Julia Wendel is definitely not Madeleine McCann - DNA tests

DNA tests showed that Julia Wendel, who thought she was Madeleine McCann is not the missing toddler, Wendel and her PI Dr. Fia Johansson told Radar Online on Monday night.

The DNA test revealed that Wendel's DNA points to her being Polish with a small percentage of Lithuanian and Russian descent.

According to LBC, the tests also proved that Wendel's mother in Poland is her genetic parent, and further tests are being done to prove that her father is also her genetic parent. The test, however, proved that McCann is still missing.

What happened to Madeleine McCann?

McCann went missing in 2007 while on holiday in Portugal with her British family. On one of the nights of the trip, her parents were out to dinner with some friends in the vicinity of the hotel while the children were asleep in the rooms. The adults went back at intervals to check on the children, but at some point in the evening, one of the parents discovered that McCann was no longer in her bed. A search was conducted which later led to a wider investigation, but the girl was never found alive or dead.

The case shot back into the spotlight in the past couple of months after Wendel took to Instagram claiming that she was McCann. She said she believed this because she had some physical similarities to the girl and because certain elements of her childhood were suspicious to her.

Wendel's parents made a statement shortly after she initially made her claims, saying that they were definitely her parents and that there was no truth to her claims.

Her claims were further challenged after Swiss company Ava-X ran photos of Wendel and McCann through its Iris facial recognition software that specializes in missing person cases and found that the two were likely not a match.

A few weeks after she made her initial claims, Wendel traveled to the US with Johansson, and the DNA tests were conducted, proving definitively that Wendel is not McCann.

When the DNA tests were first submitted, Johansson had told Radar Online that even if Wendel was not McCann, the two were sure that she was not biologically related to her parents and that Wendel had been born elsewhere and moved to Poland when she was little. The results of the tests reveal that none of this is true.

Johansson later claimed after the results came in that she had had a gut feeling that Wendel was not McCann.

Regardless of the test results, the UK government is reportedly considering increasing funding to Operation Grange which is tasked with locating McCann. A source involved in the UK investigation told LBC that McCann's parents "will be delighted. It gives fresh hope."

Wendel is reportedly suffering from medical issues, which she will get treatment for after returning to Poland.