Christian Brüeckner said police stopped him three times but his bid to make a ‘quick getaway’ was because his camper van was full of drugs and had nothing to do with the missing Brit girl
The prime suspect in Madeleine McCann’s disappearance said he was flogging drugs on a nearby beach when she vanished. Christian Brüeckner said he was stopped in his camper van three times by police the night the Brit girl went missing but was waved through without being searched.
He admitted he was trying to make a ‘quick getaway’ but insisted it had nothing to do with Madeleine. Brueckner said he had a camper van full of drugs he did not want police to find.
He said he had nothing to do with the youngster’s disappearance. It is the first time Brüeckner, 50, has given a first-hand account of his movements since he was identified as prime suspect by German prosecutors in a Europe-wide appeal for information in 2020.
The convicted paedophile was living near the Portuguese resort of Praia da Luz – where Madeleine disappeared – at the time the McCanns were staying there in May 2007. A 30-minute call was made to a mobile phone reportedly used by Brüeckner shortly before the youngster vanished via a transmitter mast close to the apartment where she was sleeping.
In 2021 German prosecutor Hans Christian Wolters said he was `100% sure’ Brüeckner had murdered Madeleine and claimed his investigators almost had enough evidence to charge him. But Brüeckner has never been charged with any crime relating to the missing Brit girl.
When he was later cleared of a series of separate rape and indecent assault charges after a non-jury trial in Germany judges criticised the prosecution’s decision to publicly link him to Madeleine’s case. Last year Brueckner was released from jail after serving a seven-year sentence for raping a 72-year-old American woman in same Portuguese resort in 2005.
Since he has been staying in homeless shelters and hotels but regularly evicted after guests complained or he was recognised by staff. Opening up about the night the Brit girl vanished for Brüeckner said: “I was on the beach not far from Maddie’s hotel selling drugs.
“I’d been in Spain and smuggled the weed into Portugal. I was even stopped by police three times on the street while they were looking for Maddie. Luckily they didn’t find the drugs. My van was full of them.
“I was making a quick getaway. There were flashing blue lights and checkpoints everywhere. I just thought, ‘Get me out of here’.”
Brüeckner said he had ‘kept quiet’ until now because the ‘police want to frame me for the Maddie thing’.Mark Willi ams-Thomas, the TV investigator who exposed Jimmy Savile as a paedophile, insisted four years ago that police had `no evidence’ Brüeckner was involved in Madeleine’s disappearance.
Williams-Thomas told the Daily Star Brüeckner said he was 27 miles away with a 17-year-old girlfriend that night and the pair had been stopped and photographed at a Portuguese police checkpoint set up to find Madeleine.
The girlfriend, who has since split from Brüeckner, backed up his account and said he appeared to have no knowledge of a missing youngster when their campervan was stopped. Williams-Thomas said he also had evidence the ‘suspicious’ mobile was used by someone else.
A spokesman for the Metropolitan Police, which is conducting its own investigation into Madeleine’s disappearance, said: “We will continue to pursue any viable lines of enquiry.”