How 29 years of research into Tanja Groen starts and perhaps ends with Dutroux: a reconstruction

“Not knowing is the worst. You want to know what happened,” says Tanja’s mother Corrie Groen in an interview with NH Nieuws in 2018. “Where has she gone? Who did what to her? Those questions play every day. through your head. We’re getting older too, and we may never know. That sometimes scares me.”

Tanja was the youngest in a family of four, and had two older sisters and a brother. She would start studying health sciences at Maastricht University after the summer of 1993. She was the first in the family to move into rooms: she had just managed to get a room in Gronsveld, a village close to Maastricht.

Introduction week

In the week before she disappears, Tanja has her introduction week at the Circumflex student association. On Tuesday evening, August 31, 1993, she calls her mother around 8 p.m. and informs her that she will return to Schagen by train on Friday instead of Thursday. After the phone call, she joins the party. She is last seen shortly after midnight, as she grabs her bicycle to go back to her room. She never gets there.

In 2014, attention was paid to Tanja in the RTV NH program Recht uit Noord-Holland, the first part of the broadcast can be viewed below. Text continues below the video.

It is not immediately clear that Tanja has disappeared. Only when she does not arrive in Schagen and a student indicates that she has not been to university for two days, alarm bells start ringing with her parents. Moreover, Tanja said she would call her best friend on Wednesday and she did not do that either. At the police in Maastricht, the parents initially find no response, but that changes when they report a missing person in Schagen on Saturday morning.

Posters

Once in Maastricht, the parents and the police drive the route that Tanja must have taken. There are hung posters, her room is examined and students are interrogated. After two weeks of searching Tanja has still not been found.

The police continue to search. Hundreds of tips are checked, serious and slightly less serious. Indications of psychics are being investigated, reports that she was seen in France or Belgium are being investigated and digging is carried out in various places. It is also being investigated whether convicted serial killers from Belgium, France and Germany may also have been responsible for the disappearance and possible death of Tanja.

Watch part two of Recht uit Noord-Holland below. Text continues below the video.

In 1997, Corrie and Adrie Groen, Tanja’s parents, even searched among things that were found with the Belgian child murderer Marc Dutroux. Even then, Radio Noord-Holland has paid a lot of attention to the case over the years. “In the beginning it dominated the news for a long time,” says former Radio Noord-Holland reporter Edwin van den Berg. “It had an incredible impact, especially because it took so long and nothing was found.”

Nothing has been found of either Tanja, her bicycle, or the songbook she carried with her. Also, as far as is known, there are no concrete indications that point to a perpetrator. There are rumors. “In 1991 the 11-year-old Jessica Laven disappeared from Blokker,” remembers Robert Vinkenborg, program leader of Radio Noord-Holland at the time. “I can remember that we then tried to make the connection between Michel S., who was responsible for Jessica’s death, and that of other missing persons cases such as that of Cheryl Morriën from IJmuiden (who was 7 years old when she went missing in 1986, ed.) and therefore also Tanja’s. Who knows, maybe this perpetrator had more on his conscience.”

quieter

In the years that follow, things become quieter around the case, but the disappearance is never completely forgotten. For example, in 2012, on the instructions of a dowser, a bicycle turned up from the Maas, which also turned out not to be Tanja’s. In 2014, bones were found near Gronsveld. They are human remains, but not Tanja’s.

Tanja’s parents once again told their story in the NH Reportage program in 2018. Text continues below the video.

Two years ago, the police opened a grave in Maastricht. The day after her disappearance, a man is buried there and it is rumored that Tanja may be in the same grave. That also turns out not to be the case. Later in 2020, Tanja will be searched for on the Strabrechtse heide in North Brabant, but nothing is found here either.

Peter R. de Vries had been involved in the search for Tanja since the disappearance. He is in close contact with her parents. A week after the search, the crime reporter holds a press conference. He wants to collect 1 million euros for the golden tip. This high amount could possibly convince people. The money is collected through crowdfunding.

Thirteen days after the press conference, Peter R. de Vries is shot. He is seriously injured and dies nine days later. The event caused a major shock throughout the Netherlands. The news also comes to Tanja Groen’s parents prune hard.

His death sparked a wave of new donations and the 1 million came in a week later. For a year people can share their tip and about a thousand tips come in. The police cold case team is investigating them, but the golden tip has not yet been found. On the basis of the tips, the police investigate every possible scenario.

Still Dutroux?

This week the police takes the line to murderer Dutroux up again. Justice submits a request for legal assistance in Belgium, they ask to compare unknown female DNA from houses and vans of Dutroux with that of Tanja Groen.

As early as 1997, Dutroux was investigated as a possible perpetrator. Tanja’s parents looked at clothing, found at Dutroux. They recognized a pair of pants in this, but eventually decided that it couldn’t be Tanja’s. “Because of wear and tear on the knees”, detective Ben Renckens tells the Noord-Hollands Dagblad (NHD). The track to Dutroux stopped here.

According to De Limburger, there are various reasons to conduct more research into the possible involvement of Dutroux. For example, Dutroux came to Maastricht or the surrounding area in the early 1990s to buy drugs. The child killer would also have had a contact person in Maastricht and a road map was found in one of his homes on which Maastricht is circled.

With this request for legal assistance, the Maastricht Public Prosecution Service says it wants to exclude all scenarios with regard to Tanja’s disappearance. The results of the DNA test will be sent ‘as soon as possible’ to the Public Prosecution Service in Limburg, Attorney General Jean-Baptiste Andries of the Public Prosecution Service in Liège told the The Limburger know.