Officials formally declared a convicted German sex offender as a suspect in the Madeleine McCann case.
Christian Brueckner was officially named as a suspect in the toddler’s 2007 disappearance but has not been charged with a crime, according to The Times.
Portuguese prosecutors issued a statement on Thursday: “As part of the investigation into the circumstances surrounding the disappearance of Madeleine McCann in 2007, a person was made a suspect on Wednesday.”
In 2020, German police named Brueckner as a person of interest for the first time in connection with the case.
“The person was made (a suspect) by the German authorities in the execution of a request for international judicial cooperation issued by the Public Ministry of Portugal.”
“The investigation has been carried out with the cooperation of the English and German authorities,” the statement concluded.
Brueckner, referred to as Christian B in Germany due to the country’s strict privacy laws, is currently serving a jail sentence for raping a 72-year-old woman in the same resort where McCann went missing.
The three-year-old vanished during a family vacation in the resort of Praia de Luz in Portugal’s Algarve region in 2007. She went missing from the resort on May 3, a few days before her fourth birthday.
The toddler’s parents had left their three children sleeping in the apartment while they went to a restaurant nearby, returning regularly to check on McCann and her siblings.
But when her mom checked on the kids at 10 p.m., she was horrified to find the door and window to their bedroom wide open and the toddler nowhere to be found.
Next month will mark 15 years since McCann disappeared.
