Madeleine McCann: the impossible investigation of the madeleine mccann case

the impossible investigation. part 1

it really was an impossible investigation back in may 2007, when a young child gone missing, in the area managed by the ocean club, near the village of praia da luz.

the village itself has a still visible history of people living there from at least the romans on, maybe it has some of the same attractions as then, sun sea and a nice climate.
between the romans and the little britain days, praia da luz was mostly into fishing for a living. on real fish then, they have to fish now mostly for tourists.

often falsely accused of being part of the mediterranean part of europe, it is in reality a coastal village on the portuguese south coast, that has its border to the atlantic ocean.

when mass tourism flooded the beaches of the iberian coastal area’s of spain and portugal, mostly from the sixties on, the more sun deprived people of north western europe found praia da luz too.
it is hard to find real dates to when it all started in praia da luz, most of the area we will talk about is mostly on the eastern side of the old village itself, at the moment the old village of praia da luz is now covered in tourist accommodations on all sides except the sea.

the most of the accommodations that are part of the ocean club are said to be build from the early to mid eighties of the former century.

often the ocean club is presented to be a so called resort, but it is not really a typical ressort, it is not a separate part, that has its own borders, walled off area of the rest. the building of new properties never stopped. there are mostly privately owned accommodations, it looks very much like the once very popular investment schemes of so called time-sharing. what stood for owning your own property in a tourist savvy area, that could be used by your own family, but also rented out, you could handle that on your own, or more often would use a management company to do it for you.

the ocean club looks mostly to be such a management company, it was at the time a part of a holding company called greentrust. the ocean club did all the management of communal area’s, and also rented properties to tour operators, who sold the accommodations as part of their booking arrangement to holidaymakers from abroad. the names in the paperwork are mostly mark warner and thomas cook, mark warner was mostly restricted to the uk, thomas cook was a holding that owned many other names that been active in other european countries, so i know for the netherlands, most would have booked through neckermann, what was in 2007 owned by thomas cook.

it would have been nice to have seen what the different packages and deals per different tour operator have been in 2007, but by only using the name of the holding, that made that very hard.
and yes, it is important to the lay of the land in this case. because the family of missing madeleine mccann booked through mark warner, we mostly see the paperwork only from that tour operator back in the police files.

mark warner was known to organize their own package deals, like the child care through clubs and creches, they had a lot of sporty activities, like tennis, and watersports. also specific dining possibilities.
this makes it hard to see who could have been where at a certain time. like had people who booked through other tour operators also a choice of child care arrangements, maybe even the same, but they would have used simply their own paperwork. what about the booking of restaurants, and access to the communal areas.

besides the tour operators owners also could do the renting out themselves, or used a smaller local handler for all or part of that. and they could be there themselves also.

so it looks very much that if you do not ask for it, we only give you what we have on mark warner guests in the police files. not an unheard principle, all holiday companies always like to keep their names out of anything that could reflect in a negative way.
there are guest lists of the properties under management of the ocean club in use that week, but it is always hard to know if they are complete and correct. renting out of sight of the taxman is always been popular, and letting it out to friend of family without bothering with a registration, or a last minute ‘i want to be there myself’by an owner could give flaws in who was actually there.

most of the bookings in the paperwork are registered on the name of who made the booking, only on the overall guest list you can get an idea who was there.

the registration of the ocean club mostly looks to be done because of the money that had to be paid to them.
there also was a different approach in how people got the keys to the properties, most of the mark warner guest got them handed over in the bus used for the transfer from the airport. others had to go to the main reception desk of the ocean club. owners would most likely also had simply their own keys.

what besides all that information made it very hard to investigate if there was a crime involved in the case of missing madeleine, was that all these people around had no roots in the area they stayed in. most only got out for a short holiday, just 1 week in the sun, some a bit longer, some shorter. usual days of transfer had been the saturdays and the thursdays for arrival and saturday morning for departures.

holidays, certainly the short ones are not typically known as long enough to get people in a living pattern, less living on the clock, less vigilant in the surroundings are very much expected as part of it. most would simply be strangers to each other, or seen only the sunny side of characters in their fellow holidaymakers. it is very common for people to have different forms of behaviour in different circumstances. so it is not easy to paint others as in their normal behaviour at all.

even the workers of the ocean club, who had the most contact with the guests had only been out on a short term contract, many only just got in, this weeks was a week of many more getting in, because it was a natural change from skeleton crew for the low season months, to mid season and up to high season time well into the summer later on.

