Shocking new evidence: Madeleine McCann's suspected killer revealed | 60 Minutes Australia

If innocence has a face then surely it is that of

madeleine

mccann

since the night she disappeared her distraught but unwavering parents kate and jerry have never let the world forget their daughter please don't hurt her please don't scare her but evil what happens to maddie may now have a name christian bruckner good evening I'm liz hayes in recent criminal history there is no mystery more heartbreaking or disconcerting than what happened to

madeleine

mccann

police forces in three countries it has been 13 years and dozens of millions of dollars searching for a breakthrough without the slightest glimmer of hope, but now that breakthrough seems to have come in the most dramatic way in recent weeks, police in Germany and Portugal have searched for sites where sexual predator Christian Bruckner is known to have operated. , I see a lot of clues and a There is a lot of

evidence

that he is a psychopath who has a growing fantasy of violence that finally perhaps ended with the kidnapping and murder of Maddie McCannis tonight.

Experts trace Bruckner's criminal history through Portugal, living just a stone's throw from where Madeleine was taken. The menacing refuge of him in Germany, where damning

evidence

buried of his crimes under the body of his dead dog and exclusive police records of a chat room of alleged pedophiles that reveal the depraved and criminal mind of his that he does not want to catch something small and wear it for days. I will document exactly how they will do it. be tortured we will follow the trail of bruckner's

shocking

crimes we will expose the blunders the incompetence and sometimes the incredible luck that could have let a psychopath escape in the critical first 48 hours there were many mistakes but we also reveal the extraordinary advances that could finally bring justice to a girl lost forever.

I think this is the strongest lead I've seen since the beginning of this investigation. You can place Christian Bruckner in the scene. Yes, we think we have enough evidence to say. our suspect killed mel mccann tonight solving the case of maddie and the monster is the night of may 3, 2007 apartment 5a on the ground floor of the ocean club resort in prague deluge is where the british doctors kate and jerry mccann have stayed For almost a week with her young children, including her three-year-old daughter Madeleine, they met friends for dinner at a tapas bar inside the resort, a short distance from their apartment, after having checked on their children several times around 10 p.m. mccann returns to the room again and discovers that maddie has disappeared and the downstairs window is open, so an unimaginable nightmare begins for jerry and kate mccann, please tell us where to find her or put her in a safe place and tell someone where is. it distresses his family and his parents and i think that touched everyone's hearts the former head of scotland yard homicide simon foy was a member of operation grange the uk investigation into maddie's disappearance and it just grew and grew and grew and in the midst of that the Portuguese tried to build an investigation and it is not easy in those circumstances the disappearance of little maddie mccann electrified the community of prague deluge hundreds of locals joined the search for her as her mayor hugo pereira remembers they worked tirelessly together with the authorities joining in the desperate search to find the child they spared no effort in the following days to try to find money the Portuguese people did everything they could but the Portuguese police hopelessly divided between three different forces made serious mistakes that would compromise the investigation from the beginning if it is not solved in the first two days it is very likely that this will be a cold case forever criminal profiler mark hoffman suspects that maddie's kidnapper escaped amid the confusion at the ocean club and the deluge that surrounded Prague the first 48 hours after the murder or kidnapping these are the golden hours for the police or law enforcement to solve this crime the police officers chosen for the ground search were not trained for the job they were essentially security guards Portuguese police They were not used to this type of case and the sheer size of this case in the Prague Flood.

Kai Feldhaus, director of the research unit at Germany's Build magazine, watched the chaos unfold in the first 48 years. critical hours, there were too many blunders and too many errors, too many people were running in and Outside this apartment, too many people were taking their DNA to the place where they were supposed to look for other DNA. McCann's apartment was not forensically sealed, incredibly, it was cleaned and rented again before DNA samples were taken and any DNA that might have still been there. was potentially contaminated by police dogs brought to the apartment this was the worst criminal investigation university investigation because all the samples were contaminated portuguese television crime reporter sandra filgeris was at the scene on the first day of madeleine's disappearance the dogs that were sent to the apartment to take care of Madeleine were sent to the coroner so most of the samples that were collected and there were more than 600 were made of dark things, which no one knew at that time, least of all the local police, was that a little more than a kilometer from where madeleine disappeared lived a monster christian bruckner a sexual predator who had raped a young girl in germany and then fled to portugal where he had raped an old woman in the prague flood just two years before it is really important to understand that many children Abusers are not pedophiles Mark Hoffman says that from the moment three-year-old Madeline McCann arrived at Bruckner's domain, she was a target as much as her elderly victim, they like to kidnap easy victims and, if you ask me, older women and children, this is not the case. a contradiction, this is one of the biggest similarities at the time of maddie's disappearance, portugal did not have a sex offender registry, but the country's authorities learned of christian bruckner's story the previous year while he was facing a local court for robbery charges, Bruckner told the Portuguese judge that he had a criminal record for sexual crimes against children in Germany, is it correct that he admitted his criminal past in court?

