about suspects or theories or whatever. It's suspects this time, not theories. Can we talk about that? We just go ahead, cool, We're not going to talk about all of them. In two thousand thirteen, the Metropolitan Police of London said that they had thirty eight persons of intra us So we are obviously not going to talk about all of them. Nope, not going to happen. The first suspect or theory or something that we're going to

talk about is the Tanner sighting. You guys, remember Jane Tanner. Don't want to make that face that made Jane Tanner. Yeah, she was one of the top of seven. She was the one who said that she totally saw Jerry talking to that dude, but neither of them, lady totally reliable one. But besides Jerry, she saw a man. Yeah, she said she saw a man carrying a child ahead of her when she was heading to check on her own kids.

She said that the man was white, dark haired, about five ft seven and of Southern European or Mediterranean appearance, forty years old, wearing gold or baige trousers and a dark jacket, but she didn't see his face so I don't know how she knew all those things. Yeah, we've talked about how reliable memory is before in cases like this, and it was dark. It's completely unreliable. Yeah, it was dark. But okay, so she uh, he apparently did not look

like a tourist. He looked like he was a little and she claimed that he was carrying a barefooted child who was wearing light colored PJS with a floral print print and ruffle cuffs. The description does match the PJS that Mattie was wearing at the time, that's fair. The police said that that sighting was actually of another British tourist who was picking his kid up from the kids club and carrying her home. She had been sleeping and in fact, because like we talked about earlier, you could

leave them. Yeah, got it. And they did the responsible thing when they went to dinner and they sent their kid to the kids club and had them sleep there while they were waiting for them to be done with dinner. But they actually did a reproduction of this scene. Eventually they found the man and did a photo shoot with him in the clothes that he was wearing that night, carrying his daughter in the PJ she was wearing, and it's it looks exactly like that. It looks exactly like that,

So we basically just nipped that one right in the butt. Yeah. The man actually later sued for liabel against Jane Tanner and the media. It's generally accepted this is a really bad theory. How do you do in his libelcity against Jane Tanner? He did pretty good. He won. He won against all of them. She that's fair. She didn't, but I think he wants anyways. The even more important thing about this is that most people say that she didn't

actually even report this until November. Um. There are some other reports that say that she did actually report this immediately, but the police didn't really reveal the information until late May, and I couldn't figure out which one was true. The more widely spread one is that she didn't reveal this until in November. But again I don't know. I don't have access to the police reports. I also don't speak Portuguese, so I wouldn't be able to read them even if

I did have access to them. Google Translate. It's really bad with Portuguese. It's actually true. I used to have a friend who spoke Portuguese, and I couldn't ever actually transplating stuff anyways. Uh. The only reason that I thought this was interesting, or anybody thought this is interesting initially was because they thought that maybe it gave a time frame for when Maddie went missing, because we don't really know exactly when. No, she was no longer in the end.

What's accepted now is that she was. She was taken, just like moments before Kate discovered that she was taken. And we'll talk about this more in a second. Actually we're about to talk about it, but I just wanted to also mention because Jane said that she saw the man at but I don't think I don't think that

was a good time frame. We're gonna talk about the Smith sightings now because there was another report of a man carrying a child, and this time it was by people who are not part of the Top of seven, nor were they even staying at the resort. As far as I can tell, they were on vacation from Ireland.

Their names were Martin and Mary Smith. Just talk about yeah, and apparently Portugal like super pop Miller with people from the British Isles in the UK and oh my gosh, I feel like I just like I'm going to get in so much trouble because I don't think Ireland is part of the UK or the British Isles. It's it's part of the isles. Gotten really offensive, I'm sorry. Spain are indeed huge destinations for the British because it's close, it's cheap, and it's not wet and cold, which is

what the UK is. That area is chucked full of tourists. Sure it is. And by the way, I believe Ireland is part of the UK, the United Kingdom. Northern Ireland is Northern Ireland, and anyways, it doesn't matter. Yeah, no, no. Martin and Mary reported seeing a man at about ten pm carrying a child towards the beach. It was an odd time to be doing that, but okay, fine whatever. They thought that the girl was probably three or four years old. She was wearing light colored PJS and had

