in Diario de Noticias this morning:
http://dn.sapo.pt/2007/11/02/sociedade/seis_meses_rasto_reforcam_tese_morte.html
Copied from:
http://helpmadeleine.proboards79.com/index.cgi?board=latest&action=display&thread=1182386581&page=39 post #577
Six months without a trace reinforce death theory
Most of missing persons cases are clarified within 15 days
Six months of waiting increase the hypothesis that Madeleine is dead, and this is the investigation line that continues to be followed by the PJ. Abductions don't happen the way the disappearance of the English girl is reported and, in most cases, are solved within the first days. At least, this is the police's experience, such as it was transmitted to DN.
There are no studies available in Portugal about the probabilities of finding a child as time moves on. What does exist is the police's experience, and it indicates that most cases of underage missing persons is solved within the first few days (the most complicated cases involve mentally handicapped children). And this is why, after 15 days without clues, the PJ places the missing person's photo on the internet.
15 days are the norm, but there are exceptions, like the case of the baby from Penafiel that was abducted from hospital on February 17, 2006. She was found one year later. But as Carlos Anjos, the president of the PJ workers' Union, stresses, time is not the main factor that pushes the possibility of Maddie's kidnapping away, but rather confirms the main investigation line.
"The main line that we are investigating is the child's death, and from here onwards, the question is not whether we find her. If she is found, it will be a cadaver, because everything that has been concluded, points to that hypothesis. The issue is to find out what happened and how it happened. But until the clues become evidence, all possibilities are open", Carlos Anjos says.
The Portuguese police is proud of the fact that, in 14 years of investigations, only eight cases apart from that of Maddie remain unsolved, and their names have been publicised. And unsolved means to find the child, or to find out what happened to her. For example, Sofia Valente (Madeira) was abducted by her father, who confessed to the action and is currently serving a prison sentence, but refuses to say what happened to his daughter. Her picture remains on the PJ's list.
But in Madeleine's case, the abduction possibilities are practically null, and if PJ doesn't say so openly, Moita Flores, a Judiciaria ex-inspector, dismisses that hypothesis completely. "If that were the case, there would be obvious signs of an abduction. Evidence which would have been seized by the police. Because abduction is always done in an inconsequent and precipitated manner, which always leaves a loose end topick up from. If, after six months, that abduction theory - even without the child having been found - has not been assumed yet, then we are talking about homicide", he justifies. The mayor of Santarem knows very few cases, even in England, where one has not realised, after six months, that it is a case of abduction. "After such a long time, if there is no evidence of an abduction, then we are walking towards a homicide crime. This is one of the pieces of evidence of a crime, which I believe was accidental, but still a homicide."
Six months is not a motive of pressure for the PJ, says Carlos Anjos. Not when they have been waiting for three and a half months for the results of the analyses that are being performed in Birmingham, on the residues that were found in the McCanns' car. Which proves that reality is quite different from the speed of the solutions that are shown on series like CSI. Tests take time.
What happens if the tests are inconclusive? If the clues fail do become evidence? If a cadaver is not found? "The investigation does noy stop and whenever there is a sign that the child may be alive it is investigated, like in the case of Rui Pedro. Every day we check images via Interpol or Europol", Carlos Anjos replies.
