SY made no promises, to be fair, but the only evidence they had was that collected by the first investigation plus a lot of nonsense from private investigators with no track record of success in such cases.
The crux of the matter is SY's conviction that a stranger abduction was the crime to investigate, given the dearth of evidence available.
Anyone who had something to offer could have contacted the police at any time after 3rd May 2007. It's odd that this only happened ten years later and there seemed to be no reason why it was withheld for so long.
People with no information and no suspicion could hardly have been expected to have anything to offer.
I believe it was Brueckner's extraordinary reaction to the tenth anniversary tv crime programme featuring Kate and Gerry making an appeal for news of Madeleine which alerted his companions.
His behaviour was such that they became concerned to the extent that they brought their suspicions to the police who investigated and who took it further.
I suggest to the trained professional eye of the German police the proximity between the rape committed in Praia da Luz in 2005 ~ for which Brueckner was convicted in Germany 2019 ~ and the McCann apartment must have set alarm bells ringing.
