Madeleine McCann suspect ‘boasted of torture’ to fellow paedophile as cold case reopens
The suspect in the disappearance of Madeleine McCann is said to have spoken about torture in a conversation with another paedophile as Belgium reopens a horrific cold case that could link to Maddie. WARNING: Graphic content
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The suspect in the disappearance of three-year-old Madeleine McCann is said to have gloated about torture and destroying evidence in an online conversation with another paedophile.
Christian B has been named as the prime suspect in the investigation after the three-year-old went missing in 2007 - though his lawyer has now said he will not give any information.
“Christian B is not making any statements on the case at the moment and we ask for your understanding that we as defense attorneys are not making any statements either,” his lawyer Friedrich Fülscher said.
Maddie is believed to have been murdered soon after she was kidnapped, the German prosecutor leading the investigation said.
In a conversation with another paedophile, he made threats about wanting to “catch something little and use it for days”, reports The Sun.
SHOCKING COLD CASE REOPENED AS POSSIBLE LINK
Belgium reopened an investigation on Thursday into the 1996 murder of a German teenager because of a possible link with the man suspected of murdering British girl Madeleine McCann.
Carola Titze, 16, was found dead and mutilated in July 1996 in the resort town of De Haan on the Belgian coast.
The public prosecutor’s office in Bruges “is indeed reopening the file relating to this murder”, a spokesman told AFP, without giving further details.
At the time, Titze was on holiday with her parents and the investigation turned to a German suspect in his early 20s.
The man had bragged to her about his criminal past, according to the Belgian media, but he was never found.
Following the identification of the German suspect in the “Maddie” case, Paul Gevaert, the now retired investigator in charge of the Titze murder probe, said there was “certainly a connection to be made”.
The suspect, named as 43-year-old “Christian B.” by German media, has a history of sex offences, including child abuse and rape.
“The description fits,” Gevaert told Belgian newspaper De Standaard. His investigation was closed unsolved in 2016.
‘I HAVE A HORRIBLE JOB TO DO TOMORROW’
This comes after a British ex-girlfriend of Christian B claimed the night before the toddler vanished he told her: “I have a horrible job to do in Praia da Luz tomorrow.”
She also said how she asked him if he snatched Madeleine McCann and he warned: “Just don’t go there.”
The woman is one of two British ex-girlfriends of Christian B who were dating him while he was in the Praia da Luz area of Portugal and have now given evidence to the police.
Christian B “freaked out” in 2014 as his staff at the kiosk-bar he ran discussed the Madeleine McCann case.
Barmaid Lenta Johlitz, 34, revealed: “Once he was completely freaked out when we were sitting talking with friends about the Madeleine case.
“He wanted us to stop. He cried out, ‘The child is dead now and that’s a good thing’, then he said: ‘You can make a body disappear quickly. Pigs also eat human flesh’.”
Christian B is currently eligible for parole having served two-thirds of his sentence for drug offences - but German legal experts say it is unlikely to go through as he is under investigation for murder.
Hans Christian Wolters, a prosecutor in the northern city of Braunschweig, where detectives are leading the investigation, told the BBC, “We have evidence against the accused which leads us to believe that he really killed Madeleine but this evidence is not strong enough at the moment to take him to court.”
The evidence is “strong enough to say that the girl is dead and strong enough to accuse a specific individual of murder — that strong,” he said.
However he added: “One has to be honest and remain open to the possibility that our investigation could end without a charge, that it ends like the others have.
“We are optimistic it will be different for us but for that we need more information.”
Mr Wolters told The Times that he believed Madeleine was killed soon after she was abducted, a German prosecutor said as it was reported that the prime suspect had boasted that he would “document” the abduction of a child.
“My private opinion is that he relatively quickly killed the girl, possibly abused her and then killed her.
“We believe our suspect committed further crimes, especially sexual crimes, in Portugal possibly but also elsewhere like Germany.”
The suspect could be freed if a court in Kiel, in northern Germany, grants him parole because he has served two thirds of his sentence.
SATELLITE PICS PLACE SUSPECT NEAR MADDIE
Meanwhile, a Spanish investigator spent days scouring old satellite imagery after Christian B was identified last week.
