Woman who claimed to be Madeleine McCann ‘stalked missing girl’s parents’

A Polish national who claimed to be Madeleine McCann “pursued that myth” and stalked the missing girl’s parents by sending emails, making phone calls and turning up at their address, a court has heard.

Karen Spragg and Julia Wandelt carried out a “campaign of harassment”, Leicester Crown Court heard, and in Ms Wandelt’s case, that occurred over two and a half years.

On Monday, jurors were told Ms Wandelt repeatedly claimed she was Madeleine and was abducted and transported to Poland.

Ms Spragg and Ms Wandelt each deny a count of stalking causing serious alarm and distress to Kate and Gerry McCann between June 2022 and February this year.

There was a brief break in proceedings when Ms Wandelt started crying and went to the back of the dock, when prosecutor Michael Duck KC said: “Can we, at this very early stage, make this position clear. Julia Wendelt is not Madeleine McCann.”

Madeleine’s disappearance in 2007 – at the age of three during a family holiday in Portugal – is one of the most widely reported missing child cases and remains unsolved.

Mr Duck also spoke of the global attention that Madeleine’s case had brought on the family.

He said: “One of many tragic consequences for Madeleine’s parents, Kate and Gerry McCann, has been their constant inability to escape the glare of publicity that came with that tragedy.

“The attention they have received has not always been compassionate, sometimes far from it.

“There remains a group of individuals who continue to fail to acknowledge their plight and perpetuate conspiracy theories.

“Unfortunately, these two defendants belong to that latter group.”

The court heard from June 2022, Ms Wandelt had begun to speak to “anyone who would care to listen” that she was Madeleine.

Mr Duck KC said that, in January 2023, Ms Wandelt was in contact with a Polish charity established to assist with historic missing persons cases and offer support and advice to people seeking those who had gone missing.

According to the prosecutor, Ms Wandelt initially said she was missing German girl Inga Gehricke.

But after these claims were ruled out by the charity, Ms Wendalt then contacted the charity with a belief she could be Acacia Bishop – a missing baby from Utah in the US – before messaging them about her insistence she was Madeleine McCann.

Her belief escalated to an attempt to call the hospital where both the McCanns worked.

A 20-minute call to the switchboard led to a report back from the NHS trust’s communications manager to Operation Grange, the British investigation into the disappearance.

The jury was told Ms Wandelt made further attempts to contact the authorities and then Mr McCann directly via email.

But her attempts went unanswered, which Mr Duck said “did not deter” Ms Wendelt – who then made contact with Madeleine’s younger sister Amelie via social media.

Telling her she was her “only hope”, she sent doctored images to show they were “somehow related” and claimed to have memories of life before the abduction, the court heard.

These claims, the court heard, were repeated in 2024 when Ms Wendalt is alleged to have “consistently” messaged Mrs McCann’s mobile over the course of a day – calling her “mommy”, claiming to recall feeding Madeleine’s younger brother Sean, of playing ring a roses in the back garden of the family’s home in Rothley, Leicestershire, and of the night Madeleine was abducted.

In one message, she said: “I remember you came to my room before the abduction, rubbed my head and said ‘I love you and I will find you’.”

The trial of Ms Wendalt, of Jana Kochanowskiego in Lubin, Poland, and Ms Spragg, of Caerau Court Road, Cardiff, continues.