Christian Brueckner: To be or not to be

Verdi wrote:Madeleine McCann suspect denies killing her in disturbing new letters written from prison - 'I'm not a monster!'

I can feel another BBC Shamima Begum-style documentary coming on...

I'll wager it's already awaiting release - subject to a bit of tweaking here and there to keep up with trends.

Meanwhile another very important witness, who shall remain nameless..

'I KNOW he did it': Madeleine McCann suspect Christian Brueckner's friend says the drifter talked of selling children in Morocco

   A friend of Christian Brueckner believes the German took Madeleine McCann
   Michael Tatschl was a cellmate of Brueckner's before their release in 2006
   The Austrian carpenter said pervert Brueckner was capable of snatching a child
   Mr Tatschl believes Madeleine could have been sold to an individual or a sex ring

By Arthur Martin In Praia Da Luz For The Daily Mail and Jon Clarke  

Published: 22:00, 21 June 2020 | Updated: 06:32, 22 June 2020

A close friend and former cellmate of Madeleine McCann suspect Christian Brueckner declared yesterday: 'I know he did it.'

Michael Tatschl, who lived with Brueckner in a ramshackle farmhouse near the Portuguese resort of Praia da Luz, described him as a pervert who was 'more than capable of snatching a child'.

The Austrian carpenter said his friend bragged about making money by trafficking drugs and burgling apartments, and once talked about 'selling children to Morocco'.



He thinks Brueckner probably sold Madeleine to another individual – possibly a sex ring.

The pair spent eight months in the same prison after they were caught stealing 320 litres of diesel from lorries in Portugal.

Both were released in December 2006 – five months before three-year-old Madeleine, from Rothley, Leicestershire, disappeared from her family's holiday apartment in Praia da Luz.

Mr Tatschl became convinced of his friend's involvement after watching an eight-part Netflix documentary on the case last year.

In one episode, a tourist describes how a man fitting Brueckner's description started acting strangely around her child in Praia da Luz in the days before Madeleine vanished.

Speaking for the first time yesterday, Mr Tatschl revealed that he was grilled for two days about Brueckner last year by police investigating Madeleine's disappearance.

The father-of-one, who has returned to his homeland, was interviewed for 14 hours by four detectives at a police station in Graz, southern Austria.

Mr Tatschl, 46, said: 'The detectives were very clear with me from the first minute.

'They said, 'We are investigating Maddie McCann and Christian Brueckner', and I told them I knew why they were here. I was convinced it was him. I know he did it. I was living with him at the time.

'He was my best friend and he was definitely a pervert and more than capable of snatching a child, for sexual kicks or money.'

He thought Brueckner would be arrested shortly after his police interview and said he 'cannot believe' Portuguese detectives have not yet searched the farmhouse they once shared.

'When I saw the Netflix documentary I knew immediately that he was guilty,' he said.

'It was when the female tourist talked about the man turning up at her door where her child was playing, that I knew it was Christian for sure.

'She described him as a creepy guy with acne and blond hair, which fits his description.'

Mr Tatschl said he decided against calling the authorities after watching the documentary because of his dislike of the police and his criminal past.



He said Brueckner, now 43, was 'definitely quite a strange character' who 'liked to brag about the crimes he had done and planned to do'. His aim was to steal as much money as he could until he reached his dream of having a million euros.

'It was rich pickings in Praia da Luz,' he said. 'He was always breaking into apartments in the area and bragging about it to me. He was a very good burglar and would easily climb up to first floor apartments when tourists were out.

'He would steal lots of money, valuables and so many passports. In fact hundreds of passports and lots of Rolexes and other expensive watches.'

Mr Tatschl said Brueckner hid his stolen loot in the rafters of his farmhouse, which overlooks Praia da Luz.

While he was in prison, the convicted sex offender asked a German friend to remove the haul from the rafters and keep it in a safe place so the police would not find it.

But the friend decided to keep the stolen valuables, Mr Tatschl said. The friend also found a video of Brueckner raping and beating an older woman while she was chained to a post.

Mr Tatschl said: 'That's how I found out he was sick. I told the police all about that. Christian was always on the dark web. I don't know exactly what he did but I suspect it involved drugs and pornography.

'He was always bragging about making money. He even talked about selling kids maybe to Morocco, and I think he probably sold Maddie to someone – maybe a sex ring.

'There have been some sex crimes around the area over the last decade and it wouldn't be surprising if he was involved.'

Brueckner is in prison in Germany for drugs offences. He has denied any involvement in Madeleine's disappearance.

Mr Tatschl added that he had returned to Praia da Luz in February 2007 to find  Brueckner camping near the town.

He said: 'He was going to raves and I think selling drugs. I stuck around for a bit and then went back to Spain.'

Just weeks after the abduction of Madeleine McCann Brueckner also travelled to Spain where Mr Tatschl was living in Orgiva, Andalucia.

Tatschl said: 'In late May or early June he arrived in Spain with his big American camper van. He knew I had connections to the marijuana world and could help him make money.

'We just thought he was a pervert but didn’t think he liked young children.'

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8445183/I-know-did-Christian-Brueckners-friend-says-German-guilty-taking-Madeleine-McCann.html
....................

With friends like that who needs enemas ....

Yet another one crawls out of the  woodwork ! 

So he stole passports and watches , hmm , the McCann passports were still there and presumably their watches , after all they weren't wearing them were they Clarence ? 

He apparently took an almost 4 years old child instead ! 

Ok pet we'll believe you !

He would steal lots of money, valuables and so many passports. In fact hundreds of passports and lots of Rolexes and other expensive watches.'

Every one of which will have been reported to the police, and the Emergency passport replacement applications will have been noted by the Embassy in Lisbõa as a highly localised crime wave . . .

