Portuguese police still believe Madeleine McCann's parents, Kate and Gerry, killed her, a German prosecutor has claimed. Photo / AP
Portuguese police still believe Madeleine McCann's parents, Kate and Gerry, killed her, a German prosecutor has claimed. Photo / AP
Portuguese police still believe Madeleine McCann's parents killed her, a German prosecutor has claimed, as he exposed the "cumbersome" working relationship between rival forces.
Hans Christian Wolters, the state prosecutor in Braunschweig, northern Germany, said working with the Portuguese authorities over the 2007 disappearance of Madeleine is "time-consuming" as both sides have differing opinions on what happened to the missing three-year-old.
Portuguese police still believe Madeleine McCann's parents, Kate and Gerry, killed her, a German prosecutor has claimed. Photo / AP
It was Wolters who announced last week that a 43-year-old German man - later identified as convicted paedophile Christian Bruckner - was now the key suspect in her disappearance.
He insists it is now a "German investigation" and evidence is passed to the Portuguese police when appropriate.
The suspect is currently serving a jail sentence for a drugs offence and has been put in isolation to protect him from fellow prisoners following last week's revelations. He is also receiving counselling on how to deal with the intense media coverage and has appointed Johann Schwenn, one of Germany's most high-profile defence lawyers, it was disclosed yesterday.
Madeleine went missing from Praia da Luz while on holiday with her parents, Kate and Gerry McCann, and two siblings.
Satellite images taken shortly after Madeleine McCann's disappearance appear to show the prime suspect's camper van parked just a mile away from her hotel.
The Portuguese police have faced significant criticism for their handling of the case, which involved naming the McCanns as official suspects - or "arguidos" - for 10 months.
Wolters said the prosecutor's office in Braunschweig, the town where the suspect lived most recently, has evidence that suggests he killed Madeleine in Portugal not long after her abduction.
"We have no evidence that he held on to Maddie for some period. I personally think that she was killed a short time after she disappeared," he said.
Commenting on the working relationship with the Portuguese police, Wolters said: "Working together with authorities in south European countries is generally more time-consuming. They take a long time for everything and the French or British police are faster. We do stay in contact with the colleagues in Portugal, but everything is more cumbersome.
"I think the Portuguese officials still think that Maddie's parents are responsible for her disappearance." A senior source in the Portuguese police yesterday said that they are not searching any of the suspect's former homes until they get a request from Germany. "We will do what they say," he said.
Meanwhile, satellite images taken shortly after McCann's disappearance appear to show the prime suspect's camper van parked just a mile away from her hotel and are being examined by German police, Britain's Daily Telegraph has learned.
A campervan can be seen at Christian B's home after Madeleine vanished.
Heriberto Janosch Gonzalez, a Spanish criminologist who works in computer science, was contacted by officers from Germany's Federal Criminal Police Office just hours after he sent them a picture he uncovered this week from early June 2007 — just weeks after the young girl disappeared.
The van, a distinctive white and yellow VW T3 Westfalia from the 1980s, appears to be parked near a run-down farmhouse where the suspect lived until late 2006 and could offer clues as to where Christian Bruckner went after McCann's abduction.
The farmhouse had been left "ramshackle with no sign of occupancy" in 2006, its British owner said.
Sitting at the end of a dusty dirt road, it is surrounded by hilly scrubland and has a number of deep wells close by, which Janosch Gonzalez said police should now search.
Speaking to the Telegraph, Janosch Gonzalez said he was confident the van belonged to Bruckner.
The suspect was living in this campervan in Portugal when Madeleine disappeared.
"The satellite images depend on the definition and perspective, so it was very difficult to do an exact analysis, but the measures and proportions, the location of the windshield, correspond well to a VW T3 Westfalia campervan," he said.
It came as a British ex-girlfriend of Bruckner's claimed he told her he had "a horrible job to do in Praia da Luz" the night before Madeleine disappeared. He told the woman who was not identified: "It's something I have to do, and it will change my life. You won't be seeing me for a while," according to the Sun.
