MADDIE MYSTERY
Madeleine McCann cops look drained as two-day dig uncovers secret cellar and ‘divers search nearby river’
GERMAN cops digging up an allotment rented by Madeleine McCann suspect Christian B looked drained last night as the two-day mission took its toll.
Shattered officers were pictured wearily rubbing their faces as they stood on the site after reportedly uncovering a hidden cellar.
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Divers were also spotted by locals trawling the River Leine in the nearby town of Seelze in a search believed to be linked to the investigation.
The paedophile frequented the Hanover allotment in the years after the toddler's disappearance in 2007.
After two days of using sniffer dogs and ground-penetrating radar, officers yesterday discovered a hidden "basement" at the site, .
The find was made this afternoon, with the basement underneath a house that has since been demolished.
The tenant of an adjacent plot said the cellar had been at the site for years but was not filled in when its above-ground structure was torn down in 2007 - the same year Madeleine vanished.
On Wednesday evening cops were seen packing up digging equipment at the search site as the day drew to an end.
Sources said the operation was likely to come to an end after the significant discovery of the cellar and retrieval of key evidence.
The discovery of the basement comes as:
- It emerged Christian B lived at the site in a caravan from 2007
- The prime suspect has dropped his bid for freedom
- Cops began digging up the allotment site in Hanover on Monday
Pals have previously said they and Christian B would joke about him emerging as a suspect, saying: "Maddie’s downstairs in the cellar. Come on Christian, get Maddie out of the cellar."
British police officers are also taking part in the investigation and have quizzed a garage owner who rented a workspace to Christian B.
The search at the site began after another allotment holder at the site tipped off cops after watching a 'Crimewatch' TV show about unsolved crimes that featured Madeleine's case.
Specialist ground radar and sniffer dogs were brought in to help the search as cops used diggers and shovels to dig up the earth.
Police also removed a huge skip-full of evidence for analysis from the allotment dig site this afternoon.
Pictures show the skip crammed with rubbish including rubble, gravel, a child’s bucket and old plates.
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The dig comes days after they also searched public gardens close to his former flat.
Christian B previously boasted to the owner of an allotment he rented in Braunschweig, northern Germany, that he wanted to put perspex glass over a hole in the ground at her site.
The woman sensationally claimed last month he wanted to build a “Fritzel cellar” to stash snatched children under her land.
Profiler and intelligence analyst Mark Hoffmann told local media it was "unlikely" a body could have been taken from Portugal to Germany.
"But there are also sniffer dogs that are specially trained to find mobile phones, USB sticks or other data carriers," he added.
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Wolfgang Kossak, 73, who owns the plot next to Christian B's, described the search as “ominous”.
He said many of the plots were sub-let and he recalled the suspect as a stranger who “caused a lot of trouble” visiting the site around 2007.
Christian B "had the garden next to mine" and he "arrived in 2007 and left within a year", he said.
"He told me that he was living off the grid, that he had not registered with the authorities – no one knew he was there," Mr Kossak told the MailOnline.
"The building was not really a house, you might call it a shed. But it had a cellar and underneath there would be foundations."
They have also searched public gardens opposite a block of flats where he lived.
One neighbour said: “There were two police tents on the street and a helicopter flying up above last week.
“Police were very busy in the gardens opposite, they seemed to be looking for something.
THE 'SCREWDRIVER'
“They wouldn’t say what they were doing but it makes sense now knowing that he lived here and they are searching other sites he was involved with.
“Christian is remembered for selling weed when he lived here. The block where he lived always stunk of cannabis, he was the local dealer.”
The plot is four miles from his last known address in Hanover and just two miles from where the 43-year-old worked in a car workshop.
He rented a garage at Euro Hobbywerkstatt in Hannover - a few miles down the road from the allotment currently being excavated by German police.
He was nicknamed “the screwdriver” because he always smelled of oil and petrol.
Officers from the Met looking for Madeleine took away documents and paperwork relating to the German paedophile.
The garage owner said said detectives “took away everything” to do with Christian B.
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The suspect's former apartment is situated right next to a school - with its playground visible from most windows.
Christian B recently abandoned his attempt to secure release from prison and his legal team are said to be battling attempts to pin Madeleine's disappearance on him.
A run down swimming pool and leisure centre is opposite the high-rise block where he lived from around 2010.
Hoffmann said the suspect is unlikely to have provided any information about allotment.
“The suspect never confessed to anything. He only ever made confessions if it promised him some benefit or if the evidence was clear anyway," he said.
“Repentance or insight - as far as I could see, he never had any."
At the latest allotment site being searched this week, trees have been uprooted and a four-foot-deep hole dug at the remote plot.
It is coincidentally located just three miles from the grizzly site where a sex worker’s dismembered body was found in 2010.
Repentance or insight - as far as I could see, he never had any
Mark Hoffmann
Christian B was questioned over the murder but never charged.
The German woman who rented her garden to Christian B in neighbouring Braunschweig told The Mirror in June: “There was a hole in the floor inside the allotment house and one day he told me he wanted to put a see-through perspex glass over it.
“I said to him, ‘What the hell for? Just so you can look down into a dirty old cellar?’
“In retrospect I think he wanted to build a Fritzl cellar like the guy in Austria who put his daughter down there.”
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One local said the alleged tunnel cops were digging for could possibly be an old cellar from an outbuilding that once stood there.
Officers have been pictured leaving the 15-ft wide-garden clutching bags of dirt, which will be analysed by forensics teams.
They will analyse the soil for any potential DNA evidence that links Madeleine to the site.
The searches were carried out in a joint operation by German federal police and the prosecutors’ office in Braunschweig, where Christian B was convicted of rape last year.
MOST READ IN NEWS
The plot being searched - one of five on the site - is commonly known as a ‘laub’ in German.
READ MORE SUN STORIES
Laubs are commonly included in the sales of city centre flats and apartments.
They are garden areas owned by city dwellers to give them refuge from the hustle and bustle of urban life.
Former landlord shows off space where Christian B slept after Madeleine disappeared
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