A girl has confidently claimed to be Madeleine McCann – the victim of the kidnapping that shocked Britain in 2007.
Recently, Julia Faustyna – a 21-year-old girl from Poland has claimed that she could be Madeleine McCann – the baby victim in the most famous missing child case in the UK in the past decade.
Julia Faustyna has attracted attention on Instagram and TikTok when she said that she could be the child who disappeared from a family holiday in Portugal in 2007 due to their similar age and appearance.
The Madeleine McCann case has been a harrowing kidnapping case for the British police for the past 16 years. After the 3-year-old girl went missing, a multi-million dollar search operation was launched across Europe. Many celebrities spoke out to join the search for Madeleine, but in the end, all were unsuccessful.
Over the past decades, the police have found suspects and many theories about why Madeleine McCann disappeared, but the real answer has never been revealed. Every time there is a new development, such as a new suspect, the case stirs up the media. Therefore, the fact that someone claims to be Madeleine McCann makes many people hopeful and curious to follow.
Julia Wendell said that she doubts her identity because she believes she was a victim of kidnapping when she was a child. She does not remember the details of her childhood. Julia sees herself as having many similarities to the photo of little Madeleine, and they even have a brown mark on their right iris and a birthmark on their cheek. This statement has caused a lot of controversy. Some people believe Julia and call for the police to investigate, while others think this is just a trick for her to become famous on social media.
Julia Wendell has submitted samples of her DNA for forensic testing in search of answers.
Private investigator Fia Johansson told RadarOnline.com that the 21-year-old has submitted samples for three different forensic tests to map out her DNA sequence, along with a 23andMe-style genetic test to determine her ancestry.
“If the results show that she is British or from that area, then we will continue our investigation into Madeleine McCann and contact detectives in Portugal,” Dr Johansson said. “We now have a lot of evidence that Julia was definitely trafficked to Poland from another country by an international sex trafficking ring. We are still investigating but Julia is definitely not the biological daughter of her Polish parents.”
If Wendell's ancestors came from the same region as Madeleine's parents, Gerry and Kate McCann, Dr Johansson said she would immediately send the DNA sequence to Portuguese investigators for comparison.
Dr Johansson recently told The Sun: “Julia was very open to the idea that she could be another missing child, not necessarily Madeleine. Julia just wanted to know the truth about who she was. One of the reasons she linked herself to Madeleine was because one of the suspects in Madeleine’s case looked very similar to a man who abused Julia as a child. The same man could have been linked to Madeleine and many other missing children. This is how kidnappers and traffickers operate.” Julia’s story gained further attention when many internet users speculated that she could be Livia Schepp, who disappeared in 2011 along with her six-year-old twin sister Alessia.