DNA destroyed in Maddie-link rape inquiry

Potential DNA evidence from a rape linked to Madeleine Mccann suspect Christian Brueckner was destroyed on the orders of Portuguese prosecutors.

Irish rape victim Hazel Behan waived her right to anonymity last week to say she believed a masked man who targeted her in her Algarve apartment could have been the German sex offender.

She went public about the 2004 attack after discovering Bruecker had been convicted of the September 2005 rape of an American OAP in Praia da Luz where Madeleine vanished in May 2007.

Mum-of-two Ms Behan said the Met Police had told her they were taking her case very seriously and would be contacting their Portuguese counterparts.

But yesterday it emerged biological material collected from the crime scene was destroyed around two months before Madeleine’s disappearance, meaning the chance of

Hazel Behan

making any solid link between the two cases if the same offender was responsible could now prove impossible. The decision to destroy the DNA was revealed in court papers.

Confirming the destruction of the potential key evidence, the papers say: “On March 15 2007 when the judge decided to archive the investigation, the Public Ministry decided any biological material should be destroyed.”

Brueckner only came back on the police radar in 2017, after confessing to a pal in Germany on the 10th anniversary of Maddie’s disappearance that he knew what had happened to her.