Christian Brückner, the German man long considered the prime suspect in the disappearance of British toddler Madeleine McCann, was released from a German prison on Wednesday, September 17, 2025, after completing a sentence for an unrelated crime. His release marks a new chapter in one of the world’s most notorious unsolved missing person cases, raising fresh questions about the ongoing investigation and the limits of international justice.
Shortly after 9:00 a.m. local time, Brückner was driven out of Sehnde prison near Hanover in a black Audi, accompanied by his lawyer and a police escort. Local police spokesman Lars Dehnert told the BBC, “We said before that we wanted this to happen as smoothly as possible,” adding that police would only escort Brückner for a short distance. “With this our police operation has terminated. We don’t have any knowledge about where Christian B is going to go. This is happening in co-operation with his lawyers.”
Brückner, 48, had been serving a seven-year sentence for the rape of a 72-year-old American woman in Praia da Luz, Portugal, in 2005—a crime eerily close in time and place to Madeleine McCann’s disappearance two years later. Upon release, he was fitted with an electronic ankle tag, surrendered his passport, and registered his permanent address with probation officers, as confirmed by his lawyer Friedrich Fülscher to regional broadcaster NDR and reported by Der Spiegel.
Despite being under investigation for the McCann case since 2020, Brückner has never been charged in connection with her disappearance. He has consistently denied any involvement, and his lawyers have refused to disclose his whereabouts or future plans. As Sky News highlighted, Brückner is required to regularly report to probation services, and his movements will be monitored by authorities. “This is an attempt by the public prosecutor’s office to keep him in a kind of pre-trial detention where they would have access to him at any time. We will not accept that,” said his lawyer Philipp Marquort.
German prosecutors, led by Hans Christian Wolters, have long insisted that Brückner is responsible for Madeleine’s abduction and presumed murder. Wolters told Sky News, “We do consider him very dangerous and assume there is a risk of reoffending.” He added, “At the moment, we still have lines of investigation we are pursuing, and we hope we may gain more evidence or indications. If that happens, our situation would, of course, improve, and we would prefer to go to court with that stronger position.”
The evidence against Brückner remains circumstantial. German authorities have cited mobile phone data placing him near the McCanns’ holiday apartment in Praia da Luz on May 3, 2007, the night three-year-old Madeleine vanished. Prosecutors also point to an alleged confession Brückner made to a friend and the fact that he re-registered his car the day after the disappearance. However, there is no forensic evidence linking him to the crime, and after eighteen years, the likelihood of finding such evidence is slim. As German crime analyst Mark T Hofmann told Sky News, “I’m a big believer in second chances, but I’m not that much of a big believer in 10th chances. So if you commit a crime, and you do it again and again and again and again, then you need to ask yourself, ‘why should we believe that he will stop now?’”
Brückner’s criminal record is lengthy and troubling. He has previous convictions for sexually abusing children in 1994 and 2016, as well as for theft, drug trafficking, and forgery. He spent many years living as a drifter in Portugal’s Algarve region, including the period between 2000 and 2017, and was known to frequent the area around the Barragem do Arade reservoir—about 30 miles from Praia da Luz—where he was photographed and filmed. Multiple searches by Portuguese and German police in 2023 and June 2025 near sites linked to Brückner yielded no significant breakthroughs.
In October 2024, Brückner was acquitted by a German court of several unrelated sexual offenses alleged to have occurred in Portugal between 2000 and 2017. According to AP, the presiding judge cited insufficient evidence and unreliable witnesses, some of whom had been influenced by media coverage. Brückner still faces a court hearing on October 27, 2025, in Oldenburg, Germany, where he is accused of insulting a prison employee—a charge that could see him return to jail if convicted.
The investigation into Madeleine McCann’s disappearance continues to span three countries. British police, who have spent more than £13.2 million on Operation Grange since 2011, continue to treat the case as a missing persons investigation. An additional £108,000 was secured from the UK government in April 2025 to keep the case active. Scotland Yard detectives have tried to interview Brückner, but he has refused, with his lawyers arguing that investigators have not shared prosecution files with him. Madeleine’s parents, Kate and Gerry McCann, remain hopeful that their daughter might still be found alive, as there is no evidence known to them confirming her death.
The differences in legal systems between Germany and the UK further complicate the case. While German investigators publicly state they suspect Brückner of murder, British authorities have not upgraded their investigation beyond a missing child case. As BBC reported, the funding and international cooperation have kept the search alive, but the lack of charges against Brückner underscores the challenges of cross-border criminal investigations, especially when evidence is largely circumstantial and so much time has passed.
For now, Brückner’s release is both a relief and a source of frustration for those seeking closure. His continued status as a suspect, combined with the monitoring measures imposed upon him, reflects the authorities’ ongoing concerns. Yet, as his lawyers and some legal experts argue, the presumption of innocence remains paramount in the absence of concrete proof. The world watches and waits, hoping that one day the mystery of what happened to Madeleine McCann will finally be solved.
