Today's proceedings have come to an end.

The jury has retired and been told the case will resume at 10:00.

As the court proceedings have drawn to a close, we are pausing our coverage.

George Torr
BBC News, East Midlands

Further messages are relayed to the court, including one where Ms Wandelt asked to take a DNA test.

The jury has also heard a voicemail the defendant left for Madeleine's mother on 13 April 2024.

Lasting for one minute and 50 seconds, the audio goes quiet in parts.

In the message, Ms Wandelt said: "I don't want any money, I just want to talk to you.

"Don't give up on your daughter... call me, please."

The prosecution has detailed more messages, including those about DNA tests.

"Let me prove to you I'm not a liar and a crazy person... I beg you to stop blocking my number... I know things only you, Gerry and Madeleine would know," Ms Wandelt wrote in one of the messages.

George Torr
BBC News, East Midlands

Mr Duck KC said the contact with Madeleine's sister, Amelie, ended at the start of January 2024, but she was "not deterred" and "adjusted her approach and her target".

The prosecutor told the jury that Kate McCann, Madeleine's mother, had not changed her telephone number since Madeleine's disappearance, adding the contact details "in the wrong hands made her vulnerable".

Mr Duck KC said Ms Wandelt ended up obtaining those details in April 2024 and "continued to pursue her false agenda with Madeleine's parents".

The court heard the defendant contacted Madeleine's mother's phone on 60 occasions but did not receive a response.

One message read: "I never lied, I'm not crazy. Please let me prove it."

George Torr
BBC News, East Midlands

The prosecution is now going through contact Ms Wandelt had with Madeleine's sister, Amelie.

In one message, Ms Wandelt said: "I know you will not answer me, I'm this girl who went viral saying 'I'm Madeleine McCann'.

"I was rejected with no proofs and no DNA test was done."

Addressing the jury, Mr Duck KC said: "She knew her communications were not welcome and that she was rejected without any proof."

Mr Duck KC said Ms Wandelt continued to contact Madeleine's sister and claim she was her missing sibling.

She claimed she had hypnosis sessions and had "flashbacks" and that she "knows so many things", he added.

The court heard she went on to claim she had memories of the two playing in the garden and that she was her "only hope".

"Please don't block me, I never lied about anything," she said in another message to Madeleine's sister, claiming that the "media made her look crazy".

George Torr
BBC News, East Midlands

The prosecution has told the court that Ms Wandelt sent emails to Gerry McCann, Madeleine's father, in June 2023.

In one email, she wrote: "I could be your daughter, it's possible I'm her."

She added that people were "trying to cover up the story" and claimed she had the same scars in the same places and shapes as Madeleine, the court heard.

Mr Duck KC said: "Scientific proof means categorically that [the defendant] is not Madeleine McCann."

The McCanns "simply ignored" these claims but Ms Wandelt continued to "engage and provoke a response", he added.

George Torr
BBC News, East Midlands

Mr Duck KC said Ms Wandelt called the switchboard of the University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust, claiming to be Madeleine McCann and asked to be put through to Glenfield Hospital.

She added she "remembers nothing before 2010" and had contacted both the UK and Polish police.

The prosecutor said this was the "first attempt to speak to the McCanns" and the information was forwarded to Operation Grange - the team investigating Madeleine's disappearance.

"Far from being deterred, she made further attempts... but that failure, rather than stopping her in her tracks, was a catalyst for a multitude of attempts which culminated in the next two and a half years," he said.

Ms Wandelt followed up by contacting Operation Grange and telling them why she believed she was Madeleine - her reasons included a mark in the iris of her eye.

The court heard the defendant also claimed her birth certificate was "a fake" and that a woman had said she had seen Madeleine in Poland, close to where Ms Wandelt grew up.

George Torr
BBC News, East Midlands

The prosecutor told the court Ms Wandelt said she had been abducted and transported to Poland.

Mr Duck KC said that, in January 2023, Ms Wandelt was in contact with a Polish charity established to assist with historic missing persons cases and offer support and advice to people seeking those who had gone missing.

According to the prosecutor, Ms Wandelt said she was missing German girl Inga Gehricke, then Acacia Bishop - a baby from Utah in the US - and then Madeleine McCann.

The charity said images "formed the view" that did not support her claim.

George Torr
BBC News, East Midlands

The prosecutor is continuing the Crown's case and said Ms Wandelt "sought to manipulate" information, including images, "to back up her unsustainable claims".

The court heard she "sought information from experts" and "got answers that she liked".

Why she pursued these "false claims is not a straightforward answer" and something the jury "will not have to answer", he said.

Mr Duck KC added she used features [images], which were freely available, to support her claims that there were similarities between her and Madeleine McCann.

"The evidence will show she obtained numerous images of Madeleine McCann and memories of the McCann family to support her claim," he said.

He added this garnered "wide public interest".

Evidence from this case is of use of images. One powerful example, the court heard, is that Ms Wandelt forwarded images to Madeleine's siblings.

Those images were designed to persuade that there were similarities between them and "were in some way related".

"They had been manipulated and features altered," the prosecutor said.

The three-year-old was on holiday with her family in Portugal when she disappeared on 3 May 2007.

She vanished from an apartment complex in Praia da Luz in the Algarve, sparking a Europe-wide investigation that has become one of the highest-profile missing persons cases.

Madeleine's parents had been dining with friends at a restaurant a short walk away, while their daughter and her younger twin siblings were asleep in the ground-floor apartment.

They had checked in on the children periodically until her mother, Kate, discovered she was missing at about 22:00 local time.

The case remains unsolved.

George Torr
BBC News, East Midlands

The jury has returned to the courtroom.

Mr Duck KC will continue to open the prosecution's case.

The judge has said the court will sit until 16:15 BST today.

Isaac Ashe
BBC News, at Leicester Crown Court

We are taking a brief recess right now.

As Mr Duck KC told the jury that Ms Wendelt is not Madeleine McCann, the defendant stood in the dock and began to weep.

Mrs Justice Cutts then asked for the jury to be ushered from the courtroom.

At the beginning of his evidence, the prosecutor addressed the jury and said they were going to be here "for some time".

Mr Duck KC said: "Can we, at this very early stage, make this position clear. Julia Wendelt is not Madeleine McCann. This is not an issue you are going to have to decide."

George Torr
BBC News, East Midlands

Mr Duck KC said the defendants' behaviour was "not typified by an off-hand comment in a post on social media" but a "well-planned campaign of harassment". In Ms Wandelt's case, he added, of two and a half years.

"The McCanns had to endure not just the unimaginable trauma but also the vitriol from some members of the public," he said.

The prosecutor said Madeleine McCann's disappearance "remains close to the top of the media's agenda", which has the capacity to draw "enormous media attention".

George Torr
BBC News, East Midlands

Michael Duck KC, for the prosecution, is on his feet addressing the jury.

He is explaining the charges brought against Ms Wandelt and Ms Spragg. Both are charged with stalking causing serious alarm or distress.

Mr Duck KC said the charges relate to a time period between 1 June 2022 and 21 February 2025.

The prosecutor told the jury Ms Wandelt "pursued claims she was Madeleine McCann and pursued her parents over a period of a time".

He told the court this happened both by email, telephone, visits to their home village in Leicestershire and by visits to their home address.

George Torr
BBC News, East Midlands

Good afternoon from Leicester Crown Court.

The trial of two women who are accused of stalking the family of Madeleine McCann, who went missing in 2007, is opening.

Julia Wandelt, from Lubin in south-west Poland and Karen Spragg, of Caerau, Cardiff, previously entered not guilty pleas.

The prosecution is about to open the case.

Image source, PA Media/Supplied