A murder mystery that has gripped Belgium for 30 years may be on the verge of being solved after a former policeman apparently confessed on his deathbed to being one of the “Crazy Brabant Killers” – a gang that killed 28 people and left a further 40 injured in a string of robberies in the early 1980s.



During a three-year spree, the Brabant Killers staged more than a dozen raids on supermarkets, hostels and a gunsmiths, during which they shot customers, staff and even children. They suddenly ceased their activities and disappeared in 1985.

The killers’ proficiency in handling weapons raised suspicions at the time that there was a link with the gendarmerie, a former paramilitary police force of Belgium. Theories circulated that the group was part of an attempt by the far left or right to undermine the state, something that the Belgian government confirmed on Tuesday remained “a possibility”.

The Brabant gang, who were French speaking, and would taunt and roar at their victims, terrorised Belgian society. They have retained a hold on the public imagination since their sudden unexplained disappearance.

The group – usually comprising three disguised men, wearing face paint, known as “the Giant”, “the Killer” and a getaway driver, “the Old Man” – would at times take just petty cash and low-value goods, yet be content to shoot anyone in their way.

Various leads have emerged since the gang disappeared, but there have never been any prosecutions. Officials confirmed, however, that the brother of a retired policeman in Aalst, near Brussels, came forward earlier this year to claim that his dying sibling had confessed two years ago to being the Giant, the suspected ringleader.

“In the beginning I was in denial because I really struggled with it,” the unnamed man told the Belgian broadcaster VTM. “But today I can say formally that this is my brother.”

The body of a man killed during a hold-up by the Brabant gang at a supermarket in Overijse in 1985. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images

The suspect, named as Christiaan Bonkoffsky, was dismissed from the Diane Group, an elite police commando unit, in 1981, it has been claimed.

His brother’s lawyer suggested the suspect was removed from his post after his gun accidentally unloaded, and that he had been deeply bitter about the career-ending incident, drinking heavily until his death in 2015, aged 61.

Local media have been comparing wanted posters circulated at the time with photographs of Bonkoffsky. One of his former girlfriends, Nicole, 56, told La Dernière Heure newspaper that he had become furious when she once suggested that he looked like the police sketches of a member of the gang.

The last appearance of the group, which operated in the Brabant province around Brussels, was in November 1985 when they burst into a supermarket in Aalst firing pump-action shotguns. Eight people were killed in the raid, including people cowering on the floor and a nine-year-old girl waiting in a car outside.

It was believed at the time that the group member known as the Killer was fatally wounded by police in that raid, although a body was never recovered.

The Belgian justice minister, Koen Geens, addressing a committee of the Belgian federal parliament on Tuesday said he believed it was possible the gang had sought to destabilise the Belgian state, and described the latest development as “certainly interesting”.

Geens further revealed that a saliva sample and fingerprints had been taken from Bonkoffsky in 2000, but that comparisons with those contained in the Brabant gang’s police file had come up negative. A genetic analysis was also performed this year in light of the apparent confession but that also did not produce any results, the minister said.

“It has become clear to me that a series of investigative strategies had not yielded any satisfactory results, that there have been attempts to manipulate the investigation, while the victims and their relatives have made me understand that they have not been sufficiently heard in the past,” Geens told the committee. “It is possible that the killings of Walloon Brabant also targeted the state.”

Ignacio de la Serna, the prosecutor general for the southern city of Mons, told the Agence France-Presse news wire that the new information was being taken very seriously. He added: “There is now a big push to advance following these revelations.”

Patricia Finne, a daughter of one of the 28 people killed by the gang, described the news as “the first really serious revelation in 30 years”. She told Belgian media: “I really hope that this will lead to dismantling the rest of the gang, whether they are dead or not.”

Christian de Valkeneer, the Liège public prosecutor, told reporters: “The investigators have received general and specific information from a family about participation in the facts of this former gendarme.” One of the group’s most infamous moments was in a grocery at Nivelles in 1983, when they murdered a couple at an all-night fuel station next door and then shot police officers arriving at the scene.