Madeleine McCann: German investigators want to retest mystery saliva sample

17 June 2020, 10:37

German investigators want to retest a mystery saliva sample found in the holiday apartment where Madeleine McCann went missing.

A Portuguese forensics team apparently found no DNA match to the new suspect in the investigation known as Christian B.

The convicted sex offender is currently in jail in Germany and a prosecutor there believes he's responsible for the British girl's disappearance 13 years ago.

It also emerged today that girls’ swimming costumes and other clothes were found in 2016 in a mobile home owned by Christian B.

Police found the cloths in the 43-year-old's mobile home during their investigation into the disappearance of Inga Gehricke, who disappeared in 2015 while on a picnic with her parents.

The items were found in the van in 2016 along with USB sticks containing images of child sex abuse.

German investigators are investigating whether he killed Madeleine soon after abducting her from a holiday apartment in the Portuguese resort of Praia da Luz in May 2007.

He serving a 15-month prison sentence in Germany for drug dealing, and is appealing a conviction for the 2005 rape of a 72-year-old American woman, also at Praia da Luz, for which he was sentenced to seven years in jail.

Germany's Spiegel TV has revealed in a documentary that police seized the motorhome in May 2016, as part of an investigation into the disappearance of five-year-old Inga Gehricke - the so-called German Maddie.

The red and white Allegro Bay RV had been bought in Germany in 2010. It was found at a disused factory site near Braunschweig which he had bought six years earlier at auction.

During a six-day examination of the site, police also found computer memory sticks with more than 8,000 files, mostly containing pictures and videos of child abuse, the documentary said.

The items were in a carrier bag buried beneath the body of his dog.

He found himself under suspicion after Inga vanished from the woods near Diakoniewerk Wilhelmshof in Saxony-Anhalt during a family picnic in 2015. He was charged in relation to the child pornography, but not in relation to Inga.

Spiegel TV said police had also found numerous items of children's clothing, most of them "small swimsuits", in the motorhome.

He was named prime suspect over Madeleine's disappearance earlier this month by German police.

Alongside the developments in that case, German investigators have also reopened the file into Inga Gehricke's disappearance, and the murder of Tristan Brubach in Frankfurt in 1998, media reports claim.

The 13-year-old was reportedly beaten unconscious, strangled, raped and tortured, with the cause of death a long cut to his throat.

It has also been revealed there is a chance the suspect could be released from prison on July 17 if the European Court of Justice overturns his conviction for the rape of the 72-year-old American woman in Portugal.

Madeleine's parents have denied receiving a letter from German investigators "that states there is evidence or proof" she is dead.

Kate and Gerry McCann posted a statement on the Find Madeleine website on Tuesday to deny the claims, saying that the news caused "unnecessary anxiety to friends and family and once again disrupted our lives".