Timeline of Christian Brueckner’s crimes and hyperlinks to Madeleine McCann

Convicted paedophile and rapist Christian Brueckner was named as the prime suspect in the disappearance of Madeleine McCann in 2020.   

Born Christian Fischer in Bavaria in 1976, he descended into a life of crime as a young teenager, and was convicted of his first burglary in his home town of Wurzburg in 1992, when he was just 15.

Over the years, the sex offender, 47, has been linked to several horrific cases, from sexual abusing children to raping a 72-year-old pensioner.

Brueckner has more than a dozen previous convictions for burglary, theft, and sex offences, including serving an 18-month sentence for a sex attack on a youth when he was a teen.

He is currently serving a seven-year prison sentence in Germany for raping an elderly American in the Algarve and drug trafficking – but it is set to end early next year.

Following the news of an alleged confession to a former cellmate that he took a child from a Portuguese apartment during a break-in, MailOnline has taken a look at the warped life of Christian Brueckner.

1994

In 1994, when he was just 17, Christian Brueckner was convicted in his homeland of Germany of sexual abuse of a child, and carrying out sexual acts in front of a child.

He molested a six-year-old girl in a playground in Wurzburg, Bavaria, only stopping when she began to scream and cry, a youth court heard. 

Brueckner then ‘dropped his trousers’ at a nine-year-old boy before fleeing the scene.

The vile playground attack earned him a two-year youth sentence, of which he only served part, before fleeing to Portugal.  

1995

The following year, as an 18-year-old who had just got his driving license, Brueckner fled Germany for Portugal with a girlfriend to escape the youth custody sentence he had received, while abandoning his car mechanic apprenticeship in the process.

‘We knew nothing about Portugal,’ he would later tell a court. 

‘We went to Lagos [in the Algarve] because we liked the name. We had a tent with us and camped in the wild.’ 

His relationship soon ended but he took on an array of jobs over the years, including swimming pool installations and car repairs – before settling down in the resort of Praia da Luz – where Madeleine McCann would disappear from 12 years later.

Brueckner’s relationships with women, including an English woman in 2004 to 2005, were said to be frequent but short-lived.

The convicted rapist was later linked to the disappearance of Jair Soares, a seven-year-old who vanished in August.  

1996

Authorities in Belgium have linked Brueckner to  the murder of missing 16-year-old Carola Titze, who disappeared while on holiday in De Haan on July 5. 

1999

In 1999, Brueckner was arrested by Portuguese police and and sent back to his home country to serve the rest of his youth sentence from 1994.

He is believed  to have served prison sentences in Portugal, where he became known to authorities for drug dealing and breaking into holiday apartments and hotels.

Former detective Mark Williams-Thomas said: ‘So in 1999 Christian Brueckner came to the attention of the Portuguese police, having committed a sexual offence against a child.

‘It is now clear police failed to trace, interview and eliminate a local child sex offender.

‘Had they done so, Brueckner would have been flagged up as a significant person of interest and potential forensic evidence obtained from his campervan’.   

2001

Bruckener has been linked to the disappearance of Penny Knobloch, a German schoolgirl, after she went missing aged nine in May. 

Part of her skeleton was discovered 15 years later by a mushroom picker in a Bavarian forest, around 60 miles from her home in Lichtenberg, Upper Franconia.

The town is roughly 100 miles from Brueckner’s home town of Wurzburg. 

2004

While dating an English woman living in Praia da Luz, Brueckner was later accused of raping an Irish mother-of-three in June 2004.

Giving evidence in the trial of Brueckner in May this year, Hazel Behan alleged she was raped at knifepoint by the main suspect in the Madeleine McCann case and told the court she would never forget the eyes of her attacker, which ‘bored into my skull’.

She said on the second and final day of testimony, delivered over 10 hours, that she still bears the scars of the attack, which took place in Praia da Rocha, in the Algarve, where she was working as a holiday representative.

In haunting remarks made to the court, Behan said: ‘When you spend time in a situation like that with a person and there’s nothing else you can see on this human except their eyes, it’s the only thing you can remember. They bored into my skull. I’ll never forget it.

‘They were just so blue… everything so dark… they were like lights, they were so bright. I just know them,’ she said.

