Disturbing findings from hard drives allegedly collected by cops when they raided the lair of the serial sex criminal suspected of kidnapping and killing 3-year old Madeleine McCann nearly 20 years ago were revealed in a documentary from The Sun that aired in the UK Wednesday.
The trove of material shown on Channel 4 were found at an abandoned factory owned by prime suspect, Christian Brueckner, in East Germany and confirm the devastating news prosecutors delivered in a letter in 2020 to Maddie’s parents: That their daughter was killed shortly after she was abducted from her bedroom at a Portuguese beach resort in 2007.
One particularly grotesque discovery on the drives is a Skype chat with other pedophiles, where Brueckner brags that he wants to “capture something small and use it for days,” The Sun reported.
Other haunting items collected by police from the year after little Maddie, who was from the UK, vanished while on vacation with her family include a variety of masks, chemicals, guns and children’s swimsuits, toys and bikes.
The chilling findings from The Sun allegedly showed Brueckner’s unrelenting obsession with children, including stories in which he fantasized about abducting them. In one, he described drugging a mother and daughter outside a pre-school and sexually abusing a 4-year-old blonde girl.
There is also a cache of child abuse images with children as young as 4, the outlet said.
A list a phone numbers were also found at Brueckner’s factory, while an address book was located nearby, The Sun reported.
The drives were found in a wallet beneath the remains of Brueckner’s dead dog, Charlie, and contained six USB sticks and two memory cards.
Brueckner’s former home was overrun with weeds, old crumbling buildings and an abandoned car pockmarked with bullet holes, according to The Sun.
Scrawled in red on a wall in German were the words: “My girlfriend lied to me, cheated on me and raised me to hate,” the Sun reported.
Authorities also discovered what appeared to be a shallow grave, according to reports.
Brueckner had a rape lair that was a small room, that contained everyday items such as a loveseat, a coffee table and some other furniture, along a large pole in the middle of the room.
The disturbing images pulled from the hard drives paint a chilling picture of a man authorities have long suspected of kidnapping Maddie from the apartment in Praia da Luz, on May 3, 2007.
A manhunt ensued and the case involved multiple suspects — including, briefly, her parents Kate and Gerry McCann — and several countries, but officials eventually narrowed in on Brueckner.
German authorities named him as a suspect in 2020, but he has yet to be formally charged in her headline-making disappearance. Two years later, Portuguese prosecutors confirmed to the Associated Press that they had identified an official suspect in the case, but did not reveal a name.
Brueckner was convicted in 2019 for the rape of a 72-year old American woman in the same Portugal town where Maddie disappeared and has since been linked to the disappearances of several other young children, according to officials.
He was arrested on drug charges in Italy, and cleared of some sexual abuse accusations in Portugal.
The long and winding case took a bizarre turn in 2023 when a Polish influencer named Julia Wandelt, who went by the aliases Julia Wendell or Julia Faustyna, claimed she was Madeleine.
She remained steadfast with her claim — even after DNA tests proved that she could not be the missing youngster.
Wandelt was arrested on stalking charges upon landing in Bristol, England, on Feb. 21 that are believed to be connected to the McCanns.