German police and Scotland Yard have been sent a picture which appears to show the roof of the VW Westfalia T3 van parked near his former Praia da Luz home.
The image could prove crucial because it suggests the distinctive van was taken back to open land Christian B was familiar with after living close by for six years.
Imagery shows the white roof of a van of similar dimensions to the VW parked beside a hedge yard from a ramshackle single-storey former farmhouse plot.
Chrsitian B lived there with a German lover from 1999 to 2006, when he abandoned the premises and left it strewn with debris including wigs and smashed computer gear.
The picture shows the van appears to have been driven back to the plot – which is surrounded by scrubland littered with deep, abandoned well shafts.
One of the old stone wells is visible a few feet from the van.
The image was captured days after Madeleine went missing at the very start of the massive police search.
A Portuguese investigating source said: “If that is the van in that spot – so soon after the abduction – the image could be extremely significant.
“He would have known that area well having lived there for six years but he had left the farmhouse months earlier.
“So why did he go back at a time when everyone was looking for missing Madeleine?”
Christian B, then 30, split with his partner after tempestuous rows at the ramshackle farmhouse.
In June 2014, Scotland Yard detectives – backed by a team of cadaver dogs and ground penetrating radar – excavated land 300 yards from the building but unearthed no clues.
But their focus was on ground closer to the main road and it is not clear if they checked the many wells dotted around the landscape.
Police are now preparing to dig up land around two Portuguese locations where Christian B lived.
Locals – who described the suspect as a “quiet, angry weirdo” – say he would have known the area well and believe vital evidence may have been missed.
Spanish investigator Heriberto Janosch González found the satellite picture during a trawl of records last week.
He said: “For the last five days I was looking for evidence concerning the houses and vehicles belonging to Madeleine McCann’s prime new suspect Christian B, following Scotland Yard Operation Grange and German Bundeskriminalmat (BKA) appeals.
“I found a NASA satellite photograph taken days after the abduction of Madeleine.
“It shows one of the houses where he lived, and an image totally congruent with the dimensions and colour of the VW Westfalia van that the suspect was using at that time.
“I have passed this information to Operation Grange and German Bundeskriminalmat (BKA).
“If he is involved in Madeleine McCann’s abduction, as the police appeals suggested, maybe he carried her to that place, and some evidence or her remains were hidden in that location.
“Will the police search that house and the field around, including the wells?”
Police in Germany fear the drifter, who stole from hotels in Praia da Luz, may have snatched Madeleine after first entering the holiday home to raid it.
Among the growing body of facts linking him to Madeleine’s disappearance is he was revealed to be living in a campervan in the area around the time the youngster vanished on May 3, 2007.
RAPED WOMAN FEARS IT WAS MADDIE SUSPECT
A woman abducted and raped in the Algarve by a masked German man fears the attacker was Madeleine McCann’s prime suspect.
Hazel Behan, from Ireland, was working in Praia da Rocha – just a 30-minute drive from where the toddler vanished – when she was attacked.
The victim, who waived her anonymity to the Guardian, was gagged and raped in her apartment in 2004 but the culprit was never caught.
She now fears Christian B could be her attacker as her ordeal bears chilling similarities to the German’s 2005 rape of a 72-year-old American woman in Praia da Luz.
Ms Behan told the newspaper: “My mind was blown when I read how he had attacked a woman in 2005, both the tactics and the methods he used, the tools he had with him, how well he had planned it out.
“I puked, to be honest with you, as reading about it took me right back to my experience.”
Recounting her own nightmare, Ms Behan said she had gone to bed in her apartment in the Portuguese town when she was chillingly woken at 1am by someone calling her name.
She added: “I turned on to my back and standing there was a masked man dressed in tights and what resembled a leotard, a machete around 12in long in his hand.”
The rapist set up a video camera in the room and told Hazel not to scream as he dragged her into the living room and tied her to a countertop.
He then produced a bag of whips and chains and used scissors to remove the terrified Brit’s clothing before gagging her with a cloth and raping her.
Hazel said she was repeatedly raped for up to five hours before the attacker threatened her with a machete when she refused to perform a sex act on him.
