there was no dna from madeleine in 5a???

one question i still see pop up a lot on social media is;'how is it possible there never was dna found of madeleine, in her bed, or in 5a?'

that is not a simple answer, but it is. in short because in the first days, they never looked for dna of madeleine. and that has multiple reasons.

when the first officers of the gnr arrived, the parents told only about a abduction that must have happened, but maybe the understand of the first stories at the scene, it just not got beyond someone broke in 5a and stole a child.

if you go to the files and read the statements of the officer, you can filter that out. mostly by the actions that are done by these officers. they checked first if the missing child was not just hidden in 5a. and they also could not recognize ant traces of a breaking in in 5a. the shutters and windows have both been closed.

in these first hours it is not very clear if really was known and told to these officers that the patio door was open or not. but because there was nothing there to show someone had gotten in, and no sign of anything else that could tell more, like fresh blood deposits, left open doors, drawers or cabinets inside, no signs of struggles and resistance, the bed the child was said sleeping looked ample disturbed. there were no signs of a abduction, so the only thing they could use to work from, was a missing person, a missing child.

and most people have no idea that missing persons cannot be translated into a criminal offence.
and like almost all countries the police has a dual task, the first is assisting those who are in need of it. the second is investigating criminal offences. only missing persons have often no protocol, missing is in itself not criminal, so it hangs easily between both tasks. but for the first task, you can not do things you can do when there is indeed a criminal offence.
most countries have no sound protocol for a situation of being a missing person, and there are no signs around that story to put a remit out that relates the missing to a criminal event.

and when you end up in 5a, with the only thing you can get is a missing child story, you end up with empty hands. you simply are not able to make use of competences, because these are bound to protocols that are there only for criminal offences.

and there was no reason why the child could have been missing on her own energy. she was nearly 4 years old, could walk without assistance, and children can do often much more than the adults around then think they can do. that misunderstanding is probably even the largest factor in many accidents and adventures even.
and it is easy to prove young children can be really good in opening exits in a living space, even on a much younger age than madeleine had. there is a reason their is an industry in child proof materials to escape it from happening.

if the parents already told the sliding patio doors had been unlocked, it would even been much more easier to leave 5a on her own account. and even if doors and child gates are closed of again after use, you only can know for sure the child could or would not do that, when it happens under your own eyes.

so there was nothing to not take in mind , the girl could have left by herself. and even if there was a third party involved, she could still be out there, in need of help. so searching was a good decision.
searching as long as there is a good reason to think the child could still be alive out there, you just start doing it.

very quickly after their arrival there was already contact with the pj by phone, to inform them about a chance of a possible crime. if you read the reports in the pj files, they did not bet on one horse.
there is outside very big cities hardly a police force in europe that has complete police teams that stand ready to go. late in the evening, most would be home, or are already busy with tasks of surveillance, so to get a team that can work serious crimes to a small place at pdl from usually a headoffice takes time.

only when the first people of the pj and forensics showed up, based on what they could observe, there still was nothing to see that told what had happened. they to did not see any sign of a getting access by forcing windows or doors. going by the words amaral once said in a tv interview, they used the burglary protocol for looking for clues of entry/exit and traces. they did take also the full bedroom of the children. what was at the time presented by the parents as the place she was last seen.

the dna of most traces they found of human origins is from hairs, and there are two ways to look for dna in hairs, you can try to get a nucleair dna result, what would be the full , or chosen part of someone his full genome. but only the root of a hair can be used in testing for that in the most common used ways of testing, in 2007 it was just in publication, there could be nucleair dna found as an oddity in the rest of a hair. by nature it does not belong there, but it can happen it catches in the rest of the hair. stil this would ask for a much more complicated way of testing. and forensics testing is never cheap, budgets for an investigation are not endless, so you always have to work with selecting what you send in. taking samples has more freedom, but storing them can be another problem.

so for hairs they often use another type of dna, mitochondrial or mt-dna, it is a little bit of dna that everyone gets from its mother, that mostly is busy with the energy of cells. it does not mutate easy, around 2007 there have been about 26 of different mt-dna linneages been recognized, there are some more know. it tells not much about a family relation as we use them, the shared 'mother' could be thousands years earlier. so the same mt-dna does not mean you are relatives and must have a connection, it is mostly used to exclude quickly a lot of people from a group.
like when a body is found and is no longer in recognizable state, you can use mt-dna to look if this body could belong to a known missing person or not. it saves a lot of time in that field.

