Madeleine McCann suspect is linked to unsolved abduction of five-year-old German girl in woods in 2015 - as chilling online chats reveal he wanted to 'capture something small and use it for days'
- Inga Gehricke, 5, disappeared from Saxony-Anhalt in Germany on May 2, 2015
- She vanished 48 miles away from where Christian Brueckner owned a house
- Police are said to have investigated Brueckner in 2016 over Inga's disappearance
- Case compared to that of Madeleine who vanished in Portugal on May 3, 2007
The new Madeleine McCann prime suspect was today being investigated over the disappearance of a five-year-old girl in his native Germany eight years later.
Inga Gehricke vanished from Diakoniewerk Wilhelmshof in Saxony-Anhalt during a family outing in a case that detectives have been unable to solve ever since.
Her disappearance on May 2, 2015 was 48 miles away from where new Madeleine suspect Christian Brueckner owned a house in Neuwegersleben at the time.
Prosecutors in nearby Stendal confirmed this afternoon that they have opened a preliminary investigation into whether Brueckner was involved in the Inga case.
It comes as documents revealed by Spiegel allegedly show Brueckner fantasised in online chats about the kidnapping and sexual abuse of a child in September 2013.
He is said to have told one acquaintance he wanted to 'capture something small and use it for days', and that it would be safer if 'the evidence is destroyed afterwards'.
Inga Gehricke vanished from Diakoniewerk Wilhelmshof in Saxony-Anhalt during a family outing on May 2, 2015 in an case that detectives have been unable to solve ever since
Christian Brueckner (left), 43, is now the prime suspect in the disappearance of Madeleine McCann (right), who vanished from her family's holiday apartment in Portugal on May 3, 2007
Inga has often been labelled the German equivalent of Madeleine, who went missing aged three during a family holiday on the Algarve in Portugal on May 3, 2007.
Now, it is believed that police investigated Brueckner, 43, in February 2016 over the disappearance of Inga, according to Saxony-Anhalt newspaper Volksstimme.
Detectives repotedly discovered a device at his home containing child pornography and it has been said he had no alibi for the day in question when Inga went missing.
But it appears no further action was taken against him in relation to Inga, which has been questioned by lawyer Petra Kullmei, who represents the girl's mother.
Inga's disappearance in Diakoniewerk Wilhelmshof on May 2, 2015 happened 48 miles away from where Christian Brueckner owned a house in Neuwegersleben at the time
Justizvollzugsanstalt Kiel in northern Germany where Brueckner is currently being held in jail
Mr Kullmei, who is calling for a new investigation, told Volksstimme: 'The file was closed again only four weeks after starting work. I think that's not very ambitious.'
Brueckner, who has been labelled a 'multiple sexual predator' by prosecutors, is said to have been convicted of a child sex offence in Germany when aged just 17.
Yet the drifter, who reportedly has as many as 17 criminal convictions, was apparently overlooked by Portuguese police during their Madeleine probe.
Brueckner, who is in jail in Kiel, Germany, was also convicted of raping a 72-year-old US widow in her Algarve home 18 months before Madeleine disappeared.
In 2014, Brueckner was said to have been living at a house on this road in Braunschweig, near Hanover, where he told friends he had opened a shop and worked from 7am until midnight
Police say Brueckner may have been living in this campervan at the time Madeleine vanished
But 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.
Madeleine disappeared while her parents, from Rothley in Leicestershire, were having a meal with friends at a tapas bar close to their apartment in Praia da Luz.
Inga, who had blonde hair and blue eyes, had been having a barbecue with her family at an apartment complex in a forest when she disappeared.
She is believed to have wandered off to collect wood to light a campfire but never returned, prompting more than 500 people to search for her.
Brueckner had lived in this remote farmhouse overlooking Praia da Luz from 1999 to 2006
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
Police dogs also failed to pick up the scent of Inga who had been wearing a butterfly T-shirt, blue jeans and her hair in two plaits and vanished at about 6.30pm.
