Madeleine McCann: Christian Brueckner performed sex act in front of girl, 10, weeks before toddler disappeared
The prime suspect of Madeleine McCann's murder, Christian Brueckner, has been linked to a sex attack nearly a month before the British toddler disappeared, reports state. A woman from Germany recently approached authorities, stating that she recognized Brueckner from television reports as the man who had attacked her when she was just a 10-year-old in April 2007.
Brueckner, a 43-year-old pedophile from Germany, was named by authorities in June as the prime suspect Madeleine's missing case. The three-year-old mysteriously disappeared from her parents' vacation apartment at The Ocean Club Resort in Praia da Luz, Portugal on the night of May 3, 2007.
The German woman, who is now 23, said she was on a family holiday in Salema, six miles away from Praia da Luz, where Madeleine disappeared at night. The woman reportedly told police that a man grabbed her on the beach and performed a sex act on himself and then ran off. The woman added that her brother and father, however, did not succeed in catching him at the time.
The news comes days after it was revealed in new documents that Brueckner was arrested and convicted for sexually abusing the five-year-old daughter of a former girlfriend. The German police, in assistance with Scotland Yard, is probing Brueckner, a convicted rapist, in Maddie's case. The detectives, in June, had revealed that they were convinced the toddler was dead and knew how she was killed. They, however, do not know where her body is. German prosecutor Hans Christian Wolters, while addressing a press conference, had said: "We think that Madeleine McCann is dead and are appealing for witnesses. The 43-year-old suspect is a multiple sexual predator already convicted of crimes against little girls."
Considering the latest accusation of child sexual assault against Brueckner, prosecutors in Brunswick examining Maddie's case have reopened the file on the woman's attack. Prosecutor Wolters, in a statement, said: "The man currently in custody suspected of Madeleine McCann’s abduction is also the suspect in a sex attack on a German girl," according to The Sun.
Christian B has convictions for child sex abuse and was found guilty of raping an American woman, 73, in 2005 close to where Madeleine vanished. But his lawyer Friedrich Fulscher says he is innocent of the rape and has appealed, and has nothing to do with Madeleine. He is in jail in Kiel, Germany, serving 21 months for drug offenses.
Brueckner's criminal history states that he was convicted of sexually abusing a child in 1994 when he was 17. The suspect was reportedly given a youth sentence of two years. Later, in 2016, he was imprisoned again for a year and three months for "abusing a child in the act of procuring himself and possessing child pornography," and in June 2017 he received 15 months' prison sentence for sexual abuse of a child. Brueckner, as he went in and out of prison, spent his time between Germany and Portugal, where he was living at the time of Madeleine's disappearance. The suspect would have been 30 at the time when the little toddler disappeared. His phone records showed him near the resort on the day of Maddie's disappearance. He reportedly lived in a farmhouse near Praia da Luz at the time and in May 2007 traveled around the Algarve in a VW camper van as a drifter, according to authorities.