A woman from Arkansas has stirred controversy by insisting that she is the real Madeleine McCann, claiming to possess ‘DNA evidence’ to support her assertion even though the validity of her statements has been widely questioned. 

Eugenea Collins, aged 22, has taken to social media to make the bold claim that she is the missing British child who vanished in 2007 during a family vacation in Praia da Luz, Portugal.

With blonde hair and blue eyes, Collins told DailyMail.com that her belief in being Madeleine was triggered after watching a Polish woman named Julia Wandelt on the Dr. Phil talk show and noticing striking resemblances between herself and the images of the missing girl.

Wandelt was this week arrested for harassing the McCann family.  

‘If it wasn’t for me seeing her on the Dr. Phil show I would’ve never known. In a way her stupidity actually helped me find my family,’ Collins bizarrely claimed.

‘I saw the age progressions and it was like I was looking in a mirror. I just know I saw pictures of myself online and it says I’m missing.’

Collins birthday is October 23, 2002, putting her around the same age as Madeleine, who was born on May 12, 2003. 

She took an ancestry DNA test that shows she is 68 percent English and Northwestern European, which she believes helps prove her case – but said she does not have any other DNA connections to the McCann family. 

Despite having very limited evidence, Collins said she was upset the local police in Arkansas have not taken her seriously. She also claimed she has tried to contact Operation Grange, the Metropolitan Police Department’s investigation into the case.

Eugenea Collins (pictured), 22, launched a social media campaign claiming she is the real Madeleine McCann 

McCann went missing in 2007 while on vacation with her family in Praia da Luz, Portugal

Collins claims that she became suspicious of her family when she tried to get a new ID and couldn’t get copy of her birth certificate.

‘I am unable to get any kind of identification,’ Collins said. ‘I couldn’t even get any help from the people at the red cross when my house was burned because I have no identification.’

‘I have never seen an original birth certificate neither. The only thing I saw had someone else’s name wrote on it and they marked that out and wrote mine above it.’ 

Despite being hell-bent on the fact she is the missing British child, Collins has not shared her mother’s name. 

She shared a writing prompt she did in elementary school that she believes describes her kidnapping, and pointed out that she has photos of herself wearing a dress similar to one that Madeleine wore in on of the last photos of her.

Social media users – who think that the woman’s claims are bogus – have pointed out several major differences between Collins and Madeleine.

‘Not to be rude here, but your eye doesn’t have that defect in it like she does. 

‘The reason I’m not convinced is because I don’t see the same spot on the eye in any photo,’ another said.

Collins told DailyMail.com she started to think she was Madeleine after seeing Polish woman Julia Wandelt on Dr. Phil’s talk show and noticed similarities between her and the child

Collins took an ancestry DNA test that shows she is 68 percent English and Northwestern European, which she believes helps prove her case

Collins also claimed that she the man she believed to be her biological father, Eugene Collins, is actually suspect Christian Brueckner

‘Girl unless you have the eye thing that Madeline had please stop this nonsense,’ a third person said.

She did address some critics who pointed out that her ears are differently shaped than Madeleine’s.

‘People keep saying something about [my] ears not being a match, but I have scars on mine,’ she said.

‘Never noticed them until they pointed out they were different, I had my boyfriend look at the back of them and they have scars on them.’

Collins also claimed that the man she believed to be her biological father, Eugene Collins, is actually one of the main suspects in the case – convicted pedophile and German native Christian Brueckner. 

‘I saw pictures of the suspect and he looks like my biological father or who I’ve been told is my biological father my whole life,’ she said.

‘I never had any relationship with this man whatsoever and I was always told he was a little off in the head.

‘When I first saw the photos of Christian Brueckner I instantly recognized that man.’

Polish woman Julia Wandel (pictured), 23, claimed she is the real Madeleine McCann

Wandel was recently arrested for stalking Madeleine’s parents Kate and Gerry McCann (pictured)

When Brueckner was identified as a suspect in Madeleine’s disappearance in 2020, he was convicted of unrelated crimes, including child sexual abuse and drug offenses, and was serving a prison sentence in Germany.

Brueckner is nearing the end of his seven-year jail sentence for raping an elderly woman in Praia da Luz on the Algarve, where Madeleine vanished in May 2007 – and is set to be released in September.

It is unclear when Collins last had contact with her father and his whereabouts are unknown.

Collins said she has issues with Wandelt, who was recently arrested on suspicion of stalking involving serious alarm and distress to Kate and Gerry McCann and their two other children.

Wandelt appeared on Dr Phil in March 2023 and maintained her claims that she was the missing girl – before a DNA test blew that theory out of the water. 

‘I just know that my mom is looking for me and I always had this feeling of longing and loneliness my whole life and I finally figured out why I felt that way,’ she said.

‘Especially after hearing that Julia stalker making her cry saying, she was her daughter. I heard that and it broke my heart because I’m right here.’ 

Wandelt’s claim to be Madeleine was disproven by private investigator Dr Fia Johansson, who in 2023 shared her DNA results that said she was, in fact, fully Polish. 

Johansson said: ‘At first she didn’t want to believe the DNA results, she was saying “What if someone changed the results?” but I told her, “Stop this now”.

‘I can understand as a psychologist why she didn’t want to believe her mother is her real mother. 

‘But I told her – she must stop this fixation now that she is Madeleine McCann and accept the result of the DNA test and start to move on with her life.’