Jon Clarke (Publisher & Editor)
THE Olive Press can reveal more details of the guns and other items found in the recent searches for missing Madeleine McCann in Portugal.
The two weapons found at a derelict property where prime suspect Christian Brueckner, 38, was known to have stayed in 2007, are still being analysed.
Although a series of bone fragments and animal bones were sent to Germany for scientists to test, the guns inexplicably stayed in Portugal.
It comes after the head of the country’s PJ force, Luis Neves said the searches had ‘not been in vain’.
He has not elaborated further. But while one of the weapons was described by Portuguese police sources as a 50-year-old ‘rusting relic’ so far they have been tight-lipped about the other.
This gun is a 6.35 calibre pistol and, while not in good working order, is considerably newer.
An Olive Press source in Lisbon revealed it had been found in the ruin, where Brueckner allegedly camped beside his VW Westfalia van, buried under ‘stones and dirt’.
The source added it could definitely ‘still be linked’ to the disappearance of toddler Maddie, 3, in May 2007.
It could also be linked to other crimes on the Algarve, including further missing children, where Brueckner may have been involved.
“The guns were found in different places and were immediately seized by the PJ,” revealed the source. “They wanted to keep everything under their control.”
One of them was ‘in a well covered with muddy water and garbage, the other in a ruin under stones and dirt.’
The Olive Press can reveal that this 6.35 calibre gun was a similar size weapon to one Brueckner sometimes carried when living on the Algarve in 2007.
Former friends and acquaintances of the German sex offender told The Olive Press he had the gun when he lived in the inland village of Foral, 45 minutes from Praia da Luz, for much of 2007.
His former landlady told The Olive Press he had been ‘carrying the gun’ when he was recruited to track down a teenage girl – a German orphan – who had run away from the home of his then girlfriend.
“He came and went and was a really scary guy,” Lia Silva told the Olive Press. “People were scared of him in the village.
“Some people said they saw him carrying a gun which was obviously really terrifying.”
She continued that the paedophile had been ‘given the job’ of locating the young girl who had vanished and he brought her back from a rural property where she was staying with three Russians.
Shockingly, as The Olive Press reported, the 16-year-old was later discovered to be pregnant.
According to an official missing person’s report filed with police in nearby Messines, she had come back ‘voluntarily’ and didn’t wish to make any further complaint.
The report, seen by this paper, however was filed alongside her then guardian, Christian Brueckner’s girlfriend, with whom he was known to be involved in various crimes.
The German woman, born in the same month as Brueckner, claimed to be a ‘child psychologist’ and ran a rehabilitation programme for troubled teenagers.
She fled the home, Villa Bianca, in Foral, leaving thousands in unpaid rent, claimed the landlady Silva, as well as traces of drugs and syringes.
She has been grilled at least four times by German police over her involvement with Brueckner at the time.
On the night Maddie went missing she told the Mail on Sunday Brueckner had parked his van outside her house, telling her he had inexplicably been on a long journey back from Tomar, in the north of Portugal.
She added he had got up and left early in the morning.
Police launched the recent three-day search, earlier this month, in a distinct area around 2 kilometres from a farmhouse outside Praia da Luz, where Brueckner lived for a decade.
Led by the German BKA, who have been investigating Brueckner since 2018, they centred their search around 21 plots with various ruined properties on them.
Their search was halted before the end of the third day.
Brueckner, who has many convictions for sex crimes and child abuse, is known to have been in Praia da Luz on the night Maddie went missing.
His mobile phone connected to the village’s mobile phone tower just two hours before Maddie was snatched from her bed at the Ocean Club, where her family were on holiday.
Brueckner was a prolific burglar who regularly stole from apartments in the complex.
He has allegedly confessed at least twice to friends that he knew what happened to Maddie and may have been involved in the abduction.
He was absolved of five further sex crimes on the Algarve, three rapes and two child abuse offences, during a trial last year. The verdict is being appealed.
If unsuccessful he could be let out of prison in September this year.
A Change.org petition has been launched to keep him inside.
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