Kirsty Mckenzie
SCOTLAND Yard is set to end its investigation into the disappearance of Madeleine McCann later this year, according to reports.
The Operation Grange inquiry, which was set up by the Metropolitan Police in 2011, four years after Maddie, then three, was abducted from a holiday apartment in Praia da Luz, in Portugal.
Police were given an extra £350k in July 2021 to continue the inquiry, which had already cost around £12.5 million.
But funding is reportedly ending this year The Sun said, with cops winding down the investigation amid fears that the main suspect will not be charged.
A source told The Sun: “The end of the road for Operation Grange is now in sight. The team’s work is expected to be completed by autumn. There are currently no plans to take the inquiry any further.”
Christian B, who was identified as a suspect by German authorities in 2020, is believed to be highly unlikely to face criminal charges in connection with Madeline’s disappearance.
The 45-year-old is currently serving a seven-year jail sentence for raping a woman aged 72 in Portugal in 2005.
The Olive Press previously revealed that Brueckner would be charged with three other sex crimes.
In particular, he is facing ‘up to nine years’ for the rape of Irish woman Hazel Behan, in 2004, which he is said to have filmed.
Police have a ‘very strong case’ against him having found a partial fingerprint of Brueckner’s at the scene, in Portimao, on the Algarve.
He will also be charged with the sexual assault of a 10-year-old girl on a beach, near Praia da Luz, just a month before Maddie went missing.
And in the most recent case, he will be charged with exposing himself to four children in a play park in a town, 40 minutes inland from Praia da Luz, in 2017.
He was extradited from Portugal to Germany that year to serve a prison sentence for the sexual assault of a German girl in 2015.
In total, the German pervert has nearly 20 convictions spread around Europe.
In 2016, police in Germany found ‘over 20,000’ photos and videos of child sex abuse and other degrading pornography buried under the dead body of Brueckner’s dog in East Germany.
Olive Press editor Jon Clarke interviewed lead prosecutor Wolters for his book on the case My Search for Madeleine, published on Amazon last year.
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