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This case. Oh, honestly, what do I even say? How many people are in the world nowadays? How many people are existing in today's day and age? 8.2 billion people. 8.2 billion people. And you're telling me that not one single person on this entire world knows what happened to Madeleine McCann? Right? Yeah. Okay. No. Wrong. Next question. Madeleine McCann, three year old little girl from the UK. She goes on vacation with her family to Portugal in 2007. Disappears from her hotel room, from her apartment. Room. Room. What do you mean? If you've never heard of this case, first of all, shocked. Second of all, you may be lying because there's no way that you have not heard of it. This is one of the biggest missing people cases up there with JonBenet Ramsey. And again, it's one of those where it's still to this day one of the biggest mysteries that people continue to talk about year after year. And we have so much information to go through. So let's just get into it. I hope you guys are having the best weeks. So excited to get to chat to you today. And I'm so excited to hear your thoughts about this case because I know that you have them. Welcome to this episode of I wish you were here. Grab a snack, grab a drink. We'll be here for a while. Before the disappearance that made them a household name, the McCann family was by all accounts an ordinary, happy British family. The parents were known to be well educated individuals. They were devoted to their three young children and they were creating a very happy, close knit family. It was the year 1993 when Kate McCann and Jerry McCann met while they were both working as junior doctors in Glasgow, Scotland. Kate specialized in general practice and she had a reputation for being quiet, but also very determined. She was a hard worker. She also had this natural caring aura about her. She was known as the kind of person that in today's age we would call an empath. She just had this very caring, very loving, very compassionate personality for the people around her, especially toward children. Jerry, on the other hand, he was trained as a cardiologist and he was known for his intelligence and his confidence. He was the kind of guy that walked around with a certain certainty about him. Does that sound like a weird sentence? Certain certainty? He was very confident, but not in a cocky way. He was just very sure of himself. The couple got married in 1998. They settled into a comfortable middle class life in England where they both continued working in the medical field as practicing physicians. Like I mentioned, Kate bounced around a little bit. Experience in different fields, but ultimately landed on practicing general practice. And Jerry went on to obtain his md, but he stuck with cardiology. So at the time of these story, he was a consultant cardiologist. When the couple started trying to have kids, they were really excited about the idea of creating this new family together. But they were having a really hard time and it proved to be a difficult road for them. They ended up having to resort to ivf, but luckily that ended up working out for them and they were the happiest people in the world when they found out that they were expecting. In 2003, they gave birth to their first baby, a little girl they named Madeleine McCann. Two years later, Kate miraculously fell pregnant again and they had a set of twins in 2005. And it was around that time in her life that Kate decided that the best option for herself, but also for her family would be for her to slow down on work for a little bit, focusing on staying mostly at home with the kids, raising these three babies, but also stay still, maintaining a part time job in medicine. So this story takes us to April of 2007. It was then that the five members of the McCann family would head off to Portugal for a vacation with some friends. They would leave as a family of five, but heartbreakingly, they would come back as a family of four, leaving pieces of their broken hearts in Portugal. April 28th of 2007, it was a Saturday. That was the day that the McCanns were set to leave the UK and head off to Praia Dalus, which is located in Southern Portugal. And in the initial beginning stages of planning this trip. Call it a mother's intuition, but Kate had a very uneasy gut feeling about going on the trip to begin with. But ultimately they made the decision that it would be good for them to take some time off, relax a little bit, spend some time not only with the kids, but also with their friends, because they went with some friends. There were a total of nine adults. Total, it was Kate and Jerry, Matt Oldfield and his wife Rachel, Russell o' Brien and his girlfriend Jane Tanner, David and Fiona Pay, Fiona's mother, a lady called Diane Webster, and the other couples brought their kids as well. So it was a total of nine adults and then eight children going on the trip. So it was a pretty ideal situation. The adults would enjoy themselves, kind of relax a little bit, settle down, take some time off thinking about whatever was going on in the outside world, and the kids would have their little friends there to entertain each other. They specifically picked the place that they were going to be staying at because it was known to be a pretty family friendly resort. So the plan was for all of them to stay at the Lose Ocean Club. Each family was going to be staying in their own little unit, but all right next to each other, right by each other. And the resort, when I was looking into it, I think it's obviously changed now from 2007, but it kind of sounds like it was a timeshare resort place almost. And the rooms within it are more like apartments or like say a small villa rather than hotel rooms. So each unit has a their kitchen, their common area, multiple bedrooms. Just overall, a little bit more spread out and a little bit more room than a hotel room would have. The place they were staying at also had a kids club for little kids to play at, which was pretty ideal because they were allowed to leave their kids there. It was like a