His body was discovered thirty-one years ago at the bottom of a river in Antwerp. Remaining anonymous all these years, the identity of Rita Roberts was finally found thanks to a “black flower tattooed on her left forearm, with green leaves and “R’Nick” written underneath,” Interpol explained on Tuesday. . She was a British woman who moved to Belgium in 1992. “A family member in the United Kingdom recognized the tattoo in the media and notified Interpol and the Belgian authorities, via the Identify Me web page,” explains Interpol.
This unique campaign launched by Interpol in May calls on the general public to help identify the bodies of 22 women found over several decades in Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands and advance investigations into these “cold cases”.
Public contributions
Concretely, Interpol publishes on its website and its social networks a selection of information previously reserved for internal use and contained in its “black notices”, dedicated to the identification of human remains. Nearly “1,250 contributions from the public” have already been collected. In Rita Roberts’ file, her relatives “formally identified” her, Interpol specifies.
“Even though the news was extremely hard to accept, we are very grateful to know what happened to Rita,” explained the family, quoted in the press release. Now, “the Belgian authorities are asking the general public to clarify the circumstances of the death of Rita Roberts”, and any information can be “communicated via a form on the Interpol website”.