blonde hair and pale skin. The man, they said, was probably in his mid thirties. He was about five ft seven to five ft nine. He was slim, had short brown hair, and was wearing light pants. They said that the man looked like he was a local and he didn't seem comfortable carrying the child. And I've always thought that these sightings could be the same man. But they cited this person sited saw they saw this person further away than you know, the the initial sighting forty five

minutes later. He wasn't forty five minutes away, So it probably wasn't the same person unless he was just walking circles. Yeah, yeah, I've got this kid. I took it from an apartment. I just keep walking in circles. I don't see that happening. So here's the thing that's interesting to me. And yes, I'm setting myself up for my favorite theory in fairness, both sightings, but particularly the e FIT images that were created. Um,

the Smith sighting. Okay, if it's are electronic facial identification techniques, they're basically forensic drawings but digital. Oh so instead of a sketch artist, you've got a digital artist exactly. Yeah, they both look or will. That one particularly looks a lot like Jerry McCann to me. And I think Steve and I talked about this a little bit before we started recording, and I think what he has to say

is fair. But I also want to mention that The chain of evidence is pretty good on this because Mary and Martin, as far as I can tell, hadn't seen Jerry prior to creating this e fits sketch. And also I don't think that they knew that Maddie was missing before they reported this. When did they make this the sketch the sketch, It was like within a couple of hours. I think. I don't know for sure, but it's just that's what I'm giving to understand is that they hadn't

seen Jerry. Okay. Well, and and this is what I you and I were talking about earlier, is Jerry is not a super unique looking individual. He's got a very a very common set of facial traits. And the guy that's in this e fit matches the appearance of about a half dozen people at my office, but also matches Jerry somewhat somewhat. And that's that's the perfect point. Joe just hit it on the head some what. Ye, It's

it's not as if it's a dead ringer. Well, and I understand that, fairness, that could be a dead ringer for a lot of people, you know what, absolutely could, but it also could be a dead ringer for him. Okay, you know, I think it's yeah, I just I just want to put that out absolutely. Yeah, it could be a lot of people, but it could be him. Yeah, it could be Yeah, definitely. But there there's a lot of differences when you look at it too. Yeah. In

the job line, the eyeb house, they're they're way different. Yeah, that's true. Hairline is a bit different. Yeah, I mean again, you know, it's dark. Yeah, I guess it's interesting, you know, And Jerry was at the restaurant. Almost everyone who placed him there, however, was part of the top of seven, and servers wouldn't have really noticed. I don't think that servers really noticed when somebody is away from the table

for a long period time. You know, had he been going getting up and checking on the kids, things like that, he could have been gone for a half an hour before anybody would have really noticed. I don't think that that's something that's tracked. But yeah, the top is seven. I'm assuming those people weren't covering up for him. If he disappeared long enough to go murder Madeline and disposed of the body and everything like that, it would think that people who have noticed that he's been gone for

an hour or two. Yeah. Absolutely, But if you were going to, like, if you're gonna, oh my gosh, we're gonna get into the like stuff Steve doesn't like. But if you I see it, if she died earlier and they placed her in her bed so that if anybody else were to check on her, looked like she was sleeping, and he were just going to dispose of the body quickly, I mean, he would probably have time to do that.

He wouldn't have time to, you know, create a whole thing, but he probably would have had time, especially because there's a little bit of weird unaccounted for time that would have he would have had time to maybe retreat the body and put it put in the trunk of the car, yeah, or later disposal. But yeah, but um, but we're going to talk about the whole theory that the kid that Maddie might have died of by an accident. We'll talk

about that later, Okay. Absolutely. The next theory suspect is the person who was first the first suspect in this case, Robert Murat Murratt, Robert Robert, I am going to call him Robert. He was a local property consultant and he was like I said the first suspect. He lived about a hundred and fifty yards from the Meccan's apartment, so close by. He was a local and it was the his apartment or no, the house he lived and sorry,

he lived with his mother. The house he lived in was in the direction that Jane Tanner said that she saw a man walking just He was an official interpreter until his interest was deemed a little too real. Um well, he offered to translate. He was He was fluent both in Portuguese and English, so he offered to translate the statements that the suss are, that the top of eight and all that everybody had given and guests. The British police decided that that was really suspicious. You know, the

