Germany/Portugal - Christian Brueckner, 27 @ time of 1st crime (2004), charged with sexual assault crimes, Praia de Rocha, Portugal. #5

[Mex]

I don't recall that being part of the judgement in CB's recent trial.

It was indeed an extremely intriguing conclusion for which the writing was on the wall immediately the court cancelled the arrest warrants at the behest of the defendant's legal team.

If you remember, the prosecution unsuccessfully appealed that decision on the grounds of bias.

Court criticizes "lying witnesses"​

With its verdict, the chamber essentially followed the demands of the defense.
"The evidence we had was not enough to convict the accused," said presiding judge UE, adding:
"We were dealing with unreliable witnesses, some of whom deliberately lied to the court."
The chamber could not base a judgment on this.

She further argued that witnesses were influenced in their statements by the reporting on Christian B. The defendant had been "stylized as a sex monster and child murderer" in the media.

Überraschung in Vergewaltigungsprozess: Urteil gegen fränkischen Maddie-Verdächtigen (47) gefallen

Der Prozess gegen den auch im Fall "Maddie" verdächtigten Christian B. ist beendet. Der 47 Jahre alte Mann aus Franken hat sein Urteil erhalten - wie geht es nun für ihn weiter?

www.infranken.de

Quite a damning conclusion given the plethora of accusation universally directed at witnesses for the prosecution who actually were not on trial but now must carry the burden of perjury because presiding judge UE has so decreed.

CB did not require to 'prove his innocence'. But an interesting point made by the judge was her total acceptance of the testimony by one expert witness for the defence while by definition considering the expert witness testifying on the same point on behalf of the prosecution to be guilty of falsehood.
She showed a remarked upon intense interest in the colour of CB's eyes.

Probably there will be numerous points of law to be considered because the enormity of a complete retrial is not a decision which will be taken without intense scrutiny; perhaps even which evidence and witnesses were allowed and which disallowed.
But the proof is that CB had a fair trial throughout which his rights were scrupulously upheld, surely somewhere within the mix-mash of the Braunschweig trial the law must allow some sort of equity for those who suffered as a result of criminal activity.
At the least not to be branded as liars in criminal cases committed many years apart and in which the only constant was who the perpetrator might have been.
My opinion

 

[frank-cole]

It was indeed an extremely intriguing conclusion for which the writing was on the wall immediately the court cancelled the arrest warrants at the behest of the defendant's legal team.

If you remember, the prosecution unsuccessfully appealed that decision on the grounds of bias.

Court criticizes "lying witnesses"​

With its verdict, the chamber essentially followed the demands of the defense.
"The evidence we had was not enough to convict the accused," said presiding judge UE, adding:
"We were dealing with unreliable witnesses, some of whom deliberately lied to the court."
The chamber could not base a judgment on this.

She further argued that witnesses were influenced in their statements by the reporting on Christian B. The defendant had been "stylized as a sex monster and child murderer" in the media.

Überraschung in Vergewaltigungsprozess: Urteil gegen fränkischen Maddie-Verdächtigen (47) gefallen

Der Prozess gegen den auch im Fall "Maddie" verdächtigten Christian B. ist beendet. Der 47 Jahre alte Mann aus Franken hat sein Urteil erhalten - wie geht es nun für ihn weiter?

www.infranken.de

Quite a damning conclusion given the plethora of accusation universally directed at witnesses for the prosecution who actually were not on trial but now must carry the burden of perjury because presiding judge UE has so decreed.

CB did not require to 'prove his innocence'. But an interesting point made by the judge was her total acceptance of the testimony by one expert witness for the defence while by definition considering the expert witness testifying on the same point on behalf of the prosecution to be guilty of falsehood.
She showed a remarked upon intense interest in the colour of CB's eyes.

Probably there will be numerous points of law to be considered because the enormity of a complete retrial is not a decision which will be taken without intense scrutiny; perhaps even which evidence and witnesses were allowed and which disallowed.
But the proof is that CB had a fair trial throughout which his rights were scrupulously upheld, surely somewhere within the mix-mash of the Braunschweig trial the law must allow some sort of equity for those who suffered as a result of criminal activity.
At the least not to be branded as liars in criminal cases committed many years apart and in which the only constant was who the perpetrator might have been.
My opinion

I believe the chamber changed its stance on or just after an admissibility arguement went in. I think it was about the finding of evidence by a police officer walking a dog on CB’s land. There’s not been any clarity on how all of the motions were judged. But given that the chamber changed its position so quickly (mid-trial) it seems that it may have been because of a motion. The court not having enough to convict doesn’t magically make the witnesses & victims liars or mistaken.

