There was a plan to abduct a child before Madeleine disappeared

The kidnapping of a child was planned at a Portuguese resort a week before she disappeared Madeleine.

As stated in “Sky News»Christian, the German wanderer, who is considered the number one suspect in Madeleine's abduction, he tried to recruit a friend of hisin order to help him find a child, to sell to a couple who had failed to have children.

Mr Ralphs, a former political campaign worker in Britain, said Christian made the proposal to a man who was living in a tent on a remote part of the Algarve coast. “We were sitting around the fire one night after dinner, had a few beers, and in the early hours of the morning my friend started crying. I asked him what was going on and eventually he confessed to me that he got involved with Cristian, to steal a child from Praia da Luz from a rich family,” he said.

Ralphs, Christian and their mutual friend, a foreigner, who cannot be named for legal reasons, were members of a nomadic, bohemian, community, who lived in isolated houses in Southwest Portugal.

“17 years ago my friend and his family were living in a tent and my wife and I were taking food to them. Christian knew the guy was vulnerable and wanted to travel abroad, but he couldn't go because he couldn't afford the plane tickets,” he said.

Ralphs, meanwhile, emphasized that he asked their mutual friend not to get involved, while he offered to provide him with financial assistance when he returned from a trip he was going to make to the United Kingdom. “I told him you can't get involved in kidnapping a person for ransom. This is ridiculous. Then he told me: “No, it's not like that”.

Christian had a client, a buyer, a German couple, who could not have children.” A week later, Ralphs returned to the UK and he learned from the news that Madeleine had disappeared from the family's holiday rental apartment.