Madeleine McCann kidnap suspect Christian Brückner may walk free this week due to lack of evidence, fear cops
Police fear that the convicted pedophile who is currently behind bars for sex crimes and is now the prime suspect in the disappearance of Madeleine McCann could walk free as early as next week.
German authorities announced this past week that they had made a breakthrough in the 13-year-old case of Madeleine, who was last seen on the evening on May 3, 2007, in a holiday apartment at a resort in Praia da Luz in the Algarve region of Portugal.
Christian Hoppe, a criminal investigator at Germany's Federal Criminal Police (BKA), announced that they had zeroed in on a 43-year-old German man as a suspect; a man that has since been named by several media outlets as Christian Brückner, who has 17 convictions to his name.
No charges are have been officially filed against Brückner in Madeleine's disappearance, and authorities are said to be concerned they are running out of time as he could be released from prison in the coming week.
Brückner is currently behind bars in Germany serving a 21-month sentence for dealing drugs. The Daily Mail reported that he had been arrested while living on the streets of Milan in 2018, on a European arrest warrant over the rape of a 72-year-old American woman.
He was subsequently brought back to Germany and was charged with the rape — which occurred in Praia da Luz just 18 months before Madeleine went missing — in August 2019. One month later, he was convicted of drug dealing in the German resort of Sylt and sentenced to 21 months in prison.
Then, in December 2019, a court in Braunschweig, where he had lived before moving to Portugal in his teens, convicted him of the rape because DNA from his hair was found in the victim's holiday home.
While the judge said at the time that it was a 244 billion to one chance that he was not guilty, Brückner is appealing the verdict on the grounds his extradition from Italy was illegal. Germany's Federal High Court has not yet ruled on the appeal and his seven-year jail term for the conviction will not start until it has.
The 43-year-old has served two-thirds of his drug sentence in Kiel prison, Schleswig-Holstein and legal experts said this could mean he is on the verge of getting parole and could be free as quickly as Sunday, June 7.
In a bid to uncover evidence, the German police have promised 10,000 euros to anyone providing information that could help them solve the case and provided a link where the public can submit photographs or any other evidence. Scotland Yard has also launched a joint appeal with the BKA and the Portuguese Policia Judiciaria (PJ) with a reward of £ 20,000 for information.
Investigators are said to be looking for a German woman who is believed to have stayed with Brückner in a farmhouse near Praia da Luz in 2007 but walked out on him before Madeleine's disappearance. That residence is just 25 minutes away from the hotel where the three-year-old was staying.
They also want to speak to an underage Kosovan ex-girlfriend who lived with him in Braunschweig and may have returned to Portugal with him during his most recent trip around five years ago.