Madeleine McCann suspect Christian B had SECOND allotment & joked about building ‘Fritzl cellar’ to hide snatched kids
MADELEINE McCann suspect Christian B had a second allotment and joked about building a "Fritzl cellar" to hide kidnapped children, it has been claimed.
The claims relate to a plot in Braunschweig, north Germany, and come as police excavate another allotment previously used by the alleged killer in Hanover.
Christian B was named as the prime suspect in the McCann case last month, and is known to have lived in a number of places as well as in a camper van around the time of the three-year-old's disappearance in Portugal in 2007.
A friend has claimed that, while living in Germany in 2013, the sex offender told him that he wanted to turn the cellar of his rented home into a "Fritzl cell".
"He had a cellar and he said he wanted to line it with heavy plates, like the guy in Austria," the friend said.
Austrian Josef Fritzl held his daughter captive in the basement of his home for 24 years, committing frequent rapes that resulted in the birth of seven children.
The case came to light in 2008 only after Fritzl's daughter alerted authorities that she was being held during a visit to a hospital.
The owner of the plot Christian B rented in Braunschweig, where he reportedly lived for a time, similarly described conversations in which he talked about constructing a cellar.
The woman said: “There was a hole in the floor inside the allotment house.
“One day he told me he wanted to put clear plastic over it. I said, ‘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.”
Another former landlord in Braunschweig has said he thinks police will eventually search his private gardens as well, the reported.
Prosecutors have claimed that Christian B, who has a history of sex offences, also described fantasies about kidnapping "something small" in online forums.
Friends have even claimed that he would joke about the idea of emerging as a suspect in the McCann case, and that he would laugh when they said: "Maddie’s downstairs in the cellar. Come on Christian, get Maddie out of the cellar."
This week has seen police and forensics officers use dogs, diggers, and underground radar equipment to search a plot in Seelze, Hanover, 45 miles from Braunschweig.
Officers yesterday removed two skips full of concrete blocks as well as a bucket and other objects from the site.
Neighbours at the plot have described how Christian B spent time living in a hut at the site and told them he wanted to have it insulated.
Wolfgang Kossack, 73, said: “He never did any gardening or tried to grow anything. He just sat around drinking beer.”
He added that he would often be seen with a girlfriend and staying in a VW Transporter parked nearby.
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The structure was reportedly demolished shortly after Christian B left the site in 2007 or 2008, with no outward sign remaining of a "cellar" contained in its concrete base.
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Cops were tipped off about his use of the plot by another tenant who saw a German crime show about the case last month.
