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A Polish national who claimed to be the missing girl "pursued that myth" and stalked the child's family by dispatching electronic messages, placing telephone calls and appearing at their address, a court has heard.

Karen Spragg and Julia Wandelt conducted a "systematic intimidation", Leicester Crown Court heard, and in Ms Wandelt's case, that lasted for thirty months.

On Monday, the court heard the defendant consistently asserted she was the missing child and was abducted and transported to Poland.

Ms Spragg and the second accused each deny a count of stalking causing serious alarm and anxiety to Madeleine's parents between mid-2022 and early this year.

Madeleine's disappearance in the year 2007 - at the age of three during a family holiday in Portugal - is among the most widely reported child disappearance incidents and continues unresolved.

The prosecutor also mentioned the global attention that Madeleine's case had directed toward the family.

"Among numerous devastating outcomes for the McCann family has been their ongoing struggle to escape the glare of publicity that came with that incident.

"The attention they have received has sometimes lacked sympathetic, sometimes far from it.

"There remains a group of individuals who continue to fail to recognize their situation and perpetuate unfounded claims.

"Unfortunately, these accused individuals fall into that second category."

Increasing Actions

The court heard from June 2022, the defendant had begun to speak to "any willing listener" that she was Madeleine.

The prosecutor said that, in early 2023, the accused was in contact with a Polish charity created to help with long-term disappearance incidents and offer support and guidance to people looking for individuals who had gone missing.

Based on court testimony, the defendant first claimed she was missing German girl from Germany.

But after these claims were ruled out by the organization, Ms Wendalt then reached out to the group with a belief she could be another missing child - a disappeared infant from Utah in the US - before contacting them about her insistence she was Madeleine McCann.

'Failed to Stop'

Her belief progressed to an effort to contact the hospital where both the McCanns were employed.

A 20-minute call to the switchboard led to a report back from the NHS trust's communications manager to the investigation team, the UK inquiry into the vanishing.

The jury was told the defendant made additional efforts to contact the authorities and then Mr McCann directly via email in mid-2023.

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

She continued people were "attempting to conceal the case" and asserted there were resemblances between her and the child, including having scars in the identical locations.

But her efforts went without response, which the prosecutor said "did not deter" Ms Wendelt - who then made communication with Madeleine's younger sister the sibling via social media.

Telling her she was her "sole chance", she sent altered photographs to show they were "somehow related" and claimed to have recollections of events prior to disappearance, the trial was told.

These claims, the proceedings revealed, were repeated in this year when Ms Wendalt is accused of "consistently" messaged Mrs McCann's mobile over the span of 24 hours - calling her "mother", asserting memory of giving food to Madeleine's younger brother Sean, of engaging in children's games in the back garden of the residence in the Leicestershire village, the English county, and of the evening Madeleine was abducted.

In one message, she said: "I remember you visited my room before the abduction, rubbed my head and said 'I love you and I will find you'."

The trial of Ms Wendalt, of Jana Kochanowskiego in Lubin, the country, and Ms Spragg, of a location in Cardiff, continues.