New details about the suspect in the Madeleine McCann investigation are emerging as prosecutors in Germany say they assume the missing girl is dead.
A bombshell was dropped on Thursday in the missing persons case that has gripped the globe over the last 13 years, with both British and German authorities confirming a 43-year-old German prisoner is being considered a suspect in the investigation.
Two vehicles the man used in Praia da Luz - the Portugal town where McCann disappeared from - were also revealed to the public as well as phone numbers linked to him. The suspect was connected to the area between 1995 and 2007. McCann went missing on the evening of May 3, 2007.
German media have now identified him only as Christian B. Other media, such as The Guardian, the Daily Mail, and The Telegraph, have said his name is Christian Brueckner.
On Thursday, Christian Hoppe of Germany's federal police service told local media the man was in prison for a sexual crime and has two previous convictions for "sexual contact with girls".
German newspaper Braunschweiger Zeitung reports the man's description matches that of an individual who was convicted in 2019 for raping a 72-year-old American women in Portugal in 2005. The man is appealing the conviction.
These details emerged as Hans Christian Wolters from the Braunschweig Public Prosecutor's Office said authorities there were "assuming that the girl is dead".
"With the suspect, we are talking about a sexual predator who has already been convicted of crimes against little girls and he's already serving a long sentence," the BBC quotes him as saying.
The suspect is also understood to have broken into hotels.
"He had several occasional jobs, among other things in the gastronomy business, in the Lagos area in this time period. In addition, there is information suggesting that he also earned his living by committing criminal offences, such as burglaries of hotel complexes and holiday flats as well as trafficking in narcotic drugs," German prosecutors said in a statement.
"Furthermore, the suspect was sentenced on numerous occasions to prison terms for sexual abuse of children in the past. This fact is probably not known to most of the contact persons."
London's Metropolitan Police are still treating the investigation as a missing persons case.
Following Thursday's news, the missing child's parents, Kate and Gerry McCann, said they would never give up trying to find her.
"All we have ever wanted is to find her, uncover the truth and bring those responsible to justice. We will never give up hope of finding Madeleine alive but whatever the outcome may be, we need to know, as we need to find peace."
Speaking to the BBC, family spokesperson Clarence Mitchell said this latest suspect appears to be the first time "police had been so specific about an individual".
"Of all the thousands of leads and potential suspects that have been mentioned in the past, there has never been something as clear cut as that from not just one, but three police forces."
