🔗 Share this article

A female accused with pursuing Kate McCann apparently recorded her a phone message which questioned: "what if I am Madeleine?"

The defendant, twenty-four, who witnesses stated has persistently declared she was the disappeared Madeleine McCann, and her co-defendant are facing charges accused with harassing Kate and Gerry McCann between June 2022 and February 2025.

On Monday, Leicester Crown Court heard call records and evidence obtained from phones logged Ms Wandelt persistently asking Madeleine's mother for a DNA test throughout the past two years.

Madeleine's disappearance in 2007 - when she was three years old during a family holiday in Portugal - is one of the most widely reported child disappearance cases and remains unsolved.

'I Don't Want Money'

Another phone message, presented in court, captured Ms Wandelt stating: "I realize I'm overweight and unattractive like Madeleine was, but I feel what I know."

While another instance of Ms Wandelt's recordings with Mrs McCann's recording stated: "What if there is a small chance that I'm her? Then what? Isn't that crucial for you?"

"I do not need money, I possess a living here in Poland, I just want to discover," she added.

The panel was advised that by means of electronic messages, text messages and calls, Ms Wandelt asked for a genetic test, transmitted youth pictures to her phone in a attempt to display a similarity to Mrs McCann's vanished daughter, and stated to have "recollections" from a childhood with the McCanns.

An intelligence analyst, an investigator with the police force who gathered the information, informed the court there "seemed to lack any responses" from Mrs McCann.

Ms Wandelt also contacted acquaintances of the McCanns, according to the phone records.

On 9 October 2024, Mr McCann picked up a phone call from Ms Wandelt to his wife's phone, saying she had "the wrong phone."

On that occasion Ms Wandelt deposited a message on Mrs McCann's recording stating "I will persist and I will prove my claim."

The court was informed the co-defendant struck up a relationship through digital means with Ms Wandelt prior to accompanying her on a visit to the McCanns' home in the county in last December.

Phone records showed Mrs Spragg had reached out using WhatsApp to Mrs McCann to say the press had portrayed Ms Wandelt as "emotionally disturbed" but that she should be taken seriously in the months leading up to the appearance to the village, that area, in last December.

The court was told message exchanges between the two defendants, in last November, discussing endeavoring to get Mrs McCann's DNA samples from her bins or from cutlery at a restaurant.

"We need to make a stand," the co-defendant advised Ms Wandelt.

On the evening of the visit to their home, Mrs Spragg transmitted a text which said: "We find ourselves sitting near the McCanns' residence with our vehicle dark resembling detectives. I had hoped to accomplish this with someone else I never thought I would be engaged in this with the McCanns."

The case proceeds.