This translated article contains some interesting (new) information for non-German speakers. (Parts of the content may offend some.)
Die Akte Christian B (Der Spiegel, 9 June 2020 by Hubert Gude) (translation courtesy of Ulrike U.) [I have added names to the text that have since become known within the public domain.]
The File Christian B
A German is said to have kidnapped and murdered little Madeleine McCann in Portugal. A court classified him as a "parole failure". Who is the man?
Braunschweig, June 2013. Anja P. and her daughter visit a man she met through the Internet portal Chat2000. Christian B. lives with two dogs in the back room of a run-down kiosk in Braunschweig. There wasn't much going on with him, only once did they get physically closer, Anja K. will later tell the police. She got to know him as a child and animal lover.
When she is back home in the evening, she sends him a text message: "We arrived safely, it was nice again, the time with you is good for me! You are also someone special to me. I am glad to know you."
For the daughter, four years old, the visit was a nightmare. When the police searched the kiosk the next summer, she discovered a digital camera. On the SD card are hundreds of pictures and videos with child *advertiser censored* as well as photos from that visit. One shows the daughter with her legs spread in a meadow, B. has pushed her underpants to the side and is touching the girl's vagina. Another one shows the girl climbing a tree with B. holding his erect penis in the picture.
In the fall of 2017, the Braunschweig Regional Court sentences Christian B. to one year and three months in prison for "sexual abuse of a child" and possession of 391 child *advertiser censored* photos and 68 videos. The court expressly does not suspend the sentence on probation. It is to be assumed that the convicted person is a "parole violator", the Chamber finds.
Christian B. has been punished many times in his life. Currently he is in a prison in Kiel because he smuggled kilograms of marijuana to Sylt. In addition, he was sentenced to seven years in December because he allegedly attacked and raped a 72-year-old American woman in Portugal; this sentence is not yet final.
The big question is: Will there be another verdict? This time for life, for murder? The Braunschweig public prosecutor's office is investigating Christian B. in the case of the missing English woman Madeleine McCann. The three-year-old girl disappeared in spring 2007 from a vacation resort in Praia da Luz, Portugal. "We assume", says a spokesman for the authorities, "that the girl is dead."
Praia da Luz, in September 2020. street lamps bathe the white houses and the remains of an ancient wall in a warm light. From the beach, past the church, you walk only a few hundred meters to the Luz Ocean Club, a spacious apartment complex with pretty arches.
The Kiel lawyer Friedrich Fülscher, who defends Christian B., has travelled here. He wants to get a picture of the crime scene and gain his own insights. He stops in front of a window with lowered shutters on the north side of the apartment complex. It belongs to the first floor apartment 5A. The time of day, the silence in the side street - it's like back then.
Between 21.10 and 22 o'clock Madeleine Beth McCann disappeared from this room on 3 May 2007. "If the witness statements are correct, there was a time window of one minute and 30 seconds in which the child could have been abducted at that time," says Fülscher. "The perpetrator had a maximum of three minutes."
Photos by the Portuguese investigators show a plain bedroom with a pine chest of drawers. In the middle of the room are two travel cribs for the twins of the McCann family, two years old at the time. Next to them: Madeleine's bed, the blue and white checked bedspread is neatly folded back.
Since that evening more than 13 years ago, the girl has disappeared. During the night the parents Kate and Gerry McCann informed the British television station BBC and other media. They started a Europe-wide search for their child. Celebrities such as David Beckham made a donation, the then Pope Benedict XVI received the parents in the Vatican and blessed a photo of their missing daughter. Later, the parents themselves became the target of the Portuguese investigators, one of so many twists and turns in this case.
And now, after 13 years, the solution? The murderer is a man from Germany, whom the investigators hadn't seen for a long time, even though he already had a criminal record and lived near the crime scene?
Shortly before Madeleine McCann disappeared, a prepaid cell phone with the Portuguese number
00351 912 730 680 was logged into the radio cell of the crime scene. It was, as was to turn out much later, the cell phone of Christian B. Who was he talking to for 30 minutes? An accomplice? Or someone who could give him an alibi? His lawyer does not want to comment on this. He says: "My client did not commit this crime."
From the window of the bedroom Fülscher goes around the corner to the place where several witnesses stood at that time. In a dead-end street lies the back of the apartment, whose terrace door is said to have been open. A friend of the McCanns testified to having seen a man carrying a child away from the resort. Fülscher says: "This man was later identified and has nothing to do with the disappearance. The case is full of "inconsistencies and contradictions
Würzburg, in the seventies. Christian B. was one year old when he and his brothers came to an adoptive family in Würzburg. He later told a social worker about his broken childhood: beatings and other punishments had been the preferred methods of upbringing, his brothers and he had been abused every day. At the age of 14, he moved into the living group of a children's home. He said he had fared better there.
After secondary school, Christian B. began training as a car mechanic. He broke it off because he wanted to leave Germany at all costs. At 18, he "emigrated" to Portugal, where he worked for a German newspaper, in hotels and car repair shops, said B.
