Madeleine McCann suspect could have been caught in 2005 if cops had tested evidence in rape case for DNA
Madeleine McCann suspect Christian Brueckner could have been caught two years before she disappeared had it not been for a mishap by Portuguese cops who blundered over evidence in a rape case. The clothes and a rope from a villa where Brueckner had raped a 72-year-old American woman in 2005 were not tested for DNA, reports Daily Mail. German Prosecutors are convinced that the cops not DNA testing the evidence was a crucial oversight, which left Brueckner out and about to kidnap Madeleine two years later.
The 2005 rape case inquiry had also been abandoned just five months after the attack had taken place. A red t-shirt that had been stuffed into the victim's mouth and a nylon rope used to tie her hands together had not been tested, reports The Sun. The villa is believed to be not too far from where Madeleine was snatched. Madeleine vanished at the age of 3 while she was on a vacation with her parents at a Portuguese resort in May 2007. The villa is a short walk away from the Praia da Luz apartment where Madeleine was taken from.
The Portuguese police made quite a few blunders while dealing with the 2005 rape case and it was only in 2017 that Brueckner was locked up for the crime. Former Director of the Judicial Police's Forensic Science Laboratory, Carlos Farinha, had written a letter in 2009 which read, "We have learned by telephone that the examination is no longer necessary. We are therefore canceling the tests and returning the material sent to us for analysis," official documents reveal. Brueckner was convicted after the German police reinvestigated and did DNA tests on some body hair that was obtained from the villa.
The German police had previously written to Madeleine's parents and told them that she is dead. They did not say how they knew but said that giving away any more information could jeopardize the inquiry into suspect Brueckner. Hans Christian Wolters, who is leading the case, shared, "I sympathize with the parents but if we reveal more details to them it might jeopardize the investigation. We have concrete evidence that our suspect has killed Madeleine and this means she is dead. The parents have been told the German police have evidence that she is dead but we have not told them the details."
The prosecutor says that there is "no forensic evidence" that Madeleine is dead but there is "concrete evidence" that she has not survived her 13-year long disappearance. We had earlier shared that, as per The Mirror, "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."