The prime suspect in the Madeleine McCann case seduced a young mother in a chatroom used by ‘paedophiles and sick people’, where he told her he thought her three-year-old daughter was ‘cute’ and ‘could be a model’, a court heard.
Christian Brueckner, 47, who is currently on trial accused of carrying out separate sex attacks on women and children in Portugal, was said to have met his ex-girlfriend on the dating site in 2013, before she discovered it was ‘where many paedophiles… operate’.
‘At the beginning I thought it was about me,’ the woman from Hanover, who cannot be named for legal reasons, told the court yesterday. ‘But when I spoke to him, I mentioned my daughter. She was almost four … He said she was cute and could be a model.’
The witness claimed that Brueckner had also boasted to her about burgling holiday apartments at night, and alleged he had ‘always’ been drunk, but that she had not felt unsafe leaving her daughter alone with him.
Brueckner is also being investigated by German prosecutors, who believe he may have abducted Madeleine McCann, then three-years-old, from a rented holiday villa in Praia da Luz in May 2007.
Christian Brueckner arriving in court in Braunschweig, Germany, accused of sex offences
Madeleine McCann disappeared from a rented villa in Portugal in May 2007
Speaking at the court on Wednesday, Brueckner’s former girlfriend testified that the convicted paedophile had asked her for pictures of her daughter after learning that she was three-years-old.
‘He just said that he found her cute, and she could be a model,’ she said, as reported by The Times.
The woman also said that while she ‘never knew him sober’, she never felt unsafe to leave him alone with her daughter when they went on dog walks.
Brueckner is still serving a seven-year sentence for the rape of an American pensioner, 72, in Praia da Luz in 2005.
In 2020, a year after his sentencing, he was named as the prime suspect in the Madeleine McCann case by German investigators.
Brueckner denies involvement in the disappearance.
Brueckner is now standing trial accused of raping a woman in Praia da Rocha in 2004, and abusing a teenage girl and a woman aged between 70 and 80 in Praia da Luz, where he lived, between December 2000 and June 2006.
He is also accused of exposing himself and masturbating in front of children on at least two occasions in Portugal, and insulting prison officers in Germany.
His current trial started in February and has heard from witnesses who say they saw Brueckner in harrowing sex tapes which showed the rape of an elderly woman and a young girl.
Brueckner’s defence have tried several times to have witnesses ruled out saying the case is unfair and prejudiced against their client because of the link to Madeleine but all attempts have so far failed.
A former girlfriend of Brueckner previously claimed at the trial that detectives in the Madeleine McCann case had still not searched her home, despite revelations he called her on the night she disappeared.
The woman said that on the night of May 3, 2007, Brueckner had called her to say he was driving to her house in Portugal and that she did not know if he had arrived.
It was revealed the woman’s father and German prosecutors had urged police to investigate the compound near Praia da Luz in 2022, but they never arrived.
Speaking at the trial in Germany, the unnamed woman said: ‘I don’t know if he came late that night and parked the vehicle outside and slept in there, and left that morning again.’
German prosecutor Hans Christian Wolters said they gave the information about the house to the Portuguese police but ‘I don’t know if they are going to doing anything’.
Madeleine McCann disappeared from the Ocean Club resort in Praia da Luz on May 3, 2007.
The case was archived in July 2008 for lack of evidence, but the family kept the investigation open with private detectives until Scotland Yard opened its own enquiry in 2011.
Since then, German police in Braunschweig have picked up the case after identifying a convicted paedophile as a new suspect.
German prosecutor Hans Wolters said evidence included phone analysis placing the suspect at the Ocean Club resort, and an alleged confession Brueckner made to a friend.
Brueckner was named as the suspect being investigated by the Met in 2020, in what they classed as a murder inquiry.
Christian Brueckner is currently on trial in Germany for sex attack charges her denies
Madeleine McCann vanished from the resort in 2007, the case then archived in 2008
Police said he was seen in the area around Praia da Luz in the days and weeks ahead of Madeleine’s disappearance.
Portuguese prosecutors formally identified as a suspect Brueckner in 2022 after his yellow and white VW T3 Westfalia campervan was reportedly spotted near the Praia da Luz resort in Portugal where Madeleine vanished.
Brueckner has denied he was in the area at the time and distanced himself from the allegations against him.
German prosecutors say phone logs show he received a call on May 3 2007 near the Ocean Club.
He has claimed he was miles away with a young woman at the time.
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