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A Polish national who asserted to be Madeleine McCann "maintained that false narrative" and stalked the child's family by dispatching electronic messages, making phone calls and turning up at their residence, a court has heard.

The first defendant and the second defendant conducted a "campaign of harassment", Leicester Crown Court heard, and in one defendant's situation, that lasted for thirty months.

On Monday, jurors were told the defendant consistently asserted she was Madeleine and was abducted and taken to Poland.

Ms Spragg and Ms Wandelt each contest a charge of harassment resulting in serious alarm and anxiety to Madeleine's parents between June 2022 and early this year.

Madeleine's disappearance in the year 2007 - at the three years old during a family holiday in Portugal - is among the most extensively covered missing child cases and continues unresolved.

Legal counsel also spoke of the global attention that the disappearance had directed toward the family.

"One of many devastating outcomes for the McCann family has been their constant inability to escape the glare of media attention that accompanied that tragedy.

"The attention they have experienced has sometimes lacked compassionate, at times quite the opposite.

"There continues to exist a group of individuals who continue to fail to acknowledge their plight and perpetuate unfounded claims.

"Unfortunately, these accused individuals belong to that latter group."

Increasing Actions

Testimony revealed from June 2022, the defendant had started telling to "anyone who would care to listen" that she was the missing child.

Legal authorities said that, in January 2023, Ms Wandelt was in communication with a organization in Poland created to help with historic missing persons cases and provide assistance and guidance to people looking for individuals who had gone missing.

According to the prosecutor, Ms Wandelt first claimed she was the disappeared child from Germany.

But after these assertions were ruled out by the organization, the accused then contacted the charity with a belief she could be another missing child - a missing baby from the American state in the United States - before messaging them about her insistence she was the British missing child.

'Did Not Deter'

Her belief escalated to an effort to contact the hospital where both the McCanns worked.

A lengthy telephone conversation to the switchboard resulted in a report back from the health service representative to the investigation team, the UK inquiry into the disappearance.

Court proceedings revealed Ms Wandelt made further attempts to contact the authorities and then Mr McCann directly via email in mid-2023.

In one email, she wrote: "It's possible I am your child, there's a chance I am the missing girl."

She continued people were "attempting to conceal the case" and asserted there were resemblances between her and Madeleine, including having scars in the same places.

But her attempts went without response, which the prosecutor said "failed to discourage" Ms Wendelt - who then made contact with the family's other daughter Amelie via social media.

Informing her she was her "only hope", she sent doctored images to show they were "somehow related" and claimed to have memories of events prior to disappearance, the court heard.

These assertions, the proceedings revealed, were repeated in 2024 when the defendant is alleged to have "consistently" contacted the mother's cell phone over the course of a day - calling her "mommy", asserting memory of feeding Madeleine's younger brother the boy, of playing ring a roses in the rear yard of the residence in Rothley, Leicestershire, and of the night Madeleine was abducted.

In a communication, she said: "I remember you visited my bedroom before the incident, touched my hair and said 'I love you and I'll locate you'."

Court proceedings of Ms Wendalt, of Jana Kochanowskiego in Lubin, Poland, and the second defendant, of Caerau Court Road in the Welsh city, continues.