She said she suffered from recurring posttraumatic stress disorder and frequent panic attacks as a result of the assault and had scars on the backs of her legs that remain to this day from where she was tied with rope to a breakfast bar during the prolonged attack at the flat where she lived.

Behan also said she still bled from wounds received during the vicious attack.

Over the span of the two-day trial, the victim said her attacker had been masked and was covered head to toe in a leotard-style body suit of about 60-denier thickness, and wore leather, or fake leather, gloves.

She recounted in graphic detail how she was repeatedly whipped, raped, tied up, and filmed during the attack while he threatened: ‘If you scream, I’ll kill you’.   

2005 

Just a year later, Brueckner donned a mask and broke into a Praia da Luz  apartment where a 72-year-old American tourist was living.

He is currently nearing the end of a seven-year sentence for the assault on pensioner and widow Diana Menkes.

The victim was bound, gagged, blindfolded and whipped with a metal cane before being raped for 15 minutes. 

Menkes said afterwards that he had clearly enjoyed ‘torturing’ her before the rape.

In 2006, Portuguese authorities dropped the rape investigation linked to the pensioner due to a lack of evidence. 

The following year he moved out of a farmhouse he was living in and into a campervan now linked to the crime. 

The farmhouse was cleared out and a bag filled with wigs and ‘exotic clothes’ were found. 

But earlier this month, Braunschweig regional court was told that Brueckner confessed to the rape of Menkes and Behan while behind bars in 2019.

Prosecutor Vanessa Beyse said in one confession he boasted of ‘raping an old lady’ and ‘tying up and beating her, which really excited him’.    

2007

On May 3, 2007, three-year-old Madeleine McCann was snatched from her bed at around 10pm as her parents ate tapas with friends just yards away while holidaying in Praia da Luz.

Her parents had devised a rota system to check on all of the children – Madeleine and her younger bother and sister – but when mother Kate McCann went to check, she realised Madeleine was gone.

Police and resort staff searched for the missing toddler along with other guests until daybreak – but the efforts were unsuccessful and border police and airport staff were put on alert in the following days.

On May 12, Portuguese police said they believed Madeleine was abducted but was still alive and in Portugal, and just over two weeks later, issue a description of a man seen on the night of Madeleine’s disappearance, possibly carrying a child.

Across the following months, British police became involved in the investigation and at the start of the following year, the McCanns released sketches of a suspect, based on a description by a British holidaymaker of a ‘creepy man’ seen at the resort.

In April, Brueckner allegedly exposed himself to a German girl on a beach in Salema. 

The convicted paedophile is also said to have sold marijuana at parties for young teenagers close to the Portuguese holiday apartment where Madeleine had been staying.

Before her disappearance, Brueckner sold drugs accompanied by another man, according to a witness, but both were assumed to be British as they always spoke English.

A witness said he sold drugs at parties held for teenagers in the forests around the village of Barão de São João, five miles north of Praia da Luz where Madeleine was abducted.

The village has a large German population and is regarded by locals as a ‘hippy commune’ where marijuana is openly smoked – villagers confirmed that Brueckner was a regular visitor.   

2011

Just four years later, Brueckner was sentenced to 21 months behind bars for ‘dealing narcotics’ in Niebull, in northern Germany.

In October, a district court in the northern state of Schleswig-Holstein sentenced him to one year and nine months for a crime involving ‘narcotics in large quantities’.

The term was initially suspended.      

2013

In 2013, the McCanns appealed to the German public on TV for evidence over their daughter’s disappearance, and Brueckner’s name cropped up in connection with the case. 

According to a report in the news weekly Der Spiegel, Brueckner received a letter from police in Braunschweig on November 4 inviting him to be interviewed as a witness in the ‘missing person case Madeleine McCann’.

Braunschweig police had sent the letter after noticing Brueckner’s history of sexual offences following a routine request by the German Federal Office for Criminal Investigation.

Federal investigators in Germany had received a tipoff linking Brueckner to Madeleine’s disappearance following the TV appearance by her parents on October 16, Der Spiegel reported. 

A former colleague had recognised Brueckner on the basis of a photofit of a man spotted near the site where Madeleine went missing.

