#DNA from rape linked to Madeleine McCann suspect allegedly destroyed

Portuguese authorities allegedly destroyed DNA evidence in a rape linked to the suspect in the disappearance of British toddler Madeleine McCann, according to a report.

Hazel Behan, an Irish woman who was raped in 2004 at a resort in southern Portugal close to the area where McCann later disappeared, came forward last week after German suspect Christian Brueckner was named as a key suspect in the abduction of the toddler who was on holiday with her family.

But DNA evidence collected during the investigation of her horrific five-hour assault by a masked man was destroyed in 2007, two months before McCann’s May abduction that year, according to Portuguese court records cited by the Daily Mail.

German police and London’s Metropolitan Police identified Brueckner as a key suspect in McCann’s disappearance and have appealed to the public for any information.

Behan, a mother of two, had contacted the Metropolitan police earlier this month when she read about Brueckner’s conviction last year in the 2005 rape of an American woman at the Praia da Luz resort, where McCann also disappeared.

Brueckner only came back on the police radar in 2017, after confessing to a barroom pal in Germany on the 10th anniversary of McCann’s disappearance that he knew what had happened to her.