Miss Wandelt has finished her evidence for the day.

The jury has been sent out, with proceedings set to continue tomorrow.

Miss Wandelt said she still believed memories of her with the McCann family were "genuinely true".

She said she remembered playing childhood game Ring a Ring o' Roses with the other McCann children.

"There are certain things from the memories that came to be true," she said.

The defendant added that she remembered the place where she grew up had big glass window or doors, which she said was the case at the McCanns' house.

She said: "How could I remember something that turns out to be true?"

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Miss Wandelt has told the court she received death threats after her claim to be Madeleine went viral.

She said she received messaged from a German number.

"They said if I don't stop, I'll be killed and cut up into pieces and the pieces would be given to the pigs," she said.

"I want to know who I am. If I'm not Madeleine then who am I?"

When asked why she contacted the McCann family, Miss Wandelt said: "I think they were misled.

"If police treated their daughter's case in the way they treated me, then they would not find their daughter.

"The police were not interested in finding Kate and Gerry's daughter."

When asked by her lawyer, Tom Price KC, if Miss Wandelt meant the McCanns any harm, she said: "I always defended them. I would never harm them.

"I actually even have sympathy with them, even after I've been in prison.

"They've been looking for their child. I can't imagine how they feel."

Miss Wandelt has disputed a summary of a phone call from Operation Grange, which took place in 2022.

"I don't think this call ever took place," she said.

"I wasn't told I was not Madeleine, that's why I wanted to pursue this because I wanted to know.

"It's confusing, I just thought they would do a DNA straight way."

The record, the court heard, showed Miss Wandelt provided a number of pieces of evidence suggesting she was Madeleine McCann, but was told she could not be the missing girl.

"I was never was told that I was not Madeleine at that point," she said.

"Assuming this happened, how were they able to exclude me from the investigation in the same day?"

The summary said she was eliminated because she did not have the same eye feature and was not the same age.

A document shown to the court from October 2023, shows that Miss Wandelt's blood type is AB positive.

A second document, found in court records from the abuse trial in which she was a victim, showed that her blood group was O positive.

Miss Wandelt said the result made her suspicious about her upbringing.

"The fact that in the beginning when I was asking them [parents], they didn't want to tell me my blood type," she said.

The defendant said the O positive blood type did not match either of her parents.

Miss Wandelt has told jurors she wanted to try to get in touch with "everyone I could think of" before contacting the McCann family.

"In general, if someone's child is missing I would assume it would be upsetting to raise a lead which could result as a false hope at the end," she said.

"I wanted to try everything before getting in touch with the parents of Madeleine directly.

"I didn't want to give them false hope or cause them any distress."

Continuing her evidence this afternoon, Miss Wandelt told the jury that she found the details of a friend of the McCanns on a stolen bicycle post on Facebook.

She said at the time, she was not aware their details could be found online.

Miss Wandelt added she phoned the man in question, but the call was ended as soon as she explained who she was.

Miss Wandelt told the trial she "contacted every single person" before she went to the McCanns.

She said: "I did not want to contact Kate and Gerry and the McCann family until I contacted every single person I can.

"I did everything before."

The defendant said she found out about Operation Grange - the Metropolitan Police investigation into Madeleine's disappearance - and got in touch with the team in 2022.

She emailed the operation stating "I think I could be Madeleine McCann", the court heard.

Miss Wandelt said she told investigators that her date of birth was in 2001, but said "documents can be faked".

She told the jury that she has always looked younger than she was.

Miss Wandelt told the court she discovered who Madeleine was when she was in hospital.

She said she was in hospital in the summer of 2022 when she spoke with her father, who told her the man who abused her had "been involved in kidnapping".

She told jurors it was at that time that she had been considering whether she had been adopted and decided to "check out databases" of missing people.

Asked if Miss Wandelt found anyone who matched her, she said: "There were not actually a lot of people my age or around my age, but that is how I found Madeleine."

Like her parents, Madeleine's sister Amelie gave evidence as part of the prosecution's case, this time over video-link.

She told the court Miss Wandelt first tried to contact her in January 2024 over Facebook.

Ms McCann said Miss Wandelt told her she had memories of playing Ring a Ring o' Roses with her and feeding her brother Sean.

Image source, Elizabeth Cook/PA Wire

The court was told the defendant asked Ms McCann to do a DNA test with her, but the witness said: "I always knew she wasn't Madeleine, so I didn't need to do one."

