Braunschweig Regional Court
Suspect in the “Maddie” case in court – the indictment lists the most brutal crimes
The main suspect in the Madeleine “Maddie” McCann case, Christian B., who has already been convicted many times, is accused of a number of crimes by the Braunschweig public prosecutor’s office
© DDP Images / IPA
Serious rape and sexual abuse of children: Christian B. must answer for criminal offenses before the Braunschweig regional court from this Friday. The 47-year-old is also the main suspect in the case of “Maddie” McCann, who disappeared more than 20 years ago.
The world press looks to Braunschweig: The trial against the main suspect in the missing Madeleine case begins at the regional court this Friday.Maddie” McCann. Christian B. has to answer for allegations of a total of five crimes against sexual self-determination. The investigations into the case of the missing British girl against the 47-year-old remain unaffected. They are continuing, the investigators emphasized again and again.
According to the prosecution, B. is said to have visited a previously unknown woman in her bedroom sometime between 2000 and 2006. “The masked accused is said to have tied up the victim and raped her. He then hit the victim several times with a whip,” explained Braunschweig public prosecutor Hans Christian Wolters in a statement from October 2022. B. is said to have made video recordings of the crime.
Christian B. is accused of five crimes
Almost the same modus operandi is said to underlie an act in April 2004. B. is said to have surprised a then 20-year-old Irish woman in her apartment at night, woke her up, threatened her with a knife and raped her. “The accused then tied the woman to a table, gagged her and raped her again,” said Wolters. “He then whipped the victim on the back with a whip he had brought with him and finally violently performed oral sex on the victim.” B. is also said to have filmed this case.
B. presumably also carried out his brutality on minors: in the early 2000s, according to the public prosecutor’s office, his video camera was also running when an unknown young person was said to have been tied naked to a wooden post and whipped by him before B. forced the girl to have oral sex.
In 2007, B. is said to have committed another crime. He is said to have forced a ten-year-old girl “grinning” on the rocks in the Portuguese holiday resort of Salema to watch him masturbate until she ejaculated, according to the indictment “in order to thereby sexually arouse herself”.
The suspect was arrested in June 2017. Here he is also said to have masturbated in front of a child during a folk festival in the Algarve. The victim: an eleven-year-old girl. The child ran to his father for help, who alerted the police. B. was arrested on site.
The regional court has now scheduled a total of 29 days of hearings; a verdict in the mammoth trial is expected in June 2024. “According to the files, the defendant must expect a prison sentence of up to 15 years,” said public prosecutor Wolters to the DPA news agency before the trial. Subsequent preventive detention may also be considered. Friedrich Fülscher, Christian B.’s defense attorney, called for acquittals on all charges. The lawyer left it open whether his client would speak out in court or whether he planned to remain silent. B. is considered innocent until proven guilty in court.
Christian B. is currently serving a seven-year prison sentence for raping an American woman in Praia da Luz, Portugal, in 2005. According to previous information from the public prosecutor’s office, this would have been served in full in September 2025.
The Braunschweig public prosecutor’s office assumes that B. is also responsible for Madeleine’s disappearance. According to the Braunschweig public prosecutor’s office, the evidence supports this, some of which the investigators made public: The suspect was traveling in the Algarve in 2007 in a dark red Jaguar and a white and yellow VW bus. “There are indications that he (Christian B.; editor’s note) could have used one of these vehicles to commit the crime,” the BKA in Wiesbaden said recently.
What happened to Madeleine “Maddie” McCann?
B. is also said to have been making phone calls in Praia da Luz, the McCanns’ vacation spot, around the time of the three-year-old’s disappearance. There is suspicion of murder against Christian B. “We assume that the girl is dead,” Wolters announced to the assembled world press in June 2020. There was “material evidence” of Madeleine’s death, Wolters later said in an interview. When asked, he did not want to provide any information about what evidence was involved – possibly in order not to jeopardize further investigations. Wolters said: “Christian B. has no alibi.”
The “Maddie” case is one of the most famous missing person cases in the world. The girl disappeared without a trace and under unclear circumstances from her parents’ holiday apartment in Praia de Luz, Portugal, on the evening of May 3, 2007, while they were eating in a nearby restaurant. Kate and Gerald McCann launched a media-wide search campaign for their daughter and managed to ensure that the case was never forgotten. But the global sensation of solving the case is still a long time coming. Christian B. denies having anything to do with the kidnapping of Madeleine McCann and the possible murder of the girl.
Editor’s note: This article was first published on November 30, 2023 and has been updated.
Sources: Braunschweig Regional Court, Braunschweig Public Prosecutor’s OfficeDPA news agency