The Serial Killer in Plain Site - Belgium (1990s)

For twenty-five years, the murders of four women in Antwerp, Belgium remained one of the country's most perplexing cold cases. Between 1992 and 1997, each victim died in strikingly similar circumstances, yet investigators could not identify their killer.

The cases went cold until 2017, when a DNA match in Belgium's criminal database finally gave authorities the name they had sought for so long.

This is the story of unspeakable crimes that shook the Antwerp region, of grieving families who waited decades for answers, and of how a serial killer was finally brought to justice.

A Warm Evening on Mechelsesteenweg

It was a warm evening on June 17, 1992, when a young man walked into a modest apartment on the Mechelsesteenweg in Antwerp. This was the home he shared with his girlfriend, 30-year-old Ariana Mazijn. Ariana worked as a waitress and was known by friends and family as lively and kind-hearted. That evening, she hadn't shown up for a planned gathering with friends after her shift. Concerned, her boyfriend hurried home—only to stumble upon a scene of horror.

Inside the bedroom, Ariana was found brutalized. She had been strangled with an electrical cord and stabbed multiple times in the chest and abdomen. The violence of the attack was shocking. There were clear indications that this was a deeply personal crime: in addition to the strangulation, there were seven stab wounds, suggesting rage or a twisted passion behind the attack.

Ariana's clothing was in disarray, and investigators quickly noted evidence of sexual assault. Later forensic analysis confirmed the presence of semen on her body. Whoever the killer was, he had left behind a vital clue—biological evidence that, someday, might speak for Ariana as she no longer could.

Police from the Antwerp homicide division launched an intensive investigation. They combed through the small apartment for any fingerprints, fibers, or DNA that could identify the attacker. The electrical cord used to strangle Ariana had been yanked from a sunlamp she owned, suggesting the killer had grabbed whatever was handy to subdue her. This indicated a measure of improvisation.

Maybe the attack had not been long premeditated, or perhaps the murderer hadn't come armed with a weapon and relied on what he found at the scene. The multiple stab wounds, however, hinted at anger and control—the killer wanted to be sure Ariana was dead.

Investigators first looked at those closest to Ariana. It's an unfortunate reality that in many murders, the victim's partner or someone they know is involved. Ariana's boyfriend, the very person who had discovered her body, fell under scrutiny. Detectives interviewed him extensively, probing for any relationship problems or possible motives.

He insisted he had nothing to do with it and had been devastated by finding Ariana in that condition. Indeed, the brutality of the crime didn't fit the profile of a typical domestic dispute. Still, police had to consider every angle. For a time, Ariana's grieving boyfriend lived under a cloud of suspicion, whispered about as a possible murderer.

Yet there was zero physical evidence tying him to the scene. In fact, if his DNA had been compared to the semen found on Ariana, it would not have matched. Back in 1992, however, DNA profiling was still in its relative infancy, and the sample from the crime scene yielded no immediate leads. With no eyewitnesses and no obvious suspect, the investigation slowed.

As weeks turned into months, Ariana's case remained unsolved. The Antwerp police followed dozens of tips and interviewed neighbors and local acquaintances. They learned that on the day of the murder, Ariana had been at home during the afternoon before her shift.

Could someone have talked their way into the apartment? One detail did stand out: Ariana's apartment windows had been cleaned that day. Investigators noted that a window washer had been working in the building, going door to door offering services. Ariana, who liked to keep a neat home, had apparently let the man in to wash her windows. According to statements from neighbors, the window cleaner was a familiar sight in the area—a polite, unremarkable tradesman making his rounds.

The Man Who Cleaned Windows

Police spoke with this man as they did with everyone who had been around the building that day. Nothing about the interaction raised alarms. He claimed he remembered little, just that he had done his job and moved on. With no evidence to implicate him or anyone else at the time, the inquiry hit a dead end.

Summer faded, and Ariana's family was left without answers or justice. Her case wouldn't be the last to confound Antwerp's detectives in that era. In fact, the very next year, another mysterious killing would strike, this time outside the city, and it would deepen the puzzle of who was behind these crimes.

