The Courier & Advertiser (Angus and Dundee)
Police probing Madeleine suspect find children’s clothes and images of abuse
MISSING: German investigators reveal fresh evidence in Brueckner inquiry
Girls’ swimming costumes, children’s clothes and 8,000 child abuse images were found by police investigating Madeleine Mccann suspect Christian Brueckner, according to German media reports.
Brueckner also reportedly boasted a motorhome he owned and drove repeatedly between Germany and Portugal was ideal for hiding “drugs and children”.
German investigators believe Brueckner killed Madeleine soon after abducting her from a holiday apartment in the Portuguese resort of Praia da Luz in May 2007.
Brueckner, 43, is serving a 15-month prison sentence in Germany for drug dealing, and is appealing a conviction for the 2005 rape of a 72-year-old American woman, also at Praia da Luz, for which he was sentenced to seven years in jail.
Germany’s Spiegel TV has revealed in a documentary that police seized the motorhome in May 2016, as part of an investigation into the disappearance of five-year-old Inga Gehricke – the so-called German Maddie.
The red and white Allegro Bay RV had been bought by Brueckner in Germany in 2010. It was found at a disused factory site near Braunschweig which Brueckner had bought six years earlier at auction.
During a six-day examination of the site, police also found computer memory sticks with more than 8,000 files, mostly containing pictures and videos of child abuse, the documentary said.
The items were in a carrier bag buried beneath the body of Brueckner’s dog.
Brueckner was under suspicion after Inga vanished from the woods near Diakoniewerk Wilhelmshof in Saxonyanhalt during a family picnic in 2015. He was charged in relation to the child images, but not in relation to Inga.
Spiegel TV said police had also found numerous items of children’s clothing, most of them “small swimsuits”, in the motorhome. Brueckner does not have any children.
A friend of Brueckner’s, identified in the documentary as Bjorn R, spoke of Brueckner’s behaviour while he lived near holiday resorts in Portugal.
“Alcohol sometimes loosened his tongue. He said that he was in Portugal and he got in everywhere and stole cameras,” Bjorn R said.
A former ambulance driver who met Brueckner and saw the RV said: “He told me, ‘I can transport children, kids, in this space. Drugs and children, you can transport them in this van, it’s a safe space in the van, nobody can find them.”
Brueckner has racked up 17 convictions across Europe, including for sex offences against children, drug offences, theft and forgery.
He was named prime suspect over Madeleine’s disappearance earlier this month by German police, although his lawyer said Brueckner denies any involvement in the case.
It has also been revealed there is a chance Brueckner could be released from prison if the European Court of Justice overturns his conviction for the rape of the 72-year-old woman in Portugal.
Brueckner’s lawyers are appealing, claiming that German police broke the law by extraditing him from Portugal on a drugs charge but then putting him on trial for rape.