Along a canal in Amsterdam red light districtone of the “window women” is actually a hologram that Dutch police hope will help solve the gruesome 2009 murder of a sex worker.
Peering at passers-by through a frame, a human-sized likeness of Bernadett “Betty” Szabo – in skimpy shorts and a leopard-print bra, a dragon tattoo covering much of her torso – taps on the glass and fogs up the window. window with her. breath.
The word “HELP” appears, frighteningly, on the screen.
NICK GAMMON/AFP via Getty Images
“Fifteen years ago, Betty was killed in a horrible way and the investigation was never closed,” Amsterdam police spokesman Olav Brink told AFP.
Aged just 19, Hungarian-born Betty was stabbed multiple times in her brothel room in the centuries-old red light district known as De Wallen, just months after giving birth to a baby boy. boy.
Despite a large-scale police investigation, the case remained unsolved.
However, during an examination, police found “promising clues” and decided to reopen the investigation, Brink said.
They hope Betty’s image, created with 3D visualization technology, will jog the memories of people who may have information about her murder.
“Betty was murdered in one of the busiest areas of Amsterdam, perhaps even the Netherlands. It’s really almost impossible that no one saw or heard anything unusual at that time,” said cold case team member Anne Dreijer-Heemskerk. statement. “We hope that witnesses who may have previously been afraid or remained silent for other reasons will now have the courage to come forward. »
Waiting for the “golden tip”
“There are still people who know what happened to Betty,” Brink said, hoping that 15 years later, “people will feel freer to share information with police.”
The initiative also aims to raise awareness of the violence faced by sex workers.
In the Netherlands, about 78 percent of prostitutes have been victims of sexual violence and 60 percent report being physically assaulted, according to a 2018 report from Dutch charities and sex workers’ rights groups.
Concerns about violence have also increased during the Covid-19 pandemic, when loss of income forced some prostitutes to continue working illegally and reduced their ability to report crimes to the police.
In the week since the hologram and information about Betty were posted, police have found “a lot of people are talking about it.”
“We find it very special that Betty can draw attention to her case in this way,” Brink said.
On the streets of De Wallen, lined with women watching from red-lit booths, groups of locals and visitors pause and strike up conversations about the unusual exhibit titled “Who Was Betty?”
Amsterdam Police
Theo, 80, who lives outside Amsterdam, said he had heard about the project in the newspapers and “came specially to see it” when he was in town.
Soyoon Jun, 34, lives near the red light district, “so it was even more shocking to me that there were neighbors experiencing this kind of horrible event.”
For Jun, who works at a Christian charity, the hologram made the murder “real.”
“It’s not just information that was released,” Jun explained. “People could feel the helplessness that Betty would have felt. »
The police have already “received several indications because of the campaign”, Brink confirmed to AFP.
But they are still waiting for the “golden tip” that will lead them to the murderer, along with a reward of 30,000 euros ($31,600).
“A special way to attract attention”
According to Brink, the hologram is a “special way of drawing attention to this matter” – including placing it in De Wallen, which is “one of the busiest places in Amsterdam and probably the whole of the Netherlands”.
This may not last, however, as Amsterdam’s sex workers may soon lose the centrality and visibility of their storefronts.
The local government is considering moving the red light district to a purpose-built center in the south of the city in hopes of reducing petty crime and tourist numbers in De Wallen.
The move is opposed by tens of thousands of local residents and sex workers, who are instead calling for better crowd control and surveillance in the existing hot zone.
Miranda K, a 57-year-old woman who lives near Amsterdam and declined to give her full name, said the relocation plan was a “shame” because she felt “safe” in De Wallen.
She said the outskirts of the city center would be in a “dark” area, while De Wallen has “tourists, people, locals and everything here.” So I think it’s safer.
“For me, it’s not just about finding Betty or finding out who Betty was,” she said, “but it’s also about… these other women on the street.”
Continued effort to identify victims of unsolved cases across Europe
Betty’s search is part of a broader effort to solve unsolved cases in the Netherlands and beyond. Last month, Interpol launched a new campaign to identify 46 women whose remains have been found across Europe in unsolved cases, some dating back decades.
The initiative of the Lyon association builds on the success of the first Identify me campaign, which last year made it possible to identify the body of a woman – nicknamed the “Woman with flower tattoo» – found murdered 31 years ago in a Belgian river under the name of Briton Rita Roberts.
The original initiative launched to identify 22 deceased women saw some 1,800 tips received from the public.
Now the the campaign has been expanded to include cold cases from Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands, as well as unexplained deaths from the new participating countries France, Italy and Spain.
Most of the women were “murdered or died in suspicious or unexplained circumstances,” the organization said.
Among the women Interpol is seeking to identify is the body of a woman – dubbed “the woman in the suitcase» – whose age is estimated between 16 and 22 years old. In the fall of 2005, his body was found in a red suitcase lying in the canal in the town of Schiedam, in the west of the Netherlands.
The oldest of the cold cases, “the girl in the parking lot», dates back to 1976. His body was found along the A12 motorway in the Netherlands.