Nov. 7 (UPI) — A 24-year-old Polish woman claiming to be missing British girl Madeleine McCann now faces deportation to Poland after her guilty verdict of harassing the McCann family.
Julia Wandelt was found guilty Friday of harassing Kate and Gerry McCann, the parents of Madeleine McCann, between June 2022 and February of this year.
A co-defendant, Karen Spragg of Cardiff, was declared not guilty of harassment and stalking following the five-week jury trial.
Madeleine McCann disappeared in 2007 from the Portuguese holiday resort of Praia da Luz.
On Friday, Justice Johannah Cutts sentenced Wendell, of Lupin in the southwest part of Poland in eastern Europe, to a six-month prison sentence with time served in Leicester Crown Court.
Wandelt allegedly made scores of telephone calls, left messages and showed up at the McCann family’s home in December and begged for a DNA test.
Cutts imposed a restraining order on Wandelt, who claimed memories of induced hypnosis of getting kidnapped, due to a “significant risk of the harassment of the McCanns in future.”
A forensics experts told the curt that “Julia Wandelt cannot be Madeleine McCann” because DNA did not match.
Investigators continued their probe over the summer at the Portugal resort.
Last month, the main suspect in the McCann disappearance, Christian Bruckner, was released from prison after completing a sentence for an unrelated rape conviction.
Meanwhile, a deportation order is now a matter for Britain’s secretary of state to determine if Wandelt will remain in state custody.
In court, Wandelt said she felt there was a “50/50” chance that she was the missing McCann girl, and said she wanted to review the full DNA paperwork.
“I do believe I’m her,” she said the next day in court. “I do remember them but I’m exhausted, I’m completely exhausted with all of this.”
