Serial Killer Plays Macabre Hide-And-Seek Belgian Police Find Body Parts In Grimly Named Locations

First, a mutilated torso of a transsexual prostitute on the banks of the river Hate. A month later, nine trash bags of body parts near the river Fear. Two days later, a torso found on Anxiety Lane.

In a macabre game of hide-and-seek, an apparent serial killer has been dumping his victims - or parts of them - at locations with appropriately grim names. The murders - five so far - happen on weekends.

On April 12, police found a severed head on Deposit Street. Last weekend, April 19-20, police found three bags of body parts on Saint Symphorien Street, named for a beheaded martyr whose bones are enshrined in a Mons church.

“The locations all have a special name so it is important to know whether there is some message, some sign,” said Mons prosecutor Didier Van Reusel.

Only the victim killed April 12 has been identified: a 21-year-old homeless woman. This week, police arrested someone who knew her as their first suspect. But as the weekend approached, they were worried.

“This has never happened in Belgium,” Van Reusel said. “We have now reached the heights of horror.”

Aside from where the killer leaves his victims, police had two other clues. The bags are always knotted the same way. And the bodies are dismembered with “remarkable precision,” said chief investigating magistrate Pierre Honore.

Police believe the killer must have been trained as a doctor or a butcher, and they suspect he may have a 9-to-5 job because the killings happen on weekends.