Plot to kidnap a child from Portuguese resort was hatched a week before Madeleine McCann was abducted there, British expat claims

A plot to kidnap a child from a Portuguese holiday resort emerged a week before Madeleine McCann was kidnapped there, a British expat claims.

Ken Ralphs said the prime suspect in the McCann case, Christian Brueckner, tried to recruit a mutual friend to help find a child to sell to a childless couple.

Mr Ralphs said Brueckner made the offer to the man who had no money at the time and was living in a tent in a remote part of Portugal’s coastal Algarve region, 20 miles from Praia da Luz – where Madeleine disappeared on May 3, 2007 .

“We were sitting around the fire one evening after a meal, having a few beers and in the early hours of the morning my friend started crying,” the expat said Sky News. ‘I asked him what was going on and he finally confessed to me that he was involved with Christian to steal a child from Praia da Luz from a wealthy family.’

Madeleine was on a family holiday when she disappeared. The case was never solved and her fate remains unknown.

Brueckner was formally made a suspect by prosecutors in Portugal in 2022, although he has not been charged in her disappearance.

He had been identified as a suspect by German prosecutors earlier in 2020, after which he was only named as German drifter ‘Christian B’.

Mr Ralphs – a former British political campaigner, Brueckner and their mutual friend – a foreigner who cannot be named, were all part of a nomadic group who lived an off-grid bohemian lifestyle in remote places in south-west Portugal .

He took the Sky News reporter to where he said his friend lived in a tepee with his family 17 years ago. Mr. Ralphs said he and his wife would buy them food.

The 59-year-old said he encouraged his friend not to get involved in Brueckner’s scheme, calling it “ridiculous” and telling him he would end up in jail.

‘I said you can’t get involved in kidnapping someone for ransom, that’s ridiculous, and then he explained, ‘No, it’s not like that.’ Christian had a customer, a buyer lined up, a German couple who couldn’t have children,” Ralphs told Sky News.

A week after their conversation, Madeline disappeared.

Mr Ralphs says he was back in Britain when he heard the news.

Three hours later, he told Sky News, he drove to a police station in Cumbria and reported what he knew about Brueckner and the kidnap plan.

Mr Ralphs also said he gave police a “secret map” that led them to the point in the woods where his friend had been living in the tent with his family, with orders to send it to detectives in Portugal so they could investigate this.

He wrote a statement and repeated his story when he returned to the Algarve, but told Sky News that police there said they knew nothing about his report. He also returned to the spot where the teepee had stood, only to find that it had been burned.

Mr Ralphs told Sky News he never saw Brueckner or his friend again, but recognized the German when he became a suspect in 2020.

This again prompted him to contact British police, and he sent his written statement to German prosecutors. He was also interviewed by Portuguese detectives, but do not know whether his statement was used in their investigation into Brueckner.

German prosecutor Hans Christian Wolters told Sky News that he had passed the statement on to German investigators, the broadcaster reported.

“They told me that someone had been in contact with my friend abroad and that he had denied knowing me, but I have a dozen witnesses who will say he is lying,” he added.

“I think he just didn’t want to be questioned by the police.”

Another friend of Brueckner’s who knew the drifter from his time in Portugal also said the German was planning to steal a child.

“He (Brueckner) always bragged about money and made money, especially with burglaries,” Michael Tatschl told author Jon Clarke in his book My Search For Madeleine. “He even talked about selling children, perhaps to Morocco.”

The expat’s claim follows news that the German suspect will likely remain silent during an upcoming trial for unrelated sex offenses in Germany, but has “nothing to hide,” according to his lawyer.

Brueckner will appear in court in Braunschweig, Lower Saxony, on February 16, charged with five crimes between 2000 and 2017 in Portugal and already serving a sentence for rape.

Christian Brueckner will appear in court in Braunschweig, Lower Saxony, on February 16, charged with five crimes between 2000 and 2017 in Portugal and already serving a sentence for rape

Brueckner’s lawyer told the newspaper BBC in an email that he did not expect his client to make “substantial submissions” at the upcoming trial in Germany, which could last months.

Friedrich Fülscher, a public defender, said: “We will see whether the defendant will defend himself silently or make statements denying individual actions.

‘At this time I do not expect any substantive submissions to be made.’

Brueckner’s lawyer said that ‘no negative conclusions’ could be drawn from this.

He added: ‘Whether a suspect declares ‘I had nothing to do with it’, ‘I am innocent’ or the like, or exercises his right to remain silent, leads to the same result in criminal proceedings.

‘This does not mean that there is anything to hide, but simply comes from the fact that it makes sense from a procedural point of view.’

Brueckner is still expected to confirm details such as his name and date of birth.

He has been charged with five crimes that allegedly took place in Portugal between 2000 and 2017, including the rape and sexual abuse of children.

In a later ruling, the court in Braunschweig was found to have no jurisdiction over the case, but this was later overturned.

Madeleine McCann was on a family holiday in Praia da Luz, Portugal, when she disappeared on May 3, 2007. Brueckner was made a formal suspect by prosecutors in Portugal in 2022.

The charges include the rape of an unidentified woman aged between 70 and 80 at her holiday home in Portugal sometime between 2000 and 2006, and the rape of a girl believed to be at least 14 years old at his home in Praia da Luz sometime between 2000 and 2006.

He is also accused of raping a young woman after she entered her apartment in 2004, sexually assaulting a child on a beach in 2007 and sexually assaulting a child at a playground in 2017.

Brueckner is serving a seven-year prison sentence for a rape that took place in Portugal in 2005.

The trial, which begins next week, will decide whether Brueckner will remain in prison at the end of that sentence.