Police hunt Madeleine McCann suspect’s ‘underage Kosovan’ ex-girlfriend as police focus shifts to a farmhouse with abandoned wells the couple shared in Praia da Luz
- Detectives believe Christian Brueckner's ex-girlfriend will help in investigation
- They hope she has details about the 43-year-old's movements in Praia da Luz
- The pair stayed in a farm house 25 minutes' walk from the McCann's resort
- She is reported to have left before Maddie went missing, while Brueckner stayed
Detectives probing into the background of the new prime suspect in the Madeleine McCann investigation are attempting to track down his former partner - described by one person who had met her as an 'underage Kosovan girl'.
Officers are hoping to trace the woman, who is believed to have stayed with suspect Christian Brueckner in a house near Praia da Luz, Portugal, prior to the then three-year-old's disappearance.
The Algarve farmhouse, which has several abandoned wells on the property and surrounding wasteland, is 25 minutes' walk from the hotel where Madeleine went missing in May 2007.
British police searched land the property in 2012, while German police yesterday released images of the house as part of an appeal for witnesses.
Detectives want to track down his ex-girlfriend, who is thought to have left the area prior to Madeleine's disappearance, while Brueckner is said to have stayed in Praia da Luz, possibly sleeping in a campervan.
They hope to find out more about the movements of Brueckner around the Portuguese tourist hotspot.
It is part of their investigation into Brueckner, the paedophile prime suspect who has 17 convictions and who is serving seven years in Kiel jail in northern Germany for rape.
It comes as a former acquaintance of Brueckner told a German television news channel how he was once threatened by the 43-year-old in Braunschweig, Germany.
This is Christian Brueckner, the new key suspect in the Madeleine McCann case, whose identity is protected in Germany despite being in jail for raping a US tourist in Praia da Luz in the months before Maddie vanished. Here he is pictured in a bar in Hanover, Germany
Officers are hoping to trace the woman, who is believed to have stayed with suspect Christian Brueckner (pictured) in a house in Praia da Luz, Portugal, prior to then three-year-old Maddie's disappearance
Madeleine McCann who vanished from the resort of Praia da Luz in Portugal in May 2007, while on holiday with her family
The man, whose name was changed by RTL to Norbert M, said he had lived in an apartment which was previously run by Brueckner as a kiosk and knew he had a 'minor girlfriend from Kosovo'.
Mr M told RTL: 'He became more and more aggressive.
'I heard that he left the kiosk and then went to Portugal or Spain with a girl. He then left dogs in his kiosk for weeks.'
He added: 'I can imagine that he is behind the disappearance of Maddie.'
The comments came as yesterday prosecutors in Germany labelled Brueckner a ‘multiple sexual predator’.
It was also claimed Brueckner had been convicted of a child sex offence in his native Germany when aged just 17.
Yet the drifter, who reportedly has as many as 17 criminal convictions, was apparently overlooked by Portuguese police.
It also emerged yesterday that he had been convicted of raping a 72-year-old US widow in her Algarve home 18 months before Madeleine disappeared.
Brueckner is now the focus of the 13-year investigation into the disappearance of the three-year-old from the Algarve.
Yesterday a spokesman for her parents Kate and Gerry McCann hailed the ‘significant’ breakthrough.
But they faced renewed anguish as German prosecutors stated they believed their daughter was dead and also suggested officers knew how she died.
Brueckner is behind bars in Germany.
But it was claimed that he could walk free within days, as he will become eligible for parole on Sunday.
The suspect is said to have lived at this property named Escola Vehla - meaning 'old school' - during his time in Portugal
An aerial view of the farmhouse where Christian Brueckner is said to have stayed with his girlfriend near Praia de Luz in Portugal
The property around the land and the surrounding wasteland is said to have several abandoned wells on it
The house is situated between the resort of Praia da Luz and the larger town of Lagos four miles away
Madeleine vanished from this holiday apartment in the popular Portuguese holiday resort of Praia da Luz - Apartment 5a - while her parents were with friends nearby and regularly checking on their three sleeping children
The German suspect had lived in a warehouse outside Praia da Luz for several years but moved into a campervan just before Maddie vanished
On the most dramatic day in the case since Madeleine vanished on May 3, 2007:
- Brueckner emerged as a ‘person of interest’ for British police in the early stages of a major Scotland Yard review started in 2011;
- German prosecutor Hans Christian Wolters said: ‘We think that Madeleine McCann is dead and are appealing for witnesses’;
- German magazine Der Spiegel said Brueckner was convicted of sexually abusing a child in his native Bavaria in 1994;
- Police faced questions on why it took 13 years for the suspect to come to light.
