"Buried under the body of his dead dog, the files had been kept dry in a Lidl bag and came with various other items, some of which it is understood directly implicate Brueckner in the abduction of Maddie."
One of those – who had been a friend of Brueckner’s since he first arrived on the Algarve in 1994 – told me how he had spent much of 2007 living on/off with a girlfriend, Nicole Fehlinger, in Foral.
While they immediately hit it off at a Christmas party in 2006, it was a ‘turbulent’ relationship, leading Brueckner to frequently go off for days on end alone.
Much of this was spent in his various camper vans by isolated beaches or down by his trio of inland reservoirs.
Sometimes going with friends, but mostly alone, his favourite was nearby Arade, which he ‘knew like the back of his hand’, said the pal, who is a key witness in the case.
“He would drive right down to the edge of the lake. He liked to be near the water,” she revealed this week.
“He always camped in the same spot, but I don’t know exactly what he did there as he was very secretive.
...
The friend, a German mother-of-two, who has lived on the Algarve for three decades, has been helping the BKA with their enquiries for a number of years.
She was even flown to the headquarters in Wiesbaden two years ago to officially pinpoint the spot where he camped at Arade.
“The most important thing detectives needed to know was exactly when and where he went by the lake. They made me pick it out on maps and aerial shots, which luckily I could do.
It was hard to give them exact times though, as it has been more than 25 years since I first met Christian.
“He came back and forth so many times I couldn’t tell them exactly when.
“We didn’t have smart phones back then, and it wasn’t actually important to me.
“Other witnesses had already pinpointed his trips to Arade reservoir and, in any case, I think they know everything about what happened in May 2007. I’ve just been helping join the dots.”
IT was his secret camp that he called his ‘little paradise’. A copse of trees overlooking the expansive Barragem do Arade reservoir, it conveniently had a
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