every one gets the mt-dna of its mother, male and females alike, males can not give it to their offspring, only the mother can. so if we go back to 5a and look through the hairs that have been found, you will find a much higher amount that by using mt-dna belonged to the mt-group kate her self had. are all these hairs from kate, no, you can not take that, because there are besides kate have been 3 other candidates living in 5a who have exactly that same mt-dna type, madeleine and both of the twins.

the same happened with the mt-dna in the property of murats aunt sally. there is often put a relation between the mt-dna robert murat had, and that property. he must have been there, right, his mt-dna was there, right! wrong, that same mt dna as robert murat has can not prove anything about even he being ever there before it was found and tested, because robert murat got that same mt-dna from his mother jenny murat, and that is identical. jenny murat is the sister of aunt sally, what means both sisters of the same mother have identical mt-dna too.
so you can from that not conclude who the donor from the mt-dna truly was, was it sally who owned the place, lived and worked there, or left robert or jenny it when they have visiting that same place. it is an impossible question, you can not tell who of some very related people , who all are of the same motherlines it has been. so in this case you can not exclude any of these 3.

the same as we can not know if the mt-dna equal to kate's in 5a was indeed hers, or from madeleine, or one of both twins. going by the high amount it is far more likely more than one carrier of this mt-dna has loose some hairs in 5a.

and there is usually another thing at play, when a supposed victim of a crime has been within legal rights to stay in a building, and has done that for some time, you do not go looking for the dna from that victim at all. dna can not show when it was left behind, and most times not under what circumstances, you do not investigate a victim in that way, in such places there always could be dna of the supposed victim, like it could be of all people who stayed their under sound legal rights.

the problem between dna and when a supposed victim is a young child, it is almost impossible to make use of dna to tell something about a crime that happened. it is perfectly normal, that young children are helped with daily things, that parents or a carer also has clothes and bedding in hands.
so only in case where the dna is fond in a setting it can never be explained as getting there other than from a normal form of care and contact it can be used.

a stranger who has no legal rights to get into a building, and acts against the same child, and does leave dna behind, it is very easy to accept dna results from findings on, in, or near that child as hard evidence.

and there is hardly a need to even get the personal dna from a missing person so early, it is nice to have it, but when there are living near family members you can also use their when there is a need to identify a found living child, or a body.

identification does not rest on dna alone, most will be by recognizing by a known person, but also that a person indeed exists can be gathered from paperwork, being seen in pictures and video material. dna is still not a obligation to use for identifying.

so the first forensic search did most work to look for traces of a third party. they did not look for fingerprints of kate and gerry mccann, and they did not search all surfaces in 5a for fingerprints too.
the same as with their dna, it would mostly not mean something in relation to a possible criminal offence. it is only when they looked for traces in places someone could have made use of to entry or exit 5a, they found kate her own prints on the window, and also the deposition on the window could be seen, and that indicated one of opening that window. she later declared not to have done.

forensic work always will be done with the crime that is possible in mind. crime scenes are usually even quite small. if you would have checked 5a completely, with all test done you can do in this field, it would reaches in costs in multiple million euro's and most of the results would still not tell anything at all about a crime or what crime took place at all.

that first night there never was even a question if a female child of nearly four years old, with the name registered as madeleine beth mccann had been in 5a. there was nothing in 5a that told what could have happened to her if she was indeed a victim of a crime at all.
so there was no need to go looking for her own dna, or that of her family at all. there are much cheaper ways to get a identity checked.

and yes it ois perfectly standard and normal when you look for traces of unknown humans on a crime scene, the dna of all people who had access in a legally sound way are included.

also if we take a look at the traces in the second forensic search brought, and the use of victim recovery dogs was not done before in portugal at that time, and that was not the only country in europe. as a nice good result from this case, they can be used in cases, as a result of the court cases mccann versus amaral, they got accepting of it as a method in multiple court. still only civil courts, but it can helps other investigations greatly.

