Maddie: Car clue shocker
EVIL Christian Brueckner kept a secret third vehicle that could solve the mystery of Madeleine Mccann’s disappearance.
His British ex-girlfriend says the jailed German paedophile had a battered Volkswagen estate at the time the three-year-old vanished.
Police who are probing Brueckner’s involvement released pictures of two vehicles linked to him – a black Jaguar and a twotone camper van.
Now his ex has revealed he owned a third car, details of which have never been made public.
In an exclusive interview with the Daily Star, she said: “Towards the end of our relationship he had another car as well as the Jaguar. I haven’t seen that mentioned anywhere. It was a Volkswagen. I don’t remember the model. “It was a dirty, yellowy, mustardy kind of colour. It was an old one and was long. I heard he still had it around the time that Madeleine disappeared, along with the Jaguar.
“I think I told the Portuguese police all about the cars, but I can’t be sure about the estate. When I spoke to the Portuguese police I tried to help as much as I could, but Portuguese isn’t my first language.
“I would be happy to talk to British police about it. Maybe it could help their case and solve what happened to Madeleine?”
The woman, originally from Berkshire, said Brueckner began driving the estate in mid-2005, two years before
Madeleine disappeared.
He also owned the black Jaguar at this time, but had not yet bought the camper van.
Portuguese detectives also quizzed the woman, 45, about Brueckner’s farmhouse on the outskirts of Praia da Luz. She spent many nights with the German in the rundown property less than a mile from the Ocean Club resort from where Madeleine disappeared.
“I never lived with him but I often stayed over,” she said. “His house was OK. It was old but he kept it tidy and clean. It had one bedroom.
“I’ve seen the photos and instantly recognised the big tree trunk in the middle of the room.”
The mum, who the Daily Star has agreed not to name, also told police that she and her friends suspected Brueckner of burgling homes and businesses in the area. She said: “He was always bringing expensive things
back to the house – computers, cameras, things like that.
“I didn’t ask where he got them from. I remember my friend and I wondering if they were stolen. “We said we think he might be involved in some illegal business because he seems to have money, but we don’t know where it comes from. Maybe selling stolen property, nothing too big.” The woman is still living in fear that Brueckner will be released and then come after her.
She said: “He came to Portugal with a German girl. He said they grew up in a children’s home together. She left him for someone else.
“He said to me once that if he ever found her he would kill her. It made me think, ‘If he said that about her, what would he do to me if I left him?’”
The Daily Star revealed yesterday how the woman dated the German for nearly a year in 2004 and 2005 when they both worked in the same bar in Lagos.
He flew into a jealous rage and brutally attacked her after she innocently hugged another man.
He repeatedly slammed her head against a wall in the bar’s ladies’ toilets, leaving her a bloodied mess. Then, in a chilling echo of the Madeleine case, he broke into her flat through a window and hid under her bed.
She said: “I don’t have any photos of him. I used to, but I hated him so much because of what he did to me I destroyed everything.
“It’s scary and weird to be embroiled in this case now. It scares me because he was obviously into things that I had no idea about. I have a quiet life here.
“I start to imagine what if he knows people, criminals, who could hurt me.
“I worry and overthink, ‘What if he comes after me?’
“That’s my fear and that’s why I don’t want my identity revealed. I just want to protect my family.”
The woman now believes Brueckner, who is in a German prison, could be responsible for Madeleine’s abduction in 2007.
She has also given police crucial leads about their main suspect. They include details of Brueckner’s associates in the Algarve and Germany, the layout of his Praia da Luz home and remote beaches where he took her.