Trio Wore Masks and Face Paint — Then opened fire on grocery stores, killing 28 people, including children

YOU NEED TO KNOW

• A masked trio known as the Brabant Killers attacked Belgian grocery stores and other businesses between 1982 and 1985, leaving 28 people dead.

• Survivors included David Van de Steen, who lost his parents and sister, and Geneviève Van Lidth, who later said she recognized one attacker.

• Investigators reviewed thousands of leads over decades and closed the case in 2024 without identifying the men responsible.

Between 1982 and 1985, a masked trio known as the “Crazy Killers of Brabant” carried out a wave of supermarket massacres across the Brabant region of Belgium, killing 28 people — including families and young children.

The men used face paint during the raids and were nicknamed the Giant, the Killer and the Old One by investigators and the press, according to the BBC. They have never been identified.

The outlet reported that the attacks took place in two main waves and targeted supermarkets, hostels, a weapons shop, a bar and a restaurant. Some victims were tortured before being killed, the outlet reported.

On November 9, 1985, eight people were killed during an attack on a Delhaize grocery store in the city of Aalst, according to the BBC.

Two brothers, aged 7 and 10 at the time, later said they saw six men in dark clothing fleeing the scene, and the boys wrote down a car’s registration number in a notebook as part of a childhood hobby. CBS News, citing AFP, reported that the notebook was recorded in the case file but the lead was not followed for decades and the brothers were never questioned.

One survivor of the Aalst attack, David Van de Steen — who was seriously injured at the age of 9 and lost both his parents and his sister — later said that his sister shouted, “Don’t shoot, that’s my father!” before their father was killed, according to The Bulletin.

Another victim, a woman named Geneviève Van Lidth, was one of the few people who saw one of the attackers without a mask. In 1983, she had her car stolen at gunpoint outside her home in Plancenoit, Walloon Brabant.

She later described the man as appearing to be of southern European origin, with short, curly black hair and “impeccable” French that made him appear well-mannered, and said a Peugeot 504 that followed her car was later linked to an attack by Delhaize in Genval, per The Brussels Times‘ a summary of her account.

“I always said he had a northern French accent, that he wasn’t Belgian,” she said, according to the outlet, adding that she was “99% sure” she recognized her attacker when shown a photo years later.

The Guardian reported that investigators once examined whether the attacks were an attempt to destabilize Belgium by current or former law enforcement officials with far-right ties. The AFP report cited by the outlet also noted a long-circulated theory that the Giant may have been a former member of the gendarmerie, Belgium’s national police force.

In 2019, a retired police officer was accused of allegedly dumping weapons and ammunition linked to the case into a canal in 1986, but was never convicted, according to The Guardian.

In 2017, The Guardian reported that the brother of a former Belgian policeman, Christiaan Bonkoffsky, had confessed two years earlier that he was “the Giant.” Patricia Finne, whose father was among the 28 people killed, told the sport that the disclosure was “the first serious revelation in 30 years.”

“I really hope this leads to the rest of the group being dismantled, whether they’re dead or not,” she told the outlet.

The total amount stolen during the theft was estimated at around €175,000, The Guardian reported.

According to the outlet, prosecutors told the victims’ families that investigators had checked 1,815 pieces of information, examined 2,748 sets of fingerprints, compared 593 DNA samples and exhumed more than 40 bodies without identifying the killers. No one was ever convicted in the case.

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In 2020, police released a photo of an unidentified man standing in a wooded area near a lake while holding a shotgun. Investigators described him as a “vital lead” in the case and appealed for help to identify him, according to the BBC and The Guardian reporting.

In June 2024, despite Bonkoffsky’s 2017 confession to being “the Giant”, Belgian federal prosecutors announced that the case was being closed after more than four decades of investigation, The Guardian reported. The families were told that “all possible investigative actions have been carried out,” according to the outlet.

“This means that the case is now buried and it makes me very sad,” said Irena Palsterman, whose father was among the eight victims of the Aalst attack, according to the outlet.

CBS News, citing AFP, reported that an appeals court in Mons later ordered investigators to hear two more witnesses, including the brothers who recorded the license plate number before the Aalst attack.

“We don’t want to give up,” said Kristiaan Vandenbussche, a lawyer representing the victims’ families, according to the outlet.

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