Christian Brueckner: To be or not to be

A plot to kidnap a child was being hatched in a Portuguese holiday resort a week before Madeleine McCann vanished there, Sky News has been told.

Martin Brunt
Crime correspondent @skymartinbrunt

Videos here https://news.sky.com/story/plot-to-kidnap-child-hatched-a-week-before-madeleine-mccann-disappeared-13066078

Expat Ken Ralphs said that Christian B, the German drifter suspected of abducting Madeleine, tried to recruit a mutual friend to help find a youngster to sell to a childless couple.

Mr Ralphs, a former UK political campaigner, said Christian B made the offer to the man who was penniless and living in a tent in a remote part of the Algarve coast.

Mr Ralphs, 59, said: "We were sitting around the fire one night after a meal, we had a few beers and during the early hours of the morning my friend began to cry.

"I asked him what the matter was and, eventually, he confessed to me he was getting involved with Christian to steal a child from Praia da Luz from a rich family."


Mr Ralphs, Christian and their mutual friend, a foreigner who cannot be named for legal reasons, were all part of a nomadic, bohemian community living - for different reasons - off-grid in isolated spots in southwest Portugal.

After a short drive off-road, Mr Ralphs took me along a track to a clearing in the woods about 20 miles from Praia da Luz, the beachside village from where Madeleine disappeared in May 2007.

"It's fenced off now, probably privately owned," explained Mr Ralphs, as we stood in the shadow of several towering eucalyptus trees.

"But 17 years ago my friend and his family were living in a teepee here and me and my wife used to bring them food.


"Christian knew the guy was vulnerable and wanted to travel abroad, but he couldn't leave because he couldn't afford the air tickets."

Mr Ralphs said he told his friend not to get involved in the plot and offered to help him financially when he returned from a trip he was about to make to the UK.

"I said you can't get involved in kidnapping a person for ransom, that's ridiculous, then he explained - 'no, it's not like that'. Christian had a customer, a buyer lined up, a German couple who couldn't have children."

'I showed police secret map'

A week later, Mr Ralphs was back in the UK when he heard the news that Madeleine, aged three, had vanished without a trace from her family's rented holiday apartment.

He told me that within three hours he had driven from his father's home to a police station in Workington, Cumbria, and reported what he knew.

"I said to the police, here's the secret map of how you get to this point in the woods here. I said that must be sent immediately to the Portuguese police."

On his return to the Algarve he went to his local police station and repeated his story, but said he was told Portuguese detectives knew nothing about it.

He found his friend had disappeared, his teepee tent burned, and there was no sign of Christian B. He never saw either of them again.

Mr Ralphs added: "The GNR [local police] asked me, 'have you made your statement to the British police'? I said, 'yeah' and they said, 'well, don't worry, go home. If they need to contact you, they will'. And of course, over the years nobody contacted me."

In 2020, when Christian B was publicly identified as the Madeleine suspect, Mr Ralphs recognised him from media photographs and again contacted the police.

Mr Ralphs was interviewed by Portuguese detectives, though he still doesn't know what part his evidence has played in the investigation.

He said: "They told me someone had made contact with my friend abroad and he had denied knowing me, but I have a dozen witnesses who will say that he's lying. I guess he just didn't want to be interviewed by police."

Mr Ralphs has had contact with Scotland Yard detectives and late last year sent a detailed statement to the German prosecutor now leading the Madeleine investigation.

The prosecutor, Hans Christian Wolters, told Sky News he had passed the statement to German investigators.


'He normally parked in the bushes where he was hidden'

Christian B, who cannot be fully identified under German privacy laws, is still the main suspect in Madeleine's disappearance but has not been charged. He denies any involvement.

He is currently serving a seven-year sentence in a German prison for the rape of an elderly American woman, a crime he committed in Praia da Luz in 2005.

Mr Ralphs said he knew Christian in the months before Madeleine vanished because they both used to park their camper vans on Barranco beach at the end of a long, rocky track.

Mr Ralphs and his wife had left the UK when police mistakenly exposed him after he had passed on information about a gangland murder.

He successfully sued Greater Manchester Police, pulled out of a witness protection plan and disappeared into an itinerant life in Portugal.

When German police appealed for information about the then unnamed suspect in 2020 they released a photograph of Christian B's yellow and white camper van parked on Barranco beach near its eastern cliffs.

"I think Christian took that picture to show his friends back in Germany, a tourist snap," Mr Ralphs told me as we wandered the beach on a blowy January morning.

"He normally parked away from the sea, in the bushes where he was hidden and could sell drugs which was what he was known for."

I showed Mr Ralph pictures of Christian B from those days and more recent police photographs and asked if he was sure it was the same man.

"Of course, it's definitely him," he said. "I remember him clearly, he was good-looking, spoke very good English and was polite, though not particularly friendly. A bit of a loner."


Mr Ralphs's evidence of a plan to steal a child is backed up by Michael Tatschl, a good friend of Christian B in those days.

Tatschl told author Jon Clarke in his book, My Search For Madeleine: "He (Christian B) was always bragging about money and making money, particularly from burglaries. He even talked about selling kids, maybe to Morocco."

