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The Heul Girl (Dutch: Heulmeisje) was a murder victim found on 24 October 1976 at the former De Heul parking lot on the A12, in Maarsbergen, Netherlands. Her identity has never been established.

Case summary

It was assumed for many years that the naked, leaf-covered body belonged to a missing 18-year-old girl from a neighbouring village. However, that theory was ruled out in 2006 when the missing girl, now an adult, reported to the police.

Based on later research on the epiphyseal plates, the Heul Girl would have been 12 to 15 years old at the time of death, putting her date of birth between 1960 and 1965. Isotope research on her teeth showed that the girl probably lived between the Ruhr and Eifel regions of Germany for the first seven years of her life. Around 1975, the child was likely in East Germany or Eastern Europe. The year prior to her death, she supposedly stayed in either West Germany or the Netherlands. In that year, the girl received particularly poor nutrition, which may indicate extreme poverty or a possible kidnapping.

In 2012, a witness stated that in 1976, multiple people saw the girl being "thrown out" by two men between the ages of 30 and 40.

In 2013, both the Opsporing Verzocht program and the German variant Aktenzeichen XY... ungelöst aired episodes on the case.

In 2016, the German judiciary gave permission to start a large-scale investigation based on the girl's DNA. This is a joint operation by both countries, in which DNA databases from both countries will be utilised. At the end of 2018, the Utrecht police confirmed that DNA testing had not started yet.

In 2023, the case was part of Operation Identify Me by Interpol to identify 22 unidentified women who were found deceased in the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany between 1976 and 2019.

See also

• Cold case
• Forensic identification
• List of unsolved murders
• Unidentified decedent

References

1. ^ "Maarsbergen – Heulmeisje". www.politie.nl (in Dutch). 27 November 2014. Retrieved 11 May 2020.
2. ^ Elsbeth Stoker (25 February 2013). "Who was this girl? The police search, to the atom" (in Dutch). De Volkskrant. Retrieved 14 March 2016.
3. "New Light on Heul Girl Murder Case – 2013 – Faculty of Science". science.vu.nl. Retrieved 12 November 2020.
4. ^ "Maarsbergen – The Heul Girl" (in Dutch). 12 November 2013. Archived from the original on 5 March 2016. Retrieved 27 October 2015.
5. ^ "Large search into Heul Girl DNA match" (in Dutch). De Volkskrant. 14 March 2016. Retrieved 14 March 2016. (subscription required)
6. ^ "Unidentified victim, found in 1976 in the Netherlands" (in German). BKA. Retrieved 27 October 2015.
7. "577UFNET". The Doe Network. 16 March 2016. Retrieved 11 May 2020.
8. "DNA kinship research to discover who the Heul Girl was" (in Dutch). NOS. 14 March 2016. Retrieved 14 March 2016.
9. "Heul Girl DNA test still not started". RTV Utrecht (in Dutch). 5 November 2018.
10. "Identify Me: NL01 - The girl on the parking lot". www.interpol.int. Retrieved 11 May 2023.

External links

• Heul Girl at The Doe Network
• Netherlands Police

• 1960s births
• 1976 deaths
• 1976 crimes
• Deaths by person in the Netherlands
• Female murder victims
• German expatriates in the Netherlands
• German people murdered abroad
• Incidents of violence against women
• People murdered in the Netherlands
• Unidentified murder victims
• Unsolved murders in the Netherlands
• Violence against women in the Netherlands