In fact, Christian B. did not emigrate at the time, but fled. He received his first punishment, which was suspended on probation at the age of 16. It involved several thefts and driving without a driver's license.
Then he abused a girl, still a teenager. He followed her into a bush, held her by her upper arm, took his penis out of his pants, lifted the six-year-old's skirt and grabbed her between her legs. The girl cried, B. fled. A little later he abused nine-year-old girl.
B. received two years in prison for "sexually abusing a child, attempting to sexually abuse a child and performing sexual acts in front of a child. Shortly afterwards he traveled to Portugal, where investigators tracked him down after about five years. B. was extradited to Germany and went to prison. After his release at the end of 2000 he traveled back to the Algarve.
"He was a Hallodri, a jack-of-all-trades," Anja P. tells us in a Berlin café. After graduating from high school, she went to Portugal and stayed there for several years, "like Christian and so many others". Together with a friend, she met him at the opening ceremony of the Taberna de Lagos restaurant, and Christian B. waited there. "Everyone in the foreign community knew him. He was striking because he always wore these jackets and drove an old Jaguar. For me, he was a very nice and helpful guy at the time, who kept his head above water with odd jobs and never had any money.
Later, she also worked in the Taberna de Lagos and visited him several times in his house in Praia da Luz. "The house was near a golf course. At that time, Christian collected golf balls, which he later wanted to sell, and sold tickets for boat trips at the port of Lagos."
With his Jaguar, when she broke down on a country road, he towed away her old Fiat Punto, which is prohibited in Portugal. "He was not interested in that. He brought my car to his farm via hidden roads." Then he told her that the Fiat was beyond repair. "I ditched it and got myself another car. At some point I saw that he was driving around in the Punto himself, but that didn't bother me."
Does she think it possible that Christian B. is the murderer of Madeleine? "You always knew that Christian also did crooked things, but not that kind of thing," says Anja P. When the ZDF program "Aktenzeichen XY Ungelöst" reported on the suspicion in June, "it really shocked me.
The friend who was present at the opening ceremony of the restaurants put it similarly. "I would never have thought that, although everyone knew that they were sure to have one on the waffle," says the woman, who still lives in Portugal. "If someone walks around in a jacket, driving a Jaguar and showing off, but then works as a waiter, you know you'd rather stay away from him.
Praia da Luz, in the summer of 2003. Andrea B. and Yvonne B., two young women from Munich, met a nice "bon vivant" during their vacation - this is how they regarded the man who sold oranges and called his dog "Charlie", the "eternally panting Charlie".
Together they went to the casino. Chris, as they called him, loved to gamble and told about his plan to be a millionaire at the age of 40. After the trip home, they stayed in touch. Chris wrote e-mails which he signed with "Wölkchen".( little cloud)
Hello girls,
how time flies! Now it is already September! I booked a flight to good old Munich yesterday. For a measly 215 Euro! All criminals! Stop Stop, I'm flying to Stuttgart.
The first night I will stay in Augsburg. After that I would like to stretch my nose to the south and come to you. There is so much to tell again, two months are not enough,
Yours
WÖLKCHEN
"Wölkchen" was allowed to stay overnight with them in Munich. Yvonne B. will later tell the police that she never noticed anything about this man. Perhaps he had not quite correctly expressed himself from time to time about the bust of a woman, nothing else. She had never noticed Christian B. as particularly aggressive.
A German musician and IT-technician, who got to know him in 2005 after a gig in a music bar in Lagos, learned that B. also has an uncanny side. The SPIEGEL reached Christian P., 53, via Skype in the small town of Kampot in Cambodia.
"I met Christian from time to time, he fixed my car, I helped him with the TV," he says. Sometimes they would drink wine. "He was quite a messie. The house in Praia da Luz was totally untidy and unkempt."
During a visit, he noticed three stacks of foreign travel documents. "There were 30 to 50 passports lying around in plain sight." When asked about this, Christian B. told about thefts in Praia da Luz and the surrounding area. "He told us that he went on tour from time to time, and climbed up facades in the process.
This is consistent with the findings of the investigators. According to this, Christian B. financed his life in Portugal in the mid-2000s not with odd jobs, but with burglaries and thefts. In April 2006, he and an Austrian accomplice were caught red-handed at a gas station when they were siphoning diesel from a truck. A Portuguese court sentenced them to 258 days in prison.
"I visited him in prison at the time," Christian P. recalls. "He complained about the poor prison conditions and the lousy food. Because there was no alcohol in the prison, I was supposed to bring him oranges sprinkled with vodka, but I didn't want that. That made B. angry.
During his imprisonment, B. received notice of termination for the house he had rented in Praia da Luz. Christian P. wanted to help his friend and place a few boxes for him. "But there were such disgusting CDs with dirty movies like animal *advertiser censored*, more than a hundred CDs," says Christian P. He threw all the stuff away. Christian B. didn't want to see him again afterwards, "he was so angry".