Death by the Canal

July 10, 1993, was a sunny Saturday in the Kempen region east of Antwerp—perfect weather for a bike ride. Lutgarda Bogaerts, a 28-year-old from the small town of Grobbendonk, set out on her bicycle that afternoon, planning to enjoy the rural path along the Albert Canal. Lutgarda was an active, independent young woman. She often rode that route for exercise and relaxation.

The canal's towpath was quiet that day, with just the occasional passerby: a jogger here, a fisherman there casting a line in the water. As the hours passed, Lutgarda's family grew concerned when she didn't return home for dinner. Evening fell and still no sign of her. By night, worry turned into alarm. Something was wrong.

A search party was organized by local police and volunteers. They retraced Lutgarda's intended path along the canal, calling her name into the dusk. It wasn't until two days later, on July 12, 1993, that the grim discovery was made. Lutgarda's body was found hidden in a patch of bushes not far from the canal path in Oelegem, a nearby village along her route.

She had been killed in a way that shocked the community for its cruelty. Lutgarda's hands were bound with the straps from her own bicycle, and one of those straps had been tightened around her neck. She had been strangled to death with the very bungee cords she carried to secure items on her bike. Her clothing was in disarray, and evidence at the scene indicated she had been sexually assaulted before her death. The carefree summer ride had ended in unspeakable violence.

Investigators from the region arrived to process the scene. They collected anything that might serve as evidence: pieces of the bindings, possible hairs or fibers on her clothing, and swabs for DNA evidence from the assault. The brutality and public nature of the crime terrified locals. An attack like this, in broad daylight on a public path, suggested a predator bold enough to strike wherever opportunity arose. The question was: who?

Early suspicion fell on a man who happened to be fishing along the canal around the time Lutgarda went missing. He was an older local fellow known to spend his days by the water. More importantly, he had a criminal past involving a sexual offense. In the absence of other leads, police focused on this fisherman. They interviewed him multiple times and even searched his property for any sign of involvement.

People in Oelegem quietly traded theories—perhaps this man had seen Lutgarda biking alone and seized the chance to attack her. However, as the forensic evidence trickled in, nothing definitively tied him to the murder. DNA from the perpetrator was recovered from Lutgarda's body, and when compared to the fisherman's, it did not match. Despite his checkered past, it appeared he was not responsible for this particular crime. With that suspect cleared, investigators were back to square one.

The case of Lutgarda Bogaerts went cold. Residents of the area were warned to be vigilant, especially women out walking or cycling alone. Was this horrific incident an isolated attack, or could it be connected to other crimes? At the time, authorities didn't publicly link Lutgarda's murder with Ariana Mazijn's case in the city. The two cases had different investigators and different circumstances—one woman killed at home, another out in nature.

Yet looking back, the similarities are striking: two women, close in age, attacked and strangled, with signs of sexual assault, within a year of each other in the broader Antwerp region. In the early '90s, though, without a clear common suspect or DNA match, those dots remained unconnected.

Stenenbrug Street

Just as the memory of those first two murders was starting to unsettle investigators, a third killing took place. In late 1994, the danger struck once more in Antwerp itself. Maria Van den Reeck was a 46-year-old woman living alone in the city's Borgerhout district. She was older than the previous victims, but otherwise lived a routine life. Neighbors knew Maria as a quiet, friendly presence in their apartment building on Stenenbrug Street.

She had a habit of tending to her window flower boxes, chatting with the building's cleaning lady, and going about her daily errands without much fuss. When Maria seemingly dropped out of sight in November 1994, people noticed. She missed a regular meetup with a friend and wasn't seen doing her usual grocery run. Calls to her phone went unanswered. After a couple of weeks, a concerned neighbor and a family member decided to check on her.

On December 9, 1994, about three weeks since anyone had last heard from Maria, police were called to her apartment. What they found inside was a distressing scene. Maria was dead in her bedroom. Her body showed signs of having been there for quite some time. She had been strangled with the cord of an appliance—later identified as the electrical cord of her curling iron, which was still wrapped around her neck.

