EP04 - Madeleine McCann: The Chief Suspect

Donal and Jon Clarke discuss Christian Brueckner’s early life in Germany and how his dysfunctional upbringing may have moulded him into the dangerous repeat offender he became. Jon recounts his journey into ‘the heart of darkness’ in Germany and takes us up to the point that Brueckner takes his fateful first trip into Portugal.

Jon Clarke’s book, ‘My Search for Madeleine’ is available via the link below:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/MY-SEARCH-MADELEINE-Reporters-Harrowing-ebook/dp/B09F85HG7S

Transcript

00:37 --> 00:48

Donal:              So, you're about to commence this journey into the heart of darkness, into the mind and world of Christian Brueckner, where he's come from, and what made him. How did that journey commence?

00:48 --> 01:31  

Jon:                 Well, it’s fairly obvious Donal, I had to go to Germany. I had to go right back to the source deep into understand who Christian Brueckner was. I mean first things first, he's not Christian Brueckner, he’s actually a guy called Christian Fischer, he was born Christian Fischer in December 1976, born into quite a sad household as you can probably imagine, and he was adopted then at three years old. We have to sort of understand that this was quite a messy household, he was born into a place called Würzburg, in Germany, quite a medium sized industrial town. By all accounts the German press had published that the father may have been a criminal and it certainly wasn't a happy start to life. 

01:32 --> 01:59

Donal:             He was born into a home in which you know for certain social services were involved, so it seems that social services, the state, must have taken the children away from this dysfunctional home, he was put into care and then adopted. Those first three years for any child are the formative years about attachment and about engagement. So even though his own memory of those three years will be scant pathological minds are formed in those crucial three years. 

02.00 --> 02:45

Jon:                 Well yeah, I know that myself because I've been adopted, so I know how important it is and understanding those early years, and he was taken over by social services and was handed over to a German charity called Diakonie. Diakonie is a very big church charity in Germany, right the way round the country and it perseveres to this day, they actually pay money to families to take children on. In Germany as I understand it then, the family that adopted him who lived in a village called Bergheim. They actually got paid, I believe a thousand to fifteen hundred a month per child, to take these children in to adopt them to give them homes. They obviously were in orphanages and the idea was to get them out into homes in the community. So, Christian was adopted at three years old by this rather unusual couple in this rather, well, actually quite an attractive village, really.

02.46 --> 02:53

Donal:             In Germany in terms of where that town is, just give me a geographical sense. 

02.54 --> 02:59

Jon:                 It’s basically an area sort of central West Germany, broadly halfway between Munich and Berlin, it’s an attractive area, very sort of rural area. Basically, Fritz and Brigette Brueckner were paid, I believe anything from three to four thousand, that’s a bit more to take in three boys. So, they’ve took in, Christian had two brothers, so there were three of them living in the village, and no one's actually managed to find his brothers. I think one was older, and one was younger, two of them may have been even older. What was certain is, that they grew up in this village and they definitely didn't have a nice upbringing. They were treated pretty brutally by their parents; they were disciplined pretty hard. Christian himself told social workers it wasn't a happy childhood, they were hit hard by the father, disciplined with a belt, and locked in rooms when they were bad, they were locked in rooms without food, without drinks, they were not even given a glass of water, which was one of the things that came out of a very interesting interview. I believe Christian in the house, in this little village, may well have been locked in the cellar, which is where comes this obsession with cellars.  Since you follow it through, you'll notice he had this very interested sort of obsession with underground spaces, and in the house that he was adopted into, which by the way, was really rather an attractive house Donal.

03.59 --> 04:27

It's sort of three/four storey German turn of the century, I mean, you know 19th century property which it had a kind of portico above the front door with an Angel in it and pitch roof, a rather attractive property, in this rather old village and downstairs there was this basement. It’s now divided into four flats, but back then it was a house. I think the boys were not treated well and one can surmise what else happened to the boys. He was abused in various ways, we don't know exactly to what extent, but they definitely weren’t treated well. 

04.28 --> 04:48

Donal:             It is really instructive in helping us to kind of provide a road map to what built this monster that ended up being Christian Brueckner.  Where else does his obsession about dark spaces, because children normally run the other way from dark spaces, and yet here was a child and now a young adult who seems to be obsessed by those enclosed spaces.

