Ed The Madeleine McCann Case.

Nessie said:
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news...deleine-mccann-is-dead-say-german-authorities

"Hans Christian Wolters, a spokesman for the Braunschweig public prosecutor’s office, said on Monday it had some evidence Madeleine was dead but did not have enough for a trial.

Wolters told Sky News: “The hard evidence we don’t have, we don’t have the crucial evidence of Madeleine McCann’s body.

“We expect that she is dead, but we don’t have enough evidence that we can get a warrant for our suspect in Germany for the murder of Madeleine McCann.

“At the moment, we also don’t have enough proof for a trial at court, but we have some evidence that the suspect has done the deed. That’s why we need more information from people, especially places he has lived, so we can target these places especially and search there for Madeleine.”
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This guy walks like a duck quacks like a duck and looks like a duck.
If I were the MCanns I would mentally close the file but hope process can support common sense.
 
Samson said:
This guy walks like a duck quacks like a duck and looks like a duck.
If I were the MCanns I would mentally close the file but hope process can support common sense.
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And yet there is insufficient evidence to conclude he killed the McCann child.

If it looks, waddles and quacks like a duck, it could still be a different duck than the one you are searching for.
 
I'm honestly just shocked that all of the internet detectives might possibly have been mistaken when they claimed that the McCann's just looked guilty and were smiling oddly in certain pictures. Seemed like such a foolproof way to determine guilt.
 
Gilbert Syndrome said:
I'm honestly just shocked that all of the internet detectives might possibly have been mistaken when they claimed that the McCann's just looked guilty and were smiling oddly in certain pictures. Seemed like such a foolproof way to determine guilt.
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Ha yes. All those dunderhead "sleuths" who trumpeted that the McCann parents must have had some role in the abduction (and probable murder) of their own daughter......

I would have to add though: at this stage it's incredibly difficult for any outside observer to gauge accurately the quality and weight of evidence against this new apparent suspect. And in addition to the fact that the true nature of the evidence against him is still effectively unknown to us outsiders, there are myriad potential political and psychological factors at play unfortunately. For example, the UK police investigators may want to make a big splash about this apparent suspect in order to secure further financial funding. It also appears unclear as to what role the McCann fund has played in funding the investigation into this man, so there may be another "persuasion" factor at play there too. The German authorities will obviously want to ensure that they maximise their own investigations into this man: imagine how it would look if the UK police and media are all shouting about this man, only for the German authorities - who presently are the only ones with jurisdiction over the man - to conduct only a cursory investigation into him. And lastly, it's a fair bet that certain sections of the British media (notably, not surprisingly, the Daily Mail...) are magnifying and twisting any information coming out of Germany, Portugal and elsewhere concerning this man.

I suspect that the first chance any serious and sober observer will get to assess the case against this man will be if/when charges related to the McCann abduction/murder are brought, plus the early arraignment hearings where the prosecution outlines the evidence to the courts. But, frankly, it will only be via a properly-reported trial (if indeed the case against this man ever gets to trial) that the full nature and quality of the probative evidence will be able to be assessed by the likes of us.
 
LondonJohn said:
Ha yes. All those dunderhead "sleuths" who trumpeted that the McCann parents must have had some role in the abduction (and probable murder) of their own daughter......
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They are 100% responsible for her death.

Whether they actively participated in whatever crime was committed is irrelevant - it's illegal in every country I can think of to leave a child unattended as they did. If they hadn't left her alone, she wouldn't have been abducted.

Why have they never been prosecuted?

Do you think they might have been prosecuted if they were rich, white and pretty?

LondonJohn said:
I suspect that the first chance any serious and sober observer will get to assess the case against this man will be if/when charges related to the McCann abduction/murder are brought, plus the early arraignment hearings where the prosecution outlines the evidence to the courts.
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I'd bet a box of chocolate fish he never faces trial for it.
 
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The Atheist said:
it's illegal in every country I can think of to leave a child unattended as they did.
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Really?

UK law says parents "can be prosecuted if they leave a child unsupervised ‘in a manner likely to cause unnecessary suffering or injury to health’."

I would have thought they would have a good case for saying that leaving a child sleeping while checking on her every half hour wasn't likely to cause injury. In fact it was very unlikely to do so, even if was a possibility, and it did actually do so in this case.

I don't know about laws in other countries.
 
