Madeleine McCann search latest: Animal bones among limited findings as third day of police hunt ends in Praia da Luz – UK Times

The assertion that 47-year-old Christian Brueckner could be the prime suspect in the disappearance of Madeleine McCannlooked a little thinner when he was acquitted in October on five unrelated sexual offences – two of which involved children – following a trial that began in February 2024.

Despite the huge amount of interest around Christian Brueckner’s past, the verdicts were no great surprise. They had been anticipated since last July when the presiding Judge, Uta Inse Engemann, in the German regional court of Braunschweig had ruled that there was “no longer sufficient evidence of guilt for all of the charges”.

Brueckner, a German national, remains in jail, serving the final months of a seven-year sentence for the rape of a 72-year-old American woman in 2005 at the Ocean Club resort in Praia da Luz — the same hotel where Madeleine went missing two years later.

But as he seeks early release from the 2019 sentence, police in Germany are hurrying to charge the prime suspect in the disappearance of the British toddler before he walks free from prison in the next two weeks.

Dozens of police from Germany and Portugal have spent most of the week scouring a 120-acre stretch of scrubland and abandoned buildings for clues about Madeleine McCann’s disappearance.

That effort, set to end today unless significant evidence is uncovered, is estimated to have cost at least £300,000, The Times reports.

The newspaper reports more than 60 officers have been involved in the hunt, and on Wednesday aerial drones were deployed and an excavator was brought in to help clear rubble.

Searchers also used ground penetrating radar, which can detect abnormalities underground, such as a hidden burial.

The search area is just a couple of miles from Praia de Luz and the Ocean Club resort where Madeleine had been sleeping before she vanished on May 3, 2007.

A neighbour of German suspect Christian Brueckner, who lived near Praia da Luz at the time of Madeleine McCann’s disappearance, described him as an “angry” young man who she would hear having rows with his girlfriend.

Brueckner, who has denied any involvement in the McCann case, was living in the town around the time of Madeleine’s disappearance.

The neighbour said: “If I was riding past and he’d be standing outside, we’d say hello, you know, how are you,” she said. “Nothing more. Then we found out he was a really nasty piece of work.”

The resident, who used to ride her horse around the 120-acre search area, said the farmhouses and outbuildings on the site have been derelict since at least the 80s.

“It is the first time I’ve heard of Atalaia being searched,” she said. “I know the properties because I used go up there all the time with my horse. I know exactly where they are. Whether he’d been up there or done anything, no clue.”

The neighbour said locals were “exhausted” by the search operation – just the latest in a long history of investigations in the 18 years since Madeleine disappeared.

The current search, a few miles from where Madeleine McCann was last seen in a Praia da Luz resort, is just the latest in the years-long, international effort to find answers.

Read the full history of the toddler’s disappearance and the effort to find her below:

Portuguese newspaper Correio da Manha reported that some material had been gathered on Wednesday and was being processed and analysed to see if it contained anything relevant to the investigation.

A local television station, SIC, reported that animal bones were among the limited findings of the large-scale investigation.

Since Tuesday, dozens of police from Germany and Portugal have been scouring a 120-acre swathe of scrubland, just a couple of miles from where Madeleine was last seen alive.

The search is expected to finish this afternoon if nothing significant has been found.

On a stop sign at the entrance to Praia Da Luz, faded graffiti declares: “STOP McCann circus.”

The stencilled message – now hastily sprayed over – was once daubed on every stop sign in the town as locals reeled from the devastating impact of the British toddler’s disappearance in 2007.

Tourism halved in the charming Algarve resort as the mystery of Madeleine McCann turned into a media storm which they have struggled to escape ever since, according to weary residents.

Read the full story by The Independent’s crime correspondent Amy-Clare Martin: