A Woman Who Claimed She's Missing Girl Madeleine McCann Says She Now Has DNA Test Results
"We finally know the reality."
Julia Wendell who claimed to be missing girl Madeleine McCann. Right: Madeleine McCann.
Julia Wendell, the Polish woman who claimed she might be long-lost British girl Madeleine McCann, is now updating her stance based on new DNA evidence.
Wendell is not, in fact, McCann, according to DNA test results shared by Wendell's representative this week.
Fia Johansson, a psychic and private investigator working with Wendell, now says the woman is not the same person who went missing while on a family vacation in Portugal in 2007, although it's "impossible to tell for sure" without DNA from the family.
"We finally know the reality," she wrote on Instagram.
Johansson confirmed to RadarOnline on Monday that the 21-year-old woman is "absolutely 100 percent from Poland."
“She is a small percentage of Lithuanian and Russian but the test results show she is Polish.”
In February, Wendell began posting photos and videos on Instagram and TikTok, saying she believed she could be the long-lost girl.
That's where she shared several similarities to McCann, the biggest one being the same rare eye disorder in her right eye that the 3-year-old girl had.
Wendell, who has also been identified as Julia Wandelt and Julia Faustyna in various news stories, continued making those claims during a recent appearance on Dr. Phil.
The New York Post reports that in a written statement aired during the Dr. Phil episode, Wendell's parents said it was “obvious that Julia isn’t Maddie.”
“For us as a family it is obvious Julia is our daughter, granddaughter, sister, niece, cousin and step niece. We have memories, we have pictures,” they said in the statement.
“Julia also has these photos because she took them from the family home with the birth certificate, as well as numerous hospital discharges.”
During her appearance on the show, Wendell said that her mother "refused" to provide her with any information from her early childhood, as reported by Hello! Magazine.
Also in February, police in Poland told local news outlet Gazeta that there was no evidence backing Wendell's claims.
Madeleine’s parents, Gerry and Kate McCann, have not publicly commented on Wendell's claims and did not contribute to her DNA test.
McCann went missing from an apartment in Praia da Luz in Portugal in 2007.
The U.K. girl was sleeping in the apartment at the time while her parents were having dinner at a nearby restaurant.
In April 2022, Portuguese prosecutors announced that Christian Brueckner from Germany was an official suspect in the disappearance of McCann, according to BBC.