‘I AM MADDIE McCANN’
DNA evidence could finally reveal the truth
APolish woman is shockingly claiming to be missing English girl Madeleine McCann, 16 years after the three-year-old went missing from a Portuguese holiday apartment.
“I think I can be Madeleine,” Julia Faustyna announced on social media, alongside a series of annotated pictures to provide “proof” of the similarities between her and the abducted tot.
“I have a defect in my eye, in the same eye,” she explains, referring to the condition, coloboma, which is a distinctive marking in Madeleine’s right eye.
Sexual abuse survivor Julia, who has also been identified online as Julia Wendell and Julia Wandelt, believes discrepancies in her childhood memories could be explained by her being the missing child.
In a series of emotional posts on Instagram, Julia has explained how she’s been shunned by her family over the publicity she’s received.
However, she claims the missing toddler’s parents, Gerry and Kate McCann, have agreed to a DNA test. If Julia is Madeleine, who would be 20 in May, it would be a miraculous conclusion to one of the world’s most famous missing-person cases.
Madeleine vanished on the evening of 3 May 2007, from a holiday apartment in Praia da Luz. Her parents, who had been at a nearby restaurant at the time, were initially named as suspects by local investigators, fuelling long-discredited conspiracy theories claiming they were responsible for the toddler’s disappearance and likely death.
Since then, multiple investigations and inquiries have been launched, with the British police concluding Madeleine was probably the victim of a planned abduction or disturbed burglary.
In 2020, a German prosecutor claimed he had “concrete” evidence jailed paedophile Christian Brueckner had killed Madeleine, although he continues to deny the accusations and hasn’t been charged.
The McCanns continue to hold out hope that Madeleine might be found alive. Last year, on the 15th anniversary of their daughter’s disappearance, Gerry and Kate issued a moving statement thanking investigators and supporters.
“It’s a huge comfort to know that regardless of time passed, Madeleine is still in people’s hearts and minds,” they said.
Whatever the truth, Julia isn’t giving up her quest. “Police investigators from UK and Poland try to ignore me,” she has written on social media. “I will tell my story in posts here. Help me.”