Like the other victims, Maria had been overpowered and sexually assaulted in her own home. Given the state of her remains after weeks in a closed apartment, determining other details (like whether there were stab wounds or defensive injuries) was more challenging. But the fundamental facts were clear and all-too-familiar: another woman had been brutally raped and strangled, in Antwerp, just a year or so apart from the previous cases.

For Antwerp detectives, this was an alarming development. Ariana Mazijn in 1992, and now Maria Van den Reeck in late 1994—two women killed in their own apartments by an assailant who used ligatures found at the scene to strangle them. Though Lutgarda's murder in 1993 had occurred outdoors in a different jurisdiction, investigators could not help but recall its details as well. Three women in three years, all killed by strangulation, all sexually violated. A pattern was emerging, though it was not yet officially confirmed as the work of a single predator.

In Maria's case, police again canvassed the area and questioned anyone who might have seen something. Neighbors reported nothing particularly unusual beyond noticing that a window cleaner had been working on the building in late November, shortly before Maria vanished from sight. Like many apartment dwellers, Maria occasionally hired a roving window washer to keep her windows clean.

It was such a routine occurrence that no one paid it much mind. Investigators made note of this and did speak to the window cleaner who serviced Stenenbrug Street, but it was just one of many interviews. No immediate evidence linked that individual to the crime, and, as with the prior murders, there was no eyewitness or obvious suspect.

Forensic technicians attempted to recover DNA or fingerprints from Maria's apartment. By 1994, DNA profiling was improving, and they did find evidence of rape. The unknown DNA profile from Maria's case was compared with the one from Ariana's murder two years earlier. The results were inconclusive or kept under wraps at the time—later reports would indicate that the same man's DNA was indeed present at both scenes.

If police realized they had a serial offender on their hands, they did not publicize it, likely hoping to avoid panic and to quietly work leads. But behind the scenes, one can imagine a growing resolve among the investigators: a single perpetrator might be responsible, and he had now struck three times. They needed to catch him before he struck again.

Unfortunately, by the end of 1994, leads in Maria's case were as scarce as in the earlier murders. Another year passed, the cases remained unsolved, and fear simmered under the surface. Women in Antwerp took extra precautions, and police had no choice but to wait for the killer to make a mistake.

Eve's Last Appointment

Nearly three more years went by. It was starting to seem like the murderer—if it was indeed one person—had disappeared. But in September 1997, the nightmare returned. Eve Poppe, a 38-year-old woman, was found dead in her apartment in the Luchtbal neighborhood of Antwerp. The circumstances were grimly consistent with the earlier cases.

Eve had been raped and strangled, her body left on her bed with a length of rope cinched tightly around her neck. She had also been stabbed multiple times in the chest, much like Ariana had been. The killer's brutality had not waned with time. If anything, the murder of Eve Poppe was especially vicious.

Eve was an outgoing, independent woman. She was originally from the city of Mechelen but lived and worked in Antwerp. She had a half-sister, Pascale, to whom she was very close. In fact, Pascale often knew Eve's day-to-day schedule. In the first week of September 1997, Eve mentioned to her half-sister that she needed to settle up a small debt with someone—her window washer.

She owed him about 3,000 Belgian francs (around €75) for recent work, and he was planning to stop by on September 5th to collect the payment. When Pascale couldn't reach Eve in the days after that appointment, alarm bells rang. By September 9, 1997, four days after that scheduled visit, family members and friends had contacted the police, urging them to check on Eve's welfare. That's when her body was discovered in her home. She had been killed on or around September 5th—the very day she was due to meet the window cleaner.

The investigation into Eve Poppe's murder moved swiftly at first. This time, there was a concrete lead. Thanks to Pascale's information, police knew that one of the last people to see Eve alive might have been the local window cleaner. They tracked him down within hours. Stephaan, the window washer in question, was a 31-year-old man from the Deurne district who cleaned windows for several clients in Eve's area.

Detectives brought him in for questioning, treating him initially as a witness who might help establish a timeline. They asked if he had seen or heard anything unusual when he visited Eve's apartment on the 5th. Stephaan acknowledged he'd gone by Eve's place that day; he said she paid what she owed, they chatted briefly, and he left. He claimed she was perfectly fine when he departed. As far as he knew, Eve was alive and well when he walked out her door.

