Madeleine McCann ‘died soon after abduction’
A German prosecutor said he believed that Madeleine McCann was killed soon after she was kidnapped
A German prosecutor said he believed that Madeleine McCann was killed soon after she was kidnapped
EVERTON FC/PA
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Madeleine McCann was killed soon after she was kidnapped, a German prosecutor told The Times yesterday as it was reported that the prime suspect had boasted that he would “document” the abduction of a child.
Police have discovered that Christian Brückner discussed kidnapping, raping and killing a girl in a conversation with another paedophile online. He graphically described his wish to “catch something little and use it for days”.
Asked about the risk of being caught, he said: “Meh, if the evidence is destroyed . . .”
He added: “Then I’ll record maaaany videos/clips. I’ll document in detail how she’s being tortured.” The conversation was discovered by German police investigating the disappearance of Inga Gehricke, five, on the eve of the eighth year since Madeleine disappeared in May 2007.
Hans Christian Wolters, the German prosecutor leading the investigation into Brückner, said he feared that Madeleine had been killed shortly after being abducted from her family’s holiday flat in Praia da Luz, Portugal.
“My private opinion is that he relatively quickly killed the girl, possibly abused her and then killed her,” he said. “We believe our suspect committed further crimes, especially sexual crimes, in Portugal possibly but also elsewhere like Germany.”
Mr Wolters said that Brückner, 43, could be released today if a court in Kiel, the northern city where he is serving 21 months for dealing drugs, granted him parole because he has served two thirds of his sentence. Brückner is appealing against a seven-year sentence imposed last year for raping an American woman near Praia da Luz.
“The sooner we get evidence, the better for us to avoid the risk of him ever being released,” Mr Wolters said. “If we find nothing new against him it could be that in seven years at the latest he may be released and leaves Germany for a country that doesn’t extradite.
“If we don’t solve the McCann case perhaps we can prove he committed one or two other crimes, which might be enough to keep him in prison permanently in preventive detention.”
Mr Wolters declined to say whether he believed that Brückner had filmed his abuse of Madeleine, as he did with his other victims. He said investigators want to collect as much proof as possible before interrogating Brückner so that he would not be able to weaken the case against him by finding explanations for individual pieces of circumstantial evidence against him.
Brückner is appealing against his sentence for raping a 72-year-old American woman in 2005 at a villa close to where the McCanns later stayed. A video at his nearby farmhouse showed him raping and torturing her, another woman and a teenage girl.
Hazel Behan, an Irish woman who was raped in 2004 by an intruder 12 miles from Praia da Luz, and who was also filmed by her attacker, has asked police to review her case.
The attack on her bore striking similarities to that on the American victim. The rapist, who spoke English and German and whose description matches Brückner, tortured her for five hours.
The father of Louise Kerton, a 24-year-old British student nurse who disappeared in Germany in 2001, urged police to investigate possible links with Brückner. Phil Kerton, 75, from Kent, said: “It just confirms that the family have been right to keep persisting, there was something to find out there.”
Prosecutors are also looking for links to Peggy Knobloch, who disappeared in Lichtenberg, Bavaria, in May 2001, when she was nine.
Dutch detectives are investigating whether Brückner could be linked to Jaïr Soares, a seven-year-old boy who disappeared on a trip to a beach near the Hague in 1995.
