The three-year-old girl suddenly disappeared from the hotel where she was sleeping, in 2007, while her parents were eating at a restaurant in the same complex, in Praia da Luz, in the south of Portugal. In this sense, detective Mark Draycott, involved in the search, appeared this Thursday, May 2, before the Braunschweig Court, which is investigating this case, to provide his testimony in this regard. What changed the course of the search was an answering machine message from a former friend of the alleged perpetrator of this crime, Christian Brueckner, who is currently being tried by justice.
Madeleine’s disappearance is one of the world’s most shocking unsolved mysteries. It all happened on May 3, 2007, when the family made up of Kate and Gerry McCann was taking a vacation in Praia da Luz and the girl, who was sleeping in the hotel, disappeared without leaving any clues. At that time, Scotland Yard detectives and the German police followed the few traces that there were and, over the years, pointed to who today is the main suspect of having kidnapped her: Christian Brueckner.
New information
17 years after his disappearance, the Braunschweig Court is investigating the case and trying Christian Brueckner these days, although for a previous case. The first of the police officers to be called to testify was Detective Mark Draycott, who appeared to answer questions about Madeleine’s disappearance because he dedicated himself to investigating the case in the search known as Operation Grange, which began in 2011.
In his testimony, he provided a detail that could be key in the investigation. According to him, Helge Busching, a former friend of Brueckner’s who met him in the Algarve (the holiday resort where the family stayed) during the 2000s, contacted British police in 2017.
“Back then we still had a public telephone number that was advertised all over the world. The public could call to report Operation Grange, the investigation to find Madeleine McCann. One of my jobs was to check the answering machine messages. On May 18, I checked the answering machine and there was a message,” the detective introduced.
Then he added: “He said he had information and left a Greek cell phone number. I then called this number and spoke to a man who I now know is Helge Lars Busching. He referred to himself as ‘Lars’ and gave me information in relation to Madeleine.” The surprising thing was that, in a statement that later went viral in the media, Bursching said that Brueckner clarified to him, without further details, that “she did not scream.”
The detective said they spoke for two days before he traveled to make his statement. “As the line of inquiry continued, he was happy to give a statement to the British police. “He said that he had a conversation with Christian at the Orgiva Festival in 2008. That conversation was in relation to Operation Grange,” he continued.
The judge asked him if he had sworn him in and the detective responded: “We don’t make witnesses swear. We never pay witnesses for information. We may be able to pay some expenses (and we do). We paid 35 euros for him to travel by bus to Athens to meet us and we paid his expenses to return to where he lived in Greece. “We also booked a cheap hotel for him to stay in the capital.”
Currently, Christian Brueckner is serving a seven-year sentence for the rape of an elderly woman in 2019 and is now being accused of a series of sexual attacks in Portugal between 2000 and 2017. Furthermore, the accused denies the charges in relation to the Madeleine McCann case.
