Kate McCann has said it was hard to hear an alleged stalker refer to her as “Mum”, as she gave evidence in the trial of a woman who claimed to be her missing daughter.
Speaking from behind a screen, McCann told Leicester crown court she was left frightened and distressed by the actions of Julia Wandelt, 24, who is accused of a two-and-a-half-year harassment campaign.
The Polish national is accused of calling McCann “Mum” on a number of occasions while claiming to be Madeleine, who was three when she disappeared while on a family holiday in the Portuguese holiday resort of Praia da Luz in 2007. This included in a letter signed “Madeleine x”.
“That was an example of a thing that was getting to me,” McCann said. “It’s obvious the thing I want the most … is for Madeleine to be back and for Madeleine to be calling me 'Mum. And that was really stressful for me. Referring to me as ‘Mum’ is hard.”
The court was told that Wandelt and her co-defendant, Karen Spragg, 61, from Cardiff, bombarded McCann with messages and calls and waited for the family outside their home on the evening of 7 December 2024.
McCann described getting out of her car alone and hearing a voice in the darkness saying “Kate”. “I knew it was someone behind me but I didn’t know who it was,” she said. “I got a fright.”
Turning round, she recognised Wandelt “pretty quickly” from the pictures she had sent, she said. “She was quite vivid in my mind anyway because of all the communications,” she said.
“I got a fright and when I realised who it was I felt quite distressed. I think I’d been on edge anyway with all the communication and it just bubbled up.”
She said she managed to get inside the house despite Wandelt “putting her hands out trying to stop me closing the door”.
The pair had been asking for a DNA test, something McCann said she would have been unable to do without the involvement of the police, who had already ruled out the possibility that Wandelt was her daughter.
She said she had not wanted to indulge the womenbut admitted she had a moment of doubt.
“I think because [the alleged harassment] was getting to be so much, a little bit of my brain was saying ‘what if?’, even though I knew …
“I guess having seen a photograph of her, and she’s Polish, none of it made any sense. I can’t say what Madeleine looks like now, but if I saw a photo of her, I would recognise her. When I say there was a niggle, it was tiny.”
Madeleine’s father, Gerry McCann, was asked about the same evening in court on Wednesday afternoon. He had come home after his wife to be confronted by the defendants, which he described as “pretty horrible”.
He talked about being sure Wandelt was not his missing daughter and said that at one point he answered the phone to her. “I can’t remember my exact words but I said something like: ‘You’re not Madeleine, please stop calling,’” he said.
He struggled to speak through the emotion as he talked about trying to protect his other two children from the spotlight brought by Madeleine’s case.
“Social media can be really damaging, all the horrible things that have been written about us and nasty stuff online, so obviously we wanted to try to protect them from that,” he said.
Kate McCann had also been emotional earlier in the day when she said it was only when Wandelt contacted their grown-up daughter Amelie that they decided to pursue things through the police. Her voice broke as she said Amelie and her twin brother Sean had had to deal with a lot.
Wandelt began sobbing from the dock in what appeared to be an effort to ensure McCann could hear her. She was ushered to the back of the dock where she shouted: “Why are you doing this to me?” She was led through the door leading towards the cells and her crying could be heard echoing in the corridor.
Wandelt and Spragg deny the charges against them. The trial continues.
