The woman who gained social media notoriety after claiming to be missing child Madeleine McCann has learned she is not the missing girl.
DNA results showed that Julia Wendell, 21, who is too old to be McCann anyway, has been definitively ruled out as the little girl who was abducted from a vacation rental nearly 16 years ago, People Magazine reported. Wendell, who is Polish, gained a social media following and media attention earlier this year after she claimed to share similar birthmarks to McCann. Her spokeswoman, Dr. Fia Johansson, however, confirmed that Wendell could not be McCann following DNA testing.
“We finally know the reality,” Johansson wrote on Instagram. “Although it is impossible to tell for sure without the parent’s DNA results on either side, the test results speak to the origins of Julia’s roots. The test results revealed that she is 100 percent of Polish heart, with negligible influence from Lithuania, and Russia.”
Johansson insisted that Wendell wasn’t just “making a claim to get attention.”
“This story is much more complicated than a simple girl from a small town in Poland making a claim to get attention. She truly believed what she was saying, and with so many questions about her childhood it is easy to understand where she was coming [from],” Johansson wrote in the same post.
Wendell’s parents reportedly released a statement shortly after she made her claims saying they were false. Wendell even went on “Dr. Phil” to deny her parents’ allegations that she stole her own birth certificate along with childhood photos to hide who she truly was while claiming to be McCann, the New York Post reported.
“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,” Wendell’s family said in a statement aired during the program. “Julia also has these photos because she took them from the family home with the birth certificate, as well as numerous hospital discharges.”
In response to the DNA test, McCann’s parents released a statement saying: “There isn’t anything to report at this time. If and when there is, it will come from The Metropolitan Police.”
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Madeleine McCann was three years old when she disappeared from her bed in an apartment her family rented while on vacation in Praia da Luz, Portugal, in 2007. No trace of her has ever been found.
The biggest break in the case came in 2020, when police named “Christian B” as a suspect, later identified as Christian Brueckner. Brueckner is from Germany and currently in prison for drug offenses, as well as a seven-year sentence for the rape of an elderly woman. Jim Gamble, a former British police officer who in 2010 led an official review of McCann’s disappearance, said in April 2022 that phone data put Brueckner near the scene of the crime within a 30-minute timeframe. Brueckner had also allegedly stolen from vacation homes in the area, with children’s clothing reportedly found in his vehicle.
“I think the circumstantial evidence that I know exists is extremely strong … I wouldn’t be surprised if charges follow,” Gamble noted. “It would just be fantastic to be able to give the McCanns peace of mind so far as knowing exactly what happened.”
Brueckner, however, denies any involvement in Madeleine’s disappearance.
