http://missingmadeleine.forumotion.net/main-maddie-thread-latest-news-f1/dna-results-t11522-30.htm

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This is a copy and paste from a respected Poster on the question of the DNA testing and for me ,and I hope others, clarifies the results in easy to understand language:-
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you are indeed correct that not every hair from the head of every dead person will show signs of "corpse banding." If a hair is detached before the person has been dead for at least 8 hours, it will not. If a piece of hair that comes from the ends of the hair rather than near the end that was attached to the scalp is tested, it is unlikely to show corpse banding (though over a long period of time, "corpse bands" will move down the hair shaft.) But some hairs will show signs of corpse banding, and if it is not tested for, obviously it won't be found.

I do not know what Paulo Rebelo's reasoning was, but one possible explanation occurs to me: It may be that the hairs thought most likely to have been Maddie's were subjected to testing for mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), which destroys hair, and were therefore not available to be returned.

Let me elaborate on that a bit. The FSS report indicates that some of the hairs from the hire car were tested and were found to contain mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) consistent with that of Kate McCann. This would mean that said hairs could have come from Kate, Maddie, Sean, Amelie, or any other relative of Kate's on the maternal side of her family, and we know that some of her relatives came out from England to be with the family, so hairs from the hire car containing mtDNA consistent with Kate's could have come from probably at least 6 or 7 different people.

Testing hair for mitochondrial DNA would destroy it. What was returned to the PJ was the hair that remained after testing. It may be that the hairs that were deemed most likely to have been Maddie's were tested for mtDNA and were therefore destroyed. In order to determine whether any of the hairs were Maddie's and could have become detached from her head after death, they should have been looked at under a microscope for corpse banding BEFORE testing for mtDNA was done, but there is no indication in the file whatsoever that this was done. Then and only then should mtDNA testing have been performed on them, in my opinion.

It does no good to know that hairs from Kate or people sharing her mtDNA were in the hire car; definitely, that could be expected, as we know for a fact that at a minimum Kate and the twins were in the car. What it would have taken to prove that Maddie was dead would have been that first proximal banding was found on hairs that came from the hire car and then these same hairs were tested and found to contain mtDNA consistent with Kate's, meaning that they came from a relative of Kate's who was dead. The logical inference, then, would have been that the hairs were from the relative who was missing: namely, Maddie