Yes, it is very true, it is very true, she admitted that she committed a felony of evolving sexual crimes. Public defender Seraphim Vieira represented Bruckner. In 2006, interestingly, Bruckner also told the court that he had no domicile in Portugal despite having lived there for more than 10 years. I believe that at the time he was convicted the sexual offense did not appear in his criminal record in Portugal during a simple matter, he was not resident in Portugal, therefore, there was no trace of his past instead. reveal his residence. Bruckner preferred to remain in prison for a sentence that lasted eight months.

He said no one can know about that address. Bruckner called a friend, a German. friend from prison and he asked that friend to go to that house to take all the computers, pen drives and cameras that he had there. Whatever Bruckner was hiding there he was never found. He was released from prison in December 2006 and returned to Pra Deluge just months before madeleine mccann was taken away, he was a convicted child molester when madeline mccann disappeared and he never focused so how can there be a molester of convicted minors living very close, a few kilometers away and it was like the first, but not by any means the last mistake that was made a few days after the disappearance of Madeleine McCann.

Christian Bruckner left Portugal and headed to Germany. A monster that no one knew in motion. 60 Minutes presents with Liz on June 4, 2020 after 13 years that have baffled police investigators in the german authorities of the united kingdom and portugal make a surprising announcement in the case of madeleine mccann the prosecutor's office is investigating a citizen 43 year old german on suspicion of murder we assume the girl is dead your suspect is 43 year old christian bruckner a sex offender currently in a german prison for the rape of a 72 year old woman christian b i mean he is the serial offender in many past cases he was a criminal and was in prison and did it over and over and over and over again 17 or 18 times It's 1995 and 19-year-old Christian Bruckner arrives in the Portuguese coastal town of Pra Deluge.

He lives in this house just over a mile from a resort called Ocean Club. It will eventually become one of the most infamous crime scenes in the world. Bruckner comes here looking for a safe haven to escape from Germany where two years before being convicted for the sexual assault of a young girl he was 17 years old he raped a girl he received the sentence and then he escaped from Germany and came to Portugal when you talk to these people Those who knew Christian Brooklyn at the time described him as a disturbed man who had strange behaviors that no one understood very well in the following years.

Bruckner made his living as a small-time drug dealer and a thief was a criminal responsible for more than 20 robberies. in the same area in the previous hoax bruckner's targets were vacation homes and hotels he was always looking for houses with the same description of ocean club where madeleine disappeared he always went to the first floor to the windows that were easy to open, but below the mask of a petty criminal seemed like an unimaginable evil, yes when I look at his criminal record I see many crimes, but I clearly see two categories of crimes, financially motivated crimes, but he also had a darker side, he went into violence and torture and rape against Vulnerable, weak and easy victims lurking on coastal roads and tourist resorts.

We now know that Bruckner was not only looking for houses and apartments to rob, he was also looking for victims and in 2005 he discovered that the rape of a 72-year-old woman is not just rape, this is one of the most brutal forms of rape possible. Bruckner broke into his elderly victim's home and over a period of hours tortured and sexually assaulted her, inflicting extreme cruelty according to police records that included hitting her with a metal bar, the defendant forced the naked, bound and gagged woman, to stand up and repeatedly hit her on the chest, lower abdomen, arms and buttocks with a metal object he had brought with him.

The attack

revealed

that Bruckner targeted victims of any age, from children. the elderly as long as he considered them weak and vulnerable and in what became his hallmark as a psychopath, he videotaped the entire assault, although the video would eventually be his undoing it is about violence it is about playing god it's about power it's about domination this isn't just about sex or rape, it's about torture. Local police investigated, but the case went nowhere. An opportunity was missed that could have alerted this sleepy community to a lurking monster. The victim felt embarrassed and too scared to tell even her friends that she hadn't done it.

