Moment ‘pretend’ Madeleine McCann caught lurking outdoors Gerry and Kate’s dwelling in darkness

Chilling doorbell footage has been released showing ‘Fake’ Madeleine McCann, Julia Wandelt, outside Gerry and Kate’s family home.

The footage, released following the verdict today (November 7), shows Wandelt walking back and forth across the font of the McCann family home.

Wandelt was found guilty of harassing the McCanns by a jury at Leicester Crown Court today. However, she was cleared of stalking.

Karen Spragg, who was with Wandelt, was found not guilty of stalking or harassment.

In recordings of the interaction outside their home, Kate McCann can be heard saying: “You’re causing us a lot of distress.”

The following day, the couple received a sinister letter addressed “Dear Mum (Kate)” and signed “Lots of love, Madeleine”.

Wandelt referred to Mrs McCann as “mummy” and said “you are my real mother” in other messages sent to her phone.

Wandelt now faces deportation after being convicted of harassing the missing girl’s parents by turning up at their home and repeatedly begging for a DNA test.

She put her hands to her face and gasped when jurors returned a guilty verdict for the harassment.

Wandelt was told her sentence would be one of six months’ imprisonment, which is less than the time she has already served on remand awaiting trial, and that she would be made the subject of a restraining order because she poses a “significant risk of the harassment of the McCanns in future”.

A five-week trial at Leicester Crown Court heard Wandelt claimed to have memories, induced by hypnosis sessions, of being abducted and of living with the McCanns as a child, including feeding Madeleine’s younger brother Sean and playing ring-a-ring-a-roses.

Jurors heard Wandelt, who had an emotional outburst while Mrs McCann gave evidence against her, 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”.

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.”

Before the judge reconvened court to discuss her sentence, Wandelt appeared to be sobbing in a room behind the dock.

The judge told her barrister she would “need to compose herself” for sentence, but she was satisfied Wandelt did not need to be present while representations were made.

Prosecution counsel Michael Duck KC said a restraining order was sought against Wandelt because there had been “plain harassment” against the McCann family.

Sentencing Wandelt as she eventually made her way back into the dock, Mrs Justice Cutts said it was not for her to decide whether she would be released.

She said: “It’s not for me to say that you could be released at this point, notwithstanding that you have served your sentence.

“A notice of deportation has been served on you and it’s a matter for the secretary of state as to how things proceed.”

Both Madeleine’s parents gave evidence during the trial, from behind a curtain shielding them from Wandelt.

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