but if you see inconclusive result please, do not make the mistake to say inconclusive stands for no, no it could not be madeleine, so useless. inconclusive means to much doubt if the answer can be a most likely yes, or a most likely no, and anything in between those two. you never get a hard yes or no in any result.

also the meaning for an investigation does not need a hard yes or no, it is far more in looking into possibilities. and here it means, you also will be looking into other lines, because there is almost always a counter question, if the samples that had quite a lot identical parts as madeleine her own dna showed, who was there around that has them to, and her parents and siblings are not the answer, they are excluded.

let's take on the myth of madeleine her own dna, yes, gm had to travel back home to get a most likely not contaminated sample to be used in the comparison with the dna found through lcn-dna testing and other findings.

because there was no reason to look for madeleineher own dna in 5a in the first forensic searches, and 5a, had been kept for weeks, but was released for further use by the ocean club, there was no longer a good source to look for it there, and the investigation changed already and asked for more than a comparison identification on madeleine her own dna, by the use of that of her parents, and in first instance there looked to be no other means to get such a sample elsewhere that was not under high risk of contamination, the lesser disturbed source could be the home in the uk.

many never read all of the forensic stuff in the files, a bit later after the home sample was analysed, there became a so called blood card available. these are made shortly after birth, and on a card with the other personal information of at least the child. in most countries they are kept until a child reaches the age of 5.

and this sample was tested and was identical as that from the home sample. it still is not the golden standard is met, but only the person or a body could reach that.

all together the question i started from can only be answered by the meaning we chose to use for all kind of details around the dna, and the opinions we form with these meanings, still it would not become facts because what we say.

but again, there are so much circumstances to take with your thinking, and most of them are things that would not be easily changed in meaning.

so it is a question we can not answer with a simple yes, that is correct, there was never dna of madeleine found, or no, that is not correct there was dna of madeleine found.
and the only true proven way will still be the need of the golden standard en even that is never the 100% way, to test all findings to that of madeleine her body.

for the ones who have already read the files, there is in the translations section, a header with dogs- f.s.s.- portuguese forensic, the first option to forensics links is often overlooked.

the full forensic reports are not in the files, i never seen something that looks as they do overhere, and the reason could very well be that the files only contain material the pj has ownership on, and that they are where they usually are kept, at the forensic services of portugal.
because i cannot even find a row of enough not published pages to think they could be hidden from public view. there must be at least 3 of such full reports, 1 from the uk lab, and 2 from the portuguese forensic services. they usually contain a lot of very private information of all people who have given their samples.
but i does mean you can not check everything to the full. what is there shows a quite big part of the picture, but not all of it. so the use of margins will be healthy.

these are also the same reports that the perlin guy needs for his system.

if people want to give meaning to 'there was no dna of madeleine in 5a'.

there was no dna registered as found from the twins too.
the same as the idea that maybe they kept all children of the tapas9 together in the evening under supervision of a adult, that was excused from the table because of a bout of 'holiday tummies'.

there is no dna found to be used for such things happening. other apartments are not been part of a full forensic investigation.

nothing from the first forensic searches, and also not nothing from the second round , after the dogs.

but can this end up in a fact that tells there never have been any children in 5a in that week the mccanns booked it in may 2007?

there was dna found from people who stayed earlier in 5a. the bedlinnen was just reused, or at least partly reused. the dna from an earlier guest was of a kind that is not likely still been around to stick to a fresh set of sheets or duvets.

the massive finds of hairs in the bedroom of the children, the one in the front of 5a, can be explained by looking what was done there, the original placements of both beds and the cabinet have been changed, all 3 have a pretty closed off underside, the beds in their former position and the cabinet too, could have been 'catchers', it is not uncommon that people work only around furniture, beds and cabinets also could have been simply to heavy to be easy shove to the side, or aside, to also clean the floor under it. and there was not really room to work under them when in the original positions.

so when the beds and cabinet have been switchs to the positions against both walls for each bed, and the cabinet , that was originally under the mirror was placed between them to the wall 5a shared with 5b.