I don't talk to anyone about her being raped, but was this old woman Bruckner's first victim in Portugal? Eerily similar was the ordeal suffered by young Irish woman Hazel Bihar in 2004, when she was raped in her ground floor apartment near Pradeluge by an attacker she described as being young and German and who also filmed the attack, two violent assaults in two years, both with the same characteristics of a psychopath, then, on May 3, 2007, in the same small corner of Portugal, the girl whose face would haunt the world disappeared from the ocean club a stone's throw from where Christian lived bruckner 60

minutes

presents with liz hayes how are you going to bed with me one took a girl is 2013 six years after the disappearance of madeleine mccann these are the words of christian bruckner now the main suspect in her kidnapping supposedly in a living room pedophile chat catch something small and use it for days oh if the evidence is destroyed afterwards I will document exactly how they will be tortured well let's see not only talk but also do it if I look at your life and your criminal. records that he is pretty clear about his fantasy about kidnapping, torturing and fighting children, to name it, and this could be a serial

killer

in the making and this is absolutely a red flag, yes, for mark hoffman, christian bruckner absolutely fits in the profile of a psychopath, a psychopath who in 2007 lived just over a kilometer from the complex where Madeleine was kidnapped and near where he brutally raped a 72-year-old woman and videotaped his crime, they don't actually start with murder or rape and this is sometimes the end of a long process of a growing fantasy because if you think about it, murder or manslaughter is like the purest form of domination because they choose whether the victims live or die, they play god.

Christian Bruckner left Portugal in 2007 during the desperate early search for Madeleine McCann the Dark. Parts of his life were pieced together from incidents, crimes and evidence that remaineddisconnected. The new day of searching has begun until the German investigators finally connected the dots. This year there are forensic police here, police with ground penetrating radar and also police divers after fleeing Portugal Bruckner. He moved first to the German city of Brunswick, a source who knew him speaking anonymously says that for years he ran a kiosk next to a kindergarten, yes a kindergarten, there is a kindergarten and a high school next door , they spent their pocket money on the streets, gave candy to the children. free bruckner has a series of girlfriends always very young charming on the outside but says a neighbor is brutal with his teenage lovers he was very bad with women if they didn't do what he wants he just hits him as I learned from his ex girlfriend she once had me shown that he had strangulation marks on his neck that he had struggled with that is violence in relationships absolutely typical of a psychopath and absolutely typical of people with the profile of Christian Be but even more chilling BrucknerA friend says he talked about creating a dungeon in his rented cabin, just like the Austrian pedophile Joseph Fritzel used to imprison and abuse his daughter for 24 years, the one with the blue roof, he lived there, he had a basement and he said he wanted to remember him with heavy plaques like the guy in Austria and Searches by German police in July this year uncovered a seller hiding in a property once owned by Bruckner May 2015, almost eight years to the day Madeleine McCann disappeared Another girl in Gergerich disappeared The location was just a two-hour drive from where Bruckner lived.

A dark van similar to the one he had at the time was seen leaving the abduction site, but Inga's case was never found and many others are now being re-examined. I think there are more victims of our suspect from another crime, but are you afraid you're dealing with a serial

killer

? I don't know, I don't know, no, I can't judge this on June 1st. On the 4th of this year, prosecutor walters announced that bruckner was the main suspect in the kidnapping and probable murder of maddy mccann. Do you have irrefutable proof that madeleine mccann is dead?

We have solid evidence of Melanie McKenna's death and that our suspect killed her, but I don't have permission and I can't at this time tell you all the details of our evidence. She doesn't have a body, obviously, yes, we don't have the body or any body parts, but we have enough evidence to say that our suspect killed Mel McCann. And can I ask how long ago he realized that Madeleine McCann was dead? It was sometime in the last two years when we realized she was dead. Whatever is fueling German prosecutors' certainty now began with Kate and Jerry McCann and their tireless appeal to the public for information in the years after Maddie disappeared.

