Police Dogs Put McCanns Wrongly In Frame
MADDIE WATCH - Anorak’s at-a-glance guide to press coverage of Madeleine McCann
Portuguese detectives made Madeleine McCann’s parents suspects on the “slightest chance” they could have been involved in her disappearance, a leaked report revealed.
An official 57-page summary of the massive final dossier assembled by the Policia Judiciaria (PJ) - Portugal’s CID - was apparently posted online.
The leak came as Gerry and Kate McCann considered taking legal action against the Portuguese authorities after the couple had their suspect status formally lifted.
The police report, dated June 20 2008 and written by an Algarve-based PJ inspector, was placed on the website of the Portuguese newspaper Expresso.
Detectives named the McCanns as “arguidos”, or formal suspects, last September in the light of sniffer dog searches and initial DNA test results, according to the document. This was because inquiries had flagged up the “slightest chance of their involvement with a possible corpse” in their holiday flat and hire car, it said.
The leaked report said a “cadaver dog”, trained to sniff out dead bodies, picked up a scent in the McCanns’ apartment and on clothes belonging to Mrs McCann and Madeleine. The animal also apparently scented death on the key of the Renault Scenic hire car rented by the McCanns 24 days after the little girl went missing.
Preliminary forensic analysis on samples recovered from the McCanns’ hire car raised the possibility of a match with Madeleine’s DNA profile, the report said. But final DNA test results could not match the material to any particular person - or even establish whether it was blood or another type of body fluid.
And that was that…
July 23rd, 2008 at 12:01 am
# chenier Says:
July 22nd, 2008 at 11:34 pm
The Real Stig Says:
July 22nd, 2008 at 11:27 pm
áde
“revelation of the contents of the files - which will expose them as guilty bastards to the world”
This would be the same file which does not contain enough evidence to charge them with anything?
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Er, ade didn’t suggest that they were guilty of any specific offences. I took his comment as conveying the same spirit in which Jeremy Paxman allegedly approaches any interview with a politician:
“Why is this lying bastard lying to me?”
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chenier, I realise you are probably not very happy about the Portuguese announcement yesterday, but…..excuse me…….have you been drinking to drown your sorrows?!
July 23rd, 2008 at 12:05 am
I note the BBC says that the notes in the police files which say that RM was made an arguido on the strength of what a journalist said to them (??!!??) contradicts what the police actually told the BBC at the time, ie. that they already had concerns about him when the reporter first approached them.
July 23rd, 2008 at 12:06 am
Trying to blame the dogs now are they? IMHO - now we just wait patiently and all will be revealed!
July 23rd, 2008 at 12:09 am
If the police DID make RM an arguido simply because a British reporter said she thought he was acting a bit suspiciously……….it does rather raises questions about their whole arguido system at that time!
(I realise that the system was tightened up a week after the Mcs were made arguidos. The law now requires the police to have some real evidence before making someone an arguido.)
July 23rd, 2008 at 12:11 am
The dog findings have yet to be explained. To say the scent was planted would be pure speculation.
July 23rd, 2008 at 12:12 am
# lyn Says:
July 23rd, 2008 at 12:06 am
Trying to blame the dogs now are they? IMHO - now we just wait patiently and all will be revealed!
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Who is “they”??
This report, if true, comes from the Portuguese police.
Do you object to the Portuguese police “blaming” the dogs?! I think they’re just trying to explain how the arguido thing came about.
That’s if this report is the true one at all.
And if it is true, it is a disgrace that the Portuguese police have leaked it to a newspaper.
July 23rd, 2008 at 12:29 am
Sorry if this has already been posted.
This seems another sensible idea by Alipio Ribeiro, now retired.
It would “have perhaps been more sensible” to have lifted the arguido (suspect) status of those formally named in the case while continuing to pursue the inquiry in other directions, he added.
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He thinks it may have been rushed to decide to close the investigation. The police, he thinks, should have kept open the investigation into Madeleine’s disappearance while getting rid of the arguido status of the Mcs and RM.
Sounds suspiciously like common sense.
What a pity that man retired!
July 23rd, 2008 at 1:56 am
Thankgod they have realised what is really important here and that is finding the real person or persons who have taken Madeleine, what a balls up and a waiste of 14 months that they could have been searching for Madeleine… What hell that has added to an already horrible situation as a parent, that is a form of torture that the police have put the Mccanns through. I hope they have learnt a lesson and will never ever put anyone through the same torture.
July 23rd, 2008 at 2:23 am
I thought in early reports that some of the Tapas 9 were the ones that said…yea…pointing our Murat…saying there was someone that looked like him hanging around the Mccanns place?
How can the dogs be so wrong on so many different things? The apartment, the clothes, the car??!?!? All that should of sent up red flares!!
July 23rd, 2008 at 2:25 am
They have tortured themselves for the past 14 months because they couldn’t agree on a time-line between them!
The cops were immediately suspicious because they did not fuck off home straight away to check that none of the other kids had been abducted by a nasty predator.
