Julia Wendall has gone viral online after revealing she thinks she could be Madeleine McCann, the Leicestershire girl who disappeared while on a family holiday in Portugal in 2007..
Her Instagram account, @IAmMadeleineMcCann, gained over a million followers and many were convinced by her theory and supposed evidence.
However, the 21-year-old from Poland has since deleted all of her social media accounts after receiving numerous death threats.
Now private investigator and self-professed psychic Dr. Fia Johansson, who has previously assisted police on missing persons cases in the US, Julia’s claims and continues to share her findings online.
Julia submitted three DNA samples, as well as a 23andMe-style genetic test, and is currently awaiting the results to determine if she is Madeline. Here are all of her claims that suggest she could be the missing child, as reported by the Daily Star.
Physical Matches
Julia claims she has the same rare eye condition as Madeleine – a coloboma in her right eye. This is a hole in the structure of the eye and can cause the pupil to become misshapen.
In close-up photos shared by Julia, the coloboma doesn’t seem to be as prominent as the one in Madeleine’s photos.
However, according to the National Eye Institute, the deformed pupil can “look rounder” through surgery or the use of colored contact lenses.
Julia has freckles on her leg and cheek that are very similar to the missing toddler’s.
“I have a mark on the same eye,” she said. “I have a similar shape of face, ears, lips and gap between my teeth.”
No hospital data
To further investigate Julia’s claims, Dr. Johansson traveled to Poland. She found that there were no hospital records in Wroclaw – the city where she supposedly spent her childhood – covering the first five years of her life.
Speaking to RadarOnline, Dr Johansson said: “Everything from the ages of zero months to five years – everything – is missing.
“And there’s no doctor’s signature showing that they removed any of the data from her record. She just doesn’t exist during that time period.”
This could possibly support Julia’s suspicions that her age is incorrect, as Madeleine would now be 19 instead of 21.
Regardless of whether she’s Madeline, Dr. Johansson said she had no doubt Julia was smuggled into Poland as a child.
No childhood memories
Julia claims there are significant gaps in her memory, especially when it comes to her childhood.
One thing she can vaguely remember is being in a hot spot with “white buildings”.
She claimed: “I can’t remember most of my childhood, but my earliest memory is very strong and it’s about holidays in warm places where there was a beach and white or very light-colored apartment buildings.
“I don’t see my family in this memory.”
Links to German pedophile
Julia claims she was assaulted by a German pedophile who looks like a police sketch of a male suspect once considered in Madeleine’s disappearance.
She said her grandmother told her “something” about the missing three-year-old’s case and that she found a photo of the man who assaulted her at her grandmother’s house.
Speaking to RadarOnline, Dr Johansson said Julia reportedly told her school about the incidents of abuse when she was seven. She claims she was then sent on an eight-hour car ride with the attacker to another family member’s home.
Dr. Johansson and Julia are now in the US where their alleged evidence has been passed on to the relevant authorities. The detective says police “think sex traffickers are probably the ones threatening her with death.”
family in Poland
Julia’s family in Poland, through the missing persons organization Missing Years Ago, released a statement denying her claims.
Dr. Johansson said they are refusing to take a DNA test and have blocked Julia’s phone number.
Julia also claims that she heard her mother admit that she “took her”.
Dr. Johansson told The Sun: “What we found out after some research is that she heard her mother say something along the lines of ‘I don’t know why we have this girl, she’s always been a troublemaker ever since we took her’.
“Since then she started to wonder what was going on and if her parents were her real parents.”
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