Speaker 1: Thinking Sideways. I don't interest you never know stories of
Speaker 1: things we simply don't know the answer to. Hey, guys,
Speaker 1: welcome to another super exciting episode of Thinking Sideways of
Speaker 1: the podcast. I'm Devin, joined as always by and Steve,
Speaker 1: and we're going to tackle another unsolved mystery. Super unhappy
Speaker 1: about it, and I'm just saying I'm apologizing in advance.
Speaker 1: You know, there's been a whole lot of talk about
Speaker 1: John Benet Ramsey. That's how you say that, right, John
Speaker 1: by John Believe John Bene Ramsey lately, and I think
Speaker 1: it's mostly because of that a m a that happened. Um.
Speaker 1: But we're not ready to tackle that one, if ever.
Speaker 1: I mean probably we will at some point, but it's huge,
Speaker 1: and we want to get some experts and do really
Speaker 1: do it right more more all lot Jeff Davis eight
Speaker 1: sort of situation. But instead I will bring you something
Speaker 1: equally tragic that is, honestly, I think a little more
Speaker 1: interesting than the John bon A Ramsey mystery. It is
Speaker 1: a strange little tale. It's strange, it's really strange. We're
Speaker 1: going to talk about the disappearance of Madeline McCann and
Speaker 1: a few points of order before I start one is
Speaker 1: that this is one of those stories that Steve hates
Speaker 1: that deals with missing little kids. So if that's not
Speaker 1: your cup of tea, it's not in particularly gory or
Speaker 1: anything like that. It's just a missing kid. But if
Speaker 1: that's not your cup of tea, this is one to skip.
Speaker 1: So I can skip this. No, you cannot. Come on,
Speaker 1: I don't want to help. You gotta this is part
Speaker 1: of the deal, Steve. We do the ones I don't
Speaker 1: want to do. Fine, I'll help, but I'm not gonna
Speaker 1: like it. Yeah, I know you won't. Okay, we've got
Speaker 1: to solve this one, guys. Also, this was a recommendation
Speaker 1: from Yohan right. Johan right, Yeah, I think last year.
Speaker 1: Late last year. I called DIBs on it. I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: it's taking me Okay, guys ready sure, Sadly Steve is
Speaker 1: not no cool. Sorry. Madeline McCann was born in May
Speaker 1: of two thousand three to Kate and Jerry McCann. They
Speaker 1: were both physicians, uh and they also had a set
Speaker 1: of twins that were younger than Madeline. She was born
Speaker 1: in oh Lester. The good news is we've been getting
Speaker 1: a lot of feedback about mispronouncing stuff and sorry, it's
Speaker 1: got to happen a lot in this episode. But also,
Speaker 1: let's be fair, it's just the way we pronounce it
Speaker 1: in America. Sometimes some of this stuff is just the
Speaker 1: way we say it here. Sorry. Anyways, So they lived
Speaker 1: in Oh my gosh, how did we say it, Lester?
Speaker 1: It looks like it's should be Leicester, but think it's
Speaker 1: pronounced last year, okay. And then in May and two
Speaker 1: thousand and seven, the McCanns went on holiday holiday to
Speaker 1: Portugal with a group of family friends and their children
Speaker 1: as well. The adults of this group eventually became became
Speaker 1: to be referred as the Top of seven. And I
Speaker 1: think they were the Top of seven. We're not didn't
Speaker 1: include the Meccans, right did I thought? I thought there
Speaker 1: were nine people in the group, and then the Top
Speaker 1: of seven with the seven friends of the Meccans. You're right.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, you're right. Okay. I'm the storyteller here and
Speaker 1: I can't remember who. Sorry. Point of order. So May
Speaker 1: three was the last day of the trip. We're just
Speaker 1: going to delve right into the story. It's a long one.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry. That's gonna be one of those ones you
Speaker 1: have to listen to me talk for a while. Damn
Speaker 1: the way you drone off. I know. I'm sorry, It's
Speaker 1: just like want want, walt walt wa. So. May three
Speaker 1: was the last day of this trip and the group
Speaker 1: was staying at a resort called something that Joe is
Speaker 1: going to have to pronounce for me. Well, I'm probably
Speaker 1: gonna mangle it, but I think it's prior to lose.
Speaker 1: That sounds right. Yeah. There were eight kids that were
Speaker 1: part of the group, and they spent much of their
Speaker 1: day at the kids club in this resort. That morning,
Speaker 1: while the top of seven took a walk, the kids
Speaker 1: played in the kids club, and then after lunch, the
Speaker 1: families headed to the pool, where the very last known
Speaker 1: picture of Madeleine was taken. After the pool, the kids
Speaker 1: went back to the kids club until about six pm.
Speaker 1: I'm guessing that was probably check out, come time, come
Speaker 1: get your kids. You know, I don't have that sense.
Speaker 1: I have the sense that kids could stay as long
Speaker 1: as they wanted, just because of some stuff that happens
Speaker 1: a little bit later in But it's it resorts like that,
Speaker 1: typically you could drop your kids off if you're going
Speaker 1: to have dinner, say, which would be like a safe
Speaker 1: alternative to some of the things that happened in this story. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I kind of kind of wonder why they didn't use
Speaker 1: the little daycare center. Yeah, that's my sense. I could
Speaker 1: be wrong. I know that when I worked on the
Speaker 1: cruise ship we had that, and I think a lot
Speaker 1: of resorts offer that sort of thing. It would make
Speaker 1: sense kind of almost seven care for kids, but almost
Speaker 1: if you want to party in that a way though, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you may as well drop your kids off. Anyways. Jerry,
Speaker 1: Gary Jerry. Jerry had a tennis lesson at six, So
Speaker 1: Kate picked up the kids and hung out with them
Speaker 1: for a little while and you know, fed them and
Speaker 1: bathe them and all that stuff. And then at about
Speaker 1: seven she put she and Jerry both Gary Jerry Jerry.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, this is like Parks and wreck up
Speaker 1: and here I'm so sorry Jerry name sorry Jerry, and Kate.
Speaker 1: The mom put their three kids to bed in the
Speaker 1: room that the kids were sleeping in. It wasn't the
Speaker 1: room they were all sleeping in. It was the parents
Speaker 1: had the one room, and then there was an apartment.
Speaker 1: It was an apartment, yeah, and the kids had one room.
Speaker 1: They were all sharing the two little ones were in
Speaker 1: a crib set up next to a single bed that
Speaker 1: Madeline was staying in. Madeleine was wearing pink or pj's
Speaker 1: and cuddling with her pink blanket and pink cuddle cat.
Speaker 1: She liked pink what girl. By the way, Okay, you know,
Speaker 1: I spent so long since I've read Winnie the Pooh,
Speaker 1: I mean, I've forgotten about you are. How we're that's
Speaker 1: a different mystery, been a long time, Yeah, because nothing
Speaker 1: ever bad happens to upper middle class white folks that
Speaker 1: are out of resort. The top of seven and the
Speaker 1: Meccans followed their typical evening routine, which was leaving their
Speaker 1: kids in an unlocked room and having dinner. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: top Us, which is where seven comes from. Retrospect, it
Speaker 1: does seem like about maybe not a great idea. They
Speaker 1: were about a hundred and sixty feet as the crow
Speaker 1: flies away from the apartment the Meccans were staying in
Speaker 1: is five A, which apparently, according to Kate, was about
Speaker 1: a thirty or forty five second walk. I'm having a
Speaker 1: really hard time figuring out how this place was set up.
Speaker 1: But yeah, that's one of the things that's surprised at
Speaker 1: is that for all the stuff that's been written on
Speaker 1: the internet about this, nobody, nobody anywhere has a layout
Speaker 1: of the resort. Yeah, I've never I did a lot
Speaker 1: of looking for that, and I couldn't find a one.
Speaker 1: I've got a guess that it's in. It's one of
Speaker 1: those places where the restaurants and everything are centrally located
Speaker 1: and all the apartments are splayed around them in kind
Speaker 1: of an arc. Yeah, although everybody relatively straight access the description.
Speaker 1: The description that I heard was that they were on
Speaker 1: the other side of the pool, So I don't totally
Speaker 1: know how this whole thing was set up. But they
Speaker 1: had reserved this specific table that was close to their
Speaker 1: rooms for PM for the entire time that they were
Speaker 1: on holiday. And the way that Kate reserved this table
Speaker 1: again because nothing bad ever happens to up her white
Speaker 1: middle people, was she wrote a note and just left
Speaker 1: it on the front desk where like anybody could have
Speaker 1: seen it. And this is this is indicative of a
Speaker 1: bunch of things that seem innocuous to anybody who's doing
Speaker 1: them until something like this happened that fair and you
Speaker 1: start all of these silly little things you think nothing
Speaker 1: of start cross. He's wrote a little red flags that
Speaker 1: you know you kind of you can look back on
Speaker 1: and say, well, I was dumb. Why would you do
Speaker 1: that that you don't even think about in the moment.
Speaker 1: But she said in the note, she said, what I
Speaker 1: want this table so I can watch my kids in
Speaker 1: apartment five Sea. She said, we're part of a group
Speaker 1: that are all in this block of apartments. We've got
Speaker 1: kids with us that will be in bed. Uh, so
Speaker 1: we want to reserve this table that's the closest one
Speaker 1: for eight thirty every night for the time that we're here.
Speaker 1: And I remember something about she had written some of this,
Speaker 1: or at least the request. I want to say it
Speaker 1: was in a guest book. Is this what? Yeah? So
Speaker 1: it wasn't just a posed it note. It was in
Speaker 1: the book that anybody walking by could have read, okay,
Speaker 1: just making sure yea. So probably another guest you signed
Speaker 1: in right after them. Always possible. As mentioned, they did
Speaker 1: this every night. This was what they did every night.