daycare almost within the resort. So that was nice, obviously, because it was really convenient for any parents that were visiting to be able to have that if they needed to take advantage of it. The place also had four pools, it had tennis courts, there were restaurants within the resort, and it was a really lovely place to travel to. And it was considered very safe. Also pretty funny that the Loos Ocean Club at the time was commonly referred to as Little Britain because of the amount of British people that either went on holiday, as they say, went on holiday there, or owned property there and rented out their apartment for other people to stay at. The McCann family stayed in apartment 5A. And if you're not watching the version of this episode, I will try my best to describe the floor plan. 5A was a ground apartment. It was a corner unit with two bedrooms, a bathroom, a small kitchen, and an open living and dining area. There were two doors, one front door, one back door. But the McCanns usually entered through the sliding glass patio doors in the back, which opened up directly into the living room. And if you were inside standing in the living room looking out, it faced the pool, the tennis courts, the tapas restaurants. That all was around 150, maybe 160ft away from the apartment door. Inside, the kitchen was just off the living area. And then there was like a short, small little hallway in between those two rooms that led to the bedrooms and the bathroom. The parents room was on the side closest to the front door that was facing the resort's parking area. And the second bedroom where the kids would be staying at was on the other side, toward the side of the building, closer to the back patio door. Madeline and the twins would be staying in that second bedroom. So the McCanns, like I mentioned, ground floor apartment in 5A. Their friends Matthew and Rachel Oldfield were right next door in 5B. Jane Tanner and Russell O' Brien were in 5D. And the Pains and Diane Webster were on the first floor just above them. May 3rd of 2007 was a Thursday. So the McCants had been there for some days now, and they were kind of settled into this little routine that they had with their friends at this point. This point. In the mornings, they would either spend time at the beach or at the kids club. The afternoons were reserved for pool time or nap time if any of the kids needed to take a nap. And the evenings were for dinner at the resort's tapas restaurant with the group of friends, but only the adults. The tapas restaurant was that same apartment that you could see from the McCann's living room if you were standing looking through the sliding back door in their apartment, it was across the pool. And from the restaurant you could see the building of the apartments, but you could not see the doors. And the little routine that the adults fell into it was that all the parents would put their own kids to bed in their own apartments. They would leave them sleeping. But once all the kids were quiet, settled and sound asleep, the adults would then go and meet up for dinner at the restaurant. And then they would take turns checking on the kids. So every 20, 30 minutes, an adult would get up, go check on their own kids, and then they would make their rounds and peek in the other apartments to listen and make sure that the other kids were also sound asleep. That routine had worked with them just fine for several nights, and they were so used to it by this point that the resort staff even had a note at the reception desk asking for that same exact table to be reserved for the parents every single night. All that to say that that's pretty much how Thursday started. The children had spent the day playing at the kids club. They ate lunch and then headed over to the pool in the afternoon. And at the pool at 2.29pm, Madeline's mother, Kate, took a picture of Madeline sitting next to her dad, as well as the twins on the edge of the pool. That would be the last known photograph to ever be taken of three year old Madeleine McCann. That night she would disappear, never to be seen again. When the McCanns got back from being out all day, playing around all day. Kate noticed that the kids were particularly tired that specific night, especially Madeline, when they were walking back altogether back to their apartment. She was so sleepy that she asked her parents if they could carry her the rest of the way home. And once they did get home and the kids were put to bed, Kate stayed with them for a few minutes longer just to read them a bedtime story from a book. And according to her, little Madeline was so sleepy, so tired, she could hardly manage to keep her eyes open through the end of the story. But right before they completely fell asleep, Jerry entered the room to kiss the kids good night before she kissed all three of them good night. And then she left. She closed the door almost all the way, but left a little crack. And then she went back to her room to finish getting ready while Jerry got in the shower. And then around 8:35pm, they both headed off to the tapas restaurant to meet up with their friends, just like they had done every single other night on this trip, leaving Madeline and the twins sound asleep inside of the apartment. Kate and Jerry were one of the first to arrive. But shortly after, all of the adults started to slowly trickle in and they all sat down at their usual table. Now, as far as the McCann's apartment, like I mentioned, the sliding back glass door, it faced the resort and it was the entrance closest to go in through if you were walking back from the tapas restaurant. So there were basically two different paths that you could take to get to the apartment. Back door. One was directly through the resort, if you were kind of walking through the grass and rocking right by the park pool. The other one was on the sidewalk kind of further out to the side if you were walking from the outside of the resort. Regardless, both walks there were only about a two to three minute walk, maybe four, maybe five minutes if you were walking really slowly, but that's pushing