The McCanns appeared twice on German television and each time there were clues, the first in 2013, just the name Christian Bruckner put him on the police radar and investigations began. The biggest mistakes that have been made was that after Kate and Jerry McCann came on a German television show and after this show where they showed the portrait of a person who was seen at the Ocean Club the night of the disappearance, apparently there was a clue. of a viewer said this if it reminds me a lot of a person I know, a German who lived there in the area and who lived in a caravan, this could well be him leading his team for Germany's construction magazine.

Kai Felt House remembers the moment in 2013 when a bystander identified Bruckner and the surprising mistake that followed when police inadvertently alerted Bruckner that he was a suspect and then perhaps the biggest mistake in the investigation occurred when local police sent a letter to Christian B asking him to come forward. as a witness at the police station and telling him what he knows about the disappearance of Medley McCann, they alerted him that he could be involved in this crime case, it was a serious mistake. Bruckner realized that he was on police sites when One day I told my friends that I went to the newsstand and he was distraught and said look what I just received and showed me the letter from the police about Madeleine McCain Bruckner.

He never reported to the police, but in 2015 they discovered a dark lead. Investigators discovered that he owned this deserted factory in a remote location. While searching for her, they made a grim discovery: hard drives and USB sticks hidden in a plastic bag buried with her dog on Christian B's property. They found material that, according to current information, is about 8,000 pieces. videos and images and this is quite typical for these types of criminals, they are filming what they do and sometimes they fantasize about their crimes every day and every night, over and over, and over and over, the lair of Bruckner

revealed

many secrets and not only his terrifying buried treasure trove of videos, there were more and there his 10 meter long American camper was parked in his motorhome the police discovered little girls' swimsuits in 2017 the German television interview of Kate and Jerry mccann was repeated on the 10th anniversary of Maddie's disappearance this time the public response brought information from eyewitnesses that Bruckner made a drunken confession about Maddie McCann also reports that friends saw the video of Bruckner's horrific rape of an elderly woman in Portugal in 2005, evidence that would lead to his conviction.

In that case there has been a couple. from witnesses who alerted the police and said we have seen videos we have seen videos of christian bee raping women with christian bruckner now under investigation kai Felthouse believes the story he has been covering for 13 years may be reaching its final chapter i think the suspect who has been named by the german authorities is the most important suspect in these 13 years of the history of the disappearance of melanie mccann there has never been a suitable suspect but what is the police evidence in this devastating case of maddie and the monster that presents 60

minutes

?

The prosecution investigates with Liz Hayes a 43-year-old German citizen on suspicion of murder. Is this the end of the case of the mysterious disappearance of three-year-old Madeleine McCann? Police teams continue to carry out forensic searches at properties in Portugal and Germany. Looking for evidence involving her main sexual predator suspect, Christian Bruckner, I was sitting in a restaurant with friends when my editor called me and you know, with the editor's phone at 10 pm, something serious is going on. I think this is the strongest track I've ever come across. seen since the beginning of this investigation, but what is the irrefutable evidence that has convinced the German authorities that they have her man?

What you're telling me is that you can place Christian Bruckner in the scene. Yes, we believe, then we know that the phone. The number used by a suspect on May 3, 2007 was connected to the mast of the Ocean Club in Praia da Luz Maddie was kidnapped between 9 a.m. and 10 p.m. on the night of May 3, 2007. Portuguese investigators subsequently recorded mobile phone records for the area that night but found nothing the records were passed to the uk scotland yard which established operation grange a special team of officers tasked with finding maddie spoke from personal experience that there was a phenomenal amount of data related to personal phone, so you want to see a pattern of you know, did that person have a phone number?

Did that phone number appear? It's a huge amount of data, a huge amount of data, it's the classic haystack where you're looking not just for a needle, but for the head of a needle, but Scotland Yard's Operation Grange also failed to find the needle in the records. mobile phones. It was the Germans who made the discovery. A phone number traced to someone with a criminal record for sexual crimes against children. Back home, buried in the data is a single call from May 3, 2007, triangulated by police, that was made just outside the Ocean Club. The phone number was Christian Bruce.

