Suspect's pal: I warned Maddie hunt over 'really dangerous' Brueckner

A FRIEND of Christian Brueckner said he rang an investigator working for Madeleine McCann's parents to warn about the "really dangerous" paedophile a year after she vanished.

- MARTIN FRICKER

Helge Busching knew the German - the prime suspect in Maddie's case - when they both lived in the Algarve. Busching previously claimed the German told him "she didn't scream" when they discussed Maddie's case in a Spanish bar in 2008.

He said he alerted former RUC detective Dave Edgar that year.

Busching then tipped off Scotland Yard in 2017, sparking the ongoing international police probe into 47-year-old Brueckner.

It led to German police naming him in 2020 as the man responsible for Maddie's "abduction and murder".

Busching yesterday gave evidence in the rapist's trial on unrelated sex crimes allegedly carried out in Portugal.

He told judges how he found a video camera in Brueckner's house showing him raping and sexually assaulting two women.