Julia Wendell, the Polish woman claiming to be Madeleine McCann, has issued a message to the missing girl’s parents reaffirming her belief that she is their daughter.
Wendell, who also goes by Julia Faustyna and Julia Wandelt, went viral in February after sensationally claiming that she is Madeleine, the missing British girl who vanished from a holiday resort in Portugal in 2007, aged three.
The case, which captured the attention of the world, has never been solved, and there remain any number of theories as to what actually happened.
Madeleine’s parents, Kate and Gerry McCann, have always maintained that she was abducted after they left her and her siblings alone in their holiday apartment in Praia da Luz, Portugal to have a meal at a restaurant close by.
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Wendell created an Instagram account named “Help me, I need to talk with Kate and Gerry McCann” – the username is “iammadeleinemccan”.
Despite heavy criticism online, the Polish native has refused to back down and, according to Sky News, submitted several forensic tests to establish her DNA sequence – she’s still waiting for the results of a test to identify her ancestry.
Last week the 21-year-old appeared to suffer a blow in her attempts to proof her assertions true when a Swiss artificial intelligence company ran an extensive facial recognition test and deemed that the likelihood of her being Madeline is extremely low.
Per Sky, Ava-X submitted photos of Wendell and McCann into its Iris facial recognition software. The result? The software determined it was “practically impossible” for the young woman to be the missing Madeleine.
Christian Fehrlin, the company’s co-founder, told reporters that the system was able to find a match between childhood and adult photos of Wendell, but was unable to do the same thing with photos of Madeleine.
“When we did the same with Maddie’s picture, no match could be found,” Fehrlin told Swiss newspaper Blick.
Peter Macdiarmid / Staff
Wendell, however, remains undeterred, and has now sent a message to Madeleine’s parents. In an interview with RadarOnline.com, the Polish native reportedly fought back tears as she recalled watching a video of Kate McCann singing to Madeleine. Wendell then said that she instantly recognized the voice as someone from her own childhood.
The 21-year-old is currently residing in a California safe house, having relocated from Poland after reportedly receiving death threats. She said: “I really believe that I could be Madeleine.
“I want to say something to Kate McCann: I listened to a song that you sang to your daughter Madeleine.”
She added: “If I am not Madeleine McCann, I know that I can open this case again.
“I tried to talk with many authorities back to 2022. I talked with embassy in Poland, embassy in Portugal, embassy in England, Metropolitan Police with Operation Grange (the long-running, multi-million-dollar British police operation to find out what happened to Madeleine), with Interpol, with Polish police, Portugal police… but nobody listened to me.
“I have a message to McCann’s family… I want to say that I really believe I can be Madeleine, your daughter, but if I’m not, I’m over 100% sure that the person who abused me is involved because I recognize picture from site findmadeleine.com.”
Wendell’s family have continued to vehemently condemn her claims.
“For us as a family it is obvious that Julia is our daughter, granddaughter, sister, niece, cousin and step niece,” they said in a statement.
“We have memories, we have pictures. Julia also has these photos, because she took them from the family home with the birth certificate, as well as numerous hospital discharges.”
I don’t know about you, but I hope the McCanns can get some measure of peace soon.
Let us know what you think about Madeleine’s disappearance and Julia Wendell’s claim in the comments.
