Detectives in Amsterdam have created a hologram of a young sex worker who was murdered more than a decade ago to bring awareness to the case which remains unsolved.
In 2009, Bernadette “Betty” Szabo was killed just three months after giving birth to her son. Szabo, a Hungarian native, had moved to Amsterdam in 2008 and fell pregnant shortly after. She worked at a brothel throughout her pregnancy, enduring a series of hardships, according to cold case detective Anne Dreijer-Heemskerk.
On 19 February 2009, Szabo’s deceased body was found with multiple stab wounds. Her baby son was placed in foster care.
Dreijer-Heemskerk hopes that the hologram of the young worker, displayed in Amsterdam’s red light district, will help members of the public jog their memories and lead to the capture of the killer.
“A young woman, only 19, [was] taken from life in such a horrific way,” Dreijer-Heemskerk said. “[I] hope people will remember the case again when they see this [hologram]. There are certainly several people who know who committed that crime.”
“Although, of course, every murder case is terrible, Betty’s story is particularly poignant in a number of ways,” she continued. “[She] worked long hours as a sex worker and kept working until just before she gave birth to her son. This son was placed with a foster family shortly afterwards and never had the chance to get to know his mother.”
Police have announced a €30,000 (AUD$48,832) reward to encourage witnesses to come forward with any information. It’s part of their extensive week-long campaign to draw the public’s attention to Szabo’s tragic death. The hologram is being displayed in a house in the Amsterdam Red Light District that has been devoted entirely to the murder case, where large stickers have been stuck on windows providing information about the case, television screens display footage of the crime scene and final images of Szabo seen alive.
It was the first time Amsterdam police used 3D visualisation technology to make a holographic representation of a murdered victim — something the coordinator of the Amsterdam Wanted and Missing Persons Team, Benjamin van Gogh, said he was anxious about.
“This is the first time we do something like this and, to be honest, we’re a bit nervous,” he said.
“We want to do justice to Betty, to her family and friends, and to the case. Therefore, before deciding to use a hologram for the campaign, we brainstormed with different parties both within and outside the police on whether we should go ahead with this and how we should set it up. Of course, there has also been contact with her relatives about this. We are committed to doing this with dignity and with the clear purpose of achieving some form of justice for Betty by finding her murderer or murderers.”
“We believe that Betty’s hologram may create a certain connection with her and thus convince a person to come forward. In this type of case, we always try to put a face on a victim, so that informants know who they’re doing it for, and the hologram is a way of taking this a step further.”
Detectives hope the campaign will also bring awareness to the risk and dangers sex workers face in their employment.
Female sex workers face higher rates of violence and homicide than the general population. In France, ten sex workers were killed in a six-month period in 2019. Three years prior, the French government passed a law making it illegal to pay for sex, forcing workers to conduct their business in riskier, underground environments.
Last year, Amsterdam’s city council announced plans to move its famous world-famous red light district out of its traditional De Wallen area into an out-of-town ‘Erotic Centre’ — a plan which one sex worker described as “one big gentrification project”. The total number sex workers active in Amsterdam remains unclear, with experts reluctant to make estimates. In the red-light district, there are roughly 250 active windows.