Speaker 1: So it was a strong pattern, and had somebody been
Speaker 1: planning anything nefarious, it would have been a fairly easy
Speaker 1: thing to plan because they knew exactly what was going
Speaker 1: to happen at eight thirty every night. Oh and also
Speaker 1: as a fun side note, because the patio was closest
Speaker 1: to the restaurant. They yeah, they left the patio door
Speaker 1: unlocked because it only locked from the inside. They left,
Speaker 1: they left it closed, but they left it unlocked instead of,
Speaker 1: you know, adding the extra whatever ten seconds to walk
Speaker 1: around to the front and use your key and at
Speaker 1: least kind of safely have your kids in a locked
Speaker 1: apartment seems like a better idea. It seems like a
Speaker 1: better idea. Again, It's one of those little red flags,
Speaker 1: right that you would think I would think, as a
Speaker 1: not parent who doesn't have to deal with kids all
Speaker 1: the time, I would think I would absolutely lock them
Speaker 1: in that apartment too. But I can see this. I
Speaker 1: can see my parents doing something like this in the
Speaker 1: late seventies early eighties, when people didn't have bad things
Speaker 1: happen all the time that they knew about. Not to
Speaker 1: say that bad things didn't happen, but when everybody is
Speaker 1: so security conscious, it shocks me. And the only thing
Speaker 1: that I can think that prompted this is a bit
Speaker 1: of what you were alluding to, which is they come
Speaker 1: from a very comfortable, safe place so those simple security
Speaker 1: steps just don't seem necessary. Well, I mean, it's the
Speaker 1: only way I can rationalize this. And you're you're in
Speaker 1: a fancy resort too, you have you know, people will
Speaker 1: typically expect things to be safer conditions there, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: but it's not. I the sense that I have is
Speaker 1: that the pattio opens out into a street at least
Speaker 1: an alleyway. It's not oh so that the patio. I
Speaker 1: thought the patio doors were visible from the topas restaurant.
Speaker 1: They weren't. They were, they were. But just because it's visible,
Speaker 1: it doesn't mean you're staring at it the whole time. No,
Speaker 1: not at all. But and it's a row of patio doors,
Speaker 1: so you know, the person that's in the apartment next
Speaker 1: to you maybe coming and going out of the patio doors,
Speaker 1: and you don't you can't necessarily tell the difference. I
Speaker 1: suppose it's dark and all that. Yeah, how many times
Speaker 1: have you been out at a restaurant on a patio
Speaker 1: in the evening and had a conversation and dinner with
Speaker 1: people and never noticed the jillion people that walked by
Speaker 1: across the street. You're focused in front of you, not
Speaker 1: really far away, not to say that they're bad parents
Speaker 1: and they weren't watching. But you can't watch that continually.
Speaker 1: Would you would think they'd be like kind of keeping
Speaker 1: an eye on it, though, you would you think that
Speaker 1: I would think that, wouldn't you. To their credit, the
Speaker 1: parents did take shifts on checking on the kids, you know,
Speaker 1: because all of the parents wasn't just Maddie's Madeline's parents.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna call her Maddie. Um, I've seen it a
Speaker 1: couple of times. It's not always there, but I am
Speaker 1: going to call her Maddie, just so you SAME's the
Speaker 1: same thing. I'm not adding a new character. Don't worry.
Speaker 1: Maddie's parents weren't the only ones who left a kid unattended.
Speaker 1: As I said, They were eight kids in total, and
Speaker 1: they were all left in their rooms and I think
Speaker 1: they all, as far as I can understand, had unlocked
Speaker 1: patio doors and they were all doing this. They were
Speaker 1: all kind of doing this. Well, there's five other children
Speaker 1: besides the McCanns, because they had the twins and then
Speaker 1: mat Yeah, Jerry carried out the first check at nine
Speaker 1: oh five pm, which was, you know, about a half
Speaker 1: hour after they left him alone. He said that he
Speaker 1: thought that he had left the door to the kid's
Speaker 1: room only slightly open, at maybe a five or ten
Speaker 1: degrees openness angle. Yeah, but when he checked on them,
Speaker 1: the door was wide open. He pulled it back to
Speaker 1: be almost entirely shut after, you know, glancing in on them,
Speaker 1: and then returned to dinner. And then at nine fifteen,
Speaker 1: another one of the top of seven, Jane Tanner, went
Speaker 1: to check on her kids. She said that she passed
Speaker 1: Jerry on the way back to check on her kids,
Speaker 1: you know, like I said, it was that alleyway street
Speaker 1: way they would have both had to have walked on
Speaker 1: to get to their apartments. And he said that he
Speaker 1: had stopped to chat with another vacationer on his way back.
Speaker 1: And the oddity here is that neither Jerry nor the
Speaker 1: other man saw Jane Tanner. And the street was apparently
Speaker 1: pretty narrow. It sounds more like it's an alley than
Speaker 1: a street to me. Yeah, that's kind of my sense.
Speaker 1: It's like an alley way. It's not. Yeah, it's an
Speaker 1: alleyway basically, but it's a fair you know, it's it's
Speaker 1: a street that people take to walk and things like that.
Speaker 1: It's not like a weird dead end alleyway, right, it's
Speaker 1: not full of dumpsters and rats and all of that.
Speaker 1: It's just more of a walkway than it is at anyway.
Speaker 1: So that's that's a little odd that they would have
Speaker 1: not seen her, and so yeah, it's unlikely that she
Speaker 1: could have just passed them without them noticing or anything
Speaker 1: like that. Anyways, Tanner said that she saw a man
Speaker 1: with the child and his arms crossed the street just
Speaker 1: ahead of her. Will get more on that later, But
Speaker 1: she checked in with her kids and then returned to
Speaker 1: dinner at Kate had intended to check on her kids,
Speaker 1: but one of the other or one of the top
Speaker 1: of seven, not other top of seven, said that he
Speaker 1: was going to go check on his kids, so he'd
Speaker 1: look on in on there's two because hey, the door's unlocked,
Speaker 1: so he can just peek in, no problem. It's important
Speaker 1: to note that these these checks weren't necessarily to make
Speaker 1: sure that they were the kind of checks you do
Speaker 1: when you've got kids who maybe wake up in the
Speaker 1: middle of the night and start playing when they're not
Speaker 1: supposed to, not the kind of checks that you do
Speaker 1: when you've left your apartment un locked in a weird
Speaker 1: place and you're paranoid about your kids getting stolen. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: and I I've I got to say initially, that's what
Speaker 1: I took from when Jerry said, well, I swear I
Speaker 1: shut that door and then it was open. That was
Speaker 1: my initial reaction, is that Madeline must have gotten up
Speaker 1: to use the bathroom. Yeah, I mean, not to not
Speaker 1: to pull us off track, but no, know, I mean
Speaker 1: I think that's that's a very easy thing, and we
Speaker 1: should definitely keep that in mind. That you've got a
Speaker 1: kid who's probably pretty potty trained at that point, you know,
Speaker 1: may wake up in the middle of the night, have
Speaker 1: to go to the bathrooms and not going to close
Speaker 1: the door all the way, you know, all of that
Speaker 1: sort of stuff. It's unlikely that she would have woken
Speaker 1: up half an hour after just half an hour after
Speaker 1: they had put her down, but I guess she had
Speaker 1: been asleep for about an hour and a half at
Speaker 1: that point, so she may have. You know, it's it's
Speaker 1: we do need to keep that in absolutely. But as
Speaker 1: I said this, it's important to note that this is
Speaker 1: the kind of check you do to make sure your
Speaker 1: kid isn't like up and playing. Matthew Oldfield was the
Speaker 1: one who he was one of the top of seven.
Speaker 1: He was the one who did this check of Yeah,
Speaker 1: and he said that he didn't hear any noises coming
Speaker 1: from the room, but the door was once again wide open,
Speaker 1: so he pulled it shut without looking in the room, right,
Speaker 1: because he didn't hear a kid playing or you know,
Speaker 1: making noises or anything in distress. So he just thought
Speaker 1: another find they're sleeping. I'm not going to bother to him.
Speaker 1: Actually look, well, Jerry, Jerry went earlier and pulled the
Speaker 1: door shut. Did he actually look to see if he
Speaker 1: said that he saw the kids. Yeah, he said that
Speaker 1: he looked in that Maddie was in her bed at
Speaker 1: that time, but that's what he said. Yeah, in fairness.
Speaker 1: At about ten, Kate did actually do another check. She
Speaker 1: entered through the patio doors and noticed that the door
Speaker 1: to the kid's room was once again wide open, and
Speaker 1: when she attempted to close it, uh, it slams shot
Speaker 1: on her, like there was a draft in the room.
Speaker 1: Maybe A note again to mention that it seems unlikely
Speaker 1: had the door not slammed, Kate would have actually looked
Speaker 1: in the room. Look in the room. Well, I don't
Speaker 1: think she was planning on it. I think it was
Speaker 1: kind of like when Jerry did his, or I guess
Speaker 1: it was when Matthew did his. She just went to
Speaker 1: close the door. She didn't seem to actually look in
Speaker 1: the room. That's kind of an explicable Okay, why why
Speaker 1: in the hell are you going to look at in
Speaker 1: your apartment at your kids? If all you're doing is
Speaker 1: to go in and stand and go and listen here anything,
Speaker 1: wouldn't you just peek in see if they're there, you know,
Speaker 1: and then wander back, Because isn't that why you're going
Speaker 1: to check on them? You want to make sure they're
Speaker 1: not getting into trouble, not to make sure that they're there.
Speaker 1: Because I don't kids dnapped, I haven't ever dealt with
Speaker 1: young children, But to me, it would seem logical. If
Speaker 1: I'm going to go make sure they're up, I'm just
Speaker 1: going to look in and make sure that somebody's not
Speaker 1: just sitting there fidgeting and is actually asleep. So yes,
Speaker 1: I agree. Every time I've ever taken care of kids
Speaker 1: overnight or otherwise, if they're supposed to be sleeping, I
Speaker 1: will actually put eyes on them. Yeah, but also doors
Speaker 1: slamming on their own like that um doesn't that race
Speaker 1: suspicions right there? Well, but that's why, right, That's what
Speaker 1: I'm saying is that I'm just making the note that
Speaker 1: she saw the doors open and she thought, oh, I
Speaker 1: will close that door, and she went to close it
Speaker 1: and it slammed, so she opened it up and realized
Speaker 1: that Maddie wasn't there anymore. Ok. Yeah, after it slammed
Speaker 1: shut on her. I was just mentioning that it seems
Speaker 1: that her intention was simply to close the door and
Speaker 1: had not slammed. I don't know that she would have
Speaker 1: opened it not to you know, be liabel ng anybody,
Speaker 1: but it doesn't seem like she would have. No It
Speaker 1: seems like her intention was to make sure there was
Speaker 1: no noise and then get back to dinner. On the
Speaker 1: bed was Maddie's cuddle cat and blanket, but not not
Speaker 1: Maddie and Kate ran back to the restaurants screaming and
Speaker 1: the window was open. Correct, the window was open. I
Speaker 1: don't know if it was a security shutter, but it
Speaker 1: was a shutter. The pictures I've seen, because I've seen
Speaker 1: pictures of the shutters, they look like they're just shutters.