and that does matter, like at a time when a young nanny commented in the media; ‘we directly started the lost child approach out, as we always do.’well that does sound pretty normal, until you find out that this specific nanny had arrived the same saturday before as the missing child itself. or the nanny who said that was honest and there are often children missing or lost, i mean to have the experience, it must have happened, or we have someone who likes to use a bucket of grout to fill herself in a nicer professional shape than she was.

so all in all there was little history between all the people around in the groups of holiday makers and most workers that had contact with them. none of them could she, well they normally did this and now they did that.

part 2.

and it was not a self contained ressort, all roads had been simply public roads, only specific areas for the pools and tennis courts, and like the tapas restaurant area had been said restricted to guests. how restricted this was at all times is still unknown. in daytime that area had a receptionist at a desk in the entry, but there was no statement of a evening/night porter in the files. the lack of knowledge of doing checks on the children makes clear there cannot be much efficient ways to control who got access.
and it is hard even to get an insight in all who visited the bar or the restaurant outside the mark warner guests. mark warner had put a slot on amount of diners to their guests, some mentioning 20, others 16 even, but no restaurant would hire full staff for an evening with only so little seats taken in at least 2 time slots.
because the paperwork lacks it could be that we miss out on many possible witnesses of that evening. and the lack of non mark warner guests who did gave statements makes it more likely even the police never got the full lists.

a police force that had one big handicap, they simply were too nice and polite to all people around. they handled them like they most likely would like to be handled themselves.
and that seems to be a portuguese trait, not a bad one overall, i like the approach very much, but i think in police work it usually works better to expect the dirt that can come with the people. maybe portuguese citizens are more imprinted to know that if you do know something, you do not wait if you have the idea the police could have a use for what you know, and make it your duty to tell them. where northern and western europeans are more used to wait until something is asked of them, and our police forces known that habit, the portuguese police forces expected it been done the portuguese way. and that did not happen.
from the portuguese citizens their statements is also to take, or you tell the trut, or you do not tell about it, they also there have the habit of knowing they had as a witness the duty to only state the truth. in most other european countries we are much less feeling the duty to be honest in the ways the laws ask from us.

part 3.

the misconception of the virgin field.

not even special to the investigation of this case, but one that always is part of it, from the outside we like to focus on one case at the time, but in reality there is almost never only one case around going on, but just many more. where there are people, there is crime happening, there are many laws and rules, that it is easy to break one.

and it is certainly not restricted to tourist accommodations to see more crime, it is true they are easy prey, all the snatching of things from bags, pockets and holiday accommodations makes it easy, they like all to flock together, so it is more efficient. they like to be more at leisure and they do bring nice stuff. it is likely the numbers are a bit overrated too, because the holiday maker is known to act in criminal intent is out there too, so when your aunty phil is accidentally seated on the old pair of sunglasses, they can change by that handling into the latest pair that is sold for at least a number in euros and pounds of 3 figures, at least when the insurance is paid in time, to become ‘stolen’. cameras and phones too. being just negligent to your stuff in keeping it safe from being stolen is a thing already, but travel insurance does know there are many cases where the story was not so true at all.

but all kinds of crime take place everywhere, they are not bound to a location per se, there simply is always criminality going on. and almost none of these have any line into the investigation in a specific case like this one.
so you can expect that not everyone is very favourable to tell what they have seen, what they have known, because telling about it, would be telling they had some bad business of their own to care about.

and even besides criminal matter, other people, who are outsiders of your case can have to think they have to protect themselves too. that can be expected from companies, but also private people often have things they do not want to be known at all.

in both groups it can have a change of heart, earlier in a case people think it would be solved anyway, if they talk or not. commitment to companies and other people can change too, so it can take a while to get their true words out.

what makes it more difficult for us, as onlookers, is that we miss out on all the informal stuff.
and that is usually so much more. also because investigations do change often from one line to the other, statements have to be seen to the line they belong too, most of the information is there already much longer in informal form, only that what you in the end really need to back up points in the investigation line when it has brought to a court will make it into an formal statement. it sometimes can take weeks or even months before the investigation reaches a point where you need to get the statement in the formal forms. or when you already know there is a risk the witness is not so easy to get back in, like living outside a jurisdiction, or of an older age, or of bad health.

