FreeDuck wrote:Walter, I'm aware that stranger abduction is a very small percentage of actual abductions and missing children cases. However, in these highly sensationalized cases that happycat was referring to, children ARE kidnapped by strangers from their beds. And they usually end up dead. How many parents kill their children and then launch an elaborate scheme to hide the body and then claim abduction to cover it up.? I can think of only Susan Smith. Perhaps you have some experience that will tell us exactly how common such a scenario is.
Agreed.
Re "launching an elaborate scheme", as I said before, this is usually only successful in a Hollywood movie, requiring the likes of Bruce Willis to get to the bottom of it all.
IRL, people are not nearly so good at keeping their ducks in a row. Even if you are 2 intelligent people.
This reminds me of a case that happened years ago, when I was living in South Florida. There was this story being aired live regarding a little girl who supposedly went missing when her mother took her to this big city wide flea market, when the little girl went to the bathroom.
The reason I remember this so well was because I had been to this flea market just the day before, and had used the same restrooms there, so the layout was quite clear in my memory.
The mother described how she stood outside the doors (it was a large public facility with at least a dozen stalls in the ladies room), waiting for her daughter, who never came out.
She said she thought her daughter must have been taken through the window.
I had too thoughts simultaneously....
While it would have been physically possible to somehow lift the child through a small window I remember being there, then holding on to her while climbing through yourself (somehow keeping the child quiet), it really wasn't at all likely. The day the mother was at the scene being interviewed was supposed to be only an hour or so since the girl disappeared, and I know it was a Sunday, because I had gone on a Saturday.
This was a huge flea market covering acres and acres, and always very crowded on the weekends. It would be hard to imagine the ladies room ever being completely empty, in fact, there was usually a line. Also, outside the window was right out in the middle of the flea market.
Well, OK, maybe somehow a person managed to sneak the girl past the mother at the door. It could happen, but I don't think so.
2nd thing was that the mother was referring to the daughter in the past tense. She was crying and the media was around her and there was a lot of commotion, and I'm sure she never realized what she was had done.
Needless to say, the little girl had already been dead for several days. The old boyfriend getting mad and beating her to death story. Found her buried under a few inches of sand.
Now, this mother and boyfriend had several DAYS to come up with a good story, and immediately screwed it up.
Is it impossible the McCanns came up with an alibi that's been strong enough to hold up, with no changes, no slip ups, no lapses in memory.
Sure it's possible. But forensic scientists and physiologists and police etc etc are apt to catch something.
I don't know what happened. But I'm not going to be part of a witch hunt, and project how I would have handled the situation leading up to to disappearance, because, I'm not those people.
