Jon Clarke (Publisher & Editor)
THE father of the ex-girlfriend of Madeleine Mccann suspect Christian Brueckner has pleaded with police to search her former home in Portugal.
Dieter F, a hospital minibus driver, has twice given evidence to German detectives in the case of the missing British toddler.
And he believes remains of Madeleine may be found in the garden of the former rented home of his daughter on the Algarve, first tracked down by the Olive Press.
He revealed she and ex-boyfriend Brueckner – who is currently on trial for five sex offences in Portugal – kept a compound with dogs behind the large detached villa in Foral.
And Dieter was told by Brueckner he had a hiding place in his winnebago large enough to ‘hide a small child’.
He believes the paedophile snatched the three-year-old toddler and brought her to the five-bed detached villa, 45 mins inland from Praia da Luz.
His daughter has already admitted he was at her home that night and he ‘arrived late’ en route from Tomar, in north Portugal, but left early the following morning.
“I’ve twice told the BKA police they must dig up the garden and home,” Dieter told the Olive Press.
“Unfortunately, I think she is responsible and getting easy money is everything to her.”
His daughter, a mother-of-three, based in Schweinfurt, has been interviewed four times by police over Brueckner’s movements at the time.
And her name has come up twice so far in the sex offenders current trial in Braunschweig over three rapes and two child abuse offences committed between 2000 and 2017.
Last week, key witness Helge Busching said he believed one of the girl’s allegedly raped by Brueckner was being ‘looked after’ by her.
The former pal of Brueckner named her during his testimony to Judge Dr Engemann.
It has already emerged that two other former orphans were treated badly under her care.
One, Tomás, revealed her cruelty in a TV documentary and another, Lena W, ran away and came back pregnant.
The Olive Press revealed in 2020 how the missing German teenager had sparked a police manhunt on the Algarve before turning up an alarming 12 days later.
She told police she had ‘voluntarily’ stayed with a ‘pair of Russians’ but a later social services investigation slammed her treatment and revealed she had been pregnant.
We discovered that Dieter’s daughter had stepped in representing an agency that brought troubled German teenagers to Portugal, insisting she was fine.
When we tracked Lena down to her current home in Germany, the mother-of-four declined to comment.
However, Dieter and wife Corinne, revealed they are ‘convinced’ she is involved in the Maddie case.
When they tried to contact her over it, they claim she got ‘very angry’ and clammed up.
“In fact she broke off all contact as soon as we asked her about Christian,” Dieter told the Olive Press last month.
“If you refuse to explain yourself and don’t say anything, it is deeply suspicious.
“To think that when I first met Christian in Portugal he had been babysitting my five year old granddaughter!
“My daughter picked me up from the airport and when we arrived at the house in Foral he was sitting on the lawn playing with her.
“And now I know he was prosecuted for abusing someone else’s five year old it makes me sick to the core.”
He continued that the last time he saw her was at a supermarket and she ‘ran away’.
“But not before we could accuse her of being involved in the Maddie case.
“She looked horrified and said we were ‘putting her children’s lives in danger’ whatever that means.”
Meanwhile, the owner of the home, Villa Bianca, Lia Silva welcomes the police coming to search there.
She told the Olive Press last year: “I’ve always said it’s important to try and solve this case once and for all and if that means bringing in diggers fair enough,” she said.
She added that her former tenant and her ‘various boyfriends’ were nothing but ‘trouble’.
She claimed she left owing a lot of money in rent and the place was left in a ‘total mess’.
A BKA source told the Olive Press this week they ‘still hope to undertake more searches soon’ in Portugal and this ‘could include Foral’.
Prosecutor Hans Christian Wolters said: “We gave the info from Dieter to the Portuguese police but I don’t know if they are going to do anything.
“We can only ask them. If they want to do it they do it, if they don’t, they don’t. We can’t go on our own.”
He added: “I can’t confirm how many times we have spoken to this lady but it is various times.
“She is a witness in the Maddie case but I can’t say how important.”
The trial of Christian Brueckner is continuing this week.
