‘I didn’t kill Maddie’: Prime suspect denies murder in extraordinary prison letters
He's written a string of dark letters from his cell to try and convince the world of his innocence.
![Christian Brueckner has made extraordinary claims in a series of letters claiming he didn't abduct and kill Madeleine McCann (Pictures: AFP)](https://metro.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/SEC_157910396-43de.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&w=1024)
The prime suspect in the Madeleine McCann case has written a string of dark letters from his prison cell trying to convince the world of his innocence.
Police investigating Maddie’s disappearance believe she was kidnapped and murdered by convicted sex offender and child abuser Christian Brueckner.
In a major development this week, large-scale searches were carried out at a remote reservoir in Portugal that the 45-year-old used to visit regularly.
Following the conclusion of the search, which was conducted after German prosecutors received ‘certain tips’, a ‘relevant clue’ was reportedly discovered – but it may take months to be analysed.
The site of the Barragem do Arade reservoir, near Silves, is around 30 miles from the Praia da Luz resort where Maddie vanished while on holiday with her family 16 years ago, aged just three.
And now it’s been revealed that Brueckner has hand-written pages and pages of letters in a desperate attempt to deny that he abducted and killed her, reports MailOnline.
But a graphologist said the letters show that Brueckner was ‘distorted and deluded’ and indicated someone who wanted to ‘command and control’.
![(FILES) This file handout photo taken in 2018 and released by Italian Carabinieri on June 5, 2020 shows Christian B, when he was arrested for drug trafficking in Italy. - A police blunder led to the German man suspected of murdering British girl Madeleine McCann being informed he was being probed over the case as early as 2013, according to a Spiegel Online report Friday, June 12, 2020. Police raised hopes last week that the mystery over the disappearance of three-year-old](https://metro.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/PRI_183034725-33ad.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&w=895)
‘You can never imagine how it is when the whole world believes you are a child murderer, and you are not,’ he says in the letter written in pencil shortly before the searches began.
Brueckner, who is currently serving seven years in jail for raping a 72-year-old woman in the same area of the Algarve region of Portugal where Madeleine went missing, tries throughout his letter to protest his innocence.
He seems to confidently believe that he will never have to face a judge over Maddie’s disappearance and claims: ‘There will never be a trial.’
‘I got told a long time ago that the prosecutor’s office was closing the Maddie case because there is not even the smallest evidence,’ he writes.
‘The prosecutors are not saying anything to the public because they must give the files to my lawyers – and they contain many (sic) material which confirms my innocence.’
![(FILES) An undated handout photograph released by the Metropolitan Police in London on June 3, 2020, shows Madeleine McCann who disappeared in Praia da Luz, Portugal on May 3, 2007. - The parents of missing British girl Madeleine McCann are marking the 18th birthday of their daughter on May 12, 2021, just over 14 years since she disappeared on holiday in Portugal. Madeleine or](https://metro.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/SEI_78490422-cac8.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&w=638)
![File photo dated 05/05/07 of the Ocean Club in Praia Da Luz in the Algarve, Portugal, where Madeleine McCann went missing. A German prisoner has been identified as a suspect in the disappearance of Madeleine, detectives have revealed. The Metropolitan Police have not named the man, 43, who is described as white with short blond hair, possibly fair, and about 6ft tall with a slim build. PA Photo. Issue date: Thursday June 4, 2020. See PA story POLICE Portugal. Photo credit should read: Steve Parsons/PA Wire](https://metro.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/PRI_153593038-41be.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&w=1024)
Brueckner says that he is being ‘persecuted’ by police and prosecutors who are ‘attempting to create a monster’ to ‘divert and let people think that I am the right one’.
He even makes extraordinary sexual allegations against one of the key members of the investigating team, writing: ‘I mean a gay investigator who is in love with a big criminal. Outrageous. Have you ever heard that a hunter is f****** his prey?’
But his bizarre letter has been examined by graphologist Tracey Trussell, who has also analysed others he’s sent over the last two years, and she says his ‘fantastical views are constant, unchanging’.
Ms Trussell said the long extended endstroke on the reclining letter S is symbolic of ‘someone who suffers with feelings of guilt’.
She said: ‘In some cases, this symbol is seen where a violent death has taken place close to the writer, and they are trying to come to terms with it.
‘Whatever the truth, there is a need to continually feed his ego, and his ultimate aim is to get some sort of recognition.’
She concluded that Brueckner is on a ‘short fuse’.
![SILVES, PORTUGAL - MAY 25: German and Portuguese police investigators dismantle base camp at the end of the three-day search for remains of Madeleine McCannat Barragem do Arade Reservoir on May 25, 2023 in Silves, Portugal. British girl, Madeleine McCann, aged 3, went missing from her bed in a holiday apartment in Praia Da Luz on the Portuguese Algarve in May 2007. German Prosecutors believe that a German national convicted of child sex offences was responsible for her abduction and possible death. The suspect is known to have visited the Portuguese reservoir several times in 2007. (Photo by Horacio Villalobos/Getty Images)](https://metro.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/SEI_157651348-1267.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&w=1024)
In the letter, Brueckner implies he is struggling psychologically and says he is being scapegoated by the BKA – Germany’s central criminal investigation agency.
He says: ‘The torture I’m going through is the best evidence I can have. I’m not able to tell the real treatment I get because I don’t have the right words for it. Of course, this all happens by the orders of the BKA.’
His final protestation of innocence in the letter claims that the authorities are ‘not strong enough to admit the mistakes they made in the Maddie case’.
‘So they try despairingly to accuse me of other weird stuff,’ he adds. ‘It doesn’t matter that I have a completely different look like the victims are saying.’
![Personnel at Barragem do Arade reservoir, in the Algave, Portugal, as searches continue as part of the investigation into the disappearance of Madeleine McCann. The area is around 50km from Praia da Luz where Madeleine went missing in 2007. Picture date: Thursday May 25, 2023. PA Photo. See PA story POLICE Portugal. Photo credit should read: Yui Mok/PA Wire](https://metro.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/SEI_157614975-ea40.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&w=1024)
At the end of the four-page letter, Brueckner has drawn a daisy with its petals coming off and written over it: ‘Guilty, not guilty, guilty, not guilty.’
The drawing is captioned: ‘Spring is coming.’
In a separate letter written a few weeks before, Brueckner claimed he was being deprived of his ‘prison rights’ and being restricted from having any outside visitors because authorities feared he would get ‘sexual satisfaction’ from interacting with other people.
He wrote: ‘It is against human rights to get isolated for such a long time and in this way. Not even Goebbels and his war crimes friends were isolated like me when they were awaiting their death penalty in Nuremberg prison.
‘It is the right of prisoners to receive visitors – except for me. All I see is my lawyer and the guards.’
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