Madeleine McCann suspect Christian Brueck set to walk free | UK | News

A bombshell new documentary has exposed terrifying fresh revelations about Madeleine McCann prime suspect Christian Brueckner  – just as the twisted predator prepares for his imminent release from prison.

The sick child abuser will walk free on Wednesday after completing a seven-year stretch for the brutal rape of a 72-year-old American tourist in Praia da Luz – the very resort where little Madeleine vanished without trace, reports the Daily Mail.

German authorities sensationally named Brueckner as their number one suspect for Madeleine’s abduction and murder back in 2020, yet no formal charges have been brought against the career criminal. The news comes as McCann witness FLEES Germany in terror as he reveals prime suspect ‘confession’.

The depraved offender’s rap sheet already includes sickening convictions for child sexual abuse and drug trafficking across multiple countries.

ITV’s explosive new documentary Madeleine McCann: Searching For The Prime Suspect follows criminologist Dr Graham Hill, a former senior Met detective who was dispatched to Portugal during the original investigation’s crucial early days.

The veteran investigator makes an emotional return to Praia da Luz for the first time, revisiting the exact spot where three-year-old Madeleine disappeared forever.

Dr Hill conducts spine-chilling interviews with experts, associates of the twisted suspect, and explores the sinister locations where Brueckner lurked, meticulously dissecting the prime suspect’s horrifying criminal empire.

Terrifying warning over monster’s release

German crime journalist Rob Hyde, who has spent years tracking the case, delivered a blood-curdling warning about the catastrophic dangers posed by Brueckner’s impending freedom.

Hyde told Dr Hill: “Brueckner has always been very, very successful at running from the police, he’s also got convictions for forgery of documents, and he is connected to the criminal underworld. There are places in the world with no extradition treaties with Germany, I think there is a high chance he will make his way somewhere else.”

The expert has painstakingly reconstructed Brueckner’s globe-trotting movements before and after Madeleine’s disappearance.

Hyde revealed: “It’s complicated, he was all over the place. He flitted between Germany and Portugal, but even that isn’t the entire story. He would also go off to other places, just making it incredibly difficult to keep track of him.”

The monster was born Christian Fischer in Wurzburg, Bavaria, adopting his current surname when he and his brothers were taken in by adoptive parents Brigitte and Fritz Brueckner after their troubled biological mother abandoned them.

At just 15, while enduring physical abuse from his adoptive parents, the future predator committed his first recorded crime – a burglary that would mark the beginning of decades of escalating criminality.

In 1994, two years after his initial conviction, Brueckner’s adoptive parents dumped him in a children’s home following a serious accident that left Fritz severely injured.

It was within these supposedly safe walls that the teenage monster committed his first horrific sex crime, abusing a vulnerable child when he was just 17 years old.

The sick teenager’s appetite for evil grew rapidly – he went on to sexually assault a nine-year-old victim before finally being caught.

Courts sentenced him to two years behind bars for “sexual abuse of a child, attempted sexual abuse of a child and performing sexual acts in front of a child.”

But the cunning predator quickly fled to Portugal, finding casual work in hotels and garages while evading justice, until police finally tracked him down and dragged him back to Germany.

After serving his sentence, the determined criminal returned to Portugal where his reign of terror escalated dramatically.

In 2004, he allegedly carried out a savage rape attack on Irish tour guide Hazel Behan at her apartment in Praia da Rocha on the Algarve coast – chillingly close to where Madeleine would vanish three years later.

The following year brought more horror as he brutally raped 72-year-old American woman Diana Menkes, who was living peacefully in the Algarve and has since died.

In 2007 – the same year Madeleine disappeared – Brueckner fled Portugal and didn’t return for nine long years, instead establishing a base in Germany where his criminal activities “spiralled” out of control.

Hyde took Dr Hill to the innocuous-looking kiosk Brueckner operated in Braunschweig, north-west Germany, for 18 months following Madeleine’s disappearance.

A former employee revealed a bone-chilling moment when news about the Madeleine McCann case appeared on television.

Hyde revealed: “A person who worked there told me about the news piece about the Madeleine McCann case running on the TV, Brueckner then flips out, starts shouting ‘das mädchen ist tot’ – the girl is dead. And he makes a really odd comment, which is ‘yes, pigs can also eat human flesh, you know’.”

Dr Hill uncovered another deeply disturbing revelation from Dieter Fehlinger, father of Brueckner’s ex-girlfriend, who recalled a haunting encounter with the suspect and his modified Volkswagen van in Portugal during spring 2007.

