Maddie murder police lay bare the child sex crime past of Jaguar-driving wannabe playboy who was actually a drug-dealing drifter and rapist - as it's revealed he could be out of jail on parole in days
- Christian Brueckner spent 12 years pursuing a bohemian lifestyle in resort town of Praia da Luz, Portugal
- He left to return to his native Germany in 2007 - shortly after Madeleine McCann's disappearance on May 3
- Alleged to have told a drinking partner he 'knew all about' Maddie in a bar on kidnapping's 10th anniversary
- Also claimed he showed his companion a video of himself raping an American widow in Portugal in 2005
- Now 43, Brueckner is in a German prison serving a seven-year sentence for a sex crime
- Revealed he has been on police radar for more than two decades and has 'as many as 17 criminal convictions'
The new Madeleine McCann suspect was unmasked last night as it emerged he had been on the police radar for more than two decades - and he could be let out of jail on parole within days.
As prosecutors labelled him a 'multiple sexual predator', it was claimed Christian Brueckner, 43, had been convicted of a child sex offence in his native Germany when aged just 17.
Yet the drifter, who reportedly has as many as 17 criminal convictions, was apparently overlooked by Portuguese police.
It also emerged yesterday that he had been convicted of raping a 72-year-old US widow in her Algarve home 18 months before Madeleine disappeared.
Brueckner is now the focus of the 13-year investigation into the disappearance of the three-year-old from the Algarve.
Yesterday a spokesman for her parents Kate and Gerry McCann hailed the 'significant' breakthrough. But they faced renewed anguish as German prosecutors stated they believed their daughter was dead and also suggested officers knew how she died.
Brueckner is behind bars in Germany. But it was claimed that he could walk free within days, as he will become eligible for parole on Sunday.
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.
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.
Christian Brueckner spent 12 years pursuing a bohemian lifestyle – but not long after Madeleine McCann vanished in 2007, he left Portugal and returned to his homeland. Photographs obtained by the Mail show the drifter enjoying a night out in a Hanover bar in 2011, wearing a pinstriped blazer, sitting next to an innocent shot girl
As Madeleine McCann's face flashed up on a bar's television screen in 2017, Bruekner reportedly turned to a 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
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.
As more details come to light over the new prime suspect in the disappearance of Madeleine McCann, it also emerged that:
- Portuguese police face serious questions as it is revealed that the man who may have taken Maddie spent 12 years in Portugal before her disappearance committing serious sexual and drugs crimes without ever being arrested;
- German police were told about his bar chat about Maddie with a friend in 2017 - but three years on have finally confirmed he is a suspect;
- His VW campervan and Jaguar have been located by police who believe one or both were - but a lack of DNA evidence means a 10,000 euro reward has been put up for any information that leads to his conviction;
- Portuguese detective says 'Christian B' was dismissed as a suspect in 2008 - but a discussion 'years later' on an online forum about Maddie and her abduction was brought to the attention of police;
- Her parents Gerry and Kate McCann have not given up hope that their daughter is alive but are 'realistic' that she might not be, their spokesman Clarence Mitchell said today;
- Downing Street said the latest developments appeared to be significant and added that Number 10's thoughts were with the McCann family 'who have had to endure so much'.
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.
The suspect's battered camper van. Scotland Yard released images of the VW T3 Westfalia camper van, with a white upper body and a yellow skirting, with a Portuguese registration plate
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.
By this time Brueckner lived 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 sped 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. 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 15 months in prisonfor 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.
Bound, blindfolded, beaten with a pole and raped... attack by Christian Brueckner on US widow, 72, that years later alerted Maddie police
Details emerged yesterday of the horrific rape of an American pensioner by Madeleine McCann suspect Christian Brueckner.
The German, who was given seven years in jail for the sexual assault, is reported to have blindfolded and then beaten the 72-year-old with a metal pole after breaking into her house near Praia da Luz.
