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A new breakthrough in the investigation appears to be coming through the testimony of a cellmate of the prime suspect.

Christian Brückner is currently on trial for facts that took place between 2000 and 2017 in Portugal, but have nothing to do with the May 2007 disappearance of Maddie McCann, also in Portugal. He is in prison in Germany, appearing in court on suspicion of three counts of rape and two counts of se*ual assault of minors. 

'Theft turns into kidnapping'
Christian Brückner has confessed to kidnapping a girl in Portugal, according to a former cellmate. The latter said so in the court in Braunschweig, where Brückner is on trial for a series of rapes and se* crimes.

“He told me that he had once kidnapped a child after a burglary when he lived in the Algarve,” said cellmate Codin. Immediately, of course, the link is then made to McCann, who disappeared without a trace from her family's vacation apartment in Portugal's Praia da Luz in May 2007. “He said he committed many thefts in a region full of hotels and wealthy vacationers. When he saw a window open, he found no money inside but a child. He took that with him. Two hours later, when police and dogs were everywhere, he fled.” Still according to Codin, Brückner had told him that he then took the child in his car. “He asked me if a child's DNA can be taken from bones underground,” he said.

No body found yet
“He said he had a van and that he had taken her,” he said. Whether he had killed her, according to Codin, Brückner did not say. But young the girl certainly was. 

DNA from buried bones?
For seventeen years, the whole world has sympathized with Madeleine McCann's parents, family and friends. There is still little hope of finding the girl alive, yet everyone is at least hoping for answers for the parents. After all, they still don't know what happened to their little daughter.
Madeleine McCann, then just under four years old, disappeared in May 2007 while on vacation with her parents in Portugal. While her parents were having dinner with friends at a restaurant in a vacation resort in Praia da Luz, she disappeared from her room. Seventeen years later, it is still not clear what happened to her.

The prime suspect for the disappearance is still 46-year-old German Christian Brückner, a convicted pedophile already in jail in Germany for a rape in Praia da Luz, the place where Maddie disappeared. In 2007, Brückner was living in the Algarve.

Investigators also believe that the German prime suspect, Christian Brückner (46), took photos of Madeleine McCann and then buried them. So writes the British newspaper The Sun. Those photos, by the way, would have been the immediate reason for the three-day search around Portugal's Arade reservoir in May.

(FVDV for Tagtik/Illustration picture: FindMadeleineDotCom Facebook)