Madeleine McCann suspect Christian Brückner made phone call to female 'accomplice' the night 3-year-old vanished
Christian Brückner, the 43-year-old German man who is now the prime suspect in the kidnapping and disappearance of Madeleine McCann, had a female accomplice for his crimes in Portugal, it has been claimed. Madeleine was just three-years-old when she disappeared on May 3, 2007, from her bed in a holiday apartment at a resort in Praia da Luz, in the Algarve region of Portugal, where she had been vacationing with her parents.
Her disappearance, which has come to be described as "the most heavily-reported missing-person case in modern history," had sparked an international manhunt and multimillion-dollar investigations but remained unsolved.
In June 2020, Christian Hoppe, a criminal investigator at Germany's Federal Criminal Police (BKA), announced they had zeroed in on Brückner, a convicted pedophile, as a suspect. Besides having a history of sex crimes, the 43-year-old 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.
Portuguese investigative journalist Sandra Felgueiras has now claimed that Brückner was not alone in his crimes and that his girlfriend was an "accomplice" who helped him in his illicit activities.
The night Madeleine vanished, police said Brückner had a long telephone conversation from the area near the young girl's holiday home with a person on a Portuguese cellphone. It was suspected that the person was his ex-girlfriend, believed to be a child psychologist who ran a rehabilitation program for troubled German teenagers from her home in Foral, a 45-minute drive from Praia da Luz. She has been questioned twice by police leading the McCann investigation in Germany but is not thought to be a suspect in the disappearance.
But speaking on a national television show, titled 'The Accomplice of Christian B,' Felgueiras said the girlfriend, who has not been officially identified, helped Brückner choose luxurious homes that they then robbed together. She said that during a burglary on November 1, 2007, a few months after Madeleine's disappearance, they targeted $114,000 in cash at a property in Praia da Gale, near Albufeira. Brückner was reportedly even recognized by neighbors as he later fled the property.
"I have evidence that Christian committed burglaries with [his then girlfriend]," Felgueiras shared. "It was always the same modus operandi. She called him saying the house was free. Then it got robbed. I know [his ex] got investigated by police over it. The victims contacted me and I have now confirmed it with the court files."
It's not the first time that Brückner's life as a burglar has been laid bare. Michael Tatschl, who lived with the 43-year-old in a ramshackle farmhouse near Praia da Luz for two years, had previously revealed that the German kept hundreds of passports, expensive watches, and jewelry in a secret hiding place after robbing unsuspecting British and German tourists.
He also said Brückner had talked about "selling children to Morocco" and told detectives during a 14-hour interview at a police station in Graz, Austria, that he was confident he was behind Madeleine's disappearance.
"The detectives were very clear with me from the first minute. They said, 'We are investigating Maddie McCann and Christian Brückner', and I told them I knew why they were here. I was convinced it was him. I know he did it. I was living with him at the time. He was my best friend and he was definitely a pervert and more than capable of snatching a child, for sexual kicks or money."