Madeleine McCann: German prisoner identified as suspect #29

[peanutJelly]

If you look at other recent convictions, where multiple arrests were made, at this stage we have no idea whether the investigations involve others. To me this would help explain the length of time being taken. Maybe this web is full of spiders and they are hoping to catch more than one…

 

[Janosch]

Glad to hear that.

And I'm sure everyone here would also agree with you that we'd need to see more than a profile and a phone call to determine an assessment of guilt against CB.

But also, surely you don't believe that the BKA have already publicly revealed all the evidence they've spent the last 5 years compiling against him? Or that they'd publicly accuse him of murder based solely on a phone call and a profile?

To be sure CB was MM abductor/killer you must have proof. And if you have proof you do not need to make a public appeal (VW Westfalia, phone call, etc). That is why I am skeptic ...

 

[Dlk79]

To be sure CB was MM abductor/killer you must have proof. And if you have proof you do not need to make a public appeal (VW Westfalia, phone call, etc). That is why I am skeptic ...

BBM
Be careful in using that term, it has a very different meaning in the MM community from how I think you are meaning it here.

As for the rest of your post - strong evidence vs absolute proof... yes it's pretty clear the BKA want to strengthen their case via the appeal, but you didn't really answer the question.

Do you really think all the BKA have against CB currently is a phone ping and a suitable profile? I'm sure you don't. In which case, making judgements on the strength of the evidence they have communicated publicly is a moot point.

 

[Dlk79]

Inside Madeleine McCann suspect Christian B's explosive TV claim he has 'alibi'

The new three-part documentary features British investigator Mark Williams-Thomas.

He told The Sun: “B had agreed to talk to me but the interview was blocked by prison authorities.

“We have since been in contact at length in writing and he has explained his position to me in detail.

“He has told me exactly where he was on the night Madeleine disappeared — and that he was not where the police say he was. He also insists that he is entirely innocent.

“My inquiries have unearthed evidence which is pretty explosive, but I’m not saying whether I believe what he told me. That’s for viewers to judge.”

Well you said you "believed" Oscar Pistorius, Mark. In spite of the massively overwhelming evidence that saw him convicted. So if you aren't prepared to say you believe CB, then I doubt your unearthed "evidence" is anywhere near as explosive as you make out.

 

[Trivento]

Inside Madeleine McCann suspect Christian B's explosive TV claim he has 'alibi'

This Sun article talks about the VW having a modified space big enough to hide children in , and swimsuits etc being found in it.

I don’t believe this is correct as it has been previously reported this was connected to the much bigger Winnebago , that CB also used…and there is DF’s account ( also appearing in JC’s book ) relating to the Winnebago.

See this OP article..mentioning Winnebago ( Tiffin Allegro ) ..for example..

Madeleine McCann suspect DID drive his winnebago on a long journey through Portugal on night toddler went missing - Olive Press News Spain

Makes me curious which vehicle the BKA are supposed to be looking into just now ( if they are ) ..is it the VW , Winnebago ..or perhaps both..?

 

[sandy_80]

away from this dude
why MMs crime should be about sex ?
kids are stolen all the time for the sake of being sold.. if an abduction really happened

 

[onemoremiletogo]

Well if they aren't going to even charge MM till after they convict on the other offences I'll check back in 5 years!

A hand full of the same....nothing.
And 5 years couldn't be enough...

 

[Dlk79]

Why did it take 15 years to make rapist child molester Christian Brueckner a suspect in Maddie case? | Daily Mail Online

Finally, after 15 long years, the man prosecutors say was ‘responsible’ for the most notorious child abduction in criminal history, has been dragged in front of detectives and formally asked: ‘Where were you on the night Madeleine McCann disappeared?’

Christian Brueckner, a convicted paedophile and rapist who is currently behind bars in his native Germany, was told to account for his whereabouts on the evening of May 3, 2007, when the three-year-old British girl vanished from her bedroom at a resort on the Algarve as her parents ate tapas with friends at a nearby restaurant.

‘If you weren’t by the apartment she disappeared from that night, where were you?’ was one of a series of questions which the 44-year-old sex offender failed to dignify with a response.