<modsnip>

 

[Davieson]

I believe the chamber changed its stance on or just after an admissibility arguement went in. I think it was about the finding of evidence by a police officer walking a dog on CB’s land. There’s not been any clarity on how all of the motions were judged. But given that the chamber changed its position so quickly (mid-trial) it seems that it may have been because of a motion. The court not having enough to convict doesn’t magically make the witnesses & victims liars or mistaken.
<modsnip>

No, but it does suggest that the prosecution were too complacent and that the case should not have been brought in the first place on the evidence presented.

 

[Mex]

I believe the chamber changed its stance on or just after an admissibility arguement went in. I think it was about the finding of evidence by a police officer walking a dog on CB’s land. There’s not been any clarity on how all of the motions were judged. But given that the chamber changed its position so quickly (mid-trial) it seems that it may have been because of a motion. The court not having enough to convict doesn’t magically make the witnesses & victims liars or mistaken.

<modsnip>

Yes, there doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason which enables a systematic or sequential analysis of what happened in the Braunschweig court. Without which it is impossible to enable a meaningful interrogation leading to interpretation of what went on throughout the trial which eventually resulted in such a mess.
My opinion

 

[frank-cole]

Yes, there doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason which enables a systematic or sequential analysis of what happened in the Braunschweig court. Without which it is impossible to enable a meaningful interrogation leading to interpretation of what went on throughout the trial which eventually resulted in such a mess.
My opinion

I agree. I think it’s senseless to consider everything to be a series of standalone coincidences. He’s a serial sexual offender with a conviction for rape & multiple counts of child assault. He has undoubtedly committed further sexual crime. A rapist & paedophile in the region that rapes & series of child assaults took place….what a coincidence….!

The McCann’s have received a disgusting level of mindless accusations over the years. ‘Communities’ have even been formed. Yet somehow CB hasn’t been treated fairly… Hypocrisy is staggering & so annoyingly obvious.

 

[Davieson]

I think CB has been treated perfectly fairly.
He has faced charges in court and has been found not guilty.
Who can ask more ?

 

[Mex]

No, but it does suggest that the prosecution were too complacent and that the case should not have been brought in the first place on the evidence presented.

Probably the one criticism that cannot be levelled at those working on this case is complacency.

There is a system in place.
Everyone concerned has to work within the protocols of that system.

The prosecutors have no say in bringing cases – that is down to the judges who scrutinise the evidence brought to them by the prosecutors and it is the judges who decide if an indictment will be made on the strength of the evidence.

Bearing in mind that this particular case was passed around for four years prior to trial as a result of the jurisdiction appeal submitted by CB’s lawyers.
My opinion

 

[Mex]

In the closing stages of the Braunschweig trial a surprising witness was introduced who was may not only have been a surprise to the defence team but whose testimony definitely was a bolt out of the blue for the prosecutors.

LC, was introduced late in the day and no time was set aside by the chamber for further in-depth perusal of what he had to say which in part corroborated other witness testimony; perhaps because he was a member of those informants who shared a cell and who become a confidant of the cell mate; or who had fallen foul of the presiding judge's difficulty in classifying witness statements.

He proved to be amine of information of relevance to the trial substantiating many of the points with which the presiding judge struggled but which tied in with testimonies she chose to publicly deride in her summary.

There is still much to be revealed from the knowledge this witness has and his introduction as a witness to this trial ensures that he will have a locus should any subsequent appeal be successful and who knows the elusive "truth" might emerge from the morass.

My opinion

 

[frank-cole]

Probably the one criticism that cannot be levelled at those working on this case is complacency.

There is a system in place.
Everyone concerned has to work within the protocols of that system.

The prosecutors have no say in bringing cases – that is down to the judges who scrutinise the evidence brought to them by the prosecutors and it is the judges who decide if an indictment will be made on the strength of the evidence.

Bearing in mind that this particular case was passed around for four years prior to trial as a result of the jurisdiction appeal submitted by CB’s lawyers.
My opinion

I’ve been taken by the resentment of the prosecutors & the frustration that HCW has been calling CB a murderer for 4 years. To put it in context - there have been ex law enforcement saying the same awful debunked things for 18 years yet that creates no frustration or concern.

I sense that people want CB & the investigations to go away in order to pave the way for ‘business as usual’.

I don’t think this will be anywhere near a resolution until 2026/2027.

 

[Mex]

I’ve been taken by the resentment of the prosecutors & the frustration that HCW has been calling CB a murderer for 4 years. To put it in context - there have been ex law enforcement saying the same awful debunked things for 18 years yet that creates no frustration or concern.

I sense that people want CB & the investigations to go away in order to pave the way for ‘business as usual’.

I don’t think this will be anywhere near a resolution until 2026/2027.

Me too - I don't know where the rancour comes from for the forces of law and order V a proven criminal, drug dealer, rapist and abuser of minors.

