Julia Wendell, a 21-year-old Polish woman who came to notoriety after claiming to be the missing Madeleine McCann, announced her intention to sue her mother in an interview with RadarOnline.com on Saturday.
After Wendell’s claims, her mother publicly stated that Wendell had mental health issues and asked her to stop her “lies and manipulation.” As a result, Wendell has announced her intention to pursue defamation charges.
"Whatever she said, as she's ill, she has a mental health condition, she needs to go to the hospital. So, that's the defamation and we need to figure it out … where she came from," Wendell’s private investigator Dr. Fia Johansson told RadarOnline.com.
"We have no other choices [than] to take legal action when we are making a decision to go forward in the investigation," Johannson added. "We will continue to dig into and figure it out who is she, what she's hiding, and why she's hiding," to Radaronline.com
Wendell believes she is Madeleine McCann
Wendell believes that she could be the missing child based on several similarities and suspicions.
Firstly, Wendell alleges that she was molested by the same German molester that is suspected in McCann’s abduction 16 years ago.
Secondly, she claims that McCann and Wendell have the same eye defect and that she looks like the McCann parents,
Finally, she claims to have no memory of her childhood and alleges inconsistencies in the stories her parents have told her.
"The memories are very blurry, and when I talked about them with my parents, things didn't match up. They always tried to change the subject," Wendell said, adding that her "teacher at school said that I didn't always attend school, but my parents insist that I did.”
As The Jerusalem Post previously reported, facial recognition software has led experts to believe that Wendell is not McCann.
Wendell is awaiting the results of multiple DNA tests to confirm whether she is Madeleine McCann or not. It was previously reported that Wendell’s family refused to participate in a DNA test to prove her relation.
Polish police have ruled out that Wendell could be McCann, but have not disclosed how they came to this conclusion.