Following yet another week of intense media focus, convicted child sex offender Christian Brückner has said he had nothing to do with the disappearance of Madeleine McCann.
Reports on his “first public comment” were made by Brückner’s lawyers as it is becoming increasingly clear that unless ‘concrete evidence’ is produced linking him to the case, he could walk free within a matter of weeks.
The 43-year-old German has served the statutory ⅔ of his current jail term, and is appealing a rape conviction on legal technicalities.
If successful, he would likely be released “immediately” which German police are reported as fearing would see him ‘flee’ to a jurisdiction that has no extradition agreement with Germany.
Meantime, the press has been full of every kind of lurid unsolved murder possible, suggesting Brückner could have been responsible for any or all of them.
This is despite there being nothing more than circumstantial evidence at best, or indeed no evidence at all, to link him to the cases.
The Resident has spoken to people who remember Brückner from the early 2000s, and while they attest to him being “very weird” and giving off the impression that “there was something not quite right about him”, there was nothing to suggest he was a predatory serial killer.
Nonetheless, mainstream media is adamant that German investigators believe they have their man.
German prosecutor Hans Christian Wolters insists the force has ‘concrete evidence’ not only that Madeleine is dead, but that Brückner caused her death.
But he has also confused the issue massively by saying a) there is a possibility that Madeleine is still alive, and b) that a letter has been sent to her parents to say that she is dead.
Madeleine’s parents, Kate and Gerry McCann, have taken to social media to categorically deny receiving a letter to this effect, and to decry the “many inaccurate stories reported in the media”.
UK reports that police are to start excavating in wells and around homes used by Brückner during his spells in the Algarve also appear to be unsubstantiated.
Portuguese press stories on Wednesday suggest “at this moment the authorities are at an impasse”.
