Bradford Telegraph & Argus

Vilification that’s bang out of order

7:58pm Monday 17th September 2007
By Mike Priestley

I've been amazed, since the Portuguese inquiry into the disappearance of Madeleine McCann took such a bizarre turn a week or so ago, how many ordinary people seem to think it a serious possibility that the little girls' parents really might have done away with her.

Why? How? There are no answers forthcoming to either of those questions. The couple have been under close scrutiny from the moment it was announced that the four-year-old was missing. How could they have hidden a body and later disposed of it, presumably hiding it again, and all in a strange country? Yet that seems to be the thrust of the case the police are assembling against Kate and Gerry McCann.

Why would they deliberately kill Madeleine. Have there been any suggestions that this was a dysfunctional family? And if they killed her through an accidental overdose of a sedative (as has been suggested) surely they would have owned up to it?

I simply can't believe any of this. I might be proved wrong, but all my instincts tell me that Mr and Mrs McCann are entirely innocent and that, as was first believed, Madeleine was abducted as they dined at a nearby restaurant.

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