Police are about to start a fresh dig for Madeleine McCann‘s body, not far from where she disappeared 18 years ago. German police investigating the British girl’s disappearance, from a resort in Portugal’s Praia da Luz, are set to carry out a new search about 50km from her last sighting on May 3, 2007. Portuguese law enforcement are offering support to investigators who are scouring the area adjacent to the case’s prime suspect, Christian Brückner’s former villa.
It’s reported three areas will be searched including scrubland between Praia da Luz and the cottage where Brückner lived at the time of Maddie’s disappearance which contains many wells and ditches.
Another area is a wooded, cliff-top area known as Atalaia and the other is streets surrounding Ocean Club, the resort where the three-year-old was staying with her family when she vanished. German detectives will also be focusing on an area where extensive groundworks were taking place at the time she vanished.
Around 30 agents from Germany’s BKA have arrived at the resort area and have ground-penetrating radar which can be used to scan many metres below the surface.
FAMILY’S DETERMINATION
Last month Madeleine’s parents’ Kate and Gerry McCann and family marked the 18th anniversary of her disappearance with a heartfelt new statement .
“The years appear to be passing even more quickly and whilst we have no significant news to share, our determination to ‘leave no stone unturned’ is unwavering. We will do our utmost to achieve this,” they said.
Maddie would have turned 22 on 12 May.
Around the same time a new documentary shown in the UK revealed shocking new details about Maddie’s alleged killer. Billed as an investigation by UK newspaper The Sun, Madeleine McCann: The Unseen Evidence on Channel 4, reveals that in 2016, German police uncovered a chilling collection of items at Brückner’s abandoned box-making factory. USB sticks, memory cards and a laptop are reportedly among the evidence found.
In email accounts alleged to be traced to the convicted paedophile and rapist, are messages where the author says how they have fantasies about abducting and abusing a blonde toddler.
Kate and Gerry McCann with a digitally-created picture of what their daughter could look like (Image: Getty)
The British documentary also alleges that masks, guns, chemicals, toys and other disturbing items were found in the disturbing lair.
Brückner is currently serving a seven-year prison sentence for the rape of a 72-year-old American woman in 2005, and has previously been convicted of unrelated child sex abuse offences and drug trafficking charges. He has not been charged in the case of Madeleine , who disappeared from a holiday apartment in the Portuguese resort town of Praia da Luz in May 2007 and has never been found.
POLICE TIPPED OFF
German police were first tipped off about Brückner after they investigated claims he was allegedly living in a borrowed camper van in Algarve, the regional of Portugal where Maddie and her parents, Kate and Gerry McCann, were staying when she disappeared.
Police interest escalated when Brückner allegedly told a friend about Maddie’s abduction over a drink on the 10th anniversary of her disappearance in 2017.
Brückner is currently serving time in prison for several unrelated offences. (Credit: Getty)
Brückner’s British ex-girlfriend claims the night before Madeleine was abducted, she had a chilling conversation with the suspect over dinner.
He told her: “I have a job to do in Praia da Luz tomorrow. It’s a horrible job but it’s something I have to do and it will change my life. You won’t be seeing me for a while.”
He disappeared at exactly the same time as Maddie, resurfacing three years later working in a bar in Lagos, not far from Praia da Luz.
It was in this bar that another British girlfriend said he looked exactly like the suspect in police photos being distributed.
The girlfriend jokingly asked: “You did it Christian, didn’t you?”
He has a history of child sex abuse, rape and drug trafficking charges. (Credit: Getty)
A friend of the girlfriend told The Sun: “He blanked the question and shrugged — then added, ‘Just don’t go there’.”
REMAINING SILENT
At the time of these revelations being made public, Brückner’s lawyer Friedrich Fulscher said his client would be remaining silent on all the allegations and is not cooperating with police, on his own advice.
“Help our family become a family of five again,” read this poster appealing for an independent review of the case. (Credit: Getty)
He said this was because prosecutors have not produced enough evidence that Brückner is guilty yet – and certainly not enough to begin a trial.
“Mr B is remaining silent on the allegation at this time on the advice of his defence counsel. This is quite common in criminal proceedings,” Fulscher told The Times.
“It is the duty of the state to prove that a suspect committed a crime. No accused person has to prove his innocence to the investigating authorities.”
Kate and Gerry McCann with Maddie’s sibling: Sean and Amelie. (Credit: Getty)
OFFICIAL VIEW
In 2020, German prosecutors wrote to Maddie’s parents, informing them of their official view that their daughter was dead.
They didn’t publicly state why they were so certain of this fact and, reportedly, they were also prevented from informing the McCann’s of the reason why.
“We have concrete evidence that our suspect has killed Madeleine and this means she is dead,” a spokesman for Germany’s Braunschweig Public Prosecutor’s Office, Hans Christian Wolters, told journalists.
“The parents have been told the German police have evidence that she is dead but we have not told them the details.
“We can’t say why she is dead – it is more important that we are successful and we are able to get the culprit, as opposed to just putting our cards on the table and telling them why we think she might be.
“I sympathise with the parents, but if we reveal more details to them it might jeopardise the investigation,” he said.
He also added: “This a murder case, not a missing person‘s case.”
HARROWING NEWS
But despite this harrowing declaration, authorities are still appealing for more information about Maddie’s disappearance, because they do not have enough evidence to bring the case to trial.
“The hard evidence we don’t have, we don’t have the crucial evidence of Madeleine McCann’s body,” Wolters told Sky News.
“We expect that she is dead, but we don’t have enough evidence that we can get a warrant for our suspect in Germany for the murder of Madeleine McCann.
“At the moment, we also don’t have enough proof for a trial at court, but we have some evidence that the suspect has done the deed.
“That’s why we need more information from people, especially places he has lived, so we can target these places especially and search there for Madeleine.”
