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A Polish national who asserted to be Madeleine McCann "pursued that myth" and stalked the child's family by sending emails, making phone calls and turning up at their address, a court has heard.

Karen Spragg and the second defendant carried out a "systematic intimidation", Leicester Crown Court heard, and in Ms Wandelt's case, that lasted for two and a half years.

On Monday, jurors were told Ms Wandelt repeatedly claimed she was Madeleine and was abducted and taken to the European nation.

Ms Spragg and the second accused each deny a charge of harassment resulting in significant distress and anxiety to Kate and Gerry McCann between mid-2022 and early this year.

Madeleine's disappearance in 2007 - at the three years old during a family holiday in Portugal - is among the most widely reported child disappearance incidents and remains unsolved.

Legal counsel also mentioned the international focus that the disappearance had brought on the parents.

"One of many devastating outcomes for the McCann family has been their ongoing struggle to escape the glare of media attention that accompanied that incident.

"The focus they have received has sometimes lacked compassionate, at times quite the opposite.

"There remains a group of individuals who persist in refusing to acknowledge their situation and perpetuate conspiracy theories.

"Regrettably, these accused individuals fall into that latter group."

Increasing Actions

The court heard from June 2022, Ms Wandelt 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 Polish charity created to help with historic missing persons cases and provide assistance and advice to people seeking those who had disappeared.

Based on the prosecutor, the defendant initially said she was missing German girl Inga Gehricke.

But after these assertions were dismissed by the charity, the accused then contacted the group with a conviction she could be Acacia Bishop - a disappeared infant from Utah in the United States - before contacting them about her insistence she was Madeleine McCann.

'Did Not Deter'

The defendant's conviction escalated to an attempt to call the hospital where both the McCanns were employed.

A 20-minute call to the switchboard resulted in a notification from the NHS trust's communications manager to the investigation team, the UK inquiry into the disappearance.

The jury was told Ms Wandelt made further attempts to reach out to officials and then the father personally through electronic mail in June 2023.

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

She continued people were "attempting to conceal the case" and asserted there were resemblances between her and Madeleine, including having marks in the identical locations.

But her efforts went unanswered, which the prosecutor said "failed to discourage" Ms Wendelt - who then made contact with Madeleine's younger sister the sibling via social media.

Informing her she was her "only hope", she sent altered photographs to show they were "somehow related" and asserted possessing recollections of life before the abduction, the trial was told.

These claims, the court heard, were restated in 2024 when the defendant is alleged to have "consistently" contacted Mrs McCann's cell phone over the span of 24 hours - referring to her as "mother", asserting memory of giving food to the family's son the boy, of engaging in children's games in the back garden of the family's home in Rothley, the English county, and of the evening Madeleine was abducted.

In one message, she stated: "I remember you came to my room before the incident, touched my hair and said 'I care for you and I'll locate you'."

The trial of the first defendant, of Jana Kochanowskiego in Lubin, the country, and the second defendant, of a location in the Welsh city, continues.