Something which the PJ will have been aware of in their role as the Criminal investigators, and teh GRD in theor role as patrolling police, and the local town hall in their role as   . . . ?
Err . NO

This is total bilge

Friend '100% certain' Madeleine McCann suspect Christian Brueckner snatched child in night raid

Exclusive: Christian Post was tracked down by the Mirror to a small town in Cambodia where he lives under an assumed name. In his first ever interview he told how he and Christian Brueckner would go to each other’s flats after they became friends.

News
ByMartin FrickerSenior Reporter

09:29, 2 APR 2022Updated09:37, 2 APR 2022


Cambodia: Jim Gamble, under cover, abusing prisoner rights

Sorry, wrong one.


30-03-2022 -Christian Post speaks to the Mirrors Martin Fricker (Image: Phil Harris / The Daily Mirror)

Christian Post believes his former friend ­Christian Brueckner came across Madeleine McCann by chance as she slept in her apartment before snatching her.

The 54-year-old is "convinced" the German paedophile took the three-year-old girl in May 2007 at Praia da Luz on the Algarve.

And Mr Post claimed Brueckner boasted of burgling holiday flats during chilling “night-crawls” around the Portuguese resort.

He told how the chief suspect in Madeleine’s disappearance had up to 100 passports from ­properties he raided. And he admitted he regrets not tipping off police about his crimes, but insisted he is willing to try to help bring him to justice over the missing British toddler.

German Mr Post, a talented musician and IT expert, became friends with Brueckner, 45, after the pair met in an Algarve bar in the early-2000s, The Mirror reports.

He initially believed his fellow ­countryman could not have been behind Madeleine’s kidnap and thought his criminality was limited to burglary.

But since discovering Brueckner had been convicted of child sex offences in his teens, Mr Post said it was now “so obvious” he snatched her.

He added: “Now I know about his paedophile past, his rapist past, I’m 100% certain it was him.

“I think he found her by chance and just took her on the spur of the moment.

“I think once you are a paedophile, there is a switch in your brain that cannot be turned off. If he saw a little girl asleep, alone in her apartment, he would definitely have taken her.

“Thinking about what he has done in the past makes me sick, it makes me want to vomit knowing I was hanging with him. If he is convicted of taking Madeleine I hope they lock him up and take away the key.” Mr Post was tracked down by the Mirror to a small town in Cambodia where he lives under an assumed name.

In his first ever interview he told how he and Brueckner would go to each other’s flats after they became friends.

Mr Post said he knew his new pal was on the “fringes” of crime but had no idea of the true scale until a later visit to his ramshackle farmhouse. He said: “I was sat in the living room and noticed piles of passports on the fireplace.

“There honestly must have been between 60 and 100 of them, neatly stacked up in three piles.

“He told me he got them on his ‘­night-crawls’ in Praia da Luz, climbing on to balconies and through windows. It shows how many burglaries he must have done. He said he would go into rooms and take what he wanted. At the time I guessed he was talking about cash, jewellery, ­passports… but who knows?

“He would only do it at night, it was too risky being seen in the daylight.

“He also said he was trafficking a bit of weed to make cash. But there was absolutely no sign he was into children or anything like sexual crimes.

“Do I have regrets not telling the police about the passports at the time? I guess I do.

“But now I’m willing to go back to court, to face him again, and help convict him if they want me to.” Mr Post only found Brueckner had been convicted of child sex offences after reading about them in the press.

And we can reveal he has twice been interviewed by detectives investigating the suspect and Madeleine’s case.

Mr Post gave evidence against him at his 2019 trial for raping a pensioner in Praia da Luz in 2005, for which he is serving seven years in Germany.

He fell out with Brueckner in 2006 after the crook asked him to go to his house and clear out anything ­incriminating while he was in a Portimao prison for stealing petrol.

Mr Post found some porn films and binned them rather than take them to a friend’s house who had children. He said: “He thought I was stealing from him or something.”

The pair met briefly again in 2012 after Mr Post had returned to Germany to work on a Christmas market in Solingen near Dusseldorf.

But after moving to Cambodia in 2015, he was stunned when his brother rang three years later to say German detectives wanted to speak to him.

Mr Post added: “They said he was a suspect in the Madeleine case. I was absolutely shocked.”

He said he had never spoken about Brueckner publicly before over fears he would be linked to the Madeleine case. And he insisted he had nothing to do with any of the suspect’s crimes.

German prosecutors named Brueckner as a suspect in June 2020 and claim to have evidence that he abducted and killed her. He denies any involvement in the case.

Madeleine’s parents Kate, 54, and Gerry, 53, from Rothley, Leics, continue to believe she is alive somewhere.

Last week it was reported UK Home Office funding for Scotland Yard’s Operation Grange investigation into the disappearance will end this year.

The probe, opened in 2011, has so far cost more than €15million.

https://www.irishmirror.ie/news/world-news/friend-100-certain-madeleine-mccann-26617347

i think the winner is, the search was about finding, that also sold camera, that was stolen by a friend/a colleague/a associate/ a prospect associate, in 2006 when cb was in jail , because they think in germany there could be maybe pictures of madeleine on that.

i do think rachel deserves to be the winner of this round of; how to write something absolutely dumb about the case, and your editor will still send it of to the website. for her work from yesterday. pisa only gets a second place. but he is still working on it.

so cb must be a psychic too, he already had known almost a year before the tapas 9 decided to travel to portugal and his magical videocamera already had taken pictures of madeleine, and survive a first year in the reservoir it never was dumped in. and when that videocamera was sold accidentally or on purpose, or other reasons, with a old camper van. the famous blue bedford, that also was from cb, and the mt in that last product.

also in the last communications hb and ms stole the same articles as ms describes from cb his former address in praia da luz, the little finca, so now they sell us a second home, with a second gun, do not forget it was a big one told ms, and another videocamera that had the same dirty pictures on it. a house in foral , a few miles, what cannot be the around 31 miles they told us already for the location of the reservoir do arade. 