the findings that ended up belonging to earlier users of 5a, tell us their could not have happened, the sometimes very populair 'forensic cleaning of 5a'. there can not even been a pretty standard deep cleaning before the mccanns took into 5a, and because so much was still there in the first forensic search, it was not done between arrival of the mccanns, and may 4, 2007, the time the first forensic searches started.

the first forensic search took off with looking for traces of a third party, an intruder, amaral described it like what was usual how it is done after a burglary. there have been seen no signs of breaking and entering at all. no disturbance of the shutters and windows , or the area around it, not on other windows of doors. there have been no goods stolen. no signs of rummaging through drawers of closets, so there was little that even could start into thinking third party.

also it is hard to find cases with a history that a burglar took no goods, but people.

burglary is also something that can end up in very different ways in a book of law, and there are often differences of the opinion of the laws between countries. there could be differences in how the acces was gained. still it happens very often, so it is a type of crime there is a lot of experience with all who have to work in the field, around it.

where did they look, first the ways available to get into 5a. the doors, only one was closed, the window was only told to have been found open, but closed after the alarm by gerry mccann, the shutters was only told to have been found open. but closed after the alarm by gerry mccann.

other windows they certainly will have looked at, but as no disturbance was there, it would be useless to spend time to that, meaning you would not work on these. inside 5a, they had to select modst likely used routes a third party could and would have been using to get from a possible point of entry to get to the missing child. so the looked for the floor and what was beside it between the patio doors and the hall to the front door. because the child was told missing from the bed, what not makes it a fact, if you was not there, you simply can not know the child was in the bed , or somewhere else in 5a.
still it would fit the criteria you would use for places to be part of the forensic search. they would not look for the child, they already knew very well the child was not there. part of forensic is still done with eyes, ears, nose and hands.

the bedroom in the front of 5a had most attention, it also would be the most likely area an intruder would have moved more, so that makes the chance to find traces from the body, or clothes, or materials uses of an intruder more likely.
you cannot select traces to a former owner, you need testing for that. so they did took all they could reach in the area they searched.

it was not a clean possible crime scene. well before the call was made to the gnr, people have been searching in 5a itself, or seek access for other reasons. even the bedroom was multiple times searched. most we know from the statements given by the tapas9 and workers from the ocean club.

not only entry to the bedroom, but also walking around from door to door and the parents bedroom could easily have been of influence on traces that had been there, shoes, socks on walking feet are known to do that. touching things could have wiped out fingerprints, or made nice quality ones into smudges, or even gone for good.

also traces from outside can be walked into 5a.

even when the gnr was around, 5a was not sealed off, they came in with the idea a child would have most likely just wandered out. and it is not unlikely, that the state they found when arriving at 5a, they did not feel the urge to seal it off, because of how many people already had trashed through it and still been in it. also the gnr did not find any signs at all of a break in. they had done their own first view of the surroundings in 5a.

the gnr did talk to some of the tapas9 and going by the statements of jane, that was in 5a in the living room.

there was pretty early after the gnr arrived contact to the pj. but something you always hate, if such a place ends up as a possible crime scene you have to work on later on is not sealed of timely. eve when you can understand how such things do happen, it will have an outcome on the results, not even in what you still can find, but how traces got there and when. it is not unknown that perps like to get into the crime scene after it all ready happened to have a reason to explain traces did not have to be from crimes of their hands. also you can get all kinds of traces in, from after the facts. meaning you would wasting lots time and budget in follow these up, you do not have, or need.

because the family mccann had been there for days, it would be of no use to specifically start to look of their traces. there is very little that gives a time of deposition with traces you can find. so easy to explain these by normal behaviour and legally sound staying in 5a.

it is very normal that dna of the inhabitants of a place of stay ends up in the results, it is not a given, but likely, but not all people shed things easy , and their can be many factors in play that are of influence on that too.
you would like to get samples to test for dna of the inhabitants, more to exclude them of other profiles you have found. as both parents and two siblings also have been available there was at the start no reason to hurry up to get the dna of the missing child. even if a body was found shortly after, or a living child they could use their dna to check it was offspring of this family.

identity checks are still quite old fashion, most would still be done by witnesses who know the person well. but paperwork of existence, and in this case there was even security video fro arrival in portugal.
the dna of the supposed victim makes it easier when you find a candidate for being the intruder and taker of the child, because having a good dna profile just works more efficient if you have to look in other places, but still, with a bit of extra work, the parent's dna could be used in that too.

