🔗 Share this article

An individual from Poland who claimed to be the missing girl "pursued that myth" and harassed the missing girl's parents by sending emails, placing telephone calls and appearing at their residence, a court has heard.

The first defendant and Julia Wandelt conducted a "campaign of harassment", Leicester Crown Court heard, and in one defendant's situation, that lasted for thirty months.

On Monday, jurors were told Ms Wandelt consistently asserted she was the missing child and was taken and taken to the European nation.

Ms Spragg and the second accused each contest a count of stalking causing serious alarm and distress to Madeleine's parents between mid-2022 and early this year.

Madeleine's disappearance in the year 2007 - at the three years old during a family holiday in the European country - is among the most extensively covered child disappearance incidents and continues unresolved.

The prosecutor also spoke of the global attention that the disappearance had brought on the family.

"One of many devastating outcomes for the McCann family has been their constant inability to avoid the spotlight of publicity that accompanied that tragedy.

"The attention they have received has sometimes lacked sympathetic, sometimes far from it.

"There remains a number of people who continue to fail to recognize their plight and perpetuate conspiracy theories.

"Unfortunately, these two defendants fall into that second category."

Increasing Actions

Testimony revealed from mid-2022, Ms Wandelt had started telling to "any willing listener" that she was Madeleine.

The prosecutor said that, in January 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 disappeared.

According to the prosecutor, the defendant initially said she was missing German girl from Germany.

But after these claims were dismissed by the organization, Ms Wendalt then reached out to the charity with a conviction she could be another missing child - a missing baby from Utah in the United States - before contacting them about her persistent claim she was Madeleine McCann.

'Did Not Deter'

Her belief progressed to an effort to contact the medical facility where the parents were employed.

A lengthy telephone conversation to the switchboard resulted in a notification from the health service representative to Operation Grange, the British investigation into the vanishing.

Court proceedings revealed the defendant made additional efforts to reach out to officials and then the father directly via email in June 2023.

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

She continued people were "attempting to conceal the story" and asserted there were resemblances between her and the child, including having scars in the same places.

But her attempts went without response, which court officials said "did not deter" Ms Wendelt - who then made communication with the family's other daughter the sibling via online platforms.

Telling her she was her "only hope", she sent doctored images to show they were "possibly connected" and asserted possessing memories of life before the abduction, the court heard.

These claims, the court heard, were repeated in 2024 when the defendant is accused of "repeatedly" messaged Mrs McCann's mobile over the course of a day - referring to her as "mother", asserting memory of giving food to 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 a communication, she said: "I recall you visited my room before the incident, rubbed my head and said 'I love you and I'll locate you'."

The trial of Ms Wendalt, of Jana Kochanowskiego in Lubin, the country, and Ms Spragg, of Caerau Court Road in Cardiff, proceeds.