Speaker 1: They don't look like they're security measure of any kind. Okay,
Speaker 1: So Kate ran back to the restaurants, screaming they've taken her.
Speaker 1: Of note right, she's screaming they've taken her. Whoever they are. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then at ten ten, Old Field Matthew, the guy
Speaker 1: who did the check right before Maddie was taken or
Speaker 1: maybe she was taken, who knows, was sent to reception
Speaker 1: to have the resort called the police, and at ten
Speaker 1: thirty the resort activated it's quote missing child search protocol.
Speaker 1: The staff above of about sixty people looked for Maddie
Speaker 1: until about four thirty am, and apparently at first everybody
Speaker 1: kind of thought that Maddie had just woken up and
Speaker 1: wandered off. That's understand A good reason I lock your
Speaker 1: kids in the apartment. Yeah, it is understandable. However it
Speaker 1: created some problems. Yeah, to National Guard officers showed up
Speaker 1: at eleven ten pm. They searched briefly, but soon decided, oh, hey,
Speaker 1: actually we need the criminal police here. So the criminal
Speaker 1: police were alerted and they arrived at about midnight. This
Speaker 1: is the National Guard. These guys are Portugal Portuguese National Guards.
Speaker 1: And then at about two am, two patrol dogs showed up,
Speaker 1: and then not until eight am did four search and
Speaker 1: rescue dogs show up. These are the actual sensitive Yes,
Speaker 1: the patrol dogs, I think are are just kind of
Speaker 1: to smell. I don't have a good sense on what
Speaker 1: they're good. They're just canine units. Yeah, But then the
Speaker 1: search and rescue dogs. The search and rescue dogs would
Speaker 1: have been meant to smell, but you know, not until
Speaker 1: eight am. And this is where we encounter the biggest
Speaker 1: problem of this case really is that everyone other than
Speaker 1: the top of seven and the Meccans seemed to have
Speaker 1: thought that Maddie just woke up, woke up, and wandered off,
Speaker 1: so the area wasn't treated like a crime scene at all.
Speaker 1: In fact, about twenty people accessed the room that Maddie
Speaker 1: had been taken from before it was closed off, thus
Speaker 1: probably ruining almost all of the evidence that would have existed.
Speaker 1: The room was never actually secured, and though it laid
Speaker 1: empty for about a month after the abduction, the resort
Speaker 1: rented the room out before forensic evidence was taken. In August,
Speaker 1: this room was rented out before forensic evidence was taken.
Speaker 1: Let me let me ask a question that I think
Speaker 1: you might have answered. But how long was it before
Speaker 1: the cops decided this was something other than a wandered
Speaker 1: off kid. I think it was at two a m.
Speaker 1: When the dogs arrived, and it took them over a
Speaker 1: month to it there forensic guys in there. Yeah, they
Speaker 1: actually had some fingerprints taken the day after. But you
Speaker 1: can see the picture of you should look it up online. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's stomps. People were trooping through there like oh no,
Speaker 1: the guy who was taking fingerprints wasn't wearing gloves. He
Speaker 1: was dusting for prints without gloves on. This is okay.
Speaker 1: That wasn't a phrase that was gonna use. It's it's
Speaker 1: a crap show, is what it is. Yeah, oh wait,
Speaker 1: oh wait, okay, so it gets better. Sure, the exterior
Speaker 1: of the building wasn't cordoned off at all. Right, so
Speaker 1: there was a crowd that showed up that was walking
Speaker 1: all over the area that the abductor, if there was
Speaker 1: an abductor, would have taken, like from the window. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so they all stomped all over that. Also, it wasn't
Speaker 1: until ten am that police put up roadblocks. And let's
Speaker 1: be fair, right, if you've taken a child and you're
Speaker 1: about to beat feed out of town. It's not going
Speaker 1: to take a twelve hours. You're gonna do it immediately,
Speaker 1: So putting roadblocks up twelve hours after a kid has
Speaker 1: gone missing not so helpful. Furthermore, it took Interpoll five
Speaker 1: days to issue a global missing person's alert. Well that's awesome.
Speaker 1: Five days. You can fly anywhere in the world in
Speaker 1: five days, easily, in a day, in a day, in
Speaker 1: twelve hours, not really in twelve hours, but you know
Speaker 1: that gives you ample time to cover your tracks, and
Speaker 1: cover your tracks and cover your tracks. You know. You
Speaker 1: get on a plane, you get on another plane, you
Speaker 1: take a car or whatever. We're as simple as you
Speaker 1: drive out of town, you drive to another town, you
Speaker 1: hang out for a day, you go to another town.
Speaker 1: When the time they come through this, this trail is
Speaker 1: ice cold. Yeah, I doubt that this guy actually got
Speaker 1: on a plane with his kids. I suspect I suspect
Speaker 1: you probably lived in Portugal and just drove on home
Speaker 1: where he had a basement, you know, with that with
Speaker 1: chains and the walls and all kinds of As you
Speaker 1: can imagine, the media crabbed onto this one pretty quick, obviously,
Speaker 1: and as you you kind of want that to happen
Speaker 1: with missing person's reports like this, because the more that
Speaker 1: that missing child's faces out there in the world, the
Speaker 1: more likely it is that somebody's going to see you know,
Speaker 1: if the kid is out in the world, the more
Speaker 1: likely it is that somebody's going to see that kid
Speaker 1: and think, oh, hey, I know I've seen that kid before.
Speaker 1: I'll call the police and a report that I saw
Speaker 1: that kid. It's the same reason that you send out
Speaker 1: amber alerts in America. It's a good thing, right you.
Speaker 1: You know, we get amber alerts sometimes for you know,
Speaker 1: abducted or missing children three states away, because who knows
Speaker 1: they might be there, who knows that might have made
Speaker 1: it here. Super effective. They're really they're highly annoying because yeah,
Speaker 1: it's from several states away, or you know, they say
Speaker 1: it was a white Subaru, and every guy in a
Speaker 1: white Subaru is getting pulled over by the cops. So
Speaker 1: they're angering a lot of people, but they have good results.
Speaker 1: I hate people that drive white super so I think
Speaker 1: that's a good well, no, I mean I think that
Speaker 1: that Steve brings up a good point is that because
Speaker 1: the media did grab onto this so quickly, there were
Speaker 1: a lot of sightings reported. You can look at pictures
Speaker 1: of Maddie and with the one exception of a very
Speaker 1: outstanding feature, she kind of just looks like a very
Speaker 1: cute little white girl. Well there is one remarkable thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I think that we'll talk about that in a
Speaker 1: second instead of talking about it now. Actually, no, let's
Speaker 1: talk about it now. This is the posters that circulated
Speaker 1: in Portugal. I was hoping to find a good picture
Speaker 1: of to use as the photo for this mystery, but
Speaker 1: there aren't any really good pictures of it. But the
Speaker 1: slogan was luck because Maddie in her right I right eye,
Speaker 1: Steve's making a little thinking face and the right eye
Speaker 1: has a tear in her iris that makes it look
Speaker 1: like she just has it's well, yeah, it's a discoloration.
Speaker 1: It looks like a black stripe through her eye iris,
Speaker 1: not know full eye, but through her iris, and that's
Speaker 1: very distinctive. That's not something you can hide. But that's
Speaker 1: not something that you can fake. Oh no, not at all.
Speaker 1: It's not something that a witness is going to really
Speaker 1: notice from one of a couple of feet away. That's true.
Speaker 1: But I think that was the that was the campaign
Speaker 1: was look and it actually the ohs were looked like
Speaker 1: her eyes because it you know, if she was out
Speaker 1: in public, all you have to do is look on
Speaker 1: her eyes and you see that and you're like, oh, hey,
Speaker 1: I know what that kid is. So that's that's fair.
Speaker 1: But it is true that, you know, as long as
Speaker 1: you keep even her eyes hidden or you know whatever,
Speaker 1: it's pretty easy to conceal. It's not like, you know,
Speaker 1: half of her body was a birthmark or something. She
Speaker 1: was the tattooed three year old. How it didn't happen.
Speaker 1: So here's another thing, aside from the weird handling of
Speaker 1: the crime scene. In Portugal, they have anything that's a
Speaker 1: criminal investigation is constrained but by what's known as a
Speaker 1: secrecy clause, which means that there are no official updates
Speaker 1: or press conferences or suspects or witness names or anything,
Speaker 1: which is a problem. One journalist was quoted as saying
Speaker 1: it created a leak system instead of a watertight system,
Speaker 1: which I think is probably true. Yeah, it's if the
Speaker 1: if the media is scrambling for any details, they're going
Speaker 1: to offer money to get those details, and of course
Speaker 1: a cop who's got you know, an okay wage, we'll
Speaker 1: just make a couple of bucks on the side. Here's
Speaker 1: a detail for sure. Maybe that's uh, maybe that's why.
Speaker 1: Maybe maybe the police actually like supported the passage of
Speaker 1: this thing just so you can make a little money made.
Speaker 1: The whole thing is a freaking media circus, though, was
Speaker 1: the problem? Well so? And actually it's interesting to me
Speaker 1: the mccans, you may or may not know. If you
Speaker 1: know the story, you know the McCanns were like suspects.
Speaker 1: They still are suspects in a lot of people's minds.
Speaker 1: They've officially been cleared, but again we're not there yet.
Speaker 1: But one of the biggest weirdest reasons to me that
Speaker 1: the Portuguese police deemed the mccans to be suspects is
Speaker 1: because they refused to honor this silence code and did
Speaker 1: talk to the media. And because of that, the Portuguese
Speaker 1: police said, oh, well, clearly your suspects, because you're trying
Speaker 1: to hide something. They accused them of turning the investigation
Speaker 1: into what Steve said, a media circus, And that's just
Speaker 1: a different cultural approach to the whole situation, is what
Speaker 1: it is. It's a different cultural approach. But it's also
Speaker 1: you know, of the things that the mccans did. This
Speaker 1: is one of the ones I understand the most because
Speaker 1: if your kid goes missing, you want her face freaking
Speaker 1: everywhere everywhere, and how do you do that the media?
Speaker 1: And turns out, actually, this media circus was so large
Speaker 1: that photos of Maddie were literally the most reproduced image
Speaker 1: of the decade. That is not a lie, that is
Speaker 1: an actual statistic. Photos of Madeline mccan were the most
Speaker 1: reproduced image of the decade was number two. I don't know,
Speaker 1: I've seen something to do with like nine eleven or something.
