On your second point:The Sun's article is pretty consistet with the Mirror one but does contain this additional piece -
He aimed to steal as much money as he could until he reached his dream of having a million euros.
“But the German guy and his friend took everything.
“I came back to Praia da Luz in about February 2007 and found Christian camping wild near the town.
“He was going to raves and I think selling drugs. I stuck around for a bit and then went back to Spain.”
Couple of things to perhaps infer from this. One, he was expecting to come out of prison with his loot intact. Now it is all gone, does he now become desperate?
Second, CB was camping wild back in Feb 2007. Reported that he wasn't kicked out of the farmhouse until April 2007 in some articles though... He was released from prison in Dec 2016 and if the loot and video camera was taken from the farmhouse then, he must have still been a tenant, or is it the pending eviction which made him get an acquaintance to move what was in there before someone else found it?
ETA: MT seemed to indicate CB was interested in MT's cannabis connections. Possibly why he sought out MT. We know CB was drying out cannabis on the roof of AB's house in Germany around this time too.
CB was in jail 8 or 9 months ending December 2006.
The robbery by ‘friends’ was while he was in jail.
So could have been any time between March/April and December.
maybe he was worried about losing goods to pay for the diesel sentence fine? Which could be the reason behind Getting friends to remove his valuables from the farmhouse.
Makes sense that the robbery happened while he was in jail, and at some point after this, while he was still in jail, his tenancy ended. as it also explains why the farmhouse was found in such a mess. The mess being because the whole place had been ‘turned over’.
Also, could this Austrian guy be the second tall ‘English speaking’ friend witnessed with CB at the drug parties/raves up at Barao d st Joao ?