Alleged stalking ‘did not impact McCanns lives’

The alleged stalking campaign of a woman who believes she is missing Madeleine McCann had little real impact on the day-to-day lives of Gerry and Kate McCann, her defence team has argued.

Addressing the trial at Leicester Crown Court, Tom Price KC, representing Polish national Julia Wandelt, said his client only approached the McCanns as a last resort.

He said: “It’s a tragedy of this case that the McCanns have had to live with interference in their lives since 2007, but when you examine what impact her actions have had you will see it wasn’t that much.”

Both Miss Wandelt and co-accused Karen Spragg deny stalking Gerry and Kate McCann.

Mr Price said the first contact made by his client to Glenfield Hospital and Operation Grange in June 2022 did not affect the McCanns, and was made with a genuine hope to answer “complex questions about her background”.

He said Miss Wandelt had contacted 23 different organisations including in the UK, Poland, and Portugal including police and Interpol, missing persons charities and the Find Madeleine website.

He said: “When she contacted the McCanns, she had tried everyone else. This is a woman at the end of her tether.”

He argued the Metropolitan Police’s Operation Grange did not treat her approach seriously, with his client ruled out within 24 hours of contacting them.

“She just wants the certainty of a DNA test, it could have been done, it was not done,” he said.

There was no concern relayed to police by the McCanns when they became aware of Miss Wandelt’s claims through a routine operational meeting, Mr Price said.

After messaging became direct, Mr Price said there was never “malevolence” and that all the numbers she contacted were publicly available after being leaked in the Portuguese police files.

He said: “We never see, do we, any threats of violence, there’s no swearing, nothing of that type.

“This is not wicked. This is the confused behaviour of a rather sad and pathetic young woman.”

When she visited the public vigil for Madeleine McCann in May 2024, she was “polite” he said, and the following day she visited a police station, “not the behaviour of a woman who’s done something wrong”.

When Kate McCann raised the matter with police after her visit to Rothley, it was two years on, Mr Price said, while police had also taken no formal action.

Before the visit to the McCann’s home in December 2024, the victims were “just getting on with things” he said.

He argued that when confronting the McCanns at their family home alongside co-defendant Karen Spragg, his client “didn’t shout, didn’t swear” and when Mrs Spragg raised her voice “she said don’t speak to her like that”.

He added that “half an hour later” the victims had “waited for them to clear off” and were “in a car going to a party”.

Mr Price said: “It doesn’t sound as though it is something that is disrupting their lifestyle.”

He said Miss Wandelt’s actions had not been for any personal gain, other than to find out her identity.

“She’s somebody who’s absolutely ripe to be taken advantage of. And what has she got out of it? All she’s got out of it is a period in custody and a restraining order,” Mr Price said.

Karen Spragg’s solicitor Simon Russell Flint KC said his client’s “sole purpose once she became involved was to find out whether Julia Wandelt might be the missing Madeleine McCann, the abducted Madeleine McCann, the lost Madeleine McCann”.

After reaching out following Miss Wandelt’s appearance on a YouTube broadcast in September 2024, she “supported” and “believed” Miss Wandelt and wanted to know the truth of her claims – but did not “encourage”, said Mr Russell Flint.

He said: “If you ask how a child can disappear, seemingly into thin air, are you then a conspiracy theorist?”

He said Mrs Spragg’s “purpose was not to cause upset to the McCanns” and when she became involved in 2024, there was no DNA evidence to disprove her theory.

Mr Russell Flint said: “It was not until after Julia Wandelt’s arrest, nearly three years after she had first asked and months and months after others started asking, police finally did what they had been asked.

“Before that nobody could have stood up and said with complete certainty and said Julia Wandelt is not Madeleine McCann, and that’s a real irony of this case.

“It’s the very test that Julia Wandelt, Karen Spragg and others had been begging to be carried out.”

Mr Russell Flint said it was “obvious” that his client posed no risk to the McCanns, as she was only arrested when Miss Wandelt flew back into to the UK in February.

Julia Wandelt, 24, of Jana Kochanowskiego in Lubin, Poland, and Karen Spragg, 61, of Caerau Court Road, Cardiff, deny stalking the McCanns causing serious alarm and distress between June 2022 to February 2025.

The trial continues.