Woman who claims she could be missing toddler Madeleine McCann is 'arrested after landing in UK'

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By Kim Novak

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A woman who claims she could be the missing toddler Madeleine McCann has reportedly been arrested at Bristol Airport after landing in the UK.

GettyImages-74165450 (1).jpgMadeleine was just three when she vanished. Credit: Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images

Julia Wandelt, 23, made headlines last year after she claimed she was the missing British child and was trying to get in contact with Kate and Gerry McCann, who she believed were her parents.

Madeleine McCann went missing on May 3, 2007, in Praia da Luz, Portugal, after she and her siblings were left in the family's holiday apartment while their parents dined nearby.

The missing girl, who was three years old at the time, has never been found.

Wandelt, who is from Poland, has repeated claimed that she could be Madeleine, and wants the McCanns to take a DNA test to prove whether she is their child.

However, according to reports from the Daily Mail, Wandelt was arrested this week after landing in the UK, on suspicion of stalking and harassing Kate and Gerry McCann.

According to the outlet, police swooped on Wandelt moments after she landed in the UK from Wroclaw, Poland, in front of stunned passengers.

Wandelt had been due to meet a friend, who lives in Cardiff, and both she and the friend - who is believed to be in their 60s - were arrested and taken away by police.

Screenshot 2024-11-27 at 14.53.50.pngJulia Wandelt claims new DNA evidence proves she could be related to the McCanns. Credit: Julia Wandelt / Instagram

Wandelt's representative, Surjit Singh Clair, confirmed news of the arrest, telling the Daily Mail: "I'm trying to find out what's happened but it appears Julia has been arrested at Bristol Airport this evening just after she got off the plane.

"The police have reportedly arrested her on an allegation of stalking and harassing the McCanns."

Wandelt's latest claim is that she has recently taken a DNA test which was examined by a specialist in America who claimed it could link her to the McCanns.

She shared the results on her Instagram account, claiming the McCanns had "refused" to partake in the DNA test, which she claims showed that she had British and Irish ancestry, rather than being 100 percent Polish.

She also claimed that experts have matched photos her own eyes - which feature a similar coloboma in the iris as Madeleine's - as well as her teeth and voice to those of the missing girl.

Wandelt claimed on Instagram that her "source" believes the DNA "strongly supports that Gerry McCann could be Julia Wandelt's biological father".

The claims refute those previously made by private investigator Dr Fia Johansson, who worked with Wandelt in 2023 to get a DNA profile for her, but claimed that showed she was fully Polish.


Wandelt later said she believed that Dr Johansson was not telling the truth - something Dr Johansson denied - and has sought to get further answers about her past.

Her latest DNA test results were analyzed by "highly respected and recognized world expert" Dr Monte Miller, who has a PhD in Biochemistry from Loma Linda University in California, who said in an email to Wandelt: "The simple answer is that the suspect is not the source of the DNA on the evidence, because their DNA is not fully established everywhere.

"However, they do match fairly well, more than I would expect at random, and a specific pattern emerges that look like an almost certain family connection."


Wandelt previously told the BBC's disinformation and social media correspondent, Marianna Spring, that she was sexually abused as a child and that she began to wonder if she was Madeleine after seeing resemblances between her abuser and sketches of the suspect accused of abducting the child.

She also claims the abuse led to her suffering from gaps in her memory which made her suspicious about her roots, as her parents previously dismissed her questions about whether she was adopted.

Wandelt also claims her medical records only go back as far as when she was eight or nine years old, and claims her parents never showed her photos of her early years or her birth certificate which her parents quickly refuted.

Featured image credit: Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images