CONVICTED German rapist Christian Brueckner was officially named as a suspect in the disappearance of Madeleine McCann in 2022.
In February 2024, the predator was in court in Braunschweig facing claims he raped three women and twice sexually molested children in Portugal.
Who is Madeleine McCann suspect Christian Brueckner?
In 2011, Metropolitan Police took over the investigation into the disappearance of then-toddler Maddeleine McCann during a family holiday in the Algarve in May 2007 — codenamed Operation Grange.
The Met ran into several dead ends, until German prisoner Christian Brueckner, 47, was revealed as a "significant" suspect.
He was born in Germany in 1976, before moving to Portugal in his late teens.
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The suspect, who was 30 at the time of Madeleine's disappearance, has twice been convicted for sex crimes against young girls.
German police previously claimed to have "concrete evidence" that Maddie is dead, with prosecutors in Germany writing a letter to Kate and Gerry McCann informing them of this.
They believe he initially planned to rob the McCann's holiday apartment before he "moved on to a sexual motive".
In May 2023, police launched a new search for Maddie's body in the first major operation of its kind in nine years.
Police from Germany, Portugal and the UK searched a remote Algarve reservoir, the Arade Dam, that Brueckner is believed to have used and called his "little paradise".
It is approximately a 45-minute drive from the Ocean Club holiday resort of Praia da Luz where Maddie vanished from.
Local Portuguese reports, partly confirmed by police sources, claimed the searches were requested and authorised after German police obtained videos and photos of Brueckner by the dig site.
The area is also where there was a sighting of a child being handed to a man days after the three-year-old disappeared.
Teams of officers clutching shovels were accompanied by sniffer dogs as they combed the desolate site under a no-fly zone.
Cops ended the search after three days on May 25, 2023 — without revealing what they had uncovered.
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How was the suspect identified?
The information came from a witness who stepped forward following the appeal by the Met Police on the tenth anniversary in 2017.
Brueckner is known to have been in the area at the time of Maddie's disappearance, having taken a 30-minute phone call an hour before she went missing.
In 2017, he allegedly confessed to kidnapping Maddie while sitting in a German bar watching coverage of the 10th anniversary of her disappearance.
The friend he spoke to came forward to German police.
In June 2020, German police said that Maddie was assumed dead and that Brueckner was likely responsible for it, but he has not been charged with any crime related to the disappearance.
What other cases has Christian Brueckner been linked to?
Brueckner has been linked with the disappearances of several children over the past 25 years, including that of a six-year-old boy in Portugal in 1996 and a five-year-old girl in Germany in 2015.
Authorities in Belgium have also linked him to the murder of missing 16-year-old Carola Titze, who disappeared while on holiday in De Haan on July 5, 1996.
Brueckner has been associated with the missing person’s case of Inga Gehricke as well.
The child disappeared during a family outing in Saxony-Anhalt on May 2, 2015.
Brueckner has also been linked with the disappearance of Jair Soares, a seven-year-old who vanished in August 1995.
Meanwhile, Peggy Knobloch's disappearance is yet another case which has been linked to the German sex offender, after she went missing in May 2001.
In 2020, Brueckner was investigated over the rape and murder of 13-year-old German boy Tristan Brübach.
And in February 2024, the convicted paedophile appeared in court in the German city of Braunschweig facing charges of raping three women and molesting two children in Portugal.
Why is Christian Brueckner in prison in Germany?
Brueckner is serving a prison sentence after being convicted of raping a 72-year-old woman in 2005.
The act happened in the same place where Madeleine went missing.
The suspect is believed to have a total of 17 convictions, including burglary.
Scotland Yard also revealed that a 1980s VW T3 Westphalia white camper van has been linked to the suspect, and was seen in Praia da Luz days before Maddie vanished.
He is also believed to have been living in the van for weeks before and after the disappearance.
A 1993 Jaguar XJR6 has also been connected to the German sex offender, with one of the two vehicles believed to have been used during the kidnapping of Maddie.
