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An individual from Poland who claimed to be the missing girl "pursued that myth" and harassed the child's family by dispatching electronic messages, placing telephone calls and appearing 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 occurred over two and a half years.

At the trial's commencement, the court heard Ms Wandelt repeatedly claimed she was Madeleine and was abducted and taken to Poland.

Ms Spragg and the second accused each contest a count of stalking resulting in serious alarm and distress to Kate and Gerry McCann between June 2022 and early this year.

Madeleine's disappearance in the year 2007 - at the age of three during a vacation in the European country - is among the most widely reported missing child cases and continues unresolved.

The prosecutor also mentioned the international focus that the disappearance had brought on the parents.

"Among numerous tragic consequences for Madeleine's parents has been their ongoing struggle to avoid the spotlight of media attention that accompanied that incident.

"The attention they have experienced has sometimes lacked sympathetic, sometimes quite the opposite.

"There remains a number of people who persist in refusing to recognize their plight and spread conspiracy theories.

"Regrettably, these accused individuals fall into that second category."

Increasing Actions

The court heard 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 offer support and guidance to people looking for individuals who had gone missing.

Based on court testimony, Ms Wandelt initially said she was the disappeared child Inga Gehricke.

But after these assertions were dismissed by the charity, Ms Wendalt then reached out to the group with a belief she could be Acacia Bishop - a missing baby from Utah in the United States - before messaging them about her persistent claim she was the British missing child.

'Failed to Stop'

Her belief escalated to an attempt to call the medical facility where the parents were employed.

A lengthy telephone conversation to the switchboard resulted in a report back from the NHS trust's communications manager to Operation Grange, the UK inquiry into the disappearance.

The jury was told Ms Wandelt made further attempts to contact the authorities and then the father personally through electronic mail in mid-2023.

In one email, she stated: "I could be your child, it's possible I'm her."

She continued people were "trying to cover up the story" and claimed there were resemblances between her and the child, including having scars in the same places.

But her efforts went unanswered, which the prosecutor said "did not deter" Ms Wendelt - who then made communication with Madeleine's younger sister the sibling via online platforms.

Telling her she was her "sole chance", she transmitted altered photographs to show they were "somehow related" and claimed to have recollections of life before the abduction, the trial was told.

These assertions, the court heard, were repeated in 2024 when the defendant is accused of "repeatedly" messaged Mrs McCann's cell phone over the course of a day - calling her "mommy", asserting memory of giving food to Madeleine's younger brother the boy, of playing ring a roses in the rear yard of the family's home in Rothley, Leicestershire, and of the evening Madeleine was abducted.

In a communication, she said: "I remember you visited my room before the abduction, rubbed my head and said 'I love you and I will find you'."

Court proceedings of Ms Wendalt, of an address in the Polish city, Poland, and Ms Spragg, of Caerau Court Road in Cardiff, proceeds.