Jon Clarke (Publisher & Editor)
A FORMER friend of Madeleine McCann suspect Christian Brueckner has admitted he threw away up to 80 of his sick sex tapes.
The potentially incriminating evidence was dumped after he was asked to clear out the sex offender’s home in Praia da Luz on the Algarve.
The pal, who has given evidence in the paedophile’s current trial in Germany, admitted the ‘three stacks’ of CD-roms could have included ‘considerably damaging evidence’ against Brueckner.
“I threw away a stack of CDs, at a guess 60 or 80 of them, stacked in three big piles,” revealed fellow German Christian P, who asked the Olive Press not to give his full name.
“I wrapped them up in a plastic bag and dumped them in a big bin just outside Praia da Luz.”
The IT expert, who lives in Cambodia, gave his evidence to a panel of judges in Braunschweig in November.
During the hearing, in which he was cross-examined by Brueckner’s defence team, he told the judge he had been asked to help clear out the paedophile’s rented home in April 2006.
It came after he had visited Brueckner in prison in Portimao when he was arrested for fuel theft with another pal.
He was worried that police would find incriminating evidence, including numerous stolen items, as well as, presumably, evidence of his sex offences.
“Christian asked me to go to his home and clean up and move things to his friend Bernard’s house,” he told the Olive Press.
“When I got there his girlfriend Marina was already there preselecting things to take.
“She was putting things into bags and I was putting them in my van.
“Then I saw some CDs stacked on top of one bag and I allowed myself to take a peek at two or three of them.
“Each of them were carefully hand-written with labels in a CD pen. I don’t remember the exact details but nothing was labelled as paedophile content. It was mostly downloaded from the internet.
“I looked at one and some Brazilian (Portuguese) was being spoken. I didn’t look much longer.”
The 56-year-old, from near Dortmund, then decided he would put them in a different bag and – unknown to Marina – he would throw them away.
He took the decision, he claims, because the friend of Brueckner’s, Bernard Piro, had two young children at the time and he ‘didn’t want them to see the tapes’.
He continued: “Not knowing how they would be stored and knowing there were youngsters at the house I decided to scrap them.
“I didn’t break them or destroy them, I just put them in this big bin on the national main road (the N-125) between Praia da Luz and Sagres. I have no idea what happened to them.”
Curiously, he added he then took two of Christian‘s dogs to a nearby village where he dumped them by the side of the road.
“Christian asked me to take them in my car and release them somewhere and hope someone would take care of them.
“I took them and released them in Barao San Miguel where there were lots of foreigners and I have no idea how he got them back but perhaps some people in the village knew they were his dogs.”
The telecommunications expert, who has a diploma in electronic engineering, had first met Brueckner in a pub in Lagos on the Algarve.
He agreed to fix his computer and other electrical items, including a stereo, in return for doing some work on his car.
P lived near Praia da Luz, near Lagos and Odiaxere, from 1998 until 2013, when he decided to move to Cambodia.
He got to know many of Brueckner’s friends and ex-girlfriend’s while playing keyboards in various bands around the area.
Speaking from his home, in Kampot, he continued: “I met Christian’s much older girlfriend Marina on many occasions and he always seemed to treat her pretty well.
“She was about 20 years older and in her early 50s then.
“But I know he treated another younger girlfriend Linda much worse,” he continued.
“She told me he was an arsehole and I heard from others her experience was horrible.”
What was clear was that he was definitely leading a life of crime, committing regular burglaries around the nearby resort.
Apart from driving a Jaguar he always had smart clothes which didn’t fit his official jobs such as working in bars and restaurants.
“His house was full of stolen stuff and particularly passports.
“He kept them next to the chimney. They were in three piles and there were 80 to 100 of them. Certainly more than 60.
“I asked him where he got them and he said he had stolen them on tours at night time. He called them ‘tours’, the words he used.
“He was a burglar and he went around looking for places with unsecured windows. I don’t know if he went out daily or weekly, but he said the passports were one of the results of his tours.”
P added the police were particularly interested in what else he had at the small farmhouse he rented just outside Praia da Luz from 1995 to 2006.
“They were particularly keen to know if he had sex toys and things like that,” he said.
“All I could say is the place was always filthy and he was definitely untidy.
“The fact that he always wore a suit or blazers did not fit his personality, he was clearly a dodgy guy and he smelt of trouble. I knew not to get too close.”
He claims he fell out with Brueckner after he had been asked to go to visit him in prison a second time with a bag of oranges ‘laced with vodka’. He was kept in prison until December that year.
“He said he couldn’t get any drink or drugs in prison and he was desperate for something. He asked for the oranges, which I didn’t think would cause any problems.
“But when I took them in he was in a really bad mood and short with me.
“Marina had told him that I had stolen his CDs, saying she had seen me putting them in a separate bag in my van.
“He was really angry and didn’t believe I’d thrown them away. I didn’t speak to him after that.”
The last time he spoke to him he came and visited him when he was working at a Christmas fair in Germany.
It was 2012 in Solingen and he was working on a stall selling gemstones, which he does now every Christmas.
“He bumped into me and said hello. We spoke for about 20 minutes and he told me he had gone to see his girlfriend Marina after getting out of prison in 2006 and had become a drug dealer.
“He offered me hash and asked if I knew anyone who wanted to buy it. I said no and off he went.”
He last saw him during the 2020 court case against Brueckner for raping an elderly American woman.
His evidence had helped to convict him of the vicious late night attack on Diana Menkes, 72, which left him with a seven-and-a-half year prison sentence.
Prosecutor Hans Christian Wolters confirmed that a video of his testimony and cross-examination will be played to the court next Thursday (March 14).
“It’s three hours long,” he told the Olive Press this week. “I’m not sure how helpful it is in this case. That’s up to the judge.”
But P himself is pleased he’s done his bit to keep a ‘very dangerous’ man in prison.
“I hope the evidence I have given will help in keeping Christian in prison for a very long time,” he added.
“He is clearly a very dangerous man.”
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