Leicester Crown Court, October 8, 2025 – The air in the courtroom hung heavy with unspoken grief as Kate McCann, her voice steady yet laced with quiet devastation, took the stand behind a protective blue curtain. For nearly two decades, she and her husband Gerry have navigated the labyrinth of loss since their daughter Madeleine vanished from a sun-drenched holiday apartment in Portugal’s Praia da Luz. But on this crisp autumn morning, the spotlight shifted not to the enduring mystery of 2007, but to a more intimate torment: a young woman’s unyielding claim to be the girl they never stopped searching for. Julia Wandelt, 24, from the industrial heartland of Lubin, Poland, sat in the dock, her face a mask of fractured hope. As Kate concluded her testimony—detailing years of relentless harassment—Wandelt shattered the solemnity. Sobbing uncontrollably, she screamed, “Why are you doing this to me?” before being led away in hysterics, her wails echoing off the wood-paneled walls like a final, futile plea for recognition.

The outburst marked a raw crescendo in a trial that has peeled back the layers of desperation, delusion, and doubt surrounding Wandelt’s saga. Accused alongside Karen Spragg, a 61-year-old from Cardiff who became her unlikely champion, Wandelt faces charges of stalking the McCanns and causing “serious alarm or distress” from June 2022 to February 2025. Both women deny the allegations, but prosecutors paint a picture of a calculated campaign: hundreds of messages, voicemails thick with emotion, uninvited visits to the family’s quiet Leicestershire home, and even audacious plots to pilfer DNA from discarded rubbish or restaurant cutlery. At its core, though, lies Wandelt’s conviction—a belief so profound it borders on tragedy—that she is Madeleine McCann, abducted as a toddler and reshaped by a life of shadows in Eastern Europe. “You know who I am,” she allegedly wrote in one message. “I am your daughter.”

Wandelt’s journey into this conviction began in the dim glow of social media screens three years ago. Born in 2001, nearly two years before Madeleine’s disappearance, she posted a viral Instagram video under the handle @IAmMadeleineMcCann. Her blue eyes, framed by tousled blonde hair, stared into the camera with a vulnerability that captivated millions. “I don’t remember my childhood,” she confessed, her Polish accent softening the edges of fragmented memories: whispers of a British lullaby, a terror of the ocean, an inexplicable pull toward a family she’d never met. She claimed falsified documents, a trafficker’s grip, a stolen identity pieced together from nightmares and hypnosis sessions. Supporters rallied, donating to GoFundMe campaigns for her “truth-seeking” travels. Skeptics scoffed, pointing to the age discrepancy, her lack of the distinctive coloboma in Madeleine’s iris, and a commercial DNA test from her 2023 Dr. Phil appearance that tied her roots firmly to Poland.

Undeterred, Wandelt escalated. Emails flooded the McCanns’ Find Madeleine campaign, voicemails pleaded with Gerry at his hospital workplace. “Hello, I’m Julia, and I think I’m your daughter Madeleine,” one read. “I can prove it’s me. I know things only Madeleine would know—things Gerry would remember.” Kate, first alerted by Operation Grange officers in 2023, felt an initial “niggle”—that maternal whisper of possibility amid the barrage. But it curdled into dread. On a single April day in 2024, her phone lit up 60 times: calls from withheld numbers, texts begging, “Let me prove I’m not a liar. Give me a chance—I don’t want money.” Another: “Please just give me a chance. I’m not crazy—I just want the truth. Call me or message me, whatever.” Kate never replied. “I did not want to engage,” she told the court, her words measured, eyes fixed on the unseen jury. Engaging, she implied, would only feed the fire.

The flames leaped higher when Wandelt turned to the McCanns’ twins, Sean and Amelie, now in their early twenties. Using ChatGPT to fabricate childhood photos of “sisters reunited,” she messaged Amelie: “I’m the girl who went viral saying I think I’m Madeleine. I’ve had hypnosis—got so many flashbacks.” She described spoon-feeding Sean as a baby, family Christmases in Rothley, the twins’ laughter echoing through a home she’d never seen. “There are many things I remember,” she wrote. “I’d never lie.” Amelie, thrust into the spotlight of her sister’s absence since birth, was “extremely distressed,” prosecutors said. For Kate, this was the breaking point—the “final straw” that prompted a police report in April 2024. “Contacting my daughter… that crossed a line,” she testified, her voice catching. Wandelt’s outreach to Sean fared no better; he ignored her entirely.

Enter Karen Spragg, a retired support worker whose path crossed Wandelt’s in the murky online forums of missing persons theories. What began as empathetic messages evolved into complicity, prosecutors allege. Spragg, described as “aggressive” in demeanor, became the enabler: shuttling Wandelt across borders, plotting stakeouts outside the McCanns’ home with car lights dimmed “like private investigators.” On May 3, 2024—the anniversary of Madeleine’s vanishing—Wandelt crashed a vigil in Rothley, accosting the village priest and Kate’s great-aunt when the family stayed away. “The truth will come out,” she reportedly insisted. Spragg messaged friends post-confrontation: “Kate cried and Gerry was horrible. Lol, we do our stakeout again.” To investigators, her tone turned venomous: “Everyone knows the McCanns are guilty—a massive cover-up is happening.”

