Featured Image Credit: Facebook/Julia Faustyna
Topics: Madeleine McCann, True Crime, UK News
Jess Battison
Topics: Madeleine McCann, True Crime, UK News
A woman who claimed to be Madeleine McCann bombarded the parents with ’60 calls in a day’, a court heard.
Julia Wandelt is currently on trial with Karen Spragg as they both deny stalking Kate and Gerry McCann causing serious alarm or distress between June 2022 and February this year.
The 24-year-old from Lubin in South Poland believed she was Madeleine, the little three-year-old British girl who went missing during a family holiday in Portugal back in 2007.
But jurors were told that there was ‘unequivocal scientific evidence’ that Wandelt has no familial link to the McCanns despite her claims of having memories of the girl’s childhood and disappearance.
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She began crying in the dock yesterday (6 October) when prosecutor Michael Duck KC said: “Can we at this very early stage in the trial make this position clear – that Julia Wandelt is not Madeleine McCann.”
The jury was also told that the Polish woman called and messaged Kate’s phone over 60 times on one day.
Madeleine’s mother did not answer them, with one message alleged to feature Wandelt telling her she remembered her on the night of the disappearance ‘rubbing my head and said I love you and you would find me’.
“You have nothing to lose, if I’m her then everybody should be okay but if I’m not, as you probably think, then I will leave you alone,” she said in a voicemail played to the jury at Leicester Crown Court.
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“I know my accent is Polish because I live here, I know I look fat and I know I’m not pretty like Madeleine was in the past, but I know what I know, I know what I remember.
“Please just give me a chance, I’m not a liar, I’m not crazy – I just want to know the truth. Call me or message me or whatever please.”
The woman also claimed to have had ‘flashbacks’ from hypnosis sessions, like a memory of spoon-feeding Madeleine’s younger brother.
And in June 2023, the court heard how she emailed Gerry, as well as on other occasions messaging the missing girl’s youngest sister to say there were ‘many things’ she could remember and that she’d ‘never lie’.
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Opening the case yesterday, Duck said that from June 2022, Wandelt began attempting to persuade ‘anybody prepared to listen’ that she was Madeleine, as he claimed she and Spragg have ‘perpetuated’ conspiracy theories.
“Nothing gives you the right to pursue and stalk people just because you want them to bend to your will and do as you demand or request,” he said.
The trial continues today.