Why did the police come to the garden in Hanover?
In the case of Maddie McCann there is movement again: In Hanover, investigators search a garden with an excavator and sniffer dog. A profiler and crime analyst explains what that could mean.
from
Ann Guenter
With a small excavator and ...
... a sniffer dog has been searching investigators' plots in Hanover since Monday.
"I rule that out," says profiler and intelligence analyst Mark Hofmann to 20 minutes. «Brückner has never admitted anything voluntarily. Regret or insight - as far as I could see, he never had that. »
The profiler suspects that the investigators may have been made aware of the property by a witness reference. After all, after another call for witnesses in the program "Case number XY", more than 800 reports were received by the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA).
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That's what it's about
- The German police searched a parcel near Hanover. There is a connection to the Maddie McCann case.
- The deployment will take a few more days, according to the Braunschweig public prosecutor.
- A profiler who deals with the main German suspect in the case discusses the background.
New development in the case of Maddie McCann, who disappeared from the Portuguese Praia da Luz in 2007: The German police have been searching an allotment plot in Hanover since Monday. The operation will take several days, a spokeswoman for the Braunschweig public prosecutor said 20 minutes. The search continued on Wednesday. An excavator and a sniffer dog are also involved in the operation, according to local media reports.
According to local media, the thinned property is only a stone's throw away from Hanover's Linden district. Christian Brückner (43), the main suspect in the Maddie case, had lived here between 2010 and 2011. At that time he was known in the bars and pubs mainly because of his oil-smeared fingers as "the screwdriver". At the time, hardly anyone knew that he had a full criminal record - including child sexual abuse, theft, drug trafficking and rape.
«He never volunteered anything»
But how did the police get onto the allotment plot near Hanover? Has Brückner, who is currently in Kiel for drug dealing, possibly giving the investigators a clue themselves? "I rule that out," says profiler and intelligence analyst Mark Hofmann to 20 minutes. He studied Brückner's long criminal record and found: «The suspect has never voluntarily confessed to anything. He only made confessions if he hoped it would be of use or if the evidence was clear anyway. Regret or insight - as far as I could see, he never had that. »
The profiler suspects that the investigators may have been made aware of the property by a witness reference. After all, after another call for witnesses in the program "Case number XY", more than 800 reports were received by the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA).
«Unlikely that the body was transported from Portugal to Germany»
The Braunschweig public prosecutor's office did not comment on what the police were looking for in the garden.
But "the fact that there is a sniffer dog strongly suggests that people are looking for a body, body parts or clothing," says Hofmann. «However, it is unlikely that a body was transported from Portugal to Germany. But there are also sniffer dogs that are specially trained to find cell phones, USB sticks or other data carriers. » In fact, thousands of videos and pictures on storage media had already been discovered on another property by Brückner in Braunschweig - buried under his dead dog.
One thing is certain: the German investigators are looking for evidence. So far, there has only been talk of "evidence-based suspicion" against Brückner, and that is not enough for an indictment in the Maddie case.
In this context, Hofmann refers to the "four essential indications in the Maddie case, which, when summed up, give a strong picture, but are not sufficient in court":
- The radio cell evaluation : Brückner was near the crime scene on the night of Maddie's disappearance - or at least it was his cell phone. The device had been on the phone for 30 minutes. The police are looking for Brückner's interlocutor.
- Preferences and criminal records go together: "Brückner had preferences for child
, for rape, for weak, defenseless victims," says the profiler. His criminal records corresponded pretty closely to these preferences.
- Break-ins as a specialty: Brückner often bragged about his thief tours and his tour of getting into apartments, even when there were people sleeping in them. Profiler Hofmann suspects that what was planned as a break-in into Maddie's room ended up being kidnapped.
- Strange behavior: After all of Praia da Luz and soon the whole western world was looking for Maddie, Brückner unregistered his car and left Portugal.
It remains to be hoped that the police will find what they are looking for in the garden parcel near Hanover - namely concrete evidence. According to Hofmann, this includes "a body, a confession or a witness - without at least one of them, an indictment and conviction will be difficult" ».
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