Jon Clarke (Publisher & Editor)
A GIRLFRIEND of Madeleine McCann suspect Christian Brueckner has refused to discuss a robbery of €100,000 she is accused of masterminding with him.
The organised break-in of a luxury villa on the Algarve took place in the same year the British toddler, 3, vanished, in nearby Praia da Luz.
However, while Nicole Fehlinger, 45, refused to discuss it, she did admit she had spoken to Brueckner on the night Madeleine went missing in May 2007 AND he was on a long drive.
She also confirmed he was ‘obsessed’ with young girls and liked ‘violent sex’.
“He said he liked small bodies of women and he liked the bodies of girls before they reached puberty,” she told the Mail on Sunday.
In the intriguing interview in which she finally admits dating the dangerous German paedophile, she denied however that she was ‘an accomplice’ in his crimes.
It comes after detectives interviewed her at least three times over her links to Brueckner, 45, who she was living with for much of 2007 in the village of Foral, a 40 minute drive inland from Praia da Luz.
And in a hard-hitting TV documentary to be shown on Germany’s Sat.1 tonight, she refused to discuss claims that she tipped him off over various crimes, including the abduction of Madeleine.
While her own father Dieter Fehlinger revealed his suspicions – and knew about her boyfriend’s claims of drug-dealing and smuggling children – she would not be drawn.
Despite angrily refusing all attempts to interview her for the documentary, she did tell the Mail: “I have nothing to do with the disappearance and am not involved in the case. I was his lover, not his accomplice.”
In the carefully controlled interview, with various subjects off-limits, she admitted she had started dating Brueckner in December 2006, the month he got out of a Portuguese prison for theft.
Introduced by some German friends, she confirmed he regularly stayed at her rented home, Villa Bianca, where she lived with her young daughter and a series of orphaned teenagers she was paid to look after.
As the Olive Press revealed last year, they were not treated well and one of them ran away for 11 days only to be brought back by Christian Brueckner pregnant.
More suspiciously, Fehlinger – who was born in the same month and town in Germany as Brueckner – admitted she HAD spoken to her boyfriend on the night Maddie vanished.
She confirmed they had spoken by phone but she was vague about his movements AND exactly where he was coming from and to.
Or if she saw him later that night.
While she did not confirm if this was the critical 30-minute conversation someone had with Brueckner in Praia da Luz at 7.30pm just hours before Maddie vanished, she revealed he did ‘drive his winnebago’ van on a long five-hour journey that night.
This must be the same Tiffin Allegro Bay RV that Brueckner had told Fehlinger’s father, that year, he could smuggle 50kg of marijuana or a ‘small child’ adding: ‘nobody can catch you’.
She said Brueckner had rung to say he would be driving his winnebago to Foral from the town of Tomar, 341 kms north (at least a five-hour drive).
But she added that she didn’t remember if he had arrived at their shared home that night.
“I don’t know if he came late that night and parked his vehicle outside and slept in there, and left that morning again, or he did not turn up,” she said.
She added that Brueckner had pointedly speculated what might have happened to Madeleine in the ensuing days.
He told her Madeleine was probably taken by ‘the underworld’, which must mean a paedophile network, while adding ‘the police will never find her’.
Police have twice investigated and shut down paedophile rings in the northern Portuguese town of Tomar over the last 15 years, one centering around a priest and another a lawyer.
She added: “Looking back, his behaviour did not change and he did not look suspicious after Maddie disappeared – but he is a person who was good at hiding his feelings.”
A source at the Sat.1 TV documentary said: “She is definitely covering herself and being very selective with what she does and doesn’t reveal.
“The German police are certainly closely exploring her links to Brueckner and his crimes.”
The 17-times convicted sex offender, who is currently spending seven years in prison for the rape of a 72-year-old American woman in Praia da Luz, is expected to be charged with three more crimes in February.
German police are ‘100% certain’ that he snatched Madeleine, while they will charge him with the rape of Irish girl, Hazel Behan, having left a fingerprint in her apartment.
They will also charge him with the sexual assault of a 10-year-old near Praia da Luz a month before Madeleine went missing and of four children, in 2017, in Messines, near Foral.
READ MORE:
- MADELEINE MCCANN: German sex offending undertaker shared child porn with chief suspect Christian Brueckner
- EXPLAINED: The new clues that link German sex offender to missing Madeleine McCann
- EXCLUSIVE: Explosive fingerprint clue as Madeleine McCann suspect faces three new charges