Brueckner had lived in a remote farmhouse overlooking Praia da Luz from 1999 to 2006 and may have been living in a campervan at the time Madeleine disappeared.
But not long after Madeleine vanished in 2007, he left Portugal and returned to his homeland - where he was later said to own the property in Neuwegersleben.
In 2014, he was said to have been living in Braunschweig, near Hanover, where he told friends he had opened a local shop and worked from 7am until midnight.
Madeleine's parents Kate and Gerry McCann are pictured in London in October 2014
Sources have said that a German national serving time in prison in northern Germany would likely face trial in his homeland rather than be extradited to Britain.
The Metropolitan Police in London has always insisted that if the suspect is a UK national, it will push for them to be charged and prosecuted in Britain.
But in the case of a foreign suspect, it would be extremely difficult to extradite them to the UK for a crime committed overseas.
The Portuguese authorities could seek to pursue the case as the offence occurred there. But sources said the German investigation would be likely to take primacy.
Jaguar-driving wannabe playboy who was actually a drug-dealing drifter — and child sex predator
Brueckner, 43, in a bar in Hanover in 2011
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.
Brueckner retained his prized 1993 Jaguar XJR6. The day after Madeleine vanished, he re-registered the classic British car to someone else, even though he was still driving it
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.
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.
He was briefly locked up for diesel theft, and is also said to have traded passports and stolen goods, according to Bild.
He initially lived in a dilapidated house accessed by a dirt road. 'In terms of furnishings, it was a typical bachelor's apartment,' said one acquaintance. After a decade on the Algarve, Brueckner burgled a 72-year-old American widow and subjected her to a violent sexual assault, which he recorded on camera.
The month before Madeleine disappeared, he moved out of his villa and into a VW Westfalia
By this time Brueckner is thought to have been living in a rented whitewashed villa on a remote hillside – above the beach where the McCanns played during their week's holiday.
Neighbours described him as an 'angry' car dealer who raced along country roads. They say that when he vanished, he left behind a collection of exotic clothing, including wigs and fancy dress. Brueckner left Portugal after Madeleine disappeared on May 3, 2007. The previous month, he had moved out of the villa and into a VW Westfalia campervan. Police have now linked this vehicle to Maddie's disappearance.
Brueckner also retained his prized 1993 Jaguar XJR6. Scotland Yard has now revealed that the day after Madeleine vanished, Brueckner re-registered the classic British car to someone else, even though he was still driving it. 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.
By 2014, Brueckner was living in Braunschweig, near Hanover, where he boasted to friends he had opened a local shop.
The interior of the house on the Algarve in Portugal where Brueckner lived from 1999 to 2006
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 another year in prison for 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.
His view over Maddie resort: 25 minutes' walk from Praia da Luz, home where suspect lived at time of three-year-old's abduction...and which neighbours say he left a ramshackle mess
Nestled into the hillside, this is 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.'
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.'
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
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.
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
'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.
Bungled from the start: Taking so long to suspect a man with Christian Brueckner's profile is just the latest in a long line of apparent blunders that have dogged the Madeleine McCann inquiry – right from those fateful first hours
Police face serious questions over why it took a decade to identify convicted sex offender Christian Brueckner as a key suspect.
Portuguese detectives are under renewed scrutiny after it emerged Brueckner had been convicted of paedophile offences in 1994, when he was 17, before he arrived in Praia de Luz.
He received a two-year sentence in Bavaria for 'abuse of a child' and 'sexual acts against a child', according to German magazine Der Spiegel, which reported he has at least 17 entries on his criminal record.
The Daily Mail can reveal that Brueckner emerged as a 'person of interest' for British police early on in a major Scotland Yard review of the case that started in 2011.
Cashing in: Ex-Portuguese police chief Goncalo Amaral. He wrote a book accusing the parents Kate and Gerry McCann
Shameful treatment: Kate (pictured in 2007) and Gerry McCann had to live under the shadow of suspicion
However, even after this was upgraded to a multi-million-pound full investigation two years later, he did not emerge as a key suspect until 2017.
Portuguese detectives have been widely criticised in the past over a string of elementary mistakes which hampered the investigation.
