German and British investigators announced this week that they are targeting a new prime suspect in the disappearance case of three-year-old British girl Madeleine McCann in 2007. It concerns 43-year-old convicted German child molester Christian Brückner. This is what we know about him.
McCann disappeared without trace from her bedroom thirteen years ago in the apartment of the Portuguese holiday resort Praia da Luz in the Algarve, where she stayed with her family. Her disappearance became one of the largest unsolved British crime cases in history and also attracted considerable attention worldwide.
Several suspects have been identified and acquitted in recent years, including Madeleine’s parents Kate and Gerry McCann.
Ten years after the toddler’s disappearance, British investigators said they may never solve the case, even if they never gave up.
A “disturbing remark” in a German bar
A high-ranking source within the Portuguese legal system told the BBC that the joint investigation into the new suspect began after a tip from Germany in 2017. According to the source, the tip came from a friend of Brückner, who had heard Brückner make a “disturbing comment” while visiting a German bar.
According to several British media, the pair watched a news item on television about McCann’s ten-year-old missing, after which Brückner would have told the friend that he knew what had happened to the girl. Then he is said to have shown a video in which he raped a woman to the friend.
Investigators are still looking for more information about the suspect, his van and his Jaguar, but at least suspect that Brückner was near the resort where McCann disappeared thirteen years ago.
Brückner broke into hotels and holiday homes in Portugal
Brückner was first convicted of the sexual abuse of a child in his home country in 1994 when he was a teenager, writes The Guardian. According to the British newspaper, he fled to Portugal at the age of eighteen to avoid his sentence in juvenile detention.
Brückner stayed in the Algarve between 1995 and 2007. He had various jobs there and worked, among other things, as a swimming pool installer and car mechanic. He also broke into hotels and holiday homes during that period and traded in drugs.
The suspect said The Guardian a house on the edge of the holiday resort Praia da Luz, where McCann stayed with her family in 2007.
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The van with which Brückner traveled in Portugal. (Photo: Pro Shots)
Suspect was ‘a sexual predator’
Later, the Portuguese authorities extradited Brückner to Germany for drug trafficking. He was also convicted in his home country of raping a 72-year-old woman in Praia da Luz in 2005.
On Thursday, the German prosecutor announced that the suspect was “a sexual predator, who had already been convicted of abusing little girls.” He is currently “serving a long sentence for this,” said Chief Prosecutor Hans Christian Wolters of the Braunschweig Public Prosecutor’s Office.
Wolters suspects McCann is no longer alive and has classified the investigation as a murder case. The London police, working closely with its German and Portuguese colleagues, are still speaking of a missing case, as it has no “definitive evidence” as to whether Madeleine is alive or not.
Police get 270 tips after photos are released
Police released photos this week of the interior of a house associated with Brückner. The police also shared photos of a white-yellow Volkswagen T3 Westfalia van with Portuguese license plate and a dark Jaguar XJR 6, which were then owned by Brückner. He changed the vehicles to another German name a day after McCann’s disappearance.
As a result of the photos, the London police have now received 270 phone calls and emails, reports the BBC Friday. The investigation services will continue to search for more information in the near future.
What the police know in any case is that Brückner was in Praia da Luz on the night of the disappearance, on May 3, 2007, because he made a phone call from that location between 7:32 PM and 8:02 PM. It is suspected that McCann disappeared that evening between 9:10 PM and 10:00 PM.