Speaker 1: I don't know, Yeah, something we have to having to
Speaker 1: do with nudity celebrities. But now in July of two
Speaker 1: thousand seven, and as a side note, this case moves
Speaker 1: so slow. Yeah, it's still, it's still they're still investigating
Speaker 1: this May in May of two thousand seven, early May
Speaker 1: May third, two thousand seven is when she disappeared. So
Speaker 1: in July of two thousand and seven, somebody thought, oh, hey,
Speaker 1: you know what we should do is get some sniffer
Speaker 1: dogs from Britain. Let's bring them over. Maybe they'll be
Speaker 1: able to find something, which is a good idea. Should
Speaker 1: have happened earlier. I don't know, that sniffer dogs are
Speaker 1: so good that they could do anything a few months later,
Speaker 1: but sure, yeah, why not. It's like, I mean, some many,
Speaker 1: some of the other cents and people have trampled over
Speaker 1: the crimes and everything else, so possibly do anything. One
Speaker 1: of them, named Kila, was a train was to alert
Speaker 1: to traces of human blood, and the other one, Eddie,
Speaker 1: was what's called an enhanced victim recovery dog, which basically
Speaker 1: alerts to human cadavers. And it should be noted they
Speaker 1: can't alert to specific cadavers and specific blood, just the
Speaker 1: presence of human blood or decaying human bodies. The dogs
Speaker 1: the dogs, and there are some dog you know, bloodhounds
Speaker 1: can trace the scent of a human being living, you know,
Speaker 1: within a couple hours and things like that. These are
Speaker 1: not that, they're they're identification dogs. They can alert to
Speaker 1: the presence of blood and ostensibly at that point somebody
Speaker 1: can take a sample of that area and test it
Speaker 1: and then find what they can find from that, hopefully.
Speaker 1: The dogs were taken to two beaches that were close
Speaker 1: to the resort, the house of one of the suspects
Speaker 1: and many of the apartments in the resort. The only
Speaker 1: place that the dogs gave alerts was in the McCanns
Speaker 1: apartment five A. Both dogs gave alerts. Soum if the
Speaker 1: cadaver dog, say, let's say, if there had been a
Speaker 1: dead body and then an apartment, then then it had
Speaker 1: been gone for two or three months. It's my understanding
Speaker 1: that the dog would have been able to identify that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because it's a it's a search. He's a victim recovery dog,
Speaker 1: so he ostensibly, I get, I don't know, I keep
Speaker 1: saying a sensibly, I'm sorry, I'm given to understand that,
Speaker 1: and I could be wrong, but I think that he
Speaker 1: would have been able to smell any presence of cadaver.
Speaker 1: But the thing, the thing that's weird about that is
Speaker 1: that you know, I don't want to stop all over
Speaker 1: your story. You know, some people are like the like
Speaker 1: for example, the Portuguese police, for example, accused of mechands
Speaker 1: of sedating metal and an accidentally overdosing her and killing her.
Speaker 1: Another theory that they have a sci died at accidentally
Speaker 1: in an accident, tried to cover that up. Think about
Speaker 1: it is and of course when you die, you're a
Speaker 1: cadaver right away, but you don't start smelling like a
Speaker 1: cadaver for quite a while. It takes a while for
Speaker 1: you to become actually smell like a cadaver, which is
Speaker 1: why this is a little problem with this the dog.
Speaker 1: I mean, I I just can't figure out why this
Speaker 1: dog would have gone on high alert. I agree in
Speaker 1: this situation. I agree. I think the thought of bringing
Speaker 1: him along was that, you know, they took them to
Speaker 1: the beaches and things like that and thought, looking, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: the I don't think the intention was for him to
Speaker 1: alert in the apartment, but he did, which is a
Speaker 1: little weird. You don't necessarily want there to be a
Speaker 1: cadaver dog saying, hey, there's the smell of a cadaver
Speaker 1: in your apartment behind the sofa, a dead rat in
Speaker 1: the wall. Maybe it's human cadavers only, yeah, stopping all
Speaker 1: over your theory now. Yeah. Anyways, the dogs did both
Speaker 1: alert behind the sofa. That is an interesting point. Again,
Speaker 1: I don't know what that means, but it means something
Speaker 1: to some people. In August, again, this thing moves real slow.
Speaker 1: It seems like time would be of the since to
Speaker 1: find a missing little girl, but find whatever. In August,
Speaker 1: the police took several items from the mccans, both from
Speaker 1: when Maddie had been alive and after she disappeared, clothes,
Speaker 1: the cuddle cat, um Kate had borrowed a bible from
Speaker 1: one of her friends after the disappearance. Things like that,
Speaker 1: Eddie and Kilo were put in a room with these items,
Speaker 1: and at least one of the dogs, possibly both of
Speaker 1: them alerted to all of the items. It's not published
Speaker 1: which one did. It's possible both of them did. It's interesting, right,
Speaker 1: because it's items from pre disappearance and post disappearance. The
Speaker 1: McCanns lawyers argue, I think, maybe vadly, although also maybe
Speaker 1: not validly, that because the mccans were both physicians, they
Speaker 1: would have encountered dead bodies and blood in their line
Speaker 1: of work and therefore could have transferred it to those items. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a very valid point. I think it's a valid point,
Speaker 1: though I don't know why. Necessarily, when you encounter blood
Speaker 1: in your workplace, you don't wash it off. Instead, you
Speaker 1: take it and put it, you know, on your kid's
Speaker 1: cuddle cat, you know, or a kid, Yeah, sure, a
Speaker 1: kid like bleeds on it or something. I think that
Speaker 1: it's fair. I wish I knew which one alerted. Also,
Speaker 1: I don't really want to go see a position who's
Speaker 1: like dealing with dead bodies all the time. Well, and
Speaker 1: the thing about it is when you're dealing with the
Speaker 1: dead body, you put on gloves and all kinds of stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're not necessarily going to go touch a bible or
Speaker 1: like your disappeared kids blanket. And also the trac or
Speaker 1: two of blood is not a big People cut themselves
Speaker 1: all the time. I mean, so the existence of blood
Speaker 1: is not necessarily sinister, which is why I wish I
Speaker 1: knew which dogg alert. Yeah, just because if it's a
Speaker 1: cadaver dog, that that makes it even stranger. Yeah, because
Speaker 1: I agree the dog that's gonna smell blood. Yeah, we
Speaker 1: can see very mundane reasons. But the cadaver dog being
Speaker 1: a dog, or if you have to occasionally go to
Speaker 1: the morgue, doesn't mean that you're covered in dead people
Speaker 1: staying and then roll around all of your possessions should
Speaker 1: carrying that. Well, let's continue because it gets a little
Speaker 1: more interesting. I do have more information about some other stuff.
Speaker 1: Eddie and Kila were then taken to uh underground parking
Speaker 1: garage that had the McCanns car and another one of
Speaker 1: the suspects car, and then a lot of cars that weren't,
Speaker 1: you know, kind of control cars. Did the suspect car
Speaker 1: Did they police actually put that there? Yes, it wasn't
Speaker 1: just randomly park No, no no, no, they did like a
Speaker 1: lineup of cars basically for the dogs. And the Eddie,
Speaker 1: the cadaver dog alerted outside of the McCanns car and
Speaker 1: into the trunk of their car, and I didn't even
Speaker 1: I couldn't even find if the mccans had driven to
Speaker 1: their holiday or not. But the fact that a human
Speaker 1: cadaver dog would be alerting to anything around a car
Speaker 1: is suspicious and weird. There are I do want to
Speaker 1: just go ahead and say, I have not seen these videos.
Speaker 1: I'm just taking on faith that this stuff happened. And
Speaker 1: there are some reports from some skeptics that say that
Speaker 1: the handlers can be seen directing the dogs to alert
Speaker 1: in these areas, but it's not widespread. It's those are
Speaker 1: not widespread beliefs, but there are some. I just I
Speaker 1: want to make sure that that makes it into this episode,
Speaker 1: that there's some speculation that the handlers are saying, oh,
Speaker 1: this is the McCann's car. Although I don't think that
Speaker 1: the handlers knew whose car was who's. It seems like
Speaker 1: it would be poor police work if you were going
Speaker 1: to do a lineup of cars and say, handlers, just
Speaker 1: so you know, these are the cars where the suspect car.
Speaker 1: So these folks are British, so they would have had
Speaker 1: a car with a British license plate on it. Was
Speaker 1: the suspect most likely. Don't you think they flew there
Speaker 1: and rented a car, not necessarily because it's it's actually
Speaker 1: I know, Spain is not that far away, and they
Speaker 1: could have can like a ferry. Yeah, it probably would
Speaker 1: be cheaper to rent a car than than take your
Speaker 1: car over on a ferry. Really, but let's just say,
Speaker 1: let's just say they took their car. They have a
Speaker 1: car that had has a British license plate. Now this
Speaker 1: is again saying it's their personal car. Suspect was it
Speaker 1: a local? Yeah, he was, so he would have had
Speaker 1: a car with local license on it. Yeah. And again
Speaker 1: I don't know. I didn't I couldn't find out where
Speaker 1: this lineup was done because it was the British police
Speaker 1: that did the lineup. But I don't know if it
Speaker 1: was done in Portugal or where this is. Again, this
Speaker 1: is one of those frustrations where I wish there was
Speaker 1: more information but I can't find it. I'm sure than
Speaker 1: the original police reports, but I can't requisition those because
Speaker 1: this is still an open case. It's still secret. But
Speaker 1: it sounds like that, I mean, Eddie and Kia that
Speaker 1: were flowing to Portugal for this, for their investigations. Probably, yeah,
Speaker 1: so I don't but I don't know if it was
Speaker 1: a rental car or their car. But again I would
Speaker 1: say that a cadaver dog alerting outside of your car
Speaker 1: is not a great thing. That would be bad, even
Speaker 1: if it's just a rental Right, well, yeah, if it's
Speaker 1: a rental then probably the previous renter probably murdered somebody
Speaker 1: and you know, stuffed the body in the trunk because
Speaker 1: to do with you. Okay, fine, so whatever. Fine. In August,
Speaker 1: The Times reported that forensic evidence said that the blood
Speaker 1: found in the bedroom that Maddie had disappeared from was
Speaker 1: that of a man. I don't think we had mentioned
Speaker 1: that there had been blood found there. Oh yeah, sorry,
Speaker 1: there was blood found there. It was a man. It
Speaker 1: was a man's It was Kiley had or Kila had
Speaker 1: alerted to that blood as well, and that was a
Speaker 1: man's blood. Obviously there was a fight. There was a struggle.
