A new documentary on Madeleine McCann has explained recent developments in the case when a new prime suspect was named.
Madeleine McCann of ITV: The Hunt for the Prime Suspect explained what events led to Christian Brueckner being identified as the prime suspect earlier this year.
Brueckner, 43, is currently in prison in his native Germany for raping a 72-year-old woman, and had previously been jailed for sexually assaulting a six-year-old girl on a playground.
The documentary explores evidence that a phone allegedly belonging to suspect Christian Brueckner hit by a mobile phone tower in Praia da Luz, near where Madeleine disappeared, the night he disappeared.
(Image: PA)
However, the Portuguese police were unable to connect Brueckner and his prepaid mobile phone with the data from the cell tower.
Police prosecutor Hans Christian Wolters says: “We are now looking for the other person who was on the call. We want to know what they talked about. But we also want the other person to tell us who they were talking to.”
“The data shows that there was a phone there, not who used it. That is why the other person on the call would be so important to us.”
(Image: BILD)
He added: “They could tell us who they spoke to, possibly our suspect. In that sense, it could result in a conviction.”
Wolters also told Maddie’s parents, Kate and Gerry McCann, that they have concrete evidence that the girl is dead.
Three-year-old Maddie went missing on a family vacation in the town of Praia de Luz in Portugal’s Algarve region in 2007.
German police believe Brueckner kidnapped her, but they have only 22 months to process him, as there is a 15-year statute of limitations under Portuguese law, and he has not yet been questioned.
In the documentary, criminal law specialist Dr. Alexander Stevens explains: “The biggest challenge for the German prosecutor to obtain witnesses is the fact that any confidant would have to incriminate himself.”
“Once you are involved in a murder crime, you should at least be sentenced to 10 years in prison. Therefore, the chances of someone showing up are really very low.”
* McCann: The Hunt for the Prime Suspect airs tonight at 9 p.m. ITV
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