2026/2027 to be a very conservative estimate particularly if the prosecutors are successful in getting a new trial.
What we have recently witnessed of German trial procedures surely cannot be the norm. It took from 2022 when indicted until 2024 to get him into a court.
Contrast that with the previous occasion when CB was tried for the torture and rape of DM.
His name was given to investigators in 2017

• he was investigated as a result
• DM was traced based on the information given about the content of video tapes
• Portuguese police files matched up with the description of the rape
• CB was arrested in Portugal having been caught exposing himself to children in a playground
• he was extradited to Germany on an European Arrest Warrant issued for the abuse of a minor,
• he was tried in 2017 for the abuse and found guilty
• in 2019 he was tried and convicted of aggravated rape

Snip
During a raid on his flat, police seized a laptop and other devices on which they found the photographs.
Analysis of the images allowed the officers to identify the scene of the attack and the girl, who had moved to another part of Germany with her mother.

By then, however, CB had fled to the Algarve in Portugal, where he had been living intermittently since the mid-1990s.

German authorities issued an EU-wide arrest warrant, but it was four years before officers in Portugal seized him after responding to reports that he had exposed himself to children at a park about 40 miles from Praia da Luz.
CB, was extradited back to Germany, convicted and given a 15-month jail term in March 2017.

TK, the Chief Prosecutor in Hanover, said last night: ‘I can confirm that there was the child abuse case. CB was sentenced in 2017 for one year and three months.’

FF, CB’s lawyer, declined to comment.

CB was subsequently convicted of the rape in 2005 of a 72-year-old American woman at her apartment in Praia da Luz

Christian Brueckner was jailed for abusing ex-girlfriend's daughter

The prime suspect in the disappearance of Madeleine McCann was jailed for sexually abusing the five-year-old daughter of a former girlfriend, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.

www.dailymail.co.uk

 

[Davieson]

I’ve been taken by the resentment of the prosecutors & the frustration that HCW has been calling CB a murderer for 4 years. To put it in context - there have been ex law enforcement saying the same awful debunked things for 18 years yet that creates no frustration or concern.

I sense that people want CB & the investigations to go away in order to pave the way for ‘business as usual’.

I don’t think this will be anywhere near a resolution until 2026/2027.

Well, there's optimism for you.
Unlike you, I think most people want to see a conclusion to this saga.
Anything short of a trial will be less than satisfactory

 

[frank-cole]

Well, there's optimism for you.
Unlike you, I think most people want to see a conclusion to this saga.
Anything short of a trial will be less than satisfactory

Me too. 18 years is a very long time. Justice for Madeleine & closure for a grieving family is most important. If it takes another few years to happen then it’ll be worth the wait.

 

[mrjitty]

Worth pointing out that the Judge criticised the prosecution for it's pre-trial publicity for important constitutional and procedural reasons.

That is not the same as what a private citizen does.

So whatever your views on that - legally there is a very big difference. The pretrial publicity helped lose the trial, which is an important reason why police and prosecutors don't do that in western democracies. I still have never encountered anything like it.

 

[Davieson]

No guarantee of an outcome, whatever the time period.
What if charges against CB never materialise, or are dismissed in court ?
Will anyone pick up the baton again or will it just drift into obscurity like so many other cold cases ?

 

[Mex]

Worth pointing out that the Judge criticised the prosecution for it's pre-trial publicity for important constitutional and procedural reasons.

That is not the same as what a private citizen does.

So whatever your views on that - legally there is a very big difference. The pretrial publicity helped lose the trial, which is an important reason why police and prosecutors don't do that in western democracies. I still have never encountered anything like it.

Indeed she did 'criticise the prosecution' and one really requires to give that assertion some appropriate thought bearing in mind that CB had been prematurely linked to the child’s disappearance in 2020.

Very likely as a result of his 2017 conviction for his abuse of a minor and his 2019 rape conviction of DM and his subsequent appeal going as far as the European Court.

There is no way the press pack were going to sit on that one particularly when an Australian pod cast pointed them in the direction with mention of ‘German’ and ‘paedophile’ in the same sentence in 2019.
Only a matter of time from there and a prosecution which had been handling information with total discretion was backed into premature action.

Presiding judge UE was in charge of the Braunschweig court in 2024 where in theory MM’s name should never have been mentioned. But it was. From the opening statement – and repeatedly throughout - until the last.
Even BKA and SY police officers still actively working on the active case were quizzed and put in the outrageous situation of having to refuse to answer questions incompetently asked of them by the court.
That simply should never have happened and the fact it was allowed to happen, shows the presiding judge in a poor light.

UE was responsible for five cases unconnected one from the other and quite fundamentally and absolutely unconnected to MM. The defence trope of adverse publicity which basically is all they had to defend with really did have an effect on the judge. But it really shouldn’t have were we in the real world.