Sources with knowledge of his recent prison interview, which was carried out by German authorities acting on behalf of their Portuguese colleagues, say that throughout the barrage of probing questions, Brueckner exercised his right to remain silent.

He was then handed a document informing him that he’d been made an ‘arguido’ — a Portuguese legal designation which elevates a witness to the status of official suspect and is usually a precursor to charges being laid.

The scandal, of course, is that getting to this stage took so long. For had the Portuguese police done their job properly in the first place, a decade and a half of heartache may well have been avoided. As a potential suspect, Brueckner was, after all, hiding in plain sight. A troubled youth who grew up in and out of care, he was a convicted paedophile by the time he arrived on the Algarve in his late teens.

He had been jailed for molesting a six-year-old girl in a playground in his home town of Wuerzburg, Bavaria. He continued to pursue a life of crime, which saw him twice jailed in Portugal.

During a sentencing hearing in an Algarve court in 2006, a year before Madeleine vanished, a judge was told that he’d served time for child sex offences, meaning his status ought to have been well known to local police.

In fact, the reverse seems to have been true. For although Portuguese detectives claimed they had interviewed all sex offenders on the Algarve as potential suspects after Madeleine disappeared, Brueckner was not on the list. Apparently his criminal record had not been properly shared by their German colleagues.

The suspect’s name also cropped up in a file of potential suspects sent to British police back in 2011. But only because he was a foreigner who’d once been jailed, and not because they thought he was linked to any prior sex crimes.

Indeed, Brueckner began to face proper scrutiny only in 2017, after German police received a tip-off linking him to the case.

And when, in 2020, they went public with suspicions he had been responsible for the abduction, Portuguese detectives — seemingly embarrassed to have been beaten to the punch — initially sought to discredit the claim.

Brueckner spent two months in Evora prison in 1999 for a minor offence, and nine months in 2006 after being caught stealing diesel from lorries on a garage forecourt.

In 2005 he carried out a depraved burglary during which he had bound, gagged, raped and tortured a 72-year-old American tourist in her villa in Praia da Luz. The victim was ‘grabbed by a very strong and tall man by the neck in the dark’ before being blindfolded and whipped with a metal cane. She said afterwards that he had clearly enjoyed ‘torturing’ her.

That crime went unsolved until 2019, when, following a tip-off from a former friend, Brueckner was arrested and charged.

Only then did police start investigating his potential links to 18 other burglaries of holiday apartments that had taken place on the Algarve in the early 2000s.

Several of these had involved the sexual assault of women and children, including nine cases of British girls aged six to 12. In most of the attacks, the ‘tall, wiry’ attacker seems to have carried out the sex crimes after stumbling upon his victims when he entered properties in search of valuables.

Of course, this delay in bringing Brueckner to justice meant that he was a free man in May 2007, when Madeleine disappeared from that ground-floor apartment near the gate of the Ocean Club.

A single storey farmhouse he had rented a few year earlier, which has a number of old wells on its land, is less than half an hour away from the scene; while a second building he occupied until 2006 sits on a hill above the resort, about 11 minutes away. On the night in question, he’s believed to have been living in a distinctive VW camper van, which he eventually sold in 2015 and is currently in the hands of German forensics teams.

Shortly after Madeleine vanished, with the case increasingly the subject of frenzied media attention, Brueckner suddenly left Portugal.

The fact that local police had failed to lock down the resort of Praia da Luz and set up road blocks, apparently assuming the little girl had merely wandered off, allowed him to leave without anyone noticing.

Meanwhile, the McCanns’ apartment was not taped off until 10am the day after her disappearance, by which time dozens of people had traipsed through the crime scene and contaminated potentially vital evidence, with ash from policemen’s cigarettes later found to be one of the contaminants.

In 2013 he abused another little girl and was caught with child *advertiser censored* on his computer by his teenage girlfriend, Nakscije Miftari, who had been 17 to his 37 when their 18-month relationship began. Friends later revealed how Brueckner had beaten her ‘black and blue’ after she discovered the material on his laptop.

