From German news coverage, I get the following:
1. German police took this to a TV format with long, distinguished reputation to call on the public for witnesses to step forward. This is hardly done willy-nilly, and certainly not to aide anyone's fundraising.
2. This is the information we have on the suspect that may increase the likelihood he did it - although I don't know which of these facts are actually taken into account by investigators at this time to make any determination of suspectabiliy:
A. He lived nearby the McCanns at the time
B. He has a police and criminal record involving sexual abuses, and also involving children (or perhaps a child)
C. He is suspected to have made a living off of burglaries, drug trade and other crimes while in Portugal at the time
D. One of his two cars, a Jaguar, was registered to a different name in Portugal the day after M. disappeared. Although I did not read whose name, and whether that means the suspect retained possession of the Jaguar.
3. The main object of police going on TV seems to be to find the person who made a phone call to the suspect on the day of the disappearence from a known and now publicized number. It may be a crucial witness. Though I am not sure any explanation was provided for why police think so.
He hasn't been charged. Thus, if there is no evidence to link him, he could be in receipt of huge compensation claims from the media.
ISTM to be suspect-centric. This guy has been a suspect twice before.
He lived in Praia de Luz at the time so no big surprise he was pinged near the beach on 3 May 2007, late spring and warm weather. Even the McCanns and the so-called Tapas 12 were dining al fresco in the balmy South Western Portuguese air.
He took a phone call an hour before Madeleine's reported disappearance from someone called 'Diago Silva'. Now this could well be a pseudonym as it was an off-contract pay as you go number. Brückner was a drug dealer and this category of person do use their mobile phones quite a lot, often anonymously for obvious reasons.
Yes, he lived within 48 kilometres of the missing 5-year-old Inga Gehricke in 2015 and he was a suspect then. The box factory where he had his camper van (...?) parked at the time was thoroughly dug up at the time. He acquired a further chidl sex offender conviction when police found his discarded USB stick containing child pornography. They found no sign of Inga. In fact, the prime suspect was a man called Silvio Schulz who was later jailed for killing two other children, one a boy snatched from a Bosnian refuge camp.
Unfortunately, the fact of the matter is, sea side resorts in the Mediterannean are crawling with European suspects on the run from various crimes and there are literally hundreds of perverts and paedohpiles hanging around anywhere families with young children gather.
Brückner seemed to have had an underage girlfriend in Portugal but then so do many men, especially if they are relatively young themselves.
Brückner's sex offences aged 17 when he abused a six-year-old girl in a playground and flashing at a nine-year-old could be seen as youth crimes which don't necessarily carry over into adulthood.
Most of Brückner's convictions apart from the rape of a 72-year old, being in possession of child pornography and attempting to 'procure himself' - presumably putting himself in a grooming position on the internet - are mainly petty crimes, do do with driving without a licence and general criminality and degeneracy I would link to an Anti-Social Behaviour Disorder, possibly arising from his early life of being given up by his mother and spending time in a childrens home before being adopted. He is clearly a psychopath, going by his restlessness, descriptions by neighbours as always appearing to be in a rage, his chaotic lifestyle and need for instant gratification.
He seems to be an obvious candidate for suspicion of having impulsively - or even calculatingly - kidnapping little Maddie which is why he has been a suspect before.
However, none of this means he actually did it. Police don't appear to have any hard evidence, no DNA found in the campervan or Jaguar, I presume, hence their public appeal for help.
All they have is his communicating with a two-times child killer in a forum that his ideal situation would be to kidnap 'something small' and then exterminate it - using the Nazi term '
vernicht' it having finished 'using it'. So cold, callous psychpathic and amoral, for sure.
The other 'evidence' is his telling a bar room pal, he knew what had happened to Maddie on the tenth anniversary and the news coming up on the screen.
The police and the media fervently wish Brückner to be the perpetrator and for the case to be solved but I fear that once again this could be a wild goose chase although I hope they do find proper evidence and that their strong hunch is not in vain.
