Maddy suspect leaves tapes trail
Video footage of the man suspected of abducting Madeleine McCann raping and sexually assaulting women was found at his rented farmhouse shortly before the youngster went missing.
Christian Bruckner, 43, is suspected of kidnapping Madeleine in May 2007, five months after he was released from a Portuguese prison.
A video cassette found at the farmhouse in Praia da Luz showed him raping a 72-year-old American woman in 2005 after he broke into her villa under two kilometres from the McCann family’s holiday apartment. The video also showed a woman aged 15 to 20 tied up who was forced to perform a sex act. He also filmed an attack on a third woman aged between 45 and 50.
The video was found by a burglar who broke into the dilapidated farmhouse. He also found a pistol and said that there were about 20 other cassettes which had not been viewed.
Bruckner’s violent offending, paedophile conviction in Germany before he moved to the Algarve and his history of stealing from local hotel rooms and rental properties have raised questions about why he had not been a prime suspect earlier in the Madeleine McCann investigation.
Graham Hill, a child abuse detective sent to help the Portuguese police in 2007, told The Times: ‘‘One of the first tasks in an abduction is to list local sex offenders. You don’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to work that out. If they did that, they would work out there was a German guy with a child sex offence history who has done burglaries. They should have been able to say he was a viable suspect. So why would it take 13 years?’’
Dr Hill, who is now a criminologist, told The Conversation website that the Portuguese approach was ‘‘flawed and not fit for purpose’’ from the beginning.
Operation Grange, the Met’s inquiry into Madeleine’s disappearance, was given Bruckner’s name years before the witness tip-off in 2017 elevated him to prime suspect. However, he was not among 600 persons of interest. Dr Hill said: ‘‘In time, there’s going to be some questions asked about why this person didn’t come to the fore of both investigations sooner.’’
Bruckner and an English girlfriend had lived in the farmhouse about two kilometres from the McCanns’ holiday apartment until mid-2005. He remained there alone until he was jailed for theft in April 2006. Before he was jailed he claimed to have bought 25 ‘‘English passports’’ for €1000 which he planned to sell for €2000.
He was released in December 2006 and returned to Praia da Luz and lived in his VW campervan. Witnesses have described seeing a man matching Bruckner’s description monitoring the Ocean Club complex where the McCanns were staying in the days before Madeleine disappeared. Some witnesses believe that he may have had an accomplice who was driving a van similar to his VW camper.
Bruckner left Portugal shortly after Madeleine disappeared and returned to Germany with an Englishspeaking girlfriend. He had a lot of cash, which he told friends that he had found during a burglary on the Algarve.
He continued to spend a lot of time in Portugal and is believed to have had a property in the Silves area, inland from Praia da Luz. In 2015 he sold the VW T3 Westfalia to the German owner of a breakers yard in Silves, where it was found by police last year. The yard owner said that he had met Bruckner several times and they talked about classic cars and vans. ‘‘We had that same passion,’’ he said. ‘‘The guy seemed normal and I never thought I’d see his face as a suspect in this famous case.’’
Bruckner fled to Portugal in 2016 while facing prosecution in Germany for sexually abusing a child. He was extradited in June 2017 and spent 15 months in prison.
The rape of the American woman who had been threatened with a ‘‘scimitar’’ with a 30cm blade remained unsolved until the burglar who found the video contacted German police in 2018. They alerted the Portuguese authorities who matched Bruckner’s DNA to the rape.
The victim had returned to the United States and was too traumatised to give evidence at the trial, at the end of which, in December last year, Bruckner was sentenced to seven years in prison.
Bruckner had arrived in Portugal in 1995 after fleeing a jail sentence in Germany for the sexual abuse of children. He sold advertisements for newspapers and worked selling awnings and pool covers. He moved to Praia da Luz to start his own pool business. When that failed he began importing used German cars to sell and worked as a waiter in the nearby town of Lagos. In 2005 he was fined for assaulting a police officer.