A Polish woman who claimed to be Madeleine McCann is set to be deported after being found guilty of harassing the missing girl’s parents.
Julia Wandelt, 24, tormented Kate and Gerry McCann during a relentless three year campaign that resulted in her turning up at the family’s home claiming to be their missing daughter.
She also bombarded them with endless messages, voicemails and calls demanding they take a DNA test to prove she was the missing girl, who vanished from Praia Da Luz in the Algarve, Portugal, during a holiday in 2007.
Wandelt was found guilty of harassment but was found not guilty of stalking last week following a five week trial at Leicester Crown Court.
She was jailed for six months on Friday but had already served nine months in prison following her arrest at Bristol airport in February. It meant she could have been released but remained in custody.
Judge Mrs Justice Cutts said a ‘notice of deportation has been served’ had already been served meaning it was now a ‘matter for the Secretary of State as to how things proceed’.
Wendelt previously told the court she did not want to stay in the UK and had a ‘life here in Poland’ with a boyfriend and cats.
The Home Office has now confirmed she will return to her home country as it ‘has begun deportation proceedings in Ms Wandelt’s case’ following the outcome of the trial on Friday.
Julia Wandelt (pictured) was found guilty of harassing the missing Madeleine McCann’s parents today after claiming she was their daughter, who has been missing since May 2007
Madeleine was three years old when she vanished during a family holiday to The Algarve in May 2007
Wandelt was also made the subject of a restraining order, with a judge telling her she poses a ‘significant risk of the harassment of the McCanns in future’.
The parents said they ‘take no pleasure in the result’ after the verdict, adding that they ‘only wanted the harassment to stop’.
The McCanns’ statement read: ‘Despite the jury’s guilty verdict of harassment, we take no pleasure in the result.
‘Like most people, we did not want to go through a court process and only wanted the harassment to stop.
‘The decision to prosecute was taken by the Crown Prosecution Service, based on the evidence gathered by the police.
‘We hope Ms Wandelt will receive the appropriate care and support she needs and any vulnerability will not be exploited by others.
‘If anyone has new evidence relating to Madeleine’s disappearance, please pass this on to the police.’
Wandelt’s co-defendant, Karen Spragg, was found not guilty of stalking and harassment.
Kate and Gerry McCann (pictured) both gave evidence from behind a screen at the trial
During her trial, Wandelt said she would did not want to live in the UK.
In a recording of an answerphone message left on Mrs McCann’s phone, she said: ‘What if there is a small chance that I’m her? What then? Isn’t that important for you?
‘I don’t want money, I have a life here in Poland, I just want to know.’
She told the court she had a boyfriend in Poland, though he later asked her to move out, and cats.
The five-week trial also heard Wandelt claimed to have memories, induced by hypnosis sessions, of being abducted and of living with the McCanns as a child.
Jurors heard Wandelt tried to persuade ‘anybody prepared to listen’ that she was Madeleine, and that she had been kidnapped from Portugal and abused with other girls in Poland.
Wandelt called and messaged Mrs McCann more than 60 times in one day on April 13 last year, claiming to have a memory of the mother stroking her head and saying she would find her before the abduction.
Sentencing judge Mrs Justice Cutts told Wandelt her ‘pestering’ and ‘badgering’ of the McCanns was ‘unwarranted’ and ‘unkind’.
Wandelt, 24, was convicted of tormenting Kate and Gerry McCann in a campaign that began on the internet but resulted in her turning up at the family’s home
She told the defendant: ‘They (the McCanns) were entitled to refuse to engage with you, particularly in the sad circumstances in which they live with the disappearance of Madeleine.
‘They have suffered from that disappearance of their young child for many years, they are entitled to their privacy and to get on with their lives in the best way they can and to decide with whom, and with whom not, they will engage.
‘Your constant pestering, badgering and eventually attendance at their home address on a dark evening in December was unwarranted, unkind, and as the jury have now found, criminal.’
Wandelt, who sat beside Spragg in the dock, gasped at the verdicts, while Spragg cried.