The_Info_Web/10 - PEOPLE/(N-S)/Robbie Van Der Plancken.md

category	tags	relations	summary	updated
Victims & Witnesses	BelgiumScandals Person Belgium Dutroux	type with role end fn partner_of Gerrit-Jan Ulrich partner (Der Spiegel); longtime lover (Hulse) 1998-06-20 10	Robbie Van Der Plancken was a Belgian national who began as a child prostitute working for Lothar Glandorf and later 'graduated to become an exploiter himself' in the European child trafficking and pornography network.	2026-10-15

Robbie Van Der Plancken was a Belgian national who began as a child prostitute working for Lothar Glandorf and later "graduated to become an exploiter himself" in the European child trafficking and pornography network. He emerged as a central figure connecting multiple major investigations during the 1990s, including the Marc Dutroux case and the Apollo Bulletin Board Service. Van Der Plancken operated across various European countries, maintaining connections to key figures in the international pedophile network while establishing himself as both a victim turned perpetrator and a crucial witness to systemic child exploitation operations spanning Belgium, Germany, Netherlands, and Italy.¹

Van Der Plancken's criminal activities began under the tutelage of Lothar Glandorf, who operated a sophisticated child trafficking operation targeting vulnerable boys from Berlin. His progression from victim to perpetrator exemplified the cycle of abuse within these networks, where former victims often became recruiters and abusers themselves. This pattern was common in the European child trafficking scene, where established networks leveraged the trauma and dependency of their victims to ensure continued participation and silence. His position within multiple overlapping networks made him a valuable asset for trafficking operations while simultaneously making him a target for both law enforcement and rival criminal elements seeking to eliminate potential witnesses.¹

The Zandvoort network investigation in 1998 revealed Van Der Plancken as "a central figure" in what was then "the world's largest online distributor of sadomasochist child pornography, served from a website called Apollo Bulletin Board Service hosted in the Dutch seaside resort town of Zandvoort." This operation represented a significant evolution in child exploitation, moving from physical distribution to digital platforms that could reach global audiences while maintaining relative anonymity for the operators.¹

Key Criminal Activities and Major Cases

Van Der Plancken admitted to helping Lothar Glandorf transport Manuel Schadwald from Berlin to Rotterdam, then, according to Nick Davies, who found the passage in an unbroadcast section of the interview with Dutch television, claimed that some time after being taken from Berlin by Lothar Glandorf, Manuel had been sold to the Englishman Warwick Spinks in Amsterdam.² The Guardian reported on July 31, 1998 that Spinks's name appeared among the possessions of Robbie Van Der Plancken. Spinks denied involvement and said he had known two men called Robbie, one a Belgian he used to meet in Amsterdam.³ S. Dovey wrote that the name was found in an address book and that this confirmed a business relationship.¹

Davies described Van Der Plancken as a veteran boy prostitute who grew up in a chaotic family in Boom, Belgium, and who went to work in the brothels of Lothar Glandorf in Rotterdam, and wrote that he had tried to sell his own twin brothers, then aged 14, to two of Glandorf's customers.⁴

The murder investigation of Gerrit-Jan Ulrich in June 1998 further exposed Van Der Plancken's criminal connections. Ulrich, a 49-year-old computer technician who owned a computer store called Cube Hardware (Hulse called him a computer salesman, Davies a Dutch businessman, the Seattle Times a convicted German pedophile, and the 2022 parliamentary commission described him as coming from Germany),⁴⁵⁶⁷ was found "shot multiple times" in an Italian forest. Van Der Plancken was arrested by Italian police as a suspect in this murder, which occurred shortly after Ulrich had been observed during a television interview with Van Der Plancken conducted by Belgian public broadcaster RTBF. The timing of Ulrich's death, coming just days after his exposure during the investigation, suggested a possible connection to efforts to silence witnesses or eliminate loose ends within the trafficking network.¹

Van Der Plancken maintained regular presence at the G-Force nightclub in Amsterdam, which was owned by American John Edward Mullaney and had connections to the Spartacus International network. This nightclub served as a meeting point for various figures in the European pedophile and trafficking scene, including Marc Dutroux. The establishment provided a legitimate business front for criminal networking, allowing traffickers, pornographers, and their associates to coordinate operations while maintaining plausible deniability. Van Der Plancken's regular attendance at this venue demonstrated his integration into the broader European criminal ecosystem that facilitated child exploitation across multiple countries and jurisdictions.¹

Arrest in Italy

Van Der Plancken was arrested in Italy after Gerrit-Jan Ulrich was found shot in a forest near Pisa on June 20, 1998.⁵ Italian sources dated the shooting June 19, 1998, near Pomarance.⁸ Davies reported that he first denied knowledge of the death, then said he had shot Ulrich and that it was an accident.⁴ Hulse described him as the chief suspect held by Italian police.⁵ La Repubblica of July 18, 1998 called him the presumed killer and gave his name as "Robert van den Planc"; L'Unità gave it as Roger van der Plancken.⁸⁹ Der Spiegel reported in August 1998 that he was in Italian custody on suspicion of having shot his partner.¹⁰ The Seattle Times, on July 30, 1998, gave his age as 24 and reported that Dutch authorities were seeking his extradition; Hulse and Davies gave his age as 23, and La Repubblica in 1999 gave 25.⁴⁵⁶¹¹

