German suspect in Madeleine McCann case linked to two more child disappearances

The father of a six-year-old German boy who disappeared on holiday in Portugal nearly 24 years ago says the recent dramatic developments in the Madeleine McCann case have given him hope he will finally learn what happened to his son.

Andreas Hasee said a German investigator called him on Friday to confirm they were reopening the case of his missing son, René, following the identification of the prime suspect in the 2007 disappearance of three-year old Madeleine.

It is the second unexplained disappearance of a child linked in recent days to Madeleine’s case and the newly revealed suspect, named by German media as Christian Brückner.

German prosecutors believe the 43-year-old convicted paedophile may have also been involved in the disappearance of Inga Gehricke, who was five-years-old when she vanished from a forest in the Saxony-Anhalt region of Germany on 2 May 2015.

Brückner is serving a seven-year sentence in the northern German port city of Kiel, for the brutal rape of a US citizen in the holiday resort of Praia da Rocha in 2005.

“I had not heard from the police for almost 20 years,” Hasee told the Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger newspaper. “They told me they will now take a closer look at the case of my son.” Police had told him that “there may be a connection” between René’s disappearance and that of Madeleine.

The latest developments came as police in Britain revealed they had received almost 400 “pieces of information” in the first three days of launching a new appeal for evidence over the disappearance of Madeleine.

Clarence Mitchell, the McCann’s family spokesman, said it was “extraordinary” that a 13-year-old case could generate so much feedback, and reiterated the appeal from Madeleine’s parents, Gerry and Kate, for as much information as possible on their daughter’s disappearance.

However, German prosecutors revealed last Thursday that they believed Madeleine was dead, though have not revealed details to support the assertion. British officers continue to treat the issue as a missing persons case, and her parents “still hope” Madeleine is alive.

As the revelation of a new suspect injects fresh momentum into the case, one longstanding theme of the hunt for Madeleine continued yesterday as various law enforcement authorities blamed one another for not sharing or acting on vital information.

In Germany, claims emerged that Brückner was flagged as a key suspect seven years ago by police but the report was ignored by the authorities. According to German magazine Der Spiegel, police in the north-western city of Braunschweig received a tip about Brückner in 2013 and sent it to the German Federal Office of Criminal Investigation, where it “was apparently not acted upon, much to the consternation of the local investigators”.

Fresh disagreements have also reportedly flared up between British detectives and Portuguese police, whose initial inquiry into Madeleine’s disappearance was roundly criticised.

Portuguese detectives had been accused of identifying the German paedophile as a suspect in 2007 but “discarding” him. Yesterday, Portuguese officers insisted they had forwarded his name to the British authorities in 2012 when they took on the case.

Back in Germany, prosecutors are commencing fresh inquiries into how René disappeared without a trace from Aljezur on the Algarve on 21 June 1996. The resort is around 40 km from Praia da Luz, where Madeleine went missing 11 years later from her family’s hotel room.

Hasee was not with his son at the time. “I’d been on holiday with him the week before,” he told the German newspaper. “Then René went with his mother and her new partner to Portugal.”

The three had gone to a restaurant on the evening of his disappearance, after which they had wanted a walk on the beach. René went ahead, and removed his shirt and trousers because he wanted to go in the water. The adults lost sight of him and never saw him again.

Hasee said he had long since got used to the fact that his son, who would now be 30, must have drowned, even if no evidence of that was ever found, and the wind and current conditions at the time meant it was unlikely. “He was actually a very careful child. He would not have simply gone into the Atlantic on his own,” Hasee said.

René’s disappearance was widely reported in Germany at the time but, unlike Madeleine’s case, was soon forgotten about by the wider public. The parents’ last contact with the police was around four years after René;s disappearance.

Now his hopes have been raised, Hasee said, that the truth about his son may finally emerge. “Of course, it starts you thinking,” Hasee said. Even if he is doubtful that his son might still be alive, he is desperate for clarity. “Unfortunately, we don’t even have a grave,” he said.

Elsewhere an investigator in Braunschweig, where Brückner is last registered as having lived, has spoken of his frustration at trying to keep tabs on the German odd-jobs man, who has had a lengthy career as a child abuser, rapist and petty criminal.

The investigator told the Braunschweiger Zeitung newspaper that he and his colleagues spent long periods following him around the city, believing him to be a “dangerous sex offender” who was a grave threat to the public. In between prison sentences, the investigator said, he wanted to ensure that Brückner did not disappear.