Brueckner is in jail in Kiel, northern Germany.
But one German media report yesterday suggested he was on the verge of getting parole, having served two thirds of his sentence.
According to a German newspaper, he becomes eligible for freedom from Sunday, if the Federal Court of Justice in Germany decides to grant him parole.
On Wednesday, Scotland Yard, which has been carrying out a £12million review of the Madeleine case, dropped the bombshell revelation there was a new suspect, as German police launched an appeal via that country’s equivalent of CrimeWatch.
The suspect, who is in prison in Germany for rape, has been linked to an early 1980s camper van - with a white upper body and yellow skirting, registered in Portugal - which is seen here on the Algarve in 2007. Police believe it may have been used in the crime but they have not found the DNA evidence needed to charge him
He has also been linked to a 1993 Jaguar XJR6 with a German number plate seen in Praia da Luz and the surrounding areas in 2006 and 2007 including just days before Maddie's disappearance. It has been seized by police.
Yesterday Mr Wolters said: ‘We think that Madeleine McCann is dead and are appealing for witnesses.
The 43-year-old is a multiple sexual predator already convicted of crimes against little girls.’
He suggested police had determined the method used to kill the three-year-old and said others would have ‘concrete knowledge’ of how she died and where her body was hidden.
Scotland Yard still insists that it is a missing person inquiry and the McCanns say they have never given up hope she will be found alive. Madeleine disappeared while her parents, from Rothley in Leicestershire, were having a meal with friends at a tapas bar close to their apartment.
The news today has given hope to comes as a shot in the arm to her parents Kate and Gerry McCann (pictured in 2017), who have never given up hope in the search for their daughter
Scotland Yard is launching a 'major' joint appeal with the German and Portuguese forces, just over 13 years after she vanished. Pictured: DCI Mark Cranwell
Portuguese police were facing serious questions yesterday about why Brueckner was not identified earlier as a suspect given he had child sex abuse convictions dating back to 1994.
He lived two miles from the resort where she vanished and phone data indicates he was in the area on the night.
If Portuguese officers had done basic checks of known sex offenders his name could have emerged within months.
The ex-lead Portuguese investigator on the case, Goncalo Amaral, has claimed the suspect had been ruled out of the inquiry in 2008.
But he allegedly came back into the frame after a conversation in an internet chatroom about Madeleine and her abduction.
Yesterday it emerged Brueckner only became a suspect for Scotland Yard in 2017 when he is said to have told a friend at a bar he ‘knew all about’ what had happened to Madeleine.
According to Sky News, Brueckner was prompted to make the comment when her face flashed up on a TV screen in a German pub during a report on a UK appeal for information on the tenth anniversary of her disappearance.
A spokesman for the McCanns said: ‘This would appear to be the most significant lead they are trying to close down in 13 years.’
German police said their phones ‘rang hot’ after the appeal went live.
Detective Chief Inspector Mark Cranwell, leading the Met Police investigation, said more than 270 calls and emails had been received.
Today more details revealed about the remote farmhouse which gave Christian Brueckner unrivalled views of Praia da Luz.
The convicted child sex offender is now a key suspect in the disappearance of Madeleine McCann in May 2007.
When Brueckner lived in the farmhouse above Praia da Luz, he seldom mixed with his neighbours and allowed the property to fall into disrepair.
Last night one neighbour told the Daily Mail: ‘I immediately recognised him from the pictures in the media. He kept to himself and lived with a girlfriend for some of the time.’
When Brueckner lived in the farmhouse above Praia da Luz (pictured), he seldom mixed with his neighbours and allowed the property to fall into disrepair
Brueckner, now 43, is understood to have lived in the farmhouse from 1999 to 2006 and may have been living in a distinctive campervan at the time Madeleine disappeared
The farmhouse is a 25-minute walk to the Ocean Club complex where Madeleine was on holiday with her parents and her twin siblings Sean and Amelie
Brueckner, now 43, is understood to have lived in the farmhouse from 1999 to 2006 and may have been living in a distinctive campervan at the time Madeleine disappeared.
The single-storey property is surrounded by disused water wells and sits on a hillside which leads on to a footpath to the beach where the little girl played. It also sits close to where Madeleine’s parents Gerry and Kate used to jog along the clifftop in search of solace during the aftermath of her disappearance.
