Maddie McCann was only 3 years old when she vanished from her holiday apartment in Portugal in 2007, and for the past 18 years, the world has been left searching for answers
Christian Brueckner, the prime suspect in the 2007 disappearance of British toddler Madeleine McCann, is a free man after being released from German prison earlier this morning.
The 48-year-old was formally named by German police in 2020 as the prime suspect in the three-year-old’s disappearance from a Praia da Luz holiday complex back in May 2007. It’s feared Brueckner, who has serve a seven-year sentence in his home country for rape, will now disappear.
Brueckner has refused a request from British police to be interviewed about the youngster’s disappearance from Portugal where she had been on holiday with parents, Gerry and Kate, as well as her two younger siblings, twins Sean and Amelie.
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Brueckner was born in Germany in 1976 and moved to Portugal in his late teens. It is believed he lived there between 1995 and 2007 working in the food industry. He was living in a ramshackle farmhouse on the edge of Praia da Luz when Maddie vanished from the holiday resort.
In 2005 he raped and beat a 72-year-old American woman in her flat in Praia da Luz and was jailed for seven years in Germany. German prosecutors say phone data shows Brueckner received a call on May 3, 2007 – the day Maddie went missing – near the Praia da Luz holiday apartment, but he reportedly claims to have been miles from the scene with a young German woman.
Brueckner insists he drove the woman, who was on holiday with her parents, to the airport in Faro for her return flight home the following day. They were stopped and photographed at a police roadblock, according to Sky News. Brueckner only came back on the police radar in 2017, after allegedly confessing to a bar room pal in Germany on the 10th anniversary of Maddie’s disappearance that he knew what had happened to her.
Brueckner was named as the prime suspect in the Madeleine McCann case in 2020, but is yet to be formally charged, and he denies having any involvement in her disappearance. German police are investigating him, and last month chief prosecutor Hans Christian Wolters claimed there was evidence against him.
However, he added the evidence was not strong enough to “make a guilty verdict likely”. He said: “He is not just our number one suspect, he’s our only suspect.” German search teams spent three days searching a 120-acre stretch of land in Lagos, Portugal, for evidence against him earlier this year.
Mr Wolters suspects Madeleine was killed shortly after she was abducted from her bedroom, but has admitted investigators do not have the “crucial evidence” of the youngster’s body in order to charge the suspect.
London’s Metropolitan Police – which has lead Operation Grange to hunt for Madeleine – said it sent an international letter of request to the 49-year-old, urging him to speak with them, but he has refused.
But as he walks free, what are the other lines of inquiry?
A former police officer has expressed concern that Madeleine may have been abducted at the behest of a notorious paedophile network once linked to Belgian child-killer Marc Dutroux.
The warning comes from Marc Verwilghen, Belgium’s former justice minister, who oversaw the Dutroux inquiry. He says disturbing intelligence passed between European forces just days before Madeleine vanished in May 2007 pointed to a trafficking gang seeking a young child. Just 72 hours before she disappeared, Belgian police had flagged that a paedophile ring had “placed an order” for a little girl.
Verwilghen told The Sun: “As soon as I heard about the case I had déjà vu – because it reminded me straight away of Dutroux. When you look at the case it is of course possible Madeleine was stolen to order. The alert […] should have been taken seriously.”
Dutroux, jailed for life in 2004, abducted, raped and murdered girls throughout the 1990s and was long suspected of links to wider trafficking networks. Verwilghen said there were many “similarities” between his crimes and Madeleine’s disappearance, adding: “The abduction of children took organisation and planning and more than one person to make this work. Intelligence suggests a paedophile ring in Belgium made an order for a young girl three days before Madeleine McCann was taken.”
In July, it was reported that German prosecutors refused to investigate claims that a couple hit Madeleine in a drink-driving accident.
According to Portuguese newspaper Correio da Manhã, Portuguese authorities demanded action after receiving a chilling tip-off from a British woman who believed her own brother and his German wife may be hiding the truth about Madeleine’s disappearance.
Investigators in Portugal asked German officials for permission to deploy an undercover officer with a fake identity to get close to the wife – suspected of being behind the wheel of the car that allegedly struck Madeleine – but German authorities reportedly shut the request down.
The British woman told officers in 2018 she thought it was her brother and his German wife who was driving under the influence of alcohol but police decided to continue solely with the investigation into suspect Christian Brueckner, rejecting other possibilities.
Portuguese newspaper Correio da Manha said the unnamed British man has now died. It did not say whether his German wife was still alive. In the front page report today, the newspaper claimed: “The German police refused to co-operate with Portugal’s Policia Judiciaria in the investigation of a clue that pointed towards Madeleine being run over.
“In 2018 a British woman went to police in the UK to say she suspected her brother had been involved in the disappearance of the youngster. She said her brother was an alcoholic and since the day Madeleine vanished had appeared to hide a painful secret.”
Madeleine McCann: Searching For The Prime Suspect airs Wednesday, September 17 at 9pm on ITV1
