McCann

A DNA test on a Polish woman claiming to be Madeleine McCann has “conclusively” proved she is not the missing child, a court has heard.

Julia Wandelt, 24, had a sample analysed after she was arrested in February over the alleged stalking of Madeleine’s parents Kate and Gerry.

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Detective Chief Inspector Mark Cranwell told a court today that when Ms Wandelt’s DNA was compared with Maddie’s the results were clear.

When asked what they proved, Cranwell replied: “A comparison took place and it conclusively proved that Julia Wandelt is not Madeleine McCann.”

The trial over Ms Wandelt’s alleged stalking of the McCann’s is ongoing as a court heard this month she is said to have bombarded Kate and Gerry with calls, letters and messages over almost three years.

Leicester crown court was played clips she left after she got the family’s phone number from Portuguese police records.

In one, Polish national Wandelt, 24, tells Kate: “I know you probably think Madeleine is dead, but she is not. I am her.”

She denies the stalking claims.

HARD as it is to accept, if the prime McCann suspect disappears after his release from prison he’ll take all hope of solving the Maddie case with him. And I know who is to blame.

Prime suspect Christian Brueckner, 49, was given a meagre seven years behind bars for tying up, torturing and raping a pensioner in 2005, in Praia da Luz – the same village Maddie disappeared from two years later, but has now been released.

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When he was sentenced in 2019 – after witnesses and DNA tied him to the dreadful attack – he was already a multi-convicted paedophile targeting girls as young as five and with a known obsession for brutal sexual attacks, which he privately fantasised over.

But thanks to Germany’s soft-touch justice system, he has now walked free from prison despite warnings he could reoffend, serving the same sentence a violent burglar would have faced in Britain.

And was his time behind bars tough? One lag told The Sun that JVA Sehnde prison – where Brueckner was caged – is “like Starbucks,” full of friendly staff, abundant coffee and individual TVs and electrical goods provided for every inmate.

The harsh reality is that the paltry sentence Brueckner was handed by a judge is not out of the ordinary in Germany.

Critics have described the justice system as so farcical that it has become “accommodating” to criminals and “a blessing” to violent crooks and sex attackers.

In fact, you can look no further than ten miles from the prison where McCann suspect Brueckner was housed.

In Hanover, a man dubbed “The Maschsee Murderer” isn’t hiding or scraping by after his awful crime – he is enjoying a thriving social media existence.

In 1997, Alexander K lured a friend to Lake Maschsee, strangled her, dismembered the body and dumped the remains in the water.

The right-wing extremist was sentenced to just 15 years behind bars and was simply released after serving his term, despite the brutality of his crime.

Since then, Alexander has become a TikTok phenomenon with followers fascinated by him arranging dates through apps while he openly talks about his dark past.

He would go on to post pictures and videos of women he enjoyed dinner with, callously wearing T-shirts that read: “I survived a date with the Maschsee Murderer.”

While exploiting such an unforgivable crime is forbidden in the UK, Alexander has capitalised on his past, turning his vile reputation into a source of danger tourism.

Such a clear mockery of victims and the justice system suggests Brueckner could easily disappear without a trace after his release.

Another case close to Brueckner’s former jailhouse in Hanover highlights the uphill battles faced in monitoring offenders – and keeping their victims safe and reassured.

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Vanessa Münstermann’s life was transformed forever when a jilted ex took revenge by throwing acid in her face – causing her agonising pain and a lifetime of disfigurement.

The 29-year-old beautician lost an eye and an ear after she was attacked while walking her dog – and was forced to undergo surgery for years afterwards to treat her injuries.  

Critics have described the justice system as so farcical it has become ‘accommodating’ to criminals and ‘a blessing’ to violent crooks and sex attackers

A judge at the time described it as “an extreme crime with extreme consequences”.

Yet her former lover is set to be released imminently after just SIX years behind bars.

Panicked Vanessa – worried about retribution – has been trying to get officials to slap him with an electronic tag to monitor his movements and include conditions not to go near her.

Despite fighting for more than two years, there are no signs of success.

Maddie suspect released

German investigators also faced a similar uphill battle before Brueckner’s release, but it appears their calls for the sex offender to be tagged have been granted.

