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A Polish woman who claimed to be Madeleine McCann says she regrets her actions after receiving abuse and death threats.
Julia Wendell created social media profiles with the handle @IamMadeleineMcCann and even appeared on the Dr Phil talk show in the US after making the claims.
But her claims were proved false after she took a DNA test. Its results proved she had no relation to Madeleine, who went missing aged three during a family holiday in Portugal in 2007.
Plus Julia is two years older than Madeleine, who would be 20 years old now.
Julia, 22, has now told a BBC podcast that she ‘regrets’ the entire affair, insisting she ‘never meant to hurt anyone – including the McCanns’.
She claims she has a number of gaps in her memory following childhood abuse, and she became suspicious about her past after her parents dismissed questions about whether she was adopted.
Julia Wendell says she received death and rape threats after sharing the claims online (Picture: BBC)
Madeleine McCann has been missing since 2007 (Picture: PA)
Before claiming to be missing Maddie, Julia had also claimed to be three other missing girls, a MailOnline investigation revealed.
Her social media posts attracted significant negative attention – though Julia claimed to ‘really want to know who I am’.
She told the podcast: ‘I knew that there will be people who will not believe me or hate me, but I didn’t expect that I will get death threats, for example.
‘I was trying to be strong even when people said, “you should die”, “you should be raped”, “you should be killed”, “you should be murdered”, “you shouldn’t exist in this world”.’
Julia says she latched on to the belief that she was Madeleine McCann after later seeing sketches of a potential suspect in the case that bore similarities to her abuser.
She said: ‘I know [what] my abuser looks like. And I know this is very, very similar to the suspects from [the] Madeleine McCann case.’
Madeleine McCann suspect Christian Brueckner is going on trial next month (Picture: REX/Shutterstock)
Julia previously said: ‘I don’t remember most of my childhood but my earliest memory is very strong and it’s about holidays in a hot place where there is a beach and white or very light coloured buildings with apartments. I don’t see my family in this memory.’
She also insists she has many physical similarities with missing Madeleine, including a coloboma of the iris – a rare eye abnormality affecting the shape of the pupil.
She said she ‘just wanted to say sorry’ to parents Kate and Gerry McCann ‘because every person can react in a different way and maybe it brought them more sadness.’
The BBC spoke to people connected to the McCanns and the family’s official search organisation, Find Madeleine, who said they were willing to accept Julia’s apology.
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Police investigating Madeleine’s disappearance hope they may get closer to solving the case, with prime suspect Christian Brueckner set to go on trial next month.
Convicted rapist Brueckner, 45, is accused of raping and sexually assaulting several women and a young girl.
The attacks are all said to have taken place between 2000 and 2017 when he lived on Portugal’s Algarve coast – the area where Madeleine was taken.
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