Unprecedented ways to relaunch unfinished investigations. Interpol announced on Wednesday the launch of an unprecedented campaign aimed at the general public to help identify the bodies of 22 women found over several decades in Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands.
Discovered for the oldest in a motorway parking lot in the Netherlands in October 1976, for the most recent in a municipal park in Belgium in August 2019, these bodies could not be identified by the national police “in part” because these women were not from these countries, according to Interpol statement.
Twenty unidentified victims
Concretely, the latter will publish on its website and social networks a selection of information hitherto reserved for internal use contained in its “black notices”, dedicated to the identification of human remains. For each of the 22 victims, a photo will be broadcast based on facial reconstruction technologies and elements on the place and date of discovery of the body, personal items, clothing and context.
“All the avenues considered to resolve these cold cases have been dealt with. The investigations are at a standstill and we hope that public attention will allow them to move forward,” François-Xavier Laurent, DNA database manager at Interpol, told AFP. “Family, friends, colleagues, who sometimes overnight have no longer seen this person” could provide information, bring “even a tiny clue”. Called “Identify Me”, this first campaign could be extended to other cases later.