At the time, the criminal was adapting vehicles to smuggle massive drug consignments across borders.

Mr Fehlinger, who was visiting his daughter, recalled the spine-tingling moment: “He invited me inside his camper van. He said to me there was a hiding place inside, 50kg of marijuana would fit in easily, he built it. And then he said, it was ‘so big that you could hide a small child inside’.”

‘She was not screaming’ bombshell

In his first-ever television interview, Brueckner’s former criminal associate Helge Busching delivered the most explosive testimony yet – recalling the moment the suspect apparently let slip shocking details about his involvement in the three-year-old’s disappearance.

Mr Busching, who had committed crimes alongside the suspect including stealing solar panels and diesel, revealed a conversation at a Spanish festival just one year after Madeleine vanished that continues to haunt him.

Busching recalled the horrifying exchange: “I told him I don’t understand how somebody can rob little children from a hotel.”

The suspect’s chilling response has never left him: “She was not screaming.”

When Dr Hill pressed Busching about the significance of this statement, he replied: “I was thinking, yeah, how you know this…yeah he have to do something with this.”

Busching added with absolute conviction: “I want Christian to go behind bars for this. This was him, I am 100 per cent sure. He can say ‘I am innocent’. I know what he was doing, I saw it with my proper eyes. I know he’s a dangerous man.”

The revelation was so terrifying that Busching feared asking further questions, and he watched as Brueckner suddenly vanished from the festival that very night.

Crucially, Busching left a voicemail for Scotland Yard later that year, but his vital testimony was lost among the staggering 60,000 messages that flooded in at the time.

It wasn’t until 2017 that detectives finally listened when he called again, and his evidence became a cornerstone of the case against Brueckner, ultimately passed to German prosecutors who would name him their prime suspect.

Busching also revealed finding a horrific stash of disturbing videos in Brueckner’s Portuguese home just a year after the rape of the 72-year-old victim, showing the monster allegedly violently raping a woman and a girl estimated to be around 14.

The criminal associate disclosed that Brueckner had a twisted specialty – breaking into hotel rooms and holiday homes.

Busching believes Brueckner may have attempted to burgle the McCanns’ apartment when he stumbled across sleeping Madeleine.

He revealed: “Christian knows the Ocean Club very well. He was working there in the Ocean Club as a pool boy. And I think Christian, I think, was thinking, okay, go in one apartment and take some stuff from this apartment. (But) this time, he don’t take baggage, luggage, he takes her.”

Dr Hill also interviewed ex-pat Ken, who regularly encountered Brueckner camping at beaches around the time Madeleine disappeared.

Standing at the exact spot where he first saw the suspect, Ken told Dr Hill: “Now, when all the motor caravans used to park where we’re stood now, he’d be a loner and he’d park on the hill where the sun’s going down. Many an evening he would spend there, of course because he sold his drugs there and he wanted to be out of the way so he was discreet. I knew him reasonably well but I kept my distance because he was part of the criminal fraternity. Didn’t want anything to do with him.”

When asked if Brueckner’s sexual interest in children surprised him, Ken mentioned “the way he used to look at young girls” and branded him a “predator.”

Ken declared: “More than just a paedophile, he’s a pervert.”

The ex-pat also insisted Brueckner “should have been made a suspect three hours after she [Madeleine] went missing,” adding: “I just don’t trust the guy, he gives me the creeps. He’s got a criminal record longer than a telephone directory.”

Sick online chats exposed

Hyde also showed Dr Hill stomach-churning online Skype conversations between Brueckner and another pedophile known only as Frank S.

These vile exchanges were discovered in 2014 when German police raided Frank’s home for child pornography as part of a massive investigation into pedophile rings.

In one horrific chat, Frank – using the username panikspatzss – sent a message reading: “Logical. Maybe you caught a little one during that time.”

The bloodcurdling response from Brueckner – operating under username crazy derholder which translates to “crazy helga” – read: “But you don’t have any benefit, unfortunately. If so, I’ll make a lot of films… hehe.”

Frank replied: “Oh yes, do it,” which was followed by another vile remark from Brueckner: “I’ll document exactly how she’s being tortured.”

When Frank simply replied “cool,” the monster said: “Well let’s see, don’t just talk – do it too! hehe.”

In another sickening Skype exchange, Brueckner asked: “Do you have new films?”

Frank responded: “No, unfortunately not yet. I barely had any time during the week.”