well peter mac, when mostly british parents not even tell the police about a nasty bloke, that wanders in and is setting on the beds of their young daughters intheir holiday let, maybe they are just not the type to tell about a stolen passport and a rolex or two. none of the three criminal acts have had a rise in any given year in the algarve, only when a certain brit start peeling onions, they came out of the woodwork. 

there are more of these so called friends of cb, remember they would tell is in that german doc, jon clarke got mixed in accidentally, were exactly cb was om may 3, 2007. it never happened. they did not know.

and they have all the same disease as the tapas 9, you can never filter a so called timeline out of their stories. the one tells cb meets hb first in any not named year somewhere in the algarve, something with stolen solar panels and helge b and cb decide they do not like each other. but helge b also gets out that he was invited into cb his house in portimao, he cannot find it back, until this date that house is still missing, and when they met in orgiva, with at least two others cb decides to confess about madeleine to hb. ms told that would have been very unlikely, because cb and hb have not been friends at that moment at all. ms and mt were with cb and hb at that same time, but never heard about a story told by cb about madeleine. 

hcw told us cb made himself scarce just after may 3, but still mt finds him near pdl. last week around 50 km was still to understand as near praia da luz, we do not know what the 'near' from mt means. 

the witnesses for the prosecution are quite unique, none of then really likes the police, with reason and experiences. ms already told hb must have been paid by grange, when his first variation on the truth was written down. the others are also not getting a straight story out of it. they all agree less or more about such kind of crime would be in the scope of cb, but it is not something they really know.

i think it is time we get a word out that is the super-enormous-superlative step of ridiculous for all of it. 

it is not even that strange, even the reporters of the tabloids are loosing the plots, it is a confusing intermezzo.

to verdi, we do miss bjorn still!

Verdi wrote:Friend '100% certain' Madeleine McCann suspect Christian Brueckner snatched child in night raid

Exclusive: Christian Post was tracked down by the Mirror to a small town in Cambodia where he lives under an assumed name. In his first ever interview he told how he and Christian Brueckner would go to each other’s flats after they became friends.

News
ByMartin FrickerSenior Reporter

  09:29, 2 APR 2022Updated09:37, 2 APR 2022


Cambodia:  Jim Gamble, under cover, abusing prisoner rights

 Sorry, wrong one.


30-03-2022 -Christian Post speaks to the Mirrors Martin Fricker (Image: Phil Harris / The Daily Mirror)

Christian Post believes his former friend ­Christian Brueckner came across Madeleine McCann by chance as she slept in her apartment before snatching her.

The 54-year-old is "convinced" the German paedophile took the three-year-old girl in May 2007 at Praia da Luz on the Algarve.

And Mr Post claimed Brueckner boasted of burgling holiday flats during chilling    “night-crawls” around the Portuguese resort.

He told how the chief suspect in Madeleine’s disappearance had up to 100 passports from ­properties he raided. And he admitted he regrets not tipping off police about his crimes, but insisted he is willing to try to help bring him to justice over the missing British toddler.

German Mr Post, a talented musician and IT expert, became friends with Brueckner, 45, after the pair met in an Algarve bar in the early-2000s, The Mirror reports.

He initially believed his fellow ­countryman could not have been behind Madeleine’s kidnap and thought his criminality was limited to burglary.

But since discovering Brueckner had been convicted of child sex offences in his teens, Mr Post said it was now “so obvious” he snatched her.

He added: “Now I know about his paedophile past, his rapist past, I’m 100% certain it was him.

“I think he found her by chance and just took her on the spur of the moment.

“I think once you are a paedophile, there is a switch in your brain that cannot be turned off. If he saw a little girl asleep, alone in her apartment, he would definitely have taken her.

“Thinking about what he has done in the past makes me sick, it makes me want to vomit knowing I was hanging with him. If he is convicted of taking Madeleine I hope they lock him up and take away the key.” Mr Post was tracked down by the Mirror to a small town in Cambodia where he lives under an assumed name.

In his first ever interview he told how he and Brueckner would go to each other’s flats after they became friends.

Mr Post said he knew his new pal was on the “fringes” of crime but had no idea of the true scale until a later visit to his ramshackle farmhouse. He said: “I was sat in the living room and noticed piles of passports on the fireplace.

“There honestly must have been between 60 and 100 of them, neatly stacked up in three piles.

“He told me he got them on his ‘­night-crawls’ in Praia da Luz, climbing on to balconies and through windows. It shows how many burglaries he must have done. He said he would go into rooms and take what he wanted. At the time I guessed he was talking about cash, jewellery, ­passports… but who knows?

“He would only do it at night, it was too risky being seen in the daylight.

“He also said he was trafficking a bit of weed to make cash. But there was absolutely no sign he was into children or anything like sexual crimes.

“Do I have regrets not telling the police about the passports at the time? I guess I do.

“But now I’m willing to go back to court, to face him again, and help convict him if they want me to.” Mr Post only found Brueckner had been convicted of child sex offences after reading about them in the press.

And we can reveal he has twice been interviewed by detectives investigating the suspect and Madeleine’s case.

Mr Post gave evidence against him at his 2019 trial for raping a pensioner in Praia da Luz in 2005, for which he is serving seven years in Germany.

He fell out with Brueckner in 2006 after the crook asked him to go to his house and clear out anything ­incriminating while he was in a Portimao prison for stealing petrol.

Mr Post found some porn films and binned them rather than take them to a friend’s house who had children. He said: “He thought I was stealing from him or something.”

The pair met briefly again in 2012 after Mr Post had returned to Germany to work on a Christmas market in Solingen near Dusseldorf.

But after moving to Cambodia in 2015, he was stunned when his brother rang three years later to say German detectives wanted to speak to him.

Mr Post added: “They said he was a suspect in the Madeleine case. I was absolutely shocked.”

He said he had never spoken about Brueckner publicly before over fears he would be linked to the Madeleine case. And he insisted he had nothing to do with any of the suspect’s crimes.

