Alleged Stalker Asked: 'However What If I Could Be Madeleine?'
A woman accused with stalking Kate McCann allegedly left her a voicemail message which posed: "imagine I am Madeleine?"
Julia Wandelt, 24, who a jury heard has persistently claimed she was the missing Madeleine McCann, and her co-defendant are standing trial charged with harassing Kate and Gerry McCann between June 2022 and February this year.
On Monday, Leicester Crown Court learned call records and data obtained from phones logged Ms Wandelt persistently requesting Madeleine's mother for a genetic test throughout 2023 and 2024.
Madeleine's disappearance in 2007 - when she was three years old during a trip in Portugal - is one of the most covered investigations and remains unresolved.
'I Don't Want Money'
A separate voicemail, played in court, captured Ms Wandelt declaring: "I know I'm fat and unattractive like Madeleine had been, but I feel what I feel."
While one recording of Ms Wandelt's one-way conversations with Mrs McCann's answerphone stated: "Imagine there is a tiny probability that I'm her? Then what? Isn't that crucial for you?"
"I don't want money, I maintain a life here in Poland, I just want to understand," the message continued.
The tribunal was advised that by means of electronic messages, mobile messages and phone calls, Ms Wandelt asked for a genetic test, sent youth pictures to her phone in a bid to demonstrate a resemblance to Mrs McCann's vanished daughter, and stated to have "memories" from a early life with the McCanns.
An intelligence analyst, an investigator with the police force who collated the evidence, informed the court there "showed no any answers" from Mrs McCann.
Ms Wandelt furthermore reached out to family friends of the McCanns, as per the call data.
On that date, Gerry McCann picked up a phone call from Ms Wandelt to his wife's phone, stating she had "a wrong number."
That day Ms Wandelt left a message on Mrs McCann's answerphone stating "I won't give up and I will prove my claim."
The court heard Mrs Spragg developed a connection via internet with Ms Wandelt before assisting her on a trip to the McCanns' home in that area in that winter.
Phone records showed Mrs Spragg had contacted via messaging service to Mrs McCann to state the media had depicted Ms Wandelt as "mentally unstable" but that she should be treated respectfully in the months before the trip to Rothley, the county, in last December.
The court heard communications between the two individuals, in last November, considering endeavoring to acquire Mrs McCann's DNA samples from her trash or from cutlery at a eating establishment.
"We must assert ourselves," the co-defendant told Ms Wandelt.
On the night of the trip to their residence, the defendant sent a message which expressed: "We are sat near the McCanns' residence with our vehicle dark resembling investigators. I wanted to achieve this with another person I hadn't anticipated I would be doing that with the McCanns."
The case proceeds.