Miss Wandelt also sent messages over Instagram, but Ms McCann said she did not respond to any of them, the jury heard.

The trial has previously heard Miss Wandelt contacted a couple who were with Madeleine's family on the night she disappeared in Portugal in 2007.

David and Fiona Payne said they had been "very close friends" with the McCanns for about 25 years.

The court was told the couple were approached by Miss Wandelt in late 2024 as part of her attempts to make contact and press for a DNA test.

Mr Payne told the court he was sent personal photos of his wife and children by Miss Wandelt.

He added he was phone twice, and then received a series of emails, which included photos of Miss Wandelt's grandfather alongside a suspect in the disappearance, and photos of the Payne and McCann families, which had not been made public.

Mrs Payne also said she was phoned and messaged by Miss Wandelt.

Miss Wandelt said she was not attracted to Madeleine's case for fame or financial gain.

"I just wanted to find out who I am," she said.

She said she had "no idea" how big the case was in the press at the time.

When Madeleine McCann's father Gerry took to the stand, he said people claiming to be Madeleine "pulled on your heartstrings", but added it was "damaging the search" for her.

Mr McCann told the court he was "very confident" a picture of Miss Wandelt was not Madeleine.

He told Miss Wandelt "you're not Madeleine, stop calling" when answering one of her phone calls, the court heard.

He added his wife Kate was "very distressed" after the two defendants went to their address.

Both Gerry and Kate gave evidence from behind a privacy screen, which the jury heard was "entirely usual" and did not reflect on the defendants in any way.

Image source, PA Media

Kate McCann took to the stand during the prosecution's evidence.

The mother of missing Madeleine said she was tempted to take an DNA test.

Mrs McCann said she "almost wanted to put it to bed" to tackle Miss Wandelt's "persistence".

When asked if Miss Wandelt's claim was different from other people who have previously claimed to be her daughter, due to her persistence, Mrs McCann replied: "Totally."

Image source, PA Media

The court heard she found in September 2024 that Miss Wandelt had been contacting her daughter Amelie since January of that year.

She said: "It was the final straw for me. I discussed it with the police."

The court heard Kate was "unnerved" when she first met Miss Wandelt face to face in December 2024.

Mrs McCann, recalling the incident, said: "I pulled up on the drive, it was really dark, it was the weekend, we had really bad gales. I was opening the boot to get stuff out and I heard 'Kate' - it gave me a fright."

She added she felt "invaded in her own home" and "distressed".

In a message sent to Madeleine's father Gerry McCann, the court heard Miss Wandelt listed all off the organisations she had contacted about the Madeleine McCann case.

• Operation Grange
• Interpol in London
• Scotland Yard
• The Crimestoppers charity
• Leicestershire Police
• Criminal police in Portugal
• Casual police in Portugal
• Local police in Poland
• Police HQ in Warsaw
• The Polish Embassy in the UK
• The Polish Embassy in Portugal
• The English Embassy in Poland
• The English Embassy in Portugal
• The Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Poland
• Mark William Thomas, a private investigator and journalist in the UK
• The X-files team in Poland (cold case team)
• The Find Madeleine campaign
• The Polish consulate in London
• A private detective
• German police
• The Missing People organisation in the UK
• A missing persons organisation in Poland

Image source, PA Media

Karen Spragg (pictured above) faces the same charge as Miss Wandelt, which they both deny.

The court previously heard Mrs Spragg was in contact with Miss Wandelt during the middle of 2024.

The prosecution said Mrs Spragg, from Cardiff in Wales, was a "forthright supporter of the conspiracy theory" that Madeleine's parents were responsible for her disappearance "despite the unequivocal evidence to the contrary".

The jury was told she kept in "close contact" with Miss Wandelt and "began to take an active role in peddling her story".

Miss Wandelt said she first became aware of Madeleine McCann in June 2022.

She discovered her name by going through missing person databases.

Having found the case, she decided to look into it more by joining a number of Facebook groups dedicated to the search for the missing girl and by looking into the Find Madeleine website.

Miss Wandelt said she only looked into another missing girl, Acacia Bishop, for a short period of time having been told by authorities she was not Madeleine McCann.

She contacted a Polish missing persons charity, stating she was the missing American girl.

But later, she said she found out Acacia had a distinctive birth mark, and so dropped the idea.

Miss Wandelt said she first found out about another missing girl, Inga Gehricke, after posting about her story on social media but "never" said she was the same person.