Dumped.. just before Maddie went missing

Suspect ditched by older lover

- MARTIN FRICKER

CHRISTIAN Brueckner was ditched by his girlfriend just weeks before Madeleine McCann vanished.

Marina Flache, who is nearly 20 years older than the paedophile, had a 19-month relationship with him after meeting in 2005.

She told a court yesterday she visited him at his farmhouse in the Algarve resort of Praia da Luz, and he bragged about the money he was making from burglaries.

But they split in March 2007 after Brueckner confessed he had been seeing a younger woman. Weeks later, in May, Madeleine vanished from her parents' holiday apartment.