it. It was really close. And throughout their trip to access their apartment, Kate and Jerry had been going in and out through the back door. So they had left it unlocked because it could only be locked from the inside inside. So they figured that while they went to go eat dinner with their friends, because they were going to be taking turns checking on the kids, they decided that what made the most sense to them was to leave the back sliding door unlocked. That way they didn't have to pull out the keys every single time, unlock the door, go inside, make a louder noise. Especially because the front door, they said, was even louder than the back door. They didn't want to have to unlock it, go inside, lock it back up. They thought it would be easier, and they just wanted to avoid waking up the kids. At 8:35pm, the McCanns arrive at the restaurant, one of their friends, Matthew, shows up a little bit later at 9pm and he remembers that on his walk to the restaurant, he walked right by the McCann's apartment, didn't notice anything, thought that it was really quiet, and that was that. The first one to check on the kids at 9:05pm was Madeline's dad, Jerry. He walked over, he said he walked in through the back door. He looked at his friend, three sleeping children, admired them for a second as they slept because they looked so adorable. And then he left. At 9:25pm, Kate McCann gets up to go and check on the kids. But one of her friends, Matthew, says, don't worry about it. I will go real quick. I'm gonna go check on my kids anyway. So he gets up, he checks on his children first. They're good. So then he heads over to the McCann's apartment to go and check on them. He does not walk into the kids room, but he just peeks in slightly. Everything looks fine. He saw them there, or he thinks that he did. He heard a small noise as if one of the kids was moving around in bed. But other than that, it sounded like they were peacefully sleeping. So he left. At 10pm, Kate, Madeline's mother, gets up for her turn to go and check on the kids. She walks into the apartment through the sliding back door. And she notices that the kids bedroom door seemed to be more open than the way that she had left it. So she reaches for the door to close it. But when she does, the door kind of slams shut as if there was almost a drift from air using force to shut it, which was weird because none of the windows were supposed to be open. So she opens the door again and that's when she noticed that the one waist high window in the bedroom was open. And that's where the wind was coming in from. Then she looked over at the kids and that's when she notices that Meline's bed was empty. The twins were there, but Meline, she was gone. And her actions next have been scrutinized for years, to say the least. Kate left the apartment. She ran out. In her own words, she says she flew back to the restaurant, leaving the twins sleeping in their beds and running back to the restaurant to tell all the other adults that Madeline was gone. What she says when she gets back to the table to Jerry, along with her friends, is quote, they've taken Madeline, someone's taken Madeline, and quote, and as soon as she said that, pure chaos. As you can imagine, it was the beginning of A nightmare that would last years. But she yells out that someone has taken Meline. And all of the adults get up in a panic, immediately starting to look for Meline. I can imagine that they all just got hit with a massive wave of adrenaline as soon as they realized that one of their kids was missing. And within minutes, everyone else around them at that resort obviously started to find out that a child was missing. Kate and Jerry were running around asking everyone, have you seen a little blonde girl? Hey, excuse me, from where you were sitting, could you see my apartment building? Did you see a little girl? Did you see a blonde little girl walking by herself? Did you see anything weird at all? They were asking all the questions. And other guests as well as resort staff members started jogging up and down to see what was going on. And eventually people started to gather up together to see where they could help. A guest there that was familiar with who Kate and Jerry were, remembers hearing Kate absolutely distraught. She was a mess. She describes hearing the crying noises that Kate was making as howling. She heard Kate howling. And she remembers her cry so vividly even now to this day, because she says that that kind of cry she's only ever heard twice in her lifetime. The police were called, but they were not getting there fast enough. And Jerry was so on edge. He was pacing around the apartment, feeling absolutely helpless. He ended up walking over back to the reception and begged them to call the police again. Minutes later, local authorities arrived. And at this point, it was now closer to 10:30pm Officers were there, investigators were starting to arrive. The McCanns, their friends, resort staff, other guests that were completely random people. They were all walking around, spreading out as much as they could to look in every single area that Madeline could be. They were looking inside of the apartment, outside of the apartment, by the pool, by the tennis courts, by the restaurant, by the kids club, by the ocean. They were looking absolutely everywhere, hoping and praying that Madeline maybe just wandered off on her own. Although I think that everyone knew that the odds of a three year old little girl walking out in the middle of. Well, I guess not in the middle of the night, but she'd been asleep. So just waking up out of nowhere, walking outside by herself, people kind of knew that that wasn't what happened. Especially when they began starting to look for her and they could not find her anywhere. Because if she had walked out on her own, how far could a three year old little girl really get? Officers from the GNR unit were there, which is like the local authorities in Portugal. And by midnight, they had looped in The PJ units. PJ is the National Criminal Investigation Police Agency of Portugal. So they deal with a more