Maddie McCann suspect’s cellmate shares shocking confession
The prime suspect in the disappearance of Madeleine McCann allegedly confessed to a former cellmate that he once took a child from an apartment in Portugal.
Christian Brueckner, a convicted German paedophile, has never formally been charged with the abduction of McCann but has long been the main suspect in the case.
Brueckner, who was in and around the Praia da Luz resort area on the Algarve coast at the time McCann disappeared on May 3rd 2007, has denied any involvement with her disappearance.
The 47-year-old is currently serving a seven-year sentence for a rape he committed in Portugal in 2005, while also being on trial for several unrelated sexual offences he is alleged to have committed between 2000 and 2017.
In court on Wednesday, Brueckner's former cellmate Laurentiu Codin claimed he opened up about his past while they were confiding in each other at Braunschweig Prison.
“He told me that in Portugal, he had stolen there,” Codin told Braunschweig Regional Court, The Sun reported.
“He was in an area of hotels where rich people live ... and when he went to the hotel area, there was an open window somewhere, he told me. And he would have entered this window for money and gold."
“However, he did not find any money, but came across a child and took it with him.”
He claimed Bruckner said he “left the area” and “took the child with him ... and drove away, while the place was full of police and dogs”.
“He drove off in the car and he was gone. He asked me if the DNA from a child could be taken from bones under the ground.”
After the witness said Brueckner was clever, the defendant’s lawyer asked whether he thought it was clever to tell someone in prison about such crimes, to which Codin said: “Perhaps ... he misjudged me.”
McCann disappeared from her bedroom on May 3, 2007, during a family holiday while her parents were dining with friends nearby in the resort of Praia da Luz.
German police said in June 2020 that McCann was presumed dead and that Brueckner was likely responsible for it, however, he has not been charged with any crime related to her disappearance.
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