Madeleine McCann’s family has been dealt another blow as prosecutors have admitted their main suspect, Christian Brueckner, could soon walk free.
The convicted sex offender, 48, was cleared in October last year of a string of unrelated sex charges, and prosecutors are now working to appeal the verdicts – but in a devastating turn, German legal observers believe they are unlikely to succeed. If they are unable to charge him in Madeleine’s case soon, he will be released in September.
Brueckner is the main person of interest in Maddie’s disappearance, but he has never been charged and has denied any involvement. The three-year-old Brit famously vanished without a trace during a family holiday to Portugal in May 2007.
German native Brueckner is currently serving a seven-year prison sentence for raping a pensioner in Portugal in 2005 – and now could be walking free again in a matter of months. So, what does the latest news mean for the McCann family and her case? And what do the police know about Brueckner? Here, the Mirror takes a look…
What does the latest news mean for Madeleine McCann’s case?
Prosecutors have now admitted Brueckner will not face any charges for the foreseeable future. Prosecutor Hans Christian Wolters told Sky News: “There is currently no prospect of an indictment in the Maddie case. As things stand, the accused’s imprisonment will end in early September.”
Philipp Marquort, one of Brueckner’s defence lawyers, welcomed the prosecutor’s pessimism about bringing charges. He said: “This confirms the suspicions we have repeatedly expressed, namely that there is no reliable evidence against our client.”
As the clock ticks towards his release, investigators are facing the pressure to charge Brueckner in Madeleine’s case. But despite claims of proof that she is dead, they appear to be no closer to proving that Brueckner is behind her disappearance.
Without sufficient evidence, it does not make a difference whether Brueckner is behind bars or not. Dean Kingham, consultant solicitor and prison law expert, previously told the Mirror: “It won’t necessarily change anything for the McCann family as the evidential threshold would still need to be met regarding evidence linking him to the crime.”
Brueckner was first identified by German investigators in 2020, and two years later, he was made a formal suspect by the Portuguese police. Investigator Hans Christian Wolters said in 2022: “We are sure he is the murderer of Madeleine McCann”.
Maddie’s parents, Gerry and Kate, had been out for dinner at a nearby restaurant with three other couples when they returned to their holiday apartment to find their little girl nowhere to be seen. Ever since, they have been campaigning to find their beloved daughter, who would now be 20 years old.
Brueckner has more than a dozen previous convictions for burglary, theft and sex offences, including serving an 18-month sentence in Germany for a sex attack on a youth when he was a teen. He is currently locked up for raping an American pensioner in Praia da Luz and drug trafficking.
In October, he was cleared of a string of alleged sex offences in Portugal between 2000 and 2017, unrelated to Madeleine’s case. He faced charges of raping an Irish tour rep, a teenage girl and an elderly woman in her holiday apartment. He also faced a child sex charge for allegedly exposing himself to a German girl on a beach in Salema.
What are the links between Brueckner and Maddie’s disappearance?
More shocking claims came to light about Brueckner and his possible ties to Maddie’s disappearance during his latest trial. His former cellmate, Laurentiu Codin, told the court that the German confessed to abducting a child in Portugal. Codin, 50, said: “He told me that in Portugal, he had stolen there. He was in a region where there are hotels and rich people live. He said there was somewhere with an open window, he told me this.”
Codin continued: “He was looking for money. He said he didn’t find any money but found a kid and took the child. He said that two hours later, there were police and dogs all over the place, so he then went away, out of the area. I am just saying what he told me. He told me that a person was with him, who he had had an argument with, allegedly it was his woman. He said he took the child in Portugal in his car, and in the time when the police and dogs were at the house, he drove away and he was gone. He asked me if the DNA from a child can be taken from bones under the ground.”
Before this, a senior detective said they discovered emails on Brueckner’s Hotmail account that linked him to the McCann case. Titus Stampa told the court he had no clearance to discuss the contents of the emails because it was “related to the killing” of the tot. He referred to it as the “murder” account but refused to say if the emails contained videos or photos.
The detective said cops found a second account where he had swapped sickening child abuse videos with fellow paedophiles. Brueckner deleted all emails in that Hotmail account from the first half of 2007 – when Madeleine vanished, the court heard. He was living in a ramshackle farmhouse on the edge of the popular Portuguese resort at the time.
Mr Stamper said the German drifter had attempted to delete “many emails” which he shared with other paedophiles. He said the emails contained “numerous” videos which showed horrific abuse of “three or four-year-old” children. Brueckner also used the email account to write a vile fantasy about raping a mother and her young daughter, the court heard.
“It was a very detailed story about a five-year-old girl and her mother who are kidnapped and taken away in a van,” he said. “It was about violence and brutality and them being abused sexually – one is raped in front of the other.” A copy of the sickening fantasy story was found on a laptop Brueckner used in Portugal in 2017, the court heard.
Back in 2020, authorities announced they had found a collection of USB sticks linked to Brueckner in Germany that were filled with child pornography. Brueckner was prosecuted in relation to the images. Police then started their search of Barragem do Arade reservoir, which is around 31 miles from the Praia da Luz in Portugal, where the McCann family was on holiday.
The reservoir is said to be a favourite spot of Brueckner, who allegedly referred to it as his “little paradise”. Investigators searched the remote reservoir last June, after receiving evidence from a “very credible” police informer. However, officers were left ‘disappointed’ by the search as the evidence did not prove to be of ‘any use’ in the case.
In May 2024, a Met Police detective shared details of a voicemail about Brueckner left on a Scotland Yard answer machine in 2017. Det Con Mark Draycott, who has worked on Operation Grange since it launched, told the court that the German’s former friend, Helge Busching, who knew him in the Algarve in the mid-2000s, gave officers a tip-off.
Busching claimed Brueckner told him during a conversation that “she did not scream” when the pair discussed Maddie. “He said he had a conversation with Christian at the Orgiva Festival in 2008. That conversation was in relation to Operation Grange. I can’t talk about that,” DC Draycott said. Busching flew to London in February 2018 to give a formal statement to British police.
Brueckner’s ex-girlfriend told the court he boasted about breaking into Algarve holiday apartments. Marina Flache said she had a 19-month fling with the German after meeting him in a bar in Lagos in late 2005. She said they split up in March 2007, just six weeks before Maddie vanished in the Algarve resort.
The convicted sex offender allegedly confessed in 2020 that he had previously snatched young girls and raped them on a bus he owned. His former cellmate Codin claimed in court that the German ‘confided’ in him while they were both on remand in the same prison. He said: “There was talk of a girl, I don’t know if what he said was true or not.
“He said that he had a bus and that he had taken her with it. He said he kept some of them, but not others, but he never said that he had killed them. We’re talking about girls, not boys. Not all at once, always one at a time. He told me about two. He said that he had taken someone, had sex with her but he didn’t kill her.”
Asked by the judge how old his victim was, Codin said: “I don’t want to get it wrong, but it was very young, tiny. I mean young. Each time when we were together he spoke about it because he was convinced that I was a paedophile.”
