'I snatched her': Madeleine McCann suspect stalked her holiday apartment for four days before her disappearance
A new prime suspect in the disappearance of Madeleine McCann reportedly boasted about "snatching" the three-year-old to a friend in a German bar, reports state. The development comes as German authorities on Wednesday, June 3, announced that Madeliene could be dead as the pedophile suspect, identified as 43-year-old Christian Brueckner, could be behind her possible murder.
German police revealed that they first zeroed in on Brueckner after he mentioned Madeleine while talking to a friend in a bar, saying: "I snatched her." The friend later alerted the authorities about Brueckner. The 43-year-old reportedly talked about the missing girl on the tenth anniversary of her disappearance and told his friend that he knew what had happened to her. Brueckner then allegedly proceeded to show his friend a video of him sexually assaulting a 72-year-old American tourist in Portugal in 2005. The suspect is currently convicted for the crime and has been sentenced to over seven years of prison.
Madeleine mysteriously disappeared from her parents' vacation apartment at The Ocean Club Resort in Portugal on the night of May 3, 2007. At the time, her parents were just 50 meters away from the apartment, dining at a tapas restaurant with several close friends while Madeleine and her twin siblings slept in the house. Thirteen years later, the child is still missing. Madeleine's disappearance is the most widely-reported missing person's case in modern history.
The pedophile is also believed to have staked out the McCanns’ holiday flat in Praia da Luz, Portugal, for four days before Maddie's disappearance. New pictures and details about Brueckner reportedly match the description of a mystery man spotted nearby at least four times the days before the child went missing.
The 43-year-old is known to have carried out burglaries on holiday villas and apartments at the time of Madeleine's disappearance. "These sightings have been a mystery for years and have been the subject of numerous police appeals," a source told the Sun. "With a suspect now in custody it seems like they may have finally been solved."
The first such sighting of the suspicious person was on April 30, 2007, two days after the McCanns arrived in Praia da Luz at the Ocean Club. Reports state that a man matching Brueckner's description was spotted in sunglasses at 8 am staring at the apartment. Later, on May 2, a blond male was seen behaving strangely at the complex's reception at midday without any reason to be there. A British, an hour later, saw a blond man with a friend visiting the Habana seafront internet cafe, which is a five-minute walk from the apartment the McCanns were staying at.
It was also revealed that the suspect, years later, had fantasized about kidnapping and raping a young child. According to investigative documents obtained by a German magazine, Brueckner wrote about his depraved fantasy in an internet chat. Brueckner had allegedly told a friend in September 2013, nearly six years after Maddie's disappearance, that he wanted "to capture something small and use it for days." He also suggested to the friend that he would destroy the evidence so the child would never be found.