Madeleine McCann’s brother and sister have described being stressed and scared by their “creepy” and “deeply disturbing” interactions with an alleged stalker who claimed to be their missing sister.
Giving evidence at the trial of Julia Wandelt, 24, who stands accused of targeting the family in a two-and-a-half-year harassment campaign, the twins Amelie and Sean McCann recalled the defendant contacting them a number of times saying she was Madeleine, who disappeared during a family holiday in Portugal in 2007 when she was three and they were two.
Appearing via video link, Amelie said the persistence of Wandelt, a Polish national, in contacting her on various social media platforms and writing letters to her home was “quite scary because you don’t know what she’ll do next”.
Messages to her from Wandelt were read to the court in which the alleged stalker described memories of being in the McCann household that she said had been recovered under hypnosis.
“It’s quite disturbing that she’s coming up with these supposed memories, even though she’s not Madeleine,” Amelie told the court. “It makes me feel quite uncomfortable because it is quite creepy that she’s giving those details and trying to play with my emotions and memories, saying that something happened.”
She said she was not convinced by Wandelt’s claims to be Madeleine. “I had a feeling there would be something about her I would maybe recognise or believe,” she said, but the “sound of desperation” in her messages “puts a lot of stress on me as an individual”.
“I didn’t find it persuasive, but it makes you feel quite guilty because she’s so desperate to connect,” she said, adding: “I knew deep down it wasn’t Madeleine.”
The court heard how Wandelt had created pictures of herself and Amelie together as children, which the prosecution said earlier in the week had been made with ChatGPT. Some of the pictures were sent through social media, while others were printed and included in a letter to Amelie that arrived at the McCanns’ home.
“I didn’t like it, it made me feel very uncomfortable,” she said. “She had clearly edited the pictures to make me look more like her, which was quite disturbing. I knew I didn’t look like that, I knew it had been changed.”
She also spoke about the effect of the alleged stalking on her mother, Kate, who gave evidence on Wednesday about being confronted at home by Wandelt and her co-defendant, Karen Spragg, 61, who is from Cardiff.
“I think my mum found it the hardest. [She] was harassed by Julia more than the rest of us and I think it definitely took its toll on her and her wellbeing,” she said. “It’s upsetting when someone’s begging you to believe them and playing with your emotions, to the point you are questioning yourself and doubting yourself. And I think my mum really struggled with that. Her saying ‘I’m your daughter’.”
She said her mother had been “very stressed and on edge”.
In a witness statement read to the court, Sean McCann said he personally had not been too badly affected by Wandelt’s alleged stalking, but he had been upset she was attracting online attention, with people saying “nasty and unfair” things about his parents.
If Wandelt was not mentally ill and was “fully aware she is not Madeleine, yet makes these claims she is, that will be very upsetting for me”, he said. “I do not believe she is my sister. The fact Julia is doing this has caused me a great deal of stress and I find it deeply disturbing.”
Wandelt and Spragg deny stalking the McCann family.
The trial continues.
