Christian Brückner was livid at staff for discussing Madeleine McCann: 'The child is dead now and that's it'
The convicted German pedophile suspected in the disappearance of Madeleine McCann once lost his temper at his employees because they would not stop talking about her disappearance, it has been revealed.
Madeleine disappeared from her parents' holiday apartment at a resort in Praia da Luz, in the Algarve region of Portugal, on May 3, 2007, just a few days before her fourth birthday and has not been seen since. Her disappearance caught the attention of media around the world and, in the 13 years that have followed, has been dubbed as the "most heavily-reported missing person case in modern history."
Last week, investigators announced they had made a breakthrough in the case, with Hoppe, a criminal investigator at Germany's Federal Criminal Police (BKA) telling reporters they had zeroed in on a 43-year-old German man currently behind bars for sex crimes as the prime suspect in the young girl's disappearance. The suspect was identified as Christian Brückner.
Now, some of Brückner's former employees and neighbors have spoken out against him and revealed there were clues to suggest he was hiding some dark secrets.
Lena Johlitz, who used to work for Brückner at a kiosk he ran in the northern German city of Braunschweig between 2012 and 2014, recalled when he "lost it" with his employees who were discussing Madeleine's case.
"Once he totally lost it when we sat together with friends and had a conversation about the Maddie case," she told Bild. "He wanted us to stop talking about it. He shouted, 'The child is dead now and that's it.' And: 'You can make a corpse disappear quickly! Pigs also eat human flesh!'"
Brückner used to run the store, which was located just a 100 yards away from a school, selling drinks and snacks and reportedly would also regularly interact with children and shower them with gifts.
"The kids would come to school holding ponies and teddy bears," shared Peter Erdmann, 64, who worked at the Grundschule Hohsteig, a primary school with around 300 children. "The kids would come to school holding ponies and teddy bears. I used to ask them where they got them from, and they used to tell me, ''Christian at the kiosk gave it to us.' He used to give the kids the presents when they walked past the kiosk in the morning."
Erdmann said he did not think much of it at the time but that it "turns his stomach" when he recalls it now. "I used to go and see Christian in the kiosk, and he always came across as friendly," he said. "I even asked him if he gave gifts to the kids, and he told me he had a little box full in the kiosk."
"It turns my stomach now to think of his intentions and I wish I had raised what was going on with my bosses at the time."
Brückner has 17 convictions to his name and had moved to Portugal from Braunschweig in his teens. He had worked in restaurants and had a record of break-ins at hotels and dealing drugs in the region where Madeleine's family was vacationing. The night she vanished, police said he had a long telephone conversation from the area near Praia da Luz with a person on a Portuguese cellphone.
He is currently behind bars in Germany serving a 21-month sentence for dealing drugs but may walk free in the coming week as a court prepares to hear an appeal he has filed over a rape conviction.