Detectives reveal DNA test was carried out on stalker who claims she is missing Madeleine McCann in bombshell testimony – and ‘conclusively proves’ she is not

A POLISH woman claiming to be Madeleine McCann is not the missing girl a senior police officer told a court. 

A DNA sample taken when Julia Wandelt was arrested in February ‘conclusively proved’ she was not Madeleine, Detective Chief Inspector Mark Cranwell told jurors on Tuesday. 

Mr Cranwell is a senior investigating officer from Operation Grange, the Metropolitan police investigation into Madeleine’s disappearance. 

He said he told Wandelt, 24, the results when he visited her in Peterborough prison in April when he said to her: ‘Your sample was submitted to the laboratory and a profile was established for you. This has now been compared to the profile of Madeleine McCann, they do not match, you are not Madeleine McCann’. 

Last week the court heard Detective Constable Mark Draycott had ruled out Wandelt after studying photos she had sent and comparing them with the missing girl, who had a small blemish called a coloboma of the iris on her right eye. 

He added: ‘We were already aware of the condition in Madeleine’s eye.

‘We were able to make that professional opinion relating to that.

‘The experts said it wouldn’t have faded in that time. The medical expertise is that it couldn’t move and couldn’t fade. We had already worked on facial recognition, etcetera, etcetera.’

Wandelt, 24, denies stalking Kate McCann and husband Gerry between June 2022 and February 2025. 

Jurors at Leicester Crown Court were played voicemail messages left by Wandelt in which she claimed Madeleine was not dead. 

They also heard messages begging Ms McCann for a DNA test, claiming she was a 69.23% genetic match to samples from the ‘crime scene’ contained in the Portuguese police files into Madeleine’s disappearance, which are online.

In one message, she told Ms McCann: ‘You are my mother, it’s science, no one can deny it.’

In another, she said: ‘I am not a scammer, I am your daughter.’ 

She also explained away differences between her and Madeleine’s appearance by saying she was ‘ugly and fat because of medication I was given’, and claims to remember trying to shout ‘mummy and daddy’ on the night the three-yearold disappeared in Portugal in 2007.

Wandelt, from Lubin in southwest Poland, is being tried along with her ‘supporter’, Karen Spragg, 61, from Cardiff.

The court has heard that Wandelt sent dozens of text messages and left scores of voicemail messages on Ms McCann’s phone, while the two women also turned up at the McCanns’ home.

The trial continues.