Police: Missing British girl may be dead - Yahoo! News

It doesn't sound too good....

What a heartbreaking story.
Suzanne

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Fate is like a strange, unpopular restaurant, filled with odd waiters who bring you things you never asked for and don't always like. - Lemony Snicket

No it doesn't sound good. What I don't understand, who leaves a 4year old and a 2-2year olds alone while they go to eat???? Sounds fishy to me. I have always thought the parents had something to do with this.

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Freedom Stands...Because HEROS Serve

Mary

I heard this on the Today show. I would be suprised if she was alive being this long . so sad.

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Too many people spend money they haven't earned to buy things they don't want, to impress people they don't like. - Will Rogers

I feel the same way!

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Square dancing is friendship set to music!

different countries ,different customs.....

i could say the same about food in the US,who the heck gives koolaid/soda/juice in a baby bottle? or even french fries or chicken nuggets to a toddler!!!!
but this has been already discuss about it.in Europe ,we have a different way of life(would I have left my kids alone ,nope,but this is not unseen and unheard!!!!) in France(where I grew up)we even left our doors wide open ,never locked (I do not think we even had a key for teh front door!!!! )

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By the time you make ends meet, they move the ends

I have heard the different countries/customs deal, but I still don't buy it. Kids that age are too little to be left alone. He is a doctor, if I am not mistaken. You are not in your country. You are on vacation, in another country. They need some common sense!

BTW, My mom still does not lock her door. She also does not have a key. She lives in America, but would not go to another country and not lock the hotel room door, nor would 3 babies be left alone.

JMTC

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Freedom Stands...Because HEROS Serve

Mary

well it is hard to explain,
as we find very strange that 16 year old can drive,but you can enlist at 17 ,vote at 18(buy a gun) but have to be 21 to buy alcohol!!!
which my parents would send me at the age of 6 to the local store across teh street to buy a 6 pack of beer when they had unexpected guests coming over.and that was no big deal!!!I never drunk any of them.....

it is just different!!!!!not better not worse ,just different!!!
something that bugs me ,people asking me if teh US is better that France! well it is just different!!!

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By the time you make ends meet, they move the ends

What does France have to do with anything? This was a British couple vacationing in Portugal. There isn't a cultural clash here. I'm quite familiar with British mores and it's not common for them to leave their small children unattended in their own country, much less when visiting another. Only a moron would do it in Portugal. It's possible that the parents are morons but it's equally possible that they had a very good reason for doing so.

Blood was found in the room, leading to speculation that the child was killed there. That brings up other questions, lots of them. Why did it take three months to discover the blood traces? Why did it take three months to discover evidence that someone tried to wipe away specks of blood off a wall? If the girl was killed in the room, why didn't the other children wake up? Why weren't they touched? Why only Madeleine?

I think the whole thing's fishy. At the very least, the parents were negligent. Their little daughter could have paid dearly for their negligence or the parents could have decided that being seen as negligent was preferable to being seen as murderers.

I believe it to be highly unlikely that the parents were involved.

If I recall correctly, they were seen in public with her not long before they say they took the children back to their villa and put them to bed. One or the other of them went back and forth from the restaurant downstairs up to their condo to check on the children. It was during one of the checks that they discovered her missing.

It really doesn't leave time for a murder and body disposal far enough away that dogs wouldn't sniff her out.

Additionally, while the public is just now learning of the blood, we do not know for certain how long the police may've been aware of its presence. No evidence has yet been presented showing that it is her blood. Many people have likely stayed there, and it is certainly possible - even likely - that the blood belongs to a former guest of the hotel.

I was under the impression that the twins were in a different room than Madeleine, so an intruder would not necessarily wake them. I know my children slept very soundly and without knowing those children, it's anyone's guess.

I think it was terribly irresponsible of them to leave three small children alone. It is my understanding that they were actually very close to them in terms of physical proximity, even though they were not actually in their villa. I know that when I heard a newscaster mention the distance between the villa and the on-site restaurant, it occurred to me that when I'm in one end of our house and my children are in the other, we're actually a little farther apart than those parents were to their three children.

For all we know, the intruder went there intent on kidnapping her and had a gun along, planning to murder the parents if that's what it took to get to her. Or perhaps they snuck in a window and could've taken her even if the parents had been in the villa at the time.

There are just too many possibilities for me to think the parents are involved. It was absolutely dumb to leave them there alone. Two year olds don't have the sense to know what to do when they're loose from their crib, and even if they knew the lay of the land in the villa, that doesn't mean that they are in a position to go out and find mom and dad in a restaurant if one of them fell out of the crib and was badly cut, etc. But to blame them for committing the act is somewhere I just can't go without lots of proof. If they're innocent, what a terrible thing to be accused of.

you may be right there, but who would leave 3 kids under the age of .... 10 atleast.... in A HOTEL ROOM IN A FOREIGN COUNTRY ALONE!!! Maybe they are not involved and maybe they are . What if one of those babies started to vomit and choked on it in the middle of the parents "checkins" they would be in trouble correct? I think that they were wrong for leaving their kids alone in a hotel room while they went galavanting around the hotel, if they were in the room this probably wouldn't have happened. I DO FEEL SORRY FOR THE LITTLE GIRL AND THE FAMILY!!! But I think that they should be arrested for neglect! I think maybe they didnt do it but maybe hired someone to. I would hate to think that any parent could do something like that but it has happened before. I JUST PRAY THEY FIND THAT POOR BABY ALIVE!!!

I agree - very, very poor judgment on their part.

But who knows if they would have been in trouble in an instance such as the one you present.

I believe they said (and they were dining with others.... correct? So the other couple could've corroborated (sp?) their story or refuted it. If in fact it was every 15 minutes, I have to say that when my kids were those ages and were sound asleep in their beds, I didn't check on them every 15 minutes. Not at all. I checked on them every hour or two, depending on what was going on at the time. During the 8 hour stretch during which DH and I were asleep and they slept through the night, we didn't check on them at all.... period. Because, well, we were asleep.

I would imagine that even parents who are in a house while their babies are asleep don't scurry to their rooms every 15 minutes. If anything, they were probably being physically, actually looked at *more* often than most babies.

But stilll.... unless they had a monitor or something to alert them to cries, etc., I just can't see how on earth they felt comfortable leaving the premises.

Sorry, but I think this is a ridiculous argument. Parents - no matter WHERE they live - should NOT leave their young children ALONE! ESPECIALLY in a hotel room, in a foreign country, while they dine out with their friends! And.... the hotel offered babysitting services, but the parents did NOT use them? And the final straw: leaving the sliding door unlocked??? Give me a break! This is very sad, and has grabbed me from the very beginning, but the parents, in my opinion, brought this on themselves by being so woefully neglectful!!! And every single person that has talked about this case w/ me, agrees!

And before I get flamed... I am not a perfect parent, by any means. Will never get "Mother of the Year" award. I have done some stupid things and probably will make thousands more mistakes in my child-rearing career. But I have never, will never, do anything like this.

Suzanne

P.S. Glad you were safe when you went across the street at the tender age of 6 to get stuff for your folks. I watch my kids - who are 7 - cross the street in our closed subdivision to go visit their friends.

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Fate is like a strange, unpopular restaurant, filled with odd waiters who bring you things you never asked for and don't always like. - Lemony Snicket

You took the words right out of my mouth!

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Freedom Stands...Because HEROS Serve

Mary