Fear has gripped the residents of Neumunster, a small, nondescript city in northern Germany, for the past week. Parents hurry past playgrounds as their children beg them to stop on the way home.

Women take cabs rather than risk walking alone on the darkening streets. Meanwhile, local social media networks are abuzz with rumoured ‘sightings’ of the threat in their midst.

One saw him walking through a shopping centre. Another spotted him in a rural area on the outskirts of the city.

One resident was so alarmed to glimpse him near a primary school that she immediately called the police.

And few could blame her. For this is no innocuous newcomer – nor is their vigilance fuelled by unfounded hysteria.

As one local Facebook group puts it: ‘How safe are our streets, our children, when a suspected child murderer suddenly lives in the neighbourhood?

‘Why is a man under such serious suspicion placed in a lively city? Who takes responsibility when something goes wrong? Who protects our children?’

The man they fear is Christian Brueckner – not only a convicted child sex offender, rapist and violent burglar, but the main and only suspect in the disappearance of Madeleine McCann.

Christian Brueckner, the convicted child sex offender, rapist and violent burglar, is the only suspect in the disappearance of Madeleine McCann – and he has been released from prison

The disappearance of Madeleine McCann in Portugal in 2007 has never been solved

Brueckner, 48, has been living in Neumunster for nine days, having been released from Sehnde prison, near Hanover, on September 17, where he was serving a seven-year sentence for the 2005 rape of an American pensioner in Portugal.

In the past week, his every move has been monitored by both German and international media.

Photographs have been published of him tucking into a burger outside a motorway  McDonald’s.

Chilling CCTV footage from inside a mobile  phone shop in the city appeared to show him laughing as he showed off his ankle tag, which enables police to track him round the clock, and attempting to buy an untraceable phone using his German ID card.

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He is said to have bragged to the shop owner, during a 90-minute conversation, that he had information that ‘could bring the scandal of the century to an end’ – which many have taken to refer to Maddie, the British toddler who disappeared while on holiday with her family in Praia da Luz in 2007.

There have also been reports of him visiting a Domino’s takeaway, wearing a fake beard as he asked staff for free pizza, as well as concerning accounts of women screaming when he entered a nightclub.

Quite how a convicted paedophile, a vile and unrepentant rapist, and a man whom criminologists have placed in the ‘top 1 per cent’ of the world’s most dangerous criminals, was able to walk free from prison in the first place is difficult to grasp.

But the relish with which he seems to be enjoying – indeed, flaunting – his new freedom is nothing short of abhorrent.

Brueckner, 48, has been living in Neumunster for nine days, having been released from Sehnde prison, near Hanover, on September 17, where he was serving a seven-year sentence for the 2005 rape of an American pensioner in Portugal

Though his release had been on the cards for several months, Brueckner’s movements since leaving prison appear both unplanned and chaotic – something that does not instil confidence in those charged with keeping him under surveillance.

Speaking exclusively to the Daily Mail this week, a source close to his legal team says he will not stay in Neumunster, indeed, the plan is to move him to Munich, in the south of the country, at the earliest opportunity. The move to a bigger city (Munich has 1.6 million residents, Neumunster just 79,000) will make Brueckner less conspicuous – and, consequently, more difficult to track.

The source says Neumunster was never the plan, rather Brueckner ended up there by default.

After leaving prison shortly after 9am last week, in a blacked-out £60,000 Audi A6 driven by one of his lawyers, Friedrich Fulscher, he travelled to Buchholz in der Norheide, outside Hamburg, where they stopped at McDonald’s.

Next, the pair drove to Kiel, 90 minutes north, where the lawyers’ offices are located, with the intention of finding him temporary accommodation in a hotel.

Finding no vacancies in Kiel, they drove to the nearest city, Neumunster, where Brueckner spent a night in a hotel, followed by a few hours the following day in a homeless centre. From there, he went to the Old Town Hall, where officials found him emergency accommodation in a flat.

Under German law, all unemployed nationals are entitled to state-funded accommodation if they are declared homeless, whether or not they have a criminal record as heinous as Brueckner’s. Indeed, in Germany, strict privacy laws protect child abusers just as they do petty criminals – meaning Brueckner can only be referred to there as ‘Christian B’.

According to a source close to his legal team, reports of him attending a nightclub or begging for free pizza are all untrue.

