It has been claimed that the main suspect in the disappearance of Madeleine McCann has written letters pleading with his former friends asking them to talk about what a “nice guy” he is in court in a bid to clear his name, it has been claimed.
Christian Brueckner, a convicted rapist, complained in a letter to a friend that prosecutors were portraying him as a “monster.”
Brueckner, whom prosecutors hold “responsible” for Madeleine’s 2007 kidnapping and murder, pleaded with two of his friends to support him in court if he has to stand trial on separate charges of rape and child sex.
“I know of two people who received Chris’s messages,” a former friend of Brueckner’s who is still in contact with those who knew Brueckner in the Algarve told the newspaper. Mirror.
“It really scared them. They hadn’t heard from him for years and suddenly these letters arrived in the mail from Germany.
Christian Brueckner, the main suspect in the disappearance of Madeleine McCann, has written pleading letters to his former friends asking them to talk about what a “nice guy” he is in court in a bid to clear his name, it has been claimed.
For more than a decade, her distraught parents Gerry and Kate (pictured together in 2017) have waited in vain for any news, any clue, that their little girl is somehow alive after all this time.
The German suspect had lived in a warehouse on the outskirts of Praia da Luz for several years, but moved into a caravan just before Madeleine disappeared.
The source added: “He was asking them to speak in his defense, about what a good guy he is.” He said that the German police and prosecutors have him repressed, that they say he is a monster.
‘It’s outrageous that Chris is asking for help because now we all know his past. When we were with him in the early 2000s, everything was a secret. We didn’t know he was a pedophile. But now he has no chance of anyone speaking on his behalf in court.’
Brueckner is currently languishing in a German prison for the rape of a 72-year-old American tourist in Portugal just 18 months before Madeleine was kidnapped.
The trial heard he planned the sexual attack by breaking into the victim’s home with a rope to tie her up. She was blindfolded and gagged before being raped and robbed.
Last year, he was named as the main suspect in the disappearance and murder of Madeleine, who disappeared from her family’s holiday apartment in the Algarve resort of Praia da Luz in May 2007, just days before turn four years old. But he has not yet been charged with her kidnapping and denies her involvement.
Brueckner was charged with several separate cases of sexual crimes allegedly committed in Portugal between 2000 and 2017, including the rape and sexual abuse of two children.
Although the Braunschweig court due to jurisdiction issues, it is understood that Brueckner could still be charged with the same offenses in another court in Germany.
And in preparation for a possible trial, he has written letters to at least two former friends asking for support.
Madeleine disappeared from a rented apartment in Praia da Luz, Portugal, on May 3, 2007, during a family vacation.
His parents, Kate and Gerry McCann, from Rothley, Leicestershire, led a high-profile campaign to obtain information about his disappearance.
The case, unsolved for the past 16 years, remains a mystery as no body has ever been found.
In June, German forensic experts searched a reservoir 30 miles from Praia da Luz as part of their ongoing investigation. Bruecker had called the Arade reservoir his “little paradise” after receiving “certain warnings.”
The reservoir is located near the town of Silves, where a truck driver claimed to have seen a woman pass a child resembling Madeleine’s description to a man two days after the child disappeared.
Investigators cleared a large area of forest in the reservoir and dug eight deep holes to collect samples, which were sent for DNA and forensic testing in Germany.
But German police have reportedly hit a “obstacle” after being “disappointed” by the items they found during the search in the reservoir.
The reservoir is located about 45 minutes from Praia da Luz, where Madeleine disappeared without a trace in 2007, when she was three years old.
An area of around 160 square feet was flattened and cleared of grass and bushes with several holes dug into the ground to a depth of around two feet during the latest search for Madeleine McCann in the Algarve, Portugal, on May 25, 2023. .
German prosecutor Hans Christian Wolters, who is leading the case, confirmed that “several objects” were seized during the search.
However, sources have now said Sun that the recovered items have not helped them in their efforts to solve the 16-year-old mystery.
A source told the newspaper: ‘Sadly, it increasingly appears that the search for the reservoir will not provide any answers or new clues.
“It’s too strong to say it was a waste of time, but the officers are naturally very disappointed.”
The three-day search at the reservoir was the first major search for the boy in nine years and comes after German police discovered photographs of Brueckner in his self-described “little paradise” in the Portuguese region, it is understood.
Brueckner camped next to the reservoir on weekends and is believed to have set up a base there to “clean up,” it emerged last month.
A former friend of Brueckner, who has lived in the Algarve for almost 30 years and has been helping the police with their investigation, claims that the criminal visited the reservoir “often” but “always kept it a secret.”
The German mother of three, whose identity has not been made public, recalled that Brueckner drove his motorhome to the lake shore because “he liked being near the water.”
She claimed that he always camped in the same spot and that “there was usually no one else around.”
“This was exactly his special place that he said he liked to come to clean himself,” she said of their camp, telling The Sun: “I don’t know what he did there because he was very secretive.”
Details of Brueckner’s secret lair came to light when a British couple told The Mail on Sunday how they saw a strange “shrine” dedicated to Madeleine in the reservoir just seven months after she disappeared.
Christian Brueckner, 45, would camp at the Barragem do Arade reservoir, where police were looking for clues in the case of Madeline McCann’s disappearance. The convicted rapist and pedophile is believed to have built a circle out of stones from the water (pictured)
Pictured: Christian Brueckner was filmed behind the wheel of a beat-up VW van weeks before Madeleine was kidnapped.
Brueckner was officially named a suspect in April 2022 after his yellow and white VW T3 Westfalia motorhome was reportedly seen near the Praia da Luz complex.
The retired couple, who asked to be identified only as Ralf and Ann, were so disturbed by what they saw that they took photographs and sent them to Portuguese detectives, thinking they were important but, surprisingly, never received a response.
The makeshift memorial, which consists of arrow-shaped rocks pointing towards a picnic spot that was dug up by police last week, was supported by a large rock and had a bouquet of flowers and a photograph of the kidnapped Madeleine.
Meanwhile, reports claim that phone records place Brueckner in the city on the night she disappeared and that her yellow and white Volkswagen Westfalia caravan was seen near the Algarve resort.
In 2020, authorities revealed that a phone call had located Christian Brueckner in Praia da Luz, where he lived from 1997 to 2007, around the time of Madeleine’s disappearance.
They traced the call and found it connected to the mast owned by the resort where the family had stayed.
Brueckner had lived in a warehouse on the outskirts of town for several years, but moved into a VW caravan just before Madeleine disappeared.
A Mail on Sunday investigation later found that Brueckner stayed in an old house in nearby Foral between 2007 and 2008, after Madeleine disappeared.
That year, it was revealed that a witness claimed to have seen Madeleine getting into a German-owned VW van with a man just weeks after she disappeared.
A police file details how a witness believed he saw Madeleine leaving a restaurant in the Spanish coastal town of Alcossebre, in eastern Spain, before getting into the van with an unidentified man.
