Madeleine McCann suspect Christian Brueckner confessed to a former cellmate that he took a child from a Portuguese apartment during a break-in, a court in Germany has heard today.
The 47-year-old paedophile is said to have asked inmate Laurentiu Codin if he too was behind bars for child offences while they were sharing a cell in 2020.
Codin claimed that the convicted rapist had begged him to burn down his lair when he got out of prison, and asked him whether ‘the DNA from a child can be taken from bones under the ground.’
It comes after German investigators sensationally named Brueckner as the key suspect in the abduction of the British three-year-old Maddie from her family’s Praia da Luz holiday apartment in May 2007.
Speaking in front of Braunschweig Regional Court today, where Brueckner is standing trial for unrelated sex crimes, Codin told a story which bore striking similarities to the night Maddie disappeared.
Christian Brueckner (C) is brought to the courtroom for a session of his trial at court in Braunschweig, northern Germany, on September 25, 2024
Madeleine McCann (pictured) went missing on May 3, 2007 at the age of just three. She has never been found. German criminal Christian Brueckner has been named by German prosecutors as their chief suspect in her disappearance
‘He told me that in Portugal, that he had stolen there. He was in a region where there are hotels and rich people live,’ Codin said.
‘He said there was somewhere with an open window, he told me this. He was looking for money.
‘He said he didn’t find any money but found a kid and took the child. He said that two hours later, there were police and dogs all over the place, so he then went away, out of the area.
‘I am just saying what he told me. He told me that a person was with him, who he had had an argument with, allegedly it was his woman.
‘He said he took the child in Portugal in his car, and in the time when the police and dogs were at the house, he drove away and he was gone.
‘He asked me if the DNA from a child can be found as evidence and I answered yes.’
In more disturbing testimony, Codin, 50, said Brueckner had told him how he had used a van to have sex with young girls near Hanover.
‘There was talk of a girl, I don’t know if what he said was true or not. He said that he had a bus and that he had taken her with it. He said he kept some of them, but not others, but he never said that he had killed them.
‘We’re talking about girls, not boys. Not all at once, always one at a time. He told me about two. He said that he had taken someone, had sex with her but he didn’t kill her.’
Pictured: The holiday complex where the McCanns were staying in Portugal’s Algarve region in May 2007, when their three-year-old daughter vanished without a trace
Kate and Gerry McCann pose with a computer generated image of how their missing daughter Madeleine might look now, during a news conference in 2012
Asked by the judge how old his victim was, Codin said: ‘I don’t want to get it wrong, but it was very young, tiny. I mean young.
‘Each time when we were together he spoke about it because he was convinced that I was a paedophile.’
Brueckner is serving a seven-year jail term for the 2005 rape of American pensioner Diana Menkes, 72, in the Algarve.
He is standing trial at Braunschweig district court for unconnected sex crimes allegedly carried out in the Algarve between 2000 and 2017.
A house near Praia da Luz resort and Lagos in the Algarve, Portugal, that was used by Christian Brueckner, a German man suspected in the disappearance of British girl Madeleine McCann
The offences Brueckner is on trial for include the alleged rape of Irish tour rep Hazel Behan, now 40, in her Praia da Rocha apartment in 2004.
The former tour guide, who waived her anonymity and has spoken publicly about her experience, broke down in tears as she told the trial that Brueckner had raped her at knifepoint.
He has also been charged with the alleged rape of a teenage girl in his home in the same city and raping an elderly woman in her holiday apartment.
Brueckner is also accused of exposing himself to a German girl on a beach in Salema in April 2007 and to an 11-year-old girl in 2017.
His current sentence ends early next year, and if he is not found guilty in the ongoing trial, he could be freed from jail. The trial is due to end in December.
Hazel Behan (pictured) has publicly spoken about the alleged attack in TV interviews
Speaking outside court, Brueckner’s defence team strongly refuted Codin’s allegations.
‘All of these claims are completely new. All of them. He has never said anything like this before, and they all contradict each other,’ lawyer Philipp Marquart told reporters.
Brueckner is said to have watched intently as as a video was shown to the court showing the apartment where Maddie disappeared in 2007.
The footage went on to show her parents, Gerry and Kate McCann, as they described the horror when they realised she was no longer in her bed.
The couple had left Maddie and her two siblings sleeping in their apartment while they dined at a nearby tapas bar in the Ocean Beach complex.
Christian Brueckner was named chief suspect in Madeleine’s disappearance in 2020
Kate returned to the apartment at around 10pm to check on the kids, and made the horrifying discovery that her daughter was missing.
Brueckner was sensationally named by German police as the prime suspect in the Madeleine’s abduction.
The revelation came in June 2020 – more than a decade after her disappearance.
But he has never been charged in the case, and has long denied any involvement.
