Police from Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands on Wednesday appealed to the public for help in solving the cold cases of 22 women and girls who were murdered in recent decades.
Operation Identify Me, launched through Interpol, hopes to determine the identities of the victims – most of whom died violently. Others, police say, were starved or abused.
Their bodies were discovered across the three European countries between 1976 and 2019.
"Because the women are likely from countries other than where they were found, their identities have not yet been established,” said Carina van Leeuwen and Martin de Wit in a statement by the Netherlands police, which initiated the appeal.
"It is possible that their bodies were left in our countries to impede criminal investigations."
Origins unclear
Belgian police put forward seven cases, Germany six and the Netherlands nine. Some of the women are believed to have come from Eastern Europe.
Most were aged between 15 and 30. Without knowing their names or who killed them, police say it is difficult to establish the exact circumstances of their deaths.
The oldest body was found in the Netherlands in a motorway parking lot in October 1976, while the most recent was discovered in a public park in Belgium in August 2019.
Others include a woman with a flower tattoo who was found in the Groot Schijn River in Antwerp, Belgium; a woman whose body was burned in a forest in Altena-Bergfeld, Germany; and the remains of a female aged 16-35 found in a bag in the IJ River in Amsterdam.
Black notices
Increased global migration and human trafficking has led to more people being reported missing outside of their national borders, says Dr Susan Hitchin, coordinator of Interpol's DNA unit.
The organisation has for the first time released details of the so-called black notices used to seek information and intelligence on unidentified bodies and to determine the circumstances of death.
Black notices are usually circulated internally among Interpol's global network of police forces.
"We want to stress that we are looking for names," said Carolien Opdecam, of the Belgian police force.
"The victim's identity is often the key to unlocking the mysteries of a case."
