Talk:Reports: Parents of missing girl Madeleine McCann are suspects in her disappearance

Diario de Noticias

I used babelfish translation to read the initial report made by this newspaper. DragonFire1024 (Talk to the Dragon) 03:30, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

Means, motive, and opportunity

I've seen the speculation about the parents reported by many news sources but all of them fail to deal with a key principle of homicide prosecutions: motive. Why would Madeleine's parents have their own 4-years old daughter killed in their own hotel room and then subsequently attract the attention of every news outlet in the Northern hemisphere - and a couple of world-known celebrities - to the case?

If they wanted to cover up something - say sexual abuse - Madeleine's disappearance could have been staged much, much more discretely.

How much motive is enough? You may have missed this speculation, how about dumb luck ineptness? An accidental overdose versus their medical professional backgrounds.

• There are some references to counter or mitigate this particular speculation
• Alledged in various newspapers, that the parents drugged their children to sleep through the evening while they dined out.
• Although, it is noted that only Madeline had had a crying jag previously, and may have been the only one needing to be handled
• It would be callous, but practical from their POV to use a little sedative to help ensure a quiet evening while they dined nearby, and only enough for a couple of hours
• The alleged lack of response, the other children sleeping through the ruckus after the parents returned to find Madeline missing.
• The alledged forcing open of the bedroom window, versus all of the easier, saner, entry and exit points of their apartment
• To protect and safeguard their remaining family and lifestyle and their good name they would most certainly find it an easier out to feign the kidnapping than risk ridicule and ruin and jail -- not necessarily in that order
• Under the same circumstances, how many have the moral fortitude to turn themselves into the police for negligent manslaughter, and would either of you, husband or wife, accept the full blame and save the other and the family?
• Thus this would only be just another sad tragic story, a variation on the same order of ineptness and guilt as all of those parents who have left a child in a parked car to cook to death, by accident