Where they disappeared: Police investigate Madeleine McCann suspect’s links to three other unsolved ‘child abductions’

• Brueckner, 43, is a suspect in the vanishing of three-year-old Madeleine McCann
• He has been linked to abduction of René Hasse, 6, who vanished in the Algarve
• Prosecutors have re-opened the suspected abduction case of Inga Gehricke, 5
• Yesterday revealed that Brueckner could be linked to killing of Carola Titze, 16

Convicted paedophile Christian Brueckner has been linked to three other unsolved child disappearances since he became the prime suspect in the Madeleine McCann case.

Brueckner, 43, is being investigated by police in connection with the vanishing of three-year-old Madeleine McCann from Praia da Luz, Portugal, in 2007.

He is currently languishing in a German prison in Kiel on a drug-related sentence.  

Brueckner has now been linked to three other vanishings, one in the Algarve, one in Germany and another in Belgium. 

Convicted paedophile Christian Brueckner has been linked to three other unsolved child disappearances since he became the prime suspect in the Madeleine McCann case

Brueckner (right) is the key suspect in the disappearance of three-year-old Madeleine (left) from Praia da Luz, Portugal, in 2007 and is currently languishing in a German prison in Kiel on a drug-related sentence 

The family of German six-year-old René Hasse, who went missing in the Algarve in 1996, revealed police are re-investigating the case for the first time in 20 years.

And prosecutors have also re-opened the suspected abduction case of five-year-old Inga Gehricke – dubbed Germany’s Madeleine – from Diakoniewerk Wilhelmshof in Saxony-Anhalt in 2015.

It was revealed yesterday that Brueckner could also be linked to the mysterious killing of 16-year-old Carola Titze in 1996.

Carola vanished on the morning of July 5 while holidaying with her parents at a Flemish resort in De Haan, West Flanders.

The German teenager was missing for six days before her body was found violently mutilated on the sand dunes.

In the days before her disappearance, she was allegedly seen at a disco with a German man, who policed tried to track down but failed.

Since Brueckner became detectives’ main lead in the disappearance of three-year-old Madeleine from Portugal’s Praia de Lug in 2007, he has been linked to two other vanishings (René Hasse, five, left and Inga Gehricke, six, right)

Prosecutors in Bruges confirmed to local media they are now probing the possible connection between Titze’s death and Brueckner.

Carola Titze vanished on the morning of July 5, 1996 while holidaying with her parents at a Flemish resort in De Haan, West Flanders

Six-year-old René Hasse went missing in the Algarve 24 years ago.

The boy’s father Andreas Hasee told his local newspaper that an investigator from the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) phoned him yesterday, for the first time in 20 years and said they were re-investigating the case.

The six-year-old from Elsdorf, Germany, was on holiday with his family in Aljezur – just 25 miles from Praia da Luz, in the Algarve – when he vanished on June 21, 1996. 

He went missing after running towards the sea and his family and the authorities had previously accepted René drowned in a tragic accident.

He had been running ahead of his mother and step-father during a walk on the beach. After losing sight of him, they never saw him again, with just his clothes left lying on the beach.

René’s grandparents have previously insisted their grandson would never have wandered into the sea by himself and said ‘his footprints stopped in the middle of the sand’.

Carola vanished on the morning of July 5 while holidaying with her parents at a Flemish resort in De Haan, West Flanders. The German teenager was missing for six days before her body was found violently mutilated on the sand dunes

Prosecutors have also re-opened the investigation into whether Brueckner abducted Inga Gehricke after she was grabbed from Diakoniewerk Wilhelmshof in Saxony-Anhalt during a family outing five years ago.

Inga Gehricke, five, had been having a barbecue with her family on May 2, 2015

Her disappearance on May 2, 2015 – almost eight years to the day after Madeleine vanished in Portugal on May 3, 2007 – was only 48 miles away from where Brueckner lived on the ramshackle five-acre in the isolated of village of Neuwegersleben, south-east of Hanover.

More than 100 officers descended on an old box factory in February 2016, digging holes looking for Inga’s body.

The little girl wasn’t found but Brueckner’s USB stash of child sex abuse images was discovered on a USB stick hidden under ‘animal bones’ with police now set to return, according to German tabloid Bild.

Brueckner was prosecuted over the child porn but he was never charged with Inga’s disappearance when the probe was dropped after four weeks.

But prosecutors confirmed this week that they have reopened a preliminary investigation into whether he was involved in the unsolved Inga case.  

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