A woman who once claimed to be Madeleine McCann is now in custody after she was accused of stalking the missing girl’s family by allegedly contacting them incessantly and turning up at their home in the U.K.
Julia Wandel, also known as Julia Wandelt or Julia Wendell, was arrested on Wednesday at an airport in Bristol, reports The Guardian.
The publication reports that she has been accused of stalking four members of the McCann family, including her parents, Gerry and Kate, and her twin siblings, Sean and Amelie, from 2024 to 2025. She is also alleged to have paid unwanted and unsolicited visits to their home twice, in May and December of last year.The charges state the alleged contact, which came in the form of phone calls, voicemails, a letter and WhatsApp and Instagram messages, “had a substantial adverse effect” on the family.
Wandel began posting various pieces of “evidence” to social media in 2023, claiming that she believed she was the missing McCann. McCann disappeared in 2007 when she was just three years old while on a family vacation in Portugal. Wandel claimed to have shared the core of her “proof” regarding physical resemblance, which revolved around McCann’s rare eye disorder. A coloboma anomaly in McCann’s right eye was used as a major identifying feature when she went missing. (A coloboma is an eye structure defect that frequently results in a visible tear or hole.) She also claimed to have the same dimple as McCann, several moles and freckles in the same places, and teeth with the same gaps.
Woman who claimed to be Madeleine McCann charged with stalking girl’s family
