Jon Clarke (Publisher & Editor)
GERMAN police investigating the disappearance of Madeleine McCann have found traces of her in a vehicle driven by the prime suspect Christian Brueckner.
A Portuguese investigator will reveal tonight that it is one of many different clues that point the finger directly at the convicted sex offender.
Journalist Sandra Felgueiras will announce the discovery on prime time Portuguese television this evening.
“I am certain Brueckner did it and the Portuguese police know he worked with an accomplice,” she told the Olive Press today.
Her SABADO Investigation on the CMTV channel managed to establish that the main evidence is a ‘trace of the English girl found by German police inside the motorhome he drove in 2007’.
Prosecutor Hans Christian Wolters refused to confirm or deny this week that a DNA link had been discovered in the VW van.
But, he explained to Felgueiras – who has been investigating the case since May 2007 – that he could not confirm it ‘because the suspect has not yet been informed’.
The infamous yellow and white van was part of the original appeal put out in a bombshell German police appeal in June 2020.
It was photographed parked alongside Barranco beach, near Praia da Luz, where three-year-old Maddie went missing while on holiday on May 3, exactly 15 years ago.
The van, which Brueckner had borrowed from a German mechanic friend, had been taken on ‘a potential dummy run’ along the Costa del Sol to Almeria from Portugal just weeks before Maddie went missing.
However, he may have also been driving a large Winnebago – the first of two – that he acquired around the time. And he was also driving a dark Jaguar.
It’s not clear at this stage exactly what traces of Maddie were found in which vehicle.
Neither Wolters or Sandra would be drawn further on it, today.
The DNA link is ‘just one of several revelations’ set to be presented by Felgueiras’ show, recorded in Germany this week.
“It was him. He is guilty,” Felguieras added today. “The key point is that Wolters doesn’t deny it.”
She added: “The crime was for money and I think Russians were involved.”
It comes as a rival documentary on Spanish crime channel AMC will tonight claim that Brueckner is NOT guilty of snatching the toddler.
Ex-policeman Mark Williams Thomas will claim that the German police investigation has got it entirely wrong.
He says the facts are ‘inaccurate and misleading’ and he tells the Daily Mail today that his programme will ‘blow their claims to smithereens’.
Felguiras said: “Mark is wrong. He (has an agreement) with Brueckner and his lawyer.”
In particular, he claims that the phone Brueckner allegedly used in Praia da Luz, just hours before Maddie was snatched, could have been used by someone else and up to 21 miles away.
He will also claim that he had an alibi on the night as he was illegally having sex in his van with a 17-year-old girl many miles away in Carvoiera.
Yet, he himself admits in the Daily Mail article that she CANNOT give him an alibi for the actual night in question.
A German police source confirmed this to the Olive Press this morning: “Police have already interviewed the girl twice and she was unclear on the actual dates.
“She only remembers his general behaviour when they got stopped at a police roadblock. That he was absolutely calm and cool.
“Because of that she thinks many years later he had nothing to do with Maddie’s abduction.”
The Olive Press has been in touch with the German girl (who we are not revealing for legal reasons) who now lives in southern Germany.
She declined to comment and, it is understood, also refused to be interviewed for the documentary also set to air on Channel 5 in the UK, this week.
Intriguingly, she had been arrested at Faro airport on May 10, 2007, when police found a Mace rape spray in her bag going through security.
She was grilled over it, but didn’t give a proper explanation.
Christian Brueckner is currently serving seven years in prison for the rape of an American pensioner, 72, in Praia da Luz in 2005.
The 17-times convicted sex offender had violently attacked Diana Menkes, before raping her on film over a number of hours.
He is expected to be charged over another rape of an Irish girl nearby in 2004, as well as three other child abuse cases, in the next couple of months.
One girl was allegedly molested by Brueckner on a beach near Praia da Luz exactly a month before Maddie went missing.
Yesterday her parents released a statement via social media stressing they will be thinking of her on the 15th anniversary of her disappearance today.
They hinted that they finally knew – and accepted – that their daughter had been killed.
“Many people talk about the need for ‘closure’. It’s always felt a strange term. Regardless of outcome, Madeleine will always be our daughter and a truly horrific crime has been committed.”
READ MORE:
- EXCLUSIVE: Italy link before German suspect Christian Brueckner is formally charged in Madeleine McCann case
- PODCAST: Olive Press joins TV investigator to blow open the Madeleine McCann case
- EXPLAINED: The new clues that link German sex offender to missing Madeleine McCann
