MADELEINE McCann suspect Christian Brueckner is facing ‘up to six years in prison’ for a child sex abuse offence in Portugal.
And he is facing more time inside over at least four other sex crimes, German prosecutors have confirmed in a new book.
They include the rape of Irish girl Hazel Behan in 2004, missing Inga Gehricke, 5, as well as murdered Carola Titze, and the sexual assault of a 10-year-old girl in April 2007, just weeks before Maddie was snatched nearby in Praia da Luz.
Hans Christian Wolters told My Search for Madeleine (Available on Amazon), by Olive Press editor Jon Clarke, that Bruckner is facing ‘several years in prison’ over exposing himself to four children in a playpark, in Messines, in Portugal in 2017.
“I cannot say exactly, but it will be two, four or six years. And it will be higher because it is not his first offence,” he revealed.
He added: “It is perhaps fair to say that the evidence is better than in other cases, but I don’t want to commit myself to saying anything until we have made the decision to charge him.”
He also confirmed that the German BKA were investigating Brueckner’s involvement in the sexual assault of the 10-year-old, just 12 kilometres from where Maddie went missing four weeks later.
The German girl had been playing in rock pools on Salema beach, when a naked man grabbed her, first speaking English, then German to her.
Her parents had fortunately been nearby and chased the man off, seeing him running towards nearby Praia da Boca do Rio.
They filed a police report reporting the man as blonde, with a tan and bad teeth and around 1.80 to 1.85m in height and around 20 to 30 years old.
Brueckner was 30 at the time and 1.83m in height.
According to the book, the parents and daughter have recently spoken to BKA detectives to confirm he was the assailant and they are ‘happy to press charges’.
Prosecutor Wolters confirmed the case was going forward saying: “We are investigating Christian B’s possible involvement and there is a good basis for our suspicion.”
He also added that police in Belgium had recently been in touch over the strange case of 16-year-old Carola Titze in Belgium.
“A Belgian prosecutor had some concrete questions about Carola not long ago. They needed some information and we gave it to them,” he said.
The Braunschweig-based prosecutor is also investigating Brueckner, 44, over the rape of 20-year-old Behan in Praia de Rocha, in 2004.
He said it was more likely that Brueckner would be prosecuted first over this case, or perhaps that in Messines.
He is not expected to be charged over the Madeleine McCann case until early next year.
But Wolters confirmed that Brueckner remained the BKA’s ‘only suspect’ in the case and that the investigation continued with ‘up to 100 officers’ and they continued to get at least one good tip a day on Brueckner.
My Search for Madeleine, by Jon Clarke, can be bought on all Amazon platforms in both digital and print formats.
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