Investigators found Stephaan's demeanor cooperative. He didn't display overt nervousness or contradictions in his story. Importantly, at that moment they had no hard evidence linking him to the crime. Yes, he admitted being at the scene that day, but as a worker doing his job. Eve letting him in was not unusual; he had washed her windows many times before. Police did not arrest him or take a DNA sample then, because they didn't consider him an official suspect yet.

It was standard procedure in Belgium at the time that DNA collection from individuals typically required some grounds for suspicion or a formal accusation. In Stephaan's case, he seemed to be just one more person who had interacted with the victim. Lacking any incriminating evidence—no witnesses placing anyone else at the apartment, no obvious motive for the window cleaner, and no immediate forensic results—authorities released him after questioning.

Behind the scenes, forensic scientists worked on Eve's case as they had on the others. They gathered semen samples and other DNA evidence from her body and the crime scene. If those samples were tested against the now-growing database of known offenders in 1997, they found no match—Stephaan, having no prior convictions for violent crimes at that time, wouldn't have been in any database.

And since he wasn't formally charged or compelled, he hadn't given a reference sample to compare either. However, if those results were cross-compared with the DNA from Ariana's and Maria's murders, the investigators likely noted a disturbing consistency: the same unknown male DNA was present in all three apartment murders. In other words, by the late 1990s, the evidence was pointing to a serial rapist-killer operating in Antwerp. The pattern was no longer deniable.

Publicly, though, these cases remained quiet. There were no sensational media headlines tying the murders together; each case was largely reported in isolation at the time. Belgium in the late 90s was already grappling with the notorious Dutroux affair (a high-profile child kidnapping case), which dominated the crime news.

The murders of adult women got comparatively limited national media attention, and without an arrest, they faded from the front pages. Still, the families of Ariana, Lutgarda, Maria, and Eve lived through those years tormented by uncertainty. Four lives had been cut short, and the person responsible was still out there.

Twenty-Five Years of Silence

After Eve Poppe's death in 1997, the killings seemed to stop. Years rolled by without a similar incident in the area. It was as if the predator had gone dormant—or gotten away with it and simply moved on, leaving a trail of cold cases behind. Investigators periodically revisited the files, hoping new information or technology might breathe life into the inquiries. But by the turn of the millennium, all four murders were shelved as unsolved. The chance to catch the killer hinged on a breakthrough that, at the time, felt like a long shot.

For more than twenty years, the families of the four women endured an agonizing limbo. They visited their daughters' and sisters' graves with no sense of closure, only the pain of not knowing who was responsible or why it had happened. Ariana Mazijn's boyfriend, once under unjust suspicion, had to live with people's sideways glances, until time and evidence eventually cleared his name.

Lutgarda Bogaerts's loved ones in Grobbendonk whispered about the unsolved murder that haunted their small town, never fully convinced that the suspicious fisherman wasn't somehow involved—until later forensic developments proved the attacker was someone else entirely. And Eve Poppe's half-sister Pascale held onto a gut feeling that the man who'd been in Eve's apartment that day—the window cleaner—knew more than he'd said. She kept that intuition alive quietly, hoping one day the truth would come out.

During these years, significant advancements were made in forensic science. DNA analysis, which had been a novel tool in the early 1990s, became far more sophisticated and routine in criminal investigations by the 2000s. Belgium established a national DNA database for convicted criminals, but its scope was initially limited. Up until the early 2010s, Belgian law required DNA samples to be collected only from individuals convicted of serious crimes like murder or sexual assault.

This meant that if our unidentified killer never faced a conviction for such a serious offense, his DNA profile would not be in any system to compare against the cold-case evidence. And indeed, through the late 90s and 2000s, none of the DNA from the four murders matched any known offender. The cases remained at a standstill.

A Law Changed Everything

However, in 2014 a pivotal change occurred: Belgium broadened its DNA collection laws. The new regulation mandated that DNA be collected from persons convicted of any crime carrying a potential prison term, not just the gravest offenses. Suddenly, individuals convicted of crimes like burglary, robbery, and other felonies had to submit DNA samples to the national database. This expansion greatly increased the chances that a previously unknown violent offender's profile might surface due to a more minor brush with the law.

