Thinking Sideways: Madeleine McCann

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Thinking Sideways. I don't interest you never know stories of
things we simply don't know the answer to. Hey, guys,
welcome to another super exciting episode of Thinking Sideways of

(00:26):
the podcast. I'm Devin, joined as always by and Steve,
and we're going to tackle another unsolved mystery. Super unhappy
about it, and I'm just saying I'm apologizing in advance.
You know, there's been a whole lot of talk about
John Benet Ramsey. That's how you say that, right, John
by John Believe John Bene Ramsey lately, and I think

(00:50):
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

(01:10):
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

(01:31):
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

(01:52):
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

(02:14):
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

(02:37):
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

(03:00):
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

(03:23):
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

(03:45):
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

(04:06):
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

(04:26):
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

(04:47):
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

(05:07):
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

(05:30):
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.

(05:52):
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

(06:14):
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

(06:34):
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

(06:54):
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.

(07:19):
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

(07:40):
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

(08:00):
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

(08:21):
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,

(08:44):
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

(09:04):
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

(09:24):
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

(09:45):
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

(10:06):
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,

(10:29):
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,

(10:50):
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

(11:12):
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,

(11:33):
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

(11:55):
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

(12:15):
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

(12:37):
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

(12:59):
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.

(13:20):
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

(13:42):
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

(14:04):
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

(14:26):
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,

(14:46):
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

(15:07):
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,

(15:29):
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.

(15:51):
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

(16:13):
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

(16:34):
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

(16:56):
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

(17:17):
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

(17:40):
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

(18:02):
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.

(18:24):
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.

(18:46):
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

(19:11):
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,

(19:33):
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

(19:54):
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

(20:15):
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.

(20:41):
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

(21:02):
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,

(21:28):
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

(21:50):
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

(22:12):
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

(22:33):
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

(22:57):
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.

(23:19):
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,

(23:41):
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

(24:03):
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

(24:25):
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

(24:47):
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

(25:09):
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

(25:32):
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

(25:55):
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,

(26:19):
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

(26:41):
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.

(27:01):
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

(27:22):
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?

(27:44):
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,

(28:04):
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

(28:30):
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,

(28:51):
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

(29:15):
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

(29:37):
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

(29:59):
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,

(30:22):
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.

(30:46):
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.

(31:07):
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

(31:29):
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,

(31:51):
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,

(32:14):
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,

(32:37):
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,

(33:01):
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,

(33:23):
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

(33:43):
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

(34:05):
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,

(34:26):
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

(34:47):
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

(35:10):
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

(35:31):
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

(35:53):
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

(36:16):
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

(36:36):
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

(36:59):
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

(37:22):
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,

(37:45):
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

(38:06):
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,

(38:28):
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

(38:50):
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.

(39:13):
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,

(39:37):
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

(39:58):
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

(40:19):
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

(40:40):
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

(41:02):
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

(41:26):
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,

(41:48):
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

(42:08):
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

(42:28):
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.

(42:50):
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

(43:11):
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

(43:32):
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

(43:56):
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

(44:18):
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,

(44:40):
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,

(45:00):
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

(45:20):
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

(45:41):
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

(46:05):
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

(46:30):
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

(46:50):
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

(47:12):
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.

(47:35):
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

(48:01):
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

(48:22):
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

(48:43):
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

(49:04):
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,

(49:25):
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,

(49:47):
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

(50:09):
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

(50:29):
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,

(50:49):
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,

(51:11):
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

(51:31):
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,

(51:55):
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

(52:16):
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

(52:36):
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,

(53:00):
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.

(53:21):
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

(53:43):
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

(54:03):
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

(54:27):
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

(54:49):
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

(55:13):
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.

(55:35):
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

(55:58):
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

(56:21):
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

(56:41):
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

(57:02):
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.

(57:23):
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

(57:46):
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,

(58:06):
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,

(58:26):
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

(58:51):
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

(59:12):
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

(59:33):
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

(59:53):
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

(01:00:15):
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

(01:00:39):
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,

(01:01:02):
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.

(01:01:22):
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,

(01:01:45):
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

(01:02:08):
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

(01:02:29):
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,

(01:02:52):
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

(01:03:14):
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

(01:03:36):
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

(01:03:56):
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

(01:04:18):
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,

(01:04:40):
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

(01:05:03):
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

(01:05:25):
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

(01:05:49):
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,

(01:06:12):
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

(01:06:34):
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

(01:06:56):
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,

(01:07:16):
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

(01:07:40):
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

(01:08:02):
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

(01:08:26):
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

(01:08:48):
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

(01:09:16):
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

(01:09:39):
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

(01:10:02):
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

(01:10:23):
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

(01:10:45):
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

(01:11:06):
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

(01:11:30):
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

(01:11:52):
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

(01:12:14):
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

(01:12:37):
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

(01:13:02):
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,

(01:13:24):
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

(01:13:47):
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

(01:14:09):
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

(01:14:30):
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

(01:14:52):
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

(01:15:15):
is thinking Sideways podcast dot com. Um. I think that
there's a link to merch and to donate and to
do a survey there as well on the right hand sidebar. Uh.
You might also you probably are actually listening to us
on iTunes. If you are, and you haven't already, leave
us comment and rating. That's how people find us. Um,

(01:15:36):
you may be streaming us. I know a lot of
you are also doing that on just a bunch of
different sites. I don't know streaming stuff. I'm an Apple kid.
I'm sorry. Well, there's there's all. There's a lot of them.
Find us on Facebook, find us, friend us, like us. Actually,
you know there's speaking of streaming. There's been a bunch
of talk of which app to use stream that Facebook group, Yeah,

(01:16:01):
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

(01:16:23):
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,

(01:16:44):
having been said, I think we're gonna get out of here,
can we please? Yes, that's time, by everybody, by us.
Two