Ronald Janssen, a 38-year-old technical drawing teacher, believed to be Belgium’s latest serial killer, first confessed to the New Year’s Day murder of a young couple in his small home town of Halen. This latest confession has led both the media and the police to speculate that he might have been involved in the murders of 3 other young women, dating back to 1991, and possibly 15 other raped and murdered young women.

Ronald Janssen, described as quiet and withdrawn family type, father of 2 girls, confessed murdering a soon-to-be married young couple – 18 year old Shana Appeltans, and 22 year old Kevin Paulus. They had both been shot dead, and their car had been torched. Annick Van Uytsel, 18, went missing after a party in 2007. Janssen had attended the same party, and Annick’s bicycle was found close to an old apartment of Janssen’s. She was eventually found dead. Her body was later found dumped in a local canal, wrapped in a plastic sheet and weighted down with stones. She had been beaten to death.
Even though police suspected Janssen might be involved in the murder, they never had enough evidence to convince him, so it was not until he confessed that they could arrest him.

“Investigators fear particularly that it will not stop and that this is rather the beginning of a long list of Janssen’s crimes,” the De Standaard newspaper reported. Prosecutors across Belgium have now reopened the files for two unsolved abduction murders, of Ingrid Caeckaert, 27 stabbed in 1991 and Carola Titze, 16, murdered in 1996. Detectives have also reopened an investigation into the 2006 disappearance, and suspected murder, of Tamara Morris, 27. Media reports have linked him to up to 15 killings, usually the rape and murder of young women.

His crimes have already been compared to the notorious Marc Dutroux case, the serial killer who traumatized Belgium when he abused and murdered four girls aged between eight to 19 during the 1990s – he murdered 4 of them. Could another serial killer have been hiding behind a quiet teacher Ronald Janssen and how many people he actually killed, until further investigation remains unknown.

-article by Bruno Waterfield, rewritten and adapted by admin-