The cops were suspicious about the length of time it took to call them on noting that a nasty horrible predatory evil bastard had slipped into the flat.
The cops were suspicious because KM did not grab the twins before she fucked off out - knowing that the shutters were jemmied - although it was discovered some time later that she was wrong about this.
One doesn’t have to be a copper or a social worker to work this out.
One doesn’t have to be a full shilling to work this out. In fact I have spoken to a lot of people who are three sandwiches short of a picnic - and they spotted all this straight away.
The blind man on a galloping horse spotted this too by the way.
July 23rd, 2008 at 2:26 am
They - means general. Dogs are trained to sniff. It could be that the PJ were too hasty in naming the McCanns and Robert Murat though, before gathering more information to have charges laid. In being hasty aided those, IMHO, to cover up what really happened.
July 23rd, 2008 at 2:31 am
Every time the Clan and co. come on the telly, my dog sets up a blood-curdling howl!
If he can smell something fishy at from about 200 miles away - I am pretty sure that Eddie and Keela were on the money.
My dog is for hire by the way! He will do anything for a hob-nob.
He’s para-gliding tomorrow before he starts his parachute course.
July 23rd, 2008 at 2:34 am
seems strange that the mccanns and friends could refuse to answer some questions, were they not allowed to have murat answer their questions, also as stated above, they could not get their story straight about that night and any info given to us by the media all this time makes the parents look guilty as heck…
I too wondered why Kate would run screaming from the room after not findng Madeleine, leaving the sleeping twins behind?!?!
Also what happen to all the phone, text and emails they had from the that night. I thought there was some incriminating evidence there?
July 23rd, 2008 at 2:34 am
Lyn …. You are right. If I had been in charge of this shower of sh*te I would not have let them keep back-tracking until the death - however there were laws in Portugal about to be changed at the time - and we wouldn’t be even be this far on if they had waited any longer coz the Clan would have had even more protection from the law.
July 23rd, 2008 at 2:37 am
The Defence said that the PJ could not have bank and phone records. However - as in the Huntley case - some records had already been tracked but they would be inadmissable in Court now.
I don’t know if they had them without prejudice before.
It’s all a wee bit too whiffy!
July 23rd, 2008 at 2:45 am
Ferdinand Says:
July 23rd, 2008 at 12:11 am
The dog findings have yet to be explained. To say the scent was planted would be pure speculation.
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Ferdinand, it has bothered me also how those dogs ‘homed in on Kate McCann and supposedly other areas in the apartment. So I figured today why not go and talk with handlers of dogs who are trained and ask how it is done. When I went back to work today I went across the street to the FBI building and talked to a couple of handlers with their dogs. That place is so surrounded by dogs it looks like a rescue league for dogs! Use to watch on my break from the balcony with their dogs. One man is there I’ve watched for sometime working his dog , he has a lovely german shepherd but he is on ‘hire’ from the West Coast as he is a professional trainer and trains his own dogs for bomb sniffing, search rescue, police work for hunting for bodies, etc. He said the dogs are as good as their handler is - if the handler does the training of the dog. He said you can lead the dogs to what you want, they will follow your signals. He said even his best are not infallible and give false signals. Then I watched this obviously young handler with a black lab taking it around a truck that pulled up beside the building to sniff for bombs - that dog was more interested in wagging its tail and looking around and he kept taking it up close to the truck, the dog would turn away and he would take it back and urge it to sniff putting it on a tight lead where it had no choice but sniff.
July 23rd, 2008 at 2:56 am
Just reading on joana morais blog - all but one family of the T9 or 10 were put in apartments near each other. What proof have the PJ that Madeleine and the twins, plus the other children were not all in one unit, with visitations every now and then by a T9 or T10. Perhaps Maddie was taken into the other apartment when things went wrong. What about the sheet changing! All these unanswered questions, IMHO, very fishy indeed.
July 23rd, 2008 at 3:15 am
Fish everywhere Lyn! But the net is being dragged!
July 23rd, 2008 at 3:34 am
Cheryl - you are right about the dogs sometimes being dragged up close to something that the handler needs them to sniff.
However they don’t start dancing and barking their bollocks off without good reason.
If I pretend that my cell-phone has fallen down the side of my sofa and ask my dog to retrieve it - he looks at me like I’m a simpleton and goes into my hand-bag and fetches it to me so that he can be rewarded with half a hob-nob or a treat.
He won’t pretend something is there when it isn’t because he does not get a reward.
Dogs aren’t daft. People are - because of reasoning and logic getting in the way.
I don’t personally have problems with reason and logic because I am a simpleton myself,
July 23rd, 2008 at 3:46 am
The scent could not have been planted because ‘whiff of death’ is difficult to get hold of in Portugal.
It would necessitate a taxi to a morgue or being present at the scene of a corpse (like the fair KM herself attended about 6 times) which in turn would involve Mr Morgue and his morgue-helpers which would mean big buck pay-offs to all the elves who work at the morgue who would have to pay somebody who had recently done an autopsy etc. etc. etc.