The presiding judge failed on being the safeguarding voice of the victims of the sexual crimes for which the defendant was being tried. And she miserably failed MM when she made their opportunity for justice into a trial in which neither MM nor she, UE had any locus.

My opinion

 

[Mex]

Worth pointing out that the Judge criticised the prosecution for it's pre-trial publicity for important constitutional and procedural reasons.

That is not the same as what a private citizen does.

So whatever your views on that - legally there is a very big difference. The pretrial publicity helped lose the trial, which is an important reason why police and prosecutors don't do that in western democracies. I still have never encountered anything like it.

Me neither.

• I have never encountered a trial consisting of five indictments
• nor one where charges were dropped before all the evidence had been heard
• or where the trial for the five offences were apparently allowed to be usurped by a case for which no charges have as yet been made
• or even where all the witnesses/victims of crime were labelled as 'liars' by the presiding judge

 

[frank-cole]

Worth pointing out that the Judge criticised the prosecution for it's pre-trial publicity for important constitutional and procedural reasons.

That is not the same as what a private citizen does.

So whatever your views on that - legally there is a very big difference. The pretrial publicity helped lose the trial, which is an important reason why police and prosecutors don't do that in western democracies. I still have never encountered anything like it.

Yes, I understand that. That wasn’t the point I was nudging at. I agree that HCW’s statements haven’t helped & it has been frustrating & misleading. But that isn’t the reason for a lot of the hostility toward him, the real reason has to do with who his suspect isn’t.

 

[frank-cole]

Indeed she did 'criticise the prosecution' and one really requires to give that assertion some appropriate thought bearing in mind that CB had been prematurely linked to the child’s disappearance in 2020.

Very likely as a result of his 2017 conviction for his abuse of a minor and his 2019 rape conviction of DM and his subsequent appeal going as far as the European Court.

There is no way the press pack were going to sit on that one particularly when an Australian pod cast pointed them in the direction with mention of ‘German’ and ‘paedophile’ in the same sentence in 2019.
Only a matter of time from there and a prosecution which had been handling information with total discretion was backed into premature action.

Presiding judge UE was in charge of the Braunschweig court in 2024 where in theory MM’s name should never have been mentioned. But it was. From the opening statement – and repeatedly throughout - until the last.
Even BKA and SY police officers still actively working on the active case were quizzed and put in the outrageous situation of having to refuse to answer questions incompetently asked of them by the court.
That simply should never have happened and the fact it was allowed to happen, shows the presiding judge in a poor light.

UE was responsible for five cases unconnected one from the other and quite fundamentally and absolutely unconnected to MM. The defence trope of adverse publicity which basically is all they had to defend with really did have an effect on the judge. But it really shouldn’t have were we in the real world.

The presiding judge failed on being the safeguarding voice of the victims of the sexual crimes for which the defendant was being tried. And she miserably failed MM when she made their opportunity for justice into a trial in which neither MM nor she, UE had any locus.

My opinion

So well put (as always).

HCW isn’t a villain sneakily out for his 15 minutes of fame before he auditions for a role as a judge on Germany’s got talent. He’s speaking on behalf a big unit & a team of murder investigators who have access to the same concrete evidence.

Whether his comments on MM’s murder may have jeopardised the trial seem possible, but more so on the defence playing this to their advantage with the judge.

HCW isn’t tanking failed PJ cold cases, he’s trying to solve them. If the investigation into Hazel’s rape was even slightly competent then it would be quite likely MM would have been with us today. Same goes for the beech assault. If they took it seriously & walked up the hill to the carpark, they may well have bumped into a blonde native German speaking man (who could also speak English) with birthmarks on his body & a bandage on his arm.
Butterfly effect in the saddest of ways.

Albeit an awful lot of coincidences, the evidence they had to work with was very slim. If pointing fingers is the game, I’d be inclined to look back at when they happened & assess whether they were adequately investigated, rather than putting it all on recent times. But irrespective of this, even if Ghandi himself was investigating CB for MM’s murder, Ghandi would have to be the ‘bad guy’.

MO

 

[Davieson]

Whatever the back history of investigations, the evidence available was inadequate to achieve conviction.

 

[Anxala]

No guarantee of an outcome, whatever the time period.
What if charges against CB never materialise, or are dismissed in court ?
Will anyone pick up the baton again or will it just drift into obscurity like so many other cold cases ?

Despite the very tiresome and logic-deficient noise on here that continues to try and suggest otherwise, all anyone who's followed this case over the years clearly wants is a conclusion and a conviction, and will be 100% hoping for a charge and a trial.

It's IMO the end of the road unless that happens. And that would be tragic. I'm sure we can all agree on that.