It is a murder mystery that gripped Belgium for decades and with the closure of the file on Friday, it would likely remain a cold case forever.
Known as the “Mad Killers of Brabant,” a gang went on a murderous rampage between 1982 and 1985, killing 28 people including children in a series of supermarket robberies.
Outlandish theories have been offered to explain who was behind what local media called Belgium’s “biggest criminal mystery” of the last century.
Photo: AFP
One seriously considered thesis was that it was a bid to destabilize the Belgian state by current or former law enforcement officers close to the far right.
The case was never cracked, and no one has ever been convicted despite multiple overlapping investigations, countless fingerprint and DNA searches, dozens of exhumations and even arrests leading to charges.
On Friday, prosecutors finally gathered together the families of victims — still living without answers many years on — to let them know the case was being closed for good.
“All possible investigative actions have been carried out,” Ann Fransen, head of the Belgian Federal Prosecutor’s Office, which took over the probe six years ago, told reporters in Brussels.
“Unfortunately we have not been able to bring the truth to the surface,” she said.
“This means the case is now buried, and it makes me very sad,” said Irena Palsterman, whose father was one of eight victims of a supermarket attack on Nov. 9, 1985.
One lawyer present, Kristiaan Vandenbussche, blamed a cover-up for the dead end — accusing rogue law enforcement officers of “sabotaging” the investigation to protect the culprits.
After the initial leads had gone cold, prosecutors picked up the case again in 2018 in the wake of a TV interview by a suspect’s relative.
The following year, charges were brought against a retired police officer suspected of hobbling the investigation back in 1986 by throwing guns and ammunition into a canal.
He was never convicted, and despite the efforts of a dozen police officers, prosecutors were eventually forced to admit they had made no serious progress.
It was not from a lack of trying, Fransen said.
In all police checked “1,815 pieces of information, both old and new,” looked at 2,748 sets of fingerprints and compared 593 DNA samples to the ones in the case file.
They exhumed “more than 40 bodies for research purposes,” Fransen said.
The mystery was all the greater since the relatively small sums involved — a total loot of 7 million Belgian francs, or about 175,000 euros (US$187,609 at the current exchange rate) — suggests money was not the motive for killing 28 people.
Although closing the case would be a “blow” for the victims’ families, Fransen said that she felt it necessary to be “clear and transparent” with them.
The case would officially be closed after a procedural hearing to be held soon in Brussels — at which the families would have one more chance to request new avenues for investigation.
Under Belgian law, there is no statute of limitations on the crimes involved.
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