Dutch police have announced they have found the remains of a Belgian plumber missing for over six months in a concrete-filled tub in a canal connecting Belgium and the Netherlands.
A forensic analysis of the remains, found in the Scheldt–Rhine Canal at the end of last week, confirmed that they belonged to 56-year-old Johan Van der Heyden, De Morgen reports.
Police on either side of the border were working together in an investigation on Van der Heyden's disappearance, after he was last seen driving to the Netherlands on 2 June.
The investigation led to a Belgian sex worker identified as Wanda VR, who was based in the Netherlands and who police established received Van der Heyden as a client.
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Police arrested her as well as her 30-year-old partner under suspicion of murder, and questioned the woman's sons who told investigators that Van der Heyden had been killed and that his body had been chopped up and thrown in a campfire.
The investigation later led police to establish that all of part of Van der Heyden's remains had been thrown into the Scheldt–Rhine Canal or into discarded near Steenbergen, in the Dutch south, HLN reports.
Investigators are still trying to determine what led to the plumber's death, and a total of seven suspects have been arrested in the Netherlands up to now.
Gabriela Galindo
The Brussels Times
