Jon Clarke (Publisher & Editor)
IT was May 2, 2015, when five-year-old Inga Gehricke went off to collect firewood for a family barbecue, never to be seen again.
Just like British toddler Madeleine Mccann – who was abducted 17 years ago today – she vanished almost without a trace.
While incredibly similar to her UK counterpart in looks, with blonde hair and blue eyes, it is the haunting timing and close connection to an infamous sex offender that is most intriguing.
For German paedophile Christian Brueckner was nearby on both days; 2015 in Germany and May 3, 2007, in Portugal.
As his trial for five other sex crimes continues in Germany this week, the parallels between the two missing child cases are astonishing. Here, the Olive Press takes a look at the similarities:
It is no surprise that Brueckner, 47, is still a suspect in both crimes.
German police say they are ‘certain’ he snatched and killed Maddie, in Praia da Luz, where he is known to have been talking on his mobile phone an hour before she vanished.
He told at least two people about his plans to snatch a child to sell and later allegedly confessed his involvement to another pal, Helge Busching, in Orgiva, Granada, in 2008, saying she ‘didn’t scream’.
His former housemate, Michael ‘Micha’ Tatschl told the Olive Press, near Orgiva, in June 2020, he was always on the darknet and discussed ‘selling children in Morocco’.
“I am sure he snatched Maddie… He was a pervert and a very strange man,” he told the paper from his former girlfriend’s house, in the hamlet of Los Tablones.
German police, meanwhile, have also refused to discount him in the disappearance of Inga, in Saxony Anhalt.
As the Olive Press revealed last week Brueckner was driving a white Mercedes van at the time Inga vanished. A vehicle that he’d converted to have two ‘secret compartments’.
The many-times convicted sex offender owned a creepy derelict box factory just 90km away and frequently drove near the scene where Inga vanished, next to a facility for rehabilitating sex offenders in Wilmersdorf woods, Stendal.
He didn’t have an alibi for the day in question and a police record shows he had an accident the day before, also close by at a motorway service station.
Most suspicious of all, one of the only clues came from a local farmer who saw a white van driving away at speed down a dirt track away from the area.
As we reported, German detectives have now seized a former white van of Brueckner’s from its new owner to check for DNA matches with Inga or ‘other missing children’.
The new owner, Norbert F, 45, confirmed the van had been dramatically seized, with police telling him it was being ‘impounded over various possible crimes’.
After years of stasis and claims of corruption – which was Germany’s biggest missing person probe in history – the investigation was handed over to a new police department last autumn.
Invigorated with new information, police undertook a third search of the area in as many months, with nothing apparently so far found.
A lawyer for Inga’s family has long insisted that Brueckner is a key suspect and needs to be probed in more depth.
Olive Press sources, meanwhile, confirmed that Bruckner had connections to the Wilmersdorf charity facility and may have had a friend working there at the time.
The Diakonie charity, run by the German protestant church, has refused to confirm to the Olive Press if a letter was sent to the unit by Brueckner from prison.
Brueckner had been adopted via the Diakonie charity at another nearby centre changing his name from Fisher. It is believed he may have attended the unit for rehabilitating sex offenders.
The amazing similarities and timing come as a detective told a German court how he had first interviewed Helge Busching over Brueckner’s links to the snatch of Madeleine McCann and other crimes in 2017.
DC Mark Draycott, 49, told Braunschweig court that he and a fellow detective had flown to Athens to interview the former German pal of Breuckner’s after he called Scotland Yard.
He insisted he had been given ‘no incentives’ and only paid 35 euros in expenses towards the bus he took from his home in Greece to Athens. “He provided a receipt for that,” he said.
“We also gave him expenses to get back to where he lived and booked a cheap hotel for him to stay in the evening in Athens,” he added.
He said his first involvement with Busching was when he had called Operation Grange, leaving an answer phone message asking to speak to Dave Edgar, who had earlier worked privately for the McCann family, and made various public appeals.
“I rang this Greek mobile and spoke to Helge… he gave information in relation to the McCann investigation,” he told the court, adding he had flown the witness to London to make another formal statement in February 2018.
“As a result of that information we conducted other inquiries and searches and this became a line of enquiry, and we worked with the BKA in Germany and the police in Portugal.”
While he said he was ‘instructed’ not to discuss the details of the McCann case (which is not relevant to this current trial) he did tell the court about the two home-made rape videos Helge claimed to have seen with Brueckner in them.
Busching told Draycott he recognised the accused in both videos, which were filmed in Portugal between 2000 and 2006. One featured a girl of around 15 years old and the other a woman in her 70s in a white flowery dress.
He recalled Busching telling him how the pensioner had been forced to put swimming goggles on, during her ordeal.
On attempting to discover the identities of both victims, he told Draycott the girl could have been staying with Brueckner’s German girlfriend, an alleged ‘accomplice’ in his crimes.
Busching told him he had ‘heard’ the teenage victim had been given to Brueckner in exchange for a large number of stolen goods, ‘including washing machines, fridges and other large appliances, which she sold on via the internet’.
Brueckner is currently serving seven years in prison for the sadistic rape of American pensioner Diana Menkes, in Praia da Luz, in 2005, which he also filmed.
This morning, the parents of Madeleine, Kate and Gerry McCann, issued a statement on the ongoing case.
In the moving missive, they wrote: “It’s 17 years since Madeleine was taken from us. It’s hard to even say that number without shaking our heads in disbelief.
“Whilst we are fortunate in many ways and able to live a relatively normal and enjoyable life now, the ‘living in limbo’ is still very unsettling. And the absence still aches.
“Your support continues to encourage us and bolsters our strength to keep going. We know the love and hope for Madeleine and the will to find her, even after so many years, remains and we are truly thankful for that.
“Thank you again for remembering Madeleine and all missing children.”
The Metropolitan Police’s Operation Grange has just been given another 192,000 pounds to continue investigating the case.
It brings the total spent on the hunt by Scotland Yard to 13.2 million pounds.