Speaker 1: It was a struggle. Yeah, she fought tooth and nail. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she grabbed your k bar knife and slash. But yeah
Speaker 1: there yeah. Um, there was some DNA testing done, but
Speaker 1: I'm not really going to get into it because I'm
Speaker 1: I've deemed it very unreliable. If you really you should
Speaker 1: look at it if you want. Um, they did a
Speaker 1: really controversial DNA test that's highly highlight sensitive, and the
Speaker 1: forensic scientists that was found in the car of the
Speaker 1: trunk of the car. Yeah, and the forensic scientists that
Speaker 1: did the testing said it was super on conclusive, and
Speaker 1: the media said it was it was Maddie's DNA. So
Speaker 1: I'm not even gonna go there because I trust those
Speaker 1: scientists way more than I trust the media. But there's
Speaker 1: nothing unusual about our DNA being in the trunk anyway,
Speaker 1: because I mean, when when we were all kids, if
Speaker 1: we were bad, then we were in a car trips
Speaker 1: and parents at all. Just story. Don't feel like I
Speaker 1: need to know about your childhood show. Okay, that didn't
Speaker 1: have that actual not at all. Holy crap. Okay, can
Speaker 1: we talk about suspects or theories or whatever. It's suspects
Speaker 1: this time, not theories. Can we talk about that? We
Speaker 1: just go ahead, cool, We're not going to talk about
Speaker 1: all of them. In two thousand thirteen, the Metropolitan Police
Speaker 1: of London said that they had thirty eight persons of
Speaker 1: intra us So we are obviously not going to talk
Speaker 1: about all of them. Nope, not going to happen. The
Speaker 1: first suspect or theory or something that we're going to
Speaker 1: talk about is the Tanner sighting. You guys, remember Jane Tanner.
Speaker 1: Don't want to make that face that made Jane Tanner. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she was one of the top of seven. She was
Speaker 1: the one who said that she totally saw Jerry talking
Speaker 1: to that dude, but neither of them, lady totally reliable one.
Speaker 1: But besides Jerry, she saw a man. Yeah, she said
Speaker 1: she saw a man carrying a child ahead of her
Speaker 1: when she was heading to check on her own kids.
Speaker 1: She said that the man was white, dark haired, about
Speaker 1: five ft seven and of Southern European or Mediterranean appearance,
Speaker 1: forty years old, wearing gold or baige trousers and a
Speaker 1: dark jacket, but she didn't see his face so I
Speaker 1: don't know how she knew all those things. Yeah, we've
Speaker 1: talked about how reliable memory is before in cases like this,
Speaker 1: and it was dark. It's completely unreliable. Yeah, it was dark.
Speaker 1: But okay, so she uh, he apparently did not look
Speaker 1: like a tourist. He looked like he was a little
Speaker 1: and she claimed that he was carrying a barefooted child
Speaker 1: who was wearing light colored PJS with a floral print
Speaker 1: print and ruffle cuffs. The description does match the PJS
Speaker 1: that Mattie was wearing at the time, that's fair. The
Speaker 1: police said that that sighting was actually of another British
Speaker 1: tourist who was picking his kid up from the kids
Speaker 1: club and carrying her home. She had been sleeping and
Speaker 1: in fact, because like we talked about earlier, you could
Speaker 1: leave them. Yeah, got it. And they did the responsible
Speaker 1: thing when they went to dinner and they sent their
Speaker 1: kid to the kids club and had them sleep there
Speaker 1: while they were waiting for them to be done with dinner.
Speaker 1: But they actually did a reproduction of this scene. Eventually
Speaker 1: they found the man and did a photo shoot with
Speaker 1: him in the clothes that he was wearing that night,
Speaker 1: carrying his daughter in the PJ she was wearing, and
Speaker 1: it's it looks exactly like that. It looks exactly like that,
Speaker 1: So we basically just nipped that one right in the butt. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The man actually later sued for liabel against Jane Tanner
Speaker 1: and the media. It's generally accepted this is a really
Speaker 1: bad theory. How do you do in his libelcity against
Speaker 1: Jane Tanner? He did pretty good. He won. He won
Speaker 1: against all of them. She that's fair. She didn't, but
Speaker 1: I think he wants anyways. The even more important thing
Speaker 1: about this is that most people say that she didn't
Speaker 1: actually even report this until November. Um. There are some
Speaker 1: other reports that say that she did actually report this immediately,
Speaker 1: but the police didn't really reveal the information until late May,
Speaker 1: and I couldn't figure out which one was true. The
Speaker 1: more widely spread one is that she didn't reveal this
Speaker 1: until in November. But again I don't know. I don't
Speaker 1: have access to the police reports. I also don't speak Portuguese,
Speaker 1: so I wouldn't be able to read them even if
Speaker 1: I did have access to them. Google Translate. It's really
Speaker 1: bad with Portuguese. It's actually true. I used to have
Speaker 1: a friend who spoke Portuguese, and I couldn't ever actually
Speaker 1: transplating stuff anyways. Uh. The only reason that I thought
Speaker 1: this was interesting, or anybody thought this is interesting initially
Speaker 1: was because they thought that maybe it gave a time
Speaker 1: frame for when Maddie went missing, because we don't really
Speaker 1: know exactly when. No, she was no longer in the end.
Speaker 1: What's accepted now is that she was. She was taken,
Speaker 1: just like moments before Kate discovered that she was taken.
Speaker 1: And we'll talk about this more in a second. Actually
Speaker 1: we're about to talk about it, but I just wanted
Speaker 1: to also mention because Jane said that she saw the
Speaker 1: man at but I don't think I don't think that
Speaker 1: was a good time frame. We're gonna talk about the
Speaker 1: Smith sightings now because there was another report of a
Speaker 1: man carrying a child, and this time it was by
Speaker 1: people who are not part of the Top of seven,
Speaker 1: nor were they even staying at the resort. As far
Speaker 1: as I can tell, they were on vacation from Ireland.
Speaker 1: Their names were Martin and Mary Smith. Just talk about yeah,
Speaker 1: and apparently Portugal like super pop Miller with people from
Speaker 1: the British Isles in the UK and oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: I feel like I just like I'm going to get
Speaker 1: in so much trouble because I don't think Ireland is
Speaker 1: part of the UK or the British Isles. It's it's
Speaker 1: part of the isles. Gotten really offensive, I'm sorry. Spain
Speaker 1: are indeed huge destinations for the British because it's close,
Speaker 1: it's cheap, and it's not wet and cold, which is
Speaker 1: what the UK is. That area is chucked full of tourists.
Speaker 1: Sure it is. And by the way, I believe Ireland
Speaker 1: is part of the UK, the United Kingdom. Northern Ireland
Speaker 1: is Northern Ireland, and anyways, it doesn't matter. Yeah, no, no.
Speaker 1: Martin and Mary reported seeing a man at about ten
Speaker 1: pm carrying a child towards the beach. It was an
Speaker 1: odd time to be doing that, but okay, fine whatever.
Speaker 1: They thought that the girl was probably three or four
Speaker 1: years old. She was wearing light colored PJS and had
Speaker 1: blonde hair and pale skin. The man, they said, was
Speaker 1: probably in his mid thirties. He was about five ft
Speaker 1: seven to five ft nine. He was slim, had short
Speaker 1: brown hair, and was wearing light pants. They said that
Speaker 1: the man looked like he was a local and he
Speaker 1: didn't seem comfortable carrying the child. And I've always thought
Speaker 1: that these sightings could be the same man. But they
Speaker 1: cited this person sited saw they saw this person further
Speaker 1: away than you know, the the initial sighting forty five
Speaker 1: minutes later. He wasn't forty five minutes away, So it
Speaker 1: probably wasn't the same person unless he was just walking circles. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I've got this kid. I took it from an apartment.
Speaker 1: I just keep walking in circles. I don't see that happening.
Speaker 1: So here's the thing that's interesting to me. And yes,
Speaker 1: I'm setting myself up for my favorite theory in fairness,
Speaker 1: both sightings, but particularly the e FIT images that were created. Um,
Speaker 1: the Smith sighting. Okay, if it's are electronic facial identification techniques,
Speaker 1: they're basically forensic drawings but digital. Oh so instead of
Speaker 1: a sketch artist, you've got a digital artist exactly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they both look or will. That one particularly looks a
Speaker 1: lot like Jerry McCann to me. And I think Steve
Speaker 1: and I talked about this a little bit before we
Speaker 1: started recording, and I think what he has to say
Speaker 1: is fair. But I also want to mention that The
Speaker 1: chain of evidence is pretty good on this because Mary
Speaker 1: and Martin, as far as I can tell, hadn't seen
Speaker 1: Jerry prior to creating this e fits sketch. And also
Speaker 1: I don't think that they knew that Maddie was missing
Speaker 1: before they reported this. When did they make this the
Speaker 1: sketch the sketch, It was like within a couple of hours.
Speaker 1: I think. I don't know for sure, but it's just
Speaker 1: that's what I'm giving to understand is that they hadn't
Speaker 1: seen Jerry. Okay. Well, and and this is what I
Speaker 1: you and I were talking about earlier, is Jerry is
Speaker 1: not a super unique looking individual. He's got a very
Speaker 1: a very common set of facial traits. And the guy
Speaker 1: that's in this e fit matches the appearance of about
Speaker 1: a half dozen people at my office, but also matches
Speaker 1: Jerry somewhat somewhat. And that's that's the perfect point. Joe
Speaker 1: just hit it on the head some what. Ye, It's
Speaker 1: it's not as if it's a dead ringer. Well, and
Speaker 1: I understand that, fairness, that could be a dead ringer
Speaker 1: for a lot of people, you know what, absolutely could,
Speaker 1: but it also could be a dead ringer for him. Okay,
Speaker 1: you know, I think it's yeah, I just I just
Speaker 1: want to put that out absolutely. Yeah, it could be
Speaker 1: a lot of people, but it could be him. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it could be Yeah, definitely. But there there's a lot
Speaker 1: of differences when you look at it too. Yeah. In
Speaker 1: the job line, the eyeb house, they're they're way different. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's true. Hairline is a bit different. Yeah, I mean again,
Speaker 1: you know, it's dark. Yeah, I guess it's interesting, you know,
Speaker 1: And Jerry was at the restaurant. Almost everyone who placed
Speaker 1: him there, however, was part of the top of seven,
Speaker 1: and servers wouldn't have really noticed. I don't think that
Speaker 1: servers really noticed when somebody is away from the table
Speaker 1: for a long period time. You know, had he been
Speaker 1: going getting up and checking on the kids, things like that,
Speaker 1: he could have been gone for a half an hour
Speaker 1: before anybody would have really noticed. I don't think that
Speaker 1: that's something that's tracked. But yeah, the top is seven.
