The man known as the “Monster of Waasland” has died in cell at Merksplas Prison in Antwerp Province. Claudy Pierret (76) murdered 2 women in the 1990s. He has also been linked to other cases. Claudy Pierret is reported to have died of natural causes.
In 2011 he was convicted of the sadistic murders of 2 women and sentenced to 20 years imprisonment. 1 of his victims was 56-year-old Marie-José De Nocker, a woman living with a handicap that was an acquaintance of his. Her mutilated body was found in a ditch in the East Flemish village of Vrasene. He denied any wrongdoing and spent months on remand. He was eventually released due to lack of evidence.
The 29-year-old drug addict Yolande Prinsen was also an acquaintance of his. She disappeared in 1988 and her heavily mutilated body was found in a plastic bag in La Roche in Luxemburg Province, where Claudy Pierret was born. Here too he denied any involvement.
Later it was decided to assign an undercover police officer to the Pierret case in an effort to get a confession out of him. During a search of Claudy Pierret’s home images of the ill-treatment of a woman were found. The case came to court and even though he denied everything he was convicted on 2 counts of murder.In 2019 he finally confessed to the murders of Marie-José De Nocker and Yolande Prinsen.
Detectives have also linked him to 2 as yet unresolved cases. He was the last person that saw 13-year-old Maddy Hollanders, his wife’s half-sister, before she disappeared in 1976. Her body has never been found. Claudy Pierret is also a suspect in the case of the murder of Sally Van Hecke (20) in 1996.
Claudy Pierret died on Thursday in his cell in the geriatric wing of Merksplas Prision. He was 76.