Sightings in general and in particular

THE STAM SIGHTING IN AMSTERDAM

'My name's Maddie. They took me from my holiday': The astonishing sightings and CCTV footage police kept secret from the public [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]
 
By DAILY MAIL REPORTER
Last updated at 2:12 PM on 05th August 2008 
 
A little girl calling herself 'Maddie' and claiming to have been taken from her mother on holiday was seen in Amsterdam at the time Madeleine McCann disappeared, the case files show.
 
Dutch shop worker Ana Stam, 41, said she spoke to a little girl aged three or four who said her name was 'Maddie' and replied to a question about her mother:
 
'They took me from my holiday.'
 
The girl entered her party shop in early May last year with a man and a woman and two other children, according to a witness statement to Dutch police in the police files.
 
The man - who "did not look like a nice person" - appeared to be speaking Portuguese but the woman spoke in English and told Ms Stam they had a small circus in France.

Ms Stam was at the back of the shop when the young girl approached her and asked in English without an accent: "Do you know where my mummy is?"
 
The shop assistant answered that her mother was a little further back in the store but the child replied, "She is not my mummy," and added:
 
'She is a stranger, she took me from my mummy."
 
When Ms Stam asked the girl where she last saw her mother, she said: "They took me from my holiday."
 
The Dutchwoman went on: 'I asked where that holiday was but the little girl was incapable of telling me.

 'I thought it all a little odd and then I heard the woman call the girl. She didn't call her Maddy, but a longer name. She could have said Madeleine but I don't remember that.'
 
The girl had dark brown hair in a ponytail, "huge" green-brown eyes and a pale face which showed "little or no emotion", she said.
 
Ms Stam said she thought the child looked "very much like" Madeleine apart from the colour of her hair.

unquote

The details are in ApensosV, Vol I. supposed sightings and locations. File 01. 
Documents 55 to 66 deal with the Amsterdam sighting.

The FACTS are: 
The girl was seen on the 6th or the 8th of May (accounts vary but I think the 6th is the most likely as by the 8th the press in NL was wild about the case) . 
Ms. Stam went to the police on the 13th June. 
The people bought ‘wild wigs and masks’ (it’s a party shop) to the value of about 237 euro. 
They wanted to pay with a credit card and were very insistent that this would be done. 
The shop didn’t accept creditcards however. 
The next day the woman of the group came back on her own to pay cash. 

The Dutch police checked 
Reports were sent to Portugal on the 17th or 18th June. 

Considering:
that these people had already told her that they ran a small circus in France -
that they wished to pay by credit card and were very insistent on this.
that the child called herself Maddy -
that she had brown hair and no coloboma apparently -
that the conversation with the child as reported is highly unlikely -
that the woman came back the following day to pay -

it is highly unlikely that these were kidnappers trying to escape justice.  

However, the McCanns chose to use this as a typical example of laxness of the PJ.

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] brings witness Anna to Britain to help in the hunt for Madeleine It is 462 days since Madeleine went missing in Portugal…
Anna, 41, spoke out after the Mirror flew her to London to meet a police artist and representatives of the McCanns. Pledging to instruct investigators to make Anna’s dramatic sighting a priority, family spokesman Clarence Mitchell said: “I’m grateful to the Mirror for bringing her to us. Her evidence could be very significant. Our investigators will interview her in the next few days.”
On one woman’s word, so much has been done. Says the Mirror:
Anna saw the couple with the Madeleine lookalike in her party shop in Amsterdam on May 6 last year.

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]Published by Jon Land for 24dash.com
Wednesday 6th August 2008 - 12:31pm
 

Anna Stam, 41, said "it was stupid" nothing was done by Portuguese police after she reported speaking to a little girl named Maddy in Amsterdam who replied to a question about her mother: "They took me from my holiday."
 
It was probably now "too late" to find any clues, she told ITV News.
 
Attacking British and Portuguese officers, she said: "I think it's stupid because maybe they could have done something more at that time and maybe now it's too late to find any clue. So I think it's very neglectful by the police.
unquote

(Stam was photographed with the McCanns and had a photofit drawn up of the man and the woman.)

How hard can it be to trace all the small circuses working in France in 2007? - The French bureaucracy ensures that plenty of traces will be left - so did the McCanns then instruct their detectives to go to France and work on the best clues they’d had so far?
Description of an entire family, photo fits, information that they had credit cards, the type of material purchased and the business they were running. Imo they should have traced them in no time, I think it could still be done!  


At a later date Clarence Mitchell stated that since the girl called herself Maddie (not Madeleine) it was unlikely that it was MMcC.

if Anna Stam thought this child had been abducted, why didn't she tell the police immediately, whether she thought it was Madeleine or another child? No logic to this IMO.

Oh yes we believe that... they took Madeleine, walked around with her in public allowing themselves to be caught on CCTV and let her say who she was and all... of course the shop didn't accept credit cards, which would allow them to be identified...

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There's a good CCTV image of the woman and child here.

No Fate Worse Than De'Ath wrote:[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

There's a good CCTV image of the woman and child here.

But this is the one of the petrol station not the one from Amsterdam.

Apologies, yes.

More haste, less speed! I didn't read the article properly.

No Fate Worse Than De'Ath wrote:Apologies, yes.

