Inside warped world of Maddie suspect who ‘chased bohemian playboy life to cover up depraved sex crimes’
THE prime suspect in the “murder” of Madeleine McCann is a lifelong paedophile who chased a fantasy playboy lifestyle to cover up his warped sex crimes.
The German criminal, named as Christian B, 43, was first convicted of abusing children aged 17 back in 1994 - a year before he is believed to have moved to Portugal where the British girl vanished in 2007.
Scotland Yard has revealed his XJR 6 Jag was re-registered to someone else in Germany the day after Madeleine McCann vanished.
A pal told "‘If everything is true then he was indeed a master of illusion."
The friend said the suspect, who was convicted last year of raping an American pensioner, 72, in the Algarve in 2005, lived a "chaotic" life.
We cannot reveal his full identity due to German privacy laws.
The suspect is currently in jail in the German city of Kiel serving a 21-month drugs sentence and will serve seven years for the rape if his conviction is upheld on an appeal he has lodged against the verdict.
What we know...
- The German paedophile, 43, was living in Praia de Luz, Portugal, when she disappeared
- He took a 30-minute call on his mobile around an hour before Madeleine vanished
- The suspect is linked to a campervan he was reportedly living in at the time of the disappearance
- He also has links to a Jaguar XJR6 with a German plate seen in the area in 2006 and 2007
- German police are treating the disappearance as a murder inquiry and say the suspect is 'significant'
- Madeleine's parents have welcomed the breakthrough and say they will 'never give up hope of finding her alive'
- Anyone with information for Operation Grange can ring 0207 321 9251 or email Operation.grange@met.police.uk
He is appealing against the rape conviction but is serving a sentence for supplying drugs — though he also has previous theft and child abuse picture convictions.
He was caught for the rape only when he was reported to police more than 12 years later by two friends, who said they had seen disturbing films in his home.
The films, never located, allegedly showed him raping and torturing the elderly victim and a younger woman he tied to the ceiling.
DNA was found at the scene, in the form of a body hair on a bed sheet, resulted in his conviction last year.
RAPE ATTACK
Shocking details have emerged of the rape of the American woman when she was also robbed of £90 and a computer.
Christian B was being held on remand for diesel theft in 2006 when two friends broke into his ramshackle home to get a video camera he stole from them.
They approached German detectives some 11 years later in 2017 and revealed how they had reeled in horror when they saw horrific footage of the brutal attacks on the two women.
They could tell it was him as he “pulled the mask off his face”.
It was then that Germany’s Federal Criminal Police Office — which can investigate German citizens for crimes abroad — began looking into the rape claims.
German authorities requested his arrest in Milan on a European Arrest Warrant in September 2018 over the Algarve rape of the 72-year-old.
He was brought back to Germany and charged in August 2019.
The woman, a widow who is now 86 and living back in the US, was too frail to travel from the US to give evidence.
'ENGLISH GIRLFRIEND'
Born in 1976 and raised in a home, Christian B trained as a car mechanic, and first fled to Lagos in Portugal with a girlfriend after serving part of a two-year sentence for child abuse at a Wurzburg juvenile court in 1994.
In 2000, he was caught by Portuguese cops and deported to Germany under a European Arrest Warrant.
After being released from jail, he returned to Portugal and settled in Praia da Luz, working as a waiter and selling advertising for English newspapers during a 12-year stint at the resort where the McCanns took their fateful holiday.
He rented a farmouse Monte Judeu between Praia da Luz and Lagos and was noticed driving a Jaguar and dressing in a shirt and jacket.
He fell back into crime, dealing drugs and would target tourists at the resort, stealing passports and laptops.
While living in Praia da Luz, Christian B flirted with German female tourists and had a year-long relationship with an English woman, it has been reported.
He met the unnamed woman in 2004, but they split a year later, according to German news magazine FOCUS Online.
The crook would also buy used cars in Germany and repair them before trying to sell them on.
After returning to Hanover in Germany, he began living in a caravan and working in a car repair shop before being convicted of forgery of documents in 2010.
Meanwwhile, a former neighbour of the career criminal in Braunschweig, the German city where Christian B opened a kiosk after relocating in 2014, said he was "often very aggressive."
The neighbour, named only as Norbert M., told German newspaper Bild he would mistreat women and that he had an underage girlfriend from Kosovo.
Norbert M said: "He was very bad with women.
"He had a minor friend who came from Kosovo. He always beat them.
"Once she even had strangles on her neck."
He was very bad with women
Former neighbour, Norbert M
Norbert M told the paper he was threatened after he took over a kiosk from the suspect in 2015.
He said: "He wanted to take a freezer and the air conditioning with him, even though it didn't belong to him. He was very aggressive.
"A little later he showed up here with some acquaintances. One of them threatened me with a knife.”
He said the convicted sex abuser allowed the kiosk to be used for squalid booze and drug parties.
He added: "Parties were celebrated in the back, with lots of alcohol and probably also drug addicts.
"Everything was filthy. "
The convicted sex offender also moaned about his own psychological problems and being burnt out before his second child abuse conviction in 2016.
