A key witness who alerted authorities to Madeleine McCann prime suspect Christian Brueckner has claimed that he let slip that she “didn’t scream” when she was kidnapped.
In his first public interview, Helge Busching explained that his former acquaintance appeared to incriminate himself in the disappearance of the three-year-old girl.
Helge said that he learned of Brueckner’s true nature before the disappearance of McCann after he stole some videotapes and a gun from his house.
Christian Brueckner was identified as the primary suspect in 2020— (Italian Carabinieri)
The video clips purportedly showed Brueckner sexually abusing an elderly woman and teenage girl in Portugal. Helge recounted: “The victim said ‘This borders on rape!’ and he just said ‘Shut up’. That’s when I knew what kind of guy Brueckner was.”
After leaving Portugal, Helge told the German outlet Bild that he crossed paths with the suspect at a music festival in Spain in 2008.
“He asked me, ‘’don’t you go to Portugal anymore and do business there?’. ‘I said, ‘’no, since the girl disappeared there, there have been too many police checks for me and I don’t need that at all,’ Helge said.
“[The topic of Madeleine’s disappearance] came up and I said: ‘’Anyway, I don’t understand how the little one could have disappeared without a trace.’
“Christian had drunk two or three beers, and he said: ‘She didn’t scream.’
“I thought: He knows that. He has something to do with it. But he also checked that I understood that and then left at night.”
A search was conducted of the Algarve reservoir in May which had been visited by Brueckner— (PA)
Helge claimed that he’d approached German authorities after finding the videotapes but that a policeman told him to keep quiet.
He also said that he tried to inform Scotland Yard about Brueckner in 2008 via the dedicated hotline but failed to receive a response.
“I called Scotland Yard back in 2008,” he said “At the Maddie hotline. I said I knew someone who might have something to do with it and gave them the name. But nothing happened there. Nothing! I was never called back.
“In 2017 I had just served a prison sentence in Greece. When I heard about the 10th anniversary of the disappearance, I remembered. Apparently the call didn’t help at all.
“So I contacted Scotland Yard again. Then they listened to me.”
Madeleine disappeared while her parents were sat at a restaurant 55 metres from their apartment— (PA Media)
In what has been described as the “most heavily reported missing person case in modern history”, Madeleine disappeared in May 2007 while staying with her parents at a holiday apartment in Praia da Luz.
Her parents, Gerry and Kate McCann, had been dining with their friends at a restaurant 55 metres away when they discovered she was missing during a routine check at 10pm.
The case has remained unsolved for 16 years with no body discovered, however German prosecutors have stated their belief that she was killed.
Brueckner was identified as the primary suspect in 2020, with authorities conducting a major search of a remote Algarve reservoir in May as part of their investigation. It is believed that the jailed paedophile had regularly visited the mile-long peninsula and had described it as a “little slice of paradise” when living near the Praia da Luz resort.
Brueckner has previous convictions for child sexual abuse, drug trafficking and is currently serving a prison sentence in Germany for raping a 72-year-old pensioner.
