Madeleine suspect once broke into teen girls’ flat naked, pal claims
MADELEINE McCann suspect Christian Brueckner once broke into an Algarve holiday apartment naked while three teenage girls were asleep, a friend said.
The German paedophile fled after one of the terrified youngsters woke up and screamed when they were confronted by him, a court heard.
Former friend Michael Tatschl said Brueckner had boasted about burgling Algarve tourist flats while the holidaymakers slept inside.
The carpenter told the German court he chillingly told him that he “didn’t care” if the properties he raided were occupied at the time.
Shocked
Brueckner, 47, also bragged of scaling buildings in Portugal’s Praia da Luz to burgle flats on the first or second floors, it is claimed.
Tatschl said while they were in prison together Brueckner confessed to holding a teenage girl hostage at his Praia da Luz home: “He told me the girl was 14 or 15. He kept her tied to a post for days. I don’t know if she escaped. I was shocked.”
The Austrian said that the drifter kept stolen items at his “desolate” farmhouse in the resort including more than 500 passports he kept as “trophies” stashed away. Madeleine, three, vanished from her family’s holiday apartment in Praia da Luz on May 3 2007 as her Leicestershire parents ate in a nearby tapas restaurant. Tatschl said in 2020 he was “convinced” Brueckner was behind the abduction of Madeleine. He gave evidence in Braunschweig regional court yesterday, where exmechanic Brueckner is standing trial on sex charges.
Tatschl said he first met him in the Algarve in early 2006 when he helped to repair his car. He said: “I would say our relationship was both friendship and also a criminal working relationship. He told me he earned money by breaking into tourist houses.
“He told me he broke in and three teenage girls were sleeping in the living room. He was naked. One of them woke up when a phone rang and screamed. The girl’s father heard the scream and came, so Christian had to jump off a balcony. He burgled naked as he did not want to leave a trace.”
Brueckner is accused of a string of sex charges between 2000 and 2017 unrelated to Madeleine’s disappearance. One of the alleged crimes was just weeks before she went missing.
He was jailed for the rape of a pensioner in 2019 and is serving a sevenyear prison term.
Brueckner denies any involvement in Madeleine’s disappearance.
The trial continues.