"It's a horrible job but it's something I have to do and it will change my life. You won't be seeing me for a while."
"It's a horrible job but it's something I have to do and it will change my life. You won't be seeing me for a while."
An ex-girlfriend of Madeleine McCann suspect Christian Bruckner has broken her silence, claiming he told her he had a nasty job to do the night before McCann disappeared.
The British woman is one of two British former girlfriends of the child sex offender who have now given evidence to police.
Bruckner's former partner claims her conversation with him the night before McCann disappeared didn't feel right, and opened up about the chilling conversation.
"I have a horrible job to do in Praia da Luz tomorrow," she claims he said.
"It's a horrible job but it's something I have to do and it will change my life. You won't be seeing me for a while."
Three years after McCann's disappearance, the suspect's other former girlfriend said he was a dead ringer for some of the photofits of the Maddie suspects.
She jokingly asked him "You did it Christian, didn't you?"
A friend of his former partner claims "He blanked the question and shrugged — then added, 'Just don't go there'."
"It was said at a time when everyone had a theory about the Madeleine mystery and everyone had a story.
"So everyone who knew him around that time kind of dismissed it."
According to the friend, Bruckner's comments were brushed off at the time because they didn't think he'd be capable of something so wrong.
But then he disappeared.
This photo provided by the German Federal Police of Christian Bruckner's van. Photo / AP
"The ex-girlfriend with him at dinner didn't compute what he'd said because she didn't believe him capable of doing something like that — even though he had been violent before.
"Then Christian went off the radar the day after the abduction. Both his exes became more suspicious when he didn't return to the area for around three years.
"They read about the witness accounts and realised some of the photofits and artist's impressions struck a chord.
"And now we all fear we know exactly what he's done. All the pieces of the jigsaw have fallen into place. We're horrified and traumatised. It just doesn't bear thinking about.
"What he said at that dinner suggests he planned the whole thing very carefully and that he might even have stolen Madeleine to order.
"But we also can't help feeling guilty thinking we should have pulled together all the clues years ago and gone to the police."
A house where Bruckner lived in Portugal and released by German police in connection to the case of Maddie McCann. Photo / AP
BARMAID REVEALS WHAT SUSPECT SAID TO HER ABOUT MCCANN
A barmaid who used to work for Bruckner claims the paedophile told her McCann was dead and made a number of other chilling claims.
Lenta Johlitz, 34, was a close friend of Bruckner when working with him at his kiosk pub in the German city of Braunschweig.
She told German newspaper Bild that in 2014, the paedophile became agitated when McCann flashed up on the TV screen, claiming he shouted "the child is dead now and that's it".
"Once he totally lost it when we sat together with friends and had a conversation about the Maddie case. He wanted us to stop talking about it. He shouted, 'The child is dead now and that's a good thing'."
He also allegedly said: "You can make a corpse disappear quickly! Pigs also eat human flesh!"