The informant claimed the suspect had run a swimming pool service close to the Cala d’Or holiday resort. 

A month later he had also shared a string of sick messages with an undertaker, including some about snatching and imprisoning a toddler.

Brueckner talked to the mortician – also a convicted sex offender – about making films to ‘document exactly how she is tormented’

The disturbing Skype conversation was found when Brueckner was arrested for molesting his girlfriend’s daughter.   

2015

Brueckner has been associated with the missing person’s case of Inga Gahricke who disappeared during a family outing in Saxony-Anhalt on May 2. 

2017

In June 2017, Brueckner was arrested again and convicted for ‘sexual abuse of a child in the act of creating and possessing child pornographic material’.

He was returned to Germany for a sentence of 15 months, but after his release he found himself homeless and said he felt persecuted by the police who followed his every move, even as he slept on a park bench. 

Brueckner is said to have been in a bar with a friend when a ten-year anniversary appeal following Madeleine’s disappearance was shown on German television.

He is said to have told him that he ‘knew all about’ what happened to her before showing his friend a video of him raping a woman.

MailOnline understands the friend went to police shortly afterwards.

2018 

After travelling to Italy to take a holiday, he was arrested again at the end of September in Milan.

He was extradited to Germany on an arrest warrant for drug trafficking.

When he arrived back in his homeland, Brueckner was put on trial for raping the American tourist in 2007 after a DNA match to hair found at the crime scene.   

2019

In July, Brueckner was jailed for 21 months for drug dealing in the northern German resort of Sylt.

Just a month later, he was charged with the rape of the American tourist in Praia da Luz in 2005, and by December was convicted of rape and extortion of Diana Menkes based on DNA evidence.

He was handed a seven-year sentence which he is currently serving at a prison in Oldenburg.  

2020

Scotland Yard revealed in June that a  43-year-old German prisoner – named at the time by German media only as Christian B – had been identified as a suspect in Madeleine’s disappearance.

Brueckner was named after his yellow and white VW T3 Westfalia campervan was reportedly spotted near the resort where Madeleine vanished.

He has repeatedly denied he was in the area at the time and distanced himself from the allegations against him.

But German prosecutors say phone records allegedly show that Brueckner was near the McCanns’ holiday apartment, near the Ocean Club, an hour before Madeleine disappeared.

Prosecutor Hans Christian Wolters told the Times at the time that it was his ‘private opinion’ that the convicted rapist ‘relatively quickly killed the girl, possibly abused her and then killed her.’

Wolters added, ‘We believe our suspect committed further crimes, especially sexual crimes, in Portugal possibly but also elsewhere like Germany.’

A former friend and roommate also sensationally claimed that he knew Brueckner was responsible for Madeleine’s disappearance.

Michael Tatschl, who lived with Brueckner in a ramshackle farmhouse near the Praia da Luz, described him as a pervert who was ‘more than capable of snatching a child’.

The pair spent eight months in the same prison after they were caught stealing 320 litres of diesel from lorries in Portugal.

Both were released in December 2006 – five months before three-year-old Madeleine, from Rothley, Leicestershire, disappeared from her family’s holiday apartment in Praia da Luz.

Tatschl became convinced of his friend’s involvement after watching an eight-part Netflix documentary on the case.

‘He was definitely a pervert and more than capable of snatching a child, for sexual kicks or money.

‘When I saw the Netflix documentary I knew immediately that he was guilty,’ he said.

‘It was when the female tourist talked about the man turning up at her door where her child was playing, that I knew it was Christian for sure.

‘She described him as a creepy guy with acne and blond hair, which fits his description.’

Bruckner was also investigated over the rape and murder of a 13-year-old German boy Tristan Brubach.   

2022

Two years Brueckner was made an official suspect in the Madeleine McCann case and spoke out for the first time, denying allegations he was involved in her disappearance in a letter seen by MailOnline.

In the five pages Brueckner described himself as ‘the most known bad person in the world’ and stressed that he was ‘not there at the time and that he was not living close to the place [of her disappearance].’

Brueckner said in the letter: ‘Welcome to the biggest adventure you can imagine.

‘I’m the most-known bad person in the world and I did nothing – well almost nothing.’

He added: ‘I wasn’t kidnapping anybody and of course I wasn’t killing anybody.