Speaker 1: I'm assuming those people weren't covering up for him. If
Speaker 1: he disappeared long enough to go murder Madeline and disposed
Speaker 1: of the body and everything like that, it would think
Speaker 1: that people who have noticed that he's been gone for
Speaker 1: an hour or two. Yeah. Absolutely, But if you were
Speaker 1: going to, like, if you're gonna, oh my gosh, we're
Speaker 1: gonna get into the like stuff Steve doesn't like. But
Speaker 1: if you I see it, if she died earlier and
Speaker 1: they placed her in her bed so that if anybody
Speaker 1: else were to check on her, looked like she was sleeping,
Speaker 1: and he were just going to dispose of the body quickly,
Speaker 1: I mean, he would probably have time to do that.
Speaker 1: He wouldn't have time to, you know, create a whole thing,
Speaker 1: but he probably would have had time, especially because there's
Speaker 1: a little bit of weird unaccounted for time that would
Speaker 1: have he would have had time to maybe retreat the
Speaker 1: body and put it put in the trunk of the car, yeah,
Speaker 1: or later disposal. But yeah, but um, but we're going
Speaker 1: to talk about the whole theory that the kid that
Speaker 1: Maddie might have died of by an accident. We'll talk
Speaker 1: about that later, Okay. Absolutely. The next theory suspect is
Speaker 1: the person who was first the first suspect in this case,
Speaker 1: Robert Murat Murratt, Robert Robert, I am going to call
Speaker 1: him Robert. He was a local property consultant and he
Speaker 1: was like I said the first suspect. He lived about
Speaker 1: a hundred and fifty yards from the Meccan's apartment, so
Speaker 1: close by. He was a local and it was the
Speaker 1: his apartment or no, the house he lived and sorry,
Speaker 1: he lived with his mother. The house he lived in
Speaker 1: was in the direction that Jane Tanner said that she
Speaker 1: saw a man walking just He was an official interpreter
Speaker 1: until his interest was deemed a little too real. Um well,
Speaker 1: he offered to translate. He was He was fluent both
Speaker 1: in Portuguese and English, so he offered to translate the
Speaker 1: statements that the suss are, that the top of eight
Speaker 1: and all that everybody had given and guests. The British
Speaker 1: police decided that that was really suspicious. You know, the
Speaker 1: British police decided it was really suspicious. They mentioned, hey,
Speaker 1: that's a little suspicious, and the Portuguese police said, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a little suspicious. Huh. So they named named him
Speaker 1: as a suspect. He could have been, um, which, what's
Speaker 1: the word I'm looking for when he's a good Samaritan.
Speaker 1: He could have been just trying to be a good Samaritan. Well.
Speaker 1: He says that his interest in the case was that
Speaker 1: he had recently lost custody of his three year old daughter,
Speaker 1: and so his heart kind of went out to these
Speaker 1: people who had just lost their three old daughter, and
Speaker 1: he wanted to help his best teach, which it turns
Speaker 1: out was the you know, the Portuguese police verified that
Speaker 1: and said, oh my gosh, we're so sorry. The other thing, too,
Speaker 1: is that he might have wanted some attention. Getting involved
Speaker 1: in this case is possibly going to get your face.
Speaker 1: He might have, and I, you know, I think there
Speaker 1: are a lot of totally innocent reasons that he could
Speaker 1: have wanted to get involved in this case. But three
Speaker 1: of the top of seven said that they saw Robert
Speaker 1: around the apartment five A at that time. But um, oh, hey,
Speaker 1: he lived a hundred and sixty yards away. Probably they did,
Speaker 1: or they saw somebody who looked like him, because his
Speaker 1: mom said that he was home all evening. Okay, well,
Speaker 1: every buddy knows your mom always comforts. Your mom is
Speaker 1: gonna say, no, not he was here. I'm not I'm
Speaker 1: not being I'm not joking. It's that's true. A mom's
Speaker 1: automatic reaction. In almost every case that we've ever looked at,
Speaker 1: or whether beyond this podcast or not, their mom always
Speaker 1: backs them because that's a maternal thing you do. You
Speaker 1: protect your child, course of course. But the thing about
Speaker 1: it is is that if he shows you, if he
Speaker 1: comes wandering on home with a three year old girl
Speaker 1: into and he's like, Mom, I just kid that this
Speaker 1: three year old girl and she's gonna be my sex
Speaker 1: slave or something like that, Mom is probably not gonna
Speaker 1: be down with that, but she says, we now have
Speaker 1: a little girl to raise. Mom might be on board
Speaker 1: with that, maybe with it. Again. I gotta wonder too.
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess you might be. But you know,
Speaker 1: you would think that as a mother, she would recognize
Speaker 1: the tremendous grief that they would bring to the real
Speaker 1: mother of Maddie. Yeah. Well no, I mean it would
Speaker 1: have been easy enough, you know, for her to just say, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: I know, we found her, but it doesn't matter because
Speaker 1: a huge search for evidence was carried out on the
Speaker 1: mom's house, you know, through the car. His car was
Speaker 1: the one that was the suspect car that the dogs
Speaker 1: sniffed at. Uh. Literally, nothing was found. They like scoured
Speaker 1: the crap out of everything that he owned, every place
Speaker 1: he had been, everywhere he lived. They called in character
Speaker 1: witnesses all of that stuff. Nothing was found. They said, oh, boops, sorry,
Speaker 1: you're innocent. And eventually, you know, this happened to the
Speaker 1: Mechans too. Um. The media pretty much just deemed him
Speaker 1: guilty for a while, and he sued a couple of
Speaker 1: different media agencies for Liabel and eventually won more than
Speaker 1: eight hundred thousand dollars in those suits combined. It's a
Speaker 1: good winning him. Yeah, so I would say, I agree,
Speaker 1: he's probably innocent. I would say, so, yeah, Now here's
Speaker 1: a thing I need Joe to yeah say for me,
Speaker 1: Ris and German, but I'm going to rust Hans from
Speaker 1: my guest, there's a tenuous, incredibly tenuous link between this
Speaker 1: known pedophile and a possible abduction. Uh, it was not
Speaker 1: just a pedophile. He was a pedophile and a murderer. Yeah.
Speaker 1: He lived in Spain, not so not very close to
Speaker 1: this Portuguese resort place. But I guess somebody thought, well,
Speaker 1: he has a pattern of abducting and murdering young girls,
Speaker 1: so he might be in on it. He was. He
Speaker 1: committed suicide in July of two thousand seven by shooting
Speaker 1: himself in the head after abducting a five year old
Speaker 1: girl in Spain. I don't put any stock into this,
Speaker 1: but I didn't want to mention it. Yeah, that just
Speaker 1: seems like that's just too easy. All he's a he's
Speaker 1: a pedophile murderer. Probably of things did hyeah. I think
Speaker 1: that's maybe one of those things that most people can
Speaker 1: agree onmore. It will come as no surprise. We've already
Speaker 1: discussed a little bit that the Meccans were also suspects,
Speaker 1: And because this episode is a little long already, and
Speaker 1: because there's just a lot to say, we're going to
Speaker 1: kind of just bullet point this thing of note. Who
Speaker 1: leaves their kid alone in an unlocked room in a
Speaker 1: strange country for like every night, for your the duration
Speaker 1: of your holiday, after having left a note that everybody
Speaker 1: could see. Who does that? Really? Who does that? Right?
Speaker 1: I believe we called that red flags flags, lots of
Speaker 1: lots of little red flags. The other thing that people
Speaker 1: talk about a lot is they've taken her. The fact
Speaker 1: that Kate came running screaming they've taken her. And the
Speaker 1: Portuguese police actually said that they thought that Kate was
Speaker 1: setting up spending the stage for an abduction story. Because
Speaker 1: I think I think this is really fair to say
Speaker 1: that most parents, when walking into the room and seeing
Speaker 1: your kids gone, you're going to start screaming, she's missing.
Speaker 1: Where the hell is Mike, right where I can't find her?
Speaker 1: She's gone. You're not going to scream they've taken her.
Speaker 1: That's a little strange. It's weird. Although again, um, it
Speaker 1: just depends on the account she read. This, is that
Speaker 1: actually what she was screaming? That's every account I've read
Speaker 1: says that. No, correct me if I'm wrong. I swear.
Speaker 1: I also remember because the door slam because the window
Speaker 1: in the bedroom that the kids were in was open. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Playing a little bit of Devil's advocate here, she could
Speaker 1: have realized that her daughter was gone, looked over, saw
Speaker 1: the window was open, and made the immediate presumption, correct
Speaker 1: or not, that somebody had coming through the window and
Speaker 1: taking the child and left. And that's why she immediately
Speaker 1: started screaming, they've taken they've taken her, not necessarily meaning
Speaker 1: they've as in two or three people, but just they
Speaker 1: say the unknown people. Yeah, I think that's fair. I
Speaker 1: think there's you know, it's that both sides of that
Speaker 1: for sure. Again, it's the lots of little red flags.
Speaker 1: Kate also refused to answer um of the questions that
Speaker 1: the Portuguese police asked her, and she in fact said
Speaker 1: that the reason that she refused to answer them was
Speaker 1: because she was afraid they might implicate her. Do we
Speaker 1: know what those questions were? Specifically? No, we don't, And
Speaker 1: that's fair. I mean, that's another fair point, right, But
Speaker 1: I do think that that's weird. Again, if I can't
Speaker 1: think of it, I mean maybe you can't. I can't
Speaker 1: think of a question that they would have asked her
Speaker 1: reasonably within those first you know it was. It wasn't like,
Speaker 1: you know, four months later they were asking your questions.
Speaker 1: It was pretty early on asking your questions. I can't
Speaker 1: think of a question that you would ask that, you know,
Speaker 1: questions that you would ask I can, okay, ask me
Speaker 1: what do yeah, but like walk through me with this.
