Madeleine McCann suspect Christian Brueckner ‘confessed to kidnapping girl from Algarve apartment’, claims former cellmate

Christian Brueckner, a suspect in Madeleine McCann’s case, has confessed to a former cellmate that he took a child from a Portuguese apartment during a burglary, a court in Germany heard today.

The 47-year-old pedophile is said to have asked prisoner Laurentiu Codin in 2020, when they shared a cell together, whether he was also being held for child sex crimes.

Codin claimed the convicted rapist begged him to set his den on fire when he was released from prison, asking if “a child’s DNA can be extracted from bones underground.”

This comes after German detectives sensationally named Brueckner as the prime suspect in the abduction of three-year-old British woman Maddie from her family’s holiday apartment in Praia da Luz in May 2007.

Speaking today at the Braunschweig Regional Court, where Brueckner is on trial for other sex crimes, Codin told a story that bore striking similarities to the night Maddie disappeared.

Christian Brueckner (C) is led into the courtroom for a hearing of his trial at the district court in Braunschweig, northern Germany, on September 25, 2024

Madeleine McCann (pictured) disappeared on May 3, 2007 at the age of just three. She has never been found. German criminal Christian Brueckner has been named by German prosecutors as their prime suspect in her disappearance

“He told me he stole in Portugal. He was in an area where there are hotels and rich people live,” Codin said.

‘He said there was a window open somewhere, he told me this. He was looking for money.

‘He said he didn’t find any money, he found a child and he took the child. He said two hours later there were police and dogs everywhere, so he left, out of the area.

‘I’m just saying what he told me. He told me that there was someone with him, with whom he had had an argument, it was said to be his wife.

‘He said he had taken the child in his car to Portugal, and that he had driven away when the police and the dogs were at the house.

“He asked me if a child’s DNA could be used as evidence and I said yes.”

In even more disturbing testimony, Codin, 50, said Brueckner told him he had used a van to have sex with young girls near Hanover.

‘There was talk about a girl, I don’t know if what he said was true or not. He said he had a bus and he took her. He said he kept some of them but not others, but he never said he 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 he took someone, had sex with her, but he didn’t kill her.”

Pictured: The holiday park where the McCanns were staying in the Algarve, Portugal in May 2007 when their three-year-old daughter disappeared without a trace

Kate and Gerry McCann pose with a computer-generated image of what their missing daughter Madeleine might look like now, during a press conference in 2012

When the judge asked him how old his victim was, Codin said, “I don’t want to say it the wrong way, but he was very young, small. I mean young.”

‘Every time we were together he talked about it, because he was convinced I was a pedophile.’

Brueckner is serving a seven-year prison sentence for the 2005 rape of American pensioner Diana Menkes, 72, in the Algarve.

He is on trial in Braunschweig for separate sexual offences allegedly committed in the Algarve between 2000 and 2017.

A house near the Praia da Luz and Lagos resort in the Algarve, Portugal, that was used by Christian Brueckner, a German man suspected in the disappearance of British girl Madeleine McCann

Brueckner is on trial for, among other things, the alleged rape of 40-year-old Irish tour representative Hazel Behan in her apartment in Praia da Rocha in 2004.

The former guide, who gave up her anonymity and spoke openly about her experiences, burst into tears as she told the trial that Brueckner had raped her at knifepoint.

He has also been charged with the alleged rape of a teenage girl at his home in the same city and with the rape of an elderly woman at her holiday apartment.

Brueckner is also accused of exposing himself to a German girl on a beach in Salema in April 2007 and to an 11-year-old girl in 2017.

His current sentence ends early next year, and if he is found not guilty in the ongoing trial, he could be released from prison. The trial is expected to end in December.

Hazel Behan (pictured) has spoken openly about the alleged attack in TV interviews

Outside court, Brueckner’s defense strongly denied Codin’s accusations.

“All these claims are completely new. All of them. He has never said anything like this before and they all contradict each other,” attorney Philipp Marquart told reporters.

Brueckner is said to have watched intently as a video was shown in court showing the apartment where Maddie disappeared in 2007.

The footage also shows her parents, Gerry and Kate McCann, describing the horror they experience when they realise she is no longer in her bed.

The couple had left Maddie and her two siblings to sleep in their apartment while they went out for dinner together at a nearby tapas bar in the Ocean Beach complex.

Christian Brueckner was named the main suspect in Madeleine’s disappearance in 2020

Kate returned to the apartment around 10pm to check on the children and made the horrific discovery that her daughter was gone.

Brueckner was sensationally identified by the German police as the main suspect in the Madeleine kidnapping case.

The revelation came in June 2020, more than ten years after her disappearance.

But he has never been charged in the case and has long denied any involvement.