Christian Brueckner, the main individual of interest in the 2007 disappearance of British child Madeleine McCann, has been released from a German prison today. German authorities officially identified the 48-year-old as the key suspect in the case involving the three-year-old’s vanishing from a holiday complex in Praia da Luz back in May 2007. Brueckner, who previously served a seven-year sentence in Germany for a rape conviction, has declined a request from British law enforcement to be questioned regarding the child’s disappearance in Portugal while she was vacationing with her family.
Born in Germany in 1976, Brueckner relocated to Portugal in his late teens and resided there from 1995 to 2007, working in the food sector. He was situated in a rundown farmhouse on the outskirts of Praia da Luz at the time of Maddie’s disappearance. In 2005, he committed a heinous act against a 72-year-old American woman in Praia da Luz, resulting in a seven-year imprisonment in Germany. Investigations revealed that Brueckner was in the vicinity of the Praia da Luz holiday apartment on the day Madeleine disappeared, although he claims to have been elsewhere with a young German woman.
Despite being designated as the primary suspect in the Madeleine McCann case in 2020, Brueckner has not been formally charged and maintains his innocence regarding any involvement in the disappearance. German authorities are conducting an inquiry, with chief prosecutor Hans Christian Wolters stating last month that there is incriminating evidence against him, although not enough to guarantee a conviction. London’s Metropolitan Police, leading Operation Grange in the search for Madeleine, sent a request for cooperation to Brueckner, which he rejected.
Furthermore, a former police official has raised concerns that Madeleine might have been taken as part of a notorious pedophile network, previously linked to Belgian criminal Marc Dutroux. The ex-justice minister of Belgium, Marc Verwilghen, who supervised the Dutroux investigation, highlighted intelligence suggesting a trafficking group seeking a young child just before Madeleine’s disappearance. Verwilghen drew parallels between Dutroux’s crimes and the circumstances of Madeleine’s vanishing, indicating the possibility of her being abducted on order.
In a separate development, there were claims that German prosecutors declined to investigate allegations implicating a couple in a drink-driving incident involving Madeleine. Portuguese authorities sought to probe a tip from a British informant regarding her brother and his German wife’s potential involvement in concealing information about the disappearance. Although the British man has since passed away, investigations focused on Christian Brueckner as the primary suspect, dismissing alternate leads.
The ongoing investigation continues to uncover new leads as the case of Madeleine McCann’s disappearance remains a high-profile mystery.