The Atheist said:
They are 100% responsible for her death.

Whether they actively participated in whatever crime was committed is irrelevant - it's illegal in every country I can think of to leave a child unattended as they did. If they hadn't left her alone, she wouldn't have been abducted.

Why have they never been prosecuted?

Do you think they might have been prosecuted if they were rich, white and pretty?
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I'd bet a box of chocolate fish he never faces trial for it.
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I've never held it against the parents that they left their kids alone tucked up in bed in what they thought a safe environment. Parents make mistakes. Sometimes bad ones they regret.

However, the only two suspicious activities linking this guy Brückner, I can see is that (1) he changed the registration on his Jaguar to that of his landlord in Augsberg, Germany the day after the disappearance, and (2) on returning to Germany not long after Maddie went missing he appears to have come into a large sum of money in cash - hinting at ill-gotten gain - enough to buy a disused box factory and a piece of land.

The first could just be coincidence. Lots of people did lots of things on 4 May 2007, which in retrospect, if you were suspect-centric could be considered suspicious. That man who left for Spain the next day. The couple who turned up in a restaurant in Morocco with a kid 'who looked just like Maddie'.

Who knows? His defence lawyer will argue in court Brückner signed over his car to the landlord as security, being behind with the rent, or as a retainer.

He was pinged outside the Ocean Club at 8:00pm because he often went for a walk that way having lived in the area on and off for twelve years.

The money came from drug trafficking and trading porn.

He has a list of convictions as long as your arm, some of them quite disgusting to any decent person, but crossing over the line to kidnap and murder of a young child is a big one.

There is no evidence as far as I can see that Brückner as reprehensible as he is, has done this.
 
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And after all the noise about this new suspect we get this:

Madeleine McCann: New inquiry 'could be dropped' without clues from public

Hans Christian Wolters, a prosecutor in the northern city of Braunschweig - where detectives are leading the investigation - told the BBC: "We have evidence against the accused which leads us to believe that he really killed Madeleine but this evidence is not strong enough at the moment to take him to court."

The evidence is "strong enough to say that the girl is dead and strong enough to accuse a specific individual of murder - that strong," he said.

However he added: "One has to be honest and remain open to the possibility that our investigation could end without a charge, that it ends like the others have.

"We are optimistic it will be different for us but for that we need more information."
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I cannot help being cynical about this, I suspect their alleged evidence will turn out to be little more than hearsay and rumours just as it has so many times before.
 
Vixen said:
I've never held it against the parents that they left their kids alone tucked up in bed in what they thought a safe environment. Parents make mistakes. Sometimes bad ones they regret.

However, the only two suspicious activities linking this guy Brückner, I can see is that (1) he changed the registration on his Jaguar to that of his landlord in Augsberg, Germany the day after the disappearance, and (2) on returning to Germany not long after Maddie went missing he appears to have come into a large sum of money in cash - hinting at ill-gotten gain - enough to buy a disused box factory and a piece of land.

The first could just be coincidence. Lots of people did lots of things on 4 May 2007, which in retrospect, if you were suspect-centric could be considered suspicious. That man who left for Spain the next day. The couple who turned up in a restaurant in Morocco with a kid 'who looked just like Maddie'.

Who knows? His defence lawyer will argue in court Brückner signed over his car to the landlord as security, being behind with the rent, or as a retainer.

He was pinged outside the Ocean Club at 8:00pm because he often went for a walk that way having lived in the area on and off for twelve years.

The money came from drug trafficking and trading porn.

He has a list of convictions as long as your arm, some of them quite disgusting to any decent person, but crossing over the line to kidnap and murder of a young child is a big one.

There is no evidence as far as I can see that Brückner as reprehensible as he is, has done this.
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You've misattributed a quote to me, when in fact it was written by The Atheist
 
Garrison said:
And after all the noise about this new suspect we get this:

Madeleine McCann: New inquiry 'could be dropped' without clues from public



I cannot help being cynical about this, I suspect their alleged evidence will turn out to be little more than hearsay and rumours just as it has so many times before.
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And this is the core of the problem for any decent outside observer right now. It's extremely difficult (impossible in some instances) to gauge the reliabilty, credibility or veracity of the veritable tsunami of leaks and briefings which have found their way - often via the hysterical "reporting" of the UK mid-market press - to the public.