the official investigation has no obligation to make formal statements, most can simply be worked from the informal ones. sometimes there could be many witnesses about the same information, and you do not need formal statement from all.

so it is often quite hard to look only at the formal statements available and use them to prove your own line of thinking. informal statements can be kept better out of sight too. Nothing is ever really thrown out in the garbage, but much of the information can be laid aside when it is about investigation of a specific line, because it has no true functional effect in that.

because it was 2007, it also can mean statements and the dates do not cover the actual time the statement was taken, depending on the habit or local uses, it could simply be a principal rule that the statement was taken by hand and later worked out into the official legal format and signed of with the date of signing it real time. date, place and signature and full out written name makes it the legal format.

witness statements are often not verbatim, but a report style, this is, because it works much easier, it would only take the short list of information needed for a line of investigation at that time. If you need more , you always can go back to the notes taken during the hearing, or ask the witness in again. It is not about the witness, but about the information that is shared.
in 2007 it was not even very common to have all hearing rooms fitted with good working recorders. You even see it back in the so called rogatory statements of the people heard in the uk in coordination with the portuguese pj. lacking words, complete parts of the interview to be done over.

so that are points it makes it impossible to investigate all and everything there is to know.
and using other sources, like media articles and even interviews on video, can be different, there is at least never that same obligation to only declare what is the truth in those. also it depends much more on the want of the reporter how near they want it to keep to the truth, or as it truly is said. translated citations are not real citations even. so it is a sound idea to always keep extra margins when you use it.

the same with statements, if they are formal or informal through the police made, the police itself cannot know if it is all fully the truth at all.
for an officer of the law it is always imprinted with keeping margins to anything, only it is hard to think, to make that always known, if it is said in public.

part 5.

back to the difficulties of this official investigation.

the most of possible witnesses would leave the area to travel back home, a completely different jurisdiction. and did that within 48 hours of when the missing became known to the portuguese police. that was a nightmare, usually only lecturers during training dare to let it happen in your provisional study case. It is the kind of stuff you truly thinks off that it never would happen, well in this case it did.

the witnesses itself could make a choice to contact you, but you are not allowed to contact them, not informally, not formal, it means all have to be conquered about from a higher up desk sitter to another desk sitter in that jurisdiction, and you usually have to make a list of questions upfront, all the rogatory statements are of this kind. you cannot react to what is told during the hearing of the witness, no adding of extra questions, that surface because of the time consuming exercise it usually is. words have to be translated all, and that means you even can loose out on how the question will be asked. there are very different approaches and styles in doing that.

the language barrier was already playing a major role in this case too, not only the english portuguese, but also other european languages.

translators are always rare material to get quickly in, in enough quantity and quality, it often does not need the highest quality for a simple witness hearing and statement, early on in a case, so often it can be certainly at the start to get anyone you can get. and in the case of a missing child, as long as there is still a good chance to find the child alive, you cannot wait for an accredited translator around. so it is often just looking around in your own network, and finding someone who has a good understanding of both languages to translate in the first instance.
certainly the group that most likely stays available after that, so that you simply still can go back and redo the hearing or ask more or different questions will do nicely with local sourced translators. the chance to save a child simply has always priority over best practices.

translating is difficult work, even if you manage both languages it still is hard. most who are using different languages do not translate them for their own use of it. It is not simply translating the exact words, because the same words can have still a different meaning by how they are said, or meant by the speaker. and using a translator means there is also that extra set of brains in between.

cultural differences certainly played a role in this case, i already touched on the politeness of the portuguese, but there was much more, family life in relation to children is very different from the portuguese habits. even how the portuguese police gone for long lunch breaks, well that is just the way it works there, their times to do common living things are simply different, that does not makes them bad, only different.

the same with justice works in silence, well that is the portuguese ways, not a bad approach, only a different approach. that the also make available a large amount of police files when a case is shelved, is something we do not know, is it bad, no it is just different.

painting it in a bad light is not asked at all, accept there are simply differences can work too.

and if it was not already worse enough the division of uk government related troops walked in and tried to take the investigation over. Not that is was a success, even the later approach of operation grange is still without an answer, must have adapted the portuguese principle that justice works in silence with a gold medal, it still gets money, but does not tell anything, almost anything, i know if you are writers of books or other lovely people they do talk, but not to the public that funds them through paid taxes.

