Antwerp: Man accused of four murders between 1992-97 sent to Criminal Court

An Antwerp court has sent a window washer from Deurne to the Criminal Court on Thursday. The man is accused of four murders committed between 1992 and 1997, as per reports.

57-year-old Stephaan Du Lion has already confessed to the grizzly murders, although the motive is still unclear.

Du Lion was arrested in October 2018 for the 1992 murder of Ariane Mazijn, then 30, whose body was discovered by a friend in a studio apartment in Antwerp. She had been strangled with a cord and had multiple cuts and stab wounds. The police linked Du Lion to the murder of Mazijn through his DNA, as he had been included in a DNA database after being convicted for attempted robbery in 2015.

In September 2019, Du Lion was also charged with the murder of Eva Poppe, 38, also after a DNA match. She was murdered on September 5 1997, in her apartment in the Luchtbal district of Antwerp. She had also been strangled with a rope and had been stabbed several times in the chest.

Du Lion confessed to murdering the two women, and in October 2019, he spontaneously confessed to two additional killings, also in the 1990s.

These murders were Lutgarda Bogaerts, 28, who was strangled with the lock of his bicycle near the Albert Canal in Oelegem on July 10 1993, and Maria Van den Reeck, 46, who was strangled with the cord of a curling iron in her apartment in Borgerhout on November 24 1994.

The prosecution referred Du Lion to the Criminal Court for these four murders. The trial is expected to begin later this year or early in 2023.