Christian Brueckner has ‘no remorse’ over his crimes, a reporter has said, as the convicted rapist is set to be released from jail following a seven-year rape sentence
Madeleine McCann chief suspect Christian Brueckner has “no remorse” about his crimes, the only journalist to ever speak to him behind bars has said.
Brueckner, 48, German investigators’ chief suspect in the Maddie missing persons case, is due to be released from Sehnde prison after he was sentenced to seven years behind bars for the rape of a 72-year-old woman in Portugal in 2019. The 2005 rape took place in the same area, Praia Da Luz, where Madeleine disappeared two years later.
Journalist Ulrich Oppold has said that, not only does Brueckner feel no remorse about the crimes of which he was convicted, he believes he does not need rehabilitating.
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Speaking to The Sun, Mr Oppold said the convicted rapist remained “ice cool” as he asked him whether he regretted anything that “happened in the past”. He said: “I asked him, ‘Do you regret anything? Is there any kind of remorse you feel towards anything, what happened in the past?’. And his answer was, ‘This is one of these questions I definitely don’t want to answer’.
“My impression was there was a man sitting in front of me who doesn’t feel any guilt, any remorse.” When he went on to quiz Brueckner over court claims he was a psychopath, to which he replied: “I’m not dangerous.”
Brueckner was named as the prime suspect in the Madeleine McCann case in 2020, but is yet to be formally charged, and he denies having any involvement in her disappearance. German police are investigating his possible involvement in the case, and last month chief prosecutor Hans Christian Wolters claimed there was evidence against him.
However, he added that the evidence was not strong enough to “make a guilty verdict likely”. He said: “He is not just our number one suspect, he’s our only suspect.”
“We have evidence against him but in our view it’s not strong enough to make a guilty verdict likely.” Prosecutors have claim to have linked Brueckner to Madeleine’s disappearance via phone records, alleging a mobile tower “ping” placed him in the Praia de Luz on May 3, 2007, the night the three-year-old vanished.
They are now seeking to find who made a 30-minute call to the convicted rapist, with Mr Wolters telling The Mirror his team is still working on the case “every single day”.
Mr Wolters said: “We don’t know yet who made this phone call. We don’t have any forensic evidence so this would be extremely, extremely important to us because it could lead us to the stage that our suspicions become so strong that we can then justify securing an arrest warrant for Christian B. Or, of course, it could even mean that we can bring charges.”