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A suspected stalker who insisted to be the abducted child was eliminated after a covert DNA test established beyond doubt she was not the long-lost child, authorities disclosed in court.

Stalking Allegations Towards McCann Family

Julia Wandelt, twenty-four, is alleged to have conducted a stalking campaign against the parents of Madeleine, who went missing from a holiday destination in Portugal in 2007 when she was three.

The woman from Poland overwhelmed Kate and Gerry McCann and their grown-up kids, Sean and Amelie, with hundreds of calls, messages, voicemails and letters from 2022 until recently, and visited their home insisting on a DNA test, jurors learned during proceedings.

Police Testimony

Providing testimony on Tuesday, the senior investigating officer on Madeleine's disappearance, stated he had acted outside normal guidelines to test Wandelt “in the hope she may stop her behavior towards the McCann family”.

The senior officer said over a dozen persons had earlier asserted to be Madeleine McCann but that: “We would not take DNA unless we believed that person was Madeleine because I wished to avoid setting a precedent.

“If it got out in the media I had taken DNA from a person quite likely not to be Madeleine, I was concerned I would have had a lot of people coming forward saying ‘I’m Madeleine’.

“I sincerely hold major concerns about approaching the family to say I aim to take DNA from an individual – that could have given them false hope. It could have been very traumatic and hard for the family.”

Genetic Testing

He said authorities had already judged Wandelt not to be Madeleine due to a lack of resemblance and that she was older by two years than the missing girl. But, he said, after learning Leicester police intended to detain Wandelt on harassment allegations, he “decided that the DNA would be taken when she was apprehended”.

He stated: “Analysis occurred. It definitively established that Julia Wandelt cannot be Madeleine McCann.”

Court Proceedings

The court heard that in April this year, the officer visited Wandelt under arrest and informed her that her DNA had been tested alongside Madeleine’s and that the profiles did not match. The jury heard he told Wandelt at that meeting: “You are not Madeleine McCann.”

Evidence showed that throughout their discussion, Wandelt asked: “Do you sincerely wish to find Madeleine?”, and the detective told the jury he answered: “Yes.”

He said despite the test, he believed Wandelt “might claim we have tampered with the sample”, adding: “There was a possibility she would never accept she is not Madeleine even when provided with scientific proof.”

Emotional Distress

In prior court sessions, jurors learned how the family were left terrified and distressed by their “disturbing” and “extremely troubling” interactions with Wandelt and her alleged accomplice Karen Spragg, 61, from Cardiff, as the two women attempted to insist on a DNA test.

Jurors heard how both women made ever more strange plans” to collect Kate McCann’s DNA, which included rummaging in the McCanns’ bins and stealing utensils from restaurants that the family visited.

The accused women both contest one count of stalking. Proceedings are ongoing.