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Christian Brueckner will find sympathy hard to come by.

The convicted paedophile is the prime suspect in the disappearance of Maddie McCann. He’s also currently serving seven years behind bars in Germany for raping a 72-year-old American woman in Praia da Luz, Portugal, back in 2005.

That’s around two years before McCann vanished from a holiday apartment in the same resort.

As the case against him in connection with McCann’s disappearance grows, German prosecutors say they’ve now handed a dossier of evidence to Brueckner’s lawyers. The evidence links Brueckner to a separate rape in Praia da Luz, as well as “a string of exposure incidents against children while he worked in the resort McCann was snatched from”.

This via The Daily Beast:

Varying theories about what happened next all point to the likelihood that Brueckner was contracted to kidnap her for a child sex ring known to be present in the area at the time. [German prosecutor Hans Christian] Wolters said he believes that the media attention of the young Briton’s disappearance likely made her unattractive to the traffickers, who would not easily be able to keep her identity hidden. Wolters thinks that is when she was killed.

Image: Carabinieri / Reuters

German investigators say they found a cache of little girl swimming suits and child pornography in the camper van where Brueckner [above] was living and working at the Ocean Club in Praia da Luz as a handyman in May 2007.

While the latest evidence doesn’t mention McCann, it’s believed it brings prosecutors one step closer to finally charging Brueckner with her disappearance.

Incredibly, Brueckner actually flew under the radar until he slipped up in 2017 on the 10th anniversary of the three-year-old’s disappearance.

It’s alleged an image of McCann flashed on a TV screen in a Portuguese bar, where Brueckner was sat, and he told a drinking buddy that “he knew all about” what had happened to her.

After a tip-off, Metropolitan Police tracked him down in Italy and he was arrested in connection with the 2005 rape. In 2019, he was sentenced to seven years in jail.

McCann’s parents, Kate and Gerry, say they hold out hope that their daughter is still alive.

[source:dbeast]