British police decided it was really suspicious. They mentioned, hey, that's a little suspicious, and the Portuguese police said, yeah, that's a little suspicious. Huh. So they named named him as a suspect. He could have been, um, which, what's the word I'm looking for when he's a good Samaritan. He could have been just trying to be a good Samaritan. Well.

He says that his interest in the case was that he had recently lost custody of his three year old daughter, and so his heart kind of went out to these people who had just lost their three old daughter, and he wanted to help his best teach, which it turns out was the you know, the Portuguese police verified that and said, oh my gosh, we're so sorry. The other thing, too, is that he might have wanted some attention. Getting involved in this case is possibly going to get your face.

He might have, and I, you know, I think there are a lot of totally innocent reasons that he could have wanted to get involved in this case. But three of the top of seven said that they saw Robert around the apartment five A at that time. But um, oh, hey, he lived a hundred and sixty yards away. Probably they did, or they saw somebody who looked like him, because his mom said that he was home all evening. Okay, well, every buddy knows your mom always comforts. Your mom is

gonna say, no, not he was here. I'm not I'm not being I'm not joking. It's that's true. A mom's automatic reaction. In almost every case that we've ever looked at, or whether beyond this podcast or not, their mom always backs them because that's a maternal thing you do. You

protect your child, course of course. But the thing about it is is that if he shows you, if he comes wandering on home with a three year old girl into and he's like, Mom, I just kid that this three year old girl and she's gonna be my sex slave or something like that, Mom is probably not gonna be down with that, but she says, we now have a little girl to raise. Mom might be on board with that, maybe with it. Again. I gotta wonder too.

I mean, I guess you might be. But you know, you would think that as a mother, she would recognize the tremendous grief that they would bring to the real mother of Maddie. Yeah. Well no, I mean it would have been easy enough, you know, for her to just say, oh, yeah, I know, we found her, but it doesn't matter because a huge search for evidence was carried out on the mom's house, you know, through the car. His car was the one that was the suspect car that the dogs

sniffed at. Uh. Literally, nothing was found. They like scoured the crap out of everything that he owned, every place he had been, everywhere he lived. They called in character witnesses all of that stuff. Nothing was found. They said, oh, boops, sorry, you're innocent. And eventually, you know, this happened to the Mechans too. Um. The media pretty much just deemed him guilty for a while, and he sued a couple of different media agencies for Liabel and eventually won more than

eight hundred thousand dollars in those suits combined. It's a good winning him. Yeah, so I would say, I agree, he's probably innocent. I would say, so, yeah, Now here's a thing I need Joe to yeah say for me, Ris and German, but I'm going to rust Hans from my guest, there's a tenuous, incredibly tenuous link between this known pedophile and a possible abduction. Uh, it was not just a pedophile. He was a pedophile and a murderer. Yeah. He lived in Spain, not so not very close to

this Portuguese resort place. But I guess somebody thought, well, he has a pattern of abducting and murdering young girls, so he might be in on it. He was. He committed suicide in July of two thousand seven by shooting himself in the head after abducting a five year old girl in Spain. I don't put any stock into this, but I didn't want to mention it. Yeah, that just seems like that's just too easy. All he's a he's

a pedophile murderer. Probably of things did hyeah. I think that's maybe one of those things that most people can agree onmore. It will come as no surprise. We've already discussed a little bit that the Meccans were also suspects, And because this episode is a little long already, and because there's just a lot to say, we're going to

kind of just bullet point this thing of note. Who leaves their kid alone in an unlocked room in a strange country for like every night, for your the duration of your holiday, after having left a note that everybody could see. Who does that? Really? Who does that? Right? I believe we called that red flags flags, lots of lots of little red flags. The other thing that people talk about a lot is they've taken her. The fact

that Kate came running screaming they've taken her. And the Portuguese police actually said that they thought that Kate was setting up spending the stage for an abduction story. Because I think I think this is really fair to say that most parents, when walking into the room and seeing your kids gone, you're going to start screaming, she's missing. Where the hell is Mike, right where I can't find her? She's gone. You're not going to scream they've taken her.