And Scotland Yard detectives have always believed that, whatever her ultimate fate, Madeleine was abducted in a carefully planned operation.

Sky News has approached Christian B's lawyer and Scotland Yard for comment.

A reminder of what Martin Brunt, author of the nonsense in the last post, originally told us.

@sharonl #481 wrote:Sky News has approached Christian B's lawyer and Scotland Yard for comment.

Im RTL-Interview geht es auch um die aktuellen Gerüchte, Christian B. könnte Maddie entführt haben, um sie an ein kinderloses, deutsches Ehepaar zu verkaufen. „Ich glaube nichts, was die schreiben. Das ist in meinen Augen ganz viel Humbug“, meint Fülscher dazu. „Es gibt eine Menge Falschinformationen, die insbesondere von einigen britischen Medien immer wieder in den Umlauf gebracht werden.“

Translation:

The RTL interview also deals with the current rumors that Christian B. could have kidnapped Maddie in order to sell her to a childless German couple. "I don't believe anything they write. In my opinion, it's a lot of humbug," says Fülscher. "There is a lot of false information that is being circulated again and again, especially by some British media."

Source: RTL interview: https://www.rtl.de/cms/maddie-verdaechtiger-christian-b-vor-vergewaltigungsprozess-anwalt-zu-rtl-werden-den-freispruch-verteidigen-5076451.html

woodpecker wrote:This  childless German couple would ideally have wanted a baby or as young a child as possible - so why take  Madeleine, a few days short of her 4th birthday when her just two year old blonde sister was available for taking?

So was a younger child in the group, Racheal and Matt's Grace,

What childless German couple are going to put a 4 year old into a Kindergarten where the Teacher is going to notice an English accent straight away?

The Police invitation to attend an interview regarding Madeleine was for the 6 Nov 13 at 13:00.

Christian Brückner was born on the 07 Dec 76 in Würzburg.

‘Weeks later’ turns out to be ‘a Month later’?

CB was interviewed as a Witness to give the Police any information to the disappearance of Madeleine McCann between Midnight 01.05.2007 and 31.05.2007.

Strange that no one wanted to know what Brückner might have saw or heard between 28 April and the 03 May 2007?

Or did they not want to know?

All the above Photos are contained in the Spiegel TV production from 3 years ago, ‘My friend Christian B’ and mention no Birthday party, just a normal meeting of the ‘Drinking and Partying Troop’.

Source:
https://youtu.be/yifTRpSfz-g?feature=shared

The Candle on the Table could be a ‘Grabkerze’ or Grave Candle?
Brückner is wearing black. Whether this is related is not known.

Petermac Post#500

In your first Photo Peter, bottom left in the Picture there seems to be a 'Schneeball' or Snow Globe on the Table.

Normally associated with Christmas, and not Birthdays or Wakes?

Brückner will be in Court today to be charged with all the allegations for everything BUT the Abduction and Murder of Madeleine McCann.

Friday is a half day in Germany.

Obviously they do not want to spend a whole day on him…

According to Fülscher, the biggest challenge for the defender team is "to fight against the effect of the media pre-condemntion. The size and amount of reporting in this case are unique. English media besieged me, offered me high five-figure sums for information and quoted me again and again, even though I never talked to them."

Source: https://www.bild.de/regional/niedersachsen/regional/maddie-mccann-diese-vier-anwaelte-verteidigen-verdaechtigen-vor-gericht-87134300.bild.html

But the process only begins 38 minutes late, the crowd of the press and the public was too great. 

Even before Judge Dr. Uta Engemann can determine the personal details, Defence lawyer Dr. Friedrich Fülscher (39) makes the first application: He considers Schöffin Britta T.-D. to be biased.

In 2019, she called for the killing of Brazilian ex-president Javier Bolsonaro in several tweets on Twitter. "Kill this devil," the judge wrote there, "this bastard must be destroyed." She is therefore not suitable to act as an alderman. The judge lacks  "distance", her views are not compatible with the Basic Law.

The court interrupts for half an hour so that the public prosecutor's office and side action can discuss the application.

At 10.32 a.m. it continues: Prosecutor Ute Lindemann agrees with the request that it is justified. We do not tolerate statements outside the legal system, call for murder and manslaughter, someone like that cannot be a voluntary judge, it says.

The process is addated! In total, only nine minutes will be negotiated on this day!

For the first day of the trial, the reading of the indictment was actually on the agenda. In October 2022, the Braunschweig Public Prosecutor's Office had submitted an indictment of more than 100 pages after investigations in several European countries.

I have to ensure a fair trial. This is not possible with such a judge," says defender Dr. Friedrich Fülscher (39) to BILD.

Source: https://www.bild.de/regional/niedersachsen/regional/christian-brueckner-vor-gericht-prozess-auftakt-um-maddie-verdaechtigen-87183276.bild.html

Update:

The trial will continue next Friday - probably with a new lay judge.

A total of 29 trial days have been scheduled for the hearing in Braunschweig (Lower Saxony) and more than 40 witnesses have been summoned. According to the planning, a verdict could be reached on June 27.