In search for Heidi De Schepper's body: what can be found after 15 years?
Detectives are again searching in Balen for the body of Heidi De Schepper, who disappeared 15 years ago. For now, without results. But what can be found after all these years? And what could a body still tell us?
For the fourth day in a row, a search is under way for the body of Heidi De Schepper on an industrial estate in Balen. For now, without result, although the public prosecutor's office is very clear: ‘We want to find her’.
For 15 years there has been no trace of Heidi De Schepper. But that disappearance went unnoticed for a long, very long time. Only last year did the disappearance come to light, when the school of one of her children sought contact in vain.
Late last week, the investigation gained momentum, with the arrest of three men: her then-partner and two friends. One of those two friends immediately made full confessions: according to him, Heidi De Schepper was murdered. Based on those confessions, investigators are now searching.
Suppose Heidi De Schepper is effectively buried: what can you recover from it after 15 years? We put the question to some experts.
‘It seems like a simple question, but the answer is not,’ say law doctor Wouter Van Den Bogaert and professor of forensic radiology Koenraad Verstraete. ‘There are several parameters that determine whether a body decomposes quickly or slowly.’ The most important ones? The soil type, humidity, depth and casing of a body.
- The casket. ‘In an ordinary burial, the body lies in a coffin. As a result, the body is not exposed to natural phenomena for a long time. A body without a coffin decomposes faster.’ In addition, the time between a death and burial also plays a role. ‘If decomposition has already started, that also proceeds faster underground.’
- The depth of the grave. ‘Is it about a relatively shallow grave or not? Very often we see in practice when there is a sudden violent death that people act quickly and impulsively. Then people don't think about the right material. If you hide a body in a panic, you are not going to use an excavator. It is often a cascade of quick decisions, which then results in a small and superficial grave,’ Van Den Bogaert points out. And: ‘The shallower the body is buried, the more influence natural phenomena like warming, cooling, water seepage or insects have.’
- Humidity. ‘What is bad is acidic soil and moist soil,’ also says Koenraad Verstraete. ‘Then bodies decay much faster.’
- The type of soil. ‘In clay, for example, a body is preserved relatively well. In sand, bones are preserved well, but then soft tissue decays very quickly.’
‘Actually,’ Van Den Bogaert argues, ‘it depends on the case. One cannot say in advance exactly what condition a body will be found in.’ And after 15 years, it will only be a skeleton anyway. ‘Bones, teeth and possibly hair or clothing. There is a real chance that such things will still be recovered.’ Verstraete agrees. ‘Bones and teeth are very resistant, one also finds bones and teeth that are much older. The soft tissue is naturally gone after a certain time. In some bodies it is after six months, in others after four years. Very sometimes we still find soft tissue on even older bodies, on Tutankhamun, for example, but he was embalmed, of course.’ ‘Things that don't decay, we find,’ says forensic dentist Christl Verbiest. ‘Shoes or jeans, for example, do not decay easily. We can also recover a gold chain.’
How does such a search work?
At the moment, investigators are using a crane, carefully excavating layer by layer, the public prosecutor's office indicated on Friday. That search must be done very carefully indeed, so as not to damage any skeletal remains. If a body is then found, a second important phase begins: excavation. ‘You have to have an eye for the conditions in which a body is found. How was the grave dug, for example? Because, you shouldn't think it's a nice sprawling body lying two metres deep in the ground. Often it's double-digging, for example.’ In a third stage, the body is examined at a forensic centre. There, the law doctor will see if anything can be told about the cause of death.
But what can a body tell us after all these years?
First and foremost, identification is important. That is where bones and certainly teeth play a big role. ‘Bones can tell us how big someone was, for example. Teeth, in turn, can tell us the age or gender,’ says forensic dentist Christl Verbiest. ‘If there is then also pre-death data, from the dentist, GP or hospital, for example, these can be compared. That's how most identifications happen.’
DNA from the victim can also be recovered - even after all this time. ‘It is not an obvious technique, but even from bones you can still extract DNA, just like from nails or teeth,’ Van Den Bogaert says. However, to find the perpetrator's DNA after all this time is as good as impossible.
Of course, an autopsy will also take place, to (hopefully) still find the cause of death. Whether that succeeds depends on what happened. ‘You can see a bullet impact on the skeleton,’ says Verbiest. ‘Strangulation is harder to trace because the throat skeleton is harder to find and the eyes are gone. With a stab wound, it depends on whether the bone was hit and so on.’ Van Den Bogaert does add an important caveat: ‘It's not because you find a fracture that it is anyway related to the death. For example, if vehicles have driven across the site, or the earth has been tamped down, that can also cause fractures.’
What an autopsy can almost never determine after such a long time is exactly how long ago a victim died. ‘Much more accurate than ‘several years ago’ it often doesn't get,’ he says. Such an autopsy also very often involves taking a CT scan, and then we enter Verstraete's field of work. He also sometimes calls this ‘the virtual autopsy’. ‘Then you can show the corpse in three dimensions. We then look for small details or try to visualise things better. With the latest techniques, we can also detect metal fragments. All those little bits help to find the truth. It is a whole team working together in such a case, and all the scientists together try to find the solution.’
‘A body can give answers, but there is no certainty that it WILL give answers,’ Van Den Bogaert sums it up nicely. ‘You can only establish what you can establish.’ Nevertheless, he stresses that it is important to conduct such a search anyway. ‘It gives security for the next of kin AND at least you can investigate, as long as you don't have the body, you can't,’ he says. ‘Everything starts with a body they have to find. Unfortunately,’ Verplaetse concludes. It now remains to be seen whether the search in the Balen industrial estate will yield anything.
In de zoektocht naar lichaam Heidi De Schepper: wat kan je na 15 jaar nog terugvinden?
