France Belgium- " The Butcher of Mons ", Dismembered 5 females, In clear plastic bags, Jan'96-Jul'97

[dotr]

MAR 21, 2022
25 years after the garbage bag murders, the 'butcher of Bergen' still remains untraceable - World News | TakeToNews

''25 years after the facts, the butcher of Bergen is still untraceable. His atrocities came to light on March 22, 1997, when police officer Olivier Motte chanced upon several garbage bags containing human remains. Later, the police found two more bags containing the bust of a woman. In total, the police managed to find 37 different body parts of five female victims, but the Bergen butcher himself remains untraceable.''

Butcher of Mons - Wikipedia
''The Butcher of Mons is a media name given to an unidentified serial killer who committed five murders between January 1996 and July 1997 in or near the Belgian city of Mons.[1][2][3] The name was allegedly chosen because of the high precision of dismemberment the victim's bodies had endured.[2] Then they were placed in plastic bags "clearly visible on the roadside or on a channel embankment".

''On March 22, 1997, police officer Olivier Motte discovered eight garbage bags containing human remains below the Rue Emile Vandervelde in Cuesmes. They were then examined by magistrate Pierre Pilette, who determined that the arms and legs in the bags came from three different bodies, all of them women. Of all the bags, five of them appeared to originate from the municipality of Knokke-Heist. On the following day, a ninth bag was found on the same street.

On March 24, a tenth bag was discovered, containing the bust of a woman, on the path of Concern in Mons.

On April 12, two bags were found in Havré, in the rue du Dépôt, near the Haine river, a tributary of the Scheldt. These bags contained one foot, one leg, and a head.

The victims[edit]
The human remains were found in the Mons region, as well as in northern France, between March 1997 and April 1998, in garbage bags. The systematic mutilation of the bodies made their identification difficult. The garbage bags were found in places with evocative names: "Avenue des Bassins", in the river Haine, "path of worry", "rue du Dépôt", "chemin de Bethlehem" near the river Trouille, etc. In addition to the bodies, brightly colored underwear was also found in the bags. All the victims had in common that they frequented the area of Mons railway station, and all were plagued by socio-economic or family issues.''


''The human remains were found in the Mons region, as well as in northern France, between March 1997 and April 1998, in garbage bags. The systematic mutilation of the bodies made their identification difficult. The garbage bags were found in places with evocative names: "Avenue des Bassins", in the river Haine, "path of worry", "rue du Dépôt", "chemin de Bethlehem" near the river Trouille, etc. In addition to the bodies, brightly colored underwear was also found in the bags. All the victims had in common that they frequented the area of Mons railway station, and all were plagued by socio-economic or family issues.

Carmelina Russo[edit]
Russo, 42, disappeared on January 4, 1996. Her pelvis was discovered on January 21 in the Scheldt, in the department of Nord in France.[4]

Martine Bohn[edit]
Bohn, 43, a former prostitute from France, went missing on July 21, 1996. That same month her bust was fished near Mons, in Haine.

Jacqueline Leclercq[edit]
Leclercq, 33, a mother of four children, went missing on December 22, 1996.[4] Her arms and legs were found by a policeman on March 22, 1997, in one of the trash bags below the rue de Emile Vandervelde in Cuesmes.[5][6]

Nathalie Godart[edit]
Godart, 21, disappeared in March 1997. Her bust was found in the Haine.

Begonia Valencia[edit]
Valencia, 37, disappeared from her home in Frameries in the summer of 1997. Her skull was found in Hyon.[6]''

 

[ZaZara]

This report is from 2012. 'Mons' is the French name of the town, 'Bergen' is the name in Flemish.

Vijftien jaar later: Wie is de Slachter van Bergen?

A doctor? A butcher? A foreign soldier on a mission? Fifteen years after garbage bags with body parts of five women who had fallen on hard times surfaced for weeks in and around Mons, the identity of le dépeceur de Mons remains a mystery. 'Even on crucial questions like where, when and how the women were murdered, we unfortunately have no answers. All that remains for the investigators is frustration,' according to Bergen's prosecutor Christian Henry.

'Yet another bunch of fly-tippers', police officer Olivier Motte thinks when he rides his horse into the Emilie Vanderveldestraat in Cuesmes on Saturday morning 22 March 1996 and finds a few garbage bags. He jumps off his horse, opens the bags and makes a gruesome discovery. The bags reveal arms, feet, legs and thighs, but heads and torsos are missing. In the weeks that followed, these would turn up in and around Bergen. Each time dumped in garbage bags, that were knotted together in exactly the same way. In total, fifteen bags with limbs were found between January '96 and July '97.

