The British ex-girlfriend of the new prime suspect in the Madeleine McCann case has been quizzed by police – as a close friend last night raised fears she is terrified he will ‘come after her’.
The unnamed woman, from Berkshire, is said to have lived in Praia da Luz where she dated German paedophile Christian Brueckner for around a year from 2004 – three years before Madeleine went missing.
She is not a suspect in the case, but according to reports, has agreed to cooperate with police and has twice spoken to detectives investigating her former partner.
The mother-of-two, who is still living in Portugal, was interviewed last year by police as part of the investigation into Brueckner, and, according to The Mirror, has spoken to them again in recent days after the 43-year-old was identified as a prime suspect in the Madeleine case.
Brueckner is currently serving a jail sentence in Germany for the rape of a 72-year-old woman in Portugal.
But he is reportedly eligible for parole this weekend and one friend has since revealed to the Sun that the unnamed woman is terrified he will come after her.
Christian Brueckner (left), 43, is now the prime suspect in the disappearance of Madeleine McCann (right), who vanished from her family’s holiday apartment in Portugal on May 3, 2007
This map shows where 43-year-old Brueckner lived on the Algarve in relation to Praia da Luz
The friend said: ‘She’s really nervous, she knows B is in prison but fears he could be released one day and come after her.
‘It’s true they were together.’
Meanwhile, the Mirror say the woman’s British ex-husband, a businessman who also lives in Portugal, was also spoken to by Interpol last year in connection with Brueckner.
He told The Mirror: ‘We’ve decided not to talk.
‘The police have been in touch and we’ve spoken to them. We don’t want to be involved in this.’
His ex-wife did not respond to requests for an interview, the paper reports.
It comes as it emerged last week that Brueckner also had an underage Kosovan former girlfriend whom he lived with in Braunschweig after returning to Germany following Madeleine’s disappearance.
Police want to speak to this Kosovan woman whom police believe he may have returned to Portugal with on his most recent trip around five years ago.
The Kosovan is thought to have left the area before Madeleine vanished, while Brueckner is said to have stayed in Praia da Luz, possibly sleeping in a campervan.
One neighbour said Brueckner lived with a girlfriend at a farmhouse above Praia da Luz but ‘kept to himself’ and allowed the property to fall into disrepair.
Another neighbour told how he moved into the home in the mid-1990s with a German girlfriend who left around a year and a half later.
They said: ‘They seemed to have a tempestuous relationship. I would hear them arguing. I knew very little about his life but he seemed to me to be a choleric man.’
When Brueckner lived in the farmhouse above Praia da Luz (pictured) on the Algarve in Portugal, he seldom mixed with his neighbours and allowed the property to fall into disrepair
The Ocean Club in Praia Da Luz, where Madeleine disappeared during a family holiday in 2007
The last photograph taken of Madeleine shows her smiling next to her little sister Amelie and their father Gerry at 1.30pm on May 3, 2007 in Portugal, the day she went missing
The German drifter spent 12 years pursuing a bohemian lifestyle – but not long after Madeleine vanished in 2007, he left Portugal and returned to his homeland.
It was in a German bar exactly ten years later – on the anniversary of the three-year-old’s disappearance – that Becks-drinking Brueckner turned the spotlight on himself.
As Madeleine’s face flashed up on the bar’s television screen, he reportedly turned to his drinking partner and claimed he ‘knew all about’ the case.
He is alleged to have said something to suggest he knew what had happened to Maddie, according to a report on Sky News.
Later, it is claimed, he showed his companion a video of himself raping an elderly American widow in Portugal in 2005. The friend contacted German police.
Brueckner swiftly became of interest to the detectives probing Madeleine’s disappearance. It was three more years before his name became public.
One friend told the Mail that Brueckner’s ‘life situation’ was ‘a bit chaotic’, but added that ‘if everything is true then he was indeed a master of illusion’.
Born in 1976, Brueckner was said to have been raised ‘in a home’ and committed his first burglary in his home town of Wurzburg in Bavaria when he was just 15.
Within two years, he was convicted of sexually abusing a child, earning him a two-year youth sentence in 1994. A report claimed he served only part of this term.
Brueckner went on to notch up convictions for drug dealing, driving under the influence and without a licence – before taking off to the Algarve after turning 18.
Last week he emerged as a key suspect in then the disappearance of then three-year-old Madeleine from an apartment where the McCann’s were staying in the Ocean Club in Praia da Luz, Portugal, in May 2007.
He moved from Germany to the Portuguese coastal town in 1995 after serving part of a two-year sentence for molesting a six-year-old girl in Wurzburg.
