Neighbour recognises Madeleine suspect in newly found mugshot
A PICTURE of the German paedophile suspected of abducting Madeleine Mccann, taken just a year before her disappearance, could provide fresh leads to what happened to her.
A mugshot of Christian Brückner from April 2006 when he was arrested for stealing fuel in the Algarve, aged 29, has been found in Portuguese court documents from the time. A former neighbour told The Daily Telegraph that she recognised the drifter, who was often spotted racing his Jaguar XJR up the gravel track towards his secluded farmhouse just outside Praia da Luz. “He always had greasy hair and scarring on his face from what I assume was acne,” she said, adding that “it might help people” remember him. It is hoped others may recall the young man with floppy hair from the Praia da
Luz area in May 2007, when the threeyear-old British girl disappeared.
In an interview with The Daily Telegraph on Monday, Michael Tatschl, an Austrian, who claimed he was Brückner’s best friend from the time, said: “When I saw the Netflix documentary, I knew immediately he was guilty. Where the female tourist talked about the man turning up at her door while her child played by the front door, the creepy guy with acne and blonde hair, I knew it was Christian for sure.”
Brückner was known to be a “snappy dresser” and allegedly had an array of stolen watches. Another image that has been uncovered shows him as a teenager in 1996 – after his release from jail in Germany for molesting a six-yearold girl in a playground – with shorter hair and a more youthful face.
The new pictures came to light as the Bundesgerichtshof, Germany’s highest court, confirmed it would decide if Brückner should be granted parole for
the drugs offence he is imprisoned for in Kiel, northern Germany.
The ruling was expected from the local courts in Kiel and Braunschweig, where the 43-year-old last lived in Germany, after he finished two thirds of his sentence on June 6. But both institutions ruled the case was outside their jurisdiction. If Germany’s equivalent of the Supreme Court rules in Brückner’s
favour, he could be free by July 17, depending on a separate legal challenge before the European Court of Justice.
Brückner is appealing his conviction of raping a 72-year-old American woman after an administrative error by the German police who extradited him from Portugal on a drugs charge, then put him on trial for rape. The blunder could result in the ECJ ordering a retrial or even scrapping the conviction.
Rogério Alves, the lawyer who represented the Mccann family in 2007, yesterday again criticised German authorities’ stance on the investigation into Madeleine’s disappearance.
He told The Daily Telegraph: “The prosecutor is saying he is convinced that Madeleine is dead. He keeps saying that he has found Brückner to be suspicious, and they believe that he is responsible. At the same time, he is arguing that there is not enough evidence to charge him, so sometimes we get a little bit confused.”