A rape victim has asked police to investigate whether her attacker in Portugal was the German suspected of killing Madeleine McCann.
Hazel Behan was tied up and sexually assaulted by a rapist who broke into her apartment in a Portuguese resort only half an hour from where Madeleine is believed to have been snatched after another break-in three years later.
The brutal crime against her was committed in 2004, a year before suspect Christian Brückner, now 43, raped a 72-year-old US tourist in Praia da Luz, where the McCann family was staying.
Brückner, who has a history of committing paedophilic and other crimes, is in prison in Germany after being convicted of the American woman’s rape.
Ms Behan, an Irish woman who waived her anonymity to give an interview to the Guardian, now believes that she too might have been a victim after learning of Brückner’s criminal activities in the Algarve.
“I had gone to bed around 1am, and was awoken by someone calling my name. I turned on to my back and standing there was a masked man dressed in tights and what resembled a leotard, a machete around 12in long in his hand,” she told the newspaper.
“It seemed to me he had worked everything out, he had a plan and was very deliberate. When he was finished... I could not stand up because of the ropes digging into the backs of my legs… I was convinced he was going to kill me.”
Ms Behan, who was working as a holiday representative in Praia da Rocha, just over 20 miles from Praia da Luz, said her attacker had worn a mask but had spoken English with a German accent and had been around 6ft 1in with blond hair.
She said he videoed the attack and she also spotted what she suspected might have been a birth mark on the man’s thigh.
Brückner reportedly has a birth mark, while his height and hair colour match Ms Behan’s description. Police have already said that he lived in the Algarve between 1995 and 2007, meaning that he was there at the time when Ms Behan was raped.
She added: “My mind was blown when I read how he had attacked a woman in 2005, both the tactics and the methods he used, the tools he had with him, how well he had planned it out.
“I puked, to be honest with you, as reading about it took me right back to my experience. I think if the police had done their job investigating what happened to me, if this is indeed the same man that attacked the American and abducted Madeleine McCann, they might have prevented the attack on her, and Madeleine would now be at home with her parents.”
The new allegations follow the revelation by German prosecutor Hans Christian Wolters that police are seeking information about all the places that Brückner lived so that they could search his former homes for Madeleine’s body.
“That’s why we need more information, especially places he has lived, so we can target these places especially and search there for Madeleine,” Mr Wolters said.
He added that prosecutors also “think our suspect has done more crimes, possibly against British, Irish or American people” in what could have been a reference to the rape of Ms Behan.
The German authorities have already said they believe that Madeleine is dead and that they believe that Brückner was her killer, but that they lack definitive evidence.
They are also investigating whether Brückner is linked to a series of other suspected child murders, including the abduction and killing of Peggy Knobloch, nine, who disappeared on her way home from school in Bavaria in May 2001.
