A court appearance by the main suspect in the Madeleine McCann case sparked a flood of potentially ‘vital’ tip-offs, it has been claimed.
German detectives leading the investigation into Christian Brueckner had reportedly ‘hit a brick wall’ before he faced judges in Braunschweig on unrelated sex abuse charges just over a week ago.
Images of the stony-faced 47-year-old arriving for the start of his trial – the first time he was seen in public since 2020 – were widely published in the press.
It’s thought this could have triggered the memories of people who met or saw him around when Maddie disappeared aged three in the Portuguese resort of Praia da Luz.
According to The Sun, some of the new information relates to where he was living in Portugal at the time.
A source close to the investigation told the newspaper: ‘Having his face on TV screens, and in newspapers across the world, has generated fresh calls, tip-offs and leads which they will look into and which they hope could prove vital.
‘It’s a massive boost for German detectives because their investigation had really hit a bit of a brick wall.
‘So they are really pleased about this, and really hope this will give fresh impetus to the investigation into what happened to Madeleine.
‘They remain convinced Christian Brueckner was either involved in Maddie’s disappearance or knows about how Maddie vanished.’
Brueckner, who was raised by foster parents who reportedly routinely beat him and his brother, received the first of many criminal convictions at the age of 15 when he committed a burglary in his home town.
Two years later he was found guilty of molesting a six-year-old girl at a playground.
Shortly before his trial he ‘dropped his trousers’ in front of a nine-year-old girl before fleeing, according to German newspaper Bild.
After serving a two-year sentence he dropped out of school, trained as a mechanic and travelled to the Algarve region of southern Portugal, spending the next two years as a nomad flitting back and forth between Portugal and Germany.
Exactly where he went and when is still said to be ‘far from clear’ to detectives, who reportedly believe many of the people who came into contact with him have not yet come forward.
The charges currently against him are for a slew of sexual offences allegedly committed in Portugal between 2000 and 2017.
They include the alleged rape of an Irish woman in her flat in Praia da Rocha in 2004, when she was 20 years old and working locally as a holiday rep.
The woman, Hazel Behan, who is now 39, was able to identify her alleged attacker after reading about how he raped a 72-year-old in news reports linking him to the McCann case.
He was jailed for seven years for that crime in 2019 and is currently serving the sentence in a prison in northwest Germany.
Court documents from the trial list 13 previous convictions including rape, uninsured driving and dealing cannabis on the North Sea island of Sylt.
The other charges he currently faces include the alleged rapes of a teenage girl and a woman in her seventies in southern Portugal in the early 2000s.
In April 2007 – around a month before Maddie disappeared – he allegedly approached a 10-year-old German girl on a beach five miles away and forced her to touch him sexually.
The trial was suspended earlier this month over comments made on social media by one of the lay judges on the case.
Instead of a jury, Germany appoints ordinary members of the public for long-term stints sitting alongside professional judges.
One of those presiding over Brueckner’s trial was deemed unfit to sit on the case after she wrote comments about Brazil’s former president, Jair Bolsonaro, including ‘kill the b*****d now’ and ‘kill the devil’.
The case is expected to resume soon once a replacement judge is found.
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