A Polish woman’s claims she was missing British child Madeleine McCann came crashing down this week making it just one more of the thousands of dead ends and red herrings in a mystery that have touched all corners of the globe – even Australia.
Julia Faustyna, 21, claimed she might be the adult British girl who disappeared at the age of three from a Portuguese resort where her family was holidaying in May of 2007 but this was disproved by a DNA test last week.
The tests showed she is not Madeline, who was from the English Midlands city of Leicestershire, but was from Poland, with some Lithuanian and Romanian heritage.
Dr Fia Johansson, a private investigator and ‘pyschic medium’ who acted as Ms Faustyna’s spokespeson, confirmed the find.
‘She is absolutely 100 percent from Poland,’ Dr Johansson said.
‘At least Julia got the investigators to move on the McCann case – she made things happen.’
Ms Faustyna, who also goes by Julia Wendell or Julia Wandelt, thought she might have been Madeleine because she had the same rare blotch in her right iris and other similar facial features.
The 16th anniversary of Maddie’s disappearance is approaching this year. She would be 19, turning 20 in May, if still alive
She recalled being sexually abused as a child by a ‘German pedophile’ who resembles an official police sketch of the man suspected to have abducted Madeleine but said she had no other memories of her early childhood.
Her parents insisted Ms Faustyan was their natural born daughter.
In response to this Madeleine’s parents Gerry and Kate McCann issued a short statement through a spokesperson.
‘There isn’t anything to report at this time. If and when there is, it will come from The Metropolitan Police’ the spokesperson said.
These are the latest twists in a case that has captivated global attention ever since the McCann parents fronted the media nearly 16 years ago to plead for the return of their blonde-haired girl.
Madeleine went missing from a holiday apartment in the port town of Praia da Luz on the southern tip of Portugal as her parents were dining with six other friends at a tapas restaurant 100 metres away.
The adults said they were checking on Madeleine and her two-year-old twin siblings Sean and Amelie, who have turned 18 this year, every 15 minutes.
However, when Kate checked at 10pm that night Madeleine’s bed was empty, which prompted a frantic search of the resort assisted by staff and a call to police.
Since that fateful night Portuguese, British and other international police along with private investigators have exhaustively investigated thousands of leads and put forward a dozens of theories about what happened to Madeleine.
Polish woman Julia Faustyna has claimed she could be Madeleine McCann as she has the same blotch in her right eye and doesn’t remember her childhood but claims to have been sexually abused by a German pedophile matching a police sketch of a suspect in the case of the missing British girl
There has even been an Australian connection when private investigators working for the McCann parents sought to interview luxury yacht owner and Perth businesswoman Rhonda Wyllie along with her daughter Melissa Karlson in 2009.
The investigators believed Ms Wyllie’s 32-metre yacht, Willpower, was moored in the Spanish city of Barcelona three days after Madeleine disappeared.
Ms Wyllie and Ms Karlson, who was 31 at the time, denied they or the yacht had been in Barcelona during the time in question. There is no suggestion that Mrs Wyllie and Ms Karlson had anything to do with Madeleine’s disappearance.
‘Rhonda and Melissa are perplexed by the media coverage of the past 24 hours, especially given that neither of them was actually in Spain on the night in question,’ a spokesperson said at the time.
A British businessman said during a night out on the marina three days after Maddie went missing he spoke to a 30-year-old woman with an ‘Australian accent’, who asked if he was there to ‘deliver my new daughter’.
The woman, who has never been identified, reportedly went into a nearby bar and had a heated conversation with a local in fluent Spanish.
The tourist, who was chaperoning his brother on a stag party, was too shocked to reply and the woman repeated the question twice more. A second member of the party also spoke to the woman before she left.
It is believed that the woman mistook the witness for a man she had arranged to meet.
At an early stage of investigations Portuguese police accused the McCann parents of covering up an accidental death of Madeleine but those suspicions were dismissed by Portugal’s attorney-general in 2008.
Melissa Karlson was at one stage sought for questioning by private investigators as a possible suspect in the Madeleine disappearance
There has also been speculation that the young girl wandered out of the apartment by herself and came to grief, possibly falling down a hole that was covered up the next day at a nearby work site.
German serial rapist and child molestor Christian Brueckner was identified as a prime suspect in the case in April of last year but despite claims by his nation’s police that charges were close to being laid they have not eventuated.
Brueckner, who was convicted of raping a 10-year-old girl at Praia da Luz a month before Madeleine disappeared and remained in the region, is serving time in Germany for the rape and murder of a 72-year-old woman.
From his prison cell he has maintained he had no involvement with Madeleine’s disappearance.
Rhonda Wyllie (pictured left chatting with British tycoon Richard Branson) owned a luxury yacht that private investigators believed could be connected with Madeleine’s disappearance
In 2007 it was revealed there had been more than 8600 reported possible sightings of or potential leads on Madeleine from around the globe.
This included the discovery of a suitcase containing the skeletal remains of a fair-haired young girl next to a motorway in Wynarka, near Adelaide in 2015.
Forensic experts believed the girl died in 2007 and with no children reported missing matching the remains there was speculation they could belong to Madeleine.
However, a DNA test did not find a match.
It was recently reported by English tabloid The Sun that UK police are set to get approval to continue spending hundreds of thousands of pounds in the continued search for Madeleine.
Since 2011 UK police are estimated to have spent $30million on the case but for all the money and man hours spent what happened to the three-year-old girl seems no clearer now than the night she disappeared.
Her parents, Kate and Gerry, have never given up the hope of one day being reunited with their daughter.
In a statement released last year, the McCanns wrote: ‘This year we mark fifteen years since we last saw Madeleine. It feels no harder than any other but no easier either. It’s a very long time.
‘Many people talk about the need for ‘closure’. It’s always felt a strange term. Regardless of outcome, Madeleine will always be our daughter and a truly horrific crime has been committed. These things will remain.
‘It is true though that uncertainty creates weakness; knowledge and certainty give strength, and for this reason our need for answers, for the truth, is essential. We are grateful for the ongoing work and commitment of the UK, Portuguese and German authorities as it is this combined police effort which will yield results and bring us those answers.
‘As always, we would like to thank all of our supporters for their continued good wishes and support. It is a huge comfort to know that regardless of time passed, Madeleine is still in people’s hearts and minds.’