The farmhouse is a 25-minute walk to the Ocean Club complex where Madeleine was on holiday with her parents and her twin siblings Sean and Amelie.
In 2014 police sealed off an area of scrubland close to the farmhouse and used ground-penetrating radar to detect whether the soil had been disturbed.
Another neighbour said of Brueckner last night: ‘He moved in in the mid-Nineties with a German girlfriend who left around a year and a half later. They seemed to have a tempestuous relationship. I would hear them arguing. I knew very little about his life but he seemed to me to be a choleric man.’
Another added: ‘He had a fall-out with another German he sub-let the place to for around six months. He treated him very badly.
‘But I never for one moment suspected he could have had anything to do with Madeleine McCann’s disappearance. It’s something that never even crossed my mind. His life was pretty much of a mystery to people round here. His girlfriend left a long time ago and she hasn’t been seen around here since.’
A third neighbour said: ‘This is an idyllic spot and we are all proud of our houses and look after them. But this guy let his place go to ruin. He left it looking a right mess and it took the owner some time to make it right.’
The owner of the property is a British man who rented it to the German suspect and his girlfriend. The homeowner, who asked to remain anonymous, said both UK and Portuguese police have asked for his help relating to background information on Brueckner.
He said: ‘In 2006 my neighbour contacted me in the UK to say that the house had been left ramshackle and abandoned with no sign of occupancy.
‘We returned to Portugal and reported the disappearance to the Portuguese police and later discovered that he may have been arrested.
This was the last we heard from him until about a year ago when we were contacted by the UK and Portuguese police requesting what information we had as they were following a new line of inquiry relating to this person.’
Speaking to Sky News, he added: ‘My wife and I moved back to the UK in 1992. The house was let out to friends and friends of friends to maintain occupancy, look after the land and pay the bills.
‘The house was occupied for a period of time by what seemed like an ordinary young couple trying to get by in Portugal.
'Living in England, we had relatively little interaction besides talk of the house, the land and any maintenance issues.
'We met in person when passing through on family holidays to the Algarve.
'At a later date we discovered that the man’s girlfriend had parted company and returned to Germany.’
Police are now trying to trace Brueckner’s ex-girlfriend to establish a full picture of the suspect’s movements on the Algarve. She is thought to have left Praia before Madeleine’s disappearance.
Brueckner, a known drifter, also spent time dog-sitting for German friends at a house in Monte Judeu, a few miles from the seaside.
Maddie murder police lay bare the child sex crime past of Jaguar-driving wannabe playboy who was actually a drug-dealing drifter and rapist - as it's revealed he could be out of jail on parole in days
By Sam Greenhill and Claire Duffin for the Daily Mail
The new Madeleine McCann suspect was unmasked last night as it emerged he had been on the police radar for more than two decades - and he could be let out of jail on parole within days.
As prosecutors labelled him a ‘multiple sexual predator’, it was claimed Christian Brueckner, 43, had been convicted of a child sex offence in his native Germany when aged just 17.
Yet the drifter, who reportedly has as many as 17 criminal convictions, was apparently overlooked by Portuguese police.
It also emerged yesterday that he had been convicted of raping a 72-year-old US widow in her Algarve home 18 months before Madeleine disappeared.
Brueckner is now the focus of the 13-year investigation into the disappearance of the three-year-old from the Algarve.
Yesterday a spokesman for her parents Kate and Gerry McCann hailed the ‘significant’ breakthrough. But they faced renewed anguish as German prosecutors stated they believed their daughter was dead and also suggested officers knew how she died.
Brueckner is behind bars in Germany. But it was claimed that he could walk free within days, as he will become eligible for parole on Sunday.
Cruising the Algarve in his classic Jaguar, Christian Brueckner posed as a fun-loving playboy.
The German drifter spent 12 years pursuing a bohemian lifestyle – but not long after Madeleine McCann vanished in 2007, he left Portugal and returned to his homeland.
It was in a German bar exactly ten years later – on the anniversary of the three-year-old’s disappearance – that Becks-drinking Brueckner turned the spotlight on himself.
As Madeleine’s face flashed up on the bar’s television screen, he reportedly turned to his drinking partner and claimed he ‘knew all about’ the case. He is alleged to have said something to suggest he knew what had happened to Maddie, according to a report on Sky News.
Later, it is claimed, he showed his companion a video of himself raping an elderly American widow in Portugal in 2005. The friend contacted German police.
Brueckner – who chose a moniker for his Facebook page that means ‘madness’ in German – swiftly became of interest to the detectives probing Madeleine’s disappearance. It was three more years before his name became public.
