A week ago, it was reported that a “mystery donor” had paid fines ensuring that the main suspect in the disappearance of Madeleine McCann, Christian Brueckner, would remain detained at least until January. Now, German magazine Der Spiegel has disclosed that the payment of the 1,446 euros fine was made by a former officer from the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA), a police force comparable to the FBI.
With the fines settled, 48-year-old Christian Brueckner is expected to be released on September 17, marking the end of a seven-year prison sentence in Germany for a rape he committed in 2005 in Portugal’s Algarve on a 72-year-old American woman.
However, this development is unwelcome by investigators in the Maddie case, who sought to keep Christian Brueckner incarcerated longer to bring forward new charges regarding the British girl’s disappearance.
“This is not just a scandal, it is a catastrophic oversight failure. The police must explain how this happened under their watch,” a German Public Prosecutor’s Office source told Der Spiegel.
Meanwhile, Brueckner’s lawyer, Friedrich Fuelscher, disclosed that Brueckner intends to remain in Germany post-release and wishes to reside on the island of Sylt in the North Sea, also known as the “billionaires’ island.”
“Sylt has always been appealing to him,” noted Friedrich Fuelscher.
The island of Sylt is the northernmost in Germany, situated off the coast of Schleswig-Holstein. It has been linked to the mainland by the Hindenburgdamm bridge since 1927.
In 2023, Christian Brueckner was charged concerning the disappearance of the English girl. Authorities stated that the German had lived in the Algarve between 1995 and 2007, with phone records placing him in the Praia da Luz area on the day the child vanished.
Last October, he was also acquitted of several sexual assaults that occurred in the Algarve from 2000 to 2017. The defense argued that Brueckner was being tried solely in connection to Madeleine’s case, an argument the Braunschweig court accepted.
The anonymous donation news surfaced shortly after authorities conducted searches in Lagos, Algarve, near the German’s former residence and the location where the girl disappeared.
During these searches, over 20 plots of land east of Praia da Luz, near the countryside home where Brueckner lived and the spot from which Madeleine disappeared, were examined. Radar equipment capable of underground scanning was used. German newspaper Bild also noted that the search aimed to find traces of the child’s body.
Last week, the German Public Prosecutor’s Office announced that the searches were “completed as planned” and currently has no results to present.
In the final portion of their statement, the German Public Prosecutor’s Office expressed gratitude “to all police officers involved in the searches” and highlighted that the “collaboration between the Portuguese police and the Federal Criminal Investigation Department (BKA) was excellent and very constructive.”
Madeleine McCann disappeared on May 3, 2007, just days before her fourth birthday, from the room where she was sleeping with her twin siblings in an apartment at a tourist resort in Praia da Luz.
