Key Madeleine McCann witness dying of cancer, court told
A central witness in the investigation into the disappearance of Madeleine McCann has life-threatening cancer, a court heard on Friday.
Helge Busching has intestinal cancer and is not expected to live long, a friend told the court during a trial involving Christian Brueckner in Germany.
Mr Busching is the prosecution’s key witness in the trial, in which Brueckner is accused of five counts of sexual assault in Portugal between 2000 and 2017.
Brueckner is the chief suspect in the McCann case but this trial is unrelated.
Mr Busching, 53, claims to have found homemade tapes in Brueckner’s home in 2006 that showed him raping two women.
On Wednesday, he described the details of the tapes to the court, saying that Brueckner wore a balaclava but took it off to reveal his face. The tapes no longer exist and the police have never seen them.
Mr Busching also told the court that Brueckner hinted to him during a meeting in 2008 that he had been involved in the abduction of Madeleine, telling him “she didn’t even scream”.
On Friday, Michael Tatschl, another witness in the case, said Mr Busching has cancer, in comments reported by Sky News: “When we spoke... on the phone, we discussed general things including his cancer. It’s pretty bad. He got his diagnosis just a couple of months ago.”
Tatschl told the court that he often stayed overnight at Brueckner’s house in Praia da Luz, the town where Madeleine went missing in 2007.
Tatschl described their relationship as “friends and partners in crime”. He said that he saw a whip, several pairs of handcuffs and a balaclava in Brueckner’s home.
In 2006, the two men were sentenced to eight months in jail in Portugal for stealing diesel from a lorry.
During their time in prison, Brueckner told him that he had held a young woman captive for several days, Tatschl said.
Prosecutors opened the investigation into Brueckner on suspicion of murdering Madeleine back in 2020, but have yet to bring the case to court, perhaps suggesting they do not have enough evidence to charge him.
Mr Busching is set to appear in court again in June. The trial is scheduled to last until October.
Madeleine McCann’s disappearance
It is has been almost 20 years since Madeleine McCann was reported missing from the vacation apartment rented by her parents in the town of Praia da Luz in the Algarve.
Her parents, Kate and Gerry McCann, left her asleep with two smaller siblings while they had dinner at a nearby restaurant, and said they checked frequently on the children. They have always insisted she was kidnapped
At the time, the little girl’s disappearance led to massive publicity, with celebrities such as David Beckham appealing for her safe return.
But before long, police in Portugal scaled-down local searches, saying the case had become an international investigation.
In 2012, British police said they believed Madeleine could still be alive and released a picture of what she might look like as a nine-year-old.
A year later, they launched Operation Grange. After two years of reviewing the investigation, police said they had identified 38 people of interest, including 12 Britons.
In 2015, the UK said the investigation into the disappearance had cost more than £10 million. A month later, police reduced the number of officers working on the case from 29 to four.
In 2020, Police in Germany announced that Madeleine was presumed dead and a German man convicted of a rape committed in Portugal in 2005 was a suspect. To this date, the little girl’s remains have not been found.
In 2022 Brueckner, a German prisoner, was named a formal suspect by Portuguese authorities. He was allegedly in the area where Madeleine disappeared in 2007.
In May last year, police searched the Arade reservoir, about 30 miles from Praia da Luz.
