"I think I'm Maddie." Julia, a 21-year-old Polish woman, claims to be the nearly four-year-old British girl who disappeared in Portugal in 2007.
"I have to do a DNA test. British and Polish investigators ignore me. Help me," she wrote on Instagram @Iammadeleinemcan, where she shares posts with photos of physical details that recall the little girl who, according to detectives, was killed shortly after her disappearance by German pedophile Christian Brueckner.
The birthmark and the stain in the eye
Julia said she became suspicious after some allusions made by her grandmother and, from that moment, she began to notice physical characteristics that would bring her closer to the little girl.
In a video, the Polish girl shows marks on her body similar to those of Madeleine, circling them in red to illustrate her point of view. Another image, which she cites as "evidence," shows a facial structure similar to Maddie's.
Perhaps the most powerful image is the one showing Julia with what appears to be an eye defect similar to what Madeleine also had. "I have an eye defect, the same one Maddie had - he says - Only in my case it disappears every year". In Maddie's case, it was caused by an extremely rare condition of coloboma in her right eye. Connecting the two would also be an identical birthmark on the leg, he says.
In addition, Julia confessed to having been abused by a man named Ney, the same surname as Martin, one of the first suspects in Maddie's kidnapping, then exonerated. An element that the Polish girl sees as another parallel with the story of the English girl.
Juilia said she asked her mother for photos when she was pregnant with her, medical records and any photos from her childhood but she wouldn't show her anything.
The details that do not add up and the investigation open
Despite some similarities between the two, the young woman's claims have raised a number of doubts. Some passages of its history do not add up. Starting from age: Maddie today would be 19 and not 21 and Julia would have gone to kindergarten in Poland, in Wrocław, while the British child was kidnapped. The 21-year-old also gives her interpretation on this aspect: the age on her documents would be false and the kindergarten teacher would have confessed to her that she went to school only from September 2007 to July 2008.
In any case, so far neither the London Metropolitan Police - which still has an open investigation, Operation Grange, into Madeleine's disappearance - nor the Find Madeleine campaign have issued a statement on the Polish girl's claims. A spokesperson for the Met Police told Australian website news.com he had nothing specific to say about the new claim, saying the investigation into Madeleine's disappearance continued. It is estimated that the investigation into Maddie has cost £13 million, or about $23 million, to date.
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Madeleine McCan
The case
Maddie's case dominated the news for many years: the little girl disappeared from a holiday home in the Algarve, Portugal, while her parents Kate and Gerry McCann dined a few dozen meters away. Although German prosecutors believe Brueckner was the culprit (already in prison for other crimes when the announcement was made), the body has never been found. Julia claims to be in contact with a cousin of Madeleine, who would have talked about a possibility of comparing her DNA with that of the child's parents. And now she asks to do those tests to remove that doubt that grips her.
Maddie's parents, now 54, who are also parents of 17-year-old twins, Sean and Amelie, would be open to the possibility of carrying out these investigations. "The family is not taking risks, they are willing to look at all tracks. The girl looks similar, there is no doubt and if what she says is true, there is every chance that it could be her. It all comes back," a source told the Daily Star. Many have condemned Julia's goal – to get a DNA test – who for this reason has even received death threats online.
"Thank you for the support you give me and to the haters I have to say that I'm not joking and I really believe I can be her," she wrote on social media. "I didn't take money from anyone and I won't because the police would have to test my DNA and compare it to Kate and Gerry McCann's DNA," Julia explained.