serious crimes, including homicides and kidnappings. Think of them as kind of the FBI for Portugal. They get there, they start talking to people. And this is when a woman called Jane, who was one of the friends of the McCanns, remember something really important. She says that around 9:15pm when she was walking back to the apartments to go and check on her own children, she saw a man carrying a child in his arms. She remembers thinking that the child's body was limp, almost as if they were asleep. And she could see that the child was wearing light colored pajamas and had no shoes on or no socks on. The man she described was crossing the road just outside the corner of where the McCann's apartment was. And at the time, she didn't really think anything of it. After all, they were at a very family friendly resort. She assumed that it was just another father carrying their own child. But of course, after learning and hearing that Madeline had disappeared, she couldn't help but wonder if maybe the sleeping child that she saw was Madeline in the arms of her kidnapper. Another woman also recalled crossing paths with a man who was carrying a child over his shoulder. That child, she thought, looked to be around Madeline's age, around 3 years old, and also looked to have similar hair color. So everyone was doing what they could in the hours that followed. But when PJ officers and investigators had first arrived, they were shocked at the state the apartment was in. Not because it was messy or dirty or anything like that, but solely because of the amount of people that were walking in and out of it, touching countertop areas, cabinets in the kitchen, moving chairs, scooting things out of the way. So many people were coming in and out of that apartment, completely contaminating what should have been closed off as a crime scene. Spreading all of their DNA everywhere. Which like, they had to know that was going to make the investigator's job harder. No sign of Madeleine McCann was found that day. And Kate and Jerry eventually laid in their bed alone after the search had been called off for the night around 4 in the morning. By 6am they were back at it. Back out, walking around searching for their daughter as they were waiting for officers to also come back. But even then, when officers and investigators were back on the scene, they. When it felt like every single journalist and news station and local resident was at the scene, they had no luck. Zero. It just felt like this innocent three year old baby had just vanished into thin air. Kate and Jerry McCann made their first public appeal on May 4th of 2007, just one day after Madeline disappeared. 24 hours into her disappearance, they were standing in front of the cameras in front of Prada Delus, visibly distraught, pleading for their daughter's safe return. Jerry was the one who spoke first. He was thanking the police and the local community for their help, while also begging for anyone that may have information to come forward. And Kate was standing next to him, very tightly, holding on to Madeline's pink stuffed toy, very visibly distraught. They were pleading for anyone who may have seen something to please come forward, no matter how big or how small. And eventually, Madeline's grandparents ended up flying in from the UK to also be there and help and support the family. The initial biggest theory in this case was that someone abducted Madeline because like I said, this three year old little girl would not have been able to walk out of her bedroom on her own, open up the heavy sliding back door on her own, and then get lost in a place where nobody could find her. All within the time period of when the adults were taking turns checking on the children. But the question that was on everyone's mind was how in the world would an abductor have a way of knowing that the children were going to be alone in that apartment? How would he know? He or she, whatever. How would they know that the door would be unlocked? How would they have enough time to walk in, take a child? And how would they manage to do all of that while not waking up the other two babies in the room? And apparently also without waking up Madeline at all? Because if you were a person who believed that that man that was seen carrying the child was Madeline, it seemed that she was asleep in his arms. Both of the people that saw him said that she looked to be limp. So how did that man manage to get so far away in such little time to where he would never be found? It just wasn't making sense. A lot of things were not making sense for people. But then Kate remembers the note that hotel staff had about reserving that same table for, for the adults at the tapas restaurant. Every single night at the same time, she starts thinking about that, and she thinks that the note said that the adults wanted that specific table because it had the clearest view to the apartment buildings, and that they wanted some sort of view because their children were left behind sleeping in their units. Which begs the question, could a kidnapper have seen the note that was left in the reception area stating that the parents were planning on eating at the restaurants? And. And then know that the kids would be alone. And then knowing that without information, could they have walked in and taken Madeline? Or could someone have been watching the McCann's family and their friends for long enough that they had figured out that they had pretty much the exact same routine every single night. Photos and posters of Madeleine McCann were being handed out left and right, hung up also everywhere to get as many eyes on it as possible. The police continued furthering their investigation with the help of other investigators and detectives. Some were on foot, some were walking around with search dogs, forensic dogs. Others were on helicopters. There were a total of at the very least 150 detectives assigned to the case, some of who were working three day shifts. Non stop. Volunteers kept gathering in, searching different areas where they could. News stations in Portugal, Spain and the UK were