German prosecutors named Brueckner as a suspect in June 2020 and claim to have evidence that he abducted and killed her. He denies any involvement in the case.

Madeleine’s parents Kate, 54, and Gerry, 53, from Rothley, Leics, continue to believe she is alive somewhere.

Last week it was reported UK Home Office funding for Scotland Yard’s Operation Grange investigation into the disappearance will end this year.

The probe, opened in 2011, has so far cost more than €15million.

https://www.irishmirror.ie/news/world-news/friend-100-certain-madeleine-mccann-26617347

But Madeleine was not alone in her apartment, she was with her brother and sisters plus five passports and other goodies for a Burglar to fitch...........next............

this article has some sayings of the friend bjorn r. from that german docu.

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/madeleine-mccann-suspect-christian-brueckner-kept-kids-clothes-and-swimwear-in-his-mobile-home/SH5EBZQXMM5XYVW65HKRITC2M4/

"In order not to be recognised where there were cameras, he took off his clothes and put on diving goggles so he wouldn't be recognised."


and still being expected to been in and out under 2.00 minutes, opening windows, shutters and holding a child, and put his clothes back on to play tannerman. 

Madeleine McCann suspect 'kept children's swimwear in mobile home'

8,000 child abuse images were also found by police investigating the case

News
ByTrevor Marshallsea PA
Luke TraynorChief Reporter

12:33, 17 JUN 2020Updated12:42, 17 JUN 2020

Girls' swimming costumes, children's clothes and 8,000 child abuse images were found by police investigating a suspect linked to the disappearance of Madeleine McCann, according to German media reports.

Suspect Christian Brueckner, reports PA, boasted a motorhome he owned and drove repeatedly between Germany and Portugal was ideal for hiding "drugs and children."

German investigators believe Brueckner killed Madeleine, whose mum Kate is from Liverpool, soon after abducting her from a holiday apartment in the Portuguese resort of Praia da Luz in May 2007.

The 43-year-old Brueckner is serving a 15-month prison sentence in Germany for drug dealing, and is appealing a conviction for the 2005 rape of a 72-year-old American woman, also at Praia da Luz, for which he was sentenced to seven years in jail.

Germany's Spiegel TV has revealed in a documentary that police seized the motorhome in May 2016, as part of an investigation into the disappearance of five-year-old Inga Gehricke - the so-called German Maddie.

The red and white Allegro Bay RV had been bought by Brueckner in Germany in 2010.

It was found at a disused factory site near Braunschweig which Brueckner had bought six years earlier at auction.

During a six-day examination of the site, police also found computer memory sticks with more than 8,000 files, mostly containing pictures and videos of child abuse, the documentary said.

The items were in a carrier bag buried beneath the body of Brueckner's dog.

Brueckner was under suspicion after Inga vanished from the woods near Diakoniewerk Wilhelmshof in Saxony-Anhalt during a family picnic in 2015.

He was charged in relation to the child pornography, but not in relation to Inga.

Spiegel TV said police had also found numerous items of children's clothing, most of them "small swimsuits", in the motorhome.

Brueckner does not have any children.

A friend of Brueckner's, identified in the documentary as Bjorn R, spoke of Brueckner's behaviour while he lived near holiday resorts in Portugal.

"Alcohol sometimes loosened his tongue. He said that he was in Portugal and he got in everywhere and stole cameras," Bjorn R said.

A former ambulance driver who met Brueckner and saw the RV said: "He told me, 'I can transport children, kids, in this space. Drugs and children, you can transport them in this van, it's a safe space in the van, nobody can find them. Nobody can catch you'."

While living in Braunschweig, Brueckner ran a kiosk between 2013 and 2015.

Bjorn R told the documentary he had been contacted in 2013 by police investigating Madeleine's disappearance.

He said: "One day I came into the kiosk and he was a little bit distraught and said, 'Hey, look what I've got here' - and he showed me a subpoena for the Madeleine McCann case.

"You could see it churned him up a bit but he wasn't panicking and he wasn't saying 'they are on my heels'.

"I think he said he had been there but that he had nothing to do with it and that was that."

Brueckner has racked up 17 convictions across Europe, including for sex offences against children, drug offences, theft and forgery.

He was named prime suspect over Madeleine's disappearance earlier this month by German police, although his lawyer, Friedrich Fulscher, said Brueckner denies any involvement in the case.

Alongside the developments in that case, German investigators have also reopened the file into Inga Gehricke's disappearance, and the murder of Tristan Brubach in Frankfurt in 1998, media reports claim.

The 13-year-old was reportedly beaten unconscious, strangled, raped and tortured, with the cause of death a long cut to his throat.

It has also been revealed there is a chance Brueckner could be released from prison on July 17 if the European Court of Justice overturns his conviction for the rape of the 72-year-old American woman in Portugal.

Brueckner's lawyers are appealing, claiming that German police broke law by extraditing him from Portugal on a drugs charge but then putting him on trial for rape.

https://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/liverpool-news/madeleine-mccann-suspect-kept-childrens-18436393
....................

Truth is dead!

Where is the evidence for any of this rolex - the reporters don't even bother to try and get their facts right.

The Independent has taken up the reins of this ..

Sixteen years and countless heartbreaks: Where are Madeleine McCann’s family now?

Parents refuse to give up hope and have spoken movingly about ‘new normality’ of raising twins without their missing daughter, Joe Sommerlad reports

2 hours ago

The case

of Madeleine McCann, the British toddler who disappeared from a Portuguese holiday resort 16 years ago, unexpectedly lurched back into life this month when investigators launched a major search operation at a reservoir in the Algarve.

The initiative was instigated by German prosecutor Hans Christian Wolters, who said officials were acting on “certain tips” from Christian Brueckner, an incarcerated sex offender who lived in the area between 2000 and 2017. Mr Wolters has said he is “very confident” the 45 year-old holds the key to Madeleine’s disappearance.

