OLIVE PRESS REPORTS: New search for Madeleine McCann set to start in Portugal this week

EXCLUSIVE By Jon Clarke in Praia da Luz

UP to 100 Portuguese police will support German detectives as they begin a new round of detailed searches in the mysterious case of missing Madeleine McCann this week.

Teams of forensic investigators will scour a hillside just yards from where the German prime suspect in the murder of the British toddler lived for nearly a decade.

Investigators will ‘spend up to three days’ searching for clues that link Christian Brueckner, 48, to the snatch of Madeleine, three, on May 3, 2007.

Based on an exclusive tip off to Germany’s BKA crime agency, based in Wiesbaden, it follows on from in-depth searches at a nearby lake two years ago.

German prosecutors are certain that Brueckner, a convicted rapist and paedophile, took the toddler from her bed as she slept in the sleepy resort of Praia da Luz.

They believe he likely acted alone, but they don’t discount the snatch at the Ocean Club was to order or he had help.

In particular they know he received a 30-minute phone call in the heart of the Algarve resort just under two hours before Maddie was abducted. 

He has always refused to confirm who the call was with.

There are many other pieces of evidence, including two alleged confessions, and he does not have an alibi for the night.

He has yet to be charged however, with fears the case could soon be dropped.

A recent case in Braunschweig controversially found him not guilty of five other sex crimes committed close to Praia Da Luz between 2000 and 2017.

These were three rapes and two child abuse offences.

While the judgment is being appealed, police confirmed during the trial last year that they had seized numerous storage devices linked to him that have evidence that back their Maddie claims.

In particular, they have a computer and at least two memory sticks whose contents have never been revealed to the media.

Meanwhile, Brueckner has hinted that he snatched young children during a series of Skype chats and other conversations with online paedophiles.

Police have also seized a number of rape and abduction fantasy ‘stories’ he wrote that involve young children.

In one, he fantasises about abducting a mother and her young daughter and committing horrendous, sex crimes against them before killing them.

Brueckner, who was adopted, was first convicted of snatching and abusing children at the age of 17 in Germany.

In one case, he snatched a young girl and pulled her into a bush, and then committed another offense, just one week before the trial.

He fled to Portugal in the mid-1990s before he had served his sentence in full and needed to be dragged back by a European manhunt.

He has numerous other convictions for child abuse, as well as burglary, drug dealing and theft.

He is currently serving a seven year sentence for the brutal filmed rape of an American pensioner, 72, also in Praia da Luz, in 2005.

Police hope to find critical evidence this week that ensures that they can charge him with the murder of Madeleine, before he potentially gets released this autumn or at the latest in the spring.

It is the fifth time police have been searched around the small resort, with the Metropolitan Police’s Operation Grange first organising a detailed search in 2014.

During their searches that year, they looked at an area close to this week’s search, as well as an area called ‘Snail Hill’, and close to the town’s church.

In 2020, after German police announced their prime suspect, searches were undertaken by Portuguese police at a series of wells a few miles west of the resort.

The area being searched this week has already been pinpointed by two South African detectives with a search device that they have patented.

In 2008 Danie Krugel worked closely with the McCanns to try and pinpoint where a DNA match to Maddie’s body might be in the area.

Having been lent Madeleine’s hairbrush, they took a hair that triangulated to an area just east of the resort which included the beach and Black Hill as well as the farmhouse which Bruckner rented for nearly 10 years.

It also picked out the villa of Clement Freud, who was later exposed as a paedophile, who had befriended the McCanns and likely Brueckner.

The two detectives revealed they are set to come back to do further investigations imminently. “Likely within the next 90 days,” said Krugel this week.

They have been in negotiation with the Portuguese PJ for many years and might explain why the German’s have taken the lead this week.

The operation is being led by the BKA, but with support from the PJ headquarters in Lisbon.

British detectives from Operation Grange are also expected to be on hand for advice and for immediate briefing.

A source in Portugal told the Olive Press: “the Germans have been pushing us for the last two years to search five or six other places, following Arade lake.

“We finally agreed to do this place, and we may do another one or two locations this week.”

A former cell mate of Brueckner’s told the trial last year that the German had told him he had snatched the girl and raped her before disposing of her body near the resort. He had also asked Laurentiu Codin ‘if DNA from a child could be traced’ from bones.

“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 told the court. 

“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.”

A British detective Mark Draycott told the trial that they had found a huge series of emails he had sent discussing depravity on a very high scale.

He dubbed the evidence as the ‘murder files’.

Meanwhile, a German detective revealed in court that German police had ‘many’ bits of evidence pointing to the accused who was made their prime suspect in June 2020.

The Portuguese followed this up and made him an official ‘Arguido’ (or official suspect) the following year.

Brueckner frequently traveled through Europe in vans, many times through Spain, where he frequently bought and sold drugs.

Police believe he went to Barcelona having slipped them in 2019, and they also traced him driving through Spain thanks to the seizure of a vehicle tracker.

He lived for many months around the Granada area where he bought and sold drugs. He was also a  frequent visitor to various New Age festivals, including the Dragon Festival in Orgiva.

He was arrested on a European arrest warrant when he was picked up allegedly exposing himself to a group of young children at a festival in Portugal in 2017.

He openly talked about smuggling drugs in a series of vans that he drove, and he told the father of his girlfriend that he had a secret compartment in his Winnebago ‘big enough’ to smuggle a small child.

The Olive Press was the first newspaper to discover a camp he frequently stayed at at Arade Lake some 30 minutes inland from the Algarve.

We took extraordinary pictures of his camp that included stone circles, and an unusual path.