I have a facebook 'friend' who is utterly obsessed with the McCann saga. Her posts in groups pop up on my timeline occasionally and let me tell you these people are worryingly fixated on it. Hundreds, maybe thousands of them, infatuated with every minute aspect of the case. Every day, a stream of comments, rumours, accusations and abuse...genuinely, I think some of these people need help.

Never seen anything like it, almost an underground cult.

She was somehow involved with Brenda Leyland, posting about their contact and saying some twitter users had accused her of stirring the whole thing up somehow. She has since deleted her account.

In some ways I can understand some lonely bugger sat in their bedsit with only maybe a cat for company. But for someone in their 60s, supposedly middle class, with a circle of friends (when she was doorstepped by the Sky News "reporter", she was going to "lunch with a friend"), then I shake my head and say "why", especially "where were her friends?"

The ever so sympathetic Katie Hopkins has weighed in with her poisonous vitriol on Twatter.


@KTHopkins
''How many more must die before the McCann's accept their negligence is at the heart of all their grief. Enough already."

Nice!

To be fair she does have a point. Who the hell leaves their kids unattended in a foreign country? There's one thing that is for sure. If Gerry and Kate had have been Tracey and Daz from a Northern council estate they'd have been lambasted to eternity by the 'working class bashing brigade'. The whole McCann saga stinks to high heaven, even more so now it's become an almost celebrity like entity with Sky news calling the shots.

If it wasn't the McCann's it would be another high profile person(s) introduced to the debate by media opinion. Some years ago I followed a blog which in itself was quite entertaining but which always seemed to find it way back to lambasting one of the victims of the 7/7 tube attacks, the female involved being obsessed with a female who had lost limbs in the attack and had received compensation - while all of the news reports were very sympathetic towards the victim the blogger was anything but, being convinced that the victim had made up the whole story and had never been on the tube that day, she was finally arrested when she burgled the home of the victim and she received a jail sentence and time in a secure hospital for her pains.

During the trial it was disclosed that she was also involved with a group who had an ongoing campaign against some amateur researchers who investigated the identity of the Whitechapel Jack the Ripper and out of curiosity I took a look at some of their blogs, jesus wept, if you want to see what true fruit-loopy trolling and bat-shit lunacy is all about then just dig around that topic, its absolutely packed with them.

Yes, of course.
I'm sure the McCann's need constantly reminding of their complicity in the disappearance of their daughter.
Especially by media whores like Hopkins.
And what is it for you that stinks about the whole McCann saga?

Off-topic, but mental illness is a huge issue in the world, not just this country.

There are far too many unanswered questions, media manipulation and fabricated PR campaigns. Too many accusations of corruption and lies from and to all parties involved. The Mccanns came across as far too media savvy from the start, some people even believe they have profited handsomely from the whole episode.

Out of the multitude of abductions/disappearances/murders that take place on a daily/weekly/monthly/yearly basis, why is this case the one that has stuck?

They are intelligent people - think back to when the story broke, they were in Portugal and getting nowhere with the local police and so contacted a friend in the UK to try and raise publicity, I recall the exact day the story broke because it was an important day for me too (not going into that) and was on every BBC radio news bulletin, the early reports were all from their friends in the UK as they couldn't be contacted.

So put yourself in their position, could you light the spark of a media campaign ? I could, its very, very easy to contact your local BBC news office and they are ALWAYS looking for news with a local angle and an exclusive report that they can break - as are your local newspapers, I'm sure many here would be savvy enough to kick off a campaign that would then take on a life of its own.

Wow.
Manipulation, fabrication and profit.
I must be one the simplistic few who just see a distraught couple, probably racked with self-guilt who are just desperate to find out what became of their beloved daughter.