Renaud Hardy (55), de seriemoordenaar uit Mechelen, heeft in aanloop van zijn assisenproces twee moorden en twee moordpogingen bekend. Dat deed hij in november al, maar het nieuws raakte nu bekend in aanloop van het proces.

Renaud Hardy, die aan de ziekte van Parkinson lijdt en zich ondertussen verplaatst met een rollator, belandde twee jaar geleden achter de tralies, nadat hij op 17 september 2015 zijn ex-partner Linda Doms (51) in Hofstade om het leven had gebracht. Toen speurders beelden vonden van de feiten, hoe hij urenlang zijn ex had vernederd en verkracht tot ze uiteindelijk stierf, kon hij niet anders dan de moord bekennen.

Hoewel de speurders hem via DNA-sporen ook aan verschillende andere feiten linken, bleef hij die steeds stellig ontkennen, tot in november. Dat nieuws raakte nu bekend in de aanloop van het assisenproces.

Tweede moord

Zijn ex blijkt niet het eerste slachtoffer te zijn van de Mechelaar. In mei 2014 heeft Hardy de alleenstaande Maria Walschaerts (82) om het leven gebracht.

Hij vertelde ook dat hij op de avond van 29 september 2014 een heel gezin wilde uitmoorden, maar dat het plan faalde. Diezelfde avond probeerde hij rond middernacht dan maar in te breken bij Annie H. (toen 68) in Bonheiden, maar ook daar raakte hij uiteindelijk niet binnen

Andere feiten

Het onderzoek en DNA-analyse brachten ook andere verbanden aan het licht. Zo zouden de speurders via DNA-analyse hem ook een moordpoging

Met de vingerafdrukken en het DNA van Hardy tot hun beschikking, konden de speurders hem aan nog drie andere dossiers linken. De moord op Maria Walschaerts (82) uit Leest, die in mei 2014 gedood werd door een inbreker en de moordpoging op Annie H. (68) uit Bonheiden in september 2014. Ook bij haar werd een inbraakpoging ondernomen, maar raakte de dader niet binnen.

In februari 2015 werd actrice Veerle Eyckermans (55) uit Hofstade - bekend van tv-series als ‘Albert II’ en ‘Postbus X’ - door een inbreker bont en blauw geslagen met een stok. Ondanks de aangetroffen DNA-sporen ontkende Hardy bij die feiten betrokken te zijn geweest.

‘Geen commentaar’

Frédéric Thiebaut, de advocaat van Renaud Hardy, wil niet reageren op de bekentenissen van zijn cliënt. ‘Ik ga daar geen commentaar op geven. We zullen het proces afwachten.’

Het assisenproces in Tongeren start in februari, na de krokusvakantie, en zal drie weken duren.</s>At first hesitant to use the term, police are now clearly calling the case of Toronto landscaper Bruce McArthur, who is charged with killing five men, a serial killer case while some crime experts are drawing parallels with notorious B.C. serial killer Robert Pickton.

When Toronto police first announced last week that McArthur had been charged in the deaths of two men, they skirted the subject of whether or not the crimes he was accused of could be defined as serial killings, saying that was a media definition.

Police had been leading an investigation into the disappearances of three men from Toronto's Gay Village between 2010 and 2012 but had resisted calls from some in the community to link the disappearances to a potential serial killer.

But on Monday, as police announced more charges had been laid, Det.-Sgt Hank Idsing said unequivocally that the crimes were indeed the work of a "serial killer" and that Toronto police had "never seen anything quite like this with the number of crime scenes that we have to process."
• Here's what we know about man charged with serial killings
• What we know so far about alleged serial killer's victims

McArthur, 66, who had already been charged in the deaths of Selim Esen, 44, and Andrew Kinsman 49, who disappeared from downtown Toronto last April and June, respectively, faces three additional first-degree murder charges in the deaths of Majeed Kayhan, 58, Soroush Mahmudi, 50, and Dean Lisowick, 47.

None of the charges has been proven in court.