That's a little strange. It's weird. Although again, um, it just depends on the account she read. This, is that actually what she was screaming? That's every account I've read says that. No, correct me if I'm wrong. I swear. I also remember because the door slam because the window in the bedroom that the kids were in was open. Yeah.

Playing a little bit of Devil's advocate here, she could have realized that her daughter was gone, looked over, saw the window was open, and made the immediate presumption, correct or not, that somebody had coming through the window and taking the child and left. And that's why she immediately started screaming, they've taken they've taken her, not necessarily meaning they've as in two or three people, but just they

say the unknown people. Yeah, I think that's fair. I think there's you know, it's that both sides of that for sure. Again, it's the lots of little red flags. Kate also refused to answer um of the questions that the Portuguese police asked her, and she in fact said that the reason that she refused to answer them was because she was afraid they might implicate her. Do we know what those questions were? Specifically? No, we don't, And that's fair. I mean, that's another fair point, right, But

I do think that that's weird. Again, if I can't think of it, I mean maybe you can't. I can't think of a question that they would have asked her reasonably within those first you know it was. It wasn't like, you know, four months later they were asking your questions. It was pretty early on asking your questions. I can't think of a question that you would ask that, you know, questions that you would ask I can, okay, ask me what do yeah, but like walk through me with this.

They asked the same question over and over and over multiple ways. And she may have gotten fed up when they said when they were saying, did did you kill your daughter? Did you hide her somewhere? And she may have said, shut your bloody mouth, I'm not answering that. Screw off, This isn't helping, and they said, well, she refused to answer that question because she's obviously guilty, that's all that's possible. And then also, don't forget this a

language barrier here, so they're going through translators. So yeah, I guess you know. The sense that I had was that she had flat out refused to answer forty eight individuals different questions, and she did. Her lawyers did say, oh yeah, the reason she didn't answer those is because she thought they would implicate her. It wasn't the police later saying oh what, it seemed like she was scared

that we were going to say she was guilty. Her lawyers actually came out and said, oh yeah, the reason she didn't answer those is because she thought they would implicate her. I can see that lawyers being they kept answering, asking the same question, trying to get her to say something the same answer different ways. Because cops do this all the time, you get them to exploit. Wait, run

me through this scenario one more time. How many times have you watched the Cops show where you'll see the cops saying now, I just need you to explain this to me one more time because they want people to say it in multiple versions to see if they can parse anything apart to find a detail that accidentally slips into the narrative. And again, if, like Joe said, this is going through translators, I can see how frustrating that is.

Absolutely so maybe the lawyers like, yeah, she answered the question, she knew better than to keep answering, because they just keep doing this. They're trying to finger her for the for the whole thing. I get it. I don't believe the parents, but I don't like this whole story in general.

But I'm just saying I don't. I guess I just don't think that even in lawyers speak, saying she thought the question, the answers to those questions might implicate her means she like they kept asking her the same question. I think that a lawyer says to the public in a press conference says they kept asking her if she had murdered her daughter, and she kept saying, no, that's you don't say she thought that it might implicate her. No lawyer would say that, I'm going to say about

your car. You can't say that though in an active open investigation, but you can't say I don't know. I feel like a different way, but yeah, this whole unanswered question thing, we've beaten that to ye, no pun intended. Oh my god. Um, the sniffer dog reactions, that's a bullet point of this one. It's a pretty good one. We did already discuss a little bit the different ways that that could be interpreted. And again, you know, because they don't know which dog alerted to what, it's hard

to tell. The theories around the Meccans. They're mostly not nefarious, accidental, they're mostly accidental. And in fact that yeah, Joe's you know, kind of hit the nail on the head, as Steve would say, that what the Portuguese police originally thought, and then they said, no, that didn't happen. But I think a lot of people have held onto and I, you know, I honestly my heart goes out to this theory a little bit because I can see where they were coming from.