The trial’s emotional nadir arrived on December 7, 2024, a gray winter afternoon that prosecutors replayed in chilling audio for the jury. Kate, returning from errands, spotted two figures in her driveway. “You’re causing us a lot of distress—now stop it,” she pleaded, her voice trembling as recorded. Wandelt, thrusting forward a letter, begged for a DNA test: “You have nothing to lose. If I’m her, everybody should be okay. But if I’m not—as you probably think—then I’ll leave you alone.” Spragg loomed, demanding, “Take the test if you want to find out.” Gerry, arriving moments later, cut through: “The police are well aware of Julia and her situation. We are not having a discussion. Please leave—you are not welcome.” The pair lingered, Wandelt’s hands blocking the door as Kate tried to retreat inside. No blows landed, but the invasion lingered like a chill. “I felt frightened,” Kate admitted. “Invaded in my own home.”

The next day, a letter slipped through the door, addressed to “Mum (Kate).” Its contents, read aloud by prosecutor Michael Duck KC, dripped with pathos: “Dear Mum, I’m so sorry for causing you so much distress, but when I saw you yesterday, my emotions were so strong. I felt a close connection to you. I don’t like seeing you upset. All I want is to find out the truth. I have memories and I’ve gathered a lot of evidence supporting my case.” It delved deeper into alleged recollections: Kate rubbing her head on the night of the abduction, whispering, “I love you—you’ll be found.” Then, the plea: “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.” It closed with a flourish Duck called “cruel”: “I think that inside your heart you believe and know who I am, and I am your daughter. Lots of love, Madeleine x.”

Duck’s opening salvo had set the stage bluntly: “Can we make this clear at the very outset—Julia Wandelt is not Madeleine McCann.” Unequivocal scientific evidence, he promised—birth records, family photos from Lubin, DNA mismatches—would dismantle her claims. Wandelt, he argued, was a serial impostor, having posed as two other missing girls: Inga Gehricke, a German toddler vanished in 2015, and Acacia Bishop, another unresolved case. Her “memories” were fabrications, gleaned from news clips and hypnosis-fueled fantasies. Yet Wandelt’s defense hints at a deeper narrative: a woman adrift, scarred by foster homes and alleged abuse, grasping for identity in the void. “I won’t give up my claim,” she told police post-arrest at Bristol Airport in February 2025, even as officers warned her off. In voicemails played to the court, her Polish lilt cracked: “Mummy, why reject me? You have nothing to lose.”

Gerry McCann followed Kate to the stand that afternoon, his testimony a mirror of resolve laced with raw vulnerability. Shielded like his wife, he recounted showing Wandelt’s photo to friends from the “Tapas Seven”—the dinner companions from that fateful 2007 night. “This isn’t her,” they chorused. He was “very confident” upon seeing it himself, echoing Scotland Yard’s dismissal. But the harassment gnawed: anonymous calls spiking Kate’s anxiety, messages to his work line. “It pulls at your heartstrings,” he admitted, tears welling as he spoke of the family’s “glimmer” of hope that Madeleine lives. “I want Madeleine to call me mum. I want most for her to be back.” Pressed on the DNA refusal, Gerry outlined three pillars: visual mismatch—no coloboma, wrong bone structure; official verification from Polish inquiries; and protocol—”It’s not our job; leave it to investigators.” Yet Kate’s fleeting consideration—”to put it to bed”—hinted at the torment. What if it reopened 2007’s forensic ghosts: cadaver dog alerts in their rental car, faint DNA traces that fueled early suspicions?

As the trial stretches into its third day, the jury grapples with asymmetry. Wandelt, in custody since March, huddles in sketches like a lost child, her outbursts painting her as victim or villain. Spragg, on bail, faces the same charge, her texts to Wandelt—”We should get their DNA; it’s the only way”—betraying zealotry. Online, the case reignites Madeleine’s vortex: forums buzz with revived theories, from Brückner’s looming trial to whispers of McCann complicity. But amid the spectacle, a quieter tragedy unfolds. Wandelt’s messages, laid bare, reveal not malice, but a soul unmoored: “I know I look different now… but I remember.” Her scream—”Why are you doing this to me?”—wasn’t accusation, but anguish, a echo of the girl she yearns to be.

For the McCanns, it’s a cruel redux of 2007’s scrutiny. Kate spoke of feeling “on edge,” her routine errands shadowed by fear. “Everyone in the world knows how to find us,” Gerry noted, frustration edging his calm. Their advocacy—billboards, books, the Missing People charity—has kept Madeleine’s face alive, but at what cost? This trial, prosecutors argue, is harassment’s endpoint, a bid to “emotionally manipulate” a family already fractured. Yet Wandelt’s letter lingers, its “Madeleine x” a phantom kiss that blurs predator and prey.

As verdicts loom—potentially by mid-October—the courtroom empties, but the echoes persist. In Rothley’s ribbon-festooned streets, yellow symbols of hope flutter on. Madeleine McCann remains missing, her story a tapestry of what-ifs. Julia Wandelt’s cry, raw and unfiltered, forces a reckoning: In the pursuit of truth, who truly suffers? For a woman convinced she’s a stolen daughter, rejection isn’t dismissal—it’s erasure. And in that void, the ghosts of Praia da Luz multiply.