Madeleine McCann suspect Christian Brückner bragged about her on internet chatroom years after kidnap, say cops
German authorities on Thursday, June 4, disclosed that they know how three-year-old Madeleine McCann was killed nearly 13 years ago as they revealed the prime suspect in the case to be a drug-dealing pedophile. The suspect, identified as Christian Brückner by multiple outlets, reportedly first mentioned Madeleine in an internet chatroom, according to a former Portuguese detective.
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.
Brückner, a 43-year-old sex predator, reportedly executed multiple attacks on little girls over the years and raped an American pensioner while living as a drifter in Portugal months before Madeliene went missing. The suspect would have been 30 at the time when the little girl disappeared. His phone records showed him near the resort on the day of Maddie's disappearance. Portuguese authorities, in 2008, had reportedly zeroed in on him among the suspects but reportedly let him go despite him having a history of child abuse and drug peddling.
The national assistant director of the Policia Judiciaria, Pedro do Carmo, said in 2017 that Portuguese authorities have long considered the case a "thorn in their side". "We'd never had a case like it and we've never had one since," he said. The former lead investigator on the McCann case, Goncalo Amaral, last year, revealed that a German pedophile had been the focus on his inquiry in 2008 but he was ruled out then and was later jailed in Germany for murdering children. Years after, it was revealed that the suspect had mentioned Madeleine in a chatroom conversation, his first discussion of the three-year-old.
"Many years later, it appears that in an internet chatroom there is a conversation between that person and another person where they talk about Madeleine," the former detective said. Brückner, later, on the 10th anniversary of Maddie's disappearance, confessed to a person at a bar in Germany that he knew what had exactly happened to the little girl, according to the Daily Mail.
The suspect is reportedly serving a prison term of seven-year in Germany at the moment in an unrelated sex attack. His conviction is linked to the rape of an elderly American woman in Portugal two years before Madeleine went missing. He was convicted after DNA from a body hair on a bed sheet linked him to the crime scene. The suspect, first convicted of a sex crime at the age of 17, is believed to be appealing his conviction in the case.
The German authorities, on Thursday, June 4, revealed that they had determined the method that was used to kill Madeliene, however, they have not revealed it publicly. No body has been found in the investigation yet.
The authorities, however, have established that the 43-year-old was living in a campervan in Praia da Luz in Portugal around the time Madeleine disappeared as they suspect that he may have used the campervan to abduct her from the resort. His previous charges, starting from the age of 15, include sex attacks on kids, child pornography, sexual coercion, theft and breaking and entering houses and establishments.