He is then said to have carried out the degrading rape, videotaping the whole ordeal and ripping off his own mask at the end of the attack before stealing cash and a computer, according to evidence heard at Brueckner's trial last year in Braunschweig, near Hanover.
Details of the rape case first emerged in a local newspaper, but were then reported by two of Germany's biggest media organisations – Bild and Der Spiegel – after Brueckner's name was linked to the McCann case.
Police in Braunschweig, who are leading the investigation, refused to comment directly.
Christian Brueckner was given seven years in jail for the sexual assault
However, according to widespread reporting of the case yesterday, a witness told how he had seen a horrific video of the sexual attack – which happened just a year and a half before Madeleine disappeared. The witness, an acquaintance of Brueckner, said the elderly woman was bound, masked and whipped before being raped.
He said: 'Then the man sat on the bed and pulled the mask off his face. I thought: That can't be!' He said he immediately recognised Brueckner.
The witness told the court he had also seen a second video film, showing a younger woman tied naked to a wooden beam, crying out to be released and saying she had been raped, and that in it Brueckner was sitting on a sofa.
The witness stole the video tapes during a burglary in 2006 and said he later destroyed them, horrified by what he had seen but years later reported the contents to police.
His testimony prompted detectives to trawl cold cases and they came across the report of the American widow.
On the night of the attack, in early September 2005, she had been watching television news coverage of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans.
At around 10.30pm she went into her office to compose some emails when she was grabbed from behind, dragged up several stairs to her bedroom and tied up with a rope and raped.
She was also beaten with a metal, flexible object.
'I felt that he enjoyed torturing me,' she told the investigators.
The ordeal lasted more than 15 minutes and the widow suffered a broken jaw and injuries to her shoulder.
The victim, who was 86 at the time of the trial, was unable to travel to Germany to give evidence. But an investigator visited her at home in the US when she told him how the attack still haunted her.
'After that she couldn't sleep, couldn't turn off the lights at night and was afraid,' he said.
She said she did not recognise her assailant as he was wearing a mask but said he was muscular and spoke poor Portuguese.
After the brutal attack he demanded money. She went to the kitchen with him and gave him 100 euros from her purse. He also took a computer before vanishing. The woman said she hid in the bathroom for ten minutes before running to her neighbours who called police.
The court heard DNA linked a body hair found on the woman's bed to Brueckner, who was living less than a mile away from the woman.
He denied the attack, claiming the hair could have been transferred to the woman's bed on the back of her cat after he petted it outside her house, which was on his way to the beach.
In court Brueckner was said to have come across as 'eloquent' and was seen leafing through legal texts as evidence was heard.
He wore a plain grey shirt and jeans that were slightly too big for him, it was reported.
He denied the offence and said the witness was a liar. He said he could give the names of former lovers who would testify as to the 'normalcy' of his sex life.
Brueckner was handed a seven-year jail term, it was reported. But it is understood he appealed arguing the trial was unfair because he had been extradited from Portugal, in 2017, on a different matter.
Lawyers argued he could only be prosecuted in Germany for the offence to which the European arrest warrant was issued for. The case is understood to be ongoing.
New Madeleine McCann sex offender suspect had been on police radar for 'more than two decades' and 'has as many as 17 criminal convictions'
The new Madeleine McCann suspect was unmasked last night as it emerged he had been on the police radar for more than two decades.
As prosecutors labelled him a 'multiple sexual predator', it was claimed Christian Brueckner, 43, had been convicted of a child sex offence in his native Germany when aged just 17.
Yet the drifter, who reportedly has as many as 17 criminal convictions, was apparently overlooked by Portuguese police. It also emerged yesterday that he had been convicted of raping a 72-year-old US widow in her Algarve home 18 months before Madeleine disappeared. Brueckner is now the focus of the 13-year investigation into the disappearance of the three-year-old from the Algarve.
