Will a water well provide a breakthrough in the Madeleine McCann disappearance case?

This week, the search for the body of missing toddler Maddie McCann resumes in Portugal.

This new search operation began on Tuesday morning and will continue until Friday. In particular, water has already been pumped out of two wells to allow investigators to look for possible clues. The house where suspect Christian Brückner lived in 2007 is also being searched again, according to local media reports. German newspaper ‘Bild’ states that in the coming days, the search will focus on the area between the Ocean Club — the resort where the almost four-year-old girl vanished in 2007 — and a dilapidated farmhouse where German national Christian Brückner lived at the time, less than three kilometres from the resort.

Madeleine McCann, who was just under four years old at the time, disappeared in May 2007 while on holiday in Portugal with her parents. While her parents were dining with friends at a restaurant in a holiday resort in Praia da Luz, she vanished from her room.

Confession?

There is still no real breakthrough in the Maddie McCann disappearance case. Christian Brückner is officially a suspect but has not yet been charged due to a lack of substantial evidence against him. In 2007, Brückner was living in the Algarve. He is currently in prison after being convicted in October 2024 of rape and sexual abuse he committed in Portugal between 2000 and 2017. The Sun investigated and claims to have discovered that in Brückner’s hideout, German police found a hard drive that directly links him to Maddie’s disappearance and reportedly contains evidence that the British toddler died shortly after going missing. The existence of this hard drive is said to have always been kept secret by the police.

According to a former cellmate, Christian Brückner has confessed to abducting a girl in Portugal. The former cellmate testified to this last year in court in Braunschweig, where Brückner was standing trial for a series of rapes and sexual offences.

He is currently in prison for earlier convictions but could be released in September. This is why investigators are now resuming the search. The last search operations took place over two years ago but yielded nothing at the time.

(FVDV - Source: Bild - Illustration image: ©Unsplash)