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Mar 07, 2024 at 12:44 Update: 14 minutes ago
The body in an unnamed grave in Verdun, France is indeed that of Elisabeth Wessels, who has been missing for more than thirty years. The police reported this on Thursday. A French YouTuber made a breakthrough in the cold case.
As early as 2022, various media reported that Wessels had been identified. The police informed NU.nl that the force can only now provide “definitive confirmation” because “some further investigative actions” had to be carried out.
The investigation has now been completed and the police can now release confirmation of the find. This week the cold case team of the East Netherlands police looked at YouTuber Bruno Infocrimes back to the matter.
Wessels, originally German, lived in Nijmegen for a long time in the 1980s. There she had joined a sect. At the end of the eighties she moved to France with that group. Wessels was last seen alive on February 21, 1989. She was just 32 years old at the time.
Wessels’ body was found later that year in Verdun, France. Despite investigations by the French police at the time, her identity was never established. Wessels was then buried in a nameless grave.
French YouTuber Bruno, in one of his investigations into cold cases, came across an article about an anonymous woman in Verdun. He eventually made a possible link with the missing woman from the Netherlands.
Police found a match after DNA testing
The Dutch police compared the DNA of the anonymous woman with DNA from the Van Wessels family. This made it clear that the anonymously buried woman in Verdun is the missing Elisabeth Wessels. It is not clear how she died.
The police re-investigated Wessels’ disappearance in February 2013. Her disappearance was brought to the attention again and she was again spotted internationally. The police also paid attention to the missing woman on the website again. That initially yielded no results, until YouTuber Bruno took up the case years later.
Improvement: The approach of this article has been slightly adjusted after publication. NU.nl sent a push notification for this news after the police wrote that there had been a breakthrough and a DNA match in this cold case. The police later corrected this: the DNA match dated from 2022, but this is the final confirmation after the investigation has been completed. We have adjusted our message accordingly. A push notification was subsequently not necessary.
Image: Police
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