Ronald Janssen was a teacher in the province of Limburg, in northeastern Belgium, who lived in Loksbergen, a village that is part of the municipality of Halen. In January 2010 his next-door neighbor, 18-year-old Shana Appeltans, and her boyfriend, Kevin Paulus, were found dead. Investigators doing routine inquiries among the neighbors found Janssen strange and nervous, and after two days of questioning he confessed to killing them. Days later he confessed to a crime that had gone unsolved for almost three years: the 2007 murder of Annick Van Uytsel, an 18-year-old student from Diest who had disappeared while cycling home from a party.
At Tongeren in October 2011, a jury of the assize court of Limburg found him guilty of all three murders, which it held to be premeditated, and of the rape and torture of Shana Appeltans. He was sentenced to life imprisonment. A year later, at a separate trial behind closed doors in Hasselt, he was convicted in ten cases of rape and other sexual violence against women between 2001 and 2006, convictions the Antwerp Court of Appeal upheld in 2013. Belgium's police oversight body, Comité P, found faults in the way the Van Uytsel investigation had been organized and run, and the case led to calls in the federal parliament for a commission of inquiry. He also told investigators about a possible fourth killing, but no victim was ever found.
Little is publicly known about Ronald Janssen's early life. When he was arrested in January 2010 he was reported to be 38; at the opening of his trial in September 2011, VRT NWS gave his age as 40. He lived in one half of a semi-detached house in Loksbergen. The other half was home to the Appeltans family.
When VRT NWS, the Flemish public broadcaster, marked the tenth anniversary of his sentence in 2021, it described him as a teacher and father who had lived an ordinary life for years before his violent side came to light. In court he spoke of back problems and a difficult divorce, according to the VRT court reporter Machteld Libert, who followed the trial.
Jef Vermassen, the criminal lawyer who represented the parents of Annick Van Uytsel, said in 2019 that Janssen had no criminal conviction at the time of the 2007 murder.
Annick Van Uytsel was 18, a student who lived in Diest, in the province of Flemish Brabant. On April 28, 2007, she left a party in Schaffen, near Diest, by bicycle to go home, and she never arrived. Her family soon became worried.
Child Focus, the Belgian foundation for missing children, put up posters; friends and volunteers searched alongside the police and the paratroopers based at Diest; and her mother made an emotional appeal in the media. None of it turned up any trace of her. At one point her mobile phone was picked up by a mast in Halen, the municipality that includes Loksbergen.
On May 3, 2007, she was found dead at Lummen. Her bicycle was found in Leuven in late July 2007. In the meantime an anonymous caller had claimed that she had been the victim of a hit-and-run. The caller was later traced; he had nothing to do with the case, and a court ordered him to pay damages to her parents. In late November 2007 a special edition of the television program Koppen Justitie devoted to the case produced about 100 tips, none of which led to a breakthrough. For almost three years the investigation, led by the Leuven prosecutor's office, made no arrest.
Janssen's name had come up during that time. A witness named him in the Van Uytsel case, RTBF reported in January 2010, but the testimony was judged too vague to act on. The Leuven prosecutor's spokesman, Ivo Carmen, said after the confession that investigators had followed up every lead, including those without concrete information, and that a possible link to a 38-year-old man from Loksbergen had not been pursued because investigators did not then know what they knew in 2010. No one in the man's immediate circle, Carmen said, had suspected him.
Shana Appeltans was 18 and lived with her family in Loksbergen, next door to Janssen. Her boyfriend, Kevin Paulus, was reported in January 2010 as 22; a VRT report in October 2011 gave his age as 21. On January 2, 2010, the young couple left a café in Loksbergen and were never seen alive again. That night Shana Appeltans and Kevin Paulus were found dead. Both had been shot.
The investigation into the double murder was led by the Hasselt prosecutor's office. During neighborhood inquiries, investigators found that the man next door behaved nervously, and his name, they knew, had also appeared in the Van Uytsel file. He was taken in for questioning on January 5, 2010, and his house and garden were searched for weapons and traces.
After two days of questioning, Janssen confessed on January 7, 2010, to killing Shana Appeltans and Kevin Paulus. He changed his account several times. He said he had acted out of revenge because Kevin Paulus had insulted him. In the version he gave investigators, he killed them both, and he admitted raping Shana Appeltans. He later withdrew the confession to the rape, although, as of March 2011, he still admitted the killings.
Over the following weekend, investigators in Leuven questioned him about Annick Van Uytsel. On the Saturday, the Leuven prosecutor's spokesman said the double-murder investigation had made Janssen's involvement in her death a serious line of inquiry, and the office called a press conference for Monday morning. On Monday, January 11, 2010, Ivo Carmen confirmed that Janssen had confessed over the weekend to murdering her and had confirmed the confession to the investigating magistrate. The magistrate, he said, saw serious indications of Janssen's involvement.
