German police have discovered an email account linking Christian Brueckner to the disappearance of Madeleine McCann, investigators have claimed.
Titus Stampa, a senior detective, told a court in Germany that investigators had found emails on a Hotmail account used by Brueckner that linked him directly to the case.
The bombshell revelation is the first time an investigating official has alluded to evidence directly connecting Brueckner to the three-year-old’s disappearance from a holiday apartment in Praia da Luz, Portugal in 2007.
But Stampa said he was unable to share details of the evidence as it was ‘related to the killing’ of young Madeleine.
Brueckner, the prime suspect, is currently on trial in Germany for unrelated sex crimes. He denies involvement in Madeleine’s 2007 disappearance.
Christian Brueckner, the prime suspect in the Madeleine McCann case, sits next to his lawyer Friedrich Fuelscher (R) at court for a session in his trial of an unrelated case, on June 5
Madeleine McCann disappeared from a resort in Praia da Luz, Portugal in May 2007
Gerry and Kate McCann (pictured) read a statement to the press following their daughter’s disappearance back in 2007
Speaking at the Braunschweig regional court in Germany, Stampa referred to the ‘murder’ email account allegedly possessed by Brueckner.
‘An external hard drive is also belonging to the killing case – and I am not allowed to talk about it.’
He declined to say whether emails recovered included photos or videos implicating the suspect, as reported by The Mirror.
Stampa claimed that police had found a second account where Brueckner – a convicted paedophile – had shared media of child abuse with other abusers.
Brueckner allegedly deleted all emails from that account in early 2007, when Madeleine vanished from a hotel resort in Praia da Luz, southern Portugal, Stampa said.
‘I can remember that things were “massively” deleted in the inbox. There was nothing in there from January 2007,’ he told the court.
Brueckner is suspected of having taken young Madeleine, from Rothley, Leicestershire, from a bedroom in the family’s holiday apartment at the Ocean Club resort on May 3, 2007.
British police initially investigated the case before it was archived in July 2008 due to lack of evidence. Her family kept the case open with private detectives until Scotland Yard opened its own investigation in 2011.
German officials finally named Brueckner as their chief suspect in 2020, and international authorities have continued to investigate the disappearance in the years since.
It has now been revealed prosecutors received access to a secret email account containing images of abuse after an appeal to Microsoft in 2019.
The account was said to have been opened in January 2007, months before Madeleine’s disappearance.
For more than a decade, Madeleine’s anguished parents Gerry and Kate (pictured together in 2017) have continued investigations into the disappearance of their daughter
A man walks next to the apartment where three-year-old Madeleine McCann vanished in 2007, in Praia da Luz, Portugal, June 5, 2020
Brueckner speaks with his lawyers on trial in Germany on June 4, 2024. He is accused of raping three women and assaulting children between 2000 and 2017 in the Algarve
Now, a court in Germany has heard how Brueckner allegedly attempted to delete ‘many emails’ showing filmed abuse of children as young as ‘three or four’.
Stampa described an email he claimed was written by Brueckner detailing a fantasy ‘about a five-year-old girl and her mother who are kidnapped and taken away in a van’ before being ‘abused sexually’.
‘It was about violence and brutality and them being abused sexually – one is raped in front of the other, he claimed.
A copy of the fantasy story was also found in Portugal in 2017 on a laptop also used by Brueckner, the court heard.
Brueckner was officially named as the official suspect in the case in 2022, after his yellow and white VW T3 Westfalia campervan was reportedly spotted near the Praia da Luz resort in Portugal where Madeleine vanished.
Brueckner has denied he was in the area at the time and distanced himself from the allegations against him.
German prosecutors say phone logs show he received a call on May 3, 2007 near the Ocean Club. He has claimed he was miles away with a young woman at the time.
Brueckner also faces allegations he called his ex-girlfriend on May 3, 2007 to say he had been in Tomar, a spot where he regularly parked his camper vans.
Last May, detectives announced they would search a reservoir near Silves in Portugal that Brueckner referred to as his ‘little paradise’, the first major operation of its kind since a dig in Praia da Luz in 2014.
Since then, the case in Germany has seen testimony from past partners and new pleas for investigation into Brueckner’s past hangouts some 17 years since Madeleine vanished.
A former girlfriend of Brueckner previously claimed that detectives in the Madeleine McCann case had still not searched her home, despite revelations he called her on the night she disappeared.
The woman said that on the night of May 3, 2007, Brueckner had called her to say he was driving to her house in Portugal and that she did not know if he had arrived.
It was revealed the woman’s father and German prosecutors had urged police to investigate the compound near Praia da Luz in 2022, but they never arrived.
Madeleine McCann disappeared from the Ocean Club resort in Praia da Luz in May 2007
Kate and Gerry McCann make an appeal for their three-year-old Madeleine’s return back in 2007 (pictured)
A view of the block of apartments from where Madeleine McCann disappeared in 2007, in Praia da Luz, in Portugal’s Algarve coast
Detectives believe Brueckner was living out of a German campervan in the village of Praia da Luz in 2007 when Madeleine disappeared
The McCanns joined friends for dinner at the resort, close to the room, on May 3 after a day of activities with the children
Brueckner is now standing trial accused of raping a woman in Praia da Rocha in 2004, and abusing a teenage girl and a woman aged between 70 and 80 in Praia da Luz, where he lived, between December 2000 and June 2006.
He is also accused of exposing himself and masturbating in front of children on at least two occasions in Portugal, and insulting prison officers in Germany.
Brueckner was jailed in 2019 for seven years after being convicted of raping an elderly woman in the Algarve in 2005.
He is currently serving a rape sentence in Oldenburg high-security prison, 217 kilometres away from Braunschweig.
The current trial began in February and has heard from witnesses who say they saw Brueckner in harrowing sex tapes which showed the rape of an elderly woman and a young girl.
Brueckner’s defence have tried several times to have witnesses ruled out saying the case is unfair and prejudiced against their client because of the link to Madeleine but all attempts have so far failed.
The trial continues.