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8 months ago
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A VAN uncovered by The Sun is being probed by the German FBI for child-snatching links to Madeleine McCann suspect Christian Brueckner.
The BKA is bidding to trace the white Mercedes Sprinter we revealed parked at the sicko’s woodland lair after Maddie vanished.
Dan Charity
Our exclusive picture shows a white Mercedes Sprinter van parked at the creepy woodland site Brueckner later boughtDan Charity
Madeleine McCann disappeared 17 years ago in Portugal on holiday with her family
Brueckner is believed to have had a white Mercedes van in Portugal at the time the tot was abducted, in 2007 – although it is not clear if the vehicles are one and the same.
Feds want to examine the Mercedes – shown to have belonged to the convicted paedophile – amid hopes it could still contain DNA or crucial clues.
An employee at the garage which took the van when Brueckner was finished with it said: “We cleaned it and repaired it but it wouldn’t have been wiped of all DNA.
“There could still be hairs and other traces of anyone who was kept inside.
“Due to data protection issues we cannot give you exact dates or further details of the client.”
An official request has been made to the Rosier dealership in Braunschweig, which leased the van to Brueckner between 2014 and 2015.
“We are onto this now and appreciate the tip,” said a BKA source. “We are getting in touch with the Rosier garage today.”
Prosecutor Hans Christian Wolters said: “I know that the white Sprinter information has been passed on to the BKA.”
As well as any links to Maddie, it is now thought Brueckner owned the vehicle at the time German Maddie, Inga Gehricke, vanished in forest in Saxony-Anhalt, in 2015.
Brueckner was initially looked at in connection with the disappearance in 2016 and 2020 – after he had an accident an hour away before the case was dropped.
Little Inga Gehricke vanished on May 2, 2015, from a family picnic in a wooded area of Wilhelmshof.
Like Maddie – who went missing in 2007 – she disappeared leaving almost no clues, sparking the largest missing persons search in German history.
The only clue was the sighting of a ‘white Sprinter van’ driving down a track through woods at the exact time.
The case however, remains open and he hasn’t been officially discounted.
At the time of her disappearance, Brueckner, 47, was living on and off at his derelict factory in Neuwegersleben, just 90 kilometres away.
He was unable to give an alibi for the day and the day before he had an accident in nearby Helmstedt, just an hour away.
A friend of Brueckner’s told the Sun: “He drove around Europe with it and even took a girlfriend to Portugal and Spain with it.
“I went in it a few times with him, even to the box factory, and he used it all the time to move his stolen goods around.”
Brueckner was known to store vehicles at the factory in Neuwegersleben.
He bought the lot in former communist East Germany in 2010 and is believed to have also lived in a trailer there.
A 2016 police search uncovered disturbing images and videos on memory cards in a Lidl plastic bag there beneath the corpse of one of his dogs.
Clothing including swimwear in children’s sizes were also found.
Multiple sources confirmed at least two other vehicles had come back from Portugal with Brueckner.
The owner of the scrapyard, who did not want to be named, previously told The Sun on Sunday: “German law requires that you keep all records for at least ten years.
“But the thing is, none of the police divisions came round to ask us anything, which you could say is surprising.”
Brueckner is in jail in Germany for rape and also now on trial for other rape and child abuse charges which have emerged as part of the Madeleine investigation.
He denies any involvement in Madeleine’s disappearance.
Brueckner bought the abandoned factory in East Germany in 2010Dan Charity
Dan Charity
Dan Charity
English (US)