Alleged Stalker Asked: 'But Imagine I Could Be Madeleine?'
A female charged with harassing Kate McCann apparently deposited her a voicemail message which posed: "what if I am Madeleine?"
Julia Wandelt, twenty-four, who court testimony revealed has persistently claimed she was the vanished Madeleine McCann, and Karen Spragg are on trial accused with stalking Kate and Gerry McCann between June 2022 and February this year.
On Monday, the tribunal heard phone records and evidence recovered from phones documented Ms Wandelt repeatedly asking Madeleine's mother for a DNA test over 2023 and 2024.
Madeleine's disappearance in 2007 - as a three-year-old during a family holiday in Portugal - is one of the most widely reported child disappearance cases and is still unresolved.
'I Do Not Need Money'
A separate phone message, played in court, captured Ms Wandelt saying: "I realize I'm overweight and plain like Madeleine had been, but I believe what I believe."
While one recording of Ms Wandelt's recordings with Mrs McCann's voicemail stated: "What if there is a tiny probability that I am she? What then? Wouldn't that be significant for you?"
"I don't want money, I have a life here in Poland, I only wish to understand," the message continued.
The tribunal was told that via electronic messages, text messages and calls, Ms Wandelt demanded a genetic test, transmitted youth pictures to her phone in a effort to display a likeness to Mrs McCann's vanished daughter, and stated to have "flashbacks" from a early life with the McCanns.
Robert Jones, an intelligence analyst with law enforcement who collated the information, told the court there "showed no any responses" from Mrs McCann.
Ms Wandelt furthermore reached out to acquaintances of the McCanns, based on the call data.
On that date, Gerry McCann responded to a phone call from Ms Wandelt to his wife's phone, saying she had "the wrong phone."
That day Ms Wandelt deposited a voicemail on Mrs McCann's recording declaring "I will persist and I intend to demonstrate my point."
The court learned the co-defendant developed a association through digital means with Ms Wandelt prior to joining her on a appearance to the McCanns' residence in that area in last December.
Phone records showed Mrs Spragg had contacted via communication app to Mrs McCann to state the media had depicted Ms Wandelt as "emotionally disturbed" but that she should be treated respectfully in the period leading up to the visit to the village, that area, in that winter.
The court learned message exchanges between the two defendants, in last November, planning trying to obtain Mrs McCann's genetic material from her bins or from cutlery at a eating establishment.
"We need to make a stand," Mrs Spragg told Ms Wandelt.
On the night of the trip to their house, the defendant dispatched a text which stated: "We find ourselves sat outside the McCanns' house with our headlights off similar to investigators. I wanted to accomplish this with someone else I hadn't anticipated I would be involved in this with the McCanns."
The trial ongoing.
