Old cold case clarified by a Youtuber from Marseille

By chance one day he was reading in an old search notice issued by the Dutch police that ‘Bruno’ will make the connection with a corpse exhumed in 2004 in Verdun.

3,000 subscribers, videos that rarely take off with more than 400-500 views: despite its reserved audience, Infocrimes, the YouTube channel created by ‘Bruno’, a 30-year-old from Marseille – who wishes to remain anonymous – has just clarified a legal file that has remained unanswered for 33 years. It is thanks to him that the disappearance of a 31-year-old German citizen, Elisabeth Wessels, on 21 February 1989 at Verdun station (Meuse) has found its conclusion, as revealed this week by Le Parisien.

Some people like football or Chopin sonatas. “Bruno”, dedicates passion… to the most frightening news. Murders, disappearances, serial killers, he recalls that this taste for morbid and mysterious stories dates back to his childhood. ‘I was a kid who was often punished,’ he confides. In those moments, the only thing I had the right to do was to read what was in my house, it was my grandmother’s newspaper, La Provence…” Various facts attracted him so much that, as a teenager, Bruno went to the newsagents to buy Détective, the trashy magazine dedicated to criminal cases, and grew up watching reruns of Porta l’accused.

Gradually he became convinced that policemen, overwhelmed, ‘don’t always have the time’ to go through every lead and that his keen eye might well unearth ‘a detail’. something that would have escaped experienced investigators. “From a taste for the macabre, I then moved on to empathy for the victims,” he also explains. I wanted to try, in my own way, to help people who are suffering and waiting for answers. Twelve years ago, during his research ( ‘At the time, I was interested in Michel Fourniret’s career, I was looking for possible disappearances in his career’ ), he came across an article in the Belgian newspaper Le Soir, evoking the exhumation, in 2004, of a body buried without identity since 1989 in Verdun.

In a river bed they had then found the corpse of an unknown woman of strong corpulence, ‘measuring 1.73 m, and aged 25 to 40 years’ … For years, this article will remain in the corner of ‘Bruno’s’ head, who by now has made a habit of going through the search notices published in France and Europe (‘You never know’). Until the beginning of 2021, when he discovers on the Dutch police website the notice issued to try to find Elisabeth Wessels, a young woman who, on 21 February 1989, had left a bag at the locker of the Verdun station. had never made it to the station in Cleves, Germany, “And then suddenly I say to myself that it could be her, this exhumed body,” says ‘Bruno‘. “The corpulence, the location of the disappearance: it could stick. The women who disappeared at Verdun station must not be millions.” However, until then, the two cases had strangely not been linked.

Via Twitter, Bruno contacted the Dutch police and then the SRPJ in Nancy (Meurthe-et-Moselle) and shared his insight with them. “They didn’t give me too much hope, eh. But they took my information.” Another year passes.

Until this unexpected letter, winter 2022, from the Dutch police: confirmation that the DNA samples taken from the nameless remains have finally spoken: the body is indeed that of the young German. It seems to have ended his life. “They thanked me for my tip. But I, frankly, was especially happy for the family who finally got an answer’. he delivers today.

Since then “Bruno” has resumed his investigations as an amateur cop, with his makeshift means: his computer and a large notice board marked with drawing pins – yes, just like in serial killer movies. “As soon as I get a moment I’ll get going. That’s what the YouTube channel is for: maybe one day someone will tip me off?”