Maybe is that, you know, sometimes you've got a kid who's a little overactive, and you're tired, and you just want to enjoy your holiday, and you give the kids some heroin. No, you give kids some like benadral it, a little bit of benadryl to try and calm them down, or a little bit of whatever sedative. They were both physicians, so they definitely had access to a lot of different kinds of sedatives or otherwise sleep aids of some kind

that might have helped her relax or sleep. And we don't know if she was one of those kids who was like super hyperactive, she was excited to be going home. Who knows, But the theory goes that she was given a sedative and it was an accidental overdose. Though again they were physicians, so they probably shouldn't have accidentally overdosed her. But fine, whatever, she died, they freaked out and tried

to cover it up. I have no sympathy for this theory whatsoever, because when your kid has had an accident, it is bleeding and unconscious, you think the kid is dead, but you don't know for sure. You alert somebody and try and call the ACE. Same thing with an overdose, you call an ambulance exactly. And I actually was just talking. I was talking to somebody about this because that's what I do. I think you guys do this too, at least I know Steve does. I don't know if Joe

does or not. But when I'm working on a story, I'll talk to you know, my significant other or friends about the story and you were talking for dinner last night, and I said, but what you do, like if an accident happened, you like, find somebody, you know, you don't look at this like poor child of yours who's suffering on the ground and think, crap, better cover that up. Oh damn, I got another body to hide. You go, no, oh my gosh, what happened? What have I done? I

gotta you know? And I guess it's possible that, right, she like died in her sleep. Maybe maybe what happened was they gave her too much sedative and they didn't realize and when Jerry went to go check on them, he checked on them, or they both gave her the dose, not realizing that the other had already done it. Right, But what you know that they realized after the fact that she wasn't breathing anymore, you know, after they came back and he had to defy something. It's it's possible,

it's still but you still you revived that kid. You try and revive that kid, And it's understandable. I for you to kind of make the argument, it's you know, it's not going to go super great for you, but your kid's not going to be dead exactly. Besides which, you know, you don't have to make any arguments at all. How often, when when I was a kid, my parents told me, look all that stuff in the medicine cabinet. You don't go eating that stuff like candy because it'll

kill you. And of course after that they came up with child proof caps and stuff like that. So but that, But the idea of a kid getting into some drugs and and swallowing a bunch of pills, not realizing what he's doing, and dying is not exactly outrageous. So you just say, you know, there's a reason they came up

with Mr Yuck to put on everything. Oh yeah, yeah, So you just say to the kid just you said, I'm sorry, You just say to the police, Uh, the kid got into these drugs unfortunately, and and O deed, so please save my kid's life, and I'm We're sorry as hell. There was no crime. Actually, you don't even have to go that far. You can say, I don't know what's going on. I'm a physician. She's unconscious and it appears to be some kind of drug reaction and

I don't know what it is. And then they rushed to the hospital and then one of you quote unquote figures out that one of the pill bottles has been opened. Yeah. I mean like we're flushing out a bunch and we're really going down the rabbit hole here. But there's a million ways that that could happen. Yeah. The point is is that the Mechansas suspect suspects makes no sense to me, because if the kid had had an accident, they would have called an ambulance. If the candidaded, they would have

called an ambulance. I just can't believe that they would have burned their own kids. And I guess that for me, I totally agree. But for the red flat, you know, it's kind of that. It's that thing where had they not left their kid alone, had they seemed as they were more attentive, had all of these tiny little red flags led up to this thing, I would be way more willing to say, there's no way they would try and cover this accident. Of course, not any compassionate caring

parent wouldn't try and cover that up. But honestly, the story of the Meccans doesn't exactly paint a compassionate caring parent picture. And again, I don't say that to disparage them, because I mean, they're still raising those children. They those children are alive. Yeah, that murder me yet, I'm they probably won't. But because I don't, it just doesn't. So much of me wants to be able to say, yeah, I agree, it doesn't make sense because it doesn't make sense.

