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Dublin Live
Dublin Live
World
Ethan Blackshaw

Woman claiming to be Madeleine McCann deletes Instagram account as doubts cast

The Polish woman claiming to be Madeleine McCann has deleted her Instagram account as doubts are cast on the Polish police's public statement.

Julia Wendell had been documenting her claims and supposed evidence online through her recently deleted Facebook and TikTok accounts. She has now deleted her Instagram too. The 21-year-old, who believed she was the missing Leicestershire girl who disappeared in Portugal in 2007 aged 7, had amassed over 1 million followers on the social media site.

Here she claimed she had a speck in her eye similar to Madeleine's, that she couldn't remember most of her childhood and that she was allegedly abused by a German paedophile who looked like an early suspect in the Madeleine case. Dr Fia Johansson, a private eye and supposed medium visited Julia on March 1 to look at her claims. The two appeared in a video together which has since been deleted.

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However, one user reuploaded it to TikTok, and in it, Dr Johansson cut down Polish police's previous statement that said that Julia is not Madeleine, after they met with her family. She stated: "We started to investigate this situation for 45 minutes and what we got back [was that] no police officers whatsoever in Poland said that she is, or she is not, Madeleine McCann."

"No official record whatsoever went out... it was all lies," the psychic medium, who previously worked on missing person cases with U.S law enforcement claimed. She also said that Polish police could only look into the case if prompted by British or Portuguese authorities.

The medium, speaking in the video, went on to say that she and Julia have intentions to go meet Polish police themselves, adding that Julia's parents are steadfastly refusing to take a DNA test to figure out who Julia really is. It is not known whether Julia removed her account on Instagram herself or whether it was the work of the social media site.

After deleting both her Facebook and TikTok last week, the young woman wrote: "If you don't like me, please unfollow. I don't want fans or followers. I closed my Facebook account and TikTok so people can't make fun of me."

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