Il Tirreno reported on July 30, 1999 that he had been indicted for voluntary homicide.¹² Franca Selvatici wrote in La Repubblica on November 5, 1999 that he was on trial for murder in Pisa, that he called the killing an accident, and that several witnesses, including his father, said it was deliberate; his defence lawyer was Giangualberto Pepi and the Pisa prosecutor Angelo Perrone. According to the same report, the Haarlem prosecutor Henk van Brummen, in Pisa to follow the trial, had just dropped the charge that Van Der Plancken took part in the child-abuse-material trade run by Ulrich. Perrone gave van Brummen a statement dated June 15, 1999 from a former cellmate, who said that Van Der Plancken, code-named "Lupetto", had described the network to him in Pisa prison, as well as trips with Ulrich to Morocco to obtain children, and had named a British rock star. Van Der Plancken denied the account and announced a slander complaint.¹¹

Van Brummen said on April 26, 1999 that justice was 95 percent certain that Van Der Plancken had not been involved in producing or distributing child pornography, that the extradition request was not yet withdrawn because of the remaining 5 percent, and that nothing showed he was involved in the 1993 disappearance of the German boy.¹³ Der Spiegel wrote that Van Der Plancken appeared in at least five films of Gero-Video.¹⁰

Legal Consequences and Potential Witness Testimony

Following his arrest for the murder of Gerrit-Jan Ulrich, Van Der Plancken faced imprisonment in Italy while potentially possessing explosive information about broader criminal networks. His father made dramatic statements to the media, claiming: "If Robby spoke, the Dutroux case wouldn't be anything against it." This statement suggested that Van Der Plancken possessed knowledge that could significantly impact one of Europe's most notorious child abuse and murder cases, potentially implicating higher-level figures or revealing connections between seemingly disparate criminal operations. The father further alleged that "There is a snuff video in which a boy from Berlin dies. I saw it and recognized my son as the actor in it," suggesting Van Der Plancken's possible involvement in the production of extreme child abuse material.¹

German authorities reported that "the alleged child molester Robby van der Plancken, who is imprisoned in Italy because he is said to have shot his partner Gerrit Jan Ulrich, can be seen in at least five Gero films." Der Spiegel reported in August 1998 that investigators had found nothing punishable at Gero-Video Produktions GmbH, a Düsseldorf distributor, that several proceedings against it had been discontinued, and that the firm's owner said it bought the films in 1993 from a Dutch production company.¹⁴ The international scope of these operations, spanning Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands and Italy, demonstrated the challenges faced by law enforcement in investigating and prosecuting cross-border criminal enterprises that exploited jurisdictional boundaries and legal differences between countries.¹

In February 2001, investigators tracked down a transvestite in Amsterdam named Robert Jan Warmerdam, who "claimed to have known not only Robbie Van Der Plancken, but also Marc Dutroux." ¹

Footnotes

---

1. Dovey, S. (2023). Eye of the Chickenhawk. United States: Thehotstar. ↩︎

2. Nick Davies, "Paedophile networks traffick young boys across Europe," dated October 1, 1998 and marked "Previously unpublished," https://www.nickdavies.net/1998/10/01/paedophile-network-trafficks-young-boys-across-europe/ ↩︎

3. Kate Connolly and Owen Bowcott, "Fugitive Briton linked to Dutch child porn hits at 'witch-hunt' from Prague refuge," The Guardian, July 31, 1998, page 15. ↩︎

4. Nick Davies, "Paedophile network traffics young boys across Europe," The Observer, dated October 1, 1998 and marked "Previously unpublished," https://www.nickdavies.net/1998/10/01/paedophile-network-trafficks-young-boys-across-europe/ ↩︎

5. Tim Hulse, "No kind of hero," The Independent, September 13, 1998. ↩︎

6. "Internet child-porn scandal hits Holland," The Seattle Times, July 30, 1998, https://archive.seattletimes.com/archive/19980730/2763828/internet-child-porn-scandal-hits-holland ↩︎

7. Tijdelijke Onderzoekscommissie Georganiseerd Sadistisch Misbruik van Minderjarigen (Commissie Hendriks), "Rechtszaken en aangiftes van georganiseerd sadistisch misbruik bij minderjarigen," December 21, 2022, Bijlage bij Kamerstuk 31015 nr. 265, p. 11 and notes 17 to 19, https://zoek.officielebekendmakingen.nl/blg-1067911.pdf ↩︎

8. "Gli abusi prenotati via Internet. In rete le immagini degli stupri," L'Unità, July 17, 1998, p. 13, https://archivio.unita.news/assets/derived/1998/07/17/issue_full.pdf ↩︎

9. "Pedofilia, nuovo caso in Belgio 340 bambini nei video hard," La Repubblica, July 18, 1998, p. 14, https://ricerca.repubblica.it/repubblica/archivio/repubblica/1998/07/18/pedofilia-nuovo-caso-in-belgio-340-bambini.html ↩︎

10. "Nur die kleinen Fische," Der Spiegel, no. 32, 1998, https://www.spiegel.de/politik/nur-die-kleinen-fische-a-fc226181-0002-0001-0000-000007956187 ↩︎

11. Franca Selvatici, "Quella rockstar è un pedofilo," La Repubblica, November 5, 1999, p. 25, https://ricerca.repubblica.it/repubblica/archivio/repubblica/1999/11/05/quella-rockstar-un-pedofilo.html ↩︎

12. "Il giallo della Valdicecina risolto con l'incriminazione di Robby Van der Plancken per omicidio volontario. Ucciso perché stava per confessare," Il Tirreno, July 30, 1999, http://ricerca.gelocal.it/iltirreno/archivio/iltirreno/1999/07/30/LA106.html ↩︎

13. Margriet Oostveen, "Kinderporno in Zandvoort was eenmansactie," NRC Handelsblad, April 27, 1999 (excerpted at https://www.tegenwicht.org/01_tw_hoezo/zantvoort.htm) ↩︎

14. "Nur die kleinen Fische," Der Spiegel 32/1998, August 2, 1998, https://www.spiegel.de/politik/nur-die-kleinen-fische-a-fc226181-0002-0001-0000-000007956187 ↩︎