Gerry and Kate McCann have been stuck in a living nightmare ever since their young daughter vanished during a 2007 family holiday in Praia da Luz, Portugal.
Leicester-born Madeleine McCann was just three-years-old when she disappeared from the family’s ground-floor Ocean Club apartment, where she’d been sharing a bedroom with her younger siblings, twins Sean and Amelie, 20.
Nearly 18 years on, and doctors Gerry and Kate have never given up hope of welcoming their missing daughter home again, continuing to buy her Christmas and birthday presents, which they keep safe for her in her old bedroom.
Sadly, this year has brought further anguish for a couple who’ve already endured the unimaginable. The McCanns currently face the disturbing prospect of key Maddie suspect Christian Brueckner walking free as early as September of this year, should detectives fail to find enough evidence to tie him to the case. The convicted sex offender has always vehemently denied any involvement in Maddie’s disapearance.
And now Julia Wandel, a 23-year-old woman who claimed to be Maddie, has been charged with four counts of stalking following a shocking arrest at Bristol Airport. Here, the Mirror takes a look at the McCann’s year from hell, and why things could get even worse before the end of 2025.
Peado suspect’s plans to flee
In 2020, after years of agony for Maddie’s family, officers finally named their chief suspect in the case – Christian Brueckner. The convicted sex offender, who is currently serving a seven-year prison term for raping an American pensioner in Praia da Luz, had been living in a rundown farmhouse on the edge of the popular Portuguese resort at the time of Madeleine’s disappearance, and had been known to regularly break into villas.
In October, he was cleared of a string of alleged sex offences in Portugal between 2000 and 2017, unrelated to Madeleine’s case. He faced charges of raping an Irish tour rep, a teenage girl and an elderly woman in her holiday apartment. He also faced a child sex charge for allegedly exposing himself to a German girl on a beach in Salema.
At the trial, new disturbing allegations emerged. His ex-girlfriend Marina Flache told court that the drifter, who is originally from Germany, had boasted to her about breaking into Algarve holiday apartments. Meanwhile, Brueckner allegedly confessed in 2020 that he had previously snatched young girls and raped them on a bus he owned. His former cellmate Laurentiu Codin claimed in court that the German ‘confided’ in him while they were both on remand in the same prison.
He said: “There was talk of a girl, I don’t know if what he said was true or not. He said that he had a bus and that he had taken her with it. He said he kept some of them, but not others, but he never said that he had killed them.” Asked by the judge how old his victim was, Codin said: “I don’t want to get it wrong, but it was very young, tiny. I mean young. Each time when we were together he spoke about it because he was convinced that I was a paedophile.”
Codin also told the court that the Brueckner had confessed to abducting a child during his time in Portugal. He alleged: “He said he took the child in Portugal in his car, and in the time when the police and dogs were at the house, he drove away and he was gone. He asked me if the DNA from a child can be taken from bones under the ground.”
But prosecutors have now admitted that Brueckner will not faces any charges for the forseeable future. The 48-year-old was cleared of all charges in the rape trial, and prosecutors are now working to appeal the verdicts – but German legal observers believe they are unlikely to succeed. The only way to stop him from being released in September is by finding evidence to charge him in the Madeleine case.
In an interview with the Mirror last month, Philipp Marquort, who is one of Brueckner’s lawyers, spoke of his client’s plans to flee Europe and change his appearance upon his release. Mr Marquort said: “Sometimes he wants to stay here in Germany, sometimes he wants to leave Europe. If I were him I would leave Europe and look for a state which doesn’t extradite to Europe or Great Britain, maybe like Suriname.”
He continued: “We talked about the possibility of changing his appearance. I would get a face operation if I were him. I mentioned to him it would be nice for him to change his face or how he looks so that nobody can recognise him anymore. Right now he doesn’t have any money to do that. Right now he’s just the guy who tries to get a fake moustache or sunglasses or a hat. But I think if I were him I would sometime in the future try to change how I look and get plastic surgery.”
This will likely come as another devastating blow for the McCann family, who have had to listen to years’ worth of harrowing testimony against paedophile Brueckner.
In a tragic update given in June 2020, Hans Christian Wolters, of Germany’s Braunschweig Public Prosecutor’s Office, said: “We are assuming that the girl is dead. With the suspect, we are talking about a sexual predator who has already been convicted of crimes against little girls and he’s already serving a long sentence.”
And speaking exclusively with the Mirror in the following year, Wolters asserted: “We’re confident we have the man who took and killed her”, stating that they were “100% convinced” Brueckner was responsible for Madeleine’s disappearance. Wolters, who has repeatedly appealed for new information, explained: “It is now possible that we could charge. We have that evidence now. But it’s not just about charging him – we want to charge him with the best body of evidence possible.”
In May 2024, Met Police detective Mark Draycott, who has worked on Operation Grange since 2011, shared details of a voicemail left by Brueckner’s former friend, Helge Busching, on a Scotland Yard answer machine back in May 2017. In their tip-off, Busching alleged, during a conversation about Maddie, Brueckner told him “she did not scream”.
The following month, senior detective Titus Stampa told the court that emails discovered on Brueckner’s Hotmail account linked him to the McCann case. Mr Stampa explained that he had no clearance to discuss the email content as this was “related to the killing” of Madeleine. Referring to it as the “murder” account, Mr Stampa refused to specify whether or not the emails contained videos or photos.
‘Stalker’ hell
Now the McCanns have endured fresh pain after a woman claiming to be their long-lost daughter was arrested at Bristol Airport on Wednesday, and later charged with four counts of stalking.
Julia Wandel, also known as Julia Wandelt, stands accused of stalking Kate, Gerry, Sean and Amelie McCann between January 3 2024 and February 15 2025. The 23-year-old, who has been remanded into custody at Leicester Magistrates’ Court, allegedly attended the McCann family home on May 2 and December 7 last year, and also sent Maddie’s siblings, Amelie and Sean McCann Instagram messages between January 3 and December 29.
The charges state that these incidents “had a substantial adverse effect” on the family’s day-to-day activities “when you knew or ought to have known that your course of conduct would cause alarm or distress”. Each of the four stalking offences carry a maximum penalty of 12 months in custody and/or an unlimited fine. A 60-year-old woman from Wales was also arrested at the airport on suspicion of stalking, but has been released on bail, police have confirmed.
Wandel first made headlines in February 2023, when she claimed to be missing Maddie. As well as making several media appearances, Wandel also underwent a DNA test to ‘prove’ she was telling the truth. However, this test confirmed she was not Maddie, instead showing she is from Poland, with some Lithuanian and Romanian heritage.
During a 2024 appearance on the BBC Radio 4 podcast series ‘Why Do You Hate Me?’, Wandel stated that she’d “never meant to hurt anyone” with her claims. She said: “I knew that there will be people who will not believe me or hate me, but I didn’t expect that I will get that death threats, for example. It was something that I don’t understand.”
In May, it was reported that the McCanns decided against attending a prayer vigil to mark the poignant 17th anniversary of their daughter’s disappearance, as Wandel had turned up. Speaking after the 45-minute service, Wandel said: “I am Madeleine McCann. I have never stopped believing it and I have come here because I want to ask Kate and Gerry to do a DNA test. They haven’t done one to prove I am not their daughter.”
Wandel, who was clutching a letter she’d hoped to give to the McCanns, continued: “No I am not crazy. I am not a liar.” The letter was later given to a vicar, under the assurance it would be passed on. After her presence was made known, a message from Kate and Gerry was later read out during an informal gathering of friends and well wishers, in which they apologised for their absence.
Do you have a story to share? Email me at [email protected]