Drifting around the German city of Kiel, Christian Brueckner was in a typically belligerent mood last week, sneering at claims that he might be extradited to the UK and finally made to answer questions about Madeleine McCann.
Moving between cheap hotels, homeless shelters and tents – at one stage he is even said to have been living in a shipping container – the convicted sex offender strikes fear and fury into the hearts of those who recognise the 48-year-old’s arrogant, pock-marked face.
Mothers in Dietrichsdorf, the working-class district of the port city in northern Germany where Brueckner lives, are so terrified by his presence that they have formed a campaign group to keep tabs on his movements.
Some of them, The Mail on Sunday was told, are no longer allowing their children to go out alone in case they cross paths with a man who, by his own account, is now ‘the most known bad person in the world’.
The elderly, whom he has also targeted in the past, are also keeping their doors locked.
‘He is a rapist but he walks around here as if he has never done anything,’ says one campaigner. ‘He is often out alone. Germany protects him far too much. The government has failed completely.’
For the past six years, Brueckner has been the only person connected to the 2007 disappearance of three-year-old Madeleine in the Algarve, Portugal.
But while German police named him as their prime suspect in 2020 – stating they believe that Brueckner abducted and murdered the British girl – no charges have been brought against the convicted sex offender. In fact, so unrepentant is he that last week he sent messages to the MoS saying that he has become a ‘vogelfrei’ – an outlaw –and complaining: ‘There is no law for me. I feel like anybody can do anything with me.’

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Brueckner, the prime suspect in the disappearance of Madeleine McCann, pictured in Germany

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Madeleine was just three went she went missing in Algarve, Portugal, in 2007

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As Madeleine’s parents Kate and Gerry and twin siblings Sean and Amelie, 21, marked the 19th anniversary of her disappearance in a prayer vigil in Rothley village, Leicestershire, last week, Scotland Yard was weighing its options. Namely, whether it has enough evidence to apply for the German national’s extradition in a desperate attempt to get him to stand trial at the Old Bailey.
Such a move was quickly dismissed by German government sources who say criminal suspects cannot be extradited to non-EU countries because of strict rules put in place after the end of the Second World War.
A source close to Brueckner’s legal team also told the MoS that ‘the chances of this happening are non-existent’. They added: ‘If the UK authorities have any evidence and are so sure of it, why don’t they share it with the Germans so they can look at it and press their own charges?’