Email account links German rapist to Madeleine McCann case, court told

Stampa also referred to an email allegedly written by Brueckner involving a fantasy of a young girl and her mother being kidnapped and abused. “It was about violence and brutality and them being abused sexually,” he said.

Brueckner is on trial in Braunschweig, facing three charges of rape and two charges of child sexual abuse, which are unrelated to the McCann disappearance.

His lawyers say he denies those charges.

If convicted in the Braunschweig trial, he faces a maximum sentence of 15 years on top of his current rape sentence, for which he is due for release at the end of 2025.

Camper van

Brueckner was living in a T3 Westfalia camper van near the area where McCann, who German prosecutors suspect is dead, disappeared. British detectives say they continue to treat the case as a missing person investigation.

German prosecutors also say that phone records show Brueckner receiving a call on May 3, 2007, near the Ocean Club resort, where the McCann family had been staying. He insists he was several kilometres away with a young woman at the time.

Last May, detectives investigating the Madeleine McCann case said they were searching a Portuguese reservoir for more evidence, in the first dig of that nature in Praia de Luz since 2014.

The search of the Arade man-made reservoir, near Silves, ended after three days, with investigators taking material from the area for further analysis.

Brueckner denies any involvement in McCann’s disappearance and has not been charged with that offence.

His lawyers have said he cannot receive a fair trial in the Braunschweig case as German prosecutors have “created a worldwide sense of pillory against our client”.

He is currently serving a seven-year sentence for raping an American pensioner in the same resort town where McCann vanished. The trial, which is expected to last until October, continues.