Heteropaternal Superfecundity

A little known phrase and condition but one which is of relevance in all the Madelaine McCann disappearance mess whose first anniversary has now passed.

First a story. Some twenty years ago, a young woman from Kerry is south west Ireland was having a tawdry and incomprehensible affair with a weasel of a married man. She became pregnant. She hid the pregnancy by wearing loose fitting clothes. She lived at home with her mother, brothers and aunt who was an ex-nurse. The young woman gave birth to a child at home one evening. The child may or may not have been still born but was dead shortly after the birth. The aunt intervened and took control. The body of the child was buried close by the house.

At the same time, the body of a second newly born child was washed up on a beach about 20 miles away. A murder investigation was initiated.

The Irish police dispatched what was known as the Murder Squad from Dublin to investigate. The boys arrived, complete with attitudes, arrogance and expense claim forms, to show the local yokels just how these matters should be done.

They quickly discovered about the young woman and her pregnancy but no child. They interviewed the young woman and her family. With physical persuasion, all those interviewed signed identical confessions acknowledging their various parts in the disposal of the baby whose body had been washed up. Job sorted. Expense claim forms completed. Backs clapped. Hands shook. Shoulders enclosed with big hands. Big feed of drink all round and back to Dublin, neenaws crowing in congratulatory screeches.

Then matters unravelled. The confessions were withdrawn. The original child’s body was discovered. So now there are two babies. No problem says the Murder Squad – the young woman had twins and killed them both. The family witnessed one birth. The young woman on her own dealt with the other. However, the blood type of the original baby (these were days before DNA testing) was different from the baby whose body was washed-up on the beach. So the two babies could not have the same father. Hah said the Murder Squad. Heteropaternal Superfecundity. Twins with different fathers. The young woman had unprotected sex with two different men in very close succession and each fathered a child. No problem. The original confessions stand. Never mind that the only barely proven case of Heteropaternal Superfecundity occurred in the early nineteenth century. Never mind its deep physiological improbability in humans. It is common in, for example, cats but that is a specific evolutionary feature.

Controversy ensued. A legal tribunal (known as the Kerry Babies Tribunal) of inquiry was established to determine the facts. The Murder Squad boys stuck to their story. The family confessions – all the same, all containing the same errors – were voluntarily given and were valid. No violence was used. Heteropaternal Superfecundity. They did nothing wrong. The family were guilty.

This absurdity was rejected.

The lesson here is that the police had a conclusion and rammed every square, triangular, hexagonal and other shaped piece of evidence into the round hole of their prejudice, their stupidity, their arrogance and their absolutely certainty of their moral rightness contradicted by every fact.

And so with the Madelaine McCann disappearance investigation. I can credibly imagine that the Portuguese police have all the investigative skills and open attitude of the Irish police of the 1980s.

They had decided the McCanns are guilty of murder and are similarly rammed every inconveniently square shaped piece of evidence into the round hole of their incompetence and arrogance.

Now I am not defending the McCanns in any way. In other jurisdictions, they would have been charged with crimes such as reckless child abandonment. The certainty with which they left their three children alone in an apartment really does credibly suggest they administered some form of sedative so they could be sure there were no accidents while they were away. They are patently culpable in some form. They are not innocent parties in this affair. That role is reserved exclusively for the now long-dead Madelaine McCann.

But the Portuguese police had made up their minds and are thereafter attempted to retrofit every new item of evidence into this. Alleged DNA evidence in a car rented nearly four weeks after the child’s disappearance means the McCanns disposed of the body. Never mind the chain of events that would have had to happen to enable this – child’s body stored without being discovered for over three weeks, no significant decomposition that would have identified it or made its transportation difficult, body retrieved in the full glare of publicity, body moved and disposed of, no one following the parents, and so on. The general principle is that an aberration without a justifying continuum and context is just that: an aberration that is irrelevant when judged against the bigger picture.

So the police change their story in response to factual changes but with the same conclusion. The McCanns killed their child, accidentally or otherwise, and immediately disposed of the body. The McCanns allowed someone else to dispose of the body. The McCanns allowed their child to be kidnapped.

The real truth is probably some sequence of events along the lines of: the child was being observed by someone working in or living close to and with access to the resort and was abducted easily because it was deeply asleep. The child is now dead, the body dumped sea or buried in a desolate grave or an Algarve building site, long-devoured so it will never be discovered.

So Heteropaternal Superfecundity: a synonym for an absurd fixated idea pursued blindly to the exclusion of all rational alternatives, irrespective of how much new evidence arises.