Half decade milestone since Christian Brueckner was named prime suspect in the Madeleine McCann case – where are we now?

Olive Press editor Jon Clarke remembers the week that he began investigating the German paedophile in June 2020 during the Covid Lockdown.

It was exactly five years ago, this week, that a German suspect named as the primary suspect in the 2007 abduction of Madeleine McCann.

I’m not sure if the police are packing up after the three-day long search for the British toddler in Portugal, or if it is just another attempt to get a conviction.

Hans Christian Wolters of the German Police and Prosecutor’s Office held a shocking press conference on Wednesday, June 3, 2020 in Braunschweig in Lower Saxony.

READ MORE EXCLUSIVE: ‘I’m certain they’ve found key evidence in Maddie search’ says former detective who worked alongside McCann family in 2007 Portugal search

Seemingly a critical turning point in what is the world’s biggest missing persons case, the following morning I was on my way to Portugal – in the heart of the Covid lockdown – to start digging for clues.

German investigators categorized it as murder investigation, and my ex-bosses at Mail on Sunday London called me immediately into action.

A trip to Portugal at that time was extremely complicated. Although the trip was only four hours long in Spain, the strict pandemic regulations prevented anyone from even leaving their home town.

It was necessary to obtain an official letter from London, and then, when I reached the border, I had to call the Home Office in Lisbon to confirm that I was indeed a regulated journalist.

READ MORE Exclusive photos: the Maddie search site, where police hope to find crucial clues in order to charge German Christian Brueckner

Only five vehicles, mostly lorries were waiting at the border. 

Both sides had armed officers and both nationalities asked me a lot of questions. We were finally in, and two days later on June 5, I knocked at the door of Brueckner’s rental home outside Praia da Luz where he had lived for the past 10 years.

The first journalist to arrive on the scene, I met his next door neighbour, Monika, a 60-something German lady, who told me he had only ever been the ‘loveliest’ neighbour, incredibly charming and someone she regularly had a coffee with.

At another home he had stayed at on the other side of the village, in Bensafrim, the new British tenants were far less friendly and soon put up a sign saying simply: ‘Journalists do not touch the bell or knock the door: DO NOT DISTURB’.

My Search for Madeleine was about to be republished and updated. It would be the beginning of another intense period in trying to find out who abducted the British child back in May 2007.

By the time that came out in 2022, Brueckner had been named an ‘official suspect’ or ‘arguido’ in Portugal, as well, and British police had publicly backed the German BKA insisting they had their man.

The evidence was there: the detectives had discovered that a pay as you go mobile number registered to Brueckner was used in Praia Da Luz on the night that Maddie vanished for a quarter of an hour.

He had also been convicted of sex offenses and child abuse in the past.

A German prosecutor described him, while he is serving a seven-year prison sentence for the sadistic videotaped rape in 2005 of an American retiree in Praia da Luz as “extremely dangerous”.

I learned that he had been accused of beating an English girlfriend at a resort’s busy bar on Christmas Eve, and he did the same in Germany.

He was also being investigated for five additional sex offenses in the Algarve region between 2000 and 2017

He had also allegedly told another girlfriend the night before Maddie went missing that he had a ‘horrible job’ to do the next day and wouldn’t be around for a while.

While I long thought this was a classic ‘flyer’ from the Sun newspaper, I now believe this conversation to be true.

In the same week, I learned about a second home where he spent a lot of time in the interior, and had dated a girl back in 2007. A German woman looked after orphaned teenagers.

Nicole Fehlinger was the name of the woman and the Olive Press stood outside her rundown rural house in Foral on June 6, 2006.

Owned by a rather eccentric Portuguese/Australian lady called Lia, she told me Nicole was a tenant who had left ‘owing her thousands’ and that Brueckner was a really dangerous man, who walked around with a gun.

As I tried to piece this mystery German together, it was the beginning of the most exciting months of my career as a journalist.

In 2007, despite a man’s long history of sex crimes and his living in the Praia de Luz area, he was not considered worthy to be included on a list with 600 potential suspects by Portuguese police.

The man had committed other crimes in Portugal, and told the judge that he was convicted of paedophilia before.

It was when I got a tip off to visit a former housemate of his in Orgiva, near Granada, in Spain, a fortnight later, that  I really started believing for sure he was guilty.

Speaking to me for the first and only time, former friend and housemate in Praia da Luz, Michael ‘Micha’ Tatschl told me: “I’m sure he snatched Maddie. I’m sure he did. He was an odd man and a pervert.”

The first of many of his former cellmates, associates and friends to come forward to say he was guilty of one of the most heinous crimes in history.

I wonder, as the searches led by the German BKA begin to wind down, if we’ll ever see Germany’s number one public enemy convicted of Maddie.

Despite claims that German detectives, supported by their Portuguese counterparts, have found ‘nothing of value’ this week, it is far too early to say.

Obviously they are searches that should have been done by the Policia Judiciaria in the weeks after Maddie vanished and, to quote the words of well-respected former police boss and safeguarding speclaist Jim Gamble, they ‘blundered’ badly.

It is good to see that something has been done about a dangerous sexual offender who has evaded the attention of Portuguese (and Spanish) law enforcement for over a year.

In the week that followed the initial appeal in June 2020 alone, the police in England got 270 calls or emails that linked to the prime suspect. So there’s still a chance someone could come forward.

The police must know who Brueckner spoke to the night before Madeleine disappeared. Two, where is Madeleine’s body buried.
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