already beginning to to cover the case. A sketch was also eventually made and later released to the public using the descriptions that they had of this mysterious man that was seen carrying the child. And as hours turned into days and days turned into weeks, the search expanded across the world. While airports and border crossings were being patrolled, they were being alerted that there Was this missing 3 year old little girl. And yet, despite all that, despite the massive effort and world wide attention, Madeleine McCann was nowhere to be found. Over the years there have been so many suspects, so many suspicious people, people of interest that were questioned but then cleared. However, let's go into it, let's go into that. Let's talk about one of the first ones, a man named Robert Murrah. Robert was a British man, but he was living in Prada de Luz in Portugal at the time. He was actually living just a few hundred feet away from the Ocean club where Meline McCann disappeared. And at the time of the disappearance, he was 33 years old. He lived with his mother in a villa located right across the street from apartment 5A. After Madeline McCann disappeared, Robert stepped up and he volunteered to help the police translate since he was fluent in both English and Portuguese. But within days, some journalists and witnesses and some investigators began claiming that his behavior just felt a little bit off, a little bit suspicious to them. People were saying that he was acting, quote, overly eager to get involved in the investigation. And on May 15th of 2007, 12 days into the disappearance of Meline, Robert Morat was officially declared a formal suspect by the Portuguese police. So the investigation continued and they were looking into him a little bit more. However, they were never able to find any solid evidence that linked him directly to the case. His home was searched, his computers were seized, his Face was all over the media and his reputation was, quite frankly, absolutely destroyed because of this entire thing. Eventually, when they were sure that the investigation wasn't going to find anything incriminating against him, he was cleared of all suspicion in 2008. But that's not to say that it didn't affect him, because it affected him massively. His reputation was clear, quite literally destroyed, and the hate that he was receiving was cruel. Robert ended up getting £600,000 in out of court settlements for defamation, basically because of all the damage that had been done to his name and his life. But not only that, also his mother's life and his friend's life as well, because of all these accusations that he was facing that all turned out to be false. As time continued to pass, now, months into the investigation, around late summer of 2007, Kate and Jerry McCann began traveling extensively to give public appeals in different places about Madeline's disappearance. They kind of started it just weeks after she went missing, but continued it going into months. And they began this sort of global campaign to keep her case in the public eye. They wanted as many people as possible to see Madeline's face. They wanted to talk about it as much as they could to make sure that nobody forgot her and that nobody would say, stop looking for her. They appeared on major TV networks, they met with journalists, they were giving interviews across Europe and the uk, meaning that just like Madeline's, their faces were also all over the tv and they had a ton of eyes on them. And the more people watched, the more and more people started to slowly grow suspicious of them. But it was interesting because most of the criticism that they were getting, at least in the beginning stages were, was coming from Portugal, not so much from the uk, from where they lived, even down to how the story was being told, the way that it was being reported in Portugal, it just felt heavier. It felt more critical and more suspicious overall. And there was this kind of shift where you could feel that the public, the people of Portugal, were getting. I think the best word I could use to describe it is resentful almost, because Madeline's story was literally anyone could ever talk about. And it was obviously even bigger, probably in Portugal, because that's where she went missing. But people in the area, people in Portugal, started growing this feeling of judgment, thinking, wow, this British girl is getting the attention that missing kids in Portugal never get. All of this money is going into looking for her. But why are those same efforts not applied to when it's one of our own that's missing? You Know what I mean? And you could really start to feel this shift then. And it was. It turned into backlash that the McCanns were getting suspicion towards Kate and Jerry McCann began to grow more and more when the initial theory of a stranger abduction kind of started to fall apart when investigators just couldn't find any clear signs of a break in or forced entry into the apartment. 5a. At the beginning, police did fully believe that Madeline had been taken. But over time, a few details made them slowly begin to question that theory. For one, the apartment's window and shutters showed no signs of tampering, suggesting that the window may have been opened from the inside. Which, honestly, when I read that, to me it sounds kind of indifferent because the back door was unlocked. So not having signs of forced entry isn't really shocking in my opinion. But other people of the public also thought that Kate and Jerry's demeanor when they were on tv, when they were seen by the entire world, they thought that they were acting way too calm and collected. In the public interviews, people felt strange about the way that they were acting because they weren't acting like grieving parents. Even though I've also said this a million times, you never know how you're going to react when you're dealing with such a strong feeling, especially when that feeling is grief. So I don't know, I think to judge someone off the way that they were acting is a bit harsh. But regardless, that was an important point that people