Madeleine McCann case against paedophile suspect Christian Brueckner ‘is close to collapsing as former friend who gave damning statement is ”wobbling” and threatening to stop helping probe’
Madeleine McCann case against pedophile suspect Christian Brueckner ‘on the brink of collapse as former boyfriend who made damning statement ‘wobbles’ and threatens to stop helping with investigations’
- There are fears that Helge Busching is about to withdraw his evidence
- The 45-year-old Brueckner was named the main suspect in Madeleine’s disappearance last year
The case against the main suspect in Madeleine McCann’s disappearance is on the verge of collapse, it has been claimed.
Christian Brueckner, 45, was named by prosecutors last year as a prime suspect in the 2007 disappearance and murder of the three-year-old.
The police’s case revolves largely around the testimony of his former friend Helge Busching, who Brueckner chillingly told him when they discussed Madeleine’s disappearance: “She didn’t scream.”
Mr Busching gave Brueckner’s name to British police in 2017, around the 10th anniversary of Madeleine’s disappearance.
Busching claims that Brueckner told him at a Spanish kite festival in 2008 that he had been involved in the kidnapping of Madeleine from Praia da Luz a year earlier.
Madeleine McCann disappeared from a holiday apartment in Praia da Luz on Portugal’s Algarve coast in May 2007
Christian Brueckner was named by prosecutors last year as the main suspect in the three-year-old’s disappearance and murder
When asked in 2020 what he thought of Brueckner, Busching said, “One word. Guilty.’
Busching, who now lives on the French island of Corsica, added: “He is in the right place at the moment and hopefully he will stay there for a long time.”
After German prosecutors announced in June that they were investigating Brueckner, the Metropolitan Police revealed that they had received a tip about him in 2017.
“Following the tenth anniversary, the Met received information about a German man who was known to have been in and around Praia da Luz,” Detective Chief Inspector Mark Cranwell said at the time.
But it is now feared Mr Busching is ‘wobbling’ and on the verge of withdrawing his evidence. The sun.
“He was paid a huge sum to repeat his statement in a German newspaper and now he is pulling the plug,” a German source said.
“It just shows you what kind of people you’re dealing with, and their credibility as witnesses.”
Convicted rapist and pedophile Brueckner is currently serving a seven-year prison sentence in Germany for the rape of a 72-year-old woman in Praia da Luz, Portugal in 2005.
A police search team walks along the bank of the Arade Dam near Silves, Portugal in May 2023
A map shows Brueckner’s movements around the Algarve at the time Madeleine disappeared during a family holiday
Madeleine was snatched just nine days before her fourth birthday while left alone with her younger twin siblings
In June, Brueckner branded the police investigation against him as unfounded in a handwritten letter seen by MailOnline.
In the letter he attacked informant Busching. The two men had been friends in Portugal in the early 2000s, but as Brueckner explains in his latest post, he says they fell out after a drug deal went wrong the year Madeleine went missing and never spoke again.
Madeleine disappeared from a holiday apartment in Praia da Luz on Portugal’s Algarve coast – where Brueckner lived at the time – in May 2007 and has never been seen since.
In May, parents Kate and Gerry McCann gathered with friends and family in Rothley, Leicestershire, to poignantly mark the 16th anniversary of her disappearance.
They harbor a glimmer of hope that Madeleine is still alive.
She would now be 20 years old.