The mystery of Madeleine McCann’s disappearance has haunted the world for nearly two decades, and this autumn, it found a new—and deeply emotional—chapter inside the walls of Leicester Crown Court. Julia Wandelt, a 24-year-old woman from Lubin, Poland, stood at the center of a high-profile stalking trial, her name splashed across headlines for claiming she might be the missing British child. Her testimony, at times tearful and raw, has gripped the public and reignited painful questions for all involved.
On December 7, 2024, in a scene described by multiple outlets including CrispNG, Wandelt came face to face with Kate McCann, Madeleine’s mother, outside the family’s home in Rothley, Leicestershire. As Wandelt recounted on the witness stand, “I said her name, and she turned around. She started crying straight away—I got too upset.” Both women broke down in tears, the weight of years of grief and uncertainty hanging between them. Wandelt said she had hoped to show Kate McCann a DNA report to prove she was Madeleine. Instead, the encounter quickly soured. According to Wandelt, Kate McCann refused to engage and warned she would call the police. “She said she would call the police, and I told her she could if she wanted,” Wandelt testified. “I didn’t mean harm. I just wanted to talk.”
The prosecution alleges that Wandelt, along with her co-defendant Karen Spragg, 61, of Cardiff, orchestrated a campaign of harassment against the McCanns. The court heard that this campaign included a barrage of emails, phone calls—sometimes more than 60 in a single day—and repeated attempts to contact the family at their home. Both Wandelt and Spragg deny the charges of stalking between June 2022 and February 2025, insisting their actions were motivated by a genuine desire to solve a mystery and, in Wandelt’s case, to find the truth about her own identity.
The story took a decisive turn earlier this year when Wandelt was arrested at Bristol Airport. DNA samples taken at that time, according to police testimony referenced in CrispNG and BBC reporting, conclusively proved she is not Madeleine McCann, who vanished from a Portuguese holiday apartment in 2007 at just three years old. Yet, Wandelt told the jury her doubts about her identity have never fully faded, the result of a troubled upbringing marked by abuse and lingering questions about her parentage.
“I’m not a liar or an attention seeker,” Wandelt insisted in court. “I just wanted the truth about who I am.” She described a childhood with limited memories, mostly of abuse at the hands of her step-grandfather. “I realised I only remember abuse. My friends, they could remember things,” she explained, adding that her parents’ refusal to provide a DNA test only deepened her suspicions. “It made me feel a bit surprised because I didn’t expect them to refuse, especially because at that time I still dealt with a lot of emotional problems.”
Wandelt’s search for answers led her to online databases of missing people after learning her abuser had been involved in kidnapping. That’s when she discovered the Madeleine McCann case. “There were not actually a lot of people my age or around my age, but that is how I found Madeleine,” she told her barrister, Tom Price KC. She also noted that a sketch of a suspect in the McCann investigation bore a striking resemblance to her abuser, even sharing the same surname—a detail she described as a “big factor.”
Throughout her testimony, Wandelt has rejected accusations that she sought attention or financial gain. “No,” she said simply when asked if that was her motivation. “I just wanted to find out who I am. I could not be able to heal from my trauma if I never fully know who I am, what happened to me and if my parents are my parents.”
The court heard that Wandelt and Spragg developed a close friendship online, with Spragg becoming a daily companion and supporter. Together, they traveled from Cardiff to Leicestershire to present what Wandelt believed was evidence to the McCanns. Jurors were told of WhatsApp exchanges between the pair discussing even the possibility of going through the McCanns’ bins to try to obtain a DNA sample. Under cross-examination, Wandelt denied ever acting on this idea, saying, “No,” when asked if they had actually gone near the bins. She later characterized the discussion as “joking.”
After delivering a letter to the McCanns’ address, Wandelt and Spragg went to Beaumont Leys Police Station, where Wandelt asked for a copy of the DNA results. Det Con Draycott told her the DNA had not been tested, explaining, “We can’t spend public money on something like that.” This response, Wandelt said, left her frustrated, particularly given the large resources allocated to the ongoing investigation into Madeleine’s disappearance. “If they have resources, why not do a DNA test?” she questioned in court.
On April 1, 2025, police finally contacted Wandelt to inform her that DNA tests had conclusively proved she was not Madeleine. She described the timing as “disrespectful,” noting it was April Fool’s Day. Despite the results, Wandelt told the court she still feels “50-50” about the possibility she could be Madeleine, a testament to her ongoing struggle with identity and trauma.
Wandelt’s vulnerability and history of mental health struggles were laid bare in court. She spoke of depression, self-harm, and a suicide attempt following childhood abuse. She also described feeling “fooled, duped and conned” by an American woman named Fia Johansson, who had offered to help her. Most worryingly, Wandelt recounted an incident in prison just days before her trial when “someone slipped something” into her drink, leaving her fearful for her safety and unsupported by prison officers. “I have been concerned about my safety since I told my story,” she said.
Support for Wandelt has come from unexpected places. She testified that a friend of Spragg’s, Steven Dempster—whose wife was a victim in the UK’s Post Office scandal—offered to pay for her DNA test, seeing parallels in their experiences as victims of miscarriages of justice. However, Dempster made it clear he would not help if Wandelt contacted the McCanns again.
Throughout the proceedings, Wandelt maintained she never intended to cause distress to the McCanns. “If Kate McCann told me to leave her alone after hearing me out, I would have respected that,” she said. She described the emotional encounter outside the McCanns’ home as one where, in her view, Kate’s tears were a response to the potential hope of finding her daughter, not distress caused by Wandelt’s actions. “From what I saw… the moment she started crying was actually the moment she saw me. The impression I got… was that she was crying because of the emotions—maybe the chance of me being her daughter.”
As the trial continues, the world’s attention remains fixed on Leicester Crown Court. For some, the proceedings are a painful reminder of the enduring agony faced by the McCanns. For others, they highlight the complex intersections of trauma, identity, and the desperate search for answers in a case that, even after all these years, offers little closure. The story of Julia Wandelt is not the solution to the Madeleine McCann mystery, but it is a sobering reflection on the human costs of unresolved tragedy and the lengths to which some will go in pursuit of the truth.