did start to notice, and they just started paying closer attention to the McCann story and what they had claimed happened. A journalist reporting on the case stood at the tapas restaurant in the area where the McCann said they were sitting down at their dinner table. And in her opinion, she found it to be, quote, completely impossible, end quote, to have eyes on their apartment from all the way across the pool. Back at the restaurant, the lead investigator also realized that there was this plastic material that would be blocking their view of the buildings. So then they started to question, why would the McCanns have lied about being able to see the apartment from where they were sitting at the restaurant? If they really couldn't, why say a little lie like that? It just didn't sit right with them. They also began questioning their timeline of events because to them, it started to feel. Feel very chaotic, especially because they also had to consider the timeline. Their friends that they were at dinner with were saying as well. So just to recap, at 8:35pm The McCants arrived at the restaurant. Others were walking in and out. Matthew said that he arrived around 9pm, at 9:05, Jerry said that he went to go check on the kids. At 9:25pm, Kate was going to go, but then Matthew offered to go, so he went. But at 9:15. So about 10 minutes prior, Jane said that that's when she went to go check on her kids. And that's when she saw the suspicious man carrying the little girl in his arms. And then at 10pm, Kate does go and check on her own kids, and that's when she realizes that Madeline is missing. Then one person says that someone was checking on the kids every 20 minutes. One person says that they were checking on all of the kids, but another person says that they were only checking on their own kids. Someone says that they were entering the apartment to go check on the kids, while somebody else was saying that they were just peeking through the windows. Someone else then says that they were getting up to check on the kids every 30 minutes. But then another person says that they were only checking every hour. But from the McCann's recollection of events, it kind of sounded like their table was just never full. And there were multiple people checking on the kids every maybe closer to 15, 20 minutes. Jerry first said that when he went to go check on the kids, he walked in through the front door that was locked. But then he changed his story and said that he actually went in through the back door that was left unlocked. It felt very confusing. Kate also told investigators that when she noticed that Madeline was missing, she looked underneath the bed to make sure that she was in hiding. But she couldn't have looked underneath the bed because the mattress went all the way, almost touching the ground. There were little things, right? But put them all together and they can make a massive impact on the case. The biggest red flag, and the one that is probably not, probably, definitely the most talked about, is the fact that when Kate realized that her three year old little girl was missing, she sprinted out of the apartment to go and tell the others that she was gone. But she left the twins behind, still sleeping. Why? And when she got to the table, if you remember, what she said was, someone has taken Madeline. Not Madeline is missing. Madeline walked out. Madeline is gone. She said, they've taken her. Someone has taken Madeline. And the question there is, if she was so sure that her child was abducted that somebody had broken into the apartment and took Madeline against her will, why would she then leave her two other children behind alone? That part is very, very strange to me. Then there's also the part that the crime scene was not at all preserved As a crime scene. The McCants let anyone walk in and out of the apartment in the minutes following Meline's disappearance. And they also started to get backlash for that, because people were thinking, your daughter is gone. You think that she was taken from the apartment, Meaning that you know that the apartment itself itself is a crime scene, yet you're letting all these people walk in and out consistently, absolutely contaminating the scene, getting their DNA everywhere, making it almost impossible for authorities to recover actual DNA of importance that was left behind. And speaking of DNA, on the window in the children's room where Madeline and the twins were sleeping, there was only one fingerprint found. It was part of a palm print belonging to Kate. But because of the way the palm print was placed, it looked as if her hand would have been positioned in the way that it was to slide the window open, not to slide it close. Which was interesting, because if you remember, the thing that alerted Kate when she got there was that the window seemed to be open because they had left it closed. And that is when, for the lead investigator, things really started to shift. And he began considering the possibility, possibility that the McCanns could have staged this crime scene. The real turning point, however, came 89 days into the investigation, when sniffer dogs were brought into the apartment. And the lead investigator remembers thinking that when this idea first got brought up, they brought it up to the parents, obviously, the McCanns. Jerry wasn't happy about it. He says that he remembers thinking that Jerry was scared for the dogs to come. Scared is the exact word that he used. One sniffer dog, Keela, was specifically trained to alert to the smell of human blood. And Eddie was a cadaver dog trained to smell human decomposition. Eddie was the cadaver dog, and his way to alert that he found the scent that he was looking for was to bark. He was trained only to bark when he found the scent that he was looking for. That's it. No other time. And there's a video, and you can see Eddie walking around, sniffing all around. He pokes his head into different cabinets and moves from place to place. And then he gets to one of the bedrooms, which would have been where Kate and Jerry McCann were sleeping. He starts sniffing around