Stem-cell research... chemical/nuclear plants... cancer studies

Missing children and recovery efforts.  Gee... you do that math!

Sickening, indeed.

A child goes missing.  God knows what has happened, but it's all future gains for someone else, isn't it?

I hate reading these sort of things, yet it's wrong to remain ignorant.  Human life has to have value that goes beyond a vial and a dollar sign.  It has to, doesn't it?  I suppose in this day and age everything is replacable; even a child.  With enough money, I'm sure that lovely couple can either use in-vitro, or adoption as safe alternative to have a new baby.  Or hell, maybe if they're really lucky, maybe they have some DNA, and can have their little angel cloned one day!  Wouldn't that be swell?

Reading the posts you made about the Maddy McCann's, two cases from the past come to mind: JonBenet Ramsey and Charles Lindbergh Jr. In all three cases, the parents are influential and rich and in none of the cases the truth is ever found out.

I am not the first to notice the similarities between the cases. Here is an article that compares the Ramsey and McCann case:

from: www.javno.com

McCann-Ramsey:Victims of Parents or Botched Probes

The Madeleine McCann case will remind many of a similar media hysteria in 1996 when JonBenet Ramsey was killed.

The case that gave rise to unprecedented public interest is still not resolved because of a badly conducted investigation due to great pressures on the little girl’s parents who were considered the chief suspects from the get-go. These two stories match up in many important details, from the fact that both sets of parents are wealthy and thus publicly condemned, to the hiring of private investigators.

JonBenet Patricia Ramsey

The blond six-year-old girl JonBenet Patricia Ramsey disappeared from her bed a day after Christmas in 1996. The next morning her mother awoke and found a ransom note as long as two and a half pages on the staircase leading to the kitchen. The ransom demanded exactly 118,00 dollars. Apart from the fact that ransom notes are very rarely that long, the amount demanded in the note was even stranger and strangely specific. One of the reasons why the police immediately suspected the father was the fact that the total bonus John Ramsey had received from his company that year was exactly 118,000 dollars.

The ransom note stated the kidnappers would call, but no call followed.

Despite warnings in the note not to involve law enforcement, the mother, Patsy Ramsey called 911 and police arrived within minutes.

Botchy crime scene investigation of McCann and Ramsey crimes 

The investigation of the crime scene was bungled, which is the first important similarity with the McCann case. In the case of the British girl there are differences due to the different methods of the Portuguese and British police. On the other hand, the Ramseys lived in the little town of Boulder in Colorado where such crimes were very rare. Many local police officers were never involved in a homicide investigation.

The crime scene was never sealed, which is the same mistake the Portuguese police made in the McCann case. Also, friends could enter and exit the house uninterrupted. Forensic evidence was not protected and the father and a friend of the family joined the search for clues. It was the father who found the body of the dead girl in the cellar with strangulation marks and a smashed skull. That was yet another piece of proof for the local police that the perpetrator was somebody from the house and that it could be the girl’s father, John Ramsey.

They were not there to help us, they were there to hang us, John Ramsey said later, after he realised the police were only looking for additional, sure proof to convict him. The same thing is happening to the McCanns. After evidence about the possible involvement of Kate McCann, she said the police had leaned on her several times, trying to get her to admit to killing her daughter. They even offered her a reduced, conditional jail term if she admitted to having accidentally killed her child.

Rich families got the world on its feet 

The media accepted police claims about the guilt or involvement of the parents in the homicide of the Little Miss Colorado. Another bond between the two families is their wealth. John Ramsey was a successful businessman. He built his own computer company that he started in his own garage. The McCanns are doctors. The public condemned the Ramseys because of their wealth. They thought it was the only reason why the obvious culprits were never arrested.

Every move they made was proof of guilt, such as the fact that they had hired several attorneys to defend them, which is the usual practice, as well as their public appearance on CNN to try to diminish public pressure. There were even accusations that John had molested his children. There were indications that the girl had been sexually molested before she had been killed, but the police failed to take into account the fact that the Ramsey family had no criminal history whatsoever or that they had never had encounters with the police before. A comprehensive investigation was conducted in their home in an attempt to find pornographic contents, but the results of the search were never made public. In both cases the public accused the parents and believed they were not behaving as innocent people would.

Weak or no evidence? 

The fact that the police had weak evidence, with various theories making their way to the media, did not at all help the probe. Soon nobody was siding with JonBenet’s parents apart from some of their closest friends. The Ramseys soon hired John E. Douglas, a former FBI agent, who investigated the crime and established that the Ramseys had nothing to do with their daughter’s killing. The McCanns also hired a private investigation company, Control Risks Group.