‘I’ll go further, I’ll tell you I wasn’t attacking anybody after I was 18.

‘I made some silly mistakes when I was younger but who hasn’t?’

Then referring to the McCann case Brueckner said: ‘Perhaps I was a suspect after all they found out about me.

‘Drug dealer, breaking into houses, living in cars and there was something with kids when I was 17.

‘But they had (sic) not even one proof that I was involved with the McCann case. And they still don’t have it.

‘I know why. Because they have no hairs or anything from Maddie what means (sic) that nobody can put anything like that into my stuff to find it.

‘The idea behind that all perhaps was to make the BKA (German police) and German prosecutor famous as well known all over the world as the smartest organisation ever.’

He added how there was ‘no proof’ against him and that the authorities in Germany were leaking information to portray him in a bad light.

Brueckner wrote:’I know of about five open cases against me all of them including raping and abusing.

‘They have manipulated the truth in such an unprofessional way that I am laughing.

‘I still have not lost my sense of humour. Even in this critical situation. This is what keeps me alive.’

The letter was sent to a woman who the MailOnline did not identify.  

2023 

At the end of May, police launched a major search of a Portuguese reservoir that prime suspect Christian Brueckner used to call his ‘little paradise’.

German prosecutor Hans Christian Wolters said on June 1, 2023: ‘A number of items were seized as part of the investigation. These will be in the evaluated in the coming days and weeks.

‘Whether individual items actually have a connection to the Madeleine McCann case cannot yet be said. 

‘The investigations conducted here in Braunschweig against the 45-year-old suspect are expected to continue for a long time.’

Police had said they found a ‘relevant clue’ during their search of the beauty spot after an informant was able to match photographs showing Brueckner close to the reservoir.

Several items were removed from the site, which may or may not be of relevance to the investigation into Madeleine’s disappearance. They include a bra strap, pieces of clothing and plastic items.

An area of about 160 square feet had been flattened and cleared of grass and shrubs with several holes dug into the ground to a depth of about two feet to collect samples of soil, which were sent for forensic and DNA testing in Germany.

On May 30, it was revealed that there could be other areas surrounding Praia da Luz, where Madeleine had been staying with her family, that police can search after German detectives looked through more than 8,000 photographs belonging to Brueckner.

A source told the Sun: ‘German officers have gone through more than 8,000 pictures belonging to Christian B. 

‘That forensic work led to them to Barragem – but there are other places that have come up in the pictures too.

‘Detectives are seeking to work out where they are and why Christian B was taking pictures of those places.’

In June a key witness to the Madeleine McCann case – former friend of Brueckner, Helge Busching – spoke out for the first time, claiming the girl’s suspected murderer said she ‘didn’t scream’ and that Scotland Yard ignored his tip-off, in his first ever public interview.

Busching explained how he came to know about Brueckner’s shady past by discovering harrowing sexual abuse videos, and how his former acquaintance appeared to incriminate himself in Madeleine’s disappearance.

Helge said he learned of Brueckner’s true nature well before the disappearance of McCann after stealing some videotapes and gun from Brueckner’s house along with an accomplice.

Remembering the moment he witnessed the clips, which purportedly showed Brueckner sexually abusing an elderly American woman and a teenage girl in Portugal, Helge recounted: ‘You could see how someone whipped the woman. She was tied up, lying on the bed, wearing painted ski goggles… must have been 70 or 80 years old. She shouted: You fucking b******!… then I saw it was Brueckner.

‘[The teenage victim] said: ”This borders on rape!” And he just said: ”Shut up.” That’s when I knew what kind of guy Brueckner was.’

Helge then left Portugal, but told German outlet Bild how he crossed paths with Brueckner again in 2008 at a music festival in Spain.

‘He asked me, ”don’t you go to Portugal anymore and do business there?”

‘I said, ”no, since the girl disappeared there, there have been too many police checks for me and I don’t need that at all.”

‘[The topic of Madeleine’s disappearance] came up and I said: ”Anyway, I don’t understand how the little one could have disappeared without a trace.”

‘Christian had drunk two or three beers, and he said: ”She didn’t scream.”

