The parents of a five-year-old girl who disappeared in 2015 have been given a glimmer of hope with the news that cold case sniffer dogs have been deployed in the search.
Blonde, blue-eyed Inga Gehricke disappeared on May 2, 2015 during a family barbecue in a forest in the German state of Saxony-Anhalt.
The case quickly drew comparisons to the 2007 disappearance of Madeline McCann, who vanished from her family's apartment in Praia da Luz, Portugal, at the age of three.
Despite extensive searches, media reports and national appeals, Inga, like Madeleine, was never found, while the mystery still hangs over Germany today.
But Inga's parents Jens-Uwe and Victoria have been given new hope this week, with investigators deploying sniffer dogs to the region from which she disappeared and teams searching the forest near where she disappeared.
The parents of five-year-old Inga Gehricke who disappeared in 2015 have been given a glimmer of hope with the news that sniffer dogs have been deployed in the search
Blonde, blue-eyed Inga Gehricke (photo) disappeared on May 2, 2015 during a family barbecue in a forest in the German state of Saxony-Anhalt
Former officer Axel Hehl, an ex-police officer who founded the association 'Victim Recovery Dogs', said he took part in the search with his cold case sniffer dogs that specialize in searching for bodies.
Axel said: 'The noses of the trained dogs sniff out odors and the smallest particles that are created when a human decomposes.'
The dogs were taken on Saturday, December 2, for investigation in the area of Uchtspringe, near Wilhelmshof, Stendal, where Inga disappeared.
Axel told local media: 'After our advance team in the summer, we were now searching with four dogs.'
According to reports, the dogs stopped in one spot and appeared to sniff something.
He added: 'I'm 85 percent sure there is something there.'
The dogs could not have sniffed out animal remains because they are trained to distinguish human from animal bones, local media said.
The private investigators and lawyers who took part in the investigation said: 'We will tirelessly search for the needle in the haystack.
“There's a clue, we just have to find it.”
Earlier, Lower Saxony's Interior Minister Tamara Zieschang revealed that a new team of investigators has been formed to solve the Inga case.
Stung by criticism that previous efforts have failed to produce any new leads, she announced a new shake-up to “reorganize case management.”
The Christian Democratic Union minister said at the time: 'The police in Halle (Saale) will support the police in Stendal. This step is part of a reorganization of case management after years of research without results.'
Local media reported on April 25 that the new investigators will be part of a team dealing with 'crimes against life'.
However, she did not say how many officers the unit will consist of.
The decision comes following enormous criticism of the police for a series of blunders in the Inga case, which was initially dismissed in 2017.
Berlin-based lawyer Steffen Tzschoppe, who represents Inga's family, told politicians in February that 1,900 pages of investigative files on the activities of a convicted pedophile had simply disappeared.
The case quickly drew comparisons to the 2007 disappearance of Madeline McCann, a British girl who vanished from her family's hotel room in Portugal at the age of three.
And earlier this year it emerged that police had found a sex doll in the abandoned home of a convicted pedophile which they bizarrely revealed looked like Inga.
Investigators then checked a new lead linking her disappearance to convicted pedophile Martin H., 41, from Berlin.
Lawyer Tzschoppe told the Bild newspaper: “He is originally from the area of Stendal, not far from Wilhelmshof (district), where Inga disappeared.”
The lawyer claimed that authorities have a 1,900-page file on the perpetrator, who is already in prison for previous child sexual abuse.
The officers were reportedly surprised when they burst into the perpetrator's destroyed house in the area of Scheuder, near the city of Dessau, Saxony-Anhalt, and found brick windows, soundproof doors and numerous mattresses placed in a basement dungeon.
The dungeon could only be reached through a hatch estimated to be 40 by 40 centimeters in size, police said.
They also discovered full bondage kits and sex toys.
Later, during their search of his Berlin flat, they found silicone sex dolls, one of which reportedly bore a striking resemblance to the then five-year-old Inga.
Tzschoppe said: 'In May 2015, shortly after Inga's disappearance, this perpetrator used an excavator on his property.'
Martin H. would have dismantled his car on the property at the same time, the lawyer claimed.
Unwilling to reveal too many details, he added: 'The Stendal investigators dropped the lead because they believed the man's alibi.
“However, in my opinion the alibi is highly questionable.”
Tzschoppe pointed out the errors in the previous investigations and revealed that detectives had not yet analyzed the pedophile's extensive file for further possible links.
He claimed that they allegedly stopped further investigations after just eleven days of investigation in 2019.
A senior police officer also reportedly admitted in 2019 that he had no experience in homicide cases after he was appointed head of a new special unit formed to solve her disappearance.
And Christian Brueckner, a suspect in the McCann case, is also reportedly among the suspects involved in Inga's disappearance.
Christian Brueckner, a suspect in the McCann case, is reportedly among those suspected of involvement in Inga's disappearance
At the time of her disappearance, 43-year-old Brueckner was living in a caravan on the site of an abandoned factory in Neuwegersleben, about 110 kilometers from where Inga disappeared.
Brueckner has been linked to a series of child kidnappings and murders in Portugal and Germany.
He is currently in prison in Kiel, in the German state of Schlweswig-Holstein, for drug trafficking, and is appealing against a conviction for the 2005 rape of a woman near the Praia da Luz resort where McCann went missing.
Despite years of police investigations and appeals to the public offering a reward of 25,000 euros for any useful information leading to her whereabouts, Inga has never been found.