The German authorities, or for that matter the UK or Portuguese authorities, might have strong credible evidence against this man. Or they might not. The tone of the latest reporting (which you're referencing in your post above) appears on the face of it to suggest that actually there doesn't currently exist anything like enough probative evidence to warrant charges related to the McCann case. But we (unattached observers) simply can't know anything with any clarity right now.....
 
Oh and as a quick reminder: the first given name of the child in question here is Madeleine. Not "Maddie". She was never known - by her parents or anyone else in her life - as Maddie. It's yet another invention by the likes of the Daily Mail, possibly/probably in an attempt to "cutify" her and make her name easier to remember. But it's not right.
 
The Atheist said:
They are 100% responsible for her death.

Whether they actively participated in whatever crime was committed is irrelevant - it's illegal in every country I can think of to leave a child unattended as they did. If they hadn't left her alone, she wouldn't have been abducted.

Why have they never been prosecuted?

Do you think they might have been prosecuted if they were rich, white and pretty?
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I believe that the parents acted somewhat irresponsibly in leaving their three children - twins aged 2 and a girl just short of her 4th birthday - alone in their holiday apartment while they ate and drank with their friends. I'd argue that their primary dereliction of responsibility was more to do with either a) the possibility of one of the children either becoming distressed (in a strange bed/room remember) or becoming injured in some way, or b) the possibility of an intruder (most usually an opportunist burglar) breaking in and frightening or harming the children (but not abducting or killing them, which proportionately is a hugely rare sort of event).

Why the McCanns didn't pay for one of the resort's child minders to sit in their apartment is a mystery to me - the McCanns were both relatively well off financially, and the payment required would have been of virtually no financial consequence to them. I suspect the parents have tortured themselves enough by now about that - and about the true regularity with which they checked up on the children. But I absolutely don't think that what the parents did (and didn't do) in this respect amounts to a criminal act of any sort.
 
FWIW, we were left alone on holiday (Butlins, 1970s) from time to time. IIRC, the camp did have staff who went round the chalets to check for crying children, though I'm not sure if they actually entered, or just reported on noise they heard from outside. This was not uncommon during that era and wasn't a big deal, AFAIK.
 
Rape victim asks Madeleine McCann detectives to review her case

An Irish lady who was raped in Portugal in 2004 thinks the rapist may have been the same man accused of murdering Madeleine McCann.

"The man, who she later told police spoke English with a German accent, was about 6ft 1in. He wore a mask that covered his whole head, she said, “but I could see he had blond eyebrows, and piercing blue eyes, even in the dark”.

She also recalled a distinctive mark on the top of his right thigh, “either a pull in the tights, a birthmark or a tattoo”. In descriptions of Brückner in the German media, he is said to have birthmarks on his upper right thigh.

The attacker also videoed his attack, which Bruckner is known to have done.

The Portuguese investigation seems to have been pretty shoddy.
 
Vixen said:
Someone involved in the investigation of the case recently offered the suggestion Maddie woke up during the night and wandered off to look for her parents. Gerry and Kate McCann reacted with great anger and insisted that 'someone had taken her from the apartment'.

How can they be so sure? Or is the story 'someone has taken her' to assuage their feelings of guilt at leaving their kids alone with an unlocked door or worse, to cover up the fact they know she wasn't taken, but that has become their mantra, for whatever reason.

If you recall, Kate raised the alarm by running back to her party and shouting, 'They've taken her, they've taken her'.
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Ths has always been an aspect of the case that I have struggled with. I know, from my own two sproglets that in such a situation, I and the wife at the time would alternate. Sometimes a handy volunteer aunt/uncle would substitute in. It would have been unthinkable to leave them without adult supervision. And the favour was returned. I stood watch over various nieces and nephews in my turn. Boring as hell, while you know everyone else is partying somewhere, but that is what you do as a parent.

But these pair were not Joe Pleb like me, they were both doctors. If anyone should have known better, they should have.
 
Matthew Best said:
Really?

UK law says parents "can be prosecuted if they leave a child unsupervised ‘in a manner likely to cause unnecessary suffering or injury to health’."

I would have thought they would have a good case for saying that leaving a child sleeping while checking on her every half hour wasn't likely to cause injury. In fact it was very unlikely to do so, even if was a possibility, and it did actually do so in this case.

