🔗 Share this article

A Polish national who asserted to be Madeleine McCann "pursued that myth" and harassed the child's family by sending emails, making phone calls and appearing at their address, a trial was told.

Karen Spragg and Julia Wandelt conducted a "campaign of harassment", the court was informed, and in Ms Wandelt's case, that occurred over thirty months.

At the trial's commencement, the court heard the defendant repeatedly claimed she was the missing child and was abducted and transported to the European nation.

The first accused and Ms Wandelt each contest a count of stalking causing significant distress and distress to Kate and Gerry McCann between June 2022 and February this year.

The child's vanishing in the year 2007 - at the age of three during a vacation in Portugal - is among the most extensively covered missing child cases and remains unsolved.

Legal counsel also spoke of the international focus that the disappearance had directed toward the family.

"One of many tragic consequences for the McCann family has been their constant inability to avoid the spotlight of media attention that accompanied that tragedy.

"The focus they have experienced has sometimes lacked compassionate, sometimes quite the opposite.

"There continues to exist a number of people who persist in refusing to recognize their plight and spread unfounded claims.

"Unfortunately, these accused individuals belong to that latter group."

Escalating Behavior

Testimony revealed from June 2022, the defendant had started telling to "any willing listener" that she was Madeleine.

The prosecutor said that, in early 2023, Ms Wandelt was in communication with a Polish charity created to help with long-term disappearance incidents and provide assistance and guidance to people looking for individuals who had gone missing.

Based on the prosecutor, Ms Wandelt first claimed she was the disappeared child from Germany.

But after these claims were dismissed by the charity, the accused then reached out to the group with a conviction she could be Acacia Bishop - a disappeared infant from Utah in the US - before contacting them about her persistent claim she was Madeleine McCann.

'Failed to Stop'

The defendant's conviction escalated to an attempt to call the medical facility where both the McCanns worked.

A 20-minute call to the reception led to a notification from the health service representative to the investigation team, the UK inquiry into the vanishing.

The jury was told Ms Wandelt made additional efforts to contact the authorities and then the father directly via email in mid-2023.

In a message, she stated: "It's possible I am your child, there's a chance I am the missing girl."

She added people were "trying to cover up the case" and claimed there were resemblances between her and Madeleine, including having marks in the same places.

But her attempts went without response, which court officials said "failed to discourage" Ms Wendelt - who then made contact with the family's other daughter Amelie via social media.

Informing her she was her "only hope", she transmitted altered photographs to show they were "somehow related" and claimed to have recollections of life before the abduction, the court heard.

These assertions, the court heard, were restated in 2024 when Ms Wendalt is accused of "repeatedly" contacted the mother's mobile over the span of 24 hours - referring to her as "mommy", claiming to recall feeding the family's son the boy, of playing children's games in the rear yard of the family's home in the Leicestershire village, Leicestershire, and of the evening Madeleine was abducted.

In a communication, she stated: "I recall you came to my room before the abduction, rubbed my head and said 'I care for you and I'll locate you'."

The trial of Ms Wendalt, of an address in Lubin, the country, and the second defendant, of a location in the Welsh city, proceeds.