Police hologram on Opsporing Verzocht

With a police hologram we helped the Dutch police solve a case. It concerned serious sexual offences committed in 2010 in Schiedam and Vlaardingen; the victims were 13, 15 and almost 16 years old. The perpetrator had never been found.

Based on a composite drawing from 2010, the police Expert Team for Visualisation and Reconstruction created a three-dimensional representation of the suspect. It was shown to the public at true size and in motion through a Holobox, so that people really saw how he might have looked. In December 2021 the police and the Rotterdam Public Prosecution Service presented this approach, and the crime programme Opsporing Verzocht covered it.

More than three hundred tips came in at the cold case team. One of them was specifically about the suspect. That tip led to him being selected in November 2022 for a large-scale DNA investigation among dozens of men from the area. His DNA turned out to match traces from the investigation, and on 16 January 2023 he was arrested, twelve years after the events.

It was not only a first for HEREweHOLO, but also for the police and for Opsporing Verzocht.