EXCLUSIVE. Ex-partner of missing Heidi De Schepper breaks the silence: ‘Her situation only got worse, I couldn't take it anymore’
‘Whether Heidi is still alive? No idea. I think she is in Spain.’ We are at the front door of N., the ex-partner of the missing Heidi De Schepper from Balen. He was arrested on Monday and questioned for hours about the mother of his children, who disappeared without a trace in 2010. He talks unfiltered about the beginning of their relationship, the last time he saw her ánd her difficulties: ‘I had put her to the choice: choose for the children and stop doing drugs or leave.’
N. shuffles a little nervously when he sees us standing at his front door. We ask him if he is Heidi De Schepper's ex-partner. ‘That's right,’ he says. We too are wary, having already spent several hours walking around Balen. Our tour started in Langvennen, where he and Heidi rented a cottage. Meanwhile, the house has already been razed to the ground and the landlord has built a new residence there. He would not speak to us. His partner briefly names the situation of N.'s family: ’It took a lot of judges to get him out. It was problematic.’ Other local residents also confirm that story. One of them warns himself: ‘He is a dangerous man with a lot of problems and a short fuse. I won't be mentioned, will I? I don't want him to come and see me.’
No handcuffs
Here at the garden gate, N. seems no threat at all. With a juicy Kempen accent and sports clothes of the same shade of grey as his hair, he speaks to us. He wants to clarify some things after the communication from the federal police, share his version of the story. ‘The CLB (student support centre) initiated all this,’ he says. ‘Last year, one of my sons had played truant. They had tried to call the mother but couldn't get contact and found that suspicious. So they notified the police, behind my back. And then they came on Monday with the big guns, it was unbelievable.’
‘I was walking my dog. The police had already knocked on my parents' door - who live a little further away - saying: “We are looking for N., because he has fled and I know a lot.” When I got home, there were all anonymous cars parked. I thought to myself: what is all this? They came to search my house. They took me to the office, I was interrogated for nine hours. That was not normal. The whole time the camera is there on you, they put pressure on you and suddenly they want all the info, all the exact times (sigh). Look, I left without handcuffs, I thought that was already a good one.’
No report
But then why did it stay quiet around her disappearance for years? ‘I know Heidi through and through, which is why I didn't make a report when she disappeared,’ says N. ’If she feels hunted, she will only flee further away. I knew: if you wanted to get something done with her, you had to give her space.’ Five minutes into the conversation, he returns to this and apparently did report her absence to ‘the child support fund’ in the two months following her disappearance. In the end, it does not become clear what steps N. would have actually taken to report her disappearance.
We return to the moment they met. That too is a somewhat disjointed and, to say the least, peculiar story. At the time N. met Heidi through her father, she was still a minor. ‘She was having a very hard time,’ says N. ’I was the only one who still cared about her and went to visit her in institutions several times. When she turned 18, she became my foster daughter and moved in with us, in the house on Langvennen. We lived there for quite a long time anyway. Her big dream was to move to the Ardennes, to do something with horses. She rode horses as a child and that love never disappeared. Unfortunately, nothing came of it.’
Drugs
He begins to cry softly. He talks about how Heidi would have had difficulties with drugs. ‘Her situation only got worse. I just couldn't take it anymore and had put her before a choice. Either you choose your children or you choose that *advertiser censored*. At the end of my working day, I was just scared to come home, scared for my children. Because what will I find there again? The mum comatose in the sofa, the drugs still on the table. She used speed, because she wanted to lose weight. Once she was hospitalised because she only weighed 35 kilos ... Nothing is said about that by the police, lol! And I find that very bad. That way I come across as the bogeyman, while I did so much for her.’
‘She had a double life filled with drugs and going out. I also saw talk of that other disappearance in Balen. (Sigrid Dormaels disappeared in Balen in 2008, ed.) Another one. Then I ask myself a question: would they have known each other? We don't know.’ N. pauses. ‘This affects everyone. Above all, I want to protect my family, which is why I am speaking to you anonymously. My children still searched for her, I even helped. But yes, at some point that also ends. They said: ‘If she is still alive, she is welcome for a chat. But she will never be a part of our lives again.' And I understand that too.’
‘It became too much’
‘On one hand, she was the perfect mum, even making the fruit and vegetable porridges for our two-year-old son. But once the household chores were done, it was time for her moment: drugs. And that became too much.’ N. recounts the last moments he saw Heidi. But what follows becomes vague. ‘We went to the GP, there she acknowledged for the first time that she had a ‘working point’. Between that moment and the last time I saw her, there were seven days. Days in which Heidi did not speak to me again. A week later, she came to drop the children off at my parents' house. It was on a Friday, the day when chips were always eaten. The children came from school, on the table the fries were already ready. She left back. To where? No idea.’
It was the last time anyone saw Heidi. When we ask him when that was, what year or month, he struggles. ‘No idea, I don't remember all that. I had a bad motorbike accident, since then I have lost a piece of my film.’ N.'s phone vibrates. ‘Ah see, again of that. My phone won't stand still today.’ N. wants to go back inside to his sons. Meanwhile, we are an hour on and the mystery is as big as ever. Whether the Heidi case will ever get solved? No one knows. But if she is somewhere, alive and well, reading and seeing what her disappearance still triggers even after 14 years, she might respond anyway. ‘I doubt that,’ concludes N.
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