Julia Wendelt , the 24- year -old Polish woman who has been on trial for a month on stalking charges for falsely claiming to be Madeleine “Maddie” McCann — the little girl who disappeared in 2007, at the age of three, while on holiday with her parents in Praia de Luz, in the Algarve, southern Portugal (presumed dead for some time, according to investigators) — has been found guilty at Leicester Crown Court in central England.
According to the prosecutor's reconstruction , Wendelt allegedly stalked the McCann family for months, even going so far as to show up at their home. She was arrested last February at Bristol Airport, just after arriving from Wroclaw, with the intent—according to the investigation—of reconnecting. The young woman allegedly constructed a false identity , altering images to accentuate a supposed resemblance to Maddie, and in 2023, opening a dedicated Instagram account, through which she began contacting the girl's parents and sister. The entire operation, according to the prosecution, was motivated by mythomania and financial interests. Karen Spragg, 61, of Cardiff, believed to be Wendelt's accomplice, was also tried. The final sentence and likely restraining order will be issued by the judge at a later date.
Julia Wendelt, whose attempt to impersonate Maddie McCann was definitively disproved in the trial based on a DNA test, was convicted of harassment, but acquitted of stalking due to the lack of evidence of blackmail . She was sentenced to six months in prison (already served in pre-trial detention), as well as a restraining order requiring her expulsion from the UK and forced repatriation to Poland, which will bar her from future entry into Leicestershire (where McCann lives). The 24-year-old Polish woman was heard crying during the reading of the sentence, delivered an hour after the guilty plea by Judge Johannah Cutts.
Co-defendant Karen Spragg, a 61-year-old Welsh woman, was also convicted of aiding and abetting and acquitted of the specific crime of stalking. Meanwhile, the McCann case remains unsolved against the backdrop of the recent release from prison in Germany of Christian Brückner, a 48-year-old German who had previously lived in Portugal and who had been identified for years as the only known suspect . The man—a repeat sexual predator—had recently completed a sentence in his homeland for abusing a 72-year-old woman in a separate legal case, unrelated to the investigation into Maddie's fate. And while he remains suspected by the prosecution of possible involvement in the disappearance of the English girl, he has not been nailed by sufficient investigative evidence to warrant indictment.
(Unioneonline)