Speaker 1: They asked the same question over and over and over
Speaker 1: multiple ways. And she may have gotten fed up when
Speaker 1: they said when they were saying, did did you kill
Speaker 1: your daughter? Did you hide her somewhere? And she may
Speaker 1: have said, shut your bloody mouth, I'm not answering that.
Speaker 1: Screw off, This isn't helping, and they said, well, she
Speaker 1: refused to answer that question because she's obviously guilty, that's
Speaker 1: all that's possible. And then also, don't forget this a
Speaker 1: language barrier here, so they're going through translators. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess you know. The sense that I had was
Speaker 1: that she had flat out refused to answer forty eight
Speaker 1: individuals different questions, and she did. Her lawyers did say,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, the reason she didn't answer those is because
Speaker 1: she thought they would implicate her. It wasn't the police
Speaker 1: later saying oh what, it seemed like she was scared
Speaker 1: that we were going to say she was guilty. Her
Speaker 1: lawyers actually came out and said, oh yeah, the reason
Speaker 1: she didn't answer those is because she thought they would
Speaker 1: implicate her. I can see that lawyers being they kept answering,
Speaker 1: asking the same question, trying to get her to say
Speaker 1: something the same answer different ways. Because cops do this
Speaker 1: all the time, you get them to exploit. Wait, run
Speaker 1: me through this scenario one more time. How many times
Speaker 1: have you watched the Cops show where you'll see the
Speaker 1: cops saying now, I just need you to explain this
Speaker 1: to me one more time because they want people to
Speaker 1: say it in multiple versions to see if they can
Speaker 1: parse anything apart to find a detail that accidentally slips
Speaker 1: into the narrative. And again, if, like Joe said, this
Speaker 1: is going through translators, I can see how frustrating that is.
Speaker 1: Absolutely so maybe the lawyers like, yeah, she answered the question,
Speaker 1: she knew better than to keep answering, because they just
Speaker 1: keep doing this. They're trying to finger her for the
Speaker 1: for the whole thing. I get it. I don't believe
Speaker 1: the parents, but I don't like this whole story in general.
Speaker 1: But I'm just saying I don't. I guess I just
Speaker 1: don't think that even in lawyers speak, saying she thought
Speaker 1: the question, the answers to those questions might implicate her
Speaker 1: means she like they kept asking her the same question.
Speaker 1: I think that a lawyer says to the public in
Speaker 1: a press conference says they kept asking her if she
Speaker 1: had murdered her daughter, and she kept saying, no, that's
Speaker 1: you don't say she thought that it might implicate her.
Speaker 1: No lawyer would say that, I'm going to say about
Speaker 1: your car. You can't say that though in an active
Speaker 1: open investigation, but you can't say I don't know. I
Speaker 1: feel like a different way, but yeah, this whole unanswered
Speaker 1: question thing, we've beaten that to ye, no pun intended.
Speaker 1: Oh my god. Um, the sniffer dog reactions, that's a
Speaker 1: bullet point of this one. It's a pretty good one.
Speaker 1: We did already discuss a little bit the different ways
Speaker 1: that that could be interpreted. And again, you know, because
Speaker 1: they don't know which dog alerted to what, it's hard
Speaker 1: to tell. The theories around the Meccans. They're mostly not nefarious, accidental,
Speaker 1: they're mostly accidental. And in fact that yeah, Joe's you know,
Speaker 1: kind of hit the nail on the head, as Steve
Speaker 1: would say, that what the Portuguese police originally thought, and
Speaker 1: then they said, no, that didn't happen. But I think
Speaker 1: a lot of people have held onto and I, you know,
Speaker 1: I honestly my heart goes out to this theory a
Speaker 1: little bit because I can see where they were coming from.
Speaker 1: Maybe is that, you know, sometimes you've got a kid
Speaker 1: who's a little overactive, and you're tired, and you just
Speaker 1: want to enjoy your holiday, and you give the kids
Speaker 1: some heroin. No, you give kids some like benadral it,
Speaker 1: a little bit of benadryl to try and calm them down,
Speaker 1: or a little bit of whatever sedative. They were both physicians,
Speaker 1: so they definitely had access to a lot of different
Speaker 1: kinds of sedatives or otherwise sleep aids of some kind
Speaker 1: that might have helped her relax or sleep. And we
Speaker 1: don't know if she was one of those kids who
Speaker 1: was like super hyperactive, she was excited to be going home.
Speaker 1: Who knows, But the theory goes that she was given
Speaker 1: a sedative and it was an accidental overdose. Though again
Speaker 1: they were physicians, so they probably shouldn't have accidentally overdosed her.
Speaker 1: But fine, whatever, she died, they freaked out and tried
Speaker 1: to cover it up. I have no sympathy for this
Speaker 1: theory whatsoever, because when your kid has had an accident,
Speaker 1: it is bleeding and unconscious, you think the kid is dead,
Speaker 1: but you don't know for sure. You alert somebody and
Speaker 1: try and call the ACE. Same thing with an overdose,
Speaker 1: you call an ambulance exactly. And I actually was just talking.
Speaker 1: I was talking to somebody about this because that's what
Speaker 1: I do. I think you guys do this too, at
Speaker 1: least I know Steve does. I don't know if Joe
Speaker 1: does or not. But when I'm working on a story,
Speaker 1: I'll talk to you know, my significant other or friends
Speaker 1: about the story and you were talking for dinner last night,
Speaker 1: and I said, but what you do, like if an
Speaker 1: accident happened, you like, find somebody, you know, you don't
Speaker 1: look at this like poor child of yours who's suffering
Speaker 1: on the ground and think, crap, better cover that up.
Speaker 1: Oh damn, I got another body to hide. You go, no,
Speaker 1: oh my gosh, what happened? What have I done? I
Speaker 1: gotta you know? And I guess it's possible that, right,
Speaker 1: she like died in her sleep. Maybe maybe what happened
Speaker 1: was they gave her too much sedative and they didn't
Speaker 1: realize and when Jerry went to go check on them,
Speaker 1: he checked on them, or they both gave her the dose,
Speaker 1: not realizing that the other had already done it. Right,
Speaker 1: But what you know that they realized after the fact
Speaker 1: that she wasn't breathing anymore, you know, after they came
Speaker 1: back and he had to defy something. It's it's possible,
Speaker 1: it's still but you still you revived that kid. You
Speaker 1: try and revive that kid, And it's understandable. I for
Speaker 1: you to kind of make the argument, it's you know,
Speaker 1: it's not going to go super great for you, but
Speaker 1: your kid's not going to be dead exactly. Besides which,
Speaker 1: you know, you don't have to make any arguments at all.
Speaker 1: How often, when when I was a kid, my parents
Speaker 1: told me, look all that stuff in the medicine cabinet.
Speaker 1: You don't go eating that stuff like candy because it'll
Speaker 1: kill you. And of course after that they came up
Speaker 1: with child proof caps and stuff like that. So but that,
Speaker 1: But the idea of a kid getting into some drugs
Speaker 1: and and swallowing a bunch of pills, not realizing what
Speaker 1: he's doing, and dying is not exactly outrageous. So you
Speaker 1: just say, you know, there's a reason they came up
Speaker 1: with Mr Yuck to put on everything. Oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: So you just say to the kid just you said,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, You just say to the police, Uh, the
Speaker 1: kid got into these drugs unfortunately, and and O deed,
Speaker 1: so please save my kid's life, and I'm We're sorry
Speaker 1: as hell. There was no crime. Actually, you don't even
Speaker 1: have to go that far. You can say, I don't
Speaker 1: know what's going on. I'm a physician. She's unconscious and
Speaker 1: it appears to be some kind of drug reaction and
Speaker 1: I don't know what it is. And then they rushed
Speaker 1: to the hospital and then one of you quote unquote
Speaker 1: figures out that one of the pill bottles has been opened. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean like we're flushing out a bunch and we're
Speaker 1: really going down the rabbit hole here. But there's a
Speaker 1: million ways that that could happen. Yeah. The point is
Speaker 1: is that the Mechansas suspect suspects makes no sense to me,
Speaker 1: because if the kid had had an accident, they would
Speaker 1: have called an ambulance. If the candidaded, they would have
Speaker 1: called an ambulance. I just can't believe that they would
Speaker 1: have burned their own kids. And I guess that for me,
Speaker 1: I totally agree. But for the red flat, you know,
Speaker 1: it's kind of that. It's that thing where had they
Speaker 1: not left their kid alone, had they seemed as they
Speaker 1: were more attentive, had all of these tiny little red
Speaker 1: flags led up to this thing, I would be way
Speaker 1: more willing to say, there's no way they would try
Speaker 1: and cover this accident. Of course, not any compassionate caring
Speaker 1: parent wouldn't try and cover that up. But honestly, the
Speaker 1: story of the Meccans doesn't exactly paint a compassionate caring
Speaker 1: parent picture. And again, I don't say that to disparage them,
Speaker 1: because I mean, they're still raising those children. They those
Speaker 1: children are alive. Yeah, that murder me yet, I'm they
Speaker 1: probably won't. But because I don't, it just doesn't. So
Speaker 1: much of me wants to be able to say, yeah,
Speaker 1: I agree, it doesn't make sense because it doesn't make sense.
Speaker 1: But a lot of the stuff they did doesn't make
Speaker 1: sense to me, and I don't. I don't have a
Speaker 1: good theory on this one, but I do think that
Speaker 1: of the likely suspects, they are the most likely. They
Speaker 1: are a little too little follow up things here. One
Speaker 1: is that in two thousand eight, may have two thousand eight,
Speaker 1: about almost you know, a year, a little more than
Speaker 1: a year after Maddie went missing, there was a note
Speaker 1: left on the doorway of the apartment that the Meccans
Speaker 1: had been staying in that said that Maddie's body had
Speaker 1: been dumped in a reservoir. And there's some there was Yeah,
Speaker 1: I said the specific reservoir, but I can't remember the
Speaker 1: name off the top of my head. I'm sorry, you
Speaker 1: don't know. It's the language. I don't know, um, but
Speaker 1: they there's some research done in it, but it's basically
Speaker 1: brushed off as not valid this claim they didn't train
Speaker 1: the reservoir, and look, they did not. There's also been
Speaker 1: a few sightings quote unquote sightings of Maddie in Spain
Speaker 1: and Portugal, and they've mostly been with local families. You know,
Speaker 1: somebody will say, oh, yeah, I saw this local family.