But a lot of the stuff they did doesn't make sense to me, and I don't. I don't have a good theory on this one, but I do think that of the likely suspects, they are the most likely. They

are a little too little follow up things here. One is that in two thousand eight, may have two thousand eight, about almost you know, a year, a little more than a year after Maddie went missing, there was a note left on the doorway of the apartment that the Meccans had been staying in that said that Maddie's body had been dumped in a reservoir. And there's some there was Yeah, I said the specific reservoir, but I can't remember the name off the top of my head. I'm sorry, you

don't know. It's the language. I don't know, um, but they there's some research done in it, but it's basically brushed off as not valid this claim they didn't train the reservoir, and look, they did not. There's also been a few sightings quote unquote sightings of Maddie in Spain and Portugal, and they've mostly been with local families. You know, somebody will say, oh, yeah, I saw this local family.

But also one of their the people they were calling their daughters, was this pale, blonde haired girl who looked a whole lot like she could have been Maddie. And I think it was made. You know. So that's um a thing that's been happening a lot. It's been happening this entire time, honestly. Um, so that's worth mentioning as well. Uh yeah, so that's kind of the story. Well maybe maybe mad they will find yourself. Because if she's what eleven now, she mean missing in two thousand and seven,

she was three. She was born in two thousand three, right, she would have been four, and she had just turned She was born in May of two thousand three, so she was three when she disappeared, so she would have Yeah, so imagine that, you know. I mean, so she's taken when she's three, and she's too young to really have much of much memory. Of anything, and so somebody snatched her and say adopted her because they wanted they wanted a kid, but she was a cute kid too. Yeah,

get little kid. And so imagine you're this person and you you're being raised by these people or your parents, and then you're reading this and the somewhat on one days, stumble across in the inner the story of Madeline McCann. And they do age progressions every couple of years, and they publicize those. They have one of her when she

was nine. Yeah, and then you see these but then you see these these you see all these pictures of her eyes and that weird anomally in her eye And wouldn't that be wouldn't that be really waits, that might be me? Yeah, I doubt that what you're suggesting is remotely a possibility. Well, that's just me being wistfully thinking. I would prefer right on the right, on the outset. I'm going to say, this is gonna sound terrible. I don't want it to be her parents. I wanted to

be somebody else. But to be somebody else means very bad things. They all mean very bad thing Because here's what I did. And I don't know if I didn't tell you do this is that I read some of the article and then I couldn't stomach of the article anymore. So what I did is I took it in the way that I could, which is I started going into research specifically just on abductions. And the stats are staggering as to likely what has happened, because there's there's two

kinds of situations. There is a known person abduction, so that's you know, an acquaintance or a family member, except none of those people who are around, So then this becomes what's called a stereotypical kidnapping, which is by somebody that a child doesn't know. There's some very set things that happened at that point that didn't A ransom wasn't

put out that we know of. Well, we skipped over this part um, but there were some people that were arrested for trying to exploit the mechans to say that they had information about where Mattie was. But that's that's exploitation. That's not specifically rants, but it seems to happen a lot in cases like this. Absolutely talked about there was a situation like that. But but the things that normally happened.

Is if it's a stereotypical kidnapping, is the child is transported up to or fifty or more miles away, which we talked about roadblocks. Hey, thanks guys, um. And then the child is either a put into some kind of slavery scenario and I'm not going to explain that, or is kept to be raised on their own. Okay, Well I'm hoping that is the one. Okay, all of these things they tell me, I mean, I can, I can go through this law, your list of stats, things like

you know, one percent of kidnapped kids. No, I don't want to hear you never come back. I don't want to hear that. Then three hours most of them are dead. But I mean, there's there's all this stuff. There's and all these numbers and I'm pulling by the way their us it's all from the FBI, because go figure, because if a child is listed as abducted, it doesn't matter for what reason, the FBI will step in. And that's the little it's a federal stuff out of the Uniform