Yesterday a spokesman for her parents Kate and Gerry McCann hailed the 'significant' breakthrough. But they faced renewed anguish as German prosecutors stated they believed their daughter was dead and also suggested officers knew how she died.
Brueckner is behind bars in Germany. But it was claimed that he could walk free within days, as he will become eligible for parole on Sunday.
Brueckner is in jail in Kiel, northern Germany. But one German media report yesterday suggested he was on the verge of getting parole, having served two thirds of his sentence. According to a German newspaper, he becomes eligible for freedom from Sunday, if the Federal Court of Justice in Germany decides to grant him parole.
On Wednesday, Scotland Yard, which has been carrying out a £12million review of the Madeleine case, dropped the bombshell revelation there was a new suspect, as German police launched an appeal via that country's equivalent of CrimeWatch.
Yesterday Mr Wolters said: 'We think that Madeleine McCann is dead and are appealing for witnesses. The 43-year-old is a multiple sexual predator already convicted of crimes against little girls.' He suggested police had determined the method used to kill the three-year-old and said others would have 'concrete knowledge' of how she died and where her body was hidden.
Scotland Yard still insists that it is a missing person inquiry and the McCanns say they have never given up hope she will be found alive.
Madeleine disappeared while her parents, from Rothley in Leicestershire, were having a meal with friends at a tapas bar close to their apartment. Portuguese police were facing serious questions yesterday about why Brueckner was not identified earlier as a suspect given he had child sex abuse convictions dating back to 1994.
He lived two miles from the resort where she vanished and phone data indicates he was in the area on the night. If Portuguese officers had done basic checks of known sex offenders his name could have emerged within months. The ex-lead Portuguese investigator on the case, Goncalo Amaral, has claimed the suspect had been ruled out of the inquiry in 2008.
But he allegedly came back into the frame after a conversation in an internet chatroom about Madeleine and her abduction. Yesterday it emerged 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.
According to Sky News, Brueckner was prompted to make the comment when her face flashed up on a TV screen in a German pub during a report on a UK appeal for information on the tenth anniversary of her disappearance. A spokesman for the McCanns said: 'This would appear to be the most significant lead they are trying to close down in 13 years.'
German police said their phones 'rang hot' after the appeal went live. Detective Chief Inspector Mark Cranwell, leading the Met Police investigation, said more than 270 calls and emails had been received.
His view over Maddie resort: 25 minutes' walk from Praia da luz, home where suspect lived at time of three-year-old's abduction
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.
Christian Brueckner was living in a rented home overlooking the holiday resort where the McCanns were staying
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.
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 Maddie played
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.'
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.
'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.
How the disappearance of three-year-old Madeleine McCann unfolded over 13 years
2007
May 3: Gerry and Kate McCann leave their three children, including Maddie, asleep in their hotel apartment in Praia da Luz, Portugal, as they eat with friends in a nearby restaurant. When they return, they find Maddie missing from her bed
May 4: A friend of the McCanns reports of seeing a man carrying a child away in the night. Meanwhile, airports and borders are put on high alert as search gets underway
May 14: Robert Mural, a property developer who lives a few yards from the hotel, is made a suspect by Portuguese police
May 30: The McCanns meet the Pope in Rome in a bid to bring worldwide attention to the search
August 11: Police in Portugal acknowledge for the first time in the investigation that Maddie might be dead.
September 7: Spanish police make the McCanns official suspects in the disappearance. Two days later the family flies back to England
July 21: Spanish police remove the McCanns and Mr Mural as official suspects as the case is shelved
2009
May 1: A computer-generated image of what Maddie could look like two years after she disappeared is released by the McCanns
2011
May 12: A review into the disappearance is launched by Scotland Yard, following a plea from then-Home Secretary Theresa May
2012
April 25: After a year of reviewing the case, Scotland Yard announce they belief that Maddie could be alive and call on police in Portugal to reopen the case, but it falls on deaf ears amid 'a lack of new evidence'
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