Operation Identify Me

Operation Identify Me was launched on 10 May 2023 by Interpol to solve cold cases across Western Europe to identify 22 unidentified women who were found deceased in the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany between 1976 and 2019. Most of the women were murdered, and none had ever been identified.
A public appeal was made for information surrounding the unidentified women. Interpol alongside Dutch, German, and Belgian police forces released forensic facial reconstructions as well as other information used in the investigations. It is believed some of the murdered women may be from parts of Eastern Europe.
The second phase of the project was launched in October 2024. The 46 newly publicised cases were expanded to France, Italy and Spain.

Cases (2023)

The suspected murder cases in the first phase span five decades. The bodies were discovered between October 1976 and August 2019. Their average ages range from 15 to 30. Most of the women suffered violent deaths.

Case code

Case name

Date of discovery

Country

Location

Estimated age

Progress

Details

NL01

"Heul Girl"/ "The girl on the parking lot"

24 October 1976

Netherlands

Cases (2024)

Further inquiries

On 16 May 2023, it was reported that police had received over 200 tip-offs regarding the cases, with 122 tips from Germany, 55 from Belgium and 51 from the Netherlands, some of them with names. Near the end of August, the number of tips had increased to over 500. By November police said they had received about 1,250 tips.
On August 29, 2023, Interpol made a public appeal on the identification of an unidentified dead boy in Großmehring, Bavaria, Germany. While the unknown dead child was not officially added in Operation Identify Me, he was part of an effort to publicly request tips for unidentified decedents.

Identifications

In November 2023, "The woman with the flower tattoo" was named as British woman Rita Roberts. Roberts was 31 years old when she moved from Cardiff to Antwerp in February 1992 but was reported missing months later. Due to the publicization of the case, a member of her family in Britain recognised the tattoo and contacted the Belgian authorities to formally identify the body.
In mid-March 2025, a second phase case called "The woman in the shed" of 2018 was identified as Ainoha Izaga Ibieta Lima from Paraguay through fingerprints comparison. She was last contacted in 2018 and was reported missing by her brother months later.
In September 2025, "The woman in pink" was identified as Russian citizen Liudmila Zavada because of Turkish authorities' fingerprint analysis. She was so named for the pink top, pink trousers, and pink shoes she was wearing. She had been dead for less than 24 hours at the time of discovery, and her death was considered suspicious by Spanish police. Her body was discovered by the side of a road in Viladecans near Barcelona on 3 July 2005.
Barely a month after the previous identification, "The woman with German keys" was identified as German citizen, Eva Pommer after a vital tip about her. She was mistakenly assumed to be from Eastern Europe since she was revealed to be a German national.