Though his release had been on the cards for several months, Brueckner’s movements since leaving prison appear both unplanned and chaotic – something that does not instil confidence in those charged with keeping him under surveillance

The source says he hasn’t left his flat since September 18, except once, to eat a steak at a nearby restaurant. The flat, a one-bed apartment in a residential building, has a lounge, bathroom and kitchen. His legal team are believed to have visited him several times to bring food and supplies while furniture, including a table, armchair and kitchen chair were provided by state representatives.

The squalid space is not much larger than the four walls that surrounded him at Sehnde prison. While there, Brueckner apparently spent much of his time indoors due to threats from other prisoners. Even going out into the yard carried too much of a risk.

Though he’s not under curfew, and could technically go anywhere he wanted in the city, he is too recognisable, too universally reviled, to even leave his flat.

‘He feels like he is imprisoned in a different cell,’ the source says.

As well as the ankle tag, which Brueckner must wear for the next five years, and enables officials to track him 24/7 to within a few metres, he is in regular contact with his lawyers.

He has a named probation officer, to whom he must report in detail once a month. German police in unmarked cars have been spotted outside his address, and German FBI agents are said to be watching his every move. Brueckner has form, after all, for evading the authorities, skipping borders, and once even jumping on and then off a train to give police guarding him the slip.

Shockingly, however, a source close to local police told the Daily Mail this week that there have already been problems with the mechanisms in place to monitor him – including his electronic ankle tag.

His reason for visiting the  phone shop in Neumunster, another source says, was to get a new phone because the one he had been given by police had switched off and wouldn’t charge.

Brueckner is said to have bragged to a shop owner, during a 90-minute conversation, that he had information that ‘could bring the scandal of the century to an end’ – which many have taken to refer to Maddie, the British toddler who disappeared while on holiday with her family in Praia da Luz in 2007

‘He did not go in [to the shop] requesting an untraceable [phone],’ the source explains.

‘He was first offered an unregistered phone by an employee at the shop, but when the owner showed up, he said he couldn’t sell a phone without an ID card.’

Apparently, in showing off his ankle tag by lifting his leg onto the counter (seen in CCTV from the shop), he was highlighting the fact that it seemed to be having problems loading.

This is why police later turned up at the shop, when Brueckner returned eating a kebab, wondering why the tag wasn’t working and why his phone was off. Electronic tracking by ankle tag in Germany is reserved for criminals at high risk of reoffending.

Wearers of the devices, equipped with satellite location data, are monitored continually by the Joint Monitoring Center (JMC) of the Federal States, based in Wiesbaden.

If suspicious activity is detected, such as a weakening battery or trying to remove the device, JMC staff call the wearer immediately. If there is no satisfactory explanation, the local police are alerted.

That an ankle tag on such a dangerous criminal might be showing signs of being defective, just days into his freedom, is alarming.

here is also the concerning matter of Brueckner’s ID card.

According to Farouk Salah-Brahmin, 32, the owner of the phone shop who saw the document, there are no travel restrictions listed on it, suggesting Brueckner – who has had his passport confiscated – could use it to travel elsewhere in Europe.

When travelling within the Schengen area (comprising 29 countries), EU citizens do not typically need to show their passport. Were this to happen, his ankle tag, which only works within German borders, would not function – and he could simply disappear into thin air.

He has access to money, too. Having signed on as unemployed, Brueckner is not currently looking for work – but receives a €550 (£480) stipend from the state to cover his living expenses.

This does not include the rent for his flat, which is also covered under German unemployment laws, giving him €6,600 (£5,770) in annual spending money.

There are, as yet, few details about Brueckner’s impending move to Munich, nor when exactly it will take place. The news comes amid reports that officers from Operation Grange, the unit of the Metropolitan Police still investigating the Madeleine McCann case, are due to travel to Germany, to examine documents and re-interview witnesses, in the coming months.

Brueckner is due back in court in Oldenburg, another city in the north of the country, at the end of next month, where he faces minor, unrelated charges (licence plate infractions and insulting a female prison guard). As long as he remains in Neumunster, however, locals continue to worry for their – and their children’s – safety.

‘I’m afraid; I’m full of fear,’ Hilke Reichhardt, 63, told the Daily Mail.

‘When you think of what this man has done – to women, for example – then it really does worry me very much.

