Heul Girl

The Heul Girl (Dutch: Heulmeisje) Her body has never been identified. She was found naked underneath branches and soil.

Case summary It was assumed for many years that the naked, leaf-covered body belonged to a missing 18-year-old girl from a neighbouring village. However, that theory was ruled out in 2006 when the missing girl, now an adult, reported to the police.

Based on later research on the epiphyseal plates, the Heul Girl would have been 12 to 15 years old at the time of death, putting her date of birth between 1960 and 1965. Isotope research on her teeth showed that the girl probably lived between the Ruhr and Eifel regions of Germany for the first seven years of her life.

In 2012, a witness stated that in 1976, multiple people saw the girl being "thrown out" by two men between the ages of 30 and 40.

In 2013, both the Opsporing Verzocht program and the German variant Aktenzeichen XY... ungelöst aired episodes on the case. At the end of 2018, the Utrecht police confirmed that DNA testing had not started yet.

In 2023, the case was part of Operation Identify Me by Interpol to identify 22 unidentified women who were found deceased in the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany between 1976 and 2019.

In April 2026 authorities reopened her grave, only to discover her skull was missing. A search of a police evidence storage location led to them locating her skull, but they were unable to find her lower jaw. Her skull was replaced in the grave, while the search for her jawbone continues. Authorities said if they located her lower jaw, they would reopen her grave again to return it.