The cadaver dog hired by the British detectives to sniff out the apartment in August detected the scent of a person who had to have been dead for at least 2 hours for it to "hit" on it. If Gerry (or anyone else) killed Madeleine after 8:00, she would have had to lay there until at least 10:00 for the dogs to hit on the scent. But Kate was at the apartment at 10:00 and her daughter was already gone. Therefore, Madeleine must have died at least 2 hours before the last parent who checked on the kids had time to move her. The Portuguese police are looking at a timeframe of approximately 6:30 to 7:30 pm.
-- By that logic, Gerry and Kate could not have removed Madeleine from the apartment before they went to dinner (they arrived at 8:30), so that means they left her lieing there dead in the apartment with the twins while they went to have dinner?
-- That just doesn't wash, for me.
[QUOTE-=] There have been no end of witnesses, including the McCanns themselves, who have said that once Kate found Madeleine missing, she went back to the Tapas restaurant
without the twins to summon help.[/QUOTE]
-- I know she left the twins alone, but the poster who reminded us of this was supposedly answering a question I'd asked, and I didn't see how "leaving the twins" answered the question.
Think about it, hcc. She's convinced that her daughter has been kidnapped, and she turns around and leaves her other two children is the same apartment that Madeleine just disappeared from. What, is she convinced that the kidnapper is gone and won't come back for the twins? I don't just find that amazing, I find it beyond ridiculous.
-- Ok, I'm thinking about it.
1) One account I've heard says that she searched all around the place first, before running back to the Tapas Bar. It's possible that she satisfied herself that no abductor was lurking in the immediate surroundings.
2) How many abductors are likely to be running around the place on one night? And how many children can one abductor carry? Abductors like to GET AWAY QUICK, so if he's not right here then he's probably somewhere far away.
3) The twins are probably too big and heavy for someone her size to carry, so she didn't have the option of taking them with her.
4) Why didn't she call someone at the Tapas Bar? Maybe the Tapas celebrants didn't have their cell phones with them or turned on. Or were too drunk to hear them. Or maybe cell service there is crappy. Do we know for sure these apartments have land lines? Seems obvious they would, but as an investigator you'd want to be sure as these days more and more people are going to cell only.
5) It was too late to go knocking on neighbors' doors to ask for help (and even that would've required leaving the twins alone).
So here's the scenario I'm now convinced of: She tried calling Gerry, he didn't pick up. She's panicked, she doesn't want to leave the twins alone but she knows there's no one in the immediate area (inside the apartment or in the bushes around the apartment). She's a good runner (right:? That being one thing all the Kate-disapprovers note again and again). And she knows that with a quick sprint she can get a posse headed toward the apartment in under a minute, meaning that in the unlikely event the abductors come back for more, they won't have time to complete the deed.