Brueckner was jailed for 15 months this time, for possession of child *advertiser censored*. Then, shortly after his release in May 2017, he bumped into an old friend while heavily intoxicated in a bar.

It was the tenth anniversary of Madeleine’s disappearance, and the venue’s television carried a news report. Brueckner is said to have told his chum that he ‘knew all about’ what had happened to her. He then showed his friend a video of him raping a woman.

The friend later went to police, leading to Brueckner’s subsequent arrest and imprisonment for the 2005 rape of the American tourist.

But with no confession forthcoming, and no proof that Madeleine has been murdered, the question of whether he will ever face trial over her disappearance may revolve around the outcome of forensic work on the VW van he drove while living on the Algarve.

One Portuguese insider described the results as ‘potentially crucial’. But he added: ‘They could also be the final throw of the dice. At the moment, it’s a bit of a wait-and-see situation.’

As for Brueckner, he recently wrote to the Mail (prior to the arguido development) denying that he’d yet been interviewed about Madeleine’s disappearance.

‘It is obvious the German authorities, and especially the Department of Justice, are providing the media with information about me that is likely to make me appear contemptible,’ he complained.

The truth, however, is that Brueckner’s appalling criminal record is what makes this convicted paedophile and rapist contemptible — and why he is now officially an arguido.

 

[onemoremiletogo]

BKA should have more. No doubt on that. But what else? CB’s autobiographic notes telling the same stories corroborated by HB’s testimony? Is this strong enough?
Gather more evidence to strengthen the case…
A new (real?) half of a fingerprint?! A micro pubic hair?

Naïve?!... well BKA made the public appeal in June 2020. We are in April 2022…

It seems obvious and I guess HCW has admitted that, the tip/final proof they are desperately waiting for did not arrive soon as they expected. With all this media show may be it was lost or eliminated forever.

The errant CB can very likely be the abductor and killer of MM. But in opposition to his “meticulous” planned rapes, on MM, it seems he was really “lucky” to have left no trace. Or simply have done it there, at the top of PJ's incompetence.
Honestly I really want this to have an end and CB will finally be charged. And we will finally know what really happened that night. But still this decade?

 

[Dlk79]

A bit more clarity around HCW's comments about the potential MM charge. This year OR maybe going into next year depending on how things go with the progress over the other charges. Certainly not 5 years as some have facetiously suggested.

German prosecutor on McCann case says naming of suspect is legal formality

A German prosecutor investigating a jailed rapist over the 2007 disappearance of British toddler Madeleine McCann said on Friday that the man's naming as a suspect in the case by Portuguese police was a legal formality while investigations continued.

Wolters said the suspect status related solely to the Portuguese enquiry - there are separate British, German and Portuguese investigations - and that his own probe could take longer to yield results.

"We can't say whether we'll come to a conclusion this year or next year," he said.

Wolters is also investigating Brueckner on suspicion of the rape of a young Irish woman in the same area in 2004.

He said he expected to make further announcements in May. "We have found some more evidence in other cases in Portugal, the rape of the Irish woman and other cases of abuse," he said.

"We have intensified our investigation there, and results are foreseeable."

 

[mrjitty]

A bit more clarity around HCW's comments about the potential MM charge. This year OR maybe going into next year depending on how things go with the progress over the other charges. Certainly not 5 years as some have facetiously suggested.

RSBM

To be clear the 5 year thing was a joke, after @SuperdadV8 suggested there might not be charges until after a final conviction in the other investigations.

No serious trial strategy could proceed on that basis, IMO

 

[Davieson]

away from this dude
why MMs crime should be about sex ?
kids are stolen all the time for the sake of being sold.. if an abduction really happened

That's what the 'profile' has determined.
I have no idea why police decided that it was an abduction by paedophiles.
Was the profile constructed before or after Brueckner was identified ?

 

[Davieson]

BKA should have more. No doubt on that. But what else? CB’s autobiographic notes telling the same stories corroborated by HB’s testimony? Is this strong enough?
Gather more evidence to strengthen the case…
A new (real?) half of a fingerprint?! A micro pubic hair?

