A 61-year-old grandmother and a military of fame-hungry fantasists whose conspiracy theories have solely added to McCanns’ misery

The three-year campaign of harassment that brought Julia Wandelt to court was never just about one woman and her feverish obsession.

As the jury was told at the outset of the trial, the disappearance of Madeleine McCann brought with it consequences far beyond the crushing pain of loss and not knowing.

‘One of many tragic consequences for Madeleine’s parents, Kate and Gerry McCann, has been their constant inability to escape the glare of publicity that came with that tragedy,’ said prosecutor Michael Duck, KC.

‘The attention they have received has not always been compassionate, sometimes far from it.

‘There remains a group of individuals who continue to fail to acknowledge their plight and perpetuate conspiracy theories.’

In those words lies the agonising twist in this whole sorry saga.

For while Wandelt, clearly a troubled young woman, perhaps warrants some sympathy, the same cannot be said of the many others who have continued to perpetuate her fiction.

Among those supporters is Wandelt’s co-defendant Karen Spragg, a woman who during the early stages of the trial was seen holding hands with her co-accused until the judge ordered they sit apart.

Spragg, 61, a grandmother who lives in a rental flat in Cardiff, was found not guilty of stalking or harassing the McCanns. She did not break any laws and, it should be stressed, walked free from court – but she undoubtedly had a role in this tumultuous tale.

She sat next to Wandelt, holding hands once again, as the verdicts were read out – Spragg was found not guilty of stalking and harassment, Wandelt was cleared of stalking but convicted of harassment.

But Spragg, who wept as her fate was decided, was given a five-year restraining order, banning her from contacting the McCanns.

‘I’m satisfied she became involved and enjoyed the drama of the situation,’said Mrs Justice Cutts. ‘Mrs Spragg said it herself in an interview – she saw Miss Wandelt as the victim and not the McCanns.

‘She supported her while indulging in her conspiracy theories.’

Spragg has never wavered from her view that Madeleine’s parents were somehow responsible for their daughter’s disappearance from a holiday apartment, where Maddie had been sleeping with her siblings while her parents and their friends had dinner at the resort’s tapas restaurant.

‘We get arrested for turning up at their house once or twice, two days in a row… and they leave their children alone and everyone’s asking why weren’t they punished?’

These were Spragg’s words to police after she was arrested. ‘They know what they have done. They arranged the kidnapping and the abduction.’

Such sentiments are shocking and unimaginably distressing for the McCanns.

And yet, this was precisely the febrile online environment into which Wandelt plunged when she began claiming to be Madeleine.

Ever since the McCanns were, for a brief time, made suspects by Portuguese police in the shambolic early days of their daughter’s disappearance, the floodgates have been open for abuse and false hope.

Take the Facebook group entitled Justice For Madeleine McCann, a ‘private’ group with 42,000 members.

This is how it describes itself to members: ‘From the very outset the parents lied, and an unprecedented amount of intervention from the UK Government took place.

‘Our aim is to expose the lies, the subsequent cover-up, the people involved, and hope that one day we can all see justice for Madeleine.’

It was the collision of fame-hungry, vulnerable Wandelt and an army of keyboard warriors – armed with preposterous and at times utterly vile conspiracy theories – that fuelled the fire that led her to a Leicester courtroom.

The Free Julia Wandelt Facebook group, on which members continued to discuss Wandelt and uphold her claims throughout the trial – in apparent disregard of strict instructions from the judge – has more than 4,000 members.

But at the height of her notoriety – Wandelt’s claims went viral in early 2023 – she had in the region of one million followers.

How intoxicating it must have felt to a young woman who, apparently, thrived on the quasi-celebrity nature of it all.

Spragg, who clutched her husband’s hand as she attended court each day – unlike Wandelt, she was not held on remand – was just one among many supporters.

Quite when she started following Wandelt online is unclear, but the court heard that contact between the two women started ‘in earnest’ on social media in 2024.

‘I believe you are [Madeleine] and they know you are, that’s why they [the McCanns] won’t do the DNA test. You are going to expose something big,’ urged Spragg in one exchange. ‘Someone needs to take you seriously. Keep up the good work.’

It wasn’t long before the missives escalated to daily telephone conversations.

In her police interviews, Spragg said she couldn’t recall how the pair ended up exchanging numbers, but they did, speaking on the phone ‘for hours sometimes’.

‘She sees me as a good friend… she says I am like family to her,’ Spragg said. ‘I’m a mother and she’s like a daughter to me. I’m a mother and a grandmother, so that’s my motherly instincts kicking in.’