Photographs obtained by the Mail show blue-eyed Brueckner enjoying a night out in a Hanover bar in 2011.
Wearing a pinstriped blazer, the self-styled Romeo appeared to be enjoying himself with a group of friends.
One picture shows him cradling a small dog.
Last night one friend told the Mail that Brueckner’s ‘life situation’ was ‘a bit chaotic’, but added that ‘if everything is true then he was indeed a master of illusion’.
In fact, despite the Renaissance man image he seemed desperate to cultivate, Brueckner, 43, has long tried to hide a gruesome life of crime ranging from petty thefts to horrific sexual assaults.
Born in 1976, Brueckner was raised ‘in a home’ according to German news magazine Focus.
He committed his first burglary in his home town of Wuerzburg in Bavaria when he was just 15.
Within two years, he was convicted of sexually abusing a child, earning him a two-year youth sentence in 1994. A report by Germany’s Der Spiegel claimed he served only part of this term.
Brueckner went on to notch up convictions for drug dealing, driving under the influence and without a licence, the news magazine reported.
As a young man, Brueckner is said to have dreamed of emigrating with his girlfriend of the time.
After turning 18 – and acquiring a driver’s licence – he took off to the Algarve town of Lagos with his girlfriend, the German newspaper Bild reported.
After returning to Germany, Brueckner continued stealing and drug-dealing. In October 2011, a district court in the northern state of Schleswig-Holstein sentenced him to one year and nine months for a crime involving ‘narcotics in large quantities’. The term was initially suspended.
Christian Brueckner spent 12 years pursuing a bohemian lifestyle – but not long after Madeleine McCann vanished in 2007, he left Portugal and returned to his homeland. Photographs obtained by the Mail show the drifter enjoying a night out in a Hanover bar in 2011, wearing a pinstriped blazer, sitting next to an innocent shot girl
Portuguese detective says 'Christian B' was dismissed as a suspect in 2008 - but a discussion 'years later' on an online forum about Maddie and her abduction was brought to the attention of police;
The German drifter spent 12 years pursuing a bohemian lifestyle in and around Praia da Luz at two houses, one in the town and one two miles away between the neighbouring town of Lagos
As Madeleine McCann's face flashed up on a bar’s television screen in 2017, Bruekner reportedly turned to a drinking partner and claimed he ‘knew all about’ the case. He is alleged to have said something to suggest he knew what had happened to Maddie
It quotes him as saying: ‘We didn’t know anything about Portugal. We went to Lagos because we liked the name so much. We had a tent with us and camped in the wild.’
He eventually settled in Praia da Luz – the picturesque resort where the McCanns took their three children on holiday.
Brueckner stayed there for 12 years, telling families he was working as a caterer and odd-job man. In truth, he was dealing cannabis, trafficking drugs and burgling holiday homes and hotel rooms.
The farmhouse where the new prime suspect in Madeleine McCann's disappearance lived was located just two miles from where she went missing from her family's holiday apartment
Bruekner is said to have lived at this property named Escola Vehla - meaning 'old school' - during at least part of his 12-year stay in Portugal until 2007 - shortly after Madeleine disappeared
Pictured above and below, the Jaguar he re-registered the day after Maddie disappeared
The suspect's battered camper van. Scotland Yard released images of the VW T3 Westfalia camper van, with a white upper body and a yellow skirting, with a Portuguese registration plate
On May 3, 2007 Kate and Gerry McCann went to a small tapas bar metres away from their apartment to dine with friends. But when Kate returned to do a routine check on their children, she found that Madeleine had disappeared
By 2014, Brueckner was living in Braunschweig, near Hanover, where he boasted to friends he had opened a local shop. He claimed he worked from seven in the morning until midnight but the business, along with his relationship, failed and he began to hit the bottle and live on benefits.
In 2016 he was sentenced to one year and three months’ imprisonment for ‘sexually abusing a child in the act of procuring himself and possessing child pornography’.
After his bar-room claims about Madeleine in May 2017, Brueckner appears to have returned to the Algarve. Within a month he was held under a European Arrest Warrant and extradited back to Germany.
That September, he was sentenced to 15 months in prisonfor the sexual abuse of a child according to Thomas Klinge, spokesman for the Hanover public prosecutor’s office.
After his release in August 2018, he later told a court, he was homeless, spending nights sleeping on park benches. He travelled to Milan – but within a month he was arrested and extradited to Germany yet again, this time to face trial for drugs offences.
