Woman claiming to be Madeleine McCann text parents ‘I remember how you hugged me’

A woman who falsely claimed to be Madeleine McCann texted the missing toddler’s mum, ‘I remember how you hugged me’, a court heard.

Madeline was days from her 4th birthday when she vanished from her family’s holiday apartment in Portugal nearly 20 years ago.

Julia Wandelt, 24, from Lubin in south west Poland, claims she has memories of Madeline’s childhood and of when she was ‘abducted and taken to Poland’.

She was arrested in February and went on trial today, accused of stalking Madeline’s mum Kate, dad Gerry and siblings Sean and Amelie.

Wandelt and Karen Spragg, 61, of Caerau Court Road in Caerau, Cardiff, deny stalking, causing serious alarm and distress to Kate and Gerry between June 2022 and February this year.

Jurors were told that there was ‘unequivocal scientific evidence’ that Wandelt has no familial link to the McCanns.

She began to cry when prosecutor Michael Duck KC said earlier today: ‘Can we at this very early stage in the trial make this position clear – that Julia Wandelt is not Madeleine McCann.’

The court heard that from June 2022, Wandelt ‘began to make attempts to persuade anybody who was prepared to listen’ she was Madeleine.

Wandelt, who is in custody, spent the next two and a half years ‘pursuing the myth’ she was the missing youngster.

She claimed to have memories of interacting with Madeleine’s siblings and attending family events.

Duck noted to jurors that Wandelt was not the same age as Madeleine at the time of her disappearance.

He added: ‘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.’

Duck said Wandelt sent a letter, calls, voicemails and WhatsApp messages to the couple and visited their home.

In one text Wandelt allegedly wrote, which was read to the court, she told Kate she was her daughter and can ‘prove’ it.

The text continued, according to The Mirror: ‘I remember how you hugged me and a pink teddy bear.

‘I remember that you came to the room before the abduction happened and were rubbing my head and said you will find me.’

In a voicemail played to the court, Wandelt allegedly said: ‘I know I’m fat and not pretty like Madeleine was in the past, but I know what I know and I know what I remember.

‘I don’t want money. I just want one call and then I’ll leave you alone.’

Kate and Gerry said that they had left Madeleine and her siblings, two-year-old twins, at their flat in Praia da Luz, a village in the Algarve region, on May 3, 2007.

When Kate checked in on them around 10pm, Madeleine was gone.

Her disappearance is one of the most widely reported missing child cases in the world and remains unsolved.

Duck 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 trial continues.

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