Prosecutors are confident that they have found the man who kidnapped and killed Madeleine McCann in Portugal in 2007.
German Christian Brueckner is the man believed to have been responsible, and he is currently serving time for separate offences in a high security prison in Oldenburg, Germany.
“We’re confident we have the man who took and killed her,” German prosecutor Hans Christian Wolters told The Mirror.
“It is now possible that we could charge. We have that evidence now. But it’s not just about charging him – we want to charge him with the best body of evidence possible.
“When we still have questions, it would be nonsense to charge rather than wait for the answers that could strengthen our position.”
Wolters continued to say that the prosecutors do not have any scientific evidence, and everything they have at this point is circumstantial.
“It is circumstantial evidence – we have no scientific evidence,” Wolters said. “If we had a video of the act or a picture of Madeleine dead with Brueckner on camera, we wouldn’t have had to make a public appeal. But we only have circumstantial evidence.
We have no body and no DNA but we have other evidence. Based on the evidence we have, it leads to no other conclusion. I can’t tell you on which basis we assume she is dead. But for us, there’s no other possibility. There is no hope she is alive.”
Brueckner became a suspect in the case in 2017, 10 years after McCann’s disappearance. He is said to have been living in a camper van close to Praia da Luz, where Madeleine disappeared.
He is also being investigated for a number of other offences, including on a 10-year-old girl, as well as the murder of a teenager in Belgium.