He officially left the high-security prison in Sehnde near Hanover just after 9:15am German time yesterday morning.

The rapist was even given breakfast before being driven away in his lawyer’s black Audi A6.

A chilling image showed Brueckner wearing a red and white striped shirt as he sat in the rear seat with his hand up in the air.

Brueckner has refused to rule out fleeing Germany now that he is free, sparking fears he could slip into a non-extradition country and dodge justice forever – even if a major Maddie breakthrough is found.

Officials have tried all they can to keep track of him, with an electronic tag being mandated and the seizure of his passport.

But investigators still worry Brueckner could flee Germany despite his conditions due to no passport being required to move freely within mainland Europe.

If he crosses the German border, then it’s believed the tag would no longer work, making him untraceable.

But let’s be clear – while the German justice as a whole has allowed Brueckner to walk free, German prosecutors, the courts, and police forces can only work with the laws of their country, which appear to be stacked heavily in Maddie suspect’s favour.

This is the situation justice officials face in Germany.

In the UK, murder attracts an automatic whole-of-life sentence. Judges set a minimum tariff — usually 20–30 years, but it can be longer.

Whole-life terms are possible in the most serious cases, meaning a prisoner will never be released.

In Germany, most killers would expect to be released after just 15 years.

In the UK, violent rapists – such as Christian Brueckner – would expect to be jailed for up to 15 years – or longer if there are aggravating factors.

Post-release monitoring exists in almost every case, making it the rule rather than the exception.

In Germany, rapists can enjoy just two years behind bars, while those with longer sentences of up to ten years are usually released early.

German law offers no way back – no remedy after the case to protect its citizens from such a threat

Terrorists face life behind bars in the UK, but often just 10–15 years in Germany, again with early release after two-thirds of the sentence has been served.

Armed robbers get 10–20 years in the UK, but as little as just five years in Germany.

Britain makes extensive use of probation, electronic tagging, Sexual Harm Prevention Orders, and lifelong licence conditions for high-risk offenders. Breaches can mean immediate recall to prison. 

German authorities face a battle just to fit electronic tags – as shown by Brueckner’s case.

There are fewer conditions upon release – and sometimes none at all – and post-release monitoring can be as little as a weekly phone call, even for society-threatening offenders such as Brueckner.

The judge who handed Brueckner the current soft sentence from which he was yesterday released is the same judge behind his sensational acquittal for rape and sex attacks on children last year.

It’s hard not to question the court’s attitude to that trial last year. It spent years trying to reject the case but was forced to take it on by a higher court and there has been private speculation over the bad blood of being forced to take such an unwanted case.

But experts have told me the judge did exactly her job and followed German law to the letter.

Perhaps her only mistake was failing to slap an order on Brueckner at his 2019 sentence that would have given officials the option to keep him behind bars, given the extraordinary danger he poses to the public.

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The argument for Germany’s preoccupation with individual liberties over society protection is understandable.

The Weimar Republic, which Adolf Hitler hijacked for his own evil ends, used police and courts to design the society it wanted – turning the justice system into a tool of dictatorship, repression and mass murder.

Modern Germany built its constitution to avoid ever again allowing courts or police to be used as instruments of tyranny, enshrining individual rights and strict limits on state power.

That is a situation the wonderful, abundantly reasonable people of Germany never want repeated.

Germany is a brilliant, modern, rich, thriving, forward-thinking democracy – with problems Britain might gladly swap its own battles for.

The people are hardworking, friendly, intelligent – but also funny and laidback in a way that smashes the clichéd image the country has sometimes carried outside its borders.

It’s well recognised here, however, that the cost of all this seems to be a propensity to forgiveness and trust in its offenders.

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Sept. 17 (UPI) — The main suspect in the disappearance of Madeleine McCann, the British child missing since 2007, was freed Wednesday from a prison outside of Hanover in northwestern Germany after completing a sentence for an unrelated rape conviction.

Police confirmed that Christian Bruckner, 48, left Sehnde Prison, accompanied by his lawyer, after authorities, who had been desperately trying to find a way to keep him incarcerated, conceded there were no legal grounds for his continued detention.

It was unclear if he would be required to wear an electronic tracker on his ankle as demanded by prosecutors who believe he is responsible for three-year-old Madeleine’s disappearance 18 years ago from a resort in southwestern Portugal, which they are treating as a homicide.