Naïve?!... well BKA made the public appeal in June 2020. We are in April 2022…

It seems obvious and I guess HCW has admitted that, the tip/final proof they are desperately waiting for did not arrive soon as they expected. With all this media show may be it was lost or eliminated forever.

The errant CB can very likely be the abductor and killer of MM. But in opposition to his “meticulous” planned rapes, on MM, it seems he was really “lucky” to have left no trace. Or simply have done it there, at the top of PJ's incompetence.
Honestly I really want this to have an end and CB will finally be charged. And we will finally know what really happened that night. But still this decade?

No sure that's going to be true

 

[mrjitty]

BBM
Be careful in using that term, it has a very different meaning in the MM community from how I think you are meaning it here.

As for the rest of your post - strong evidence vs absolute proof... yes it's pretty clear the BKA want to strengthen their case via the appeal, but you didn't really answer the question.

Do you really think all the BKA have against CB currently is a phone ping and a suitable profile? I'm sure you don't. In which case, making judgements on the strength of the evidence they have communicated publicly is a moot point.

BIB

My opinion remains the same.

Strength of evidence should be tested in open court. Therefore charges should be brought if the prosecution has the evidence, otherwise I do not believe they should keep talking about it.

We shouldn't be asked to believe in claims of the strength of the evidence, which remains secret, whilst the prosecution continues to make public accusations to which an accused cannot answer.

In this case, HCW said last year to expect charges this year, but now seems it might be next year, and that in fact he is pursuing other cases first.

I find it not credible that he would pursue less serious cases in priority, if in fact he was close to charging.

Indeed, why is he even talking about his potential charges in the HB case? Charge CB with the rape or don't. But I find it hard to accept that the prosecutors office can claim he is guilty of it, without charging.

 

[mrjitty]

I think we can all agree that CB is best kept behind bars. Nothing in his known free and imprisoned life suggests otherwise. If he's responsible for the other crimes HCW/The BKA believe he's committed and are currently focused on, and they get their convictions, great. And everyone I'm sure will welcome that.

That still doesn't make him responsible for a crime that HCW, almost 2 years after publicly accusing him of MM's murder, and now in his own words, is still clearly struggling to find proof of.

I'm not sure why that perspective on the look of things in Apr 2022 is treated with such suspicion on here.

BIB

This is the part I am struggling with. Depending on which article you read, we shouldn't expect charges until summer, and even then they won't be in the more serious case. The hint that we should not even expect charges this year is a bit of a step backward from what was said last year and not an indication the investigation is progressing well IMO.

I really hope they do have the evidence to move to charges on some other stuff, as otherwise the whole thing doesn't reflect well IMO.

 

[onemoremiletogo]

No sure that's going to be true

Maybe not in fact. At least get some light on that, I hope.
Believing that it cannot remain obscure forever.

 

[Davieson]

BIB

This is the part I am struggling with. Depending on which article you read, we shouldn't expect charges until summer, and even then they won't be in the more serious case. The hint that we should not even expect charges this year is a bit of a step backward from what was said last year and not an indication the investigation is progressing well IMO.

I really hope they do have the evidence to move to charges on some other stuff, as otherwise the whole thing doesn't reflect well IMO.

From what I've read, these two outstanding abuse cases are fairly straightforward, involving indecent exposure, so there shouldn't be any problem in bringing them before a court

 

[RichardKimble]

Why ask CB if he was in 5a and not ask the most relevant question of all, did you kill Madeleine and if so where are her remains, unless of course there's no evidence of her demise.

 

[Davieson]

Why ask CB if he was in 5a and not ask the most relevant question of all, did you kill Madeleine and if so where are her remains, unless of course there's no evidence of her demise.

How do we know what h was asked?
Has a list of questions been forthcoming, or is it all speculation ?

 

[RichardKimble]

How do we know what h was asked?
Has a list of questions been forthcoming, or is it all speculation ?

Indeed, in 2014 it was said at the time OG asked the three locals if they killed Madeleine, we've been here before.