More haste, less speed! I didn't read the article properly.

Yes it happens, I just opened the link because I was curious and recognized the image, from CCTV I think there's only that one and the other from a street near a bank I can't remember where exactly, but in Europe too.

This is the sighting outside a bank in Brussels.
 
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No Fate Worse Than De'Ath wrote:This is the sighting outside a bank in Brussels.
 
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The one from cameras 4 and 5 where the speed is slowed right down certainly bears a striking resemblance to Madeleine imo.

I can't see her face at all in any of the shots, just the hair, which an awful lot of small children have cut in that way. A longish bob. 
It's a little blond girl, like millions of others imo. 

Apart from it being my considered opinion that we often saw Maddie with a wig in photographs, when not a wig, a hat. 
Also, consider this: in the normal world, if someone showed you the two Everton photographs, you'd not even think they were sisters, leave alone the same girl. 

Just to help this argument along: how many girls can be made to look like Marylin Monroe with a blonde wig and make-up?  An awful lot. Toddlers all tend to have button noses and round faces so adding the blonde hair with the ubiquitous page-boy cut  can make anyone (even a boy) look like Maddie. 

Besides, she had brownish hair?

Well, I'm writing here because this topic is about sightings in general... I was thinking to myself, that all the "famous " sightings of Madeleine must be fake. I mean, you see a child you think was abducted and let it go away??? I'd call the police and hold the people and the child until they get there, if it wasn't Madeleine I'd apologize and take the consequences but how can we believe someone say they saw her and let her go???!

Ayniia wrote:  I'd call the police and hold the people and the child until they get there, if it wasn't Madeleine I'd apologize and take the consequences but how can we believe someone say they saw her and let her go???!

You do that and you could be charged with kidnapping or various other charges would not be the thing to do

Should those complicit in the disappearance of Madeleine McCann be brought to account in law, I fully expect there will be an outbreak of further alleged sightings during the period that the accused are on remand. .

@noseyparker That is not necessarily the case as any citizen in the UK may "arrest without a warrant anyone who is in the act of committing an indictable offence; or whom the person has reasonable grounds to suspect is committing an indictable offence."

Different laws will apply in other countries but, providing they have not used undue violence when detaining any suspects, in such a high profile case imo it's highly unlikely anyone would face charges for acting in the best interests of the now 12 year old Madeleine McCann .

noseyparker wrote:

Ayniia wrote:  I'd call the police and hold the people and the child until they get there, if it wasn't Madeleine I'd apologize and take the consequences but how can we believe someone say they saw her and let her go???!

You do that and you could be charged with kidnapping or various other charges would not be the thing to do

I wouldn't care about anything if i really believed it was Madeleine?! I'd hold her until police arrived!

Ayniia wrote:

noseyparker wrote:

Ayniia wrote:  I'd call the police and hold the people and the child until they get there, if it wasn't Madeleine I'd apologize and take the consequences but how can we believe someone say they saw her and let her go???!

You do that and you could be charged with kidnapping or various other charges would not be the thing to do

I wouldn't care about anything if i really believed it was Madeleine?! I'd hold her until police arrived!

..... I'd have a quick word with myself. Then think about the dog alerts in the various places in he apartment, on Kate's clothes, Cuddle Cat, the car boot, key fob, the flower bed outside 5A.

Quickly followed by all the lies the parents and friends have told ......

In other words - I could NEVER believe a blond-haired 12-year-old girl is Madeleine McCann.

Gaggzy wrote:

Ayniia wrote:

noseyparker wrote:

Ayniia wrote:  I'd call the police and hold the people and the child until they get there, if it wasn't Madeleine I'd apologize and take the consequences but how can we believe someone say they saw her and let her go???!

You do that and you could be charged with kidnapping or various other charges would not be the thing to do

I wouldn't care about anything if i really believed it was Madeleine?! I'd hold her until police arrived!

..... I'd have a quick word with myself. Then think about the dog alerts in the various places in he apartment, on Kate's clothes, Cuddle Cat, the car boot, key fob, the flower bed outside 5A.

Quickly followed by all the lies the parents and friends have told ......

In other words - I could NEVER believe a blond-haired 12-year-old girl is Madeleine McCann.

You're totally right. Ok I'd do what I said BEFORE we knew about the dogs alerts.
After,as you said, I'd have to remind myself of that. I still have to sometimes, I start thinking about some aspect of the case and theorizing until the light bulb gets on and I'm like, oh ,ok, the dogs

I wish you were wrong gaggsy..but uou hit the nail on the head why all sightings should be discarded

The Stam sighting (ref. topic on the Killer Look) is on page one. It was one of the most peculiar ones given the many details given by Stam, the question is why the McCanns didn't immediately set their detectives on this promising lead. 
Way better than the Edgar/McCowley duo disguising themselves as cherry pickers in deepest Portugal, they might have tried to find out where this little circus operated. The EU has plenty of regulations in place for such itinerant performers. Should have been a doddle.

Nina wrote:

No Fate Worse Than De'Ath wrote:This is the sighting outside a bank in Brussels.
 
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The one from cameras 4 and 5 where the speed is slowed right down certainly bears a striking resemblance to Madeleine imo.

Could be any western European girl that age.

I am sure that girl, and her babysit, were identified and the girl was not Madeleine.