A crime that has shocked Romania

An abominable crime has grabbed the headlines in Romania for the last few days.

Roxana Vasile, 24.09.2019, 13:50

The echoes of the Caracal case are
far from receding. Against the backdrop of this collective shock generated by a
man in his sixties who admitted to kidnapping, raping and killing two teenage
girls, another event of exceptional gravity has been in the headlines for a few
days.

On Friday night, a family from a
village in Dambovita county, southern Romania, called the police saying their
11-year-old daughter had gone missing without a trace on her way back from
school. The police, accompanied by people from the village, started looking for
her, with the aid also of CCTV. The child was only found on Sunday, dead and
her body discarded on a nearby field. Investigations revealed that she had not
been raped but subjected to sexual perversity and then strangled. On Saturday,
before the little girl’s body was found, the police began suspecting a
47-year-old Dutch citizen by the name of Johannes Visscher, who arrived in
Romania on Wednesday and went back to Holland on Saturday. As new information
was gathered, Visscher became the main suspect. He was known in Holland as
having a criminal record for sexual assault, violence and driving under the
influence.

Given the complexity of the case,
the Prosecutor General’s Office has taken over the investigations. According to
the prosecutor general Bogdan Licu, there is reason is believe that the Dutch
citizen acted in a number of other counties as well, given that he had
travelled at least four times to Romania in the past. Bogdan Licu:

We are now focusing on the movements
of this individual in Romania. We are trying to find out where he went and
whether he had any accomplices. For the time being, we have no preliminary data
in this sense, so we are looking at different possible leads. In the wake of
the Caracal case, the widest search in the history of the public ministry has
been initiated. We are looking into all missing cases from the last ten years.
This inquiry is to be finalised next week and should help us to identity other
possible victims.

According to the Romanian police,
400 minors have been reported missing in Romania since the beginning of
September alone, even though many are voluntary departures.