At the time of Madeleine McCann's disappearance, Brueckner was known to have previously lived two miles from the resort where she vanished and was still living in the area in his campervan.
Sources said that if Portuguese officers had done basic groundwork, including comprehensive door-to-door inquiries, and identified known sex offenders including foreign nationals living locally, his name could have emerged as a potential suspect within months.
Last night, a source said that Brueckner's name cropped up after Met detectives began probing the case but there was no firm evidence then linking him to Madeleine's disappearance.
Taped-off: It was hours before the crime scene was protected. Portuguese police officers are pictured on duty in Praia da Luz
'He was an itinerant whose exact whereabouts on the night could not be established,' the source added. 'This is why he was not treated as a suspect at that stage.' It was only in 2017 that Brueckner emerged as a potential key suspect, after German police were tipped off about his possible involvement.
According to German law enforcement officials, Brueckner lived almost permanently in the Algarve between 1995 and 2007.
Portuguese police closed the inquiry into Madeleine's disappearance in 2008 after claiming there were no more leads to pursue. The inquiry was shelved after the missing girl's parents, Kate and Gerry McCann, were wrongly implicated in the case.
Amateurish: police smoked in the McCanns' apartment. Pictured: a forensic expert takes a sample from the blinds of the apartment where the family were staying in 2007
THE PROLIFIC CRIMINAL
According to Der Spiegel, Brueckner's criminal record contains 17 entries and he has been investigated for 'driving without a licence, assault, serious theft and drunk driving'. The magazine reported that according to the Federal Central Register, aged 17 he stood trial in Bavaria in 1994 for 'abuse of a child' and 'sexual acts against a child'. The district court of Wurzburg imposed a two-year 'youth sentence', of which he served only part.
It also said yesterday that in October 2011 the district court in Niebull, northern Germany, jailed Brueckner for 21 months for drug offences, while in 2013 the district court in Braunschweig, near Hanover, jailed him for 15 months for 'sexually abusing a child and possessing child pornography'.
He was last in court in Germany in December over the rape of a 72-year-old American tourist in the Algarve in 2005, for which he received a seven-year jail term.
Julian Reichelt, editor-in-chief of Bild, said the new key suspect – who is fighting his rape conviction – is currently in prison in the German city Kiel.
Not revealing the suspect's full name, Mr Reichelt said: 'Everything we have heard so far publicly has been around and basically known to police in Germany and Britain for years.
'We are hearing that there was an additional push towards looking at 'Christian B' another time and that's when the police reviewed all the pieces again and opened a murder case investigation.
'He has been convicted of child abuse as early as 1994. He was born in 1976, he's 43 years old.
'That means early in his life already there was a record of child abuse. And it wasn't the only time.
'There are numerous other convictions, drug convictions, driving under the influence, driving without a licence. It is a huge, numerous page-long criminal record that we have seen.'
Pictured is a sketch that was done of a suspect by the detectives working on the case - which features only hair
THE BOTCHED PORTUGUESE INQUIRY
The disappearance of Madeleine from the Ocean Club resort in Praia da Luz in May 2007 was mishandled by Portuguese detectives from the very beginning.
The immediate aftermath of a child going missing – the so-called golden hour – is seen as a critical phase of a case by experienced detectives. But Portuguese officers, woefully out of their depth according to British police sources, took four days even to issue a description of the missing girl.
They failed to lock down the resort or set up road blocks because they assumed she had just wandered off.
The McCanns' apartment was not taped off until 10am the following day, by which time dozens of people had traipsed through the crime scene and contaminated potentially vital evidence.
Ash from policemen's cigarettes would be found among contaminated forensic samples from the flat. Not all the staff and guests at the Ocean Club were traced and interviewed. Those who were interviewed were not always properly eliminated.
And a photofit picture of an early suspect consisted of nothing more than the sketch of a face with hair parted on one side but with no eyes, nose or mouth.