I don't know about laws in other countries.
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I'm amazed to find UK doesn't. NZ, USA & plenty of other countries do, including Portugal, apparently.
 
abaddon said:
Ah, that was before I signed up as a member here, but I had been a lurker. I was trying to figure out why it rang a bell. How the hell did you recall that?
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Because I had press credentials at TAM7, where she did her MDC test and I had some personal interactions with her subsequent to that.
 
Well the facts of that case are completely different to this one. That child was left alone for 14 hours, while McCann was left with her siblings for 30 minutes.

What does the law in Portugal actually say?
 
Matthew Best said:
I suspect that the main evidence they have at the moment is his purported "confession" to a friend.
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He also allegedly said to a barmaid a few years ago 'the child is dead and that is a good thing' and that 'a corpse can disappear quickly and pigs eat human flesh'.

I can understand why the German authorities believe she is dead. I don't understand how they think they know how she died without a body.
 
Gary Burton said:
He also allegedly said to a barmaid a few years ago 'the child is dead and that is a good thing' and that 'a corpse can disappear quickly and pigs eat human flesh'.

I can understand why the German authorities believe she is dead. I don't understand how they think they know how she died without a body.
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LOL That line comes from a well-known film. Millions of people around the world have expressed the view sitting in bars and pubs that, 'Maddie is dead and the body will never be found because...' [insert drunken ramblings].
 
abaddon said:
Ths has always been an aspect of the case that I have struggled with. I know, from my own two sproglets that in such a situation, I and the wife at the time would alternate. Sometimes a handy volunteer aunt/uncle would substitute in. It would have been unthinkable to leave them without adult supervision. And the favour was returned. I stood watch over various nieces and nephews in my turn. Boring as hell, while you know everyone else is partying somewhere, but that is what you do as a parent.

But these pair were not Joe Pleb like me, they were both doctors. If anyone should have known better, they should have.
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Whilst I get that a parent can make a mistake, what I find troubling is the fact Madeleine had complained the previous night, 'Why didn't you came when I was crying', according to Kate, and the owner of the apartment immediately above (Pamela Fenn IIRC) declared that on the night of the second of May 2007, she had heard a young child - not a baby - crying for a solid 1.25 hours and she was beginning to get quite worried, when the parents appear to have arrived back and the crying stopped. This witness as per her written police statement at the time claimed the child in question also shouted, 'Daddy! Daddy!'.

This makes me wonder if there was an intruder on the 2nd May casing the joint - as Brückner is known - or believed - to have done around the area and Maddie, on hearing the noise, as she was a known light sleeper became frightened and that is why she called out. It would explain her admonition to Kate the next day.
 
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Gary Burton said:
He also allegedly said to a barmaid a few years ago 'the child is dead and that is a good thing' and that 'a corpse can disappear quickly and pigs eat human flesh'.

I can understand why the German authorities believe she is dead. I don't understand how they think they know how she died without a body.
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Welcome.

You have entered a tough, uncompromising thread. Good luck.
 
Vixen said:
Someone didn't include the quote marks so blame whoever didn't include them. Clue: it was not me, for the record and right of reply.
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I see that the post in question has been retrospectively edited to fix the broken quote tag. Nevertheless, a little checking on your part would have been advisible perhaps....
 
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Vixen said:
Whilst I get that a parent can make a mistake, what I find troubling is the fact Madeleine had complained the previous night, 'Why didn't you came when I was crying', according to Kate, and the owner of the apartment immediately above (Pamela Fenn IIRC) declared that on the night of the second of May 2007, she had heard a young child - not a baby - crying for a solid 1.25 hours and she was beginning to get quite worried, when the parents appear to have arrived back and the crying stopped. This witness as per her written police statement at the time claimed the child in question also shouted, 'Daddy! Daddy!'.

This makes me wonder if there was an intruder on the 2nd May casing the joint - as Brückner is known - or believed - to have done around the area and Maddie, on hearing the noise, as she was a known light sleeper became frightened and that is why she called out. It would explain her admonition to Kate the next day.
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"is known - or believed - to have done"...... :rolleyes: (I think you mean: "is believed to have done")

I am not sure what reliable evidence exists to corroborate the McCann's claims around how regularly they (or others in their group) checked in on the children in the apartment. But in the event that there is no such evidence, I wouldn't be at all surprised if the McCanns and their friends were being somewhat "economical with the actualité" in this respect.

