Fifteen years after the disappearance of Maddie McCann, this 3-year-old British girl whom no one has seen since the evening of May 3, 2007, when she was in a seaside resort in southern Portugal with her parents, the German track becomes clearer. In a press release published Thursday, April 21, the Portuguese public prosecutor announced that a suspect had been indicted at his request, the day before, in Germany.
If the Portuguese justice did not specify his identity, it was not long in being revealed: Christian Brückner, a 45-year-old repeat offender, currently in detention in a German prison for the rape of an American in the south from Portugal in 2005, two years before Maddie disappeared. Since 2020, the German authorities claim to have evidence of his involvement in the disappearance of the girl.
Since then, fifteen years have passed, but the emotion aroused by the affair among the British remains intact. The drama experienced by Kate and Gerry McCann, Maddie’s parents, took place on May 3, 2007, at the Ocean Club, Praia da Luz, in the Algarve – where the McCanns were staying. That day, Kate and Gerry McCann had slipped away 70 meters from their apartment to eat tapas by the pool with a group of friends. They had left Maddie, 3, with her brother and sister, 18-month-old twins, alone in the apartment. Gerry hadn’t noticed anything unusual when he went to check if the little ones were sleeping at 9 p.m. But, at 10 p.m., when Kate had returned in her turn, Maddie had disappeared.
solid track
Initially in charge of the investigation, the Portuguese police began by suspecting a British-Portuguese binational who lived near the apartment where the McCanns were, but they ended up abandoning the trail because the latter, aged 34 years old at the time, had an alibi. Then, suspicion fell on Gerry and Kate McCann, placed under the status ofarguidos (“suspects”) by the Portuguese police, who spoke of a tragic domestic accident that led to Maddie’s death. This second track was ruled out after a year, in the summer of 2008.
Blanched, Gerry and Kate McCann then moved on, raising money to finance private detectives and pleading their case with the media so that the investigation was reopened in 2011 by Scotland Yard. Without much success: despite several searches and interrogations, the years that followed did not lead to substantial progress. At least until June 2020.
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