There was no need to look into master keys, as the McCanns left the doors unlocked.
Only the patio door. The front door had a double lock system, one of which locks automatically.
PDL was an extremely quiet, sleepy fishing town. Cars were unusual and
largely unnecessary. At that time of the evening, a car starting up would have alerted many sleeping tourists, locals, and strolling passers by.
Not true, it is a small village, but it is unusual in Europe for people in villages not to have cars. In fact it is more common for people in cicites not to have cars as there is so much public transport. It was also only between nine and ten when madeleine is believed ot have been taken so few people woudl be sleeping, and if they were a car is not an unusual thing to hear. Plus the flat fronted on to a car park.
People seem to believe that Goncalo Amaral is the only member of the Portugese LE. He is not, and the fact is often overlooked that the hunt for Madeleine was the most intense, expensive and thorough in Portugese history. An area of 200 square km was checked and rechecked, by dogs, foot patrol, helicopter, scanner, sea. No expense was spared. Borders were checked. Passports were checked. Cars were searched. RSO's were searched. They pulled apart Robert Murat's life from top to bottom. Millions of dollars and man hours were expended (some would say wasted) in the search for this little girl. They were not some bumbling bunch of fools tripping over one another and their own shoelaces.
It wa sonly the local PJ involved. Now there is a review it is being done out of area. I am not sure about helicopters, but there is no record of sea scans being done, and borders were not checked. In fairness this is not normal practice in the EU, despite the ease with which you can cross borders. The criticisim the PJ got for not rushing to borders was unfair, and down to british people forgeting how easy it is to cross borders in the EU. All countries except Ireland and the UK in the EU are also in Schengen, which means that they do not need passports to cross the border, you just drive over the border. And in all EU countries you can just use a national identity card anyway. However because the UK is not in schengen, does not really use id cards, and is an island with only one way to cross the border by car, people from the Uk are much more used to borders being a hassle and everyone being id-ed and checked.
Further, British police were involved almost from ground zero. British Police who closely worked with the PDJ, and were summarily dismissed and sent home in disgrace by their own government once they themselves began to believe an "abduction" was the LEAST likely explanation for Madeleine's disappearance.
It is not true they were sent home in disgrace. the british police proved a liason officer to help with the FSS, and family liason officers to help the mccanns as is normal. The FSS are not part of the police, and the dogs were brought in with help from the police. The british government did not send them home in disgrace - do you have any primary sources for this, where is the evidence of your claim?
The PDL suffered British governmental pressure from day one in this case. At no stage were they allowed to investigate, question, form theories, and follow those theories through to their natural conclusion of arrest and prosecution.
Do you have any evidence of this, it is rather a wild accusation.
The Fund has absolutely paid for a staggering list of "professionals" who have individually and collectively profitted from Madeleine's disappearance. If you or I lost our child, we would naturally receive donations from well wishers. We would probably set up a bank account for those, and appoint trustees to administer those accounts, to carefully and transparently use them ONLY to find our child. This has not happened with the McCanns, who chose to set up a private company shrouded in secrecy, appoint friends and relatives to the board of directors, make themselves and their friends families and supporters beneficiaries. They could easily have achieved tax free status as a charity but that would mean they would have to have transparancy.
No they could not have acheived charity status. It would have broken the law. It is totally against the law in England and Wales for a fund set up to help just one person become a charity. In the Uk if you want trustees to manage money and actually spend it rather than just invest and manage it, you need to set up either a company or charity. In the case of one individuel you would need a company. It is a complete and utter fabrication to suggest the law could have been broken and them awarded charity status, it goes against the 2006 charity act, and the charit commissions own rules. In these circumstances the charity commission advises to set up a NFP comapny like the mccanns did. remember they were under no legal obligation to donate the compensation and book royalties to the fund, the could have kept it themselves. They were given over a millon in donations very quickly, it would have been thought of as more suspicious if they had just put it in a bank. To suggest they should have done anything other than set up a NFP company demonstrates a lack of knowledge of english law when it comes to trusts and charities (also remember when you hear the word trust in a title in england it is often just a charity name, trusts are a very different thing. A trust would have meant that the money could not have been spent on things lthat were not considered financial investments, and it would have meant that any money in it belonged to the mccanns or madeleine, whereas in the case of a NFP company it belongs to the company and its decisions have to be agreed by a large group, also under its legally binding constitution any mney left after madeleine is found will be used to turn the company into a gneral missing children's charity.
Also NFP companies, and charities have equal transparency in the UK. In fact charities are nto that transparent, and certainly do not give out breakdowns of individuel expenses. They are also allowed to invest money which the fund has not done according to its accounts.
As the fund was set up to look for madeleine it did rather have to fund private investigators.
ullhair:
