Credible Informants: Tips Generated By Fake Madeleine McCann Case May Have Led Investigators To New Search For Missing Tot
May 24 2023, Published 6:15 p.m. ET
The desperate search for Madeleine McCann continued for a second day as teams of cadaver dogs fanned out near the shoreline of a Portuguese reservoir where divers searched the murky waters for the toddler’s pink pajamas and other evidence, RadarOnline.com has learned.
The first major search for McCann in nearly a decade was reportedly sparked after investigators discovered photographs of suspect Christian Brueckner’s so-called ‘Little Paradise’ — the remote reservoir where he was known to spend the night in a beat-up VW campervan.
RadarOnline.com has also exclusively learned Dr. Fia Johansson believes the hundreds of tips generated by Julia Wendell – the Polish woman who made international headlines claiming to be McCann – may have provided the German authorities with the new clues that led to the current search.
“I feel that Julia’s case caused all these things to happen,” said Dr. Johansson, the private detective that whisked Wendell to California from Poland and conducted the DNA test proving she was not McCann.
“It sounds like people started to realize that it is time to speak out about what they know,” said Dr. Johansson who referred two credible tipsters to German authorities last month.
German investigators requested permission to search the reservoir, located about 30 miles northeast of the beachfront resort town of Praia da Luz where the 3-year-old British girl vanished in 2007 while on vacation with her parents, after receiving a tip from a 'credible' informant.
Dozens of investigators, including Scotland Yard, were seen fanning out in search parties bushwacking through heavy brush with cadaver dogs hoping to recover the pajamas McCann wore the night she vanished, the Daily Mail reported.
Some teams were spotted using rakes and gardening hoes to poke into the earth as drones buzzed overhead scanning the rugged landscape.
As RadarOnline.com previously reported, forensic investigators descended upon the Barragem do Arade reservoir about 15 miles west of the rural village of Foral where the German creep lived in a run-down villa.
Clarence Mitchell, a former spokesman for the McCann family told the UK Mirror, Madeleine’s parent Kate and Gerry, are monitoring the search and investigators are keeping them updated.
“Until a body is found and proved to be Madeleine's, Kate and Gerry are not giving up hope,” Mitchell said. “They will be kept informed every step of the way of any development. It leaves Kate and Gerry on tenterhooks. It is another incredibly difficult time for them.'
Julian Peribanez, a Barcelona-based gumshoe who was part of the 2008 search at the same reservoir, told RadarOnline.com he believes investigators were tipped-off to an exact location along the massive reservoir which can hold about 3.6 cubic gallons of water.
“They are conducting the search in a very specific point of the reservoir because they think this guy is the one that kidnapped and killed Madeleine – so obviously they think a spot that he would use to get rid of her body would be a place that only he knows and that is obviously secluded,” he told RadarOnline.com.
Brueckner, 46, is currently sitting behind bars in Germany for raping a 72-year-old woman in the same area where McCann was abducted. He was recently charged in Portugal with several sex crimes spanning over a 17-year period ending in 2017.
Christian Wolters, the prosecutor in Brunswick, Germany who is leading the investigation against Brueckner, indicated he doesn’t think they will find McCann’s remains in the search area.
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“We have indications that we could find evidence there. I don't want to say what that is exactly, and I also don't want to say where these indications come from,” he told German broadcasters NDR.
“The only thing that I would clarify is that it doesn't come from the suspect - so we don't have a confession or anything similar now, or an indication from the suspect of where it would make sense to search,” Wolters said. “'We never said that the girl disappeared where we are now searching.”
Brueckner has vehemently denied any role in the McCann case even though the creep worked as a handyman at the resort where Madeleine was snatched.
International interest in the McCann case peaked earlier this year when Wendell, 21, took to social media to claim she could be Madeleine. But a DNA test proved her genealogy originated from her native Poland, said Dr. Johansson whose 2019 investigation determined McCann was abducted by a German.
