'Some evidence' Madeleine McCann is dead, say German authorities

German authorities have said they have “some evidence” that Madeleine McCann is dead but are appealing for more information in order to bring a suspect to court.

The investigation into Madeleine’s disappearance in Praia da Luz, Portugal, in 2007 has attracted renewed attention after authorities announced they were investigating a 43-year-old convicted German child sex offender.

The suspect, who is reportedly serving a seven-year prison sentence for the rape of a 72-year-old American woman in 2005, has been named in reports as Christian Brückner.

Brückner is known to have lived on the Algarve coast and his Portuguese mobile phone received a half-hour phone call in Praia da Luz about an hour before Madeleine, then three, went missing on 3 May 2007.

German authorities have previously said they believe Madeleine is dead and are investigating the suspect on suspicion of murder.

Hans Christian Wolters, a spokesman for the Braunschweig public prosecutor’s office, said on Monday it had evidence that Madeleine was dead but not enough for a trial.

Wolters told Sky News: “The hard evidence we don’t have, we don’t have the crucial evidence of Madeleine McCann’s body. We expect that she is dead, but we don’t have enough evidence that we can get a warrant for our suspect in Germany for the murder of Madeleine McCann.

“At the moment, we also don’t have enough proof for a trial at court, but we have some evidence that the suspect has done the deed. That’s why we need more information from people, especially places he has lived, so we can target these places especially and search there for Madeleine.”

Wolters called on British tourists who visited Praia da Luz between 1995 and 2007, when the suspect is thought to have lived in the area, to come forward with any information about him.

Meanwhile, German prosecutors are reportedly examining any possible links to the disappearance of two other children, and Wolters said he believed there were victims of related sex crimes who had not come forward.

Following publicity around the Madeleine case, the father of a student nurse who went missing in Germany in 2001 has called on German police to question Brückner in relation to her case.

Phil Kerton, from Kent, whose daughter Louise disappeared, said: “Certainly the German police seemed confident they are on to something there. It gives one some sort of hope that the truth is out there to be found.”

An Irish woman raped in Portugal in 2004 has asked detectives to review her case after learning that the sexual assault for which Brückner was convicted bore a similarity to her own experience.

In the days since the renewed appeal around Madeleine’s disappearance, Scotland Yard said it received nearly 400 tips to its Operation Grange team.

Operation Grange refers to the force’s active investigation, which a spokesman said was still considered a missing person inquiry because there was no “definitive evidence whether Madeleine is alive or dead”.

The Metropolitan police’s investigation has identified more than 600 people as potentially significant and was tipped off about the German national, already known to detectives, following a 2017 appeal 10 years after she went missing.

Madeleine, who vanished shortly before her fourth birthday while her parents were eating dinner with friends at a nearby tapas restaurant, would have turned 17 last month.