Forty-six women. Forty-six victims died in suspicious or unexplained circumstances. But no name, no identity. This Thursday, Interpol, an international police cooperation organization based in Lyon, launched a major campaign with the support of six European countries to try to elucidate 46 unresolved cases. Corpses discovered for years but which could never be identified.
Each time, Interpol gave them “a name”. The woman with the canethe woman with the “Little Italy” t-shirt, the woman who was not alone, the woman on the road… This week, reconstructed portraits of these victims, accompanied by “black notices” taken from police files , were published on this dedicated site. All died “in suspicious or unexplained circumstances”.
Businesses over forty years old
This vast operation aims to appeal to the general public to try to put a name to these victims and provide answers to the families. Some of these cold cases go back a long way, like the “woman with the 10 cent coin”, found dead in 1982 in Le Celliera small town in Loire-Atlantique.
This European cooperation initiative comes a year and a half after the launch of the “Identify Me” campaign opened in May 2023 to try to find the identity of 22 deceased women. According to Interpol, 1,800 pieces of information had been collected.
An identity has already been found
Two days after the launch of the first phase of the operation, relatives of Rita Roberts contacted the reserved telephone service after recognizing the young woman’s flower tattoo in the media. This 31-year-old British woman left Cardiff in 1992 without giving any news to her loved ones for several weeks. His lifeless body was found in Antwerp (Belgium) in June 1992. “The investigation helped determine that she had been killed », Specifies Interpol. “This appeal gives hope that decisive leads will emerge, so that more women can be identified and justice served if it is established that they were victims of murder,” adds Interpol.
Launched in France, Belgium, Germany, Italy, Spain and the Netherlands, the campaign received the support of several celebrities such as former sprinter Marie-José Pérec and singer Axelle Red.
Secrets of the investigation revealed
In an attempt to identify these deceased, Interpol publishes facial reconstructions of certain women, also revealing details taken from “black notices”, normally kept secret. Information about where the body was found, DNA, fingerprints, odontograms, a description of the body or the clothes the person was wearing.
Photos of clothing, jewelry or other objects discovered near the places where the bodies were found are also released. “The aim of the “Identify Me” campaign is simple: we want to identify these deceased women, provide answers to their families and obtain reparation for the victims,” said Jürgen Stock, Secretary General of Interpol. “The smallest piece of information can be decisive and shed light on these mysteries. Whether it is a memory, information or an anecdote, the smallest detail is sometimes enough to bring out the truth.”