Peers debate change to 105-year-old law so children can work on steam trains
Madeleine McCann: where the family are now, from Kate's moving memoir to the brother tipped for the Olympics
Memoirs and Olympic swimming: where Maddie McCann's family are now
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Daily Mail
3 hours ago
- Daily Mail
EXCLUSIVE Portuguese police brand search for Madeleine McCann a 'waste of time' as sources claim three-day operation in Portugal turned up 'nothing'
The head of the German force leading the fresh searches for Madeleine McCann told a friend who wished him luck: 'Thanks, we need it.' Rainer Grimm, boss of the BKA, Germany 's equivalent of the FBI, is in Portugal overseeing the search which ended yesterday. His apparent lack of confidence in the operation to his pal echoed what many have seen as the 'last throw of the dice' for investigators looking to solve the 18-year riddle. But sources close to the investigation said that 'only animal bones and bits of old adult clothing' have been found in the estimated £300,000 operation. One officer told MailOnline: 'We always knew it was going to be a waste of time but we have to show cooperation. 'What did they expect to find after 18 years? We were happy to work with them but we knew it would be a waste of time.' The head of the German force leading the fresh searches for Madeleine McCann (pictured) told a friend who wished him luck: 'Thanks, we need it' Convicted rapist and paedophile Christian Brueckner, 48, has been identified by German prosecutors as the man behind Madeleine's 'abduction and murder'. He was sensationally named by German authorities in June 2020 as the man responsible for Madeleine's abduction and murder, but he has not been charged – and the sands of time are running out. Brueckner, who has vehemently denied the allegations, is currently serving a seven-year sentence for a separate rape case and is due for release in September and has already vowed to leave Germany. As a result, it means prosecutors will have trouble bringing him to court should they charge him in connection with Madeleine's disappearance. His earliest possible release date is September 17 however that is unlikely as he will have to pay 1500 euro in outstanding fines from a series of motor offences to do so. But his legal team say he is broke and so a release date of January 6 looks more likely. Brueckner's lawyer Philipp Marquort told MailOnline:'I haven't had a chance to speak with him yet about the searches and I am not going to comment on what has been happening in Portugal. 'What I will say is that I don't think he will be coming out in September as he doesn't have any money to pay the fines because it went on his legal fees, so I can't see him leaving prison until early next year. 'He will probably see the news on the TV in his cell and he will talk about it when he calls me next time but I still do think when he is freed he will leave Germany.' Last October he was cleared of a series of unrelated sex attacks that took place in the Algarve between 2000 and 2017. Two years ago police also searched a dam close by for evidence but after a week-long operation nothing was found. Brueckner continues to deny any involvement with Madeleine's disappearance. Details of Mr Grimm's downbeat message came as the operation at Atalaia near Praia da Luz was brought to a close after three days. Permission had been given to search the derelict outbuildings on the scrubland close to where Brueckner used to live and where he previously to park his campervan until Friday Meanwhile locals expressed exasperation at the eyes of the world once again being on Praia da Luz with one business owner telling MailOnline: 'What on earth do they expect to find after 18 years ? 'It's been such a long time, of course everyone sympathies with the parents but it's gone on for too long now and to be honest no one here is convinced this German guy did it.' The German police team will fly back on a military plane due to pick them up today and which will also carry two vans brought with them. German officials said they would update the media on Friday or Monday if they had anything significant to say but the feeling was one of disappointment.
Powys County Times
4 hours ago
- Powys County Times
Madeleine McCann suspect ‘told police decisive questions can never be answered'
The prime suspect in the disappearance of Madeleine McCann sent a letter to police saying 'decisive questions can never be answered', according to reports. Christian Brueckner, who is in prison for raping a 72-year-old woman in Praia da Luz in 2005, reportedly sent a letter to officers saying questions which would implicate him in the case of the three-year-old British girl, who vanished from the same resort 18 years ago, cannot be answered. In the note, seen and translated by The Sun newspaper, Brueckner reportedly wrote: 'It is the important questions, the decisive questions that can never be answered. 'Was I or my vehicle clearly seen near the crime scene on the night of the crime? 'Is there DNA evidence of me at the crime scene? Are there DNA traces of the injured party in my vehicle? 'Are there other traces/DNA carriers of the injured party in my possession? Photos? 'And, don't forget, is there a body/corpse? All no, no no.' It is not clear when the letter was written. Brueckner spent time in the Praia de Luz area between 2000 and 2017 and had photographs and videos of himself near a reservoir. It comes as German and Portuguese investigators finished three days of searching a 120-acre stretch of land near Lagos, Portugal, on Thursday as part of attempts to source evidence to implicate Brueckner. In the searches, requested by German authorities, crews spent three days scouring scrubland and abandoned structures. Brueckner is due to be released from jail in September if no further charges are brought. In October last year, he was cleared by a German court of unrelated sexual offences, alleged to have taken place in Portugal between 2000 and 2017.
