Madeleine McCann suspect Christian Brueckner 'confessed to abducting girl from Algarve apartment' former cellmate claims

Madeleine McCann suspect Christian Brueckner confessed to a fellow inmate that he took a child from a Portuguese apartment, a court in Germany has heard today.

The 47-year-old paedophile is said to have asked Laurentiu Codin if he too was behind bars for child offences while they were sharing a cell in 2020.

The convicted rapist then revealed that he had taken 'a child' during a break-in while he was living in the Algarve, the court was told.

It comes after German investigators sensationally named Brueckner as the key suspect in the abduction of the British three-year-old Maddie from her family's Praia da Luz holiday apartment in May 2007.

Speaking in front of Braunschweig Regional Court today, where Brueckner is standing trial for unrelated sex crimes, Codin told a story which bore striking similarities to the night Maddie disappeared.

'He told me that in Portugal, that he had stolen there. He was in a region where there are hotels and rich people live. 

'He said there was somewhere with an open window, he told me this. He was looking for money.

'He said he didn't find any money but found a kid and took the child. He said that two hours later, there were police and dogs all over the place, so he then went away, out of the area.

'I am just saying what he told me. He told me that a person was with him, who he had had an argument with, allegedly it was his woman. 

'He said he took the child in Portugal in his car, and in the time when the police and dogs were at the house, he drove away and he was gone.

'He asked me if the DNA from a child can be taken from bones under the ground.'

In his disturbing testimony, Codin, 50, said Brueckner had 'confided' in him about his crimes while they were both on remand in the same prison.

'There was talk of a girl, I don't know if what he said was true or not. He said that he had a bus and that he had taken her with it. He said he kept some of them, but not others, but he never said that he had killed them. 

'We're talking about girls, not boys. Not all at once, always one at a time. He told me about two. He said that he had taken someone, had sex with her but he didn't kill her.'

Asked by the judge how old his victim was, Codin said: 'I don't want to get it wrong, but it was very young, tiny. I mean young. 

'Each time when we were together he spoke about it because he was convinced that I was a paedophile.'

Brueckner is serving a seven-year jail term for the 2005 rape of American pensioner Diana Menkes, 72, in the Algarve.

He is standing trial at Braunschweig district court for unconnected sex crimes allegedly carried out in the Algarve between 2000 and 2017.

The offences Brueckner is on trial for include the alleged rape of Irish tour rep Hazel Behan, now 40, in her Praia da Rocha apartment in 2004.

He has also been charged with the alleged rape of a teenage girl in his home in the same city and raping an elderly woman in her holiday apartment.

Brueckner is also accused of exposing himself to a German girl on a beach in Salema in April 2007 and to an 11-year-old girl in 2017.

His current sentence ends early next year, and if he is not found guilty in the ongoing trial, he could be freed from jail. The trial is due to end in December.