According to his confession, as VRT NWS summarized it before the trial, Janssen took Annick Van Uytsel from a deserted road as she cycled home, forced her into his van and took her to his home in Loksbergen, where he killed her. Jef Vermassen, comparing the case in 2019 with another Belgian murder, said that Janssen had waited in advance for his victim and had taken her to his home and killed her there. Janssen himself told investigators that he had killed her out of a need for affection, a claim VRT reported without endorsing.
In the days after the confession, the Hasselt and Leuven prosecutors' offices discussed which of them should lead the investigation into Janssen. The Bruges prosecutor's office ordered an inquiry into possible links between Janssen and two unsolved murders on the West Flanders coast, from 1991 and 1996. In his cell he was checked every seven and a half minutes at night, because the authorities wanted to prevent him from taking his own life.
In a statement reported on January 12, 2010, Annick Van Uytsel's mother spoke on behalf of the family for the first time. She asked the press to leave them alone and expressed sympathy for the families of Kevin Paulus and Shana Appeltans. The long wait for a confession, she said, had taken a heavy toll; the family now knew who had killed their daughter, but they still had questions about what had happened, where and why. The family thanked the police and investigators for their work. Jef Vermassen, their lawyer, used the moment to call for a central European database of unsolved murders, like systems used in the United States.
Within weeks, attention turned to why Janssen had not been identified in 2007. Comité P, the standing committee that oversees Belgium's police services, examined the investigation into Annick Van Uytsel's death. Its report was made available to members of parliament on an "eyes only" basis, to be read but not distributed. Parts of it nevertheless reached the press.
On December 21, 2010, the justice committee of the Chamber of Representatives questioned the justice minister, Stefaan De Clerck, about the report. Bert Schoofs of Vlaams Belang asked whether mistakes had been made that were serious enough that the murders of Kevin and Shana might have been prevented, and Carina Van Cauter of Open Vld complained that the minister had confirmed errors before the families were informed, and asked what the errors were and how the leaks had happened. De Clerck confirmed that Comité P had found faults and problems in the organization of the investigation, in its methods and in the handling of information. He gave no details, said the report contained recommendations that should be acted on without waiting, and said it would be discussed in parliament's police monitoring committee the next day. He said the prosecutors-general of Brussels and Antwerp, responsible for the Leuven and Hasselt offices, were following the matter, and that there must be no interference between the Comité P review and the judicial case against Janssen. He deeply regretted the leaks and promised to investigate them.
In January 2011 three Vlaams Belang members, Schoofs, Gerolf Annemans and Peter Logghe, tabled a proposal for a parliamentary commission of inquiry into how the police and the judiciary had handled the Janssen case. Their explanatory note said that, according to Comité P, Janssen's name had come up three times as a possible suspect in the Van Uytsel investigation, and that the federal judicial police in Leuven had never questioned or arrested him. They called it a picture of amateurism and poor organization, 15 years after the Dutroux affair.
Janssen was held in pretrial detention from January 2010. In July 2010, a special committee of Flanders's free education sector ruled that he could be dismissed from his teaching post, basing its decision on his confession; he kept his pension rights.
On March 31, 2011, the indictment chamber in Antwerp ordered that he stand trial before a jury for the three murders and for the rape and torture of Shana Appeltans. He had confessed to the murders, BRF reported, and had confessed to the rape before withdrawing that confession. The other rapes he was accused of were sent to the ordinary criminal court, to be tried later. He had also told investigators that he had driven around the eastern part of Belgium with a fourth body. No victim had been found.
The trial before the assize court of Limburg opened at Tongeren in September 2011. After the jury was chosen, the indictment was read on Friday, September 23. The charges covered the three murders and the rape and torture of Shana Appeltans, nine charges in all.
At the trial Janssen gave no real answers to the questions the families had come with, according to the VRT reporter Machteld Libert; he either did not know, she said, or changed his account. He told the court that he remembered very little of what had happened.
The trial lasted about four weeks and was followed closely across the country, especially in Diest. On October 6, 2011, the forensic pathologist presented the autopsy findings on Annick Van Uytsel, which suggested that she had not died in a struggle, as Janssen had claimed. Her mother, who had felt unwell that morning, was treated by paramedics, and her parents did not return to the courtroom that afternoon. Earlier in the trial the court had briefly excluded Shana Appeltans's father after he made an obscene gesture.
On October 20, 2011, the jury found Janssen guilty on all nine charges after deliberating for about two hours. It found that the murders of Annick Van Uytsel, Kevin Paulus and Shana Appeltans were premeditated. The jurors were not persuaded by his account that he remembered little.
