German prosecutors fear Madeleine is dead
GERMAN prosecutors believe Madeleine McCann is dead and are investigating a child sex predator on suspicion of her murder.
The suspect, a 43-yearold German national named in media reports as Christian Brueckner, is reportedly serving a seven-year prison sentence for the rape of a 72-year-old American woman in Portugal in 2005.
He is known to have lived on the Algarve coast and his Portuguese mobile phone received a half-hour phone call in Praia da Luz around an hour before Madeleine, then three, went missing on May 3, 2007.
Launching an appeal on Wednesday night, Scotland Yard said he was believed to have been living in a distinctive early 1980s VW T3 Westfalia camper van at the time and re-registered a 1993 Jaguar XJR6 in someone else’s name the day after her disappearance.
The force’s Operation Grange, which has received £12.3 million in funding since it was launched in 2013, still considers the case a missing person inquiry because there is no “definitive evidence whether Madeleine is alive or dead”.
But Hans Christian Wolters, a spokesman for the Braunschweig public prosecutor’s office, said the suspect is being investigated “on suspicion of murder”, adding:
“We are assuming that the girl is dead. With the suspect, we are talking about a sexual predator who has already been convicted of crimes against little girls and is serving a long sentence.”
German newspaper Braunschweiger Zeitung reported the suspect was convicted of rape in Braunschweig District Court in December last year.
Der Spiegel reported he is serving a prison sentence in Kiel, having been initially extradited from Portugal in 2017 and convicted of drug trafficking. The German magazine said his criminal record contains a total of 17 entries, including child abuse while he was still a teenager.
It comes after Christian Hoppe, from Germany’s Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA), told the country’s ZDF television channel on Wednesday night German police have not ruled out a sexual motive for the alleged crime against Madeleine. He said that the suspect may have broken into an apartment in the Ocean Club complex, where Madeleine was on holiday with her parents, Kate and Gerry McCann, and her twin siblings Sean and Amelie, before spontaneously kidnapping her.
Both vehicles linked to the suspect have been seized by German police, who said there is information to suggest the suspect may have used one of them in the alleged offence.
The BKA is asking for other potential victims to come forward, while an appeal on German TV said the suspect was linked to houses in Portugal.
The McCanns, from Rothley, in Leicestershire, welcomed the latest appeal in a statement which said: “We will never give up hope of finding Madeleine alive, but whatever the outcome may be, we need to know as we need to find peace.”