A woman who harassed the family of Madeleine McCann and claimed to be the missing girl has been condemned to six months in jail.
Julia Wandelt, 24, from Lublin in Poland, was found guilty this morning of harassing the McCann family by sending emails, leaving voicemails, and turning up at their residence in Rothley in Leicestershire, between June 2022 and February this year.
The judge told Wandelt her “pestering” and “badgering” of the McCanns was “unwarranted” and “unkind”.
She told the defendant: “They were entitled to refuse to engage with you, particularly in the sad circumstances in which they live with the disappearance of Madeleine.
“They have suffered from that disappearance of their young child for many years; they are entitled to their privacy and to get on with their lives in the best way they can and to decide with whom and with whom not they will engage.
“Your constant pestering, badgering and eventually attendance at their home address on a dark evening in December was unwarranted, unkind, and as the jury have now found, criminal.”
Madeleine went missing in Portugal in 2007, and the case has never been solved.
Julia Wandelt was told that she was convicted of a “summary offence”, which meant she could only be imprisoned for six months.
Mrs Justice Cutts told her: “You have served more than that in the time that you have been on remand awaiting your trial.
“It’s a sentence I impose on you today.”
She was also made subject of a restraining order against Kate and Gerry McCann because she poses a “significant risk of the harassment of the McCanns in future”, her trial judge has said.
Since she received a notice of deportation, the Home Secretary, not the trial judge, will determine what happens next.
Julia Wandelt has been claiming to be Madeleine McCann for nearly two years. She said she first started to believe she was Madeleine in June 2022.
She began publicising on social media in early 2023, comparing images of herself as a child to Madeleine.
Her posts went viral, and on 27 March 2023, she emerged on the popular American talk show “Dr Phil”, where she reiterated her assertions.
The Crown put forward “unequivocal scientific evidence” from a forensic expert that shows Wandelt does not match Madeleine’s DNA profile, and she has no familial link to the McCanns.
Wandelt told Leicester Crown Court she had childhood memories of being with the McCann family, including playing ring-a-ring-a-roses and feeding Madeleine’s younger brother Sean, as well as memories of being abducted and abused.
It has now been established that Wandelt is not Madeleine McCann – DNA testing says so, and evidently, this lady is an extremely troubled woman.
Sadly, though, this lady genuinely believes that she’s Madeleine McCann, and clearly, she is seeking answers to something. Still, she clearly needs some serious therapy before she comes out of prison and pursues another missing child.
Or maybe she simply thought of becoming Maddie to gain notoriety and wealth.
Madeleine McCann had a blemish in one of her eyes, so it was rather evident from the start that this woman was not Maddie. You don’t actually have to be a rocket scientist to figure that one out.
Sadly, Madeleine McCann will never be found because the probabilities of a missing person being found are the highest in the first 24 hours, with about 75-80 per cent of missing adults and children found within this timeframe. The odds fall significantly with each passing day, though the first 72 hours are deemed crucial for a thorough investigation.
THE MONTHLY MOSQUITO 