Madeleine McCann suspect likely tipped off about family leaving apartment door open by an 'inside man' at resort
Police are looking into how Christian Brueckner, the alleged prime suspect in Madeleine McCann's case, ended up in the Portuguese resort the night of Maddie's disappearance. The latest report is that Brueckner could have been tipped off about the routines of the McCann family by a former employee at the resort from where three-year-old Madeleine disappeared.
Brueckner was allegedly aware of Madeleine's parents, Kate and Gerry McCann's routines, their friends and even their habit of leaving valuable belongings in their apartments while they would go for long dinners outside. According to a Portuguese local news station, Correio da Manha claimed that Brueckner was told of Kate and Gerry McCann's routines by a former Ocean Club employee who had left his job at the time, Mirror reports.
The publication said, "The theory shared by the Portuguese and German police is that the suspect panicked. The objective was to carry out a burglary but he saw Madeleine and her siblings and decided to take the oldest one."
"An old employee of the Ocean Club had the number in his diary and revealed who it belonged to, a then 30-year-old German who lived nearby and didn’t have a known profession. The friend said he committed petty crime including thefts and had spoken to him about the British group the McCanns formed part of. It was in 2007, days before Madeleine disappeared," it said.
"The friend told him there were several apartments and the group would spend hours over dinner, leaving their valuables," it added.
Brueckner, 43, is currently serving out a seven-year jail term for raping an American woman, 72, in Praia da Luz, Portugal. He is housed at the Kiel Jail in northern Germany. He is now the prime suspect in Madeleine's disappearance from 13 years ago.
Madeleine vanished at the age of 3 while she was on a vacation with her parents at a Portuguese resort in May 2007. Madeleine's parents Kate and Gerry McCann are in for another agonizing wait as it is believed that Brueckner is not cooperating with the authorities after his suspected involvement in the case. While speaking to The Sun, a source close to the German police said, "If he is responsible for taking Madeleine and suddenly crumbles and confesses it could end reasonably rapidly. But so far he is saying absolutely nothing to officers, he is keeping schtum, so Kate and Gerry could be left in limbo for many weeks and months which is agonizing for them."
It is believed that Brueckner had once lost his temper at his employees because they were discussing the Madeleine case. Lena Johlitz, who used to work for Brueckner at a kiosk he ran in the northern German city of Braunschweig between 2012 and 2014, recalled when he "lost it" with his employees who were discussing Madeleine's case.
"Once he totally lost it when we sat together with friends and had a conversation about the Maddie case. He wanted us to stop talking about it. He shouted, 'The child is dead now and that's it.' And: 'You can make a corpse disappear quickly! Pigs also eat human flesh!" she told Bild.
Madeleine's disappearance caught the attention of media around the world and in the 13 years that have followed, has been dubbed as the "most heavily-reported missing person case in modern history."