Madeleine McCann suspect Christian Brueckner seduced young mother in ‘paedophile’ chatroom and told her he thought her daughter, three, was ‘cute’ and ‘could be a model’, court hears

The main suspect in the Madeleine McCann case seduced a young mother in a chat room used by ‘paedophiles and sick people’ where he told her he thought her three-year-old daughter was ‘cute’ and ‘could be a model’, a court heard heard.

Christian Brueckner, 47, who is currently on trial for carrying out separate sexual attacks on women and children in Portugal, is said to have met his ex-girlfriend on the dating site in 2013 before discovering that there were ‘many pedophiles’ there. .. to serve’.

“At first I thought it was about me,” the Hanover woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, told the court yesterday. ‘But when I spoke to him, I mentioned my daughter. She was almost four… He said she was cute and could be a model.”

The witness claimed that Brueckner had also boasted to her about nightly break-ins at holiday apartments and that he had ‘always’ been drunk, but that she had not felt unsafe leaving her daughter alone with him.

Brueckner is also being investigated by German prosecutors, who believe he kidnapped Madeleine McCann, then aged three, from a rented holiday villa in Praia da Luz in May 2007.

Speaking in court Wednesday, Brueckner’s former girlfriend testified that the convicted pedophile asked her for photos of her daughter after learning she was three years old.

“He just said he thought she was cute, and that she could be a model,” she said, as reported by The times.

The woman also said that although she “never knew him sober,” she never felt unsafe leaving him alone with her daughter when they went for a walk with the dog.

Brueckner is still serving a seven-year prison sentence for the rape of an American pensioner, 72, in Praia da Luz in 2005.

In 2020, a year after his conviction, he was named by German investigators as the main suspect in the Madeleine McCann case.

Brueckner denies involvement in the disappearance.

Brueckner is now on trial for raping a woman in Praia da Rocha in 2004, and abusing a teenage girl and a woman aged between 70 and 80 in Praia da Luz, where he lived between December 2000 and June 2006.

He is also accused of exposing himself and masturbating in front of children at least twice in Portugal, and of insulting prison staff in Germany.

His current trial began in February and has heard witnesses who say they saw Brueckner in graphic sex tapes showing the rape of an older woman and a young girl.

Brueckner’s defense has tried several times to exclude witnesses, saying the case was unfair and biased against their client because of the link to Madeleine, but all attempts have failed so far.

A former girlfriend of Brueckner’s claimed earlier in the trial that detectives in the Madeleine McCann case had still not searched her home, despite revelations that he had called her the night she disappeared.

The woman said Brueckner called her on the night of May 3, 2007, to say he was driving to her home in Portugal and that she did not know if he had arrived.

It was revealed that the woman’s father and German prosecutors had urged police to investigate the compound near Praia da Luz in 2022, but they never arrived.

During the trial in Germany, the unnamed woman said: ‘I don’t know if he came late that night and parked the vehicle outside and slept there, and left again that morning.’

German prosecutor Hans Christian Wolters said they gave the information about the house to Portuguese police, but “I don’t know if they are going to do anything.”

Madeleine McCann disappeared from the Ocean Club resort in Praia da Luz on May 3, 2007.

The case was archived in July 2008 due to lack of evidence, but the family kept the investigation open with private investigators until Scotland Yard opened its own investigation in 2011.

Since then, German police in Braunschweig have taken up the case after identifying a convicted pedophile as a new suspect.

German prosecutor Hans Wolters said the evidence included telephone analysis placing the suspect at the Ocean Club resort and an alleged confession Brueckner made to a friend.

Brueckner was named as the suspect under investigation by the Met in 2020, in what they classified as a murder investigation.

Police said he was seen in the area around Praia da Luz in the days and weeks leading up to Madeleine’s disappearance.

Portuguese prosecutors formally identified as suspect Brueckner in 2022 after his yellow and white VW T3 Westfalia camper was reportedly spotted near the Praia da Luz resort in Portugal, where Madeleine disappeared.

Brueckner has denied he was in the area at the time and distanced himself from the allegations against him.

German prosecutors say phone logs show he received a call near the Ocean Club on May 3, 2007.

He claims he was miles away with a young woman at the time.