{"id":136860,"date":"2025-10-21T21:25:13","date_gmt":"2025-10-21T21:25:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/136860\/"},"modified":"2025-10-21T21:25:13","modified_gmt":"2025-10-21T21:25:13","slug":"alleged-mccann-stalker-had-to-be-convinced-she-was-not-three-missing-girls","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/136860\/","title":{"rendered":"Alleged McCann stalker \u2018had to be convinced she was not three missing girls\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Polish woman<\/strong> accused of stalking the family of Madeleine McCann<\/strong> had to be convinced by a missing person charity<\/strong> that she was not three different girls who have disappeared<\/strong>, a court<\/strong> has heard.<\/p>\n

Jurors at Leicester Crown Court were told that Julia Wandelt, 24, \u201creturned with a new story\u201d weeks after being told by the charity, which is based in Poland, that she was not a child who disappeared in Germany.<\/p>\n

Iwona Modliborska, who helped to set up the charity a decade ago, gave evidence via video-link assisted by a Polish interpreter on Tuesday and told the court Wandelt began sending messages to the organisation\u2019s Facebook pages in January or February 2023.<\/p>\n

\"MadeleineJurors heard Julia Wandelt (left) and Karen Spragg are on trial after turning up at the McCanns\u2019 home Photo: PA<\/p>\n

Wandelt listened in the dock beside her co-defendant Karen Spragg, 61, while Ms Modliborska told the court it was \u201cnot easy\u201d to convince Wandelt she was not Madeleine.<\/p>\n

It is alleged that Wandelt peddled the myth she was the three-year-old, who went missing during a family holiday in Portugal in 2007, while stalking Kate and Gerry McCann between June 2022 and February this year.<\/p>\n

Speaking about the first contact from Wandelt, Ms Modliborska said: \u201cShe wanted to find out about DNA tests, how it worked and how much it would cost.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor some time she drew comparisons between herself and another girl from Germany, Inga Gehricke.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe was asking if she could be that girl and as far as we were concerned we were asking her why she thought she might be that girl.<\/p>\n

\u201cHer biological parents did not want to give her access to her birth certificate and she claimed that when she asked questions about her early childhood, she did not get any answers from them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ms Modliborska told the court she did not believe Wandelt, from Lubin in south-west Poland, was Inga, adding: \u201cWe quickly made her stop believing in this because something did not agree with the description.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt didn\u2019t take long because very quickly we convinced her that she was wrong. Within weeks, she returned with a new story.”<\/p>\n

\u201cA few weeks later, she wrote about Acacia Bishop to us. She sent photographs of herself and Acacia Bishop to compare.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere were no similarities and there were no marks specifically that could really indicate it was her.\u201d<\/p>\n

The court heard that Acacia was kidnapped in 2003.<\/p>\n

Ms Modliborska told the court Wandelt \u201c1,000% could not be\u201d Acacia, and the defendant \u201cvery quickly gave up\u201d on her claim to be her.<\/p>\n

She added: \u201cThat was the end of the conversation.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"MadeleineKaren Spragg is charged with one count of stalking. Photo: PA<\/p>\n

The witness told the jury that Wandelt then started messaging the charity claiming to be Madeleine, with comparisons of their eyes and faces.<\/p>\n

Ms Modliborska said the defendant told her that she thought she might have been kidnapped.<\/p>\n

She told the court: \u201cJulia was told that she was a quiet girl and did not speak a lot\u2026 It was difficult to tell if she could speak Polish.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"Dna<\/p>\n

World<\/p>\n

DNA samples taken by police \u2018conclusively prove alleged stalker not Madeleine\u2019<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

The witness added: \u201cI knew she was not similar to Madeleine. I tried to convince her again but she was well-prepared and it was not easy.<\/p>\n

\u201cI knew from the very start that it was rubbish. I tried to make her be aware that she was wrong. She did not accept that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wandelt and Spragg, of Caerau Court Road in Caerau, Cardiff, both deny one count of stalking.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Polish woman accused of stalking the family of Madeleine McCann had to be convinced by a missing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":136861,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[9,10,13,14,6,11,12,15,16,5,7,8,65,66,67],"class_list":{"0":"post-136860","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-breakingnews","10":"tag-featured-news","11":"tag-featurednews","12":"tag-headlines","13":"tag-latest-news","14":"tag-latestnews","15":"tag-main-news","16":"tag-mainnews","17":"tag-news","18":"tag-top-stories","19":"tag-topstories","20":"tag-world","21":"tag-world-news","22":"tag-worldnews"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136860","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=136860"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136860\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/136861"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=136860"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=136860"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=136860"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}