A 51-year-old Albanian, nicknamed Arturo Vrenoz, has been arrested for the murder of a 17-year-old Romanian in Antwerp’s Schipperskwartier. Iona Balaban was killed with about twenty stab wounds on May 16, 1999. Thanks to DNA research, there has now been a breakthrough in the cold case.
On the night of May 16, 1999, the body of the 17-year-old Romanian woman Ioana was found near Dries in Antwerp. She had been killed in a gruesome manner. The medical examiner counted about 20 cuts and stab wounds. The investigation revealed that the victim had been seen with her suspected pimp in a café in Klapdorp shortly before the facts and witnesses had seen a man running away from the facts.
In a container, the police found a 30 centimeter long knife and freshly used kitchen gloves. The next day, the then 26-year-old Artur X., an Albanian friend of the murdered Iona Balaban, was arrested. He denied having anything to do with the murder. After some time in pre-trial detention, he was released.
Spokesman Kristof Aerts of the Antwerp public prosecutor’s office: “The victim’s pimp stayed in our country with a false identity. After the facts he fled abroad. Despite the extensive murder investigation conducted at the time, a suspect could not be located. The file has thus become a cold case.”
False identity
After consultation between the Antwerp public prosecutor’s office and the Federal Judicial Police (FGP) Antwerp, FGP re-analyzed the file. After that review, it was decided to request the investigating judge again. In 2020, he then asked the forensic advisor of the National Institute for Criminalistics and Criminology (NICC) to reexamine the DNA part of the file through a scientific lens. Evolution in science allowed a single DNA profile of a man to be discovered on a glove left at the scene.
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In the search for the possible suspect, FGP Antwerp collaborated with the Albanian authorities and Interpol. The possible suspect, nicknamed Arturo Vrenoz, is said to have left Albania in 1993 and arrived in Italy in 2002. Before that, he had again used a false identity. In Italy he was checked several times by the police. Based on all new elements, the investigating judge issued a European arrest warrant and the man was notified. Thanks to international cooperation, the man could be located.
Positive match
FAST Italy, in collaboration with FAST Belgium, was able to arrest the man in Rome on August 21, 2023. After the surrender procedure, he was flown to our country on April 5. The investigating judge in Antwerp arrested him the next day for murder. A comparative DNA test that has since been carried out has revealed a positive match.
The man appeared before the council chamber for a second time on Monday. His detention has been extended. The victim’s family has now been informed of the new developments.
“Red spot on the sidewalk”
The media paid little attention to the gruesome murder at the time. Only theater maker and journalist Bert Verhoye, who wrote about it in his Minimal column in Het Laatste Nieuws. He lived in the Leguit and walked through the Dries every day. In Minimal of May 18, 1999, Bert wrote: “ If you walk along the Dries in Antwerp, you will see a large, red spot on the footpath, just in front of the kindergarten * It is the dried blood of a murder. The girl was nineteen, a quiet Romanian. She had a boyfriend who forced him to prostitute himself. That friend is now in jail. For that you have to be from Romania and barely nineteen. I have not yet tasted real life, but have already experienced all the misery of living on the edge. And then slaughtered, more gruesome than an animal, with stab wounds in the chest and stomach. All that’s left is a stain on the sidewalk. About five days of sun and the stain is gone.”
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