The long-awaited DNA test results have been sent to the 21-year-old who made international news earlier this year when she claimed to be missing British Madeleine McCann.
Julia Wendell, also known as Julia Faustyna or Julia Wandelt, gained notoriety in February after sensationally asserting that McCann, a little child who disappeared from a Portuguese vacation resort in 2007, was actually her.
Wendell created an Instagram account named “Help me, I need to talk with Kate and Gerry McCann” – the username is “iammadeleinemccan” – and supported her claim with pieces of “evidence”, including side-by-side comparisons of physical characteristics she shares with Madeleine.
The Polish native was ultimately had to leave her country after receiving death threats as a result of the attention her pleading got, but she has consistently insisted that she is not intentionally lying.
A thorough facial recognition test conducted last month by a Swiss artificial intelligence company to see if the 21-year-claim old’s would be accurate raised serious doubts about it.
According to Sky, Ava-X fed images of McCann and Wendell into its Iris facial recognition program. The outcome? The computer program concluded that it was “practically impossible” for the young lady to be Madeleine, who went missing.
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.
The young woman’s family, meanwhile, have vehemently condemned her claims.
“For us as a family it is obvious that Julia is our daughter, granddaughter, sister, niece, cousin and step niece,” the family 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.”
Wendell has been working tirelessly to find a solution, and she recently made an appearance on the talk show Dr. Phil to further publicize her issue.
She migrated to the US after being forcibly removed from Poland for her personal safety, as previously noted, and reportedly underwent a DNA test to establish her kinship to the McCann family.
Nevertheless, those outcomes now indicate that she is not Madeleine and that she is actually from Poland with some Lithuanian and Romanian ancestry.
Speaking to RadarOnline, Dr. Fia Johansson said: “She is absolutely 100 percent from Poland. She is a small percentage of Lithuanian and Russian but the test results show she is Polish.”
Dr. Johansson, who has been awarded power of attorney over Julia, stated before the test results were released that she had a “gut feeling” that her client wasn’t Madeleine.
“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,” Dr. Johansson said.
“They’re not 100% but they believe that Julia’s mum is in fact her mum. They’re questioning her father’s side. They’re checking into that, that’s part of what they’re doing with the DNA.
“But Julia’s mum is in fact her mum is what they’re believing and she is not in fact Madeleine McCann.”
UK sources claim that authorities are to get a fresh infusion of funding worth tens of thousands of pounds to aid in the search for Madeleine.
An insider with knowledge of the probe said: “This is fantastic news. Kate and Gerry, Maddie’s parents, will be overjoyed. It inspires new hope.
The only thing I can hope for is that the matter is resolved quickly so that Madeleine McCann’s troubled parents can finally find some peace.
If you’re hoping for a quick resolution as well, share this post on Facebook.