Madeleine McCann suspects that Christian Brueckner was only 15 years old when he committed his first crime: a robbery that would lead him on a downward spiral into pedophilia, rape and drug trafficking.
Born Christian Fischer in Dettlebach, near Würzburg, in Bavaria, southern Germany, he was adopted by Brigitte and Fritz Brueckner, who would discipline him and his two brothers with regular beatings.
His biological mother, who lived above a town inn, abandoned him because she could not cope and preferred the company of petty criminals to her own son.
A friend of his adoptive parents’ family. saying: ‘They were very cold; They were only interested in money. The dachshund was treated better than the children.
Once he hit her head on the table. On another occasion he urinated.
‘His father pulled down his pants and hit him with his belt. When the boy began to cry, his father told him, “If you cry, they will give you some more.”
Christian Brueckner arrives at the state court in Landgericht Braunschweig for one of the final days of his sex crimes trial on October 7, 2024.
Brueckner led a nomadic existence while in the Algarve, living most of the time in a caravan.
Brueckner was born in the Bavarian city of Würzburg in 1976 and was placed in a foster home (pictured, aged 11).
A former neighbor told German media: “Even when they were little children, the children were hit and yelled at, Brigitte always said that children must be strictly disciplined.”
They revealed how Brueckner and his brother were locked in dark rooms and only allowed to drink at set times.
The neighbor added: ‘They (the adoptive parents) were cold and heartless. The fact that they took in the children was just a business for them.
“They spoiled their beloved dachshund, but repeatedly told the children who they were, the sons of a thief and a whore.”
When teachers asked how the children were covered in bruises, neighbors said she said “they fell down the stairs.”
In 1994, two years after his robbery conviction, Brueckner’s adoptive parents placed him in an orphanage after Fritz was seriously injured following an accident.
And it was there that he was convicted of his first sexual crime: abusing a child at home when he was 17 years old.
He followed her to a bush, grabbed her by the arm, took his penis out of his pants, lifted the six-year-old girl’s skirt and grabbed her between her legs.
The girl screamed and Brueckner fled and then abused a nine-year-old boy.
He was sentenced to two years in prison for “sexual abuse of a child, attempted sexual abuse of a child and performing sexual acts in front of a child.”
But shortly afterwards he traveled to Portugal, where he found work in hotels and workshops before being located by the police and extradited to Germany.
Madeleine McCann suspects that Christian Brueckner was only 15 years old when he committed his first crime
After serving his sentence, he returned to Portugal and in 2004 he is said to have raped Irish tourist guide Hazel Behan at her apartment in Praia da Rocha on the Algarve coast, near where Madeleine disappeared three years later.
A year later he raped an American woman, Diana Menkes, 72, who lived in the Algarve and who has since died.
Hazel Behan (pictured) spoke publicly about the alleged 2004 attack in television interviews.
She was tied up, gagged, blindfolded and whipped before being raped by Brueckner, who was only convicted in 2019 after DNA linked him to the attack and was jailed for seven years.
In April 2007, shortly before three-year-old Madeleine disappeared near the apartment where she was staying, she is said to have exposed herself to a ten-year-old girl.
Brueckner then left Portugal and was a regular at Costa del Sol hippie festivals, highlighting his distinctive American-style Winnebago motorhome.
With this he regularly traveled to Germany bringing drugs back and forth and in 2011 he was finally convicted of trafficking.
After his release, he continued to flit between Germany and Portugal and is said to have exposed himself to children at a festival there in 2017.
Christian Brueckner was photographed pulling up in a prison van outside the courtroom in Brunswick, Lower Saxony, at the start of his trial.
The same year, while returning to Germany, he was arrested and convicted of “sexual abuse of a child” and sentenced to 15 months in prison.
After his release, he traveled to Italy, where he was held in Milan before being sent back to Germany on charges of drug trafficking.
And it was there that he was charged and tried in 2019 for the rape of Ms Menkes and, at the same time, he was also convicted again of drug trafficking and sentenced to 21 months.
His current sentence will end in September 2025.