After his despicable act he fled and she was able to call police for help.
POLICE SAY MADDIE IS DEAD
German authorities have made a desperate plea for more information about the movements of prime suspect Christian B.
It comes as new details emerged about how a restaurant reservation booking may have given Christian B’s hotel worker accomplice details that Madeleine would be alone while her parents had dinner at the resort.
Madeleine’s parents Kate and Gerry McCann had asked that the restaurant put them at a table near their flat, noting in the book they would be leaving their children there and checking on them regularly.
Madeleine, who would have turned 17 last month, was sleeping near her younger twin brother and sister Sean and Amelie.
The table was about 100 metres away from the room and they took it in turns to check every 15 minutes but they later noticed that she had been taken.
Christian B’s friend had reportedly noted the booking of seven at the Praia da Luz’s Ocean Club, which would have made the holiday flat easy to burgle.
Christian B remains in a German jail, and authorities there want to try him on McCann’s disappearance.
Germany extradites suspects to face court in their homeland for crimes committed abroad.
Christian B has been linked to the disappearance of at least two other children and police in Germany suspect there may be other rape victims who had not made reports.
British police have received more than 400 tip-offs since Christian B’s photograph was released last week along with details of his alleged links to Madeleine’s disappearance, which was still listed as a missing person’s case in the UK.
BRIT DAD BELIEVES MCCANN SUSPECT ABDUCTED HIS DAUGHTER
It comes as a British man fears Christian B abducted his daughter in Germany.
Trainee nurse Louise Kerton, 24, went missing in Germany in 2001 visiting her boyfriend’s family while the McCann murder suspect was moving between Portugal and his German homeland.
Mr Kerton told The Sun: “Christian seems to have gone after all ages, despite preferring the very young.
“I would urge police to make sure his whereabouts and his activities at the time of Louise’s disappearance are properly investigated.”
Christian B could serve as little as 15 years behind bars if he was ever tried and convicted of Madeleine’s murder, according to German law.
Barmaid Lenta Johlitz, 34, said a group of people were sitting around a bar talking about Madeleine when Christian B became distraught.
“Once he was completely freaked out when we were sitting talking with friends about the Madeleine case. He wanted us to stop,” Ms Johlitz said.
“He cried out, ‘The child is dead now and that’s a good thing’, then he said: ‘You can make a body disappear quickly. Pigs also eat human flesh’.”
Christian B has been linked to the disappearances of at least two other children.
A school caretaker in his hometown of Braunschweig, northern Germany, told how Christian B showered pupils with toys and teddy bears as they walked past the kiosk he ran at the time.
“I’d ask where they got them from and they’d say, ‘Christian at the kiosk’,” Peter Edrmann said.
“It turns my stomach now to think of his intentions. I wish I had raised what was going on with my bosses at the time.”
Christian B regularly used the kiosk for drink and drug parties, triggering complaints from the neighbours about the noise.
One local, who gave his name as Norbert, recalled Christian B’s former girlfriend helped run the shop, The Sun reported.
The pair lived in a nearby apartment and Norbert said: “He was often aggressive, very bad with women.
“He had a girlfriend from Kosovo. He always beat her. Once I even saw her with strangle marks on her neck.”
Christian B is being held in a prison in Kiel, north Germany, where he is serving 15 months for drug trafficking.
Asked about the Madeleine case, public prosecutor Hans Christian Wolters said: “There is not enough evidence for a warrant or indictment against him.”
But Mr Wolters added: “We assume there are other victims.”
British woman Angie Dawes said Christian B visited her parents’ house when he worked at a nearby restaurant in Portugal and did odd jobs on this side.
“I met him at my parents’ house. Even though he was polite, on every occasion he was weird,” she said.
“He was memorable to look at. The blond hair with striking blue eyes.
“But he would just stare at me in a sleazy way for a minute or two without saying a word and not release his gaze.
“It was bizarre and made me feel very uncomfortable. His eyes chilled me to the bone.
“It’s absolutely horrible to be associated with him. He even tracked me down on Facebook. I can’t even think about it now without breaking down.”
— with The Sun.
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