all over by the walls, by the bed. And then he gets to the closet in the corner between the bed and the closet, and he starts barking so loudly, Learning that there was the smell of human decomposition. He continues walking around, jumping on and off the couch, trying to smell around it. And when he gets behind the couch in the living room area, again, lets out so many loud barks, alerting his handler that the smell of a deceased body was there. After Eddie, Keela was then brought inside of the apartment. And like I mentioned, Keela was trained to alert to the smell of human blood without getting distracted by the scent of human decomposition or animal blood. And this doggy Keela was so good, I guess you could say. As a way of testing out his abilities to. To be able to sniff out blood, investigators gathered multiple pieces of fabric, like over 15 pieces of identical pieces of fabric. And they put the tiniest little dot of blood only on one of them. They then washed the fabric three separate times and laid them all out on the floor. Immediately, when Kilo is allowed to go and sniff, he starts sniffing around. And not only is he able to point out the exact piece that once had blood on it, but he sniffed out the exact spot. So Keela's taken into the McCann's apartment right after Addie, and he alerts to blood inside of the apartment, behind that same couch in that living room. He also alerted to a wall in the bedroom where Madeline had been staying in. Investigators also then had the dog sniff through 10 different cars. Eddie was sniffing around all 10 cars. He got to the rental car that the McCanns had rented to drive on vacation during days after Meline disappeared. And he's circling around, sniffing around it all over the outside, underneath the car, on the back, when all of a sudden, loud barking. Eddie alerted to something on the driver's side door. Keela alerted to blood in that exact same area. And he also alerted to something in the trunk on the car on the right side. After that, the two dogs were taken to the UK to search the McCann's house there, where they lived. Keela didn't sniff out anything, but. But Eddie, the cadaver dog, alerted to one thing. Madeline's stuffed animal that she always had with her. The same stuffed animal that she had on vacation when she disappeared. This was shocking to investigators, even the ones that were hesitant at the beginning to bring in sniffer dogs. They just. After seeing the dog's work and seeing what they found, they could not believe just how big of a turn they had just created in their investigation. It completely shifted the focus of the investigation for them. And they started to look into Kate and Jerry McCann seriously. But their thought process was the way that their brains were working were if Jerry and Kate would have been capable of killing their own daughter, what would have been their motive? That was a difficult question to answer because it was never assumed that at least I don't think maybe some people. I'm sure some people. But it wasn't really assumed that the parents would have done something to Madeline on purpose. Remember, this was their miracle baby. They had struggled to get pregnant. They had to go through IVF in order to be able to have a child. And they did so because they desperately wanted a family. Madeline was their firstborn. They looked at her and loved her as if she was this little beautiful miracle in their lives. So why in the world would they want to get rid of her? It had to be an accident. Investigators thought something must have happened, something horribly unexpected. An accident that ended in Madeline losing her life. And to avoid prison time, her parents then would have done what they could to cover it up and stage a kidnapping. And that is when another new theory began to circulate that Madeline might have been given too much medicine, either by accident or in some other way that it could have caused her sudden death. Portuguese police, the authorities, they were aware that both Kate and Jerry were doctors with access to to prescription drugs, as well as four of their friends. So six out of the nine adults were doctors. And they began to consider the possibility that a small mistake of theirs could have turned fatal. They speculated that Kate and Jerry McCann gave Madeline medicine either because she was feeling sick or because they wanted her to sleep through the night. Since they were going to be out late at the restaurant. They thought they accidentally gave her too much for her little body, causing her to pass away, they thought. Then Jerry and Kate panicked, not only at the thought of going to prison, but also at the thought of losing their medical licenses. And they tried to cover it up and stage a kidnapping instead of calling for help. The more and more they began thinking about this theory, the more it made sense that they could have given something to their children to make sure that they stayed asleep throughout the night. Right after Madeline disappeared, Minutes after, when everyone rushed back to to the apartment, 5am when it was chaotic, when people were coming in and out, when investigators were showing up, officers were arriving. Friends of the McCann's family were walking around. Kate was howling because it was. She was in such distress at that time. All of that noise was going on, all of that panic, all of that chaos, and yet the two twin babies remained sound asleep in the bedroom. They did not make a sound the rest of that night. Kate kept checking on them, consistently touching them almost as if to make sure that they were still breathing. She was very visibly worried about the children. So was that because they had given their children medicine to keep them asleep? Was she worried that because they gave too much to Madeline and they caused Madeline to pass away, the same thing could have happened to the babies. I don't know. It could be. And investigators thought so too. The Portuguese police's theory was that Jerry and Kate gave Madeline too much of some sort of medicine. She passed away. They concealed her body for some