04.49 --> 05:25

Jon:                  Donal we can only really surmise about the cellar, and I went down into the cellar actually because the door was open. I actually spoke to couple of tenants who lived in that house now.  I was able to go down into the cellar and get some photos in the cellar, and it’s quite a dark, dingy place and I can imagine it being pretty horrible to be locked down there for a day and that was apparently where he was locked up. And I imagine he formulated ideas while down there, and there were some slit windows you could out of looked into the streets. Maybe that's where his fetish began or his passions, his mind started to dream, or make ideas up, maybe he got comfortable down there, maybe he sometimes voluntarily went down there to escape his parents to hide. We don't know that do we?

05.26 --> 05:29

Donal:             What was the floor was it concrete and the walls, were they brick?

05.30 --> 06:11

Jon:                 It’s a brick cellar, quite steep stairs and it divided off into two sides and you went down, and it had this very rather attractive arch ceiling, you can imagine renovating, having a fantastic wine cellar Donal, you could put your wine collection down there.  On the face of it, it didn’t look bad, but you can imagine being locked down there would have been a whole different thing. But I should point out that talking to former neighbours of Christian and his family, that he and his brothers they ran wild in this village. As one woman said to me, there’s always one bad family in every village isn’t there and this is a village of 3800 people and there was indeed one bad family, and this was it. And these boys they used to go around lighting fires, vandalising, you know, the school, they used to steal cigarettes from vending machines, and do all sorts of things, graffitiing and I think it writ early on the wall what was going to happen here. 

06.12 --> 06:28

Donal:              So, we knew and understood that there's a pattern here that plays out and they're going to be involved in crime, they’re going to be involved in dysfunctionality, they're going to have some empathy problems, relationship, attachment, problems. How do we think this impacted upon his early years in primary school? And when did the school authorities become very concerned? 

06.29 --> 07:30

Jon:                 At the school he found it difficult to socialise with other kids, a couple of his former classmates described him as a problem child and he had a big chip on his shoulder, and there's no doubt that the school early on had their eyes on him, and they knew that he was kind of up to no good, and I think they probably tried very hard to keep him on the straight and narrow. The father disciplined the boys very heavily, they weren’t their children, let’s not forget, so whether he didn't like his children, but he disciplined them heavily.  Now when he got into a car accident when Christian was about thirteen or fourteen, he was then in a wheelchair, and was very seriously injured and the mother just could not deal with these boys, and so I'm guessing Christian was thirteen or fourteen his brothers were fifteen or sixteen. It just got a lot worse, and it caused a lot of problems for the village, and it was decided we can no longer look after these boys. And I don't know whether the brothers as well, but certainly Christian was then sent back to the same charity in Wurzburg, Diakonie Charity and the mother just said, sorry you know you're going back here. So that would have been a massive, massive, kick in the teeth for him, I guess.

07.31 --> 07:42

Donal:             This is a catalogue of rejection and dysfunctionality which would send lots of kids off the rails to a huge degree but still nothing stands out or maybe the collective to create this monster this perpetrator.

07.43 --> 08:52

Jon:                  The rejection thing is obviously majorly important, and I think something I need to study more, and I intend to go back to Germany and have a closer look at this. But it's the dates behind his first initial adoption at three and then again at the age of thirteen or fourteen was it… I've sort of been told that, I haven't confirmed it, but I believe it's around May time which could explain what happened to Madeleine McCann in May, all those years later. What I can tell you Donal is that his first conviction was in 1992, when at the age of fifteen he was convicted of burglary. At that time, he got a short sentence didn’t go to prison but they did bring up the fact that he was on the radar for sex offences. So, at that age we knew that maybe at fourteen or thirteen he’d done some naughty things with younger children, that was already sort of in the general ballpark amongst the courts, he wasn’t convicted but must have been some warnings there must have been some tickings off. Certainly, the next year in 1993, he gets eight months in prison for what's described in the courts, I’ve seen the document here says, multiple thefts and, also, driving without a licence. Now at the age of sixteen, two years before you’re allowed to legally drive in Germany, he’d stolen presumably a car so this is already showing a fairly serious degree of criminality wouldn’t you agree?

08.53 --> 09:28

Donal:             I think what's interesting is that when he's being dealt with as a fifteen-year-old by the German courts the juvenile courts which are more progressive even I would say than UK Courts regard to juveniles now. Back then they were very attuned to the fact it's a juvenile, young mind, we can’t penalise him, and put them on the criminal justice system right now. So, I'd imagine that their reflections upon his potentiality as a latent sexual predator as a kid, you're looking at inappropriate touching, exposure, but clearly to have that on the radar there must have been a constellation of concerns about that which they were obviously monitoring but felt didn't cross the line into something egregious like rape or anything much more serious. 

