Speaking to MailOnline, Mr Kossack said: ‘Christian Brueckner had the garden next to mine. He arrived in 2007 and left within a year. He told me that he living off the grid, that he had not registered with the authorities – no one knew he was there.
‘He never did any gardening. He did not plant anything or try to grow anything. He just sat around drinking beer.
‘At the time there was a building on the garden. It was a small wooden structure with only one room to keep tools and other things but it had a kitchen.
‘The building was not really a house, you might call it a shed. But it had a cellar and underneath there would be foundations. This building was destroyed in 2008.’
The retired electrician said he remembered Brueckner took it over in 2007 because the allotments had only been handed out by the local authorities the year before.
Brueckner’s plot of land was originally owned by someone else before it was passed onto the convicted rapist.
Mr Kossack, who has tended his own parcel of land since 2006, said Brueckner disappeared in 2008 and he never saw him again.
‘Sometimes a young woman would be there with him,’ he said. ‘She seemed to be his girlfriend. ‘He had two dogs – a big one and a small one – who were quite annoying. They would come into my garden to do their business.
Before Brueckner left, he talked about his time outside of Germany. ‘Brueckner said he preferred southern Europe because he liked the warm weather and said he would go back there,’ his neighbour said.
‘He did not say which country. He had a VW Transporter van and parked it next to the allotment and lived in the vehicle.
‘The van was registered in Hannover but Brueckner had not paid the tax on the vehicle.
‘I asked Bruecker what he did for a job. He said he was a car mechanic. I asked him why he didn’t repair his own van because it was always leaking diesel onto the ground. He said he would get around to it sometime.’
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