Following his naming by German police, he has further been linked to the disappearances of six-year-old boy René Hasse in the Algarve, 1996, and five-year-old girl Igna Gehnricke in Germany, 2015.
Now languishing in a German prison in Kiel on a drug-related sentence, at the time of Madeleine’s vanishing he was living in the area about a 10-minute drive away.
In 2005, two years prior to the infant’s disappearance, he raped a 72-year-old American woman on a waterfront villa less than a mile from the Ocean Club hotel where Madeleine went missing.
Prosecutors in Germany are now desperately trying to build a case against Brueckner, who is eligible for parole this weekend but unlikely to be granted a release from custody.
But today it was revealed how an unnamed senior Portuguese police official had said Brueckner was not involved in Madeleine’s disappearance.
The statement was made to respected Spanish newspaper ABC by an unnamed Portuguese police chief.
This is said to be Christian Brueckner’s home in Braunschweig near Hanover, where he had lived before he fled to Italy
Brueckner ran a small store (pictured) selling drinks and snacks in the northern German town of Braunschweig between 2012 and 2014
The officer, described as a former Policia Judiciaria chief with in-depth knowledge of the Madeleine McCann probe who still works for the force, told ABC: ‘There’s no evidence Christian Brueckner is involved in her disappearance.
‘Strong enough reasons to be able to charge him were never found.
‘People talk about surprises in the Madeleine McCann case with the capture of this German man, but for me it’s no surprise.
‘This individual was already investigated around four years ago.’
Insisting the aim of German police revelations about the man, now identified as the prime Madeleine McCann suspect, was simply to put the case back into the public eye, ABC quoted the veteran PJ boss as saying: ‘At this stage of the investigation, I think they’ve done it because they think it’s needed to shake up the case and attract new witnesses.
‘They work very closely with Portugal and now they’ve wanted to turn this case around.
‘They’re not looking to solve it now, because that’s very difficult. What they’re looking to do is agitate the waters.’
It is the first time any high-ranking Portuguese police officer has been publicly quoted as saying he does not believe Brueckner is regarded as a genuine Madeleine McCann suspect, even though he appeared to hide behind the cloak of anonymity for the interview.
The interview came as it was revealed by the Daily Mail how Brueckner was investigated over the grisly murder of a young prostitute.
The prime suspect in the disappearance of Madeleine McCann was under suspicion, but was never charged, by German detectives probing a 2010 killing in Hanover, police documents show.
In line with German privacy laws, the victim is not named in the paperwork, but that year the mutilated body of 24-year-old Monika Pawlak was found stuffed into two blue plastic bags in the Ihme river, four days after she was last seen alive.
Her head had been severed and her torso dismembered. Her personal items and some body parts were never found.
Meanwhile Brueckner is facing investigations over the deaths or disappearance of at least three other children.
The Madeleine McCann suspect drove regularly between his native Bavaria and the Algarve in Portugal and police are now tracing his movements to investigate if he could be linked to other cold case files.
Prosecutors in Belgium have confirmed they are investigating if he was connected to the murder of 16-year-old Carola Titze, whose body was found in sand dunes in De Haan, near Ostend, in 1996.
In Portugal, police face pressure to re-examine the case of Joana Cipriano (pictured), eight, who disappeared in 2004 from Figueira, seven miles from Praia da Luz
Since Brueckner became detectives’ main lead in the disappearance of three-year-old Madeleine from Portugal’s Praia de Lug in 2007, he has been linked to two other vanishings (René Hasse, five, left and Inga Gehricke, six, right)
Inga Gehricke (left), five, had been having a barbecue with her family on May 2, 2015. Carola Titze (right) vanished on the morning of July 5, 1996 while holidaying with her parents at a Flemish resort in De Haan, West Flanders
Convicted paedophile Christian Brueckner has been linked to other unsolved child disappearances since he became the prime suspect in the Madeleine McCann case
The teenager was said to have met a German man while she was on holiday in the town and was seen with him at a disco just days before her murder. Police in Germany have reportedly told the family of a missing boy they are to reopen the inquiry into his disappearance.
Police in Germany are also investigating whether Brueckner was involved in the disappearance of five-year-old Inga Gehricke in 2015, after it emerged he had been nearby.
Often referred to as ‘the German Maddie’, she vanished from a family barbecue in Stendal, northern Germany, after going to collect firewood.
In Portugal, police face pressure to re-examine the case of Joana Cipriano, eight, who disappeared in 2004 from Figueira, seven miles from Praia da Luz. Her mother and uncle allegedly confessed to her killing but her mother has since said she was forced to admit to the crime by police who beat her.