Woman murdered in Belgium 31 years ago identified by her flower tattoo

A British woman murdered in Belgium 31 years ago was identified this week thanks to an international campaign that began earlier this year to identify nearly two dozen women found dead across Europe, officials said.

The case dates back to June 1992, when the body of a woman nicknamed “the woman with the flower tattoowas found pushed against a grate in a river in Belgium by researchers.

According to details released this spring by the International Criminal Police Organization, also known as Interpol, it appears she was violently murdered.

The woman’s most recognizable feature was a flower tattoo with “R’Nick” written underneath. At the time, authorities hoped her tattoo would jog someone’s memory.

Interpol launched Operation Identify Me in May, sharing gruesome details about 22 women found in Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands. All of the cases, believed to be unrelated, have remained unsolved for years, sometimes even decades, despite extensive investigation.

The publicity surrounding the campaign led to more than 1,000 tips, Interpol reported this in a statement on Tuesday. One tip came from a person in Britain who recognized the flower tattoo on the news as belonging to a family member.

The family, who was not publicly identified, traveled to meet investigators in Belgium and formally identified the woman, now known as Rita Roberts, using “distinctive personal identifiers,” Interpol said.

“The news was shocking and heartbreaking,” Ms Roberts’ family said in a statement. “Our passionate, loving and free-spirited sister was cruelly taken. There are no words to truly express the sadness we felt then, and still feel.”

The family said that while the news was difficult to process, the cross-border collaboration had given a “missing girl her identity back and let the family know she was at peace.”

“After 31 years, an unidentified murdered woman has regained her name and her family has achieved some closure,” Interpol Secretary General Jürgen Stock said in a statement. “Such cases underscore the critical need to connect police worldwide, especially when missing persons are involved.”

Ms. Roberts’ case remains active. Authorities in Belgium have asked the public for information about the circumstances surrounding her death.

The ‘Operation Identify Me’ campaign gained attention this spring in part because details of each ‘black notice’, warnings to police around the world seeking information about unidentified bodies, were made public for the first time on the Interpol website.

The communications present different types of victim informationand no two cases are the same. The oldest case dates from almost 47 years agoAnd the most recent is from 2019. Some cases have more details than others, and the cause of death is not always known.

“We have to remember that these victims, these women, were victimized twice,” Susan Hitchin, the coordinator of Interpol’s DNA unit, said earlier this year. “They were murdered and then their identity was taken from them.”

Ms Hitchin then adamantly hoped that even a small piece of information could help move a case forward. “It doesn’t take much,” she said. “You know, we just need that one person to come forward with the memory or the knowledge that his neighbor is gone, his friend, you know, his co-worker.”