09.29 --> 10:16

Jon:                  Later on in his sixteenth year he was then convicted of two separate sex offences, in that judgement the judge ruled there was another misdemeanour that should be taken into account which was another nine year old girl, so…it was actually a six year old boy that was earlier on and that was probably when he was around twelve or thirteen that he’d taken his trousers down and masturbated in front of this kid who was only six. Two years later he grabbed a nine-year-old girl, it traces through, it happens all the time. He's outside a park there’s a girl playing he grabs her pulls her into the bush next to the park basically he has his trousers down grabs her, gropes her has sexual gratification and she screamed, absolutely screamed, screamed, and screamed until he had to let her go. And I mean obviously lots of people around the area would have heard that and that's how they got him.  Even at that age we’re talking sixteen years in 1993, the die is cast isn't it really?

10.17 --> 10:52

Donal:             For sexual offences and sexual predators for those who are fixated preferential paedophiles they’re only ever caught for a fraction of their offences, so…so, much more offending is not seen or witnessed. Here disturbingly is an opportunity for child services and the courts to recognise and to engage with somebody a potentially really serious offender, and when you see the offences and you see his MO, his MO really substantially may have got a little more technologically adept and efficient, but his MO remained exactly the same, sexual gratification, snatching young children, so really this is a blueprint for the Madeleine McCann case.

10.53 --> 11:42

Jon:                 I think you touched this earlier the Germans are more liberal in the way they deal with these kind of offences, and I’ve traced it through, they tried really hard to deal with him, giving him very intensive therapy and really, really, tried to get to the bottom of what was causing this.  I actually really wanted to speak to the father and mother about it but unfortunately the father died in ’94. The mother who still lives in the village of Bergheim, I tracked down and wanted to go and sit down and talk to and I found her, luckily, got her to open the door, but she just wasn't interested, and she hasn't spoken as yet, to anyone about their upbringing, but I think you need to ask them what happened? You have to question what happened between the ages of three and thirteen. Clearly there was something that wasn't being tackled here Donal, something quite sinister that must have created this need as you say for sexual gratification with younger children, must be something there to do with cellars that wasn't tackled. 

11.43 --> 13:06

Now the age of fourteen he was sent off to this halfway house.  I spoke to a lady who lived right next door to this sort of halfway house so basically, you’d call it an orphanage if you like but it's only eight bedrooms with two houses next to each other, with eight orphans, seven or eight orphans living in it or children that were difficult children from the age of thirteen up to sixteen or seventeen.  The woman I spoke to next door amazingly fortunately happened to be a child therapist, very well trained a very charming woman who explained that they really worked very, very, hard to try and tackle these children's problems. It was clear with Christian that he wasn't able to adapt or just couldn't somehow latch on to what he needed to do to stay on the straight and narrow. In this house other orphans who lived with him said that he was an absolute tearaway, he was taking drugs, it was a bit too liberal the problem with Germany it was perhaps a bit too liberal, he was able to smoke drugs in the house, he was able to steal things, he stole the minibus apparently. At one point he smashed a glass because someone told him he couldn't have supper because he was late for curfew, he threw the glass on the wall a bit of glass smashed that landed in one of his fellow orphan’s eyes. So, when he actually did get that final sentence for the molestation of two kids the judge quite rightly said no this is it now, you're now going to proper juvenile facility a borstal if you like in English, you're going to be sent there, we're going to put you in this, and you are going to learn the hard way now. I actually personally think that they worked pretty hard with him because they gave him a three-year mechanics course.  They put him on his training, and I don’t know, they worked really hard to help him.

13.07 --> 13:26

Donal:             In many ways is you're talking about Christian Brueckner the teenage years. We’re talking about something where this is the result of his childhood years, his adoption, multiple rejections. So, from dysfunctional family to dysfunctional family, if you add up rejection and abuse, and dysfunctionality, and suddenly you get this tearaway, sexual predator, now it seems to me the blueprint is set.

13.27 --> 13:49

Jon:                 And it goes on and on Donal, I mean when he lived later on in Braunschweig and he ran the kiosk there, and all sorts of horrible things were going on. It turns out that one of the boys who was in there, because there was a school next door. One of the boys regularly spent time in his bar and was probably abused at the age of, I think it was seventeen or eighteen. He then got convicted himself of grabbing a two-year-old of the street and taking them up to his apartment abusing them, that whole cycle continues doesn't it.

13.50 --> 13:54

Donal:             Tell us about the kiosk because it’s the first time we’ve heard about it, what was the kiosk? What did it sell? Where was it? 

