After all the suspense and speculation and even a viral appearance on Dr. Phil, it turns out 21-year-old Julie Wendell is in fact not Madeleine McCann. Which is a disappointing outcome, for sure.
Julia has now shared a statement apologising to Kate and Gerry McCann after a DNA test proved she is not the missing Brit.
Amazingly, Julia now says that she never claimed she was Madeleine McCann in the first place, even though that’s exactly what she’s been doing for the last six weeks. I mean, her Instagram account is literally called @IAmMadeleineMcCann, and she used it to share ‘evidence’ including a defect in her iris and a dimple on her face to over a million followers she amassed since this whole saga began.
She enlisted the help of private detective and self-professed psychic Dr Fia Johansson who claimed to uncover a number of other clues, such as a lack of medical records for Julia in the city she said she grew up in.
In the end, all it took was a simple DNA test to show that Julia was of nearly 100% Polish heritage, and is definitely her parents’ daughter. She’s now flown back to Poland to be with them, and apologised for bringing ‘sadness’ to the McCann family:
I don’t remember most of my memories but I can remember some things and I never said that I am Madeleine McCann.
I used this sentence to create a [name] for my old instagram account, it was my mistake and I know it and I apologize for that because I should use [the] words ‘Am I Madeleine McCann’, not ‘I am’.
So it was my fault and it wasn’t my intention to bring sadness or another negative emotions to anyone, especially to McCann family. My main purpose was always to find out who I am and what exactly happened in my very hurtful past.
The reason that I came out with all my thoughts and I asked for help with DNA is because nobody helped me with finding the truth earlier. I gave many questions to my family (not only mother and father). They didn’t want to answer me.
Since I’ve started believing that my mother can’t be my mother, I’ve started to research missing children. And then I found [a] picture of Madeleine and I tried to find out more about her abduction, that’s why I joined many Facebook groups about her unsolved case.
And then, after all that, Julia says she STILL reckons she might be Madeleine:
I believe that my birth certificate could be forged. I still believe that it’s a possibility that I could be Madeleine and don’t be bad I will tell you why.
When I was doing [the] dna test in USA it was DNA kit from company called Ancestry. Fia didn’t want to give me results over one week me asking for it.
When she finally gave me access to my results I was so shocked because it was on another company’s website. Tell me please, how [is it] possible that my results came to [the] website of competitive company?
She concluded her statement by saying she’d hired a private detective to keep investigating her claims and promised another ‘important update’ tomorrow. Jesus, make your mind up, girl!
I suppose there’s too much money to be made from this grift for Julia Wendell to stop now, as evidenced by the fundraiser she started to ‘help her get back on her feet’. Yeah OK it’s only made £200 thus far, but you’ve got to start somewhere…