There has always been speculation that an insider at the tapas bar where the McCanns were drinking. Dinner notified Maddie's kidnapper at the entrance to her reservation. It was noted that the McCanns wanted to eat near their apartment because they were leaving their young children alone. Christian Brooklyn could not have acted alone. That was the phone call he was making to someone he helped. He that night I think someone must have been involved it is very difficult to understand that he could have done this alone German prosecutors also discovered that the day after Madeleine Bruckner's disappearance he canceled the registration of the Jaguar car he owned and identified photographs based on eyewitnesses At the Ocean Club revealed a striking similarity to Bruckner, but perhaps the strongest evidence German prosecutors can have that Madeleine is no longer alive is contained in the 8,000 videos they unearthed in her desolate hideout in Germany.

I'm pretty sure they have good evidence that it could be videos, I mean he was into child pornography and torture and he committed crimes against children at a very young age and according to current information he also filmed his crimes so he can clearly say what what happened there. She is innocent until proven guilty. Christian Bruckner's defense lawyer. frederick forsha doesn't say if he has even asked his client about madeleine mccann so you don't know if i asked him um the first thing and the second thing is that if i had asked him i won't tell you his answer because the defense lawyer's entire conversation with his client is confidential with security is as strangely cryptic as he claims to have confidence in bruckner certain that bruckner will never cooperate with the german prosecutors before my client cooperates with the prosecution you can order holy water like A long drink to hell, whatever the new evidence Whatever criticism the German prosecutors have, including what they may have unearthed in recent days and weeks, they are keeping to themselves for now, although prosecutor Voltas may have given us a clue, we know that the police recovered thousands of files. of disturbing images and videos that you believe belong to christian brookner is there evidence of those videos of madeleine mccann at this time i cannot say if there are photos or if there are no photos of madeleine given that german investigators have said very clearly they believe that madeleine McCann is dead.

Do they accept that they must have important information? My experience working with the German police is that they are very careful about what they say publicly. They would have recognized the importance of it. They would have recognized the international agreement. The sensitivity of the matter and they would probably have recognized the public interest in it, so the fact that they made that statement is in itself significant if the German authorities have a video proving Madeleine's death along with trace of the mobile phone that shows that Bruckner was in the area. so eyewitness evidence conclusively placing him at the Ocean Club between 9 and 10pm on the night of May 3, 2007 would be the final piece of the puzzle and, for Jerry and Kate McCann, the terrible final truth, a truth that may already be known. minutes presents with liz all the parents of a missing child hope that their son is found far from the events unfolding in germany and portugal a mother shares her pain with kate mccain cares for kate i was working as a waitress in a local hotel and my mother I was babysitting Ben that day, it was summer 1991, Kerry Needham and her beautiful 21 month old son Ben were living on the Greek island of Koz where her parents were renovating a house.

Ben was basically a normal little kid running around. and he walked out the farm gate, um, playing with his grandfather's work tools and things like, you know, swords and things like that, and for a couple of minutes he just didn't come back to the gate, um, and my mom he just walked out the door and he just wasn't there, there was just no sign of him, it was like he had vanished into thin air, there really was no trace of Ben or witnesses, then four years ago a tip that there may have been been accidentally killed. by a local man operating a mechanical excavator who then buried him in a panic, but the man died and excavations of the site by police proved inconclusive.

You don't want to think that you know your child is dead after searching for him all these years. um so you know, after all those years and then the police say you know they think he died, it's very, very hard to accept, it's the last thing you think about at night and it's the first thing you think about. in the morning and Are you living a nightmare that you can't wake up from about yourself and Ben? They have been in my thoughts and prayers many times. Kerry shares a unique and tragic maternal bond with Kate McCann.

It's the pain of not knowing what happened. to your beloved son and then perhaps the even greater pain of discovering for 13 years the fate of Madeleine McCann has been a single question withoutresponse to an unsolved case that still causes terrible torment to all those affected by it. I would not like to end my life without knowing and having the key to this mystery is very disturbing for me, not only as a journalist but also as a person. I think everyone, all human beings, should feel the same. We need to know what happened to Madeleine, how she dresses tonight.

German prosecutors. In cooperation with the Portuguese police they are building their case against the main suspect, Christian Bruckner, there may soon be an answer for Madeleine's parents, Kate and Jerry, and for all of us, no matter how painful that answer may be, I am Liz Hayes, thanks for joining me. Hello. I'm Liz Hayes, thanks for watching to stay up to date with the latest news from 60 Minutes Australia. Make sure to subscribe to our channel. You can also download the Nine Now app to watch full episodes. Other exclusive 60 Minutes content.