but almost all of the send off troops did miss the experience in missing children, and the still most heard of ones, still do not understand, it was a portuguese investigation on portuguese soil. so that means your ranks and co ends at the border. it always is a problem you hardly have an idea about the capacities of the people sent in, there is no standard to work that out at all. some never understood that at all, and still do not get it, but keep on every time they get a paid appointment in the media to tell how the portuguese bungling on.

they could never really know that, because the portuguese restricted their access to the investigation material, mostly because they did not ask politely to get a look at it, but just by walking in offices.

the portuguese did agree on family liaison officers, ceops ceo’s been solid as the guys to go on abducted children, but they had not been so much of that at all, mostly a still enduring source of noise.

also they worked happily together with other liaison officers, one from the embassy they already had worked with before, there also has been an officer of scotland yard that could do both languages.
when they started to look into the possibilities the child was not missing but has died, they got advised by the uk heads to get mark harrison in, it was him who brought on the dog teams. mark harrison got little critics in the media, but the dogs are a story in itself. At least the dogs did their job well, and it is not worth to become critical of these both uk dogs and their handler, when it still is our human lack of resources to get the evidence from their alerts, that is our own handicap, not that of these both dogs.

besides police officers and other uk officers of the law, there have been multiple agencies doing the rounds, and that work is always and still is illegal when a case is still active, in portugal they have quite a strict ruling by law, that the investigation of crime is a sole responsibility of the police there.

part 6.

missing is no crime.

but the most interference was simply the result of lack of evidence at first glance about what happened in unit 5a that evening in may, or on any other moment in time around madeleine mccann.

and police forces have a dual task in most countries, the first is help and assistance to those who have a need for it. and the second is investigation of crime. the problem with missing people is, that it is not a crime. for the help task you cannot make use of the liberties, tools and competences you do have during a criminal investigation. and that hurts.

there was no damage, or even a trace of a break in at all. no signs of a struggle, nothing other disturbed. only the child was no longer there. It was only the parents who had been absent as they say when the ‘it’ happened, who kept on stating it must be an abduction of the child. they knew it directly, at least the mother stated that and still does. the dad couldn't agree to that imminent knowledge, because he started to search for a bit, around the pools in the tapas area, and under cars in front of unit 5a. so by his first actions he must have still seen room for a child walked out.

because of the age of the child, just shy of becoming 4 years, it could be named a vulnerable person, and the investigation started dually from remits of a missing child, so the searches could be started on, and a possible abduction with some question marks to it.
Not that there was much belief in abduction, but from the situation such a young child could come to harm easily, you usually become very willingly into getting the most serious crime you can talk the investigation into. and abduction is a serious enough crime to at least get some of the tools and competences in. only on a missing child you can not use anything at all. it must be seen as a white lie, to being able to get as much grip on the case as you can.
Most officers of the law would love to get the liberties that come with the protocol of a murder investigation. that is the protocol that gives the best choice in what you can do. and it certainly has the best tools in the forensic field.

there is a sound reason by law why you cannot do that as freely as you like, most tools and competences are not doing well with things such as the freedom rights of citizens. So the law asks very hard questions to overstep these boundaries, and that start with it has at least the start to be a possible crime. and there is usually a ranking in seriousness of the crimes that dictates what you can do.

the exact time of the first alarm never became clear, there are too much different times out there, and one of the rare facts in this case is that hard, is the logged time of the phone call to the local police force. Made from the ocean club desks. 22.41 hours. Their phone number is registered on the name of the holding green trust. so it must have been before that exact time log. there is a second log from the same number to the gnr at 22.52 hours.
no earlier calls that could be traced to a number somewhere in the area of the ocean club was traceable to a more fitting time at all.

police practice uses mostly the nearest full hour, or at least, the last full gone hour on the clock. Just to keep room for margins of the often off timed time devices as watches, phones and clocks. exact timings are only used if there is enough back up to make that realistic enough.

the forensic team handled the indoors of unit 5a in the manner they do when a break has most likely taken place, so that means, all possible routes of entry and exit and the most likely walking routes inside it.

before the officers of the gnr arrived, many people already had sought entry in unit 5a. the officers of the gnr restricted themselves for securing the indoors and outdoors of unit 5a, maybe because of the traffic of people they saw up and about, they must already have understood there was no chance anymore on a pristine scene inside or around unit 5a.

