5 days ago
Madeleine McCann search LIVE: Cops focus on dilapidated farmhouse in secluded shrubland as debris carried from site
MADDIE HUNT Madeleine McCann search LIVE: Cops focus on dilapidated farmhouse in secluded shrubland as debris carried from site
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COPS began the hunt for Madeleine McCann's body today on the Algarve in a "last-throw-of-the-dice," focusing on a dilapidated farmhouse.
Officials have been captured carrying out what appear to be boxes of soil and debris from the site among the shrub on the hillside overlooking Atalaia.
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A criminal police investigator walks near ruins as the police resumes the search for the body of Madeleine McCann
Credit: Reuters
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Cops have been searching the farmhouse
Credit: Solarpix
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Police are searching scrub land, using radar equipment, around the former home of prime suspect Christian Brueckner
Credit: Dan Charity
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Investigators have been carrying boxes at the site
Credit: Dan Charity
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Madeleine McCann went missing while on holiday with her family in 2007
Credit: PA
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Christian Brueckner appears in court in Germany last month
Credit: Dan Charity
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The focus of the Madeleine search today fell on a derelict barn where cops were using chainsaws to cut through roots and undergrowth to access the soil.
It's currently unclear whether this is the ramshackle cottage convicted paedophile and sole suspect Brueckner used to live - near to the Ocean Club in Praia da Luz where Madeleine vanished in 18 years ago
A police theory is the three-year-old or her pyjamas might have been dumped in trenches near the holiday resort.
Vans containing Germany's FBI arrived in the area alongside Portuguese authorities this morning, sealing off dirt roads and erecting blue tents by scrubland.
They are equipped with ground-penetrating radar that can scan 15ft below the surface.
The major search, the first for more than two years in Portugal, is focusing on wells, ruins, and water storage tanks on 21 plots of privately-owned land thought to cover around 120 acres.
Brueckner, currently serving a seven-year prison sentence in Germany for a 2005 Praia da Luz rape and yet to be formally charged over Madeleine's disappearance despite being named as the sole suspect, is set for release from jail in September.
The area was a rat run for prolific thief Brueckner and leads to the property where he raped a US woman in 2005 — for which he is currently in a German jail.
A source said: 'It's now or never.'
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