With help from Portuguese police and with Scotland Yard detectives watching on, German investigators carried out a thorough search of the Barragem do Arade beauty spot in Silves.

They combed the shoreline and surrounding grasslands with sniffer dogs, rakes, spades and pickaxes, and inspected the water in a rigid-hull inflatable boat. A no-fly zone in place in the skies overhead allowed police drones to survey the region undisturbed.

The site is located approximately 30 miles northeast of the Ocean Club holiday resort at Praia da Luz in Lagos from which Madeleine vanished on 3 May 2007, sparking a huge investigation that attracted media attention and public interest across the world but which has so far still not yielded any definite answers.

The girl’s parents, Gerry and Kate McCann, have refused to give up hope, recently posting a poem remembering their lost daughter on their Find Madeleine website, reminding readers that she is “still missing... still very much missed”.

“The police investigation continues, and we await a breakthrough. Thank you to everyone for your support – it really helps,” they added.

Here’s a look at the family, whose lives have been defined by the mystery.
Parents Kate and Gerry McCann

Madeline’s mother was born Kate Marie Healy in Huyton near Liverpool in 1968.

After attending All Saints School in Anfield and Notre Dame High School in Everton Valley, she took a degree in medicine from the University of Dundee and graduated in 1992. Beginning her career by specialising in obstetrics, gynaecology and anaesthetics, she subsequently became a GP.

She met her future husband Gerald Patrick McCann in 1993 and they married in 1998. Madeleine, their eldest child, was born in 2003 and the couple had twins, Amelia and Sean, in 2005.

Mr McCann was born in Glasgow in 1968 and attended Holyrood RC Secondary School before graduating from the University of Glasgow with a bachelor of science degree in physiology and sports science in 1989.

He obtained his medical doctorate from the same institution in 2002 and has worked as a consultant cardiologist at Glenfield Hospital, Leicester, since 2005, with the family setting up home in Rothley, Leicestershire.

After Madeleine’s disappearance from the family’s rented apartment complex – while her parents and a group of friends ate dinner at an open-air tapas restaurant, a member of the party checking on the otherwise-unattended children every half-hour – the McCanns led the public appeals for information and became fixtures on newspaper front pages and television screens.

They were also subjected to lurid tabloid allegations suggesting that they and their friends might be swingers or, as physicians, might have been in the habit of sedating their children. Others claimed to have spotted inconsistencies in their account of the night’s events, insinuating that they might have been involved in their daughter’s disappearance.

The intensity of the hostility towards the McCanns would later be described by Roy Greenslade of The Guardian as “no journalistic accident” and “a sustained campaign of vitriol against a grief-stricken family”.

The couple were interviewed as “arguidos” (suspects) by the Portuguese authorities in September 2007, with the parents told that police dogs had discovered DNA evidence from the missing girl in the boot of their holiday rental car. They vehemently denied the accusations against them and subsequently launched a libel action against one of the detectives who had gone on to write a book about the case.

After the family returned to England, chief inspector Tavares de Almeida of the Policia Judiciaria in Portimao signed a nine-page report alleging that Madeleine had died in the holiday apartment as a result of an accident (rather than been abducted by a stranger), that the tapas dinner and rota checks had been part of a planned cover-up, that the family’s friends had helped to mislead the police and that the McCanns had concealed her body and then faked a kidnapping.

That official suspicion lingered until July 2008 when Portugal’s attorney general, Fernando Jose Pinto Monteiro, announced that there was no evidence to link either the McCanns or another suspect, local man Robert Murat, to the disappearance after all and closed the case unsolved.

The McCanns refused to give up, issuing computer-generated images of how their daughter might look with the advancing years, publishing their own book, entitled simply Madeleine (2011), and endorsing a successful campaign to pressure then-prime minister David Cameron into reopening the case. He did so.

The result was Operation Grange, which saw officers return to Portugal in 2014 and investigate tens of thousands of documents at great expense, without definitively establishing the truth, causing the case to lie dormant for several years until Brueckner emerged as a new suspect in 2020.

Writing in Madeleine, Kate McCann discussed the toll the ordeal had taken on her devout Roman Catholic faith, stating: “There have been many times when I’ve felt God has deserted me or that He has let Madeleine down. I’ve occasionally doubted His existence altogether. And yes, I’ve been angry with Him.

“For now, though, at least, my anger towards God seems to have subsided. I believe in Him and I still feel His presence.”

Siblings Amelia and Sean McCann

Out of respect for their privacy, especially given their ages, Madeleine’s younger siblings have largely been shielded from the glare of the spotlight.

However, Amelie McCann, now 18, did join her parents in remembering her missing sister on the 16th anniversary of her disappearance on 7 May 2023.

Speaking publicly for the first time at a prayer meeting in Rothley, she said: “It’s nice that everyone is here together but it’s a sad occasion.”

Ms McCann reportedly joined in with chants including “Never never give up”, “leave no stone unturned”, “don’t forget about me” and “still missing, still missed”.

Her parents were among the 70-strong crowd in attendance but her brother Sean was not, preferring to remain off stage.

Rob Gladstone, leading prayers at the event, told his audience: “We are here this evening to show our loving concern for Madeleine and for all young children who have been taken away from their families against their will.

“We are also here to encourage one another to keep up hope and pray for a renewal of strength even after this long time.”

Reflecting on the importance of the twins in keeping their family unit together in a 2017 interview with the BBC’s Fiona Bruce, Gerry McCann said the ordeal had forced them to face “a new normality” in living without their daughter.

Kate McCann added: “What people do say is that you don’t realise how strong you are until you have no option.

“And I think that’s very true. Obviously massive events like this cause a lot of reaction, a lot of trauma and upset.

“But ultimately you have to keep going – and especially when you have got other children involved.

“Some of that is subconscious I think – your mind and body just take over to a certain extent. But if you can’t change something immediately, you have to go with it and do the best that you can.”

