Madeleine McCann: “Gerry McCann broke the secrecy code and ‘briefed’ me on what had really happened that night’

The assertion that 47-year-old Christian Brueckner could be the prime suspect in the disappearance of Madeleine McCann looks a little thinner this week, with his complete acquittal on five unrelated sexual offences – two of which involved children – following a trial that began nine months ago, in February this year. During the BBC’s Panorama programme at the end of last year, with Brueckner’s new trial imminent, Hans Christian Wolters, the chief public prosecutor for Braunschweig, repeated his claim that “we think was involved in the disappearance of Madeleine McCann and we think that he murdered Madeleine McCann.” Brueckner has been acquitted on five unrelated sexual offences But if there is evidence to make such a public declaration, why hasn’t Brueckner ever been charged in Madeleine’s disappearance? But, to emphasise the current position, he has never been charged in Madeleine McCann’s case and his lawyer, Friedrich Fulscher spoke on Brueckner’s behalf to last year’s Panorama, complaining of his client facing “trial by media” in what Fulscher called one of the most famous cases in the world. As I reported at the time, the PJ – led by its misguided chief investigator Goncalo Amaral – had made a catastrophic misjudgement and “abandoned the abduction theory”, instead building an implausible case against Gerry and Kate McCann based on a misreading of DNA traces found in the boot of their car and a pair of sniffer dogs brought over from the UK, whose “alerts” at the car and in the apartment were somehow – and wrongly – taken to be hard evidence. “The secrecy code is like the speed limit,” a local journalist told me, “Everyone knows it but no one keeps to it.” Soon after their return, at their invitation, I travelled to the McCanns’ home in Rothley, Leicestershire, and went to the pub with Gerry McCann where we sat in a quiet corner and broke the secrecy code while he “briefed” me for two or three hours on what had really happened that night.