GROUND ZERO!

Olive Press editor Jon Clarke was the only journalist to visit the ‘secret camp’ of Madeleine McCann suspect last year, as three-day lake search finds ‘relevant clues’

Mayor Farewell

GIBRALTAR’S mayor Christian Santos has held two farewell evenings with Gibraltar organisations and associations he has supported during his time in the role.

With only weeks left, one of the most inclusive mayors in Gibraltar’s history is saying goodbye after two years in office.

The openly gay public figure, who also runs Gibraltar’s hugely successful Academy of Music and Performing Arts (GAMPA), is taking leave of the groups he supported. His deputy, playwright and actress Carmen Gomez, will take over as mayor on June 6.

Well done

“My time in office has only been possible because of all the work we have been able to do together,” Santos said on social media.

“I am making every possible effort to celebrate with everyone who has made my time in office so special.”

His words echo his vision to make the City Hall a place where everyone was welcome as part of his ‘We Are One’ campaign.

“His Worship has made it his mission to reach out to all who work hard to make a difference in our community,” the Gibraltar Government said in a statement.

Santos thanked everyone present at his receptions for their tireless work in their own areas.

IT was his secret camp that he called his ‘little paradise’.

Hidden in a copse overlooking Arade lake, this was the Portuguese hideout that Christian Brueckner would come to ‘cleanse himself’ alongside lots of beer and marijuana.

As well as a rudimentary table, hewn out of a log, the Madeleine McCann suspect even sculpted a stone bench down by the water’s edge.

But what most intrigued German detectives, who spent 72-hours scouring the area last week, was a perfect stone circle, now dismantled, that was made beside it.

“This was his exact special spot he liked to come to ‘cleanse himself’,” a former friend told the Olive Press on a visit to the reservoir, last year.

“He came here often, but I don’t know exactly what he did as he was always secretive.”

The Olive Press established he spent long periods by a trio of lakes on the Algarve, as well as Granada’s Alpujarras region, where he sold drugs and stolen items.

The convicted rapist and paedophile particularly liked Arade lake.

EXCLUSIVE

“He would drive down to the edge of the lake. He liked to be near the water,” revealed the German mother-of-two, who is a key witness in the case.

“He always camped in the same spot and said he came to ‘cleanse himself’ and he certainly washed himself and his clothes in the lake.

Cambodia

“He drank a lot of beer as when I came down with him to pick up stones for a wall at my house there were loads of empty cans.

“I think he liked the silence and the fact there was usually no-one else around. It now makes me horrified to think what he really might have done down there.”

Talking at her home near Silves, the expat, who has lived on the Algarve for three decades, added: “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.

“I really hope they finally catch him for all the horrible things he has done.”

Located just 30 miles from where Madeleine, then 3, was snatched from her bed in Praia da Luz, Arade lake sits close to where Brueckner was staying at the time in the village of Foral.

A former flatmate, Michael Tatschl, told the Olive Press in 2020 that Brueckner ‘loved’ spending time by the lakes with his friend Christian Post, an IT technician, who now lives in Cambodia.

“He loved the isolation at the lakes… and he was definitely a pervert and more than capable of snatching a child, for sexual kicks or money,” said Tatschl, from his home in Austria.

“He was always bragging about making money. He even talked about selling kids maybe to Morocco, and I think he probably sold Maddie to someone – maybe a sex ring.”

When we tracked Post down to Kampot, in Cambodia, last year, he said he believed Brueckner snatched a sleeping Madeleine while on a burglary spree.

“Now I know about his paedophile past. I’m 100% certain it was him.

I think he found [Madeleine] by chance and took her,” said Post. This is a theory that German detectives have been working on since they unearthed a stash of 8000 photos and videos, including child abuse, at a Brueckner property, in 2016. The files came with various other items, it can be revealed, some of which ‘directly implicate’ Brueckner in the abduction.

Clue

Yet remarkably, while he was twice extradited from Portugal for sex crimes against children, Portuguese detectives never considered he could be involved.

He is currently serving a seven-year sentence for the rape of a 72-yearold in Praia da Luz, in 2005. German cops discovered his phone was used near Madeleine’s apartment on the same night she went missing. Prosecutor Hans Christian Wolters told the Olive Press last year he is ‘certain’ Brueckner abducted Madeleine and killed her.

Detectives have found at least one ‘relevant clue’ from the Arade search and taken dozens of samples back to Germany to be analysed over the coming weeks.

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