German prosecutors also want Bruckner, a convicted pedophile and drifter who spent much of the early 2000s traveling between different European countries, to have to report to authorities on a regular basis and surrender his passport, citing him as a flight risk as they pursue an 8-year-long investigation.

State prosecutors say they have circumstantial evidence connecting him to the crime, including that his mobile phone logged in the area where Madeleine vanished from a holiday apartment where she was staying with her family, as well as confessions Bruckner allegedly made to three separate witnesses.

However, the evidence so far has been insufficient for an indictment and Bruckner has never been charged with any offense related to Madeleine’s disappearance.

Bruckner was convicted and sentenced to a seven-and-a-half-year prison sentence for raping an elderly American woman in 2005 in Praia de Luz, from where Madeleine disappeared 18 months later.

In October, he was found not guilty of rape and child sex abuse charges in a trial in Braunschweig, east of Hanover, after the court ruled there was insufficient evidence and that the prosecution’s witnesses were “unreliable.”

The acquittal had knock-on effects on the McCann investigation and prosecutors’ effort to keep Bruckner in preventative custody beyond the end of his sentence because their case relies on some of the same witnesses.

Forensic searches directed by German police investigators, including the use of divers, were carried out at a remote reservoir Bruckner was known to frequent, 30 miles away from Praia de Luz, two years apart in May 2023 and this summer.

The search in June also focused on a 120-acre area between the Ocean Club resort where the McCann family were staying and a house Bruckner lived in at the time.

Bruckner this week declined to be interviewed by Scotland Yard detectives from Britain’s Met Police, which has also been investigating the case for the past 18 years — although as a missing persons case due to differences in the German and British legal systems.

The Met’s Detective Chief Insp. Mark Cranwell confirmed Monday the force’s request had been rejected, but that Bruckner remained a suspect.

“We have requested an interview with this German suspect but, for legal reasons, this can only be done via an International Letter of Request, which has been submitted. It was subsequently refused by the suspect. In the absence of an interview, we will nevertheless continue to pursue any viable lines of inquiry,” said Cranwell.

Going to be a ‘thriller’

Promoter Eddie Hearn believes Lewis Crocker can cause a shock tonight.

Hearn said: “Lewis, I think mentally he’s in a much better place because he’s not putting any pressure on himself.

“Paddy’s the big favourite in the fight because of how the first fight played out, but I think this will be a totally different Lewis Crocker.

“I think physically he looks totally different this time around, and he has to be better.

“I thought he was poor in the first fight, and I think he knows he was poor in the first fight.

“I think Paddy Donovan has to be the favourite going into the fight, but I think Lewis Crocker’s well in this and is Paddy a little bit too complacent?

“He wouldn’t have trained that way because Andy [Lee] wouldn’t let him.

“I know that’s not a technical term, but Lewis Crocker can punch and punch hard.

“He’s got to take chances, he’s gotta roll the dice, and he’s gotta let his hands go and if he does, you’re gonna get a thriller.

“I mean we’re gonna have close to 20,000 here at Windsor Park, it’s gonna be absolutely wild.”

Ferne McCann has been left ‘mind blown’ by breastfeeding rates in the UK as she continues to breastfeed her two-year-old daughter beyond what is considered the norm

Ferne McCann has been left ‘mind-blown’ by breastfeeding rates in the UK. The former TOWIE star, 35, has daughter Sunday, seven, with her ex Arthur Collins as well as two-year-old Finty with current partner Lorri Haines.

She has opted to keep breastfeeding her youngest, even though she is beyond the traditional age. The reality TV star decided to take action after discovering that UK has one of the ‘lowest’ rates of breastfeeding in the world, with many women choosing to feed their children via formula, having shared her own experience with it on social media with sets of candid images and received backlash from some followers, who she thinks may have believed she had the wrong ‘intentions’ with it all.

During an appearance on Wednesday’s This Morning, she told Andi Peters and Emma Willis: “Society, why people have such a problem with it, is breasts are over-sexualised and I think for other people, they found it very triggering because they felt that they had failed. It wasn’t to shame or to make anyone feel like they’d failed, and I had to make a decision. It’s such a small community, because the UK has the lowest rates of breastfeeding globally, which blows my mind.” It comes after Alex Jones fights back tears as her rarely-seen husband appears on The One Show.

