A Polish woman who claims to be Madeleine McCann screamed, “Why are you doing this to me?” after the missing child’s mother, Kate McCann, told of her distress at being confronted by the alleged stalker outside her home, who was calling her “mum”. Mrs McCann told a jury at Leicester Crown Court that Julia Wandelt had been “incessant” with her messages, which left her with a “little niggle” about doing a DNA test.
Prosecutors allege Wandelt, from Lubin in south-west Poland, peddled the myth that she was Madeleine, who went missing in Portugal in 2007, while stalking the missing girl’s parents by bombarding them with emails, making phone calls and turning up at their address. Mrs McCann said part of her brain was “saying ‘what if’” because of Wandelt’s frequent messages, but added: “Having seen a photo of her, she’s Polish … it doesn’t make sense.”
Wandelt, 24, and Karen Spragg, 61, of Caerau, Cardiff, deny a count of stalking causing serious alarm and distress to Mrs McCann and her husband Gerry between June 2022 and February this year.
Former GP Mrs McCann said in the past two and a half years, the alleged stalking has “escalated the level of stress and anxiety” she feels.
Giving evidence from behind a curtain screening her from the dock, Mrs McCann said it is only since the women were arrested on February 19 this year that she has felt “more relaxed”.
She told jurors she did not know whether Wandelt had been crying when she turned up at her family home, but said the Polish national had been “pleading” and “asking about DNA tests again”.
Mrs McCann, who said she had been made aware by police of communications sent by Wandelt as early as June 2022, told the court: “I pulled up on the drive … it was really dark, it was the weekend, we had the gales.
“I was opening the boot to get something out, and I heard someone say ‘Kate’.
“I knew it was someone behind me, but I didn’t know who it was. She called me mum, I think, she was asking for a DNA test, ‘why won’t you do a DNA test?’ and pleading with me.”
Asked about the manner of Spragg, who had attended the address with Wandelt, Mrs McCann said: “I would say she was slightly more aggressive.
“She was a bit more kind of … ‘don’t you want to find your daughter?’.”
She told Michael Duck KC, the prosecuting counsel, that she did not want the women at her home and ordered them to leave.
She added: “I told them to leave. I told them I was distressed.”
Mrs McCann conceded that when Wandelt and Spragg turned up at her address on December 7 last year, they “did not give any indication” they would hurt her, but said the request for a DNA test had proved confusing and she almost agreed “to put it to bed”.
She added: “I think it was getting to me so much that a little bit of my brain was saying ‘what if?’
“Having seen a photo of her, she’s Polish … it doesn’t make sense. I can’t say what Madeleine looks like now, but if I saw a photo of her, I would recognise her.”
The mother of two other children also spoke of how people continue to turn up at her home with information about her daughter’s disappearance “sporadically, every six months,” but said less than 10 people had made contact claiming to be Maddie, who was aged three when she vanished whilst on a family holiday to Portugal’s Algarve in 2007.
The trial continues.