Before Christian Brueckner became the prime suspect in the disappearance of British toddler Madeleine McCann, Portuguese and British authorities had another person in their sights.
Seven years ago, police investigated a German woman in connection with a hit-and-run theory, focusing on whether Madeleine had wandered from her apartment and been accidentally killed by a car.
Sky News has now tracked down that woman, who recalls her home in Praia da Luz being searched twice by police.
Served dinner to the McCanns
At the time, she was reportedly furious when officers asked her to empty her freezer. “Do you think I’ve cut her up in little pieces and I’m going to have her for dinner?” she snapped at the officers.
The German woman, who was in a relationship with a now-deceased British man, explained to Sky News that she had been working at a nearby restaurant the evening Madeleine disappeared. She arrived home after the toddler went missing.
Her partner, a chef at the the Ocean Club holiday resort where Madeleine vanished from, had reportedly served dinner to the McCanns and their friends that night.
“I don’t even know if there was a car accident, because I was working,” she said.
“I came home at half ten, and my boyfriend was home already.” She confirmed that the couple’s flat, like many in the area, was searched in the days following Madeleine’s disappearance.
Contacted the woman again
The Portuguese newspaper Correio da Manha reported that the investigation stemmed from a tip-off by the British man’s sister in 2018. German prosecutors had been asked to authorize a covert operation to get the woman to confess, but the courts refused.
The investigation then focused exclusively on Christian Brueckner, 48.
More than a decade later, German authorities contacted the woman again — but only to ask if she had ever seen Bruckner near the McCanns’ apartment.
“They wanted to know if I ever saw this German bloke around this area where I was living for a long time. Other people obviously saw his van, but I never saw it,” she said.
Meanwhile, Madeleine’s mother, Kate McCann, has consistently rejected the idea that her daughter could have left the apartment on her own.
In her book Madeleine, she wrote:
“To give any credence whatsoever to the idea Madeleine could have walked out on her own you would have to accept that she had gone out the back way, pulling aside the sitting room curtains and drawing them again, then opening the patio door, the child safety gate at the top of the stairs on the veranda and the little gate to the road—and carefully closing all three behind her. What three-year-old do you know who would do that?”
Hit-and-run theory
The hit-and-run theory has largely been set aside, but this German woman’s story adds a new layer to one of the world’s most mysterious and closely watched cases.
Christian Brueckner, the main suspect in the Madeleine McCann case, reportedly shows “no remorse” for his crimes, according to the only journalist to have interviewed him in prison.
Ulrich Oppold stated that Brueckner not only feels no guilt for the offenses he was convicted of but also believes he does not require any rehabilitation.
Brueckner is now set to be released from Sehnde prison at any time, where he is serving a seven-year sentence for the 2019 rape of a 72-year-old woman in Portugal. That 2005 assault occurred in Praia da Luz — the same area where Madeleine vanished two years later.
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