The 'race against time' to find Madeleine McCann evidence

A fresh search linked to the 2007 disappearance of British toddler Madeleine McCann has entered its third day, as police "race against time" to find forensic evidence pointing to their "prime suspect", convicted German paedophile Christian Brückner.

German investigators have been given until Friday to complete their search but, faced with an 8.1 square mile site, covered with "dense shrubs, empty barns, disused wells and dirt tracks", they "have got their work cut out", said Sky News. Brückner, currently in prison on a separate rape conviction, is due for release in September, after which he reportedly "plans to disappear", said The Telegraph.

Where is the new search?

German and Portuguese police teams are searching an area of clifftop scrubland a mile or so from the Algarve resort of Praia da Luz where three-year-old Madeleine was last seen, and near where Brückner was known to have been staying at the time.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

The investigators were "swinging pickaxes" into the "hardened" ground and "clearing piles of rocks and rubble" on Tuesday, said The Independent. Then, on Wednesday, "diggers and specialist equipment" were brought in to help "scour" patches of thick gorse, a disused well and abandoned buildings, said the BBC.

Why now?

The new search activity was ordered after "bombshell" evidence was found at Brückner's "lair" in a disused factory, including stories "showing his obsession with snatching children" and a hard-drive of pictures whose nature has not been disclosed but which are "believed to indicate" why the German investigators are "sure Madeleine is dead", said The Sun. They also have witness evidence placing Brückner at a festival in April 2008 where he's said to have "all but confessed" to killing Madeleine by, allegedly, saying she "didn't scream".

Among other "disturbing" finds at the factory, were toys, children's clothes, chemicals and firearms. However, this cache of evidence was uncovered during investigations into the assault of Brückner's ex-girlfriend's five-year-old daughter, and used to convict him for that crime in 2017. Due to a "legal quirk", the evidence can't be relied on again to charge him with a different crime now, Jon Clarke, the author of "My Search for Madeleine", told The Telegraph. Hence the need for further evidence – and the new search.

Brückner is currently in jail in Germany for the rape of an elderly American woman in Praia da Luz in 2005. Last year, he was acquitted of other charges of rape and indecent assault against children in Portugal. He is known to have spent much of his time between 2000 and 2017 in the Algarve.

Haven't they searched the area before?

When Madeleine first disappeared, her parents, Gerry and Kate McCann, "struggled" to get the Portuguese authorities to "take it seriously". Searches were "not rigorous" and "seemed unstructured", and then, for a time, the McCanns themselves "fell under suspicion", said the BBC's Daniel Sandford. Watching detectives searching for evidence now in the same areas that formed part of the initial investigation, it "all feels like it is 18 years too late".

Madeleine's whereabouts remain unknown. She was presumed dead in absentia by German police in 2020 but both the British and the Portuguese police continue to treat her case as a missing person investigation. Kate and Gerry McCann have declined to comment during the current "active police investigation", the Find Madeleine Campaign said, but when they marked the 18th year anniversary of their daughter's disappearance last month, they said their "determination to leave no stone unturned is unwavering".