Police and justice are investigating the possible involvement of serial killer Marc Dutroux in the disappearance of Tanja Groen. That reports The Limburger. The 18-year-old student from Schagen disappeared in Maastricht in 1993.
Sources in investigative circles in both the Netherlands and Belgium confirm the news to the regional newspaper. A request for legal assistance has been submitted in Belgium. Justice asks that the unknown female DNA material found in Dutroux’s homes and delivery vans be compared with that of Tanja Groen. The results will be sent ‘as soon as possible’ to the Public Prosecution Service (OM) in Limburg, says Attorney General Jean-Baptiste Andries of the Public Prosecution Service in Liège.
Tanja Groen’s parents were not aware of this new research. They say to wait for the outcome. “We’ll see,” father Adrie told the Limburg newspaper.
Investigations have already been carried out. The cold case team of the police in Limburg has spoken with various witnesses. In addition, it is being examined whether facts and circumstances surrounding Groen’s disappearance can be linked to Dutroux.
His method, in which he pulled girls with bicycles and all into a van, such as 12-year-old Sabine Dardenne in May 1996, could fit with Groen’s disappearance. She was last seen in Maastricht in the summer of 1993. In the night of August 31 to September 1, the first-year student cycled in the direction of the Vrijthof after a party organized by student association Circumflex. After that there is no trace of her. She was on her way to her room in Gronsveld, about five miles south.
From research by The Limburger According to the newspaper, there are various reasons for further deepening the Dutroux track. In the early 1990s, for example, he came to Maastricht or the surrounding area to buy drugs. The serial killer would also have had a contact person in that city and a road map was found in one of his homes on which Maastricht is circled.
Clothes, toys and hair
The Belgian justice already investigated in 1997 whether Tanja Groen was one of the victims of Marc Dutroux. Her parents and those of numerous other missing youths were then invited to view some 4,500 pieces of clothing and toys that had been seized from Dutroux and his co-defendants. This confrontation with ‘material evidence’ yielded nothing. After Dutroux’s arrest in mid-August 1996, Tanja’s parents had urged the Belgian police to include their daughter’s disappearance in the investigation.
In January 2008, the Public Prosecution Service (OM) in Liège decided that the then investigating judge Jacques Langlois had to conduct additional investigations into the so-called ‘Dutroux-bis’ file. That contained data that had not been discussed in the lawsuit against the child molester and murderer. That file also contained material that had never been fully examined, including DNA traces and thousands of hairs found during searches of Dutroux’s homes in and around Charlerois.
Reward
In June 2021, traces of Tanja Groen were searched in vain in the Stabrechtse Heide nature reserve in South-East Brabant. At the beginning of 2022, a research team led by the Haarlem legal psychologist Peter van Koppen discovered three places where the student could be buried. After a brief on-site investigation, the Public Prosecutor’s Office decided that no further investigation would be carried out because the ‘ground disturbances’ had a natural cause.
In an ultimate attempt to solve the disappearance of Tanja Groen, Peter R. de Vries launched the Gouden Tip foundation on June 23, 2021 – her birthday. He offered a reward of 1 million euros, raised through a fundraiser. His daughter Kelly became director of the foundation after her father’s murder. She said in June 2022 that about a thousand tips had come in. The concrete tips were (anonymously) forwarded to the cold case team of the Limburg police. The team was still investigating tips on the foundation’s first anniversary. The 1 million euros will remain available until the police have investigated all tips. The foundation expects to be able to announce how the investigation has been completed before the end of the year.
In May there was a special strip in De Limburger, in which attention was once more drawn to the disappearance of Tanja Groen in 1993:
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