Crime Report. Well, I got it from the FED, from the FBI's website, and they have a bunch of PDFs that you can pour through, which are not nice things to pour through, but I did. Anyway. Now I go to the I go out to the uniform crime reports all the time. Actually they're quite useful. Well they're they're they're disturbing. But but here's here's my thing is that if I want Magdaline to have been abducted by somebody to have been kept as that person's child, it means

a woman would have been the one who did the abduction. Well, unless somebody kidnapped for a woman. Primarily primarily when women, when women do the abduction, it's because they want to have a child of their own. For whatever reason, lost a child, can't have a child, doesn't matter that that's their primary motive. It's a very re extremely low percentage of man do it for that reason. So yes, a woman could have had talked to man into doing it,

but that's a very low probability. A woman could have had a husband who you know, and they wanted to have kids, and she especially wanted to have it, and she was getting all Cathy Bates on him, and he's like, okay, I'll find you a kid. But but the point is, I hate this story because I feel so terrible for the parents because I am so absolutely positive that Patty's not alive anymore. And that's the reason that I hate these cases is that so often, more often than not,

the numbers don't support the probabilities. Yeah, no, it is most likely that she's not alive. Yeah, I mean, I mean, I hope. This is one of those one that sucks you guys. Stop suggesting these stories, please, because you suggest them and we have to do them happy stories, just like, no more weird missing kids please. This is this is why I don't like these stories. I know, but we have to do them. I know, I know we do, but I'm just I'm just going to take this stance

right now. Is that the stats support what I unfortunately don't like. Is there the writing on the wall and well, as you know, as a a side, um, not that they needed the money, but the Meccans have one a lot of libel lot they have one way more than Robert ever won. But they also have written making stuff. Oh yeah, and we're sitting here on a podcast talking about all the red flags and how they could have

totally accidentally killed their daughter. You know, I think it sucks to be them, absolutely because not only are they going through the pain of losing a child, they're also being accused of being horrible human beings. It's kind of like Marl Murray's dad. You know, I felt the same way about himmy now, so it's poor the poor guy. He loses his daughter and everybody in the Internet is

accusing him of being a murderer. Yeah, but you know, maybe just don't do suspicious stuff, you guys, Yeah, because it's so easy to know. Okay, if my kid disappears today, what do I not do? Do you not make lists like that? Because I absolutely do. Oh yeah, yeah, well I do unsolved mysteries like that's my thing, so I know what not to do. So, you know, instead, I follow a very specific pattern every day, so it's very

obvious what I do every day. Also, I think maybe you just don't plan to have kids, Well, then I don't plan to do anything bad to them or anybody anybody ever. This is why we keep our identities of secret. That's true, exactly. The guy's pretty soon and the internet is going to be alive with rumors that we committed all these murders that we talked about on our show. So that's why we stay hidden. Yeah, I can't wait to be at your kids mitzvah. So that's the end

of this episode. I'm sorry I was long. I know you guys really when we do long episodes. UM, if you want to see some of the research that I did for this episode, UM, we'll put some links up. You can also comment on this story. You can listen in download as well, all on our website. That website is thinking Sideways podcast dot com. Um. I think that there's a link to merch and to donate and to

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you know there's speaking of streaming. There's been a bunch of talk of which app to use stream that Facebook group, Yeah, join the group and then you can find out which ones are better than others, because some of them do actually cut us off for example, that's annoying. Um, we're on Twitter thinking Sideways. Some cool activity there, I guess a little bit some of it. Email Thinking Sideways podcast

at gmail dot com. Email us story ideas, thoughts about this episode, thoughts about other episodes, creative criticism, just fan girl, fan boy ing, um bet anything, literally, anything you want to say to us, you can email us, and if we don't like it, we'll just ignore it pretty much it. Yeah, I think that's it. So as Steve would say that, having been said, I think we're gonna get out of here, can we please? Yes, that's time, by everybody, by us. Two