The next day the 12 jurors and the court decided the sentence together. Just after noon on October 21, 2011, the court sentenced him to life imprisonment, the maximum penalty. VRT broadcast the sentencing live. The jury concluded that Janssen had wanted the total destruction of his victims and had treated them as objects rather than as people. The presiding judge, Michel Jordens, said there were no mitigating circumstances. He described Janssen's personality as psychopathic, said no treatment was possible, and called him a danger to society. Speaking to Janssen directly, the judge told him that the sentence meant society no longer wanted him in its midst. Janssen had two weeks to lodge an appeal to the Court of Cassation.
The civil phase of the trial followed. In November 2011 the victims' relatives claimed almost one million euros in damages, of which 875,000 euros was for moral damages and the rest for funeral costs, lost income and psychiatric support. The court was to rule on the amount on November 21, 2011.
A second trial opened before the Hasselt correctional court on September 10, 2012. It concerned ten cases of rape, attempted rape and sexual assault committed between 2001 and 2006 in Hasselt and Leuven. At the request of the civil parties, the judges ordered the hearings closed to the public. On the second and last day of hearings, September 11, the civil parties made their statements; a lawyer for the women said the trial had a healing effect for them. Some of the women had put forward claims for damages, which they would have to pursue through the national fund for victims of violent crime. The presiding judge warned those in the courtroom not to pass information from the hearings to the press, saying that too many details had already leaked. Because Janssen was already serving the maximum sentence, no further prison term could be imposed.
On October 5, 2012, the court found him guilty in all ten cases, on charges of rape, indecent assault, attempted murder and torture. His lawyer, Adam Miskovic, said later that month that Janssen would appeal against five of the convictions; a report on the appeal ruling said he had denied four of the cases. The Antwerp Court of Appeal heard the appeal, and on May 24, 2013, it found him guilty on all counts. The ruling again added no prison term. A separate decision on compensation for the women was expected the following week; Janssen was reported to have been ordered to pay 400,000 euros to six of them.
In November 2012 Janssen's half of the semi-detached house in Loksbergen was put up for public sale, with the proceeds going to a compensation fund for the victims. Municipal workers had emptied the house completely beforehand, because they feared souvenir hunters. At the public auction on November 20, 2012, the highest bid, 67,000 euros, came from an uncle of Shana Appeltans. The family's interest had discouraged other bidders, and the Appeltans family said it wanted to demolish the house.
Janssen was still in prison ten years after the sentence, when Machteld Libert, who had published a book about the trial, told VRT NWS that the families never got answers to their questions: what had happened, what the victims' last words were and whether they had suffered. She recalled that a psychiatrist had described Janssen as a core psychopath, a person not open to improvement. He had already tried to obtain early release, she said, and the attempt had failed; she considered early release very unlikely, because it would require a psychiatric assessment that she doubted any judge would accept.
Janssen's account of a fourth killing has never been confirmed. He told investigators that he had driven through the eastern part of Belgium with a body, and, according to VRT NWS, he described a possible murder in the summer of 2007 in the East Cantons, the German-speaking area near the border with Germany. VRT described his story as incoherent. No victim has been found, and he was never tried for any such killing. Investigators in Bruges examined possible links to two unsolved murders on the coast; no such link was charged against him.
2001 to 2006: the ten cases of sexual violence later tried at Hasselt, in Hasselt and Leuven.
April 28, 2007: Annick Van Uytsel, 18, leaves a party in Schaffen by bicycle and disappears.
May 3, 2007: she is found dead at Lummen.
Late July 2007: her bicycle is found in Leuven.
Late November 2007: a Koppen Justitie broadcast brings about 100 tips, none decisive.
January 2, 2010: Shana Appeltans, 18, and Kevin Paulus are found dead.
January 5, 2010: Janssen, their neighbor, is taken in for questioning.
January 7, 2010: he confesses to the double murder.
January 11, 2010: the Leuven prosecutor confirms his confession to the murder of Annick Van Uytsel.
July 2010: he is dismissed from his teaching post.
December 21, 2010: the justice minister confirms that Comité P found faults in the Van Uytsel investigation.
January 2011: Vlaams Belang members propose a parliamentary commission of inquiry.
March 31, 2011: the Antwerp indictment chamber sends him for trial before a jury.
September 23, 2011: the indictment is read at the assize court in Tongeren.
October 20, 2011: the jury finds him guilty of three premeditated murders and the other charges.
October 21, 2011: he is sentenced to life imprisonment.
September 10 to 11, 2012: the rape trial is heard behind closed doors in Hasselt.
October 5, 2012: he is convicted in all ten cases.
November 20, 2012: an uncle of Shana Appeltans buys his house at auction.
May 24, 2013: the Antwerp Court of Appeal upholds the convictions on all counts.
October 21, 2021: ten years after the sentence, he is still in prison; an attempt at early release has failed.