A woman who insisted she was Madeleine McCann is on trial for stalking the McCanns via texts and calls, and even showing up at their home.
The sister of missing British girl Madeleine McCann on Thursday told a jury she found messages from a woman claiming to be her lost older sibling “creepy”.
Amelie McCann, who was a toddler when three-year-old Madeleine disappeared from the family’s holiday apartment in Portugal in 2007, said Julia Wandelt began messaging her on social media in early 2024.
‘Quite creepy’
Some of the messages mentioned hypnosis sessions and offered to tell Amelie her “memories”, prosecutor Nadia Silver said.
Wandelt also repeated requests for Amelie’s parents, Kate and Gerry McCann, to take a DNA test to confirm her belief that they were related.
Amelie McCann said she always knew that Wandelt was not Madeleine but that it was “quite creepy that she’s giving those details” and playing with “my emotions and my memories”.
Wandelt and Karen Spragg, 61, from Cardiff in Wales, are on trial accused of stalking causing serious alarm and distress to Kate and Gerry McCann. They each deny the charge.
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Prosecutors said earlier there was “unequivocal scientific evidence” that Wandelt, who has claimed to have recollections about Madeleine’s childhood and disappearance, did not have any familial link to the McCanns.
Amelie described the messaging on multiple platforms including Facebook as “quite persistent”.
Giving evidence at Leicester Court in central England, she said she blocked Wandelt on some social media but the woman continued to try to establish contact through a letter posted to her.
In the letter, Wandelt told Amelie she was her “last hope” of proving that she was Madeleine. It also included pictures of “me and her”, she said.
“She clearly altered or edited the pictures to make it look more like her, which is quite disturbing,” she added.
‘Strange and upsetting’
Wandelt allegedly bombarded the McCanns with emails and calls between June 2022 and February 2025.
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At one point, she called Kate McCann 60 times in a single day, the prosecution said.
In a written statement Amelie’s twin brother Sean added he found Wandelt’s efforts to contact him and his parents, who are both doctors, “strange and upsetting”.
“I do not believe she is my sister. The fact that Julia is doing this has caused me a great deal of stress and I find it deeply disturbing,” he said.
On Wednesday, Kate McCann also told the court she had been left distressed after Wandelt turned up at the family home in the dark.
“She called me mum … she was asking for a DNA test, ‘why won’t you do a DNA test?’ and pleading with me,” she said.
She followed her and tried to “put her hands out to stop me closing the door”, she added.
The unsolved case of Madeleine’s disappearance was thrust back into the spotlight last month after the top suspect was released from a German prison.
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