Sunday Mirror (Northern Ireland)
MADDIE SUSPECT GAVE US TOYS & SWEETS
Children reveal gifts to horrified witness
SCHOOLKIDS say the Maddie McCann prime suspect plied them with toys and sweets.
They told a caretaker that Christian Brueckner had a kiosk full of treats.
A FORMER school caretaker has told of the “gut-wrenching” realisation that a man who told him he spoiled young kids is now prime suspect in the disappearance of Madeleine McCann.
Peter Erdmann, 64, told the Sunday Mirror that Christian Brueckner gave sweets and cuddly toys to children aged seven to 10 for TWO YEARS.
He said kids turned up at school with gifts they said Brueckner gave them – and another local claimed children went behind the counter and into the storeroom of his shop. Peter now says police should investigate whether Brueckner, 43, was grooming kids at the kiosk just 300 yards from a school in Braunschweig, north Germany.
The caretaker said yesterday: “The police should definitely investigate whether Christian abused them.
“He was mainly giving the presents to boys, but also some girls. He was giving them presents nearly every day and it went on for a couple of years.
“I thought nothing of it and just thought he was a friendly man. I used to go into the kiosk and he would give me free shots of Jagermeister. He knew I was the school caretaker. It turns my stomach now.”
Peter spoke as police in Germany revealed they are probing possible links connecting Brueckner to the disappearance of Maddie and three German children.
Three-year-old Maddie, from Rothley, Leics, vanished while on holiday in Praia da Luz, Portugal, in May 2007.
Police are now looking at the cases of Inga Gehricke, five, and René Hasee, six, in Germany – and the murder of German girl Carola Titze, 16, in Belgium.
Brueckner is in jail on drugs offences but can technically apply for parole. He was also jailed for seven years last December for raping a 72-year-old woman at her villa in Praia da Luz in 2005. But a legal challenge over that conviction is reported to be under way over extradition issues.
Brueckner took a phone call in Praia da Luz on the night Maddie vanished. He lived locally, on and off, and had a grey Jaguar and a Westfalia campervan which were seen in the area.
Caretaker Peter told the Sunday Mirror he regrets not speaking to police earlier.
He worked at Grundschule Hohestieg School in Braunschweig from 1999 until 2016 and says Brueckner lived locally from
2014-16. Peter said: “The kids would come to school holding ponies and teddy bears. They said Christian gave them to them and he always had a big bag of them in the storeroom.
“I asked him if he gave gifts to the kids and he told me he had a box full of such gifts in the kiosk.
“He would walk past the school at least once a day while walking his two dogs. I wish I had raised what was going on with my bosses at the time.
“I regret it and not being more suspicious. It is gut-wrenching and I am disgusted by what I read about him.”
There is no suggestion Brueckner abused any of the school’s pupils or the kids in the kiosk.
RUBBISH
Another local named Norbert said he spotted kids as young as nine behind the counter.
Norbert grew up in the area and later moved into Brueckner’s old flat nearby. He said: “He sometimes let children work behind the cashier. Children were also seen in the storeroom, but no one knew about his convictions then. He disgusts me.”
Norbert allowed the Sunday Mirror inside the flat, which he says Brueckner left in a disgusting condition.
He said: “There was rubbish everywhere. The floors and bottom of the walls were black and there was vomit and insects everywhere. Pest control had to disinfect everything. There were broken windows. The bedroom was wrecked. Everything was damaged. He was an animal. He held parties all night and neighbours complained to police.
“Who knows if the children got involved? It wouldn’t surprise me.”
Norbert also claimed Brueckner, who lived in the flat with a 17-year-old girlfriend, left two dogs to die of thirst during one return visit to the Algarve.
And he alleged Brueckner returned and threatened him with a knife while demanding to take a freezer and airconditioning unit he had left behind.
The squalor matched conditions of an abandoned farmhouse near Neuwegersleben where Brueckner also lived.
Meanwhile, a former pal claimed Brueckner had a reputation for plying teenage girls with drugs in exchange for sex. The friend claims he was known in the village of Barao de Sao Joao, in the Algarve, as the go-to person for cannabis and class-A drugs.
The woman claimed: “It was a favours exchange. He provided joints and what they need. In exchange they had sex with him because they had no
money to pay for drugs.”