The body of a Belgian woman named Britta Cloetens, who went missing when she was aged 25, has been found almost 12 years after her disappearance.
Human remains were found in December last year in a forest near the Walloon town of Dinant by a hunter, who reported this to the local Haute-Meuse police. The site was thoroughly searched, and more remains were found, resulting in a DNA search being initiated, the Antwerp public prosecutor’s office reported in a press release on Wednesday.
"Through the National Institute of Criminalistics and Criminology's (NICC) DNA missing persons database, a match was found today with Britta Cloetens' DNA trace," the statement read.
This database contains 428 DNA profiles compiled from unknown bodies or body parts, as well as personal items of a missing person and from relatives of a missing person, which can all be used to identify unknown bodies and trace missing people.
End to long road
On Saturday 23 April 2011, the then 25-year-old Cloetens was last seen at the Honda garage on Boomsesteenweg in Wilrijk (a district of the City of Antwerp). A judicial enquiry was set up, which led to the questioning of 41-year-old Tijl Teckmans who worked as a salesperson in that garage.
He was later arrested, and in 2015, the Antwerp Assize court sentenced him to 30 years imprisonment. After making sexual advances which she did not respond to, he reportedly slammed the boot lid of the car on her head, a blow she did not survive.
Teckmans at the time said he had put her body in the car and had driven towards the Ardennes, where he had dumped the body. However, he could not or would not recall an exact location when asked.
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The Antwerp public prosecutor’s office stressed that, during investigations led by the investigating judge and also after the Assize trial, "everything was tried by the Federal Judicial Police (FGP) Antwerp and the Missing Persons Unit of the Federal Police" to find her body.
Eventually, it was an alert hunter who discovered her remains at the end of last year.
"The victim advocacy services conveyed the news in a conversation with Britta's family," the statement from the Antwerp public prosecutor’s office concluded, which stated that the family expressly asked that they "be given time and space to process the news now."
