Is 15-yr Maddie mystery on the brink of being SOLVED?
THE Madeleine McCann mystery has thwarted international investigators in the 15 years since she vanished from an Algarve holiday flat aged three in May 2007.
Parents Kate and Gerry continue to hold out hope their daughter is still alive and now 18 years old.
But German investigators claim to have evidence she is dead and that convicted paedophile Christian Brueckner, 45, is responsible.
It is almost two years since his name was first publicly linked to the case, but since then little new information has emerged from police working in Germany, Portugal and the UK.
Last month Brueckner was made an “arguido” – formal suspect – by Portuguese authorities, which hinted at a breakthrough.
And yesterday we told how Portuguese media claimed an item linked to Madeleine from Rothley, Leics, was found in his camper van.
On the face of it, the discovery – not confirmed by prosecutors – is a monumental breakthrough.
But how close are German prosecutors to charging Brueckner?
Have they solved the mystery? We take a look at the evidence they have linking him to Madeleine’s disappearance and his past that makes him a prime suspect.
Brueckner’s alleged bar confession
Brueckner came to the attention of the authorities in 2017 after he allegedly told a friend “he knew all about” what happened to Madeleine.
According to police, he was sitting in a bar in Portugal on the 10th anniversary of the youngster’s disappearance when her image flashed up on a TV.
Brueckner is alleged to have told the drinking buddy that he knew exactly what had happened to her.
The friend rang authorities in 2017, sparking the massive investigation that continues to this day.
Brueckner’s criminal past in Germany
When Madeleine vanished from Praia da Luz in May 2007, Brueckner was already a convicted paedophile and serial criminal.
He was found guilty in Germany in 1994 of abusing a girl of six in a playground and exposing himself to another youngster when he was 17.
He was sentenced to two years’ jail but fled to Portugal.
After his arrest there he was extradited to Germany in 2000 and jailed.
He was released the next year and returned to the Algarve. After Madeleine’s disappearance he went back to Germany and was jailed for drug smuggling. In 2016 he was convicted of sexual abuse of a minor and possessing child abuse images. He fled Germany in 2018 but was caught in Italy on a European arrest warrant.
Brueckner’s criminal past in Portugal
In 2005 he broke into a US pensioner’s home in Praia da Luz and raped her.
The following year he served nine months’ jail for stealing diesel from HGVs in Lagos.
The German was freed in December 2006, five months before the youngster vanished, and began living in a camper van.
He was eventually convicted of the Praia da Luz rape in 2019 after DNA linked him to the attack. He is serving a seven-year prison term in Kiel, Germany, for the crime.
Damning claims of his ex-friends and girlfriends
Brueckner’s former pal
Christian Post told police he boasted of regularly breaking into holiday flats in Praia da Luz.
At the time Brueckner was living in a ramshackle farmhouse on the outskirts of the resort. Post, now living in Cambodia, said Brueckner would go on “night-crawls” looking for properties to burgle.
He recalled seeing “between 60 and 100” stolen passports stacked on a fireplace in his farmhouse.
Post recently told the Mirror: “He told me he climbed on to balconies and through windows.
“He said he would go into rooms and check what was in there and take what he wanted. He would
only do it after dark, because it was too risky being seen in the daylight.”
Brueckner’s British ex claimed he once broke into her flat and lay in wait for her under her bed, hours after attacking her in a jealous rage after she innocently hugged another man.
She said he repeatedly slammed her head against a wall in the toilets of the Algarve bar where she worked – leaving her a bloodied mess. When the woman returned home she had a “horrible feeling” someone was inside and found Brueckner under her bed.
The petite barmaid said he then embarked on a stalking campaign, leaving her too afraid to walk home alone. Portuguese police were twice called out to deal with Brueckner for the attack and stalking but he was never charged.
Mobile phone located near
McCann apartment
The big breakthrough came in May 2020 when phone records placed Brueckner in Praia da
Luz on the night Madeleine vanished.
Mobile phone records showed he received a 30-minute call while in the town lasting from 7.32pm until 8.02pm. Madeleine went missing about an hour later. Police have still not identified who Brueckner was speaking to during that call.
The day after Madeleine disappeared Brueckner re-registered a Jaguar XJR-6 he owned in the name of an innocent German. He left the Algarve days later.
Camper van
Brueckner was evicted from his Praia da Luz farmhouse while serving his sentence for petrol theft. After being released he began living in a distinctive early 1980s VW camper van with a white body and yellow trim.
Police later seized the vehicle and regard it as critical to their investigation into the German.
It was inside this camper that items belonging to Madeleine have been found, according to unconfirmed Portuguese media reports.
Other suspected Portuguese crimes
Brueckner is suspected of raping Irish tour rep Hazel Behan in 2004 in Praia da Rocha, where she was working at a resort a 30-minute drive from Praia da Luz. Hazel, who waived her anonymity to the Guardian, was gagged and raped in her apartment but the culprit was never caught. Her ordeal has similarities to Brueckner’s attack on the US pensioner the following year.
German prosecutors have confirmed they are investigating Brueckner over the 2004 attack and are thought to be close to filing charges. He is also suspected of indecently exposing himself to a group of children in Sao Bartolomeu de Messines, Portugal, in 2017.
Brueckner’s denials
Brueckner and his lawyers have repeatedly denied he had any involvement in Madeleine’s disappearance.
It was claimed earlier this week that he was having sex with a German teenager in his camper van on the night Madeleine vanished.
Sources close to him told Sky News and Channel 5 that she was the alibi he needs to prove his innocence.
But the Mirror understands the woman has twice been interviewed by German detectives and cannot corroborate the claims.
In a recent letter from his prison cell, Brueckner insisted he was not responsible for snatching Madeleine.
He wrote: “I did nothing – well, almost nothing. Perhaps I was a suspect after all they found out about me. Drug dealer, breaking into houses, living in cars and there was something with kids when I was 17.
“But they had not even one proof I was involved with the McCann case. And they still don’t have it. I know why. Because they have no hairs or anything from Maddie [which] means that nobody can put anything like that in my stuff to find it.
“I wasn’t kidnapping anybody and of course I wasn’t killing anybody. I wasn’t attacking anybody after I was 18. I made some silly mistakes when I
younger, but who hasn’t?”
What do German prosecutors say?
Last year German prosecutor Hans Christian Wolters said investigators have enough evidence to bring a charge against Brueckner.
But in an exclusive interview with the Mirror, he said they “want to strengthen their position first”.
He said his team remain “100% convinced” that the British youngster was killed by Brueckner.
But he refused to reveal what evidence they have that led them to reach that conclusion.
In an interview with Portuguese TV this week Mr Wolters refused to deny Portuguese media claims that an item belonging to Madeleine had been found in the camper van.