One can suppose that these investigators are doing what the Portuguese police is not capable of doing, say sources close to the McCanns.

Both families established funds with the aim of helping the investigations. The public also condemned for the funds, claiming they were using the resources from the funds for their own private purposes.

Handwriting analyses of both JonBenet’s parents excluded them as the authors of the ransom note. Police found shoeprints in the cellar that did not match to any person in the house and the most important clue was a DNA sample found on the underwear of the little girl. It is presumed to be saliva. The sample did not match any family member. Also, DNA samples collected from underneath JonBenet’s fingernails did not match any of the suspects. Although there were no signs of forced entry into the house, a cellar window had been broken during the time of the crime and provided an easy way into the house. Also, at least one door to the house was unlocked that night.

What is most interesting is that the autopsy revealed that the little girl had eaten pineapple before she had been killed. A bowl of pineapple with a spoon was found on the kitchen counter, but neither John or Patsy remember taking the bowl or the spoon out and serving pineapple. More to the point, Patsy said that the type of spoon found in the bowl would have never been used for that purpose, which caused additional confusion for the investigators.

Forgotten case? 

Because of a lack of evidence the case was slowly forgotten until a decade later. On August 16, 2006, a former school teacher, John Mark Karr, was arrested in Bangkok on child pornography charges. Karr had often sent e-mails about JonBenet Ramsey to Michael Tracy, a journalism professor. When he was arrested he admitted to having been with JonBenet when she had died, but claimed her death had been an accident. However, Karr was released because his DNA did not match the samples found on the girl’s underwear. Taking into consideration his tendencies towards child pornography and that his handwriting matched the ransom note, the police said they were investigating him as a possible accomplice to her murder. Another theory states that Karr only has a vivid imagination and had confessed to the crime so he would be extradited to the United States instead of being charged for child pornography in Thailand where the punishment was much more rigorous.

The Ramsey family moved to Atlanta where Patsy died from ovarian cancer in 2006. Two lead investigators in the Ramsey case resigned. One said that the police had completely neglected the intruder theory, while the other said the police was not successful in making a case against the Ramseys.

We can only hope that the case of the little Madeleine will get closure and that the culprits, whoever they might be, will be properly punished.

The comparison to the Lindberg case is made in this article

from: www.guardian.co.uk

The Lindbergh kidnap is a lesson for the McCanns - and the media

To read the diaries of Anne Morrow Lindbergh is to be taken to the heart of parental anguish

Ian Jack
Saturday September 15, 2007

Madeleine McCann has been missing for 135 days; Charles Augustus Lindbergh was missing for 72. This week readers of the Daily Express were invited to respond to the question "Were Madeleine's parents involved in her death?" by phoning or texting Yes or No (25p plus network operator rates - and "death", note, not disappearance). For the first time, the words "hyperactive" and "unruly" have been connected to the vanished child. Some papers report that her soft toy, Cuddle Cat, now in her mother's possession, is badly wanted by the Portuguese police. Others report that what the police need to see more of is Kate McCann's diary. Meanwhile Kate McCann and her husband, Gerry McCann, doctors and fellow suspects, are prospecting for a new public relations person, who may turn out to be a former editor of the News of the World.

A conventional view of the McCanns is that they are now being eaten by the tiger they tried to ride; the media like to manipulate rather than be manipulated, and the Portuguese police don't care to be mocked. But if they had behaved differently, what then? They would do well to study the Lindbergh case. Eight days after her 20-month-old son vanished, Anne Morrow Lindbergh wrote in a private letter that there had been little in the way of new developments: "With this lull the papers, especially the tabs, bring out wild stories every hour and none of them true, as you know ... "

Mrs Lindbergh last saw her son about 7.30 on the night of March 1 1932. She and her Scottish nurse, Betty Gow, made sure that he was well tucked-up in his bed - he was recovering from a cold. They closed the window shutters, save the pair that couldn't be closed because they were warped. Colonel Charles Lindbergh, the great flyer, came home to the house in Hopewell, New Jersey, soon after. The couple had supper. At 10pm, Betty Gow went to check on the baby and discovered he wasn't there. It became, in the words of HL Mencken, "the biggest story since the Resurrection".

