By James Rothwell
Berlin: An email account linking rapist Christian Brueckner to the disappearance of British toddler Madeleine McCann has been discovered by police, a German court has been told.
Police detective Titus Stampa said investigators found a Hotmail account and hard drive belonging to Brueckner which were “related to the killing”, referring to McCann’s 2007 disappearance.
Christian Brueckner is a suspect in the disappearance of three-year-old Madeleine McCann but has never been charged.
“An external hard drive also belonging to the killing case, and I am not allowed to talk about it,” he told a court in Braunschweig, in comments reported by the Daily Mirror, during a trial of Brueckner on unrelated sex offences.
He declined to give any further details, such as any photographs or video files that implicated Brueckner, who was identified in 2020 by German authorities as a suspect in the case of McCann’s disappearance.
It is the first time German authorities have disclosed some details of the evidence they hold against Brueckner in the McCann case.
Stampa, who said he could not further discuss the email account as it was related to a different criminal case, went on to describe a second email account in which Brueckner shared child abuse content with other predators.
German police search a garden that belonged to Christian Brueckner in July 2020. Credit: Getty Images
He told the court that Brueckner had deleted all the emails in that account dating to early 2007, when Madeleine vanished from a hotel resort in Praia da Luz, Portugal.
“I can remember that things were massively deleted in the inbox. There was nothing in there from January 2007,” he told the court in Braunschweig.
Stampa also referred to an email allegedly written by Brueckner involving a fantasy of a young girl and her mother being kidnapped and abused. “It was about violence and brutality and them being abused sexually,” he said.
Brueckner is on trial in Braunschweig, facing three charges of rape and two charges of child sexual abuse, which are unrelated to the McCann disappearance.
His lawyers say he denies those charges.
If convicted in the Braunschweig trial, he faces a maximum sentence of 15 years on top of his current rape sentence, for which he is due for release at the end of 2025.
Camper van
Brueckner was living in a T3 Westfalia camper van near the area where McCann, who German prosecutors suspect is dead, disappeared. British detectives say they continue to treat the case as a missing person investigation.
Gerry (left) and Kate McCann show a picture of their daughter Madeleine in 2007.Credit: AP
German prosecutors also say that phone records show Brueckner receiving a call on May 3, 2007, near the Ocean Club resort, where the McCann family had been staying. He insists he was several kilometres away with a young woman at the time.
Last May, detectives investigating the Madeleine McCann case said they were searching a Portuguese reservoir for more evidence, in the first dig of that nature in Praia de Luz since 2014.
The search of the Arade man-made reservoir, near Silves, ended after three days, with investigators taking material from the area for further analysis.
Brueckner denies any involvement in McCann’s disappearance and has not been charged with that offence.
German and Portuguese police investigators at a search site last year.Credit: Getty Images
His lawyers have said he cannot receive a fair trial in the Braunschweig case as German prosecutors have “created a worldwide sense of pillory against our client”.
He is currently serving a seven-year sentence for raping an American pensioner in the same resort town where McCann vanished. The trial, which is expected to last until October, continues.
The Telegraph, London
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