Featured Image Credit: Matt Cardy/Getty Images
Topics: Madeleine McCann, Crime, UK News
Emily Brown
DNA results have been revealed following a test to determine whether a 24-year-old woman named Julia Wandelt is actually Madeleine McCann, the missing daughter of Kate and Gerry McCann.
It's been almost two decades since then-three-year-old Madeleine disappeared from the Ocean Club in Praia da Luz, Portugal, where she had been on holiday with her family in 2007.
Kate and Gerry had been out to dinner with friends in the complex, while Madeleine and her younger twin siblings stayed in the apartment, but when Kate went to check on the kids she discovered Madeleine had vanished.
The disappearance has sparked a years-long investigation, which took a turn three years ago when Wandelt began to claim she was the missing person.
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Wandelt went on to be arrested in February 2025 for stalking the McCann family, along with another woman, Karen Spragg. At that time, Wandelt had a DNA sample taken.
At a trial for the two women on Tuesday (October 14), jurors were told Wandelt learned the result of the test in April, while being held at Peterborough Prison.
Detective Chief Inspector Mark Cranwell explained: "It conclusively proved that Julia Wandelt is not Madeleine McCann."
The decision to conduct a DNA test on Wandelt came despite investigators having previously denied to carry out tests on other people who had claimed to be the missing girl.
Cranwell explained: "‘We would not take DNA unless we believed that person was Madeleine because I did not want to set a precedent."
However, the decision to take Wandelt's DNA came in the hope that the results 'may stop her behavior towards the McCann family'.
The Chief Inespector added: "It weighed heavy on my mind. The threshold remained the same, but it was outside the framework."
The court heard that Wandelt disputed the results when she was first told about them, but the results likely do not come as a surprise to Kate and Gerry, who previously released a statement after seeing a photo of Wandelt to say they 'were confident' it was not their daughter.
In spite of denial from Kate and Gerry, Wandelt is accused of pursuing the family with messages, calls, and visits, as well as demanding a DNA test of her own. The family also allegedly received messages from a 'Welsh-sounding woman', according to a statement from family liaison officer Det Sgt Roger Bearn.
The woman was later alleged to be Spragg, from Cardiff, Wales, who prosecutors claim had struck up a relationship with Wandelt and supported her theories.
Wandelt, who is originally from Jana Kochanowskiego in Lubin, Poland, and 61-year-old Spragg have both denied the charges against them.