‘Many people are really frightened… it’s really not OK.’

Teacher Mario Baum, 46, agrees.

‘I think he’s a sick person, and I would prefer it if he were locked up permanently in an institution,’ he says. ‘He has an ankle tag, but the thing is, that doesn’t show you what is in his mind.’

Kenan Yilmaz, 54, a restaurateur, has been calling his eight-year-old daughter ‘all the time’ to check on her since Brueckner moved to the city.

‘She wants that, because she is afraid,’ he says. ‘Her friends at school yesterday were all talking about it and getting worried.’

Lea Rauschan, 21, an office worker in the city, adds: ‘It’s pretty scary that this man is just walking around.

‘He’s clearly dangerous based on his convictions. I’m a young woman and it does scare me.’

Residents have started a petition to get Brueckner out and, earlier this week, an emergency meeting was held at the Old Town Hall, with attendees calling for protests and vigils to bring the community together. A demonstration is planned for October 4.

Meanwhile, Philipp Marquort, part of his defence team, is standing firm. In a short statement, he said: ‘My client deserves to be left alone. He’s served his sentence.’

Moving to Munich will place Brueckner closer to his roots. He grew up in Wuerzburg, southern Germany, where he lived with his two brothers and adoptive parents. But thanks to a sickening trail of criminal behaviour that started when he was just 15, he no longer has family ties to the area.

His adoptive mother, Brigitte, has disowned him, accusing him of ‘destroying’ her life, while his adoptive father, Fritz, is dead. His brothers have never been traced.

In an interview with the Daily Mail this week, Thomas Hertel, 51, who spent time in the same children’s home as Brueckner as a teenager in the Nineties, described him as ‘extremely dangerous’ and warned he should be locked up for life. He recalls a violent, troubled young man who ‘terrorised everyone’.

‘Some of the care workers there even locked themselves in their rooms because they were so afraid he would flip out,’ he says. ‘He would smash doors and throw bottles… he was always making trouble, breaking out of the home, nicking bikes and car radios and hoarding the stolen goods on his balcony.’

He adds: ‘It’s a complete disaster that he is free. I can’t understand how someone like that can be allowed to walk around freely.’

Others from Brueckner’s past recall his cold, sadistic nature – even as a child. ‘We were scared of him,’ a former classmate remembers. ‘I’ll never forget those ice-cold blue eyes.’

Another former acquaintance, Elke Piro, 69, a grandmother with whom the sex offender stayed in 2006 and again in 2016, recalls his unpredictable temperament.

He was both a ‘classic sociopath’ and a ‘terrible alcoholic,’ she says, switching between being ‘kind and gentle or crazy and raging about sex’. ‘I got to know Christian over many years and I believe he did something bad to Maddie,’ she adds.

Though Brueckner has always denied involvement in the Madeleine McCann case, he was working in Portugal at the time, where he had an extensive criminal record, and mobile  phone data has linked him to Praia da Luz on the night of her disappearance.

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German police, who have been investigating him since 2020, insist he remains their ‘only’ suspect. Today, former friends, such as Brigitte Szegedi, who used to run the Sportsbar in Braunschweig, near where Brueckner ran a kiosk until 2014, want nothing to do with him.

‘Other people here in Braunschweig really, really don’t want him to ever show his face here,’ she told the Daily Mail this week.

‘They’re furious with him. Many would beat him up and I think if he turned up here then he might be killed.’

Brueckner, too, has hinted that he fears for his life now he is free.

He told staff in the phone shop last week that he would ‘not last long’, sparking rumours that he may have links to an international paedophile ring, about whom he may hold incriminating evidence.

‘It sounded to me like he was part of something wider,’ the shop owner said. ‘Something he clearly had knowledge of. Some network or something, maybe.

‘It’s clear he knows far more than he had been telling police.’

Brueckner’s concerns for his own safety are far from a priority for the residents of Neumunster.

‘I want him gone,’ says Alex Ehmke, 49, who runs a local Facebook group and has an 18-year-old daughter in the city. ‘Everyone does. He’s dangerous.’

That much, no matter what his lawyers say, no matter what the scales of justice have decreed, is undeniable. And wherever he ends up, wherever he tries to hide, revulsion, fear, and notoriety will surround him for the rest of his days.