Transparent LCDs Part Of Toolset Used To Solve Dutch Sex Assault Cold Case

January 17, 2023 by Dave Haynes

Police in the Netherlands used those shower-stall like transparent LCD set-ups in shopping malls to help generate leads on a series of sexual assaults of girls, tracing back more than a decade.

The incidents go back to 2010, but an effort in late 2021 saw a composite drawing of the suspected offender put on public-facing screens. The overall effort produced more than 300 tips from the community, and one of them led to an arrest of a 52-year-old man.

RTL Nieuws reports:

To solve the cold case, a hologram of the possible perpetrator was made in December 2021 based on a composite drawing. That hologram was displayed in shopping malls, among other places.

Subsequently, more than three hundred tips were received. One of the tips was specifically about the suspect. Last November, a large-scale DNA study was then conducted. The suspect was also selected for that investigation and voluntarily gave his DNA.

There appeared to be a match with the traces from the sex file from 2010, after which the suspect was arrested this morning. His house was searched and his car seized. 

The police are happy that after years someone has finally been arrested for the rapes. “Ultimately, we do these investigations for the victims, so that they can partially close an incredibly nasty event that happened to them,” the police write in a press release.

“It was therefore a very special moment to be able to inform the victims this morning about the arrest of the suspect.”

The hologram-ish displays were provided by the Dutch firm HereWeHolo, which posted about the arrest on Linkedin.

That composite presumably went out across a whole bunch of mediums, so it would be a reach to draw a direct line between this effort and the man’s arrest. But these displays are inarguably attention-grabbing, at least for now, in ways that more conventional screens are not.