Operation Identify Me - Interpol

[kittensinthekitchen]

Operation Identify Me is a public appeal to identify 22 women, believed to have been murdered in Belgium, Germany and The Netherlands, but whose identity was never found. Most are cold cases; women who died 10, 20, 30 or even 40 years ago.

Despite extensive police investigations, these women were never identified, and evidence suggests they could have come from other countries. Who they are, where they are from and why they were in these countries is unknown.INTERPOL has published a Black Notice for each victim; these alerts are for police only so they are not public. But here we have shared details of each case, including facial reconstruction images and other potential identifiers, in the hope that someone might recognize them.If you remember a friend, family member or colleague who suddenly disappeared, please take a look and contact the relevant national police team via the form on each page if you have any information about any of them.https://www.interpol.int/How-we-work/Notices/Operation-Identify-Me

Just read the article about poor Rita finally being identified and I am also curious about how it took so long, if the family knew she had moved to Antwerp.
Did nobody join up the dots?

I don't know, maybe it could have been phrased better, but that's quite important information. There must be many, many, bodies that are found and not identified.

Unless there is some definite signs of foul play, the police often won't investigate, as adults can choose to cut off connections from family. Her being in a foreign country won't have helped matters, especially in the pre-internet era.

Thank you so much for sharing this, OP. I've always kept an eye on Interpol's Trace an Object. I didn't know about Identify Me until this thread.

As for posters wondering why families don't report missing members: They do. One thing I've realised, listening to podcasts like Crime Analyst and also, having lived and worked in Europe in the 90s/early 2000s as a model (lots of exploitation/criminal activity/attempted trafficking), you'd be amazed by how much police don't do. It's unfathomable how listless police can be. Often times, families are accused by police of harassing police! They're so desperate to shake authorities into wakefulness and awareness of their personal plights, that their action is seen as 'harassment'. Family members spend years trying to get the attention and involvement of police just to get an answer as to where their likely dead relative is. We just don't hear their side of the story. It's utterly, utterly tragic.

I think it's numbers - a quick Google suggests the UK on it's own has 170,000 missing person reports a year. Most are found quickly, a small percentage are not. An adult that's not considered vulnerable I would guess would not be a high priority without anything to raise suspicions that foul play was involved.

I don't think this is about the numbers of missing people; rather the number of unidentified bodies

It too 16 years to identify the final victim of the Kings Cross fire - even though he'd had distinctive surgery (the leaving of a post operative clip, which survived the fire). Interpol were involved, and leads followed to a number of countries, but it turned out Alexander Fallon was Scottish, believed living rough in London, having become gradually estranged from his family over the previous dozen or so years since his wife died of cancer.