ROME—German police are sifting through more than 8,000 files of grotesque kiddie porn found on old memory sticks in a camper van owned by Christian Brueckner, the 43-year-old under investigation for the disappearance and murder of 3-year-old Madeleine McCann more than 13 years ago.
Brueckner, who is in solitary confinement in a German jail where he is serving time for the rape of a 72-year-old woman and drug offenses, is also under investigation in two other child abduction and murder cases including the brutal strangling death and rape of a 13-year old boy and the disappearance of a 5-year-old girl.
Portuguese authorities have now also admitted that they served Brueckner with a subpoena and questioned him in 2013, six years after McCann disappeared from the Praia da Luz holiday resort as her parents dined at a nearby tapas bar with friends. The Portuguese authorities reportedly have handed over the transcript of that interrogation to police in Germany but declined to comment to The Daily Beast on the contents of that interview.
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German prosecutor Hans Christian Wolters insists that Brueckner is involved and that McCann is dead. He told German media outlets that he wrote a letter to the McCanns explaining how he arrived at that conclusion. But on Tuesday, Kate and Gerry McCann issued a statement saying they had received nothing of the kind.
“The widely reported news that we have a received a letter from the German authorities that states there is evidence or proof that Madeleine is dead is FALSE,” they wrote in a statement posted on the Find Madeleine websites. “Like many unsubstantiated stories in the media, this has caused unnecessary anxiety to friends and family and once again disrupted our lives.”
The McCanns, who were for a time named as persons of interest in their daughter’s disappearance, do not retain lawyers and no longer employ a family spokesman and only communicate with the press through their website.
Portuguese police have confirmed that they are now looking back over evidence, including saliva samples from the crime scene that they will now send to Germany to be tested against Brueckner’s DNA.
German media outlets have also unearthed a documentary about the disappearance of 5-year-old Inga Gehricke, who vanished from a family campsite in Germany almost eight years to the day after McCann disappeared. Brueckner was investigated for that disappearance but ultimately released and charged only with possessing child pornography.
A man identified only as Bjorn R. interviewed in the German documentary described the day he visited his friend Brueckner where he worked. “One day I came into the kiosk and he was a little bit distraught and said, ‘Hey, look what I’ve got here’ and he showed me a subpoena for the Madeleine McCann case,” Bjorn says. “You could see it churned him up a bit but he wasn’t panicking and he wasn't saying ‘they are on my heels.’ I think he said he had been there but that he had nothing to do with it and that was that.”
Other friends of Brueckner told the documentary makers that Brueckner often bragged that his large camper van was ideal for “hiding kids and drugs.” Police found stashes of little girl swimsuits and reams of child pornography inside the van when police investigated Brueckner for Inga’s disappearance in 2016.
Brueckner’s lawyer Friedrich Fulscher said his client denies any involvement in any of the three missing children cases for which he is currently under investigation.
