In 1971, women around Mechelen stopped walking home after dark. Three were found strangled and bitten. The killer was twenty, worked the railway yards, and had danced with his last victim the same night he murdered her.

Staf Van Eyken — the Vampire of Muizen — was sentenced to death in 1974. The sentence became life. More than fifty years later he is still Belgium’s longest-serving prisoner, and he says he should never be released.

Alexander Lawson tells the story of Marie-Thérèse Rosseel, Ida Smeets, and Lutgarde Van der Wilt — and of the quiet neighbour a whole street failed to see.

Content warning: sexual violence and murder.

June 1995: two eight-year-old girls vanish after waving at cars from a motorway bridge. Fourteen months later, police open a hidden cellar in Marcinelle—and Belgium’s justice system is forced into the light.

Host Alexander Lawson traces the public record of Marc Dutroux: a convicted offender released early, a trail of missing girls across Wallonia and Flanders, the rescue of Sabine Dardenne and Laëtitia Delhez, the White March, and the 2004 trial that ended in life imprisonment.

This episode stays with established facts and the names of the victims. It does not dwell on graphic detail. Listener discretion is advised.

July 1945. Five people are shot in a Luxembourg farmhouse living room. Three years later, Nicolas Bernardy is tied to a wooden post and executed by firing squad — the last common criminal put to death in the Grand Duchy.

Host Alexander Lawson tells the story of the Windhof massacre: Johann and Susanne Weyer, their son Mathias, farmhand Josef Lucas, and maid Leonie Colling. A fingerprint. A confession that was taken back. A sergeant seen near the farm who was never convicted. And a country still raw from occupation, settling accounts the old way.

The post is still in the police museum. You can see the hole.

A teenager in France finds a torso. Weeks later, more remains turn up in Germany. The woman they belong to — Diana Santos, 40, Portuguese, living in Diekirch — was killed in her Luxembourg home on 18 September 2022.

In this episode of A True Crime Podcast, Alexander’s Lawson follows the case of Saïd Banhakeia: the former partner who told a Diekirch court he did not kill her — he only helped cut up the body — and blamed his nephew Gibran, who fled to Morocco and has never stood trial.

Prosecution said jealousy. Defence said the wrong man was in the dock. In February 2026 the court imposed life imprisonment. The sentence is under appeal. Diana’s arms were never found.

A cross-border murder, two accusations, and a verdict that is not the end of the story.

On a Sunday in Bereldange, a Luxembourg police officer poured drinks to toast his promotion. Minutes later his sister and brother-in-law were dying on the terrace. The lab said cyanide. He said it was the wrong poison — that he only meant to ruin their holiday. The court called it murder for money.

Alexander Lawson traces the 2016 double killing, the darknet orders, the life sentence, and the later charge that Gilles L. also poisoned his mother, found dead in a bathtub two years earlier.

A quiet country. A man with a badge. Glasses no one should have trusted.

A True Crime Podcast.

Luxembourg was supposed to be too small, too rich, and too quiet for this. On 30 October 1985, Carlo Fett walked into the BIL headquarters on Boulevard Royal, smashed the glass with a shotgun, and opened fire. Minutes later, officer Patrice Conrardy was dead — the first police officer in the country’s history killed on duty. Fett fired 22 of the 33 shots.

This episode follows Fett from a children’s home in Limpertsberg to the Waldbëlleger Gang’s two-year run of bank, jeweller and petrol-station robberies, the murders on a farm in Waldbillig, a chase that ended against a farmer’s tractor, a life sentence, a prison break, and a cell in Schrassig in 2003.

I’m Alexander Lawson. This is A True Crime Podcast.

Content warning: gun violence, murder, suicide.

Luxembourg is one of the safest countries in Europe — until a man starts hunting women in car parks, on footpaths, and across the German border.

Between the mid-1980s and 1989, Luis Matias attacks seven women. Three are murdered. Four survive. One of them, Rosanna Campanella, fights him off in a Luxembourg City parking garage, reaches the police, and watches him walk free. He keeps his job. He writes to the newspaper. He claims a fourth killing the state never identifies.

Host Alexander Lawson traces how a high-trust country missed its first known serial killer — the failures after the attacks, the 1992 trial, and the women whose names this story still has to protect.

Content warning: murder, sexual violence, and police failure.

A True Crime Podcast.

In 1883 Vienna, a charming fraudster promised marriage to housemaids — then robbed them, murdered them, and sank their bodies in the river. Host Alexander Lawson tells the story of Hugo Schenk, Austria’s “Viennese Housemaids Killer”: four confirmed victims, a prison-made accomplice, a stack of letters to women still waiting for a wedding, and a skull that still sits in Vienna’s crime museum. A cold, short killing year on the banks of the Danube.

In June 1925, Emil Marek took an axe to his own leg so his wife could collect the insurance. The money came in. The killing did not stop there.

Host Alexander’s Lawson traces the crimes of Martha Marek — the Viennese poisoner who insured the people closest to her, then watched them die of “mysterious” illness while the city sent her sympathy and cash. Husband. Daughter. Aunt. Lodger. The same slow death in every case: thallium, sold over the counter as rat paste.

This episode follows the 1927 fraud trial that made her a public darling, the graves that were opened in 1938, the son who almost died the same way, and the courtroom performance that no longer worked after the Anschluss. Martha Marek was guillotined in Vienna on 6 December 1938. The chair they carried her in still exists.

A True Crime Podcast. One case. The facts. The names of the dead.

In postwar Austria, lonely women answered marriage ads. A charming salesman promised a honeymoon by the water — then poured the drink that ended the trip. Max Gufler was convicted of four murders and suspected of as many as eighteen. Police later opened an attic in St. Pölten and found handbags, jewelry, dentures, and bottles of sleeping pills. Host Alexander Lawson tells the story of the man newspapers called Bluebeard: how he lured, drugged, and drowned his victims, how one forged letter broke the case, and how many names the Danube never gave back.