Helge Busching said in an interview ahead of Christian Brueckner’s release that he was ‘100% sure’ the convicted paedophile was involved in Madeleine McCann’s kidnapping
A former associate of Maddie prime suspect Christian Brueckner, believes he is “100% sure” the German was involved in her kidnapping.
Helge Busching made the statement just days before Brueckner is due to be released from prison for rape. In his first television interview he told how Brueckner appeared to let slip details of his involvement in the 3 year old’s disappearance from a Portuguese hotel in 2007, describing how she “wasn’t screaming” during a conversation about the case.
Speaking to ITV News in an interview to be aired tonight he said: “I want Christian go behind bars for this, for the case of Madeleine McCann. This was him, I am 100% sure.
“He can say I am innocent. I know what he was doing, I saw it with my proper eyes. I know he’s dangerous man.” Busching was speaking to a reporter at an undisclosed location in Europe. He is a man with a criminal past who whilst an associate of Christian Brueckner said they were not friends.
Both German nationals operating in the Algarve, he described how they did some “business” together, from stealing solar panels and diesel, to drug dealing.
Mr Busching told ITV News he has left his past behind and he has now become a key witness for the German authorities. “He’s a dangerous man. A really dangerous man,” he said. Christian Brueckner is a convicted paedophile who German prosecutors say is their prime suspect in the disappearance of Madeleine McCann.
Brueckner, has strenuously denied any involvement, is now just days away from walking free from prison, after serving a sentence for a rape conviction.
Busching said at a festival in Spain just a year after Madeleine vanished, they had a conversation about the three year old’s disappearance where Brueckner made the remark he says has never left him. “I told him I don’t understand how somebody can rob little children from a hotel,” Busching recalled.
And then, he says, Brueckner answered. “She was not screaming. I was thinking, yeah, how you know this… yeah he have to do something with this.”
“He took Maddie out from this hotel. He is involved, sure.” he said. He said he feared asking any more questions, and he said Brueckner then left the festival suddenly that night. Busching says he left a voicemail for Scotland Yard later that same year. But his message, one of 60,000 that poured in at the time, was lost.
It wasn’t until 2017 that he called again, this time to a dedicated hotline. Within days, police were interviewing him at length. His testimony became part of the case against Brueckner, passed to German prosecutors who would later name him their prime suspect.
Mr Busching’s evidence has been used before. At Brueckner’s rape trial in 2019. When he was convicted of attacking a 72 year old American woman in Praia de Luz in Portugal in 2005. He told about finding a stash of disturbing videos, just a year after that rape in 2006, in Brueckner’s home showing him violently raping two females – one who appeared to be a German child around 14-years-old.
Mr Busching said he stumbled across the videos when he broke into Brueckner’s home in Portugal to steal diesel fuel that he was keeping inside a large tank.
A house that was just a mile away from the Ocean Club resort, where the McCann’s stayed the following year. Mr Busching says Brueckner had one speciality that he did not engage in, breaking into hotel rooms and holiday homes. And he thinks Brueckner may have tried to burgle the McCanns apartment when he stumbled across Madeleine.
“Christian knows the Ocean Club very well. He was working there in the Ocean Club as a pool boy. And I think Christian, I think, was thinking, okay, go in one apartment and take some stuff from this apartment.”
“(But) this time, he don’t take baggage, luggage, he takes her.” Now, with Brueckner’s release looming, Busching says he feels let down by the German justice system. “A big criminal man. To let him go as a free man. I don’t understand this… Now I know there will come out a really dangerous man.”
He said he no longer has faith in German prosecutors and wants British police to take back control of the Madeleine McCann investigation.
“I don’t have anymore confidence in the German justice” he said. “The best way is the English police will take the case of Madeleine McCann and Christian Brueckner.”
Christian Brueckner has always strenuously denied having any involvement in the disappearance of Madeleine McCann. Busching insists Brueckner is lying. “I don’t believe him. No. Christian is a big, big liar. He knows what I saw. He knows it.”
You can watch the full report on ITV News at 1830 and ITV X