In October 2018, he was convicted of dealing drugs and sent to prison in Kiel in Schleswig-Holstein, where he remains to this day. Prosecutors also had enough evidence to charge him with the horrific sex attack he had filmed 13 years earlier.
His rape trial took place last December. Reports of the proceedings descibe Brueckner as ‘eloquent’ and state he leafed through legal texts as evidence was heard. He called what had happened to the traumatised pensioner a ‘bad deed’, but denied any role in it.
In court he repeatedly mentioned the names of ex-lovers, insisting they would testify as to the ‘normalcy’ of his sex life.
He branded witnesses as liars and claimed that DNA from a strand of hair used to convict him must have ended up on the victim’s bed after he had petted one of her cats. Yet as so often before, the court rejected his denials and Brueckner was sentenced to seven-and-a-half years, pending the outcome of an appeal.
One trial witness described Brueckner as someone who ‘always paid attention to his appearance’.
As the Madeleine case enters a dramatic new phase, there will certainly be a lot more attention paid to him now.
New Madeleine McCann sex offender suspect had been on police radar for 'more than two decades' and 'has as many as 17 criminal convictions'
The new Madeleine McCann suspect was unmasked last night as it emerged he had been on the police radar for more than two decades.
As prosecutors labelled him a ‘multiple sexual predator’, it was claimed Christian Brueckner, 43, had been convicted of a child sex offence in his native Germany when aged just 17.
Yet the drifter, who reportedly has as many as 17 criminal convictions, was apparently overlooked by Portuguese police. It also emerged yesterday that he had been convicted of raping a 72-year-old US widow in her Algarve home 18 months before Madeleine disappeared. Brueckner is now the focus of the 13-year investigation into the disappearance of the three-year-old from the Algarve.
Madeleine McCann would have turned 17 last month. In 2012, five years after her disappearance, her family issued an age progression efit photo to show what Madeleine may have looked like aged nine (right)
Yesterday a spokesman for her parents Kate and Gerry McCann hailed the ‘significant’ breakthrough.
But they faced renewed anguish as German prosecutors stated they believed their daughter was dead and also suggested officers knew how she died.
Brueckner is behind bars in Germany. But it was claimed that he could walk free within days, as he will become eligible for parole on Sunday.
Brueckner is in jail in Kiel, northern Germany. But one German media report yesterday suggested he was on the verge of getting parole, having served two thirds of his sentence. According to a German newspaper, he becomes eligible for freedom from Sunday, if the Federal Court of Justice in Germany decides to grant him parole.
On Wednesday, Scotland Yard, which has been carrying out a £12million review of the Madeleine case, dropped the bombshell revelation there was a new suspect, as German police launched an appeal via that country’s equivalent of CrimeWatch.
Yesterday Mr Wolters said: ‘We think that Madeleine McCann is dead and are appealing for witnesses. The 43-year-old is a multiple sexual predator already convicted of crimes against little girls.’ He suggested police had determined the method used to kill the three-year-old and said others would have ‘concrete knowledge’ of how she died and where her body was hidden.
Scotland Yard still insists that it is a missing person inquiry and the McCanns say they have never given up hope she will be found alive.
Madeleine disappeared while her parents, from Rothley in Leicestershire, were having a meal with friends at a tapas bar close to their apartment. Portuguese police were facing serious questions yesterday about why Brueckner was not identified earlier as a suspect given he had child sex abuse convictions dating back to 1994.
He lived two miles from the resort where she vanished and phone data indicates he was in the area on the night. If Portuguese officers had done basic checks of known sex offenders his name could have emerged within months. The ex-lead Portuguese investigator on the case, Goncalo Amaral, has claimed the suspect had been ruled out of the inquiry in 2008.
But he allegedly came back into the frame after a conversation in an internet chatroom about Madeleine and her abduction. Yesterday it emerged Brueckner only became a suspect for Scotland Yard in 2017 when he is said to have told a friend at a bar he ‘knew all about’ what had happened to Madeleine.
According to Sky News, Brueckner was prompted to make the comment when her face flashed up on a TV screen in a German pub during a report on a UK appeal for information on the tenth anniversary of her disappearance. A spokesman for the McCanns said: ‘This would appear to be the most significant lead they are trying to close down in 13 years.’
German police said their phones ‘rang hot’ after the appeal went live. Detective Chief Inspector Mark Cranwell, leading the Met Police investigation, said more than 270 calls and emails had been received.
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2020-06-05 01:31:06Z
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