All these supposed memories ...it's quite creepy...she's not Madeleine

Sister, 20, 'bombarded by stalker'

- BY MARTIN FRICKER

Defendant Julia Wandelt

MADELEINE McCann's sister was left terrified by a stalker who invented childhood memories to try to convince her she was her missing sibling, a court heard yesterday.

Julia Wandelt, 24, allegedly bombarded Amelie McCann, 20, with messages on multiple social media platforms, after first contacting her via Facebook in January last year.

The jury heard “creepy” Wandelt falsely reminisced about playing “ring a roses’ with the McCann children.

She also wrote to Amelie, it is claimed, including digitally faked photos of the two of them together, and turned up at the family home in Rothley, Leicestershire.

Amelie told Leicester crown court her parents Kate and Gerry installed a panic alarm as a result. Speaking via video-link, she said she “just knew” Wandelt was not Madeleine”. But despite being “used to ignoring” unsolicited messages from strangers about her sister, she found Wandelt's behaviour “distressing”.

“There was a sound of desperation... which put quite a lot of stress on me,” Amelie told the court.