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A Polish national who asserted to be the missing girl "maintained that false narrative" and stalked the child's family by dispatching electronic messages, placing telephone calls and turning up at their address, a court has heard.

Karen Spragg and the second defendant carried out a "systematic intimidation", Leicester Crown Court heard, and in one defendant's situation, that occurred over two and a half years.

On Monday, the court heard the defendant repeatedly claimed she was the missing child and was abducted and taken to Poland.

Ms Spragg and the second accused each deny a count of stalking resulting in significant distress and anxiety to Madeleine's parents between June 2022 and early this year.

Madeleine's disappearance in the year 2007 - at the age of three during a vacation in Portugal - is one of the most extensively covered child disappearance incidents and remains unsolved.

Legal counsel also spoke of the global attention that the disappearance had directed toward the family.

"One of many devastating outcomes for the McCann family has been their ongoing struggle to avoid the spotlight of publicity that came with that tragedy.

"The attention they have received has sometimes lacked compassionate, sometimes quite the opposite.

"There continues to exist a number of people who persist in refusing to recognize their situation and perpetuate conspiracy theories.

"Unfortunately, these two defendants belong to that second category."

Escalating Behavior

The court heard from June 2022, Ms Wandelt had begun to speak to "anyone who would care to listen" that she was Madeleine.

The prosecutor said that, in early 2023, the accused was in communication with a Polish charity established to assist with long-term disappearance incidents and offer support and guidance to people looking for individuals who had disappeared.

Based on the prosecutor, the defendant first claimed she was missing German girl Inga Gehricke.

But after these claims were ruled out by the charity, the accused then reached out to the group with a belief she could be Acacia Bishop - a disappeared infant from the American state in the United States - before contacting them about her persistent claim she was Madeleine McCann.

'Did Not Deter'

The defendant's conviction progressed to an attempt to call the hospital where the parents were employed.

A lengthy telephone conversation to the switchboard resulted in a notification from the health service representative to Operation Grange, the UK inquiry into the disappearance.

The jury was told Ms Wandelt made further attempts to reach out to officials and then the father directly via email in June 2023.

In one email, she stated: "It's possible I am your daughter, there's a chance I am the missing girl."

She added people were "trying to cover up the story" and asserted there were resemblances between her and the child, including having scars in the same places.

But her attempts went unanswered, which the prosecutor said "did not deter" Ms Wendelt - who then made communication with the family's other daughter Amelie via online platforms.

Telling her she was her "only hope", she transmitted altered photographs to show they were "possibly connected" and claimed to have memories of life before the abduction, the trial was told.

These claims, the court heard, were restated in 2024 when the defendant is accused of "repeatedly" contacted Mrs McCann's cell phone over the course of a day - calling her "mother", asserting memory of giving food to the family's son the boy, of engaging in children's games in the back garden of the residence in the Leicestershire village, Leicestershire, and of the evening Madeleine was abducted.

In one message, she stated: "I recall you came to my room before the abduction, touched my hair and said 'I care for you and I will find you'."

The trial of Ms Wendalt, of Jana Kochanowskiego in the Polish city, Poland, and the second defendant, of a location in the Welsh city, proceeds.