The three additional counts were announced as investigators also revealed that they discovered dismembered remains in the bottom of large planters after searching a property at Mallory Crescent in midtown Toronto that was linked to the self-employed landscaper.

Investigators are scouring about 30 Toronto properties to which McArthur had access, believing more remains may be found.

The details of the case revealed so far have prompted some to point to similarities between McArthur and Pickton, who was convicted in 2007 of six counts of second-degree murder after the remains or DNA of 33 women were found on his Coquitlam pig farm, about 25 kilometres east of Vancouver. He was suspected of targeting sex workers and other vulnerable women on Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, whose families accused the police of neglecting the alarm bells raised about the number of women going missing in the area for years.

"The parallels with the Pickton case are obvious in some cases," said criminologist and Western University professor Michael Arntfield. "We have an offender who is operating within a tight area, very specific geographically, targeting marginalized population that has a bit of a conflicted relationship with the police in some cases."​

As well, both Pickton and the suspect had access to properties where people can be made to disappear and dismembered to affect that disappearance, he said.

"The idea that police are connecting potential multiple disappearances to a single person and finding clues all around them — we saw something quite similar to this in the Robert Pickton case, where [Pickton] used his farm as a way to hide the remains of his victims," said Jooyoung Lee, a University of Toronto associate professor of sociology who specializes in serial killers. "

When it comes to serial killers hiding evidence, they "are very cunning and crafty," Lee said.

"They don't want to get caught, and they go to great lengths often to make sure that they can conceal the murders that they've committed," he said.

Some serial killers do take pleasure in dismembering and torturing their victims, and that's very much part of their killing ritual, he said.

Serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer, for example, kept the remains of his victims as trophies, and said he felt a great sense of peace when he saw the body parts of those he killed, Lee said.

But there are some serial killers who go through this process just to try and discard the bodies. For example, Pickton fed the remains to pigs on his pig farm. Gary Ridgway, the Green River Killer, would dump bodies in the Green River in Washington State. John Wayne Gacy, one of the most notorious serial killers in U.S. history, hid his young victims underneath his house in a crawl space.

"In those cases, it was about hiding evidence that could potentially implicate them as a serial killer," Lee said.

Arntfield said the way the victims were disposed in Toronto — their transportation and concealment either through obliteration, dismemberment or burial of a body — "speaks to an offender who has been honing this for some time."

Typically, serial killers will also use their occupation as a way to acquire victims and will use their time at work to scout locations, Arntfield said.

"One of the things I look at is the nexus between occupation and opportunity in serial murder," he said.

"These are allegations, but if proven to be true, it would appear McArthur used access to these locations and the equipment to help dispose of these victims."

But Arntfield said 66-year-old McArthur doesn't fit the known age demographic for serial killers. Serial murder, he said, has widely been thought to be limited to males 18 to 26 and that by 35, offenders are "aging out."

If McArthur is found guilty, it would mean he either started relatively late for a serial killer, or his crimes go back several decades, he said.

As for the motivations of serial killers, Lee said they vary. Some enjoy the act of killing and find gratification in the power and absolute control over another person.

Others don't like the act of killing but instead enjoy torturing or just having somebody as a personal slave, he said.

What they all have in common is they "enjoy the process of hurting other people and that it gives them gratification. It gives them psychic relief," Lee said.

Few are found to be clinically insane or suffering from psychosis, and they do understand the difference between right or wrong, Lee said.

"But their impulses are so strong and at some point they're unable to stave them off anymore, and then they begin acting out."

There's also wide variation in their social skills, meaning they can range from a complete loner, totally withdrawn, to those who are Ted Bundy-like — extroverts and quite gregarious.

"Popular media like movies tend to create and rely on very narrow caricature that actually sort of misleads people, because we start to look for people who match like a Hannibal Lecter or Dexter or something like that. But that's not necessarily a sign of a serial killer."
Renaud Hardy, a suspected serial killer from Mechelen, Belgium, confesses to two murders and two attempted murders ahead of his February assizes case in Tongeren.