(And once again: the child's name is/was Madeleine. Not Maddie.)
 
other disappearances

"Police have also eyed him over three other missing children, according to the Sun — including a 6-year-old boy who in 1996 went missing in Portugal, where Madeleine had been on vacation when she disappeared.

Brückner is also a suspect in the disappearances of 16-year-old Carola Titze, who went missing while on vacation in Belgium in 1996, and Inga Gehricke, 5, who vanished in Germany in 2015... "New York Post

I have not followed this case closely; perhaps this was already well known.
EDT
The Telegraph reported on 6 June that, "Police in Germany and Belgium are yet to comment on whether Carola's death is being linked to the Madeleine investigation."
 
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Chris_Halkides said:
"Police have also eyed him over three other missing children, according to the Sun — including a 6-year-old boy who in 1996 went missing in Portugal, where Madeleine had been on vacation when she disappeared.

Brückner is also a suspect in the disappearances of 16-year-old Carola Titze, who went missing while on vacation in Belgium in 1996, and Inga Gehricke, 5, who vanished in Germany in 2015... "New York Post

I have not followed this case closely; perhaps this was already well known.
EDT
The Telegraph reported on 6 June that, "Police in Germany and Belgium are yet to comment on whether Carola's death is being linked to the Madeleine investigation."
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Even if he was linked to half the child kidnappings in Germany and Portugal, it doesn't prove he kidnapped and murdered Maddie.
 
LondonJohn said:
"is known - or believed - to have done"...... :rolleyes: (I think you mean: "is believed to have done")

I am not sure what reliable evidence exists to corroborate the McCann's claims around how regularly they (or others in their group) checked in on the children in the apartment. But in the event that there is no such evidence, I wouldn't be at all surprised if the McCanns and their friends were being somewhat "economical with the actualité" in this respect.

(And once again: the child's name is/was Madeleine. Not Maddie.)
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The hotel staff at the time didn't recall the parents checking in on the kids. In his first statement, Gerry McCann (Gerald to you) claimed he and Kate took it turns to check the kids every half hour. In his first statement he claims he went at 8:30 but subsequently changed it to 9:00ish and bumped into 'Jez' whom had played tennis with (Jeremy to you).

In his first statement Gerry claims the door was locked and he used a key to unlock it. In his subsequent statement he claims he went in via an unlocked sliding door, which is how his colleague Matthew (iirc) also looked in on the kids but not closely just that there was no noise. When Kate went there at 9:30 she says that's when she discovered Madeleine missing. In other words the 9:15 professed time that Maddie disappeared is one set by Gerry McCann.
 
Vixen said:
The hotel staff at the time didn't recall the parents checking in on the kids. In his first statement, Gerry McCann (Gerald to you) claimed he and Kate took it turns to check the kids every half hour. In his first statement he claims he went at 8:30 but subsequently changed it to 9:00ish and bumped into 'Jez' whom had played tennis with (Jeremy to you).

In his first statement Gerry claims the door was locked and he used a key to unlock it. In his subsequent statement he claims he went in via an unlocked sliding door, which is how his colleague Matthew (iirc) also looked in on the kids but not closely just that there was no noise. When Kate went there at 9:30 she says that's when she discovered Madeleine missing. In other words the 9:15 professed time that Maddie disappeared is one set by Gerry McCann.
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Well as I said, in the absence of reliable corroborating evidence from either a disinterested party (eg a member of the club's staff) or CCTV, I don't think it's unfair or improper to open the possibility that in fact the checks on the three children in the McCanns' apartment were spaced significantly further apart than the McCanns' and friends' testimonies.


Some bickering over the child's name has been sent to AAH. The point has been made, and you cannot enforce what name another member chooses to use; please do not continue with this derail from the topic.
Replying to this modbox in thread will be off topic  Posted By: zooterkin
 
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Matthew Best said:
Really?

UK law says parents "can be prosecuted if they leave a child unsupervised ‘in a manner likely to cause unnecessary suffering or injury to health’."

I would have thought they would have a good case for saying that leaving a child sleeping while checking on her every half hour wasn't likely to cause injury. In fact it was very unlikely to do so, even if was a possibility, and it did actually do so in this case.

I don't know about laws in other countries.
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From your link:

.....

  • children under 12 are rarely mature enough to be left alone for a long period of time
  • children under 16 should not be left alone overnight
  • babies, toddlers and very young children should never be left alone

...
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