Did Maddie suspect attack another British girl two years earlier?
A SEXUAL assault on a British girl in Portugal has become part of the fresh investigation into Madeleine McCann’s disappearance.
The ten-year-old was attacked two years earlier just yards from the complex where Madeleine was snatched.
Hans Christian Wolters, the German prosecutor leading the investigation, said detectives are examining the possibility a serial child abuser was responsible for both incidents in Praia da Luz.
Police have been trying to piece together the movements of convicted paedophile Christian Brueckner in the Algarve between 1995 and 2007.
They are examining where the suspect was when nine British girls aged between six and 12 were assaulted on holiday in southern Portugal from 2004 to 2006.
In many of these cases, their families’ apartments were broken into and the girls were attacked in their beds.
These include the assault on the tenyear-old which Mr Wolters said was part of the investigation into Madeleine’s disappearance from the Ocean Club in 2007. The victim, who is now thought to be 25, did not tell her parents at the time and only came forward following an appeal by Scotland Yard in 2014 for information about a lone sex offender in the Algarve.
The attack was in the same year Brueckner, now 43, raped a 72-year-old American nearby. He received a seven-year jail term last year, which he is appealing against.
Concerns have previously been raised about forensic material collected by local Portuguese officers after the attacks on the British girls. Speaking in 2014, the Met Police’s Detective Chief Inspector Andy Redwood said his concern was a breakdown in communication between local police and the national Policia Judiciaria.
He feared this may mean ‘sitting in police exhibit stores somewhere in the Algarve could be forensic material that we and the Policia Judiciaria are not aware of’.
Detectives in Germany are still trying to find the person who called Brueckner just before Madeleine went missing.
Mr Wolters suspects a rogue Ocean Club employee told the German drifter the family’s apartment was free to burgle.
He said: ‘This is the evidence we want before we issue an arrest warrant and then interview him for the murder.’
German police have not yet arrested Brueckner, who used to live in Braunschweig (Brunswick), because they would be forced to reveal their evidence against him. Mr Wolters said there was a ‘100 per cent’ certainty Madeleine was no longer alive. But he sparked confusion by giving another interview suggesting ‘there was a little bit of hope’ she may still be found. The lawyer representing Madeleine’s parents Kate and Gerry in Portugal has urged police to reveal the new developments.
Rogerio Alves said German and Portuguese officers have not told him why they suspect Brueckner.
Portuguese newspaper Sol claimed yesterday police have looked at the possibility Madeleine’s body may be in wells near Brueckner’s old home in Praia da Luz.
The suspect is refusing to talk to police. Defence lawyer Friedrich Fulscher has visited him in prison, where he is serving time for drugs offences. He said Brueckner was not responding to allegations he killed Madeleine but this should not be viewed as an admission of guilt.