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The_Info_Web/10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Christine Van Hees.md

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category tags summary died location created updated
Victims & Witnesses
BelgiumScandals
Person
Belgium
Dutroux
Brussels teenager whose burned body was found in 1984 at a disused mushroom farm in Auderghem; the case was reopened in 1996 on the testimony of the witness X1 and never solved. 1984 Auderghem, Belgium 2026-05-14 2026-10-09

Christine Van Hees was killed in February 1984 and found bound and partly burned in the disused mushroom farm (champignonnière) at Auderghem, on the outskirts of Brussels. The murder was not solved, and the file stayed with the Brussels investigating judge Jean-Claude Van Espen.12 She was sixteen.3

The X1 Testimony

In 1996 the witness X1, Regina Louf, told the Neufchâteau investigators of the murder of a girl she knew as "Chrissie." "It was a sort of bondage," she later said, "so her legs and her hands and her throat were connected with the same rope, and so when she moved she strangled herself." She said that Jean-Michel Nihoul took part in the killing and that Marc Dutroux watched; Nihoul denied it.4 She also named Bernard Weinstein and the lawyer Michel Vander Elst.5 The farm had since been demolished, but she described its wallpaper, sinks, hooks in the ceiling and a network of stairs and adjoining rooms. She also mentioned details that had never been made public, among them a metal pin in the dead girl's wrist.3 Rudi Hoskens, one of the officers assigned to re-examine the case, said: "She gave us some details that made us think it's impossible to give without having been there at that place." The son of the farm's former owner said: "I have never met Regina Louf. All I know is that she could not have described the house as well as she did unless she'd been there. It was two houses joined together in a strange way." The Prosecutor General of Liège, Anne Thily, told a reporter in 2002 that Louf was a fantasist who had invented everything.4

Louf's account led the gendarme Aimé Bille to the old file, and he found that the earlier investigation under Van Espen had "multiple gaps."2 Van Hees had swum weekly at a pool above the premises of Radio Activité, where Nihoul was active, and skated at Poseidon in Woluwe, which Dutroux also frequented.5

The Senate proposal of October 9, 2000 states that one of X1's accounts led the investigators to an old file on Van Hees, who had been murdered and partly burned in the former mushroom farm at Auderghem, a murder never solved, and that the gendarme Aimé Bille, assigned to the file, found that the earlier inquiry under the investigating judge Jean-Claude Van Espen presented multiple gaps.6 The parliamentary commission's complementary report of February 16, 1998 records that an anonymous witness had associated Jean-Michel Nihoul and "A. Bouty" with an unsolved murder in the Brussels region on which Van Espen had led the inquiry in the 1980s; the commission's text does not name the victim in that passage.7 The commission also records that the Brussels district commander wrote to Van Espen on September 2, 1997 about a division of tasks among investigators for instruction 64/85.8

On October 21, 1998 the Chamber of Representatives' justice committee tabled motions after five interpellations. A recommendation signed by Gerolf Annemans asked the minister to press the college of prosecutors-general for an independent rereading of the files on the statements of the so-called X witnesses (among them Van Hees and Mazibas), separate from the Neufchâteau investigating judge and from the antenna head Duterme.9

La Libre Belgique reported in 2004 that on March 17, 2000 it became known that semen recovered from Van Hees's body had been analyzed and corresponded genetically neither to Nihoul nor to any known suspect in the Dutroux affair, a result the paper described as destroying the credit of X1 on the point.10 A Zembla programme of March 11, 2004 stated in its description that X1 had "daderkennis" (knowledge of the perpetrators) in the Van Hees and Dellaert cases and that the gendarmerie had been able to confirm much of what she said.11 Michel Clippe, a former adjudant of the Brussels BSR, told La Dernière Heure in 2020 that he was able to verify a great deal of what she said.12

The Investigating Judge

The reopened file was returned to Van Espen at the end of January 1997. The Belgian parliamentary commission of inquiry recorded its astonishment at his "violent reaction" to contacts between its councillor-investigator and the Neufchâteau investigators, and his order of June 22, 1997, suspending all investigative acts by the team; it concluded that he had given "particular, in fact disproportionate, attention" to those contacts.1 In 2002 it was reported that a Belgian journalist had revealed his "close relationship" with Nihoul and his then wife: that as a lawyer he had represented Nihoul's wife, that his sister was godmother of Nihoul's child, and that he had resigned from the case in early 1998.4

