Carola Titze (left) vanished on the morning of July 5, 1996 while holidaying with her parents at a Flemish resort in De Haan, West Flanders


Madeleine McCann's suspected murderer Christian Brueckner could be linked to a fourth unsolved child disappearance, prosecutors claimed today.

Belgian authorities are investigating whether the 43-year-old German sex offender was involved in the mysterious killing of 16-year-old Carola Titze in 1996.

Carola vanished on the morning of July 5 while holidaying with her parents at a Flemish resort in De Haan, West Flanders.

The German teenager was missing for six days before her body was found violently mutilated on the sand dunes. 

In the days before her disappearance, she was allegedly seen at a disco with a German man, who policed tried to track down but failed.

Prosecutors in Bruges confirmed to local media they are now probing the possible connection between Titze's death and Brueckner, following his naming as prime suspect in the McCann case.

Since Brueckner became detectives' main lead in the disappearance of three-year-old Madeleine from Portugal's Praia de Lug in 2007, he has been linked to two other vanishings.

The family of German six-year-old René Hasse, who went missing in the Algarve in 1996, revealed police are re-investigating the case for the first time in 20 years.

And prosecutors have also re-opened the suspected abduction case of five-year-old Inga Gehricke - dubbed Germany's Madeleine - from Diakoniewerk Wilhelmshof in Saxony-Anhalt in 2015.
















Madeleine McCann, the three-year-old British girl who vanished from her hotel room in Praia de Lug in May 2007. Christian Brueckner (left) is the prime suspect in her case

















Since Brueckner became detectives' main lead in the disappearance of three-year-old Madeleine from Portugal's Praia de Lug in 2007, he has been linked to two other vanishings (René Hasse, five, left and Inga Gehricke, six, right)







Carola vanished on the morning of July 5 while holidaying with her parents at a Flemish resort in De Haan, West Flanders. The German teenager was missing for six days before her body was found violently mutilated on the sand dunes







In the days before Titze's disappearance, she was allegedly seen at a disco with a German man, who policed tried to track down with this identikit photo but failed


The case into Carola's disappearance in 1996 went cold in 2016. At the time, police released an identikit drawing of the German man she was seen with at the disco, but he was never identified. 

Mayor Wilfried Vandaele of De Haan said: 'A shockwave went through our community when the body of Carola Titze was found in woodland in the dunes in 1996,' according to Belgian news site VRT.

'Of course, we too want the perpetrator to be found at long last. Let's hope the German investigation can provide greater clarity.' 

Only a few weeks before Carola's disappearance, six-year-old René vanished from Amoreiras beach in the Algarve. 

The infant from Elsdorf, Germany, was on holiday with his family in Aljezur - just 25 miles from Praia da Luz, where Bruenecker was living.

René was last seen running towards the sea on a crowded beach before his mother lost sight of him - only his clothes were later found by the water. 

The boy's grandparents have previously insisted their grandson would never have wandered into the sea by himself and said 'his footprints stopped in the middle of the sand', and yesterday his father Andreas said there 'could be a connection' with Bruenecker.          

Andreas told his local newspaper that an investigator from the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) phoned him yesterday, for the first time in 20 years and said they were re-investigating the case.      

It comes after prosecutors re-opened the investigation into whether Brueckner abducted five-year-old Inga Gehricke after she was grabbed from Diakoniewerk Wilhelmshof in Saxony-Anhalt during a family outing five years ago.  

Her disappearance on May 2, 2015 - almost eight years to the day after Madeleine vanished in Portugal on May 3, 2007 - was only 48 miles away from where Brueckner lived on the five-acre site of a box factory in the isolated of village of Neuwegersleben, south-east of Hanover.

One day before Inga went missing, Brueckner's vehicle was in a minor crash at a service station close to where she wandered away.
















René was last seen running ahead of his mother and step-father during a walk on the beach to swim in the sea. After losing sight of him never saw him again; left with just his clothes lying on the beach. Pictured, it was just 25 miles from where Brueckner lived in Praia da Luz













Police are set to return to this abandoned box factory in Neuwegersleben, Germany, where Christian Brueckner lived in a caravan and hid child porn among animal bones. Police raided it in 2016 looking for missing Inga Gehricke













More than 100 police officers descended on the site in February 201 (pictured), digging holes looking for missing Inga















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