In 2023, the Madeleine McCann investigation was thrust back into the spotlight after 21-year-old Polish woman Julia Faustyna publicly claimed she was the British girl who disappeared from Praia da Luz in 2007.

Faustyna pointed to perceived similarities in appearance and said she believed she could be Madeleine. Her claims quickly spread online and generated intense international attention.

But genetic testing did not support the idenтιтy claim. Results reported in April 2023 indicated that Faustyna’s ancestry was overwhelmingly Polish, with small Lithuanian and Russian components, and did not show the British or German ancestry she had hoped would support her theory.

The story resurfaced years later in a separate development involving Julia Wandelt, who is the same woman and was 24 by 2025. During court proceedings in Leicester, a forensic expert testified that Wandelt’s DNA profile did not match samples ᴀssociated with Madeleine and that she was not the biological child of Kate and Gerry McCann.

The court also heard that police had conducted a DNA comparison after Wandelt was arrested in 2025. The investigating officer said the result conclusively ruled out her being Madeleine.

Madeleine disappeared on May 3, 2007, shortly before her fourth birthday. Despite numerous theories and reported leads over the years, her disappearance remains unresolved.

The DNA evidence surrounding Wandelt does not solve the wider Madeleine McCann mystery — but it does firmly rule out one highly publicized idenтιтy claim.

Source: The Independent, The Guardian, ITV News Central, 7NEWS