Anybody involved in any kind of planting would have been banging down the doors of tv stations by now for a whopping big back-hander.
Any slime-ball paedy would have grassed up one his/her mates by now for money.
This is why we can be absolutely certain that paedy-men or women are not involved in anyway with this case.
As I have said before - the SAS or al Qaeds would love the skills of this abductor who left without a trace, not waking two other children or a single trace.
July 23rd, 2008 at 3:50 am
Not only is whiff of death scent and cadaverine soup hard to get hold of - I am having an absolute bastard of a time getting hold of any Yves Saint Laurent Rive Gauche parfum and eau de parfum on account of it not being produced anymore.
Rochas have also stopped making Byzance parfum and eau de parfum.
I hate the eau de toilettes of both but if any Anorakians know where there is old stock I would be very grateful and I will personally grant you 3 wishes! XXXX
July 23rd, 2008 at 4:32 am
Were there any trap-doors or removable flooring - like a safe area or pipework area in flat 5A?
Just been reading the trap-door ant story.
July 23rd, 2008 at 5:01 am
Mrs.Garth…..
It must be handy having a FBI building across the road.
Handy that dogs were being trained at that very time you were there too!.
Handy that the handler admitted his best dogs are not infallable.
(I thought it was one dog each handler)
What FBI building would be positioned to let people watch what is going on inside from a balcony. Let alone let member of the public inside for smoko (or are you back in service?) You really are turning out to be a Maxwell Smart type.
You really would give Clarrie a run for his money and if you had to cross a border, then you’d win hands down.
Maria (why that name?) is being very smug too. Good on yer too. Like a victory is it not. But watch yer bum for teethmarks.
July 23rd, 2008 at 5:51 am
Look what the cadaver dogs found in the orphanage in Jersey. Sniffer dogs are trained and so are sniffer dogs at airports. They only know what scent they are looking for. Dogs have acute sense of smell too. The trap door sounds interesting!
July 23rd, 2008 at 6:03 am
DR K. looks like she is just a little preggers.
July 23rd, 2008 at 6:47 am
I thought the scent of death indicated by the dogs was explained, as she had come across a number of dead bodies the week before her holiday, during her job as a GP and had even taken cuddle cat to work with her, hence the scent on the toy.
July 23rd, 2008 at 7:15 am
Cheryl Says:
“He said the dogs are as good as their handler is - if the handler does the training of the dog. He said you can lead the dogs to what you want, they will follow your signals. He said even his best are not infallible and give false signals.”
From the wikipedia:
Clever Hans (in German, der Kluge Hans) was a horse that was claimed to have been able to perform arithmetic and other intellectual tasks.
After formal investigation in 1907, psychologist Oskar Pfungst demonstrated that the horse was not actually performing these mental tasks, but was watching the reaction of his human observers. Pfungst discovered this artifact in the research methodology, wherein the horse was responding directly to involuntary cues in the body language of the human trainer, who had the faculties to solve each problem. The trainer was entirely unaware that he was providing such cues.
In honour of Pfungst’s study, the anomalous artifact has since been referred to as the Clever Hans effect and has continued to be important knowledge in the observer-expectancy effect and later studies in animal cognition.
July 23rd, 2008 at 1:16 pm
coco Says:
July 23rd, 2008 at 3:46 am
The scent could not have been planted because ‘whiff of death’ is difficult to get hold of in Portugal.
It would necessitate a taxi to a morgue or being present at the scene of a corpse (like the fair KM herself attended about 6 times) which in turn would involve Mr Morgue and his morgue-helpers which would mean big buck pay-offs to all the elves who work at the morgue who would have to pay somebody who had recently done an autopsy etc. etc. etc.
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A doctor doesn’t go to the morgue to declare a patient deceased - when a patient dies at the hospital a doctor goes listens for a heart beat, pulse and notes the time of death. They have to touch the body to do that. Rebelo was a first class investigator and it crossed my mind when he accepted that about being around deceased patients he must have checked it out, imo!
July 23rd, 2008 at 3:36 pm
Why would Kate take that cuddle cat thing around dead bodies and then let her daughter play with it?
If there is death smell on her clothes were did it come from? Like someone said if she deals with a dead body at work, the person probably just died and would not smell. How many times would one need to wash clothes to get this smell out? Why is there this dead smell in several different places? Could Madeleine be dead due to who knows what reason, and her parents some how had her properly buried? There would have to be records and way too many people involved in that cover up. That still doesnt explain the smell in the apartment, i mean i live in a rural area and believe me you know if there is a dead animal any where around. I’m not sure how they could of stored a body. But the smell in the car? They said dirty diapers? That makes no sense to me. And a cadavar dog, does it not only smell out the scent of dead? Dont they have dogs for search and rescue and then cadavar dogs? I believe the police messed up when they did not separate all the friends and the mccanns and get statements rite away. They were allowed to compare notes. Hopefully some day they will come clean and we will know what happen to Madeleine. I feel so bad for the lil girl, who knows what she went through and where she may be now!!