NOS News•today, 2:34 PM
In Belgium, a cold case seems to have been solved after thirty years. The East Flanders police have arrested a 78-year-old man for the murder of his then wife in 1994. The woman, Annie De Poortere, disappeared without a trace at the time and had been missing all along.
Last weekend, a body was accidentally found in a garden near the woman’s parental home during excavation work in Sint-Martens-Latem. It is probably De Poortere. DNA research is still being done to definitively determine the identity, but the police have already announced that there were indications that it is De Poortere.
Immediately after the discovery, the woman’s ex-husband, Hans D., was interrogated and arrested for murder. The police have started another investigation into what happened thirty years ago.
Partial confession
According to Belgian media, the arrested man has made a partial confession: “Yes, I buried Annie in the garden,” he is said to have said. D. has not admitted that he also killed his wife. It is not yet clear how she met her end in 1994.
D. was the last person who would have seen Annie De Poortere alive. In 1999 he stated in a TV program that on the day of the disappearance he was alone shopping and then went to a football match. When he came home that evening, he said his wife had disappeared.
D. had his wife declared “absent” in 1999. This is a legal procedure that has the same consequences as death. This allows, for example, an inheritance to be divided or a marriage to be dissolved.