the officers of the gnr took the first informal statements in 5a, at least going by the statements. They very early conclude the scene did not have signs of a break in, or a crime took place, so going for dual tasking they got back into their car, the also are used as their field office to contact without nosy ears around. the searches got started, the first statements taken and shortly after contact was made with their base to contact the pj, the police force that handles serious crimes in portugal.

so besides the technicalities of the law, also a compromised scene in unit 5a was a true burden to this case from the start.

part 7.

the media did not accept the silence of the law.

the already named principle that in portugal the law works in silence, got from the early hours already in conflict with the family representation and the media who loved all words about this case, they still do.

talking to the media is pretty much restricted for all who have a role in a criminal investigation. the family of madeleine found a way around that, by giving many commentaries from more extended family members. They also made use of multiple spokespersons, some delivered to them by the uk government, but also family members.

the portuguese have been simply served that the uk media cannot handle a law working in silence, and by that putting a finger to the portuguese, if you do not tell us things, we still get them and just print them. the portuguese did give some media moments, but did not agree to make a running commentary from it.

the story that was planted in the heads of the public was simply a child stolen during a break in from a villa or hotel in a ressort. Parents who got no assistance at all from the police.

quite a falsehood. it was an unit in an apartment building, with a left open patio door, that had no signs or traces of a break in at all. a building that was situated with access to public roads and passages, on the ground floor.

children that been checked from hourly, to each half hour or even every 15 minutes.

and all in all the most compromising fact in this investigation is that 90% of the material to work from is only the result of words spoken by people. There are very little facts and circumstances that can be secured to paint the background of this case.
that is what makes this a case of nightmares.

Many things that got criticized by entitled persons, mostly in the media of course, as how different all would have happened in the uk, if it all happened there. Some comments are rightly made. I do not think the uk police would have letting the portuguese interfere in the way they themselves did, and they know it did not deserve any award, they even agree on that in their own manual from their part in the investigation named operation task.

and some time later on, they actually had a case that also started with a missing child, all on uk soil, and if you read that manual, called operation paris, they did not so much different from the portuguese, and it was in the end a member of the public that talked to an officer in his spare time that opened up this case. not their professional approach.

and of course there are mistakes made, there always mistakes in every investigation, the police always start from zero knowledge, so there is no picture on the box of the puzzle to guide them. and there is a common approach to work many possible lines next to each other, but there are always human errors, restrictions through budget or law that are not welcome too.

i myself still think that first part of the investigation has mostly solved the case, would i have chosen to do things differently, maybe i would have, but i was not there to have to make the decisions and you can usually not easily choose to not make them. time is always what will tell with hindsight what are your best ones and what your mistakes. this case is still unsolved. had many suspects, many views. and looking back on bits time after time again is still possible. not so much with the idea that it can be solved, it is more to understand the case.
and yes i am one of the former officers of law that also follows this case from day one. never been a police officer, but there are more kinds than most realize, and i rolled in pretty quickly from being just a member of the public, into becoming an officer of the law, and after that only still from time to time. and for this case just one of the armchair branches.

it is a strange world, that one of the officers of the law, you are only there because the law itself has no arms or feet, so it cannot do the job from the books, you are not a person, or a name any longer when in duty. you are just the mixer through the dough, the bus to reach a destination, and just keep it all rolling on.
there are no screens to keep your eyes from the nasty scenes. there is endless waiting until test are done, not the usual maximum of 1.5 hours or less that it takes the tv detective to solve each case. Less miracles possible, many gaps to learn to jump over, many margins to keep in mind. and still never can forget it all is about people. even when these people are more seen as information.
and it is always a bunch of people to call the team that works a case, there is no room for becoming a hero, yeah you can be the lucky finder of a tidbit of clue, but it still has to be laid in the puzzle others had already put in their effort too. and as it is not up to the police to tell who is guilty or who is not, each investigation still needs to do its exams through the courts.

Thank you Onehand for such a brilliant summation of a straightforward case that has been maliciously manipulated across mainstream and social media, to say nothing of officialdom.

As said up-page, the case of Madeleine McCann has attracted interest across the globe, until it is satisfactorily solved it remains an open investigation thus worthy of continued deliberation - it is after all about the fate of a little three year old child, it can't be allowed to fade into oblivion for the sake of lost interest. Some seem to think there is nothing left to discuss but a child is still missing so there will always be loose ends.

Welcome here, we look forward to more of your musing.