Interpol ‘Black Notices’ made public to identify female murder victims
Interpol has made its “Black Notices” public for the first time, as part of a campaign to identify more than 20 murdered women and girls.
Officials hope Operation Identify Me will lead to information on 22 victims, believed to have been killed in Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands, whose identity was never established.
The international crime agency has taken the unusual step of making public the Black Notices list – to which access was previously granted only to police forces – in a bid to identify the victims of “cold case” crimes stretching back almost 50 years.
The victims’ bodies were found in bogs, wells and rivers. The oldest case involves a girl, believed to be 13, who was found in a car park in the Netherlands by hikers in 1976. She is thought by police to have come from Germany.
Another is a woman found in Belgium almost 32 years ago. Her body was discovered in 1991 in a well in the town of Holsbeek, about 40km from Brussels, and may have been there for two years.
Francois-Xavier Laurent, manager of Interpol’s DNA database, told The National that, although unlikely, the agency cannot rule out links between these unsolved murders.
“Looking at the context, they do not seem to be linked apart from that they are all females and all victims of a crime,” said Mr Laurent.
“But we can never reject the hypothesis some of the women were part of a human trafficking network.
“We have launched this because every victim has the chance to be identified and so the families know what happened to their loved ones.
“The difficulty in these cases is that there are no names and no identity documents.
“The bodies were highly degraded and we cannot rule out that they were visitors to the countries where they were found and they could have come from the other side of the globe.”
Police fear the bodies may have been left in different countries to impede criminal investigations.
“This campaign is a first. It is the first time Interpol has given information out from the Black Notices, in the hope the public can give us potential tips to help solve the cases,” said Mr Laurent.
A facial reconstruction has been created for each of the victims as well as information about the place and time they were discovered, personal items found on the bodies and their clothing and jewellery.
A printed T-shirt, a silver bracelet and a rose tattoo are among images posted to Interpol’s website and social media.
“Every avenue we could think of to solve these cases has been explored,” said Mr Laurent.
Interpol believes that some of the women may have come from Eastern Europe.
“These could be women who decided to take a tourist trip, but also potential victims of trafficking,” said Mr Laurent.
“As this is the first launch we decided to keep it small, but it is already proving successful and other states have already asked us to help them too.”
Susan Hitchin, who co-ordinates Interpol’s DNA unit, said identifying the women could help bring closure to their family members.
“It’s horrendous to go all these years without any news, not knowing what’s happened,” said Ms Hitchin.
“Hopefully, a member of the public will be able to bring new elements that the police can use that will ultimately provide the identity of these victims and ideally help lead to the perpetrator, if there is one.”