BBC News
4 hours ago
- BBC News
Madeleine McCann: Hopes of closure fade despite fresh searches
From the moment I arrived in Praia da Luz on Monday the word on everyone's lips was "closure".All the long-term residents of the sleepy Atlantic resort told me closure was what they were hoping for. From the English woman who lived at the time above the apartment from which Madeleine McCann disappeared in 2007, to the former neighbour of the main suspect in the all said: "We hope her family get closure".Of course, any chance of a really positive outcome disappeared years ago. Closure now would mean either finding Madeleine McCann's body, or finding her living with another family, unable to remember her parents or her younger twin siblings. But, frustrated as residents are when the world's media return to Praia da Luz - year after year at the same time that purple flowers appear on the jacaranda trees - they do understand the unbearable pain that Kate and Gerry McCann must feel. How that shock of realisation that Madeleine was not in her bed turned into minutes, then hours, and then days of panic. Then tortuous, unending months and years of 13 years there was no single theory as to what happened to Madeleine McCann. Did she wake up in the middle of an opportunistic burglary and have to be silenced? Was she abducted on behalf of a couple desperate for a child of their own? Had her own parents covered up her accidental death? (A theory given sufficient weight by Portuguese prosecutors that for a while Kate and Gerry McCann were officially under suspicion.)The initial Portuguese investigation failed to preserve the scene adequately, so the opportunity to gather forensic evidence from Madeline McCann's room at the Ocean Club was lost. Long-term residents remember joining in uncoordinated and ad-hoc searches of the Metropolitan Police investigation that began in 2011 built to a peak in 2014, with substantial searches near Praia da Luz - but they did not appear to have any identifiable suspects. They had 60 people of interest, 38 of whom they were investigating. Portuguese prosecutors had allowed them to search only one of three sites they had asked for access changed in June 2020 when, out of the blue, the head prosecutor in Braunschweig in Germany, Hans Christian Wolters, said he had evidence that Madeleine McCann was dead. Working with the Bundeskriminalamt (BKA), the German equivalent of the FBI, he said he had identified a suspect, later identified as Christian Brückner."The evidence is strong enough to say that the girl is dead, and to accuse a specific individual of murder," Hans Christian Wolter who spent many years of his life in the Algarve, was a drifter, a petty criminal and a convicted sex offender. It all fitted neatly into place and it seemed that the mystery might finally be solved. Brückner's long list of previous convictions includes ones for sexually abusing children in 1994 and 2016. The Braunschweig prosecution team have never disclosed the extent of any evidence they have, but we do know their suspicions are partly based on a conversation an old acquaintance of Brückner's claims they had at a festival in Busching says the topic of Madeleine McCann's disappearance came up, and Brückner said she "didn't scream". Mr Busching says it was clear to him what Brückner 2019, Brückner has been in prison in Germany for raping a 72-year-old American woman in Praia da Luz in 2005. But he is due for release in September, or in January if he does not pay an outstanding told an RTL reporter earlier this year that he was looking forward to a "decent steak and a beer". The concern is that he will leave the country and head somewhere with no extradition treaty with Germany, though he appears to have no Braunschweig prosecutors' confidence was dealt a severe blow last year when they put Brückner on trial for rape and unconnected attempted child abductions. Mr Busching gave evidence, but the court in Braunschweig acquitted Brückner and suddenly time was very Wolters has made no secret of the fact that he wants more evidence to charge Brückner. That is why the BKA footed the bill for the search this week in ruined farm buildings on merciless, shadeless scrubland in the rising heat of an Algarve summer. The buildings are frequented at night by the kind of drifters and petty criminals that Brückner once was. Nearby residents told us they sometimes find looted suitcases among the ruins that have been stolen from this week's searches were not targeted on one specific building, so any intelligence they were based on was clearly quite all felt a bit like a last desperate attempt to back Mr Busching's statements with concrete, physical some ways this search was similar to those I have seen on previous trips. The use of shovels in the heat, digging up stone-hard the German team were mostly targeting old farm buildings. This meant they needed a large, yellow mechanical digger to break up the concrete floors and sift through the resulting rubble. They also made extensive use of a ground-penetrating radar, slowly pushing the device across the buildings' floors, looking for anomalies and cavities underneath. The Portuguese fire brigade helped on the first day, pumping out an old well so it could be safely searched. The officers were looking for traces of Madeleine McCann, or some of her time I travel to Portugal for a new search it always begins optimistically. Could police find something this time? But on every occasion it quickly becomes apparent the searches are not tightly targeted. The police work always clearly based on quite vague intelligence - or just an investigator's Neves, the National Director of the Polícia Judiciária, the Portuguese equivalent of the FBI, said at the end of the week that, "nothing is in vain, not least because doors are being closed".As we watched the German detectives packing away it felt like the spring of hope of a resolution that had bubbled up in June 2020 was evaporating in the thankless heat.
