Woman who claimed to be Madeleine McCann issues apologies to Kate and Gerry McCann
Julia Wendell, the woman who appeared on Dr Phil claiming to be Madeleine McCann, has now shared a lengthy statement after a DNA test proved she was not the missing Brit.
In the update, she apologised to Kate and Gerry McCann and said she never claimed she was Madeleine in the first place.
Wendell, with the help of private investigator and medium Dr. Fia Johansson, attempted to prove she was Madeleine, who went missing from the Praia da Luz holiday resort on the Algarve in 2007.
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She used physical similarities such as a defect in her iris and a dimple on her face to try and back up her claims.
Wendell conducted a DNA test to settle the issue once and for all, and it turned out she was actually her parents’ daughter.
Johansson told Radar Online: “She is absolutely 100 percent from Poland. She is a small percentage of Lithuanian and Russian, but the test results show she is Polish.
"We learned a few things, one being that Julia’s mum is in fact now believed to be her mum, so she is not Madeleine McCann."
In the wake of the test results, Wendell had an explosive falling out with Johansson and set up a fundraiser to help her get ‘back on her feet’.
Now, she has posted a long statement to her Facebook account claiming that she never said she was Madeleine McCann - despite the bio of her old Instagram account being @iammadeleinemccann.
She wrote: “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.”
Later in the statement, Wendell explained why she went public with her quest to prove she was Madeleine.
She wrote: “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, Wendell went to say she still thinks she could 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.
LADbible has reached out to Dr. Fia Johansson for comment.
Topics: Madeleine McCann
Simon Fearn