In 2011, a district court in Niebüll jailed him for nearly two years for dealing “large quantities” of narcotics.
And while he was initially handed a suspended sentence, his probation was revoked and he was eventually caged, it has been reported.
German police say Christian B, who they have not identified for privacy reasons, is suspected of burgling holiday homes while living on the Algarve between 1995 and 2007.
Christian B's timeline of crime
1976: Born, probably in Bavaria, Germany.
1992: Some minor crimes before a string of thefts.
1994: On trial for the first time, aged 17, for child sex abuse and sentenced to two years.
1995: Got out early and started dealing drugs.
1996: Goes to Portugal with his then girlfriend. Thought to have been living between Germany and the Algarve from as early as the mid-1990s.
1999: Arrested in Portugal and extradited to Germany, where he serves a youth sentence.
2005: He ties up, rapes and robs an American woman, 72, in her home near Praia da Luz, but is not caught.
2006: Lives in a bungalow about two miles from the Ocean Club, in Praia da Luz. In this year, thieves steal a camera showing a brutal rape and attack, which eventually leads the police to him.
2007: Christian B lives in a VW T3 camper van near one of the McCann’s favourite beaches. A 1993 Jaguar saloon with German plates, owned by him, has its registration swapped on May 4 — the day after Madeleine’s disappearance.
2011: District court in Niebüll, Germany, gives him a suspended sentence for drug dealing which is later activated and he is jailed.
2013: He sexually abuses another child, it is claimed.
2014: Christian B is in Braunschweig, Germany, where he claimed to be starting a business.
2016: Braunschweig district court gives him a year and three months jail for “sexually abusing a child in the act of procuring and possessing child pornography”.
2017: From June he is held on pre-trial remand over child pornography charges before being jailed in July. Christian B is convicted of assault.
2018: He is released in August, but is homeless. Police monitor him but then German authorities have him arrested in Milan in September after he flees to Italy. He is jailed for drug offences. He is then jailed for rape.
2019: He is hit with another prison sentence for violation of the Narcotics Act and then charged with the 2005 rape of the 72-year-old American in Praia da Luz. Now 43, he is jailed for seven years.
2020: While in prison he is hit with another jail sentence for drug offences.
YESTERDAY: German cops reveal they are investigating a prisoner over the presumed murder of Madeleine McCann.
The 43-year-old was living in a campervan in Praia da Luz in Portugal around the time three-year-old Madeleine vanished on May 3, 2007.
German police say they have determined the method used to kill the British child - although this has not been revealed publicly and no body has been found.
CAREER CRIMINAL
The Metropolitan Police also revealed a 30-minute call was made to the suspect’s Portuguese phone around an hour before the three-year-old is feared to have been snatched from her holiday apartment as parents Kate and Gerry dined with pals nearby.
Kate and Gerry, said in a statement issued before the German prosecutor spoke: "All we have ever wanted is to find her, uncover the truth and bring those responsible to justice.
Christian B is known to have shared a remote home a few miles outside the resort with a girlfriend.
The property was owned by a British man who has asked to remain anonymous, but who confirmed that the couple separated in the years before the career criminal abandoned the property in 2006.
He said that both British and Portuguese police have asked for his help when gathering background information for the case.
The suspect was born in Germany in 1976 but moved to Portugal in his late teens.
Christian B came into the frame as a suspect in 2017 after allegedly confessing that he knew what happened to Madeleine, it’s reported.
He is understood to have been in a bar in Germany with another man, around the time of the tenth anniversary of the disappearance.
A report came on the TV about Madeleine and he said something to suggest that he knew what happened, it is claimed.
He also allegedly showed the pal a video of himself raping a woman, leading to a police probe that would see him convicted of a 2005 sex attack on a woman in Portugal.
He broke into his OAP victim's house armed with “a curved sabre” and a rope to tie her to a wooden beam, The Times reports.
She was blindfolded, gagged and whipped with a piece of metal before being raped and robbed.
The victim told the police: “He enjoyed torturing me.”
The newspaper said he was convicted of the offence in Braunschweig district court in December last year.
Christian Hoppe, from Germany's Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA), yesterday said he believes Madeleine may have been randomly targeted after the man broke into her family’s apartment.
He said: “We think that she might have become the victim of a homicide.”
Hoppe was also asked if the suspect could have had accomplices and replied: “We do not rule that out – besides the initial offender there might be others who have known about the crime, the location of Madeleine’s body or even participated in the crime.”
German cops believe the prolific burglar, who has previous convictions for sex crimes against young girls, may have initially gone to raid the McCanns' apartment before he "moved on to a sexual motive".
When asked whether the initial break-in was sexually motivated, Mr Hoppe said: “We cannot rule that out.
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“But it is also possible that the suspect, after an initial intention of burglary, spontaneously moved on to a sexual motive.”
German cops are treating Madeleine’s disappearance as murder - though the Met are still investigating the case as a missing person inquiry because there is “no definitive information” on whether she is dead or alive.