GROUND ZERO!

Olive Press editor Jon Clarke was the only journalist to visit the ‘secret camp’ of Madeleine McCann suspect last

EXCLUSIVE

By Jon Clarke

the fact there was usually noone 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