His latest charges stem from cases relating to five women and girls aged between 10 and 80 years old, and he is expected to spend the rest of his life languishing in jail cell if he’s convicted.

Ken Ralphs said that chief suspect in the McCann case, Christian Brueckner , tried to recruit a mutual friend in Portugal to help find a youngster to sell on to a childless couple.

The woman said she knew Brueckner as a teenager when he was running in a gang in Würzburg in Germany and they were ‘very rebellious and destroyed a lot of stuff’.

Portuguese police are soon expected to start closing off roads soon leading to the man-made dam near the town of Silves ahead of the official start of the search tomorrow.

Convicted rapist Brueckner, 45, was named as the man responsible for Madeleine’s May 2007 abduction two years ago by German police in a fanfare which sparked worldwide media attention

Fifteen years after Madeleine McCann was snatched from a flat in Portugal, a German alleged kidnapper has been named a suspect in the case. Christian Brueckner is already in jail.

German prosecutor Hans Christian Wolters said investigators were ‘confident’ they had the right man and had sufficient evidence to charge over the 2007 disappearance.

Prosecutors investigating the disappearance of Madeleine McCann fear they do not have enough evidence to arrest Christian Brueckner, who was named as a suspect in June.

Christian Brueckner was seen with a blond man the night he was arrested for allegedly exposing himself to four children, aged eight to 12, in the village of Messines in 2017.

Madeleine McCann prime suspect Christian Brueckner would try to get elderly holidaymakers to pay him for sex in Portuguese resorts, an old friend has said.