Battan the Irrelevant wrote:
Susan Smith drowned both her kids then claimed on national tv that the car was jacked by a black man with a generic discription. She shed tears on tv and begged the public to find her babies. She confessed to killing them. Jon Bonet Ramsey gets taken from her room during the night while her parents were just down the hall and they didn't hear a thing? Give me a break, they're guilty as hell.
And Elizabeth Smart was found a year or so later half a continent away...
The fact is that the incidence of a parent killing a child and faking an abduction is incredibly rare. The vast majority of reported abductions are either mistakes (child was with friends and found safely shortly thereafter), or family related (a relative takes the child without permission, and the child is found safe shortly thereafter), or the child is actually kidnapped by a stranger intending the child harm.
The logic of cases like this is that you *always* assume the last case. Why? Because if the parents killed the child and are covering it with a kidnapping, then the status of the child isn't changed if you rush in the wrong direction for awhile. There's no harm done to the child's chances. If either of the other two cases are true, there *also* is no harm or risk to the child's safety. But if it's a true abduction, every single minute counts.
This is why even in cases where there's strong evidence to indicate a family member's involvement, they initially investigate it as though a stranger took the kid. Only after exhausting their leads in that direction do they turn back to the family. Because if you decide to focus on the family and it turns out that a stranger did it and the child may have been saved if only you'd been out beating the bushes instead of questioning family members, you're toast as an investigator (and you'll get sued for massive amounts of money).
Which is why I'm not surprised by the direction this case is going. All their leads have dried up (of course they totally botched the initial investigation and crime scene examination, so who knows how many clues they missed). Naturally, they then turn towards the family. The family was planning on leaving the country, so they needed a reason to keep them in Portugal while they are investigating. Trumping up evidence to make it look like they might have done it is a good way to do that...
Honestly, since we haven't seen the actual evidence yet, but have only heard leaks to the media, it's quite possible that none of this stuff is "true", but is being deliberately leaked by the police in order to make the parents more likely to confess. Hence, my initial statement that this is "hardball" by the police more then actual "proof" of any crime.
Never can be sure, but that's my gut on this. The timing is to coincidental, and the process of questioning of the mother too direct. It's designed to make it as easy as possible to confess. Hint that there's blood evidence of their involvement. Offer the mother a chance to confess that it was an accident. It's a pretty obvious pattern IMO...
