AOn February 16, the trial of Christian B. – the man who, according to the public prosecutor's office, killed three-year-old Madeleine McCann, known as “Maddie” in Portugal in 2007 – will begin in Braunschweig. But he is facing trial for five other incidents, including three brutal rapes in Portugal.
Christian B.'s defense lawyer Friedrich Fülscher wants to undermine the credibility of the witness in the trial: Helge B. admitted that he broke into Christian B.'s apartment in Portugal in 2006 with a friend. They claim to have found videotapes showing Christian B. being raped. Christian B. is now facing charges for two of these alleged acts. The only evidence is the testimony of two witnesses, says Fülscher.
The lawyer started a fight for Helge B.'s credibility even before the trial began. She reported him in 2023 for allegedly making a false statement. Fülscher noticed that Helge B. suddenly changed one point in his statement in 2022: he had previously stated that he left the video cassettes in a mobile home in Portugal, then suddenly talked about the finca.
The public prosecutor's office in Braunschweig has now announced that it has suspended the investigation against Helge B. at the end of November 2023. In the 2019 trial against Christian B., Helge B. added the word “probably” to the information about his mobile home, so it was only a guess. And in 2022, he only announced the “possibility” that the cartridges could be in the finca. It is understandable that after such a long time has passed, he does not remember exactly, and there is no motive for giving a false statement. What is much more obvious is that the witness had kept the video tapes in various places and in 2019 he really believed he left them in the caravan.
Helge B. contributed significantly to the conviction of Christian B. in 2019
Helge B. also made a decisive contribution to the fact that Christian B. was convicted of raping an American woman in Portugal in 2019. It was only because of the statement made by Helge B. about the videotapes that the Portuguese authorities were asked if such an act had been reported there. Thus came the victim's complaint, which described a similar crime. And then a hair found at the crime scene matched Christian B.'s DNA.
However, records of British investigators available to FAZ show that Helge B. had already been very clear about the caravan: “I didn't know what to do and I just hid the cassettes in the upper storage compartment of my caravan,” he said. In early 2018. After that, German investigators even had the property in Portugal searched, where Helge B. allegedly left the caravan. Nothing was found.
Defender Fülscher considers the state prosecutor's decision to stop the investigation against Helge B. “incomprehensible”. Otherwise, the investigators would have lost one of their most important witnesses. Anyway, the little battle was probably just the beginning: the real battle will be fought in the courthouse starting in February.