READ MORE: Ferne McCann says her two daughters are going to be famous after psychic predictionREAD MORE: Ferne McCann defends breastfeeding daughter Finty, 2, in public as trolls say ‘it’s weird’

The former I’m A Celebrity…Get Me Out Of Here! contestant had opened up about how she wasn’t always feeling confident about breastfeeding herself, and how she had to find a new way to think about her breasts, and while she understands that some of her social media posts may appear ‘shocking’ to some, she is ‘proud’ of what she is doing to raise awareness and stamping out the stigmas.

She added: “I want to use my platform to show support because that’s the main reason that women don’t continue. It’s down to lack of education, and support, and confidence. I had to have that mindset shift when I began breastfeeding Sunday nearly eight years ago, and that relationship with my breasts.

“They then had to nurture my baby. You do have to dig deep, and find some confidence and that can be quite a daunting prospect. I think with every negative comment, there’s been 10 positive and that’s so hopeful. People want you to win.

“Community midwives want you to have a successful breastfeeding journey. It’s a really right network and everyone really praises I feel proud to share those visuals because, I get that it is shocking because the relationship that people have with breasts and so on, I feel proud, especially now that Finty is two, because it isn’t the norm. Bottle feeding is the norm.”

As it stands, in the UK, around 81% of mothers attempt breastfeeding immediately after birth but and just 1% are exclusively breastfed by the age of six months. Comparatively, a study in 2021, found that 56.7% of mothers in the US breastfed their babies beyond six months.

When it comes to the idea that Ferne is choosing to breastfeed her child beyond what is considered the normal period, she insisted that it was never intentional but that it all has to work on a case by case basis.

She added: “People are not used to saying a toddler or a pre-schooler breastfeeding. For me, I didn’t have a goal. With Sunday, it was different, and it was circumstances and I had to return back to work now I work from home, it’s more freeing. it’s more flexible for me.

“I didn’t plan to do it for two years. It’s so individual and it’s so relative. It’s our normal and I understand that it’s not everyone else’s but we’re just going with it.”

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June 2 (UPI) — German police have launched new searches for Madeleine McCann in the same area in southern Portugal where the 3-year-old from England was last seen 18 years ago.

Madeleine vanished on May 3, 2007, from a resort in Praia da Luz, a town in the Algarve. Her parents, medical doctors Kate and Gerry McCann, had gone to dinner and left her sleeping in a room with her 2-year-old twin siblings.

On Monday, Portuguese police confirmed to the BBC that a search will be carried out from Monday through Friday on warrants issued by German prosecutors.

Searchers last looked in 2023 near the Barragem do Arade reservoir, about 30 miles from Praia da Luz, The Guardian reported.

The prime suspect is Christian Bruecker, who is serving a seven-year prison sentence in Germany for the rape of a 72-year-old American woman at her home in Praia da Luz in 2005. He has denied any involvement in the girl’s disappearance and is due to be released from prison in September.

In October 2024, Bruecker was acquitted of rape and child sex abuse charges in Portugal between 2000 and 2017 after an eight-month trial by Braunschweig District Court judge Uta Engemanndue, who threw out the case due to lack of evidence.

The new search will focus on the area between the Ocean Club resort where the McCann family was staying and the house where Bruckner lived.

In 2022, a German documentary found evidence that Bruckner occasionally worked at the Ocean Club as a handyman. German prosecutors also have linked his mobile phone data and a car sale to their case against him.

“We are aware of the searches being carried by the BKA [German federal police] in Portugal as part of their investigation into the disappearance of Madeleine McCann,” a spokesperson for Britain’s Metropolitan police said. “The Metropolitan police service is not present at the search. We will support our international colleagues where necessary.”

In April, British ministers approved more than $135,000 in additional funding for Scotland Yard detectives investigating her disappearance.

She would be 22 years old now.

“The years appear to be passing even more quickly and whilst we have no significant news to share, our determination to ‘leave no stone unturned’ is unwavering,” Kate and Gerry McCann and other family members said in marking the 18th anniversary of her disappearance last month. “We will do our utmost to achieve this.”

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