After his release, B. lived in an old VW bus. Madeleine McCann disappeared a few months later, which nobody connected with him at the time.
Saxony-Anhalt, 2010. Christian B. had driven around a lot, in a large American motor home of the brand Winnebago. Now he bought himself a permanent accommodation again. In Saxony-Anhalt, in the community of Am Großen Bruch, he purchased the grounds of an old box factory for 20,000 euros.
B. had big plans at that time. He wanted to open a camping site there, he told a friend. In fact, he was dealing drugs, bought kilograms of marijuana from a dealer in Oranienburg and sold it on Sylt. The drug deals were discovered and he was investigated. Christian B. moved to the kiosk in Braunschweig.
In Internet chats dating from this time, he did not write as a "cloud", but rather as "maddeningly catchy". Also about his perversions, for example in the chat with "panikspatz66".
wahnsinnderholger: "finally wants to f..k a little one!
panikspatz66: "who doesn't want that"
wahnsinnderholger: "catch something small and then use it for days, that's it ..."
panicspatz66: "... is not without danger either."
wahnsinnderholger: "oh if the evidence is destroyed afterwards ..."
panic sparrow66: "mm"
madderholger: "if for example the deepthroat took too long ...".
In January 2016 the police searched the grounds of the former factory. Neighbors had complained about the smell of decay. It came from a dead dog that B. had buried there. Under the carcass, the officers discovered a cloth case with six USB sticks and memory cards full of pictures and films showing abused children.
By this time, the kiosk in Braunschweig had already been searched, and Christian B. was threatened with a prison sentence for the child *advertiser censored* seized there. He fled again to the Algarve. In São Bartolomeu de Messines, Portuguese investigators arrested him in 2017. Several children had reported that a man had exposed his limb and made obscene movements. B. was extradited to Germany.
No investigator had ever connected him with Madeleine McCann and her disappearance. The lead came about because the notorious criminal B. had himself been the victim of a crime.
When he was imprisoned in Portugal for the thefts, two thieves had raided his house in Praia da Luz. They were also from Germany and were after B.'s loot. One of them, Helge Lars B., reported more than ten years later, in August 2017, from a Greek prison near Scotland Yard.
A few months later German investigators visited him in Greece. Helge Lars B. told them that he had never been friends with the "head waiter" he had met a few months before his arrest. When Christian B. was in prison, he and an accomplice drove to Praia da Luz. First they tapped 200 to 300 liters of diesel from the tank behind the house, then they searched the house. It was full of stolen goods, cameras, clothing, laptops. In the closet, he found swimming goggles, which strangely enough were painted gray on the inside. He had taken two video cameras and about 20 tapes with him, his accomplice a revolver.
On some of the videos, both thieves later agreed in court in Braunschweig, they saw Christian B. raping a woman between 70 and 80 years old. Another video showed a girl, about 14 years old, tied to a wooden post. The statements of the two men contradicted each other in parts; the films can no longer be found.
The investigators assumed that three rapes had been filmed and made inquiries in Portugal. In one case they made progress: a 72-year-old woman was abused in 2005 in Praia da Luz in her house near the beach. At the scene of the crime, the Portuguese police had seized a hair that can be attributed with a probability of 244 billion to one Christian B.
Helge Lars B. told even more: Later he saw Christian B. again, at the so-called Dragon Festival in Orgiva, Spain. There Christian B. admitted to having had something to do with the disappearance of Madeleine McCann.
The detectives are always following up new leads, checking new cases all the time.
Was it really like that? Is this the solution to the criminal case that has made more headlines worldwide than almost any other? Circumstantial evidence speaks against Christian B., but guilt or innocence will only be decided by a court, if an indictment is ever made.
The detectives are still following new leads and examining new cases. Portuguese authorities have informed their colleagues about a ten-year-old girl from Germany who was abused on a beach near Praia da Luz four weeks before Madeleine disappeared. The now 23-year-old woman (Joana E) testified that she is now 99 percent sure that the man was B. A woman from Ireland (Hazel B) also came forward and accused B. of being the man who raped and assaulted her in the Algarve in 2004.
"My client does not want to comment on the ongoing investigations and denies that the 72-year-old woman was raped in Portugal," says attorney Fülscher.
Portugal, in September 2020, about half an hour drive from Praia da Luz to the man (Bernard P) who lent Christian B. the VW bus at the time. With long gray hair and a gray full beard, the screwdriver from Germany is leaning against a car with flat tires, his hands are oily, his pants are torn.
On the remote yard near Messines there are rusty VW Golf and Mercedes, as they were modern in the eighties. "I don't want to say anything to Christian," the mechanic immediately says, "he was just here from time to time. He could not understand all the excitement.
He and his son (Flavio P) drove around in the white-yellow VW bus for several years after B. returned it, the man says. About two years ago, officials from the Federal Criminal Police Office came by and picked up the bus. They believe that Madeleine McCann could have been kidnapped with it.
