For the first time, Brueckner reveals where he was when Maddie disappeared

O the main suspect in Madeleine McCann's disappearance, admitted in an interview this Sunday that he was about 130 metres from the resort where the British child disappeared, in Praia da Luz, Algarve, in 2007.

Speaking for the first time about his movements that night, Christian Brueckner stated that he was “selling drugs” on a beach near the resort of Praia da Luz, where the McCann were staying the night Maddie disappeared. However, he continues to deny any connection to the case of the girl who was then three years old.

In an interview with Mail on Sunday, the suspect said that he was questioned by the police that night when he was trying to escape from the scene, because the van he was driving was “full of drugs.”.

“ I had nothing to do with her disappearance. I would be happy if Maddie appeared tomorrow, so everyone would immediately understand that everything that is said against me is and was staged”, says Bruckener, recognizing however that it will always be “the main suspect”. 

“ I was on the beach, not far from Maddie's hotel, selling drugs. I had been to Spain and smuggled the weed to Portugal. I actually got pulled over by the police three times on the street [at Praia da Luz] while they were looking for Maddie. Fortunately, they didn't find the drugs. My van was full of them”, revealed, recalling that the police apparatus was great and that “just wanted to get out of there”.

The prime suspect in Maddie's disappearance

The pedophile is pointed out as a suspect in the case five years ago and the German police believe that he is one of those responsible for the disappearance of the British child for finding circumstantial evidence in an old warehouse that Christian Brückner bought in 2008, a year after Maddie was last seen.

At this location, police found “horrible” and “disturbing” documents such as photographs, bathing suits, children’s toys, files with images of abuse and conversations, through Skype, with other paedophiles who led investigators to believe Maddie was killed.

Brückner has already denied any involvement in Maddie's disappearance, but he remains the prime suspect in the German and British investigations into it.

The 49-year-old man served prison time in Germany for the crime of rape, and was released in September last year.

Christian Brückner was constituted in 2023 by the disappearance of the English girl. According to the authorities, the German lived in the Algarve between 1995 and 2007, and phone records put him in the area of Praia da Luz the day the child disappeared.

Already last year, the man was found innocent of the practice of three rape crimes and of two sexual abuse of minors, allegedly committed between 2000 and 2017, in the Algarve. The defense claimed that Brückner was only being tried for his connection to the Madeleine case, an argument with which the Braunschweig court agreed.

Remember Madeleine McCann disappeared on May 3, 2007, a few days before she turned four, from the room where she slept with her twin brothers in a tourist village apartment on Praia da Luz.