The Brussels Public Prosecutor, Aurélie Baurain, apologised on Thursday to the family of murder victim Jeanine Fabry for a judicial error that allowed her killer to remain at large when he should have been in jail at the time of her murder.
Fabry, 83, died in her apartment in Auderghem on 7 October 2023 after being repeatedly struck on the head with a mallet. Her body was found a week later in a suitcase in a wooded valley in Vresse-sur-Semois.
Her grandson, Olivier Vanderboght, 33, has confessed to killing Fabry, but stated that he suffers from a dissociative identity disorder. He claims that one of his three alter egos, Mathias, bore responsibility for her death.
The day Fabry was killed, Vanderboght was not in custody despite having received a 10-year prison sentence from the Brussels Court of Appeal on 26 April 2021.
In 2020, he was sentenced to 10 years in prison in Leuven for attempting to poison his love rival. Vanderborght appealed, but the 10-year sentence was upheld. However, he was not summoned to prison and went on to kill his grandmother when she should have been incarcerated.
During the investigation, authorities realised Vanderboght should have been detained at the time of the crime. Prosecutor Baurain acknowledged this oversight to the jurors, the court, the lawyers, and the accused during a hearing on Thursday at the Assize Court in Brussels.
Baurain explained that the prosecution carried out an internal investigation to identify the procedural failure. No other errors were found in the case file, she added.
Her remarks followed the reading of the indictment, which did not reference the judicial error. Baurain stressed the importance of openly addressing the issue “to make things clear”.
The prosecutor expressed profound regret, stating that the murder could have been prevented if Vanderboght had been imprisoned. She apologised to society and especially to Fabry’s family for the tragic consequence of the oversight.
