Inside dungeon beneath Maddie suspect’s house
HUNT FOR MADELEINE: GRIM SCENE AT PAEDO’S HOUSE Mystery surrounds hole searched by cops
POLICE searched a sinister cellar dug under a ramshackle house by Madeleine McCann suspect Christian Brueckner, we can reveal.
Officers swooped on the convicted paedophile’s former home in Central Germany after the current tenant raised the alarm.
Brueckner had lived in the allotment property, on the outskirts of Braunschweig, while he ran a kiosk in the city from 2013 to 2016.
While there, he illegally dug the 10ft deep pit.
Last year, it was reported a friend claimed Brueckner had said he wanted to create a dungeon – with soundproof walls – “like the guy in Austria” – a chilling reference to monster Josef Fritzl.
There is no evidence he ever followed through with that idea.
Brueckner left the home and went on the run when he suspected German detectives were closing in on him for a number of offences – including a rape – in Portugal.
Our sister paper the Mirror is the first newspaper to gain access to the creepy site and inspect the dank cellar.
The current occupier of the house, Sabine Selig, 36, said she had called the police the moment she heard about Brueckner’s link to the Maddie investigation and they had since scoured the basement.
Sabine revealed Brueckner, who she described as “grubby”, was desperate to get rid of the place when she took it off him in 2016.
Now the artist says she realises he was itching to go on the run after being convicted of sexually abusing a little girl in Germany.
He even joked about heading to Italy where he was eventually captured, living on the streets of Milan, in 2018.
Sabine said: “If I had known what kind of guy he was, I never would have moved in here.
“He wanted to give up his little house, his allotment quickly – as quickly as possible.
“He wanted to run away to Italy. I had to pay him 800 euros to take over the garden.
“It all looked like a rubbish dump, not like a flat. I didn’t care, the garden was big, you could make something out of the hut.
“And I needed the space and Brueckner was under stress.”
After moving in, Sabine says, she noticed Brueckner had dug the cellar but gave it little thought.
Then when she found out he was the prime suspect in the Maddie case, she contacted police immediately. They descended on her place and began digging it up in a frantic search for evidence.
Sabine said: “I went straight to the police, because I remembered the half-closed cellar and I don’t know what’s still down there.
“It’s a strange feeling, a hole under your feet and no one knows what’s ‘buried’ there.”
The quaint wooden structure where she lives, which is like something from a Grimm fairytale, is secluded but easily identifiable thanks to its distinctive blue roof.
It sits in a large garden and fruit trees abound. But inside the house itself it is damp and neglected. Brueckner, a skilled tradesman, did fit it with a kitchen and woodfuelled stove in an attempt to make it more homely.
He also decorated it in what Sabine called a “creepy” fashion.
She said it was more like a child’s fairytale version of a house than a single man’s dwelling, with a collection of hand-carved wooden dolls and fairy-lights. She said: “He showed me his handicrafts in and around the house.
“Like a child’s world, a fairytale house that can always light up.
“It was fun and spooky at the same time.” Describing Brueckner,
It’s strange having it under your feet with no idea what’s buried there SABINE SELIG ON MYSTERY HOLE DUG BY BRUECKNER
she said: “He made a nervous, unsorted impression. He always had a beer in his hand, as far as I can remember.
“He was always very shorttempered, full of tension due to his personal circumstances, one clearly on the run – but from what, I don’t know. There were also friends of his in the allotment garden but fortunately I haven’t seen them again so far. Strange characters.
“He was always in a jacket, according to my memory was always a bit dirty and he was totally under pressure and had to get away quickly. He had a fixed gaze, he stared at you almost motionless. There was something unpleasant and opaque about him. Today I can explain it, it seems to be the Maddie McCann case.”
Madeleine was snatched from her bed in the resort of Praia da Luz, Portugal, in 2007 when she was three.
Brueckner had fled to Portugal in 1995 after completing a two-year sentence for abusing a child. He is now serving seven years in Germany for raping a 72-year-old American woman in the Algarve in 2005.
German prosecutors are currently compiling evidence against Brueckner, who became the prime suspect in her disappearance in June 2020. They believe Maddie has been murdered. In May, Brueckner made his first comment on the case, branding the investigation against him “scandalous” in a letter penned from his cell.
He said the public prosecutor had “brought shame to the legal system” and refuses to speak to police or investigators about the case.
Last year, German police intensively searched another allotment linked to him in Hanover, about an hour away from Braunschweig.
It was a short drive away from a flat where he once lived, and the “Havana Club” bar he often frequented.
But the large scale, two-day operation, involving diggers and sniffer dogs, came up with nothing.