Walter Finch
Olive Press editor Jon Clarke recalls the week he started probing the German paedophile during the Covid lockdown in June 2020
IT is exactly five years ago this week that a German suspect was named as the prime suspect in the abduction of Madeleine McCann in 2007.
As police begin to pack up after a detailed three-day search in Portugal this week linked to the British toddler, I can’t decide if this is the last throw of the dice or just one more attempt to try and get a conviction over the line.
It was Wednesday June 3, 2020, that German police and prosecutor, Hans Christian Wolters, held a bombshell press conference in Braunschweig, in Lower Saxony.
Seemingly a critical turning point in what is the world’s biggest missing persons case, the following morning I was on my way to Portugal – in the heart of the Covid lockdown – to start digging for clues.
German investigators had classed it as a murder inquiry and my former bosses at the Mail on Sunday in London immediately called me into action.
It was an incredibly complicated time to be heading to Portugal. While the journey time was still around four hours, the draconian pandemic regulations in Spain prevented anyone from leaving their own town, let alone the province.
So I needed to get an official letter of commission from London and when I got to the border a call had to be made to the Home Office, in Lisbon, no less, to confirm I was a bona fide regulated journalist.
Incredibly it was only the fifth time in history the border between Spain and Portugal was closed and I arrived to find ONLY five vehicles, all lorries, queuing at the border.
Both sides had armed police and both nationalities peppered me with questions. But finally, we were in and on the morning of June 5 two days later I first knocked on the door of the rental home Brueckner lived at for 10 years just outside Praia da Luz.
The first journalist to arrive on the scene, I met his next door neighbour, Monika, a 60-something German lady, who told me he had only ever been the ‘loveliest’ neighbour, incredibly charming and someone she regularly had a coffee with.
At another home he had stayed at on the other side of the village, in Bensafrim, the new British tenants were far less friendly and soon put up a sign saying simply: ‘Journalists do not touch the bell or knock the door: DO NOT DISTURB’.
It was to be the start of another intensive period of trying to discover who had abducted the British toddler back in May, 2007, and eventually led on to my book; My Search for Madeleine, which is about to be updated and republished.
By the time that came out in 2022, Brueckner had been named an ‘official suspect’ or ‘arguido’ in Portugal, as well, and British police had publicly backed the German BKA insisting they had their man.
On the face of it, it certainly seemed to be the case: detectives had found proof that a pay-as-you-go mobile number registered to Brueckner had been used in Praia da Luz for half an hour on the evening that Maddie went missing.
He was also a prolific burglar, who had lived in the area for over a decade, and had previous convictions for sex offences and child abuse.
Currently in prison serving a seven year sentence for the sadistic rape, filmed on camera, of an American pensioner IN Praia da Luz in 2005, he was described by the German prosecutor as extremely dangerous.
I soon discovered he had been charged with battering an English girlfriend in a busy bar in the resort one Christmas, and had done the same back in Germany.
Then it emerged he was being probed for five other sex offences around the Algarve area between 2000 and 2017.
He had also allegedly told another girlfriend the night before Maddie went missing that he had a ‘horrible job’ to do the next day and wouldn’t be around for a while.
While I long thought this was a classic ‘flyer’ from the Sun newspaper, I now believe this conversation to be true.
And finally, that week, I was tipped off about another home he frequently spent time inland, where he had a girlfriend in 2007. A German woman who looked after teenage orphans.
Her name was Nicole Fehlinger, and the Olive Press was outside the rundown rural home in the tiny village of Foral, on the morning of June 6.
Owned by a rather eccentric Portuguese/Australian lady called Lia, she told me Nicole was a tenant who had left ‘owing her thousands’ and that Brueckner was a really dangerous man, who walked around with a gun.
It was to be the start of the most exciting few months of my journalistic career as I bit by bit tried to piece together who this mysterious German was.
A man, who despite living in the Praia da Luz area for over ten years, and with a long track record for sex crimes, was not deemed to be worth putting on a list of 600 possible suspects for Portuguese police back in 2007.
A man who had also committed various crimes in Portugal and even told a judge that he had previous convictions for paedophilia in Germany.
It was when I got a tip off to visit a former housemate of his in Orgiva, near Granada, in Spain, a fortnight later, that I really started believing for sure he was guilty.
Speaking to me for the first and only time, former friend and housemate in Praia da Luz, Michael ‘Micha’ Tatschl told me: “I’m sure he snatched Maddie. I know he did it. He was a pervert and a very strange man.”
It was to be the first of a number of his former associates, cell mates and pals who came out to insist he had committed one of the crimes of the century.
As the current round of searches, led by the German BKA, start to come to an end, I wonder if we will ever get to see the German public enemy number one convicted over Maddie.
Despite claims that German detectives, supported by their Portuguese counterparts, have found ‘nothing of value’ this week, it is far too early to say.
Obviously they are searches that should have been done by the Policia Judiciaria in the weeks after Maddie vanished and, to quote the words of well-respected former police boss and safeguarding speclaist Jim Gamble, they ‘blundered’ badly.
But, at least they are finally being done and putting a further spotlight on the movements of a very dangerous sex offender, who lived under the noses of law enforcement and the courts in both Portugal (and Spain) for well over a decade.
And given that in the week after the appeal went out back in June 2020, police in England alone got 270 calls and emails linking to their prime suspect, there is still a chance that someone important might come forward.
But the bottom line is police need to know: with whom did Brueckner talk to on that night before Madeleine went missing. And two, where is her body buried?
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