Julia Wandelt, also known as Julia Wandel, has been accused of systematically persecuting the family of Madeleine McCann – the English girl who disappeared at the age of 3 in 2007 while on vacation with her parents in Portugal. This persecution allegedly involved letters, messages on WhatsApp and social media, and even physical intrusions into the private lives of the little girl’s parents.
The 23-year-old Polish woman, who falsely claims to be the missing child at the center of an international case since 2023, now faces 4 charges of stalking in the UK, spanning from January 3, 2024, to February 15 of this year.
Dubbed the ‘fake Maddie’ by the media, Wandelt was arrested by British police at Bristol airport on Wednesday along with a 60-year-old woman (later released on bail). Today, she appeared in a court in Leicestershire, the same county where Gerry and Kate McCann, the parents of the vanished girl, reside, for a hearing where her remand in custody was confirmed.
According to BBC News, the woman visited the family’s home on two occasions, May 2 and December 7, causing “fear and distress” to the McCanns. It remains unclear what drives Wandelt to harass the already deeply affected parents of Maddie, with speculations ranging from mythomania, frustration, to a thirst for visibility on the part of the 23-year-old who, at the time of her arrest, had mentioned wanting to visit a friend in Cardiff.
Her unfounded claims began in February 2023 with the creation of an Instagram account where she asserted to be the missing child based on certain elements, including a photo showing alleged similarities between her and the little girl. She had apologized to the McCanns in January 2024 in a social media post after a DNA test excluded her as the adult Madeleine. However, her attention-seeking behavior persisted even after this confirmation. She appeared on the sensational talk show Dr. Phil in the US, and mainstream media also gave her coverage. Last year, in a BBC Radio podcast ‘Do You Hate Me?’, she revealed suspicions about her identity since the age of 20 due to her family’s inability to fill in the gaps in her childhood memories.
The mysterious case of Maddie has garnered significant international attention, attracting interest and even obsession from individuals seeking visibility, and has had repercussions across various countries. The main suspect in the girl’s disappearance remains the convicted German Christian Brueckner, cleared in Germany last October of sexual violence charges involving minors between 2000 and 2017 in Portugal, unrelated to the girl’s case.
Brueckner is currently serving a seven-year sentence for the rape of an elderly American tourist in Praia da Luz, the same town in the Algarve region where Maddie vanished. So far, the attempts by the German prosecutors to bring Brueckner to trial for the girl’s disappearance, described as a “dangerous sadistic psychopathic repeat sex offender,” have not yielded results.
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