Barry George won damages against the media for suggesting that he killed Jill Dando. Brueckner is guilty of other crimes, but it still can't be suggested that he abducted and murdered Madeleine McCann.
Just so and like Brueckner had a criminal past including indecent assault.
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George adopted several pseudonyms, starting at school, where he used the name Paul Gadd, the real name of singer Gary Glitter.[8] In 1980, after George failed in his attempt to join the Metropolitan Police, he posed as a policeman, having obtained false warrant cards. For this he was arrested and prosecuted. In May 1980,[5] he appeared in court clad in glam rock clothing and untruthfully stated his name to be Paul Gadd,[10] and stated his occupation as 'unemployed musician' and former managing director of a company that handled three rock bands.[5] At Kingston Magistrates' Court he was convicted and fined £25.[6] In the early 1980s he appeared in a local newspaper claiming to be the winner of the British Karate Championship. He gave his name as Paul Gadd and his occupation as 'a singer with the band Xanadu and a session musician with the Electric Light Orchestra'. He was exposed as a fraud by another newspaper. He then assumed the identity of the cousin of Electric Light Orchestra singer Jeff Lynne and created a fictional company called Xanadu Constructional and Mechanical Engineers.[5] In 1980, George joined the Territorial Army, but was discharged the following year.[6] He then adopted the persona of SAS member Tom Palmer, one of the soldiers who ended the 1980 Iranian Embassy Siege.[3] George was charged with two counts of indecent assault in June 1981;[5] he was acquitted of indecent assault against one woman, and convicted of indecent assault against another woman, for which he received a three-month sentence, suspended for two years.[11]
He assumed the identity of Steve Majors and claimed to be a stuntman; he convinced a stadium to stage a show in which he would jump over four double-decker buses on roller skates, and injured himself attempting this stunt.[5] In March 1983 George was convicted at the Old Bailey under the pseudonym of Steve Majors for the February 1982 attempted rape of a woman in Acton,[5] for which he served 18 months of a 33-month sentence.[11] On 10 January 1983,[5] as was revealed after his arrest for the Dando murder, George had been found in the grounds of Kensington Palace, at that time the home of Prince Charles and Diana, Princess of Wales. He had been discovered hiding in the grounds wearing a balaclava and carrying a poem he had written to Prince Charles.[8]
On 2 May 1989 at Fulham register office, George married a 35-year-old Japanese student, Itsuko Toide, in what Toide described as a marriage "of convenience – but nonetheless violent and terrifying".[5][12] After four months she reported to the police that he had assaulted her. On 29 October 1989, George was arrested and charged, but the case was dropped and did not go to court;[5] the marriage ended in April 1990.[11][6]
In April 1990, and again in January 1992, George was arrested and charged with indecent assault. Neither case went to court.[5]
Before his trial for the Dando murder, George was diagnosed with Asperger syndrome.[13] Prosecution psychologists studying George concluded that he had several different personality disorders: [ censored word]ocial, histrionic, narcissistic and possibly paranoid,[5] as well as somatization and factitious disorders and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.[14] He was said to be epileptic and to have an IQ of 75;[10] however, a prior assessment found George to be of average intelligence.[5] George has also been likened to a "lone obsessive, Walter Mitty-type figure" for his desire to impersonate famous figures.[15]
I would think if Brueckner is never charged he would have a stronger case than George to sue as George was charged and tried.
