He May 3, 2007As rarely happens, a police incident shocked the planet: Madeleine McCann had disappeared.
The little girl was asleep in the room at the Portuguese resort where her family was spending their holidays when, suddenly, they no longer saw her. Still today, 17 years later, she remains missing.
Las alerts They lit up immediately. The hypotheses multiplied at a ferocious pace. Everyone, even their own parents, were suspects. But nothing can ever be verified.
Her photo, replicated endlessly in the world’s media, showed a girl with blonde hair on her shoulder, sweet eyes and an unmistakable spot on the iris. She had only 3 years.
His case, a painful unsolved enigma, continues to generate controversies like no other.
How was the Madeleine McCann case?
17 years ago, on May 3, 2007, Maddie -as they affectionately called her- slept in apartment 5A of the Ocean Club complex, in Praia da Luz, Portugal.
Madeleine McCann was 3 years old when she disappeared from her room. Photo: Archive
That night he shared the room with his brothers: the twins Sean and Amelie2 years old, one younger than her.
Kate and Gerry McCann, his parents, were having dinner with friends at “Tapas”, the resort restaurant, about 50 meters from the room. They had arrived there around 8:40 p.m. and every 20 minutes they took turns checking on them and checking that everything was okay.
Around 10 p.m., after one of those visits, the little girl’s mother returned crying and screaming to the table. “They took her”he repeated over and over again.
The dreamed and long-awaited family vacation had become a nightmare. From which until now they have not been able to wake up.
From that precise moment, everything became a skein of contradictory versions, suspicions, false clues and conspiracy theories from which no one was left out.
Los numbers They speak for themselves. As part of the investigation, some 600 interrogations were carried out, more than 2,000 police investigations, 500 searches in the area of the incident and nearly 10,000 “sightings” of the girl throughout the planet.
However, despite the efforts of the Portuguese and British police, the case could never be solved, and the enigma about what happened to Madeleine McCann – who was about to turn 21 – still persists.
17 years after the disappearance of Madeleine McCann: who is Christian Brüeckner, the main suspect
Despite the passage of time and the complexity of the situation, the researchers They never abandoned their work.
Thus, in 2020, the German police identified a suspicious. A German man who, in 2007, lived in a Caravan near where the kidnapping took place. Currently, he is in prison in his country with a conviction for sexual abuse.
His name is Christian Brueckneris 47 years old and a terror record. Pedophile, rapist, trafficker and thief are just some of the accusations among his 17 criminal records. For the authorities, he is today the main suspect.
According to what was confirmed by the Daily Mailworked in the same tourist center of the Algarve when Madeleine McCann disappeared.
The media obtained the testimony of the British expatriate Ken Ralphs, that he knew Christian Brueckner at the time and that he maintains that the German criminal worked in the Ocean Club tapas bar frequented by Kate and Gerry McCann, Madeleine’s parents.
Ralphs maintains that Brueckner conspired with another man to kidnap the girl and then sell her to a couple who could not have children.
Christian Brueckner is currently the main suspect in the case. Photo: AP/File
However, in statements to MailOnlinethe man said he suspects Brueckner and his accomplices nervous when they saw the extensive media coverage of the case and took the worst decision…
The truth is that although Brueckner was convicted and charged with a series of other sexual crimes, He was never formally charged. in relation to Madeleine’s case and denied having any involvement in her disappearance.
It is currently in a german prison for the rape of a 72-year-old woman in her home in Praia da Luz in 2005.
The (other) theories and suspects in the Madeleine McCann case
Hours of desperation, maximum uncertainty, inefficient police – at least – and the constant siege of the press that asked for more and more, formed a dangerous combo that, from the beginning, plotted against the investigation.
First, it was said that a man had taken the little girl in her teddy bear pajamas wrapped in a striped blanket. Quickly, that man had a first and last name: Robert Murat.
Everything focused on this divorced man who lived with his mother near the complex, who barely saw his daughter (of a similar age to Madeleine) and who, since he was fluent in both languages, offered himself as McCann translator. Neither the house searches nor the various interviews they conducted led to anything.
Madeleine McCann’s parents never stopped looking for her. Photo: AFP/File
In this maelstrom, another clue came from Tongeren, a small town in Belgium. The case crossed borders and spread.
There, a waitress reported that she thought she had seen Madeleine in a bar being carried away by a couple. The analysis of the remains of a smoothie that the girl drank there was conclusive: It wasn’t his DNA..
Something similar happened in dozens of places. The girl was seen in Argentina, in Morocco, in Malta… False clues and rumors that only filled newspaper pages and minutes of television, but led to nothing.
Las theories They continued to multiply and, at the same time, become entangled in inconducive labyrinths.
The most popular hypothesis about what happened that night is connected with the responsibility of the Madeleine’s parents, a couple of doctors from Leicester, Great Britain.
This is what the controversial excomisario Gonçalo Amaral, the first person responsible for the investigation, who was removed from the case five months after the disappearance of the little girl because he criticized Scotland Yard.
His controversial (and implausible) version maintains that Madeleine died because her parents They provided him with a sleepy so he wouldn’t wake up while they were in the restaurant.
One of the many newspaper covers that talked about the case in these 17 years.
Gerry and Kate went investigated formally by the Portuguese authorities, but in the end they turned out exonerated due to lack of evidence. Today they continue to ask that the case be clarified.
Another line of research – with some weight in public opinion – is that which maintains that Maddie was kidnapped by a international pedophile network.
Julián Peribánez, the Spanish private detective who worked for the McCanns, is the main defender of this position. For him – he maintained it in the Netflix series about the case – the girl could be alive in South America.
He case Madeleine McCann remains a dramatic and painful question. Sadly, today marks a new anniversary: 17 years of a heartbreaking absence and, for now, without any explanation.
