Madeleine McCann was a British girl who went missing from Praia da Luz, Portugal on May 3, 2007.
In May 2023, the Arade reservoir in the Algarve of Portugal was searched for evidence connecting Christian Brueckner to her disappearance.
Case[]
Madeleine was on vacation with her parents Gerry and Kate, both doctors, and her two-year-old siblings at a resort in the Algarve region of Portugal. They had organized the vacation with three other couples and an accompanying mother and had been vacationing together since April.
In the evening, the parents and accompanying adults went to a restaurant about 50 meters away and left all the children in the apartments used by the families. At 30-minute intervals, they took turns checking on the children to see if they were still asleep. When Madeleine's mother Kate checked on the children around 10 p.m., her daughter Madeleine was gone. A window, which had previously been closed, was open.
Large-scale searches began within minutes of the disappearance and investigators quickly assumed it was a kidnapping.
The Madeleine McCann case quickly received major national media attention and rewards in the millions were offered. All of this, including private searches in several European countries, came to nothing.
Suspect[]
In June 2020, the public prosecutor's office in Braunschweig, Germany, announced that a suspect had been identified who was allegedly involved in Madeleine's disappearance: 43-year-old German national Christian Brueckner had a criminal record for sexual abuse of children and burglary. At the time of Madeleine's disappearance, he lived in the vicinity of the resort. The suspect earned his living with jobs in the catering trade, thefts and burglaries in hotels and vacation resorts. He is currently serving a sentence for the rape of a 72-year old woman in Portugal.
Christian Brueckner has not been formally charged in Madeleine's disappearance and denies involvement in her case.
Gallery[]
Sources[]
- Find Madeleine
- Madeleine McCann on Wikipedia
- Madeleine McCann at the Doe Network
- BBC
- The Independent
- Welt (German)
- Stern (German)