Christian Brueckner, the prime suspect in the disappearance of Madeleine McCann, claims he was selling drugs less than 500 feet from the Portuguese resort where the three-year-old British girl vanished. He also says police stopped him three times as he tried to make a “quick getaway” that night.
Brueckner, 49, a convicted rapist and child sex offender, has long refused to give a full account of his movements when Madeleine disappeared from a holiday apartment in Praia da Luz in May 2007.
In an interview with the Mail on Sunday, however, he said he had been about 150 yards—roughly 450 feet—from the resort. Brueckner claimed he had stayed silent because he believed investigators were trying to frame him for Madeleine’s disappearance.
“I was on the beach, not far from Maddie’s hotel, selling drugs,” Brueckner said. German authorities identified him as the leading suspect in the case in 2020, but he has never been charged over Madeleine’s disappearance.
“I’d been in Spain and smuggled the weed into Portugal.
“I was even stopped by police three times on the street while they were looking for Maddie.”
Brueckner said he was attempting to leave the area quickly to avoid being caught with drugs, rather than because he was involved in the search for Madeleine.
“There were flashing blue lights and checkpoints everywhere,” he said.
“I just thought, ‘Get me out of here.’ Luckily, they [the cops] didn’t find the drugs.”
Brueckner, who was convicted as a teenager in 1994 for sexually abusing a child, continues to deny any role in Madeleine’s disappearance and maintains that authorities are attempting to implicate him.
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“I have nothing to do with the little girl’s disappearance,” he said.
“I would be happy if Maddie turned up tomorrow, then everyone would immediately understand that everything against me is and was staged.
“But that probably won’t happen, so I remain the prime suspect.”
German investigators named Brueckner as the prime suspect in 2020. Portuguese authorities later designated him an “arguido,” the country’s formal term for a suspect in a criminal investigation.
He was released from prison last year after completing a seven-year sentence for the 2005 rape of a 72-year-old American woman in Portugal.
Brueckner has also declined interview requests from London’s Metropolitan Police, which continues to investigate the case through Operation Grange. Scotland Yard established the operation in May 2011, placing it under the Specialist Crime Command.
It remains uncertain whether Brueckner’s latest claims will lead to any change in the long-running Metropolitan Police investigation into Madeleine McCann’s disappearance.
“As part of ongoing [inquiries,] we remain in close working discussion with policing colleagues in Germany and Portugal,” the Met told The Post in response to the allegations.
“We will continue to pursue any viable lines of [inquiry].”
With Post wires