‘The Girl in the Parking Lot’, ‘The Woman in the Bag’ and 20 Violent Deaths Interpol Asks for Help to Solve
“The Body in the Swamp,” “The Girl from the Parking Lot,” “The Woman from the Canal,” “The Woman with the Flower Tattoo”…these are some of the names of the 22 open-box but cold, in police jargon, women who have been murdered over the past 40 years. Interpol and the police of Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany want to reactivate it. That is why they launched Operation Martial.
Dubbed ‘Operation Identification’, Suzanne Hitchen, coordinator of Interpol’s DNA unit, said in a video call about the operation.
He said the women had been found in Belgium, the Netherlands or Germany, but they could have been from other countries. It is also possible that their bodies were taken there to confuse investigators.
The oldest unsolved case, “The Girl in the Parking Lot”, involves a young woman, between the ages of 13 and 20, who was found in 1976 by hitchhikers in the Netherlands and believed by Dutch police to have come from Germany. The investigation also believes that he died the same year his body was discovered.
Another is about a woman who was found in Belgium nearly 32 years ago. His body was discovered in 1991 in a rainwater well in the town of Holzbeek, about 40 kilometers from Brussels. His body can be in the hole for up to two years.
Unidentified victims
The operation focuses on female victims, Hitchin explained, as “women are disproportionately affected by gender-based violence, such as sexual assault, human trafficking, and domestic violence.”
“In similar investigations, the identification of the victim eventually led to the arrest of a suspect,” Anja Allendorf of the German police said in a statement announcing the operation.
For all these reasons, INTERPOL and the National Security Forces hope that through this publicity process the cases and their details will reach a wider and more global audience as there is someone who can identify and identify one of these 22 unnamed bodies. Possible progress in resolving his death.
