Julia Wandelt Woman who waged long secret campaign against family

For two years Julia Wandelt ran an Instagram account claiming to be Madeleine McCann, arguably the world's most famous missing child, who disappeared from the Portuguese holiday resort of Praia da Luz in 2007 at the age of three.

- Robyn Vinter

Then in January this year, Wandelt, 24, said she no longer believed she was the missing child.

Wandelt told the BBC's disinformation reporter, Marianna Spring, that she had never realised she could have upset the McCann family with her handle @IAmMadeleineMcCann, where she amassed more than 1 million followers and received gifts from supporters all over the world.

Wandelt solicited support from an online bubble of "truthers", speculators and armchair detectives and attracted so much attention that she featured on the US television chatshow Dr Phil in March 2023, where she declared: "I believe I am Madeleine McCann."

On Spring’s podcast she painted a sympathetic picture of a lost and confused young woman who had earnestly thought she had been abducted and separated from her family. She had wanted to represent a happy ending to a devastatingly sad story. She told of online abuse and death threats she had received from anonymous people. She painted herself as a victim.

While she sat in her home in southern Poland and publicly apologised to the McCanns for any hurt she might have caused them, Wandelt was privately waging an enormous secret campaign of harassment with no regard whatsoever for the damage she was doing to a family who had already suffered so much.

By the time the podcast aired, Wandelt had bombarded the McCanns with hundreds of calls, messages, and letters signed “Madeleine x”, and had even ambushed Kate and Gerry McCann at their home. She was still doing it. And she was plotting more.