Police divers search Portuguese reservoir for missing Maddie
GERMAN police probing the disappearance of Madeleine McCann are to search a reservoir in the Algarve which was a regular haunt of their suspect Christian Brueckner.
Their counterparts in Portugal are expected to start closing off roads leading to the site near the town of Silves ahead of the official start of the hunt today.
Detectives from Scotland Yard are understood to have travelled to the area with a ‘watching brief’. German police are set to arrive later, having received permission to search the ‘area of interest’ that Brueckner, 45, reportedly called his ‘little paradise’.
The search is expected to last for at least two days.
It will be the first major operation of its kind since June 2014 when British police were given permission to dig in Praia da Luz, where Madeleine disappeared. They used ground-penetrating radar and sniffer dogs trained in detecting bodies.
Portuguese broadcaster SIC reported that German police sought permission to search the
‘Linked to four child murders’
reservoir in an official judicial request after concluding it was ‘an area of interest’.
It was searched both in February and March 2008 by divers hired by a Portuguese lawyer.
More divers will explore the murky depths of the Barragem do Arade reservoir but digs will also take place in the surrounding woodland. Local reports are claiming around 80 per cent of the investigation will be on land and the rest under water.
The search area is around 30 miles from the seaside resort of Praia da Luz.
One well-placed source described the search as a German-led operation which was being coordinated with the help of Portuguese police and linked to information the authorities had gleaned pointing to regular trips Brueckner had made to the dam.
The insider said: ‘ Portuguese police will offer logistical support but the initiative is German and they were the ones that requested the work that is going to take place this week.
‘Scotland Yard officers are due to travel to Portugal but theirs will be a watching brief.’
Marcos Aragao Correia organised a privately funded operation after claiming he had been tipped off by underworld contacts that Madeleine had been murdered and her body thrown into the reservoir within 48 hours of her disappearance. Two bags containing small bones were found during the second search after divers had earlier recovered several lengths of cord, some plastic tape and a single white cotton sock.
Portuguese police were alerted following the discovery but subsequently ruled out the possibility that the bones were human because of their size.
Last year, Brueckner spoke out for the first time about the case, denying allegations in a letter that he was involved in Madeleine’s disappearance. Made an official suspect in the investigation in April 2022, he stressed that he was ‘not there at the time and that he was not living close to the place [of her disappearance]’.
Brueckner, linked to four child murders across Europe since 1996, said: ‘I’m the most-known bad person in the world and I did nothing – well almost nothing.’
In 2021, prosecutors said they were ‘100 per cent sure’ they had the right man.
Hans Wolters said evidence included phone analysis placing Brueckner at the Ocean Club resort the McCanns were staying at when Madeleine went missing and an alleged confession Brueckner made to a friend.
He is serving a seven-year jail term for a rape committed in Portugal in 2005.
Last October he was charged with the rapes of two unknown women in Portugal, the rape of an Irish tour guide in 2004, sexual abuse in 2007 close to where Madeleine vanished, and a sexual abuse case in 2017, again in Portugal.
Madeleine, from Rothley, Leicestershire, disappeared from her holiday apartment on May 3, 2007, aged just three. She was in the Algarve with her doctor parents and two-year-old twin siblings.
‘Regular trips to the dam’