Life went on for the unknown perpetrator of the Antwerp murders. After 1997, there were no known similar murders attributed to him, leading some to wonder if he'd left the country, been jailed for something else, or perhaps even died. In reality, he was living a fairly ordinary life right there in Antwerp.

In the 2000s, this man—whose name was still just a question mark in the case files—continued working as a self-employed window cleaner. He married for a third time and settled into middle age. To the outside observer he was unremarkable: a blue-collar worker, a husband, perhaps a father, making ends meet in the city. But beneath that facade lay dark secrets. He had a history of violence that few knew about. Years earlier, when he was a teenager and young adult, he'd been in trouble for attempted sexual assaults.

Those crimes had landed him in prison briefly and cost him relationships, but they predated modern DNA tracking and he eventually faded off the authorities' radar. By the 2010s, any such past transgressions were essentially forgotten or filed away, and he was not on any list of active suspects for the unsolved murders.

Then came an incident that, in hindsight, set the dominoes in motion. In 2011, this man attempted a petty theft—an attempted robbery that had nothing to do with his earlier pattern of crimes. He was caught and charged. At his court date in 2012, he failed to appear, leading to a conviction in absentia. He received a six-month prison sentence for the attempted theft. Eventually, in 2015, he appeared to appeal that conviction, but his appeal was denied.

This minor criminal matter would ordinarily have been just a blip on the radar. But thanks to the new 2014 law, his conviction—even for a small-scale robbery—required that a DNA sample be taken and added to the national database of convicts. And so, in 2015, the man who had walked free from four murders unknowingly gave the state the key that could unlock all of those cases. His DNA profile was logged and stored, waiting for a match.

The Database Speaks

By 2017, the cold case unit of the Antwerp police, in collaboration with the National Institute of Forensic Science, decided to take a fresh look at the unsolved murders from the 1990s. Technicians re-examined the evidence from those crime scenes with modern techniques. The semen sample from the Ariana Mazijn case—carefully preserved since 1992—was analyzed again with the latest DNA profiling methods. This time, investigators ran the DNA profile through the expanded national database.

No one dared to get their hopes up too high; countless searches before had turned up nothing. But this time was different. To their astonishment, the computer returned a hit. The DNA from the crime scene matched an individual in the database. After 25 years, they finally had a name.

When the notification of the DNA match came through, detectives could scarcely believe it. The profile from Ariana's murder was linked to a 53-year-old man living in the Antwerp area. His name was Stephaan Du Lion. To the police who reviewed the file, the name wasn't entirely unfamiliar.

A quick check of their records showed that this same man had been interviewed, though not charged, in connection with Eve Poppe's 1997 murder as a potential witness. The window cleaner. A jolt of realization shot through the investigative team: the man they had briefly considered and let go back then was now identified by DNA as the person who left evidence on Ariana's body.

It was a surreal and chilling moment. The investigators knew they had to proceed carefully and thoroughly—after all these years, they had only one chance to get this right and bring justice to four murdered women.

The Walls Close In

In October 2018, police moved to quietly arrest the now middle-aged Stephaan Du Lion at his home in Deurne, an Antwerp suburb. He did not resist. By outward appearances, Du Lion was an ordinary citizen—married, working, with adult children. Neighbors were stunned to see him led away in handcuffs, as the police had kept the operation low-key.

The arrest was initially in connection with the murder of Ariana Mazijn, the case for which they had the conclusive DNA evidence. Under Belgian procedure, Du Lion was brought before an investigative judge for interrogation. The walls were finally closing in on a suspect who had evaded capture for so long.

In those first interviews, Du Lion seemed cagey. Confronted with the DNA evidence linking him to Ariana's rape and murder, he couldn't deny he had been with her. Instead, he offered a feeble explanation: he claimed he did recall having a sexual encounter at Ariana's apartment around that time, but suggested it was consensual and that he didn't know if it was Ariana because he "didn't recognize her photo."

