Suspect in Maddie case ‘had second secret cellar’

‘The new tenant is in such a panic’

THE prime suspect in the murder of Madeleine McCann kept a second secret cellar, it was revealed yesterday.

Christian Brueckner excavated it by hand at a second allotment 40 miles from the site searched by German police this week.

A business associate told the Mail investigators went to the second plot, in Braunschweig, last month, after he was publicly identified as the focus of the police investigation into Maddie’s 2007 disappearance.

The developments came as it emerged Brueckner, currently in jail for drug trafficking, had launched a fresh bid for parole which could see him walk free early next year.

On Wednesday night, police finished forensic work at allotments on the edge of Hanover where Brueckner, 43, stayed ‘off the grid’ at a plot with a ramshackle summer house – the only one of the five plots with a cellar. Yesterday it emerged police are also focusing on the outskirts of Braunschweig, where Brueckner kept another allotment.

Neighbours said he reopened a cellar under the floor of the house on that plot and the current leaseholder now wants police to search the site amid worries she could be ‘sleeping over a body’. Manfred Richter, 80, said: ‘Brueckner excavated the floor of the house. He dug a big hole. It was three metres deep and six metres wide. He carried out the rocks and earth by hand and dumped it at the front of the house.

Vanished: Madeleine McCann ‘He put planks of wood over the top of the hole. It took him two months. Doing this work got him in trouble with the authorities in charge of the gardens.’

Another neighbour said: ‘That cellar was built by the previous tenant. It is a huge cellar which runs under the whole house. Brueckner just opened it up. There are no steps. But the new tenant is now in such a panic, she has asked the police to search it but they won’t come. She has spent a week sleeping outside because she is so scared.’

Thomas Tager added: ‘The woman is terrified. She called police to ask them to come with search dogs. She said to me, “I’m worried I am sleeping on a dead body”.’

Karsten Richter, whose family tend the plot next door, said he called the police two months ago to ask if they were aware of Brueckner’s history at the site, and was told they were not.

On Wednesday, police officers at the allotments near Hanover breached the foundations of the summer house – which was demolished at least eight years ago – and found the entrance to a cellar.