A German police officer testified on Tuesday that they discovered an email account linking a convicted rapist to the unsolved 2007 disappearance of Madeleine McCann.
The Telegraph reported that detective Titus Stampa said police located Christian Brückner’s Hotmail account and a hard drive which was related to the McCann case. McCann was three when she vanished from her bedroom while vacationing at a Portuguese resort with her parents and family friends.
Stampa testified that he was “not allowed” to talk about how Brückner’s external hard drive was related to the toddler’s disappearance. However, he did reveal that Brückner used another email account to share child abuse content, according to The Telegram.
Stampa claimed that Brückner deleted emails in that account going back to McCann’s disappearance. He highlighted an email, allegedly sent by Brückner, in which he detailed fantasizing about a mother and young child being sexually abused.
Brückner is serving a seven-year sentence in Germany for raping an elderly American woman in Praia da Luz, Portugal, in 2005. He is currently on trial in Germany for rape and child sexual abuse — though he has never been charged in connection with McCann’s case.
Brückner’s release date is scheduled for late 2025 if he is not convicted in the second case.
