The prime suspect in the Madeleine McCann case has revealed he was named as the man responsible by an informant after telling him “strange she didn’t scream.”
Convicted rapist and pedophile Christian Brueckner, 45, made the confession in a letter seen by MailOnline again calling the police investigation against him baseless.
Brueckner has made a concerted effort to clear his name, writing several letters, all of which contain complaints about his treatment in prison, serving seven years for rape.
In the letter, he attacked informant Helge Busching – who initially contacted police in 2017 to say he had information about the case – while serving a prison sentence for human trafficking in Greece.
The two men were friends in Portugal in the early 2000s, but as Brueckner explained in his last post, he says they fell out after a drug deal went wrong the year Madeleine went missing and never spoke to each other again.
Madeleine McCann went missing on May 3, 2007 from her room in the Portuguese Algarve resort of Praia da Luz
Convicted rapist and pedophile Christian Brueckner, 45, gives the confession in a letter seen by MailOnline again denouncing the police investigation against him as baseless
A map shows Brueckner’s movements around the Algarve at the time Madeleine disappeared while on a family holiday
He wrote: “The following sentences of the ‘witness’ Helge B in 2017 were responsible for all the public hunting and hatred against me by the German authorities.”
He then quotes Busching: ‘In 2008 I was at the hippie festival in Spain. Manfred (Seyferth another witness) was also there and Michael (Tatschl another witness), Manfred, Christian and I then started talking about Portugal.
“Then Christian made a comment about the missing girl. Christian asked me if I was still going to Portugal, I replied; “I’m not going to Portugal anymore because there are too many problems there, Portugal has too many police for me because of the missing child.
‘It is indeed strange that she disappeared without a trace. Christian replied, “Yeah, she wasn’t yelling.”
Rejecting the claims, Brueckner added, “It’s not even worth commenting,” before going on to explain how they got into a fight over a drug deal.
He said: ‘In 2007 Helge B gave me a kilo of hash and when I arrived in Germany with it I saw that it was only 750 grams. After that he no longer existed for me (sic).
“There wasn’t a single conversation in 2008. After that, not even Manfred existed for me. The point is that the main leader of all investigations is Helge B, who was released (sic) long before the regular end of his prison in Greece.’
Busching is known to have been convicted of human trafficking in Greece and in 2017 the media there reported how he had been released so he could meet Scotland Yard officers after telling them he had valuable information.
Brueckner has made a concerted effort to clear his name, writing several letters, all of which contain complaints about his treatment in prison, serving seven years for rape.
Brueckner led a nomadic existence while in the Algarve, mostly in a motor home
In his letters, Brueckner insists that he is innocent of Madeleine’s disappearance
At the time, Greek media reported how he was interrogated for hours at a city center hotel in a hotel room being swept for bugs before officers from the Operation Grange team met him.
Busching made the statement in 2017 after he was arrested trying to smuggle migrants from Greece to Italy, it is alleged. He was previously convicted of an attack on a beggar in Italy in 2011.
During the investigation, Busching was put in touch with Operation Grange – the Met Police team investigating Madeleine’s disappearance – where he gave them details about Brueckner.
According to a Greek police report, Busching’s evidence was given “voluntarily and without monetary or other consideration.” It is not known what his final sentence for human trafficking was or whether she served all of them.
Busching and Seyferth also told police that in 2007 they broke into Brueckner’s home in the Algarve and stole a camcorder and a gun which they later threw into a lake.
Both men claimed that the camcorder contained scenes of sexual violence and torture against two women and they recognized Brueckner in the footage and it was this testimony that led to his being convicted of raping a 73-year-old woman in the Algarve the year before Madeleine disappeared.
Earlier, MailOnline revealed that Christian Brueckner, 45, wrote a series of letters hoping to gain publicity for his campaign to exonerate himself of anything related to the mystery
A graphologist, who examined Brueckner’s letters and neat handwriting for MailOnline, says they show he was “distorted, misguided” and that his “fantastic views are constant and unchanging.”
A police investigation team walks along the bank of the Arade dam near Silves, Portugal in May 2023
At the request of the German authorities, the Portuguese police searched the Barragem do Arade reservoir in Silves on the Algarve. The area is about 40 kilometers north of the holiday apartment Madeleine disappeared from in Praia da Luz
A timeline shows Brueckner’s life from his birth in Germany in 1976 to his prison sentence for raping a pensioner in the Algarve
However, the camcorder and gun were never recovered and Brueckner claims it was this testimony that sparked the investigation against him and led to his being named as a prime suspect in 2020 by German authorities investigating Madeleine’s disappearance.
She disappeared from a holiday apartment in Praia da Luz on Portugal’s Algarve coast – where Brueckner was then living – in May 2007 and has never been seen since.
Brueckner’s attorney, Friedrich Fulscher, said, “It remains to be seen whether this conversation took place at all, as we have other witnesses who said it did not.”
The revelation comes just days after German prosecutor Hans Christian Wolters confirmed items had been found following a high-profile search last month at the Arade Dam, just 35 miles from where the then three-year-old Madeleine was last seen.