The couple also addressed the online abuse they have received, commenting: “I’m sure it is a very small minority of people who spend their time doing it, but it has totally inhibited what we do.

“Personally, we don’t use social media, although we have used it in Madeleine’s campaign.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/madeleine-mccann-family-disappearance-portugal-b2347676.html

What's needed here is a reminder of the facts - not the fiction.

Madeleine McCann – latest news: Kate and Gerry forced to wait ‘weeks’ for reservoir search results

In major new development in Madeleine McCann investigation, police scoured remote reservoir in Portugal last week

Tara Cobham
20 minutes

Madeleine McCann’s parents will have to wait several weeks to find out the results of the analysis of the materials gathered in the new search in their daughter’s investigation, according to German authorities.

Police were scouring the remote Barragem do Arade reservoir in the Algarve, Portugal last week, around 35 miles from where the then-three-year-old went missing in 2007 while on a family holiday in Praia da Luz.

As police concluded their three-day hunt for evidence on Thursday, they confirmed “materials collected” had been sent to Germany for analysis.

But German authorities have told the BBC that Kate and Gerry will have to wait several weeks before they find out the results.

Speaking to the BBC, Braunschweig prosecutor Hans Christian Wolters said there had been good reason to scour the reservoir area and that the German-led investigation is ongoing out of the public eye, with other searches having been conducted.

This comes as letters written by the prime suspect in the Madeleine McCann case - Christian Brueckner, who is in jail for rape - in which he protests his innocence, have been revealed for the first time.



https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/madeleine-mccann-shrine-christian-brueckner-b2347510.html

Forced to wait .... agonizing wait .... another set-back .... more heartache .... how much more pain .... when will they know peace .... when will it end - good question!

Now I'm bored

Kate and Gerry? They are not national treasures, they are the primes suspects in the disappearance of their own daughter MADELEINE.

crusader wrote:Tell a lie often enough, and people will start to believe it.

And that's it - in a nutshell.

Good job we ain't all so daft as to be fooled by all this tomfoolery.

they can't help themselves. hcw has even taken the time to tell the german media, it have not been tip-offs from cb, that made them ask for a search. he had tip-off about cb. hcw knows it must happened differently, maybe because he was there, when the tip-off landed on his desk.

always nice to use a language barrier, and it looks to be a sturdy one this time. they jump high and low to miss out on reality. 

or it was just a bit of a concrete approach of the hcw, talking to the beeb in his english. we all know what can happen when he does just that.

it is actually why i never wanted to be a teacher, remember all these times everyone had to write at least two pages about one word or sentence. and you had the obligation to read all 30 of them! knowing most people are just not that talented enough to write up a story, that ends up readable. 

never had guessed then, that such an exercise would be called media. 

and it is not their first outing in trying to tell us the suspect must have done it. the names change, their origine, but the tales still are only from the fairies. they must have their years under their belt, but let say, they had been trained as an car mechanic, these would be capable to get all 4 wheels of it, and keep telling you it is still a car. 

dear joe the reporter did not even try to be correct.

the bbc has what wolters did say about it to the ndr, a german broadcast enterprise;

"The only thing that I would clarify is that it doesn't come from the suspect - so we don't have a confession or anything similar now, or an indication from the suspect of where it would make sense to search."


full link;
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-65710265


but i did like the live streams the independent had, they had exactly the amount of time i needed to crochet a pair of socks. nice timely lunch breaks too. 

I see Clarke of the Olive Press was on location in Silves on the afternoon of 24th May, 2023.

He is in the process of artfully weaving the case of Joana Cipriano into the latest development. I quote..

Olive Press wrote:Marcos Aragao Correia organised two searches around the Barragem de Arade alongside the Spanish detective agency, Metodo 3, who were hired by the McCann family.

As well as insisting their findings - including bones in a bag weighed down by a stone and a child's sock - were 'ignored' by police, he claims the 'corrupt' government of the time orchestrated a cover up.

In a damning interview by email with the Olive Press, he dre parallels with another missing girl, Joana Cipriano, who vanished at the age of 8, just 10 miles from Praia da Luz where Madeleine when missing in May 2007.

Writing from his home in Madeira, he slammed the way the mother of the girl, Leonor Cipriano, who he represented as a lawyer, had been tortured by police into signing 'a false confession' that she had killed her daughter.

And he described it as particularly 'shameful' that the same group of detectives, led by Gonzalo [sic] Amaral, was later tasked with investigating the case of missing Maddie, who vanished while on holiday in Praia da Luz.

"It is totally shameful that the Portuguese Government, led by the corrupt socialist Prime Minister Jose Socrates, allowed Amaral, already accused of torturing Leonor, to again be responsible for an investigation into the disappearance of another child, Madeleine McCann"

Jon Clarke of the Olive Press should be more cautious about with whom he confides.

I can't shift this gut feeling Clarke is in some way affiliated with Julian Peribañez, former employee of Metodo3 private detective agency.

I've never seen anything to connect the two, apart from the Netflix Madeleine McCann Show, but the Spanish connection keeps rearing it's ugly head.

Why?

Sixteen years and £13m later, could Madeleine McCann have been saved from abduction?

As police search a reservoir, her parents are praying this won’t be another missed opportunity

By Harry de Quetteville 27 May 2023 • 9:00am

There is no doubting the beauty of the Barragem do Arade reservoir, its glistening blue waters a vibrant contrast to the dry reddish soil of its shores, where wild flowers sprout amid orange groves. From single-track roads, footpaths lead off into the expanse that borders the lake, to secluded areas perfect for a picnic and a bonfire, a drink and a smoke, perhaps of something illicit. Or, darkly, for something far more sinister.

For this is the area, 30 miles from Praia da Luz, where police this week have been digging and probing for clues in a 16-year-old investigation which has baffled, captivated and tormented those at its heart. Today for Kate and Gerry McCann, whose daughter Madeleine disappeared from the holiday village where the family was staying 16 years ago – freezing her forever in our minds as a toddler when today she might be a 20-year-old woman – these footpaths may lead to some sort of resolution.

