MADELEINE McCANN SHOCK NEW TWIST

FIFTEEN YEARS ON FROM THE LITTLE GIRL’S DISAPPEARANCE, POLICE MOVE IN ON A PRIME SUSPECT

- Michael Crooks

During a visit to his friend’s home in the seaside resort village of Praia da Luz, Portugal, German IT professional Christian Post was shocked at what he saw neatly stacked above the fireplace. He was in the rented ramshackle farmhouse of Christian Brückner, a fellow German who Post had befriended in a local pub, and on his fireplace were at least 60 stolen passports.

While Post knew that his pal was involved in drug dealing and petty crimes, until then he had no idea of the scale of Brückner’s criminal activity.

“He told me he got [the passports] on his ‘night crawls’ in Praia da Luz, climbing onto balconies and through windows,” Post told the UK’s The Mirror. “It shows how many burglaries he must have done. He said he would go into rooms and take what he wanted.”

Portuguese investigators now suspect that during one of those raids, Brückner may have taken Madeleine McCann. On April 21, nearly 15 years after the heartbreaking disappearance of the English girl, Portuguese police declared that Brückner, a convicted paedophile and rapist, was an “arguido” or “named suspect” in her abduction.