A break in the Madeline McCann case?
Three years after the Netflix blockbuster, here's where things stand
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It’s been just over three years since Sarah and I discussed Netflix series The Disappearance Of Madeleine McCann. In that archived episode of The Blotter Presents, from April 10, 2019, we struggled with the docuseries’ journalistic rigor — and, as I recall, we were also disappointed that the case, itself, seemed impossible to solve. News broke over the weekend that officials now have a suspect in mind, so this seems like a good time to dive back into the case.
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UK newspaper the Daily Telegraph characterized the disappearance of three-year-old Madeline McCann as “the most heavily reported missing-person case in modern history” about a year after her 2007 abduction (?) from a Portugal resort. The BBC has a good timeline of the developments in the case since then, but the key things to know are that no remains have ever been found, and no arrests have been made.
The Netflix series on the case ended up as the streamer’s most popular UK release in 2019, we noted at the time. A few months after that — perhaps invigorated by renewed interest in the case inspired by the series — German officials announced that they believed that an unnamed German national, who was currently in prison “for sexual offences and drug trafficking,” might have had a role in the case, the Guardian reported at the time.
The suspect who is currently in prison in Germany has not been named. He was in the vicinity of the Algarve resort of Praia da Luz on the evening of 3 May 2007, and had a telephone conversation that ended just over an hour before the child went missing from the holiday apartment where she had been sleeping alone with her younger twin siblings as her parents dined at a nearby restaurant.
German investigators launched an appeal for witnesses on Wednesday in which they revealed the suspect was a convicted paedophile in prison for sexual offences and drug trafficking. They have initiated proceedings against the suspect on suspicion of McCann’s murder.
He was described as being white, with short blonde hair, possibly fair, and being of around six foot tall. Now aged 43, in 2007 he was 30 – but it was said that he may have looked as young as 25. The man, who is in prison on an unrelated matter, had been in the Algarve between 1995 and 2007, with short spells in Germany during that time.
Things have been silent since then — the main action has been on the case’s Wikipedia page, which is one of the most detailed ones out there.
Then, over the weekend, news from Portugal. Per CNN, prosecutors in Faro say “a suspect has been formally identified” in the case, the first time officials there have named a suspect since 2007, when Kate and Gerry McCann, Madeline’s parents, were named as the target of the investigation. (The pair were later cleared, obviously, but that they were initially named is one of the many reasons the case attracted such fervent interest.)
While officials didn’t name the suspect, his defense attorney did. According to German attorney Friedrich Fülscher, convicted rapist Christian Brueckner is the man police say abducted McCann. The BBC has more:
On Thursday, a statement was issued by prosecutors in Faro, Algarve's main city, who said a person was made an "arguido" - which translates as "named suspect", "formal suspect" or "person of interest" - a day earlier.
On 3 May it will be 15 years since Madeleine was reported missing and under Portuguese law it would no longer be possible to declare someone a person of interest beyond this date. Declaring someone a person of interest is a necessary step to any criminal charges.
In its statement, though, Portugal's office of public prosecutions said the move was not driven by timing, but by "strong indications" of the practice of a crime.
For his part, Brueckner — who is currently “behind bars in Germany for raping a woman in the same area of the Algarve region where Madeleine went missing in 2007” — denies any involvement in the McCann case. From CNN:
He lived in the Algarve between 1995 and 2007 and burgled hotels and holiday flats, according to court documents seen by Reuters in 2020. He also falsified passports and was caught stealing diesel from a Portuguese harbor.
Portugal's Judiciary Police handed over documents with hundreds of names related to Madeleine's case, including Christian Brueckner, to British authorities in 2012, according to the force.
German police received their first tip-off linking Brueckner to Madeleine's case in 2013.
The suspect had previously been convicted for sexually abusing children, the German State Prosecutor's Office of Braunschweig, in the state of Lower-Saxony, said in a 2020 statement, which added that he was serving a "long" jail sentence "for an unrelated matter." He was being investigated for "possible murder" in connection with McCann, the office said at the time.
It’s possible that Brueckner could be extradited to Portugal for questioning, but it’s unclear if police in either country have any actual evidence linking Brueckner to the case. According to Fülscher, at least, they don’t — and all this “formal suspect” news is just a way to keep that 15-year statute of limitations window open a bit more. He says that this "measure taken by the Portuguese authorities should not be overestimated,” and that “I do not assume there to be any new findings.”
Meanwhile, the McCann family released a statement on the latest news, saying that they are still holding out hope that their daughter is alive, and that “it is important to note the ‘ariduido’ has not yet been charged with any specific crime related to Madeline’s disappearance.”
What do you think, given the current headlines? Is there any actual news here, or is this latest coverage essentially clickbait regarding a legal maneuver? Does this announcement make you any more interested in the Netflix series? We’d love to hear your thoughts on the case in the comments.
Wednesday on Best Evidence: Is an old case having a moment?
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