New pictures reveal fresh Madeleine McCann search near abandoned building
Search teams have scoured undergrowth and an abandoned building in Portugal in the fresh hunt for British toddler Madeleine McCann.
Search teams have scoured undergrowth and an abandoned building in Portugal in the fresh hunt for British toddler Madeleine McCann, with police hoping to find evidence that could implicate a convicted German sex offender in her disappearance 18 years ago.
Madeleine was just three years old when she vanished from an apartment on the Algarve coast where she was on holiday with her family, sparking a global campaign to find her and unprecedented media coverage.
A previous search of a lake near the Ocean Club resort in Praia da Luz in 2023 yielded no results, but on Tuesday investigators were back in a part of nearby Lagos to hunt for clues.
AFP journalists saw several police vehicles with Portuguese and German number plates as well as fire trucks down a cordoned-off dirt road towards the search site.
Late Tuesday, those same vehicles left, marking the end of the first day of the renewed search. A police spokesperson told AFP the day’s operations “ended around 5:45pm.” That’s 2:45am Wednesday AEST.
Portuguese police said about 25 German investigators were taking part, with the investigation looking at an abandoned building in an overgrown wooded area.
The new searches are being carried out at the request of German authorities investigating Christian Brueckner, a convicted rapist who is suspected of having killed Madeleine.
A mobile phone registered in Brueckner’s name was traced close to the family’s accommodation on the night Madeleine went missing.
A spokesman for the Braunschweig prosecutor’s office that issued the new search warrant told AFP that the operations would go on for a total of “two or three days”, meaning up to Thursday.
“As to whether or not something will be found, personally I’d remain rather prudent towards the results we can expect,” the spokesman, Christian Wolters, said.
Investigators scour abandoned building
Police are focusing on over 20 plots of land to the east of Praia da Luz, The Sun reports.
Officers are zeroing in on a remote farmhouse.
Police on Tuesday used chainsaws to cut through roots and undergrowth to access the soil and firefighters were using a hose to drain one of two wells at the search area.
Investigators are equipped with ground radar technology that can scan the ground down to 4.5 metres in depth.
That means they only have to dig if they see something interesting on scans.
The major search, the first for more than two years in Portugal, is focusing on wells, ruins, and water storage tanks on 21 plots of privately-owned land thought to cover around 120 acres.
It’s currently unclear what exactly Brueckner’s relationship to the derelict building police are digging near is.
The barn is found in between the golf course and the sea — not far from the Ocean Club in Praia da Luz where Madeleine vanished.
Brueckner had lived near the area close to the beach in a cottage in 2005 — when he had raped a 72-year-old American woman.
The shrubland area was a rat run for the prolific thief.
Suspect Christian Brueckner
Brueckner, a 48-year-old German national, is currently serving a seven-year prison sentence in Germany for the rape in 2005 of a 72-year-old American woman in Praia da Luz. He is due to complete his sentence in September.
He was acquitted in October 2024 in Germany at a trial for two other sexual assaults and three rapes, committed in Portugal between 2000 and 2017.
German authorities in 2020 said they were convinced Brueckner was involved in Madeleine’s disappearance, which gained worldwide publicity and has seen several false leads.
He has not been charged in connection with the McCann case.
Brueckner, who according to German media had a string of previous convictions, including for sexual offences, assault and theft before he was convicted of rape, worked as an odd-job man during his 10 years in the Algarve.
He also burgled hotel rooms and holiday apartments.
At the time of Madeleine’s disappearance he was living in a camper van. On Tuesday, a journalist from Germany’s RTL television recounted his correspondence with Brueckner, and how he had met him in prison.
Brueckner, the journalist said, complained that “half the world” considered him to be a “cruel rapist”.
He said he wanted to eat steak and drink beer when he is released from prison.
A former neighbour in Portugal had told Sky News television in 2020 that Brueckner was “always a bit angry, driving fast up and down the lane, and then one day, around 2006, he just disappeared without a word”.
He returned to Germany in 2007 — the year Madeleine disappeared — settling in Hanover, but still spent time in Portugal.
On the 18th anniversary of their daughter’s disappearance on May 3 this year, Madeleine’s parents Kate and Gerry McCann said they were still determined to find out what happened.
“The years appear to be passing even more quickly and whilst we have no significant news to share, our determination to ‘leave no stone unturned’ is unwavering,” they wrote on the findmadeleine.com website.
“We will do our utmost to achieve this.”
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