Speaker 1: But also one of their the people they were calling
Speaker 1: their daughters, was this pale, blonde haired girl who looked
Speaker 1: a whole lot like she could have been Maddie. And
Speaker 1: I think it was made. You know. So that's um
Speaker 1: a thing that's been happening a lot. It's been happening
Speaker 1: this entire time, honestly. Um, so that's worth mentioning as well.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, so that's kind of the story. Well maybe
Speaker 1: maybe mad they will find yourself. Because if she's what
Speaker 1: eleven now, she mean missing in two thousand and seven,
Speaker 1: she was three. She was born in two thousand three, right,
Speaker 1: she would have been four, and she had just turned
Speaker 1: She was born in May of two thousand three, so
Speaker 1: she was three when she disappeared, so she would have Yeah,
Speaker 1: so imagine that, you know. I mean, so she's taken
Speaker 1: when she's three, and she's too young to really have
Speaker 1: much of much memory. Of anything, and so somebody snatched
Speaker 1: her and say adopted her because they wanted they wanted
Speaker 1: a kid, but she was a cute kid too. Yeah,
Speaker 1: get little kid. And so imagine you're this person and
Speaker 1: you you're being raised by these people or your parents,
Speaker 1: and then you're reading this and the somewhat on one days,
Speaker 1: stumble across in the inner the story of Madeline McCann.
Speaker 1: And they do age progressions every couple of years, and
Speaker 1: they publicize those. They have one of her when she
Speaker 1: was nine. Yeah, and then you see these but then
Speaker 1: you see these these you see all these pictures of
Speaker 1: her eyes and that weird anomally in her eye And
Speaker 1: wouldn't that be wouldn't that be really waits, that might
Speaker 1: be me? Yeah, I doubt that what you're suggesting is
Speaker 1: remotely a possibility. Well, that's just me being wistfully thinking.
Speaker 1: I would prefer right on the right, on the outset.
Speaker 1: I'm going to say, this is gonna sound terrible. I
Speaker 1: don't want it to be her parents. I wanted to
Speaker 1: be somebody else. But to be somebody else means very
Speaker 1: bad things. They all mean very bad thing Because here's
Speaker 1: what I did. And I don't know if I didn't
Speaker 1: tell you do this is that I read some of
Speaker 1: the article and then I couldn't stomach of the article anymore.
Speaker 1: So what I did is I took it in the
Speaker 1: way that I could, which is I started going into
Speaker 1: research specifically just on abductions. And the stats are staggering
Speaker 1: as to likely what has happened, because there's there's two
Speaker 1: kinds of situations. There is a known person abduction, so
Speaker 1: that's you know, an acquaintance or a family member, except
Speaker 1: none of those people who are around, So then this
Speaker 1: becomes what's called a stereotypical kidnapping, which is by somebody
Speaker 1: that a child doesn't know. There's some very set things
Speaker 1: that happened at that point that didn't A ransom wasn't
Speaker 1: put out that we know of. Well, we skipped over
Speaker 1: this part um, but there were some people that were
Speaker 1: arrested for trying to exploit the mechans to say that
Speaker 1: they had information about where Mattie was. But that's that's exploitation.
Speaker 1: That's not specifically rants, but it seems to happen a
Speaker 1: lot in cases like this. Absolutely talked about there was
Speaker 1: a situation like that. But but the things that normally happened.
Speaker 1: Is if it's a stereotypical kidnapping, is the child is
Speaker 1: transported up to or fifty or more miles away, which
Speaker 1: we talked about roadblocks. Hey, thanks guys, um. And then
Speaker 1: the child is either a put into some kind of
Speaker 1: slavery scenario and I'm not going to explain that, or
Speaker 1: is kept to be raised on their own. Okay, Well
Speaker 1: I'm hoping that is the one. Okay, all of these
Speaker 1: things they tell me, I mean, I can, I can
Speaker 1: go through this law, your list of stats, things like
Speaker 1: you know, one percent of kidnapped kids. No, I don't
Speaker 1: want to hear you never come back. I don't want
Speaker 1: to hear that. Then three hours most of them are dead.
Speaker 1: But I mean, there's there's all this stuff. There's and
Speaker 1: all these numbers and I'm pulling by the way their
Speaker 1: us it's all from the FBI, because go figure, because
Speaker 1: if a child is listed as abducted, it doesn't matter
Speaker 1: for what reason, the FBI will step in. And that's
Speaker 1: the little it's a federal stuff out of the Uniform
Speaker 1: Crime Report. Well, I got it from the FED, from
Speaker 1: the FBI's website, and they have a bunch of PDFs
Speaker 1: that you can pour through, which are not nice things
Speaker 1: to pour through, but I did. Anyway. Now I go
Speaker 1: to the I go out to the uniform crime reports
Speaker 1: all the time. Actually they're quite useful. Well they're they're
Speaker 1: they're disturbing. But but here's here's my thing is that
Speaker 1: if I want Magdaline to have been abducted by somebody
Speaker 1: to have been kept as that person's child, it means
Speaker 1: a woman would have been the one who did the abduction. Well,
Speaker 1: unless somebody kidnapped for a woman. Primarily primarily when women,
Speaker 1: when women do the abduction, it's because they want to
Speaker 1: have a child of their own. For whatever reason, lost
Speaker 1: a child, can't have a child, doesn't matter that that's
Speaker 1: their primary motive. It's a very re extremely low percentage
Speaker 1: of man do it for that reason. So yes, a
Speaker 1: woman could have had talked to man into doing it,
Speaker 1: but that's a very low probability. A woman could have
Speaker 1: had a husband who you know, and they wanted to
Speaker 1: have kids, and she especially wanted to have it, and
Speaker 1: she was getting all Cathy Bates on him, and he's like, okay,
Speaker 1: I'll find you a kid. But but the point is,
Speaker 1: I hate this story because I feel so terrible for
Speaker 1: the parents because I am so absolutely positive that Patty's
Speaker 1: not alive anymore. And that's the reason that I hate
Speaker 1: these cases is that so often, more often than not,
Speaker 1: the numbers don't support the probabilities. Yeah, no, it is
Speaker 1: most likely that she's not alive. Yeah, I mean, I mean,
Speaker 1: I hope. This is one of those one that sucks
Speaker 1: you guys. Stop suggesting these stories, please, because you suggest
Speaker 1: them and we have to do them happy stories, just like,
Speaker 1: no more weird missing kids please. This is this is
Speaker 1: why I don't like these stories. I know, but we
Speaker 1: have to do them. I know, I know we do,
Speaker 1: but I'm just I'm just going to take this stance
Speaker 1: right now. Is that the stats support what I unfortunately
Speaker 1: don't like. Is there the writing on the wall and well,
Speaker 1: as you know, as a a side, um, not that
Speaker 1: they needed the money, but the Meccans have one a
Speaker 1: lot of libel lot they have one way more than
Speaker 1: Robert ever won. But they also have written making stuff.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, and we're sitting here on a podcast talking
Speaker 1: about all the red flags and how they could have
Speaker 1: totally accidentally killed their daughter. You know, I think it
Speaker 1: sucks to be them, absolutely because not only are they
Speaker 1: going through the pain of losing a child, they're also
Speaker 1: being accused of being horrible human beings. It's kind of
Speaker 1: like Marl Murray's dad. You know, I felt the same
Speaker 1: way about himmy now, so it's poor the poor guy.
Speaker 1: He loses his daughter and everybody in the Internet is
Speaker 1: accusing him of being a murderer. Yeah, but you know,
Speaker 1: maybe just don't do suspicious stuff, you guys, Yeah, because
Speaker 1: it's so easy to know. Okay, if my kid disappears today,
Speaker 1: what do I not do? Do you not make lists
Speaker 1: like that? Because I absolutely do. Oh yeah, yeah, well
Speaker 1: I do unsolved mysteries like that's my thing, so I
Speaker 1: know what not to do. So, you know, instead, I
Speaker 1: follow a very specific pattern every day, so it's very
Speaker 1: obvious what I do every day. Also, I think maybe
Speaker 1: you just don't plan to have kids, Well, then I
Speaker 1: don't plan to do anything bad to them or anybody
Speaker 1: anybody ever. This is why we keep our identities of secret.
Speaker 1: That's true, exactly. The guy's pretty soon and the internet
Speaker 1: is going to be alive with rumors that we committed
Speaker 1: all these murders that we talked about on our show.
Speaker 1: So that's why we stay hidden. Yeah, I can't wait
Speaker 1: to be at your kids mitzvah. So that's the end
Speaker 1: of this episode. I'm sorry I was long. I know
Speaker 1: you guys really when we do long episodes. UM, if
Speaker 1: you want to see some of the research that I
Speaker 1: did for this episode, UM, we'll put some links up.
Speaker 1: You can also comment on this story. You can listen
Speaker 1: in download as well, all on our website. That website
Speaker 1: is thinking Sideways podcast dot com. Um. I think that
Speaker 1: there's a link to merch and to donate and to
Speaker 1: do a survey there as well on the right hand sidebar. Uh.
Speaker 1: You might also you probably are actually listening to us
Speaker 1: on iTunes. If you are, and you haven't already, leave
Speaker 1: us comment and rating. That's how people find us. Um,
Speaker 1: you may be streaming us. I know a lot of
Speaker 1: you are also doing that on just a bunch of
Speaker 1: different sites. I don't know streaming stuff. I'm an Apple kid.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry. Well, there's there's all. There's a lot of them.
Speaker 1: Find us on Facebook, find us, friend us, like us. Actually,
Speaker 1: you know there's speaking of streaming. There's been a bunch
Speaker 1: of talk of which app to use stream that Facebook group, Yeah,
Speaker 1: join the group and then you can find out which
Speaker 1: ones are better than others, because some of them do
Speaker 1: actually cut us off for example, that's annoying. Um, we're
Speaker 1: on Twitter thinking Sideways. Some cool activity there, I guess
Speaker 1: a little bit some of it. Email Thinking Sideways podcast
Speaker 1: at gmail dot com. Email us story ideas, thoughts about
Speaker 1: this episode, thoughts about other episodes, creative criticism, just fan girl,
Speaker 1: fan boy ing, um bet anything, literally, anything you want
Speaker 1: to say to us, you can email us, and if
Speaker 1: we don't like it, we'll just ignore it pretty much it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that's it. So as Steve would say that,
Speaker 1: having been said, I think we're gonna get out of here,
Speaker 1: can we please? Yes, that's time, by everybody, by us.
Speaker 1: Two