Earlier this month, to mark a vigil on the anniversary of Madeleine’s disappearance, where her 18-year-old sister Amelie lit candles in her memory, they noted: “The police investigation continues, and we await a breakthrough.” German prosecutor Christian Wolters, leading the search at the reservoir, put matters more starkly: “Of course we are still looking for the body. [But] there are other things too.”

But the truth is, that after a hunt for a little girl over a decade and a half, that has involved the police forces of three nations, countless missteps, many millions of pounds (the Metropolitan Police have spent £13 million since they started their investigation in 2011 while the spending in Portgual and Germany is not known), appalling accusations and conspiracy theories, these paths may also lead nowhere. Or worse, since the dig team packed up on Thursday night, they may offer up clues only to the “what might have been?”

Now, so long after Madeleine went missing, there is a prime suspect for her abduction, the German 46-year-old convicted sex offender Christian Brueckner, and a key location in her disappearance, and yet despite the samples sent back from the reservoir to forensics labs, nothing may come of it.

Because mistakes, and the passage of time, have effaced and eroded so many of the clues that might long ago have incarcerated whoever broke into the children’s room of the McCanns’ holiday apartment, pulled back their eldest daughter’s duvet while their younger twins slept on, separated Madeleine from Cuddle Cat, her favourite teddy, and lifted her off into the night.

Fifteen years ago, Portuguese police closed the case, saying there was nothing more they could do. Now German police are convinced they have the man they want in their sights. But will they find enough to make a case stick? And if the same rigour had been applied in the years before May 3 2007, the night Madeleine went missing, or even during the hours after, might this whole trauma have been prevented in the first place? Could she have been saved?

The list of mistakes, of bumbling, straightforward errors, made in the aftermath of her disappearance is well known: the fact that the so-called “golden hour” – that vital chance in the immediate aftermath of a child’s disappearance to find them – was spurned by Portuguese police appearing late at the resort; that house-to-house enquiries were haphazard; that delays meant potentially vital CCTV footage from a neighbouring apartment block had been wiped by the time officers got round to checking it; and possibly worst of all, that a series of procedural errors were made in securing forensic evidence from the crime scene.

The McCanns’ apartment, for example, was not taped off until well into the following morning, by which time dozens of people had been in and out. Vital sheets, blankets and pillow cases were reportedly washed by resort cleaners allowed to follow their normal routine. DNA testing was not carried out on Cuddle Cat. Officers performing fingerprint dusting were photographed not wearing gloves themselves.


Kate McCann holding Madeleine's favourite toy, Cuddle Cat Credit: John Taylor

If not enough effort was spent on these leads, too much time was wasted on others. For example Jane Tanner, a friend of the McCanns, told police she saw a man carrying a slumbering child in his arms at the time. This “mystery” suspect was a key avenue of the investigation. But when, more than five years later, British police launched their own inquiry – Operation Grange – they quickly traced and ruled out the “suspect” merely by checking the records of the resort creche.

Yet possibly the most disabling wrong turn was performed by Goncalo Amaral, the detective in the charge of the Portuguese investigation – at least until he was removed in October 2007. He, according to one long-time observer of the inquiry, “became utterly convinced that the McCanns themselves were guilty” – partly through DNA traces found in their hire car – and began, in this version of events, to prioritise police resources accordingly.

“Ultimately when you read through the detail of the [hire-car] DNA you see the absolute red herring it was, but it was a dangerous red herring because I think investigators in Portugal thought this was a smoking gun,” Jim Gamble, a former top child protection officer, later told the producers of a Netflix documentary. To the horror of their daughter’s disappearance, the McCanns had to add the horror of being suspects.

In 2015, after writing a book about the case, Amaral was ordered to pay half a million euros in libel damages to the McCanns – a decision overturned on appeal by a judge who ruled the detective’s claims were covered by a right to “free speech”.

Only when Scotland Yard began their review of the case in 2011 were breakthroughs made. Mobile phones shown to be in the area on May 3 2007 had not been traced to registered owners. In October 2013, Detective Chief Inspector Andy Redwood, then leading the Met inquiry, said doing so was tough to do with mobiles acquired six years earlier on a pay-as-you-go basis. But eventually, they did match a phone to a name: Brueckner.

The prime suspect in the Madeleine McCann case, a drifter now serving a seven-year sentence for the rape of a 72-year-old American woman, lived more or less permanently in the Algarve between 1995 and 2007, at times very close to where Madeleine went missing. His first conviction for sexually abusing a child came in 1993, when he was just 17. But after a two-year youth sentence he left Germany for Portugal, mixing casual jobs with petty crime.

With an Austrian carpenter called Michael Tatschl, he shared a ramshackle farmhouse near Praia da Luz, with Tatschl later describing him as both a “very good burglar” who amassed countless passports and valuables by breaking into apartments, and “a pervert … more than capable of snatching a child”.

In 2006, the pair were jailed for several months after stealing diesel from lorries, being released in December, just months before Madeleine was abducted. While in jail, another German drifter Manfred Seyferth, with a man called Helge Busching, claim they broke into Brueckner’s home and stole a gun and a video camera. Footage shot with the camera, they allege, shows Brueckner abusing and torturing a woman as well as a girl in her teens.

Seyferth and Busching allegedly disposed of the gun at the reservoir, which Brueckner called “paradise” and allegedly visited days before Madeleine’s disappearance.

Last October, at a court in Braunschweig, central Germany, prosecutors charged Christian Brueckner with four separate brutal sex offences committed in the area before Madeleine went missing. These alleged crimes include two rapes, forcing a girl to perform a sex act, and exposing himself to a 10-year-old girl. But in April, the charges were dropped after the court declared it had no jurisdiction. Though the charges may be made at another court, it is a sign of how now, whenever the net appears to be tightening, the passage of time and the bureaucracy of a three-nation investigation make it hard to draw close.

