Dutch police receive tip-offs on identities of murdered women

Dutch police have received dozens of tip-offs about the identities of 22 murdered girls and young women, seven of whom were found in Belgium, following the broadcast of a TV programme on Tuesday.

The women’s bodies were discovered between 1976 and 2019, with nine found in the Netherlands and six in Germany. Twenty of the 32 new tip-offs relate to the identity of a woman whose body was found on a houseboat in Amsterdam in 1998, Dutch police said on Wednesday.

"Who they are, where they came from and why they were left in Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands is unknown"

Five tips were also received about the “girl of Teteringen”. The victim, believed to be aged between 15 and 25, was found dead in 1990 in woods near Breda. Police believe she had been severely neglected and abused before her death.

Last week, Interpol and the Belgian, Dutch and German police launched Operation Identify Me, a public campaign to try and identify 22 girls and women believed to have been murdered and then abandoned in one of the three countries.

Before Opsporing Verzocht was broadcast in the Netherlands on Tuesday, police had already received more than 200 tips. These included several possible names of victims. “Who they are, where they came from and why they were left in Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands is unknown,” the police say.

^{© PHOTO HANDOUT / INTERPOL / AFP}