In November 2024, their chats escalated into action.

Wandelt – whose letters, emails and phone calls had been rebuffed by the McCanns – decided on a more direct approach.

It was Spragg, the court was told, who adopted increasingly bizarre plans to try to acquire samples of the McCanns’ DNA.

‘Yes, we can go through their bins. LOL,’ quipped Spragg, with a jarring jollity.

It was Spragg who collected Wandelt from East Midlands airport, when she flew in from Poland in December 2024. Spragg’s car was then picked up on CCTV on its journey to Rothley, where she sent a message to an associate.

‘We are sat outside the McCanns’ home waiting for them to come home. We are like private investigators with car lights out… Never thought I would be stalking the McCanns,’ she wrote.

Flippant. But nothing about their meeting with Kate McCann on that dark evening in December 2024 was light or warm.

Wandelt shared an audio recording of the encounter, on the doorstep of the McCanns’ home, on her TikTok account.

It is abundantly clear how upsetting it was; Kate can be heard saying: ‘You are causing a lot of distress, stop it.’

Meanwhile, Wandelt can be heard telling Spragg: ‘Don’t shout at Kate.’

Afterwards, Wandelt and Spragg formed a WhatsApp group to which Kate’s number, which she had never changed in the wake of her daughter’s disappearance, was added. They made further plans to visit Rothley in February and to ‘stake out’ the next annual vigil, held in Madeleine’s home town every May.

Thankfully, no further encounters happened.

Wandelt was arrested as she got off a flight at Bristol airport and Spragg, who the court was told had a police caution after slapping a neighbour in 2006, was arrested shortly afterwards, as she sat waiting in her car.

She is now able to return home a free woman.

But it remains an inescapable fact of this saga that beyond the two women who appeared in court, there are many others who metaphorically helped stir the pot.

Social media may have been in its infancy when Madeleine went missing but it has grown inexorably.

Among the first and most prominent of those to leap on Wandelt’s assertion that she was Madeleine was American psychic Fia Johansson, who goes by the Instagram handle @persianmedium.

She contacted Wandelt in February 2023, flying to Poland to meet her and arranging, as the court heard, for the younger woman to fly to Los Angeles and appear on the sofa with US chat show host Dr Phil.

Contrast that with more recent online statements in which she distances herself from Wandelt, stating that she ‘recognised at once what was being staged: a dangerous media circus that put not only the McCann family but also the validity of the investigation at risk’.

Then there was British publicist Surjit Singh Clair who, the court heard, advised Wandelt how to manage her social media posts, telling her: ‘I am suspicious why they won’t give you a DNA test.’

He, too, would subsequently distance himself from Wandelt.

On social media, there was endless appetite for theory and speculation, just as there was following the disappearance of mother Nicola Bulley in 2023.

Wandelt appeared numerous times on screen with true crime YouTuber Shaun Attwood and his collaborator Ron Swanson.

The pair even provided a forum for Wandelt to continue her attempts to spread her claims from behind bars – a live blog, which, understandably found no favour with the courts.

During the trial, Stacy Gorman, an American woman who helped co-ordinate the communications of the legitimate Find Madeleine campaign, and who also received emails from Wandelt, gave evidence.

‘When it first started, I felt very sympathetic, and so did Gerry and Kate,’ she says.

‘They showed her a lot of grace. As time went on, I became concerned because she had a big following on social media.

‘Julia’s contact was not aggressive, but a lot of the other people were extremely aggressive.’

While the Wandelt trial may have offered a glimpse into the agonies faced by the McCanns, it is just a fraction of what they have been presented with since 2007.

One of the most striking pieces of testimony at the trial came from Detective Chief Inspector Mark Cranwell, of Operation Grange, the Metropolitan Police operation that has probed Madeleine’s disappearance at a cost of more than £13 million – prompting some to question whether the operation remains viable considering no arrests or charges have been made.

Mr Cranwell revealed that since 2018, his team had received 22,000 emails, and filed away some 42,000 documents. How many of those emails included claims to have knowledge about the case? He did not say.

But poignantly, he revealed that 12 people had contacted police saying they are Madeleine McCann.

Even as the trial neared its conclusion the online debate raged on.

Take this post from one of Wandelt’s supporters: ‘Regardless of outcome, Julia needs to write a book, go on podcasts and tell her story loud and proud.

‘It needs mass attention to get people questioning and putting pressure on the system to fold. The truth must be brought to light!’

The simple truth is that after 18 years, one family still needs answers.