Forensic investigators were faced with a puzzle as difficult as it was gruesome. They are the body parts of several women. A special investigative unit - the Cellule Corpus - is hastily set up to find the mysterious dépeceur de Mons, or the Butcher. The victims all happen to be women who have fallen on hard times and who spend most of their time in the Mons railway station district. To drink and prostitute themselves to get drugs. All four had disappeared for some time, but were not really missed by anyone.

The first woman identified is Nathalie Godart (22), a woman on the loose who alternated drink with drugs.

After Godart comes OCMW cleaner Jacqueline Leclerq (33). She disappears on her way to a butcher's shop. The Butcher of Mons withdraws money with her bank card, but the camera of the bank branch unfortunately turns out to be defective.

The two other victims are the French prostitute Martine Bohn (43) and Carmelina Russo (46), a severely depressed woman who sold lingerie at home.

In the summer of '97 a fifth woman, Begonia Valencia (38), disappears. This divorced mother was also heavily into alcohol and pills. She also frequented the station neighbourhood. In the autumn, first her head and months later her cervical vertebrae and teeth were found in an orchard.

Everyone suspected, everyone walks free.

Apart from the link with the station neighbourhood and the identically knotted bin bags, the investigators find nothing. And all these years later, nothing has changed. Bergen prosecutor Christian Henry is open and honest about it: 'Fifteen years later, we are forced to keep on searching for the most elementary questions of a judicial murder investigation. Where and when were these five women murdered? And how did the perpetrator act? Did they all die of suffocation? Or were their throats cut with a butcher's knife? The exact modus operandi remains a mystery to us as well.'

A clear profile of the man is also lacking. Detectives of the Cellule Corpus believed for a long time that only a butcher or a doctor could commit such murders. The trail of a foreign soldier, stationed for two years at NATO's Shape base not far from here, was never really abandoned either', Henry says.

Five years ago, there seemed to be a breakthrough in the making. Investigators linked it to an Albanian man in his sixties who had murdered his own wife in New York in the nineties. In an identical manner. Moreover, the Albanian suspect had lived in the area for a while and had disappeared like a thief in the night. But the trail led nowhere, just like the one of a Walloon poet with frighteningly detailed lyrics about the murders. Or that of the first victim's gypsy friend. And that of an aggressive doctor. There were plenty of suspects. Some of them were even put behind bars for a while. But one by one they had to be released, because no evidence was found.

1,400 dead ends

This week it is exactly fifteen years ago that police officer Olivier Motte found the first garbage bags. The prosecutor's office of Mons has kept track of how many leads have been investigated in the meantime. There are 1,400 of them. But the golden tip never came. The Cell Corpus still exists, but the investigators are mainly working on other cases. Sporadically, as after the TV broadcast on RTBF last year, they draw courage from the many tips.'The hope of ever solving the Butcher's case has become very thin.' The prosecutor speaks of the biggest murder mystery of the country. 'After fifteen years of investigating, we have to face the fact that the man who killed these five women here will probably never be found. That causes enormous frustration. We have so few leads, fewer traces even than the dossier of the Nijvel gang. But we have to keep searching. It is our duty.'


BBM

 

[ZaZara]

DPG Media Privacy Gate


25 years after the garbage bag murders, the 'Bergen slaughterer' still cannot be found

25 years after the facts, the "Mons Butcher" still remains untraceable. His atrocities came to light on 22 March 1997 when police officer Olivier Motte happened to stumble across several bin bags containing human remains. Later, the police found two more bags also containing the bust of a woman. In total, the police managed to find 37 different body parts of five female victims, but the Bergen butcher himself remains untraceable.

The investigation revealed that all the victims were frequent visitors to the station and all five were struggling with financial or family problems. Carmelina Russo (42) disappeared on 4 January 1996, Martine Bohn (43) on 21 July 1996, Jacqueline Leclercq (33) on 22 December that same year, Nathalie Godart (22) in March 1997 and finally Begonia Valencia (38) on 3 July 1997.

A special investigation unit, 'Cell Corpus', headed by examining magistrate Pierre Pilette, was set up. The cell is still active. "The aim is to use new investigative techniques, including DNA research, to bring the evidence to light and gather new information," the Mons prosecutor's office said.

Over the years, police have investigated several suspects, including the friend of one of the victims and a doctor from Mons who was accused of being the perpetrator by his own son. It has also been suggested several times that the murders were committed by different perpetrators.

Earlier this month, a new book on the case was published, 'Il est moins cinq...' "The aim of the book is twofold," authors Morgan Vanlerberghe and Dani Corlana explain. "On the one hand, it does not want to let the terrible deeds of the slaughterer fade into oblivion, out of respect for the relatives of the victims. On the other hand, this collection of testimonies may perhaps open new avenues of thought, even 25 years after the facts."


BBM