Madeleine McCann disappeared from her family’s holiday apartment in the Algarve resort of Praia da Luz in May 2007 – just a few days before her fourth birthday.
Despite several ‘sightings’, no trace of her has ever been found.
Detectives believe she was spirited away in a vehicle while her parents dined just yards away.
Convicted child sex attacker Christian Brueckner has become the prime suspect.
Here, MailOnline answers the key questions surrounding suspect Brueckner in relation to Madeleine’s disappearance.
MailOnline answers the key questions surrounding suspect Brueckner in relation to Madeleine’s disappearance
1. Did prime suspect Brueckner have access to any transport?
Brueckner was known to have a distinctive yellow and white VW campervan and it was seen close to the apartment where Madeleine vanished from.
It was also spotted close to an isolate dam searched at the end of May and where he was regularly seen calling it his ‘little paradise’.
Brueckner was known to have a distinctive yellow and white VW campervan (pictured) and it was seen close to the apartment where Madeleine vanished from
2. How did the abductor get into the apartment where Madeleine was staying?
Brueckner lived locally and although publicly was known as an odd job man he made his money from breaking and entering hotel rooms and holiday lets, stealing cameras and other valuables.
Friends of his dubbed him ‘The Climber’ because he could easily reach first and second floor rooms by climbing up drainpipes.
Pictured are the holiday apartments in Praya da Luz, Algarve, where Madeleien McCann went missing in 2007
3. Does Christian Brueckner have any previous convictions?
German born Brueckner was first jailed for child sex offences in 1993 when he was just 17 years old.
He abused a six-year-old child in a playground and just days before the trial was caught with his trousers around his ankles performing a sex act in front of a nine-year-old girl.
German born Brueckner was first jailed for child sex offences in 1993 when he was just 17 years old
4. What happened after that?
Brueckner drifted across Europe for several years criss-crossing the continent before finally settling in Portugal on the Algarve coast.
This is where he carried on his life of crime as a petty thief stealing diesel, solar panels, drug dealing and house breaking.
This undated handout image supplied by the Carabinieri Milano shows a police mug shot of Christian Brueckner, a suspect in the disappearance of three-year-old Madeleine McCann
5. Anything more serious?
In 2005 he raped an elderly American woman in her home at Praia da Luz but he was not convicted until 2019 after DNA evidence found at the scene was linked to him and he was jailed for seven years after a trial in Germany.
Prosecutors are convinced he was also responsible for a string of other sex attacks on women and children in the Algarve between 2000 and 2017.
He is suspected of raping Irish tour guide Hazel Behan in 2004 and she has told police she recalls her attacker having ‘distinctive’ birthmarks.
Then just a month before Madeleine vanished, police suspect him of performing a sex act in front of a 10-year-old German girl on a beach five miles from Praia da Luz.
He is suspected of raping Irish tour guide Hazel Behan (pictured) in 2004 and she has told police she recalls her attacker having ‘distinctive’ birthmarks
6. Apart from the VW is there anything else the police are looking at?
In 2010 detectives seized a burgundy Allegro Bay Winnebago that Brueckner used to travel between Portugal and Germany.
Detectives also found a girl’s swimming costume and other children’s clothes inside.
He had once told friends the RV was an ideal place to ‘hide children and drugs’.
In 2010 detectives seized a burgundy Allegro Bay Winnebago that Brueckner used to travel between Portugal and Germany
7. Wasn’t there another car linked to him?
Police also seized a Jaguar car with German plates that Brueckner would regularly be seen in cruising through Praia da Luz.
Intriguingly, the day after Madeleine disappeared, he contacted vehicle licensing officials in Germany and had it re-registered in the name of a friend who lived on the outskirts of Munich.
Police also seized a Jaguar car (pictured) with German plates that Brueckner would regularly be seen in cruising through Praia da Luz
8. Is there anything else linking him to Praia da Luz?
In May 2020, after painstaking work between German BKA officers and the Metropolitan Police, phone records put Brueckner close to the holiday complex where Madeleine was staying.
They show that at 7.32pm he received a 30-minute call and then an hour later Madeleine vanished.
In May 2020, after painstaking work between German BKA officers and the Metropolitan Police, phone records put Brueckner close to the holiday complex where Madeleine was staying
9. What about any witnesses?
Several former friends of Brueckner have come forward and given statements to police.
This includes one who said that on the 10th anniversary of Madeleine’s disappearance while in a bar he told drinkers he knew ‘what had happened’ to the then three-year-old.
While the same year another pal Helge Busching told police that he had met Brueckner in Spain a year after the abduction and he had told him it was ‘strange she didn’t scream’.
Key witness Helge Busching (pictured) explained how he came to know about Brueckner’s shady past by discovering harrowing sexual abuse videos, and how his former acquaintance appeared to incriminate himself in Madeleine’s disappearance
10. Have police found anything else in Germany ?
Other evidence police have gathered as they build up a picture of the twisted paedophile is a huge collection of child abuse images loaded onto several USB sticks and buried under Brueckner’s dead dog in an isolated warehouse.
The sickening collection was found in a dilapidated building at Neuwegersleben, 65 miles south-east of Hannover in what he told friends was his ‘secret lair’.
He denies any invovlement in Maddie’s disappearance.
The sickening collection was found in a dilapidated building at Neuwegersleben, 65 miles south-east of Hannover in what he told friends was his ‘secret lair’
