Madeleine McCann suspect Christian Brueckner confessed to an ex-cellmate that he kidnapped a child from a Portuguese flat, a court heard today.
Convicted paedophile Brueckner, 47, made the disclosure to Laurentiu Codin when they shared a cell, Codin told a German court.
Brueckner is on trial for sex crimes unrelated to the disappearance of Madeleine, who was abducted from her parents’ Portugal hotel room in 2007, aged three.
Codin claimed Brueckner asked if DNA from a child “can be taken from bones under the ground”, The Sun reports.
“He told me that in Portugal, that he had stolen there. He was in a region where there are hotels and rich people live,” Codin told Braunschweig Regional Court.
“He said there was somewhere with an open window, he told me this. He was looking for money.
“He said he didn’t find any money but found a kid and took the child. He said that two hours later, there were police and dogs all over the place, so he then went away, out of the area.
“I am just saying what he told me. He told me that a person was with him, who he had had an argument with, allegedly it was his woman.
“He said he took the child in Portugal in his car, and in the time when the police and dogs were at the house, he drove away and he was gone.
“He asked me if the DNA from a child can be found as evidence and I answered yes.”
He claimed in court that Brueckner confided in him when they were both on remand in the same prison in 2020 after Brueckner was named as a suspect in the Madeleine McCann case. He has not been charged over her disappearance.
Codin also said Brueckner appeared concerned about evidence he could have left at a crime scene and asked if a person could be traced by their hair.
Codin went on to say Brueckner had told him how he used a van to sexually abuse young girls near Hanover.
“There was talk of a girl, I don’t know if what he said was true or not. He said that he had a bus and that he had taken her with it. He said he kept some of them, but not others, but he never said that he had killed them.
“We’re talking about girls, not boys. Not all at once, always one at a time. He told me about two. He said that he had taken someone, had sex with her but he didn’t kill her.
“I don’t want to get it wrong, but it was very young, tiny. I mean young.
“Each time when we were together he spoke about it because he was convinced that I was a paedophile.”
Brueckner is serving a seven-year prison term for the 2005 rape of an American pensioner in the Algarve.
The offences he is currently accused of and on trial for allegedly took place in Portugal between 2000 and 2017 and include the rape of an Irish tour rep.
He has also been charged with the alleged rape of a teenage girl.
Outside court, Brueckner’s defence team pushed back against Codin’s allegations.
“All of these claims are completely new. All of them. He has never said anything like this before, and they all contradict each other,” lawyer Philipp Marquart told reporters.