‘I thought: He knows that. He has something to do with it. But he also checked that I understood that and then left at night’.

Helge went on to claimed he’d approached German authorities after finding the videotapes, but that a policeman told him to abandon them and keep quiet.

‘I spoke to a police officer I know in Germany. He said: ”Helge, keep your hands off it.” A lawyer told me the same thing. I wasn’t sure what could happen to me – I would have incriminated myself!’

He added that he tried to inform Scotland Yard about Brueckner in 2008 via the dedicated hotline for Madeleine McCann tips, but never heard back.

‘I called Scotland Yard back in 2008. At the Maddie hotline. I said I knew someone who might have something to do with it and gave them the name. But nothing happened there. Nothing! I was never called back.

‘In 2017 I had just served a prison sentence in Greece. When I heard about the 10th anniversary of the disappearance, I remembered. Apparently the call didn’t help at all. So I contacted Scotland Yard again.

‘Then they listened to me.’  

2024

In February, the prime suspect in the Madeleine McCann case was spotted for the first time in public since 2020 when he was spotted being put into an ambulance to receive treatment after being attacked in prison. 

In the same month, the convicted paedophile appeared in court in the German city of Braunschweig facing charges of raping three women and molesting two children in Portugal.

In early June, a German investigator testified that authorities discovered an email account that is ‘related to the killing’ of Madeleine.

Titus Stampa, a detective with Germany’s Federal Crime Police, told a court that the Hotmail account allegedly belonged to Brueckner, per the Times.

Stampa said he wasn’t allowed to talk about the account, according to the news outlet.

At trial, Stampa alleged that authorities found a second email account he used to share photos and videos of child abuse, and that emails from that account were deleted in early 2007 when Madeleine disappeared, per the Telegraph.

‘I can remember that things were massively deleted in the inbox. There was nothing in there from January 2007,’ he testified.

The following month German prosecutors called for ‘biased’ judges to be thrown off the trial of Madeleine McCann suspect Christian Brueckner.

Judge Ute Inse Engelmann overturned an arrest warrant for Brueckner after ruling the court had not heard strong enough evidence from witnesses to keep him behind bars.

Judge Engemann’s ruling was a strong indication that Brueckner will be cleared of the charges he is facing and if found not guilty, could be freed from prison by the early part of next year.

The public prosecutor’s office said it feared the criminal court had already formed its opinion about the crime and guilt.

As well as rejecting the current judges in the rape trial due to concerns about bias, the Braunschweig public prosecutor’s office requested that the case be ‘re-appointed with impartial judges’.

In a bombshell confession this month, Brueckner told a former cellmate that he took a child from a Portuguese apartment during a break-in, a court in Germany heard in September.

The paedophile is said to have asked inmate Laurentiu Codin if he too was behind bars for child offences while they were sharing a cell in 2020.

Codin claimed that the convicted rapist had begged him to burn down his lair when he got out of prison, and asked him whether ‘the DNA from a child can be taken from bones under the ground.

‘He told me that in Portugal, that he had stolen there. He was in a region where there are hotels and rich people live,’ Codin said.

‘He said there was somewhere with an open window, he told me this. He was looking for money.

‘He said he didn’t find any money but found a kid and took the child. He said that two hours later, there were police and dogs all over the place, so he then went away, out of the area.

‘I am just saying what he told me. He told me that a person was with him, who he had had an argument with, allegedly it was his woman.

‘He said he took the child in Portugal in his car, and in the time when the police and dogs were at the house, he drove away and he was gone.

‘He asked me if the DNA from a child can be found as evidence and I answered yes.’

In more disturbing testimony, Codin, 50, said Brueckner had told him how he had used a van to have sex with young girls near Hanover.

‘There was talk of a girl, I don’t know if what he said was true or not. He said that he had a bus and that he had taken her with it. He said he kept some of them, but not others, but he never said that he had killed them.

‘We’re talking about girls, not boys. Not all at once, always one at a time. He told me about two. He said that he had taken someone, had sex with her but he didn’t kill her’.

His current seven-year sentence ends early next year, and if he is not found guilty in the ongoing trial, he could be freed from jail. The trial is due to end in December. 

The Metropolitan Police has spent more than £13million on the case, dubbed Operation Grange, to date.