It was a brazen story—painting himself as someone who might have had casual sex with a stranger at the very location and date of a homicide, yet knew nothing of the murder itself. Investigators weren't buying it. They pressed him further, likely showing him evidence from the scene and reminding him that Ariana had been brutally strangled and stabbed. After two weeks of sustained questioning, the facade cracked. Stephaan Du Lion eventually gave a detailed confession to the murder of Ariana Mazijn.

He admitted that, on June 17, 1992, while washing windows at her apartment, he had forced himself on Ariana. He overpowered and raped her, and then, realizing the gravity of what he'd done and fearing identification, he took a cord from her sunlamp and strangled her with it until she was dead. The stabbing may have been an act of rage or a grotesque attempt to make sure she was beyond saving. With that confession, one of the oldest cold cases in Antwerp was finally solved—but the investigation was far from over.

Detectives knew if Du Lion committed one of these murders, he very likely committed the others that bore the same hallmarks. Now that he was in custody, they dug back into the files of the other three women. Eve Poppe's case in particular stood out. Du Lion had been the window washer who visited her on the day she died. Back in 1997 he had slipped through their fingers; this time, they would not let that happen.

In March 2019, the cold case team officially reopened the Eve Poppe investigation with Du Lion as the prime suspect. They also began re-examining the evidence from Lutgarda Bogaerts' and Maria Van den Reeck's murders, though they kept that part tightly under wraps at first.

When brought back in for further questioning about Eve's murder, Du Lion initially exercised his right to remain silent. Perhaps he thought there was no DNA linking him to that crime (and indeed, at the time, they hadn't publicly disclosed any match for Eve's case).

But the noose was tightening. Investigators likely pointed out the similarities among the cases and perhaps even hinted that more evidence could surface. Faced with this pressure and perhaps experiencing the weight of decades of secrets, Du Lion buckled once more. A few months into the renewed inquiry, he confessed to killing Eve Poppe.

Four Confessions

What happened next astonished the detectives in the room: Du Lion didn't stop at two confessions. He went on to spontaneously confess to two additional murders from the 1990s—the murders of Lutgarda Bogaerts and Maria Van den Reeck. Without being directly prompted, he volunteered details about those cases, essentially clearing the unsolved docket in one fell swoop.

It was a moment of both triumph and horror for the police. Triumph because they finally had the truth; horror because it confirmed that a serial killer had been in their midst, unrecognized, for so long. Du Lion's admissions meant that all four women's deaths were indeed connected. The same man had been responsible from the start. He had just lurked below suspicion, using his unassuming job as cover and relying on the limitations of technology and law at the time to evade capture.

Following these confessions, the cold cases of Lutgarda and Maria were formally reopened and consolidated into the prosecution's case against Du Lion. Investigators went back to corroborate his statements with the case files. In Lutgarda's case, Du Lion explained how he came across her cycling by the canal and was "triggered" by the sight of her taking a break in the bushes.

In later court testimony, he would describe following her, attempting a sexual assault, and when she resisted, knocking her down and strangling her with her own bike straps. For Maria, he admitted that during a window-washing appointment, he returned later to her apartment when she was alone. He sexually assaulted her and strangled her with the curling iron cord—just as the crime scene had indicated.

In each case, Du Lion's recollections were foggy on certain details (perhaps conveniently so), but the core facts aligned with what detectives long suspected. To the families, these revelations were both devastating and relieving. At last, they knew who had done this. There would be accountability.

Face to Face

On February 3, 2023, after years of preparatory hearings, Stephaan Du Lion went on trial at the Antwerp Assize Court, charged with four counts of murder. By this time he was 58 years old. The trial attracted considerable attention in Belgium, especially from the communities where the crimes occurred, but internationally it remained a relatively low-profile proceeding. For the families of Ariana, Lutgarda, Maria, and Eve, the courtroom was a place of somber resolution—a chance to see the man responsible and hear the full narrative of what happened, however painful that might be.

Du Lion had already confessed to the crimes, so there was no suspense about the verdict in a traditional sense. The trial's purpose was to examine the evidence, allow witness testimonies (including investigators and experts), and give the families an opportunity to confront the killer indirectly through their presence and any victim impact statements.

