Last May a four-year-old English girl disappeared from the bedroom where she was sleeping with her younger brother and sister in Portugal. Her parents were having dinner about 100 yards from the apartment, and when they went back to check the children, Madeleine was gone. Despite world-wide publicity, an audience with the Pope, and several reported “sightings,” Madeleine has not been found.
Her parents, two medical doctors, returned with their two children to England last week, but the Portugal police think that Madeleine’s mother accidentally killed her, and that the parents somehow hid the body, and five weeks later transported it in their rental car to a new hiding spot. There is gripping DNA evidence to support this hypothesis, and the police offered Kate McCann (the mother) a reduced sentence if she confessed. After sixteen hours of interrogation in which she denied responsibility, they released her.
The problem is that the DNA evidence was gathered under dubious circumstances, most of it collected months after Madeleine’s disappearance and not gathered according to the standards which a court of law in England would require.
It’s almost impossible to find a happy version of this story. At best, two parents have lost a greatly-loved child, and are now being accused of having killed her. Or possibly two parents did kill her with an overdose of medicine she should not have been given, and they are trying to cover it up. Perhaps they will get away with it. Perhaps, guilty or innocent, they will be convicted of manslaughter and concealing a body, and imprisoned for years in Portugal. Their two year old twins will be stripped of their entire family – mother, father, sister. Rightly or wrongly, two medical careers will be destroyed and a mother and father faced with the anguish of loss I find unimaginable.
To me, each of the versions is possible. Kate McCann’s family are adamant that she could not do such a thing. But I know that people think I am a good, kind, loving person with principles, and I also know that I have seriously thought about killing someone. If I had, and then come to regret it, I’m not at all sure I would have had the courage to admit it. There have been times in my life when I have not admitted my responsibility even over small things. I did break that plate but didn’t say so. Yes, I dented the car fender. No, I didn’t tell the clerk that she’d just given me too much change. Or admit that I’d said something disparaging about a friend. How would I respond if, accidentally or not, I’d done something much much worse?
The investigation continues but the Portuguese police have not accepted any outside help, even from the internationally acclaimed Scotland Yard’s Child Abduction team.
I guess to say it’s worrisome is the understatement of the decade.