The result is that somehow Kate and Gerry McCann have to live with the knowledge that, had things been done differently, a known sex offender may not have been free to wander near Praia da Luz on the night of May 3 2007. They have to live with the knowledge that golden hours were lost after their daughter went missing. And they have to live with the knowledge that every day that passes makes a criminal conviction harder to secure.

Brueckner’s current sentence is due to end in a couple of years. Will he then walk free? Those observing the case, watching investigators dig around the idyllic Barragem do Arade reservoir this week, think not. “Watch and you’ll see the Germans will charge him,” says one. Brueckner has denied being involved in Madeleine's disappearance and has not been charged with any crime related to it. For their own sakes, Madeleine McCann’s parents can only hope that this will not be another opportunity missed. It may be the last one.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/05/27/madeleine-mccann-mystery/

The Telegraph wrote:Only when Scotland Yard began their review of the case in 2011 were breakthroughs made. Mobile phones shown to be in the area on May 3 2007 had not been traced to registered owners. In October 2013, Detective Chief Inspector Andy Redwood, then leading the Met inquiry, said doing so was tough to do with mobiles acquired six years earlier on a pay-as-you-go basis. But eventually, they did match a phone to a name: Brueckner.

Oh joy to the world ..

Madeleine McCann news – latest: Investigators set to widen search after new photos reveal ‘clues’

In major new development in Madeleine McCann investigation, police scoured remote reservoir in Portugal last week

Tara Cobham
7 minutes ago

Investigators are set to widen the search for Madeleine McCann after photos belonging to prime suspect Christian Brueckner revealed ‘clues’.

Two other areas surrounding Praia da Luz, where Madeleine disappeared in 2007, could be searched by police, the Sun reported.

Investigators made the discovery after looking through more than 8,000 photographs belonging to Brueckner.

A source told the Sun: “German officers have gone through more than 8,000 pictures belonging to Christian B. That forensic work led them to Barragem - but there are other places that have come up in the pictures too.

“Detectives are seeking to work out where they are and why Christian B was taking pictures of those places.”

It comes after police searched the remote Barragem do Arade reservoir in the Algarve, Portugal last week, around 35 miles from where the then-three-year-old went missing.

The office of German prosecutor Christian Wolters said investigators were acting in response to “certain tips”.

The reservoir is known to have been frequented by the latest suspect in the case Christian Brueckner.

According to Portuguese broadcaster SIC, the suspect considered the area his “little slice of paradise”.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/madeleine-mccann-updates-today-christian-brueckner-b2347975.html

Oh well, if the Sun says so it must be true - innit..

EXCLUSIVE

   NewsWorld News

MADDIE HUNT Madeleine McCann cops identify TWO more areas linked to suspect Christian B as they ramp up hunt after dam search

   Katie DavisNick Owens

   Published: 10:42, 30 May 2023Updated: 12:16, 30 May 2023

COPS leading the search for Madeleine McCann have identified at least two other areas linked to prime suspect Christian B they could scour for clues.

Detectives last week combed the desolate Arade Dam in Portugal the convicted rapist and paedophile called his "little paradise".

They found a "relevant clue" after three days of digging at the remote site 31 miles from Praia da Luz, where three-year-old Madeleine vanished in 2007.

But The Sun understands there could be other areas in Praia De Luz where Christian B spent time that could be checked out.

A source said: “German officers have gone through more than 8,000 pictures belonging to Christian B.

“That forensic work led them to Barragem - but there are other places that have come up in the pictures too.

"Detectives are seeking to work out where they are and why Christian B was taking pictures of those places.”

Cops scoured the dam for three days following a "very credible" tip-off amid claims he had been to the spot days after Maddie vanished.

The tip-off - plus geolocation clues found in Christian B's vile stash of 8,000 videos and images - is understood to have sparked the search.

Police were spotted removing what appeared to be large brown evidence bags from the search site, where The Sun's exclusive pictures show Christian B's sinister secret camp.

They have not revealed any information about what was found, however, following the first major search for Maddie in nine years.

The source also said German officers have long believed Portuguese cops who led the original probe didn’t do things properly.

They added: "German detectives remain hugely skeptical about the way the investigation has been carried out in Portugal which is why they are keen to carry on searching and looking at areas - even those where Portuguese cops claim to have examined.

"They believe fresh work could unlock new clues which move the case forward.”

Sources close to Christian’s legal team said any new probes or searches will be a “waste of time”.

The source said: “He didn’t kill Madeleine and all of this is taking attention away from the job of finding out who really did.”

Christian B became the prime suspect in Madeleine’s disappearance in 2020 but cops did not find enough evidence to charge him.

He is now serving seven years in a German jail for raping a pensioner in Praia da Luz in 2005.

Madeleine vanished from her family’s holiday apartment in May 2007 while her parents Gerry and Kate dined with pals nearby.

In 2006 Christian B, who moved to the Algarve in 1994, and his old flatmate, fellow German Michael Tatschl, were jailed for eight months for fuel theft.

Christian B was freed in December 2006, five months before Madeleine vanished — and he is thought to have visited the Arade lake around the time she went missing.

The convicted sex offender has always denied involvement in Madeleine’s disappearance and has done so again in letters from his prison cell.

He claimed there is "not even the smallest evidence" and insisted there "will never be a trial".

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/22517259/madeleine-mccann-more-areas-hunt/
.................

Now we all know this to be nonsense so why prolong the agony.

Still ignoring THE EVIDENCE ....

And if they pin the tale on the latest ass it will 100+% falsehood.

The people behind this circus must think we are damn fools - but we ain't, so they can think whatever they darn well pleezy.

Do you think the press largely use trainee reporters/journalists to make a something out of a nothing, because that's precisely what they are doing here.

How to be an 'ace reporter' in one easy lesson - make it up as you go along.