time in the apartment before eventually transporting her in that rental car and disposing of her somewhere where she would not be found. Even after being named a potential person of interest. In September of 2007, Kate and Jerry McCann were officially ruled out of suspects. And In July of 2008, after Portuguese authorities concluded that there just was insufficient evidence to link them to Meline's disappearance. And from that point on, the focus of the investigation shifted away from the parents. Even though to this day, many, many people believe that they were the people responsible. This case has always remained such a huge topic of conversation. And even when it's felt like it was potentially going cold, throughout the years, people have continued to call in tips or possible leads or possible sightings of Madeline. Madeline McCann disappeared in 2007. By 2016, the call of possible sightings of her around the world, throughout more than 100 different countries, had grown to 8,600. Every single tip was looked into, every single lead was followed. But it always led to a dead end. And then came 2020, a massive break in the case that came from a small city in Germany, when a new prime suspect was officially formally named. 43 year old Christian Brunker. He was a registered offender who was in jail serving time for an unrelated crime. In 2017, a person called into the German police and said that Christian made a confession to them. One night when he was under the influence of saying that he knew what had really happened to Madeleine McCann. Investigators began looking into him. They spent three years looking into him and looking into his past criminal history. And they saw that he did have a very, very nasty past. Christian had a history of SA and his preferred victim type, based on his past, signaled that he targeted children, specifically little girls. He was a British man who had once fled to Pride at Luz in Portugal to escape being sent to prison until 1999 when he was sent back to Germany. After he was released, however, he returned back to Portugal. And he had been living in a house one mile away from the Loos Ocean Club around the time of Madeline's disappearance. And there he kind of became known for breaking into resorts to commit burglary. So investigators wondered if maybe that night for Christian started off as a burglary but then ended up in a kidnapping or in the possible murder of Madeline McCann. In 2019, Christian Bruckner was sentenced to seven years for essay that he committed back in 2005. And very, very recently, in September 17th of 2025, he was released. From what I could find, he's still free man. He's walking around free man now. But the investigation into him in connection to Madeleine McCann remains ongoing. So far, he is denied knowing anything or having anything to do with Madeline McCann. In a statement, the prosecutor on the case said, quote, the investigation concerning the case of Madeleine McCann is ongoing separately from these charges. Due to the ongoing investigation, the prosecution cannot at the current time give any information on the status of that investigation, end quote. So I guess we'll see what happens there. In 2020 22, a woman in her early 20s by the name of Julia Wandle came forward and began claiming that she was Meline McCann. She made up so many truly outlandish lies, saying that she spoke to Kate, Madeline's mother. She also then began reaching out to anyone who would listen to her, pretty much to further expand on her lies and talk about, quote, unquote, memories that she had of her childhood with the McCanns and her childhood in Portugal. By early 2023, she had created different social media accounts, insisted on sting that she was Madeline McCann and that she was desperate because nobody believed her. She ended up going on the Dr. Phil show, and that prompted DNA tests to be taken. Those tests proved that she was in no way shape or form related to the McCanns. But that didn't stop her. Julia continued her claims, continued contacting the McCann family multiple times over and over again the following years, even allegedly showing up at their home and sending them messages, letters, and constant phone calls. Authorities eventually intervened, and in early 2025, she was charged with multiple counts of stalking and harassment in October of 2025. So earlier this month, her trial began. And that's when prosecutors presented the evidence, presented the repeated calls, the messages. The jury was told about how she called Kate McCants number on what appeared to be at least 60 different occasions and, and left her voicemails that were then played in the courtroom. Some of the voicemails that she had left for the McCann family were played in the courtroom. And in one of them, you can hear Julia say, quote, if I'm hurt, then everything. She's talking to Kate, by the way, Madeline's mother. She says, if I'm her, then everything will be okay. And if I'm not, as you probably think, then I will leave you alone in a different one. She says, quote, I know I look fat, and I know I'm not pretty, but I know what I know I and I know what I remember. End quote. So she's on trial for that right now as we speak. But again, one plus one equals two. Let the record show that Julie Wandell is not Madeline McCann. To this day, even after countless of pages of evidence, numerous suspects, and global attention crossing multiple continents, the truth remains unknown. And that is all I have for this case. I. Yeah, I don't know. I. Literally, again, I'm not going to be able to sleep soundly at night unless this case is solved. But yeah, that is all I have for you guys today. Let me know your thoughts on this case. Hope you guys are having the best day. If not, go do something to make it the best day. Make somebody happy. And I will see you in my next video. Massive kiss on the forehead to every single one of you. Thank you guys so much for tuning into this episode of I wish you were here. As a reminder, you can listen to this podcast any way you get. Your podcast video version is also available on YouTube. Love you.