Maddie Case: The "Secret Cellars" of the Prime Suspect

Christian Brückner, the main - and only? - suspect in the disappearance of Madeleine McCann in Portugal on May 3, 2007, apparently had more than just a passion for young children. He also had a passion for cellars, which could be described as "well hidden." The photo taken from a distance, due to a security cordon, which illustrates this article, was taken shortly after July 28, 2020, during high-profile searches that took place in an allotment garden in Hanover, across the Rhine. Under this tent erected to privatize their painstaking work, investigators discovered the entrance to a cellar: a trapdoor in the foundations of a ruined house that had once served as a home for the repeat pedophile until 2007 . "I remembered his face from the pictures in the news. And I remember his van and his dogs. Until then, I had completely forgotten about him," the former owner of the neighboring plot, Wolfgang Kossack, 73, told the Daily Mail . Brückner had told him that he planned to return to live in southern Europe. Which he did.

Maddie Case: Christian Brückner, a man who loved cellars

The newspaper stated at the time that the cellar had not been backfilled following its demolition and the police therefore thought they had it "intact" since 2007 and therefore full of evidence. But apart from this find, the searches had yielded nothing. It is another cellar that will speak. Still according to the Daily Mail , in June 2020, "a former friend of Brückner had claimed that the latter had told him that he had a cellar in another property that he wanted to soundproof with sheet metal like Josef Fritzl." This Austrian who had kidnapped and raped his daughter in his basement (a fallout shelter dating from the Cold War) for 24 years. This shows the sadism of the suspect , fortunately imprisoned in Germany until at least 2027 , even if this fantasy is older than the disappearance of Maddie, who died quickly, the police believe (the Fritzl affair started in 2008).

Maddie Case: Christian Brückner, Bookseller on the Run

Between 2013 and 2016, the prime suspect lived in Brunswick, a city in Lower Saxony. He ran a bookstore there but fled because he was actively wanted by law enforcement, notably for a rape committed in Portugal. And in his most recent German residence, investigators discovered the object of his fantasy in 2021, reported The Mirror . The first media outlet to enter the home and photograph the entrance to the illegally dug "dungeon," which Brückner wanted to soundproof afterwards. The new occupant told the English newspaper at the time that Brückner looked dirty and made her nervous .

Maddie Case: Christian Brückner, "Dirty and Nervous"

" If I had known what kind of guy he was, I would never have moved here. He wanted to quickly leave his small house and flee to Italy (where he was arrested in 2018, in the streets of Milan, editor's note). I had to pay him 800 euros to keep the garden. Everything looked like a dump, not an apartment. I didn't care, the garden was big, we could do something with the shed, and I needed the space. Brückner was stressed." Later, she would notice the trapdoor to the "dungeon" without paying it any attention. But when she heard about the affair, she went "straight to the police, because I remembered the trapdoor and the cellar. But I don't know what's in it." This was just as the police began digging. Unfortunately, they found nothing conclusive.