13.55 --> 15:09

Jon:                 Christian Brueckner went backwards and forwards to Portugal and through Spain many times, and it was later on in 2013 or ‘14 when he came back to Germany and decided, I think this is one of the nightmares for the German authorities. He, sort of, randomly picked an area he wanted to live in, he lived in about five or six different federal areas, and this was one of the areas he moved to. One of the things he did, was he took over the lease of a kiosk, it was something like a bar/kiosk, that sold alcohol and crisps and sweets. I suppose it’s the nearest thing really to a pub but sold other bits and bobs, and he took over the lease of this from a local family and had an apartment where you could live in next to it, and so he lived there, and he had this shop and I think it was the perfect place to groom children because he would regularly…. children would walk past every morning on the way to school, then, of course, walked back past it in the evening or afternoon and he would regularly give sweets to children, in fact, the headmaster of the local school said that kids often came in with sweets and he’d asked them where they came from? And …oh yeah… Christian at the kiosk gave them to us. That's where he worked out, he wanted to be for a couple years, and he did have girlfriends there, I think, I’m not sure they were exactly his age, in fact one of them was I think seventeen so he would have been around thirty at the time or a bit older than 30. But I think it really was an opportunity for him to increase his passion for molestation of children.

15.10 --> 15:24

Donal:             So, to get back on track with our timeline Jon, Brueckner is now in a borstal facility around the age of 16 and he's been given a two-year sentence. Now was this to be served in full or was he eligible for early release? 

15.25 --> 16:00

Jon:                  It was a two-year sentence and I believe it may have been dropped to eighteen months. From around late sixteens, seventeens, he is in this borstal if you like, for want of a better word, it’s much stricter.  The first thing they do is they find out he they really likes cars, so, they get him on some mechanics course and the idea is a three year mechanics course so, he would do two of them while inside then he would continue in his final year and train as a mechanic. Now I do know that he obviously knew how to drive cars because he nicked them from the age of 16. He was able to drive them around, but he got his driving test, it was four months after his 18th birthday that he got his driving licence.

16.01 --> 16:05

Donal:             By this stage we now know he's out, he’s done his mechanics course, served eighteen months…

16.05 --> 16:39

Jon:                 He’s not out he’s still living in this juvenile facility, but he's doing driving lessons from the age of eighteen when you're legally allowed to have driving lessons in Germany. One assumes after four months he passed his driving test and at that point, I believe even within a week, he then drives from Germany to Portugal, and that’s with a girlfriend at time, they were young lovers, and they took off.  When he was brought back later by the judge to ask him why did he go down to the Algarve? why did he go down to Portugal? He just said we err…. saw the name Lagos on the map, we just thought well let's go to Lagos we thought Lagos would be a really interesting place to go, and that was that.

16.40 --> 16:48

Donal:             So, here's the extraordinary thing if this random association with this random five letter word Lagos hadn’t jumped out, it could have been a different Maddie McCann in a different place. 

16.48 --> 17:43

Jon:                 Except, except, there’s one major spanner in the works in that theory in which I agree he told the judge that, but we have to remember that in the late 90s through the 90s and into the 2000s Portugal was described as a paradise in paedophiles in Europe. It was one of the places you could go and get away with all sorts of things. In fact, within a year of Madeleine McCann… you could still look at child pornography on your laptop, in a… in a bar, I’ve sort of, I've made this analogy a few times that you could be sitting in a bar restaurant with your children running around and a guy in the corner could be on a laptop looking at child pornography, its entirely legal. People have accused me of libelling Portugal excuse me, but their own country when they asked in Europe surveys of what people thought about their country and whether or not there was a problem with paedophilia and child pornography, the Portuguese themselves, 70% of them thought that there was a problem with child pornography and it was seen as a paradise for child sex abusers back in the 90s. 

17.43 --> 18:04

How do we know that maybe he’d heard from some of his friends in the err borstal or before that, Portugal was the perfect place to go and where you could get away with a lot more, because it was seen as a much more liberal, open country, where you know there was definitely big child sex abuse networks that comes out and in the Casa Pia case later on. 

18.05 --> 18:13

Donal:             And so started this lifelong association for Brueckner with the Algarve which of course, offers many attractions to the tourists but to the paedophile many others.

18.14 --> 18:42

Jon:                 Yes, so obviously this first journey at the age of eighteen, and four months was the start of a lifelong passion and… and… love of Portugal for him, and we can only guess why. It was seen as a paradise for foreigners to come there and abuse children. Did he go there knowing that or did he go there and just discover it when he arrived, and either way Donal that I believe was the start of his connection to networks of paedophiles around the Algarve and indeed across the border in Spain and that really is where he got away with it for twenty years.