when there is a reason to put a notice through interpol, being able to send a dna profile with it, does help investigating possible sightings of a live person, or a body ending up abroad also more efficient.
it can also be put into databases so it can alert when the data make a connection.

your own dna is the so called golden standard for identification, but it has to be get from your own body for that, but there are still enough usable ways to look into identity and if you have been in a place without it.

still in cases of missing children, there always will be priority in finding that child alive, so if there is any thing that could give even a slight chance it still is alive, it would be very unethically to not give priority into that.

the forensics are usually in hands of other parts of an investigation, even the testing is getting quicker, there still is a need of time, and there could be other testing from other cases, that also have to be done. so it is not that labs are cleared for a fresh case, there are protocols and guidelines to solve that problem. so even when you read a test of x can be done in 6 hours, it would not tell it was done in 6 hours to. the 6 hours are only the time for doing such a test, if it was the only test you had to do.

but it is in portugal still not very clear how this case has to be treated, the second part of the investigation from october 2007 to the summer of 2008 resulted in a not being able to tell if and what criminal offence had taken place in this case. this does not translate in no crime happened, or that you can rule out crime at all. it is just a big undecided. if you have no crime to put on the board, you cannot even start to rule people in or out, because that has a need of a known criminal offence at first. missing and even still being a missing person is not a crime, and no automatic element of crime that must be there. the law is much harsher in their views, than we are and have to be.

when children are missing, there is often before, during or after that missing a crime involved. the younger the child, it would be harder to understand they just did that all by themselves. it is possible children very young can do that. when not found it ends us usually in coming to harm from the elements. still difficult cases. most children under 6 cases have just far more often the hand of other parties in it. they just have not enough capabilities do make use of.

and if you look at statistics, parents and carers, or at least people that have been around the child and being an accepted part of the life of the child, that are also well known to the child wins the majority vote for having their hands in the gone missing part.

still this group gets easily better cards than you can give them, all based on emotions, but you cannot work such a case without looking in to them as possible hands in what took place, and also keep doing that.

investigations do not declare innocent or guilty, even most courts can not do the declaring innocent, that is usually just a kind of bystander effect, meaning your name is out, when another name is declared guilty. every time new information reach an investigation, it has to look over all that there already is, facts would not change, but what they do mean in a case can change.

investigation do not have to pick one line and follow that one alone, there are certainly at the start many lines, to work on, the selection will be made based on facts and what gets to be known about circumstances, evidence can be found, so they will go downgraded, not likely completely out of it.

when you look through the files, do not forget to take notice of dates things looked to change, the largest change was the transferring of giving priority to a case with a supposed victim still alive, to looking into what if she is dead. that is what brought in mark harrison as an advisor, and from him to the dogs and the second forensic investigation.

the first part, including forensics could not tell enough in being still alive or died. all reporting sightings had not delivered anything at all, most have been worked by police forces abroad, or outside the team in portimao. none found anything. they had done enormous searches.
they did gave priority to a child still being alive. but if that does not solve anything and there is nothing left to look into, you have to change priority. priority does not mean singling out, but put most effort in a most credible line of thought.

and that change made there would be very different questions to seek answers too.
and that brought the focus in a much stronger way back to the family itself in 5a.
the family part was always there in this investigation, but it was a strong possibility, but at the start not made it to the most probable line of thought. to much was still missing to make it stronger.

i have myself never seen something that would help in any way to exclude that line. and i accept i was already biased, because my first mccann experience on screen on may 5, 2007 in the news on the bbc, resulted in my guts reacting into saying, grill the parents, and all you can look into in excluding the parents only got me empty buckets. so for me , they are still very much in the picture as the people who do know what happened to madeleine.

there is a but, there is still far too little information to take that to the test in a court of law. and cases do need that as an exam of all that you can bring as facts, circumstances, evidence and softer leads. that is the place where the margins of being more or less sure about will be lost.
it is easy to just make a write-up from all things possible, but all need still too much speculation, to get them into ready for examination in a court. and most end even in not probable enough to getting on and on in them.