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A suspected stalker who insisted to be Madeleine McCann was excluded after a confidential DNA test definitively confirmed she was not the long-lost child, police have revealed in court.

Targeted Behavior Against McCann Family

Julia Wandelt, 24, is accused of a campaign of harassment against the family of Madeleine, who disappeared from a Portuguese resort in Portugal in 2007 at the age of three.

The woman from Poland overwhelmed Kate and Gerry McCann and their older offspring, Sean and Amelie, with countless communications, messages, voicemails and letters between 2022 and earlier this year, and appeared at their home requesting a DNA test, jurors learned during proceedings.

Investigation Details

Testifying on Tuesday, the senior investigating officer on Operation Grange, said he had acted outside normal guidelines to test Wandelt “intending she may stop her behavior towards the McCann family”.

The senior officer said 13 people had previously claimed to be the abducted child but that: “We would not take DNA unless we believed that person was Madeleine because I did not want setting a precedent.

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

“I truly possess major concerns about reaching out to the family to say I aim to take DNA from an individual – that could have given them false hope. It could have been highly distressing and challenging for the family.”

DNA Comparison

He said authorities had earlier determined Wandelt not to be Madeleine because of a lack of resemblance and that she was older by two years than the child. But, he said, after discovering Leicester police were going to take into custody Wandelt on criminal accusations, he “determined that the DNA would be taken during detention”.

He declared: “Testing was conducted. It definitively established that Julia Wandelt is definitely not Madeleine McCann.”

Court Proceedings

Proceedings revealed that in April this year, the officer met with Wandelt under arrest and stated to her that her DNA had been matched against Madeleine’s and that the samples did not match. Jurors were told he told Wandelt while speaking with her: “You are not Madeleine McCann.”

Evidence showed that while they spoke, Wandelt asked: “Do you really want to find Madeleine?”, and the detective told the jury he replied: “Yes.”

He said even with the results, he believed Wandelt “might claim we have tampered with the sample”, stating: “There was a possibility she would refuse to acknowledge she cannot be Madeleine even when provided with scientific proof.”

Emotional Distress

In prior court sessions, the court heard how the family were left scared and traumatized by their “unnerving” and “extremely troubling” interactions with Wandelt and her co-defendant Karen Spragg, 61, from Cardiff, as the two women attempted to insist on a DNA test.

The jury were told how the defendants made ever more strange plans” to collect Kate McCann’s DNA, which included going through the McCanns’ bins and taking forks from restaurants that the family visited.

Wandelt and Spragg both refute one count of stalking. Proceedings are ongoing.