Madeleine McCann suspect Christian Brueckner is investigated over rape and murder of 13-year-old German boy whose mutilated body dumped in underpass
The man suspected of having killed Madeleine McCann is now under investigation for the sickening rape and murder of a 13-year-old boy in Frankfurt, whose body was mutilated.
Christian Brueckner, the suspect in the case of the disappearance and believed murder of Madeline McCann, has been named by the Frankfurter Neuer Presse as a potential suspect in the murder of Tristan Brubach in March 1998.
Brubach's body was found in an underpass known as the Liederbach near the Frankfurt-Hochst train station in the city of Frankfurt in the German state of Hesse.
He had been beaten unconscious, strangled, raped and tortured, according to reports.
The cause of death was a long cut to his throat and his body had been mutilated, with parts of his body having been removed. The removed body parts were never recovered.
Pictured: The 13-year-old Tristan Brubach, who was killed in 1998. The man suspected of having killed Madeleine McCann, Christian Brueckner, is now under investigation in the brutal murder of Burbach in Frankfurt
Three adolescents reportedly saw the murderer from a distance and the description they gave to police of the perpetrator was reportedly similar to that of Christian Brueckner.
At around 3.20 p.m., Brubach had been seen alive by the three teenagers in Frankfurt, and 10 minutes later they saw a man in the tunnel put something on a concrete platform and 'tamper' with it.
Prosecutors believe the boys witnessed the murder of Burbach at a distance, but did not realise at the time what they had seen.
From descriptions from the witnessed, an e-fit composite sketch of the suspect was produced and distributed at the time.
A year later, in March 1999, Burbach's rucksack was found in a forest in Niedernhausen, 25 kilometers (15 miles) from the crime scene. The rucksack contained a Czech-language road atlas of Germany.
Left: Christian Brueckner, who is now the prime suspect in the Madeline McCann case, and is also a possible suspect in the murder of 13-year-old Burbach. Right: A phantom composite of the man suspected of killing Tristan Brubach
Burbach did not speak Czech, so the map was not believed to have belonged to the boy, resulting in German investigators to expand their inquiries into the Czech republic and Slovakia, although no solid leads emerged.
Chief Prosecutor Noah Kruger told German daily newspaper Bild: 'We are checking whether there are any connections between the two cases. In itself, however, this is not unusual, but routine. The sequence of events and the e-fit from the Tristan case could be similar.'
There are parallels between the two cases, with Burbach, like Madeline McCann, only being left alone for a few minutes when he disappeared. The suspect was never found.
Brueckner, 43, has been linked to a series of child abductions and murders in Portugal and Germany since he was named as the main suspect in the Madeline McCann case.
He is in jail in Germany for drug dealing and is appealing against a conviction for the 2005 rape of a woman near the Praia da Luz resort where McCann went missing from in southern Portugal.
Pictured: Madeleine McCann, who disappeared in Praia da Luz, Portugal on May 3, 2007. Christian Brueckner is now the prime suspect in that case, and is now a potential suspect in the murder of 13-year-old German boy Tristan Burbach as well
What do we know about Maddie murder suspect Christian Brueckner and his criminal past?
1976: Christian Brueckner is born in Würzburg under a different name, believed to be Fischer. He was adopted by the Brueckner family and took their surname.
1992: Christian Brueckner is arrested on suspicion of burglary in his hometown of Wurzburg, Bavaria.
1994: He is given a two-year sentence for 'abusing a child' and 'performing sex acts in front of a child'.
1995: Brueckner arrives in Portugal as an 18-year-old backpacker and begins working in catering in the seaside resorts of Lagos and Praia da Luz.
But friends say he became involved with a criminal syndicate trafficking drugs into the Algarve.
September 2005: He dons a mask and breaks into an apartment where a 72-year-old American tourist is staying.
The victim was bound, gagged, blindfolded and whipped with a metal cane before being raped for 15 minutes. She said afterwards that he had clearly enjoyed 'torturing' her before the rape.
April 2007: He moves out of a farmhouse and into a campervan linked to the crime. The farmhouse is cleaned and a bag of wigs is found.
May 3, 2007: Madeleine McCann is snatched at around 10pm from her bed as her parents eat tapas with friends yards away.
Brueckner's mobile phone places him in the area that night. He returns to his native Germany shortly after that.
October 2011: He is sentenced to 21 months for 'dealing narcotics' in Niebüll, in northern Germany.
2014: He moves to Braunschweig where he starts running a town-centre kiosk. He then goes back to Portugal with a girlfriend.
2016: He is back in Germany. He is given 15 months in prison for 'sexual abuse of a child in the act of creating and possessing child pornographic material'.
May 3, 2017: Brueckner is said to be in a bar with a friend when a ten-year anniversary appeal following Madeleine's disappearance is shown on German television. He is said to have told him in a bar that he 'knew all about' what happened to her. He then showed his friend a video of him raping a woman.
MailOnline understands the friend went to police shortly afterwards.
June 2017: He heads back to Portugal and extradited again to Germany. The reason was a sentencing of the Braunschweig district court to 15 months' imprisonment for the sexual abuse of a child.
August 2018: After his release from prison he lives on the streets. But he was jailed again for drug offences.
First Prosecutor Hans Christian Wolters addresses the media during a press conference on the Madeleine McCann case at the public prosecutor's office in Braunschweig
September 2018: Brueckner is arrested in Italy and extradited to Germany and put on trial for raping an American in 2007 after a DNA match was found at the crime scene.
July 2019: He is jailed for 21 months for drug dealing in the northern German resort of Sylt.
August 2019: Brueckner is charged with the rape of the American tourist in Praia da Luz in 2005.
December 2019: He is convicted of rape of extortion of the tourist based on DNA evidence. He is given a seven year sentence, but this has not been imposed pending an appeal.
June 3, 2020: Scotland Yard and the German police reveal that that they have identified a suspect in the Maddie McCann case
June 4, 2020: Prosecutors in Braunschweig, where he lives, say they believe Madeleine McCann has been murdered, says spokesman Hans Christian Wolters. He is named in the German press as the prime suspect.
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