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The curious parallels that could link German Madeleine McCann suspect with late British paedophile

Madeleine McCann
Madeleine McCann

The identification of Christian Brueckner as a prime suspect in the disappearance of Madeleine McCann has raised curious parallels with that of another suspect in the case.

Like Brueckner, now 43, and in prison in his native Germany, Raymond Hewlett lived in a battered camper-van in the Praia da Luz area and had committed a string of sexual offences against young girls.

The British former soldier had a German wife and in 2009, when named a suspect, was wanted by police in both Britain and Ireland. Detectives described him as "cunning" and a "danger to children".

Hewlett was interviewed by British police and gave a string of contradictory statements to the media from his hospital bed before dying of throat cancer in 2010 aged 64.

It is impossible to know whether or not the two men ever crossed paths.

Christian Brueckner 
Christian Brueckner

However, both Brueckner and Hewlett lived similarly itinerant lifestyles and in 2007, when Madeleine disappeared from her holiday apartment, were both based in the vicinity of Praia da Luz.

Both had a history of sex offences against children and both had links to Germany.

Brueckner was jailed last year for raping a 72-year-old American tourist in Praia da Luz in September 2005, 18 months before Madeleine disappeared.

He had arrived in the Algarve aged 18 in 1995 and spent 12 years in the resort and surrounding areas, dealing drugs and burgling holiday homes.

Until 2007, he and a girlfriend are believed to have rented a dilapidated farmhouse from a British couple in Monte Judeu, two miles outside of Praia da Luz. But shortly before Madeleine was taken he moved into a 1980s VW T3 Westfalia campervan.

Hewlett, originally from Todmorden, West Yorks, had lived with his German second wife and six children in a large blue van at a campsite 70 miles from Praia da Luz.

He came to public attention when a couple who met him while on holiday in Portugal in 2009 raised the alarm.

 Raymond Hewlett
Raymond Hewlett

Alan and Cindy Thompson said he was living in a converted truck with his family. They described a conversation in which Hewlett said he was approached by some "gipsy tourists" offering to buy his daughter, just before Madeleine went missing.

Another couple, who encountered him in Morocco, said he had talked about the McCann case a lot, saying he knew Praia da Luz and the Ocean Club and had often parked his van near Apartment 5A, where the McCanns had been staying.

By this time, Hewlett was in hospital in Germany. Approached by the McCanns' private detectives, he demanded "thousands of pounds" in payment for interviews.

The McCanns declined, but he reportedly told police he had been to Praia da Luz and twice seen Madeleine before she died.

He later told a newspaper that he "didn't kill the McCann girl…” and had never seen her in real life, claiming he had not been in Praia da Luz since 2002 and vowing to take a lie–detector test.

In a deathbed letter to his son Wayne, he reportedly said she had been "stolen to order" by a Belgium-based gang.