The prime suspect in the 2007 disappearance of little Madeleine McCann confided to a former friend that the girl hadn’t “screamed” when she was kidnapped, according to the man who denounced him in a first-ever public interview in 2008.
“I called Scotland Yard in 2008. On the phone number for Maddie. I said I knew someone who might have something to do with it and gave them the name. But nothing happened. Nothing! They never called me back,” Helge Busching said in an interview with Germany’s Bild newspaper and reported The Independent on Thursday.
In his first public interview, the person who could be an important witness to the disappearance of little Madeleine McCann in Portugal in May 2007 said that he met his old friend Christian Brückner in 2008 at a festival in Spain where the subject of the disappearance was discussed was addressed.
“I said, ‘Anyway, I don’t understand how the little one could have disappeared without a trace.’ Christian had drunk two or three beers and said to me: “She didn’t scream,” the man would have told the German media.
The latter clarified that he discovered the true nature of Christian Brueckner long before little McCann disappeared, after he stole videotapes and a firearm from his home, where he was seen sexually assaulting an elderly person and a teenager abused.
“That’s when I knew what kind of guy Brückner was,” continued the man who reported him to German authorities before a police officer told him to shut up.
It was in 2017, on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the case, that the witness remembered the information when he had just been released from prison in Greece and decided to contact Scotland Yard again.
Christian Brückner, who was identified as the prime suspect in the case in 2020, is currently serving a prison sentence in Germany for raping a 72-year-old and has a criminal history of child abuse and drug trafficking, according to British media.