Portuguese police closed the inquiry into Madeleine's disappearance in 2008 after claiming there were no more leads to pursue. The inquiry was shelved after the missing girl's parents, Kate and Gerry McCann (pictured), were wrongly implicated in the case
The catalogue of mistakes and official complacency was almost endless and culminated in a shameful shadow of suspicion over Kate and Gerry McCann, who were treated as suspects themselves until their 'arguido' (suspect) status was removed in 2008, the same year as the inquiry into Madeleine's disappearance was formally suspended. There were, declared the Portuguese police, simply no more leads to pursue.
In 2016, retired police officer Goncalo Amaral, who had led the search for Madeleine, won his appeal against a court ruling that he libelled her parents.
The McCanns had sued the ex-police chief over claims he made about them in a book.
They were initially awarded £358,000 damages by a Portuguese court. But Mr Amaral's successful appeal meant his book criticising the McCanns could be sold again. Portugal's supreme court later rejected an appeal by the couple.
VITAL PHONE CLUES NOT PURSUED
It was only after Scotland Yard, at the behest of then prime minister David Cameron, launched a two-year review of the McCann case in 2011, that evidence was properly accessed and analysed.
Basic groundwork, including research into mobile phone data in Praia da Luz on the day that Madeleine disappeared, was not done until an elite team of Met officers on Operation Grange were asked to investigate. Although the Policia Judiciaria had this information at the time she vanished, they did not find out who the phones were registered to – even though cell-site analysis is a crucial investigative tool and the catalyst for solving countless crimes.
The oversight seems more critical now, after Scotland Yard released details this week of the phone number believed to have been used by Brueckner on the night Madeleine disappeared.
Speaking in October 2013, Detective Chief Inspector Andy Redwood, then leading the Met inquiry, said officers were examining a 'substantial amount of data' from thousands of mobile phones thought to belong to people who were in the resort of Praia da Luz in the days just before, during and after Madeleine's disappearance. 'This is not just a general trawl,' Mr Redwood said.
'It's a targeted attack on that data to see if it assists us to find out what happened to Madeleine McCann at that time.'
Officers had so far been unable to attribute a 'large number' of mobile numbers, he added, admitting that it was difficult to do so with phones bought six years previously on a pay-as-you-go basis.
Jim Gamble, the former head of the UK's Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre, said he had recommended the 'cell dump' was looked at again in his 2010 review of the case.
Speaking in 2013, he said it appeared the data 'wasn't properly or appropriately interrogated' at the time. In UK investigations, he would expect the data to have been examined almost immediately, he said, but the 'complex nature and geography' had made it more difficult.
The senior Scotland Yard detective who oversaw the two-year-review of the McCann before he retired told the Daily Mail in 2013 it was 'perfectly probable' that information that could identify the suspect responsible for Madeleine's disappearance was already in the Portuguese files.
'Of course, there is a possibility she is still alive,' said former Detective Chief Superintendent Hamish Campbell. 'But the key is to investigate the case and, dead or alive, we should be able to try to discern what happened..'
With German prosecutors saying they believe Madeleine is dead, there appears very little cause for optimism, her case now effectively a murder investigation. Forensic tests on Brueckner's old campervan have not yielded any clues.
With no body, no forensic evidence and no confession, detectives may struggle to gain justice for her and her family.
https://news.google.com/__i/rss/rd/articles/CBMicWh0dHBzOi8vd3d3LmRhaWx5bWFpbC5jby51ay9uZXdzL2FydGljbGUtODM5MTMxNS9Qb2xpY2UtbGluay1qYWlsZWQtcGFlZG9waGlsZS1hYmR1Y3Rpb24tZ2lybC1hZ2VkLWZpdmUtMjAxNS5odG1s0gF1aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZGFpbHltYWlsLmNvLnVrL25ld3MvYXJ0aWNsZS04MzkxMzE1L2FtcC9Qb2xpY2UtbGluay1qYWlsZWQtcGFlZG9waGlsZS1hYmR1Y3Rpb24tZ2lybC1hZ2VkLWZpdmUtMjAxNS5odG1s?oc=5
2020-06-05 11:49:39Z
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