Police investigating the Germanwings crash tonight searched the home of pilot Andreas Lubitz, who deliberately ploughed the Airbus A320 into the French Alps.
Officers refused to reveal details of any potential breakthrough but said they had not found a suicide note.
Speaking outside the flat on the outskirts of Dusseldorf, police said they had 'found something' that would now be taken for tests, adding it may be a 'clue' as to what happened to the doomed jet.
German detectives were also pictured carrying evidence from a £400,000 home in Montabaur, a town 40 miles from Bonn, that Lubitz is believed to have shared with his parents.
The 28-year-old is understood to have split his time between the two addresses.
The forensic find comes hours after it emerged that Lubitz was forced to postpone his pilot training in 2008 because of mental health problems, with a friend saying he was 'in depression'.
The revelation will form a central part of the investigation and raises serious questions about why he was allowed to continue his training and whether enough was done to prevent the disaster.
Airline bosses confirmed Lubitz had taken several months off work and had to retrain to join the firm, but insisted he was '100 per cent fit to fly' after passing all medical tests.
Earlier today, the chilling final moments of Flight FU 9525 were revealed by French prosecutors who said Lubitz's sole aim was to 'destroy the plane'.
Audio files extracted from the plane's cockpit voice recorder - discovered yesterday at the remote crash site - revealed Lubitz locked his captain out of the flight deck minutes before the crash.
The captain was heard growing increasingly distressed as he tried to force his way back into the cockpit and passengers' screams were heard in the final moments before impact.
The investigation is now a full-blown criminal inquiry following revelations of the pilots' argument.
Specialist criminologist officers today spent three and a half hours searching Lubitz's top-floor flat and were later seen removing three boxes.
Markus Niesczery from Dusseldorf Police told the Daily Mail: 'We wanted to search to see if we could find something that would explain what happened.
'We have found something which will now be taken for tests. We cannot say what it is at the moment but it may be very significant clue to what has happened.
'We hope it may give some explanations.'
Police said the inside of the flat in the Ekrath suburb 10 miles outside Dusseldorf city centre looked 'completely normal.'
They declined to say if he lived there alone. He was listed on the letterbox with another person named Goldbach.
Mr Niesczery said it was believed to be the only address he had lived in in Dusseldorf and he had not lived here 'very long.'
It also emerged today that his parents only discovered that their son was a mass murderer just minutes before the bombshell press conference by prosecutors in Marseille.
His mother, a piano teacher, and father, a successful businessman, were understood to be in the French city at the time of the announcement, but kept separate from the victims' relatives.
Their whereabouts is now unknown, but it is believed they are being questioned by police.
German detectives have also raided the €500,000 (£400,000) family home in Montabaur, 40km from Bonn, as well as his apartment in Dusseldorf.
At an extraordinary press conference earlier, Marseille prosecutor Brice Robin gave a disturbing account of the cockpit voice recordings extracted from black box.
He said Lubitz locked his captain out after the senior officer left the flight deck.
At that point, Lubitz used the flight managing system to put the plane into a descent, something that can only be done manually - and deliberately.
He said: 'The intention was to destroy the plane. Death was instant. The plane hit the mountain at 700kmh (430mph).
'I don't think that the passengers realised what was happening until the last moments because on the recording you only hear the screams in the final seconds'.
Referring to Lubitz, Mr Robin said: 'He did this for a reason which we don't know why, but we can only deduct that he destroyed this plane.
'We have asked for information from the German investigation on both his profession and personal background'.
Mr Robin said he had no known links with terrorism, adding: 'There is no reason to suspect a terrorist attack.'
And asked whether he believed the crash that killed 150 people was the result of suicide, he said: 'People who commit suicide usually do so alone... I don't call it a suicide.'
Responding to revelations, Lufthansa CEO Carsten Spohr said all pilots undergo annual medical checks, but not special psychiatric assessments beyond training.
Daily Mail.
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