Throughout the trial, Du Lion maintained a detached demeanor. He claimed to have little memory of the events, insisting that he had suppressed the horrific things he'd done. Psychologists who evaluated him did not find this amnesia credible; they believed he was feigning memory loss to avoid fully acknowledging his actions. Indeed, the pattern and details of his crimes suggested planning and intention, not momentary lapses of control that one might blank out.

During one poignant moment in the trial, Du Lion directly addressed the family of Eve Poppe. He admitted that his attack on Eve was not a spur-of-the-moment impulse, but a premeditated act. This admission contradicted any hint that he "lost control" or wasn't aware of what he was doing. It confirmed that he had approached Eve's apartment that day with dark intentions already formed.

For Eve's half-sister Pascale, who sat in the courtroom, those words were chilling yet validating. Her intuition about this man back in 1997 had been right all along. Now, she finally heard him confess in person to the murder of her beloved sister. Pascale later described the mix of emotions she felt—grief, anger, but also relief that the truth was out.

"You hope for a miracle," she said of the long years with no answers, "but as time goes on you fear it will never be solved. We're enormously glad that everything has come to light at last." She expressed a desire to look the killer in the eyes and hear every detail of what happened, seeking closure on the many unanswered questions that had haunted her family.

Other family members of the victims shared similar sentiments. There was heartbreak in hearing the gruesome specifics of how their loved ones were violated and killed. But there was also a measure of solace knowing that the person responsible would finally be held accountable. Ariana Mazijn's relatives could finally let go of any lingering suspicions around her innocent boyfriend and direct their anguish at the true culprit.

The community of Grobbendonk, where Lutgarda came from, learned that the long-rumored fisherman was not the killer, clearing an innocent man's name in the process. And Maria Van den Reeck's friends and family, who had spent years wondering if she died at the hands of a burglar or some acquaintance, learned it was a predator who had used his role as a window washer to gain her trust. The pattern was laid bare for all to see.

Life for a Life

After several days of testimony and deliberation, the jury delivered its verdict. In the evening of February 14, 2023, Stephaan Du Lion was found guilty on all four counts of murder. The killings were determined to be premeditated and deliberate—crimes of the most serious nature. The next day, February 15, the court pronounced the sentence. Du Lion was given life imprisonment, the maximum penalty under Belgian law.

The presiding judge did not mince words in condemning his actions. She highlighted that Du Lion exhibited traits of a psychopath and noted the high risk that he would reoffend if ever given the chance. His violent behavior had not been curbed even after the first murders, which showed that no rehabilitation or leniency was warranted. The judge acknowledged that Du Lion had endured a traumatic, abusive childhood, but she emphatically stated that many people suffer hardship without turning into killers—his past did not excuse the choices he made.

The fact that he eventually confessed to the murders did not earn him any sympathy or reduction either; it was simply too little, too late, and likely motivated by self-interest as much as remorse. In a striking line, the judge remarked that by killing four women, Du Lion had effectively "sentenced them to death," and now he was receiving the most severe sentence in return.

As the gavel fell, there was a sense of finality. Stephaan Du Lion, the once-unseen predator, would spend the rest of his days behind bars. Outside the courthouse, the lead investigators spoke to the press about the long road to solving the case.

They credited the advancements in DNA technology and the expanded database for providing the key evidence, but also the perseverance of the cold case team that never forgot these victims. Indeed, had it not been for that change in the DNA law in 2014 and the decision to re-run the old samples in 2017, Du Lion might never have been caught. He had stopped killing after 1997—perhaps spooked by nearly being caught—and lived a low-profile life.

Without the DNA match, there was little to no paper trail connecting him to the crimes. This case became a powerful example of how scientific tools can resurrect cold cases and how justice can eventually catch up, even if criminals slip through the cracks for a time.

Bittersweet Closure

For the families of the victims, the conclusion of the trial was a moment of bittersweet closure. They had answers now, which is more than many families of cold case victims ever get. Yet the answers didn't erase the loss. These four women had their lives brutally taken, and no court ruling could bring them back. What the verdict did offer was a confirmation that their lives mattered, that the law had finally heard their silent testimony through the evidence, and that the man who caused their suffering would never hurt anyone else.