Madeleine McCann suspect had two other vehicles not found by cops at time she vanished
MADELEINE McCann suspect Christian B owned two other vehicles including a Mercedes van when the British youngster went missing. Police only flagged up a two-tone VW camper van and a Jaguar XJR when they made a new appeal for information about the 13-year-old mystery earlier this month. It subsequently emerged Christian B was driving a […]
MADELEINE McCann suspect Christian B owned two other vehicles including a Mercedes van when the British youngster went missing.
Police only flagged up a two-tone VW camper van and a Jaguar XJR when they made a new appeal for information about the 13-year-old mystery earlier this month.
It subsequently emerged Christian B was driving a blue Bedford van around a year before Madeleine vanished from her Algarve holiday apartment on May 3, 2007.
And he was using a 30ft-long American-style Tiffin Allegro motor home in 2007 when he bragged to an acquaintance in early 2007: “I can transport children, kids in this space.
“Drugs and children, you can transport them in this van, nobody can find you, nobody can catch you.”
Today it emerged he was also the registered owner of a white Mercedes-Benz 205D van and a grey Opel Ascona when Madeleine went missing.
The whereabouts of both vehicles is unknown and like the Bedford van, which ended up being dismantled at a breaker’s yard in 2009, neither are thought to have been swept by forensic experts trying to build up evidence against him in the Madeleine McCann case.
Information on the two new vehicles linked to the German drifter is included in case files dating from an historic Algarve conviction for a crime of disobedience.
He was charged after police caught him driving his Jaguar in Lagos near Praia da Luz in breach of a confiscation order in January 2004.
He was allowed to keep the German-plated vehicle after being stopped for using a disabled parking bay – but told he could not use it because he had failed to put it on Portuguese plates despite living on the Algarve.
Christian B tried to escape punishment by falsely claiming afterwards he was a tourist and said he was simply helping out friends at a bar in Lagos where police said they had spotted him working.
He ended up receiving a £270 (€300) fine after a 2006 trial for disobedience when a court ruled he had lied about not understanding a banning order on using the Jaguar because of language difficulties.
Police told court officials they had no record of him having any other vehicles, but a subsequent search thought to be linked to non-payment of the fine and ordered in January 2008, revealed his ownership of the Opel Ascona and Mercedes-Benz van.
A separate court-requested criminal record check, sent from Lisbon on July 13 2004, came back clean in Portugal for Christian B even though less than two years later he confessed to being a sex offender after being arrested for diesel theft.
His sex crime admission was made to judge Antonieta Nascimento in a court hearing in Portimao after he and Austrian hippy drifter Michael Tatschl were arrested on April 8 2006 for stealing diesel from parked lorries in the Algarve town.
Court files from the time state he told the female judge that when he was 17 and living in Germany he was convicted of thefts and sexual offences and did a year and a half in prison after fleeing to Portugal but ending up being arrested.
His sex conviction, dating from 1994 when he molested a six-year-old girl in Germany, is not thought to have been passed on so it could be put on a list of paedophiles Portuguese police had access to.
Disgraced former Madeleine McCann cop Goncalo Amaral admitted in an interview on Portuguese TV late on Sunday night that he saw information pointing to the fact paedophiles were living near Praia da Luz around the time Madeleine went missing
Asked specifically about whether he had been treated as a serious suspect during his Portuguese TV interview, the head of the initial investigation said: “It was not possible to closely investigate everyone,”
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Austrian drifter Michael Tatschl, who lived with Christian B in a ramshackle cottage near Praia da Luz and was arrested with him for diesel theft a year before Madeleine McCann went missing, claimed overnight he knew his formal pal was guilty of the crime.
He said: “I know he did it” and described him as a pervert who was “more than capable of snatching a child.”
The Austrian carpenter also said Christian B bragged about making money by trafficking drugs and burgling apartments and once talked about “selling children to Morocco.”