Whatever the McCanns achieved in publicity - the visit to the Pope, the wristbands, the words of David Beckham and Gordon Brown - was both prefigured and far exceeded by the Lindbergh baby. By midnight there were road blocks all across the state; the next day 100,000 police and volunteers were sweeping the countryside and 400 journalists had gathered in the Lindberghs' garden. Aircraft circled to take pictures. Presidents, prime ministers and the Prince of Wales extended their hope and sympathy. Al Capone offered his help from jail. Such was public vigilance that a car with New Jersey number plates was stopped 109 times on its way home from California.

"I think it is thrilling to have so many people moved by one thought," his mother wrote, but soon it became less thrilling, became exhausting and confusing. By mid-April, the Lindberghs had received 38,000 letters, which Mrs Lindbergh divided by content: Dreams 12,000, Sympathy 11,500, Suggestions 9,500, Cranks 5,000. Mrs Lindbergh wrote in her diary: "I have a sustained feeling - like a high note on an organ that has got stuck - inside me."

Her husband, unlike the McCanns, didn't seek this attention. He already knew, as the McCanns may now do, how newspapers behaved. By the courageous but essentially simple act of being the first pilot to fly solo across the Atlantic he'd become the world's hero. The press had made him famous but he despised its inaccuracies and inventions. Now that he was in charge of the hunt for his son (the police were in awe of him), newspapers began to feel that they were unfairly rejected. Unhelpfully, always seeking stories, the tabloids published ransom notes and details of Lindbergh's negotiations with the underworld figures that he felt sure would lead him to the kidnappers. He and his wife felt the publicity was risking their baby's life by scaring his captors. "I think such papers are really criminal outside of their inaccuracy," Mrs Lindbergh wrote. "The publicity makes it almost impossible for them to get the baby to us."

Those were the days when parents of vanished or dead children were not the prime suspects. The Depression had brought "kidnapping syndicates" to American cities. Nobody, at least publicly, suspected the Lindberghs had harmed their own child. In private, there were rumours. Lindbergh was well-known to be an irritating practical joker and a believer in "toughening up" his son; perhaps there had been an accident. As to Mrs Lindbergh, it would be observed today that the previous year she'd left her baby with her parents and servants while she went flying with her husband - for several months, adventurously, in the Arctic and Asia. Nothing was made of this then, or should be made now: to read her diaries, eventually published in 1973, is to be taken to the heart of parental anguish.

"January 30, 1933. Terrible night. 'Do you think about it much, Anne?' All the time - it never stops - I never meet it. It happens every night of my life. It did not happen and it happened. For I go over the possibilities of it not happening - so close, so narrow they are. So hard do I think about it that almost I make it unhappen ... and then always, like a bell tolling, like a clock striking, inevitable: 'It happened.' Then, at last, back to the only comfort - Death; we will all have it. In a century, between him and me it will be nothing. And then: He did not suffer, he did not know, a blow on the head. But I want to know - to know what he suffered - I want to see it, to feel it even."

Seven months earlier, on May 12 1932, a man got out of a truck four miles from the Lindbergh's house and went to urinate among some trees. There he discovered the body of Charles Augustus and a burlap sack. Gnawed off or eaten away, presumably by animals, were the left leg below the knee, both hands and most internal organs. The post-mortem concluded that death had occurred two or three months before, the result of a fractured skull. Until then, the Lindberghs had believed that reckless newspapers and bungling police were damaging their baby's chances of survival - may even have killed him. Now they faced the stark probability that nothing they could have done would have made any difference. Their baby had died that first night, either by falling to the ground when his taker was balanced on the ladder to the window with the warped shutters, or by a sharp blow with a hammer to the head. In 1936, Bruno Richard Hauptmann, a German immigrant living in the Bronx, was sent to the electric chair, refusing to confess.

The Lindbergh case sent a shudder through America, and led the American-Japanese furniture designer, Isamu Noguchi, to invent his Radio Nurse, now known to us as the baby monitor.

The Lindberghs went on to have five more children. Anne Morrow Lindbergh, as her diary suggests, was a good writer and turned it into a career. Too-bright optimism sickened her. Reading Virginia Woolf, she wrote in her diary: "Excited by The Waves [but] I hate those labored in-between descriptive passages of the sun's rays and birds cheeping, etc. When I see those italics coming at me, I rage."

Who knows what Kate McCann's diary will be like? This week, watching her assured exits and entrances on television, it was easy to imagine that she contained Mrs Lindbergh's "sustained feeling - like a high note on an organ that has got stuck"; a feeling sustained and quietly shrieking.