Madeleine McCann investigator says he's sure Christian Brueckner is the killer, 'confident' he'll be charged
The chief investigator handling the Madeleine McCann case has said he is sure prime suspect Christian Brueckner is behind the murder of the little girl. Hans Christian Wolters has also claimed that if the public were to see the evidence they will be of the same opinion. Wolters stated that lack of much evidence prevented them from charging Brueckner, but was “very confident” he will be charged in the future.
“If you knew the evidence we had you would come to the same conclusion as I do but I can’t give you details because we don’t want the accused to know what we have on him - these are tactical considerations,” Wolters said in a TV interview, before adding: “I can’t promise, I can’t guarantee that we have enough to bring a charge but I’m very confident because what we have so far doesn’t allow any other conclusion at all.”
A week before his recent interview, the chief detective said he was taking extra care before filing charges due to strict double jeopardy German laws. He added at the time, “If we file charges and he is acquitted, then the case is dead forever. In Germany, once you have been acquitted, you cannot be charged again, at least only in very exceptional cases." Brueckner is currently in prison in Germany for drug trafficking in the northern German city of Kiel. Besides, he was also convicted in the rape of a 72-year-old American woman in 2005 and awarded seven years in jail, at a court in Brunswick, Lower Saxony. The woman was sexually assaulted at the same resort from where Madeleine was kidnapped. The victim was three when she vanished from a holiday apartment in Praia da Luz in May 2007. Madeleine was vacationing at the time with her family.
This comes after Met Police Commissioner Dame Cressida Dick said they will keep searching for the toddler until they “feel we have exhausted all” possibilities. “We're continuing to work very closely with our colleagues in the BKA (Germany's Federal Criminal Police Office) in Germany, as you know, and the PJ (Policia Judiciaria) in Portugal. We do have our small team still working on that and there's no significant change for us in terms of our resourcing or posture. As you know, we have some funding to continue that and we are continuing it,” the commissioner stated. She added, “We will continue until the time that it is right, either because much more light has been thrown on this and, or, somebody has been brought to justice. Or, if we feel we have exhausted all possible opportunities. We're not any of those stages at the moment, and the team continues."
When reporters asked Dick if she received each and every piece of information from the German authorities, she said, “We're working really closely with the German authorities. I would not expect necessarily every single piece of material to be shared with us. I'm sure they're sharing the relevant things at the relevant times with us. We are working really, really closely with them."