On April 23, 1998, the prosecutors-general of Antwerp, Ghent and Brussels found that "no proof could be found that Regina Louf could make any contribution whatsoever to these investigations" and closed the related files, among them the reopened inquiries into the murders of Van Hees, Carine Dellaert, Veronique Dubrulle, Katrien de Cuyper and Hanim Ayse Mazibas.2

Footnotes

  1. Chambre des Représentants de Belgique. Enquête parlementaire sur la manière dont l'enquête, dans ses volets policiers et judiciaires, a été menée dans l'affaire Dutroux-Nihoul et consorts, rapport complémentaire, Doc. 713/8-96/97, February 16, 1998, chapter V; translated from the French. https://www.dekamer.be/kvvcr/pdf_sections/comm/dutroux/49K0713008.pdf ↩︎

  2. Sénat de Belgique. Proposition visant à instituer une commission d'enquête parlementaire chargée d'enquêter sur l'éloignement de deux enquêteurs de la cellule d'enquête bruxelloise « Neufchâteau », déposée par M. Frans Lozie, Doc. 2-563/1, October 9, 2000. ↩︎

  3. Smoltczyk, Alexander. "Im Netz der Dossiers." Der Spiegel, no. 42/2001, October 14, 2001; translated from the German. https://www.spiegel.de/panorama/im-netz-der-dossiers-a-c9fe5b47-0002-0001-0000-000020353850 The Observer gives her age as fifteen in its account of Louf's description. ↩︎

  4. Frenkiel, Olenka. "Belgium's silent heart of darkness." The Observer, May 5, 2002. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2002/may/05/dutroux.featuresreview ↩︎

  5. "Who did not kill Christine Van Hees?" De Morgen, September 22, 1998. ↩︎

  6. Sénat de Belgique. Proposition visant à instituer une commission d'enquête parlementaire chargée d'enquêter sur l'éloignement de deux enquêteurs de la cellule d'enquête bruxelloise « Neufchâteau », déposée par M. Frans Lozie, Doc. 2-563/1, October 9, 2000, développements; translated from the French. https://www.senate.be/www/?MIval=/publications/viewPub.html&COLL=S&LEG=2&NR=563&VOLGNR=1&LANG=fr ↩︎

  7. Chambre des Représentants de Belgique. Enquête parlementaire sur la manière dont l'enquête, dans ses volets policiers et judiciaires, a été menée dans l'affaire Dutroux-Nihoul et consorts, rapport complémentaire, Doc. 713/8-96/97, February 16, 1998, chapter V, p. 150; translated from the French. https://www.dekamer.be/FLWB/PDF/49/0713/49K0713008.pdf ↩︎

  8. Chambre des Représentants de Belgique. Enquête parlementaire sur la manière dont l'enquête, dans ses volets policiers et judiciaires, a été menée dans l'affaire Dutroux-Nihoul et consorts, rapport complémentaire, Doc. 713/8-96/97, February 16, 1998, chapter V, p. 158; translated from the French. https://www.dekamer.be/FLWB/PDF/49/0713/49K0713008.pdf ↩︎

  9. Chambre des Représentants de Belgique. Motions of October 21, 1998, Doc. 25/370-1995; translated from the French and Dutch. https://www.dekamer.be/FLWB/PDF/49/0025/49K0025370.pdf ↩︎

  10. Planchar, Roland. "Des 'X' sans crédit." La Libre Belgique, February 16, 2004. https://www.lalibre.be/belgique/2004/02/16/des-x-sans-credit-LKLTKQICABBWXKFUTUJNXL6NRY/ ↩︎

  11. BNNVARA Zembla. "De X-dossiers, deel I," broadcast March 11, 2004; programme description in Dutch, translated. https://www.bnnvara.nl/zembla/artikelen/de-x-dossiers-deel-i ↩︎

  12. "Régina Louf, témoin X1 dans l'affaire Dutroux, brise le silence." La Dernière Heure, online, 2020; translated from the French. https://www.dhnet.be/actu/faits/regina-louf-temoin-x1-dans-l-affaire-dutroux-brise-le-silence-marc-dutroux-libere-je-m-y-prepare-5e652e1e9978e2051e15c16c ↩︎