The lead suspect in the disappearance of Madeleine McCann, Christian Brueckner, once went on a disturbing rant about the missing girl, a new ITV documentary claims
The prime suspect in the disappearance of Madeleine McCann went on a disturbing rant about the little girl in an outburst that left colleagues reeling, it has been claimed.
German paedophile Christian Brueckner has been behind bars serving a seven-year prison sentence in Germany over the rape of an elderly woman at her home in Praia da Luz in 2005. But now he’s being freed from jail and police are no closer to finding justice for Maddie’s distraught family.
Investigators remain convinced that the 49-year-old snatched and murdered Maddie in 2007, but they’ve failed to secure enough evidence to keep him behind bars. Brueckner previously denied any involvement with the disappearance of Madeleine.
Now a new ITV documentary has shed light on the failings during the initial investigation for Maddie in Portugal, 17 years on from the night she went missing. It also delves into the dark world of Brueckner, revealing he hid in plain sight as he committed a string of sickening crimes.
The new show follows criminologist Dr Graham Hill’s efforts to piece together clues around Brueckner’s past, his whereabouts around the time of Maddie’s disappearance and how it took 13 years for the paedophile to become the prime suspect in a case that rocked Britain.
Dr Hill, an expert in men who abduct, sexually abuse, and murder children, revisits Praia da Luz for the first time since he was posted out there as a senior detective for Surrey Police to help with the initial investigation. In the show, he hears from multiple experts and those who knew Brueckner in the hunt for answers.
Four years after little Maddie vanished, Brueckner moved from Portugal back to Germany and was running a corner store in Braunschweig. It was there where one co-worker heard the convicted sex offender’s alarming outburst about Madeleine.
Investigative journalist Robert Hyde, who has been digging into Brueckner since he became the main suspect in the little girl’s disappearance, told the programme: “A person who worked there told me that a news piece about the Madeleine McCann case was running on the TV – Brueckner then flips out, starts shouting ‘the girl is dead’.”
The writer continued: “He [then] makes a really odd comment which is: ‘Yes, pigs can also eat human flesh you know'”.
It comes as a fellow inmate of Brueckner claimed he confessed to abducting a child in Portugal. Larentius Codin, a former inmate in the same prison, was giving evidence in an unrelated cases involving Brueckner, and claimed he was told by the suspect that he had raped young girls near Hanover and had abducted a girl in Portugal.
Codin also claimed that Brueckner had asked whether sniffer dogs could detect children’s bones if they were hidden underground.
Elsewhere in the ITV documentary, Dr Hill visits an abandoned warehouse that was once owned by Brueckner. Police made horrifying discoveries at the “eerie” site, including a supermarket carrier bag stuffed with of USB sticks allegedly containing footage of child sexual abuse – both involving Brueckner himself and of others.
Journalist Hyde, accompanying Dr Hill to the factory, explained: “Under the body of a dead dog, police found a supermarket bag full of USB sticks with 100s of most vile sickening and blood curdling child sex crimes, some involving Christian Brueckner doing it and others just collections of it.”
Investigators also found more than 70 children’s swimming costumes hidden in a motorhome parked at the disused factory. Brueckner reportedly bought the site for £20,000 in 2008. Walking around the site, the criminologist presenting the programme called the buildings ‘eerie’ and ‘really creepy’.
Dr Hill said: “The things German police found at the box factory, they clearly suggest that Brueckner had an ingrained way of sexualising children. This man has been fantasising about children from a sexual point of view for decades. He felt so strongly about the items he had on those memory sticks that he felt compelled not to destroy them for good, but to bury them, to me that’s quite significant”.
‘Madeleine McCann: Searching For The Prime Suspect’ airs Wednesday 17th September at 9pm on ITV1 and ITVX