VEHICLES owned by Madeleine McCann suspect Christian Brueckner in Portugal when she vanished there were taken to Germany and scrapped.
And our exclusive picture shows a white Mercedes Sprinter van — like the one cops said he had in the Algarve — parked at a creepy woodland site he later bought.
The paedophile took a Mercedes van, VW estate and Opel Ascona back to his home country, our investigation has found.
It was not known exactly when.
Sources say he then regularly visited a scrapyard near his home there to dispose of cars and vans.
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It was understood German cops were told in 2020 he used it when he was first publicly named as a suspect in the 2007 disappearance of Madeleine, three, from an Algarve holiday apartment.
But he was aware from 2013 that his name had been given to the Madeleine investigators so it is possible he could have scrapped them between then and 2020.
The scrapyard, in nearby Helmstedt, has since shut.
We tracked down the owners who said they still have a decade of records — and admitted they were “surprised” they had never heard from cops.
Brueckner was known to store vehicles at his derelict box factory in Neuwegersleben.
A source said: “We know he brought some back from Portugal and drove them around for years.
"His white van was well-known locally. He drove it round with a mattress in the back for when he arranged hook-ups online with women.
“He told me he regularly took old vehicles to the scrapyard in Helmstedt but of course no one thought anything of it at the time.”
He bought the abandoned factory in the former communist East Germany in 2010 and is believed to have lived in a trailer there.
A 2016 police search uncovered disturbing images and videos on memory cards in a Lidl plastic bag beneath the corpse of one of his dogs.
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Clothing including swimwear in children’s sizes were also found.
Rape and child abuse charges
Multiple sources confirmed at least two other vehicles had come back from Portugal with Brueckner.
The owner of the scrapyard, who did not want to be named, told The Sun on Sunday: “German law requires that you keep all records for at least ten years.
“But the thing is, none of the police divisions came round to ask us anything, which you could say is surprising.”
German investigators last night confirmed they were still pursuing any vehicles linked to Brueckner.
Brueckner is in jail in Germany for rape and also now on trial for other rape and child abuse charges which have emerged as part of the Madeleine investigation.
He denies any involvement in Madeleine’s disappearance.