Referring to twisted plans to abduct a child, Brueckner then said: “Capture something small and use it for days, that would be…”

But when Frank didn’t reply, the desperate predator sent another message: “Has that put you off now?”

Frank said: “No why,” to which Brueckner replied: “Because you didn’t get in touch anymore.”

In 2016, two years after the sick Skype chats were uncovered, Brueckner’s name surfaced again in connection with a disused factory he owned in Neuwegersleben, Germany.

Hyde revealed the chilling truth as he showed Dr Hill around: “This was his secret getaway. This is where he wanted to carry out horrible things away from prying eyes.”

Police stormed the factory in January 2016 after a sharp-eyed policewoman living nearby alerted them that she had been on the premises and noticed the soil levels had been dramatically changed and there was a “foul smell” emanating from the site.

Buried beneath the body of a dead dog, officers made a sickening discovery – a supermarket bag crammed with USB sticks containing “hundreds of the most vile and sickening and bloodcurdling” acts of child sex crimes, some featuring Brueckner himself.

Investigators also uncovered over 70 children’s swimming costumes hidden inside his Winnebago parked on the sinister site.

Dr Hill speculated: “I would almost hazard a guess those swimming costumes were stolen from holiday complexes across the Praia da Luz area.”

Brueckner was finally deported back to Germany in 2017 after being caught red-handed in an Algarve playground allegedly exposing himself to children.

While serving his seven-year sentence in a German jail for the rape of the 72-year-old woman in Portugal, the arrogant criminal began writing twisted letters to British newspapers about Madeleine’s case.

In one chilling letter, he doesn’t profess his innocence and instead goads the papers and authorities by demanding to know where the evidence and DNA is to place him as the abductor and asking where the body is.

Crucial police blunders

The explosive documentary questions whether Portuguese police missed vital clues that could have led them to Brueckner years earlier.

Despite being arrested multiple times for break-ins and burglaries, his previous sexual offences appear to have been overlooked by authorities.

While facing a judge for stealing diesel from lorries, the suspect was asked about his criminal record and voluntarily told them about his convictions for theft and sex offences back in Germany.

However, the court allegedly failed to include those crucial convictions in the trial conclusion documents.

Dr Hill questions whether this catastrophic slip-up meant Brueckner wasn’t included on Portuguese police’s list of sex offenders – the very database they used to track down and question known predators in the area when Madeleine disappeared.

In 2024, Brueckner was finally hauled before a German court on three charges of rape, including the attack on Hazel Behan, and two counts of child sex abuse between 2000 and 2017, all committed in Portugal.

Speaking about facing her alleged attacker for the first time, Ms Behan said: “I was facing him for the duration of the two days that I sat testifying. That’s probably only about six or eight feet from him. I felt like a leaf in the wind. I felt extremely vulnerable.”

She remained absolutely convinced that Brueckner is the masked monster who broke into her apartment in Praia da Rocha in 2004, tied her up with rope before recording himself raping, whipping and insulting her for five horrific hours.

Ms Behan declared: “I have been challenged on how I could identify somebody by seeing their eyes. I am 100 per cent convinced that he is the person who did this to me.”

However, prosecutors suffered a crushing blow when Brueckner was sensationally acquitted of all the crimes he was on trial for.

All the damning material seized from his factory, including the USB sticks containing footage of him committing rape, was excluded from the case due to technical irregularities with the search warrant.

Dr Hill said: “That is damning evidence against Christian Brueckner that if they had been able to put that into the trial, could have been the difference between a guilty and a not guilty.”

Leading British psychiatrist Dr Readerman, who was tasked with assessing Brueckner during the trial, found he was in the top league of dangerous offenders with a sky-high risk of committing more crimes.

When Dr Hill asked German prosecutor Hans Christian Wolters if he still believes Brueckner abducted Madeleine, he replied: “That is still the case. Since 2020, in the last five years, our investigations have not resulted in any exonerating evidence of Christian B being involved. He has no alibi. There is only evidence that incriminates him. He is the prime suspect and, above all, he’s the only suspect. We really only have evidence that points to him as the perpetrator. But as to whether we can prove it, prove it in a court of law, that is the big task that lies ahead of us.”

Ms Behan also believes he is the monster who snatched Madeleine two years after she was brutally raped.

She said: “I firmly believe that the German police would not say that he murdered that little girl if he didn’t. When I think of Madeleine I feel really sad. For him to be the last person potentially that this little girl could of seen in her world, that’s horrendous.”