The onslaught was relentless; the emotional toll incomprehensible.
Despite a two-year age difference, the insistence of her own Polish family and even the cold, hard evidence of a DNA test – Julia Wandelt remained resolute. She was, she said, Madeleine McCann, who was three when she went missing on a family holiday to the Portuguese resort of Praia da Luz in 2007.
And once she had reached that conclusion there was, as Leicester Crown Court has heard these past four weeks, no stopping her.
She delivered a barrage of calls, emails and messages not just to Maddie’s parents Kate and Gerry McCann, but also to their 20-year-old twins, Amelie and Sean.
On a single day in April last year, 24-year-old Wandelt, who was born in the city of Gorzów Wielkopolski, fired off more than 60 messages and calls to Kate.
‘I know my accent is Polish because I live here, I know I look fat and I know I’m not pretty like Madeleine was in the past, but I know what I know. I know what I remember,’ declared one. Then there was the letter, addressed ‘Dear Mum (Kate)’.
Each message must have felt like a painful twist of the knife to the McCanns who, as Gerry admitted in his own evidence, still nurture a ‘glimmer’ of hope that their little girl might be alive.
Wandelt even turned up in the McCanns’ home village of Rothley, Leicestershire. Twice.
Julia Wandelt (pictured) delivered a barrage of calls, emails and messages not just to Maddie’s parents Kate and Gerry McCann, but also to their 20-year-old twins, Amelie and Sean
A younger Julia Wandelt with her half-brother and half-sister at her first communion
The second time she had co-accused, Karen Spragg, a 61-year-old Welsh grandmother, in tow. Spragg has been found not guilty of any offence – but audio recordings and messages document that she was a part of this whole upsetting saga.
‘Don’t you want to find your daughter?’ demanded Spragg – who was made subject of a five-year restraining order, preventing her from contacting the McCanns – as they accosted a terrified Kate.
The answer to that question is – painfully – obvious and it certainly doesn’t involve Wandelt.
Someone who undoubtedly knows the truth about Wandelt’s origins is her father Jacek, a 60-year-old radiologist who works in the same hospital where his daughter was born.
Speaking exclusively to the Daily Mail, it is clear he has struggled to come to terms with his daughter’s actions.
Weeping as he recalled the last time he saw her, just before Christmas, Jacek said: ‘When I saw her it had been a while since she said she was Madeleine McCann and so I thought maybe the situation was getting better, but I was wrong.
‘We had gone for a drive and then, just as she did when this all started a few years ago, she said to me, ‘Daddy, I love you, but you are not my dad, I am Madeleine McCann’.
‘I said, ‘I am your father; you are not Madeleine,’ but she wouldn’t listen to me, no matter how much I tried to reason with her.’
What on earth brought this bright, middle-class young woman – who, according to her barrister was depressed but not mentally ill – into the orbit of the McCanns?
While Wandelt has never explained her motives, having spoken to her father and a former childhood friend, the Daily Mail has pieced together the story of a young woman who had a conventional, loving childhood until it was derailed when she was abused by a family member.
It is this event that appears to have marked a fundamental change in Wandelt, turning her from an ambitious child who hoped to follow her father into the medical profession into a teenager who craved fame and the affirmation of strangers.
Madeleine McCann was three when she went missing on a family holiday to the Portuguese resort of Praia da Luz in 2007
Even before she courted online attention with her claims to be Maddie, she made attempts to become a model, photographer, singer, and even appears to have dabbled in X-rated material; traces of which remain online.
For the avoidance of doubt, the Daily Mail has seen a copy of Julia’s birth certificate which gives her date of birth as August 2001 – two years before Madeleine was born – and lists her parents as Jacek and his then partner, Dorota.
While Wandelt’s parents were never married, and split when she was young, the youngster had a comfortable upbringing with her mother, a businesswoman, and stepfather Piotr, who works in finance. The couple moved to a wealthy suburb of Wroclaw, the third-largest city in Poland, when Wandelt was aged around seven.