Christian B.’s lawyer reports witnesses

2023-11-27 17:02:09

When you talk about Christian B., the German murder suspect in the Maddie case, the name Helge B. comes up again and again. Christian B. is said to have drunkenly told him at a festival in 2008 that three-year-old Madeleine McCann didn’t scream at all. She disappeared in Portugal in 2007 and was never found again, and the case attracted great international attention. Helge B. says that after Christian B.’s statement at the 2008 festival, he called Scotland Yard’s Maddie hotline and gave his name. However, investigators only contacted him in 2017 after he contacted them again. Christian B. was investigated for years, but the Braunschweig public prosecutor’s office is now certain that he killed Maddie. However, she has not yet presented any evidence of this.

Instead, she filed charges against Christian B. in five other cases. And in two cases, Helge B. is again an important witness. According to him, he and a friend saw on videos how Christian B. raped a girl and two women. He took these videos with his friend, who is also a witness, when they broke into Christian B.’s apartment in Portugal while he was in prison. For one of these rapes, Christian B. was sentenced to seven years in prison by the Braunschweig Regional Court in 2019. In addition to the statement from Helge B. and his friend, a hair at the crime scene provided DNA evidence, but Christian B. continues to deny guilt.

The other two cases are scheduled to be heard next year; according to Friedrich Fülscher, Christian B.’s lawyer, the only evidence is the statements of the two witnesses. And Fülscher has now filed a complaint against one of them, Helge B.. He has also requested a stay of custody and a reopening of the 2019 rape case. The Braunschweig public prosecutor’s office confirmed receipt of a criminal complaint for alleged unsworn false testimony against a witness from the 2019 trial.

Where are the cassettes in question?

The point is that Helge B. is said to have made different statements about where he left the video cassettes on which the rapes are said to be shown. Helge B. testified in court in 2019 that he left the cassettes in a camper on a German’s property in Portugal. He had already told this version to British investigators in 2018. Investigators in Portugal were then commissioned to search the area. However, according to the investigation files, the owner stated at the time that he did not remember Helge B., but it was possible that he and many other Germans had been on his farm in 2006. However, at no time was a mobile home left with him.

Published/Updated: Recommendations: 11 Sebastian Eder Published/Updated: Recommendations: 14 Published/Updated: Recommendations: 1

At the end of 2022, Helge B. suddenly presented a new version to the investigators through a legal representative: Before his departure, he had hidden the recordings in question in a finca in Portugal that he was living in at the time, and there was a possibility that they were there can still be found. He had already told British investigators this, but was no longer able to identify the finca, according to a letter from his witness representative, which was available to the FAZ. On January 11, 2023, Helge B. was questioned again by the Federal Criminal Police Office. In a transcript of the interrogation, which is available to the FAZ, you can read that Helge B. stopped the interrogation after it was pointed out to him because of his information about the finca that he ran the risk of exposing himself to criminal prosecution for making unsworn false statements. In the summer of this year, Helge B. presented in an interview with the “Bild” newspaper again the version with the camper: “When I left Portugal later, I left the videos in my camper.”

The Braunschweig public prosecutor’s office must now assess whether this is an understandable gap in memory after such a long time or whether the witness as a whole has become – as Fülscher says – “completely unbelievable”. According to a spokesman, it is checking whether there is initial suspicion of an unsworn false statement. It also remains to be seen whether and what Helge B. will testify in court next year.