Usually my weekend posts are comical whimsy and when @galenkp posts up his great choices every week, one always stands out and I write something that gives me a giggle. The one that popped out to me is the Hidden camera prompt.
The hidden camera
You can place a hidden camera, microphone and recording device in any room on the planet for twenty four hours, in the past, present or future, what room to do you place it in and why?
Now there is loads of material here to write funny shit like being in the bunker with Hitler before he pretended to kill himself and ended up on a submarine to Argentina. But would I have the Blink camera in the submarine or the bunker??
But alas this week I am going serious!! No seriously.....
I am going serious.
Maybe it is my penchant for true crime podcasts coming out in me.
But I am going to delve into a very serious case I grew up with. An unsolved case. The most famous missing child case in the word. The case of Madeline McCann. If I was to put a hidden camera in any room it would have been hers on the night of the 3rd May 2007 in a place in Portugal called Praia da Luiz. Such is my interest of the disappearance I even took a detour to see where the event happened when I visited the Algarve a couple of years back. The area was so affected by the negative press of a little girl going missing that they renamed the town Luiz now so the tainted name Praia Da Luiz puts tourists off. Before I went I saw a documentary around where the everything was located so when I was there I was actually surprised how far the tapas bar was from where the children slept.
Madeline went missing after her parents left her with her 2 younger siblings in their holiday apartment while they had a meal at the nearby tapas bar. They regularly took turns to check on the kids but on one occasion the side window onto the street was open and Madeline was gone. She was never found. There has been many conspiracy theories around what had happened. Madeline's parents Gerry and Kate who were doctors never stopped looking for their daughter, They were at one stage accused of their daughters disappearance. But over the years they have kept going and going and going. A German suspect was named not so long ago by the name of Christian Brueckner, He was living in the Algarve at the time and has a history of brutal rapes and pedophilia. He also matches the description of a man seen carrying a child away from the scene. He was also heard boosting about it to someone at a bar. So it is safe to say he is a person of interest. When I was on holidays recently I watch my kids like a hawk all because of this case. When I was sitting on the plane to go home , I imagined the two parents doing the same as me but without their 3 year old child and how that must have felt. I would say it is unimaginable. Now I know what some commenters will say to me. They shouldn't have left the kids on their own. The hotel they were staying even had a baby sitting service. I totally agree but we cannot tar a person like this for the rest of their lives. They made a massive mistake and they are paying for it every day of their lives.
So my hidden camera would be going in Madeline's room to see what exactly happened that night. Was it a burglary at the start someone took the kid?
Did the child wake up and wonder around looking for her parents?
The parents say they checked on the kids every ten minutes? Was this the case and if so when was there that window where someone crept in and took the child.
So many questions to be answered here that I think a hidden camera would solve.
Was it our German guy or was it someone else?
It is probably the saddest mystery over the last 2 decades for me anyway and I would just love for the parents to finally get closure on it. I would predict it is most likely that the child is not with us anymore so even if they could find where the body is found then that would be some help.
At the moment the prime suspect is in jail at the moment and not co-operating but I do not think this will be the end of it.
I know many of you on Hive have little girls that are the same age as Madeline or slightly older. My daughter is now 5 and full of the joys of life. I always think about Madeline and if my daughter went missing I would move heaven and earth to find her. If the parents had nothing to do with it and in my opinion they do not then I have so much respect for Gerry McCann. I actually don't know how the man has held it together over the years. Maybe in private he is different but he always keeps his nerve in the public eye.