Belgian prosecutors said on Thursday that a 37-year-old man who said he felt humiliated by his teacher in primary school has confessed to stabbing him to death in 2020, three decades later.
Günter Uvents told investigators that he never paid attention to comments made about him in the classroom by teacher Maria Verlinden in the early 1990s, when he was a schoolboy at the age of seven.
The brutal murder of 59-year-old Verlinden at her home in Herentals near Antwerp in 2020, remains unsolved despite repeated inquiries by Belgian police and hundreds of DNA samples to try and find her killer. Her husband had made a public appeal for witnesses.
According to media reports, he was stabbed 101 times. The fact that her purse full of cash was left untouched on the dining table next to her body shows that she was not the victim of a violent robbery.
Prosecutors said that on November 20, 2020, sixteen months after the murder, Yuvents confessed to the crime to a friend, who alerted police. He was arrested on Sunday.
Youvents has provided a DNA sample for comparison with the mark found at the site of the murder. As a former student, he was in any case due to be caught in the genetic-sampling dragnet.
The local prosecutors’ office told AFP that Yuvents had provided a “detailed explanation” for his act, which resembled a confession. He is alleged to have suffered in primary school because of his teacher.
“We will see if the investigation confirms what he said,” said a prosecutor.
Juvents appeared before a judge on Tuesday and has been held in custody on a murder charge.
Belgian media reported that Youvents was a devout Christian known for helping the homeless.
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