The police immediately started with large searches on the holiday park and along the coast. Without results.
For Guido de Ville, head of the Department of Disappointments at the judicial police of Bruges at the time, it was one of the biggest things in his career: “We soon saw that it was worse. Because they were not two girls who came to the coast to go out for a whole week and die around and drink around with boys.
What the police did not yet know is that An and Eefje, 17 and 19 years old, fell into the hands of Marc Dutroux, when they wanted to go back to the holiday park from the final tram stop in Ostend. Dutroux’s delivery van picked them up, he and his companion Michel Lelièvre anesthetized the girls and took them to the house in Marcinelle, at Charleroi. Only a year later were they found death, after a tip about a new kidnapping attempt from Dutroux.