Madeleine McCann suspect raped US tourist, 72, at villa just 10-minute walk from where toddler vanished 18 months later
THE prime suspect in Madeleine McCann's disappearance had raped a 72-year-old US tourist at a Portuguese villa just ten minutes from where the toddler vanished 18 months later.
Christian B filmed the torture and rape of the American woman at Casa Jacaranda in 2005 - with the villa barely a mile from where the Brit youngster disappeared from her bed in 2007.
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The 43-year-old was last year jailed for seven years over the horrific attack after DNA linked him to the scene of the rape.
The American woman told German police she had been beaten with a metal pole, saying: "I felt that he enjoyed torturing me."
While the attack unfolded in 2005, the man was only charged in August last year after a former friend found footage of the assault after stealing a video camera.
The witness told German police he had taken the camera from Christian's home in Praia da Luz in 2006.
Cold case detectives then probed the attack - finding a hair at the villa that linked Christian there.
It comes as the German was this week named as a suspect in Madeleine McCann's disappearance.
The British toddler vanished from her family's holiday apartment in Portugal in 2007.
We are now able to show his picture in full in the UK after it was published in a major German newspaper - as cops in both countries appeal for anyone who knows him to come forward.
And a key witness in Madeleine's disappearance has identified suspect Christian B as the man she saw acting suspiciously outside the McCanns’ apartment.
The woman reported the sighting within hours of three-year-old Madeleine’s disappearance on May 3, 2007, and has always been viewed as a credible witness.
But a source close to the German Police investigation told the Sun Online: "So far he is saying absolutely nothing to officers, he is keeping schtum, so Kate and Gerry could be left in limbo for many weeks and months which is agonising for them."
Police in Germany fear the drifter, who stole from hotels in the area, may have snatched Madeleine after first entering the holiday home to raid it.
And cops have now linked the suspected snatcher to the disappearance of a blonde schoolboy - 11 years earlier.
German detectives investigating Christian B, 43, have contacted the family of René Hasee to say they were looking into his 1996 abduction again.
BKA cops in Germany have maintained other victims could be linked to the Maddie investigation. The force declined to comment on René Hasee.
Meanwhile, it has been claimed German authorities ignored warnings seven years ago that Christian B could have been involved in Madeleine's disappearance.
German news outlet Der Spiegel claimed detectives had identified him as a key suspect in the case but was ignored by Germany's Federal Criminal Office in 2013.
Der Spiegel reported: "One person did submit a tip about Christian B, but the resulting report from police in Braunschweig to the Federal Office of Criminal Investigation was apparently not acted upon, much to the consternation of the local investigators."
PROBE CONTINUES
And Christian B has also reported to have been in the same area as five-year-old German girl Inga Gehricke when she vanished in May 2015.
The little girl had been enjoying a family BBQ in woodland in the state of Saxony-Anhalt, around 50 miles from Berlin, when she vanished without a trace in chilling echoes of Madeleine's disappearance.
Details of Christian B's past have emerged this week amid the new probe - with his first sex attack on a six-year-old girl in a playground in 1993 — when he was 16.
He fled when the girl screamed in terror, but moments later he performed a sex act in front of another girl, aged nine.
When asked what he was thinking at the time he coldly replied: “I didn’t think anything.”
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A psychiatrist who interviewed him warned the authorities: “He requires intensive supervision.”
But he fled to Portugal before a sentence of two years in juvenile detention could be given.
The suspect is currently in jail in the German city of Kiel serving a 21-month drugs sentence and will serve seven years for the rape if his conviction is upheld on an appeal he has lodged against the verdict.
