The trial of a man who admitted killing his grandmother began on Thursday at the French-speaking Assize Court in Brussels.
Olivier Vanderborght, 33, beat his grandmother Jeanine Fabry, 83, to death with a hammer in her apartment in Auderghem on 7 October 2023.
Fabry's body was found a week later in a suitcase in a wooded valley in Vresse-sur-Semois. Vanderborght led investigators to the location where he dumped the suitcase on the night of October 7-8, 2023.
The defendant confessed to the crime, but stated that he suffers from dissociative identity disorder and claims that one of his three alter egos, Mathias, bore responsibility. This was stated in the indictment read out Thursday morning by the Attorney General.
The psychiatric examination showed that the accused was criminally responsible for his actions.
Vanderborght should have been in prison at the time of his grandmother's murder. 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.
The son of the victim and uncle of the accused has filed a civil suit. He was the one who first alerted the police after his mother's disappearance. He was absent from Thursday's first day of the trial.
The 12 jurors of the Brussels Assize Court (eight men and four women) must determine whether Vanderborght is guilty of murdering his maternal grandmother, a crime known as parricide.
