Madeleine McCann Suspect Christian Brueckner Whines About Being Framed
The prime suspect in the disappearance of 3-year-old British toddler Madeleine McCann has complained in an open letter that he is being trapped and framed for crimes he did not commit.
Christian Brueckner, 45, is serving a seven-year sentence in Germany for the rape of a 72-year-old American woman in the Praia da Luz resort in Portugal in 2007—the same resort and year McCann disappeared.
But Brueckner—who is now facing a string of other sex crime charges, and who was found with child pornography and little girl bathing suits in his possession—says cops are just trying to trick him to make him confess to something he says he didn’t do.
In a letter obtained by the Mirror, Brueckner wrote, “The time that some of these crimes are supposed to have happened I was in prison. The prosecution are trying to trap me and hope that I will capitulate under the mental pressure,” he wrote, according to the British tabloid. “They hope that I will just say yes to everything which will give me a chance to escape from this mental torture.”
He goes on to say that there is “no evidence at all” tying him to crimes he is serving time for and for McCann’s disappearance. Brueckner was a handyman in the resort when McCann disappeared and matches at least one suspect profile drawn by police based on a witness who saw a man carrying a child in a blanket the night she went missing.
McCann was nabbed from a family suite at the resort while her twin siblings slept nearby while her parents ate at a nearby tapas bar. The adults in the group took turns checking on the children at regular intervals, and when Kate McCann took her turn, young Madeleine was gone.
Police lost valuable time focusing their attention on McCann’s parents, who are both doctors, and who they suspected accidentally killed their daughter with sleeping syrup so they could enjoy a night out. Such claims have never been corroborated and McCann’s body has never been found.
Police in Portugal claim the German national raped a teenager and two other women in the same resort between 2000 and 2007, but Brueckner denies the charges. “No one knows who these people are and what’s happened to them,” he claims despite police relying on official reports from the time. “No name, no nationality, nothing. Perhaps the victims left for the moon for a while.”
German police say they are convinced Brueckner kidnapped and killed McCann, but they have so far not produced the evidence needed to charge him with the crime. He would face life in prison if convicted.
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