According to German authorities, there is evidence that Madeleine McCann died, although more information is needed to bring a suspect to trial.
This comes shortly after the British and German police announced last week that a 43-year-old German man is now suspected of Madeleine’s disappearance. This three-year-old British girl disappeared without a trace in 2007 while her family vacationed in Portugal.
The suspect has since been identified in reports as Christian Brückner. Brückner was previously convicted of child sex offenses and is currently serving a prison sentence in Germany for raping a 72-year-old American woman in 2005.
Hans Christian Wolters, the prosecutor in Braunschweig, Germany, said on Monday that there was evidence that Madeleine was dead, but not enough for a murder trial.
“We have not yet proved the most important, namely Madeleine McCann’s body,” Wolters explained. “We expect her dead, but we do not have enough evidence that we can obtain a warrant for the murder of Madeleine McCann in Germany.”
About Brückner’s prosecution, he says: “We currently do not have enough evidence for a trial, but the suspect did the deed. That’s why we need more information from people, especially about the places where he lived, so we can target those places and search for Madeleine there. “
The authorities are now calling on British tourists who visited the area of Praia da Luz between 1995 and 2007 to come forward with information.
During this time, Brückner lived in the Algarve region of Portugal, where he also lived in a house in Praia da Luz, the holiday resort from which Madeleine then disappeared.
German prosecutors, meanwhile, are investigating the possibility that the suspect may be linked to the disappearance of three other children, including a six-year-old boy who also disappeared in Portugal in 1996.
The suspect may also be linked to the disappearance of Carola Titze (16) who disappeared during a holiday in Belgium in 1996 and Inga Gehricke (5) who disappeared in Germany in 2015. These children were, like Madeleine, presumably murdered.
