Photo: Youtube
Maxwell looks like an old suspect sketch.
By Rebekah Kuschmider — Written on Jul 08, 2020
The arrest of Ghislaine Maxwell for her connection to Jeffrey Epstein's sex trafficking ring came as a welcome development for the victims of the pair's crimes. Now people are wondering if her criminal past is deeper and more disturbing than we ever believed before.
Old suspect sketches from the 2007 kidnapping of toddler Madeleine McCann have resurfaced and people have pointed out that one of the people pictured bears a resemblance to the disgraced socialite. The McCann case captivated the world and investigators searched for years to figure out what happened to the little girl who vanished from her family's vacation rental. No trace of her was ever found. Now there are new questions about whether she could have been a victim of the Maxwell sex trafficking operation.
Did Ghislaine Maxwell kidnap Madeleine McCann?
An old police sketch has started a flurry of rumors.
Internet sleuths noticed recently that one suspect sketch in a group of police drawings looks startlingly like Ghislaine Maxwell. The sketches were released in 2009 in relation to missing toddler Madeleine McCann. After McCann vanished in 2007, authorities were desperate to find the culprit. They investigated the little girl's parents before casting a wider net. The sketches were people who had been seen in the area during the time McCann disappeared.
The police sketch resembles Maxwell.
What happened in the Madeleine McCann case?
McCann was three years old when she was taken. The young girls and the rest of her British family were on vacation in Portugal along with a group of families the McCanns were close with. On the night of May 3, 2007, her parents and the other adults went to a late dinner at a restaurant near their rented flat after putting the kids to bed inside. The apartment was only about 200 feet from where the parents were sitting so they could take turns checking on the children. At 10 pm, McCann's mother went to look in on them and discovered her daughter was missing. She was never seen again.
McCann disappeared in 2007.
Who is Ghislaine Maxwell?
Maxwell is an infamous socialite with deep A-list connections who is accused of procuring underage girls for her boyfriend and business associate Jeffrey Epstein, who allegedly ran a sex trafficking operation. At the moment. she is awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges stemming from the accusations about luring young girls to Jeffrey Epstein's sex trafficking operation. Epstein died in jail last year after being arrested on similar charges. He was known for holding sex parties with underage girls who were expected to sleep with his friends, even flying famous and powerful men to his private island for such parties. He himself abused the girls as well and Maxwell is alleged to have participated in sexually abusing the girls.
Could Maxwell have taken McCann?
Maxwell's history in sex trafficking makes her an easy target for accusations that she participated in additional crimes. The latest rumor about her is that she appears in a photo of another famous murdered child: JonBenét Ramsey. The photo, allegedly taken in the weeks before the 6-year-old girl's murder in 1996, shows a woman in profile who appears to have the same hairstyle and similar facial features as Maxwell. There is no other evidence linking Maxwell to Ramsey. There is a strong case that the woman in the photo is actually Ramsey's mother, Patsy, who also had the kind of hairstyle seen in the photo.
As for her involvement in the McCann case, there's no evidence at all that she was close to the resort in Portugal where the McCann family was staying. And there is no substantial evidence that she is the person in the sketch.
Ramsey and a woman who looks a bit like Maxwell.
Who is the person in the sketch then?
After the sketch was released, a woman in Australia claimed it pictured a Syndey resident named Judith Aron. Aron was stunned to be pegged as a kidnapper, especially since she hadn't left Australia in over 7 years at the time of the crime. Others noted that the sketch looked a little like Victoria Beckham, who was never a suspect.
Police identified a suspect in the McCann case earlier this year.
In June, police announced that they believed a German man was behind McCann's kidnapping and presumed murder. Christian Brueckner is a 43-year-old man who was living in a van on the beach near where the McCann's were staying in 2007. He may have been one of several blonde men said to have been seen earlier in the day the same apartment complex where Madeleine went missing.
Moreover, Brueckner had been linked to sex offenses including the rape of a 72-year-old woman the year before the McCann case. He is currently serving a seven-year jail term for that crime, after being convicted of it in 2018. German prosecutor Hans Christian Wolters told reporters, "The 43-year-old suspect is a multiple sexual predator already convicted of crimes against little girls." German news reports say he has 17 convictions for child abuse and child pornography, driving without a license and drunk driving, assault, burglary, and theft.
Is it possible that Ghislaine Maxwell had something to do with this crime? It seems very unlikely.
Rebekah Kuschmider has been writing about celebrities, pop culture, entertainment, and politics since 2010. She is the creator of the blog FeminXer and she is a cohost of the weekly podcast The More Perfect Union.